submissions
| Bob Dylan – Ring Them Bells Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I take this as Bob's comment on proselytization. In each stanza, he presents someone who takes it upon himself to preach some gospel to others-- ringin them bells. Whether you're heathen, a saint, or someone names Martha, the act is the same. Some see the need for an iron hand, some want to preach to all the lost sheep, some call out to the unfortunate, others rally good against evil. It's a song about righteousness as an attitude, rather than any particular message of salvation.
To me, it's a similar sentiment to Serve Somebody. No matter who we are or how we think our message is special, we're all in the same boat. Contrast this with Slow Train, which sounds more like an invective against false prophets (propheteering?). Drifting boat versus train steaming forward forcefully in one direction. Ring Them Bells is less declarative, more observational.
And by the way, it's just a beautiful song, simple and symmetrical and doesn't ask for much, especially the live version on Tell Tale Signs. Makes my hair stand on end. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Slow Train Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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What's great about this song is that it's both religious and secular at the same time, devout and skeptical. I'd caution anyone against tacking their own agenda onto Bob's songs, religious or political. If Bob has been consistent about anything over the last 50 years, it's been that he's not writing to espouse any cause or sending a secret message to some chosen band of followers who think they know what he's "really" trying to say. I remember listening to a radio interview with Bob in about 1985, around when Biograph came out. A fan called in to say he was putting on a show about Bob Dylan's life and music. Bob replied tersely, "I do my own shows. You...I don't know what you're doing."
Anyway, Slow Train has some beautiful turns of phrase and rhythmic lyrics. "I had a woman down in Alabama/ She was a backwoods girl but she sure was realistic." And, "Masters of the bluff, masters of the proposition." |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Brownsville Girl Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Back when Bob was awarded a Kennedy Center medal for his contribution to American arts and culture (or whatever), Gregory Peck read his citation and jokingly referred to Brownsville Girl. Any fan of Peck's especially his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, will understand Bob's reference. The narrator in Brownsville Girl is on that great American search for integrity-- on the road, across borders, in himself, in a companion, even at the movies. And when he finds it, he's willing to stand on line in the rain. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Shooting Star Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Bob wrote that he felt he didn't write this song so much as inherit it. I don't know exactly what he means, but I like to think he's saying that the ideas are universal and timeless. This isn't Bob the storyteller from Tangled up in Blue; Shooting Star expresses with bare-bones eloquence a thread of emotion that runs through every life. Regret, solitude, hindsight, and the inevitable parting of ways that is the human condition. "We both heard voices for a while/Now the rest is history" is an earlier remark on the same sentiment. Catch the MTV Unplugged version on Youtube if you haven't seen it yet. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Blind Willie McTell Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Glad to read that so many others also consider this song one of Bob's masterpieces. It reminds me of Desolation Row, in that there's a tragic, ominous air around the carnival, hoe-down, gypsy camp, revival, tents coming down in a barren field. Ghosts of the 1920 Duluth lynchings, ghosts of Blind Willie McTell, ghosts of slavery's ships. To me, this is a song about what haunts America. And Bob is confessing that he could never do justice to such enormous tragedy because only one man ever lived who could sing the these blues the way they deserve. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Arthur McBride Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Of course, Bob didn't write this one, but he chose to record it, and so it's worth noting that this is an absolutely first-rate anti-war song. "I'm an honorary hippie," Bob once told an audience. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Sweetheart Like You Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This song is thick will biblical imagery, and some of the religious interpretations are interesting, But it's also powerful when you take it at face value: a man who both feels for a woman's plight, but knows it's in men's nature to take advantage of their beauty and goodness. (By the way, that's a cute hat, and a smile so hard to resist/What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?) Bob's not being cynical, just really honest. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Tough Mama Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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"Sweet beauty, meet me at the border late tonight" evokes the same feeling in me as that line from Abandoned Love, "One more time at midnight near the wall, take off your heavy makeup and your shawl." And from When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky: "It was on the northern border of Texas where I crossed the line." Borders, midnights, secret assignations, where journeys and relationships begin and end. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Po' Boy Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Epic, epic song. Here's Bob the empathetic observer at his best. The touch of humor is balanced by some cuttingly sober lines. "Had to go to Florida, dodgin' them Georgia laws," to me says Jim Crow. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Ostensibly, this song has two characters, but I always hear Senor as a conversation between an obsessed lover and his own conscience. His conscience begs him to give up the self-destructive quest to recover a lost love, but he won't. He's fixated on the wicked wind on the upper deck, and the iron cross hanging around her neck-- the kind of snippets of memory that love keeps in its grasp. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Mississippi Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This song will last a hundred years. After reading Chronicles, I think of it as Bob's ode to New Orleans. I crossed that river just to be where you are. Returning to that place of inspiration that he associates so much with his own artistic renewal. I like to think that Bob saw a riverboat called the Southern Star and somehow that bone ended up in the soup too. You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way can mean so many things, and they're all true. |
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