It’s not the meaning of Dylan’s lyrics that is important….

Posted on September 19, 2026 by Tony Attwood

 

By Tony Attwood

In case you wish to go back further over this issue…. previously in this series on Bob’s “Dissociative Identity Disorder” I’ve offered….

These articles was initiated by Bob’s claim that Bob revealed that he had Dissociative Identity Disorder – an issue that means  that from time to time the individual involuntarily changes his or personality very quickly, in a way that the vast majority of us don’t.  For most of us, we have a personality, and we stick to it and that’s that.

Now, the songs I have been writing about in this series come from the early part of 1964 at which time Bob ended up this collection of lost love songs with a piece of what I can only describe as nonsense ending with I shall be free number 10  which I have taken to have been written and recorded as a marker of the end of this series of lost love.

And indeed “I shall be free 10” could well be described as a song that is born out of the disorder – and perhaps even a song celebrating disorder.  In which case it probably truly is a song of “Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

Now there is of course a long article on Wikipedia about the song – or perhaps I ought to say “about the lyrics” since no one bothers with either the rhythms nor the chord changes, and thus the music within the piece is ignored.   But such articles also tend not to consider each song in relation to the other songs written before and after – although the few songwriters I have had the chance to talk to, and my own experience as an amateur writer of songs, suggest that quite often the biggest influence upon what one writes today is what one wrote yesterday.

But this is what Bob challenges with his assertion of having Dissociative Identity Disorder.  And indeed considering his songs in the order they were written, rather than as a collection brought together for an album, can give some insight into this.

So what we have in 1964 was a whole collection of such songs leading up to “Black Crow Blues”, which contemplate the sadness of lost love and moving on, followed by the chaotic, humerous talking blues “I shall be free number 10”.  Bob is showing here his ability to jump from the dedication and love, through the tragic sadness of Plain D and then within Black Crow Blues, to finding the route back to the more light-hearted world that exists beyond his own feelings.

Dylan effectively uses his disorder to deny his talent and indeed his unique songwriting abilities.   Just looking at the list of songs he wrote before “Number 10” emphasises this.

Now of course one can say in reply – yes Bob could move from lost love and sadness into the weird humour of “Number 10” because he’s a genius – that is why this website exists, that is why people buy his records.

And I am not denying that.   However what I am looking for are examples of changes in writing style that appear to indicate that Bob has, and has always had (because it tends to be a condition one is born with, not one that is picked up along the way) the disorder that Bob himself discussed and we have noted in Bob reveals Dissociative Identity Disorder for the first time.

It is because of this I find it particularly interesting to look not just at each individual song but at the order in which the songs were composed.   For Bob, as we have seen, had just composed a song which begins

I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s br other and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you

in which he seeks to deny that he is special in any way.  And in his next song (To Ramona) Bob takes this a step further for now we cannot be quite sure if he really is singing to Ramona or to himself.  Either way Bob has here an insight into himself, and the way he interacts with the world and he offers this thought to Ramona…

I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I’ll come and be cryin’ to you

Indeed it can be argued quite reasonably that all of us at some stage need to learn that “Everything passes; Everything changes” – it is just that for the person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, that set of changes is more dramatic and more overwhelming than it is for most of us most of the time.

In fact we can’t be sure if Bob is just giving Ramona advice, or if he is actually telling her of his own issues with relationships.   Is he just saying, “don’t worry you’ll get over him” or is he saying, “In an hour or two you’ll see life in a completely new way”?

Of course we don’t know and all we can do is to contemplate the order in which Bob wrote songs and the lyrics he put in them.    And this is where this approach – seeing the songs as simply a list of compositions, rather than breaking them into groups as determined by the album they appeared on, while ignoring those that did not get released – can give us a real insight.

What in fact happened to Bob was that he wrote songs about the breakup of his relationship, and then used the insights from that to take each song further and further forward both in his understanding of emotions, and his ability to translate that understanding in more and more powerful songs.

So we can see and feel the depth of his sadness over his lost love in Ballad in Plain D  but then find he move toward the concept of moving on with Black Crow Blues

Soon he is able to see the humorous side of what has happened with I shall be free number 10  and admit that the end of an affair is not the end of the world (To Ramona) because there is plenty more to find, plenty more to do, without the shackles of a relationship and commitment, holding one back (All I really want to do)

So Bob moves into his songs of individualism such as I’ll keep it with mine and My back pages and at this moment finds the explosion in his awareness of just what his writing can do, for the next two songs he writes are  Gates of Eden and It’s all right ma

This is an extraordinary journey for anyone to make – although I would add that I am certainly not saying it was unique to Bob – but it is quite rare.   But in essence he moved from being wrapped up in his own feelings and emotions into being able to generalise these experiences into something we can all appreciate.

It is not that in this journey Bob has just moved on to broader topics, but rather he has looked at encompassing the entire way we look at the world – which for most of us generally turns out to contain only the most partial of glimpses of what lies beyond us.  Just consider…

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

For me (and I fully admit maybe this is just for me) this journey is from visions that feel all-encompassing, into an understanding that we can never fully grasp what is going on.  And this happens because everything we see is modified and understood through our own thought patterns, which have been honed from years of experience in our own lives.  Rather obviously, everything is seen through our own eyes, and modulated through our own experiences.

Equally obviously this is just my interpretation of the evolution of Bob’s vision, and in writing it here I don’t aim to convince you I am right.   But for me this journey has been incredibly helpful as I have made my way through the world accompanied by the songs of Bob.

Indeed, I know of course that it won’t happen, but if in some odd way, I were to meet Bob and sit down with him and have a conversation about the meanings of “Gates of Eden” and he were to say, “It doesn’t mean that at all,” I’d have to say, “I don’t mind”, because my thoughts of what it is about have been an integral part of my life since I first bought the LP.

It has become part of my journey, and indeed has on occasion it has guided my journey, and so although what Bob meant is obviously very important to the wider world, to me, it now doesn’t matter nearly so much.   It is not the meaning of the song lyrics that is important – it is the pathways that each song opens up for me, that I really value.

Obviously I don’t know if he actually has “Dissociative Identity Disorder” but learning about that syndrome has helped me improve my appreciation both of Bob’s songs themselves, and my own way of seeing the world.

I have a feeling that there will be another article in this series that may appear shortly, but at the moment I don’t know what it will say…

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