| Grateful Dead – Quinn the Eskimo Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| Reality is not fixed, and certainly has never been fixed for as deep a person as Bob Dylan, as mystical person as Bob Dylan, and as serious of an artist as Bob Dylan. Is this song talking about a drug dealer, maybe...if so, it's certainly not as direct as say "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf. Is it about Jesus (or another savior figure), perhaps...is it a reference to Anthony Quinn, well of course, at least it could be. Dylan is an artist, quite complicated as a person, some of his songs are quite direct and easy to interpret, this is not one of those songs. It is a bit of an oddity in Dylan's work, though he's wrote numerous songs that tend to get "sing-along-ish", this one is very much in that vein, and very much more of a 'pop song" than most anything else he's ever done, at least in my memory. And, like many great writers, he may have intended people to draw multiple meanings, to create the meaning for themselves, and since it is so "pop" sounding, a lot of fun can be had in just enjoying the song/tune regardless of what the thing actually means. For what it's worth, I don't think so many of the 60's songs many are always claiming to be about drugs, are necessarily about drugs. | |
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