| Bob Dylan – The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| about the plotted plain, check out mr. kflemings reply (3/24/2011) to mr. PlanetarumVagatio's intiating entry posted on 5/8/2005. The reply is pretty awesome in its own right. | |
| Bob Dylan – The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Well, I definitely give you points mr. stowaway for creativity here. But it appears that "420" as a reference to the good old reefer weed had not yet been conceived when the LP was first released. You might find this entry from the (highly recommended) website snopes.com very interesting: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/420.asp. They say in the entry that 420 originated in 1971 from a bunch of high school students who would light up every day at 4:20, like it was a ritual for them - while, according to the Wikipedia entry for the album, John Wesley Harding was originally released in 1968 ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Harding_%28album%29) | |
| Bob Dylan – The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Very interesting and erudite analysis. Many insights that are helpful to me. The world can use more folk like yourself teaching literature at all academic levels. Thank you for this. | |
| Bob Dylan – The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Well, I gotta say I'm impressed with what you all have suggested here, over all. But jreis49 is especially awesome in coming up with that last entry. A few years back, I got really intrigued by Dylan and his lyrics and spent a lot of time reading stuff and listening and watching interviews and stuff he did on film (get a load of Masked and Anonymous if you have a chance. And in the soundtrack, the Japanese version of My Back Pages is really cool). Anyway, this kind of symbolism - in particular its detail, and the way mr. jreis49 frames it all for us to see the interconnections, surprises me, because though Dylan was mega symbolic in a lot of his writing (except when he wasn't), and though he often explored (and at times was even immersed in) the spiritual (in his own way, of course), he was usually much more abstract in his lyrics. A number of folks that have studied and written about him have said that the songs on the John Wesley Harding LP are among his most thoughtful (I've pasted in some interesting commentary from the Wikipedia entry for the album below). And mr. jreis49, thank you! for what you shared about the stranger being the little boy, and the source of his guilt being his having done the devil's bidding in luring Frankie to his eventual undoing. That was really well done and very well articulated. Here's the Wikipedia notes (link follows): "Most of the songs on John Wesley Harding are noted for their pared-down lyrics. Though the style remains evocative, continuing Dylan's strong use of bold imagery, the wild, intoxicating surreality that seemed to flow in a stream-of-consciousness fashion has been tamed into something earthier and more crisp. "What I'm trying to do now is not use too many words," Dylan said in a 1968 interview. "There's no line that you can stick your finger through, there's no hole in any of the stanzas. There's no blank filler. Each line has something." According to Allen Ginsberg, Dylan had talked to him about his new approach, telling him "he was writing shorter lines, with every line meaning something. He wasn't just making up a line to go with a rhyme anymore; each line had to advance the story, bring the song forward. And from that time came some of his strong laconic ballads like 'The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.' There was no wasted language, no wasted breath. All the imagery was to be functional rather than ornamental." Even the song structures are rigid as most of them adhere to a similar three-verse model." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Harding_%28album%29 |
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