This seems sort of plausible to me. I wouldn't say it makes the line great, but it's a plausible meaning. L.
He didn't need much of a reason to give a reporter a hard time. I have collected bd interviews from the 60s. That's a whole thread in itself. In 1962 he needs the interviewer, and he is accomodating. You got a great Studs Terkel thing, and then you got the Nat Hentoff Playboy thing which was not published. Thats when they put out the parody interview, but the Hentoff tape is out there. Very cool. By 66 he is excoriating the interviewer, who is scandinavian.
Yes, like he'd release an outtake of a new album before the album? Or indeed release a 17 minute song which is to be on the album as a marketing tool?
Agree to disagree. Again, I am hanging on Dylan's voice telling this story. This is one of the few lines that transition to a voice I attribute directly to "Dylan Looking Back" voice - as opposed to Dylan projecting a voice of a 'character' or historical figure as it were or figures or vague notions of figures - or the Dying President. But the way he articulates this clearly indicates that we lost the soul of America with Kennedy gone (or slyly he's mocking the consensus belief that "we" lost that soul and therefore we obviously can't find it - stuck in trauma reaction (!)]. So, I do remain open to the "unreliable narrator" concept when I think the voice most reflects emotional, but observant, Dylan Looking Back. But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at For the last fifty years they've been searchin' for that The Genius Lyrics include the annotation here about the missing brain, btw. Wheels within wheels.
" The best is always yet to come That's what they explain to me Just do your thing And you'll be king If dogs run free "
I take the Tulsa reference to be a call back to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, also known as the Greenwood massacre: Tulsa race massacre - Wikipedia This appalling incident was featured in the recent TV series of Watchmen. I took it to be a fictional event at first until I heard it mentioned in a history programme and so looked it up.
My issue is more with the execution than the meaning (as it is with most of the song). "Not there where it's supposed to be at"? "Not there where it's supposed to be" makes grammatical sense (sort of), as does "Not where it's supposed to be at." Who would say "Not there where it's supposed to be at"? And "they've been searching for that"? Who calls a soul "that"? Wouldn't most people say "They've been searching for it"? I guess perhaps you have to take those four lines together: "They mutilated his body and they took out his brain/What more could they do? They piled on the pain/But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at/For the last fifty years they've been searching for that." But in that context, what the hell does "They piled on the pain" mean? They tortured his dead body? And if his soul was supposed to be at in his brain, how did they expect to find it there anyway?
I wish I had the time to keep up with this thread but I’m a key worker and a lot of my colleagues are isolating so I’m having to put in a lot of overtime. But like many of you here I’ve become completely obsessed with Murder Most Foul and the way Dylan released it out of left-field. I’ve come to the personal conclusion that it’s undoubtedly a latter day masterpiece. I’ve listened to it a number of times now and it just resonates and taps into a certain feeling that’s in the air at the moment. And I admire the way Dylan has put his cards on the table and is saying or asking, or pointing too “who’s controlling what in this world?” and could have just as easily used 9/11. Or maybe not? I don’t necessarily think the JFK discussion is as important as some folks think regarding what Dylan is actually getting at, which is a much bigger picture, but it’s an interesting debate/conversation in and of itself, and I’ve not had the time to keep up with the speed of this thread, and obviously yes it’s the vehicle which Dylan has used to talk about or pose the theory for who’s pulling the strings and controlling this world we live in. I’m utterly compelled, enthralled and fascinated by it. But hey, I’m also a massive Dylan fan so I’m completely biased. So I’m not here to change your mind or to sell you anything. For those of you who despise it -although you’re still completely fascinated-, I get your points, I agree with some of the points I’ve read, yet I stand here as a person of contradictions because I love it and am gripped by it. Is it lyrically or poetically his best work? far from it, but the sum total is larger than the parts, and there’s a balance he’s struck which connects and resonates. It emotes feelings and sometimes feelings outweigh all the rationalism in the world.
