"Go Away Bomb:"---Dylan Writes A Song for Izzy Young

The early Cold War was a pretty scary time for American civilians who were being bombarded with messages about a potential impending atomic holocaust. Death by means of The Bomb was a very real possibility in the back of many of our minds. Books like Nevil Shute's On The Beach and films like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove kept the notion alive.

Many ordinary people, like my cousins' family in Cleveland, built bomb shelters in their homes, stockpiling food and water. Schoolchildren everywhere were trained in what to do in the event of a nuclear war, much the same as we practiced fire drills.

Mad Magazine, a staple in many households, had a cartoon series called Spy vs. Spy which also played off this cold war theme. To a certain extent few of us were untouched, including a young Bob Dylan, who translated our shared anxiety into language that resonated with us.

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"Go Away Bomb" MSS original. Notation upper right by Izzy Young.
From the Bill Pagel Archive, courtesy Bill Pagel

One of the items on display at Karpeles Manuscript Museum Library during Duluth Dylan Fest this coming month is an original manuscript which Dylan wrote for and at the request of Israel "Izzy" Young, who owned a music store called the Folklore Center. This original document from the Bill Pagel collection is one of numerous rare and unique items from the Pagel Archive that will be on view through much of the summer here.

When the young Bob Dylan arrived in New York in 1961, his first destination was Greenwich Village. Izzy Young's Folklore Center, at 110 MacDougal Street, became one of his haunts. He would often hang around the store listening to Izzy's records and writing songs. In his Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote this about the Foklore Center: “The place had an antique grace. It was like an ancient chapel, like a shoebox-sized institute.”

Side 2. "Go Away Bomb"

Young asked Dylan to write a song for an anti-atomic bomb songbook Izzy hoped to put together. Though Izzy never put out the songbook, he did hang on to this early unreleased Dylan manuscript for over 50 years before parting with it. Izzy Young himself wrote the notation in the upper right corner of the manuscript, “1963 Bob Dylan wrote this when I asked him to do a song for a bomb song book.” Dylan delivered the song the day after he was asked to write it, according to Young.

The song stays within the realm of the social movement and our nation's shared fears about nuclear war during the early 1960’s. Dylan’s songs “Let Me Die In My Footsteps,” “Masters of War,” “Talkin’ World War III Blues” as well as “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” all reflect this same theme.

In addition to the manuscript Bill Pagel is including two photos of Izzy Young at the Folklore Center  from those early Greenwich Village days.

About Izzy.

Izzy Young, circa 1980. Photo source: Library of Congress.

Israel Goodman Young (March 26, 1928 – February 4, 2019) was a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden. He was owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village and, after moving to Stockholm in 1973, also opened and operated the Folklore Centrum store there. Izzy organized the first New York concert by Bob Dylan and devoted decades of his life supporting folk music.

When a teenage Bob Dylan arrived in New York in the winter of 1961, Young became something of a mentor for him.

Young’s music store, which doubled as a small performance space, had a small back room where Dylan plinked out songs on an old typewriter. Young was struck by Dylan’s ability to absorb everything he heard, but was otherwise unimpressed. “Then he began writing those great songs and I realized he was really something.”

EdNote: The info here about the late Izzy Young and his Folklore Center was stitched together from Mr. Young's obituary in the New York Times and Nicole Saylor's Blog Post for the Library of Congress.

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Related Links & Sources
Izzy Young Obituary, NY Times
Izzy Young's Folklore Center (Nicole Saylor)
BobDylanWay.com
2019 Duluth Dylan Fest Schedule
Hibbing Dylan Project
A Bob Dylan Timeline (at New Pony)
Spy Vs. Spy

Mad Magazine Takes a Poke at Dylan, and Some Additional Dylan-Related Humor

A friend from California sent me this cartoon from a 1967 Mad Magazine. Her friend Andrew from Texas had shared it with her along with a story about being in the car with his mom as a kid in the 60s and reading out loud to her from Mad Magazine. When he read Bob's name, he said "Bob Die-lan" and his mom corrected him.

Evidently when he recently found the cartoon, he passed it along. Andrew was eight at the time and apparently quite precocious. The cartoon remains as funny as ever. To quote my source, "Way to go Mad Magazine!"

Actually, I tried to find more jokes about Dylan, and to be frank most were pretty lame. Primary theme, his mumbling or not being easy to understand, which could be taken more than one way. Here are a few licks c/o JokeBlogger.

I saw Bob Dylan in concert once and I have no memory of it whatsoever. --Glen Tickle

Bonnie Tyler is gonna sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to an actual eclipse. Bob Dylan, please start prepping "Talkin World War III Blues." --Adam Nobler

Facebook added a bunch of new gender options. You can now select male, female, or Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan --Loganerik

Listening to Bob Dylan's "O Come All Ye Faithful" and I would not be at all comfortable putting any money on what language he's singing in. --Amanda Flanagan

If Bob Dylan didn't introduce the Beatles to drugs, they would've just been another boy band with no substance... Get it?...No substance? :) --Adam Scott Waddle

[I thought this was pretty good.] Since everyone has a Bob Dylan impression, I'd say we're all the voice of a generation. --Jonathan Schwartz

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Related Links
A post from ten years back reminiscing on Mad Magazine 
Jokes Dylan himself has told during concerts over the years: Bob Dylan, the Jokerman
Mad sends a 75th Birthday greeting to the Bard.
A Mad commentary on Dylan's relationship with Mad-ison Avenue.

