Bob Dylan Stiffs Ed Sullivan

There are moments when an artist’s reputation is cemented—and such a moment occurred on this date in 1963, when Bob Dylan walked off the set of the Ed Sullivan Show.

This kind of thing just didn’t happen.

After all, Ed Sullivan had the biggest show in America. Get on his program and your career gets a steroid boost that would make Alex Rodriquez proud. The Beatles appearance on the show catapulted them to a superstardom the likes of which have never been matched.

To please the conservative host, bands were willing to sacrifice some of their “art” in order to expose themselves to a national audience. Some were unaware—like Elvis, who was shown only from the waist up. Others were complicit in their retreat—like the Rolling Stones, who changed the lyrics of “Let’s Spend The Night Together” into “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”. The Stones sold out.

Not Bob Dylan.

Far from a superstar at that point in his career, his music was still known by many and fans of Peter, Paul and Mary were aware that their hit “Blowin’ In The Wind” was penned by Dylan.

In advance of the release of his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, he received the coveted invitation to perform on the Sullivan show.

That appearance never happened.

CBS informed Dylan that his song “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” could not be performed. Rather than sing another song----or change the lyrics, Dylan stormed off the set in protest.

The song, a satirical look at the hyper-conservative John Birch Society’s tendency to see a Communist plot in virtually everything—was too much for the network’s Standards and Practices Department. The funny thing was that Dylan had auditioned the song days earlier for Ed Sullivan himself without any objections being raised.

Check out this video of Dylan—performing live on a Canadian show that same year—rare footage for an artist who was extremely selective in his mass media offerings:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXweUdZOrb8&feature=PlayList&p=57CC6CFDC0BBDDF5&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=7

The Ed Sullivan incident may have cost him the huge national audience that most artists crave, but it did help to fortify his image as an uncompromising artist—and thus, was probably worth it.

In the years since the walk-off, details have emerged that Dylan didn’t lose his temper or actually storm out. Sullivan’s producer, Bob Precht described Dylan as polite and respectful in declining to perform another song and in passing on the opportunity to appear on the show. Ed Sullivan himself denounced the network for their decision, a move that probably enhanced Sullivan’s image as well.

Just as Dylan, his lyrics, his music and all things related to the singer were raised to levels of deification that stretched the limits of rational believability, this incident solidified his “rep” as the coolest thing in music at the time---an image that has largely remained intact nearly 50 years later.


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