UPDATE 11/7/2008: See the latest and hopefully final and definitive post on this subject at the following link: The audio: What Bob Dylan really said (about life, the universe, Barack Obama and everything) on election night in Minnesota.

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Below is the initial post on the subject if you really think you need to read it:

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The bottom line would be that we have to wait for the audio, which will surely be coming (virtually every gig Dylan does is bootlegged and shared, and that goes double for the U.S. gigs).

Nevertheless, since it’s all over the place that he said something, it has to be looked at. After the main set of his gig at the University of Minnesota, he came back for the encore. He’d probably heard while off-stage that Obama had won or was about to win the presidency. He played Like A Rolling Stone and then made some remarks before playing Blowin’ in the Wind.

It is apparent that he said something about being born in 1941, something about Pearl Harbor, and then remarked that it looked like things were going to change. The Minnesota Post says he said: “I was born in 1941 — Pearl Harbor. Things have been in darkness ever since. Things are going to change.”

TwinCities.com says: Dylan addressed the country’s momentous events in his own oblique fashion, announcing “I guess things are really going to change now” …

The Star Tribune reports: Dylan said something about being born in 1941 and mentioned Pearl Harbor. And then he declared, “It looks like things are going to change now.”

A blog at Minneapolis City Pages.com reports that Dylan said: “I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things are going to change now.”

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the last and most seemingly complete quote is accurate. It seems, on the face of it, to be a completely cockamamie thing to say. What the heck can it mean, if you break it down? He’s been living in darkness since 1941 and Pearl Harbor. We can’t know what he might mean by that without a lot more elucidation; it seems to be an entirely personal statement. But things are going to change now? Because of President Barack Obama? Well, if all this is about who the president of the United States happens to be, then we have to assume that, for Bob, FDR (president when he was born) was a bringer of darkness. Truman, likewise, a purveyor of gloom. Eisenhower: darkness. John F. Kennedy: darkness. Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush: darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, and darkness. Now, however, Barack Obama, who has yet to serve a day in the White House, is going to bring — what? — brightness, lightness, peace, love and prosperity?

That’s absurd. To paraphrase our new president-elect, this is not the Bob Dylan I know. It makes no sense. It is not like him to put this kind of faith in an individual human being. It defies the wisdom of his songs — many of which he sang last night (including Blowin’ in the Wind). So, if this is what he said (and we have to wait for the audio to be sure) then it must be filed away as an incomprehensible statement. He needs to be asked specifically what he meant by it. And no one but he can explain what he really meant by it.

There is, nonetheless, one other angle which I’ll put out there. There are those who might very well and legitimately feel that a kind of era of darkness has definitively ended with yesterday’s event, and those are African-Americans, and in particular those still alive who lived through the bad old days and who have lived through the long uneven struggle to undo the damage done by those days. For sure, the election to the presidency of a man of African-American heritage can be seen by such persons as the lifting of a great curtain, the exorcism of demons, and the arrival of a truly new day. This is not ultimately about Barack Obama’s political agenda, but about his person. Bob Dylan is not African-American, as far as anyone knows (I haven’t done any research on the matter). However, members of his family are African-American. Loved ones of his are African-American. At least one child and a woman whom he married. And we don’t know who else: he keeps his private life remarkably private, and I honestly don’t even care to know. But he has a very personal stake in the difficult history of black people in America. And it is not necessary to expound here on the degree of love he has for the music and poetry that has come out of black America, which he draws upon in just about everything he does.

So, is it that Bob viscerally feels the same way a black American can feel about the election of a black American to the presidency, and rejoices in the hopeful end of perceived limits on that to which black children may aspire? I put it out there, but, again, only he can explain his comments (if what was quoted are his comments) because they don’t explain themselves.

If he meant such remarks in a more ordinary political way, then he is out of his mind. I don’t think that he is out of his mind. Unlike some, I’ve never thought he was out of his mind.

The final comment of his, on which everyone more or less agrees, went something like, “It looks like things are going to change now.” On that, I think we can all wholeheartedly agree. The Bob Dylan I’m familiar with would be inclined to add: “The only question is, what’s going to change, and how? It may not be just what you expect.”

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Now, Bob Dylan was in Minnesota yesterday as noted. I don’t know if he’s registered to vote. Maybe he did vote. Maybe he voted for Barack Obama. He’s entitled. People decide how to cast their vote for all kinds of reasons. Some of us (me included) like to think that we look at the issues and vote for the candidate who most closely and sincerely seems to agree with us on the issues. But many people vote for far more ephemeral reasons — out of a gut instinct or an affection for a certain candidate. In the early 1960s, as he recounts in his memoir, Bob Dylan liked the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, but didn’t tell anyone in Greenwich Village, as he knew they wouldn’t understand. Maybe today he likes Obama: I don’t know. (We all know the positive remark he made about him at the end of an interview with the U.K. Times in June.) Dylan is entitled to be occasionally sentimental or naïve, or to place priority on the kinds of issues mentioned previously. It seems to me, as it long has, that Dylan comes across as someone who is a kind of commonsense conservative or a mild libertarian. He’s a believer in God and in the Bible. He favors the right of law-abiding Americans to own guns. He values the freedoms of America and the ideals of the founding documents. He’s not fond of the idea of moving in the direction of some kind of world government. He doesn’t like too many laws impinging on him. He shouldn’t therefore be voting for big government liberals — if indeed he is. But there are many people who are instinctively or culturally conservative who wind up voting for Democrats. (Many of them are African-Americans, by the way.) So, Dylan can vote anyway he likes. This is America. Unlike, say, Bruce Springsteen, he does not play for candidates’ campaigns, or declare that his entire body of work reflects the agenda of a particular politician, and for that we can be very grateful.

President-elect Barack Obama is known to like some Bob Dylan music. He may invite Dylan to play at his inauguration party, as Bill Clinton did in 1993. He certainly ought to, in fact, and I would hope that Dylan accepts, if so. (I wish Dubya had invited him one of those years.) It’s an honor to play for the president of the United States in the nation’s capitol, and one that Bob Dylan richly deserves.

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UPDATE: See the latest and hopefully final post on this subject at this link: The audio: What Bob Dylan really said (about life, the universe, Barack Obama and everything) on election night in Minnesota.

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