And he said, “It’s not your books, it’s your music.” He said, “If you’re wondering how I know this, it’s because I was in the cell right next to Mandela for over 17 years. I could hear everything that was going down. They tried to kill him in the quarries, work him to death.” They pissed on him, they did every- thing they could to destroy Mandela, but like Jesus, he turned them. When he was elected President, all of the Nazi prison guards were yelling “Viva Mandela!” Anyway, he said what we did was we tried to smuggle in cassettes which was very difficult. Somehow Mandela got into his hands your first album, Sold American. And I heard the song “Sold Ameri- can” played a number of times. And then Mandela got on to another song of yours, and that was “Ride ‘Em Jewboy.” He said that for the better part of three years Mandela would play it every single night, late at night. And sometimes he would play it repeatedly. So clearly it was sustaining him - or one of the things that did it. And I started thinking about that, and it was almost fantastical, you know? It was almost unbelievable. And I started thinking about this recently, maybe a year ago. Why this song? I mean, other than its universal appeal. Why this song, when Joseph Heller’s favorite Kinky song is “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and Bill Clinton’s is “Waitress, Please Waitress, Come and Sit On My Face.” At first I thought, well, it’s the measure of a man - this is a great man. He can see beyond the problems of the blacks in Africa. He sees all of mankind. He sees us as a universal thing. Then I realized Mandela was a lawyer. I looked back over it and Mandela could not get into a law firm be- cause he was black. So the Jews took him. A Jewish law firm in Johannesburg, which was a bunch of real radicals but they loved Man- dela. They told him, “All you have to do Nel- son is stay out of politics, don’t be a trouble maker, and you’ll be the most famous lawyer
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in all of South Africa. Fortunately for us he did not take their advice. Like he told his 5- year-old daughter one night when she hugged him and asked, “Daddy, why are you gone so much?” He looked at her and said, “Because I have millions of little boys and girls I have to take care of all over the country.” At any rate, I was pretty sure that the Jews were Man- dela’s last colleagues and friends before he went away to prison. And maybe he missed them. That’s another possibility. When Tokyo was telling me this, I had a hard time believ- ing it. And then he said something that just rang with authenticity, and made me totally believe that it was true - I mean, it would be a crazy story to make up anyway- I mean, if Mandela had been listening to Bob Dylan, it probably wouldn’t even be a story. But Tokyo told me, “Now don’t be getting a swelled head about this, because you are not his favorite singer - maybe second or third- because his favorite was always Dolly Parton. And this strikes me as right. I don’t know if Dolly even knows this. But that made sense. So, over the past year I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Back in 1973 we made my first album, Sold American, with Tompall and the Glasier Brothers. And Chuck Glasier was co-produc- ing with me, and all we wanted was a hit. I would have never dreamed that years later Nelson Mandela would be playing “Ride ‘Em Jew Boy” in his prison cell. I talked to a friend of mine and he said you know, it’s nice to play in stadiums and make millions of dollars every night, but it might be even nicer to know that your music helped sustain Mandela and that he listened to every night while he was a political prisoner on Robben Island. Be- cause that fraternity of mankind is truly ethe- real, of Jesus and Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Mandela. And in today’s world, no- body else even comes close.
That’s amazing.
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