60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes'' Revisited (10)

 

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. recalled, additionally, the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"...It was my son who originally told me that Bobby [Dylan]'s name was Zimmerman, because John was doing a gig out in Minneapolis. He said, `Dad, did you know that Bob's real name is Zimmerman, Bob Zimmerman, and that he went to the University of Minnesota?' And I said no, I didn't.

"Before he was signed...

"He didn't want to be the son of a--of a middle-class hardware dealer in Hibbing, Minnesota. Right?

"And of course, the...really bad thing that Bob [Dylan] and Albert Grossman did that I'll never forgive them for, they tried to get Billy James fired here for the Newsweek piece. And that was miserable, because Billy did more for Bob [Dylan] than anybody you can conceive of.

"...Newsweek wanted to do a cover piece on Bob Dylan, and Grossman wouldn't allow Bob Dylan to be interviewed.

"So...he did his own research then. And found out this whole story on the telephone. They asked a neighbor if they ever heard Bob sing before, and the neighbor said, `Don't you remember? We heard him at his bar mitzvah.'

"Herbert Saul, the music editor at Newsweek, who's a great guy. One of the best journalists in the business.

"...This was done to Grossman. This was done purposely to Grossman.

"...The other thing I always held against Bob [Dylan] was the treatment of Joan [Baez] in that Don't Look Back picture. I think that was a disgrace, because it was Joan who made Bob in England.

"And you know--he cut her right off. I thought that was unforgivable..."

And according to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Joan Baez then told Anthony Scaduto:

"...I didn't really like `Highway [61]' until 3 years after it was written. I was mad at it. You know I was furious.

"I thought it was a bunch of crap...I felt as though he was inching away from being committed. He was...He did leave a lot of us in the lurch..."

As the following excerpt from the text of Anthony Scaduto's interview conversation exchange with Dylan, prior to Scaduto's biography of Dylan being published in the early 1970s, contained in The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan book which U. of MN Press published in 2022, indicated, Scaduto apparently allowed Dylan, himself, to exercise some control over the text included in Scaduto's early 1970s biographical book about Dylan:

SCADUTO: "Okay. Your notes about my book...At this stage I'm trying to see how I can sum you up. Basically, the problem is that everybody around town, all the cats in the Movement, are running around calling you a capitalistic pig who's ripping off the youth culture and say you should be giving your millions...It's pretty much of a campus attitude, among at least among people who are still involved in SDS and, you know the rest of that revolutionary kind of `nonsense'...You know, it's obvious that...these people...now feel you deserted them...This is what they feel about you now...

"The thing is, I want to make it clear that I cannot in any way take Sara and the children out of the book. I have cut it to a minimum...

DYLAN: "Well, I'm known to retaliate, you know.

SCADUTO: "I know you are. But first of all, you can't scare me.

DYLAN: "I'm playing in the big league and I'm sorry, you know...

SCADITO: "...Talking in terms of retaliation, that's being a little...okay, retaliate, man. No, seriously, I must mention Sara and the children. We can kick it around, we can talk it around, and if you've got ideas...

DYLAN:"...I'll tell you if I don't approve of it or not.

SCADUTO: "Okay.

DYLAN: "And if I don't approve of it, I'm past playing games too.

SCADUTO: "Okay.

DYLAN: "But I'm serious about it. And I'm just not going to stand for it anymore.

SCADUTO: "I don't know why you're getting tough.

DYLAN: "I'm just not going to stand for it. That's all.

SCADUTO: Yeah. But I don't really think there's anything you can do. Really.

DYLAN: Are you kidding?

SCADUTO: "I've taken a large step by letting you see the book in advance...And by sitting down with you and saying, sure, I'll knock out Rosemary McCarthy, if you object to that, to what that chick told me, I'm knocking it out...

DYLAN: "Well, that sounds pretty fair. Now this last part here about my wife and my children. I would like to see what you're going to write...

SCADUTO: "You've seen what I've written so far. You have it there...Okay, I'll show it to you when I write it.

DYLAN: "Okay."

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (9)

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. also recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"Bobby [Dylan] had just written `Blowin' in the Wind,' and Peter, Paul and Mary had heard [it]...

