Choosing art over politics, he broke free of the moral absolutism of “protest” music that he mocked in “My Back Pages” in 1964: “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now.” He rejected the idea of his being the avatar of anything, let alone of a revolution in consciousness. In fact, the profane actual Dylan is worse than corrupt: He is the vile betrayer of a revolution in consciousness of which he had once been the avatar.īut Dylan renounced that role 50 years ago. The sanctimonious detractors cling to a bygone Dylan: a skinny, tousled-haired genius in a work shirt singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”Īlways, the sanctimonious detractors cling to a bygone Dylan: a skinny, tousled-haired genius in a work shirt singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin.” This, supposedly, is the true Dylan that the actual man has desecrated. Soon thereafter came the rage at his writing for and playing with electric blues and rock musicians, a supposed betrayal of folk purity.Īnd so it has continued, from the sellouts of his going country on “Nashville Skyline” and later, writing gospel music, to today’s shilling for soft-core porn lingerie and poisonous gas guzzlers.

Two years later, the left-wing commissars of the folk revival denounced him for writing inward-looking emotional songs instead of “protest” anthems. To borrow one of the late Pete Seeger’s lyrics: When will they ever learn?ĭylan has been accused of selling out for 50 years, beginning in 1962 when he signed a recording contract with a big-time label, Columbia Records. I heard it three years before when he turned up in his cowboy troubadour duds wandering around a beautiful scantily clad model in a Victoria’s Secret ad. I had heard it four years earlier, when he appeared in his first car ad for Cadillac, which just happened to be sponsoring a satellite radio show he was hosting at the time. I heard it in 2011, when Dylan supposedly sold out by performing a concert in repressive China.

Sean wilentz bob dylan