Loaded Couch Potatoes

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — released May 27, 1963

(1)  “Blowin’ in the Wind”:  Arguably one of the best-known songs of the twentieth century, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is certainly one of Dylan’s most enduring compositions.  It’s not necessarily one of my favorites, partially because the performance on this album is a bit listless; Dylan doesn’t sound terribly engaged by his own song.  Still, any song that has lasted as long as this one has lasted must have something going for it, and what this one’s got is the ability to make people reflective.  The lyrics, as I’m sure you know, are a series of seemingly simple questions (How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?, How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?, and so forth) that, upon further contemplation, reveal themselves to be utterly unanswerable … unanswerable, at least, if your goal is to be definitive.

The song was immediately interpreted as a protest ballad, and is still seen that way well over forty years later.  But what, exactly, is “Blowin’ in the Wind” protesting?  My guess is that its most direct protest is against the type of mindset that refuses to ask questions about the world around it, regardless of whether or not answers can be had.

(2)  “Girl from the North Country”:  Occasionally — and incorrectly — referred to with an “of” instead of a “from” in the title, “Girl from the North Country” is unquestionably one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs.  There are several times during his early career when his guitar skills and his singing (neither of which are especially impressive on their own) combine to create something close to perfection.  This is one of those instances (and it’s not the only one on this album, either).  Taking the folk ballad “Scarborough Fair” as an inspiration, Dylan’s song is a lonely tale of a fellow who is remembering a lost love.  His lyrical talents are on full musical display in lines such as these: “If you’re travelin’ in the north country fair/where the wind hits heavy on the borderline/remember me to one who lives there/she once was a true love of mine.”

Dylan has long been regarded as one of the most poetically gifted of all songwriters, and you need look no further than the final of those four lines to see why.  Being no expert on poetry, I cannot quite tell you why the line sounds so much better — sung, spoken, or read silently — with the construction “once was” instead of the more obvious “was once,” but it’s nearly undeniable that it does indeed sound better that way.

Listening to the song also reveals Dylan’s skills as a singer in terms of his pauses between words; placing the pause in one place as opposed to another frequently adds a sort of magic to the song’s meanings, and this is a skill that not every singer possesses.  Dylan, a born storyteller, possess it in abundant quantities.

(3)  “Masters of War”:  Another nearly perfect song, this is one of the (surprisingly) relatively few in Dylan’s songbook that can genuinely be said to be protest songs.  This isn’t the venue to get into a discussion about why Dylan got adopted as The Voice Of A Generation, and I won’t go down that road very far except to say that “Masters of War” is a chance to hear Dylan actually being what people thought he was.  Here, Dylan is spitting bile at the industries that profit from war, the people who make the machinery of death and destruction.  Dylan’s voice is restrained, but you can hear a world of anger lurking beneath it, and the song ends with what has to be one of the most chilling lyrics in all of music: “And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon/I’ll follow your casket by the pale afternoon/And I’ll watch while you’re lowered down to your deathbed/And I’ll stand over your grave ’til I’m sure that you’re dead.”

(4)  “Down the Highway”:  Dylan is doing straight blues on this tedious track.  The guitar playing is especially weak, and it sounds like Dylan might have written the song about ten minutes before playing it.  I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’d rank this amongst his best songs … and I hope I never meet that person.

(5)  “Bob Dylan’s Blues”:  Another fairly boring track, this one at least features a Dylan who sounds interested in the song he’s playing.

(6)  “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”:  Yet another of my very favorite Dylan songs, this one would probably get my vote for the best on this album.  In some ways, it feels like a more polished version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” almost as if Dylan wrote the former and was then inspired to write this one as a better, stronger sequel.

The song is a series of questions in which a parent asks a child where the child has been, what the child has seen and heard, who the child has met along the way, and what the child will do (presumably as a reaction to the experiences).  The child answers each of these questions with a series of dazzling images that somehow manage to convey the world without losing the air of mystery inherent in the best poetic imagery.

