Bob Dylan: Livin’ Life On The Fly
by
R.E. Prindle
Bob Dylan
created the character of Bob the Drifter back at the beginning of the
Sixties. He has since done his best to
live the life of the ultimate drifter.
Early influences on the persona were probably Hank Williams musical
alter ego Luke the Drifter and possibly Simon Crumb the alter ego the country
singer Ferlin Husky. His immediate role
model was definitely Ramblin’ Jack Elliot who was born Elliot Adnopos making
his adopted goyish name a cover for his Jewish identity much as Bob Dylan was
doing. Thus these two very Jewish guys
have lived out their lives under assumed goyish identities.
Like
Ramblin’ Jack Bob Dylan further patterned his life on the life of the goy drifter Woody Guthrie.
Bob learned
Jack’s style when both men lived in the early sixties folk environment of
Greenwich Village in New York City. When
that particular bubble burst in the mid-sixties partly through the machinations
of Dylan himself who introduced electricity into the Greenwich Village folk
scene a dispersion took place.
I say partly
because seemingly unnoticed by everyone while being completely overlooked today
The Lovin’ Spoonful with the really legendary John Sebastian and Sol Yanovsky
had used an electric guitar since early 1965 while also writing their own
songs.
After
leaving recording for a year or two after 1966 Dylan led a sedentary life in
Woodstock New York with his wife Sara and a growing family. The call of his destiny on the road was too
strong with Dylan gradually edging back to the role of the roving hobo.
Mentally
adrift for most of the seventies and eighties Bob then devised the perfect
drifter life. He became a drifting
troubadour. He not only roved but he
made it pay to the tune of a billion dollars or more. He got himself a couple buses and phased
through several identity crises. He styled his drifting as The Never Ending
Tour.
While living
his early years in Hibbing Negro music appears to have made no impression on
him. He does say that he listened to
Black music over the radio on stations blasting up over the central plain from
locations such as Shreveport but I don’t detect that influence in his music too
much. Of course, once in New York he saw
the necessity for Negro roots and reacted socially.
Dylan does
however know all the great C&W tunes and artists. His first great plagiarism was from Hank Snow
one of the absolute greats. C&W was
however not mainstream. In the peculiar
White mentality C&W was rejected as ignorant White hillbilly music and I
mean rejected. You had to cover up your
liking of C&W as though it was the original sin. On the other hand with that peculiar
mentality of Whites they were able to embrace equally ignorant Negro ghetto
music as their own. I could never figure
it out.
Dylan didn’t
try. Sometime before he got to
UMinnesota in the Fall of ’59 he realized he wasn’t he wasn’t going to make it
as a rocker so he switched to Folk from Fall ’59 to January of ’61 when he left
for NYC. At UMinnesota he had listened
to a few Folk records while someone gave him Woody Guthrie’s autobiography
Bound For Glory so that in some mad burst of teen infatuation he came to the
conclusion that he was the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie. He adopted the persona to the best of his
ability beginning to create a hokey Oklahoma drifter’s accent and vocal style.
One gets the
impression that his folk act in Minnesota was raw enough that he was merely
tolerated. Bob, himself, knew he was a
genius so he took his half-digested act East to New York City in that January
of ’61. But he was wary. Cagey then as now he decided to scope the
scene before he burst upon it.
While
arriving in NYC in January he didn’t make his official appearance on the
Village scene until late February. Dylan
himself explains that missing period by claiming to have been hustling his buns
in Times Square. People have refused to
take him at his word but why would he say it if it wasn’t true? Why would he say it even if it were? Dylan had very low self-esteem at the time
while being a very serious drunkard. At
UMinnesota he had blottoed out and spread out on the ground at full noon in the
main crossroads at the U. You have to
glory in your shame to do that.
We don’t
know how much money Dylan had when he stepped out of the car in NYC although he
was never really broke when he buskered on the street; his Ace In The Hole was
the folks back home. They did send him
money.
Perhaps
though Dylan was so down so low that he needed to debase himself in the worst
possible way. He probably did stroll 42nd
St. looking to be picked up. Perhaps
receiving money picked him up a little; gave him value.
