Bob Dylan –The Stories Behind The Classic Songs 1962-1969-By Andy Gill Welbeck – £21.71

 "Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of his subsequent work, and notwithstanding in particular the greatness of Blood on the Tracks, it's upon his sixties songs that Bob Dylan's reputation ultimately rests: that extraordinary sequence of records which unerringly tracked the tenor of the times as he moved through his various incarnations as raw young folkie, prince of protest, fold-rock innovator, symbolist rocker and country-rock pioneer."

Andy Gill

"In the dime stores and bus stations, People talk of situations, Read books, repeat quotations, Draw conclusions on the wall. Some speak of the future, My love, she speaks softly. She knows there's no success like failure and that failure's no success at all.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit Song by Bob Dylan

"In those days, artistic success was not dollar-driven. It was about having something to say."

Bobby Neuwirth

"The riot squad they're restless / They need somewhere to go / As Lady and I look out tonight / From Desolation Row".

Bob Dylan.

"Of all nations, the United States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most needs poets and will doubtless have both the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common reference as much as their poets shall. "If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he [the poet] knows how to arouse it . . . he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it."

Walt Whitman

It would be a foolish man or woman who would disagree with Andy Gill's supposition that Bob Dylan's work from 1962-69 was his best and established him as Rock and Roll's only genius and Noble Prize winner. The book takes the form of a dictionary of songs in chronological album order, allowing the reader to pick and choose which song they read about. Each album has an introduction by Gill.

Gill looks at every Dylan song on the following albums: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline.

Gill writes on the recording of Blonde On Blonde, "Given the lyrical malleability […], it's perhaps best not to try and ascribe too literal an interpretation to 'Visions Of Joanna,' which is more of an impressionistic mood anyway. If it doesn't matter to the writer whether it's the peddler or the fiddler who speaks to the countess, why should it matter to us? The song remains one of the high points of Dylan's canon, particularly favoured among hardcore Dylanophiles, possibly because it so perfectly sustains its position on the cusp of poetic semantics, forever teetering on the brink of lucidity yet remaining impervious to strict decipherment."[1]

The book chronologically covers Dylan's formative years in small-town Minnesota, his move to New York City, and the folk scene in Greenwich Village. It ends with the controversy surrounding his "electric" conversion up to 1969.

Gill's book examines Dylan's controversial early period when he was accused of betraying the folk scene. His move to electric was openly and vocally seen as a betrayal, culminating in the iconic moment from the 1966 tour of England at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. When Dylan plugged in his electric guitar for the second set, a fan shouted, "Judas!" Dylan snarled, "I don't believe you," before turning to the band and urging them to "play it fucking loud!". 

Andy Gill's Bob Dylan – The Stories Behind The Classic Songs 1962-1969, while well written and at times insightful, is limited when it attempts to place Dylan's work in a more precise objective context. The period between 1962-69 was an extraordinary political time. Gill does little to examine Dylan's place in this ferment. Gill does not seem that interested in exploring the relationship between art, artists and social liberation.

As Paul Bond writes, "The folk music scene was regaining ground with the decline of McCarthyism and was seen largely as a product of "the Left." The idea of music that was able to articulate social and progressive concerns brought many broadly "leftist" artists to folk. Many of the guiding lights of the folk movement, like Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and the editorial circles of such influential magazines as Sing Out! and Broadside, had some affiliation with the Stalinist Communist Party of the USA. The Stalinists took a somewhat proprietorial attitude to the folk scene, but it attracted many songwriters trying to tackle serious social and political subjects in song. They were motivated, as the opening editorial in Broadside (which published many of Dylan's songs) put it, by the idea that "a good song can only do good."[2]

He continues, "Dylan's rejection of what was weakest in the folk scene, which stood in the way of a more complicated way of representing the world, took place under conditions of intensifying political crisis in the United States. He seems to have used the weaknesses of the folk milieu as part of a general move away from tackling social concerns altogether. (Although he has continued to write topical songs since that period.[3]

It remains to be seen if Gill will write on Dylan's more contemporary work. As David Walsh wrote, "A perusal of Bob Dylan's lyrics, at least its first half a dozen years or so, reveals a lively imagination at work, and sometimes deep feeling. Dylan can be witty, satirical, insightful, and genuinely outraged at American society's injustices. The lyrics can convey physical and psychic longing, both for "the beloved" and for recognition by society at large ". As said earlier, Gill is not interested in placing Dylan's art in a social or political context. He does not seem that interested in Dylan's later work.