"...And so, when Artie Mogull at Witmark heard `Blowin' in the Wind,' he said, `Bobby, I want to sign you right away.' Bobby said, `...I just signed a contract with Duchess Music.'...But Artie Mogull, said `Well, here, Bobby, here's a thousand [equal to around $10,000 in U.S. dollars in 2025]. Why don't you go over and see if you can buy back your contract?'

"...So Bobby went over to Leeds, and...Hy Grill was running the office...

"...Artie insisted Hy took the $1,000 [equal to around $10,000 in U.S. dollars in 2025]...

"Bobby got his contract back and signed with Warner Bros....

"...We completed the second album, and this album started to take off, thanks to `Blowin in the Wind,' and thanks to the...work Peter, Paul and Mary had done with (the song). In fact, we put a special sticker on the second album saying `Featuring Blowin' in the Wind.'...

"I had made one goof...in the signing of Dylan. There's usually an automatic escalation clause on the contract. You know, you start at 4 percent, then you go right to  percent...When the contract came through...there was no escalation clause...

"So, by the time Bob [Dylan]'s contract was finished with Columbia, which was 5 years later--'66--there was a 1 percent thing which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars [equal to millions of U.S. dollars in 2025], which was being held in escrow...

"...You know, the big initial boost to Bob Dylan in this company was Johnny Cash [who entertained U.S. military troops stationed in Asia, on at least 2 USO tours in 1960s]...He was behind him every which way, and they all knew it. He made it known to Clive [Davis]..."

 

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (8)

 Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"...The executive vice-president of our company [CBS's Columbia Records] was furious because I had not signed Joan Baez...Joan had come up, you see, and [Albert] Grossman was representing her. But just before I was with Columbia, I was with Vanguard Records...So Joan came up--and I was at Newport, you know, when Joan was there...Albert [Grossman] was asking a large advance for Joan. I said, `...Albert,...I'll give you a $1,500 [equal to around $16,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] advance and, of course, top royalties.'

"Vanguard, I understand offered a $3,000 [equal to around $32,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars]. So, she signed with Vanguard. Now this is not for--just turn the machine off for a second.

"...Bob [Dylan]'s first album came out...And so, we had a wonderful publicity guy at that time called Billy James. And Billy and Bob [Dylan] really became very tight. And Billy got Bob [Dylan] full-page spreads in Seventeen and all the Leed publications and made a real character out of Bob [Dylan]. Columbia did a good job in promotions.

"But the first album was a dud...

"...So then, we were working on the second album...Then Bobby came into the office one day and he said, `John, do you know Albert Grossman?'

"I said, `Sure, I know Albert Grossman...' And he said, `Well, Albert has got a deal for me to go over to England and do a pilot for BBC.' And he said, `There's a lot of loot involved'--It was 2,000 bucks [equal to around $21,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars], which I could show you, because I've been lending Bob [Dylan] money...You know $75 [equal to around $800 in 2025 U.S. dollars], $100 [equal to around $1,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars]--things like that, when he needed it. I also got him a publishing deal. Leeds. He didn't have a publisher, and so [to] Lou Levy, I said `Lou, I got a real talented guy here.'...He said, `Send him over, I'll give him a $500 [equal to $5,300 in 2025 U.S. dollars] advance.' So, Bob [Dylan] signed with Duchess Music [an imprint of Leeds].

"He [Dylan] said `What do you think of Albert Grossman?' And I said, `Well, I can work with Albert...If you want to sign with Albert... go ahead.'

"...Turn the tape machine off..."

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (6)

 Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Izzy Young also recalled the following additional biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"...It was around this time that the blacklist letter about Pete Seeger [in which a group of early 1960s folk music scene musicians protested against Seeger being blacklisted from ABC's Hootenanny television show in the early 1960s]--I was the secretary of that group, and we had a big meeting...And everybody signed. Except Bob Dylan.

"He said, `It doesn't mean anything...'...

"...He was there. He was there. He was at the big meeting [of folksingers] at the Village Gate.

"...He didn't sign. That I can say definitely. Then the second point, where he was supposed to record `Talking John Birch Society Blues' [but allegedly was never allowed to include this on a pre-1965 vinyl album].

"...That song...did go on the album. And...I have the original downstairs.

"First you do the shit, then you can do what you really want to do when you get more famous. And then--so that's the album and then the attack on the Civil Liberties Union. But that came later.

