It must be tough to be Bob Dylan and have everything you wrote or said scrutinized and often misinterpreted, but I guess that’s bound to happen when you’re on the path to becoming a Nobel Laureate.
Decades after the release of Blonde on Blonde, pundits of all stripes are still weighing in on the meaning of the album’s title. When asked about it, Bob Dylan told Jann Wenner, “Well, I don’t even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith. . . I don’t know who thought of that. I certainly didn’t.” His failure to recall how the title came about opened the door to theories from a slew of self-styled Dylan experts. It’s about Edie Sedgwick . . . no, it’s about Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg . . . wait . . . it’s a tribute to the musical Brecht on Brecht . . . hold on . . . the initials of the title are B-O-B . . . guess again . . . it’s a reference to a rock star’s harem . . . er . . . or maybe a painting titled “White Square on White” . . . one more . . . it’s about the two “blond” guitars that appear in the documentary Eat the Document. (Wikipedia)
As I’ve always dreamed of becoming a pundit, I will add my two cents based on real-life experience. As a blonde who has gone down on many blondes, both male and female, I think I qualify as an expert on the subject. “Blonde on Blonde is about oral sex, dammit!”
“Where’s your evidence?” I hear you say. Well, if the President of the United States can claim that the 2020 election was rigged with no evidence whatsoever, why should I have to prove my assertion? We’re in a post-truth world, and I have the right to conjure up all the bullshit I want!
Now that I have made my case that the album title doesn’t mean dick, I will henceforth straighten up and fly right.
*****
Speaking of the Nobel Prize, when queried about how one should approach Dylan’s work, Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, replied, “I think that if you want to start reading or listening, you may start with Blonde on Blonde, the album from 1966. We’ve got many classics, and it’s an extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming and putting together refrains and his pictorial thinking.”
I agree with her assessment for the most part (except I would replace “pictorial” with “cinematic”), but I would not recommend Blonde on Blonde to a neophyte. Many of the lyrics represent a formidable challenge, in part because Dylan kept changing them between and even during the recording sessions. Many of them fail to sync with the official versions on his website, leaving one wondering which version is the real version. I would recommend the more accessible Highway 61 Revisited as a starting point for newbies.
The lyrics are interesting, but what I love most about Blonde on Blonde are the vibes. Initially, Dylan was set up to record his next album in New York in between concerts and a very private marriage ceremony (quite unlike Ms. Swift), but ten recording sessions with the Hawks (soon to become The Band) yielded nada. “Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, “Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn’t get one song … It was the band. But you see, I didn’t know that. I didn’t want to think that.” (Shelton, No Direction Home, The Life and Music of Bob Dylan.) Producer Bob Johnston suggested a change in scenery might do him good, an idea vehemently rejected by Dylan’s manager.
Bob Johnston had been urging him to move to the Columbia studio in Nashville, Tennessee, where Johnston lived. ‘Dylan’s answer, naturally, was “hmmmm,”’ says Johnston, making a thoughtful sound. ‘You know, he never said, “Yeah, let’s go!” Just “hmmmm.” He always was thinking about things. [Then] Grossman came up to me and said, “If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you’re gone.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You heard me. We got a thing going here.”’
Unsatisfied with tracks recorded with The Hawks in New York, Bob agreed with Bob Johnston’s suggestion that the album should be recorded in Nashville, and now that Bob had made his mind up there was nothing Grossman could do about it.
Robbie Robertson and Al Kooper were the only musicians invited from New York. The other musicians were well-known Nashville session men, led by Charlie McCoy. The other musicians were well-known Nashville session men, led by Charlie McCoy. ‘He wanted someone who was not strictly from the old country school, [who] was kind of into R&B and into rock ’n’ roll,’ says McCoy, who grew up listening to the blues on the radio, as Bob had, and was noted as a fine guitarist and exceptional harmonica player. ‘Then we assembled a rhythm section for him.’ Kenny Buttrey played drums; Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins played piano; Wayne Moss played guitar; and Henry Strzelecki was on bass. These musicians had made countless famous recordings – including major hits by Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley – and were in such demand they often fitted several sessions into one day. (Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (pp. 202-203). (Function). Kindle Edition.)
Culturally speaking, it was a long way from Greenwich Village to Nashville in the 1960s, and the locals did not exactly greet the foreigners with open arms:
Bob arrived in Nashville in mid-February 1966 with scraps of songs. He spent the daytime in his room at the Ramada Inn working up ideas as Kooper sat at the piano playing chords ‘like a human cassette machine.’ When they went into the studio, it seemed to Robertson at least that the session men were circumspect of a young artist whose work they did not know well. ‘Everybody was a little standoffish. They were [doing] their sweet southern country boy thing with Bob, but they were very, very … distant otherwise,’ says Robertson. ‘I wasn’t sure why we were there.’
