Thirty-six years to the day before Princeton's senior class announced that Bob Dylan would perform on campus during senior week, The Daily Princetonian ran a review of another Dylan performance - this one at McCarter Theatre - on an inside page of the paper.
November 9, 1964 - "It doesn't matter whether the song has come down from a thousand years or you wrote it yesterday sitting on the toilet," explained the young man who had just enthralled a SRO audience Saturday night at McCarter.
Bob Dylan, part folk singer, part philosopher and a near prophet to some members of this generation makes a startling appearance when he first walks on the stage with his jeans and high-heeled desert boots, harmonica and high standing hair. His screechy voice and backwoods diction don't help much.
But Dylan kept his entire audience hushed, trying to catch all the words to his songs, songs that sound as if they were written yesterday.
After "changing" from his tan suede jacket to a papier mache top hat which he kept moving around on his head, Dylan commented on some of these songs.
His "Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues" ridiculed searching for communists. With the same twist of humor Dylan later explained that communists are "awful, just awful, but don't worry, they're only a minority group - that's all."
God on His Side
In one of his songs, the folk singer asked whether "Judas Iscariot had God on his side." Answering, he said, "There must be some people somewhere that don't believe God is on their side. Do communists believe in God? How could He be on their side if they don't believe in Him?
"I can't put God over anyone's head, I can't force anyone to believe in God. If I did that I'd be a cop or a communist."
The folk singer believes in "every breath he breathes," and, as a second commandment he added, "in every breath anyone else breathes too." Themes of death and love recur throughout his songs. "I only met death once, but the next time I'll be ready, yes, I'll be ready," and added, "It's the same way with love."
Although he is best known for his songs, Dylan said he would rather write "those things without any form, whatever you want to call them, poetry if you like."
This is the second year that Dylan has played to a sold-out audience at Princeton.
After the interview, Dylan and his friends left in search of a "respectable bar, with nice wide booths, that looks like it's just out of Russia, you know, just right for us."
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