As Matthew Brennan writes of Dylan's later work, "Cutting himself off from the source of the inspiration for earlier impactful songs, the career ambitions and an unfocused iconoclasm were nearly all that persisted. Except for some of his more moving songs about love and heartache in a later period, evasiveness and vagueness would become Dylan's guiding principles. The protracted process has led to the current news about the sale of his catalogue. Now very wealthy, Dylan has nothing to say about events that are overtaking the circumstances of his younger days.[4]

 

 

 

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[1] https://davidmarxbookreviews.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/bob-dylan-the-stories-behind-the-classic-songs-1962-1969/

[2] Ceasing to be the voice of a generation Paul Bond-9 November 2005 www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/11/dyla-n09.html-

[3] Ceasing to be the voice of a generation Paul Bond-9 November 2005 www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/11/dyla-n09.html--

[4] Bob Dylan sells his songwriting catalog to Universal for a reported $300 Million- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/16/bobd-d16.html

Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen-Peter Apps-Oneworld Publications 10/11/2022-Paperback- 352 Pages.

Peter Apps's book on the Grenfell Fire is a well-written and empathetic account of the corporate murder of 72 people. The book combines a degree of humanity, terror and technical detail in one book. Apps is a journalist and editor for 'Inside Housing' and has  written significant articles on the Grenfell Inquiry on Twitter and in newspapers that few have matched.

The Grenfell Inquiry into the fire has lasted five years and has largely been a whitewashing of events. Apps is heavily critical of the Inquiry but not to the extent that he believes this was an act of social murder. It has been clear from the outset that the ruling elite has covered up the true nature of this crime. Such a cover-up has been compared to the one involving the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in which 97 people died.

The British ruling elite is an expert in denying justice using public inquiries. They are deaf to the demands of the survivors. Yet still, millions of people live in unsafe, dangerous housing. Still, the government even refused to implement all of the limited housing safety measures recommended by Moore-Bick.

As Charles Hixson and Robert Stevens write, "The Inquiry bore witness to endless self-justifications by corporate and government bodies, shamelessly passing the buck for the use of shoddy, dangerous and illegal materials on the refurbishment of the tower even as documents confirmed that residents' concern about safety was treated with contempt. It has been painfully obvious to everyone since the immediate aftermath of the fire that a small number of individuals are culpable for the mass deaths at Grenfell, including the owners/decision makers at major contractor Rydon, cladding manufacturer Arconic, Irish insulation provider Kingspan, manufacturer of foam insulation, Celotex, the Conservative Party-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and its Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) which managed the tower".[1]

One of the most important parts of the book is how Apps writes about the night of the fire, as told through the experiences of the people involved. According to one writer: "They put a human context to the tragedy: the lives, loves, challenges, dreams of those who died or whose lives were changed forever by what happened".

Still, after six years since the fire, nobody has been charged, let alone jailed. As Peter Apps correctly states, "Grenfell can feel like a past story—it's not. It's something that needs to be kept in the public eye if we want to see the companies responsible held to account. Grenfell didn't have to happen. This was a problem people were worried about—adding combustible materials onto the outside of buildings. The book brings together the story about how a tower block in one of the richest parts of the richest cities in the world clad a building in material chemically similar to petrol."

Apps book shows that The Grenfell Tower Fire resulted from profiting, negligence and a lack of regard for people living in social housing. A raft of construction companies, regulators, the Tory-led council and the government, have blood on their hands.

As the Marxist writer Frederick Engles once wrote, "When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains."[2]

While Apps doesn't entirely agree with the concept of social murder, his book is well worth the read and would seem to have sold widely and deservedly so.

 

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[1] UK: Grenfell Tower fire inquiry hearings end with guilty evading justice

8 August 2022-wsws.org

[2] The Conditions of the working class in Britain-Frederick Engels

Identity Politics, Art, and the Class Struggle: A Reply to the “Stay in Your Lane” Doctrine

The rule that writers should “stay in their lane”, meaning that novelists, playwrights, poets, and screenwriters should only write about characters sharing their own race, gender, or sexuality, has become a harmful orthodox belief in modern culture. Supporters claim it is a progressive step that acknowledges past injustices. However, it is actually a reactionary idea that benefits privileged segments of the professional-managerial class rather than serving the interests or hopes of working people.

The doctrine's central idea is straightforward: artistic legitimacy is determined not by insight, imagination, or honesty but by the artist's background. This identity serves as a passport to certain topics and a barrier to others. What initially appears as a moral stance is actually a mechanism for distributing cultural resources—such as grants, awards, fellowships, review space, festival invitations, and publishing opportunities—within a small, affluent social circle. As James McDonald observes, the doctrine acts as a bureaucratic tool that allocates limited opportunities across different levels of the academic and cultural middle class, masking a pursuit of professional gain as a matter of fairness.

This ideological policing misses the real structure of the publishing industry: a handful of large conglomerates focused on profit, where marketing teams, risk managers, and quarterly earnings influence decisions more than artistic merit. The “stay in your lane” rule doesn't address this issue; instead, it gives the industry moral cover, framing commercial choices as ethical.

The Attack on Imagination

Art depends on the writer's capacity to go beyond personal biography. A novelist who can't imagine lives beyond their own isn't genuinely a novelist. Similarly, a playwright who can't understand others' perspectives has forsaken the essence of dramatic art. Ultimately, literature shines when it uncovers common human experiences that transcend differences, the universal elements underlying concepts of “otherness” and “sameness.”

Fencing off subject matter based on race or gender does not protect the oppressed. Instead, it undermines art's role as a means of human understanding. It reduces literature to a bureaucratic process of identity verification, replacing the universal capacity for imaginative empathy with a narrow, local view of authenticity.

The institutional manifestation of this doctrine is the emergence of the “sensitivity reader,” representing a new form of ideological oversight within publishing houses. These readers review manuscripts to flag content deemed “offensive,” “inaccurate,” or “harmful” under evolving upper-middle-class identity-politics standards. This process constitutes a form of censorship disguised as concern. As with all censorship, its primary aim is not to control the powerful but to suppress those who question the status quo.

Categories like “offence” and “harm” are flexible and can be broadened to include anything those in charge consider inconvenient. It’s quite possible, and probably likely, that a framework designed to regulate language on race or gender now could later be used to target writers discussing class exploitation, oligarchic wealth, or socialism. These topics can also be reinterpreted as “upsetting” to someone.

Kuang’s Intervention and the Limits of Liberal Critique

Rebecca F. Kuang’s willingness to speak openly about this issue is significant, given her stature. At the Hay Festival, Kuang criticised the American publishing industry’s tendency to categorise books based on the author's identity rather than their content. She noted that a writer like Kazuo Ishiguro would not be classified as science fiction if he had a different background. Kuang also called the demand for authors to write only characters of their own race illogical. She observed that discussions about race are increasingly confined within rigid, reductive frameworks that conveniently divert attention from issues of class.

Kuang’s idea that a writer must look beyond personal experience to write truthfully and compassionately points to a longstanding and advanced branch of Marxist thought on art. Soviet critic A. K. Voronsky maintained that an artwork's truthfulness isn't judged by its alignment with ideological norms. Rather, it is judged by the genuine aesthetic response it evokes in viewers: feelings of joy, empathy, or deeper understanding. Art functions as a form of cognition; an approach to understanding the world, and its worth depends on its ability to uncover what others have overlooked.

Voronsky cautioned against mistaking genuine insight for a desire to impress, which only leads to affectedness and misunderstanding. The idea of 'stay in your lane' conflates personal history with truth, identity with understanding, and politeness with artistic value. Kuang does not believe the publishing industry will reform on its own. She observed that public pledges in 2021 were superficial, with no real change in who gets published or who holds power. Notably, when HarperCollins workers protested for better pay and conditions, Kuang didn't limit her response to comments on representation. Instead, she joined picket lines and helped organise rallies. When asked about her publishing hopes, she focused on unionising rather than diversity quotas. This preference for collective, class-based action over individualist identity politics is a key point to explore.

Identity Politics as a Tool of Class Division

None of this happens by chance. As Niles Niemuth pointed out, the American ruling class and its European counterparts promote racial and identitarian politics to serve a specific purpose: to break apart working-class unity during times of rising inequality, widespread social unrest, and a revived strike movement. Framing every social crisis as primarily a racial issue is not just fashionable thinking; it is a deliberate political strategy employed by the Democratic Party, trade unions, and the layers of the pseudo-left connected to them.

Identity politics shifts focus away from class by dividing workers into demographic groups. It turns social conflict into a race for recognition instead of addressing exploitation. It also gives the ruling class a moral language that hides its role in creating inequality and provides the culture industry with profitable narratives that maintain capitalism.

The “stay in your lane” idea is not just a misguided cultural trend; it is part of a larger ideological push to stop the rise of an independent working-class movement.

The fight for artistic freedom cannot be won on the terrain that identity politics stakes out. It requires the unity of writers, editors, printers, warehouse workers, booksellers and readers across every line that the doctrine insists on drawing between them. It requires rejecting the bureaucratic policing of imagination. It requires a defence of the universal capacity of human beings to understand one another — not through the narrow lens of identity but through the shared experience of labour, exploitation, struggle and hope.

A genuinely emancipatory literature will not be built on the further subdivision of shelves by the author’s biography. It will be built on the collective struggle of workers across the cultural economy. It will be built on the recognition that art, like all human labour, is threatened by the same forces that threaten wages, conditions and democratic rights.