Comments on: Bob Dylan & America

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:29:16 +0000

Somebody disses Bob Dylan for his treatment of women. He’s terrible with women! Giving them countless millions when they divorce. I have NO idea what this person is talking about. 10 children? Really, what’s your source mam? How about not spreading rumors and slandering this “artiste”.

I spot a Hater.

By: RightWingBob.com » More of Douglas Brinkley talking about talking to Bob Dylan

Wed, 20 May 2009 15:25:55 +0000

[...] to Jay for the link to Douglas Brinkley’s appearance on “On Point with Tom Ashbrook”, from National Public [...]

By: Lauri

Lauri — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:54:59 +0000

I am waiting for this story to be available on your podcast. Thank you!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:44:11 +0000

Douglas Brinkley saying something about Bob Dylan doesn’t make it so, besides which Brinkley said that Bob is a song-and dance man who plays for bidders — perhaps not always the highest. If you can read this thread and conclude Dylan played for VS only because they were the highest bidder (they probably weren’t), then I guess you’ll think what you’ll think. He did it to tell people like you that he absolutely will be a part of women selling their sexuality, as they are free to do, just as he said he would forty years ago. Whatever that means for you he’s okay with. You’re confused about who this guy is.

By: lisette

lisette — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:53:43 +0000

mike,
“solution?” what exactly is the problem for which we need a “solution?” victoria’s secret has no reason to exist other than to make money by selling women (and girls) the idea that they are sex objects.
of course dylan doesn’t give a snit – yes, that is the point, so his desire to be a person of integrity is impossible and ludicrous when he’ll sing for the highest bidder, regardless of their message….

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:40:57 +0000

Speak for yourself, Arnold. Born 1978 here. Maybe the times have changed, but it takes an intentional leap of indifference to be unable to imagine the atmosphere of the time. That’s how we enjoy art through time. Then there’s the matter of the music he is making literally today.

By: Arnold

Arnold — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:20:00 +0000

This topic is too generational. If you were born in the 60s or later, this guy is not on your radar. Interesting stuff, no doubt; but not relevant to me.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:17:59 +0000

lisette,

So what’s the solution, disallow beautiful women from appearing in commercials? Or just nihilistic geniuses from appearing with the,?

Bob doesn’t give a snit about your “taking issue.” That’s the point.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:21:22 +0000

I grew up WITHOUT Bob Dylan… I somehow missed his music (except for the top hits), until last year when I was 52. I somehow started listening and his music blew me away.

I have almost all of his music now and for over a year listen almost exclusively to his music. Its been a significant change in my life, totally unexpected and unforseen.

Its also opened my eyes to other music more and more. But each time I listen to another artist now, I often can’t because it is missing something that I can only find in Dylan’s music. He’s opened my eyes and heart to a new dimension of music and art quality and sincerity and meaning.

Joe

By: John

John — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:36:25 +0000

Actually, back in the ’60s, he was once asked if he’d ever “sell out.” He said “only for ladies’ undergarments.” I think the Victoria’s Secret deal was a sly reference to that.
And, the man once said “God is a woman. Start from there,” when asked about his religious beliefs. Not so sexist, I don’t think, but playful.
His significance to me is that he’s written over 300 masterpiece songs, which have nurtured my spirit daily for over 30 years. If he has some private matters he doesn’t want to share with the omniverous public, that’s his affair.

By: Frankie Lee

Frankie Lee — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:22:19 +0000

Dylan now is part of the establishment he use write protest songs about, so lame.

By: lisette

lisette — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:27:04 +0000

mike, i’m not criticizing dylan’s “ongoing lust” etc. – just taking issue with his participating in and making money from the selling of women as objects. (i don’t think he’d be doing that with any other oppressed group, unless he no longer cares about equal rights for everybody.)

and elizabeth, you’re so right – it does show that he still matters!!

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:31:17 +0000

(And good for him.)

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:30:10 +0000

Also re the Victoria’s Secret ad, most of his songs are about his ongoing lust, as well as love lost. A quote from the Time Out of Mind album — “Highlands”:

Every day is the same thing, out the door
Feel further away than ever before
Some things in life it just gets too late to learn
Well I’m lost somewhere, I must have made a few bad turns

I see people in the park, forgettin’ their troubles and woes
They’re drinkin’ and dancin’, wearin’ bright colored clothes
All the young men with the young women lookin’ so good
Well I’d trade places with any of ‘em, in a minute if I could

I doubt he hesitated when the offer came in.

By: Joey Hernandez

Joey Hernandez — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:39:36 +0000

Everybody has Dylan story? right?

Four years ago I read his autobiography – Chronicles. The one theme that spoke loudly in the text was Dylan’s strife with himself. Throughout it all the man is stilling doing what he wanted to do, make music. The flavor of his music have come with time, but all still the same – Dylan. His contribution to our world is to be compared with the late Ray Charles and Johnnie Cash -both contemporaries. All of the nostalgic images and soudbites display the undeniable fact that he is more than just pop culture, he’s become classic. Nonetheless the man is his music and as laid-back as he can be.

By: Elizabeth Milliken

Elizabeth Milliken — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:39:04 +0000

John,
Dylan was and is a great admirer of the Clancys–he walked out on the Sullivan show because the CBS censors wouldn’t let him play his song satirizing the John Birch Society, not because he had any objection to the Clancy Bros. songs.
Its funny to see here how people still insist on putting their own trips and judgements on him. I still love him, with all his contradictions. I get mad when he shills for cadillac, but I guess that shows that he still matters.

By: Sam Feldman

Sam Feldman — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:23:53 +0000

On today’s show it was pointed out Dylan would not choose to give interview to Time Magazine or the Wall Street Journal….that’s because Dylan is about America.
And New York City is not America.

By: lisette

lisette — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:30:12 +0000

it’s hard to stay a fan of someone who shills for the masters of war. i fell for dylan when his first album came out – voice and all – loved it when he went electric and made the music he wanted to make. i’ll even admit i can’t imagine life without his music.
but…did i hear correctly that brinkley said dylan “wants to have integrity…refuses to be seen as a man who had no morality…and somebody like, in the folk realm, pete seeger? what…? pete seeger, who is truly a man of integrity, among many other virtues?
can anyone imagine pete promoting the obscene victoria’s secret, a corporation that sells women as meat as surely as armour sells bacon?
maybe that isn’t what he said…?

By: Lee Mergner

Lee Mergner — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:15:20 +0000

Re: Victoria’s Secret ad, in that same interview from 1964 in San Francisco, he actually jokes that he’d do a commercial for women’s underwear. It’s in the book of Dylan interviews curated by Jonathon Cott and published by Rolling Stone. I think he was being ironic, but 40 years later it came true.

By: karl sklar

karl sklar — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:37:12 +0000

the sly fox: boxer, juggler, “borrower”, wise ass, visual artist (huge irony: that he doesn’t “get” warhole ), patriot, rebel, preacher, apostate, rock star, poet. Main thing it seems to me: the inscrutable, authentic ‘merican genius with the guts to thoroughly try – contradictions be damned – and own it all. in the process the man has made us all so much richer for it with his implicit demand that we try to keep up with him.