Not since 2012 has Bob Dylan released a self-penned song. The past decade has been strange days indeed, with album upon album with Sinatra-covers, paired with gems from the vaults, bringing the Bootleg Series up to vol. 15.
And then, one late evening in March, this song materialized, out of the blue, announced on twitter, of all places:
“This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you”.
The song was Murder Most Foul – seventeen monotonous, monumental minutes of recitative about the killing of Kennedy, Dylan’s longest song ever.
It turned out to be the tip of an iceberg: two more songs followed, False Prophet and I Contain Multitudes, and then, eventually, the full album, Rough And Rowdy Ways.
Murder Most Foul is not the best song on the album by far, but it holds some of the keys to it.
First Impression: Perfected Nothingness
On first hearing, it sounds like an endless rattling of more or less loosely coherent images and motifs connected to the murder of Kennedy, but also to the USA since the 60s, especially the musical side to the country’s history – the Great American Songbook that Dylan has loved and cultivated, which brought him the Nobel Prize in the end.
The impression of a formless, quietly flowing flood of visual and textual images is being underpinned by the music. The melody – if that’s indeed the right name for it – is a steadfast recitation on one single tone, alternating at times with new recitatives one note higher.
It is as if the fight against musical development that Dylan has been pursuing over the past couple of decades has finally come to an end: finally, nothing happens!
Verses Great and Small
And yet: The song seems formless and tedious, but at the same time it is strictly structured.
The top level is marked by the title of the song, which occurs as a textual refrain, in total four times during the seventeen minutes the song lasts. Each time it is followed by a brief instrumental interlude. The interlude is heard one extra time, without the refrain, so the song can be divided into four or five “great verses”.
Each “great verse” consists of two to six “small verses”, again of varying length, but following the same structure. The first “small verse” goes:
C F
It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63
C F
A day that will live on in infamy
C
President Kennedy was a-ridin' high
F
Good day to be livin' and a good day to die
C
Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb
F
He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?"
G
"Of course we do, we know who you are"
Fmaj7
Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car.
First an alternation between C (I) and F (IV), repeated a varying number of times from verse to verse, while Dylan and the bass both recite monotonously on C.
Then, as a “climax” of sorts, the chord shifts from F to G and Dylan’s voice rises one tone to D. The F–G turn can be repeated ad libitum, until the “small verse” ends, with a return to F, and we’re ready for the next round.
Each “great verse” consists of 2–6 “small verses”, the last of which ends with the refrain “Murder most foul”, some times – but not always – with a return to the keynote C.
That’s it.
A Music Analysis of Three Chords and Two Tones
It may seem trivial and exaggerated to start off with a musical analysis of a “song” that uses two tones and three chords in simple combinations that are repeated perpetually.
But that’s what I intend to do, since the principles that are revealed through this analysis, are central not only to this song, but to the quest that Dylan has been on during the twenty-first century.
1. The chord structure in the “small verses” is closely related to the twelve-bar blues structure. There, too, we start out with an alternation between I and IV and end with the V–IV turn that we find in Murder Most Foul. The pattern is handled more freely here than in most blues songs, but it is clearly recognizable all the same, especially to those familiar with Dylan’s production: the blues goes as a red thread through his entire catalogue of songs.
2. The variability in length is also a known trick with Dylan, from his “talkin’ blues” songs of the sixties, where the V-step, leading up to the punchline, can be stretched for as long as one likes; as well as single lines with a varying number of syllables (not-so-subtly parodied by Tom Lehrer in his Folk Song Army: “The tune don’t have to be clever, / And it don’t matter if you put a coupla extra syllables into a line.”) Murder Most Foul is on a whole other level: there’s a huge difference between adding an extra syllable here and there, and to embark on a quarter of an hour’s formless recitation, without the signposts that a recognizable verse structure might give.
3. “Refrain” today means “chorus”: an extra verse with a fixed text that is sung between the regular verses. But in the ballad tradition that Dylan is also part of, going back to the sophisticated courtly songs of the Middle Ages, the refrain was primarily a recurring textual element towards the end of a larger unit of text, not necessarily with its own music or singled out as a separate verse, but structually part of the verse to which it stands. This is a musico-poetic form that Dylan has used just as consistently as the blues, e.g. in The Times They Are a-Changin’. The four refrains, “it’s a murder most foul”, can thus stand as the structural pillars upon which the song rests.
