Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 06:22 PM

Jack, thank you for informing me about MacColl's Brechtian work. In this thread, the contrast between the two was painted so vividly that their possible partaking of different flavors of modernism would never have occurred to me. I didn't mean to suggest that Joyce was an influence on Dylan, just that they both ruthlessly used and reshaped traditional forms for their own ends.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 06:18 PM

its two different views of writing . American and English.

Strangely it was an ex-pat living in America who first pointed out the differences to me - Raymond Chandler. not a songweiter 0 but the same truths obtain.

Chandler realised to het published in detective novels like RGe Black Mask. He had to pare down his writing style. As Chandler put it - you have to stop drawing attention to the language , and tell the story.

In this case Dylan tells his story using language that a ten year old could understand, and it moves along to a jaunting waltz time. What Hemingway calls simple declarative sentences

Rosselsons piece could almost be a soliloquy from one of Shakespeare's more verbose heroes - Richard II for example bewailing his fate. MacColl was a great admirer of Shakespeare - think of the wide and wasteful ocean nicked from Henry V.

Neither approach is 'wrong'. It's allowed.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 05:15 PM

contrast to Hattie Carroll, this song by leon Rosselson, a good subject but this time well written
If the sons of company directors,
And the judges' private daughters,
Had to got to school in a slum school,
Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,
Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry,
With a view onto slag heaps and stagnant pools,
Had to file through corridors grey with age,
And play in a crack-pot concrete cage.

Buttons would be pressed,
Rules would be broken.
Strings would be pulled
And magic words spoken.
Invisible fingers would mould
Palaces of gold.

If prime ministers and advertising executives,
Royal personages and bank managers' wives
Had to live out their lives in dark rooms,
Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers.
Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars,
In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs.
Had to bring up their children and watch them grow
In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow.

Buttons would be pressed,
Rules would be broken.
Strings would be pulled
And magic words spoken.
Invisible fingers would mould
Palaces of gold.

I'm not suggesting any sort of plot,
Everyone knows, there's not,
But you unborn millions might like to be warned
That if you don't want to be buried alive by slagheaps,
Pitfalls and damp walls and rat traps and dead streets,
Arrange to be democratically born
The son of a company director
Or a judge's private daughter.

Buttons will be pressed,
Rules will be broken.
Strings will be pulled
And magic words spoken.
Invisible fingers will mould
Palaces of gold.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 05:05 PM

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,guest - PM
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 12:09 PM

"I cannot think of many who gave up their time for nothing, to try and help others,"

............. well, every single folk club organiser I ever met.
yes, but none of them would be doing it,if it had not been for MacColl and Lloyd and their buddies, gtting the ball rolling.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 05:02 PM

Hattie Carroll was a good subject, but an example of poor songwriting imo.
      look at the way it is written:to me it is reminscent of mcGonagle
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gathering
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears
William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears
Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears
Songwriters: B. Dylan

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 03:19 PM

MacColl, I gather, was a traditionalist who sought to preserve, rescue, and restore historic forms; Dylan was a modernist (like Joyce) who sought to highlight them, exploit them, stretch them, and create his own very different work in part out of them.

The Radio Ballads and MacColl's theatre work don't have any precedent in folk tradition, so you're talking about two different kinds of modernism, rather than modernism and not. MacColl's came mostly out of Brecht, who Dylan never seemed to relate to, maybe with the exception of "Hattie Carroll".

There was quite a bunch of modernist song and poetry that Dylan did pick up on; I wouldn't have thought Joyce was significant. The mid-century mostly-British surrealist school was more accessibly usable.

Either of them could have recycled Prévert, but I don't think either bothered looking outside material easily accessible in English.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 01:57 PM

"Jim;You saying nothing different, "
Which is a step up from your saying nothing
" I am simply suggesting that there is no need to saw sawdust"
We've never actually discussed MacColl's work and ideas in any depth
I knew for twenty years and worked with him in depth for a great deal of that time.
I continue to work on recordings of his talks and classes, as well as masses of unreleased material privately recorded, in veiw to passing it on to somene who will make use of it without having to scramble up the garbage mountain erected by such spiteful attitudes as yours.
If you are interested, you are welcome to be part of that, if not, get out of the way and make room for sombody who is.
We have seen the tip of a largee iceberg of what he had to offer
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 12:57 PM

Dylan certainly influenced more people.

However Mac Coll was tremendous. He would always talk and discuss with you - try writing to Dylan.

He was so generous with his talent - trailing round England to tiny folk clubs even as an elderly man with a heart condition. He gave England something that Americans can only dream about - folk clubs ad hoc, all over the place, forming and re-forming.

Places where massive mature talents rub shoulders with greenhorns, totally unpatronising.

Americans on mudcat always say we wish we had a folk club. And you say - just form one, like we do. And there's a glum silence. LIke they think the local nutter will turn up with an AK47.

MacColl was amongst the first one to form a folk club. And when he'd shown us how it was done - he donated his enormous talent.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 12:33 PM

Jim;You saying nothing different, you have said the same bloody thing over and over. I am not an ajudicator of any sort, I am simply suggesting that there is no need to saw sawdust. As for being an anonymous non member. I am allowed to be so under the rules of this forum. I have good reason for that. As for Ewan McColl, yes, he wrote a few good songs, yes he had influence. But we have discussed him to death.
Bob Dylan was simply a much greater influence..I don't think any amount of bafflegab will alter that.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 12:24 PM

Sorry, forgot to log in.

Bill

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 12:09 PM

"I cannot think of many who gave up their time for nothing, to try and help others,"

............. well, every single folk club organiser I ever met.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Jackaroodave
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 11:53 AM

Dylan and MacColl seem to be drawing on two overlapping but otherwise quite different traditions. Dylan's included commercial recordings of old-timey, jug band and hokum, urban and rural blues. (Dave van Ronk did an album called "In the Tradition" which mainly comprised early jazz songs.) Dylan's tradition probably had more in common with R. Crumb's and the Grateful Dead's than with MacColl's, so it's moot to compare them as interpreters of their respective traditions as if they were trying to do the same thing.

Exposure to this world was very liberating for lyricists. It was full of colorful metaphor, allusion, very specific references to God knows what, all tremendously evocative and equally cryptic. Performer after performer has testified to the influence of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, which is just full of this kind of stuff.

For better or worse, it gave the songwriters permission to trust the associations in their unconscious, and when they came through, it was overpowering: "All Along the Watchtower," "Hard Rain," "Every Grain of Sand," or "Chimes of Freedom," for example, seem to me precise recreations of this simultaneously hyper-specific and ominously cryptic lyricism. And of course these performers came of age when sinister weirdness was thick in the air--along with other substances.

(It's also relevant that many strands in this tradition had very different approaches to originality, authenticity, "borrowing," and getting paid for selling recordings--or sheet music.)

Many traditional ballads in the forms they reached Dylan's contemporaries had the same mysterious but vividly evocative images and stories, partly, I suppose, because their original audiences already understood the background, partly because of the omissions and accumulated mondegreens that shaped their eventual form.

Even aside from the difference in their traditions, it seems to me almost inevitable that MacColl--and Dylan's early traditionalist followers--would abominate the actual hallmarks of Dylan's creativity. MacColl, I gather, was a traditionalist who sought to preserve, rescue, and restore historic forms; Dylan was a modernist (like Joyce) who sought to highlight them, exploit them, stretch them, and create his own very different work in part out of them.

All this, of course, is old hat, but I think it is relevant to some of the disagreements in this thread. They don't strike me as just matters of opinion, but rather expressions of two different and valuable approaches to "the tradition" that stem from the differences in our formative experiences of it.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 11:30 AM

well said,Jim.
I cannot think of many who gave up their time for nothing, to try and help others, MacColl and Seeger may have made mistakes,who doesnt make mistakes,but they were committed.
IMO people like them[With their faults] are needed more than ever in 2017.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 11:13 AM

Well say something different or say nothing - who do you think you are to dictate whet can be discussed?
Who started no make anonymous non-members adjudicators?
As far as I am concerned, MacColl was the major moving force in the folk revival and it's about time we discussed that fact without the garbage shoveled out by a bunch of necrophobes - the man'r been dead for over half a century
Is that different enough for you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 11:12 AM

People are generally not that bright and will reply to anything to which they have a script in their heads. And, no judgement about intelligence, Jim does like saying the same things over and over, with varying combinations of werdz.

Also, it's the internet, and this thread is searchable, so you get new folks who've never been in here before. You can probably search Google for threads where you can express your hatred for Dylan, and POW - this one comes up.

