With 2006 drawing to a close, RWB takes this opportunity to say a big “thank you” to all readers, for making the writing worthwhile. Thanks for all the support and encouragement, including links and emails (thanks too for the more thoughtful criticisms).

Which reminds me — I recently received this email from a reader named Susan all the way from Australia:

I just wanted to drop a note to you to say thanks for your website. I get
so sick and tired of reading garbage written about Dylan - both as a person
and as an artist. Although I haven’t yet read everything on the site, what
I have echoes my own feelings on the man and his work.

I have just been reading the post, “Argument with a Leftist” and it made me
think of something I read in Joan Baez’s autobiography “And A Voice To Sing
With.” In amongst (what I consider to be) her bitching about what she did
for Bob and what he did or didn’t do for her in return, she says this:

“…..He was rarely tender and seldom reached out to anticipate another’s
needs, though occasionally he would exhibit a sudden concern for another
outlaw, hitchhiker, or bum, and go out of his way to see them looked
after….” I’ve read other comments made by her and others insinuating he’s
self-serving and has a lack of concern for others. Don’t know about you,
but I think going out of your way to help people you have no vested interest
in - be they bums or hitchhikers - shows a generosity of spirit you seldom
see.

From some of the other comments she makes in the book about his
unwillingness to follow her political lead I couldn’t help but think of her
reading your post.

Keep up the good work.

I hadn’t read Joan’s autobio so I wasn’t aware of those things. It reminds me of something else, though: I believe that the oft-repeated story about the writing of When the Ship Comes In originated with her. She retells it in the Scorsese film No Direction Home. Basically, her story is that she and Bob were checking in to a hotel somewhere while on tour, and the hotel clerk gave Bob a hard time because of how he looked, and was not going to let him stay there until she intervened and vouched for him. He supposedly wrought that great song of ultimate justice, When the Ship Comes In, out of his annoyance at being insulted by the clerk.

There’s something attractive about the story, initially — it seems to be a neat example of how Dylan might derive inspiration from the mundane and create something huge and universal out of it. Yet, one begins to wonder why Joan told it in the first place, and keeps repeating it, because it’s also ultimately not a very pretty story. It portrays someone being so annoyed at being treated rudely by a hotel clerk that he goes upstairs and writes a song pleading for the seas to split and the earth to shake and the end of the world to arrive. There’s a pettiness and a preciousness being strongly implied by the story, and it doesn’t elevate one’s appreciation of the song; it drags it down.

It’s also all a matter of interpretation. If you believe that Joan is telling the facts as she witnessed them, well, fine. That is, that Dylan wrote When the Ship Comes In on the same day as the argument at the hotel. Someone else, however, might have made no connection between the composition of that song and the earlier events at the hotel. Baez, however, does make what is a very unflattering connection, and propagates it happily. It fits her image of Bob as a self-centered and self-serving guy who just happens to have a great ability to write songs.

Other than the occasional good-natured joke, by the way, I don’t know of any examples of Dylan publicly putting Joan Baez or her music down. I think he’s always been quite generous in his praise — more generous than a lot of us would be.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• When That Ship Comes In
• You ain’t goin’ nowhere
• Appreciation