"And still people accepted him as a revolutionary, as the person changing things. Well, because in my mind now I see the pattern...There's no such thing as a person not knowing when he sells out...There's no such thing as a person consciously changing, unconsciously changing...

"...This is how it works...The artist has to start from a point. Eventually they accept you...But the instant you make it into the mass thing, then you have to say goodbye to the starting group, no matter what it is. And that's what the sellout is, really.

"...Making $1,000,000 is what's killing everybody, what's making the wars necessary, that sense of competition with the whole world. And then they're saying life is beautiful, which it is to them...

"Dylan didn't start it, but it really comes after him, like in Woodstock. On one side they're getting, grabbing, grubbing all the money. On the other side they're the `sensitive artists'. Now with Dylan what I found is--to this day the kids will not accept the fact that he's a sellout. I do not understand this..."

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (5)

 

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Izzy Young recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"Now with Dylan, what's happened, the kids refuse to believe that Dylan was a cop-out, and what Dylan really is...I spoke to 500 kids at Rutgers. They booed me when I explained how the movie Don't Look Back is a cop-out. The only person that he's attacked so far in America is the...Civil Liberties Union. That's the only thing he's been angry about...

"...The latest cop-out of Bob Dylan is accepting a doctorate from Princeton...

"...When he wrote `Positively 4th Street,' at least 500 people in a few months asked me if I was the one in the song.

"...It's unfair, and I'll explain why. I'm living in the Village 20 years...I'm one of the representatives of the Village because I've been here.

"But he comes in and uses my resources and everyone else's resources in the Village, and you know, the bars and the clubs, and then he leaves. He gets bitter, he writes the bitter song...You never heard me say what a son of a bitch Dylan was...He's the one that's complaining. He's the one that left. And it's really his problem...

"...Bob Dylan is in exactly the same position now that Carl Sandburg was...In other words, Carl Sandburg's poetry was in the protest magazines of the time, the '20s. You know, `I Am the People, the Mob'...And then when he died, he didn't know anything about Vietnam...

"...In fact, without Grossman I don't think Bob Dylan would exist.

"The sellout is completely engineered by Al Grossman..."

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (4)

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of an interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Carla Rotolo recalled Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life in NYC and also recalled her initial response to the lyrics Dylan wrote to a song, titled "Ballad in Plain D", that Dylan recorded on his early 1960s "Another Side of Bob Dylan" album, which CBS's Columbia Records then marketed and distributed:

"The song [`Ballad in Plain D'], such an absolute screech. I was going to sue the pants off him [Dylan]. I decided--my lawyer said, don't even bother. Because `parasite', the `parasite' is someone who feeds off somebody. And I was the only person who was working at that time...Bobby [Dylan] of course, he makes me the `parasite' when I was working...It wasn't a nice thing to do, particularly when it was all made up out of whole cloth...

"...I think a good part of his guilt was he couldn't be real. I know it was. And he couldn't sort things out himself at that point, because of where his career was going. Just couldn't get himself out of himself...

"...Dylan needed victims, you know what I mean?...When he was a kid, he wasn't being that mean. As he got older, he started getting very nasty. But when he was first in the city, he was a very sweet kid Just not too articulate...He got tighter and tighter and nastier and nastier...He decided he would pick out your weakness and then suddenly grab it and use it on you. Which is what he did with everybody. Find their vulnerable spot and that was it...

"...I remember him saying once about his `Masters of War' song, for example, saying `it's just a whole big put-on, a whole crock of shit. That's what they wanted'...And I got the feeling...he wasn't befuddled and a confused little kid that he came on as...He was using that befuddled act as a weapon, because it worked..."

 

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (3)

 

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of an interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Sid Gleason recalled how, between 1959 and March 1961, Woody Guthrie came to spend part of each weekend at her house in New Jersey; and how it was apparently in her house, not at Greystone Hospital, where Dylan first met Woody Guthrie and also apparently listened to many rare Woody Guthrie tapes, during Dylan's early pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"`Bound for Glory' [radio program]...announced that Woody [Guthrie] was out at Greystone Hospital and asked people to write him...I rode out to Greystone...to see Woody....

