The one performance Bob Dylan was disgusted to play: “I wouldn’t have gone”
Bob Dylan has never been looking for accolades whenever he made a new record. Being praised for his music may have hurt, and being respected by his peers was awfully good, but being treated like a musical god who knew where the future of the genre was going isn’t a burden that any one person should have to deal with. Although Dylan has been a bit more callous throughout his time at the top of the rock world, he knew that there were times when he needed to draw a line in the sand.
Granted, Dylan had been cooking up the “line in the sand” mentality since the late 1960s. He was never going to be known as the kid strumming folk tunes for the rest of his life, and by the time he went electric and started working strange influences into his sound, people were either confused, disgusted or simply turned off by seeing their leader take a different path than they thought he should.
But causing that kind of stir was exactly what Dylan wanted. He never propped himself up as a role model to be respected, and looking through some of his more notable cough-ups like Self Portrait, he was practically trying to get himself placed into the bargain bin so that he could continue living his life the way he wanted to. There’s a certain amount of respect that comes from someone making every wrong step like that, but that only made people idolise him more.
No matter what Dylan did, it suddenly became dissected like some advanced lifeform, with even The Beatles not getting enough of him. And while the Traveling Wilburys did Dylan a bit of cover by having him work alongside fellow rock legends rather than hog the spotlight, he was never going to be onboard when people started to hand out trophies for his artistry.
“I was just disgusted in having to be there after they told me what they intended to do and then backed out.”
bob dylan
To him, music was never a competition, and while the Grammys were more than happy to shower Dylan with praise, he came there with the wrong idea when the ceremony used him as an excuse to make a statement on the Gulf War. While Dylan hadn’t had an opinion on the matter at the time, his performance of ‘Masters of War’ was taken as a response to what was happening overseas, and he couldn’t have been more pissed.
According to Dylan, he felt that he had been duped into playing his song for the wrong reasons and had only come because of Jack Nicholson’s involvement in announcing him, saying, “Truthfully, I was just disgusted in having to be there after they told me what they intended to do and then backed out. I probably shouldn’t have even gone myself, and I wouldn’t have gone, except the other guy [Nicholson] was true to his word.”
Then again, the performance may have less to do with Dylan’s own political beliefs and more to do with how he sees the song ‘Masters of War’. He never intended to be the kind of political artist who wishes harm upon someone because of their beliefs, and while ‘Masters of War’ was one of the few exceptions in many people’s eyes, Dylan always understood it to be a work of fiction rather than having any set target.
While Dylan may have been at the height of making some of the more forgettable pieces of his catalogue at this point, the hostile way that he felt his song was treated may have helped him move inward a bit more. He may have had moments where he could get introspective, but the characters that populate Time Out Of Mind only get created by someone who wants to focus more on universal themes rather than political satire.
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