by Wouter van Oorschot
Translated by Brent Annable
A list of the previous articles in this series is given at the end. The most recent article before this appears here.
(Publisher’s note: My sincere apologies for the delay in the appearance of this article following the rest of the series, for which there are links below. I’d love to blame technical issues for it’s non-appearance but the reality is it was incompetence on the publisher’s part).
- What you really don’t want – part 3
In short, three dreadful but universally acclaimed global hits by The Four Tops, Springfield and Wonder that represent a vast majority who stubbornly clung (and still cling) to the age-old fairy tale that human beings’ greatest happiness consists by definition in the act of discounting oneself completely in favour of another.
I chose a gender-neutral formulation here, but just in case, I will insert another reminder that in practice it was, and still is, the doing of religious moral crusaders worldwide – heterosexual men who still have no inclination to change traditional marriage values once and for all for the benefit of women, while maintaining that they are ‘ordinary, healthy men’ who are perfectly fine with the status quo. Nowadays, more and more women rightfully have very different ideas on the subject, and so we find ourselves embroiled in the ‘politics of sex’ – the latest proof of which can be seen in the #MeToo movement.
What does all of this say about the societal facet of Dylan’s ‘inner-directed, inner-probing, self-conscious’ work that Irwin Silber refused to comprehend? Given the largely autobiographical character infusing Dylan’s entire oeuvre, it could very well be that all of his love songs from the early period – that predominantly address a lost love, or sometimes a farewell – draw on personal experiences with women, though for us readers and listeners, his personal life is irrelevant. What is relevant is that his rejection of possessiveness in relationships, the first sign of which was ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’ from November 1962, merged roughly one year later with his rejection of the possessiveness of the masses who wanted him to continue writing and singing ‘socially engaged’ songs such as ‘Blowin’ in the wind’, ‘Masters of war’ and ‘The times they are a-changin’’.
It is my opinion that the quasi-cheerful ‘All I really want to do’ and the simultaneously unapproachable and dolorous, ‘It ain’t me, babe,’ are the first fruits of this attitude in his work. As a dual declaration of independence, they are both contrasting and complementary to one another since the former, though in a rather negative fashion, sets out the conditions under which the I-figure is prepared to maintain friendship with you-figures, while the latter expostulates the equally negative reasons why there is not – or no longer – any possibility of love.
In ‘All I really want to do’, Dylan clearly delineates what society can expect from him, and in ‘It ain’t me, babe’ he specifies what a lover (or potential lover) should, at any rate, not expect from him. It is the crystal-clear position of a person protecting their independence from both a possessive society and a possessive lover.
So once again: far from abandoning the engagement present in his earlier work, as described by the Irwin Silbers of this world, he instead tackled both types of possessiveness in one fell swoop. After Another side of Bob Dylan, this confrontation led to a creative explosion lasting a mere eighteen months in which Dylan, in addition to other important works that unfortunately must be left aside here due to the scope of this book, combined both rejections into a series of under ten songs, treating his besiegers to a barrage of disdain. The eight others will be presented below one by one.
Did he thereby significantly contribute to the liberation of the individual from love and from the collective, both simultaneously and definitively? Did he confound traditional power dynamics for good with the two notions that love can only exist based on freedom, reciprocity and equality, and that the authority of parents, family, teachers, employers, religious forerunners, politicians and peacekeepers are not to be taken for granted, but must be earned? Looking at the world today, it would not seem so. But neither these questions nor the answers thereto were what prompted the jury to award him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 – which was well-deserved. It was enough that the extremely well-spoken Dylan had set an oeuvre to music that posed this question, an oeuvre that was unparalleled, incomparable, and therefore inimitable.
‘It ain’t me, babe’ has proved itself as one of Dylan’s most popular songs, or at least one of the most significant. This fact evidently also held true for himself. The use of statistics often conceals skullduggery, but with over 1070 live performances by the end of 2023 it was ranked eighth among his most frequently performed songs of all time, which cannot be a coincidence.
Of the nearly one hundred cover versions by others, the earliest – by Johnny Cash and Joan Baez – appeared only months after the original. Even Nancy Sinatra tried her hand. It has been recorded in seventeen languages and distributed by ‘local artists’. Nevertheless, I would advise you here, too, to stick with the original version, which is musically already problematic enough, not being what one would call a ‘catchy tune’. Incidentally, none of the anti-possessiveness songs lend themselves to arrangements, for the simple reason that they are all inimitable. Though the substance may be relatable, any version that does not supersede Dylan’s own will only expose the performer as a parroter of ideas, destroying any sense of credibility. Superseding Dylan is also no mean feat, and one that almost nobody can pull off successfully: the sound is simply too unique, without enough ‘general appeal’.
The fact that Dylan knew exactly what he was doing is illustrated by a fourth verse that was discovered later, and that he discarded with very good reason, as it would have diluted the whole significantly:
Your talking turns me off, babe It seems you’re trying out of fear Your terms are time behind, babe And you’re looking too hard for what’s not here You say you’re looking for someone That’s been in your dreams, you say To terrify your enemies An’ scare your foes away Someone to even up your scores But it ain’t me babe
An audio recording of the London premiere on 17 May 1964 has survived. Though not the best quality, it does convey the charm of the initial try-out before a full auditorium: the tempo is low, and the vocals extremely concentrated. What struck me personally is that it was perhaps the only time when he was not completely certain of singing ‘No no no, it ain’t me, babe’, since he seems to have used ‘Lawd, Lawd, Lawd’ several times, a variant of ‘Lord’ that was not uncommon in both blues and folk circles.
Lastly, I am loathe to deny you the opinion of one particular scholar, who is convinced that Dylan’s ‘no, no, no’ is a response to The Beatles’ ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ in ‘She loves you’ from over nine months beforehand. A clever theory, and if you ask me: sure, I’m all for clever theories. I even have one or two of my own if need be. But my suggestion would be: let’s ask Dylan himself.
(Due to financial circumstances beyond the author’s control, here he must end Brent Annable’s exemplary translation of Dylan and us: beyond America. It is to be hoped for that with the publication of this one third of the book, foreign publishers will be found so that in due time the complete text will be accessible to non-Dutch readers as well. Foreign rights can be acquired through Prometheus Publishers, Amsterdam, except for English language rights, that are available directly through the author at e@hlp.nl.)
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
- 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
- What you really don’t want – part 1
- What you really don’t want – part 2
Wouter’s book is only available in Dutch for now:
Dylan en wij zonder Amerika, Wouter van Oorschot | 9789044655179 | Boeken | bol