Meantime, life goes on...

Insights from the Marshmallow Experiment

"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things... I am tempted to think there are no little things." ~ Barton Sutter

The other day I stumbled on an article about a Stanford research project that attempted to correlate a single aspect of human behavior as an indicator for future success or failure. The series of studies conducted by professor Walter Mischel came to be known as The Marshmallow Experiment.

The experiment was essentially about deferred gratification as a predictor of future achievement. James Clear describes the setup like this.

The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them.

At this point, the researcher offered a deal to the child.

The researcher told the child that he was going to leave the room and that if the child did not eat the marshmallow while he was away, then they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. However, if the child decided to eat the first one before the researcher came back, then they would not get a second marshmallow.

The researcher would leave for 15 minutes and then return. The team filmed the kids fidgeting, staring, and frequently succumbing.

What makes the experiment famous is that these children were then checked in on for the next 40 years. Mr. Clear summarizes the results:

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.

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Take a minute to reflect on the ramifications of this experiment. And then consider this.

Can delayed gratification be taught? If the answer is yes, then success can be taught. Or at least the odds of achieving more successful life outcomes for our children can be favorably influenced.

When I was growing up in the Fifties our elementary school had some kind of arrangement in which we could deposit money in a bank account. Beginning in second grade my father gave me a dime for every A I received on my report card. The dimes were deposited in the bank. I also began to receive an allowance of a quarter a week.

What I learn with that allowance was powerful. We had a candy store a few blocks away, and if I wanted to I could ride my bike there and buy candy. My dad also brought my brother and I to the Lawson's Milk Store fairly frequently and they had a magazine rack there that was fun to peruse. Once a month the new Mad magazine came out and my quarter would be used for that. On the other hand, if I saved my quarter and waited till I had fifty cents, I could then buy a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. And if I skipped candy altogether and somehow saved four quarters, I could buy a model Revell battleship to assemble to put on a shelf in my room.

Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later.

Is this a behavior that parents can teach? Or were those children wired for failure as a result of genetic dispositions?

In psych 101 students learn that even pigeons can be taught to do a surprising number of things by means of incentives, including playing a primitive form of ping pong, by means of stimulus-reward arrangements. On the other hand, how many times have you seen parents in a grocery story line attempting to restrain a screaming four or five year old brat who wants a candy bar, and instead of making this a teachable moment, they reward the child's ranting. "I want it now!"

What about now, as adults? Is it too late for us if we've been poorly wired as kids? There's plenty of evidence to support a belief that inner change is not only possible but in most cases desirable. Here's that article on The Marshmallow Experiment.

Once we're set in our ways change is not easy. It begins with awareness. To quote the Little Engine That Could, it begins with an affirmation: "I think I can." If we persist, we will succeed. 

Spy vs. Spy

The other day while waiting to get some dental work done I discovered a Mad magazine in the waiting room. It turns out that our dentist believed no waiting room is complete without Mad. Despite the price inflation (one edition today could get you 24 issues in 1964) it sent me back in time, and when I got home Tuesday evening I pulled an old issue out of my garage to share here.

No remembrance of the Sixties is complete without tipping the hat to Mad magazine, of which I will say little except to say the quarter price tag back then was a wonderful way to have my allowance money picked from my pocket on a monthly basis. The magazine contents were a spot-on commentary on the times, and against the backdrop of the Cold War, Mad editors began in 1961 to carry a regular cartoon feature by Antonio Prohias called Spy vs. Spy.

Even with no understanding of the Cold War the wordless Spy vs. Spy comic was entertaining to the very youngest Mad readers. Like many children's stories, new levels of meaning emerge with our maturing life experience. The first Spy vs. Spy appeared during the era of Kruschev and Kennedy and continued right into the latter part of the Reagan years.

The basic story line involves two characters, identical in every respect except that one is black and the other white. At the top of the page Mad's editors identified the various parts of the magazine with clever chapter titles like Berg's-Eye View Dept. (Dave Berg's pointed satire) and Don Martin Dept. (another singular Mad cartoonist.) Spy vs. Spy was in the Joke and Dagger Dept., which if you don't get it then maybe you will when you're older and have a little more life experience.

There would often be two cartoons on a stand alone page with the top being a stand alone story incorporated into the title, below which there are black dots and dashes of Morse Code. It might be interesting to translate this code, something I can't recall doing when I was young and in school. The second cartoon would be like comic strips where there is a story going on. The spies were always trying to outwit one another and blow each other up or do some other kind of permanent damage.

