Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Republicans and Obamacare, Again; plus Early, Early Bob Dylan / Start Making Sense

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Republicans and Obamacare, Again; plus Early, Early Bob Dylan / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener.
0:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Later in the show, Bob Dylan's earliest recordings have just been released.
0:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The first is from 1956 when he was 15 years old.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It opens the 18CD set called Through the Open Window, the Bootleg Series Volume 18, which ends in 1963 with his historic performance of Carnegie Hall.
0:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Historians Sean will Lance will explain he wrote the 120 page book that the company's the release.
0:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But first, Republicans and Obamacare, it's deja vu all over again, John Nichols will comment in a minute.
0:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Republicans have been wanting to get rid of Obamacare ever since it was launched in 2010.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this week Trump seems to be about to end Obamacare subsidies that are relied on by something like 22 million people.
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: For that story, we turn to John Nichols.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, he's the nation's executive editor.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: John, welcome back.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a pleasure to be with you, John.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If indeed Republicans end Obamacare subsidies this week, the premiums many people pay will more than double next year and 2 million something like 2 million more people will be uninsured next year and meanwhile Gallup just released a new poll showing support for Obamacare has now reached its highest level ever.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Republicans need to pass their own healthcare plan to replace Obamacare basically before January 1st, CNN reports that Trump quote worries that voters will blame him for rising premiums should he fail to present an alternative close quote to the Democrats proposal, which is to continue.
2:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Obamacare subsidies.
2:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump worries that voters will blame him CNN says.
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think they're
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do and you know it's it's very interesting that that whole number you've got where people are increasingly in love with Obamacare and it's it brings to my journey Mitchell You don't know what you've got till it's gone and the thing is Obamacare was always a compromise there are real flaws in it that
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
2:35
[SPEAKER_02]: However, what we've got with Obamacare is now in many states, a reasonably good infrastructure to make sure that people can get the care they need.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Suddenly, everybody is facing this reality that what was a imperfect but functional program and very, very essential for a lot of
3:02
[SPEAKER_02]: even people who have health care coming from other sources, rely on perhaps a rural hospital or rely on an urban clinic.
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you make Obama care on a affordable and dysfunctional and a substantial number of people opt out of it, that puts the whole health care system in the country, not just the people who rely on a Medicare into a very difficult position.
3:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So should
3:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Dow Trump shouldn't even begin to worry as compared to the 35 to 40 Republicans in the house and 45 Senate Republicans who are up for reelection or in states where they have open seats that are stunningly vulnerable on this issue.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump on Monday said quote, I want to give the money to the people not the insurance companies close quote and now Republican two Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and my crap of Idaho have put together a bill to give 1,500 dollars.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: into the health savings accounts of individuals earning less than 700 percent of the federal poverty level that build as not extend Obamacare subsidies.
4:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So it would end Obamacare subsidies.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And the news at this point as we speak on Tuesday is that Republicans are going to vote.
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to be the Republican proposal.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to vote on it on Thursday.
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how much insurance can you get for $1,500?
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I look this up.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get about three months of the worst coverage with incredibly high deductibles, and then you pay for about half of everything after that for three months, and then you're out.
4:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm amazed it could pay for three months.
4:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I asked AI.
4:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, well, there you go.
4:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the crisis.
5:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't imagine that there's any state in the country where a $1,500 stipend into your health savings account is going to get anywhere near where you need to be.
5:10
[SPEAKER_02]: it creates the fantasy of some resources of front with the reality that that's just not going to be backed up.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't want to over discuss it though because I have a feeling that this could get tripped up in the house and it could even get tripped up.
5:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a second Republican plan.
5:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Susan Collins of Maine, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, have a plan to extend the Obamacare subsidies for two years, which is pretty much Chuck Schumer's plan.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to do it for three years.
5:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think the rest of the Republicans in the Senate will go for Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno's proposal?
5:52
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but you are with Susan Kahnons and Bernie Morano getting into the territory where a handful of Republicans couldn't negotiate with a lot of Democrats.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Why would Susan Kahnons be doing that?
6:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
6:05
[SPEAKER_02]: She's right for your election next year.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: That really focuses the attention.
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Your challenge, though, is in the House of Representatives, because remember, anything that the Senate deals with here, the House is going to have to be working with Trump himself as well.
6:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And once again, we kind of get to this point that the Republicans have never liked Obamacare.
6:29
[SPEAKER_02]: They are not united in wanting to extend the benefits, but nor are they united on any kind of plan for anything else.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Obamacare became low in 2010.
6:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Republicans have been trying to figure out what to do about it ever since that's 15 years.
6:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think they've never been able to come up with anything?
6:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they don't want this.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: go back to the 1930s, their Republicans were griping about social security, go to the mid-1960s, they were griping about Medicare and Medicaid.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, Raul Reagan kind of made his name complaining about this stuff.
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: This runs deep in the Republican Party.
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Not the whole of the Republican Party.
7:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The party has changed a lot over the years and it's a deeply divided party now.
7:14
[SPEAKER_02]: got one grouping that really is populist, another grouping that really is, you know, redistribute the wealth to the rich.
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They have such a long history of being united in their opposition to any kind of, you know, constructing a safety net that might actually be humane and useful and decent.
7:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have, I think, finally come to a critical juncture.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is a big deal.
7:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember why Republicans opposed Obama care so passionately back in 2009, 2010, because they said at the time, if you put something in place, people are not going to want to lose it.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it has finally come to a head.
7:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're heading into an election cycle where they're already.
8:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He and his party are immensely unpopular and are about to do something that focuses the attention of the entire country on, you know, the long-term and immediate challenge of having Republicans in power.
8:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to see a real test of the Republican party in short order.
8:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Can they pull themselves together?
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: in a way that keeps them politically viable.
8:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And to do that, they have to join with the Democrats to extend Obamacare.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, of course, the midterms are 11 months away.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: As of now, 30 House Republicans have announced they're not going to run for reelection in the midterms next fall.
8:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And Puck News is reporting the 20 more House Republicans may retire in the coming weeks.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, some of these people are going to run for Senator Governor or some else.
8:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of House Republicans are just throwing in the towel and leaving politics at this point.
9:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Why would that be?
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I think they're looking at political realities all over the country.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a chaotic, dysfunctional, national leadership right now that is a unified Republican leadership.
9:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not hard to imagine how 2026 could be a disastrous year for the Republicans.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: on the surface, I'm going to say, well, yeah, but they really were targeted, Jerry Mander, a lot of districts.
9:31
[SPEAKER_02]: They have created a situation where, you know, they're hard to to beat almost invaluable because of their corruption of the political process, except for one thing, after Ben, just ran for the congressional seat in, you know, a very Jerry Mander Republican district in Tennessee, it became a nationalized race.
9:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Turn out went to midterm levels.
9:54
[SPEAKER_02]: and the Republicans poured money in.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is, you know, this is a good test of where rat and after Ben moved the numbers by 13 points to the Democratic side.
10:06
[SPEAKER_02]: If you look at a 13-point shift to the Democrats and you just spread that out across the country in house and Senate races, it's not hard if you're a Republican incumbent to look at those numbers and say, I've got a problem.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: This was literally questions, I asked AI, how many Republicans, one election in 2024 by less than the 13 points that F than Ben shifted the needle, 44 is the answer, 44 Republicans, one by a margin which now seems perhaps not to be a winning.
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: margin.
10:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And then here's one other twist, Johnny.
10:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The after-bend race was one where the Republicans got to wake up call early and they flooded resources into that district.
10:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they were countering it.
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: What if you have the wake-up call coming from 40 or 45 districts around the country?
11:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And then on top of that,
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: you have it coming in states where there are Senate seats up for grabs.
11:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly Republicans senators who were like an odd, I don't have to worry about anything are saying, no, no, I'm going to need a whole bunch of that money, right?
11:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm not sure I'm going to lose, but I don't want to risk it.
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of the realities of incumbents, right, that when you start to look at a bad year, they suck up all the money.
11:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The more vulnerable candidates get in even worse situations, and open seats become even more complicated beyond that.
11:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't want to create a fantasy here.
11:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We are still in very difficult times politically.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Donald Trump,
11:49
[SPEAKER_02]: and his allies will do everything they can to try and win this election, right?
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: They've already tried it with Jeremy Mandarin, and you're trying to get rid of mail-in voting.
11:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's all sorts of, their panic is quite evident, and so we shouldn't be naive or unrealistic about this.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: By the same token, we're looking at a situation where the wheels really could come off for the Republican Party,
12:13
[SPEAKER_02]: There are points in America where the economic realities intersect with an election in a way that can really really move numbers.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's also why you're seeing democratic recruitment go through the roof.
12:37
[SPEAKER_02]: they're struggling to keep up with the very credible candidates who are stepping up to run for office in what we're previously thought of as very difficult races.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: One last thing this week on Tuesday, Trump himself launched a national tour going to Pennsylvania as the first stop to tell voters that he is the champion of affordability and the working people.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, his approval
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: his approval rating now is lower than any other president at any point in the history of polling.
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think his approval ratings will go up now because he's going off on tour?
13:18
[SPEAKER_02]: look, he'll draw crowds, you know, in place where he goes, because he has a base of support, but I'll always remind you that Barry Goldwater drew crowds in 1964 and George MacGarber did in 1972.
13:30
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go out and rally your base, but it doesn't necessarily mean you get anywhere near the majority.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: and for Trump, at this point, unless he goes out there with a radically reworked message, which is not the out-of-the-out Trump, by the way.
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But if the out-of-the-out thing we work, message would be to say, it's clear there's a lot of things we got to do, and I'm ready to do them.
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Could Donald Trump actually, you know, kind of reposition here, theoretically, maybe?
14:03
[SPEAKER_02]: In reality, I don't think that's where he's headed.
14:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I suspect that you're going to see long rambling, you know, the typical Donald Trump rambling speeches.
14:13
[SPEAKER_02]: If that is the case in this moment, I think there is a chance that Trump's travel around the country could
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The image, his numbers, rather than help them, not because the rambling is a big problem.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: We've seen that all, we know, you know, to our rally with all sorts of things said, but something else, it is at a point where so many issues are crystal clear.
14:34
[SPEAKER_02]: If the president of the United States is going to have to talk about things that do not seem relevant to the debate, there is a huge danger.
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: that a substantial portion of his own base tunes out.
14:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But also that that people who are kind of in the middle just say, well, this is clearly not the answer.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols read them at the nation.com.
14:55
[SPEAKER_01]: John, thanks for talking with us today.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an honor to be with you, John.
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's time to talk about early, early Bob Gillin, from his teenage years as a rock and roller in Hibbing, to his focusing days in Dinky Town at the University of Minnesota, to the wide, wide world of Greenwich Village in the early 60s.
15:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And for that, we turned to Sean Wallence.
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: He teaches American history at Princeton.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the author of course of many books including Bob Dylan in America.
15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also co-producer and author of the liner notes for a new CD set.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan threw the open window.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The bootleg series volume 18
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The collection includes 48 never before released performances, as well as 38 super rare cuts.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Sean, welcome back.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let me start by saying your so-called liner notes to volume 18 of the bootleg series is actually a 120-page illustrated book that accompanies seven CDs in a gorgeous two-volume box set released by Columbia.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also separately available a two-c-d set of highlights which includes your so-called lightning.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's not the full text.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's only an edited version, but that's okay.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The story, I want to start at the end.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: The story you tell here ends on the stage at Carnegie Hall, October 26, 1963.
16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Carnegie Hall was, in many ways, as it still is the premier venue for any musical performer or orchestral, classical, you name it in the United States.
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And this marked a real culmination of his early career.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He opened that concert with a new song, the times they are a change in, let's listen.
17:24
[SPEAKER_06]: And admit that the waters around you have grown And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth saving Then you're better start swimming Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a change in
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about the times they are a change in the times you are a change as you say was a brand new song This was an anthem.
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean he had probably been best known at this to this point for a song He'd written a year you're gonna have earlier blown in the wind that is already becoming an anthem of the civil rights movement This was his follow up to that this was October 26th 1963
18:18
[SPEAKER_01]: three weeks later on November 16th, he played McCarty Theater in Princeton, a midnight show and he opened that concert with the times they are a change in.
18:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to say, I was there, I was you're there.
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to ask you about that.
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, my roommate and best friend was also from St. Paul, and we were very proud that, you know, local boy had made it to MacArthur theater.
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a spectacular way to open this concert.
18:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I dated as the beginning of the 60s on the Princeton campus.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, I want to go back to the beginning of your story here, of these stories here.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Teenage Bob Zimmerman in Hipping, Minnesota, and the 1950s, this early Bob was in bands and sang the same songs as a thousand other kids who had bands in the Midwest and every place else in the late 50s and early 60s.
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, baby, let the good times roll.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I got the blues from my baby down by the San Francisco Bay.
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What was his musical world as a high school student in Hibbing?
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that world was enormous.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It was based in Rock and Roll, as you say.
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, his first great hero, musically, was Little Richard.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: In his high school yearbook, you know, they say what they predict with your future is going to be.
19:42
[SPEAKER_00]: His future was that he was going to join Little Richard.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He played the piano somewhat more like Jerry Lee Lewis in some ways, but he played it in that rockest way and he very much admired that.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: but that was by no means rock and rock and roll generally.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean by in 56 when Elvis breaks it changes his life as it changed the life of so many other young people, you know, he was very much at the core.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He was just 15 years old when all this is happening.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was really at the center in terms of being a listener to the rock and roll revolution.
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You emphasized that his musical world was much bigger than rock and roll, much bigger than the top 40.
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you can hear tapes of him talking as a young kid about all the kinds of music he was listening to, you know, saying, what he thought about Johnny Cash, for example, and what he thought about this but to Carl Perkins.
20:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He was listening to a lot of different things, in part because up there on the iron range, you could get in those days big radio stations from as far away as Schrieveport, Louisiana.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: would be broadcasting because there was nothing between tree port Indiana and Duluth or or Hibbing Minnesota, you would get those signals.
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So he could get late at night, you could get the music that was coming up from from the south and then included country music and included the blues and included all kinds of things.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing about Bob Dylan is nothing is wasted on Bob Dylan and that was true from when he was a young kid.
21:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he hears something he
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: and the kind of what the smorgaspoor jamboree, whatever you want to call it, of music that he was getting as a youngster up there in Hibbing, Hibbing seems like it's very far away, but it was very much in touch, or he made it be in touch with the entire musical world popular musical world that was around him.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: including by the way in him and he's listening to things like polka music.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He's listening to being prosby.
21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: He's listening to things that are out there and it's all lodging in his ear.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not all going to come out right away by any means.
21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to go through one particular channel after another, but you never know what it's going to come back out so that when he's singing big prosby stuff or their Frank Sinatra songs later on in his career, this is all part of his musical soul.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, now it's time for your Minnesota moment that's news from my hometown of Saint Paul.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You have on this CD set, what is believed to be the first ever recording of Bob Dylan recorded in 1956 in my hometown of Saint Paul.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob was 15 years old.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's listen Bob Dylan and two friends, it's Christmas Eve 1956 in Saint Paul.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the good times roll.
22:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, baby, let's go, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come
22:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the good times roll, Bob Dylan's first recording.
22:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we know about this recording and how come you were able to get it?
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the second question I really know the answer to.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I signed on to this after the Dylan office had obtained this tape.
23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It was fairly recently.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Bob Dylan had a cousin, a friend of Harry Keegan and a cousin Howard Ruttman, and they were down in St. Paul of the Turlind music shop.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: In those days, you know, no matter who you were, you could go up to the counter, pay a buck or whatever it was, and record your own songs.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Bob Zimmerman then Bob Zimmerman took a great home bus down from Hibbing to meet his friends, meet up with his friends in St. Paul at this music shop and they had a little group going.
23:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They had been very very tight at summer camp.
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: They went to the same Jewish summer camp.
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think was camp rehearsal.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and so they knew each other they they they they listen to the same kind of music so they had this band they called themselves the jokers there they were in the turlin music shop and there was a piano there which Bob is going to play and they sang a whole string of the seven or eight of these thirty-second cuts of them singing the hits of the day mostly do up some rock and roll so that's the story really it's just you know cousin and a friend and they all get together and they sing rock and roll
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just so happens however that one of them was going to become Bob Dylan now if you listen closely to the cut you can actually hear Bob standing out from the others he was always the kid who knew slightly more than everybody else who was willing to take more risks than everyone else who was willing to get booed on the stage of the Hibbing High School playing little Richard songs because he just loved it so much and he's very ambitious and he's afraid of absolutely he's absolutely
24:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that comes across a little bit on this record too.
