Bob Dylan

Just saw the Dylan interview. It brought a tear to my eye, seeing one of our greatest living artists shoot the breeze with Ed Bradley after so much silence. I'm not a particularly huge fan of his music, though I've seen him perform, with and without the Dead. I sing his songs, and I certainly appreciate his contribution to music and culture. I guess the most poignant of his comments, to me now, with my passions so aroused about this Free the Music (my new slogan - I'm about to start putting it on T-shirts) issue is his open recognition about where the music really comes from. Most of the great songs come in whole. They happen when the artist gets to a point where they can get out of the way and let the music come. When you watch the music award shows, the artists almost always thank god. They rarely do that for other awards, even artistic awards. But, the musicians know. They feel it when they play, when they sing, when they hear the song come in. Dylan talks about the deal he made with his creator, the one that let the music in. He knows where the music comes from.

Dylan, along with other visionary artists like John Lennon and Jerry Garcia, has a lot of spiritually oriented fans who actually think he is some kind of deity. Both Lennon and Garcia had to do a lot of explaining to people that they were not gods, they just channel their music. Actually, they were both very Buddistic about it. It took John a long time to make peace with himself, if he ever did. Jerry had better support & had a gentler, mellower soul, less troubled past. Dylan seems basically at peace, lives a quiet life in Woodstock, which is a great town. He says he doesn't get the music anymore, but he can do other things. He can still write music, but it probably won't be Blowing in the Wind. Songs like that, and the other 499 that should have been on Rolling Stone's top 500 are our culture, our music. It came from god, pretty much wholesale, ask the artists, and it belongs to all of us.