Bob and his friends looked strange in Nashville. Al Kooper was tricked out like a Carnaby Street character and got into trouble with local youths as soon as he ventured downtown. Luckily, Elvis Presley’s bodyguard Lamar Fike was on hand for protection. Bob was something else again. By this time he had a thicket of hair so bushy and tangled it might have made a nest for a bird. ‘To go over and whisper something in his ear, it was like sticking your face in a bush,’ says Kenny Buttrey. (Sounes, (p. 203).
It didn’t help that the star attraction wasn’t a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but it all worked out beautifully in the end: “Bob kept his distance from the musicians, as he did from most people. He made more albums with these Nashville players in the years to come, but he never spent any time with them socially; he did not keep in contact with them between sessions and he rarely talked to them when he was in the studio. The music they made together, though, stands for these players as some of the best fun they ever had in the studio.” (Sounes, p. 208) Dylan would give them sketchy instructions like “this is a blues number” or “I want it to sound like this” and trusted the musicians to figure it out. Most of the songs on the album consist of three or four common chords, so the challenge facing the musicians was more about capturing the feel of a song and anticipating crescendos and decrescendos. “He would usually run the song down once for the musicians, but never, as Buttrey recalls, ‘completely from top to bottom.’ Then they would play whatever way seemed most natural. Often songs were recorded in one or two takes. The musicians had no realistic idea of the length of the songs, or in what direction they would run, because Bob would ad-lib during the recordings. ‘You had to be on your toes,’ says bassist Henry Strzelecki. ‘[But] we could count on his timing.’ (Sounes, p. 205)
Due to the length of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” Bob Dylan unintentionally created the first double album in history, opening the door for other musicians to follow suit with mixed results. Better still, he shattered music business tradition by giving credit where credit was due. “Blonde on Blonde reached number nine in the U.S. charts, and its success helped change Nashville’s music scene. Non-country acts flocked to the city to try and emulate Dylan’s sound, and the session musicians he worked with were sought after, becoming minor stars in their own right because for the first time in the history of Nashville, their names were listed on a record sleeve. ‘One of the things I would like to thank Dylan for, publicly, is putting names on albums,’ says Wayne Moss. ‘That didn’t happen before he got here.’”(Sounes p. 208)
One more thing before we explore the songs . . . the pundits also spend a helluva lot of time trying to identify the women in Dylan’s songs. I find those efforts insulting and degrading because they reduce the lyrics to cheap gossip. It doesn’t fucking matter who served as the muse; what matters in a poem is whether or not people can either relate the words to their own experience or provide them with a perspective on life they hadn’t considered before.
On with the show!
All songs by Bob Dylan, Copyright © 1966 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1994 by Dwarf Music
Side One
“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”: Howard Sounes notes in his bio that Dylan gave the musicians not one, but two instructions for this song (I guess Bob was in a talkative mood that night). The first was “he wanted a sound like a marching band, but not too slick.” The second proved to be the key to the creation of one of the most delightful album-opening songs in history.
Bob never talked much to the musicians, but late one evening he asked them: ‘What do you guys do here?’ Moss and the others muttered something about playing golf. ‘That’s not what I mean. What do you do here?’ They realized he was asking what they did to get high. They said they occasionally had a beer. Bob said he had a new song, the lyric of which included the refrain ‘everybody must get stoned.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to do this with a bunch of straight people. We’ll send out for something.’
Studio custodian Ed Gazzar was sent to the nearby Ireland’s bar with an order for Leprechaun cocktails – potent, green-colored concoctions that came in a shot glass. ‘Except when the guy came back with ’em for us they were not in shot glasses, they were in large milk-shake cartons,’ says Moss. It was extremely unusual to drink at a recording session at the time, but all the rules were being broken. ‘It takes a very small amount of that to really knock you on your butt,’ says Moss. ‘We had a huge amount.’ Marijuana joints were passed around. Pig Robbins and Henry Strzelecki accepted. ‘I got pretty wiped out because I’m not a grasser and it was pretty strong stuff,’ recalls Strzelecki. Although some of the musicians remained completely straight, including Charlie McCoy, Robbins says he and others were ‘all fucked up.’ (Sounes (pp. 205-206).
Party time!
