Nice post! Agree with much here. Again with ‘Murder Most Foul’ Dylan has an unmatched ability to be able to capture the feeling of apocalyptic fear unlike anyone else and to tap into the public consciousness.
yeah, pretty much all good art defies explanation anyway. If you could just say it, there'd be no reason to write the song and take up all that space.
An interesting take on the song: On Bob Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" - Rock and Roll Globe excerpt: "The real message of “Murder Most Foul” is so obvious it’s right in front of our faces: Bob Dylan (who will be 79 in May) is sadly but firmly stating that his generation were so easily distracted by the shiny objects of pop culture that they ignored a coup."
Also lines up with Dylan going after that same muse after JFK was killed versus what people thought he was supposed to represent. He was a song and dance man in white face.
Perhaps so, but also not. That might be Step One, like in the Clash’s “Capital Radio” (or “Groovy Times”, or E.C.’s “Radio Radio“). Step Two is that culture is what we have to express ourselves in the darkness and, even occasionally, to transcend the human condition. As Bob said not long ago, music is his true religion. Of course this fuzzy summation can’t come close to encapsulating the actual song. If everything could be boiled down to prose, we’d have no use for art.
Every time I look at this thread now I’m anticipating somebody in the U.S. bringing up Edgar Allen Poe or Huckleberry Finn.
Every time I look at this thread I expect some condescending know-it-all to make what they think is a really clever put-down because they think they are above those getting pleasure from discussing a song (you know, what this forum used to be about).
I think that's an awfully facile oversimplification, and terribly wide of the mark. A false perspective, easily invalidated on its face. And from there, pretty much dismantled by anyone with an attentive sense of historical memory. Glib, though. Akin to the breezy superficiality so often associated with "shiny objects of pop culture." If you want to get all generational about it, Bob Dylan's "silent generation" (the irony!), the Baby Boomer generation who made up his core audience in the 1960s and 1970s, and the "generations" now in their 30s, 40s, and early 50s have a lot to answer for. Most of them/us, anyway. To some extent or another. But not that.
That's the thing. All of the cliches, the cheap rhymes, the non-sequiturs, the awkward lyrical phrasing, etc., prevent me from being able to appreciate what he's trying to do. I've tried to let go of that and get into the song, but every time I inevitably reach a point where my brain starts focusing on those things instead of being captivated by the song. It's like when there's a celebrity cameo in a movie; it takes you out of the film. All of a sudden you're no longer engrossed in "Pirates of the Caribbean," you're thinking, "Oh hey, look, it's Keith Richards!" I'm not criticizing the writing just to trash the song, or Dylan. The sophomoric writing gets in the way of being able to appreciate the emotional and intellectual targets he's aiming for. At least for me. That's why I think it's bad songwriting.
Lots more discussion to be had here. There have been several wonderful transcriptions of the lyrics posted around here; using the excellent one provided by @drjohncarpenter as a starting point, I tweaked a few things, while listening very closely to the recording, and then created this single-page image. Since Dylan moves back and forth between various characters, conspirators and narrators, italics/indents are used for what I perceive to be the voice of the dying president, including the long litany of "requests" in the final verse. Hearing the song a few times again tonight, it seems like Dylan used a delivery that reminds me of some chanting gospel preacher I've heard somewhere along the line, maybe the Rev. Gates, heard on some of the Yazoo reissues? That's gonna bother me now. Any tweaking suggestions welcome. Man, what a song.
Despite a lot of distractions, this has been an enjoyable ride for a week. I think I'll take my own advice and go back and bookmark the best of the links and pointers and meditate on the song for awhile.
I’ve never paid any attention to the Weberman stuff. But I read somewhere that Weberman apparently thought Bob wrote about him in some of the songs. Phil Ochs was convinced that “Positively 4th Street” was about him, and he went on to commit suicide. I’m not going to become like Weberman. I’m not going to be the next anti-Dylan. I’m not going to commit suicide either. But damn, I have to wonder how many times has Bob included people in his work as a way to torment them?
