From "Dylan Goes Electric!"
Bonnie Beecher, recalled him playing the Elliott albums, one after another, insisting that she recognize their brilliance: “Literally, you are in this room until you’ve heard them all, and you get it.”
Dylan was perplexed by his growing fame, hurt by Newsweek’s gotcha journalism, and unprepared for situations like the ECLC dinner, and he responded by becoming more withdrawn and introspective, and more insistent on following his own direction.
In March, he and Baez did a joint tour of the Northeast, and she was troubled by the change in his attitude: “The kids were calling out for him to do the songs that meant something to them, like ‘Masters of War’ and ‘With God on Our Side,’” she remembered. “He didn’t care. They were reaching out to him, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to rock and roll.”
What no one seems to have noted was that on another level “Only a Pawn” expressed a sensibility at odds with any mass movement.
We were learning firsthand that the so-called national ‘folk boom’ had more to do with celebrity than with any deep grassroots interest.