Charlie McCoy responded to Dylan’s first request immediately and put in a call to trombonist Wayne (Doc) Butler, who immediately headed for the studio. Meanwhile, the inebriated players decided it would be fun (and consistent with “not too slick”) to switch instruments. Guitarist Moss wanted to play bass, so bassist Henry Strzelecki moved over to the organ, leaving Al Kooper to play tambourine. In a “how-in-the-fuck did he do that?” experience, Strzelecki found out that he couldn’t work the organ pedals with his feet, so he got on the floor and used his hands, “creating a comical dom, dom, dom, d-d-d-dom sound.” Meanwhile, Kenny Buttrey was busy tearing apart his drum kit, then “set up the bass in two hard-back chairs facing each other. When everybody was ready, around midnight, Buttrey counted the band off by whomping the side of his bass with a timpani mallet. He played a splashy hi-hat with his right hand and his snare with his left, ‘so that I couldn’t get too fancy with it.’” Without time for a warm-up, Butler follows the lead-in with a suitably shaky trombone . . . then the fun really begins.
Although he was on the floor, Strzelecki had his head up by a microphone and was braying with laughter. ‘I was so stoned, I was laughing through the whole track, man.’ Soon everybody was laughing, including Bob, who stumbled over the lyrics as he watched the musicians go crazy. ‘We were having a marvelous time,’ says Moss. After four and a half minutes, everybody put down their instruments and went into the control room to hear the playback. They were slapping one another on the back and saying what a great song this was going to turn out to be when it was finished. Buttrey put his arm around Bob. ‘Hey, Bob, what’s the name of this song we’re working on?’ he asked, facetiously. They had heard ‘everybody must get stoned’ so many times it seemed obvious this would be the title. ‘“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,”’ replied Bob, without a flicker of smile. Furthermore, it had not been a rehearsal. The song was finished. It was released as a single one month later and rose to number two in the charts. Sounes, (pp. 206-207).
I checked Bob’s website, and yes indeedy, the official lyrics do not quite sync with the lyrics on the recording. It’s important to note that “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” was not the first song the band recorded, indicating that the good vibes had already been established and the singer-lyricist had formed a solid relationship with the musicians without wasting words.
Dylan chose the title because he knew that a song titled “Everybody Must Get Stoned” would be banned by radio stations, but the switch failed to do the trick. The song was banned by some radio stations in the U.S. and U.K. because it was allegedly a drug song, in part due to the use of the word “stoned” and in part due to a claim published in Time Magazine that a “rainy day woman” was junkie slang for a joint. I asked my hippie father, born and raised in Haight-Ashbury, about that moniker, and he responded, “Never heard of it, but it might have been an East Coast thing.” Dylan denied that he ever wrote a drug song, and though I think the key line may feel like “when people are stoning you, you need to get stoned,” it’s obvious that the stoning is more biblical and Shirley Jackson than getting high. It’s no wonder that Dylan would write a song about stoning, as he was stoned for going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, hence the line “I would not feel so all alone.”
There are a gazillion reasons why people are subject to stoning. Needless to say, you will always get stoned when you are different. You can get stoned when “you’re trying to be good” because people sense that you think you’re hot shit. You can get stoned for being too pretty or too ugly “when you’re walking on the street.” It was common for a young person in the 60s to get stoned “when you are young and able” because they were able to see that the world needed to change and the previous generation wanted to hold on to their power. Rosa Parks got stoned for “tryin’ to keep your seat.” In a competitive, capitalist society, you’re bound to get stoned “when you’re tryin’ to make a buck/then they’ll stone you, and then they’ll say ‘good luck.'” Dylan and many others got stoned by the Establishment for “playing your guitar.” Sadly, you could have gotten stoned for being forced to fight in Vietnam. “They’ll stone you and then say you are brave/They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave.” Those lines may appear to be an odd fit for such a playful song, but I think Dylan was telling us to expect stoning from time to time, while remembering you have lots of company and at least “you’re not alone.” From Wikipedia: “Dylan finally explained” the song when speaking to New York radio host Bob Fass in 1986: “‘Everybody must get stoned’ is like when you go against the tide … you might in different times find yourself in an unfortunate situation and so to do what you believe in sometimes … some people they just take offense to that. You can look through history and find that people have taken offense to people who come out with a different viewpoint on things.”
And it’s perfectly okay to get stoned if you do so in moderation.
I was shocked by the news that “In 2013, readers of Rolling Stone voted “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” the third-worst of Dylan’s songs. The magazine’s Andy Green wrote that “today many fans feel it’s the only weak moment on the otherwise flawless Blonde on Blonde“. (Wikipedia). I guess the human passion for stoning will never end.
