The Freeloadin’ Dylan

Brilliant item on the Today programme this morning. Bob Dylan’s son is playing the famous Newport Folk Festival as a solo artist. Apparently Dylan once upset some hippies by playing an electric guitar at the festival, and now his offspring is performing the reverse stunt, abandoning a more metal-based career to perform folk.

So the son (whose name I didn’t notice) gets a five-minute segment on Today, in which his music is played and his set plugged. The music is pedestrian, ascending-and-descending-note folk stuff that means nothing to me, though it sounds pleasant enough. The lyrics are respectfully discussed (I’m paraphrasing all my quotes, because I refuse to listen to this tripe again, but it goes something like, “Is evil all around?” “I just feel that evil is all around”).

Then the interviewer goes for the question we’ve all been waiting for. “Is it frustrating to be compared to your father all the time?” “Oh,” Dylan Junior replies. “The idea that in this day and age people get a record deal because of who their father is, it’s laughable”. You can hear him giggling, a bit.

Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? That’s exactly why you’ve got a record deal. That’s exactly why you’re even doing this interview. The BBC knows it, your management company knows it, and 450,000 listeners, including me, know it. Of the people who have got their jobs on the least amount of personal merit, in the world, it goes Prince Charles, and then you.

Forget Freewheelin’, this guy’s more freeloadin’.