Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a huge fan of Bob Dylan. I get very annoyed when people don't know who he is or complain about his voice. Ignorant people are maddening to anyone rapt in fandom. To me, he is the greatest living chronicler of the American and human experience. He is the 20th century Walt Whitman and Mark Twain rapped up into one person. He plays a mean guitar as well.
My first exposure to Dylan was the song "Sweetheart Like You." I heard it on the radio and for quite while, I thought it was by the band, Dire Straits. Dylan's voice sounds an awful lot like Mark Knopfler's on this track, but then I learned that Mark Knopfler (front man of Dire Straits) produced the song and played guitar on the album. Even at age 18, I could recognize a guitar player by listening to a riff. I learned the song was by Dylan, believe it or not, when I saw the video on MTV. Then I ran out to buy the album on cassette. That's when this ride began.
Infidels was released in late 1983 and is his first non-religious album after the trinity of Slow Train Comin', Saved, and Shot of Love were released. It was originally titled Serving a Ruthless World, but apparently he didn't like the idea of having four albums in a row that started with the letter "S". Infidels' name calls attention to the end of the religious albums. He lost a lot of fans in the years those albums came out. They were very preachy, condescending and deeply religious. Infidels was a relief to these fans, but still, it is not a great album. It would be some time before he released another great album, but it was a decent album with some great tracks. It is uneven at best. It came out in an era, in America what is considered the bad part of the 1980's, when most of us realized that Reaganonics was a lie. Some people still haven't figured this out. The town I grew up in was hit hard with factories closing all over town. My thriving working class neighborhood now had crack houses and prostitutes walked the streets at night. I'm still waiting for the trickle down to hit that town. Songs like "Jokerman," "Neighborhood Bully" and "License to Kill" were indictments on the greed and excesses of the Reagan years. You can see why I got hooked. Even an average Dylan album is great compared to most of the crap coming out in the 80's.
"Sweetheart Like You" (see lyrics below) is like a lot of other songs in that its narrator is a man singing to a woman, yet it is not exactly a love song, at least not a traditional love song. By the first stanza, we know that her boss has gone North for vanity reasons. Who is her boss? We are not sure. It could be the obvious that he is her boss at her job or he could be a possessive lover. Since this album is still full of religious imaginary, the boss could be God. It may not matter, but she is no longer under his yoke. So the narrator compliments her. Did he have to wait until her boss was gone to do so? He compliments her hat, her smile and tells her that she is too good for this "dump." What is this dump? Is it a bar, like the video shows, another place of employment or is it life in general? Is it the America? The power of the lyrics is that it could be all of them. This gives it depth and makes it thought provoking.
The next stanza he compares her to another woman who used to call him "sweet daddy" when he was "only a child." She reminds him of her when she laughs. There is so much here, almost too much, to grab onto. Who is this other woman? Is it his mother or an aunt because it is someone that he knew as a child? But her nickname for him is paternal. This is a paradox about the cycle of life that we are our parents and they are theirs and they make the adults that we are. It reminds me of the Wordsworth poem My Heart Leaps Up where we find the quote "The child is father of the man." We are not adults until our child beats it into us making us whole until we are no longer children ourselves. In our reality, past is experience, present is experiment and tomorrow is expectation. Dylan's narrator sees it as a cruel game, you make the "queen disappear" with a "flick of the wrist," yet how could there be someone as beautiful as her in this cruel world? How could someone so beautiful be letting a wretch like him into her life? How do you make "the queen" disappear? ":With a flick of the wrist." Our narrator reveals to us that he is a part of the problem with this world.
He tells her that she "should be at home," presumably a safe place, where she could not be hurt. Our narrator, shows us some misogyny,"that's where you belong." He quotes the New Testament, John 4:2 almost directly "in your father's house, there's many a mansions." I am no expert, in this quote, I believe, Jesus was talking to his disciples about the vastness of heaven. Is he telling her that there is no salvation until the afterlife? All you got here is misery and abuse: "Just how much abuse will you be able to take?"
My first exposure to Dylan was the song "Sweetheart Like You." I heard it on the radio and for quite while, I thought it was by the band, Dire Straits. Dylan's voice sounds an awful lot like Mark Knopfler's on this track, but then I learned that Mark Knopfler (front man of Dire Straits) produced the song and played guitar on the album. Even at age 18, I could recognize a guitar player by listening to a riff. I learned the song was by Dylan, believe it or not, when I saw the video on MTV. Then I ran out to buy the album on cassette. That's when this ride began.
