And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity(house

Above all, Dylan never pushed for group action or mass liberation. Each person had to be free by himself to walk his own lonesome road unfettered.

That record companies and pop magazines pushed Dylan as prophet was natural. If Dylan did not strenuously reject the title, he did not truly claim the mantle either. As early as 1964, Dylan could write songs like "My Back Pages," caricaturing his earlier moralism as over serious self righteousness:

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats

Too noble to neglect

Deceived me into thinking

I had something to protect

Good and bad, I define these terms

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

After "Like a Rolling Stone" the Newport fiasco, and his motocycle accident, Dylan hibernated, his resistance to being claimed by the Movement looking suspiciously like paranoia. He wrote two of his clearest statements during the early part of that period, "It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "Ballad of a Thin Man."

Both those songs were accented Monday night. Dylan sang his "Ballad" as though by now people would finally know what he meant:

...someone attacks your imagination

But nobody has any respect