Workingman’s Blues: The meaning of the music and the lyrics in Dylan’s song

By Tony Attwood

Dylan has often turned to the step by step base line in his music, the base guitar either working its way down part of the scale, or up it.

The descending bass used here turns up in Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, I want you, Caribbean Wind, Most likely you go your way and I’ll go mine, Stuck inside of Mobile etc etc   That this is a classic Dylan musical device has of course been picked up by many before me.  Indeed Bowie very particularly chose to use it in “Song for Bob Dylan,” way, way back.

Some find Working Man’s Blues of overwhelming import in the Dylan canon, others such as Heylin don’t.  Heylin says, “There is a laziness that manifests itself in the way Dylan wanders from thought to thought, resorting to the lexicon to fill in any blanks…”

The #2 part of the could relate to any one of a number of sources.   Working Man Blues by Merle Haggard could be one of the key influences, but the two songs have little in common – in fact musically they have nothing in common.

Heylin takes us back to Big Joe Williams “Meet me at the bottom”.  Or we could go in a different direction and find one of the strangest bits of borrowings which comes from “June’s Blues”, by June Christy, which if you have a mind to, I’d recommend you have a listen to – and please don’t be put off by the start if this is not your style.  The way June Christy handles the lyrics in the first verse is unexpected, but at least go past the trumpet break and listen to the third verse.  I’ve read that Dylan played Christy on some of his radio programmes.

So all sorts of references musically, and as with Christy, with the lyrics.  Also apparently there is a line from Henry Timrod (1829-1867) “to feed my soul with thought” – but I still, after ages of trying, can’t see what the attraction is in Timrod’s work.  It is I guess my utterly different cultural upbringing – my loss, I’m sure.

I did get the reference of course to Long Tall Sally (“I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall”) which of course comes from Robert Johnson “Hot Tamales (They’re Red Hot)”, but then the amount of Johnson that has survived is small, so it is easy to remember.  And besides, that is my cultural heritage!

So, is it “all he’s got left in the tank” (Heylin) or one of the great masterpieces?   Or just a collection of borrowings?

For me, neither – it’s a middle ranking song with some nice ideas but moments that are uncomfortable for me.  But this is just me, I often get that uncomfortable feeling always comes around when Dylan says things like

They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad

And maybe this is why I always turn back to The Drifter’s Escape and Visions of Johanna, and indeed It’s all good, because they are not trying to force complex impossible-to-resolve issues into the simplicity of the structure of a popular song.  Instead they let the mists of uncertainty roll in and around the music, allowing us to take out our own elements and issues – and encouraging us to laugh at others who ludicrously simplify the world (It’s all good) rather than trying to simplify the world ourselves.

Heylin says, “There is a laziness that manifests itself in the way Dylan wanders from thought to thought, resorting to the lexicon to fill in any blanks…” and for once I agree with the old buzzard.  It does seem a bit of a cut and paste job built around that familiar descending base.

In verse one he’s thinking of the Good ol’ Days, and how the modern world ain’t up to much.

There’s an evenin’ haze settlin’ over the town
Starlight by the edge of the creek

He wants a bit of comfort in his old age now he’s handed the fight over to those younger than he who can take up the cause

I’m listenin’ to the steel rails hum
Got both eyes tight shut
Just sitting here trying to keep the hunger from
Creeping it’s way into my gut

Not insisting that others must take up the cause of the working man – your choice…

You can hang back or fight your best on the front line
Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues

He’s thinking of the old days, how he was a fighter for the cause…

Now, I’m sailin’ on back, ready for the long haul
Tossed by the winds and the seas
I’ll drag ‘em all down to hell and I’ll stand ‘em at the wall
I’ll sell ‘em to their enemies

The enemy is at the gate in fact, and I suppose my own personal problem is that Dylan’s did that so, so, so much better in 2005.

