The Never Ending Pool

or: how Bob tried to invent the wheel a second time around.

[This is rather long & there's no music this time but I hope it's enjoyable]

One important aspect of Another Side Of Bob Dylan were songs challenging traditional male and female role stereotypes. "It Ain't Me Babe" is on one level a kind of diatribe against female possesiveness while "All I Really Want To Do" with the line "be friends with you" makes fun of male possesiveness. In the words of Michael Gray:

"[...] it was clear to plenty of people at the time, and is all the more so looking back, that the love songs Dylan offered on this album were more true and real and ultimately more radical than protest songs. 'All I Really Want to Do' and 'It Aint Me Babe' are historically important songs: they questioned the common assumptions of true love and the male-female relationship; they not only avoided possessiveness and macho strut but explained why as well. This was years before any of us understood that love and politics weren't opposites - that there was such a thing as sexual politics [...] in 1964, when people first heard that line from 'It Ain't Me Babe', 'A lover for your life and nothing more', it was radical: it rocked you back on your feet, because in pop songs there never had been anything more: 'to be a lover for your life' was the ultimate ideal" (Gray, Encyclopedia, p. 22, 236)

In these years there was revolution in the air, in so far this is purely subjective view. Every generation tries to start its own "revolution" and tends to think that the older generation - who had been at least as smart in their heyday - is a bunch of boring conservatives. That is of course factually wrong, as wrong as the claim that to be "a lover for your life" had always been the "ultimate ideal" in popular songs bB ( = before Bob).

In fact these ideas weren't that new. "Sexual politics" in popular songs (not only in Blues) wasn't an invention of the 60s, it was well known before that although they didn't call it that way. An outstanding example - although barely known today - is Irving Berlin's "I Don't Want To Be Married", a quasi-feminist comical duet written for "Face The Music", a 1932 depression era musical show. It's interesting not only because it uses the phrase "to be friends" in a comparable context, in a song challenging gender stereotypes.

[VERSE:]
[Girl:]
You're compromising me
But that's exactly as it ought to be
I simply fell for you because I wanted to fall
Don't speak of wedding chimes
Because we mustn't be behind the times
Besides a wedding isn't necessary at all

[1st REFRAIN:]
Don't worry because I fell
You don't have to do right by Nell
'Cause I don't wanna be married, I just wanna be friends

Don't worry 'cause I gave in
Best of families live in sin
'Cause they don't wanna be married, they just wanna be friends

While all the happy married couples sit and fight
We'll be still going strong
And fifty million Frenchmen say it's quite alright
And that many can't be wrong

I never would change my name
Even after the baby came
'Cause I don't wanna be married, I just wanna be friends

[2nd REFRAIN:]
[Boy:]
My father would give me hell
If I didn't do right by Nell
[Girl:]
But I don't wanna be married, I just wanna be friends

[Boy:]
Please grant me my father's wish
Shotgun weddings are just his dish
[Girl:]
I don't wanna be married, I just wanna be friends

[Boy:]
The kiddies wouldn't like it, they'd be awfully mad
'Twould be known near and far
[Girl:]
To be a little "who's-this" isn't really bad
For some of my best friends are

[Boy:]
If not for the family
Make an hon'rable man of me!
[Girl:]
But I don't wanna be married, I just wanna be friends

This song - suprisingly, not to say shockingly modern in 1932 - was not recorded at that time, it was not even published as sheet music but exclusively performed on stage. Musical theater from the 30s to the 50s was modern up-to-date art that offered artistic freedom to the writers and performers far greater than what was possible in recording studios, in movies or on the radio. In that genres censors - official and unofficial - were busy trying to implement what they thought were middle class moral values although they had often enough serious problems with reality, for example when the Hays Office censored double beds out of movies. And especially in music they did not always succeed. In fact the idea that Pop music was something dangerous didn't exactly start with Elvis and Rock'n Roll.

