Maggie's Farm

I'm as disgusted with the antiwar idiots as you are, Habu, I support the U.S. military as strongly as you do, but I don't agree with taking someone's enemies' characterization of a man as the measure of the man.

The antiwar crowd would have dearly loved to have had Dylan on their side and tried to draft him, but once they realized he was just using them to gain exposure they rejected him and made up this fantasy that he had really been one of them and had apostasized.

This can be easily proved by the fact that Dylan, who was writing so many songs at this time that he would show up at the studio with a song he'd written in the car on the way over, never once wrote an anti-Vietnam war song. Never. Once. Rather odd for someone at the "vanguard" of the antiwar movement?

Dylanologist and author Marc Catone writes:

"Mr. Rose once read a statement saying that I was disappointed that Dylan didn't write a protest song specfically about Vietnam, and that I thought a lot of people in the antiwar movement felt left-down. It's true...I said it, and have no regrets because both statements are true…"

"Unfortunately, for him, as well as the public, he never wrote an antiwar protest song when it was needed most, during the late 1960s. Although, I have no way to gauge this in any way, I'm sure there are many people who would have loved a direct anti-Vietnam war song from Bob. It's like he set them up with his earlier work...conditioning them, so to speak,...and when he would have been appreciated the most... he wasn't there... a glaring omission…"

"… what I will never understand is how someone who was obviously quite pained by world affairs consisting of violence and war, and nuclear annihilation (and wrote about those feelings), never wrote a song about the Vietnam war, or the antiwar movement against it, during that era…"

"I guess I must have forgotten about all the anti-Vietnam War actions that Bob participated in and all the anti-Vietnam songs that Dylan wrote, and all the antiwar speeches he made... wait a minute... there weren't any."

"Dylan was never political, but people believed he was this new prophet, and hung on his every word. Meanwhile Dylan got off on berating the people who followed him…"

Hope that clears up the confusion. Sometimes chaotic eras and events are best looked at in retrospect, once all the dust has settled.