Bob Dylan vs. the ChiCom

Brian Doherty | April 8, 2011

Two of our major papers accuse Bob Dylan of knuckling under to commie pressure by doing his first mainland China performance and not laying down such regime-shattering powerhouses as "Blowing in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changing."

From the Los Angeles Times:

At a time when many other American performers have been banned from China, Bob Dylan was allowed to play Wednesday night in Beijing, but with a program that omitted Dylan's most famous ballads of dissent.

Conspicuously absent from the program at the Workers' Gymnasium were "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

From the Washington Post:

In Taiwan on Sunday, opening this spring Asian tour, Dylan played “Desolation Row” as the eighth song in his set and ended with an encore performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose lyrics became synonymous with the antiwar and civil rights protest movements.

But in China, where the censors from the government’s Culture Ministry carefully vet every line of a song before determining whether a foreign act can play here, those two songs disappeared from the repertoire. In Beijing, Dylan sang “Love Sick” in the place of “Desolation Row,” and he ended his nearly two-hour set with the innocent-sounding “Forever Young.”

There was no “Times They Are a-Changin’ ” in China. And definitely no “Chimes of Freedom.”

It would really be news if he had played "Blowin" or "Times"--either of them. To have played both would probably have been a Dylan moment as unusual as opening with "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."And "Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is arguably as "protesty" in its hard-to-parse poetical way as "Desolation Row," and Dylan played that one in China.

Despite the supposition--normal for most normal big rock entertainers, but Dylan's a rule-breaking maverick, baby!--that of course it's standard practice that a big rock star plays most or all of his 5 to 7 most iconic songs every gol-darned night, Dylan does not roll like a Rolling Stone that way and never has.

I've seen the man perform 28 times from 1987-2009, and because I'm the kind of guy who does that, I also have a record of every song I've seen him play and how often. And he's played "Blowin' in the Wind" exactly five of the 28 times I've seen him, and "The Times They Are A Changing" only three. He just doesn't do them that often.

And while he did, untypically, do an encore of "Blowin'" in Taiwan that night before, that was the weird outlier event needing explaining. If you check, for example, the last 10 Dylan show setlists before this Asian tour began, you'll find him not once playing either of the hoary protest era classic song he's accused of expunging to assuage the ChiCom. (No "Chimes of Freedom," either, also very rare in his live repertoire.)

So, either he's also deathly afraid of the disapproval of the masters of the American northeast, or both the Post and the Times are writing out of ignorance.

Dylanologist note: Bob did hit the godless commies with song one grabbed from his largely neglected hardcore Christian body of work, the tough-minded "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking" ("...stop being influenced by fools!")

I apologize to fellow Dylan fans for not sticking more Dylan lyric references in the post. It just wasn't flowing. But here's my 2001 Reason article on his glorious inauthenticity.

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Restoras|4.8.11 @ 11:10AM|#

"It just wasn't flowing."

Perfect, just like his music.

Corporate Drone|4.8.11 @ 11:21AM|#

or perhaps the ChiComs have gotten to Brian as well!

we're through the looking glass here, people.

Entitled Slacker|4.8.11 @ 12:34PM|#

"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles."

Well then|4.8.11 @ 1:53PM|#

Those vandals will be shot and their families billed for the bullets.

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 11:12AM|#

Brian -- are you one of those snobs who dismisses his seminal work with The Traveling Wilburys?

|4.8.11 @ 11:21AM|#

Whoa, handle with care, CN.

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 11:37AM|#

Anything you want, you got it.

|4.8.11 @ 11:38AM|#

It's the end of the line, dude.

|4.8.11 @ 12:58PM|#

Did that actually happen? I thought it was a dream after a bay leaf overdose.

Brian Doherty|4.8.11 @ 11:17AM|#

I yield to no one in my admiration for the Springsteen-tweaking "Tweeter and the Monkey Man...."

|4.8.11 @ 11:49AM|#

With ya, mang. Dylan sounded like he was having fun there.

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 12:01PM|#

You got a cold soul if you can't enjoy the Wilburys.

Shmenge|4.8.11 @ 5:11PM|#

The Headstones' version kicks ass too.

Russ 2000|4.8.11 @ 6:01PM|#

No colder soul than Jeff Lynne.

Matt Welch|4.8.11 @ 12:09PM|#

Get in line, Jan!

Ice Nine|4.8.11 @ 11:19AM|#

And so who decided that Bobby is supposed to attempt - or even give a shit about (not) - fomenting political discord or revolutionary fervor in China? As if his growling a couple rusty old folk songs might actually do that. As if more than 2% of his audience would even know what he was growling.

|4.8.11 @ 11:31AM|#

Who says he ever gave a shit about fomenting political discord or revolutionary fervor in the U.S.? If we keep demanding that rock stars change the world, all we're going to end up with is another shitty charity song from Bob Geldof or Little Steven.

robc|4.8.11 @ 1:13PM|#

Geldof recently referred to Do They Know its Christmas as the worst song in the history of recorded music, or something to that effect.

I think he is being a bit hard on himself, but not much.

|4.8.11 @ 1:17PM|#

Did you hear the cover of it Fucked Up put together this past holiday season? They got Bob Mould, David Cross, Ezra Koenig, GZA, Kevin Drew, Kyp Malone, Tegan and Sara, Yo La Tengo and Andrew WK (yeah, I don't get that last one either) to make up their "all-star" cast. It was a pretty funny idea, and an impressive group of artists, but the original song is so bad that I still couldn't bring myself to actually buy their remake.

|4.8.11 @ 12:45PM|#

I thought he always sung in Chinese

Ice Nine|4.8.11 @ 1:26PM|#

Nice pun, though unintentional I suspect.

Caption Contest|4.8.11 @ 11:23AM|#

"Everything is broken."

Spiny Norman|4.8.11 @ 11:27AM|#

Is it true that "Gotta Serve Somebody" was a cookbook?

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 11:38AM|#

Excellent.

waffles|4.8.11 @ 11:28AM|#

The best recent Dylan story is when he was picked up by a New Jersey cop because a woman called to report a suspicious vagrant snooping around her neighborhood. Just awesome.

Otto|4.8.11 @ 11:33AM|#

I apologize to fellow Dylan fans for not sticking more Dylan lyric references in the post. It just wasn't flowing.

'There was too much confusion, he couldn't get no relief.'

PantsFan|4.8.11 @ 12:33PM|#

and the fact that the cop didn't know who Bob Dylan was.

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:19PM|#

I couldn't believe after all these years, he didn't know him any better than that.

Nick Gillespie|4.8.11 @ 11:35AM|#

If he wanted to send a message to the Chinese, he could have just done a bunch of Phil Ochs or Van Ronk covers.

|4.8.11 @ 11:51AM|#

Or maybe Pere Ubu's "Chinese Radiation"? On second thought, I'm not sure if Bob could pull that one off.

|4.8.11 @ 3:16PM|#

Should have covered Bowie's "China Girl" - stereotypical keyboard lines a must.

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:22PM|#

Dude, Iggy's version is so much better.

Iggy Pop should be deployed to oppressive countries whenever possible.

Ky Voter|4.8.11 @ 11:42AM|#

This will be lost in the obligatory Dylan love/hate fest, but it's worth repeating just how goddamned shitty the Post and Times' reporting is on this.

What the fuck are they paid to do, again?

|4.8.11 @ 11:48AM|#

I'm a Bob Dylan agnostic (have about six of his albums but feel like he coasted on his reputation after about 1975) but have no issues agreeing to the suckitude of both the Post and Times.

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:23PM|#

Big time. Desire was a great album, and after that things start getting extremely patchy.

Sukriti|4.11.11 @ 6:58AM|#

Agreed, it just sounds like they need some topic to bitch about. Do they not realize that if he sang Blowing in the Wind (which is of course a brilliant song) every night, he would start to hate it? He sang the songs he wanted to, and damn well (I just came back from the Vietnam gig and enjoyed it immensely).

Jesse Walker|4.8.11 @ 11:48AM|#

My favorite part of the L.A. Times story:

Dylan is so unknown in China that one newspaper, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News, ran a story about his upcoming concerts alongside a big photograph of country music star Willie Nelson.