The problem you can do something about here is NOT getting other people to be less obnoxious, but to learn to ignore the stuff you don't like. You clicked on this thread for some reason, and then you came back to it.

Big ol' rhetorical "why"!?

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 10:37 AM

I am not interfering with free discussion, I am objecting to pages and pages of people saying the same things over and over again..As for having nothing to say, you would be a blessing if you would take your own advice.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 10:32 AM

"Who in Gods name reopened this repetitive rubbish."
Who in God's mae is interfering with free discussion, anonymous Guest
If you have nothing to say, say nothing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 10:02 AM

Same nonsense, different day. Same people saying the same things. Who in Gods name reopened this repetitive rubbish.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 09:37 AM

The UK Folk scene needs MacColl right now. I know I have been critical of him in the past, but it needs someone who is prepared to give their time to help others. The only song writers[ imo] who compare, who have a comparable dossier of well writeen songs are Rosselson , and to alesser extent Lowe
MacColl probably saw through Dylan, and possibly saw that commercialism was his Future drectioin , personally I think RayDavies was a better writer than Dylan, in the commercial genre

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 09:06 AM

Jim i would refer you to his first album. His renditions of the traditional songs of his own country are exceptional.
In the thing about amplified buskers, I said five minutes ago. That Dylan along with Pete Seeger used traditional forms to articulate our feelings of helplessness in the Cold War period. To say that an artist has not understood a song form - when they can rewrite Nottanum Town as masters of War - recorded by dozens of artists like Nina Simone. This clever stuff and we could do with a few more people misunderstanding traditional forms.

Just for that I would rate him as an important artist. i am not an aficianado of Dylan, and I appreciate the correctness of what you say Jim - it was a relatively short time in his career. but then so was Picasso's blue period.

For   my money he lost his way when he jacked in folk music. He was original and very influential, and the folk music bit was his most creative period.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 09:03 AM

From the one time I met McColl and having known several who knew him. People were very reverent towards him, and I feel many scared of him. He really seemed to hate all 'American Folk' Though of course he married American Folkie Peggy Seeger. But he also upset many top artists i.e once told Ireland's greatest Singer Luke Kelly that he couldn't sing. McColl actually had a very below average voice! But most I've met saw him as a very big headed disagreeable but talented man

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 08:49 AM

I think Masters of war is a good song, the tune is also taken from the tradition [was it taken from Jean Ritchies family tradtion?]. Bob dylans dream is a crap song[ imo] but he took the tune from the tradition again[ croppy boy/ lord franklin]
I understand why MacColl did what he thought was right, and it meant that the british reperttoire was strengthened, however I see no fault in singing Guthries songs, preferably in ones own accent, but better that they are sung than not sung at all.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 08:00 AM

Dylan's nod to the tradition was a relatively brief one - his history is mainly as a pop singer - he followed his career - when folk took a dive in the charts, he went elsewhere, nowt wrong with that

A kind of backwards Eddi Reader - when her pop career fizzled out she figured the folk scene might make an appropriate retirement home.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 07:12 AM

"anyone who thinks Dylan had no feeling for traditional song - either knows absolutely fuck all about traditional song,"
If he did Al, it didn't appear in his own songs or his interpretation of traditional ones.
Dylan's nod to the tradition was a relatively brief one - his history is mainly as a pop singer - he followed his career - when folk took a dive in the charts, he went elsewhere, nowt wrong with that
MacColl regarded Dylan as a threat to what his generation of folk singers had worked for - the opening up and dissemination of what they regarded as 'the songs of the people', particularly in respect to the national and regional repertoires
When Lomax came to Britain in the fifties, everybody was trying to sound like Woodie Guthrie, including Ewan and Bert Lloyd
Lomax argued that the native repertoire was dying because it was being ignored - MacColl and Lloyd listened and devoted their lives to our native traditions..... then along came Bobby
"The word 'tradition' comes from the Latin 'tradition' - I hand on..."
Wherever the word originated, when it is applied to song or music, it is fairly specific - I might hand on my old socks to a younger brother, but it doesn't make them traditional socks.
Don't know about you, but Bozo's predictably hysterical outburst convinces me I've chosen the right side
Hope his Vietnamese lady has been immunised against rabies!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 06:34 AM

The trouble is, Al, that this kind of discussion always ends up in polarisation. Your opening remarks are typical. It seems to always depend on whether one is a Dylan aficionado or not. The comment about the elder statesmen of the folk revival reeks of hyperbole to me. If that overwhelming influence is present, I don't see abundant signs of it all over the place hitting me between the eyes. The man himself regards himself as a rock singer. Can't deny he had influence on some people. But to suggest (not saying you are suggesting...) that he's some kind of pivotal or seminal figure in the folk music revival is pushing it way too far.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 06:25 AM

"Ewan MacColl was an arch communist" - yes a lunatic British communist, nutty as a fruitcake just like Corbyn and his bunch. Now I work with a North Vietnamese lady who is of course communist, very normal, and one of the nicest ladies you would ever care to meet, totally free of the preposterous hang ups associated with British lefties and worse!!!

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 06:17 AM

anyone who thinks Dylan had no feeling for traditional song - either knows absolutely fuck all about traditional song, or absolutely fuck all about Dylan's work.

the word 'tradition' comes from the Latin 'traditio' - I hand on...

The work of Dylan and his versions of traditional song and attempts to inject modern resonances into traditional song forms is responsible for inspiring most of the elder statesmen of the English folk revival.

attempts to trash an important artist's reputation reeks of the profitless factionalism of an earlier age. Dylan's legacy speaks for itself to anyone of intelligence or awareness of how the folk music movement in England has developed.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Thompson
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 02:31 AM

It's understandable why someone whose political heart is in the solidarity of working class people would find Bob Dylan's "only a working man" image while Dylan is a true capitalist somewhat like the scraping of fingernails on a blackboard?

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: meself
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 08:51 PM

Saying that Dylan "had no feeling for traditional songs" is simply stating an opinion. We are free to agree or disagree. ("Yes, he did." "No, he didn't." "He did." "He didn't." "Did." "Didn't.").

Maybe we could take one of those polls that they do nowadays on TV news programs: Our question: Do you think Dylan had no feeling for traditional song? x% of respondents say 'yes', y% say 'no'.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 07:56 PM

I've not read through all of these posts, so don' t know what has been said before- but toadfrog -- I have to disagree!
Certainly some early Dylan songs were based on Scottish traditional / folk material!
And I know that Jean Redpath shared a flat 'way back when with a number of musicians, Bob Dylan was either one of them or session-ed with them - and Jean would have been singing Scottish ballads and the like! So it does not surprise me that something might have rubbed off onto him-----
I have certainly heard Scots . traditional (undertones? overtones? ) in some early Dylan songs -- -

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 07:31 PM

read his autobiography- the worst day of his life was the day the soviet union fell

He died on 22 October 1989.

The USSR fell on 25 December 1991.

(I have no idea if Conrad is still alive. I don't suppose it makes much difference to the chances of a fact getting through into his skull).

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: toadfrog
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 02:54 PM

Aside from political differences--
However talented, Dylan had no feeling for traditional songs, which McColl and Seeger did. McColl believed that the spirit of the songs he sang could be preserved. Dylan may have thought he understood that spirit. But he didn't.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 16 - 08:03 PM

Dylan imo is pretentious,on occasions he wrote enigmatic songs that allowed others to read whatever message they liked.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,pauperback
Date: 28 Jul 16 - 04:37 PM

Baz Bowdidge Date: 22 Jan 12 - 10:54 AM


Not the brother of Judith Miller?

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 25 Jan 12 - 04:55 AM

@ Little Hawk:

as Bob Dylan put it,"I was so much older then,I'm younger than that now".

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jan 12 - 12:37 AM

"Ewan MacColl was an arch communist
read his autobiography- the worst day of his life was the day the soviet union fell"
.,,.
A chip off the old block, his father Will, indeed. One of the most moving moments in the whole of Ewan's autobiography Journeyman is the account of Will Miller, on the day that Lenin died, sitting in front of the fire for hours, weeping uncontrollably.

~M~

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 09:25 PM

wish someone would retool me

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: *#1 PEASANT*
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 08:01 PM

Dylan was arch capitolist chameleon folk music market server and

Ewan MacColl was an arch communist

read his autobiography- the worst day of his life was the day the soviet union fell

part of the communist take over of folk music him and seeger

dylan just wanted the money and re tooled himself to suit

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 06:34 PM

LH, I never take offence at anything that you write. Although, occasionally, I may not agree with some of your views or opinions, you are obviously a thoughtful and sensitive person and I have only respect for you.

