Friday, May 13th 2011

News:  Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Corrects Critics In Rare Statement

By Steven Anthony

A little over a month ago, Bob Dylan arrived in Beijing to play his first concert in mainland China. In the days leading up to the show, news outlets were questioning whether or not Dylan was going to be censored by the Chinese government.

After the show was over and the setlist was released, the American headlines ran wild. “The times they are a-censored,” said the Washington Post. “Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out” according to Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.

Today, in an extremely uncharacteristic act by the rarely-outspoken legend, Bob Dylan released a statement on his official site to clarify the details of his China shows, and take a dig or two at would-be conspiracist vultures. He specifically calls out Mojo magazine, who had claimed his concert was attended by mostly ex-patriots and that the there were a great many empty seats. Not so, according to Mr. Zimmerman. “If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any,” Dylan said. “Out of the 13,000 seats, we sold about 12,000 of them.” The rest were given to orphanages in China.

The letter continues, saying that the Chinese government did ask him for the names of the song he would be playing. Dylan and his band sent over the set lists from the past three months, but no censorship took place. “If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play,” Dylan explained.

We’re inclined to believe him. After the dates in China he headed to Australia where his setlists also failed to include The Times They Are A-Changing’, Hurricane and Blowin’ In The Wind, the tracks whose lack of inclusion seemed to send up red flags with the more sensationalistic journalists here in the United States. They also weren’t played at the last few dates Dylan did in the U.S. last fall, either.

The difference?

No journalist will say that Australia or the U.S. censored Dylan.

Dylan’s full letter is below:

To my fans and followers

Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn’t happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.

We did go there this year under a different promoter. According to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any. The ex-pats were mostly in Hong Kong not Beijing. Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages. The Chinese press did tout me as a sixties icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn’t have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn’t have known my early songs anyway.

As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.

Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.