Happy Birthday Bob: No Tombstone Blues Here!

As Dylan turns 80, we select five of the best cover versions of his songs, from Neil Young, Joan Osborne, Bruce Springsteen, Chrissie Hynde and Fairport Convention. Plus the usual news and politics.

You may be tired of more Dylanology after a solid week of celebrations of his birthday—which just arrives today— across social media, but here’s a little more. Note: There’s no video of Jimi doing “Watchtower” so we will “settle” for Neil and a bunch of other axemen. Plus: the greatest mash-up ever? Here’s a link to my recent reflections on my first-ever rock concert: Dylan, going electric in Buffalo, 1965, greeted by “more cowbell.” Enjoy, the comment, share, subscribe—it’s still free. Plus: My film Atomic Cover-up continues to stream free for a few more days via here.

News & Politics

Headline of the Day, from Politifact: “No, the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine does not contain a Bluetooth microchip.” Runner-up, from Axios: “Millions of cicadas were paved over.”

Chest Fever: A teacher at a Florida high school altered dozens of female students’ yearbook pictures to cover any sign of cleavage.

Sweet Om Alabama?: The state's department of education barred yoga in 1993, citing its connection to Hinduism. A new bill overturning the ban limits yoga to stretches and poses, and prohibits non-English descriptions as well as “any aspect of Eastern philosophy.” Chanting is not allowed and use of the sound “om” and the Sanskrit-based word “namaste” are still banned.”

Marge Simpleton: “Marjorie Taylor Greene compares House mask mandates to the Holocaust.” Nancy Pelosi’s decision to continue to require members of the House to wear masks on the chamber floor is like the steps the Nazis took to control the Jewish population during the Holocaust, MTG argued (prompting outrage even from some Republicans).

Finally, that frothy mixture spilled: “CNN Drops Rick Santorum After Racist Comments About Native Americans.”

Think Floyd: George Floyd’s family to visit White House tomorrow one year after his death. Meanwhile, a NY Times review of videos of the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina casts doubt on whether the use of lethal force was justified (he did drive at troopers and sped away but was no longer posing any danger to them when shot). And in Louisiana, the state police said Ronald Greene had died in a crash. Now footage shows troopers shocking and beating him. But NY Times also reports:

A year after Mr. Floyd’s death, Los Angeles and other American cities face a surge in violent crime amid pandemic despair and a flood of new guns onto the streets. The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to re-imagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services.

In the Loon Star State: A Family Sought Revenge Against a Tormentor. They Shot the Wrong Man, Police Say.

The Aftermath: NY Times relates, “Gaza is a sea of rubble, and the scale of the destruction will not allow a return to normalcy for some time. The fighting may be over for now, but for millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and has controlled through decades of failed peace talks, the routine indignities of occupation are part of daily life.” And some Israeli officials now call the airstrike that leveled AP and Al Jazeera offices in Gaza "a mistake," arguing "that Israel needs the media to be open to hearing its version of events, and the bombing made that harder.…"

A new Ipsos poll shows more than half of Republican respondents agreeing that left-wingers led the riot, to make Trump look bad...

Robert Reich: Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth -- let me repeat: one-sixth -- the tax rate their counterparts paid in 1953.

Sen. Patrick Leahy says he will run for a NINTH term. Well, he is still “only” 81. Forty full years ago he co-hosted a party for my first book, with young Rep. Al Gore, on Capitol Hill. None of us getting any younger.

One way for nuts to give GOP control: Bump off a few Dems in Congress? Wash Post:

Lawmakers worry the toxic atmosphere on Capitol Hill will follow them home, raising safety concerns. Several Democratic members have privately expressed their concerns to leadership about security back home as threats have risen, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the conversations. Some of these Democrats said they have paid out of their own pocket to increase security at their district offices or install security systems in their homes out of an abundance of caution. Members’ concerns have been validated by the U.S. Capitol Police, who report that threats against lawmakers have increased by 107 percent in just the first five months of the year compared with last year. …

My Pirate Idaho: “7 Oregon counties have voted to join ‘Greater Idaho.’” Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Sherman, Lake, Grant, Baker and Malheur counties voted on May 18 in favor of the measure that requires county officials to discuss moving the Idaho border west. There were five counties on the ballot and none voted against the measure, with an average of 62% in favor.

Nuke it out: My old friend Dan Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame is now risking arrest again, having just released an official study showing how close we came to a nuclear attack on China in 1958 and dangerous links to today. This goes to heart of my new film--and the need for U.S. to junk its "first-use" policy in effect since 1945.

More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated for Covid-19—but all are in blue states or carried by Biden.

Music: Covering Dylan

As promised, here are five great—and not obvious—covers of Dylan tunes over the past several decades. Of course the one that elevated his career (not included here) was one of the first—Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” By 1965 we had the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Turtles’ “It Ain’t Me Babe,” Sonny & Cher’s “All I Really Want to Do”—and much, much more to come.

First, Joan Osborne’s “Man in the Long Black Coat,” a mid-career Bob classic. She recorded a Dylan covers album not long ago and we saw her do a fine “Tangled Up in Blue” live a couple of years back.

Next, one of Dylan’s greatest and most poetic early songs, “Chimes of Freedom,” covered often, from the Byrds to Steve Earle, but here by Springsteen, picked partly by me due to the setting: in East Berlin just before the fall of the Wall (and chronicled in my recent book, The Tunnels).

From that same ‘60s Bob protest era period, the haunting “Percy’s Song,” which Bob chose never to release but found a home with Fairport and this stunning live Sandy Denny vocal around 1968, which tops their album version….

As I noted, we find Neil Young leading the way on “Watchtower” with probably the greatest assemblage of ace guitarists on one stage for Jimi’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame….Keith and Santana, Jimmy Page and Steve Cropper, The Edge and John Fogerty….more?

And one more Bob cover, and latest, from new Chrissie Hynde tribute album (which I previewed a couple of weeks ago with her “Blind Willie McTell”), and here on “Every Grain of Sand,” one of his strongest post-’60s lyrics:

Now a bonus “cover,” one of my favorite mash-ups of all time: As James Brown, with Bob and The Band, doing “Like a Rolling Stone”—like a “Sex Machine.” Take it Bobby!

Song Pick of the Day

Fitting to close with the Bobster himself, with his live performance below of “Things Have Changed” the night he won an Oscar. Plus hat tip here to Dan Kennedy for finding this little heard beauty cut from his Time Out of Mind album (Bob well-known for unwisely dropping fine songs from lps).

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.