The Mad magazine from which this Spy vs. Spy was extracted appeared in January 1964, the same month that our family moved from Maple Heights, Ohio to New Jersey. I turned twelve later that year, and the event marked a watershed in my life against which all my memories of youth are categorized. Before and after the move. Before the move I remember buying Mad magazine at the Lawson's store when my dad would run out to get milk. (I used to by Famous Monsters of Filmland when I saved up my quarters for two weeks.) After we moved to New Jersey we'd find our Mad magazines at the Farmer's Market in Bound Brook.

Antonio Prohias was a political cartoonist in Cuba who often poked fun of Fidel Castro, until just before Castro came to power at which time he had to flee to the U.S. in May 1960. Two months later he was knocking on the editorial door of Mad headquarters in New York to show a prototype of this cartoon concept. Booby traps and bombs, an ingenious variant on the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote concept... or parody of the CIA and KGB.

There was a lot of upheaval in that Sixties decade, but it created some great entertainment, too. And gave Mad magazine plenty to talk about.

On another topic, if you're in Duluth, don't miss the Enger Tower Fund Raising Calendar event at Blackwater tonight, 4:30 - 6:30. Be there or be square. Till the morrow.

EdNote: Click images to enlarge

Mad

... as in Magazine.

Don't know what made me think of Mad magazine this morning, but once it was there and I began ruminating, it seemed worthy of a few comments.

Two months ago I wrote about the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. If you recall, I had to save my quarter allowance instead of spending it in order to buy the fifty cent monster mag. Mad magazine was only 25 cents then, and when the next issue came out, I was on it. My quarter was gone.

We lived a couple miles from the downtown strip in Maple Heights, a suburb on Cleveland's southeast side. There was a downtown strip called Mapletown with a movie theater and stores and once a year they held a giant rummage sale where the sidewalks were filled for blocks with junk sellers. This was the early 1960s, and it was here that I discovered one of my greatest early treasures: a box of Mad magazines selling for a penny each, nearly an entire collection of the 1950's mags, undoubtedly worth a fortune today if I'd kept 'em.

A couple years ago as my father lay dying in an intensive care unit in a Tampa-area hospital, I bought a Mad magazine to read. I reminded him of that time in Mapletown and we talked about those old Mad magazines... and I noticed, sadly, how unfunny the current version of the rag was, even though some of the topics were echoes of its former self, such as the movie satires.

I remember when the back cover fold-in was first introduced in 1964. It was an election year. Do you remember the rather pointed message of that Barry Goldwater spoof? When you folded it in, the illustration became a mushroom cloud, revealing a major attitude of the Right at the time: Better dead than red.

We were in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviets, so the wordless Spy vs. Spy series was a big hit. Both the black character and the white one were lookalikes, forever at war. As they ever destroyed one another, was the magazine making a statement about the foolishness of mutually assured destruction?

Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of..." was a great piece of comic strip comedy. There were many issues Berg poked fun of in the sixties, from suburban life to the generation gap, office life, dating, psychiatry, fashions. According Wikipedia, Berg's pages were the most popular feature, and most anyone who read the mag knows why. I remember one cartoon where the parents are upstairs and the children in the basement are making noise so the dad screams down with an angry, exaggerated expression, "Will you keep it quiet down there!!!??" The next panel is teens in the basement, all necking, lounged over chairs, etc. The same dad (it is a couple years later) is screaming down the same stairs, "Will you make some noise down there!!??"

Don Martin's cartoons were original and hilarious, too. He made big lumpy characters with large chins or goofy faces, swollen noses in a very trademarked in style. He used to write out the sounds of things in big letters, like FWEEET, or PLA-FLOOOEY, imitating the sound a rush of air would make or a drill sound, etc. A memorable one comes to mind of a scene in a dentist's office.

Other regular features of the mag included "Scenes We'd Like to See", "A Day in the Life of..." and "You Know You're Really _____ When..." which might be, "You Know You're Really in Trouble When..." or "Skinny When..." ... And the recurring song parodies in which they change the words and say, "to the tune of..." Which I do to this day. Susie and I, for example, have a song about our first dog Sterling, to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel's Most Peculiar Man. "She was a most.... peculiar dog."

Mad was famous for inserts, too. Once they had fake book covers made so you could pretend you were reading famous "adult" books like Norman Mailer or Henry Miller. I put The Tropic of Cancer on one of my paperbacks and shocked my mother when I was about ten. I can imagine a lot of parents got similar shocks, to the amusement of their young children. Another time they had a vinyl record called "It's a Gas!" which was funky jazz interspersed with burping sounds. We laughed at the burping, not realizing that the double pun was that a burp is gas.

Of course the centerpiece of the mag was it's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. Every cover featured our "What, me worry?" hero. And being a freckle faced kid myself, and a Newman, you might suspect that more than a few times over the years I have been teased by this dubious connection.

If you like, share your own favorite Mad memory in the comments... or send me a note I can post. Or if you prefer, one I cannot.