There were no censors in New York City on Broadway, the shows only sometimes got problems when they went out of town, esp. to puritanical Boston. And with book writers like Moss Hart or George Kaufmann musicals surely weren't "square". So songwriters had much more freedom to write about love and sex, they were able to make fun of everybody, from politicians to moralists and reformers of all kind and they knew that satire and humour was a most effective weapon. As Irving Berlin said at that time: "There are some persons [...] who need no distortion to caricature, and the same is true for much of the world's news...It is satire in itself and has only to be photographically reproduced to be the most gorgeous kind of irony" (Furia, p. 153).

Especially during the depression musical shows were far from being purely escapist entertainment. The Gershwins' political satires like "Of Thee I Sing" and "Let 'em Eat Cake" are fine examples. There was Cole Porter who didn't give a penny for American puritanism and whose songs obviously were regarded as a serious threat to American middle class sexual mores. Irving Berlin may serve as another example. He was surely no dark reactionary nor unpolitical or only a composer of catchy dance tunes. Many of his songs were far from being harmless or square and often he was way ahead of his time. Personally he knew very well what love had to do with politics. In the 20s he had run into serious problems when he wanted to marry a girl - who was very emancipated herself - from a rich, catholic family and her father deeply resented him because he was an eastern European Jewish immigrant. But in the end he simply stole that girl and won a highly publicised major victory against bigotry and snobbism.

"Face The Music" was an innovative musical show, both racy and critical, built around a story about the corrupt police, an important topic at that time in New York as there were actually investigations against the police and mayor Walker. The personnel of the play included for example a streetwalker, an elephant, mobsters thanking Senator Volstead and "the members of his crew" for "the law that started people drinking" and a prosecutor investigating an "obscene" show with naked girls. Berlin's sources and inspirations were ranging from a popular broccoli cartoon ("I Say It's Spinach...&quot to President Hoover's absurd announcement at the height of depression that "prosperity is just around the corner" ("Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee&quot. Not at least he alludes to and quotes from many well known songs of that era and systematically parodies the cliches of the popular music.

This may also be the case with "I Don't Want To Be Married" and it's possible that Berlin is referring to "I Don't Want To Get Married (I'm Havin' Too Much Fun)", a somehow subversive minor hit in 1925. But his lyrics are ultimately more radical and provocative than both "I Don't Want To Get Married" and Dylan's 60s songs. First he shows how moral values are undermined by the harsh reality: that couple can't marry even if they would like to because they - it was at the height of depression - had no money. That was a perspective different from the "we've got the money, let's have fun" attitude of the 20s and the "our parents have the money, let's have fun" attitude of the 60s. Then it should be noted that it's the girl who's challenging the stereotypes and traditional role models. In fact she shows considerable self-confidence when she admits that "I fell for you because I wanted to fall" and when she says no to the boy's pledges to please his family and "make an hon'rable man of me". Here Berlin very elegantly mocks that old cliche of the "honorable woman". Not at least this song was also an ironic riposte against contemporary bigotry and those from the "best of families" who always speak of morals but are no paragons of virtue themselves.

At that time it was far more challenging to write something like "I Don't Want To Be Married" (and allusions to extra-marital children weren't that usual) Here he phrase "to be friends" had a much more provocative effect. But on the other hand the song was only known to a those sophisticated folks who went to the theater and there was no way get it into wider circulation. In the 60s songs like "It Ain't Me Babe" or "All I Really Want To Do" were far from being "radical", they were more a sign for how society and music business had already changed. As far as I can see Dylan had no problems publishing, recording and performing these songs. But they were also part of a longer history that goes back at least to the beginning of the century

One of the groundstones of modern day "rockism" is the illusion that popular songs with a more realistic, more risky and more open approach to love and sex started with Rock'n Roll in 50s or even with Bob Dylan et al. in the 60s. That's not exactly correct, in fact it's terribly wrong as the real watershed was not so much between pre-war and post-war popular music but between 19th and 20th century style. "In the 19th century [...] love in songs was usually considered everlasting" (Tawa, p. 98), eternal love was celebrated and lasted even beyond death. In a slow process since the last decades of the 19th century love turned out to be a much more casual affair, lovers parted for more profane reasons, eternal love was more of an illusion than reality. All these torch songs lamenting the loss of love as well as the great number of more or less comical or suggestive songs wouldn't have been possible without the "20th century concept [of the] possibility of impermanent love" (Tawa, p. 98).

