DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA: What was the public to do? – part 1

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot; Translated by Brent Annable

Previously in this series…

• Amuse bouche
• Who the book is (not) for – part 1
• Who this book is (not) for – part 2
• Anything but idolatry – part 1
• Anything but idolatry – part 2
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 1
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 2
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 3
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 4
• The unchanging (heterosexual) love song – part 1
• The unchanging (heterosexual) love song – part 2

5. What was the public to do? – part 1

‘Is there anything in addition to your songs that you want 
to say to people?’
‘Good luck.’
‘You don’t say that in your songs.’
‘Oh yes they do, every song tails up with “good luck, 
I hope you make it”.’

(Press conference in San Francisco, 3 December 1965)

By the autumn of 1961, Dylan had already been offered a recording contract. In November he had recorded his first solo LP, Bob Dylan, which appeared in March 1962 and contained eleven songs from the folk canon plus two of his first original compositions: ‘Song to Woody’ and ‘Talking New York’. The album was favourably received.

His record company, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) introduced no exception to the rule that the music industry used 45s, or ‘singles’, to present, popularise and monetise artists as much as possible.   In December 1962, they therefore released Dylan’s single debut ‘Mixed-up Confusion’, barely two months after The Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ was released in England.

It constitutes an oddity in Dylan’s early work, an attempt at something ‘rockish’ that had nothing to do with the debut LP that appeared nine months earlier, and which had established him intentionally and oh-so-carefully as a promising folk singer. By contrast, ‘Mixed-up confusion’ presents an up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll star with a five-man support band made up of seasoned jazz musicians who used this studio gig to earn a little extra on the side. With an unrelenting beat, a pounding piano, wailing harmonica and anguished vocals, it lasts 148 seconds (2:28) – only six seconds longer than ‘Love me do’. Perfect for a single.

If you ask me, it would have made for an explosive debut by the Dylan whose high-school dream was to follow in the footsteps of Little Richard. And that speaks only of the music, which was… what genre even was this? Hillo-country-rockabilly-woogie? I am happy to go with ‘folk rock’, the designation that the experts seem to have agreed upon, but it surely cannot help that the term was not coined until three years afterward, for the songs with electric instrumentation introduced by Dylan at the time.

Now to the rock ‘n’ roller’s lyrics: could anyone derive any meaning from them? I present them here by way of comparison with ‘Love me do’, with some additional lines in brackets that featured in two rejected recordings that I believe are sufficiently illustrative of Dylan’s mental state at the time. They also offer an early example of Dylan’s habit, or shall we say, ‘endearing tendency’, to alter lyrics without warning:

Mixed Up Confusion

Mixed-up confusion

I got mixed up confusion
Man, it’s a-killin’ me
Well, there’s too many people
And they’re all too hard to please

Well, my hat’s in my hand
Babe, I’m walkin’ down the line
An’ I’m lookin’ for a woman
Whose head’s (mind’s) mixed up like mine

Well, my head’s full of questions
My temp’rature’s risin’ fast
Well, I’m lookin’ for some answers
But I don’t know who to ask

(Well I’m too old to lose
But I’m just too young to win
And I feel like a stranger / [Won’t somebody tell me]
In the world I’m living in) / [Which way the world begins]

But I’m walkin’ and wonderin’
And my poor feet don’t ever stop
Seein’ my reflection
I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!

Nothing like ‘Love me do’, and as autobiographical as you please. Dylan sketches an extremely insecure mindset: ‘There’s too many people, and they’re all too hard to please… I’m lookin’ for some answers, but I don’t know who to ask… I feel like a stranger in the world… I’m walkin’ and wonderin’ and my poor feet don’t ever stop… I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!’

As I said before: not exactly a ray of sunshine. Is this what teenagers were hankering for? Clearly they were, as in July 1965 ‘Like a rolling stone’ – which is equally devoid of sunshine – became Dylan’s first global hit. They just weren’t quite ready in 1962.

The curious thing is that as far as I am aware, not even Dylanologists have been able to ascertain who it was at CBS who made the final decision for Dylan to debut on a 45 with a song like this. There can be no other explanation – and it was nothing less than a first-class blunder – than when choosing this track, the commercial department of CBS was itself in ‘mixed-up confusion’ about which Dylan should be presented to the public. It should therefore come as no surprise that it was recalled from the shelves shortly after its release. My guess is that somebody realised not only that Dylan had already been presented as a bona fide folk singer, but that he also had over 25 pure folk songs to his name, including several fine examples such as ‘Blowing’ in the wind’, ‘A hard rain’s gonna fall’, and the stirring ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’. Nina Simone’s recording of the latter is worth listening to as one of the rare performances of a Dylan song that surpasses Dylan’s own.

Nina Simone – The Ballad of Hollis Brown:

If they had asked Dylan – and to my knowledge, nobody ever did – whether ‘Mixed-up confusion’ might indeed have been autobiographical, he would probably have concocted one of the evasive explanations that he grew accustomed to giving as his fame increased.

Thankfully we can all take solace in the all-encompassing quote ‘I am my words’, which captioned his portrait in Newsweek. On 4 November 1963. Based on this utterance, and whenever I feel there is good reason, for quite some time I have given myself permission to interpret the I-figure in Dylan’s songs as their progenitor. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am most intrigued by his I/you songs on the assumption that they reflect his own love morality, which would seem reasonable for a moralist. But unlike many admirers, the actual events in his life that may have precipitated autobiographical elements in his work are not of special interest to me.

Furthermore, we must all be cognisant of the fact that whoever says ‘I am my words’ is not necessarily talking about themselves to the exclusion of all others; one can also say so in jest, or to avoid thorny questions, or even attribute the statement to someone else.

These possibilities certainly applied to the young Dylan, who around that time had become enamoured of the work by France’s most famous poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), and was therefore undoubtedly familiar with perhaps his most famous claim ‘I is somebody else’ (Je est un autre), penned as a sixteen-year-old upstart in a letter to a now completely forgotten correspondent.

Rimbaud added: ‘I am present at this birth of my thought: I watch it, I listen to it.’ In other words: he bears witness to the work that emerges from his hand, and denies any authority over it. Whoever is not prepared to accept the same level of distance to the part of Dylan’s creative process that is rich in symbolism, will be in hardly any state to appreciate it. So here we are now, you and I: where do we go from here?

On 13 August 1963, Dylan’s second single ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ was released, roughly contemporaneous with ‘She loves you’, but a full eleven weeks after it had already appeared as the opening song on his second studio LP The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, when the recording had already existed since July 1962… He had therefore written a ‘universal hit’ perfect for a single release, which CBS failed to realise, and so they promptly put it in storage.

Only when competitor Warner Bros released an arrangement of ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ by Peter, Paul and Mary a year later which sold almost a million copies within the month, did they wake up and release Dylan’s version on the seven-inch market. This strategy cannot be called ‘promotion’, it is more like capitalising on an opportunity, which nonetheless must have cost Dylan tens of thousands in income. CBS was still clearly playing catch-up, although it did appear that they had definitively decided to include 45s in Dylan’s promotional arsenal from then on.

continued: DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA: What was the public to do part 2 – Untold Dylan

Wouter’s book is only available in Dutch for now:

Dylan en wij zonder Amerika, Wouter van Oorschot | 9789044655179 | Boeken | bol

We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks