| Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| The first time Dylan played this song, it was at a folk festival, the name of which has escaped me. But he played it on an electric guitar, which was a violation of folk traditions in many fans' minds. He was actually booed off the stage. If you look at these lyrics, Dylan must have figured that this would happen. In his infinitely wondrous sense of irony, Dylan sets up the song so that the narrator of the poem is the audience at the festival, and he is the "Miss Lonely" who loses everything. By making the narrator so acerbic, he makes the audience look like a bunch of asses. Dylan knew that he would still be embraced by the musical community, even if he temporarily lost the respect of folk fans, so the message behind the song is that you can do your own thing without worrying about other people's opinions. | |
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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When reading the lyrics, the first question that I had was whether the "Desolation Row" described in the song was a good or bad place. "Desolate" means "uninhabited," and doesn't necessarily have any bad connotations. Everyone here seems to think it's a bad place to be, but I think the opposite. You look at the imagery and descriptions Dylan uses of places outside DR, and you might agree with me. Verse 3: The world is ending. Or at least people think it is. The stars and the moon are hiding, the fortune teller doesn't have any more fortunes to tell, and everyone is "making love/ Or else expecting rain." (Nuclear rain?) But inside DR, no one is frightened. There's a carnival going on. Verses 6-8: Everything in these verses happens outside of DR. And it all sucks. You have things like a "cyanide hole" and a "heart attack machine," which in my mind are symbols for the "rat race" of life. In these verses, people like Cassanova are trying to get to DR, a clear sign that it's better than wherever they are. Verse 10: I think that the first 9 verses were parts of the letter that the narrator received. The "people that you mention" were all the characters from the rest of the poem. The doorknob breaking refers to the question from the earlier verse "Which side are you on?" Basically, are you in DR or the outside world, because now the door between them doesn't work. I'm not too clear on what the punchline might be, but I would guess that DR is a place where there is no oppression (e.g. no Dr. Filth, Phantom, or insurence men), so the song is a tirade against depression. |
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| Counting Crows – Mr. Jones Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| i can't believe that no one has mentioined this yet. I think the line "I want to be Bob Dylan" is very telling if you listen to Mr. Dylan's song "Ballad of a Thin Man." Both songs talk about a "Mr. Jones" as people who want to be respected or better than everybody else. | |
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