The reasons for this development were manyfold but among those responsible for this change of style - besides African-Americans - were songwriters from immigrant families who didn't give that much for victorian values and were busy undermining them with many of their songs (Exactly this kind of music was regarded as dangerous by the conservative WASP establishment that in turn promoted "Folk songs" á la "Barbara Allen" as a counter model to the morally doubtful products of immigrants and blacks). Irving Berlin had started out in the era of rowdy Vaudeville and a notable number of his early works were non-ethnic suggestive songs that made fun of mainstream morals. A song like "My Wife's Gone To The Country (Hurrah! Hurrah!) - a big hit in 1909 - may sound harmless today but at that time it actually raised the ire of the usual suspects who attacked the songwriter for "laughing openly at the sacred institutions of marriage" and called for censorship (Hamm, p. 56).

Berlin's earliest "rhythmic ballads" written around 1910 "have female protagonists who, rather than swearing romantic, faithful and lasting love to their male partners, instead offer immediate, willing, and enthusiastic physical gratification [...] What emerges in these pieces is a type of ballad that differs from those of the nineteenth century [...] in the representation of women. The voice of the song is no longer that of the songwriter, hoping to find (or expressing his delight at having already found) a mate "just like the girl that married dear old Dad" [...], someone adept at keeping the house clean while tending to the children and being faithful until death to her husband [...] There is no mention of marriage in these songs or of children" (Hamm, p. 168)

In Berlin's and his fellow songwriters' repertoire there are many songs painting images of active and independent women as well as of relationships that are very different from 19th century cliches and mainstrean moral values. These were all songs for an urban audience at a time when women's roles in society were changing: "Many young women from small towns, had come to New York and other large cities to find jobs [...] with a freedom unheard of a generation before, they lived on their own in apartments and pursued their own recreation unchaperoned" (Furia, Berlin, p. 103). It was the era of the first wave of feminism , in the 20s the "flapper" came to prominence and there were female performers from Emma Carus to Fanny Brice and Irene Bordoni and in the 30s Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers who personified the role model of the clever, self-confident or even tough woman for whom the male songwriters had to write songs. These ladies were no helpless little girls nor easy victims of male chauvinism.

One example is Ira Gershwin's "Sam And Delilah", 1930, written for Ethel Merman in "Girl Crazy":

Delilah was a floozy
She never gave a damn
Delilah wasn't choosy
Till she fell for a swell buckaroo
Whose name was Sam

Delilah got in action
Delilah did her "kootch"
She gave him satisfaction
And he fell 'neath her spell
With the aid of love and "hootch"

But one day, so they tell us
His true wife, he did crave
Delilah, she got jealous
And she tracked him, and hacked him
And dug for Sam a grave

It's always that way with passion
So cowboy, learn to behave
Or else, you're liable to cash in
With no tombstone on your grave

Delilah, oh Delilah
She's no babe in the wood
Run cowboy, run a mile-ah
If you love that kind of woman
She'll do you no good

Ira Gershwin's "He Hasn't A Thing Except Me" (1936, for Fanny Brice) was a spoof of male chauvinism and female masochism:

Let me introduce a gentleman
High class people call a louse;
Not a very sentimental man-
Nothing you'd want 'round the house.
Oh, I really can't tell
Why I'm under his spell;
The chances are slim
I'll ever see what I see in him.

Refrain
I give you his highness,
A pain worse than sinus.
Though I felt all hopped up
The minute he popped up,
It's easy to see
He hasn't a thing except me.

I help out his brother,
Pay rent for his mother;
Feel when I took him in
I carry his women.
He's living for free,
And hasn't a thing except me.