"...We went out to visit him at the hospital. They allowed us to take him out...He was very alert, except for the fact that he just had trouble expressing [himself] because of the speech problem...The doctor told [her husband] Bob [Gleason] yes, that we could come out and get him and bring him to our home. [But] he had to be back in the hospital by 10"30 or 11:00 p.m.. The next weekend we got him...

"And I started answering his mail then...It was Mother's Day `59...

"...He [Dylan] never made a visit to the [Greystone] hospital. You see, our place was halfway out. They could come out from New York very easy...

"...I couldn't begin to tell you how many times Bobby was at the house and how many times he stayed...

"The story Bobby told us is, many times--I mean many, many times...He told us he had been in a number of foster homes, that he did have parents but he'd been in foster homes all over.

"...He would come out and he'd spend hours going through the tapes [of Woody Guthrie]. Spent hours, literally, for days..."

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (2)

 

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Dave Van Ronk recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"You could say Dylan was always vicious from time to time. This was no lollipop singer, you know. The only trouble about his viciousness, until he became famous, he couldn't get away with it...

"I remember sessions at the Kettle of Fish, where Dylan was especially obnoxious to Ochs...

"The big thing to keep in mind is that Bobby wanted to be a superstar. When he discovered the reality of being a superstar, he freaked out..."

And according to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Terri Thal also recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:

"...Dylan's two-night stand at Caffe' Gena was not an overwhelming success.

"...The Club 47 in Cambridge refused to hire him...The owner of the Second Fret in Philadelphia...told me, `Why should I hire a Jack Elliott imitation when I can get Jack Elliott for nothing?' Elliott had just filled in at Second Fret for no pay for a benefit.

"I spoke to an executive at Vanguard Records who said he wasn't interested in Dylan..." 

60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (1)

 

Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.

According to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Gretel Hoffman recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life::

"David Whitaker, my ex-husband, is a phenomenal reader...Bob had not really heard about Woody Guthrie, except as a name that sort of everybody knew--that there was a folk singer named Woody Guthrie. He didn't know much more. And David gave him Guthrie's book to read, the autobiography...

"When I first met Bobby, he claimed he was an Okie...The whole initial set of stories when I first met him was that he was an Okie, that he was an orphan, and that he'd been on the road for years as a piano player. This big thing was that he was a piano player and just starting to play the guitar. That he lived in California.

"...I suppose I learned about Zimmerman within a few weeks of the time that I met him.

"What he said was that Dylan was his mother's name...

"...It was very interesting to watch Bob build the myth, the legend of himself. And he did it, I think, very consciously and very deliberately. Because I can remember having a conversation with him...after he had come back to New York with success...

"...We had a conversation about this character that he was creating. And this was a very explicit story about creating such a character...

"...He said he was building a character that would sell...

"...He had a terrible need to be the center of attention or a star, back in Minneapolis, at the Scholar, or at a party...I just remembered a party where Bobby was playing...He realized people weren't listening closely to him and...he threw down the guitar and really stomped off in great anger..."

Pete Seeger - A hard rain's a-gonna fall HD (alta calidad)

Are Music Industry Firms Not Supporting Palestinians' BDS Campaign?

Most U.S. antiwar and Palestinian solidarity Movement music fans in the USA and elsewhere in 2024 are opposed to the Israeli government's continued war on people in Gaza and support the call of Palestinian solidarity Movement organizers around the globe for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] campaign in which musicians refuse to perform in Israel and music industry firms divest themselves of their Israeli business operations.

Yet in recent years, some music industry firms apparently expanded their business operations within Israel.  As an article by Shirley Halperin that was posted on the Variety magazine website on May 25, 2022 noted:

"Warner Music Group has opened an office in Israel. The new recorded music affiliate is headed by Mariah Mochiach, a veteran of the Israeli music industry...Warner Music Israel, based in Tel Aviv, will locally market and promote artists from the WMG roster....

"Recorded music revenue in Israel saw a rise of 10.2% in 2021...and international music companies have taken notice, with Live Nation and Universal Music Group opening Tel Aviv outposts in recent years....Superstar artists are returning to the country, routing a Tel Aviv stop among tour dates in the region... At Warner, Israel will be part of the Eastern Mediterranean region covering Cyprus, Greece, Israel and Turkey.

