Why was Bob Dylan banned from performing in China?
The greatest songwriter of his generation, Bob Dylan, hasn’t always had it easy. Whether grappling with folk purists at the height of his acclaim or critics during his subsequent nadir, Dylan has impressively maintained a stoic sense of self-worth and a brazen moral compass.
In May 1963, prior to the imminent release of his second album and its runaway success, Dylan was due to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. As The Beatles would demonstrate some nine months later, the popular televisual spectacle was an invaluable tool for raising one’s status. However, the admirably obstinate Dylan walked out on the show when the host and production team asked him to swap out the song he had planned for something safer and less controversial.
The young troubadour had planned to play ‘Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues’ for his TV debut. In a style characteristic of Dylan’s early material, the song used satire to highlight the immorality of the American government’s foreign policy concerning communist territories. This subject matter was considered unnecessarily provocative and potentially damaging to the show’s reputation.
As expected, Sullivan and his producers were just as obstinate as Dylan, and ultimately, the latter told them, “No, this is what I want to do. If I can’t play my song, I’d rather not appear on the show”, and took his leave. He wouldn’t let anyone censor him, even if it risked his career prospects.
Nearly five decades later, Dylan was again censored; this time, he was banished from China on his world tour. In 2010, the Minnesota-born musician was forced to cancel two shows after Chinese authorities took issue with the protest songs of his early folk catalogue, including ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ and ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’. They argued that Dylan’s countercultural long-held status was potentially damaging and duly refused him access to Beijing and Shanghai.
In 2011, the Chinese authorities allowed Dylan to return to the country on his Far Eastern tour leg but insisted that he submit his set lists before the performances. Following performances in Beijing and Shanghai, Dylan was criticised in the press for omitting his early protest songs from the set list, but at the time, Dylan insisted the setlist wasn’t censored and contained all of the songs he intended to include.
“The idea that the raspy troubadour of ’60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout,” Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote in criticism at the time. “He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left.”
“As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing,” he stated at the time, denying that he had caved to censorship. “There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it, and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”
Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues’ below.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.