DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA: What was the public to do part 2

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

Previously in this series…

What was the public to do? – part 2

(continued)

Concerning Dylan’s own version of Blowing in the Wind, released after the success of Peter Paul and Mary’s almost-million seller (see What was the public to do? – part 1), it has been claimed that this ‘take-2’ of Dylan’s single debut was no great commercial success. Although in fact, nobody seems to know how many copies of hís ‘Blowing in the wind’ were actually sold, which would allow a comparison with the over one million sold by Peter, Paul and Mary. We may insist on calling it an improved single debut, but only because of the far superior I/you minor-key love song on the B-side. I give the lyrics below as they appeared on the record itself:

Well it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It’ll never do somehow
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
But don’t think twice, it’s alright

It ain’t no use in a-turnin’ on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An’ it ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road
But I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
But don’t think twice, it’s alright

It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never done before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear ya anymore
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ walkin’ way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s alright

So long honey, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
Goodbye is too good a word, babe
So I just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s alright

Dylan recorded the song in mid-November 1962, twelve days before The Beatles recorded ‘Please please me’. Both I-figures address a girl or young woman (according to the listener’s discretion), and again: everything is of an openly heterosexual nature. I belabour the point because this aspect would no longer be taken for granted in the not-too-distant future. But as different as the two songs may be, both I-figures uphold virtually identical love values, which were also averred by average young Western men in 1962. For the essence of this argument, see the summary below.

Please Please Me

Last night, I said these words to my girl
"I know you never even try, girl"

[Chorus]
Come on (Come on), come on (Come on)
Come on (Come on), come on (Come on)
Please, please me, whoa, yeah, like I please you

You don't need me to show the way, love
Why do I always have to say, love

[Chorus]

I don't want to sound complaining
But you know there's always rain in my heart (In my heart)
I do all the pleasing with you, it's so hard to reason
With you, woah, yeah, why do you make me blue?

Last night, I said these words to my girl
"Why do I never even try, girl?" ("I know you never even try, girl")

[Chorus]

Lennon’s boy makes a veiled request to finally be permitted to have sex. At the time, western modesty demanded a fierce denial of any such intentions, but many girls who themselves could not wait, understood perfectly what was going on, as demonstrated by the rising Beatlemania. Dylan’s boy, on the other hand, bids farewell to his love by leaving a message that she will not find until he is already long gone. That the sex has already taken place here is but speculation, so there is no need for me to write about it. Nor is it of any material import exactly what may have transpired between the individuals in question. We never find out exactly what happened, there are myriad possibilities, but ‘You’re the reason I’m travelling on’ would seem self-explanatory: he is driving the dump-truck, plain and simple. And whatever happened, that much is clear, whether it occurred before their first lovemaking, between the various instances, or after the final occasion.

Both sets of lyrics are sung by a lover who feels hard done by. But the clarity of the desire felt by Lennon’s figure, who feels he must wait too long for what he desires, is matched only by the ambiguity of Dylan’s. The latter protagonist presents the contradiction of singing to his lover after he has already left, leading the listener to conclude that he either made a quick recording and left it for her to find, or sent it to her after he left. To adherents of this theory, the song is ripe with the undertone of a person trying to strengthen their resolve, having already made a decision but dreading the consequences. It suggests a form of heartbreak, but one that is rendered all but impossible by the extremely spiteful generalities ascribed to the woman in question by the I-figure. She is, after all, ‘the reason’ why he left, having said nothing that could have made him stay, and who also wasted his ‘precious time’. If somebody left me a note like that I would feel genuinely hurt, having been shown the door, and by a gutless runaway to boot! These days such behaviour is labelled ‘misogyny’, or if one is feeling particularly malicious, a ‘typical case of #MeToo’. There is only one moral justification for this type of sexist machismo, to be found when the ‘you’ figure is transformed into a far more distant ‘she’. Once well on his way, the man ruminates: ‘I once loved a woman, a child I am told / I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul’, and then, addressing himself for once, ‘But don’t think twice, it’s alright.’

Dylan was 21 when he wrote and recorded ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’. A young, attractive man who, with a passable effort using a borrowed melody lasting only 220 seconds (3:40), took his first steps along the road that would ultimately bring him global renown. One reason I say ‘passable’ is because instead of writing:

But I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay

he at least might have written:

I wish there was somethin’ you’d have done or said
To try and make me change my mind instead

in order to leave things in the past tense, and avoid any grammatical or logical disruption to the narrative.

On the cover to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, then famous journalist and music critic Nat Hentoff (1925-2017) wrote: ‘It’s a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better… as if you were talking to yourself.’ Hentoff’s interpretation is interesting, as it would mean that the I-character never actually intended to leave his ‘farewell letter’ behind for the woman in question. If so, it would not be the only time that Dylan gave the impression of writing and singing entirely about himself, for himself. In such instances, we might wonder whether, in addition to the desire to express a veiled moral lesson, he had any other reason for sharing his self-reflections with his listeners. Whatever this reason may be: I have been unable to find it.

It is irrelevant, in any case, for the one line ‘I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul’ expresses, albeit in embryonic form, the germ of the revolution that Dylan would effectuate in the centuries-old genre of the love song. His position here – and this is only the beginning – is as follows: ‘I will give my heart to the person I love, but hands off my soul, or I’m outta here’. This position has nothing to do with misogyny, and everything to do with an attitude that takes an axe to the equally age-old and possessive morality of love which, to be fair, also permeates all early Beatles songs, or rather, permeates the love song in general. To summarise the current state of play: we have young men of an equal age, Bob, John and Paul, with similar rock ‘n’ roll backgrounds but who are nonetheless worlds apart, and not only because they come from different countries. And what was CBS’s solution? A B-side.

(to be continued: Dylan and us: Beyond America. 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – 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

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