Two emblematic figures of the twentieth century met for the primary time on Sept. 27, 1997: One was Bob Dylan, and the opposite was Pope John Paul II.
This curious second befell in Bologna, Italy, the place the 77-year-old pope was attending a Eucharistic Congress that was billed particularly for younger individuals “and their music.” Roughly 300,000 Catholic youths have been current.
Drummer David Kemper remembers the occasion as his very first gig with Dylan’s band. Dylan’s supervisor “Jeff Kramer referred to as and stated, ‘Bob would really like you to hitch his band,'” Kemper informed Rolling Stone in 2022. “I stated, ‘Certain. How can we get going?’ He goes, ‘Nicely, we received a gig with the pope in Bologna.’ I stated, ‘Say that once more?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, the pope. John Paul II invited us to a Eucharistic Congress.'”
Earlier than Dylan started his efficiency, the pope addressed the gang: “You say the reply is blowing within the wind, my buddy. So it’s: however it isn’t the wind that blows issues away, it’s the breath and lifetime of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!’
“You ask me what number of roads a person should stroll down earlier than he turns into a person,” the pope added. “I reply: There is just one street for man, and it’s the street of Jesus Christ, who stated, ‘I’m the Means and the Life.'”
Dylan and his band then took the stage, first performing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” adopted by “A Exhausting Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
“We’re enjoying the primary tune,” Kemper recalled, “and I look and over to my left within the again nook, I noticed John Paul sitting there. He was resting his head on his arms. I used to be pondering, ‘Is that this man alive? Is he listening? He is on the market for everyone to see.’ However Bob was on good habits; I may inform. It was nice. I loved it fully.” Dylan then eliminated his cowboy hat and made his method up the steps to greet the pope personally, earlier than returning to the stage for an encore of “Without end Younger.”
Watch Bob Dylan Meet Pope John Paul II in 1997
Not everybody fully loved it, nevertheless, together with the long run Pope Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, admitted he was apprehensive about internet hosting Dylan and having him carry out. “There was purpose to be skeptical, and I used to be,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 2007 e book, John Paul II, My Beloved Predecessor. “Certainly, in a sure sense, I nonetheless am as we speak.”
Significantly within the early days of his profession, Dylan was typically described because the voice of his technology, a logo of non-public and political revolution. He overtly disliked and steadily dismissed these notions, however they shaped the premise for Pope Benedict XVI’s worries over “whether or not it was proper to let this sort of so-called prophet take the stage.”
Dylan’s relationship with faith had, at instances, additionally been a topic of controversy. He grew up in a Jewish household, and although he by no means outwardly rejected Judaism, he additionally did not really feel the necessity to analyze it a lot. “I am a Jew,” he informed The Washington Submit in 1987. “It touches my poetry, my life, in methods I am unable to describe. Why ought to I declare one thing that needs to be so apparent?”
Then, within the late ’70s, Dylan shocked his followers when he declared himself a born-again Christian. Three albums of evangelical-inspired music adopted: 1979’s Gradual Prepare Coming, 1980’s Saved and 1981’s Shot of Love. Then Dylan abruptly went again to recording primarily secular music and talking little about faith.
“Individuals name you this or they name you that,” he informed Rolling Stone in 1984, “however I can’t reply to that, as a result of then it looks like I am defensive – and, you realize, what does it matter, actually?”
Nonetheless, as Dylan noticed it, he and the pope weren’t all that incompatible. They only noticed issues from a special viewpoint. “Here is the factor with me and the non secular factor,” Dylan informed Newsweek in 1997. “That is the flat-out fact: I discover the religiosity and philosophy within the music. I do not discover it anyplace else.
“Songs like ‘Let Me Relaxation on a Peaceable Mountain’ or ‘I Noticed the Mild’ – that is my faith,” he added. “I do not adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve realized extra from the songs than I’ve realized from any of this sort of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I consider the songs.”
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