Infidels was released in late 1983 and is his first non-religious album after the trinity of Slow Train Comin', Saved, and Shot of Love were released. It was originally titled Serving a Ruthless World, but apparently he didn't like the idea of having four albums in a row that started with the letter "S". Infidels' name calls attention to the end of the religious albums. He lost a lot of fans in the years those albums came out. They were very preachy, condescending and deeply religious. Infidels was a relief to these fans, but still, it is not a great album. It would be some time before he released another great album, but it was a decent album with some great tracks. It is uneven at best. It came out in an era, in America what is considered the bad part of the 1980's, when most of us realized that Reaganonics was a lie. Some people still haven't figured this out. The town I grew up in was hit hard with factories closing all over town. My thriving working class neighborhood now had crack houses and prostitutes walked the streets at night. I'm still waiting for the trickle down to hit that town. Songs like "Jokerman," "Neighborhood Bully" and "License to Kill" were indictments on the greed and excesses of the Reagan years. You can see why I got hooked. Even an average Dylan album is great compared to most of the crap coming out in the 80's.
"Sweetheart Like You" (see lyrics below) is like a lot of other songs in that its narrator is a man singing to a woman, yet it is not exactly a love song, at least not a traditional love song. By the first stanza, we know that her boss has gone North for vanity reasons. Who is her boss? We are not sure. It could be the obvious that he is her boss at her job or he could be a possessive lover. Since this album is still full of religious imaginary, the boss could be God. It may not matter, but she is no longer under his yoke. So the narrator compliments her. Did he have to wait until her boss was gone to do so? He compliments her hat, her smile and tells her that she is too good for this "dump." What is this dump? Is it a bar, like the video shows, another place of employment or is it life in general? Is it the America? The power of the lyrics is that it could be all of them. This gives it depth and makes it thought provoking.
The next stanza he compares her to another woman who used to call him "sweet daddy" when he was "only a child." She reminds him of her when she laughs. There is so much here, almost too much, to grab onto. Who is this other woman? Is it his mother or an aunt because it is someone that he knew as a child? But her nickname for him is paternal. This is a paradox about the cycle of life that we are our parents and they are theirs and they make the adults that we are. It reminds me of the Wordsworth poem My Heart Leaps Up where we find the quote "The child is father of the man." We are not adults until our child beats it into us making us whole until we are no longer children ourselves. In our reality, past is experience, present is experiment and tomorrow is expectation. Dylan's narrator sees it as a cruel game, you make the "queen disappear" with a "flick of the wrist," yet how could there be someone as beautiful as her in this cruel world? How could someone so beautiful be letting a wretch like him into her life? How do you make "the queen" disappear? ":With a flick of the wrist." Our narrator reveals to us that he is a part of the problem with this world.
He tells her that she "should be at home," presumably a safe place, where she could not be hurt. Our narrator, shows us some misogyny,"that's where you belong." He quotes the New Testament, John 4:2 almost directly "in your father's house, there's many a mansions." I am no expert, in this quote, I believe, Jesus was talking to his disciples about the vastness of heaven. Is he telling her that there is no salvation until the afterlife? All you got here is misery and abuse: "Just how much abuse will you be able to take?"
The last stanza is the most difficult to interpret because the narrator no longer praising the woman any more. He is less conciliatory and downright preachy. He paraphrases Eugene O'Neill's "Emperor Jones": "steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king." He paraphrases Herman Melville's Billy Budd: "They say that patriotism is the last refuge/To which a scoundrel clings." Perhaps Serving a Ruthless World was a better title for this album, because there is clearly no hope in this world and the next world is a "step down." This is the most religious song on the album and my favorite. It is a devastating portrayal of a very ruthless world and it has no answers. The more you listen, the more questions you have which is one of the things that people don't like about it. For me, it just makes me listen more.
Lyrics and music by Bob Dylan:
Well the pressure's down, the boss ain't here
He's gone North, for a while
They say that vanity got the best of him
But he sure left here in style
By the way, that's a cute hat
And that smile's so hard to resist
But what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
They say that vanity got the best of him
But he sure left here in style
By the way, that's a cute hat
And that smile's so hard to resist
But what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you
She wanted a whole man, not just a half
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh
In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear
It's done with a flick of the wrist
What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
She wanted a whole man, not just a half
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh
In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear
It's done with a flick of the wrist
What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
You know a woman like you should be at home
That's where you belong
Taking care for somebody nice
Who don't know how to do you wrong
Just how much abuse will you be able to take?
Well, there's no way to tell by that first kiss
What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
That's where you belong
Taking care for somebody nice
Who don't know how to do you wrong
Just how much abuse will you be able to take?
Well, there's no way to tell by that first kiss
What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
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