The Magazine

What Dylan Is Not

Poet Laureate of the left, for one.

Oct 2, 2006, Vol. 12, No. 03 • By SEAN CURNYN
Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

Agood deal of hoopla greeted the grizzled rock-musician Neil Young's musical assault on George W. Bush earlier this year. His album Living With War included a hundred-voice choir singing a song entitled "Let's Impeach the President." For those survivors of anti-Vietnam war protests, and their younger would-be imitators, it was a moment for a sharp intake of breath and the tantalizing hope that maybe now, after all, music really could change the world. I mean, everyone has to sit up and take notice of Neil Young, right?

Young's crusading album included another song called "Flags of Free dom," in which he gave a name-check to Bob Dylan, and adapted the melody of Dylan's own somewhat more lyrically complex song "Chimes of Freedom."

He really should have known better. In an interview several months later with Edna Gundersen in USA Today, Dylan was asked about the absence of any song about the current war on his own latest album, Modern Times.

"Didn't Neil Young do that?" he jokes . . . "What's funny about the Neil record, when I heard 'Let's Impeach the President,' I thought it was something old that had been lying around. I said, 'That's crazy, he's doing a song about Clinton?'"

With his sly and somewhat wicked response, Dylan had (1) desperately frustrated the considerable number of more obvious Dylan fans who have been waiting on the edge of a cliff for him to say or sing something--anything!--against President Bush and the Iraq war and (2) told Neil Young none-too-subtly that he found his recent ultrapolitical songwriting essentially pointless.

To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber

We're Sorry,

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

You have two options:

Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed!

Privacy Policy