By Larry Fyffe
The self-proclaimed ‘garbologist’ AJ Weberman’s “A Listener’s Guide To Bob Dylan’s Tempest” might be hailed as Juvenalian satire at its best except the savage invective is so over the top that it makes Jonathan Swift look slow.
Weberman demonstrates that Bob Dylan’s song lyrics, if cherry-picked and ‘decoded’, can be twisted to show that the singer/songwriter is anything from a Communist to a fundamentalist Christian to an out-and-out neo-Nazi.
In the lyrics below, Weberman, believe it or not, contends that Dylan is telling white people to wake up and realize that African Americans belong to an inferior race:
How many roads roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man And how many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand?
(Bob Dylan: Blowing In The Wind)
According to Weberman, ‘roads’ is a Dylanesque pun on Cecil Rhodes, the white supremacist ‘dove’ who brings peace to South Africa by pointing out that blacks are destined to be ‘male servants’.
And just in in case listeners are not clever enough to pick up on the code by themselves, AJ provides another example:
Well, a childish dream is a deathless need And a noble truth is a sacred creed My pretty baby, she's lookin' around She's wearin' a multi-thousand dollar crown
(Bob Dylan: Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum)
The song above be not fragmented postmodernist quotes from poet Henry Timrod and a New Orleans travel guide, but, according to Weberman, it’s Dylan denying the Holocaust, and condemning the inflated ‘sacred creed’ of Zionists since the singer/song writer is certain that only a few thousand Jews (not millions) were killed by the Nazis.
Everybody smart enough to get that now? But it’s in the album ‘Tempest’ , according to Weberman’s listener’s guide, that Bob Dylan shamelessly bares his neoNazi beliefs:
Well, I'm grinding my life out steady and sure Nothing more wretched than I must endure I'm drenched in the light that shines from the sun I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you've done
(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood )
In the lyrics above, according to Weberman, Bob Dylan would like to attack the black ‘Muslim socialist’ President Hussein Barrack Obama, and stone him to death for stealing his hard-earned money through taxation.
Weberman’s decoding of Dylan’s song lyrics continues on and on:
Charlotte's a harlot Dresses in scarlet Mary dresses in green It's soon after midnight And I've got a date with the fairy queen
(Bob Dylan: Soon after Midnight)
Deciphered: the immoral ‘scarlet’ whore of Babylon, the Democratic Party of Obama, meets in Charlotte, North Carolina where passives male homosexuals, known as ‘Marys,’ are easily duped, and same-sex marriage is celebrated.
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing Blowing like it's gonna sweep my world away I gonna stop in Carbondale, and keep on going That Duquesne whistle gonna rock me night and day
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
Weberman claims that in the song, Dylan accuses AJ of being Captain Fritz Duquesne, a South African Nazi spy arrested by the FBI in 1941. As I’ve pointed out, Humphrey Bogart, in the movie ‘All Through The Night”, breaks up a Nazi spy ring in New York City, alluded to in Dylan’s “Sweetheart Like You”. Weberman, however, says the the song above is about blowing the whistle on Dylan because Zimmerman is the actual Nazi sympathizer:
Listen to the Duquesne whistle blowing Blowing like she never blowed before Blue light blinking, red light glowing Blowing like she's at my chamber door
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
No reference to Edgar Allan Poe is this, but, decoded by AJ, it’s a reference to a laser beam from a gun pointed at Weberman’s door lest he expose Dylan as the white racist that he is.
The light in my native land are glowing I wonder if they'll know me next time 'round I wonder if that old oak tree's still standing That old oak tree, the one we used to climb
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
The ‘old oak tree’ is one on which blacks were lynched, and Dylan, of course, wants it brought back into service.
The old oak tree he used to climb is the one that Blacks are hanging from in Blowin which is a variation of Southern Fruit = black bodies swinging from tree in the breeze. He used Blowin the climb to the top. In Masterpiece he says he had an old oak tree by his side when I forced him to leave NYC during the birthday party; Dude wants to give me a necktie party like I gave him a birthday party
should be strange fruit – speaking of fruits Bob was male prostitute im Times Sq when he first hit nyc
strange fruit – Bob was male prostitute im Times Sq when he first hit nyc