The Commodification of Revolution

Once Dylan had established himself as a figure in the music community, he ceased writing “political” songs.  Ironically, many in the folk music community saw this almost as selling out:

            When Bob began to ignore topical material, it bothered me ‘cause he wrote such marvelous material, you know?  And suddenly to have stopped that meant that he was going away from a political consciousness that we felt we all had.  One can attribute that as going commercial as getting away from this, and that bothered us.*

 Later in life Dylan would imply that he did, wrote, and sang whatever he had to in order to get where he was; basically, he did what he had to do to make it.**  A similar line to the one Jack London took.  Dylan claimed numerous times that he was not a topical songwriter, nor did he every want to be part of the “movement.”  The “revolutionaries” claimed him as a spokesman, thus allowing Columbia to capitalize.  Yet, at the same time, Dylan used them to get to where he wanted.  Dylan himself never out rightly sang of revolution, but by taking his songs to be the songs of their “revolution,” the record company profited hugely off of this allowing for other bands like MC5*** to get signed to major labels Elektra and Atlantic, and then they too could profit off of “The Revolution.”

* Harold Leventhal in “State of Becoming,” No Direction Home: Part 2.

** “60 Minutes: Dylan Looks Back,” CBSnews.com, June 12, 2005, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/ 12/02/60minutes/main658799.shtml (accessed May, 2007).

*** Though they never sang songs about revolution, they became symbols of it, being the only band that was scheduled to perform at the 1968 Democratic convention that actually played and originally being managed by radical activist poet John Sinclair who was also briefly the leader of the White Panther Party.

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