Ron Rosenbaum on Bob Dylan, Judaism, Christianity etc

It’s kind of amazing, when you think about it, that it even needs to be said that there is a “profoundly Jewish thread woven throughout Dylan’s life.” Isn’t that pretty hard to miss? But then the Jewish experience in America includes the phenomenon of those who try to run away from their Jewishness, in a variety of senses, and Dylan has given some reason to believe that he might be doing this at different times.

From the Complete Rolling Stone Interview: Following Up On Dylan & God (etc)

If you’ve read the whole interview, you’ll know that Dylan goes off on a big tangent about a notion of “transfiguration”: his own, somehow connected with the death of another, different Bobby Zimmerman in a motorcycle accident in the early 1960s (mentioned very briefly in Chronicles, page 79). Rolling Stone unabashedly makes this the centerpiece of the article, highlighting it in the intro as a story “much more transformational than he has fully revealed before …

Bob Dylan: “I still believe in Jesus, mofos!”

In the end, it’s his business. Some people pick up on it and some don’t. Yet, people continue to be curious. Many people go to Google and type in “Is Bob Dylan still a Christian?” and similar queries. I know because some of them happen to end up in my website statistics after doing so, because they hit upon something I wrote on the subject in the past. (Others have written plenty too.)

God’s Problem with Bob Dylan (and with Us)

This style of argument over whether we can believe in an omnipotent and loving God given the reality of evil in the world has been going on a long time, of-course. And it will echo down the corridors of history for the rest of the time allotted to history. But, in my view, it arrives nowhere. It ultimately becomes, I think, a game of ghoulish numbers, attempting to delineate a certain quantity or frequency of evil acts and events that are permissible while still accepting the possibility of the existence of that all-powerful and loving God.

“Senor” – Dierks Bentley sings Bob Dylan; thoughts on Street Legal

Thanks to Bob Cohen for referring me to Dierks Bentley and his bluegrassy version of Bob Dylan’s song “Senor.” I hadn’t heard it; it’s very fine, and Bentley seems to be an estimable musician in general. “Senor” is featured on his album Up on the Ridge. Dierks Bentley singing “Senor” Checking Dierks Bentley out on …

Christopher Hitchens on Ricks, Bob Dylan and Bach

However, his choices also raise a question, which has surely been raised before regarding these recent highly-vocal advocates for atheism (the most high-profile being Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins). The question is this: How many of them would really like to live in a world where everyone agreed with them that there was no God (or that if there was a God that he must be either evil or entirely unknowable)?

Follow the Light: The Heart in Bob Dylan’s Christmas

This tension of the competing narratives of Christmas is felt, inevitably, in the songs of Christmas. There are on the one hand the hymns about Jesus and Bethlehem, and then there are the songs of Santa and his reindeer and his lists of the naughty and the nice. Treading the middle ground are secular songs of the season such as “White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Yet every time that someone records an album mixing these various Christmas songs together, the implicit question for the listener is this: Which is it?

Jimmy Carter “abandoned” Bob Dylan with Slow Train Coming

Former President Jimmy Carter (who once described himself as a born-again Christian) is reported to have given up his affection for the music of Bob Dylan when Bob himself became “born-again” (I know Bob disputes the term but that’s a whole other kettle of hair-splitting). The report is in a new book about Jimmy Carter …

Q &A with Paul Westphal on Bob Dylan

Paul Westphal has enjoyed a storied career in American basketball. As a player, he was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1972, and earned a championship ring with that team in 1974. He went on to play six seasons with the Phoenix Suns (leading them to the NBA finals in ’76), and continues to rank

Chronicling Chronicles (reactions to Bob Dylan’s autobiography)

Collected posts relating to Chronicles and the world’s response to it (in chronological order, first to last)   New Morning … 09/26/2004 Chronicles is excerpted in Newsweek. My own reaction to reading Bob’s narrative is just plain joy and amazement. It is absolutely direct. From the liner notes to the Jimmie Rodgers tribute album to …

Gospel Plow

This metaphor inspired some person, sometime, to compose what has now become a traditional gospel song, known alternatively as “Gospel Plow” or “Keep Your Hand on the Plow” or simply “Hold On.” I first heard it and automatically think of it via the version that Bob Dylan recorded on his debut and eponymous LP in 1962.