As he scoped
the Folk scene and picked up the odd dollar he was devising a persona to splash
into the scene. His persona was totally
absurd and his Ten Weeks With The Circus story would be, or should have been,
seen through before he got it out of his mouth.
This was sophisticated NYC for Christ’s save, New Yorkers have seen and
heard every hustle ever devised. You
couldn’t fool them so they must have been humoring Dylan.
Nobody could
have done all the things he said he’d done and graduated from high school two
years or less earlier. He also tried to
conceal that he was Jewish which seems ridiculous to me, but then Dylan didn’t
see the obvious Jewishness of Jack Elliot so maybe it’s just me. Anyway it took these sharp New Yorkers a year
or more to figure Dylan was a little Jewish kid.
Dylan had
analyzed the scene well. He realized he
couldn’t go in and do what everyone else was doing. Besides there were a lot of good guitarists
in the Village and Dylan wasn’t one of them.
He had to shake the scene up a little.
At the time the Village Folk scene was a bore. Folk was on the down trend. The New Lost City Ramblers, one of the more
formidable Village folk groups were so trite they were unlistenable. While not on the Village scene I was aware of
the phonograph records made by the artists and quite frankly I was amazed that
anyone would record those people. I
mean, like Dylan, I was a hillbilly.
There were many amazing records being made by real folk artists like the
Carter Family. These pale Village imitations
by middle class Jews aping the mountain people were far less than
authentic.
So Dylan
practiced this garish voice, blew harmonica in an incomprehensible way and
banged the guitar in an equally noisy and unmusical way. Bud and Travis couldn’t play guitar either. It boggles your mind to watch them flail the
instrument.
People that
say they liked his first couple records may very well be telling the truth but
the truth is virtually no one bought them.
Fortunately Dylan soon learned to write songs. They too made little impression as sung by
him; sung by others, such as Peter Paul and Mary they sounded good enough to
become hits. Of course, Peter Paul and
Mary had that religious sounding name and earnest style that opened a lot of
doors for them.
Nevertheless
by 1964 Dylan was beginning to make a name for himself as a songwriter so that
people were more willing to accept his bizarre performances. Andy Warhol said that Dylan began by singing
political protest songs then shifted to singing personal protest songs. That change began about 1964 with his Another
Side Of Bob Dylan LP.
His friend
and sometime road manager Victor Maymudes said that all Dylan’s songs were
about his girl friends. If you read his
lyics with that in mind they will make more sense. You still have to work at it though. The language he uses really obscures the
content.
It was at
this point that Dylan went electric and moved out from his folk cover (Dylan said that his folk music years were
just a shuck.) and began his conversion to rock and roll. Dylan began performing in high school as a
Little Richard clone so the move should come as no surprise knowing what we do
today. When his rock and roll phase
ended in 1966 Dylan then returned to his basal influence C&W.
As he
shifted to personal protest on a rock and roll frame he made his impact as ‘a
spokesman for his generation.’
Dylan was
never a spokesman for the generation but he was a spokesman for people with the
same psychosis as his. Dylan was
unbalanced as were all the people who took his message. I was one of those who Dylan characterized as
‘abused, misused, strung out ones or worse.’
Dylan converted his angst into sexual frustration and his sexual
frustration into lyrics. We weren’t able
to understand the lyrics because we were looking in the wrong place but we
understood the songs perfectly on the subliminal level. Dylan’s psychology matched ours.
Dylan’s last
album as a New York folk singer, Blonde On Blonde, also expanded his audience
while also confusing those who weren’t on his wavelength. That is, people who hated him, and largely
for psychological reasons, were forced to acknowledge him. At the time the LP was so far outside our
musical experience that we literally had heard nothing like it before. Little Richard redux.
On the other
hand I realized that he had peaked in that style and would no longer be able to
continue in the same vein. At the same
time the pressures of the previous five years on Dylan were such that his mind
was at the breaking point and actually broke.
