Pope Leo Had The Pleasure of Meeting Bob Dylan in His Finest Black Zip-Up Hoodie
Bob Dylan. One of the few white musicians in history to get away with saying the N-word. Given it was in 1975, so he was kind of playing on easy mode. Also, I doubt he's really "one of the few" to "get away with it". Surely there was no shortage of white N-word-saying musicians back in the day. Slurs didn't even exist yet. But for me, Hurricane by Bob Dylan is always the first white guy saying N-word song that comes to mind.
The man, one of the greatest songwriters of any generation, met the Pope last week. When most people meet the Pope, they put on their Sunday best. Even if it's not Sunday. It's always Sunday when you're in the presence of his holiness. Just ask almost any other celebrity who's ever met one.
Not Bob Dylan, though. When Bob Dylan gets ready to meet the Pope, he gets out of bed, makes himself a coffee, smokes 30 cigarettes, and is out the door in whatever he'd wear on any other Wednesday. Maybe he'll throw on a hoodie if the weather calls for it. Maybe he'll put the hood up if it's raining.
Notice I phrased the title of this blog as, "Pope Leo Had The Pleasure of Meeting Bob Dylan", and not the other way around. I'm going to take a wild guess and say Bob Dylan didn't request an audience with him. Maybe I'm wrong, but Bob Dylan at 85 years old doesn't strike me as a guy who goes out of his way to do… anything. I bet this meeting was taken at Pope Leo's request. He's reportedly a Bob Dylan fan. He quoted him in a speech back in July. He's not the first Pope to quote Bob Dylan either. According to the Vatican News, Pope John Paul II quoted Bob Dylan in 1997. He dropped a, "How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man? Only one. There is only one road for man, and that is the road of Jesus Christ."
Jesus is right, Pope John Paul. That seems a little harsh towards the non-believers. I guess that's the Pope's job. The Pope roots for the home team.
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But Pope John Paul's Bob Dylan quote could have been pulled by anyone. Blowin' In The Wind is a very popular song. Pope Frances, however, when it came time to quote Bob Dylan, he went with a deep cut. He pulled a quote from a song that has never even been recorded.
Vatican News – The verses cited by the Pope in the book published by LEV, edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi, come from “Go Away You Bomb,” a protest song written by the artist in 1963, at the height of Cold War tensions. It is a unique piece, given that the song was never officially recorded or released on any music album, and the original manuscript remained unpublished until its discovery in 2013.
Which makes me think he must be a pretty big fan. I mean… he's a fan of the Chicago White Sox and Villanova basketball. He's American. He's tuned into American popular culture.
Sometimes you wish Bob Dylan would be slightly less of a crumudgen. For example, when you go see a Bob Dylan concert nowadays, you go in knowing that you'll be lucky if he plays any of the classic songs that made you fall in love with his music. And if he does play one, there's a chance it sounds so unrecognizable that you don't even realize it.
He refuses to play the hits more than any artist in the business. To the point that sometimes you can't help but wonder if he's only doing so to be a dick. Or just to see what he can get away with. But even in his prime, he was famous for not giving his fans exactly what they wanted. It made for one of the most famous moments in rock n' roll history.
So when it came to meeting Pope Frances, Bob Dylan put in as much effort as you want from Bob Dylan. I bet when Pope Frances saw Bob Dylan walk through that door in his finest black zip-up hoodie, underneath a black zip-up jacket… and a hat under his hood… I bet the Pope fucking loved it. Assuming he is a real Bob Dylan fan, he would probably have found it disingenuous of Bob to present himself any other way.
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