Reply #124: It's Halloween, and I've got my Bob Dylan mask on.

[skooooo]

Oh, I'm not going to "labor" or "inundate" you, but I will give you some facts, and in turn, if you wish to discuss this further, I will suggest you likewise dig out your books and provide documented statements to support your claims. If you don't, then I will surmise you are not too serious in discussing the issue.

From the book, _Chimes of Freedom: the Politics of Dylan's Art_, pages 97 and 98 discuss Irwin Silber's "open letter" to Dylan which was published in Sing Out! magazine. He wrote, "Your new songs seem to be inner-directed now, inner probing, self-conscious..." Still quoting the book - "As a socialist, Silber was concerned not only with the specific case of Bob Dylan but with the political questions it raised for the movement."

In 1968, the book continues, Silber reconsidered Dylan: "Dylan did desert us - not us but and outmoded style of values which had become unequal to the task of reclaiming America."

That's just one short blurb from a book that delves quite deeply into this issue of the left-wing feeling that Dylan had "abandoned" their cause because he rejected the far-left wing music and political establishment.

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Next book, Anthony Scaduto's _Bob Dylan_ which contains a lengthy interview with Joan Baez.

Referring to the period of writing Dylan entered in 1964-65, the author asks Joan Baez..."But it was in that period that he was moving away from the protest songs?

Baez replies: "Oh, you see I'm sort of puritanical and stiff. I could never enjoy the things that he did that wasn't protest until a year later. I'm still like that with a lot of his stuff because I felt so abandoned by his saying, "I wont be responsible for those kids," in his music and in his words. I just felt sad, and so I was determined not to listen to the other stuff...he did leave a lot of us in the lurch."

For more confirmation that Baez felt that Dylan betrayed the "movement," you can listen to her song "Bobby," which was written in the late 70s I think.

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From the book _Like the Night: Bob Dylan and the Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall_. Page 152 - 153 describe the audience reaction to Dylan's departure from the left wing orthodoxy. Author says, "Consider the people D.A. Pennebaker filmed in the foyer of the Free Trade Hall after the show. People said...Dylan should "be shot. He's a traitor."

Lonnie is still bitter to this day, "It was like, as if, everything we held dear had been betrayed. He showed us what to think, though I know that's a stupid thing to say. But there he was, marching with Martin Luther King and everything, and suddenly he was singing stuff about himself. We made him and he betrayed the cause."

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In the book _Voice Without Restraint_, page 7 gives an account of the critics who panned Dylan's Newport '65 appearance which included many "folk purists." Again, because Dylan bucked the orthodoxy, people attacked him. A few authors defended Dylan, and you can tell from their defense of Dylan how strong the criticism was. Paul Nelson remarked that in the audience's preference for Pete Seeger over Dylan, the "....Newport audience had chosen the safety of wishful thinking rather than the painful, always difficult stab of art."

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These are just a few examples. Similar attacks from the left wing orthodoxy broke out when Dylan returned to recording in the late 60's and put out John Wesley Harding, which was villified as some kind of celebration of red-neck America.

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Ok, you're turn. Like I said, once we go down the road of real research, I expect the same in return.
Otherwise, I'm not interested in "debating" you.