*You can listen to any of the songs mentioned in this article by clicking here and scrolling down to the song name. - ed. 

Why can’t we get enough of Bob Dylan? Why are we such voracious consumers of all that he produces – hell, even if we loathe the vehicle, even if, like me, you saw a CD of songs sold through Starbucks that had supposedly influenced Dylan, you bought it anyway, hating yourself the whole time for buying into anything that had anything to do with Starbucks and music, and in particular with Dylan - not because he’s some saint, but because part of you somehow figured he was above that fray. Mind you, if you’re in there in the first place, the question to ask yourself is why the hell he should be “above” something you clearly are not.

Let’s face it, love it or hate it, Starbucks is convenient and a convenient vehicle and stopping and meeting place and we use it. Why shouldn’t Dylan?

For as much as we want to ascribe to him, Dylan never claimed to be more than a “song and dance man” although he has said he was a poet at various times, Dylan is our entertainer, he tells us. It’s okay for him to do Victoria’s Secret or Cadillac commercials because, shit, why shouldn’t he? It’s not like he has sold out, because he never bought in, and if you think he did buy into the whole peace protest movement, then you’re sadly mistaken. It wasn’t that Dylan was ever against peace – nobody would say that because that’s just stupid (unless your Dick Cheney or George Bush, you’re not usually against peace and even the war-mongers don’t want war necessarily; it’s the spoils of war they are looking for. War is simply a necessary byproduct, and that’s it. An unfortunate but necessary side-effect of greed).

Per Dylan and the peace protest movement it was more that he formed what can best be described as a strategic alliance with the Queen of Folk herself – Joan Baez – and Dylan put himself in the position of being the King of Folk and he gave the people what they wanted…until he didn’t… and then they hated him and he became their “Judas.”  He was “Judas” for supposedly “abandoning” (abandoned love?) something he never claimed to really be a part of in the first place. No. Dylan was never Judas - Dylan was and remains simply Dylan, protean, doing his own thing, morphing from album to album and this is what keeps us coming back and this too is what brings new people to him.

Even in the Scorsese documentary, “No Direction Home”, Baez talks about the fact that protestors would wonder, When is Dylan going to turn up for a sit-in or whatever and she felt frustrated and said, Don’t you get it??? Because he never or rarely, did show up. Again, doesn’t mean he lacked or lacks any principles, only that he didn’t buy into picketing and marching and thinking that he would necessarily change the world that way.

I think Dylan genuinely liked Baez – likely even loved her. He had to in order for any of it to work, so to speak, so when we speak about Dylan using Baez as a vehicle it’s never so simple; there was love there. It's apparent even in photographs of the two and certainly the intensity of the breakup when Dylan met Sara. There was and likely still is genuine emotion between the two. Nobody is one dimensional and nobody is trying to cut down a relationship that was, but it is naïve to say that Dylan did not to some extent ride on Baez’s coattails knowing exactly what he was doing. He did. She invited him on stage and he went. He was hungry and went to New York City with a mission and accomplished that and some people loved him for it, giving them hope and holding him up as "theirs" and others hated him for it and out of that surely certain songs were born, one of them "Positively 4th Street" (Dylan lived on 4th Street with Suze Rotolo, although to say that the song is about her is one-dimensional. If anything it is more likely that the song is about a group of people who resented this new comer's quick rise. Yes, they probably would have rather seen him paralyzed; none of them would come out just once and scream it.

Baez helped make Bobby Zimmerman into Bob Dylan and that’s okay because she surely knew what she was doing. She couldn't have been that naive as she herself has said in No Direction Home. She knew he would be big and she was right.

Baez’s major thorn was that she expected he would reciprocate the stage-time she had given him during the ’65 tour and Dylan did not, choosing instead to save the limelight for himself, placing the spotlight solely on him. Maybe that was a lousy thing to do. I don’t know. He certainly had invited her on stage before then and they had performed together (Philharmonic 64, other times for sure, and later in the Rolling Thunder Revue), but not during the ’65 tour, but by then, things were essentially over and winding down – even if Baez didn’t know it, there was something afoot in the under-tow.

This is what happens. Maybe something is happening and we just don’t know what it is; maybe we’re not so different from Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones who wears suspenders, whose first name we or he can’t say because “I’ll get sued” Dylan says in one interview, yet he howls out the song and bangs it out on those piano keys that there can be little doubt that Dylan has his missiles locked and loaded onto one specific individual and while most of us have guessed who it is, or taken our best guess anyway (Max Jones of Melody Maker magazine, who was a critic and who didn’t ‘get’ Dylan’s music; other theories include Jeffrey John Owens, who, in 1965 as an intern for Time and who interviewed Dylan in right before the Newport Festival in 1965). Whoever Mr. Jones is, he didn't get Dylan at all and likely wrote a nasty review that for whatever reason, cut Dylan to the core and of that, a great song was born. Maybe we owe a gratitude of thanks to Mr. Jones afterall.

There are other theories, though these above two seem to hold the most water. Of Jones Dylan said; "He's a pinboy. He also wears suspenders. He's a real person. You know him, but not by that name... I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, "That's Mr. Jones." Then I asked this cat, "Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?" And he told me, "He puts his nose on the ground." It's all there, it's a true story.”


This is not "Positively 4th Street", which seems more directed at a group of people, or a group during a specific time during his life. “Ballad of a Thin Man” – a song I keep coming back to for its raw power and verve and élan is clearly directed at one person and one can sense the bile and vitriol that seeps from Dylan’s every pore when he sings it. It must have been a rebirth to sing that song every time – a sort of baptismal cleansing to get out the unclean thing that had so upset or sullied him, for he seems to me someone being exorcised – full of storm and fury, but signifying everything.

In the documentary Eat the Document, it is Pennebaker’s footage of that one song that makes that film. For that scene, Pennebaker hand-ground a special lens to get the halo effect of the light through Dylan’s mop of curly hair and we see that and the blurs of oranges and other colors, but what we really see during that performance is pure vitriol - hate - bile - anger, a general really pissed-offness that I think any of us can relate to. It's a pretty universal feeling. We've all had our Mr. Jones'.

Still, I haven’t answered the question as to why it is we cannot get Dylan off of our minds. Or maybe why I can’t get Dylan off of my mind, more to the point. Several factors lead me to this and I suppose it goes without saying that it is the music that must come first. There is nothing that comes close to Dylan, sounds like Dylan, or hits home like Dylan. All I need to do is hear a song like “Blood in My Eyes” and I am taken. This or “It’s Not Dark Yet” or “Dirge” or “You’re a Big Girl Now” or any other number of songs that we can all name because it is virtually impossible to pick a favorite because it is always a moving target.

Just when I think I may have hit upon a favorite song or album at least (for an album is as close as I’m going to get), then I think of another album with great songs on it and I’m done for. There is no way to pick a favorite Dylan song, I think. Not for me. It is utterly dependent on circumstance, and by this I mean where I am in my life at a specific given moment. If you ask me today what Dylan song is on my mind I would answer honestly “Positively 4th Street”. This song for myriad reasons. It may not be my “favorite” Dylan song (but then again, what is?) but right now, it is the most apt. It fits. It is the soundtrack, for lack of a better word, by which my life is being lived. This and "Up to Me" because right now, it is up to me...

I suppose in some way then, for me, Dylan has become a sort of soundtrack that is applicable to various stages of my life, or various moments in a relationship. Some couples have their “songs”, which is a slightly different thing. This thing is a wholly private thing – it is a sound that is known only to me (or that sound at that moment attached to that memory – not that the song is known only to me, but the association would only make sense to me and perhaps to the other person involved in the specific situation). Yes, other music applies: we all have our associations, but none cement the bond for me as much as Dylan does.  Hear a song on the radio and think it applies to you and your life? Then the singer / songwriter has succeeded and done his or her job. That’s what you’re supposed to feel. Identity and identification with a song or a moment or an icon is the name of the music game.

* * *

“Have year ever heard of me?” then a roll of the piano and a close-up of those long-fingered beautiful hands as they move across the keys while in the background, Richard (Manuel) takes a few sniffs of what one guesses is coke from his tiny little spoon and nifty coke dispenser.  This is only after Dylan has also done a few lines, though I can’t tell if he did them on the piano top (off of the piano top) or if he’s just laughing into it, for he is laughing uproariously before he pops his cigarette in his mouth and begins playing to the empty room of what appears to be a hotel restaurant that is being set for breakfast of lunch. So, “Have you ever heard of me?” he says to no one in particular and everyone all at once.

If my life were to have a soundtrack, then it would be composed entirely of Dylan songs. Not because other songs do not or could not apply or that I don’t listen to other music – I listen to a lot of other music and write a whole music column (The List of the Moment) of new music and my tastes are broad and varied. It’s simply that none capture the feelings as quite as well or as much as Dylan does and there is something to be said for that. It’s not an easy thing to capture the mood of one as manic as I can be, I’ll note that for starters, and it’s certainly not easy to express what a poet can usually express. It is when I find myself without words that I find Dylan almost always does have the words.

As I noted, right now I am in my “Positively 4th Street” period. That song and all of its betrayal, particularly certain passages, are applicable at this time. It’s a bitingly honest song, albeit pissy, but it’s beyond pissy; it has a furor and an anger and a tone of resignation and that’s the part about it that I relate to the most. The resignation. One gives up. You try with certain people or someone only to find they have utterly betrayed you – and then they suddenly become Judas, betraying you with a kiss and a smile – and this leaves you speechless. Judas never comes as expected, but disguised in the form of 'friend'. Unless you’re Bob Dylan and you come out with exactly what it is I want to say, which is:

You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
 
and I would be remiss if I didn’t add, just for spite (because I, like Dylan, like anyone, am not above spite and if you say you are not, then you’re full of it because all of us have that in us and it’s what we do with it. So I bang it out in an article and sing “Positively 4th Street” at the top of my lungs when I’m driving about in my Mini - Fuck me for being human. But more, fuck the person or persons who made me feel the way I feel right now. ) It ought not be the injured party, the one who is feeling the pain and even bites back that need apologize. It ought be the one who lied or let you fall when they swore they never would or whatever it was they did or did not do, it ought not be you who is made to feel the shit, but them, which is why this stanza is so damn perfect;

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you



How sad. It’s awful when it comes to that. When a relationship crashes and burns and leaves you wanting, but in time you realize that “Positively 4th Street” is a song about fighting back in some way. It is about resignation and regret more than anything, but it is also a turn on the heel and a turn away from what was, knowing, as he says, “what a drag it is to see you…” Yes, I do wish for just one moment I could stand inside the others’ shoe because maybe then I’d understand, although I doubt it, and ultimately, I think so does Dylan, which is why he doesn’t dwell there, and moves quickly on to what a drag it is to see that person. It’s cold, but then, anyone who made you feel this way in the first place has to be pretty fucking cold himself or herself.

You don’t get to be this angry, this hurt, this embittered all by yourself. Someone helped get you there and not by “accident” no matter what they say. There was a point along the way where they had a conscious choice and they chose to screw you over. They made vows to you, oaths to you, and you accepted those vows and made vows in return. Not all vows clash with vows made to some other; that's a provincial and limited way of thinking and I'll add, so very Father Dimsdale. I won't play Hester Prynne for anybody. So there you have it. Don’t come crying to me if I think of you and I think “Positively 4th Street”. Don’t come crying to me at all.

Feeling wist, put down, then it’s “Up To Me” which I have also felt a lot lately. This and “Blood In My Eyes” although from what I am told the latter is about a prostitute, though frankly, I think you could apply the song to other relationships and in a terribly sad way that is not disrespectful. It’s just freaking sad. I think Dylan is more flexible than that. That you can take his words and apply them to more than just one situation. As he even said to Baez, half the time he says even he wasn’t sure what he was writing about. Okay; maybe that was disingenuous. No doubt, to some degree it is, because nobody could write such meaningful pieces without meaning to – if you follow.

I can’t honestly say that I truly believe Dylan never tried. Even in his Ed Bradley interview (which I personally think went rather terribly, for Dylan didn't open up at all and didn't try and the questions weren't that good...when held up against a document like No Direction Home, there is no comparison to be made and that's not a slam on Bradley - that's just the way the interview went and as a journalist, I know that sometimes the subject gives you little to work with), but in that interview, Dylan spoke of a certain “magic” that song writing had for him back in the sixties and used the example of “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, and I bought that at the time. I bought what Dylan was saying, which amounted to, “I’m all used up. I have nothing left to give anymore that can rival those songs.”  But to look at what he’s pulled out these days with Modern Times. I don’t buy it anymore.

I think Modern Times is one of the best Dylan albums there has been and ranks right up there for me alongside my favorite which right now, and again, this is always a moving target, is “Bringing It All Back Home.”

“Someday Baby” is the perfect song for at least part of how I feel at the moment. And I can’t think of anyone who can’t relate to some extent to “When the Deal Goes Down”. Christ knows, whether you think a song like “When the Deal Goes Down” or “It’s Not Dark Yet” applies to you or not, one day you will as you leave that period (however long it lasts for you – for me it lasted through my early twenties) and then I realized, “Oh Shit, I’m mortal.”  

This time around however, with “When the Deal Goes Down” you get the sense that someone will be there this time; that when the deal does go down, one needn’t, or he won’t anyway, be alone.  “It’s Not Dark Yet” was (is) a solitary and searching song with, it seems, nobody at the end of the line. It said, “We’re born alone, and we die alone.” But the whole album sounded like that. It was a down and out for the most part and that’s just where he was, just as if I had half the talent, if I were to produce an album now, it would all be “It’s Not Dark Yet” and “Standing in the Doorway” (another song that I feel in my bones these days), because this is just the miserable frame of mind in which I find myself.

Not so with “Modern Times”. With “Modern Times” we have the ability to change things. We are not “standing in the doorway crying” anymore, it’s more like “someday baby” and so on… and Christ, I like that a helluva lot more. It’s more proactive, and it’s more the Dylan I fell in love with years ago. I love “It’s Not Dark Yet”. I’ve written whole articles about that one song, but I much prefer to move on.  I may be depressed at the moment, I may be feeling cheated and screwed over not because of some imagined thing (alas, that would be easier, although it would mean I’ve lost my mind, which would be worse… better to have been truly screwed over and know it, I suppose than some imaginary slight. If you ask me, why the need for either, but then, that’s just me. I’m a peaceful kind of person and not the type to go about shitting on my friends, but again… that’s just me. When I say a thing, I mean it… otherwise; I see little point in saying anything at all.

Hell, I have to tell you, and maybe this is embarrassing though I think no Dylan song could be truly embarrassing really – that for months one Spring and Summer I wholly identified with “Apple Suckling Tree, take no. 2” from the recordings at Big Pink (or “A Tree With Roots”) mostly identifying because of the lightness of the song and, I admit, because the original lyrics are named for a girl named Sadie (Sadie, by the way, like Sadi, Sayde, etc. is a common nickname for Sarah or Sara – a fact that I have found is little known in the United States, which surprises me, but there you have it. But yes, it is a nickname and now you know; take it on good authority). I don’t know if Sadie has anything to do with Sara - his Sara that is, it’s just an interesting little factoid to know when you think of Dylan’s use of the name in songs – “Apple Suckling Tree” being one of them and, of course, “In Search of Little Sadie” in which our Sadie doesn’t fare so well.

It was good to have “Apple Suckling Tree” be the song of a summer, because it made me happy and damn it, I was happy. Dylan doesn’t necessarily have to be profound to “work”.  “Apple Suckling Tree” worked and did its job precisely because it conveyed a time and a place and a space better than anything I (or anyone else) could have written. What it did was evoke a whole landscape of emotion and it still does for me. It does so much that it’s difficult for me to hear that song just now for it signifies all the lightness that I have since lost.

Can we relate? If some of us can, then I’d say the song is a success. “Apple Suckling Tree” I doubt was intended as an a-side number one hit. It sounds like a “toss-off” for lack of a better word, and a fun one, which is not to say that it was “easy” (just as for me the summer was by no means a toss-off,) but a thing to be taken lightly and so much light came in through those windows and in my life during those days; I could just as easily pick “Here Comes the Sun” by George Harrison as the theme song for that past summer and it would work almost as well, yet lack that something that the Dylan song has.

Dylan has been there with me through the mess of my life. “Lay, Lady, Lay” was the song of my sexual awakening, I only half-joke (I’ll let the lyrics speak for me here) but all those colors in your head – and etc.  Yup. I got that part.  At last I finally understood what that line meant. It had taken me so long, but at least I finally knew. Stay with your man a while. I would stay forever.

“Like a Rolling Stone” applied at one point, self-directed, as I think even Dylan to some extent directed the song at himself. I do not believe it was all outwardly directed and I do not believe it was all about Edie Sedgwick or some other shit that I hear. I think a lot more of what we write has to do with ourselves and I think that song, if you really listen, which no doubt you have, can easily be turned back around to apply to Dylan himself and he knew it at the time. Sure, I could be wrong, but I could be right.

So where am I now? I guess I’m at the rather resigned “Up to Me” phase of things. I could answer with a lot of Dylan songs. Part of me still wants to say “I’ll Keep It With Mine” because one still cares and cannot just stop caring with a snap of the fingers and so affection lingers. I suppose I could pick Todd Rundgren “Couldn’t We Still Be Friends” which applies incredibly well but it doesn’t capture the awful, sad wist of the moment like “Up To Me” does, because it doesn’t say the awful, heart-yanking and honest words, “You know one of us has got to hit the road, I guess it must be up to me.” This is about someone who just keeps trying and trying before finally accepting, like a noose about the neck that chokes and strangles;

I know you're long gone,
I guess it must be up to me.

Yet still he bangs his head against the wall until finally settling down and resigning himself to knowing that all he can offer now is the harmonica tune around his neck,

“And the harmonica around my neck, I blew it for you, free,
No one else could play that tune,
You know it was up to me.”

In every way, these days, I know that there are likely a dozen or more songs I could pick by Dylan that could capture the myriad things I am feeling (I'm a big girl now) and that swing like a pendulum back and forth as my feelings swing, manic and wanting and wailing like a new-born child who has no understanding of the situation.

Sometimes there is no understanding. Sometimes that’s just it.

Somebody's got to cry some tears,
I guess it must be up to me.

Thanks for listening. To hear any of these songs, please go to List of the Moment on this site where you can take a listen.

S.R.P.