Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (9)

During the same 1970s period when, in my 20's, I was living near the pre-gentrified Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook and working as a publicity clerk at New American Library, the by-then over 30-year-old Bob "Dylan" Zimmerman--after having pretty much stopped performing any live concert tours within U.S. imperialist society (while the U.S. war machine's attack on Vietnam escalated) when some of his early 1960s initial fans booed him at his 1965 and 1966 live concerts, for seeming to become more commercially-oriented and less Movement-oriented than he had previously been--began his new career as a "never-ending tour" performer.

Not surprisingly, by the time Dylan began performing live again and began his "never-ending tour," Establishment corporate media magazines (like the then-CIA-linked Washington Post Company's Newsweek magaine--which had published an unflattering article about Dylan over a decade before, when his songs were reflecting the concerns of U.S. New Left Movement groups) no longer viewed Dylan as being an anti-Establishment artist.

So in the 1970s the U.S. Establishment promoted Dylan's initial 1970s "comeback tour" by putting his photo on the cover of Newsweek magazine; and, at the same time, Newsweek published a flattering article about Dylan which publicized his initial 1970s live concert tour.

Between 1966 and his initial mid-1970s U.S. concert tour, Dylan could be seen performing live on television in front of Johnny Cash's tv show audience. But--aside from performing at a live concert paying tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall in January 1968 (after Woody's death in 1967), performing before a large audience at the Isle of Wight festival in the UK in 1969 and performing live at the 1971 Bangladesh benefit concert that George Harrison arranged--U.S. music fans had not been able to see Dylan performing live in front of them.

And between 1966 and his initial 1970s "never-ending concert tour" performance, the only new protest folk song Dyland had written that reflected a political issue that concerned most Movement people was the "George Jackson" song. But Dylan's "George Jackson" song was only written after one of the corporate media conglomerate book publishing subsidiaries had previously published George Jackson's Soledad Brother book, only after George Jackson's brother, Jonathan Jackson had been killed and Angela Davis had been arrested, and only after George Jackson was killed.

In addition, Dylan had only written the "George Jackson" song after the A.J. Weberman-led Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front (which ex-Beatles member John Lennon supported for awhile) and Abbie Hoffman began criticizing Dylan for not writing new protest songs anymore and characterizing Dylan as a "cultural rip-off artist" who had personally enriched himself by ripping off the 1960s Movement counter-culture and collaborating with the U.S. establishment's CBS media conglomerate's hip capitalist Columbia Records subsidiary.

And only after A.J. Weberman's critique of Dylan's post-1966 political/artistic shift and money-making began to appear in publications like the East Village Other underground newspaper, the Yipster Times, the Village Voice, and even Rolling Stone magazine, as well as being increasingly discussed over some NYC radio stations like WBAI, did Dylan write and record the "George Jackson" song.

So because Dylan didn't write any song and release his record related to George Jackson's unjust imprisonment until after George Jackson was already killed, some Movement music fans speculated that Dylan mainly wrote the "George Jackson" song to try to minimize the growing number of people who were starting to agree with A.J. Weberman's early 1970s East Village Other articles, which were then-arguing that Dylan had sold out politically and artistically to the U.S. corporate Establishment.