One writer remembers: Growing up with Dylan By RICMANNING IT City Editor Bob Dylan did not attend the black people's ‘march on Washington in 1983, the March on the Pentagon in 1967, the Democratic National Convention in 1968, the Woodstock Festival in 1989 or the May Day protests in Washington in agi. But Dylan's spirit was there just the same. Dylan was a man of the Sixties and his music and lifestyle colored and often directed the events of those years, although his words rebuked his status of leadership: “'m just the average, common too, Just like him, the same as you. T'm everybody's brother and son ain't different than anyone, Ain't no sense in talkin’ to me It be the same as talkin’ to you.” But of course, he couldn’tfoolus. In those days culture and politics, for some unexplainable reason, were intertwined and Dylan spoke both Tanguages. FOLKSINGERS SUCH as Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Phil Ochs did attend the first Washington march and the Mississippi freedom marches and they sang Dylan's songs and talked about a skinny kid back in New York who seemed to have the conscience of a new age. Dylan wrote “Blowin’ In The Wind” in 1962 ‘when young people were beginning to shake off the lethargy of the Eisenhower years, when the EERE EDITOR'S NOTE—Bob Dylan’s musical ‘career spans more than a decade and his music and the lifestyle he helped foster has touched several generations. Yet the poet-folksinger ‘most influenced the generation that passed through adolesence during the troubled 1960's. Daily Herald-Telephone City Editor and pop music eritie Rie Manning was part of that generation. He attended Indiana University during the mid-Sixties and participated in some ‘of the major cultural-political events of the times, including the Woodstock Music Festival and the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chieago in 1968, With Dylan scheduled to appear tonight at the IU Assembly Hall, Manning used the occasion to write this article. It attempts to describe what the singer meant to Manning and his generation and to reflect on what life was like growing up with Bob Dylan. oensmm ee eR, Kennedy brand of social optimism was in vogue and when pointed questions were starting to be asked about American involvement in Vietnam and about racial prejudice. “How many times can a man turn his head ‘And pretend that he just doesn’t see How many years must some people exist Before they're allowed to be free? ts TB LOOMASGTON | Hevald=Telepno | we Fel. 3 1A74 ‘The song became an anthem of the civil rights movement which, by the end of the decade, had shaken the nation to its foundations. In the middle of the Sixties, a new culture and lifestyle had begun to emerge on college cam- puses and in big city coffeehouses. It was an odd mixture of folk and rock music, Salvation Army fashions and liberal-socialist politics. AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY, deep in. the nation’s heartland and Bible ‘Belt, students began to wear jeans to class, carry their books in green bags, talk polities in the Commons and engage in long debates over Vietnam and the perceived conspiracy of the military-industrial complex. Dylan's musie, by chance or design, was very much a part of what the new magazines called the Youth Culture, In 1965, Dylan blended his coarse, nasal voice and pointed lyrics with electric rock (he sold out, said the purists) and we were hearing strange tales about life in the East Village and the Haight-Ashbury and rumors about kids who smoked marijuana in their dorm rooms, TAKING THE CUE from Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album, I took the album home cone summer and played “It’s Alright Ma (I'm ‘Only Bleeding)” for my mother. She thought (Col. 1, Back Page, This See.)Continued from Page 1) Dylan has a terrible voice and I thought she ‘completely missed the lyrics. But Dylan's music ‘was never meant for parents, it was meant for ‘their sons and daughters who, as he sang in “The ‘Times They Are A-Changin’ ” were “beyond your command.” It was the young people who felt they knew what it was like to follow the tambourine man in the jingle-jangle morning and meet the mystery tramp who did not want to make a deal. ‘Bob Dylan and I both missed the 1967 March ‘on the Pentagon when the Yippies tried to levitate the building and Norman Mailer had himself filmed while he crashed the police lines, I missed it because I couldn't afford the $20 for the bus trip and Dylan missed it because he had broken his neck in a motorcycle accident that summer, WHILE DYLAN REMAINED a hermit at his Woodstock, N.Y. retreat, electric music and LSD from San Francisco supplanted politics as reigning sacraments of the youth culture. The Movement credited itself with dumping LBJ but when itlooked for certain that the old pols would take the Democratic nomination away from Eugene McCarthy, it became ¢ynical and sometimes violent, We didn’t sing “Blowin’ In‘The Wind” in Grant Park in August of 1968. Most everybody felt there was no need to ask any more questions, Dylan also had stopped asking questions, abandoning politics altogether that year when he released “John Wesley Harding,” an album that contained not one single political song. THE LAST GREAT hurrah of the coun- terculture came one year later with the ‘Woodstock Festival. Half-million young people made a symbolic pilgrimage to Dylan's home and it didn’t even matter that the festival was in White Lake, N.Y., many miles from Woodstock, The festival of peace, love and music was ‘supposed to herald the dawning of a new age but. every later attempt to recreate the spirit of ‘Woodstock ended in tragedy. Dylan was once again ahead of the times. While the Woodstock crowd drank up electric music, Dylan was in Nashville recording ‘country songs with Johnny Cash. Now you can't buy a pop album that doesn’t have a tune on it that sounds like Merle Haggard. THE POLITICAL WING of The Movement ‘mace its last wheeze with the Days of Rage in Chicago and the May Day protests in Washington in 1971. An SDS splinter group, which liked bombs more than music, called itself the Weathermen after a line in a Dylan song. But Dylan and the Weathermen wer worlds apart. Dylan alway seemed to be trying to outrun his influence, but his fans and his imitators always caught up. He has been a reluctant hero whose efforts to avoid exposure and interpretation has brought only more publicity and analysis, HIS MUSIC AND MY LIFE have intersected sore times than I can remember. For those of us who stumbled towards maturity during the Sixties, the spectre of Dylan was like a Step- penwolf or a Damien out of a Hesse novel, When Dylan walks out on stage in the ‘Assembly Hall tonight it will be the first time I have ever seen the man in the flesh, But I feel like I've known him all my life.