Seth Rogovoy is a contributing editor at the Forward. He is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner, 2009) and the forthcoming Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).
Seth Rogovoy
By Seth Rogovoy
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Culture With an epic new album, Bob Dylan finally delivers his Nobel lecture
When Bob Dylan finally responded to the Swedish Academy that awarded him the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature with the required lecture, about six months after the fact, he did so with a rambling, recorded monologue that at its best detailed some of his literary and musical influences and at its worst was a parody…
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Culture Happy 78th Birthday To Paul McCartney, The Jewish Beatle
About seven years ago, Sir Paul McCartney, who turns 78 today, released an album called “New.” But given the artist’s love affair with all things Jewish for the past half-century — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives — the title could well be meant as a transliteration of the all-purpose Jewish word nu. Recently,…
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Culture Your top 9 Yiddish antifa anthems: a revolutionary playlist
The Yiddish roots of antifa – the anti-fascist movement whose precursors date back at least as far as opposition to the Russian czar – have been well documented. They are also enshrined in a canon of Yiddish antifa songs – songs of resistance, anarchism, revolution, and workers’ rights – that listeners might find eerily resonant…
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Culture The Secret Jewish history of The Rolling Stones
Editor’s Note: The Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts turns 79 today. In honor of that auspicious occasion, we return to this 2014 article about the band’s Jewish influences. In 2014, The Rolling Stones took the stage at HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv. That event represented more than just the world’s greatest and longest-running rock band’s…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of The Who
Editor’s Note: Pete Townshend turns 75 today. In honor of that occasion, we look back at his band’s secret Jewish history, which we first explored in 2015. If The Who’s visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, “Tommy” — an allegory about a traumatized messiah — would not have been the band’s…
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Culture Stevie Wonder’s 9 most Jewish songs
When I learned that Stevie Wonder was turning 70 on May 13, I was actually surprised by how young he is. At a time when his peers who emerged in the early 1960s – people like Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan – are all pushing 80, Wonder is something of a spry young…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History Of “Rock Around The Clock”
It wasn’t the first rock-and-roll song. It wasn’t even the first rock-and-roll hit. But 66 years ago today, Bill Haley and His Comets’ version of “Rock Around the Clock” was released, beginning its long, strange journey to the top of the pop charts, where it became the first rock-and-roll tune to hit the No. 1…
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Culture Who’s narrating Bob Dylan’s prophetic new song? Satan, God or Dylan himself?
In March 1963, Bob Dylan made a demo recording of “Long Time Gone,” one of numerous original songs he wrote for his publishing company, Witmark. In that early song, never officially released, Dylan sings, “I know I ain’t no prophet / And I ain’t no prophet’s son.” Dylan was lyrically riffing on Amos 7:14, where…
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