| Bob Dylan – Blind Willie McTell Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I created a profile just so I could comment about this song, one of my favourites. I see Bob Dylan writing this almost as an antithesis to the American Dream, taking quick snippets of the nation's less than glorious moments in history and presenting them in a lament, or perhaps even an elegy, for a land that "is condemned". After the first verse sets the tone, the second paints a tableau of charcoal gypsy maidens (or is that "chaco"? I love Dylan's use of descriptive words!) below a hoot owl in barren trees. I see the moment depicted as one before the discovery of the New World, a time when the Americas where sparsely populated, "barren". Trees are barren of course in winter, at the start of the the year, so it also refers to the start of America's story. Then the white men arrive in the next verse with slaves in tow. It's powerful and mostly self-explanatory, but when Dylan sings of "tribes moaning" - is it the tribes of Africa torn apart by slave traders, or the tribes of Native Americans overran by Manifest Destiny, or both? The tolling of the undertaker's bell signifies the end of the old way of life. The next scene could at first be a moment from anywhere and anytime, but a young man "dressed up like a squire / Bootlegged whisky in his hand" can only be found in the 1920s and 30s, a point backed up with the chain gang on the highway image that immediately follows. By the way, when he hears "them rebels yell" are we still in the 1930s or have we jumped forward to the 1940s and the greatest generation fighting in WWII, rebelling against the evil Nazis? Of course, a lot of the chain gangs of the 1930s would have been conscripted into the armies of the following decade! The last verse I see as Dylan's condemnation of modern America, greedy and grasping and so busy trying to be the greatest without stopping to think that maybe it's the little moments that count, that make life worth living in the first place. As other posters have commented, the St James Hotel was a real hotel in New Orleans, tying the story back to the opening verse, but for St James Hotel, even though I'm not religious I read also St James Bible. Is Dylan saying that we've lost our way and should look to the Bible to find ourselves again? That's my interpretation anyway and I'm sure everyone has their own. As far as I'm concerned, this just beats Mr Tambourine Man as my favourite Dylan song. |
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