During my career as a radio announcer, I worked for a time at a classical music station.

One afternoon the telephone rang, and it was an outraged listener. What caused his outrage was that I had played some "Nazi music!"

It turned out that just before he called, I had played something by Beethoven (one of the "Fidelio" overtures, I believe). And Beethoven (along with Wagner), he informed me, was one of Hitler's favorite composers.

I noted that the man had a distinct German accent, and his voice sounded like he was an older man, so I deduced that he'd probably had a rough time of it some decades back.

We chatted awhile, and I think I managed to convince him that it was not Beethoven's fault that Hitler liked his music, and that if we refused to listen to a piece of music because someone we dislike or disapprove of (no matter how justified we may be in our dislike or disapproval) likes it, we'd wind up with very little good music to listen to.

Beethoven was a surly s.o.b. and a very difficult person to deal with, but then Schubert was constantly broke, so he often ducked out of an apartment before the rent was due, and some believe that Mozart actually died of a venereal disease because he was an egregious womanizer.

Yet, they all wrote great music.

He was a bit mollified and said that perhaps he was allowing his memories of Hitler to rob him of much enjoyment, and that he would have a hard think on the matter.

I hesitate to bring this up because I don't want to divert the thread to a different discussion, but the principle is the same. Let me ask this:   Do you like Bob Dylan and his music? Why—considering that, early on, he lied his face off in a radio interview with Cynthia Gooding about who he was, where he came from, what he had done in his life (borrowing heavily from Woody Guthrie's autobiography), and—he owed a great deal to Joan Baez, who took him around on HER concert tours, introduced him and had him sing (and chewed the audience out when some of them booed him), and generally promoted his career. And then, when he finally got a concert tour of his own, he asked Joan to come with him. BUT, she found out, he didn't want her on stage with him, he wanted her to stay in the hotel room so she'd be handy for him he'd finished and wanted a little—recreation.

That kind of a person. And you still like his music?

Don Firth