Dylan never connected with his fans
Singer Bob Dylan has revealed how he was so uncomfortable with being described as the voice of a generation and never really felt a connection with those who loved his music most.
Bob reveals in his autobiography he once felt so besieged by crazed fans that he wanted to “set fire” to them.
Dylan was determined to protect his family from obsessed fans or angry enemies and kept three guns at his home in upstate New York.
In his book, Chronicles, Dylan tells how he was uncomfortable with being described as the voice of a generation.
In fact, he never really felt a connection with those who loved his music most, he writes in the book, which is being serialised by Newsweek magazine.
Dylan tells how he moved with his family to Woodstock, in New York, in search of peace and quiet, shortly after his 1966 motorcycle accident.
“I found myself stuck in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect,” he writes. “At one time the place had been a quiet refuge, but now, no more.
“Roadmaps to our homestead must have been posted in all fifty states for gangs of dropouts and druggies.”
He described encountering “rogue radicals looking for the Prince of Protest”. Arriving on his doorstep were “unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows, stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry”.
He writes: “Peter LaFarge, a folksinger friend of mine, had given me a couple of Colt single-shot repeater pistols, and I also had a clip-fed Winchester blasting rifle around, but it was awful to think about what could be done with those things.
“The authorities, the chief of police (Woodstock had about three cops) had told me that if anyone was shot accidentally or even shot at as a warning, it would be me that would be going to the lock-up.
“Not only that, but creeps thumping their boots across our roof could even take me to court if any of them fell off. This was so unsettling. I wanted to set fire to these people.”
Dylan tells in the book how having a family changed his life and “segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on”.
“Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.
“I was trying to provide for them, keep out of trouble, but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation.”
But he said he had little interest in being such a “mouthpiece”. “I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.”
When he later moved to New York City, fans would gather outside demanding to be led by him in protest. He quickly learned the price of fame.
“I don’t know what everybody else was fantasising about but what I was fantasising about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard,” he writes.
“That would have been nice. That was my deepest dream. After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can’t buy it back.”
Chronicles is released on October 5. Excerpts appeared in Newsweek’s October 4 issue.
