What interests me, aside from the fact that Shelton inserts himself into practically every paragraph (it's written in the first person, so that Shelton is the subject of the book and Dylan merely the object) are the bits and pieces out of the folk archives of those early times, when no one quite knew what to make of the skinny little kid from Minnesota who had a voice like a howling coyote and a fast-slashing wit that slipped unnoticed between the ribs of pundits and critics, creating bafflement, confusion, resentment, and even a degree of fear.
The way these indignant, insulted, obviously threatened stuffed shirts blathered on and on about how Dylan knew nothing and was stomping all over the folk tradition with muddy work boots makes for mighty embarrassing reading today. Which is why this is the most enjoyable part of this lumpy, bumpy, really-not-very-well-written-at-all biography-cum-memoir. Shelton knew Dylan like Dick Cavett knew Groucho and does not let us forget that fact for a moment, which nearly sinks the book in a sea of pretentious tedium. He also commits the most unforgiveable sin for a Dylan purist, or even a casual fan: HE GETS THE TITLE OF HIS MOST ICONIC MOVIE WRONG, spelling it "Don't Look Back" - when the filmmaker purposely left out the apostrophe. It is on every poster, in every review, and in the film itself, which makes you wonder if he even watched it.
But the sycophantic Shelton DOES provide us with, very likely, the last remaining documentation of one of the most stupid-ass periods in folk music history. Nobody else kept any of those shitty old copies of Sing Out! anyway, did they? But like back issues of TV guide piling up in an old boomer's attic, Shelton kept every issue and obsessively quotes from them for the book's entire 573 pages.
So I transcribed some of the juicier bits, which reflect just how CLUELESS these folkie pundits were, how stodgily encrusted their beliefs, and what a freaking strait-jacket they wanted to put Dylan in, probably because he scared the hell out of them:
In September 1965, singer Ewan MacColl scourged Dylan again in Sing Out!:
“. . . our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists, working inside disciplines formulated over time. . . the present crop of contemporary American songs has been made by writers who are either unaware or incapable of working inside the disciplines, or are at pains to destroy them. ‘But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers of all ages. . . a youth of mediocre talent. Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel. ‘But the poetry?’ What poetry? The cultivated illiteracy of his topical songs or the embarrassing fourth-grade schoolboy attempts at free verse? The latter reminds me of elderly female schoolteachers clad in Greek tunics rolling hoops across lawns at weekend theatre school. . .”
Izzy Young’s Sing Out! column for November 1965: “Dylan has settled for a liaison with the music trade’s Top-Forty Hit Parade. . . the charts require him to write rock-and-roll and he does. . . Next year, he’ll be writing rhythm and blues songs. . . the Polish polka will make it, and then he’ll write them, too. . .”
Animosity reached its high-water mark in the Sing Out! of January 1966. Tom Paxton lashed out in a column headed “Folk Rot” “. . . it isn’t folk, and if Dylan hadn’t led, fed and bred it, no one would ever have dreamed of confusing it with folk music.” Josh Dunson complained: “There is more protest and guts in one minute of good ‘race music’ than in two hours of folk-rock. . .”
Since 1950, when the folk audience was small, Sing Out!, under editor Irwin Silber, had laid down the "correct line" on folk song. Trumpeted by these men, the folk aesthetic denounced show business and mass culture, and advocated that Leftist, humanist views always be reflected in folk song. Deviation from belief in "art as a weapon in the social and class struggle" meant a sellout to commercial forces. Small wonder that Dylan's freewheeling exploration was apostasy.
Silber's "Open Letter to Bob Dylan", published in Sing Out! in November 1964, was particularly sharp: "I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. . . some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way." Dylan was outraged that Silber was telling him in public how to write and behave. Why didn't he telephone or write a personal letter? Silber was just using him to sell his magazine.
In September 1965, singer Ewan MacColl scourged Dylan again in Sing Out!:
“. . . our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists, working inside disciplines formulated over time. . . the present crop of contemporary American songs has been made by writers who are either unaware or incapable of working inside the disciplines, or are at pains to destroy them. ‘But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers of all ages. . . a youth of mediocre talent. Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel. ‘But the poetry?’ What poetry? The cultivated illiteracy of his topical songs or the embarrassing fourth-grade schoolboy attempts at free verse? The latter reminds me of elderly female schoolteachers clad in Greek tunics rolling hoops across lawns at weekend theatre school. . .”
Izzy Young’s Sing Out! column for November 1965: “Dylan has settled for a liaison with the music trade’s Top-Forty Hit Parade. . . the charts require him to write rock-and-roll and he does. . . Next year, he’ll be writing rhythm and blues songs. . . the Polish polka will make it, and then he’ll write them, too. . .”
Animosity reached its high-water mark in the Sing Out! of January 1966. Tom Paxton lashed out in a column headed “Folk Rot” “. . . it isn’t folk, and if Dylan hadn’t led, fed and bred it, no one would ever have dreamed of confusing it with folk music.” Josh Dunson complained: “There is more protest and guts in one minute of good ‘race music’ than in two hours of folk-rock. . .”
May I say at this point that Josh, Tom, Izzy, Ewan and Irwin are so full of shit they are overflowing, and can in fact "sit on this and rotate" through all eternity. Most of them are dead now anyway, and weren`t particularly alive even while they were walking the planet. Meantime, 80-year-old Dylan lounges on the porch with his dogs on his property in Key West, sipping a glass of Heaven`s Door whiskey and quietly working on the lyrics for his next album.
CODA. Yes, Dylan DID answer his critics. The song is legendary enough that anyone remotely a fan of Dylan will know it. But I want to say it for him again, this time DIRECTLY to "that other Bob", Robert Shelton, and all the hangers-on as well as the detractors who wound up being SO WRONG about the whole thing, and dissed a man who would later go on to win the Nobel Prize while they sat around turning into alcoholic wanna-be/has-beens-who-never-were in some dingy 4th Street bar.
You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'
You say I let you down, you know it’s not like that
If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it?
You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where it’s at
You have no faith to lose, and you know it
I know the reason that you talked behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you're in with
Do you take me for such a fool, to think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with?
You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say "how are you?", "good luck", but you don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it
No, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief perhaps I'd rob them
And now I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
Don't you understand, it’s not my problem?
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you
