Bob Dylan

Poetry Set to Music: Dylan's "Rough and Rowdy Ways"

POSTED JUNE 25, 2020

As a teenager in the 1960's, the songs of Bob Dylan always seemed to have something to say to me at just the right time. Protest songs for the civil rights and antiwar movements, surrealist songs reminiscent of the Symbolist poets, songs of longing and romantic love, songs of domestic happiness...it was all there. Now he's released a collection of new songs – something we Dylan fans haven't seen since 2012. “Rough and Rowdy Ways” is poetry set to music. The songs are full of cultural allusions and existential musings as you would expect from the artist who recently turned 79. Blues and ballads and a touch of rock, there is even a love song.

The epic feature song “Murder Most Foul” scores its own disc – it's Disc 2 of the 2 CD set. Dylan released the 17 minute song as a single in late March. If the title sounds like something from a Shakespearean tragedy, that's because it is – the words spoken by the ghost of Hamlet's father. The song about the assassination of JFK is packed with references to that “dark day in Dallas.”

Two minutes in, Dylan begins mixing in references to popular culture and to at least 74 songs including obscure Civil War ballads, classic movies, and songs by, among many others, the Who, the Animals, and Billy Joel. The most powerful lyrics, of course, are those relating the assassination. Dylan was just 22 when John Kennedy was killed. Kennedy had captured the imagination of that generation of young people. Who knows what our country might have been like today had he survived?

The day that they killed him, someone said to me, "Son

The age of the Antichrist has just begun...”

I said the soul of a nation been torn away

And it's beginning to go into a slow decay

The nine songs on Disc 1 more than hold their own...poetic gems with music alternating between ballads, blues, and pop.

In “I Contain Multitudes,” which includes a nod to the lass from Bally-Na-Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Frank, Indiana Jones and the Rolling Stones, Dylan channels Walt Whitman on the paradoxes and possibilities that exist within one's personality.

I'm a man of contradictions, I'm a man of many moods

I contain multitudes...

I'll keep the path open, the path in my mind

I’ll see to it that there's no love left behind

The strangest song on “Rough and Rowdy Ways” is the mind-bending “My Own Version of You.” The narrator wants to build a Frankenstein. The mournful, funereal beat reminded me of music in a Grade B horror film. Gathering body parts, “I will bring someone to life in more ways than one...Don't matter how long it takes, it'll be done when it's done.” He declares “I wanna do things for the benefit of all mankind” - the sometimes driving force for the mad scientists in those movies. Then he wonders “Can you tell me what it means, to be or not to be?” Another quote from Hamlet.

“False Prophet” is the first of three blues songs on the album. After the opening lines set an uneasy tone (Another day that don't end, Another ship goin' out / Another day of anger, bitterness, and doubt), Dylan proclaims himself “the enemy of the unlived meaningless life” - a reference to Socrates' famous statement at his trial. Socrateswas accused of "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state" - for being a false prophet. Dylan vanquishes his doubts:

I ain't no false prophet

I just know what I know...

I'm first among equals

Second to none

The last of the best

The other blues songs on the album are "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" and "Crossing the Rubicon."

“Goodbye Jimmy Reed” is a tribute to the great American blues musician and songwriter. Dylan celebrates Reed's gospel roots, his unpretentious nature, and his music. The driving beat of the song, similar to Jimmy Reed's, is found in some of Dylan's own earlier works.

Dylan asks “What would Julius Caesar do?” in “My Own Version of You.” Now he is "Crossing the Rubicon" – the defiant act by Julius Caesar that started the Roman Civil War in 49 BC. Since then the phrase has been used to signify committing to a course of action from which there is no turning back. After singing of dark days “in this world so badly bent,” Dylan asks us to

See the light that freedom gives

I believe it's in the reach of

Every man who lives

Links to the Lyrics.

The best way to listen to this masterpiece may be with a copy of the song lyrics in front of you. Here are links.

Murder Most Foul

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

My Own Version of You

I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Some of the songs

“I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” is the classic love song of the album. A lyrical ballad, it's a beautiful slow dance declaration of love, “a love so real, a love so true” that “I've made up my mind to give myself to you.” The realization of this love took some time and is rooted in a loneliness.

I'm not what I was, things aren't what they were...

I traveled a long road of despair

I met no other traveler there

Lot of people gone, lot of people I knew

“Black Rider” is a mysterious, spare song where we are left wondering who or what the titular presence actually is. The apocalyptic Black Rider has “seen it all”, is “living too hard”, and “on the job too long.” Dylan, whose “heart is at rest”, is negotiating a leave-taking. Is Black Rider another person? A symbol for those aspects of Dylan's life he wants to leave behind? Or a symbol for his whole life as he contemplates mortality?

Dylan's song to the “Mother of Muses” has the feel of a lost Civil War ballad. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture. The mother of the Nine Muses was Mnemosyne, a daughter of the Titans and a predecessor to the Greek gods. Dylan is thus addressing the primordial source of creativity and inspiration, asking her to “sing for me, sing of the mountains and the deep dark sea.” Asking for inspiration? Sure, as well as falling in love with Calliope – the muse of eloquence and epic poetry - and asking for her hand “She don't belong to anyone, why not give her to me?” The verse ends, though, with an enigmatic reflection on his own long life:

I've grown so tired of chasing lies

Mother of Muses, wherever you are

I've already outlived my life by far

Key West (Philosopher Pirate) closes out Disc 1. Mortality is never far from Dylan's thoughts and the song opens at President McKinley's death bed. The narrator, the philosopher pirate, heard the reports of McKinley assassination years ago “on the wireless radio ‪from down in the boondocks way down in Key West.” Now after a long hard life, he is returning to that city to close out his days in the warmth of the Keys - “searching for love, for inspiration ‬‪on that pirate radio station.” The narrator has great hope for this return journey:

Key West is the place to be

If you're looking for immortality

Key West is paradise divine

Key West is fine and fair

If you lost your mind, you'll find it there

Key West is on the horizon line

In its apocalyptic view of the world, "Rough and Rowdy Ways" seems remarkably timely. With no end in sight to the pandemic or the economic crisis, with "the soul of a nation torn away," Dylan's "Rough and Rowdy Ways" offers no comfort. Instead we are asked to look unflinchingly at what's before us ("I just know what I know"), to"go right to the edge, go right to the end, go right where all things lost are made good again", to "keep the path open, the path in my mind, and see to it that there's no love left behind."

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