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: After high school, he goes to Minneapolis and it rolls at the University of Minnesota.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Near the campus, there's a Bohemian district.
24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You call it a kind of provincial version of New York's Greenwich Village.
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We called it Dinky Town.
24:59
[SPEAKER_01]: What did Bob find there?
25:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He found folk music in a big way.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Dinky Town was actually something of a center for folks on, you know, the corner-rated lover were going to come out of there.
25:09
[SPEAKER_00]: A very important blues folk group out of the coming out of Minnesota.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They were all there.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Tony Glover was there.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Dave Ray was there.
25:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So was John Kerner.
25:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a, there was a lively folk scene.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And it hit Dylan very, very hard.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And he talks about having listened to, I think, in our debtor record, and he immediately exchanges his electric guitar for a double-o Martin, and he was going to play folk music from then on in.
25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then at one point, another friend of his Dave Whitaker, who was kind of a somewhat of the many...
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: fascinating characters are on Diki Town, something of a guru or on Diki Town.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Dave Whitaker gave him a copy of Bound for Glory.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Woody Guthrie, semi-order by a graphical book.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's embellished, but it's his life story.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And that not Bob Dylan for a loop.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he'd just become the Bob Dylan.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: He started playing in the coffee houses around Diki Town.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: places like the names like the purple onion and the ten o'clock scholar, and that's where he started, you know, he started his folk career right there, but but it was very much with a deep appreciation for both the music and the values and the life and the style of of of Woody Guthrie.
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The big rumour of Dylan's education and emergence as the story of his early days in Greenwich Village, the arrived January 24th, 1961, he told his version of those days in his wonderful memoir Chronicles.
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the best things he's ever done, and then there was the recent movie, a complete unknown starring Timothy Chalame, does a nice job on those years, but this collection of yours is the definitive musical record of that key period.
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: When he arrived in the village,
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Big question here.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you see as the most significant moments, the most important influences, the biggest breakthroughs in his first months in the village?
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, very early on, he came to the New York to meet with what he got there, to meet what he got there.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: and he did so.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What he got through was then hospitalized, yet Huntington's disease, he was but on weekends they would let him out, the Grace on Hospital let him out, to stay with a couple in East Orange, New Jersey, and this place became a little salon of the old kind of popular front era folk singers, including Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston for a while, and what he would be there, and everybody would go out there and have this sort of Sunday salon, if you will,
27:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Bob Dylan heard about that, and next thing he knew he was in East Norris, New Jersey.
27:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, very early on, he's playing to the cafe wall, and this man Dave VanRanc sees him at one point, and then in chronicles, he says that he met VanRanc at a place called the Folklore Center, which is also another important spot in the village world.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of the citadel of American folk music at this point, run by a marvellous man named is really young.
28:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, he connects with VanRanc.
28:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And Van Lung's music, you can hear it very clearly, has a great deal of influence on not so much Dylan's style, although he does borrow from David, borrow some everybody as with his repertoire.
28:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't just the folks' owners, even.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The Greenwich Village in the early 60s consists of artists, the consists of playwrights, the consists of actors, the consists of every artistic movement you can imagine.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Jazz was very much on the scene.
28:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, Dylan is going to hear John Coltrane before John Coltrane was John Coltrane Bob Dylan before he was Bob Dylan was listening to him
28:55
[SPEAKER_01]: In his influences, if we can call them that extent, beyond music, like a million other young people in the early 60s, he's also deeply moved by the civil rights movement in the south by its music, and he learns a lot about this from his new girlfriend, serious artist, and a serious activist.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Susie Rodelow was his first break in New York love and Susie Rodelow was the daughter of Paracombinus in the city and she was very politically active.
29:26
[SPEAKER_00]: She was working with core the Congress of racial equality at that point, very involved in civil rights movement.
29:31
[SPEAKER_00]: She has an enormous impact on him and so that by early 1962, he's writing songs that have a much harder political edge than anything had written before.
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: not with the idea of being a movement person, as soon as he was a person who would join picket lines, that's not Bob Dylan, and he's not going to repeat some other person's political line, but he's going to take a story, not unlike the way that Woody Guthrie did, and you know, turn it into a work of art.
29:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's at this point that he begins to be known as a singer of protests songs that people start calling him, the voice of his generation, and that's because of this song that you have mentioned, blowing in the wind.
