Word: songfulness
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...word "babe," normally a term of endearment, or at least of hipster familiarity (the 60s equivalent of "dude"), here takes on the acridity of a four-letter word. By the end of the song, the person to whom its sung not only has no doubt she/he's been dumped but finds her/his ego in tatters. The message is: I won't be your love slave, and nobody else should either. It's a rancor most people have felt after an affair goes sour, but was rarely set to music. Dylan started doing it, and kept doing it. In the liner...
...Political or personal, Dylan's impudence was catnip to kids my age, who, if we couldn't shout righteous invective at Bull Conner in Birmingham, Alabama, could at least be rude to our parents at home. His "my generation" song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" announces the passing of power from the burghers of middle-aged authority to their children. In succession Dylan addresses these mammoths who don't realize they're dinosaurs: writers and critics, senators, Congressmen and finally mothers and fathers. His acute message to parents: "Don't criticize what you can't understand. / Your sons...
...gravel-voiced Brooklyn bear was one of my favorites, and an inspiration to the young Dylan. Indeed, I thought Dylan's "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" was a radio-friendly bowdlerization of Van Ronk's "Baby, Let Me Lay It on You." (Turns out Dylan learned the song from its author, Eric Von Schmidt, and Van Ronk took it from Dylan. In his conversation with Crowe, Dylan says puckishly of the song, "Dave Van Ronk might have played...
...What did you hear?... Who did you meet?... What'll you do now, my blue-eyed son, my darling young one?"), building a Chartres of apocalyptic imagery. Dylan once said he didn't know if the world would survive the Cuban Missile Crisis, so he put all his songs into one. This great one ends with a declaration of the poet's mission: "And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, / And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it, / And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin...
...Direction Home, Ginsberg says, Ginsberg: "I heard Hard Rain and wept, 'cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation." The song had the same effect on Child Corliss, and in my innocence I thought my college English teacher, Mr. Morris, might feel the same. Anyway, I figured he's appreciate that some I typed up the lyrics and presented them to him with the midwifely pride Ezra Pound might have felt after seeing T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland in print. Mr. Morris read the text and looked at me as if I was daft. This wasn...