Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
How did Bob Dylan avoid military service conscription etc?
Posted by Chris G on 9 November 2009 - 12:49am.
Just wondering.
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This from Wikipedia on the draft during the vietnam war:
"According to the Veteran's Administration, 9.2 million men served in the military between 1964 and 1975. Nearly 3.5 million men served in the Vietnam theater of operations. From a pool of approximately 27 million, the draft raised 2,215,000 men for military service during the Vietnam era. It has also been credited with "encouraging" many of the 8.7 million "volunteers" to join rather than risk being drafted[citation needed].
Of the nearly 16 million men not engaged in active military service, 96% were exempted (typically because of jobs including other military service), deferred (usually for educational reasons), or disqualified (usually for physical and mental deficiencies but also for criminal records to include draft violations."
(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#Vietnam_W...
I can't recall this being mentioned in Clinton Heylin's "Behind The Shades" (which is exhaustive enough to induce narcolepsy), so it looks as though he probably rode the numbers and was one of the lucky 12-in-13 that weren't summoned.
Either that, or it's possible that he claimed that he was drug addicted (if, indeed, he was) to qualify for medical exemption.
Couldn't you ask the same question....
...about every other famous young civilian of the era? There was a draft between 1969 and 1973 but Dylan was too old (and in any case the draft was selective).
I was just listening to his radio show
and it sprung to mind that was all he seemed of the age for it to be an issue.
Remember the draft was only in use from
1969-1973 and it was conducted by lottery.
All men between the ages of (I think) 18-25 were allocated a number between 1 and 365 based on their birth date. On each draft cycle, a different number was picked. If your number came up, you were in.
The US lost the war before they'd got through too many numbers.
Dylan was born in 1941 so would have been (err...) 27 when the draft started
I think there was a form of
conscription before the dates 1964-1975. Muhammad Ali is only a year younger than Dylan and he got into all sorts of trouble over it (I know his conscription may not have a have been as random as others). Elvis only 5 years older than Dylan and he served . It was just a thought i wasn't making a statement about Dylan in particular.
Conscription into the US military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States will answer all your non-Dylan-related questions about the US draft system, when it operated and who was conscripted.
I was worried everyone
on this thread is quoting this same articles and seems to be quoting different dates. I will have to look further.
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen is the only rock star, or star of that era in general, I can think of who went to the draft board.
On one of his live recordings, as far as I remember, he talks about being called to the board, but rejected on health grounds - something like an old biking injury. He goes home dreading what his father, who had himself served in Korea, will say. And his father just says he's glad - even blue-collar patriots had had enough of the war.
The River
Yes, that story is from Springsteen's intro to The River, from the live 1975-1985 boxed set.
http://open.spotify.com/track/31UJsGtQSom5H0cNCdPD8u
Iggy was called before the draft board...
well he wasn't going to admit
to having a dodgy knee or inner ear trouble. On a less life threatening note have you noticed that in interviews celebrities always claim to have been thrown out of the cubs or brownies. Rather than the likely story that they were rather dull children who found everything dull and just decided not to go one week.
This link is to a news article about a conspiracy theory
that is scarcely believable but probably true.
How do you make an unpopular war more palatable to the general public? Falsely draft a very patriotic pop singer of course!
The fact it could have back-fired horrendously did not seem to deter anyone.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/normie-draft-very-dodgy/story-...
You Could Argue
with the subsequent backlash against him, that for Normie it did backfire, although he thought he was 'doing the right thing' in serving.
He probably
just sang 'Masters Of War' to the Board whilst flicking the V.
Technical point...
Americans don't flick the V's. They weren't at Agincourt :-)
Just think, if he had joined the army...
he probably would have sounded like James Blunt.