The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #142469   Message #3288270
Posted By: GUEST,Don Wise
10-Jan-12 - 03:11 PM
Thread Name: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
Subject: RE: Why didn't MacColl like Dylan?
Who cares? Seems to me that the whole matter is merely a footnote of history to be turned over and over again by people with too much time on their hands and perhaps a few axes to grind.
I would suggest that,in the UK of the sixties, Dylan probably introduced more young people to folk music than Commissar MacColl and his coterie in 'The Smoke' did. Those of us in the 'provinces' didn't subscribe to Sing-Out or whatever. We happily gave out our pocket money for Dylans records,learnt the songs,discovered a local folk club where we could even play and slowly began a journey by which we eventually arrived, perhaps, at traditional music.
Furthermore one should perhaps look at the MacColl-Dylan thing in terms of the sixties in the UK. As Dylan perceptively noted, "The Times Were a'Changing", not only in music but also in the theatre, cinema, fashion, art, social attitudes etc.etc. A lot of 'established' people who had no doubt believed that when, from whatever direction, the revolution came they would obviously be asked to 'look after and guide' their particular field, found themselves being overtaken quickly on the inside. The general response to this was to slag off the supposedly 'untalented' etc.,etc., who were setting the pace and cocking a snook at accepted procedures, structures etc. In this sense,in so far as Commissar MacColl apparently slagged off BD he was doing no more than others of his generation were doing in their respective fields.