In a review of Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan Behind The Shades: The Biography--Take Two book, that was posted on the Green Left website on Jan. 24, 2001, Phil Shannon indicated some of the historical reasons Bob Dylan apparently became less popular within U.S. anti-war left Movement circles during the last four decades of the 20th-century:
"Dylan's fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, signalled the transition to his new apolitical phase...As some left critics saw it, this album of `negative petty-bourgeois introspection' was the first...of Dylan's betrayals--protest abandoned...Other betrayals were to follow in steady succession--folk for rock, rock for country, pretty well everything thrown over for Christian fundamentalism.
"...Dylan's long farewell to the protest genre really gathered pace when he hit the pop cliches of country music in 1968 and 1969, years of dynamic political turmoil centered on the Vietnam War about which Dylan remained silent. The deterioration of Dylan's songs in both quality and social significance became a source of despair to radicalizing youth.
"...Rubin `Hurricane' Carter...sent a copy of his biography to Dylan...Two benefit concerts included in Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue...raised $600,000 [equal to over $3 million in 2022] for the Carter defense campaign. Less than 10 percent of this, however, reached Carter, with over half a million dollars [equal to over $2.7 million in 2022] disappearing into `expenses' to cover limousines, parties and hotel charges. A multi-millionaire, Dylan's lavish lifestyle undercut his practical commitment.
"...In 1978, after a mauling by critics of his recent albums and films, and the breakup of his marriage,...Dylan...became a born-again fundamentalist...Dylan's music hit rock-bottom, barren artistically and politically.
"Dylan is now a shell of his former self, living on his reputation...
"Heylin grossly over-values the later Dylan phases relative to the early '60s Dylan. Heylin regards political commitment in song as passe, an establishment view which dismisses the social context which enabled Dylan to not only become a superstar but to be a force for social change in his early days when his poetic vision and political commitment combined to create a popular and radical art which he never subsequently equalled.
"...The times cry out for more a-changin' but sadly Dylan's is no longer among the voices."
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