He probably had what was called a nervous breakdown. Shortly we heard
that Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident and might be dead. He wasn’t, of course, and it has never been
reliably determined that there ever had been an accident. His brother David just laughs it off while
many others reduce it to the equivalent of a mere scratch. Dylan himself says that his manager Albert
Grossman was driving him so hard that it was killing him. He had to stop and catch his breath or die.
Dylan hadn’t
yet learned to live on the road; he would master that later.
At any rate
he had married his Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, Sara in 1965 and needed time
out to raise a family. He did do that.
Regardless
of whether he had been hurt or not he was not musically idle. About a year and a half later in December of
1967 he released the awaited new LP John Wesley Harding. The LP was a total rejection of his first
incarnation. He used a crooning voice
backed by a C&W band. He returned,
as they used to say, to his roots. He
was no longer a trailblazer, just a C&W singer. While I knew he would not follow up in the
same style I was stunned by the reversion to a conventional country style. At that time no one knew that his roots were
C&W.
I loved the
instrumental backing of his three big albums but had no interest in what seemed
to be pseudo-country with rather ordinary lyrics. (Let Me Be Your Baby Tonight.) I abandoned him completely and never have
gone back. This was 1967. The next wave of the British Invasion was in
progress and it was astonishing. The
music was all fresh and picked up where Dylan had left off. The sounds were all new like you’d never
heard before. The lyrics were nearly as
inscrutable as Dylan’s. Dylan was not
missed by me nor a lot of his former fans.
As I said
Dylan was not idle; he was busy. The evidence
of that appeared six months after John Wesley Harding. Music From Big Pink by the Band. This was relatively sensational music and
lyrics. Of course The Band was Dylan’s
back up and his association with Big Pink buttressed his reputation a lot. And then the legend of the Basement Tapes
appeared that was even more tantalizing than the actual music although the
songs from it that appeared by other artists were remarkably good.
So while
Dylan left the Sixties with a much diminished reputation it was on a positive
note.
-II-
The Never Ending Tour
While talent
such as Dylan’s was is important, talent will not out without good luck and a
helping hand. Dylan undoubtedly had both. There has always been some mystery about how
a half skilled musician could show up in Greenwich Village in March 1961 and be
signed to a record contract with Columbia Records seven months later in
October.
People who
had been around the Village were just blown away when the news got out. Dylan’s talent was not that obvious to
everyone. Many could not see it at
all. He couldn’t play guitar and he
couldn’t blow the harp. His voice, at
the time, was so raw it grated, and still does for me. He hadn’t written a song in those seven
months so his much vaunted songwriting skills weren’t in evidence. Yet Robert Shelton, the music reviewer for
the ultra-prestigious New York Times gave him a rave review that amazed
everyone. John Hammond of CBS signed him
virtually without hearing him. Other CBS
staffers had such a low opinion of Dylan’s talent that they called him Hammond’s
Folly. Was there something going on
behind the scenes, was something happening here that the Village couldn’t
understand? Listen to Positively Fourth
Street and Something Happening again closely.
Well, you
know, I’ve thought about this and studied this and I’ve put together the
following scenarios for your delectation.
Granted it is highly conjectural yet based on facts.
Remember
that Dylan is Jewish and New York City including the Village was and is a Jewish
colony. Being Jewish in the Village did
and does count.
Back in
Hibbing Minnesota the Jewish community was three or four hundred strong while
Dylan’s, or Bobby Zimmerman’s, as he then was, family was chief among them.
Both Dylan’s
father, Abram Zimmerman, and his mother, Beatty Zimmerman were of the Frankish
sect of Judaism. Dylan’s Jewish name,
Sabtai, was derived from the last acknowledged human Jewish messiah. This undoubtedly indicated the high hopes
Abram had for his son as a deliverer of the Jews; in other words, a messiah.
Father Abe
was the Anti-Defamation League representative in Hibbing. That may have caused some friction between
himself and the goy townsmen. There
seems to be an undercurrent of resentment both to Abe and Bobby Zimmerman in
Hibbing. As an Orthodox Jew Abram had
connections back in New York probably with the Chabad Lubavitcher sect led by
its chief rabbi, Menachem Schneerson.