"In her new position, Mochiach reports to Alfonso Perez-Soto, president of emerging markets, Warner Recorded Music...

“`I’m honored to be able to open Warner Music Israel for business,' said Mochiach. `Our country is full of unique and extraordinary talent which we hope to propel onto the global stage...'....”

"Added Perez-Soto: `...We hope to turn Warner Music Israel into a powerhouse full of local stars... offering artists the opportunity to tap into Warner Music’s renowned global network...'"

And as Shirley Halperin also observed in an article that was posted on the Variety magazine website on July 29, 2022:

"...In 2021, UMG opened a Tel Aviv office housing a recorded music division and an arm of Universal Music Publishing Group...

"The key factor, says Warner’s Mochiach, is that these artists `are also fluent in English, which is an advantage when it comes to doing international promotion. …'"

Despite the failure of these music industry firms to support the Palestinian solidarity Movement's call for a cultural boycott of Israel, even many commercially-motivated pop musicians had already endorsed the BDS campaign prior to the post-October 7, 2023 Israeli war machine's military actions in Gaza, which have killed over 27,000 people--including thousands of women, children and non-combatant civilian men--as of February 1, 2024. As an article that the New Arab website posted on May 29, 2021 had previously noted:

"Over 600 musicians, including Rage Against the Machine, have signed an open letter calling on other artists to boycott performances in Israel until it ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories.

"The letter, organized under the banner "Musicians for Palestine," follows growing widespread condemnation of Israel and support for Palestine from leading public figures and celebrities...  

"`As musicians, we cannot be silent. Today it is essential that we stand with Palestine. We are calling on our peers to publicly assert their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Complicity with Israeli war crimes is found in silence, and today silence is not an option'" the letter read.

"`Today, we speak together and demand justice, dignity and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and all who are fighting colonial dispossession and violence across the planet,' it added...

"The open letter asks fellow artists to refuse `to perform at Israel's complicit cultural institutions...and...stand...firm in...support of the Palestinian people and their human right to sovereignty and freedom'." 

Were Some Early 1960s Melodies Copyrighted By Dylan Created By Other Folks?

If you check out some of the "Bob Dylan" songbooks that were first published in the early 1960s, you'll notice that the authorship of the "words and MUSIC" of the songs included in the songbooks are claimed by "Bob Dylan" and copyrighted by Dylan and his publisher. Yet as Micharel Gray noted in his 2006 book, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:

"In Patrick Humphries' 1984 interview with the Clancys, Paddy [Clancy] suddenly offers this...story about Dylan..: `You want to know where Dylan got his stuff? There was a little folk club here in London, down in the basement; we sang in it one night...Anyway, Al Grossman paid somebody and gave them a tape-recorder, and every folk-singer that went up there was taped, and Bob Dylan got all those tapes...' And Liam [Clancy] agrees with this, adding: `Yes, and the tune of `Farewell] [a song Dylan copyrighted in 1963 and is included in his official songbooks]...whoever was singing harmony was closer to the mike than the guy singing melody, and when [Dylan] wrote his version, he wrote it to the harmony not the melody line.'

"...The songs he probably took specifically from hearing the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing live are: the traditional `Brennan on the Moor,' which becme his `Rambling Gambling Willie' [copyrighted 1962]..' the traditional `The Parting Glass', which mutated into `Restless Farewell'...and the...tune Dominic Behan used for his song `The Patriot Game', which the Clancys sang and from which Dylan...created `With God On Our Side.'

In response to a 1976 query about Dylan's use of the melody of Dominic Behan's "The Patriot Game" song from the late 1950s for Dylan's early 1964 recording of "With God On Our Side," Dominic Behan wrote the following in a January 31, 1976 letter from Happendon, Douglas in Lanark, Scotland:

"Thank you for the interest you are showing in my song, `The Patriot Game". Some years ago I tried to get Dylan to settle the matter as one artist to another. I rang him at an hotel in London where he had been living then. Dylan's reaction was that I didn't have the resources to take any legal action against him, and he therefore replied, `Get lost, bum! The songs I write make other people's attempts at art good.'

"Mr. Dylan was, of course, correct in his view of my financial state. I couldn't take him to court, and, my publishers in America, `The Richmond Organisation', think the whole matter too costly and not worth the candle.

