RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Bob Dylan: gun totin' hippie hater?

Bob Dylan...has written a memoir chronicling the agonies of fame, which include a plague of peaceniks so intrusive that he kept guns in his house and "wanted to set fire to these people."

In an excerpt from "Chronicles, Volume I" published in the current Newsweek, Dylan bemoans the consequences of writing "songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities."

"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of," Dylan writes.

In fact, Dylan says he had two pistols and a rifle in his upstate Woodstock home to protect his family from his rowdiest fans.

"At first, it was merely the nomadic homeless making illegal entry - seemed harmless enough, but then rogue radicals looking for the Prince of Protest began to arrive - unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows, stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry," he writes.

"Not only that, but creeps thumping their boots across our roof could even take me to court if any of them fell off. This was so unsettling. I wanted to set fire to these people."

All he ever wanted was "a nine-to-five existence" - not to be some "Big Bubba of Rebellion."

"In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered - the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing," he writes.

But his genius for penning songs that spoke to a generation torn apart by the Vietnam War apparently turned him into "a scapegoat - someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire."

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[Dylan]sounds kind of like an asshole.
now, John Lennon [treated] people with respect.

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the G-man said:
r3x was criticizing Dylan for being distant, if not overly defensive towards, fans who came to his home, while lauding Lennon for being friendly to them.

Given what happened to Lennon, and the number of other psycho stalkers out there, it would seem that Dylan is probably right to behave that way.

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the G-man said:
r3x was criticizing Dylan for being distant, if not overly defensive towards, fans who came to his home, while lauding Lennon for being friendly to them.

Given what happened to Lennon, and the number of other psycho stalkers out there, it would seem that Dylan is probably right to behave that way.

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r3x29yz4a said:
I'd rather be a dead nice guy than a surly old asshole.

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Are you referring to Dylan or G-Man?

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the G-man said:
I'm not saying Lennon's kindness caused his death. I'm saying that, given there are people like Mark David Chapman out there, it is not unreasonable for Dylan to feel the way he does.

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the G-man said:
But we're all not Bob Dylan. We're not superstar singer-songwriters, dubbed "the voice of a generation" by the press and subject to unwanted pilgramages by fans whose mental states may or may not be questionable.

Most of us don't have to live like hermits.

In the age of celebrity stalkers, people like Dylan may have to.

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the G-man said:
I'm not saying Lennon's kindness caused his death. I'm saying that, given there are people like Mark David Chapman out there, it is not unreasonable for Dylan to feel the way he does.

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Animalman said:
People will always mold their hereos however they want. Some want to see Dylan one way, others want to see him another. I guess G-Man just feels more comfortable seeing him as someone who secretly despised the people he was supposedly speaking for(the hippie generation).

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Scorsese had the good sense to play down the “protest” side of the early Dylan. That stuff was in the air, of course, and Dylan could hardly have helped but pick it up, given the crowd he was hanging out with. He got some fine numbers out of it, too.

Watching the footage of him and Pete Seeger singing their songs in a field crowded with civil-rights people and black southerners, you got a flavor of the idealism and, yes, patriotism that carried the movement along. And of course, brave deeds were done and great things accomplished.

It needs a constant effort, though, watching that footage now, to push away the thought of how many hopes were not fulfilled — of how, in some ways, black and white Americans are still as far apart as ever.

Also, even more distressing, to see that fine idealism from 40 years on, and notice the slight aura of silliness and moral preening that flickered around it. I found myself looking at the faces of the black people in that field, and wondering what they were thinking. Scorsese, always one step ahead of you, has one of them tell us: “Who was this white kid from New York talking about walking hard roads? It was my father that walked those roads. White people don’t have hard times…”

Dylan, in any case, though he could see the injustice — anyone with eyes could see it — and felt what his peers felt, was never much interested in politics, except as a source for lyrics. Dylan was, and is, all music, all through. Watching him talking on the Scorsese film, he does not really come across as very bright. For sure he is not very articulate. Musical people rarely are, and pop musicians practically never. (I once saw an interview with Mick Jagger. I hope I get a clean run to the grave without ever having to see another one.)

Not that Dylan didn’t sometimes have a way with words. A very literary person of my acquaintance, a published poet, once told me that he thought “the dog up and died” (from “Mister Bojangles”) one of the loveliest lines in the English language. I could bring forth 100 better candidates for that particular award, but I do see my friend’s point. If you write as many lyrics as Dylan, though, and have a musician’s feel for the rhythmic properties of language, you are bound to come up with good lines once in a while. Hank Williams, who was next to illiterate, wrote some very beautiful lines.

