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
- What was the public to do? – part 1
- What was the public to do – part 2
- 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides part 1
- 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – part 2
- Teenager finds a hero – part 1
1965: Teenager finds a hero – part 2 (continued)
But while I understood Berry’s ‘Too much monkey business’ without a problem, I can honestly say that to this very day, I still have no concrete notion of the meaning of Dylan’s text. And it still doesn’t matter: a lifetime later, on every hearing I still experience the same initial sensation, that this song is about me. Tell me, how can that be? In the old days – when second-rate secondary education and literary theory had not yet ruined our enjoyment of reading, and there were still teachers who could explain in simple terms what the ‘shock of recognition’ was – back then, you could have a discussion with a teacher like that about how such a thing were possible: to experience a shock of recognition without being able to explain precisely what one recognised.
With the help of such a teacher, one might then have discovered what it was… or perhaps was not, and have it explained to one that there was such a thing as symbolism, and poetry created via a ‘stream of consciousness’ or écriture automatique, that they were not to be taken literally per se, but could be probed intuitively to see whether anything resonated.
I must confess that I had one such English teacher, Bart Westerweel, praised be his name, who managed to make me receptive to even such unfathomable texts such as ‘my sweet old etcetera’ by e.e. cummings. Encouraged by his efforts, in the autumn of 1968 I would give a presentation on Dylan’s ‘Tombstone Blues’ from 1965, with the confidence that I had explored and understood everything based on my own intuition, and concluding that it was nothing short of a masterpiece. I had just started smoking cannabis, which I believed gave me the ability to better plumb the depths of Dylan’s art. Mr Westerweel received my account favourably, precisely because I had been so ‘nebulous’ in my analysis, whereupon he began – without embarrassing me in the slightest – to explain to the class how much more meaning the song contained than I had professed with my limited understanding of it. I might hope that you, dear reader, also had the good fortune of such fine teachers.
Meanwhile, the line ‘Don’t follow leaders’ – the only one that I understood effortlessly, thanks to my political background – immediately presented me with an existential dilemma at the age of thirteen. I was still susceptible to idols, and although I do tend to think that the same applies to all adolescents, I will only speak for myself. I had acquired a new idol just like that, who was fortunately also a soloist, eliminating the need for me to divide my attentions among a group. And a good-looking one too, if the cover was any indication. Hmm. And not unimportantly, this was the same fellow who had sung ‘All I really wanna do is, baby, be friends with you’. Yes please! But are we to be convinced that idolatry and leadership should not be confused with one another? I did confuse them, however subconsciously. And yet here was an idol who urged me in the imperative not to follow leaders. If I did what he said, then I was following his own orders, which he had just explicitly instructed me not to do. What hidden meaning did this contradiction conceal, or was it merely a paradox?
My thirteen-year-old brain was set to pondering. And how was I to interpret the fourfold warning ‘Look out, kid’ because ‘it’s something you did’ (what exactly?), ‘no matter what you did’ (how come?) ‘you’re gonna get hit’ (by whom?) and ‘they keep it all hid’ (who keeps what hid?) The fact that Dylan was (or, more precisely, could have been) referring to himself as ‘kid’, and that the song was an internal monologue in the imperative mood, did not occur to me. Not because I did not know what an internal monologue was, but because the song was about me. He had struck a chord within me, he was my new hero and I was already doing many of the things he had presented to me in the imperative (keep a clean nose, learn to dance, get dressed, try to be a success, please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift, don’t wear sandals, try to avoid scandals, don’t wanna be a bum you better chew gum), so deferring to his leadership was no longer up for discussion. But what does a thirteen-year-old do with a command to do the opposite?
I will skip ahead and reveal here that one year later, in February 1966, I decided to simply forget about this contradiction or paradox, whatever it was. Once the moment has arrived, you will understand why. I say this in hindsight, of course, but I am certain that I can pinpoint the moment when it happened: the moment when I no longer cared whether Dylan’s new works were better or worse than those I already knew. After that time, my attitude to Dylan was no different than to any other artist: once fascinated, my interest is difficult to shake off. I blame my upbringing. Pick an author for yourself whose work you admire. Whenever they release a new book, you will probably read it regardless, without expecting it to be any better or worse than the previous – it is not the quality, but the development of the oeuvre that is important. This attitude is also what prevents us from issuing harsh judgements prematurely, But first, let us look at what led up to February 1966.
We have already witnessed CBS’s inept management of Dylan as an artist. But ‘Subterranean homesick blues’ also appeared as the first song on Dylan’s fifth LP Bringing it all back home in late March, two weeks after the single. When the single entered the Cashbox Top-100 on 3 April at no. 94, it seemed as though CBS’s commercial policy, after around three years, was now finally working in Dylan’s favour. On his ‘home turf’, at least – everywhere else it was still a shambles. In the global release, the B-side of the single was filled with a similarly recent love song ‘She belongs to me’, except in France, Italy, the Netherlands and what was then West Germany, where the eighteen-month-old ‘Times they are a-changin’’ graced the reverse side. For this reason, some have referred to these releases as a ‘double A-side’, but in reality it was simply a public-relations move to show his versatility.
The European branch of CBS, who oddly enough had already released records in France containing ‘recent’ songs in June and November of 1964, may have thought that with the strong left-wing movements in those countries, the public was perhaps more receptive to a positive folksong about changing times than to a love song. Seen in this light, the deliberate use of the hymn that had more or less given him the status of a secular priest in the United States was a smart move. It is also true, however, that for three whole years, nobody had seen fit to point out beyond the United States that Dylan was already a successful folk singer with four albums to his name – LPs that had not even been released in France until ‘Subterranean homesick blues’ became a worldwide hit. In any case, in the United States, they finally decided to strike while the iron was hot.
(to be continued)
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