“Pledging My Time”: No, Blonde on Blonde is not flawless. This stew of delta and Chicago blues was the B-side of the shortened single version of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” and though the band does its part and Dylan delivers one of his best renderings on the harmonica, the lyrics fall between ho-hum and “say wut?” It also suffers from comparisons to Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen,” one of my all-time favorite blues songs.
“Visions of Johanna”: Various interpretations of this mélange of beat poetry and symbolism exist on the internet, but the one closest to my view came from The Yale Herald:
No song better demonstrates Dylan’s wild imagination and poetic prowess than “Visions of Johanna,” in which he finds himself in a relationship with one woman but longs for another. Although he tries to convince himself that he is content with Louise, he cannot fight off thoughts of the angelic and unattainable beauty, Johanna. Dylan invites the listener to the frontlines of a psychological battle against these visions, which overcome him and then become him. He severs his mind from his body, creating an out of body experience in which his conscience, conquered by his fantasy with Johanna, separates from a physical self that is still stranded in reality with Louise.
Dylan opens by introducing Louise, who “holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it.” In many ways, Louise is still a mystery, only known to the listener through the lights which “flicker from the opposite loft,” pipes which “just cough,” and country music which “plays soft,” imbuing the scene with gloom. If Louise is in the “opposite loft” from Dylan, then seeing her “and her lover so entwined” in the flickering light is “temptin” him; he wants to be with her but she is with someone else, and he is “stranded,” alone. Later, however, he describes Louise as “just near,” as if beside him. But why would he refer to himself in the third-person as “her lover?” And if Louise is actually by his side, why does he feel trapped and helpless in her company? The final line, “these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind,” ties everything together: Dylan longs for Johanna, hence he feels “stranded” with Louise. The word “conquer” seems to imply that the persona Dylan conjures is in a psychological battle against these visions, with no choice but to surrender. He is not a jealous onlooker after all. Instead, Dylan uses two different characters to draw the distinction between his body, “stranded” with Louise, and his mind — elsewhere, racked with thoughts of Johanna.
As others have noted, I also happen to agree that Louise represents the mundane and Johanna the spiritual, indicating that the latter is the embodiment of carnal desire and Johanna is a symbol of unconditional love. The Yale Herald was also spot on regarding the “little boy” verse:
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain
It’s so hard to get on
Yale interpretation: “Now detached from his body, Dylan examines himself from the perspective of an outsider, aware of his flaws from this more objective point of view. He describes a “little boy lost” who “takes himself so seriously,” and “brags of his misery.” Dylan conjures a surreal image of his conscience looking down from above at his physical self. He sees an immature, misguided “little” boy who remains “entwined with Louise” even though, deep down, he wants Johanna.”
I knew a guy in high school struggling with this very same problem. He wanted the beautiful and seemingly too-hard-to-get chick all the boys wanted, but could never work up the courage to climb up her pedestal to ask her out, so he kept on fucking the average girl who used sex to build up her self-esteem. They say that high schoolers form cliques, but the dynamics are closer to a caste system.
The “museum” verse is more accessible once you know that Dylan described museums as “cemeteries” with paintings that fall short of the ideal when compared to Johanna: “But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.” The Yale Review closes with a solid interpretation of the closing verse, contrasting imperfection with perfection. (Italics mine)
As Dylan accepts that he will never reunite with Johanna, his conception of the perfect love, he realizes that this “fiddler” has no choice but to “step to the road” and move on. As he leaves Louise behind, he “writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed / On the back of the fish truck that loads,” which might be his way of asserting that he ultimately made everything right with her, that he is not a parasite after all. He walks by a “fish truck” loading on the dirty street and the foul, overwhelming smell hits him in the face, a perfect metaphor for the unpleasant imperfections of life. As his thoughts of Johanna become too much to bear, his “conscience explodes” and “harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain.” Skeleton keys are specifically designed to open many doors. Dylan uses this phrase as a brilliant double entendre, invoking the surreal image of a ghastly, skin-and-bones piano player while also suggesting that his harmonica unlocks doors to higher spiritual realms, where “these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.” Music is his only means to reach this transcendental plane, and to express these abstract desires that torture his psyche. And through this creative channel emerges this tragic and poetic masterpiece.
Music is more than “
“One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”: This was the only song from the New York sessions that made it onto the album, and Dylan was quite proud of it, arguing that as a single, it was as good as “Like A Rolling Stone.” (Wikipedia) Well, the Brits didn’t think much of the song as it peaked at #33 on the U.K. charts, and it did even worse in Dylan’s homeland: #119. In a weird flip of the coin, American critics generally praised the song while the British critics emptied their ammunition.
Americans: “Dave Marsh, who listed the single as among the 1001 greatest ever made, wrote in 1999 that it was difficult to understand how it could ‘flop so badly’. Cash Box described the single as a “‘raunchy, low-down romantic lament’ delivered with emotion.”
British: “Maureen Cleave dismissed the song as ‘Quite the worst record that he, or anybody else, has ever made.’ She criticized the ‘irritating tinkly accompaniment and lyrics that are a constant embarrassment.’ The Evening Post review suggested that the track lacked quality and commented on Dylan’s apparent lack of effort on vocals, which was described as ‘just a groaning noise.’ Liverpool Echo commented on Dylan’s ‘curiously exaggerated vocal delivery … [and] sarcastic voice’ and concluded that he was not a capable vocalist.”
Maureen Cleave should have had her ears examined. Paul Griffin’s piano is simply outstanding, and far, far, far away from “tinkly.” I can understand that Dylan’s voice is an acquired taste, but “groaning” does not come close to describing his confident vocals on this song. The lyrics about mutual misunderstanding in a relationship may not qualify as poetic, but they capture the confusion and defensiveness of two people experiencing mutual attraction but are unable to click because they really never open up to each other.
I couldn’t see when it started snowin’
Your voice was all that I heard
I couldn’t see where we were goin’
But you said you knew an’ I took your wordAnd then you told me later, as I apologized
That you were just kiddin’ me, you weren’t really from the farm
An’ I told you, as you clawed out my eyes
That I never really meant to do you any harmBut, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you’re supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you
Fortunately, today’s critics recognize the song’s value. “Retrospective reviews have been very positive, with Griffin’s piano playing often highlighted for praise. Michael Gray felt that the constant rising and falling of the music coupled with Dylan’s delivery of words, like “pers-on-al” and “un-der-stood“, combined to produce an impressive “musical whole”. (Wikipedia) I will add that the song has a more interesting chord structure than most Dylan songs, with different patterns in the verses, bridge, and chorus, combining both major and minor chords.
Side Two
“I Want You”: The last song recorded for the album is a bit unusual in that the music outshines the lyrics. Unable to figure out what the weird imagery has to do with assuring his squeeze of his desire for her, I checked out various interpretations varying from a remake of Orpheus and Eurydice to Brian Jones + Anita Pallenberg (again) to an expression of lust. Those interpretations may cover a few lines, but none offer a comprehensible take of the entire poem.
The music is light and pleasant, highlighted by melodic counterpoints from Kooper’s organ and Charlie McCoy’s guitar. Though the singer’s voice isn’t particularly melodic, the melody itself is equally pleasant and both hummable and singable (if you can remember the words). “I Want You” is certainly more poppy than most Dylan songs, and I can understand how it landed in the top 20.
“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”: It took twenty takes to get it right, and after the musicians left the studio, Dylan was still messing around with the lyrics and did a few overdubs. In Bob Dylan The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994, Clinton Heylin attributed the retakes to problems in the arrangement, but it’s also true that Dylan reworked the lyrics in between the takes.
I found two comments that helped me make sense of the lyrics. “‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’ unfolded like a movie. Bob chuckled as he composed these remarkable lyrics, working with pencil on Ramada Inn notepaper.” (Sounes, p. 205). From Wikipedia: “The sociologist John Wells argued that the song ‘cannot possibly be wholly experienced as a truly remarkable work of art’ from reading the lyrics alone, but only when listening to Dylan’s performance. He posited that after listening to the track numerous times, listeners would realize, ‘Mobile no longer just means being stuck in an Alabama city, but … represents the grotesque, turbulent world we all inhabit.'”
For the record, Mobile is actually a pretty cool place for the most part, but like in all cities, there are spots that form a dark underbelly that any sensible person would avoid. Of course, Dylan heads straight for the underbelly where the undesirable characters roam to develop his musical film noir.
Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I’d ask him what the matter was
But I know that he don’t talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues againWell, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues againMona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
An’ I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that
But then again, there’s only one I’ve met
An’ he just smoked my eyelids
An’ punched my cigarette”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
According to Songfacts, “Dylan did offer a rare song interpretation when he told Robert Shelton, author of No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, that the ragman is Satan. Many of Dylan’s lyrics are filled with biblical images, but shrouded in inscrutable stories.” No kidding! The “tape” could be recording tape, but Dylan never recorded in Mobile. I think the second and third verses are less inscrutable and paint a clearer picture of “the grotesque, turbulent world.” Speaking of grotesque . . .
Grandpa died last week
And now he’s buried in the rocks
But everybody still talks about
How badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew he’d lost control
When he built a fire on Main Street
And shot it full of holes
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Hey, dude! If you knew Grandpa was losing it, why didn’t you drag his ass to the doctor’s office? Oh, I forgot . . . you’re stuck in Mobile. Sorry!
The next two scenes reflect the growing skepticism regarding politics and traditional religion that blossomed in the America of the 60s as our hero runs into a couple of Establishment figures: a senator giving out free tickets to his son’s wedding to secure another term in Congress and a “preacher with twenty pounds of headlines stapled to his chest.” I could find no evidence of scandals involving preachers in the 60s (that was an 80s thing), so I assume that Dylan was referring to preachers who employed commercial marketing tactics to bamboozle the flock. Bob Dylan has always been religious in one form or another, and I think he would have found those techniques thoroughly disgusting.
The final three verses depict our hero getting drunk, dabbling in sexual fantasy that never comes to fruition, and wondering how he might avoid Groundhog Day syndrome. Despite the occasionally arcane references, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” makes for a most interesting and insightful film.
Make the damn movie, Bob!
“Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”: I don’t mind the ridicule of fashion fetishes (both luxurious and fake), but the music is boring, and I loathe the tone of Robbie Robertson’s guitar. Hard pass.
“Just Like a Woman”: Yuck! Stereotypes galore! The song assumes that all women are takers, not givers, and that we all make love in the same way, which is utter bullshit. And we don’t cry like little girls; we cry because we have superior emotional intelligence! From Wikipedia: “Marion Meade wrote in The New York Times that ‘there’s no more complete catalogue of sexist slurs’ and went on to note that in the song Dylan ‘defines women’s natural traits as greed, hypocrisy, whining and hysteria.'” The men rushed to his defense in condescending terms, hinting at another female stereotype—“women make something out of nothing.” The only defense I can provide is that the song was written during a period when second-wave feminism was in its infancy.
I want the Bob Dylan who sang “All I Really Want to Do,” not this guy! Double hard pass.
Side Three
“Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine): On the other hand, women are human and can be lying, cheating bitches just like some men can be lying, cheating assholes. I think Dylan shows a lot of class in dealing with his dishonest and unfaithful partner when she finally confesses what he already knew. His refusal to tell her why his kisses aren’t as hot as those of her alternate stud indicates that he wasn’t all that interested in her anyway, and he’s cool with letting her go.
You say you’re sorry
For tellin’ stories
That you know I believe are true
You say ya got some
Other kinda lover
And yes, I believe you do
You say my kisses are not like his
But this time I’m not gonna tell you why that is
I’m just gonna let you pass
Yes, and I’ll go last
Then time will tell who fell
And who’s been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine
And don’t let the door hit you in your ass on your way out. Bye-bye!
As for the music, did those Nashville boys know how to swing or what? The bouncy rhythm makes for a nice ride, and the more varied chord progression keeps things interesting, especially when they end the lines on a slightly dissonant D9. This was the opening number when Dylan toured with The Band in 1974, and it not only wowed the crowd, but one of the performances was captured on tape and appears on the album Before the Flood.
“Temporary Like Achilles”: All Dylan had to do was make a reference to Achilles, and literary critics immediately assumed that the song was inspired by the Iliad. Achilles doesn’t make his appearance until the last verse, and while Dylan describes him as “hungry, like a man in drag,” one scholar linked that image to the part in the Iliad when his mother disguises him in her clothes. That’s one helluva stretch, and there are no other references to the Iliad anywhere else in the song.
Dylan plays the role of a guy desperate to consummate a relationship with a certain woman and refuses to realize the woman wants nothing to do with him, even after she employs a scorpion to chase him away and hires Achilles to block his path to pussy. He spends a lot of time whining about how hard-hearted she is and seems to believe that he deserves a fuck because he wants a fuck.
Achilles is in your alleyway
He don’t want me here, he does brag
He’s pointing to the sky
And he’s hungry, like a man in drag
How come you get someone like him to be your guard?
You know I want your lovin’
Honey, but you’re so hard
The song works as an exposé of male obliviousness, and if they’d slotted it immediately after “Just Like a Woman,” I might have been more inclined to forgive Dylan for his obliviousness in that song. I do like the smoky, bluesy arrangement, especially Joe South’s guitar arpeggios and the interplay between Hargus “Pig” Robbins on acoustic piano and Al Kooper on electric piano (adjusted to sound a bit more like an organ).
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”: Sigh. Another song about sexual frustration . . . or is it? Most critics think so, latching on to the “yellow railroad” as a metaphor used by blues musicians to depict driving one’s boner into a woman’s sweet spot. Unfortunately for the critics, the songwriter had a completely different take:
“That’s about as complete as you can be. Every single letter in that line. It’s all true. On a literal and on an escapist level . . . Getting back to the yellow railroad, that could be from looking someplace. Being a performer, you travel the world. You’re not just looking out of the same window every day. You’re not just walking down the same old street. So you must make yourself observe whatever. But most of the time it hits you. You don’t have to observe. It hits you. Like, “yellow railroad” could have been a blinding day when the sun was so bright on a railroad someplace and it stayed on my mind… These aren’t contrived images. These are images which are just in there and have got to come out.” (from Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo, courtesy of Wikipedia).
Once again, Dylan kept changing the lyrics during the recording session, leaving them out of sync with the official lyrics. Still, he did manage to stick to the rhyme scheme featuring mosaic rhymes, alternating between masculine and feminine rhymes. I’ll share the first verse to demonstrate the technique because it contains more solid evidence of a Marie-induced erection as he bangs away on his “trumpet”:
Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can’t jump it
Sometimes it gets so hard, you see
I’m just sitting here beating on my trumpet
With all these promises you left for me
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?
Like the guy in “Temporary Like Achilles,” he can’t take a hint:
Well, I waited for you when I was half sick
Yes, I waited for you when you hated me
Well, I waited for you inside of the frozen traffic
When you knew I had some other place to be
Now, where are you tonight, sweet Marie?
We eventually learn that the poor sap is writing to Marie from a prison cell with a view of her place, now nothing but rubble:
Now, I been in jail when all my mail showed
That a man can’t give his address out to bad company
And now I stand here lookin’ at your yellow railroad
In the ruins of your balcony
Wond’ring where you are tonight, sweet Marie
I would advise him not to take a shower with the other prisoners.
The music has been compared to the British Invasion sound, and I would narrow that down to the Dave Clark Five thanks to Buttrey’s powerhouse drumming and Kooper’s ever-present organ. Critics have rated this song as one of Dylan’s best, and while I don’t think I’d place it in the top fifty, I will admit it is an enjoyable listening experience.
“Fourth Time Around”: Many critics have interpreted this song as a parody of the Lennon-McCartney song “Norwegian Wood” and its alleged similarity, excited about the opportunity to set up a battle between the stars and fill their rags with juicy gossip that fans would eat up like hotcakes. Their “evidence” was a comment made by Lennon in an interview with Rolling Stone where he shared his reaction to “Fourth Time Around” when Dylan played it for him: ” I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, ‘ What do you think? I said, I don’t like it. I didn’t like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn’t like what I felt I was feeling – I thought it was an out-and-out skit, you know, but it wasn’t. It was great. I mean he wasn’t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.”
Hmm . . . I wonder what lines the song freaked him out . . . oh, there they are!
- “And I tried to make sense/Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair/That leaned up against/Her Jamaican rum.”
- “And I, I never took much/I never asked for your crutch/Now don’t ask for mine.”
In an article titled “John Lennon: Disability Rights Champion?” Richard C Brown quotes Ray Coleman’s John Lennon: The Definitive Biography. “It is well known that his ‘bizarre obsession for cripples, spastics, any human deformities and people on crutches … was a subject which was to manifest itself throughout John Lennon’s years of fame.’”
Want more? Here’s what Cynthia Lennon had to say in a piece on Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “Part of touring with the Beatles meant meeting fans, including those with disabilities. As noted in Cynthia Lennon’s memoir John, stopping performing meant the end of this ‘particular discomfort’ for her ex-husband. ‘John had always reacted badly to disability, so for him, this was little short of a nightmare,’ she wrote. ‘In our student days, he’d mocked the disabled and drawn ghoulish cartoons of cripples. For some reason, disability terrified him, though he could never admit it,’ she continued. “It made him feel inadequate and guilty.”
To put a cap on this thread, Dylan wrote the song and played it for the Beatles before John and Paul wrote “Norwegian Wood,” so the “Fourth Time Around” couldn’t have possibly been a parody. The melodies are somewhat similar but not even close to plagiarism, and the chord sequences are quite different. Obviously, “Norwegian Wood” has a touch of Indian influence thanks to George, but Dylan noted that the musical influence for “Fourth Time Around” came from the other side of the world: “Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that “the guitar figure repeats a rippling, romantic Mexican cadence”. He related that Dylan told him that he had always been “hip to” Tejano music and a type of Mexican folk-pop music known as “cangacero”, and that these had influenced his songs “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” as well as “4th Time Around”. (Wikipedia)
At this point I’m getting very tired of fucked up relationship songs, so I’ll just congratulate Charlie McCoy and Wayne Moss for their superb acoustic guitar work and move on.
p.s. I firmly believe that “Norwegian Wood” is a far better song.
