"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.

...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).

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.

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-...

just sang 'Masters Of War' to the Board whilst flicking the V.

he probably would have sounded like James Blunt.

None of the above explains how he got out of the draft. I'm reading a bio now of Dylan and it just doesn't come up. One possibility is that he just never registered and moved around so much that he avoided all draft notices (he lived many places and no where, on friend's couches, and in two states). To my knowledge he never owned a car in those early days, so there is that. But he did go to London, so that meant he had a passport, so some how he was known to the goverment (this in the early 60's when he was just the right age to be drafted). I don't know. He had a tremendous early need to marry and have kids and this might have also been draft related, that it would allow some exemption. But probably the government did not want to draft Dylan. From 1962 he was in the forefront of resistance to the army, worked with SANE, was into civil rights -- drafting him would have started demonstrations, for certain, and the army didn't want this. That's my best guess.