I walk by tranquil lakes and streams
As each new season’s dawn awaits
I lay awake at night with troubled dreams
The enemy is at the gate

OK, it is not the same type of song, but

Now the place is ringed with countless foes
Some of them may be deaf and dumb
No man, no woman knows
The hour that sorrow will come

Compare and contrast (as they used to say in English literature examinations where I come from)…

Tell ol’ Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him that I’m not alone
That the hour has come to do or die

I suppose what I adore in Tell ol Bill is the uniformity of the composition while Working Man seems to me to have bits and pieces in it.  For the life of me I can’t understand the coupling of

I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall
Sleep is like a temporary death

It is almost as if Dylan was reminded of Long Tall Sally, liked the line and left it there without any particular reason for doing so other than he likes it.

So the Working Man has lost it all

Well, they burned my barn, they stole my horse
I can’t save a dime
I got to be careful, I don’t want to be forced
Into a life of continual crime
I can see for myself that the sun is sinking
How I wish you were here to see
Tell me now, am I wrong in thinking
That you have forgotten me?

He thinks of the person he has lost, of the world that is gone, of all his belongings that have gone and I am still reminded of that much more robust fight by one man against a different, but just as evil, force.

The evening sun is sinking low
The woods are dark, the town ain’t new
They’ll drag you down, they’ll run the show
Ain’t no telling what they’ll do

But while Tell Ol Bill is a constant struggle by one man against everything around him, in Working Man it can get a bit confusing

Now I’m down on my luck and I’m black and blue

and from the same verse

Got a brand new suit and a brand new wife
I can live on rice and beans
Some people never worked a day in their life
Don’t know what work even means

What has work got to do with it?  Is he happy with the marriage or down on his luck? How different is the ending to

All the world I would defy
Let me make it plain as day
I look at you now and I sigh
How could it be any other way?

Of course they are very different songs, but both written within a year or so of each other, both are about a man running out of options, a man alone trying to sort out what is going on, how to get through, how to get out.  A man without money, on his own calling out to one person (at least I think that is what WMB is about).

It is just that for me, one of those two songs is an utter success, and the other, somehow just doesn’t make it.

So when I read on one site “Workingman’s Blues #2 is a standout track” I just don’t see it.   That review says, “Workingman’s Blues managed to be both timeless and utterly contemporary, with its opening lines a poetic snapshot of renewed hard times,” and of course that is the wonder of music – like visual art you can make up your own mind.  It is just that for me, no, if you want that poetic snapshot of renewed hard times, you take

The river whispers in my ear
I’ve hardly a penny to my name
The heavens have never seemed so near
All of my body glows with flame

But I do think some of my difference of opinion from that of others is cultural.  One review said, “The chorus has a wonderfully elegiac, empathetic tone, just right for a late-night picket-line singalong.”  I can only imagine the writer had been on very, very different late night picket lines from me in my youth.

The song is of course about Modern Times – the throwing away of the past, and some of the people who made the past with it.  But also (and this is just me) at times it is about nothing much – just a collection of lines from other sources (there is inevitably Ovid, because where Dylan goes a-searching for Timrod he also seems to find Ovid quite often.)

Chris Gregory in a review on line writes, “Like Visions of Johanna or Desolation Row or Idiot Wind or Jokerman or Blind Willie McTell it can be subjected to many different interpretations,” and that I suppose is where I disagree most of all.  The issue isn’t just, can you interpret the songs differently? but what approach is being used, and how successful is the approach.  For me, Idiot Wind isn’t a song like this at all – it is a clear commentary in which the opening line “Someone’s got it in for me…” tells us everything that is going on here and it has a clear unity throughout.

Likewise “Johanna” brings down the mists from the first moment, “Aint it just like the night to play tricks.”

Here though, “There’s an evening haze settling over town Starlight by the edge of the creek” this is the everyday world.  And when you are telling tales of the everyday, you need to be extraordinary in your rendition of it.  Dylan can do it, but for me, personally, not here.