"I wrote the song (words and music) on the 1st January, 1957, after Feargal O'Hanlon had been shot dead the night previously.

"Thanks very much for your interest, though, when dealing with folk as ruthless as Mr. Dylan, I doubt if you and the other honest people around can do a lot of good.

"Thanks anyway and best wishes,

"Dominic Behan."

https://youtu.be/ME6PwThp-80

`Sing-Out' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber's Take on Bob Shelton/Dylan Revisited

`NY Times' Establishment Folk Music Critic Bob Shelton with Bob Dylan in 1964.

In an interview, that was published in Richie Unterberger's 2002 Turn! Turn! Turn! book, former 1960s Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber recalled why he was concerned about the artistic and political direction Bob Dylan was moving after 1964 and characterized the U.S. Establishment's New York Times's then-folk music critic, Bob Shelton, in the following way:

"My biggest concern was not with electricity...but with what Dylan was saying and doing about moving away from his political songs. In fact, even saying, well, he just used that for a while in order to get a break and all that kind of...and that's what distressed me more than anything else.

"...He combined a great artistic feel with a political sense that was poetic, that moved people. And now, to find him turning his back on it, at a time when...the civil rights movement is at its height, the beginning of the protest against the Vietnam War, and so on...And the left--the new left...was developing a whole new sense of politics. And to have Dylan deliberately, consciously, moving away from it at that time.--Well, I reall felt bad about that..."

"Bob Shelton was a funny figure in all this...The folk boom unfolded, and he was already in place at the New York Times...There was an arrogance to the way in which he appointed himself, and which everybody had to relate to because after all it's the New York Times, as sort of the definitive judge when it came to what was good, what was bad, and all those kinds of things.

"And his judgments weren't always very sound. I think he had a tendency to follow the crowd, to look for things that would make him stand out. I know for sure that he was not above working hand in glove with record producers and promoters in relation to their material, their acts and so on...

"...He then began to operate as a political judge, too...He was critical of people like me and the activists and so on, who were taking what he considered a far-left position in our militant opposition to the war...He used his position in terms of succumbing to influence, not being particularly well qualified to write what he was writing about, and to the political side of it...."

1960s `Sing Out!' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber with U.S. Movement Folksinger Barbara Dane

 

Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo's `Rock`N' Roll Is Here To Pay' Book Revisited: Part 4

 

In their 1977 book, Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay: The History and Politics of the Music, Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo recalled the pre-1977 history and politics of the U.S. corporate rock music industry in the following way:

"The critical effect of rock music was lost...The music became separated from the political ferment that had provided it with its critical edge...in the...sixties...

"...The potential for cooptation of rock music had always been present...Economically rock music has never posed a problem for the capitalist organization of the economy. Whether in the form of a record, a tape, a concert ticket, or a booking agency fee, rock music was a packaged commodity...

"Most political `censorship' of record artists is self-censorship...It has been estimated that at least 50 superstars make more than a million dollars [equal to around $4.9 million in 2023] each year [in late 1970s]. The money puts the musician in a qualitatively different position than most of his audience...

"Some of the highest paid musicians become sophisticated corporate investors. Bob Dylan owns oil stock, for instance, and Neil Young owns a string of shopping centers. His ventures are managed by Segal, Rubenstein & Gordon, Los Angeles financial counselors...Top stars, the Rolling Stones being a particularly spectacular example, have become part of the standard bourgeois jet set...

"At this point it should be evident that the vast majority of rock music does little to challenge...the basis of American society--production for private profit...For now, of course, rock'n'roll is here to pay. It is a packaged commodity which enriches a few monopoly corporations..."

Arthur Kretchmer's Aug. 5, 1965 `Village Voice' Review of 1965 Newport Folk Festival Revisited

 

In a review of the July 1965 Newport Folk Festival that appeared in the August 5, 1965 issue of the Greenwich Village, NYC-based Village Voice weekly newspaper, titled "Newport: It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Playin' R & R," Arthur Kretchmer indicated some of the historical reasons Bob Dylan apparently became less popular with some of his early 1960s U.S. folk music fans after 1965:

"Sunday night Bob Dylan was booed for linking rhythm and blues to the paranoid nightmares of his vision...