I believe strongly that we should all be able to engage in vigorous debate, on this forum, without giving each other offence.

Having said that though, it does sometimes bring out my 'competitive' side and, well, nobody's perfect!

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 06:22 PM

No, GSS I am NOT suggesting that people who "didnt like rock" were narrow. Not liking rock would merely be a matter of personal taste. Nor am I suggesting anything personal whatsoever about you in this or any other comment. Reread my previous post a lot slooooooower this time, think about what I actually said in it, and you may this time get what I was actually saying. It's all there in the previous post.

And it's summed up in this one short statement:

"I was suggesting that people who have become deep enthusiasts of (any) ONE particular style of music AND who automatically (therefore) look down their patrician (or otherwise) noses at virtually EVERY other style of music are narrow-minded."

I obviously wasn't saying that about YOU. Or Shimrod. I was saying it about myself at the age of, say, 16 years old. I was a musical snob who thought nothing was any "good" except folk music, and it had to be folk music that was sung a certain way too...Bob Dylan sure didn't sing it that way. I was verrrry particular.

I've seen a lot of 16-year-olds with that kind of snobby attitude about the music they liked. I've seen a few older people with it too. It's understandble in a 16-year-old.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Acorn4
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 04:01 PM

I think the Oyster Band have probably consistently done the folk/rock thing the best, though I appreciate that many will not like their approach.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 03:28 PM

"folk and rock [imo] just does not gel"

Try this: Shelagh McDonald: The Dowie Dens of Yarrow

Enjoy!

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 03:28 PM

little hawk,you are suggesting that people who didnt like rock were narrow.
ISAID I DIDNT LIKE FOLK ROCK, that is not the same as saying i do not like rock, even if i didnt like rock that would not make me narrow, neither did i say i only liked folk.
if you like Dylan that is great,but dont expect everyone else to do so. as a matter of fact I like some of his songs but not others, Ithink he has written some good songs and also some crap, same as EWAN.
I would be more inclined to singing Ewans songs though probably mean more to me as a singer, you probably feel that way about Dylan, DOES THAT MAKE EITHER OF US NARROW. NO

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 03:10 PM

I am not suggesting that "people who don't particularly like rock music are "narrow-minded", Shimrod. You misinterpret me. I don't expect everyone to like rock music any more than I expect everyone to like opera...or jazz...or folk music.

I was suggesting that people who have become deep enthusiasts of ONE particular style of music AND who automatically look down their patrician noses at virtually EVERY other style of music are narrow-minded.

I'm not suggesting you are such a person, so you need not take it personally.

I'm just explaining what I meant by the word "narrow-minded".

What I "always find myself ruefully amused by", Shimrod...is my own self as a younger person, utterly sure of his own tastes, who was a folk purist to the core, and who despised virtually all other forms of popular music, looked down his nose with disgust at any person or group who played rock music, country music, pop music, bluegrass or ANYTHING at all that I didn't rate as "folk music". I was inexperienced, narrow-minded, arrogant....and very young. I eventually grew up some. I started to appreicate music in many different genres...not all of them...but many.

My argument, Shimrod, is not some kind of attack on you or someone else here on this forum. It's my reaction and reflection upon my own youth, the youth that I left behind when I became a bit less narrow-minded. The only real enemy I will ever have in this life, Shimrod, is the negative voice inside ME. For about 10 years of my life it shut my ears to a whole bunch of very good music and fooled me into thinking I was more "special" than some other people because of that. That was a lie, but I didn't know it at the time.

Maybe that's why Dylan replied to the young man in England in 1966 who yelled at him "Judas!" (for playing electric music).....Dylan replied to him "I don't believe you. You're a liar!" He was right. That kid was a liar, but he just didn't know it at the time.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 02:43 PM

Surely rock is a limited, highly stylised form that has been heavily promoted over the last few decades.

Oh well, here we go: define "rock". No easier than defining "folk", is my guess.

No music is a "waste of time". Whether you like it or not is just personal taste. If it has validity for someone, it's not wasting their time. I like bits of Bob Dylan, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Martin Carthy, Lindisfarne, Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, Dave Swarbrick, Anne Briggs, June Tabor, Cream, the McPeake Family... blah, blah, blah...

