November 11, 2024
Springsteen on Dylan: "Bob Dylan is the father of my country. Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay. The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated. He inspired me and gave me hope. He asked the questions everyone else was too frightened to ask, especially to a fifteen-year-old: “How does it feel...to be on your own?” A seismic gap had opened up between generations and you suddenly felt orphaned, abandoned amid the flow of history, your compass spinning, internally homeless. Bob pointed true north and served as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the new wilderness America had become. He planted a flag, wrote the songs, sang the words that were essential to the times, to the emotional and spiritual survival of so many young Americans at that moment. I had the opportunity to sing 'The Times They Are A-Changin’ ' for Bob when he received the Kennedy Center Honors. We were alone together for a brief moment walking down a back stairwell when he thanked me for being there and said, 'If there’s anything I can ever do for you...' I thought, 'Are you kidding me?' and answered, 'It’s already been done.'”
-Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
Did Bob Dylan mean what he sang in “Idiot Wind?” Doesn’t the "we" in The Animals’ song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” refer to the American people and our getting out of the Vietnam war? Why did a U.S. Army machine gunner from Buffalo, New York write a letter to Bob Dylan asking to meet him when he got home from Vietnam? Is there a shared soundtrack for today’s veterans?
“This always happens,” I smile and say to my co-presenter and co-author Craig Werner. He nods in agreement. We’ve just made a Veterans Day Weekend presentation at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and members of the audience are anxious to know more, share more, respond to what they’ve just heard...
And we’re all too willing to keep stirring the pot.
That’s because, thanks to Craig, an emeritus professor of African-American Studies at UW-Madison, our work is rooted in the African-American cultural practice of “call-and-response.” That’s the beauty, too, of our award-winning book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War. It’s based on the responses from hundreds of Vietnam veterans about the music of that time and their responses to that call. It’s also inherent in our presentations to audiences like the one at The Dylan Center this past Saturday. You could even make an argument that “question and answer” sessions like Saturday’s are actually “call and response” sessions. Audience members, especially the veterans and their families, are always moved because the music allows them to be grounded. To be safe. To be heard.
How’s that for an appropriate way to observe Veterans Day? And maybe a good way to salute our veterans each and every day... our response to their service and sacrifice.
All of that and more were present in Tulsa on Saturday, as they’d been previously in Seattle and Saginaw, Memphis and Minneapolis, and places in between. Being where we were close to Veterans Day 2024, we emphasized Dylan’s music, the contributions of other Tulsa-bred musicians like Leon Russell and David Gates, and the stories we heard from veterans, many of them Native Americans, from the various Oklahoma tribes. These elements bring a relevancy and intimacy to the conversations that help audience members relax, be centered, and be ready to respond.
And maybe there’s no better responder to the world and the events around him than Bob Dylan. While Dylan made few, if any, explicit statements about the war in Vietnam, he saw through the hypocrisy of politicians, the hostility of generals, the foolhardiness of the public, and the tragic consequences of war. He warned us about the hard rain that could fall, pushed back against the masters of war, and railed against the idiot wind blowing "from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.” In collaboration with co-writer Rick Danko, Dylan even harnessed the resentment of Vietnam veterans as a "wheel" that "shall explode” in The Band’s version of “This Wheel's on Fire.”
Powerful responses. Iconic songs. Masterful storytelling. That’s Bob Dylan. When you’re in Tulsa, stop by the riveting Bob Dylan Center, and also go next door to celebrate Dylan’s mentor Woody Guthrie at The Woody Guthrie Center.
Hear the call...and help bring a veteran home.
Our Dylan Center Veterans Day Weekend 2024 presentation's playlist:
Dylan as a touchtone for generational consciousness:
Nixon’s War-"Idiot Wind" (Bob Dylan; written by Bob Dylan)
Oklahoma connections:
Native vets-Kiowa Gourd Dance
Veterans and Veterans Day:
