Music has played a pivotal role in the work of writer Chuck Klosterman: Throughout his career, he's has written essays about everything from hair metal to Coldplay. So it's no surprise that in his latest book, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined), Klosterman includes plenty of musical heroes and evildoers. He reveals how and why people pass judgment on bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and even the Eagles.

Klosterman also discusses his decision to write about Adolf Hitler, which he didn't originally intend on addressing. He argues that people's perception of Hitler as the embodiment of evil is so strong that even Bob Dylan — who in Klosterman's estimation is "the greatest non-reliable narrator in pop" — decided to keep his lyrics straightforward lest he be misinterpreted.

That got our host John Schaefer thinking — and writing — about how musicians reckon with Hitler.

Listen to Soundcheck's interview with Chuck Klosterman, read John Schaefer's blog post, and let us know in the comments below who your musical heroes or villains are.

This segment originally aired on Aug. 1, 2013.

Interview Highlights

Chuck Klosterman, on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as examples of good and evil:

The perception’s that the Beatles are good and the Rolling Stones are the bad version of them. But within the bands, interestingly, Paul McCartney is generally seen as the villain of the Beatles. He’s really the only Beatle that’s polarizing. Almost every other Beatle has a general positive sense towards [them].

In the Rolling Stones, over time, Mick Jagger has become sort of the villainous character, even though Keith Richards spent pretty much all of the seventies trying to be a villain on purpose. It’s interesting how that worked out — how time changes these things.

On Van Halen’s breakup as an example of how people choose to frame good or evil:

You could make a very good argument that both the David Lee Roth camp and the Van Halen camp made these huge mistakes and were missing the big picture. But what ended up happening is people pretty much decided what part of Van Halen they liked the most — what they thought was, to them, what made the band meaningful. And then they picked which side that was and then just believed their story.

On how Bob Dylan's stylistic changes when singing about Hitler on “With God on Our Side”:

When talking about the crucifixion of Jesus or Judas or all of these things, Bob Dylan, as his wont, is sort of unclear [about] what he’s precisely saying. But when he talks about World War II, he leaves no room for interpretation. It is the one time in the song when the lyrics are very straightforward, and no one could hear those songs and misinterpret what his intention was. So even Bob Dylan — who’s in the most rarefied position of our culture — even he is very uncomfortable saying anything about Hitler or Germany that a person could make a mistake on.