BOB DYLAN SONG MEANINGS

"subterranean homesick blues" is about the gopher from caddyshack (the novel, not the film obv), "it's all over now baby blue" is an 'answer song' to "me and you and a dog named blue", "a hard rain's gonna fall" is about a legendary may hailstorm that occurred in minnesota when bob dylan (or, as he was known at the time, ron weiss) was a youth.

Interestingly, none of those songs actually have lyrics in the recorded versions. What people now assume to be Dylan's vocals are actually the result of pressing errors.

Subterranean Homesick blues is a rebuttal to that Radiohead song about the subterranean homesick alien.

"Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall" is about the high possibility of precipitation.

We do not do you homework. The internet is not yet a substitute for your brain or a big, usually old building with books in it.

I agree with Noodles, but in a more positive way, which is to say that a meaning of those songs really is "Don't let us do your homework for you." And don't let other people get your kicks for you. And don't follow leaders. Strike another match and start anew. The highway is for gamblers. I drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?

"Look out kid, you're gonna get hit" means "Look out kid, you're gonna get hit." I don't intend that as a wiseass comment. You ever been hit? Physically? Emotionally? That's what the song's about, among other things.

In junior high school I read the lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (art teacher posted the lyrics and displayed student paintings inspired by them). The words seemed like nonsense to me. When I heard the song again, four years later, I knew exactly what they were about, ironically enough. I knew better than the guy who wrote them, as a matter of fact. He might have thought they were about drug busts in Greenwich Village (orders from the D.A.), but I knew that they were really about junior high school.

Don't be a bum, you'd better chew gum.

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison/And the executioner's face is always well-hidden. (No man is an island, duh, but Dylan said it better than Donne. Or as David Johansen says, "Everything connects, and that ain't nowhere.") Look out kid, they keep it all hid. The home in the valley kills the man in the prison, by long distance, face hidden.

Play those three songs, imagine that you're the one singing them. And ask yourself not what the guy who wrote those words means by them, but what you mean by them. And write that down. And if you risk those words - your words - here, you'll get a friendlier response.

What Frank said, but with more italics.

Frank rules.

Frank: I too had a teacher who taught me those lyrics. I already kinda knew them and the song but my typing teacher (former semi-pro baseball player) made me and Allen W. memorize them for class for some reason, me and Joe C. hung them in our locker so we could always be inspired by fucked-up freestyle that turned into the truth.

Because, in all actuality, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is about being a sophomore in high school.

I think every school has a teacher who is a Dylan fanatic, our English teacher is waaay into Dylan. We're doing 20th Century American Lit. and every lesson starts with a Dylan song and how it can be related to American Literature. Which I won't complain about!

If you're going to have to answer a bullshit question like that, spew deconstruction and postmodernism at them: what the fuck is meaning?

I think Richard Meltzer in The Aesthetics of Rock (or someone like that) like that said the meaning of Dylan was to liberate us from meaning.

Type 'dylan meaning' into any search engine and the random, personalised crap you get back is exactly what it 'means'.

'dylan meaning' is the new scent from jordache

and richard meltzer should be a type of toasted sandwich.

*cue twilight zone music*
i was thinking about posting a thread about random Dylan songs and what they mean to you on my way in to work this morning.

How many Dylan fans does it take to change Bob's lightbulb?

17,864,475. One to put in the new lightbulb and 17,864,474 to ponder what Bob really meant by sitting in the dark.

17,864,476 - you forgot Jesus

I thought "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was about nuclear war and the Cuban Missile Crisis and all that jazz - at least that's what it said inside the cd i bought - well, it said Bob Dylan wrote them during that crisis and he thought he wouldn't have time to write a bunch of songs and so stuck everything he could into that one song. I, too, am looking for the meanings to the lyrics for an English project, but I'm most confused about the lyrics about a white ladder all covered with water. Perhaps something he remembers from that Minnesotan storm? I think a lot of the song has to do with how it is about living after a nuclear war and how the bads in life would get concentrated and the goods would be few and far in between. But what about the misty mountains? Does that refer to cuban mountain ranges? And the dozen dead oceans or whatever? I'm a bit confused about that.

There is an article in today's (Sunday) Los Angeles Times about Dylan and his songwriting, oddly enough. It said "Hard Rain" was written before the missile crisis. Unfortunately I think you have to pay to read it online.

The extract:

Other times, he was reacting to his own anxieties.

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" helped define his place in pop with an apocalyptic tale of a society being torn apart on many levels.

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin' ...
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

The song has captured the imagination of listeners for generations, and like most of Dylan's songs, it has lyrics rich and poetic enough to defy age. Dylan scholars have often said the song was inspired by the Cuban missile crisis.

"All I remember about the missile crisis is there were bulletins coming across on the radio, people listening in bars and cafes, and the scariest thing was that cities, like Houston and Atlanta, would have to be evacuated. That was pretty heavy.

"Someone pointed out it was written before the missile crisis, but it doesn't really matter where a song comes from. It just matters where it takes you."