NEWS FEATURE: Did Dylan, the pope sell out in their joint appearance?

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Which is odder: Pope John Paul II’s choice of a middle-aged Jewish folkie to inspire Catholic youth? Or a counter-cultural icon’s decision to play for a culturally conservative cleric like the pope? Music critic Tim Riley, author of”Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary”(Knopf), saw Bob Dylan’s performance at a […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Which is odder: Pope John Paul II’s choice of a middle-aged Jewish folkie to inspire Catholic youth? Or a counter-cultural icon’s decision to play for a culturally conservative cleric like the pope?

Music critic Tim Riley, author of”Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary”(Knopf), saw Bob Dylan’s performance at a Catholic youth rally in Bologna, Italy, Sept. 27 as the ultimate sellout for both pontiff and poet.


“I see this as an example of how checked-out Dylan is and how checked-out the pope is,” Riley said.”It’s very obvious that the pope does not listen to Dylan lyrics. At the starting point, Dylan is in favor of all the things the pope is against: pre-marital sex, birth control, recreational drug use.” It’s also clear, he says, “that Dylan pays absolutely no attention to what the pope stands for.”

But Catholic University theology professor John Grabowski says don’t think twice, it’s all right. The choice of a one-time rebel icon, he said, makes perfect sense for a pope who “is not unhappy with the idea of being countercultural.”

As a young man, Grabowski noted, the pope was “somewhat on the artistic and intellectual fringe in Polish society.” It makes sense he would choose Dylan, “an artist with a very long and interesting spiritual history” that includes embracing born-again Christianity in the 1970s and praying with Hassidic Jews in the ’80s and ’90s.

It’s the pope’s prerogative, he added, to reject some of Dylan’s lyrics while allowing others to be “a springboard for his own preaching and teaching.” It’s no surprise he ignored the words “everybody must get stoned.” But in Bologna, he turned “Blowin’ in the Wind” into a rock `n’ roll homily.

“You’ve asked me: `How may roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man,”’ the pope told an audience of about 300,000. “I answer you: One! There is only one road for man and it is Christ, who said, `I am the life.”’

It’s “blasphemy of the highest order that the pope wants to use the lyrics for `Blowin’ in the Wind’ as an argument that Christianity is the only way to live,”Riley said.”And the fact that Dylan allows this statement to go without retort is another indication of how checked-out he is. The old Dylan knew there were many more ways than one to seek the truth.”

Grabowski counters that art “is open to interpretation,” and the pope responds to music “from his own faith perspective.” Dylan, in turn, does not have to accept all the pope’s teachings to recognize him as “a great spiritual leader, even if he has specific differences,” Grabowski said.


Dylan has spoken little about those differences or his own reasons for performing in Bologna, and neither he nor his publicist was available for comment.

Riley believes Dylan’s silence indicates his growing apathy and a willingness to perform for whomever asks. Had he and the pope joined together to support a larger cause in spite of their differences, Riley believes it might have had some political significance.

He recalled Dylan’s 1963 performance of “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” a song about racial injustice, the signer performed before the hundreds of thousands who had gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

The 1963 concert, Riley said, showed blacks and Jews uniting against a common foe. The Bologna concert, he argued, “is not an alliance with any kind of political or religious dimension.” Neither, he said, was a 1990 Dylan concert at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where hundreds of future military commanders sang along to “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

And then there was Sinead.

Dylan fans were outraged, Riley said, when Irish pop singer Sinead O’Connor was booed off the stage during a 1992 Dylan tribute concert because earlier she had ripped up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. They were even more upset when Dylan, a long-time proponent of freedom of expression, failed to defend her.

“It’s an understatement that rock and roll has lost the subversive edge it once had,” Riley said. “Imagine if Dylan had played for the pope 30 years ago. It would have been unthinkable.” Today, he said, “the Rolling Stones would play for the pope if they got a good deal.”


MJP END LIEBLICH

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