`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

 

How Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Dylan Became `Part Of The Establishment'

As a now-deceased early 1960s Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] activist Suze  Rotolo once recalled:

"Robert Shelton's [Sept. 29, 1961 New York Times] review, without a doubt, made Dylan's career, because that brought the Establishment. He couldn't have gotten the Columbia thing, in a way, without that. That review was unprecedented. Shelton had not given a review like that for anybody...He [Dylan] always said he was going to be very big...What was shocking was seeing him became part of the Establishment--Carnegie Hall, Columbia Records..."

NY Times Folk Music Critic Robert Shelton with Dylan in 1964

According to an Oct. 23, 1961 entry in Izzy Young's Notebook, that includes early 1960s comments made to him by  Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Bob Dylan, which can be found in the 2018 book, Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, which Jeff Burger edited, Dylan also told Izzy Young the following in October 1961:

"Bob Shelton helped by writing an article [Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Folk Song Stylist,' published Sept. 29, 1961 in the New York Times--ed.]--talked around--someone from Elektra came down but nothing happened. Bob Shelton been like a friend for a long time...The article came out on Thursday night...Showed the article to John Hammond [of Columbia Records]--Come in and see me. I did. And he is recording me..."

And in a March 27, 1965 interview a few years after he became "part of the Establishment," whose text appeared in the Sept. 17, 1965 issue of the Los Angeles Free Press underground newspaper, that also was included in the 2018 Dylan on Dylan book, Dylan told Paul Jay Robins the following:

"...I'm not going to tell them I'm the Great Cause Fighter...Because I'm not, man. Why mislead them. That's all just Madison Avenue, that's just selling. Sure Madison Avenue is selling me..."

So, not surprisingly, on May 5, 1965 antiwar protest folk singer and protest folk songwriter Joan Baez wrote a letter to her now-deceased sister, Mimi Baez Farina, from the Savoy Hotel in London, which appeared in David Hajdu's 2001 book, Positively 4th Street, that stated:

"We're leaving Bobby's entourage...He doesn't speak to me, or anyone, really, unless it's `business,' how many records he's selling, will his record be #1, etc. It's shocked me completely out of my senses and I'm fed up...Joanie."

Also not surprisingly, when most hip young people in the USA were protesting against the U.S. Establishment's decision to escalate its war in Vietnam during the 1960s, Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Dylan apparently attempted to discourage his fans from both listening to protest folk songs or from protesting against the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy by saying, in an interview with writer Nat Hentoff whose text appeared in the March 1966 issue of Playboy magazine, that's included in the 2018 Dylan on Dylan book, the following:

"Folk music is a word I can't use. Folk music is a bunch of fat people...Songs like `Which Side Are You On?'...they're not folk-music songs, they're political songs. They're already dead...Everybody knows that I'm not a folk singer...`Protest' is not my word. I've never thought of myself as such...Message songs...are a drag. It's only college newspaper editors and single girls under 14 that could possibly have time for them...My older songs, to say the least, were about nothing...

"...I haven't lost any interest in protest since then...I just didn't have any interest in protest to begin with...Sure, you can go around trying to bring up people who are lesser than you, but then don't forget, you're messing around with gravity. I don't fight gravity...People that march with slogans and things tend to take themselves a little too holy...It's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause; that's really pointless..." 

Hip Capitalist Manager Albert Grossman With Dylan In Early 1960s