30:13
[SPEAKER_01]: If there ever was an iconic song for a new generation, blowing in the wind was it.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Your collection features a 1962 recordings, the first ever public performance of blowing in
30:28
[SPEAKER_07]: How many roads must a man walk down before his cold a man?
30:40
[SPEAKER_07]: And how many seas must the wind of sail?
30:46
[SPEAKER_07]: Before his sleeps in the sand?
30:57
[SPEAKER_07]: The fool there, fool, revved and The answer my friend is blowing in the wind The answer is blowing in the wind That's the first ever
31:21
[SPEAKER_01]: public performance of blowing in the wind to tell us about this song and this recording.
31:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You say that it's not like other protests songs like which side are you on?
31:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Dylan didn't want to become a protest singer because he didn't have the all the answers the way that many political protesters seem to have the answers.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you join us and we're going to change the world.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Dylan wasn't going to go there.
31:44
[SPEAKER_00]: He was much more comfortable telling story, but blown in the wind, yeah, that was something
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: the older political people kind of thought, ah, what is this?
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Wown in the what?
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Where, how, what's blown in the wind?
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Van Rogues at Jesus Bobby, what a stupid song because it didn't have that degree of, you know, the concrete political message.
32:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a much more ambiguous, much more indeterminate.
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the answer is blown in the wind.
32:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what does that mean?
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it ever going to come down?
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the answer?
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so Dave Van Rogues called blown in the wind stupid, but what did Mavis Staples say?
32:19
[SPEAKER_00]: ah well maybe staples here's it and says my god that's what my father went through she doesn't latch on to how the blown in the wind part she takes on the verse itself so how many rows must a man walk down before you call them a man and she says in a famous interview she says that's what my father went through how did this guy understand how could this guy capture she loved the song in fact the staples singers recorded the next year and
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he wrote his masterpiece.
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to talk about hard reign.
32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Your recording here is from a private recital performance at the gas light September 1962.
33:01
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's listen.
33:15
[SPEAKER_06]: We'll have you been my darling, you know what?
33:23
[SPEAKER_06]: I have some little inside a 12 nesting mountain.
33:32
[SPEAKER_06]: I have stepped in the middle of a seven-sad forest.
33:41
[SPEAKER_06]: I have walked around six to get high
33:47
[SPEAKER_06]: And I've been in front of a dozen dead oceans.
33:53
[SPEAKER_06]: I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of the graveyard.
33:58
[SPEAKER_06]: It needs a heart.
34:00
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a heart.
34:01
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a heart.
34:03
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a heart.
34:05
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a heart.
34:08
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a heart.
34:10
[UNKNOWN]: It's a heart.
34:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Hardrain is an amazing thing.
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: What can you say about hardrain?
34:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, hardrain kind of comes at an nowhere.
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: People thought it was about the H bomb, you know, that some of you are the Cuban missile crisis.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually written before the Cuban missile quests.
34:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's about a judgment.
34:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Something's going to happen.
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Something is going to be judged.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe by the hand of God, who knows?
34:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But the judge is going to be a very harsh one.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to lead to these various scenes that he produces.
34:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he's very clearly been reading French symbolist poetry.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That shows up that affects the words that he's writing, the imagery that he's using.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very stark imagery.
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And then at the end of it all, of course, to present this kind of, I don't know, it's not a prophecy exactly, but he stands before everyone and says, I'll know my song well before I start singing and he's projecting off the mountain side so that all souls can hear it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it has to make me, you know, conclusion to it all, that just blows you away.
35:17
[SPEAKER_00]: No one had written anything like it before, let alone Bob Dylan.
35:23
[SPEAKER_01]: the album he released may 27th 1963 the free wheel and Bob Dylan blown in the wind hard reigns going to fall that also has the unforgettable cover of him with Sue's wrote-aloh on his arm walking through the slush in the village in July 63 couple months after that Bob goes to miss a sippy just to set the scene here
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Snick had a voter registration project going for more than a year in Greenwood, Mississippi.
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was a music festival to support that.
35:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It involved the leaders of Snick, John Lewis, James Foreman, Bob Moses, and several, you know, leading lights of the folk music left, led by Pete Seager, Thierry, Becal,
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Snicks Freedom Singers, this was held on a Saturday in a field at a black-owned farm outside of town.
