Bob Dylan
Biography
Robert Allen Zimmerman, better known to the world as Bob Dylan, is one of the major musical icons of the past century. Born in 1941, to a working class family in Duluth, Minnesota , Dylan followed in the literary tradition of figures like Steinback and Emerson, giving a voice to the disadvantaged and the underdogs of society. As the majority of his early work involved acoustic songs, Bob Dylan initially gained a following in the folk community, but his songwriting soon infiltrated other musical communities. His songs, Mr. Tamborine Man and All Along the Watching Tower, were covered by The Byrds and Jimi Hendrix, bringing his music into the spotlight of rock and roll, and influencing Dylan himself to join the rock scene, in his infamous shift to electric guitar. Dylan also associated himself with beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, who helped him grow as a poet and establish his reputation among the bohemian and artistic community. He is known for his politically charged and philosophical lyrics, with songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “The Times They Are a Changing” becoming anti-war anthems for the protestors of Vietnam.
"All Along the Watchtower"
Lyrics
There must be some kind of way out of here,"
Said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Analysis
While Dylan was an excellent performer in his own right, his acoustic songs were often covered by rock artists who made the songs popular and in many ways reinvented the songs. With Dylan’s song, All Along a Watch Tower, Jimi Hendrix achieved huge commercial success, with the song being his best selling single. While the two artists interpret the song in different ways, with Hendrix acting as an protagonist and Dylan as an observer, “in both versions, the song’s characters, a joker and a thief, may be seen as facets of the artist’s persona, two sides of an internal dialogue(Zak 3).”
The song is a mysterious and enigmatic story with no chorus. Dylan was experimenting with his songwriting, and told his friend and Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, that he was “Writing shorter lines, with every word meaning something (Zak 620.)” Ginsberg recalls the change he heard on Dylan’s album, “John Wesley Harding,” on which “All Along a Watchtower” first appeared: “There was to be no wasted language, no wasted breath. All the imagery was to be functional rather than ornamental.” While the song’s lyrics and music are simple, it is infused with meaning. Dylan’s conscientiousness regarding his diction illustrates his seriousness as a songwriter, as he applies principals of poetry to his own work.
The song is seen as a comment on society, as the two characters, the joker and the thief, have an existential debate on the meaning of human social actions and life itself. While the joker illustrates frustration with the material world and the ignorance of the social players, the “businessmen, they drink my mind, plowmen take my earth/ none of them along the line. Know what any of it is worth.” These lines imply that people have a misunderstanding of their purpose one earth or misplaced values. These lines can be seen on a critique of those who may be greedy for earthly delights: like wealth and wine.
The joker and the thief can be seen as literary tropes, offering commentary as the “fool” may have done in an Elizabethan drama, and the thief was often a character in pastoral plays and later dramas such as Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” in which the thief makes a fool out of all of the honest men at a party. The role of the thief as someone who outsmarts is played upon here, as the thief can reassure the joker that he knows something that many other people do not when he says: “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate.”
The subsequent lines contain imagery that is meant to represent the some established society of the past. This adds to the courtly aspect of the poem, which already uses the characters of Renassaince drama, and adds to the imagery of royalty. While the princes of the establish world watch from their tower, they sense that danger is approaching in the form of a wildcat. The wildcat can be seen to represent the social uprisings that protested the established society and values of materialism. In the closing line, “Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.” This line brings back the two characters, while it also introduces the device of the wind. Dylan used the wind in his signature protest song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” to represent the unknown force that moves us. Here, the wind is “howling” which implies that serious change is coming. The song can be seen to fit within his politically driven canon as a song of social commentary that predicts change, while using the conventions of poets and dramatists of the past to cryptically display his existential argument.
Albin J. Zak, Journal of American Musicological Society