By Susie
Davidson
Advocate
Correspondent
NEWPORT,
R.I. - Bob Dylan’s momentous appearance at Newport last weekend brought
many attendees back to an equally pivotal time in musical history. Ever the
times-a-changin’ trendsetter, he did not disappoint with his ability,
even at post-60, to reinvent both his classic songs and he himself. With wig
and fake beard, radically transforming his image from even the previous
night’s gig, he remained as enigmatic as he was the last time he played
Newport 37 years ago.
Back then,
the 24-year-old, who had just released “Bringing It All Back Home,”
a half-electric, half-acoustic effort, and whose “Like a Rolling
Stone” had come out just four days earlier, walked onstage with a Fender
guitar and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Their crashing
“Maggie’s Farm” shocked the crowd in a seminal moment,
replete with booing, which proved to be both denoumenent and breakthrough to the
then-prevailing musical scene. Three songs was enough for him, but he was
coerced to return, playing "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "It's All
Over Now, Baby Blue," on acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Following
this fiasco (and virtually rendering it moot to his career), he went on to
release his best work ever (including "Highway 61 Revisited" and
"Blonde on Blonde" in the following year alone) as the folk-rock
scene that he spearheaded blossomed into a pervasive artistic genre. Today, he
continues to produce innovative work that is both distinctly different from
past output and right in line with the times.
The saga of
Dylan’s own life has mystified as well. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on
May 24, 1941 in Duluth, he grew up the son of a hardware store owner in Hibbing,
Minn., and played guitar and harmonica in the teen band The Golden Chords.
Taking the surname Dylan after the poet Dylan Thomas and following a year at
the Univ. of Minn., he hitched to New York City and its Greenwich Village
coffeehouse scene. His first record contract in 1961 with Columbia, 1962 debut
LP "Bob Dylan", 1963’s "Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan"
and 1964’s "The Times They Are A-Changin'" began this
monumental musical legacy.
Dylan did
the ultimate distressing act of announcing a conversion to Christianity in
1978, which was backed up by the religious themes of 1979’s “Slow
Train Coming,” 1980’s “Saved,” 1981’s “Shot
of Love” and subsequent Christian-only show material, which dismayed fans
of all religious streams. However, by 1982, he was immersed in the Lubavitcher
Chabad movement, and with a pilgrimage to Israel, appeared to re-embrace the
faith of his ancestors.
"He’s
been going in and out of a lot of things, trying to find himself," said
the Brooklyn Lubavitch Center’s Rabbi Kasriel Kastel at the time.
"And we've just been making ourselves available." While recording
1983’s “Infidels,” Dylan studied with Lubavitch members.
"As far as we're concerned, he was a confused Jew,” said Kastel, who
said he never believed that Dylan ever forsook his Jewish faith.
Indeed,
Rolling Stone magazine called the “Slow Train Coming”’s
biblical references merely typical Dylan usage of religious imagery. In 1983,
Time and Newsweek published a photo of Dylan in yarmulke, prayer shawl, and
tefillin at the Wailing Wall for his son’s bar mitzvah. (His son-in-law,
musician Peter Himmelman, is an observant Jew who does not play on Shabbas.)
Acceptance
from the Christian inside was also not total. “In the late
1970’s,” says Michigan Fundamental Baptist Organization’s David
W. Cloud, “some claimed that Dylan had become a Christian, but he never
had a clear testimony of faith in Jesus Christ, and his attempt to make
religious albums did not pan out commercially.”
March 16,
1983’s San Luis Obispo (California)’s “Register” quoted
Dylan: "Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I'm Christian, I'm
Jewish, I'm a Moslem, I'm a Hindu. I am a humanist," while noting that
“in recent years Dylan has practiced Lubavitch Hasidism, an
ultra-orthodox, very strict form of Judaism, suggesting he has returned to his
Jewish roots.”
In any
event, may the tunes keep rollin’ on.
NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY
Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1983 Special Rider Music
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick
skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.
He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep.
They lay
and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the
neighborhood bully.
Every
empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and
Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a
garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with
nobody, under no one's command.
He's the
neighborhood bully.
Now his
holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract
he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the
crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took
sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the
neighborhood bully.
What's
anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin',
they say. He just likes to cause war.
Pride and
prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait
for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the
neighborhood bully.
What has he
done to wear so many scars?
Does he
change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon
and stars?
Neighborhood
bully, standing on the hill,
Running out
the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood
bully