Why do the boomer hippies and bums still claim Dylan as a counter-culturist, despite the fact he very well likely sympathised with Nixon's 'Silent Majority' campaign, and resented the subversive anti-war movement & race riots? John Wesley Harding & The Basement Tapes are a musical chud-out, where he's lamenting where America went wrong. The Nashville era is him showing his sympathy with Middle America, going back to his roots in Minnesota, away from the coastal madness. In Tears of Rage, he writes:>We carried you in our arms on Independence Day>And now you'd throw us all aside and put us all away>Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun could treat a father so?This to me is less personal, than national. Dylan was very concerned with the American nation during this period.
>>131057797He wrote 2 anthems for the Civil Rights Movement.
>>131057797I think Chuds are more likely to accuse him of this than anything because he is le jooo
>>131057797Boomer hippies have been getting Dylan wrong since the beginning.
>>131057808Right, but that was at the very beginning of his career, and he has had a long 60 years of writing music since then. His sympathy with King's fledgling activism as a young man was already passed when the civil rights movement began turning into race riots & left-wing terrorism.>>131057818I see it persistently that people's interest in Dylan has been frozen in time during when he was carousing with Joan Baez & singing for MLK. It's actually pretty sad how little Baez has moved on since her hippie days.
Dylan has no real consistent beliefs or even beliefs at all, he's easily influenced by those around him.
>>131057845>60 years of writing music since thenThose songs are his most important work. Left critics will never disavow him because of what he contributed to their cause with those songs.Dylan was fully aware of this and that's why he did it.
>>131057858Not true. People thought his Gospel period was some bout of insanity bound to pass, and he's still writing love letters to Christ in 2020's Rough and Rowdy Ways
>>131057858he's a Gemini so of course he's a bit bipolar
>>131057797Even his fellow folkies in the village acknowledged he was never very interested in politics and didn't share many of their views. At the end of the day he's always been a pretty moderate liberal, much more in common with the new deal era democrats he grew up with than anything radical he picked up as a musician.
>>131058034he grew up in the Midwest he wasn't a coastie by birth
>>131057845>It's actually pretty sad how little Baez has moved on since her hippie days.Peter, Paul, and Mary never moved on either.
>>131057808the left wing counter culture didnt win the civil rights movement. it was based on MLK who was a reverend and Christianity Communism is for godless heathens Dylan was always about middle america, real america. thats why he turned to christ and didnt like hippies and their leftoid politics
>>131057845The kind of Dylan fan who is stuck in the mid 60s is really a small and ever shrinking demographic. The fan who sees him more as an avatar for an era and the voice of a movement, rather than as a unique artist, seems to be very old and irrelevant these days. It happens often with artists of his generation that they becomes fixed to one cultural moment that looms over their whole legacy for decades only for later generations to flip the script and champion their other work. For years Zappa was synonymous with the Mothers and the 60s counterculture, and it was extremely common for critics and musicians to just write off everything he did after 1970, but that eventually changed. Bowie was derided as a washed up trend hopper in the 90s, but now his albums from that period are fan favorites.
>>131058155Well, I don't know. I'd like to think that you're right, there was the great reception to R&RW and its tour, but in popular culture, it hasn't kept up. Look at that recent biopic. It's rehashing the same tired story before the motorcycle crash. I liked how I'm Not There took in the breadth of his career, to the point that there was a gospel period depiction. But that was 20 years ago. His Nobel Prize is similarly focused on this political narrative. Look at picrel from Nobel's website.
>>131057797said it yourself his later work (which is garbaga) was MAGA chud shithis early (liberal) work was and is still goated
>>131058190It is funny too that the media and some of those oldhead fans continuously have to pretend to be shocked and/or offended whenever Bob does a tv commercial or brand deal. Like, after 60 years have you still not put it together that this guy thinks you're stupid and enjoys pissing you off?
>>131058105MLK was more radical than the mainstream wants to acknowledge. The popular narrative usually ends at the march on washington and skips over that whole final act of his life when he was taking on economic inequality and urban discrimination more aggressively.
>>131057845he wrote Hurricane in the mid 70's (and I think a few other clearly left-wing protest songs, but I don't know those).
>>131058548I think most non-naive knew he was a radical from the beginning but wore the moderate mask.
>>131060607Hurricane was just an excuse for him to use the N word.