“Obviously Five Believers”: Yawn. Another derivative blues number that earned plenty of praise from pro-Dylan critics for his ability to sing the blues. I beg to differ with that assessment, and I still have problems with Robbie Robertson’s trebly tone. Classic double album filler.
Side Four
“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”: I have to break my promise not to name the woman who inspired the song, and for good reason:
Joan Baez has been suggested as the inspiration for ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.’ Baez’s friend, Nancy Carlen, believes the reference to Cannery Row in the last verse relates to a cafe in California that Baez and Bob frequented. The song is not about Baez, however, but rather a paean to Sara Dylan. It is no coincidence that metal is used twice as a metaphor in the lyric – Sara grew up the daughter of a scrap-metal dealer. It was Sara who had a former husband who worked in magazines, as per verse five – magazine photographer Hans Lownds. Most obviously it was Sara who had the sad eyes. Three months into his marriage, Bob was celebrating his wife with a truly monumental love song. Here was evidence of a deep-seated romantic nature, although it was something Bob did everything he could to cover up in everyday life, and which he wrapped in metaphor in the song. The imagery was so deft, and his marriage was so low-profile – many of the musicians who worked on the record did not even know Bob was married – that it is little wonder few realized who the song was about at the time. (Sounes, p. 204-205)
This was the first song recorded for Blonde on Blonde, and the first time the Nashville boys experienced what it was like to work with Bob Dylan.
The musicians were called for the session around two in the afternoon. Bob showed up four hours late and still he had not finished writing the lyrics for the song he wanted to record. The musicians left the studio so he could work. They hung out in offices downstairs, playing cards and sending out for food. Some gathered around a Ouija board and tried to divine whether these curious recording sessions would come to anything. Hours passed. In the middle of the night, when the musicians were fighting to stay awake, they were called back into the studio because Bob had a song ready: ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.’
After only the sketchiest rundown by Bob, the red recording light came on and they attempted a take. It was a slow, bluesy love song in which Bob used a series of arresting images to describe a woman. She had ‘flesh like silk’ and a ‘face like glass.’ He intoned the similes like a man in a trance. Three minutes into the number, Bob showed no sign of winding up the song. The musicians were used to playing tunes that lasted on average two minutes and twenty seconds, which was the optimum length for radio. But each time ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ neared a place where it might have ended, and the musicians instinctively worked to a climax of sound, Bob let it drop down and started another verse. ‘I was playing one-handed, looking at my watch,’ says Kenny Buttrey. ‘And it kept on and kept on … We’d never heard anything like this before.’ The musicians fought off tiredness, trying to stay focused. After more than eleven minutes, Bob signaled that the song was finished. It was the longest popular song recorded up to that time, at eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds, five times the length of pop songs of the day. It would take up the whole fourth side of Blonde on Blonde, which, also unusually, would be a double album. ‘That was the introduction to Bob Dylan,’ says Charlie McCoy, who went home exhausted. ‘That’s something you don’t forget.” (Sounes p. 203-204)
It took four takes to get it right, but the boys eventually synced with the vibe and learned how to follow the cues of this most idiosyncratic artist. When you compare that to the 100+ takes that it took to record “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by four guys who had played with each other for years, you have to give them credit for working at lightning speed.
No outsider can interpret the lyrics to such a personal song, but you can certainly hear the tender love in Dylan’s vocals and appreciate the verses that ring true for you. Here’s mine:
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims
And your matchbook songs and your gypsy hymns
Who among them would try to impress you?
There’s nothing so validating as being placed on a pedestal by someone who truly loves you. Of all the songs on Blonde on Blonde, this is my favorite because it reveals that the iconic artist is a genuine, loving human being.
*****
I’m sure Dylan received some stoning from folkies and those who wanted to hear more protest songs, but for fuck’s sake, people, you have to let an artist grow! The move to Nashville worked wonders, and he would return to Music City to record his next two studio albums. Though I didn’t particularly care for some of the songs, I would have included them had I been the producer because of those marvelous vibes.
Bob Dylan has probably earned more honors than any poet or musician you care to name: The Nobel Prize in Literature, a Pulitzer Prize Citation, the Presidential Meddle of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center Honors, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. A pretty impressive list indeed, but what’s missing is the one award coveted by every musician on the planet . . . until now.
Congratulations, Bob! You’ve earned a spot on the altrockchick’s menu bar!
