DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA
by Wouter van Oorschot; Translated by Brent Annable
A list of the previous articles in this series is given at the end.
What you really don’t want – part 1
But it’s not to stand naked under unknowin’ eyes It’s for myself and my friends my stories are sung. (‘Restless farewell’ – 1963)
Turn the tables.
Perhaps you have been in a situation before where you were approached with clear romantic intentions by somebody who was in love with you. You were certainly taken with this person, though you felt like you needed time to determine whether you in fact returned their sentiments. Such universal doubts and insecurities are nothing unusual, after all.
At the same time, you were also a single person with certain needs, and so when love came along on a silver platter, and presented by someone who seemed appealing at first glance, you perhaps decided to get to know them better after all. I will skip over whether the ensuing romance was enjoyable for you both – it was your romance, after all – or whether it maybe did not ensue at all. But whatever the case, at a certain point you decided it would be better to call off the proceedings before the initial attempt at intimacy, or perhaps after several attempts – here, too, I will refrain from comment, as I cannot know when your misery began.
What it all came down to was the fact that the other party’s love for you expressed itself as stifling possessiveness. You were expected to turn a blind eye to all of their faults, for example, to promise time and time again that you would never leave them, that you would always show strength and never weakness, that you would take your lover’s side even when they were demonstrably wrong, to help them up after every stumble, close off your heart to all others but always bring your sweetheart flowers, come running whenever you were called, and heck, even die for them – or more if that were possible. In other words, you were to be a lover for life and nothing else. This, wholly or in part, is what they demanded from you.
The above scenario may seem familiar to many. Let us cautiously posit that these expectations have been (and in some cases, still are) cherished in conformity with a centuries-old, heterosexual set of love morals by quite a number of women with respect to men. To offer the benefit of the doubt, we might also add that for thousands of years, women have been subjected to conditioning by predominantly male religious leaders in the form of mores, values, legislation, religious treatises, and also in the arts (see Dusty Springfield below). In other words, a moral framework that resulted in ‘the weaker sex’ having very little say in such patriarchal societies, leaving them no option but to submit in resignation. At the same time, women quickly realised that their only recourse was to appropriate this moral code in extremis, and to demand domestic security from men, lasting from marriage to the grave. That is roughly how things went, and is reflected in the summary above.
Western society did change slightly in the 1960s due to the second wave of women’s liberation. The concept of ‘the battle of the sexes’ gained ground, and in the English-speaking world the pithy term ‘politics of sex’ became popular. While unfortunately neither attained the status of ‘winged words’, one consequence was the fact that, however slowly, it increasingly dawned on heterosexual men that a woman’s dedication at the very least presupposes some form of reciprocity. Or in other words: that mutual love and authority must be earned, not demanded. An equally important artistic consequence for the love song was that, compared to the dominance of the macho texts from the previous decades – several tasteless examples of which we examined in the previous chapters, selected from a pool of thousands – male artists were now also learning how to portray themselves as the weaker party.
To baby boomers such as myself, who were not yet ripe for love but were rapidly heading that way, this phenomenon undoubtedly began with the first Rolling Stones hit written by iMick Jagger and Keith Richards, released almost simultaneously with The Beatles’ ‘A hard day’s night’ in the late spring of 1964, when Dylan wrote ‘All I really want to do’. ‘Tell me’ is clumsy and dull, the message is little more than ‘tell me you’re coming back’. But as a Stones fan from day one, I grant clemency in this case because – mainly thanks to the final verse – it is a blues, a genre to which separate criteria apply, as you know:
I want you back again I want your love again I know you find it hard to reason with me But this time it's different, darling you'll see
Refrain:
You gotta tell me you're coming back to me You gotta tell me you're coming back to me You gotta tell me you're coming back to me You gotta tell me you're coming back to me
You said we're through before You walked out on me before I tried to tell you, but you didn't want to know This time you're different and determined to go
Refrain.
I wait as the days go by I long for the nights to go by I hear the knock on my door that never comes I hear the telephone that hasn't rung
Refrain.
But I digress: this was evidently the new direction for heterosexual men, and it did not take long for things to degenerate into extreme sentimentality, such as the first worldwide hit by The Four Tops from May 1965, a full ten years after their formation: ‘I can’t help myself’. Here, a fellow wails at his ‘sugar pie honey bunch’, claiming that he is ‘weaker than a man should be’, and ‘tied to her apron strings’:
Sugar pie, honey bunch
You know that I love you
I can’t help myself
I love you and nobody else
In and out my life (In and out my life)
You come and you go (You come and you go)
Leaving just your picture behind (Ooo)
And I’ve kissed it a thousand times (Ooo)
When you snap your finger or wink your eye
I come a-running to you
I’m tied to your apron strings (Can’t help myself)
And there’s nothing that I can do, ooh
Can’t help myself (Ooh)
No, I can’t help myself (Ooh)
‘Cause, sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
I’m weaker than a man should be
I can’t help myself
I’m a fool in love, you see
Wanna tell you I don’t love you
Tell you that we’re through
And I’ve tried
But every time I see your face (I can’t help myself)
I get all choked up inside
When I call your name
Girl, it starts the flame
(Burning in my heart, tearing it all apart)
No matter how I try, my love I cannot hide
‘Cause sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I’m weak for you (Weak for you)
Can’t help myself
I love you and nobody else (Ooh)
Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
Do anything you ask me to (Ask me to)
Can’t help myself
I want you and nobody else (Ooh)
Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I love you (Love you)
Can’t help myself
No, I can’t help myself (Ooh)
Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I love you
Oh, what a poor, powerless, hen-pecked chap. When the authoritative music magazine Rolling Stone published a revised, second list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time seventeen years after the first, they had the nerve to move this sob-story from position 422 to 483. On the positive side, this is thankfully only 18 places away from complete oblivion.
Besides, the reader will also be fully aware that lyrics of this kind do nothing to attack the essence of male-imposed love morals: most have regarded women as their property for so long already, have they not? And how recently did men still deny women even their own bank account – a trivial example compared to all the physical violence unleashed on women by men over the ages. It is therefore not difficult for a ‘healthy’ man to present himself as the weakest hankering, pleading, simpering party of the two.
I’ll give ten-to-one odds that when push comes to shove – to use a fitting expression – he will maintain that a woman should still bend to his will more than he to hers. And at least 99 out of 100 are still too self-absorbed to even give their loved one adequate satisfaction in the bedroom, where they climax too quickly, collapse in exhaustion and then usually fall asleep. Women have been counting their blessings in this regard for centuries.
Nevertheless: in our 21st century, I wish I had a dollar for all the members of both sexes who perpetuate this possessive form of love. One could become a millionaire a hundred times over – although that depends on how deep your pockets already are, I suppose. In any case, friends, by now we have realised just how slow genuine progress is, have we not? Is there anything to be done?
continued: Dylan & Us, Beyond America: What you really don’t want – part 2
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
- Teenager finds a hero – part 2
- Teenager finds a hero – part 3
- What you really want
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