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 11:53AM|#

Halfway through the first set, Pete Seeger comes out and they do Poncho and Lefty.

|4.8.11 @ 12:09PM|#

Something like 15 or 20 years ago (going by who I was married to at the time) the New Republic had a little list of "10 Reasons I Hate Folk Singers. One of the reasons: Pete Seeger refuses to die. Everytime I hear about Pete Seeger, I still laugh. That mother fucker actually does refuse to die.

Entitled Slacker|4.8.11 @ 12:18PM|#

I believe that was Willy Nelson not Pete Seeger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsR0Y-sWk-E

|4.8.11 @ 12:59PM|#

I believe that was the joke.

Citizen Nothing|4.8.11 @ 2:12PM|#

The desert's quiet, Cleveland's cold.

alan|4.8.11 @ 3:29PM|#

Seeger? I think PBS puts him in deep freeze for most of the year, and then springs him out for a yearly fund raiser, otherwise he would be long forgotten.

rather|4.8.11 @ 11:53AM|#

Can you say OCD?

Really?|4.8.11 @ 12:33PM|#

Glutton for punishment.

Otto|4.8.11 @ 11:59AM|#

given that he played in Taiwan a few nights before, I'm kind of surprised they let him play in China.

Gus|4.8.11 @ 12:02PM|#

Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn't very cute to him, was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I

Want you
I want you
I want you so bad
Honey, I want you

Spiny Norman|4.8.11 @ 12:29PM|#

If dogs run free, then why not we
Across the swooping plain?
My ears hear a symphony
Of two mules, trains and rain
The best is always yet to come
That’s what they explain to me
Just do your thing, you’ll be king
If dogs run free

|4.8.11 @ 12:15PM|#

The big question should be whether Lindsey Graham would let him sing "Masters of War" during wartime.

Almanian|4.8.11 @ 12:25PM|#

Here's your obligatory "Dylan's the most overrated performer of the 20th [and part of the 21st] century!!"

OVERRATED!!! (bum, bum, bumbumbum)
OVERRATED!!! (bum, bum, bumbumbum)
OVERRATED!!! (bum, bum, bumbumbum)...

R|4.8.11 @ 12:32PM|#

Naw dude, that's the Beetles.

Zeb|4.8.11 @ 2:07PM|#

I'm still convinced that people who don't like the Beatles (or at least some of their work) are just doing it to be difficult.

|4.8.11 @ 4:02PM|#

Yeah, I'll cop to that, though if I say I don't like the Beatles what I really mean is "I own all of their albums from Rubber Soul on, but I think the White Album is bloated, Let it Be is mediocre and I never bothered to buy Anthology or their box set in mono."

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:27PM|#

The White Album is bloated with goodness.

Xenocles|4.8.11 @ 4:18PM|#

Saying you don't like the Beatles is like saying you don't like beer. They just did too many varieties of music for most people to categorically dislike them - if it's true then you probably just don't like the entire genre of rock.

Brett L|4.8.11 @ 12:37PM|#

Performer? Yeah. Songwriter and musician, No.

|4.8.11 @ 3:34PM|#

He is easily amongst the top five Anglophone songwriters of all time (with Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies, John Lennon and Holland-Dozier-Holland, imho). But his performance style heavily inspired the Velvet Underground, which inspired punk, etc. so you have to give him props for that too.

|4.8.11 @ 4:23PM|#

I'd replace Cohen with Willie Nelson, but in fairness to Cohen I've never given his stuff that much of a chance.

|4.8.11 @ 4:24PM|#

And actually, now that I think about it, Nelson probably doesn't deserve to be in the top five based solely on songwriting. His strong suit was interpretation.

masterblaster|4.8.11 @ 12:38PM|#

Nope. Beatles are underrated. Dylan - a fine lyricist, coupled with decent music. Perhaps just a tad overrated.

mr simple|4.8.11 @ 12:38PM|#

and because I'm the kind of guy who does that, I also have a record of every song I've seen him play and how often.

You must be a blast at parties. It's okay, I'd be too busy trying to put my drink in the exact center of the coaster, chewing equal amounts of food on both sides of my mouth and such to notice.

Slap the Enlightened!|4.8.11 @ 12:49PM|#

Party time, indeed...

T|4.8.11 @ 12:44PM|#

I've seen the man perform 28 times from 1987-2009

This could be the definition of musical masochism.