Abram traveled frequently on religious business including to NYC.
Abram wanted
son Bobby to also embrace the Lubavitcher sect.
Thus, as Bobby approached thirteen and his Bar Mitzvah Abram sent back
to New York for a Lubavitcher Rabbi to come to Hibbing specifically to educate
Bobby in the Lubavitcher belief system.
This was the rabbi Reuben Meier.
In full Lubavitcher gear he was an anomaly in Hibbing where according to Dylan he
embarrassed the Jewish community.
As Dylan
tells it he got off the bus one day, spent a year teaching Bobby ‘what he had
to learn’ then got back on the bus presumably returning to NYC his mission
accomplished.
Dylan has or
had a messiah complex. Still, as he
observed the fate of Jesus (look what they done to him, he said) he was
unwilling to pick up the cross thus never declaring himself. Still Abe had connections in NYC that could
be and probably were useful bumping Dylan’s career along.
I haven’t
found any evidence that Dylan ever contacted the Lubavitchers once in NYC but
then it can’t be ruled out and he didn’t have to. His father could have worked with them
unknown to Dylan. Still, Dylan later in
life did associate himself with the Lubavitchers. Could be coincidence, of course.
Shelton who
wrote his glowing review of Dylan worked for the New York Times which was and
is owned by the Jewish Sulzberger family.
Thus in all probability Abram called in some favors from the
Lubavitchers to forward Dylan’s career.
Among them Abram had some position, and asked them to make sure that
Dylan wasn’t overlooked. Thus within the
synagogue, so to speak, Shelton wrote his actually preposterous review of
Dylan.
Now, Shelton
came to New York from Chicago in the late fifties. Dylan’s future Jewish manager Albert Grossman
also came from Chicago where he had owned the seminal folk club The Gate Of
Horn. Shelton knew Grossman in Chicago
where he wrote reviews of the folk acts.
When
Grossman went East for whatever reasons in 1959 he helped found the Newport
Folk Festival with the Jew George Wein.
Thus the Newport Folk Festival was a Jewish organization giving them the
control over who could and could not make it.
Grossman hung around the Village analyzing the talent as he had
plans. He didn’t necessarily let the
acts come to him but he went out and created them as in Peter Paul and Mary
which was his total conception. Sensing
the direction of things he realized that a trio of two men and a woman with the
right lineup would succeed and spread the message. His final choices were two male Jews, Noel
Stookey who became Paul and Peter Yarrow and a woman Mary Travers. He chose well.
Prodded by
Shelton Grossman took a look at Dylan but could see no use for him until Dylan
began to write. At that point he fit
into Grossman’s plans who then created Bob Dylan as a commercial entity. Dylan justified the confidence in himself
when he scored with the puerile Blowin’ In The Wind. Dylan was still unlistenable to most people
but with the voices of the more musical Peter Paul And Mary he began to
establish his reputation as a song writer.
The
Synagogue was behind him so that coupled with his talent he was given maximum
and incredible exposure. Now, Peter
Yarrow who was very close to Grossman, one might say almost a collaborator,
said that without Grossman there would have been no Peter Paul And Mary and
more importantly no Bob Dylan. Yarrow
believed that Dylan’s success was due to Grossman. Luck was with Dylan then when Grossman came
to town a couple years before he did while Shelton was there at the Times. You must have that luck. Grossman definitely nurtured Dylan as a
songwriter and put his career on track.
Whether Grossman was connected to the Lubavitchers isn’t clear but I’m
sure the religious connection was there.
It was all within the Synagogue; strictly a Jewish affair.
Those who
closely analyze Dylan’s songs love to point out the Biblical references with
which his songs have always been replete.
Indeed, when Dylan was writing John Wesley Harding his mother who was
visiting him during the period says that he kept a large Bible open in his
living room that he would jump up to consult it from time to time. Obviously the Bible informed his lyrics as he
dealt with his injunction to be the new messiah, if I am correct in my
analysis.