He's Mon Homme;
He can take my heart and break it-
Mend it when he starts to clown.
Just a bum-
But the guy can make me take it
When he ups and lets me down.

[spoken:]
(Well, you get the idea. You know, I've been singing about this bum for twenty-five years under different titles and making a pretty good living out of him. He's always the same low-life, always doing me dirt, but I keep on loving him just the same. Can you imagine if I really ever met a guy like that what I would do to him?)

Though I brought this on me,
How long can he con me?
Still, it's not too late for
The day that I wait for:
The day he'll agree
He hasn't a thing except me.

The most radical songwriter of that era was of course Cole Porter, not an immigrant but a francophile emigrant. who often enough wrote up to the limits of what was possible and even regularly overstepped those limits. One drastic example is "Hey Good Lookin'", written for "Something For The Boys" (1943) with Ethel Merman taking the female lead.

BLOSSOM:
When there's a sun above
I always find
Romantic thoughts of love
Never enter my mind
But when the day is done
I find that instead
I just love ev'ryone
And as Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said......

Hey, good-lookin'
Say, what's cookin'?
Do you feel like bookin'
Some fun tonight?
He, hey, hey, hey, good-lookin'
If you're not already tooken
Could you meet me soon
In the moon-
Light?
Why don't we two go roamin'
Through the gloamin'
While the stars are combin'
The skies above?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, good-lookin'
Give in and we'll begin cookin'
That delish
Little dish
Called love

ROCKY:
Your voice, Miss Ovaltine
Has me impressed
You're the missing link between
Lily Pons and Mae West
But I must warn you, Ma'am
If later you're free
That I'm half wolf, my lamb
And as the famous Tallulah muttered to me......

[refrain]

This song - a parody and joyful deconstruction of the romantic 'moonlight' cliches - is taking place in a world where monogamy was obviously never heard of and where the woman is as active as the man and there is no sign that they intend to marry and have a bunch of kids calling them 'Ma' and 'Pa'.

The songs from this era were often enough about women - and sometimes men - who were busy freeing themselves from the constraints of traditional relationships and family values. One last example: Irving Berlin's "No Strings" was originally written for Fred Astaire and when he sang it in "Top Hat" (1935) it was surely not a song praising the ideology of the happy family. Ginger Rogers recorded it too and she could sing it with just the same right:

I'm fancy free and free for anything fancy

These ladies all look somehow different from some of the women painted in Dylan's songs. The girl in Berlin's "I Don't Want To Get Married" obviously was much more sophisticated and emancipated than the girl in "It Ain't Me Babe" more than thirty years later. In some way Dylan's 60s songs may have been the step backwards compared to what was possible before WWII. Maybe Dylan's anti-love-songs are about men freeing themselves from the constraints of emotional relationships with emancipated and independent girls?


Next week:
"Boots Of Spanish Leather" - an emancipated girl dares to travel overseas alone & her shocked boyfriend worries if she will return to him unspoiled

I do love your writing on pre-Dylan popular music; easily the most interesting thing on the board these day. You are right to challenge Gray's patronising dismissal of all popular music before Dylan (or rather, before Elvis).

However, Gray's claims about Bob's introduction of sexual politics into popular song do hold up, it seems to me, in the context of the teen-oriented pop music of the late 50s and early 60s, when even the Beatles were singing exclusively about teen love. Dylan was clearly conscious of rejecting the ethos of this commercial teen pop, as we can see in a number of instances:

1) The splendid lines in "Talking World War III Blues" that parody the typical love lyric in songs that were available on 45'' records and played on the radio:

Turned on my player-
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow, Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."

2) Bob's introduction to "Blowin' in the Wind" at the Finjan Club, Montreal in July 1962:

"Here's a song, this is in a sort of a set, set pattern of songs that say a little more than 'I love you and you love me/Let's go over to the banks of Italy/And raise a happy family/You for me and me for...me.'"

3) Kurt Loder interview, March 1984:

"I hear stuff on the radio, doesn’t matter what kinda stuff it is, and I know that if you go back far enough you’ll find somebody listened to Bob Dylan somewhere, because of the phrasing. Even the content of the tunes. Up until I started doin’ that stuff, nobody was talkin’ about that sort of thing. For music to succeed on any level... Well, you’re always gonna have your pop-radio stuff, but the only people who are gonna succeed, really, are the people who are sayin’ somethin’ that is given to them to say. I mean, you can only carry 'Tutti Frutti' so far."

4) Cameron Crowe interview (for Biograph), 1985:

"The thing about rock n’ roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough, 'Tutti Frutti' and 'Blue Suede Shoes' were great catch phrases and driving pulse rhythms and you could get high on the energy but they weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing."

Bob was not the only folkie to mock the banality of pop lyrics, as we can see from Eric von Schmidt's humorous ditty "Acne" (sung by Bob with Ramblin' Jack at the Riverside Church, NYC in 1961); and both Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, & Mary sang crowd-pleasing parodies of The Diamonds' 1957 hit "Little Darlin'." What is interesting, though not well known to the folkie crowd at the time was that this same Bob Dylan was also a huge fan of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and other popular artists of the time. This dichotomy is what makes Bob so interesting, of course.

But in any case, I don't think the songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan are primarily love songs. The love song is merely the vehicle for Bob's rejection of the Spokesman of His Generation label. "All I Really Want To Do", "To Ramona," and "It Ain't Me, Babe" are every bit as much rejections, albeit less explicit ones, of "fingerpointing songs" as "My Back Pages". This is the context in which rejection of the role of "a lover for your life and nothing more" becomes a radical statement. Dylan's primary concern on Another Side is the importance of individuality, of non-conformity, of rejecting labels and stereotypes; especially for the artist:

I've heard you say many times that you're better than no one
And no one is better than you
If you really believe that you know you have nothing to win
And nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends [italics mine] your freedom does stem
They'll hype you and type you and make you feel
That you've got to be exactly like them

I ain't lookin' to block you up
Shock or knock or lock you up,
Analyze you, categorize you,
Finalize you or advertise you

(i.e. I'm not looking to do to you what the critics and the audiences do to me!)

Even the ostensibly purely humorous songs can be seen as connected to the same theme. E.g. the opening lines of the overlooked "I Shall Be Free No.10" parody the same attitude of conformity as the lines I just quoted from "To Ramona":

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you.

The leftist view that everyone is just the same is just as stultifying of individuality and creativity as the conservative attitude to people who don't conform in their physical appearance, dress sense, or social background:

I sat with my high-heeled sneakers on
Waiting to play tennis in the noonday sun
I had my white shorts rolled up past my waist
And my wig-hat was falling in my face
But they wouldn't let me on the tennis court.

And the hero of the equally unjustly overlooked "Motorpsycho Nitemare" makes his escape by exploiting the farmer's bigoted conservatism, after which the hero archly suggests that he has finally found a use for liberal/leftist politics:

Without freedom of speech I might be in the swamp.

I haven't read "The Art of Bob Dylan" for many years (and I have never seen the much-expanded third edition), but I do remember that Gray is at his very best in championing Another Side of Bob Dylan, which he describes as one of Dylan's best albums. This has never been a popular view, particularly when it first came out. It reached #43 in the US and peaked at #8 on the UK charts in 1965, and it took about 25 years to go 'gold.' Of course, it was subsequently overshadowed by the glories of 1965-66, but its importance in Bob's artistic development should not be overlooked. It is the album that redefined him as an artist; it reassessed his relationship with his audience even while contributing to reshaping that relationship.

