Terence Blacker: Why Bob Dylan prefers Starbucks to Live8

A few of us still prefer our musicians to be their own people, to belong to nobody's army

According to the folk wisdom which dates back 40 years and beyond, this is what music is all about – giving a voice to people who have been unvoiced by political cynicism. Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters, was the way Bob Dylan once put it. Get out of the way if you can't lend a hand because the times they are a-changin'.

But this week, it has been Dylan who has proved that – now and then – the times can a-change in an uncomfortable way. Unlike many other rock wrinklies, the great pioneer of musical activism will not be making poverty history in Edinburgh or anywhere else. He will be on tour somewhere, probably on the road again with Willie Nelson and his family.

Dylan's contribution to the globalisation debateis rather different from his more saintly fellow superstars. He has released a long-awaited recording of a live session from the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village in 1962, and has scandalised a fair proportion of his fan base by granting an 18-month exclusivity in the CD to that arch-villain of American corporate imperialism, the Starbucks coffee chain.

From the company's point of view, it is something of a coup. What better image could it promote than that of a young folk singer communing with like-minded folks over steaming cups of coffee? The fact that a scruffily independent coffee bar of the early 1960s belongs to a different universe of experience to anything that comes off the Starbucks production line is beside the point.

"We have always been huge Dylan fans," the chain's Entertainment President has announced. "This will hopefully be the first of many things we can do with Dylan."

The poor, naive fool. He may be Entertainment President but he has misjudged his man. Ever since the world at large decided that Bob Dylan was the voice of a generation, he has lived his life as if to prove one basic tenet of faith: he is nobody's voice but his own. He may have sung against war and injustice, but that does not make him part of any great movement. His career has been consistent only in that, as soon as others fall into step with him, he breaks ranks and heads off in the opposite direction.

Dylan has worked hard to make this simple point. His religious faiths have bounced all over the place. He cheerfully allowed one of his great protest anthems to be used to promote the Bank of Montreal. Last year, he popped up in a series of lingerie ads. Nothing, though, will enrage quite like the great prophet of musical protest appearing to throw in his lot with Starbucks.

Personally, I like it. He has struck a blow for musical individualism and has offered a useful corrective to some of the claims of musicians appearing in the Live8 concerts.

Saturday will doubtless produce some buzzy musical moments. It might even – extraordinary how potent cheap music is – influence the discussions of the semi-great and not-so-good who are gathering for the G8 summit.

But there is something faintly fascistic about all that pumped-up emotion being directed towards a vague but powerful political end. The way old songs are dusted down and recycled for propaganda purposes owes more to the advertising industry than to musical spirit. This is a showbiz occasion – from its opening Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ("It was 20 years ago today..." Get it?) to its final number The Long and Winding Road, once a little love song but now, according to the man who wrote it, representing "Africa's long walk to justice".

It has, in fact, been a very short and straight road for most of these musicians from playing for the benefit of themselves to making poverty history. Deciding whether to appear in what has been unblushingly described as "the greatest event in the history of entertainment" and "a moment that could change the world" is not, after all, the toughest of career decisions.

According to Sir Paul McCartney, one of the big beasts of rock who will be onstage, it is a climactic moment in the history of rock. "Something mighty has happened, way beyond anything we set out to do." Offering an unwitting contrast to Dylan's distaste for being regarded as a generational spokesman, Sir Paul happily argues that his songs, opinions and words are not just his but represent the ideas of an entire generation.

Something is lost when musicians start thinking and talking like this. Whatever may happen during the weekend's great orgasm of song and feeling, a few of us will still prefer our musicians to be perversely their own people, to belong to nobody's army, to be following the music in their own, private souls, without a white wristband in sight.

terblacker@aol.com