"Musically, the festival was obtuse and disappointing. Of five official concerts only one (Sunday afternoon) was satisfying, and that was mostly because of the brilliance of Mimi and Dick Farina and some other young singers.

"...Dylan is a man afraid and obsessed. He surrounds himself with people...

"Bob Dylan is out of control. He never had it and never will. Like a mogul he surrounds himself with flunkies who feed him lines and laugh when he repeats them...He is not Guthrie...On the way back from Newport Dylan's `Like a Rolling Stone' was on the radio. (He had been booed for it at Sunday night's concert)..."

Green Left's 2001 Review of `Bob Dylan Behind The Shades' Revisited

 

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."

Joan Baez - With God On Our Side (BBC Television Theatre, London - June ...

Theodore Bikel remembers Bob Dylan's appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk...

`Untold Dylan' Facebook Group: Blocking Posts That Tell How Dylan Obtained His Individual Wealth?

If you're a 21st-century music fan who checks out the "Untold Dylan" discussion group on Facebook, you might notice that most of the daily posts there don't tell readers very much about how Bob Dylan historically obtained more individual wealth than the individual wealth possessed by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, historically, or by the over 90 percent of U.S. and UK music fans who--unlike Bob Dylan in the 21st-century--are, currently, neither billionaires, multi-millionaires or millionaires. 

One reason might be because the "Untold Dylan" blog Brit editor-writer, Tony Attwood (who determines which individuals are allowed to tell what's generally untold--by most Brit and U.S. Establishment media rock music critics in the 21st-century--on the "Untold Dylan" Facebook discussion group page), apparently doesn't want too allow too many posts that tell how Dylan historically obtained his individual wealth to appear on this "Untold Dylan" discussion group page.

Asked by email to indicate for Protest Folk Magazine blog readers whether or not pre-1965 Dylan music fans from U.S. working-class backgrounds are currently being blocked from posting links or text excerpts of historical articles that are critical of Dylan's post-1964 artistic/political/philosophical shift, Mr. Attwood stated the following in a February 22, 2020 email:

"Thank you for your email. I''m very happy to answer.

"The simple answer is that there is no general policy to block any group of people or any individual because of political or social views at all except the need to abide by UK law (the Untold Dylan Facebook group being run from the UK).

"The number of people blocked is quite small--probably around quarter of one percent of those who join are eventually blocked. The vast majority of those are blocked because of offensive or insulting language towards other members of the group or for placing advertisements for their own produces or services. In the latter case when a member writes to me first and asks permission and when I think the item is one that some members are likely to be interested, I have given permission for one advert to be posted but only one. 

"In relation to the issue that you mention, we did have a case recently where a member had posted a series of posts each of which was (and I am generalizing here from a number of posts) putting forward the view that Dylan or Dylan's company acting in his name had stolen or abused or otherwise misused other people's copyright for his own financial gain. (You will appreciate that I am summarizing what were often quite long and complex pieces).

"I did allow these to go through at first, but had a fair number of complaints from other readers to me suggesting that these were repetitive in their general approach, and would be better off posted on the website as an article. In that way the correspondent could lay out his/her case, and comments in support or against could be channeled into that one part of the website. (That is why we have both the website and the Facebook page, to separate out different types of discussion).

"I took the view that having posted a number of the articles all of which were dealing with the allegations of Dylan having stolen copyright and with (as far as I recall) no one or very few people showing any interest in the articles (except in terms of abuse) that moving the theme to the blog away from the Facebook site would benefit everyone. Those who wanted to follow the debate had one place to do it, and those who felt the allegations were false or of no interest did not have to keep reading variants on the same theme on the Facebook page. 

"I wrote twice to the individual concerned once explaining my concerns and once proposing the move to the website, but received no reply, and so when the individual posted again I removed him and the posts from the group. The offer to have an article on the subject on the blog would of course still be there. To be clear there has been only one person involved in this as far as I know, it is not that more than one person has been removed.

"I would add that a guiding point in my running the Facebook and website pages is the name Untold Dylan--the point of "untold" is that we try to look at Dylan from different points of view that have not been covered before. The original posts which challenged Dylan's copyright approach was just that, and so were posted, but subsequent items merely re-iterated generally the same point, and thus were no longer Untold. I don't use that as an absolute measure of what is posted but it does seem to me to be an interesting guiding point when the issue is contentious. 