36:16
[SPEAKER_01]: About 300 supporters showed up.
36:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They had a microphone set up in front of a flat bed truck on a farm field.
36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan saying, three songs and culminated with blowing in the wind.
36:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's listen.
36:34
[SPEAKER_05]: How many rows, lest a man walk down Before he call him a man How many seals, lest a wide dove sail Before sea sleeps in the sand Yes, a round, many times lest a canny ball fly
37:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Before they're full, never find it The answer to my friend is going in the wind The answer is going in the wind
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Greenwood is incredible, John.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had not realized what they were going through and the connection with Medgar Evers.
37:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Medgar Evers was very involved in the Greenwood movement because he was the head of the NAACP in Mississippi.
37:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Greenwood scene, that they were being killed.
37:42
[SPEAKER_00]: They were being shot at.
37:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when Bob went to Greenwood, Mississippi, that was just three weeks after Medgar Ever has had been assassinated, head of the NAACP in Mississippi, shot in the back in his front yard in Jackson, which is 100 miles to the south of Greenwood.
38:01
[SPEAKER_01]: August 28, 1963, the march on Washington, quarter of a million people.
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The speeches begin with civil rights leaders starting with John Lewis of SNIC then Odetta, then Peter Paul and Mary sang blown in the wind and then Bob Dylan and Joan Bias took the stage and sang a song Bob had just written when the ship comes in.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's listen.
38:29
[SPEAKER_08]: All the time we'll come up with a win We'll stop in the breeze, we'll see It's been breathing Like it's still listening The wind's all ever gaming in The hour that the ship comes in Then the sea will put at the ship's wheel in And the sand's gonna show a lot of it's shaking
38:54
[SPEAKER_08]: And the tide will plow, and the wind will plow, and the morning will be bring in.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan and John Bayes sing for a quarter of a million people at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, when the ship comes in, it's a song of triumph, a prophetic vision of justice and equality that the civil rights struggle will win.
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: After this, Mahalia Jackson sang, and then King gave his Ayavid dream speech, tell us about Bhabat the March on Washington.
39:37
[SPEAKER_00]: By this time Bob Dylan is a name, when the ship comes in, is another prophetic song that he was a revolutionary song, actually.
39:45
[SPEAKER_00]: His songs were much more radical, actually, than the one John Washington's politics were in many ways.
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Much more like John Lewis say, than even Dr. King.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It was nationally televised, you know, and Dylan was a Greenwich village focusing or very well known inside those circles, but now he was broadcast nationwide and he was going to become regardless of whatever he thought he was going to be doing, he was going to become a kind of national spokesman just by dentist having been there and he was singing songs of extraordinary power.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So, this is kind of the end of the story as you tell it in this box set August 28, 1963.
40:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The March and Washington October 26, 1963 is kind of a key haul.
40:27
[SPEAKER_01]: One last thing, the title of Volume 18 of the Bootleg series is through the open window.
40:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's a line from a Dylan song, what is it, where does it come from, what does it mean?
40:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it means that the window was wide open and need to read about it in the notes.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: When Dylan showed up in the village, lots of people were hankering for Bob Dylan, they just didn't know it yet.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The people in the old popular front, you know, group, they wanted to know, I knew what he got three?
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Bob Dylan was going to be there, knew what he got three.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a whole bunch of other younger people who were looking for someone who was going to be able to take their energy and express it in a different kind of way.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Dylan did not seem at it first.
41:07
[SPEAKER_00]: He seemed to be an ambitious somewhat grading young guy from Minnesota who couldn't play the guitar all that well, but boom, he turned into something.
41:14
[SPEAKER_00]: and he transcended everything else that was going on.
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that sense, he arrived at just the right place, at just the right time when the window was open for him to fly through.
41:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean relance.
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: He wrote the 120 page illustrated books that accompanies the seventh CD set Bob Dylan through the open window bootleg series volume 18, 1956 to 1963, the full documented story
41:44
[SPEAKER_01]: and his transformation into the voice of a generation.
41:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean, thank you for this gorgeous collection, and thanks for talking with us today.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Don, it's always a great pleasure to talk to you, and it's great.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
41:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right,
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast from The Nation magazine.
42:10
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42:19
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42:26
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42:31
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42:35
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42:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.