Thanks very much to Joe H. for bringing to my attention the fact that the Google Books database includes a vast number of back issues of Billboard Magazine. The implications of this for finding interesting old articles about Bob Dylan is clear enough. But Joe, knowing I’m also a Sinatra fan, kindly forwarded me a link to an issue from November of 1965 that has an enormous and fascinating section on Frank, marking his 50th birthday and “25th anniversary” in showbusiness. It’s full of fascinating stories and details from fellow musicians who had worked with The Voice. For fellow Sinatra fans, that article begins on page 35. (There are also a variety of amusing full-page ads from friends of Frank in honor of the occasion.)

If interested, you ought to be able to reach that issue by clicking this link.

…

Thanks again to the same Joe for forwarding the link to a Time Out New York piece with Ray Davies (of Brit-pop combo “The Kinks”) and his reaction on hearing Bob Dylan’s tune Here Comes Santa Claus:

[Davies] Has Bob Dylan turned into Stan Freberg? [Pause] You know, musically, this is as valid as him doing his country record. He’s got a lot of bottle.

[Q] I’m sorry?
Bollocks. Balls! It’s an English expression. People think that Dylan’s just a poet singing his songs, but he’s a great vocal stylist. This is charming. I’m appalled, but mesmerized.

In America, Christmas music is part of a pop tradition, whereas in England I suspect it’s more religious.
The common denominator is that they’re both sentimental. But this track doesn’t sound sentimental to me—it’s actually a bit cynical. Captain Bob…he’s so unbelievable.

Have your paths crossed?
A few times, but not really. He doesn’t say much. He asked me where the bathroom was.

And did you tell him?
Yes. I showed him to the ladies.

Ah, he’s an incorrigible lad.

…

I am predictably irked by the following story:

Just a week before the United Nations climate change conference begins in Copenhagen, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today it will help release a rare live recording of Bob Dylan performing his 1962 song-poem A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall set to dramatic photographs of shrunken ice caps, barren landscapes, and devastated lives.

Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision with Nature by photographer Mark Edwards and Mr. Dylan will be released on DVD at the opening of the Hard Rain exhibition in Copenhagen on 6 December – the eve of the climate conference. The release is being done in partnership with UNEP.

“The dark and evocative lyrics of A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall echo the kind of impacts the world faces if climate change continues unchecked,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director. “But Bob Dylan had another song. One that reflects a strong and positive Copenhagen outcome that puts the world on a low-carbon path – The Times They Are A-Changin.”

That Hard Rain exhibition of photographs has been around quite a long while. It features photos taken across the world over a period of forty years, and certainly they’re not all about “global warming” or “climate change.” I have no clear evidence of what Bob Dylan thinks of the whole subject of man-made global warming. (About all we have is his joking remark to Jann Wenner a couple of years ago: “Where’s the global warming?” And certainly, it’s difficult, based on many remarks of his about globalism, to see him liking the idea of global authorities dictating how people live their lives.) The song A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall would be effective in backing up any images of war, disaster or horror. It’s a chilling piece of apocalyptic poetry, from a songwriter who has written many times on such visions but never with more power. The song isn’t about global warming, as we know very well. Of-course, to the professional global warming advocates, everything is fair game to be enlisted for the cause. And any tragic example of either Mother Nature’s cruelty or human pollution — as in the photographs — can just be rolled into one all-encompassing message: Humans are bad, and are destroying the Earth. Therefore we must give the most sanctimonious humans among us power over the great unwashed masses; power to beat them down with laws, regulations and taxes until they either submit or die (or both). While I wish Bob Dylan’s song were not being rolled into the whole global warming propaganda machine like this, it’s nothing new, and it’s unsurprising to me that permission was originally given to use the song with this photographic exhibtion. Permission of this kind is almost never denied by Dylan and his agents.

For the record, I’m not personally in favor of pollution. And I’d love nothing better than to see the use of fossil fuels in the U.S. decline by means a switch to a genuinely effective alternative; the only effective alternative, currently, is nuclear power. (The present administration has unfortunately set the possibility of a substantial number of new nuclear power stations back considerably by abandoning the Yucca Mountain project.)

I also think that history has already demonstrated that the best way towards a cleaner environment in the long run is through human progess and development. Wealthy populations, like those in the U.S., have more leisure and financial wherewithal to even care about the environment; after all, preserving and protecting the environment requires both people’s attention and their willingness to spend money on it. People struggling to put food in their mouths and in the mouths of their children will understandably exploit the environment in whatever way necessary to meet their needs. Therefore by helping people around the world progress, through democracy and free markets, we ultimately end up with cleaner local environments and thereby a cleaner world. (Totalitarian regimes care nothing for the environment.) All people prefer the absence of pollution and the beauty of unspoiled nature, given the ability to make the choice.

Yesterday’s polemical broadside against the man-made global warming industry was the product of sincere outrage at the prospect of what I believe to be an anti-human agenda gaining ground via these would-be global authorities. Not everyone who cares about the environment is anti-human, naturally; nor even is everyone who believes in the man-made global warming narrative. There are good intentions and well-meaning people throughout. Yet I fear that what we’re now supposed to call the “climate-change” movement has been fundamentally inspired and driven by radicals who, in the end, see human beings themselves as the problem, and are very happy not to give any thought to the impact, on real humans, of the kinds of brute-force “anti-carbon” policies that are being contemplated and in some cases already implemented. I won’t be quiet in the face of such dangers, not now and not ever. After all, some of my best friends are human.

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall rolls out a litany of nightmares. Its piled-on images of a world gone totally wrong resonate in our imaginations, and that’s why the song has lived so long and will live much longer still. Here’s a couple of lines that resonate for me in this very context:

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

I think we ought to beware of those hidden executioners, and forgotten souls. There are already more than enough in this world.

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