by Larry Fyffe
Bob Dylan has a lot the gall to make fun of Aretha Franklin in “Tarantula”. He claims that she is naive (words, spellings, and punctuation may vary a bit in different editions and bootlegs thereof).
Below, one of many references:
(A)retha with no goals, eternally single & one step soft of heaven (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
He does not use her last name:
(A)retha in the blue dunes - Plato with the high crack laugh & rambling aretha (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
He needn’t:
& so sing aretha ....sing mainstream into orbit! sing the cowbells home! sing misty (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Dylan gives the game completely away:
Oh, look, just look at me I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree I feel like I'm clinging to a cloud I can't understand Why I get misty, holding your hand (Aretha Franklin: Misty ~ Garner/Burke)
Even as the synecdochic cows come home from the pasture to listen to Aretha, there are still those who complain and moo that she’s “too gloomy”, doesn’t know any “happy songs” – according to Dylan’s persona in “Tarantula”:
(A)retha, pegged by chior boys & other pearls of mamas as too gloomy ..... & dont you know no happy songs (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
One gloomy example:
I'm only one step ahead of heart break One step ahead of misery One step is all I have to take backwards To be the same old fool for you I used to be (Aretha Franklin: One Step Ahead ~ Singleton/Snyder)
Hop the next train in the hope of hoppy her, but don’t forget that Aretha’s quite religious:
& ride the blinds & into aretha's religious thighs (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Remember also:
(A)retha - known in gallup as number 69 (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Dylan acknowledges that Franklin supports civil rights, but he questions the strength of her commitment to the cause:
Aretha - lady godiva of the migrants she sings too (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Titles her:
Aretha crystal juke box queen of hymn (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Filled with irony, Dylan remarks on how ‘freedom” is really gained:
(T)he fact is this: "we must be ready to die for freedom" (
end of fact)
so what I wanna know about the fact is this:
"could hitler have said it? degualle? pinnocchio?
lincoln? agnes moorehouse?"
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
In the movie “How The West Was Won”, Agnes Moorehouse plays Rebecca, wife of Zebulon Prescott. They leave the comforts of their eastern farm to go out west with their daughters Eve (Caroll Baker) and Lilith (Debbie Reynolds). On the way, the parents drown.
A comforting song from that movie:
Away, away, come away with me Where the grass grows wild Where the winds blow free Away, away, come away with me And I'll build you a home in the meadow (Debbie Reynolds: Home In The Meadow ~ traditional/Cahn et al)
Obvious it is that Dylan’s well aware that Aretha, the “Queen of Soul”, is the real star of the “Tarantula” show.
She binds its fragments together:
(I)n new york city she's known as just plain Aretha - i shall play her as my trump card
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)