His
religious training would surface in the seventies when he explored Jesus’
relationship to the Jews. Contrary to
what people believe Dylan never turned to Christianity, he was interested in
the Jewish Jesus cult. At the same time
he was getting the Christian take on Jesus through the Vinyard Fellowship he
was studying with the Jews For Jesus cult.
Indeed, when he came out as a Jesus freak at the Warwick Theatre in San
Francisco Jews For Jesus people were used to proselytize outside the theatre but not the Vinyard
Fellowship.
Having
satisfied his curiosity about Jesus he next showed up in full Lubavitcher gear
in Jerusalem. The Christians were
stunned at the seeming turnabout. Rabbi Reuben
Meier had not failed the Lubavitchers back in the fifties in Hibbing. Dylan came home.
-III-
On The Barricades
Jewish
self-confidence was ruined in the wake of WWII but began to resume with the
establishment of Israel in 1948. A
feeling of power began to revive after the 1956 war; then after the Six Day War
of 1967 a feeling of invincibility seized the Jewish mind. Born in 1941 Dylan was 26 in 1967. In 1968 the aborted Paris insurrection took
place.
As a result
of the Six Day War the New York Rabbi Meir Kahane organized the Jewish Defense
League (JDC) as a terrorist organization from which came the JDO or Jewish
Defense Organization. The JDO was
murderous. Both were terrorist groups
who engaged in serious bomb attacks in NYC and assassinations. It was pretty nutty.
At roughly
the same time the Weatherman group was formed that was a combined Goy and
Jewish affair designed to bring down the US government. That group was headed by the Chicago
terrorist nutcake Bomber Billy Ayers.
The JDL, JDO and Weathermen traced their origins back to Dylan while
including Dylan as one of them. Dylan
had JDL members as bodyguards and possibly JDO so at one time he seems to have
been a member. More regular Jews warned
him to dissociate himself publicly from the JDL and JDO so that he did
disassociate them from himself at least as far as one can see.
Dylan’s
association with the Weathermen if it existed was more tenuous. It would be interesting to know if through
Greil Marcus Dylan knew Ayers. All groups considered Dylan a revolutionary. This could easily be inferred from songs like
Subterranean Homesick Blues and Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie’s Farm No More
plus many of his Negro protest songs.
Now, when
Dylan was awarded the French decoration, The Legion Of Honor, in 2015 he was commended for his contributions to the
Paris insurrection of ’68. What those
contribution were weren’t specified; it may only have been the moral support of
his songs that the revolutionaries heard as a call to arms. Or perhaps Dylan functioned as a courier
during his tours throughout the world.
It wouldn’t be the first time entertainers were used as covers.
In 2007 when
Sarkozy had been elected President of France one of the first things he did was
to call a number of people to Paris to receive awards. Three relevant Americans made the trip,
Dylan, Greil Marcus and David Lynch the filmmaker.
As it turns
out Dylan and Greil Marcus are or were fairly closely associated. Marcus was ostensibly a music critic for
Rolling Stone Magazine, another Jewish set up, but he was also a member of the
French Jewish revolutionary group, the Situationist International led by Guy
Debord. Debord and his SI claim to have
been the moving force behind the Paris revolt thus tightening the connection
between Marcus, Dylan, the SI and the Paris insurrection. Dylan was also associated with the revolutionary
group centered around John Lennon and his widow Yoko Ono.
Now, in 2001
Dylan, Marcus and future president of the United States Barack Obama were in
Chicago as associates at the time of 9/11.
Dylan’s LP Love And Theft was released on that date that has references
that seem applicable to the destruction while Marcus published an article
shortly thereafter that seemed to celebrate the attack. So Dylan’s actions seem to point to
revolutionary ends.
Now, as
Dylan was touring the world from the Sixties through the present he may have
been a courier connecting global revolutionary activity. It would not have been wise to communicate by
phone or internet in later years as phones and electronics are easily tapped so
it would be necessary to communicate by hand delivered messages. Such services would have been invaluable
while coded messages in songs or interviews on radio and television appearances
are possible. Eric Burdon formerly of
the Animals was arrested by the German authorities on that suspicion.
You don’t
get awards just for being cute.
