by Andy Gill
It’s this position, poised on the cusp of good and evil, which seems most relevant to Dylan’s song, in which the ghostly figure of the cleric stands for the singer himself, left weeping against a mirror in the final verse, contemplating his own failings and desire for salvation. He is, perhaps, regretting his own earlier criticisms of religion, in which he may have unjustly condemned individuals of Augustine’s nobility and holiness along with the organized church they represented. Alternatively, it may be that he suddenly realizes his own part in luring the righteous from their path through his own brand of the Devil’s music.
Augustine is depicted in Dylan’s dream as wearing a golden coat and carrying a blanket, signifiers respectively of the worldly excesses of mankind in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and the more ascetic leanings of the prophet. He seeks the “…souls/Whom already have been sold,” the first of several references on the album to the commercialization of man’s inner being, notably in ‘Dear Landlord’ and ‘The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest’. There are, he claims, no modern martyrs among humanity’s most gifted individuals to lead mankind toward the light, and man is accordingly condemned to seek his own transcendence—though he should be assured that he is not alone in his search.
The inference is clear: Dylan, who had narrowly avoided becoming a martyr of sorts when he survived his motorbike accident, has realized that his youthful attempts to “save” society from itself have come too late—most of American society had already sold its soul to a variety of temptations, the like of which not even Augustine could have imagined (including the pop scene in which Dylan acknowledged his own complicity), and any salvation could henceforth only come through the individual’s determined efforts. Ironically, the song’s opening couplet directly paraphrases ‘Joe Hill’, the tribute to the eponymous union martyr who, as a leading light of the American syndicalist organization The Wobblies (The American Industrial Workers Of The World) would doubtless have disputed such a denial of the efficacy of collective action.
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
In ‘All Along The Watchtower’, the contrasting spirits in Dylan’s character, dramatized so evocatively in ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’, are here characterized as the joker and the thief, both trapped in the here and now with little prospect of transcendence.
The joker rues the way that philistine businessmen make free with the profits of his creative work, without according it due respect. This was clearly a heartfelt complaint from Dylan, who had recently been embroiled in contract negotiations with both his record company CBS and his manager, Albert Grossman, both of whom he considered were treating him with less respect than he deserved. His record royalties from CBS were nothing special, and Grossman seemed to consider him simply a cash cow to be milked as quickly and as deeply as possible, piling tour date upon tour date with little regard for his client’s physical and emotional well-being or for his creative needs.
And that was just the tip of what appeared to be a particularly venal iceberg. “If it’s not the promoter cheating you, it’s the box office cheating you,” he complained to Robert Shelton. “Somebody is always giving you a hard time… Even the record company figures won’t be right. Do you know that up to a certain point I made more money on a song I wrote if it were on an album by Carolyn Hester, or anybody, than if I did it myself. That’s the contract they gave me. Horrible! Horrible!” Ultimately, after scaring CBS by signing to MGM when his contract was up for renewal (the MGM deal was subsequently nixed by Allan Klein, one of the industry’s sharpest money-men), Dylan re-signed with them at double his previous royalty rate.
The thief sympathizes with the joker, adding that he’s not the only one who considers the situation absurd, but warns against letting such worldly matters prey upon his mind too heavily, since there are far more pressing matters to be addressed. What these matters are is made clear in the brief outline sketched in the final verse, which draws upon the prophet Isaiah’s prediction of the fall of Babylon, in Isaiah 21, 6–9: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed; And he cried, A lion; My Lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights; And behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.” And subsequently (Isaiah 21, 11–12): “Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night; if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come.”
In the face of the howling, apocalyptic wind approaching, it is far more important, the thief suggests, to seek remedy for the soul rather than for worldly injustices. Then again, of course, the thief would say that, having been responsible, by dint of his underhand trade, for some worldly injustices of his own. In Dylan’s version of the song, it’s the barrenness of the scenario which grips, the high, haunting harmonica and simple forward motion of the riff carrying understated intimations of impending cataclysm; as subsequently recorded by Jimi Hendrix in an arrangement so definitive as to be adopted by Dylan himself in later years, that cataclysm is rendered all the more scarily palpable through the virtuoso’s dervish whirls of guitar.
THE BALLAD OF FRANKIE LEE AND JUDAS PRIEST
Another misbegotten pair of symbolic characters inhabits this, the album’s longest (and dullest) track, representing respectively the straight-talking, candid and simple soul (Frankie Lee: “frankly”) and the forked-tongue betrayer (Judas Priest). For all its length, the song is basically a simple parable comparable to the Devil’s tempting of Jesus in the wilderness, except that in this case, Frankie Lee—presumably the character with whom Dylan most identifies—eventually gives in to the temptations of the flesh, after procrastinating half-heartedly over the temptations of materialism. Dylan, like Frankie, had never placed that much importance on money and material things, but had always demonstrated a keen appreciation of the more experiential benefits of his position, the various dalliances and indulgences available to the Sixties rock demi-god.