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:29PM|#

During this time period, he got to see the quality of Dylan morph from miserably bad to embarrassingly poor to possibly improved and then back to dreadfully shoddy.

silent v|4.8.11 @ 12:44PM|#

It just wasn't flowing.

So I yelled I love Chairman Mao and his beard?

Not for all the tea in Cuba?

Yeah, not really flowing.

Paul|4.8.11 @ 1:32PM|#

Conspicuously absent from the program at the Workers' Gymnasium were "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

Why would Dylan sing songs about dissent when he's in the Worker's Paradise?

Xenocles|4.8.11 @ 4:19PM|#

^^ This.

|4.8.11 @ 1:42PM|#

Yeah, I heard Dylan was getting back together.

Old Hippie|4.8.11 @ 2:00PM|#

Let's spend two hours debating Dylan going electric. Because that never gets old...

|4.8.11 @ 3:36PM|#

I had no problem with him going electric per se. I did have a problem when he went country-gospel and changed his singing style so he didn't sound like himself anymore.

You got me|4.9.11 @ 6:26PM|#

tangled up in blue.

Tommy Chong|4.8.11 @ 2:01PM|#

Hey, I jammed with those dudes.

Thom|4.8.11 @ 1:51PM|#

I saw Bob Dylan in 2004 and I couldn't tell what songs he was playing. I'm pretty sure that he finished with "All Along the Watchtower" though. Pretty sure, but not certain.

Zeb|4.8.11 @ 2:09PM|#

I saw him in 1992 or somewhere around there and he was already that bad.

Tim Cavanaugh|4.8.11 @ 2:42PM|#

Um, what is "Desolation Row" protesting? Einstein's controversial decision to sniff drainpipes and recite the alphabet? Or the Phantom of the Opera spoonfeeding Casanova to make feel self-assured? Those issues are every bit as relevant to contemporary China as they were to 1965 America.

marlok|4.8.11 @ 4:32PM|#

Ya just don't get it, do ya?

The man's a poet... A POET.

|4.8.11 @ 3:32PM|#

Q: What happened to the hippies of the 60s?

A: They grew up and became the yuppies of the 80s.

And some of them...|4.9.11 @ 6:25PM|#

...became authoritarian bastards working "within the system" that we have today.

|4.8.11 @ 4:18PM|#

> I've seen the man perform 28
> times from 1987-2009

Heartiest condolences.

Y'know, the tragedy of our Earth is that no matter how well you play your cards, nor how well those who love you best and brought you here play THEIR cards, the Darkness of the Human Condition will FIND you. This is a planet where good people suffer, always. It's nothing personal. I know this.

And yet, a dear person, a source of clarity and principal, has been exposed to Dylan's whimpering, for hours at a time, on nearly thirty occasions, at full arena amplification.

I weep.

God Be Wit Ye, son.

Robert|4.8.11 @ 11:35PM|#

The best use of "The Times" was the opening credits sequence of the movie of Watchmen, which was also the best part of the movie.

|4.9.11 @ 8:35AM|#

Tragically true on both counts.

J|4.9.11 @ 9:08AM|#

Weren't all his "protest songs" written before the U.S. sent troops to Vietnam?

freed dog|4.9.11 @ 12:25PM|#

He's in Saigon tomorrow and I'm gonna be there! It'll be interesting to see his song selection.

freed dog|4.10.11 @ 1:08PM|#

Tonight in Saigon he sang, "Tangled Up In Blue," "Ballad of a Thin Man," "All Along the Watchtower." Oh, and "Like a Rolling Stone" among others. No "protest songs."
Took me awhile to recognize a few of his songs like "It Ain't Me Babe." Pretty much growled the whole way through it.

|4.11.11 @ 7:04AM|#

Even though he didn't sing protest songs, I still had a fantastic time (i was in the front row). It wasn't about starting some revolution, it was about playing music, entertaining the audience, not completely boring himself by playing the same hits over and over again till he hates them, and just doing what he wants... I thought the concert was brilliant, and glad that it was more bluesy than country.

Ahaha yeah he did growl his way through it, but I would realize what song it was by the time he growled the second line... The arrangements were unrecognizable but really fun.

I don't mind at all that there were no protest songs. It was just an amazing night and that's what matters.

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candy toy|7.19.11 @ 4:01AM|#

good,Those vandals will be shot and their families billed for the bullets.

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