On Saturday, 4 May, 1974, Jimmy Carter took the stage at the University of Georgia School of Law to address an audience that included lawyers, journalists and the Democratic Party luminary Ted Kennedy. At the time, Carter was Governor of Georgia but could not run for reelection, so was starting to mull a longshot bid to become the next President of the United States. He used his speech to tear into the justice system in his own state and other parts of the country, arguing bluntly that it favored the rich and powerful at the expense of everybody else. Carter explained he got his understanding of justice from two sources. One was the work of the American Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. “The other source of my understanding about what’s right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan,” said Carter. “After listening to his records about ‘The Ballad of Hattie Carol’ and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘The Times, They Are a-Changing,’ I’ve learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modem society.”
Half a century before Kamala Harris embraced “brat summer”, it was pretty unusual for a prospective American president to align themselves with a musician in such a prominent way. Yet Carter – who died at the age of 100 on Sunday (29 December) – wasn’t shy about declaring how much he’d learned about American society listening to Dylan records. “I grew up as a landowner’s son,” he continued. “But I don’t think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, ‘I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More.’”
While Carter’s forthright declaration of love for rock’n’roll would have surprised the veteran lawyers listening on, it caught the ear of a younger generation. One of the journalists present that day was Hunter S Thompson, reporting for Rolling Stone. He was supposed to be covering Ted Kennedy’s run for President, but wrote later that as soon as he heard Carter mention Dylan he fetched his tape recorder. “It was a king hell bastard of a speech,” wrote Thompson, “and by the time it was over he had rung every bell in the room.” In December of that year, Carter officially announced his run for the Presidency and he was swept to office two years later.
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 