Bob Dylan, Politics, Folk Music, and DU Opinions [View all]

In the past couple of days there have been threads in General Discussion that were more or less trashing Bob Dylan. Nothing new there. But, as usual, those threads missed the mark. Instead of understanding who Bob Dylan really was and what his music career was about, those threads tried to put Dylan in a category and lock him into that category forever. All based on the points of view of the thread's OP.

I'll be 80 years at the end of this month. Bob Dylan is 82 years old. We are contemporaries, and in more than one way. I encountered Dylan's music with his very first album. I encountered it only because I was caught up in the folk music craze that had started in the 1950s. I wasn't just a listener. As high school kids, four guys I knew who were musicians had started a folk quartet, and we were singing and playing only old-time folk songs, mostly those collected by Alan Lomax. We were very much into it, and performed here and there, including a walk-on set at the Monterey Folk Festival in 1963.

So, I jumped on Dylan as a fan. His first albums were pure folk, but contemporary folk music. He was singing about the political issues of the time. We loved it. Lots of people loved it. We had expectations about who Dylan was and what he was writing and singing. We expected him to continue right on doing that. He decided to evolve in another way. People were pissed. The older folk music stars were pissed, beginning the first time he plugged a guitar into an amp. His music changed, and the world of folk music rejected that change.

And here's the thing: Bob Dylan did not give a shit about people's expectations of him. He got started with folk music because that genre was a little more accepting of young performers. As soon as he started writing other styles of music, the folk addicts got snippy about it and dumped on him. He wasn't meeting their expectations.

Now, in 2025, people are once again pissed at Dylan for not living up to his reputation as a protest singer and political revolutionary. They have forgotten everything about Dylan that happened after 1964 or 65. They're still expecting Dylan to do what THEY want him to do. He never did that. Not ever. Expecting him to is ridiculous.

He is who he is. If you think you know what that is or think you should be able to expect him to be who you want him to be, you are way wrong. 82-year-old Bob Dylan is not about current politics. If you want his protest music, you can still find it. It's still popular. Just don't get pissed at him for not singing that stuff today. He's not going to. Find another potential hero. He's not what you want him to be. He never was,