History has been rewritten recently to suggest that it was Newport '65 that marked Dylan's break with the folk-protest crowd, but in fact, the breakaway began a year earlier at the 1964 festival and then with the Another Side album, as a recently published letter from the late Sis Cunningham, editor of Broadside, reminds us. In this letter she states that many of the '64 Newport crowd were dismayed with the songs Bob performed on that occasion (all from the shortly-to-be-released Another Side except "Mr. Tambourine Man", not released until the following year). Many of them apparently decided that Bob was a spent force artistically. Ms. Cunningham writes:

QUOTE:
There was a lot of disappointment among followers of topical songs with Dylan's last Newport appearance and with his latest L-P, which contains mainly the same material he performed at Newport. The feeling was that he had "burned himself out", was turning his back on his earlier work, was forgetting major issues to concentrate on his own personal reactions to love affairs and such triviata [sic], that his poetry consequently was becoming weak and to some degree incomprehensible. There was considerable lamentation and even downright despair; some Dylan followers considered his career at an end and resigned themselves to this fact with the consolation, "Well, he wrote five or six great songs while he lasted." Irwin Silber's open letter to Bob in SING OUT reflects this attitude, namely that if Dylan isn't writing straightforward topical material, he isn't writing anything. I think that what we have here is the failure of small minds to grasp what constitutes the true essence of a real poet, which is what Bob Dylan is, and has been from the beginning[...]. I don't think you can corral a poet; once you pen up a poet, he ceases to be one[....]. Some months ago we had in BROADSIDE a little thing Johnny Cash sent us, in which he answered those who were already carping about Dylan with these words:

"SHUT UP and let him sing!"

Sis was on the same wavelength as Bob, it seems. In this sense, the quintessential Dylan song is "It Ain't Me, Babe", which is personal-political rather than topical-political like the early songs. One of my most powerful memories of 25 years of going to Bob Dylan concerts is a performance of this song that ended one of his shows in the mid-90s. The crowd were trying to join in on the "No, no, noes" of the chorus ("It ain't me, babe/No, no, no, it ain't me, babe/It ain't me you're looking for&quot. But singalongs are for shared songs, for campfires and traditional folk venues. To allow a singalong on a great song of defiant individualism (surpassed in this respect only by Maggie's Farm: "I try my best to be just like I am/But everybody wants me to be lik them/They say, "Sing while you slave!" - I get BORED!) would of course be to negate its very spirit.

So Bob would not allow this to happen. Every time he sung the refrain, he fooled the crowd, who were unable to anticipate the moment he would sing "No, no, no." The crowd were singing along to the record they had at home, which they were still hearing in their heads. Bob was recreating the song, making it new, reclaiming it as his. Even with just an acoustic guitar in his hands, he was still his own man, asserting the individuality of his creative art. He not busy being born is busy dying.

Odd that you bring this up, especially if you haven't heard Bobby's Theme Time Radio Hour for this week. He makes mention of Betty Friedan and this got me thinking to some writings of feminists regarding Dylan. I was remembering Germaine's Greer dissection of Bobby's songwriting and how unimpressed I was by it. Greer is and was the feminist writer I most highly regarded.

I don't know why Gray or any of the "Dylanologists" are even referred to. They simply overlay their own agendas over everything and go off on emminently boring tangents.

I'll write more later.

Here I am, well, i'm not there, writing more.

First of all -- Boots of Spanish Leather is hardly a generic bemoaning of a "liberated woman" (girl?). It's personal, it's an imagined dialogue and it's a man hurting and somewhat at a loss as to what to really say.

Now, let's go back to the "Roaring Twenties" and earlier (and later).

Now Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes

Times have changed,
And we've often rewound the clock,
Since the Puritans got a shock,
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today,
Any shock they should try to stem,
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose, Anything Goes.

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that I'm bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes

When grandmama whose age is eighty
In night clubs is getting matey with gigolo's,
Anything Goes.

When mothers pack and leave poor father
Because they decide they'd rather be tennis pros,
Anything Goes.

If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose!
When every night,
The set that's smart
Is intruding in nudist parties in studios,
Anything Goes.

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that I'm bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes

If saying your prayers you like,
If green pears you like
If old chairs you like,
If back stairs you like,
If love affairs you like
With young bears you like,
Why nobody will oppose!