Dylan was a generation younger than Williams, and from the north-midwest, not the south. The “old, weird America” of carny freak shows, town drunks, ragged mystics, stoical beaten-down Negroes, and long dusty roads with the hope of something better at the end, was slipping away even in Dylan’s childhood. He reached out and grabbed at it as it fled, though, and ripped off a corner of its strange starry cloak, and turned it into songs, by the miracle of art. I thought Scorsese did a pretty good job on the man and his music; but really, the music is all there is — and goodness knows, it ought to be enough for anyone.

Mickey Jones can always say that it was Bob Dylan who wanted to see him at the Whisky A Go-Go. He can also lay claim to being in Dylan's band on the famed 1966 tour when crowds booed the singer for going electric, prompting Dylan to whip around and demand that Jones "play f****** loud."

Jones, a veteran character actor who lives in Simi Valley, Calif., played drums on Dylan's historic and controversial 1966 world tour. A DVD featuring home movies Jones took of that tour came out last year, and now Jones is included in Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary airing Sept. 26-27 on PBS.

Jones was on a movie set in North Carolina earlier this week, back on the job after during some promotional work in New York for the PBS special, titled "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan." For Jones, it all began in early 1965 at the Whisky, the famed West Hollywood nightclub. He was drumming for Johnny Rivers at the time; a waitress he knew came up to him one night and said, "Bob Dylan wants to meet you." Jones, a Dylan fan, thought she was kidding, but soon Dylan motioned him to his table, told him he loved the way he played and wanted to record with him.

Then in early 1966, while still with Rivers, Jones was offered $750 a week to tour with Dylan. "In '66, that was a lot of dough," said Jones, adding that within three days after finishing a USO tour in Vietnam with Rivers and Ann-Margret he was rehearsing with Dylan.

The tour, now legendary, didn't seem to go so well at the time. It was the infamous tour in which Dylan went electric, offending lots of folk fans. "We got booed everywhere we went; booed off the stage," Jones said.

But it didn't deter Dylan; Jones recalled, saying Dylan was like a "caged animal" in the dressing rooms, always anxious to get onstage with his new sound. But the tour had to be cut short in August after Dylan was badly hurt in a motorcycle accident. In 1978, Dylan again asked Jones to go on tour with him, but Jones, who was just getting his acting career going, turned him down even after jamming with him for four hours at a Santa Monica studio.

Jones, now 64, found Dylan to be a "real quiet and very soft-spoken" professional. To most people, Jones noted, "Bob is more of a myth than a person ... He's almost too good to be true."

Several years ago, Jones sat down for a five-hour interview with Dylan publisher-archivist Jeff Rosen; footage from that session is used in "No Direction Home." The PBS show, Jones said, will clear up some things about Dylan and might even transform fans.

"They are starved for anything Bob, and they don't get much Bob," he said, alluding to Dylan's reclusive nature.

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Im Not Mister Mxypltk said:
Lennon was unlucky, that's all. Saying his kindness to his fans is responsible for his death is like saying that no one should travel by airplane because of Buddy Holly.

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Im Not Mister Mxypltk said:
Also, what does "leaving your fate up to a bunch of hippies" mean? I give money to a hobo every week, am I leaving my fate up to him?

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Do you think Bob Dylan is leaving his kids' life up to a gun by keeping it in the house?

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Pariah said:
No, that just means you're wasting your money.

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No. He's leaving his kids' lives up to his own use of his firearm.

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Im Not Mister Mxypltk said:
Is this a direct quote from Jesus?

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My point is that the guns are in the house, so even if they're kept in a safe place there's always the possibility that a terrible accident might happen.

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You're seeing a "lesson" in Lennon's kindness because of your own personal issue

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I don't know if this is true, but I once read that Chapman said he murdered Lennon because of his disrespect for religion ("we're bigger than Jesus", "imagine there's no heaven"). If the murderer was a religious fanatic and not a dirty hippy, would you see a lesson there too?

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Pariah said:
If--

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And if that terrible accident wasn't gun related, would you still beret Dylan on gun safety?

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Danger comes from all places Mxy. Some dangers are just more blatant than others. For example: Being such a huge celebrity would call for some security precautions. Ones Lennon didn't feel like taking.

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Uuuuuhhhh....What personal issue? I just said his brand of "kindess" killed him.

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Chapman was supposedly a Christian, but there wasn't a time where he said religion was his motive. I think people drew to that conclusion on their own.

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Bob Dylan is back at the top of the charts — for the first time in 30 years. His new album, "Modern Times," reached No. 1 on the album sales chart, selling 192,000 units in its first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released Wednesday.

The critically acclaimed disc is Dylan's first No. 1 album since 1976's "Desire."

• Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize yesterday.
  
  He was cited for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."
  
  It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, gave an award for an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive.