PODCAST: BOB DYLAN A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Two 10) Dylan as Public Poet: Masters of War and With God On Our Side

Masters of War and With God on Our Side

EXTRACTS

Masters of War and With God on Our Side can be considered to be the most didactic and moralistic examples of Bob Dylan’s early ‘protest’ material. Jesus and Judas are mentioned in both songs. Dylan’s uses these two figures to represent polar moral opposites – good and evil, faith and betrayal. Ironically, in 1966 he was famously accused of being a ‘Judas’ himself when he ‘went electric’ and abandoned overtly political song writing. Much later in his career he would, to the surprise and consternation of many of his fans, actually ‘embrace Jesus’.

Both songs were written in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, in which the entire world faced an unprecedented existential threat. By then, Dylan had already composed several anti-war songs. Blowin’ in the Wind delivers its universal message through a series of metaphorical propositions, while the apocalyptic A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall spirals off into a series of riveting concrete poetic images. Even more pertinently, Let Me Die in My Footsteps is a strident and eloquent refusal to enter a fallout shelter. But in the two post-Crisis songs Dylan has clearly decided that ambiguity is not the order of the day. He relies on a kind of dramatic ‘plain speak’ in order to expose the greed, hypocrisy and mendacity of politicians, religious leaders and those who profit from war, quite explicitly presenting himself as a national ‘public poet’ or bard.

Masters of War

Neither song deals explicitly with the recent nuclear standoff, although Dylan did make an attempt at writing such a song. In March 1963 he made a very primitive recording in the offices of Broadside magazine of Cuban Missile Crisis, based on Woody Guthrie’s tale of the ‘virtuous outlaw’ Pretty Boy Floyd. There are only three verses:

…Come gather ’round you people, a story I will tell

About a night not long ago, you all remember well.
I tell it to you straight and true, I tell it like a friend
All about the fearful night, we thought the world would end.

I was walkin’ down the sidewalk not causin’ any harm
The radio reported, it sounded with alarm
The Russian ships were sailin’ all out across the sea
We all feared by daybreak it would be World War Number Three.

I was worried about an argument I had the day before
Over some small matter, I’m sure it was nothin’ more.
But just a day ago, how it wrinkled up my brow
The same thing today seems so unimportant now…

In both songs Dylan appears to adopts a decidedly moral, quasi-religious and judgemental stance. At this point in his career he professed belief in no particular religion. In interviews he was often ambivalent about his Jewish upbringing. Yet, perhaps under the influence of the many blues and gospel singers he so admired, he always seemed to have a general respect for religious belief and a definite leaning towards monotheism. Blowin’ In the Wind was adopted by many gospel choirs as a kind of ‘secular hymn’.

He was particularly attracted to Biblical themes of divine judgement and vengeance. In A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall he adopts the stance of a Biblical prophet, picturing himself as standing on a mountain and surveying the devastation below. In his evocation of ‘generational revenge’ When the Ship Comes In he pictures those who stand up against the inevitability of change as being drowned ‘like Pharoah’s tribe’. In one of his early unreleased songs I’d Hate to Be You On That Judgement Day, the unnamed subject of the song (the nature of whose heinous sins are rather opaque), reaches ‘St. Peter’s Gate’ but is turned away from heaven.

At New York Town Hall in 1963 Dylan prefaces When the Ship Comes In by a comparison to David and Goliath. Before performing Masters of War he declares, perhaps surprisingly, that …I believe in the Ten Commandments. The first one is I am the Lord thy God….. He follows this with an unexpected but extremely vicious put down: … It’s a great commandment if it’s not said by the wrong people…

Chris talks about MASTERS OF WAR and WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE, two of BOB DYLAN’s early ‘protest songs’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uez8EeBHGss