And though I'm not a great romancer
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that I'm bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes...
Anything goes!

Thanks a lot for the extended comments, ragged_clown!

QUOTE:
But in any case, I don't think the songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan are primarily love songs. The love song is merely the vehicle for Bob's rejection of the Spokesman of His Generation label. All I Really Want To Do , To Ramona, and It Ain't Me, Babe are every bit as much rejections, albeit less explicit ones, of fingerpointing songs as My Back Pages . This is the context in which rejection of the role of a lover for your life and nothing more becomes a radical statement. Dylan's primary concern on Another Side is the importance of individuality, of non-conformity, of rejecting labels and stereotypes; especially for the artist

Yes, this is in fact one aspect of these songs. But I see them more in the context of Dylan attempting to write/create a new kind of love-song, something that he had started with "Tomorrow Is A Long Time", "Girl From The North Country" & "Don't Think Twice", love songs that should be different both from the simple-minded radio stuff of the 50 and also different but as lasting and good as all those songs by the old guys. I'm more and more inclined to think that he somehow felt (and still feels) the shadow songwriters of the older generation. And by all accounts (also judging from some of the comments in Chronicles about Sinatra, Arlen et al) he wasn't as narrow-minded as some of his fans who used to put down everything and he actually listened to these songs.

QUOTE:
However, Gray's claims about Bob's introduction of sexual politics into popular song do hold up, it seems to me, in the context of the teen-oriented pop music of the late 50s and early 60s, when even the Beatles were singing exclusively about teen love. Dylan was clearly conscious of rejecting the ethos of this commercial teen pop, as we can see in a number of instances

Yes, in context of the teen-oriented music of the 50s it is at least partly right. But that was only the perspective of the younger people. But it's like taking the dumbest stuff from the hitparade and then pretend it represents the whole genre. But even in the 50s popular music wasn't only "Our loves gonna grow, Oh-wah". There were all the records by Sinatra, Fitzgerald etc and 49-59 was probably the last great decade of Broadway where a lot of interesting and challenging plays were produced, like Harburg's political musicals ("Finian's Rainbow&quot or "South Pacific" by Hammerstein/Rodgers (including a very explicit anti-racist song, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught&quot. And now - looking back from the year 2007 - it is more interesting to ask if and how much Dylan's (or other 60s songwriters' works hold up against the real important music from the 50s (and earlier decades).

QUOTE:
History has been rewritten recently to suggest that it was Newport '65 that marked Dylan's break with the folk-protest crowd, but in fact, the breakaway began a year earlier at the 1964 festival and then with the Another Side album

It's good you mention it, that is nearly forgotten today. Love songs weren't that popular with the hard-core folk & protest crowd and for a lot of them it must have been as if Dylan had stepped on the other side of the fence.

clairdelalune wrote:

QUOTE:
First of all -- Boots of Spanish Leather is hardly a generic bemoaning of a "liberated woman" (girl?). It's personal, it's an imagined dialogue and it's a man hurting and somewhat at a loss as to what to really say

But I'll never get over this line "carry yourself back to me unspoiled"

QUOTE:
Now Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes

The original version, he complained about the quality of radio too!

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem,
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose,
Anything goes.
If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like,
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.
When ev'ry night the set that's smart is in-
Truding in nudist parties in
Studios,
Anything goes.

When Missus Ned McLean (God bless her)
Can get Russian Reds to "yes" her,
Then I suppose
Anything goes.
When Rockefeller still can hoard en-
Nough money to let Max Gordon
Produce his shows,
Anything goes.
The world has gone mad today,
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
And that gent today
You gave a cent today
Once had several chateaux.
When folks who still can ride in jitneys
Find out Vanderbilts and Whitneys
Lack baby clo'es,
Anything goes.