"Having had no reply from the individual, I did cancel his account. 

"I hope that answers the question--please do come back to me if you have any further thoughts about the Facebook page. I would add I am in the UK and as a result there can be different understandings of what might be a serious accusation of a crime for which the owner of the site could be challenged legally in one country from another--which is of course always a consideration.

"Tony Attwood."

And in a second February 22, 202 email, Mr. Attwood added:

"Sorry I missed one point - the reference to `pre-1965 Dylan music fans from U.S. working-class backgrounds.'.  I would assure you that as a person born before 1965, and from a working class UK background, I would never dream of judging anyone according to their social class, ethnicity, country of origin or anything else."  

`Sing-Out!' Editor Irwin Silber's 1964 `Open Letter To Bob Dylan' Revisited

In November 1964, the then-editor of Sing-Out! magazine, Irwin Silber, wrote and published `An Open Letter To Bob Dylan," in which the historically developing artistic, political and philosophical  shift in Dylan's songwriting was criticized in the following way:

"Dear Bob:

"It seems as though lots of people are thinking and talking about you these days. I read about you in Life and Newsweek and Time and The Saturday Evening Post and Mademoiselle and Cavalier and all such, and I realize that, all of a sudden, you have become a pheenom, a VIP, a celebrity. A lot has happened to you in these past two years, Bob -- a lot more than most of us thought possible.

"I'm writing this letter now because some of what has happened is troubling me. And not me alone. Many other good friends of yours as well.

"I don't have to tell you how we at SING OUT! feel about you -- about your work as a writer and an artist -- or how we feel about you as a person. SING OUT! was among the first to respond to the new ideas, new images, and new sounds that you were creating. By last count, thirteen of your songs had appeared in these pages. Maybe more of Woody's songs were printed here over the years, but, if so, he's the only one. Not that we were doing you any favors, Bob. Far from it. We believed -- and still believe -- that these have been among some of the best new songs to appear in America in more than a decade. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice," "Hattie Carroll," "Restless Farewell," "Masters of War" -- these have been inspired contributions which have already had a significant impact on American consciousness and style.

"As with anyone who ventures down uncharted paths, you've aroused a growing number of petty critics. Some don't like the way you wear your hair or your clothes. Some don't like the way you sing. Some don't like the fact that you've chosen your name and recast your past. But all of that, in the long run, is trivial. We both know that may of these criticisms are simply cover-ups for embarrassment at hearing songs that speak directly, personally, and urgently about where it's all really at.

"But -- and this is the reason for this letter, Bob -- I think that the times there are a-changing. You seem to be in a different kind of bag now, Bob -- and I'm worried about it. I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. It seemed to me that some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way. You travel with an entourage now -- with good buddies who are going to laugh when you need laughing and drink wine with you and insure your privacy -- and never challenge you to face everyone else's reality again.

"I thought (and so did you) of Jimmy Dean when I saw you last -- and I cried a little inside me for that awful potential for self-destruction which lies hidden in all of us and which can emerge so easily and so uninvited.

"I think it begins to show up in your songs, now, Bob. You said you weren't a writer of `protest' songs -- or any other category, for that matter -- but you just wrote songs. Well, okay, call it anything you want. But any songwriter who tries to deal honestly with reality in this world is bound to write `protest' songs. How can he help himself?

"Your new songs seem to be all inner-directed now, inner-probing, self- conscious -- maybe even a little maudlin or a little cruel on occasion. And it's happening on stage, too. You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes now -- rather than to the rest of us out front.

"Now, that's all okay -- if that's the way you want it, Bob. But then you're a different Bob Dylan from the one we knew. The old one never wasted our precious time.

"Perhaps this letter has been long overdue. I think, in a sense, that we are all responsible for what's been happening to you -- and to many other fine young artists. The American Success Machinery chews up geniuses at a rate of one a day and still hungers for more. Unable to produce real art on its own, the Establishment breeds creativity in protest against and nonconformity to the System. And then, through notoriety, fast money, and status, it makes it almost impossible for the artist to function and grow.

"It is a process that must be constantly guarded against and fought.

"Give it some thought, Bob. Believe me when I say that this letter is written out of love and deep concern. I wouldn't be sticking my neck out like this otherwise.

"Irwin Silber"