"Spokesman Denies That He's A Spokesman"

BOB DYLAN—CHRONICLES, VOL. 1, 2004

I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered.  Truth was that I wanted to get out of that race.

A few years earlier Ronnie Gilbert, one of The Weavers, had introduced me at one of the Newport Folk Festivals saying, “And here he is…Take him, you know him, he’s yours.”  I had failed to sense the ominous forebodings in the introduction.  Elvis had never been introduced like that.  “Take him, he’s yours!”  What a crazy thing to say!  Screw that.  As far as I knew, I didn’t belong to anybody then or now.  I had a wife and children whom I loved more than anything else in the world.  I was trying to provide for them, keep out of trouble, but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation.  All I’d ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities.  I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.  I’d left my hometown only ten years earlier, wasn’t vociferation the opinions of anybody.  My destiny lay down the road with whatever life invited, had nothing to do with representing any kind of civilization.  Being true to yourself, that was the thing.  I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper.

People think that fame and riches translate into power, that it brings glory and honor and happiness.  Maybe it does, but sometimes it doesn’t.  I found myself in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect.  If you looked in the press, though, you saw me being portrayed as anything but that.  It was surprising how thick the smoke had become.  It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat—someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire, and someone else would have to step up and volunteer.  I really was never any more than what I was—a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.  Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me.  I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles.  It would have driven anybody mad.

Early on, Woodstock had been very hospitable to us.  I had actually discovered the place long before moving there.  Once, at night, driving down from Syracuse after playing a show, I told my manager about the town.  We were going to be driving right by it.  He said he was looking for a place to buy a country house.  We drove through the town, he spied a house he like and bought it there and then.  I had bought one later on, and it was in this same house that intruders started to break in day and night.  Tensions mounted almost immediately and peace was hard to come by.  At one time the place had been a quiet refuge, but now, no more.  Roadmaps to our homestead must have been posted in all fifty states for gangs of dropouts and druggies.  Moochers showed up from as far away as California on pilgramages.  Goons were breaking into our place all hours of the night.  At first, it was merely the nomadic homeless making illegal entry—seemed harmless enough, but the rouge radicals looking for the Prince of Protest began to arrive—unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry.  Peter LaFarge, a folksinger friend of mine, had given me a couple of Colt single-shot repeater pistols, and I also had a clip-fed Winchester blasting rifle around, but it was awful to think about what could be done with those things.  The authorities, the chief of police (Woodstock had about three cops) had told me that if anyone was shot accidentally or even shot at as a warning, it would be me that would be going to the lockup.  Not only that, but creeps thumping their boots across our roof could even take me to court if any of them fell off.  This was so unsettling.  I wanted to set fire to these people.  These gate-crashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues were all disrupting my home life, and the fact that I was not to piss them off or they could press charges really didn’t appeal to me.  Each day and night was fraught with difficulties.  Everything was so wrong, the world was absurd.  It was backing me into a corner.  Even persons near and dear offered no relief.

Once in the midsummer madness I was riding in a car with Robbie Robertson, the guitar player in what was later to be called The Band.  I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.  He says to me, “Where do you think you’re gonna take it?”

I said, “Take what?”

“You know, the music scene.”  The whole music scene!  The window was rolled down about an inch.  I rolled it down the rest of the way, felt a gust of wind blow into my face and waited for what he said to die away—it was like dealing with a conspiracy.  No place was far enough away.  I don’t know what everybody else was fantasizing about, but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.  That would have been nice.  That was my deepest dream.  After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can’t buy it back.

Joan Baez recorded a protest song about me that was getting big play, challenging me to get with it—come out and take charge, lead the masses—be an advocate, lead the crusade.  The song called out to me from the radio like a public-service announcement.  The press never let up.  Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself to the press for an interview so the wouldn’t beat down the door.  Usually the question would start out with something like, “Can we talk further upon thins that are happening?” “Sure, like what?”  Reporters would shoot questions at me , and I would tell them repeatedly that I was not a spokesman for anything or anybody and that I was only a musician.  They’d look into my eyes as if to find some evidence of bourbon and handfuls of amphetamines.  I had no idea what they were thinking.  Later an article would hit the streets with the headline, “Spokesman Denies That He’s a Spokesman.”  I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs.  The New York Times printing quacky interpretations of my songs.  Esquire magazine out a four-faced monster on the cover, my face along with Malcolm X’s, Kennedy’s, and Castro’s.  What the hell was that supposed to mean?  It was like I was on the edge of the earth.  If anybody had any sound advice or guidance to offer, it wasn’t forthcoming.  My wife, when she married me, had no idea of what she was getting into.  Me neither, actually, and now we were in a no-win situation. 

