This article is courtesy of moon j. and expecting rain.com. It includes some anecdotal commentary, from yours truly:
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Laura Berman
Dylan sings Cadillac's praises: Times are really a-changin'
He was booed for selling out in the 1960s. His heresy then was plugging in his guitar at the Newport folk festival.
Today, Bob Dylan -- once the musical high priest of anti-hypocrisy -- is a Detroit pitch man, selling Cadillacs. A new 30-second spot airing this week depicts him driving an Escalade across the California flats, wearing a cowboy hat, black frock coat and shades.
Watch it and ponder this unexpected nexus of fat cat car with cool cat musician. It challenges you -- you baby boomer, you Gen Y Cadillac avoider -- to take on America's greatest singing poet as Detroit's new defender.
[Too many writers, imo, forget that it was the generation just prior to the Baby Boomers - those born in the War Years (essentially, 1940 to 45) - who first got into Dylan. Not all of them, mind you. They were, roughly speaking, in their early to-mid-twenties, whereas some Boomers (born, approximately, between 1946 and 1965, inclusive) were not yet born when Bobby was turning out his first albums. The "early" Boomers [i]were[/i], as teenagers, a part of Bob's audience when "Like a Rolling Stone" broke out, in 1965. All I'm saying is that they weren't the whole show when Bob's career was taking off. Born in 1941, Dylan, ironically, was a member of what some sociologists refer to as The Silent Generation.]
"What's life without the occasional detour?" he asks, after passing a fuel tanker truck and pulling over, apparently, to project his aura.
Radio show plugs Cadillacs
Dylan, now 66, is older than plenty of Cadillac drivers. Their average age hovers between mid-40s (for the Escalade) and mid-50s for the big sedans.
A full hour of his XM satellite radio show is dedicated to Cadillac. Think Dylan growling in his Minnesota-meets-Woody Guthrie twang about everything Cadillac, from Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac and on.
"Nothing goes better with a Cadillac than a long ride with music," he purrs, before introducing obscure but authentic musicians who have serenaded the car, from Vince Taylor and the Playboys ("My baby drove up in a brand new Cadillac"
to Buddy Johnson's ode to "A pretty girl, a Cadillac and some money."
Dylan once challenged "writers and critics/ who prophesise with your pen," cautioning, "Don't speak too soon."
At the time, he was talking about changing times and revolution. Now he's ordering a reinvention of a Cadillac mystique that's been lost for a generation. So far this year, 7 percent fewer Cadillacs have been sold than in 2006.
Entering a new phase
Since his "Like a Rolling Stone," days, he's been born-again and unborn-again, traversing waves of musical styles in the process. He's got a satellite radio show, a "multi-platform" ad campaign, and the children of those folkies who once booed him buying tickets to his concerts.
Even folk stalwarts like David Siglin, who's presided at The Ark, Ann Arbor's folk club, since 1968, aren't critical of Dylan's commercial moment.
Anti-establishment? "That's what we made him," says Siglin, pointing out that Johann Sebastian Bach had to pay his bills, too.
It's retro to complain Dylan's hawking a flashy, oversized automotive symbol of bloated excess and status.
And "don't criticize what you can't understand."
Bob Dylan is whispering in my ear about the delights of "livin' large" in a four-wheeled wonder and I'm listenin.' Just not buyin' it yet.
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