4. The extended refrain structure is a style of writing that Dylan has been working on at least since the turn of the millennium. Its first major appearance was in the song ’Cross the Green Mountain, written for the soundtrack to the movie Gods and Generals (2003) about the American Civil War (once again a freestanding, grand, epic ballad, which is thematically tied to dramatic and violent episodes from American history). There, there is no refrain, just occasional verses with a slightly different chord sequence, interspersed between the regular verses. Nettie Moore and Workingman’s Blues #2 off Modern Times (2006) have a similar construction, with a sequence of verses followed by a refrain. In these cases, the number of verses is fixed. Mississippi is related as well, with long verses consisting of shorter units that are repeated, and a contrasting section – this time not as a refrain.
One more thing is worth mentioning about all these songs: the repeated sections, that work as “regular” verses, are not very exciting, harmonically speaking. Some of them have an ascending or descending bass line over more or less static chords, some have some kind of alternation between static chords – almost a standstill, which the “refrain” sometimes breaks, sometimes not.
5. So we may ask: is this really a form? Is it not simply a formula, a loose frame for recitation? And, yes, that indeed seems to be the point: this song structure that Dylan has been working with, is in itself not very exciting – what makes it worth a closer look is what he does with it. It all has to do with phrasing. It is not controversial to call Dylan the master of phrasing in general – in the sense of shaping a melodic line to a text in a way that uses the sound elements of speech to make the melody seem more immediate, like speech; this is what I’ve elsewhere referred to as “prose singing”.
But on Murder Most Foul he takes this to a new level – literally speaking. It is no longer a matter of aligning the syllables of the text to the musical grid of emphases, but of aligning the lines of text to the large-scale patterns of a chord sequence and a verse structure.
Compare for example some of the G–F passages that end the “small verses”. In the first verse, we find the normal situation: each new chord goes with a full line of text:
G "Of course we do, we know who you are" F Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car
In the second verse, the F part of the pattern is generally very short, only as a brief pause before the next line hurries in – this is the only part of the song that breaks the calm river-like flow:
G F Shoot him while he runs, boy, shoot him while you can G F See if you can shoot the invisible man
Whereas in the third “great verse”, it’s just as much the G part that is short:
G F I'm leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap G F Hold on, I've been led into some kind of a trap
And in the long “Play it” final section, the phrase structure more or less collapses at times:
G F Play Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and all that G F junk All that junk and "All That Jazz"
Here, three lines of text are fitted to two G–F sequences.
The Dylan Trick
How much of this that is planned, I would not dare to guess, and perhaps that is precisely the point: the steady sequence of C–F, C–F, G–F, etc. is not even a song structure, it is more like a sounding greenscreen that may or may not serve to emphasise something other than the tune itself, shape the narrative, let other aspects of the vocal delivery come to the fore than those normally associated with a melody; a systematized irregularity, if you like: the phrasing is not entirely loose, but definitely not fixed.
Where I do dare a guess is here: the musicians have not had a detailed score or chord chart in front of them; Dylan has probably not had a clear plan about where to change chords and verse lines before they pressed “record”; and it may not even have been obvious where the verses, small or great, should end. There are places where other dividing lines than those that ended up on the track would seem more logical. I imagine Dylan sitting there with a stack of papers in front of him, with a long string of lines on them, with no given verse structure, other than those given by the refrain – and a group of musicians on their toes to guess where he’s heading and when he’s changing from chord to chord and from section to section (and it is obvious that at times they don’t guess the same thing).
It’s Dylan playing his usual trick: “Let’s mix it all up and see what happens!”, as his musicians have commented since the 60s, and which still seems to be his way of working e.g. in the studio work for Tell Ol’ Bill from 2015, where he says to the band “Maybe we should just change it all, totally. Change the melody, change everything about it. You know, put it in a minor key, I mean, everything!” And as usual, the result is quite rewarding.