The early verses, in which Frankie agonizes over Judas’s offer of money, presumably echo Dylan’s recent contractual negotiations, or those earlier in his career: certainly, Judas’s attempt to rush Frankie into a hasty decision “before [the dollar bills] all disappear” closely reflects standard negotiating practice in the music business. As, indeed, does Judas’s dangling of carnal carrots to help sway Frankie’s mind, in the form of the brothel in which he eventually exhausts himself. To Frankie, such worldly delights are represented as “Paradise,” though the devilish Judas recognizes their true price is “Eternity”—Frankie’s mortal soul.
Possessing little self-control, Frankie takes the bait, and as a result loses control over his destiny, not to mention “everything which he had made” in his more considered moments. After 16 nights of sustained indulgence—analogous to the high life Dylan had been encouraged to lead over the last few years—Frankie dies of thirst in Judas’s arms, an indication of the insatiable, addictive nature of such behavior. It’s hard to view the Judas Priest character as anyone but Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, just as the “little neighbor boy” whose guilt is “so well concealed” (and who has a vested interest in hoping that “Nothing is revealed” of his complicity in Frankie’s downfall) surely stands for the various cheerleading cronies who encouraged Dylan in his dangerous excesses. The final verse, with its bland moral, serves warning that, in future, he would be exerting more control over his life and career; and indeed, when his manager’s contract came up for renewal a few years later, Dylan chose to sever his association with Grossman.
DRIFTER’S ESCAPE
Built around a single suspended guitar chord, with Dylan’s anguished vocal entreaties furnishing most of its melodic shape, ‘Drifter’s Escape’ is a simple parable of th
e singer’s release from his previous life, with the apostolic intervention of the bolt of lightning enabling his escape.
As the song opens, the drifter is trapped in a Kafkaesque inquisition, his crime a mystery to him—just as Dylan had been baffled by the constant criticism that had dogged his path as he drifted from folk-singer to rock star, all the way around the world. The judge seems sympathetic to the drifter’s plight, suggesting that his confusion may be more successfully relieved by not actively seeking “understanding” of his situation in a strict, rational sense. The jury, however, has scented blood, and bays for more—just as, regardless of the criticisms voiced by older folkies, Dylan’s fan-base had grown all the more oppressively obsessive following his transformation into rock’n’roll idol. But God intervenes to save the drifter by hurling a bolt of lightning at the courthouse, an obvious metaphor for the motorcycle accident that helped free Dylan from his previous nihilistic lifestyle.
Ironically, the drifter makes his escape by slipping away while everybody else resorts to prayer—an indication that, while Dylan may have undergone some kind of Damascene conversion around the time of the accident—he did, for instance, keep a Bible handy on a lectern in his artist’s studio during his recuperation—his relationship with his god remains a personal, one-to-one affair, untainted by the interference of the organized churches.
DEAR LANDLORD
A weary, maundering piano blues, ‘Dear Landlord’ has been interpreted by some as Dylan addressing his god, and even—by biographer Anthony Scaduto—as Dylan’s mind addressing his body (which would certainly fit in with the album’s other dualistic texts, ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’). It’s more readily viewed, however, as a direct entreaty to Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman—whose Woodstock house and Gramercy Park apartment the singer often used as homes, and who subsequently leased a Woodstock cottage to his client—to reduce the burden of work constantly thrust upon his shoulders. Compared to the contemptuous, dismissive tone of put-downs like ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ and ‘Positively 4th Street’, or the bitterness of ‘Masters Of War’, this finds Dylan eschewing rancor in favor of a more resolute, persuasive approach toward his opponent, as if serving notice to quit.
Again, Dylan is concerned about the price placed on his soul by the purely commercial attitude taken toward his work—such creative matters, he insists, are “beyond control,” and when the time is right, he will make records again. Dylan’s contract with CBS had run its course, and it seems likely that in order to help in his negotiations with Mortimer Nasatir of MGM Records, Grossman had been pestering the singer for new material, if only to demonstrate to Nasatir that the rumors about Dylan’s decline—some suspected that he had suffered irreversible brain damage in the motorcycle accident—were unfounded.
At that time, nobody realized how enduring rock’n’roll careers might be, and it must have annoyed Grossman to observe his client squandering his talent and his time on a bunch of throwaway nursery-rhyme singalongs like The Basement Tapes, at exactly the time he most needed to reassert his public profile. In his first post-accident interview, with Michael Iachetta in May 1967, Dylan made what appeared to be thinly-veiled threats toward his management and record company, by revealing that he did in fact have songs buzzing round his head as per usual, but that “…they’re not goin’ to get written down until some things are evened up. Not until some people come forth and make up for some of the things that have happened. Somethin’ has got to be evened up, is all I’m going to say.”
