Dylan, Vylan and Political Protest: ‘Masters of War’ – Bob Dylan’s most important song in 2025
There has been a lot of talk about the ‘appropriateness’ of music, musicians, and their remarks in 2025. Bob Vylan have seen shows and visas cancelled over chanting “death to the IDF”.
Kneecap have even found themselves in court over the controversial quip “a good Tory is a dead Tory” among other subversive statements. While there is no doubt that these slogans do, indeed, prompt a sense of discomfort among the masses, that is nothing new.
In fact, that unsettling feeling is a vital function of art. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan made this perturbed sensation somewhat of a trademark. His pen induced unease as readily as a dark, misty winter evening induces eeriness.
At the tender age of 21 in late 1962, the original vagabond wrote some simple, blunt words that will go down in history:
“And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I’ll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch as you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead.”
Still to this day, the verse birstles like shaving against the grain. It was undoubtedly a dagger aimed at the warmongering status quo, and a brutal, unflinching one at that. He might have stopped short of mentioning the likes of Robert McNamara by name, but it was clear who he wished were six feet under.
However, unlike the present reaction to gutsy musical subversion, there wasn’t such a call to question its “decency” in the houses of power. There was certainly no call for Dylan to be arrested for his artful protest or the implication of murderous literalness on his part. It was seen as art. And art was seen as important.
With these lyrics, Bob Dylan undoubtedly crossed the same line that Bob Vylan and Kneecap are being accused of, but with 2.7 million of his buddies about to be shipped off to Veitnam, 58,220 of which would never come home, with anywhere from one to three million casualties from the pointless conflict in total, ‘crossing a line’ seemed like a perfectly appropriate response from the young folk singer.
In fact, his stern indictment was openly celebrated by far more people than the present furore has brought forward. He was seen as a young kid caring about something other than himself, and even to conservatives, that was something worth championing.
Dylan’s youthful ire continues to be celebrated as a boon to modern society. This same fierce spirit has resulted in a Nobel Prize, an innocent man being freed from an erroneous murder sentence, and a legion of youngsters thinking that they perhaps can have a vital and beneficial impact on a society that, in turn, undervalues them.
This is a vital legacy that only a fool or someone with something to gain would argue against. Even the government he so ferociously berated as unfit, eventually honoured him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, during which Barack Obama called him a “beacon of hope”. Despite lyrics that discomforted society, Dylan is perpetually celebrated as an icon, in part, because of his knack for conjuring that self-same discomfort that we’re now outraged about.
Why is ‘Masters of War’ so important?
With brooding anthems like ‘Masters of War’, it seems the bedraggled singer understood what we are now caught up in a daft pantomime of pretending we can’t reconcile: cultural expression must sometimes be indecent, unpleasant and even dangerous if it is going to shake up a sleepwalking society that is anithiatised by fuax moral outrage and soft repression.
In 1963, it was recognised that Dylan’s words were not a legitimate threat to safety, but the warmongering that they brought attention to was, as proven by over one million unnecessary casualties in the decade to come. In this sense, ‘Masters of War’ still stands proudly as a bastion of truth, proving that in 2025, true obscenity is not a slogan shouted by a punk band at a gig, but the sanctioned murders most foul that those words, no matter how clumsily and disconcertingly, try to expose.
Modern capitalism has sanitised the dissent that Dylan is now revered for to such an extent that we can hail him as a hero and simultaneously censor those who look to follow his lead without even noticing the duplicitous nature of our complicity in oppression.
In short, whether you agree with them or not, you can’t rue the state of the world and then chastise youngsters bold enough to be radical in a bid to stop “people being murdered”. It seems we recognised that in 1963, but we’ve now defanged important political discussion to such an extent that art seems like extremism if it escapes the narrowed realm of pre-approved marketability.
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.