And speaking of Castro, a reader writes in reference to a previous post where I spotlighted Dylan’s compliments regarding Charlie Daniels in Chronicles (and Daniel’s compliments regarding Dylan in his book Ain’t No Rag) and asks if I remember what Dylan wrote in the same book about Harry Belafonte.

Indeed I do, and it’s a fair point to bring up. I was cognizant of this issue when writing that post, which is why I acknowledged that Dylan is almost unremittingly kind to all the people he remembers encountering along the way. Dylan is clearly deliberately emphasizing the positive characteristics of people; their talents and their admirable qualities. Dylan is human—it’s not like he’s incapable of criticizing anyone—but he obviously wanted Chronicles to have a generous spirit. When he does say bad things about people, it’s generally an amorphous group, rather than a named individual. As, for instance, the “creeps thumping their boots across [his] roof” in Woodstock; he wanted to “set fire” to those “spooks, trespassers,” “goons” and “moochers.” He implicitly criticizes the New York Times, for printing “quacky interpretations” of his songs, and Esquire magazine, for juxtaposing his face on their cover with Malcolm X, Kennedy and Castro. However, the names of the people involved with all that stuff are lost in the past, unless they choose to come forward and identify themselves. There’s no personal injury being done.

There’s no question that Dylan’s remarks on Belafonte are exceedingly complimentary. It might be nice for this conservative-minded fan, especially in the light of Belafonte’s recent political noxiousness, if I could make the case that Dylan is merely commenting on his persona as an entertainer—not as an activist—but that wouldn’t be true. It’s mostly about his performing ability, but it crosses over into how he made people feel by virtue of his ideals, too. Some quotes:

Harry was the best balladeer in the land and everybody knew it. He was a fantastic artist, sang about lovers and slaves—chain gang workers, saints and sinners and children. … He was a movie star too, but not like Elvis. Harry was an authentic tough guy, not unlike Brando or Rod Steiger. He was dramatic and intense on the screen, had a boyish smile and a hard-core hostility. … As a performer, he broke all attendance records. He could play to a packed house at Carnegie Hall and then the next day he might appear at a garment center union rally. To Harry, it didn’t make any difference. People were people. He had ideals and made you feel you’re part of the human race. … He appealed to everybody, whether they were steelworkers or symphony patrons or bobby-soxers, even children—everybody. He had that rare ability.

Dylan points out how Harry had once been barred from the Copacabana because he was black, and then went on later to be top of the bill there. He describes how he had his own professional recording debut playing harmonica on a Belafonte record.

With Belafonte I felt like I’d been anointed in some kind of way. He did the same thing for me that Gorgeous George did. Harry was that rare type of character that radiates greatness, and you hope that some of it rubs off on you. The man commands respect. You know he never took the easy path, though he could have.

That all amounts to a very fine tribute indeed—and one that I’m not in any position to argue with. I didn’t know Harry back then. Undoubtedly, the record shows that he was a committed leftist from way back (he’s also a veteran of World War II), but I’d suggest that the issue above all in the air at the time was civil rights. It was an issue that the left in some ways successfully co-opted, but it was not an issue that the Left genuinely owned then, or could ever own. Human rights, human dignity, universal suffrage—these are issues that cross partisan lines and can and should draw the support of principled people everywhere. As merely one measure: a greater proportion of Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. Racism, too, crosses partisan lines, even now. There’s no question that while Dylan rejected the political labels that some (like the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee) would thrust upon him, he never rejected the songs he wrote that touch on the self-evident right to equality of all; from Blowin’ in the Wind to The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (both are songs which he continues to sing). Someone very visibly and bravely on the side of civil rights, like Harry Belafonte, would hardly appear a bad guy to someone as supportive of the sentiment as Dylan was. He would be someone to admire; and a mesmerizing giant of an entertainer to boot. As to what else was bubbling under the surface, not to be pursued until later, well, I can’t help but be reminded of the quote in Chronicles from Frank Sinatra, Jr., who was talking to Dylan in the Rainbow Room, circa ‘69 or ‘70, about his father’s own support for civil rights and the underdog: “How do you think it would make you feel,” he said, “to find out that the underdog had turned out to be a son of a bitch?”

I don’t know what Dylan would make, or makes, of the Harry Belafonte who in 2002 compared Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice to “house slaves.” Or the one who in the past few weeks described the U.S. President as “the greatest tyrant in the world” and “the greatest terrorist in the world,” while cosying up to the neocommie Hugh Chavez, and who described the Homeland Security Department as “the Gestapo.” (I do think that Dylan probably has some appreciation for what the real Gestapo did.) Maybe he’d just give credit to Belafonte for the good things he did in the past, and reserve comment on his current verbal diarrhea. In effect, that’s what he is doing, with that passage in Chronicles.

In comparing, in my earlier post, Dylan’s remarks about Charlie Daniels with Daniel’s own remarks about Dylan, I was drawing attention to their mutual good-heartedness. Sure—it doesn’t hurt the general drift of this site to quote Dylan saying stuff like, “I felt I had a lot in common with Charlie. The kind of phrases he´d use, his sense of humor, his relationship to work, his tolerance for certain things.” But it doesn’t make any kind of case that Dylan shares Charlie’s very pointed politics of today; only that he saw a kindred spirit in him, especially during those Nashville Skyline through New Morning days.

Dylan, in Chronicles, doesn’t tackle anyone’s politics in any thorough way (and why should he?). The closest he might come is when he says of Dave Von Ronk’s political point-of-view: “I wasn’t that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble.” That’s also the passage where he names Senator Barry Goldwater (Republican icon and author of The Conscience of a Conservative) as his own “favorite politician.”

Some might say, “six of one, half dozen of the other.” Dylan gives out leftist signals, conservative signals, and it all cancels itself out. I would differ. Certainly, he’s not about to sit still and be labeled, or to label himself. Yet, in the end, his consistent belief in freedom as a political maxim (emphasized in his memoir as well as in his music), and his special way of valuing the freedom that America was founded on, make him someone who could never be comfortable with the left. Further, his belief in God and the Bible, and his aversion to the idea of trying to create a utopia on earth, must make him suspicious of those who worship an ideology that essentially replaces God, and who would use the law to enforce equality of results in all things, and not merely equality of opportunity.

More important to me, however, than what this all says about the politics of Dylan the man, is the fact that it makes Dylan’s songs a treasury that can be appreciated by all; including those who have been misled for decades by the media into thinking that Dylan (like Harry Belafonte) is just some kind of darned communist.

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