The Narratives of a Dead Kennedy
Both the sheer length of the song and the seeming eventlessness makes it difficult to survey the song while listening to it. The refrains are of great help here: if we allow ourselves to assume that the four/five refrains can indeed be used as markers in the long text mass, and that the texts between the refrains are somehow united, where does that lead us?
The first “great verse” sets down the historical framework. The storyteller holds the microphone. The events in Dallas on that fateful day in November 1963 are narrated, with references to conspiracies (“You got unpaid debts, we’ve come to collect … We’ve already got someone here to take your place”), to the mysteries captured on the Zapruder film (“Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing”). The verse is full of historical references, e.g. to the attack on Pearl Harbour (“A day that will live on in infamy”, cited from Roosevelt’s “Infamy” Speech), but also subtle self-references: Kennedy’s line “Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?”, will be recognized from Dylan’s own song Hurricane, dealing with yet another huge and traumatic issue in American history: racial injustice.
The second “great verse” begins: “Hush little children”, and this sets the tone for the entire verse: the quotation from a childrens’ song continues with holding hands, sliding down the bannister, being ordered to go get your coat, and a series of admonitions that a child might hear, some of which sound like actual commands that could have been shouted in Kennedy’s car but that might also double as general sayings (“try to make it to the triple underpass”), others that sound like general sayings but may be much more concrete (“When you’re down on Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe”), some that are definitely general statements but get a wider significance in this particular context (“Don’t ask what your country can do for you”).
The narrator has put on a different hat: it is no longer the storyteller speaking, but the tutor, the “wise old owl” who observes the events cooly and communicates to us children what he sees, in short sentences, clichés, commands. There is no condemnation or moral indignation, just observation and orders. “Business is business, it’s a murder most foul”.
The third “great verse” is mindblowing, both metaphorically and literally. We are inside the head of the President while it is being blown to pieces – a unique insider perspective from a dying man, and we witness his surprised hallucinations while he observes his own death, partly as a very close observer (“Ridin’ in the back seat next to my wife, … leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap”), partly as a detatched soul, hovering over the scene, following the events depicted in the Zapruder film closely, before leaving it at 2:38 when the president’s dead and Johnson is sworn in.
The drug references that the verse is full of make complete sense as the blurred haze of a brain about to go out: it starts out with two nods to The Who’s rock opera Tommy, dealing with drug-induced hallucinations (“Tommy, can you hear me”, “Acid Queen”), then continues with brain damages, dizzy Miss Lizzy, and the famous “magic bullet” that has “gone to my head” – this time very concretely.
Play for Us – Pray for Us
Which leads into the the long final sequence of “Play it” lines, formulated as calls to the radio DJ Wolfman Jack.
A lot of effort has tbeen put into deciphering the codes behind the selection and the brief characterizations that each song or cultural item is given in the song, and thereby (re)constructing Dylan’s world view (and record collection).
In this respect, Murder Most Foul is a textbook example of the literary genre that Dylan himself has created: Bones to the Vultures – flinging around obscure references, secure in the knowledge that someone out there will dig it out some day. (And if you have found a deeply buried bone, it surely proves both that the idea behind it is deep, and that you are, too, since you’ve found it.)
Murder Most Foul is a smorgasbord for the Indiana Joneses of the literary world.
I prefer to go in the opposite direction: to disregard completely every single reference and rather see them as a whole – as one huge “great verse” where a seemingly endless row of characters pass before our eyes and ears in a procession. One by one they step into the light before they recede into the multitude again, but the remaining impression is that of the procession itself, not of the individual participant.
The closest parallell I can think of is the litany of saints, the liturgical celebration where all the saints of the church progress, one by one, to let us pray for their intercession before God:
V. Sancte Stéphane.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Ignáti.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Polycárpe.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Iustíne.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Laurénti.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Cypriáne.
R. Ora pro nobis.
V. Sancte Bonitáti.
R. Ora pro nobis.
And so on, indefinitely. “Pray for us!” we sing in the litany. “Play for us!” Dylan says – the effect is the same.
It is not very important who Saint Polycarp and Justin were, or what it is about “Stella by Starlight” that appeals so much to Lady Macbeth. They are all there – they have all made their contribution to making the world a little more bearable, especially when it gets tough, be it because the president has been shot or because the world is sick in one way or the other, or just because one needs something to keep one’s head above water. It is like walking along a bookshelf, reading the titles: one doesn’t even have to have read the books to feel a certain comfort: they are there, standing in line with their contents ready to enthuse us, whether we will ever read them or not.
This is also why the song’s finest moment is its last: when the last member of the procession is the song itself, when the long line of “Play …!” admonitions ends with “Play ‘Murder Most Foul’!”. This is not hubris or self-aggrandizing on Dylan’s part – on the contrary. He steps into the procession together with all the others. And by doing so, he also makes sure the song lasts forever: every time the Wolfman has worked his way through the playlist, he will have to start all over again. It’s the Great American Songbook version of the eternal heavenly praise of the angels.
(A Slight Reservation in F Sharp)
Which in the end makes me turn a blind eye on the many clichés and forced rhymes the song is marred by (and why would the Moonlight Sonata be played in f sharp and not in c sharp minor as Big B wrote it? Just because of the rhyme with “harp”?).
Worst in this respect is the pompous and stilted religious language. True enough: when Kennedy is sanctified and gets a litany in his honour, a little religious varnish might be acceptable. But Dylan goes further: the site of the assassination is referred to as “the place where Faith, Hope and Charity died”; Kennedy is slaughtered “like a sacrificial lamb”; and we hear Pilate’s words before Jesus was sent to be crucified: “What is the truth?” – here, clearly, we are no longer dealing with just a saint; it was virtually Christ himself who was shot in Dallas on that November day.
Platitudes like “But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at / For the last fifty years they’ve been searching for that” make Dylan sound precisely like some voice of that generation which can be so annoying to the rest of us: the dreamers who were seduced by the idea that for a brief moment in time we were holding salvation and the future in our own hands, but then it was shot to pieces, annihilated by the dark forces of the establishment and not seen again ever since.
That’s my least favourite side of the 60s. But I don’t mind. Just play “Murder Most Foul” again – just once more.
I love your work and everything you’ve done here over the last 20+ years – you basically taught me how to play guitar. I can’t thank you enough.
A very minor point – I can’t remember where it came from or if it was just me, after having read so many pages of stuff about the album, but isn’t it possible (and I’d like to think) that he knows full well that Moonlight Sonata is in C#, and the reason he puts it in F# is because of the Little Walter invocation in the next line. Surely if Little Walter was to pick up a harmonica to play ‘the MS in C#’ he’d grab an F# and do it cross-harp. I think it’s meant as an intentional crossover between the two. Of course, it doesn’t make complete sense, since the key of the harmonica doesn’t change the key of the song, but…
That’s the way I took it anyway.
Interesting attempt, but I don’t think it works, because the MS is in c sharp MINOR, so you would rather pick an E harp (or A to play it cross harp). :)
Ahhh, thanks, obviously missed the crucial ‘minor’ bit. Still think there must be a reason for it though – if he was going to be wrong for prosody, why would he go for F rather than C? Doesn’t make any difference scansion-wise.
Beethoven once remarked to a friend, “Why do they always request the c# minor sonata? (only dubbed moonlight after his death). Why not the F# one?” (quoted from memory) The F# sonata was Beethoven’s favourite, composed for his Immortal Belovéd.
It’s interesting (and comforting!) that all comments so far have been related to Beethoven. Again, it’s possible that Dylan has thought along these lines, but I’m not convinced. Most of all, it reminds me of the cases when I’m writing something, could be about Dylan, and think: “that was in 93, wasn’t it? Ok, I’ll check it later,” and then 1993 it is. No subtle intertextuality, no ingenious code, just a slip of the mind and the pen. I may be wrong, though.
Wonderful, fascinating analysis!
For Bob’s part, it’s probably best that the lyric isn’t literally ‘about’ the assassination; the first ‘great verse’ suggests he has a similarly dubious grasp of the facts of the case as he did for those in Hurricane, Julius & Ethel, Hattie Carroll, etc. But here this is a reflection of that irritating side of the 60’s, perhaps.
Second John’s comment about teaching (me) how to play guitar.
What drives me crazy about it is that “C sharp” would rhyme just as well. Dropping the “minor” wouldn’t bother me. Changing the key completely does.
Well, maybe he knows better than us. He’s the one who plays Beethoven Sonatas and Chopin Preludes.
Thanks for tabbing the album, Eyolf.
I think using the wrong key was a sort of ‘soured bone for the vultures.’
Give people a chance to feel smart by pointing out where Dylan made an irrelevant ‘mistake.’
I think Bob knows his Beethoven. Not only is he referenced twice on the album, at the close of the first and last songs, he also had a bust of Beethoven by his side on stage a few years ago. There’s no need to tell someone which key to play a composition in: it’s written on the score. But if you want them to play it in a different key – the composer’s particular favourite key – that needs to be said.
Of course, it may have just been a slip on Bob’s part, and I may be reading too much into it. But I like what I’ve read. “Play the Beethoven piece everyone wants to hear, but play it different, in a way the composer would have liked, in his favourite key.” That sounds pretty close to Bob’s own approach in concert.
To me that’s what he is doing his whole carreer: soaking up melodies, words, images and re-shuffeling it, placing things in a another perspective, connecting the unconnectable, changing the key and thowing it all back to you. In this Dylan has no beginning and no end. Like Yin and Yang
I’m guessing when Bob fumbles through Moonlight Sonata on his piano at home he plays it in F# Minor. Enjoyed this piece quite a bit. Thanks.
Since when has Bob Dylan been a reporter?
I have listened to the song daily since it was released and consider the song a career long highlight. A magical song which continues to surprise and delight each time it is on the turntable.
Lieber Eyolf,
es ist verblüffend, wieviele Überschneidungen und Analogien es zwischen unseren beiden Essays gibt!
https://deutsch.rt.com/gesellschaft/103652-allergemeinste-mord-bob-dylans-um/
Ich bin allerdings in die Formanalyse nicht so tief eingestiegen wie Du. Besonders gut gefällt mir das Bild von der Prozession!! Hätte ich eigentlich auch selber drauf kommen können … :-))))
Mit herzlichen Grüßen,
Leo
Ja, wirklich! Es wäre als ob wir über dasselbe Lied schreiben!
Mir schien das Litanei-Metapher ganz offensichtlich, aber dein Text is der einzige den ich gesehen habe, wo das Motif diskutiert wird. Danke für das link!
American composer Irving Berlin could only play piano in F?, so it is possible to hear this as a reference to Kennedy’s famous Berlin Wall speech (”Ich bin ein Berliner”). ?
I really don’t think so, and I’m not sure what the reference would be, if so.
Honestly, I think it’s one of three:
(a) He just made a mistake and meant c sharp minor;
(b) He is just playing around with cultural codes and thought it sounded good;
(c) He’s pulling our leg, trying to make us chase for a deeper meaning in something that’s ultimately just a joke.
Again, I’m intrigued by the number of comments on this one off-hand remark in the text…
I found the quote. “Everybody is always talking about the C-sharp minor Sonata! Surely I have written better things. There is the Sonata in F-sharp major—that is something very different.”
I also like the suggestion that Irving Berlin (another American songwriter of Russian origin), who could only play the piano in F#, might have something to do with it as well. I’ve often thought that when Dylan talks or sings about other musicians, he’s really talking about himself, or the aspect of himself he sees in them. His description of Woody Guthrie’s singing in Chronicles, for example. Or his not playing guitar behind his head in Goodbye Jimmy Reed. Does Dylan see himself in Irving Berlin, perhaps the only other great American songwriter with a 60-year career? Well, as Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Irving Berlin owned a sliding piano so that he could play in any key using that same F fingering. Similar to the guitar capodistra.
Love your piece. The song it has an hypnotic dirge like quality. And the procession of the secular saints, is a beautiful recognition.
one minor quibble – this statement seems kind of oblique “definitely general statements but get a wider significance in this particular context (“Don’t ask what your country can do for you”).”
of course the latter quote is from Kennedy’s inaugural address….
You’re right, of course. I was mixing it up with the “Your country needs YOU”-poster. So obviously a bad choice of “general statement” on my part. Thanks!
Platitudes like “But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at / For the last fifty years they’ve been searching for that” make Dylan sound precisely like some voice of that generation which can be so annoying to the rest of us: the dreamers who were seduced by the idea that for a brief moment in time we were holding salvation and the future in our own hands, but then it was shot to pieces, annihilated by the dark forces of the establishment and not seen again ever since.
As a child of those times, which were a changin’…..objection your honour! JFK was going to pull out of Vietnam, he was moving towards detente with Cuba as well as Soviet Union, ending the Cold War. He had achieved the signing of the Test Ban Treaty in August ’63. No POTUS since has delivered a speech like JFK’s ‘Peace’ speech at American University on June 10th ’63. All this changed with his assassination and just see where things are at in 2020!
I think the attempt to delve deeply into the elements of the song may be commendable, and I have to admit I care less about the musical structure than the author does. Mr. Oestrem begins with a strong and accurate indictment of the song for being tedious and the lyrics filled with forced rhymes and cliches–all very true. He also faults Dylan for injecting “pompous and stilted religious language”–again, very true and damning. Later, though, he tries to argue that many are searching the song’s lyrics with some justification for significance, for the sources and deeper meanings in various references. A fool’s errand. In the end, the author ends up surprisingly positive about a song that doesn’t deserve it, largely by finding complexity and deeper meaning in a song that lacks those qualities but tries to conceal its simple-mindedness with its portentous tone and endless snippets from music, politics, history and culture of the time. Actually, the song exposes Dylan’s lack of eloquence on a subject he wants us to treat as monumental. The instrumental part is tender and moody in the right ways–somber and melancholy–and Dylan’s voice is rich, gritty, urgent and scolding, though the length of the song gradually begins to turn this vocal styling into something more contrived and tedious. There is no melody in the usual sense—just a kind of repetitive melodic drone with Dylan’s recitation on top, trying to build a mournful, scathing and ominous set of images that depend heavily on undistinguished lyrics. Those lyrics are mostly disappointing–too often cliched, commonplace phrases, musical and literary references of no great import, and various allusions to social and political incidents that are not worthy of explication. All of that monotone recitation drags on without much that is unique or especially poetic in the wording. So the lengthy piece lacks the emotional richness, deeper funereal quality and challenge to our country’s soul that it could have. Dylan tries to use the killing of JFK to stand for much more, primarily the death of innocence and the death of hope held by many young people of the day for a monumental progression in the society and the culture. In the process, he overstates and hyperbolizes virtually every aspect of Kennedy’s stature, the dreams invested in a very imperfect man who is turned into a saintly religious figure by Dylan’s grossly exaggerated characterization. To use Kennedy as a symbol of the idealism many had at that time would be fine. But the long, ponderous, and ultimately pretentious song actually undermines more than it serves to remind us of what might have been lost. It’s like a dirge that wears out its welcome and tires more than inspires the mourners.
I sure there are lots of fine hymns that can be found to be played when Bob Dylan’s albums are burned in a rapturous and fiery celebration beneath the many statues erected to his critics.
Roll over, Beethoven and many others. There can be no reasonable doubt that “Murder Most Foul” is THE Rough and Rowdy Ways-song, “Key West” or not. “… not the best song on the album by far” doesn’t make much sense unless sing-along-song is what is meant by song. The Titanic song is the centrepiece of Tempest, Highlands it is on Time Out of Mind; magnitude is beauty here as well. No need to argue the case; when I played this song to my old man, of Dylan’s generation, but pronouncing the name “Dailan” and generally not interested, he turned into a Dylan fan overnight and played the song over and over again. “It was just like that”, was one of his comments, and we are definitely not talking about one of those “dreamers seduced by the idea that for a brief moment in time we were holding salvation and the future in our own hands” etc. blah blah. Does anyone really believe Dylan is or unwittingly sounds like he is? Please, come on. Otherwise, excellent essay as always, of course. (Smiley).
Hehe. Nice try.
By “song” I mean “words set to music” and by “music” I mean “intentionally organized, stylized sound”, and “stylized” here means “following limitations set along the parametres harmony, melody, and rhythm”.
It may be that MMF is the best chronicle of the album, the most recognizable account of a certain epoch, but that does not necessarily make it the best song. As songs, all your candidates fall short. Highlands is great fun, but not as a song (and Titanic, while actually being a good melody, it is really too boring to be called good (and far from best), and the lyrics just aren’t good enough. Sorry.
Then the “dreamers” remark, which I read as your central objection: I take it we belong roughly to the same generation — my father also pronounces it “Dailan”. Then there are three points I would like to make:
1. My remark was directed not only/primarily at their generation, but against the image they managed to project to our generation, that that was when it all happened, back when we were only barely born. Paradise just out of reach. Damn annoying – even had they been right (which, luckily, they weren’t – if the promised land is in the past, conservatism is the only rational option).
2. Haven’t you also met Dylan fans and/or boomers who fall into that category even though your (and my) father doesn’t? I have.
3. I do believe that the changes in the way we think, that were made (made possible, and also made real) by that generation, are tremendous and a huge contribution to mankind, and that the people who brought it about, such as Dylan, deserve gratitude and respect for that. But that does not make them exempt from criticism, especially when they are wrong, especially in the backward-looking attitude that sometimes can be discerned. This I find to be the case even with Dylan.
Otherwise, excellent comment. :)
I don’t know where to stop, so I’d better not even begin. My experience is that one can only disagree with people with whom one fundamentally agrees. I believe all dylaners share some basic insights, but as soon as you get past “he is great, greater, greatest,” consensus is pretty much done with. I’ve stumbled upon one dylaner who found that Blonde on Blonde was wildly overestimated (this is NOT, I guess, the place to air some sympathy with that viewpoint), and another who rarely cared about listening to Modern Times EXCEPT his favourite song, “The Levee’s Gonna Break”. Sic. Well, not to call Highlands a song is beyond me, my vocabulary is not rich enough to exclude it. What can I say other than recommend for the umpteenth time the live version in Santa Cruz March 16 2000. Great fun is an understatement (it has everything, from Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker imitations to everything else – and the audience sure gets it). No body on earth will ever convince me that the Titanic song (bar the title, which should have been “The Titanic Song” or just “Titanic”) is not an absolute masterpiece, lyrically and musically; I have friends who get bored, but I am tolerant, they probably get bored by Icelandic sagas as well, it takes all kind of people to make a world. I base my appreciation of that song on a thorough acquaintance with Homer, Dante, The Carter Family and what have you. O yes, Herman Melville. If Murder Most Foul is not a song, it must be because there is no other song like it, by Dylan or by anyone else. Call it a poem instead, that is fine with me, an astonishing work of art it is, way beyond the question of genre, as great works of art are. Litany is an excellent addition to the metalanguage needed to describe it. So, in conclusion, thanx again!
Hold on – I never said that those were not SONGS, only that they are not great AS SONGS. If the topic were “Highland, etc. as MUSIC”, even, things would be different – that particular border area between song and speech is after all one of the topics I’ve been working most consistently on as a musicologist and Dylan scholar.
This does not redeem Titanic, though. It’s perhaps an interesting genre – “turn-of-the-century ballad pastiche retelling of blockbuster movie” – and the singing is energetic and fun, but only for a couple of verses.
But Blonde on Blonde IS wildly overrated – there we agree.
Oh, mercy! I am afraid I cannot find more to disagree about this time. I give up the struggle and consider myself conquered; only the bookmakers’ job remains to be done, and I believe most gamblers will return home mightily satisfied. One thing I am still curious about, though, now as peace descends upon us, is: How come when one considers how immensely widespread bad taste is, that one has not got one bit of it oneself? But perhaps that is an illusion, or even just a bad habit and not even a healthy one at that, although I find that hard to admit. With mixed feelings as befits the conquered I return home to the umpteenth number one and only TITANIC SONG on repeat button, would that it never ended. But when it does (this time around), there is the mighty TRIPLICATE for joy and consolation, it never disappoints. His Masters’s Voice of My Generation Exempt From Criticism In Deed. Dixi.
(Btw which one is Dylan’s best record? Good As I Been To You is my standard answer and don’t give me that World Gone Wrong shit, of course I love that record too and of course there are other answers, Freewheelin’ for instance, or H61 or BIABH. Hard Rain. Kjør debatt, men kanskje heller på Expecting (heavy or lightweight) Rain.)
I can only speak for myself, but I have plenty of bad taste.
I suspected that.
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