Well, it was odd when Chomsky's name popped up on the Dylan newsgroup, and odd when Dylan popped up on lbo, so I can't help but post these comments by Chomsky about Dylan, back in 1994. Of course I disagree with Chomsky about this. A few months ago on the Z mag Chomsky forum somebody made a reference to his comments about Dylan and Chomsky said he didn't remember ever saying anything about Dylan. So the guy does forget things.
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As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and engagement. Just the other day I was sitting in a radio studio waiting for a satellite arrangement abroad to be set up. The engineers were putting together interviews with Bob Dylan from about 1966-7 or so (judging by the references), and I was listening (I'd never heard him talk before -- if you can call that talking). He sounded as though he was so drugged he was barely coherent, but the message got through clearly enough through the haze. He said over and over that he'd been through all of this protest thing, realized it was nonsense, and that the only thing that was important was to live his own life happily and freely, not to "mess around with other people's lives" by working for civil and human rights, ending war and poverty, etc. He was asked what he thought about the Berkeley "free speech movement" and said that he didn't understand it. He said something like: "I have free speech, I can do what I want, so it has nothing to do with me. Period." If the capitalist PR machine wanted to invent someone for their purposes, they couldn't have made a better choice. -------------------------------------------------------