Comment

Expat Comment by Crumbsey on May 16, 2011 at 5:33am

Proof enough to me against any restriction argument is that he played "Hard Rain" in Beijing, which is a protest song par excellence. The censorship gossip was an artificial creation of the foreign press; Dylan simply does not always sing "Blowing in the Wind", no matter where. The "official" set list that was circulated in advance was not even followed at the concert.

One German correspondent for a large newspaper in his Beijing concert review even went as far as to claim another extreme: that Dylan altered the lyrics of Ballad of a Thin Man from the original "Do you, Mr. Jones?" to "Do you, Mr. Hu?" The fantasies surrounding particularly the Beijing gig are ridiculous. The foreign press failed to impress but managed to upset all those who did experience the Beijing concert - which was an amazing and unexpected once-in-a-lifetime experience, for the few laowai who were there as well as for all the young Chinese fans.

The only part of the bobdylan.com statement that I am skeptical about is the mention of the tickets that were supposedly handed out to orphanages...if that really was the case, then we know who got a hold of them instead, and it wasn’t Mr. Jones ;-)