Accordingly, in the second verse Dylan advises that his landlord should cool his jets awhile: there’s no point in working so hard for too much, too soon, he contends; and anyway, materialism is just a bottomless addiction—there’s always something else that you don’t have, always another glittering temptation leading you on, right through to the end of your life. The final verse finds the singer stubbornly sticking to his guns, refusing to discuss the matter or adopt a more conciliatory position. I know you’re good at making money, he assures his landlord, but we’ll get along better if you try not to ignore the more intrinsic qualities of my work—it’s not just product, after all.
I AM A LONESOME HOBO
The album’s most straightforward moral parable, ‘I Am A Lonesome Hobo’ finds the eponymous vagrant offering free advice to those who might think themselves his betters. Despite having tried a variety of criminal pursuits to get by, including bribery, blackmail and deceit, he still retains enough self-respect to eschew begging, the ground zero of human activity. Or at least, he’s never been caught begging, which is a different matter entirely…
Once wealthy and well-fed, his downfall is sketchily presented, in a manner typical of the album as a whole; but the crux of the matter is faithlessness, a lack of trust in his brother. It’s left him an outsider, someone whose life is so apart from the normal realm of societal experience that he might as well be an alien. But in his solitariness, the hobo has found a certain philosophical stability, which leaves him standing in the garb of prophet rather than beggar, a salutary lesson for those who drift away from righteousness.
I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT
Set to the traditional folk melody ‘Come All Ye Tramps And Hawkers’—which Dylan had earlier borrowed for ‘The Ballad Of Donald White’, one of his earliest (unreleased) compositions—‘I Pity The Poor Immigrant’ is among the album’s most confusing songs, balancing itself precariously between compassion and condemnation. Is Dylan singing about a real immigrant, or just about someone who lives their life as if an immigrant, a displaced visitor in an alien society? Following hard on the heels of ‘I Am A Lonesome Hobo’ and ‘Drifter’s Escape’, it’s an outsider parable of a sterner cast, Dylan’s judgment flinty and unstinting, though his gentle and piteous delivery belies his tough attitude.
Through the three verses, Dylan builds an itinerary of the immigrant’s unprepossessing characteristics, which starts off with a propensity to strive for evil, and carries on through a damning catalogue of lying, cheating, greed, self-loathing, uncharitableness and ruthlessness—a fairly accurate portrait of everyday business practice, in other words.
The American experience of immigration is different from that of most European countries: while ostensibly more welcoming of foreign immigrants, America has traditionally offered them little reliable access to justice. The result has been that each successive immigrant community has been forced to throw up its own “strong men” to guard its interests, and in time these localized guardians have grown into powerful crime figures, most famously with the Mafia, though the process doubtless holds true for all subsequent waves of immigrants, through to the Jamaican Yardies and Russian Mafiosi of today.
It may be that Dylan is satirizing this process in ‘I Pity The Poor Immigrant’, criticizing the prospect of great bounty with which America lures other races and nations to its doorstep. After all, in a country founded on greed and theft, who can blame those who fancy a slice of the pie for themselves? In a sense, then, all immigrants to the United States have fallen “in love with wealth itself” simply by wishing to become Americans. The final line, in which Dylan contemplates the moment at which the immigrant’s “gladness comes to pass,” is a beautifully double-edged conclusion, the singer both pitying the immigrant who achieves his or her selfish dream, and savoring the point at which such dreams finally curdle in a horrifying flash of self-realization.
THE WICKED MESSENGER
The eponymous messenger is, of course, Dylan himself, the bringer of harsh home truths, and certainly a man possessed of the kind of mind “that multiplied the smallest matter.” Like the messenger, Dylan had spent much of his recent life touring assembly halls, until he too found his feet burning up from the hectic pace of his schedule.
Again, the song is riddled with biblical allusion: the title itself derives from Proverbs 13:16–17: “Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge; but a fool layeth open his folly. A wicked messenger falleth into m
ischief; but a faithful ambassador is health.” The high priest Eli, from whom the song’s messenger came, was one of the more knowledgeable and intellectual characters of the Old Testament. To have been sent by him would imply a heavy reliance on intellect rather than instinct, suggesting that Dylan perhaps felt he had valued rationality too highly over spirituality.
The revelatory, heart-opening message the messenger himself is given, “If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any,” pivots on the notion of good news, which in the gospel sense refers strictly to the Christ story. If Dylan had not, in fact, already undergone conversion to Christianity, he was certainly doing his best to make it appear that way.
DOWN ALONG THE COVE
The album’s final two songs prefigure Dylan’s full-blooded move into country music on his next album. With Pete Drake’s pedal steel guitar sidling around Dylan’s gently syncopated piano figures, ‘Down Along The Cove’ is an understated number of no import beyond offering Bob an opportunity to express his guileless, open affection for his “little bundle of joy,” most likely Sara, but possibly one of their two children that had been born in 1967, Jesse Byron and Anna. Where before he had denied his marriage, and even, on one occasion recounted by the journalist Jules Siegel, suggested that Sara hide from a reporter in a hotel closet, here he wants to shout his love from the rooftops, pleased as punch that any passers-by watching the two of them walking along hand-in-hand will recognize their love.