“And what’ll you do now, my darling young one?”

“I’m going back out before the rain starts falling.  I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest, where the people are many and their hands are all empty … where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters … where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty priso,n and the executioner’s face is always well-hidden … where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten … where black is the color, where none is the number … and I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it, and reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it.  Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking, but I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”

There’s a lot going on in those words, and while I don’t understand it all, I don’t mind; I don’t think I want to understand it all.

(7)  “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”:  Another classic song of lost love, this one and “Girl from the North Country” have been embroiled in a  steel cage match in my brain for over a decade, and a clear winner has not yet emerged.  Probably, one never will.

“I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind; you coulda done better, but I don’t mind.  You just kinda wasted my precious time, but don’t think twice; it’s all right.”

(8)  “Bob Dylan’s Dream”:  “Don’t Think Twice,” of course, is all about regret, and so is this song.  It’s an interesting song, too, one in which Dylan sings about not lost love, but lost friendship.  At the point at which this song was recorded — April of 1963 — Dylan was still more or less an unknown, but with this song, you can almost imagine that it’s being sung from the vantage point of 1965, when the world for the singer has forever changed: “Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat/I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.”  It’s a beautifully played song that is not particularly well-known … but it ought to be.

(9)  “Oxford Town”:  Less than two minutes long, this is a simple song, but it’s a great one.  The music is sprightly and cheerful, and that lies in complete contrast to the lyrics, which are dark as can be: “Oxford town in the afternoon/Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune/Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon/Somebody better investigate soon.”  It’s an interesting juxtaposition you get here, with those downbeat lyrics being conveyed through upbeat music.

(10)  “Talkin’ World War III Blues”:  It’s kinda sloppy, but this is a fun song … to the extent that a song about nuclear war can be fun.  Dylan is in storytelling mode, and while it doesn’t all quite work, you’ve got to love a song that rhymes “thumpin’ ” with “somethin’.”

“Half of the people can be part right all of the time … some of the people can be all right part of the time … but all the people can’t be all right all of the time; I think Abraham Lincoln said that.  I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours; I said that.”

(11)  “Corrina, Corrina” (traditional):  If I’m not mistaken, the drums on this song are the first instrumental accompaniment Dylan had on one of his records.  It’s a old blues song that Dylan gives a lovely, gentle performance of in a country-ish style.

(12)  “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance” (Henry Thomas):  This song is a brief return to the type of song Dylan did on his debut album: a rollicking cover of an old country blues ditty.  It’s fun enough, but it does not fit in with the rest of this album at all.

(13)  “I Shall Be Free”:  One of Dylan’s more humorous songs, this one is kinda ugly in some ways, with some fairly misogynistic lyrics lurking in there.  But it’s sung in such a cheerful manner that it’s hard to take seriously.  Dylan sounds pretty happy in this one, which is a welcome relief after some of the bummers on this album.  It shares at least one thing in common with some of the album’s more overtly serious songs: it expresses a sort of overwhelmed confusion at the world around Dylan.  It doesn’t go into the wild fits of imagistic wonder that, say, “Hard Rain” goes into, but if the songs aren’t qute siblings, they’re definitely cousins.

“Well, you ask me why I’m drunk all the time?  It levels my head and eases my mind; I just walk along and stroll and sing, I see better days and do better things … catch dinosaurs … make love to Elizabeth Taylor … catch hell from Richard Burton …”

FINAL THOUGHTS:  I’d call at least seven of these tracks genuine classics (“Blowin’ in the Wind” included, of course, despite not being one of my faves), and when you consider that this was only Dylan’s second album, that’s quite an achievement.  He made some serious strides between Bob Dylan and Freewheelin’.  The overwhelming emotion stirred up by the album as a whole is one of wistfulness; many of the songs are about lost love, but they seem to come from a place of acceptant resignation, and are mostly free of bitterness.  It’s a great album, and the first indication of what Dylan was truly capable of.

Honk’s rating: 4.5/5 spuds