Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 9
by Jochen Markhorst
IX I’m a bit of a textualist
You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
The lyrics conclude with what will become the most quoted one-liner. Up to the highest level even – Dylan is the first and, as yet, only songwriter to be quoted in US Supreme Court rulings. In 2010, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in an opinion, “The-times-they-are-a-changin’ is a feeble excuse for disregard of duty,” and two years before that, in 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts quoted – entirely correct or not quite entirely – “Like A Rolling Stone”: When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. Dylan actually sings “When you ain’t got nothing”, and the Chief Justice gets some critical questions about that, eight years later during a visit to a law school in Boston. In front of an audience of students and staff, he first discusses the use of the Dylan quote in his judicial opinion, and the interviewing Dean John F. O’Brien of New England Law drills deeper, inquiring about the ins and outs of that missing word ain’t.
O’B: Chief Justice Roberts, in reading your opinions you seem committed to clarity but also to keeping it interesting for the reader. For instance in a case described by the New York Times as “an achingly boring dispute between telephone companies” you livened up your dissent by suggesting a lack of standing, quoting Bob Dylan, one of my favorites, by pointing out “when you got nothing you got nothing to lose”. [audience laughter] What was your objective in quoting Bob Dylan?
CJR: […] Bob Dylan captured the whole notion behind standing and what was an issue there when he said “if you don’t have anything you’ve got nothing to lose”. And in that case the party didn’t have any stake in the case and had nothing to lose, and the case should have been thrown out on that basis. I know Bob Dylan would have agreed with that. [audience laughter]
O’B: But you did clean up his language. Because the original language was the double negative well when you ain’t got nothing you got nothing to lose
CJR: Well actually I did get into a little bit of discussion about that with somebody. That is as performed. The liner notes show that it doesn’t have the ain’t, so… I’m a bit of a textualist [audience laughter] so I went with the liner notes.
Ironically, the “textualist” is then mistaken about the source. The published lyrics on the site and in Lyrics confirm the Judge’s retort – so without ain’t indeed – but there are no liner notes on Highway 61 Revisted’s cover. Unimportant and forgivable of course; it’s a spontaneous response to an unexpected question, we’ll give Chief Justice Roberts some leeway. If only because he single-handedly elevates Dylan to the stratosphere, laying one of the steps on the way to the Nobel Prize.
Moby Grape – Murder In My Heart For The Judge:
It is a particular power that many one-liners from Dylan lyrics seem to have; “to capture the whole notion,” as the Chief Justice says. In 2012, Professor Alex B. Long of the University of Tennessee wrote his study “The Freewheelin’ Judiciary: A Bob Dylan Anthology” (published in Fordham Urban Law Journal) because he had noticed that Dylan quotes do pop up so very often in court judgments, lawyers’ pleadings and in the courtroom at all. The times they are a-changin’ scores well, but the Greatest Hit is you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows from “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, often used to dismiss expert witnesses who only come to kick in open doors anyway. The particular strength of Dylan’s lyrics in particular, says Professor Long: they are highly memorable and have the ability to communicate the point that judges want to make.
Harry Nilsson – Subterranean Homesick Blues:
The professor does not explicitly name it, but a third quality is undoubtedly their vagueness or, put slightly more kindly, the multi-functionality – as the nothing to lose example illustrates. Chief Justice Roberts and, in an entirely different case, Judge Stephen F. Williams use the quote to clarify that the party has no interest, no standing in the case, and so the claim should be dismissed, or be declared “inadmissible”, as a jurist would say. Which is not how Dylan uses or means it. Most likely, Dylan means it as a sneer – although that view is not watertight either, but he certainly does not use it as a condition of admissibility, he does not try to express that our Miss Lonely would have no interest in a claim.
The linguist might argue that the deductive derivation When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose is a statement closed in itself, a rather open door without any argumentative power, with a high duh content. Yep. And if you close your eyes, you can’t see a thing, and only if you do have something, you are capable of losing something. But that – obviously – is not what the one-liner communicates.
However, what the oneliner does communicate within the context of the song is not entirely clear either. Taken by itself it is, after all, a kind sentence, a consolation. You have nothing to lose is an encouragement. “It can only get better from now on,” “cheer up, the only way is up,” or something like that. Which does not fit within the context at all, within this verbal reckoning with the haughty girl who has ended up in the gutter, where she belongs anyway, according to the narrator. Or does something of compassion actually flicker at the end of his tirade? After all, she did end up being cheated and swindled by the diplomat who robbed her of everything he could steal, which is perhaps a bit harsh, despite all her flaws and her blameworthy behaviour in the past. Well – how does that feel?
Presumably, the Chief Justice would answer: like injustice. And then ask the Public Prosecutor to consider filing charges against the diplomat.
Continued: Like a Rolling Stone part 10: Just jump on it
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971