March-April 2009

Bob Does Pepsi: The Surreal Thing

By Ross Altman

I got the following email from one of my column's correspondents, pedal steel guitarist Mike Perlowin, with a one-line subject:It's Over; The World Has Come to an End. The reason for Armageddon is in the one-line text of message: "Bob Dylan appears in the new Pepsi commercial!"There was no Aesop's Fable moral at the bottom, but it was clear enough without it: Bob Dylan has sold out (again).

You may recall his previous forays into commercial song licensing: The Times, They Are a' Changing was used as the sound track for a Kaiser Permanente commercial with the caption, "Be Your Own Cause"-not exactly the message we aging boomer former hippies and radicals associate with one of the classic protest songs of the modern era. And before Kaiser the same hymn to social change was picked up by a Canadian bank, but mercifully never made it south of the border.

Then there was Victoria's Secret, with images of Bob as the coolest looking Dirty Old Man cutting to lingerie-clad nubile models young enough to be his granddaughters who were dancing and prancing to his erotic song, To Make You Feel My Love. Again,it was not exactly the erstwhile troubadour of Masters of War and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.

When I replied with enthusiasm to Mike's initial email and said, "Bravo for Pepsi"-for some lovely previously unseen early photos of Bob and a perfect pitch soundtrack of Forever Young (sung by another artist), I received a follow-up phone message from Mr. Perlowin indicating how disappointed in Bob he was and implicitly, by extension, me for not jumping on the Dylan as Judas bandwagon.

You may recall the famous scene captured in Martin Scorcese's documentary No Direction Home of one irate British fan at the1966 Royal Albert Hall concert screaming at Dylan from the audience, "Judas!"presumably in response to Bob having gone electric at Newport the year before and now taking his new act on the road. To which Dylan calmly replied, "Man, I don't believe you."

So, Mr. Perlowin, Dylan has been down this road before, accused of selling out, of betraying his audience, his songs and his ideals, of not just compromising his principles but abandoning them altogether.

We have all been there before. First it was the former editor of Sing Out!, Irwin Silber, who accused Dylan of selling out-by shifting from his Guthriesque persona and socially conscious protest songs to writing personal songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and My Back Pages.Dylan, once the hero of Sing Out! for reviving the art of protest songs for a new generation, was just as vociferously condemned for turning inward and essentially moving from protest to poetry. That was in 1964.

Then in 1965 all hell broke loose at Newport when he traded his Gibson acoustic for a Fender Stratocaster and blasted out Maggie's Farm with the backing of Paul Butterfield's Blues Band. Pete Seeger picked up his ax and threatened to cut the mike cables. And guess who came to his defense? Johnny Cash, that's who. Not to mention-hold onto your dulcimers-Appalachian ballad singer, Alameda Riddle.

Nonetheless, Sing Out! unceremoniously removed Dylan from its pantheon of folk heroes-and Dylan never looked back. In his brave hands folk rock was born.

Twenty years later Dylan, the former Bob Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, who had been bar mitzvahed no less, turned his back on another part of his identity, and became a Christian. Once again, cries of sellout started rumbling forth from one-time fans who again felt betrayed, this time his Jewish fan base.

Ten years later, after Dylan had exhausted his Christian period with three albums, and had gained a whole new group of fans, including Pat Boone, pictures started to surface of Dylan at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, wearing a yarmulke, along with reports that he had been reborn as an observant Jew, and the same Jews who had condemned his previous conversion were now only too happy to welcome their prodigal son back into the fold. He even sang Hava Nagila on the Chabad Telethon.

And so it goes. Always one step ahead of his audience, Dylan is now charged with selling out all over again, not for going personal, not forgoing electric, not for going Christian, but for going commercial, for licensing his songs for commercial use. Since he has been accused of being the devil so many times before, let me be the devil's advocate.

I loved the Pepsi commercial. They used one of my favorite Dylan songs, Forever Young; it was beautifully sung, and the homage of early photos of the young Dylan was moving and heartfelt. You'd think something of this sort would not need defending, since licensing the publishing rights of popular songs is a time-honored way for songwriters to make an honest living.

But apparently it does need defending, since Dylan is expected to live by a higher standard, his songs are supposed to be above commercial exploitation, rock is regarded by many as a sacrosanct body of secular religious hymns-and its vocal fans and supporters demand the separation of church and state, or in this case, music and commerce.

A subsequent email from Mr. Perlowin makes that case better than I am inclined to do, so let me give him the podium to provide a context for my essay. Here is what Mike wrote:

Ross,with all due respect, I think the larger issue is not the tasteful quality of the commercial, but rather that Dylan has allowed his name to be used to promote a major corporation. Pepsico also owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut,Frito-Lay, Gator-aid, Tropicana as well as God knows what else.

I believe big corporations are evil. Pure and simple. I believe the issue of corporate regulation and deregulation has been the single most important issue in American politics since the days of the industrial revolution, and all the more publicized issues like Vietnam or the civil rights movement, as important as they were, served to keep the issue of corporatism out of the public eye

Today corporations like Pepsico are the backbone of the Republican Party. Their propagandists like Rush Limbaugh talk about abortions and homosexuals and Jesus to appeal to "the base," but they don't talk about the real issue of corporate greed and abuse. They get people all fired up at the thought that their kids might be taught by a gay teacher, but they never mention that those same kids might get cancer from being exposed to toxic waste in their drinking water. After all, cleaning up toxic waste costs money and it might cut into the corporations' profits. And then the poor CEOs might have to take home a few million less.

This is a complete reversal from the stands Dylan took back in the 60s. He is supporting the people he condemned when he wrote Masters Of War.

I'm VERY disappointed in him. Mike.

Well Mike, and other outraged Dylan fans, something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

Under this implied covenant it is OK to make money by selling records and charging admission to concerts, but it is not OK to make money by licensing songs for commercial use by third parties, especially corporations who are presumably buying an implied endorsement from the artist.

There was a time before the PC and the Internet when such a covenant made sense and was a reasonable way of slicing up the artistic pie. In those "good old days" all an artist like Dylan had to worry about were thebootleggers who recorded his concerts and put out their own recordings from which they could profit handsomely and from which the creator of this wealth - just like the wage slaves of Joe Hill's day, never made a dime.

But, as Dylan observed in his Oscar winning song, Things Have Changed. So Dylan, and Columbia Records fought back and started releasing their own authorized "bootleg albums," like the officially released Basement Tapes, which were already in circulation in the underground. There are now multi-volume sets of "bootleg albums," in Columbia's Dylan catalog, which have restored Dylan's ownership of his own copyrights - the end of the world indeed.

But there was no way to really fight back against the music pirates who surf the Web. As every contemporary artist has discovered, the current generation of music fans do not expect to have to pay for music. Just like computer hackers have figured out how to game the system, these modern Websurfers know how to get music for free and file share to their narcissistic heart's content.

Have you noticed that Tower Records is out of business? Have you noticed that Rhino Records store closed? Where is Wherehouse Records? Aaron Records?

They are casualties all of these perfidious music pirates that have sprung up all over the Web. So what is an artist to do?

Well, I'll tell you what one artist has done. If you go to Bob Dylan's web site (www.bobdylan.com)you will discover one of the most generous web sites in the virtual universe. You can click onto the lyrics of any one of his more than five hundred recorded songs and print them out for free. You don't have to buy his songbook. You can listen to a great many of his songs-from beginning to end-not a 20 second Amazon sound bite or iTunes teaser-again for free. You don't have to buy his records.

For all intents and purposes, since Dylan and Columbia Records realized they couldn't beat the pirates they joined them. In effect,they pirate themselves-and simply regard the web site as a loss leader, a form of advertising.

That's how thoroughly the Internet has changed the music culture in which we now live. That's what is happening, if you haven't figured it, Mr. Jones.

So where does that leave songwriters like Bob Dylan? Well,as he wrote in that classic song which Pepsi licensed (and actually paid for),"May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift."

Fortunately Dylan has a strong foundation-a catalog of song sunmatched for their poetry, humanity, imaginative scope and musical power. And one of the few ways left to an honest songwriter to actually reap the reward of his labor is to license these songs for commercial use.

A servant is worthy of his hire says the Bible, and we all know that Dylan is well schooled in both the Old and New Testaments.

So I don't begrudge him the opportunity to make a living by pursuing one of the increasingly few avenues in which songs are still able to support their creators.

To those who believe that a musician is supposed to live like the lilies of the field or the pigeons in the park, and depend, as Blanche Dubois was forced to do, on the kindness of strangers, I say fine, let them eat cake. But I know what Dylan would say, because he already said it:

Businessmen they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,

none of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

Apparently Pepsi does know what it is worth. So I say again, Bravo for Pepsi!

Author's note:  I am grateful to Mike Perlowin for permission to reprint his emails in the context of a column that takes issue with them.  Readers who wish to get better acquainted with Mike's pedal steel guitar work can visit his web site at:  http://www.mikeperlowin.com 

Ross Altman has a Ph.D. in English. Before becoming a full-time folk singer he taught college English and Speech. He now sings around California for libraries, unions, schools, political groups and folk festivals. You can reach Ross at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

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