If Sam Goldwyn can with great conviction
Instruct Anna Sten in diction,
Then Anna shows
Anything goes.
When you hear that Lady Mendel standing up
Now turns a handspring landing up-
On her toes,
Anything goes.
Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From that news you've got
And those pains you've got
(If any brains you've got)
From those little radios.
So Missus R., with all her trimmin's,
Can broadcast a bed from Simmons
'Cause Franklin knows
Anything goes

--------------------------------------------

"Face The Music", that 1932 Berlin musical I took "I Don't want To Get Married" from also included an hilarious 10-minute parody of a trial against an "obscene" and "filthy" show. Some snippets from the lyrics:

[...]
[Defense:]
I object.
The prisoner isn't guilty,
And the prosecutor lies.
He never saw a bathroom;
Can't you see it in his eyes?

[Prosecutor]
But the evidence will show
He's a villain mean and low,
And before the trial is over
Off to jail he'll have to go.
Here's exhibit A,
And I'd like to say
It's the manuscript I put in evidence here:
It's as full of dirt
As the prisoner's shirt,
And he hasn't changed his shirt for over a year.

[Defense]
Now the prosecutor's mind
Is narrow and small,
For so help me, Judge,
That book ain't dirty at all.

[Prosecutor]
It is most obscene.

[Defense]
I insist it's clean.

[Judge]
I have read this book
And I think it's lousy.

[...]

[Prosecutor]:
One scene in Sweden
In a Garden of Eden
The girls were naked, I know.
One girl, Your Honor,
Who had nothing upon 'er
Is here to prove that it's so

[...].


[Prosecutor]
The counselor's plan is quaint;
I object to his suggestions
The prisoner's not a saint
And I'd like to ask some questions

[to prisoner]
Didn't you sign a lot of checks
For a show that was full of sex?
Didn't you make a decent girl
Undress against her wish?

[...]

[Defense]
There is one more witness
I will call to the stand;
It's the prisoner's wife,
And give this girl a big hand.

[mrs. meshbesher enters on trunk of elephant.]

[MRS.Meshbesher]:
Your Honor and ladies of the jury,
I am here to testify,
And believe me, I won't lie-
But whatever else my husband is,
He's as harmless as a fly.
It's a falsehood when they say
That he produced a sexy play-
If it was, he didn't know it,
For his mind don't run that way.
Believe me, Judge, my husband
Doesn't know the facts of life,
And if he's been enlightened,
Then it's news to me, his wife.
[etc etc]

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY

Frankie and Johnnie were lovers,
Oh, Lordie how they could love!
They swore to be true to each other,
Just as true as the stars above,
He was her man, but he done her wrong.

Frankie and Johnnie went walking
John in his brand new suit.
Then, "oh good Lawd," says Frankie
"Don't my Johnnie look real cute!"
He was her man, but he done her wrong.

Frankie she was a good woman,
And Johnnie was a good man,
And every dollar that she made
Went right into Johnnie's hand,
He was her man, but he done her wrong.

Frankie went down tn the corner,
Just for a bucket of beer.
She said to the fat bartender,
"Has my lovinest man been here7"
He was her man, but he done her wrong.

"I don't want to cause you no trouble,
I don't want to tell you no lie;
But I saw your man an hour ago
With a gal named Alice Bly,
And if he's your man, he's a-doing you wrong."

Frankie looked over the transom,
And found, to her great surprise,
That there on the bed sat Johnnie,
A-lovin' up Alice Bly.
He was her man, but he done her wrong.

Frankie drew back her kimono;
She took out her little forty-four;
Root-a-toot-toot, three times she shot
Right through that hardwood floor,
She shot her man, 'cause he done her wrong.

Roll me over easy,
Roll me over slow,
Roll me on de right side,
'Cause de bullet hurt me so.
I was her man, but I done her wrong.

The judge said to the jury
"It's as plain as plain can be
This woman shot her lover
It's murder in the second degree
He was her man, though he done her wrong.

This story has no moral
This story has no end
This story only goes to show
That there ain't no good in men
They'll do you wrong, just as sure as you're born
************************************************

I've fallen for that kimono move myself.