I couldn’t just lie there, had to take the bull by the horns myself and remodel the image of me, change the perception of it anyway.  There aren’t any rules to cover an emergency of this kind.  This was a new thing for me, and I wasn’t used to thinking this way.  I’d have to send out deviating signals, crank up the wrecking train—create some different impressions.

At first I was only able to do little things, local things.  Tactic, really.  Unexpected thing like pouring a bottle of whisky over my head an walking into a department store and acting pie-eyed, knowing that everyone would be talking among themselves when I left.  I was hoping that the news would spread.  What mattered to me most was getting breathing room for my family.  The whole spectral world could go to hell.  My outer image would have to be something a bit more confusing, a bit more humdrum.  It’s hard to live like this.  It takes all your effort.  The firt thing that has to go is any form of artistic self-expression that’s dear to you.  Art is unimportant next to life, and you have no choice.  I had no hunger for it anymore, anyway.  Creativity has much to do with experience, observation, and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn’t work.  It was impossible now for me to observe anything without being observed.  Even when I walked to the corner store someone would spot me and sneak away to find a phone.

I went to Jerusalem, got myself photographed at the Western Wall wearing a skullcap.  The image was transmitted worldwide instantly, and quickly all the great rags changed me overnight into a Zionist.  This helped a little.  Coming back I quickly recorded what appeared to be a country-western record and made sure it sounded pretty bridled and housebroken.  The music press didn’t know what to make of it.  I used a different voice, too.  People scratched their heads.  I started a rumor with my record company that I would be quitting music and going to college, the Rhode Island School of Design—which eventually leaked out to the columnists.  “He won’t last a month,” some people said.  Journalists began asking in print, “Whatever happened to the old him?”  They could go to hell, too.  Stories were printed about me trying to find myself, that I was on some eternal search, that I was suffering some kind of internal torment.  It all sounded good to me.  I released one album (a double one) where I just threw everything I could think of at the wall, and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn’t stick and released that, too.  I missed out on Woodstock—just wasn’t there.  Altamont—sympathy for the devil—missed that, too.  Eventually I would record and entire album based on Chekov short stories—critics thought it was autobiographical—that was fine.  I played a part in a movie, wore cowboy duds and galloped down the road.

The novelist Herman Melville’s work went largely unnoticed after Moby-Dick.  Critics thought he crossed the literary line and recommended burning Moby-Dick.  By the time of his death he was largely forgotten.

I had assumed that when critics dismissed my work, the same thing would happen to me, that the public would forget about me.  How mad is that?  Eventually, I would have to face the music—go back to performing—the long-awaited ballyhooed reunion tour—gypsy tours—changing ideologies like tires, like shoes, like guitar strings.  What’s the difference?  As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing.  I wasn’t going to go deeper into the darkness for anybody.  I was already living in the darkness.  My family was my light, and I was going to protect that light at all cost.  That was where my dedication was, first, last, and everything in between.  What did I owe the rest of the world?  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  The press?  I figured you lie to it.  For the public eye, I went into the bucolic and mundane as far as possible.  In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered—the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing…I was living on record royalties.  In reality I was imperceptible, my image, that is.  Sometime in the past I had written and performed songs that were most original and most influential, and I didn’t know if I ever would again and I didn’t care.

The actor Tony Curtis once told me that fame is an occupation in itself, that it is a separate thing.  And Tony couldn’t be more right.  The old image slowly faded, and in time I found myself no longer under the canopy of some malignant influence.  Eventually different anachronisms were thrust upon me—anachronisms of lesser dilemma—thought they might seem bigger.  Legend, icon, enigma (Buddha in European clothes was my favorite)—stuff like that, but that was all right.  These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them.  Prophet, messiah, savior—those are the though ones.