Extract: Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track
As with Dylan, I was caught up in the zeitgeist of the time. These were the days of great divisions in society: a rising rebellious youth, the threat of instant annihilation from nuclear war and dramatic changes in attitudes. The traumas of the second world war were still fresh, but the economy and world were opening up. Change was in the air. Our parents represented something we did not want to be. Bob was riding that wave of change.
The 1950s Beats may have cracked the façade of the rigid conformity and strict hypocritical morality of the prevailing post-war 1950s culture. Rock ‘n’ roll and r&b may have liberated youth into a temporary hedonistic frenzy, but it was the 1960s generation who blew the whole structure to smithereens.
Peculiarly, Robert Zimmerman found himself, sometimes unwillingly, right at the forefront of those shifts in the tectonic plates of society. Who could have predicted that? Who could have known that this young middle-class Jewish kid from a decaying nondescript town in the middle of nowhere would create a persona and develop the skills to take the whole world by storm?
That early Dylan was a chameleon, a sponge, a mirror, a driven force, who was searching for identity, acceptance and fame. He absorbed everything around him with an unquenchable thirst, then reflected it back a hundred times brighter. He took on his surroundings and magnified them. For that young Dylan, integrity was all that counted. Authenticity and cool were the only important things. Robert Zimmerman was an empty vessel into which he poured the ingredients that created Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books