IN A roundabout way, Andy Irvine's hope (Arts page, November 2nd) that the coming "winter of discontent" would see a revival of Woody Guthrie-style protest songs reminded me to go out and buy Bob Dylan's new album: Christmas in the Heart.
Not that there would be any protest songs on that, I guessed. To the consternation of some fans, Dylan's latest record sees him covering a collection of Yuletide favourites, ranging from Adeste Fidelesto Here Comes Santa Claus, via Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.The nearest he gets to the winter of discontent is Winter Wonderland.
Mind you, his voice is certainly wintry these days. Where it used to be just gravelly, it now has some of the texture of crushed glass as well. So nowhere on the album does he sound anything like Bing Crosby. Given which, and considering his still-powerful charisma, you might expect Dylan’s treatment of these old familiars to be in some way subversive.
But it’s not. Apart maybe from the line “In the meadow we can build a snowman/And pretend that he is Parson Brown” which, when listened to here in Winter Namaland (while smoking something), could be read as Dylan’s comment on the property boom and its relationship with reality, the album has no apparent satirical content whatever.
The Latin is kind-of funny, it's true. There's a moment on Adeste Fideleswhen, probably because of his mid-west twang, you think he's singing about elk-hunting (" veni-tay adore-ay-moose!"). But the tone throughout is affectionate, the arrangements are pleasant, and some of the less-well-known numbers, like the polka-based Must Be Santa, are downright catchy.
As for Woody Guthrie-style songs, sure enough, there are none of those on the record. Not that even Andy Irvine would have been holding out much hope.
Although a youthful Dylan famously had the protest torch passed onto him by Guthrie – at any rate he visited his dying hero in hospital before recording his debut album in the Guthrie style – he voluntarily decommissioned the torch only a few years afterwards. By then, as was his wont, he had already exhausted its artistic potential.
Two of Dylan's best-known contributions – The Times They Are A-Changing(1963) and Hurricane(1975) – arguably encompass the genre's entire spectrum. Nowadays, the opening verse of the former sounds like a far-sighted warning about climate change, what with its talk of rising waters and the need to start swimming. When it was written, however, it can't have been about anything.
Well, as the title suggests, it was about things changing: just not in any specified way. If the targets of Dylan’s warnings – politicians and parents in the main – were seeking clues as to how they might avert the threatened disaster, there was nothing to go on: just vague advice to get out of the road, not “block up the hall”, (and of course learn to swim immediately).
The song was about whatever Dylan fans wanted it to be about, really, which is a classic aspect of one kind of protest song. Perhaps the daddy of the genre, after all, is We Shall Overcome: an old gospel number once beloved of civil rights movements everywhere.
Bruce Springsteen sang it movingly in Dublin’s Point a couple of years ago, during his Pete Seeger revival phase. But since the lyrics never go beyond such generalities as “we are not alone” and “we are not afraid”, Bruce could have been joined by a backing choir of Bertie Ahern, Joe Higgins, Sister Stanislaus, and Seán Dunne, and they would all have been able to sing it with equal feeling.
On Hurricane, however – his ballad protesting the innocence of a black boxer, Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, jailed for a triple murder in 1966 – Dylan took musical protest to the opposite extreme.
Although artists often fictionalise real events for dramatic purposes, he was accused by some of breaking new ground here and fictionalising details of a court case. He had to re-record the song after one legal threat, and was sued by another witness over the revised version. Inter alia, he infuriated boxing anoraks everywhere by suggesting that Carter was “number one contender/for the middleweight crown” and that, but for his conviction, might have been world champion.
According to the Ringmagazine – the "Bible of Boxing" – apparently, he never ranked higher than three and had sunk to number nine at the time of the trial, when he was already losing more fights than he won. Perhaps more to the point, in a retrial soon after the song appeared, he was convicted anew. It wasn't for another decade that the original verdict was ruled unsafe, and rather than be tried a third time, he was released. Dylan hasn't sung Hurricanelive since the mid-1970s, a comment in itself.
He had already more than paid his dues to Woody Guthrie, even then. But now 68 (13 years older than the age at which Guthrie died), Dylan is entitled to lighten up a bit. Certainly he sounds like he’s enjoying himself on the new record, which is nice.
And whatever his protest songs did to improve the world, it’s worth noting that – in the spirit of Christmas – the royalties from his latest work are all going to food charities.