The message isn’t in the words, …. I don’t do anything with a sort of message.
I’m just transferring my thoughts into music. Nobody can give you a message like that.
~Bob Dylan (to Ray Coleman, May 1965)
To me, that song [When The Ship Comes In] says a whole lot. Patti LaBelle should do that. You know? You know, there again, that comes from hanging out at a lot of poetry gatherings. Those kind of images are very romantic. They’re very gothic and romantic at the same time. And they have a sweetness to it, also. So It’s a combination of a lot of different elements at the time. That’s not a contrived line. That’s not sitting down and writing a song. Those kind of songs, they just come out. They’re in you so they’ve got to come out.
~Bob Dylan (to Paul Zollo, April 1991)
56 years ago today Dylan did his 4th recording session for “The Time They are A-Changin'”
Continue reading October 23: Bob Dylan – The 4th recording session for The Times They Are A-Changin’ in 1963 →
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Dylan is one of the performers at the Washington Civil Rights March. Photographs of the historic march show him perched on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, singing with Baez. He also accompanies folk revivalist Len Chandler on the traditional “Hold On,” as well as performing solo versions of “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “Only a Pawn in Their Game” appears in bastardized form on the Folkways’s We Shall Overcome documentary album, largely obliterated by some ill-considered polemic superimposed over the song.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995
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But I thought Kennedy, both Kennedy’s – I just liked them. And I like Martin…. Martin Luther King. I thought those were people who were blessed and touched, you know? The fact that they all went out with bullets doesn’t change nothin’. Because the good they do gets planted. And those seeds live on longer than that.
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder, March 1984)
Wikipedia:
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or “The Great March on Washington“, as styled in a sound recording released after the event, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C..Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in which he called for an end to racism.
Continue reading August 28: Bob Dylan’s performance @ March On Washington in 1963 →
Focusing on Bob Dylan & related music
