1208blog
No Hypocrisy Here
When he first arrived in Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan sang for quarters in the village clubs. He hasn’t been singing for quarters in a very long time.
Dylan should get the Nobel Prize in economics.
If money doesn’t talk, it swears, then Bob Dylan is swearing from here to eternity as the bard, iconoclast, non-conformist, defender of righteousness, disparager of wealth and enemy of consumerism has sold his entire catalog of songs to the humongous music giant, Universal Music, for a reported $300 million. That may just be the answer that is blowing in the wind.
The deal makes Michael Jackson’s 1985 purchase of the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog for $47.5 million a steal and a downright basement bottom purchase. Jackson, by the way, outbid Paul McCartney for the catalog.
The Vatican also sold the rights to the New Testament to Sony, the Old Testament is now the property of Walmart and Shakespeare’s sonnets are controlled by Disney. Not really but maybe that’s on the way. Money talks.
I don’t criticize Dylan for selling out, the songs are his to do with what he wants, he has every right to capitalize on his work and to parade his hypocrisy to the world. He’s never been an ascetic but still there is something unholy about selling songs that lifted a generation steeped in idealism to the highest bidder. It’s seems different than the sale of a Picasso or Cezanne, paintings that can be displayed on a wall, but a song is just words and it is meant to be heard by anyone in the most democratic way and not be controlled by multi-billion dollar conglomerates. It’s like selling the publishing rights to “Moby Dick” or “War and Peace.”
Nothing says that an artist has to be poor and Dylan is not poor in any sense of the word. You would think that someone who has been so heavily critical of the evils of money would find creative things to do with his money, beyond buying castles and jets. To be fair, over the years Dylan has donated many millions of dollars to charities like Amnesty International and Feeding America but has done so with little fanfare.
Dylan has always riffed about the evils of possessions, for example, in “Gates of Eden,” he sings about “Aladdin and his lamp, Sits with Utopian hermit monks, Side saddle on the Golden Calf, And on their promises of paradise, You will not hear a laugh, All except inside the Gates of Eden.”
In “Masters of War,” he sings: “Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could? I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul.”
I’m not naive and I know celebrities have a long history of selling out to commercial interests. I’ve seen Dylan’s commercials for IBM, Victoria Secrets, iPod, Cadillac, the Superbowl, Chobani Yogurt, Fiat Chrysler and his own brand of bourbon. The Rolling Stones have hyped Rice Krispies, Iron Butterfly did a commercial for Ban Roll On deodorant and the indefatigable, undefinable Iggy Pop promoted Carnival Cruise Line. Leonard Cohen no doubt made oodles when his masterpiece “Hallelujah” ended up bathed in schumtz in the film, “Shrek.” But I have never seen an ad featuring that most uncompromising poet Tom Waitz. Maybe nobody asked him.
Will it surprise anyone to see the Pope shilling for Budweiser, the estate of Shakespeare linked with Wise potato chips, Stalin for Tempur-Pedic mattresses or Woody Guthrie for Givenchy perfume?
So “Blowin in the Wind” is now the property of Universal Music, the biggest music company in the world, which is partly owned by the multi-billion dollar French conglomerate Vivendi and Tencent, the Chinese tech holding company.
UMG is run by two women, Executive Vice President Michele Anthony, a one-time roadie for Joe Cocker, and Universal Music Publishing Group Chairman and CEO Jody Gerson, who was responsible for signing a few somewhat famous songwriters and artists, like the BeeGees, Bruce Springsteen, Prince and Taylor Swift among many others.
Universal Music Group has its roots in 1990 when the Japanese multinational conglomerate Matsushita Electric to acquired MCA for $6.59 billion. In 1995, Seagram acquired 80 percent of MCA from Matsushita. On Dec. 9, 1996, the company was renamed Universal Studios, Inc. and its music division was renamed Universal Music Group.
Listen closely and you can hear the prescient words of Dylan’s own “Union Sundown.”
“Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore, My flashlight’s from Taiwan, My tablecloth’s from Malaysia, My belt buckle’s from the Amazon, You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines, And the car I drive is a Chevrolet, It was put together down in Argentina, By a guy making thirty cents a day.
Well, it’s sundown on the union, And what’s made in the U.S.A, Sure was a good idea ,Till greed got in the way.”