Out of curiosity, do you like the song "Tempest"? I do, and I do not really care for MMF. But everything you've said is, to me, applicable to "Tempest." It's not really about the Titanic, it's about America and its downfall as a result of complacency and greed. Yet, surprisingly, it seems like many, if not most people in this thread who like MMF do not like "Tempest." Which surprises me.
I heard this today for the first time on the radio while driving home with my wife after delivering food, masks and gloves to my in laws (both in their 80's). Don't know if it was a combination of what's going on right now, a legend like Dylan in the twilight of his career, the overcast and cold skies.....but I was mesmerized and completely blown away by it.
Been pondering this song for a few days now and scanned a lot of this thread for better or for worse. All in know is this a cold stone classic, another feather in the cap for the Nobel laureate. It is similar to A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall which was written at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dylan like many others thought it was the end of times, every line was like a start of a new poem, it was a staggering document of a poet at his peak. In his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan [also] attributed his inspiration to the feeling he got when reading microfiche newspapers in the New York Public Library: "After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song." (sourced from Wikipedia) I feel Murder Most Foul is a new take of that epic tune. Dylan makes JFK a sacrificial lamb, a hope for the New Frontier that was taken away by evil, JFK is made a "fool," butchered like a dead dog on the side of the road. Brains blown out, killed twice, body mutilated, brain scooped out, no soul inside. It is a murder most foul. The song changes in the second half where Dylan goes into a stream of consciousness similar to Dutch Schultz who on his death bed went in a bizarre ramble that some linked to a larger Illumanati connection (which many have to this song). The brutal words of JFK's demise are replaced by his call out to pop culture where fragment,suggestions of random songs,films and icons are mixed in a mish-mash that ultimately lead nowhere. You can't play Moonlight Sonata in F Sharp, there is no Bud Powell song "Love me or Leave me" but there is a "blood-stained banner" and yes you can play Murder Most Foul. The unbridled energy of a young Dylan expecting to die and squeezing out every line he could write is replaced by a tired and confused old man where Myth is destroyed, the truth is the lie. Who said Dallas doesn't love you Mr. President...
I do like Tempest. I actually love the album, and yes Dylan is talking about a bigger picture I would agree. But I think MMF is an incredible piece of work for reasons I can’t quite explain. I think sometimes the more you try to rationalise and critique a piece of work like this the further away you get from the core of what -in my own personal opinion- makes it such a great piece of work. Suspend your reality, let go of worrying about grammatical errors or getting into disagreeing about the JFK theories. All of that to a large extent is irrelevant. That’s merely the surface and the cut off point where a lot of people will say ‘screw this, im out’! You’re tapping into a feeling here. Personally I believe Dylan is just riffing on the spot a stream of conscious mixture of life experience and word play encapsulated within the JFK theory as a way to express a feeling of uncertainty and to pose a larger question.
It’s all of the above and more. Surly part of the genius of this ‘song’ is to do with that dark energy and uncertainty it taps into aswell as the uncertainty that Dylan himself probably won’t be here for much longer in the grander scheme of things.
Can’t find the original post about this but I just read a clever reading of a couple of words in the verse about the Beatles—Guy “Bannister” and David “Ferrie”, get it?
He was dead. His soul was no longer in his body. The song, whether you agree or not, mashes together the spirit of JFK with the spirit of America. It is now gone from his body, and America has been searching for that spirit ever since. That was the meaning that seemed totally clear to me on listen one, though I will respectfully listen to other suggestions, but everyone acting like it just doesn't mean anything apparent at all....I donno..... I really feel like some of us here just don't understand how to listen to any human expression that is not both completely literal, with one meaning, yet also never uses a cliche. And yeh, he says "supposed to be at" because it rhymes with that. He's, among other things, a rhymester, slinging rhymes. Sometimes a rhyme demands a turnaround in normal syntax. I think the phrase "sings" quite well in his voice, and this is a verbal performance, not a poem. (Or, more accurately, that you are for the sake of this pleasant argument enjoying IN THIS CASE ALONE acting like you can't understand some basic lyrical expression, to ratify deciding early this song is a piece o' garbage....)