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 02:12 PM

I always find myself ruefully amused, LH, to be told that people who don't particularly like rock music are "narrow-minded"! Surely rock is a limited, highly stylised form that has been heavily promoted over the last few decades. Personally, I think that people who are fixated on the rock form, and ignore most other musical genres, are the truly narrow-minded ones!

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 01:48 PM

I was initially utterly contemptuous of all rock music in all its popular forms, and I wouldn't listen to it. That was when I was a folk purist...between about 1960 and 1968. It was also, basically, when I was a teenager. I probably would have agreed wholeheartedly with MacColl's view of Dylan at that time.

In 1969 that all changed. In a process that took literally one DAY I came to totally appreciate Dylan's electric music, unite it firmly to my already existing love of traditional folk forms, and after that I loved both folk music AND good rock music (by "good", I mean with lyrics that are worth listening to). There's been quite a bit of good rock music by now, although how much of it gets on the radio? Well, a bit of it...amongst a sea of dross.

Is it a good thing to be narrow? I don't think so. That's why they call it "narrow-minded" when you are. I dropped my narrow-minded outer style-based folkie prejudices in 1969 and I increased my appreciation of popular music tenfold from that point on. Who do I thank for that? Bob Dylan. And the respected friend and teacher who advised me to listen carefully to him.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 01:14 PM

"I think people today who were born into a rock world, with all its assumptions about the variety of sound possible, and who haven't passed through that change, can have no idea what a catastrophic overturn it was. It is an imaginative feat to put yourself in a world without rock—"

Yes, rock has become a dominant form which nearly eclipses all others within the 'popular' musical genres. I suspect that for many people, of the last few generations, who don't have specialised musical tastes, if it 'doesn't rock' it 'doesn't compute'.

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 12:37 PM

Come to think of it, MacColl must have been close to a coronary with the treatments Fairport,Steeleye,Lindisfarne,5 Hand Reel, etc.,etc.......gave to traditional numbers."
and rightly so, most of the time they were a waste of time,Steeleye [imo]were the best of a bad bunch,probably due to Martins influence,folk and rock[imo] just does not gel, it would be interesting to get some of Martins quotes and earlier opinions on Steeleye.
in fairness to Steeleye, I have heard many folk rock bands since, and they have all been pale imitations, that in comparison have faded into insignificance.
in my opinion, to make folk rock work the musicians need to have absorbed and been steeped in both folk and rock, very few musicians come into that category.
the same goes for musicians trying to blend folk and jazz, to be successful the musicians need to be steeped in both kinds of music, not many are

Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 12 - 10:18 AM

That was an absolutely great set of posts, Bob Coltman, the best explanation of what happened that I've heard yet. My initial reaction to Dylan's sound was very negative....and that was because I was a folk purist...wedded to the old sound, just like a lot of the other people in the folk audience who rejected the young Bob Dylan. He sounded too extreme to me...not like "folk music".

But I barely listened to him at all or even thought about him at that time...1961 to 1968, approximately.

I was listening, though, to all the other rising young folk stars such as Joan Baez, Peter/Paul/Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian & Sylvia, Leonard Cohen (a bit later), Joni Mitchell (again, a bit later), all of them people who, unbeknownst to me, admired Dylan's work and were certainly influenced by it. (I don't know if Paul Simon admired Dylan...he made fun of him in one song...but I can't help thinking he was influenced by Dylan).

I also, funnily enough, liked the Dylan songs that Joan Baez had recorded better than anything else she was singing...and I was aware that Dylan had written those songs, so I decided that although I didn't want to hear him sing them, he was a really great songwriter. To that extent, I accepted him.

So here I was, this folk purist, hated the way Dylan sounded, but was very impressed by his songwriting. And I basically ignored his music until 1969....at which time I suddenly "got it"! (mainly because the one person in the world whose opinion I most respected at the time advised me to buy "Highway 61 Revisited" and actually listen to it all the way through at least 3 times.)

I listened to it once and was totally converted into a huge Dylan fan, and I agree with you that he "came into his own as a world-class performer when he had the electric backing and could work with it". That resulted in 3 incredible albums in '65 and '66 that will stand forever.

I also think, though, that his earlier acoustic work from the 2nd album on was often stunningly good and that it changed everything in modern folk music from that point on. He wrote the songs nobody else had written...and that (by his own testimony) is why he wrote them...because he simply couldn't find cover songs or trad songs that said what he personally wanted to say. He opened the door to everything that followed, not only in folk music, but in rock music too.