Bob Dylan: why did the ‘Voice of a Generation’ reject politics?
Although his oeuvre stretches across many different realms, Bob Dylan has long been deemed one of the definitive political songwriters. Known as the ‘Voice of a Generation’ by his contemporaries, it was thanks to early protest songs such as 1963’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and the following year’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin” that he earned such a reputation. With cuts such as the aforementioned, the Duluth native positioned himself as the most articulate musician of his era, tackling a host of tricky socio-political themes in ways that were both accessible and thought-provoking.
Recently though, Dylan’s position as an inherently political songwriter has been revised. Commentators have noted that his early guise, fuelled by the influence of Woody Guthrie and other protest songwriters, soon changed due to various factors. It then gave way to a more refined way of approaching music that culminated with the record hailed as his masterpiece, 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. Famously, Dylan once repelled the suggestion that he was the defining artist of the counterculture, saying: “I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know”.
As pointed out by National Review, Dylan’s position as a political songwriter only existed in his early 20s. As a reflection of this, the publication mentioned two pieces of evidence. First, he didn’t perform at Woodstock Festival but lived there of his own volition; second, when a group of hippies surrounded his house in upstate New York looking for guidance, he told them to leave. Shortly after, he moved to Malibu to enjoy the peace and quiet he sought in Woodstock. The latter can be taken as a symbolic demonstration of the musician attempting to reject the political tag.
Interestingly, aside from the influence of Woody Guthrie, the politically-charged works of Dylan’s early career are inextricably linked to his love life. The publication noted that when he was just 20, Dylan met the political activist Suze Rotolo in 1961. Over the next two-and-a-half years, when they dated, he would write the highest concentration of political songs of his career. These included the likes of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, ‘The Times They Are a-Changin”, and ‘The Death of Emmett Till’.
When Dylan performed at the historic March on Washington in August 1963, he clarified his thoughts on being a political songwriter. Just before jumping into ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, he informed the audience: “This here ain’t a protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write protest songs…I’m just writing it as something to be said, for somebody, by somebody.”
By the end of 1963, Dylan started to break from being a primarily political songwriter. Around this time, Rotolo and Dylan split up, with her aborting their child and moving out of their apartment. At the beginning of 1964, Dylan was a single man again. Understandably, this had some impact on his musical style.
Gradually pulling away from politics anyway, in December 1963 – only three weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – Dylan shocked his fans when he said of the suspect Lee Harvey Oswald: “I saw some of myself in him” Even if it was in the context of him saying, “I don’t see why anybody can’t go to Cuba”, the comments still caused alarm.
Perhaps most indicative of his metamorphosis was that in the same speech, he said: “There’s no black and white, Left and Right to me anymore, there’s only up and down, and down is very close to the ground, and I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.”
Only two years later, Dylan fully turned his back on his political songwriting days when he went electric at the Newport Jazz Festival. 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home would embody this rejection of politics, with him now preferring more surreal and complex lyrics, with an electrified style far removed from his early one. A divisive move that killed off his early guise for good, he would rarely dip into politics again, with 1975’s ‘Hurricane’ and 2020’s ‘Murder Most Foul’ two exceptions.
Arguably, this new period delivered his best works, including 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde. 1975’s Blood on the Tracks was the pinnacle of this, and it saw Dylan cement his claim as the greatest songwriter in history.
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