Thanks to Marek Breiger who writes here about Newport, Dylan, Pete Seeger and related matters:

It looks like the 50th birthday of Newport Folk Festival will continue the deification of Pete Seeger. It’s not a bad idea to flash back to 1965 and to understand that the conflict between Seeger and Dylan was initiated by Seeger and had a lot more to do with world views and real artistic and personal freedom than the use of electic guitars. Dylan’s old friend from the Little Sandy Review Paul Nelson,an eyewitness, nailed the issues down in his essays from that time, called simply “Newport Folk Festival, 1965.” Here is Nelson [quoting Jim Rooney, another musician and a witness to events that day]: “He (Dylan) is not theirs (the audience) or anyone elses — and they didn’t like what they heard and booed. They wanted to throw him out…Pete Seeger had begun the night with the sound of a newborn baby crying and asked that everyone sing to that baby…but Pete already knew what he wanted others to sing. They were going to sing that it was a world of injustice, pollution, bombs, hunger and injustice, but that PEOPLE WOULD OVERCOME. But can there be no songs as violent as the age? Must a folk song be of mountains, valleys, and love between my brother and my sister all over the land? That’s all very comfortable and safe. But is that what we should be saying to that baby? Maybe, Maybe not. But we should ask the question. And the only one in the entire festival who questioned our position was Bob Dylan. Maybe he didn’t put it in the best way. Maybe he was rude. But he shook us. And that is why we have poets and artists.”

[Nelson himself:] “The audience had to make a clear cut choice and they made it: Pete Seeger. They chose to boo Dylan off the stage…”

The folk community to its everlasting credit was crucial in terms of support of the Civil Rights movement but with rare exceptions (Joan Baez being one) the movement supported Stalinist dictators like Mao in China, Ho in Vietnam, Castro in Cuba. Dylan has never ridiculed or used hyperbole to explain his differences with Seeger. He simply established his own independence as a poet and a person. Arlo’s recent blog condemning not the U.S. but militant Islamic murderers in Iran is in Dylan’s tradition and Arlo’s dad and Dylan’s hero — Woody Guthrie was a rebel and also in every real sense a patriot and whatever his politics — too proud and too independent to take orders from anyone.

Let’s hope that this 50th anniversary at Newport will have great music and not everyone in lockstep with the same politics that only cheapen real poetry, and real art. And let’s hope that Pete Seeger, at 90, has learned from some of his own misjudgements and mistakes.

A little clarification from Marek on some of the above:

For attribution:Paul Nelson’s essay originally appeared in “Sing Out,” November 1965.. And the first long quote was Nelson quoting another musician and writer Jim Rooney of Cambridge, Mass. Rooney was a fellow eyewitness. The last direct quote was Nelson’s.

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