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Never Just One Thing, Part XVII: Ten Favorite Dylan Songs, 6 - 10

Continuing with my list, featuring Dylan songs that are favorites of mine, which doesn't necessarily mean they are the "best," though many of my choices do have a lot of critical consensus around them. Dylan's songs approach the listener from so many different angles and engage in so many different ideas, moods, and forms, full consensus is virtually impossible, aside from "Like a Rolling Stone," of course. So here we go with 6 - 10.

6. "License to Kill" (1983)

This Infidels track tackles nothing less than man's unhealthy, dominance-based relationship with the natural world. Dylan's songs can do anything and go anywhere, so this song isn't really an outlier or anomaly, subject-wise. That said, it's not the topic itself that makes the song succeed. That would be judging a song on the basis of its politics or its sentiments, as opposed to the true measure of success, which is how well the words and music work together to create a unified aesthetic experience that stimulates the listener's internal world of thought and emotion. In other words, this song really connects for me like that. It definitely connects for other accomplished musicians, as the master songwriter-performers Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, and Tom Petty have all covered it, as well as the Cowboy Junkies. The opening lines are etched in my mind for eternity: "Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please / And if things don’t change soon, he will." It's effectiveness owes much to the descending two note pattern for "man thinks" and "things don't" that really make the words land. I could quote the whole song, but let me just offer one that shows that we are making choices, but bad ones: "Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused / And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill." Is it actually one of those "finger-pointin'" songs that Dylan so famously disavowed in the 60s? Maybe, but it points at us all.

7. "Mississippi" (2001)

The ultimate Bob Dylan not-just-one-thing song, "Mississippi" boils up a melange of regret and gratitude, ambivalence and acceptance, and throws it against the wall to see what sticks. The stuff that sticks is good, and especially so for someone such as myself in the autumn of life as Dylan was when he wrote it. In my discussion of my earlier picks, I discussed how I had considerable personal, emotional reasons, which arose for me when young, for loving certain songs. Now, decades later, the opening to this song gets me every time. "Every step of the way we walk the line / Your days are numbered, so are mine." I honestly do from time to time tally up various scenarios for my remaining days, so, yes. Like "Simple Twist of Fate," it's a noir tale, though less coherently or consistently so. But the noir part does give the whole thing atmosphere. You can picture our anti-hero in the opening scene of one of those black and white movies on TCM arriving at the edge of some dusty or swampy nothing of a city where things have a distinctly menacing vibe. "I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town / I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down." Basically, for most of the song, we get to hear Bob just thinking on things. And it works, not least because of the sophisticated phrasing he employs and the stately backing being laid down by the band. Let's let Bob tell it: "Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking fast / I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past / But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free / I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me."

8. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (1965)

This is the best kind of story song for two reasons. First, because every line or couplet is resonant and evocative in and of itself, no matter its relationship to the plot. They work on their own terms. Second, the actual plot is just out of reach, which makes room for the mind of the listener to fill in the blanks. Jackson Pollack said that the way he did his famous drip and splatter works was by painting in air, three feet above the canvas laid out on the floor. Well, Dylan tells this story from three feet above. We know our protagonist has gone across the border for some cultural research and exchange and then things go sideways, as they seem to do across the border. "When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez / And it’s Eastertime too / And your gravity fails / And negativity don’t pull you through / Don’t put on any airs / When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue / They got some hungry women there / And they really make a mess outta you." When I wrote about this song here, I shared some of my favorite lines, including: "I started out on burgundy but soon hit the hardest stuff" and "My best friend the doctor won't even tell me what it is I've got." Oh, then there's "She speaks good English and she takes you up into her room." Now that I think about it, like many other songs on my list, this one is a noir movie too. I detect a pattern! It's also a Beat tale, Mexico being central to Kerouac's journey in on the road. Long story, short: I like narratives about being on the ragged Bohemian edge of life, and Dylan nails it here.

9. "Every Grain of Sand" (1981)

Well, I have a graduate degree in theology, so I've got to go with this one, no? From his "Christian" period (scare quotes because who knows what that even means), that he really was in a time of crisis when his conversion experience happened. "In the time of my confession," it opens, "in the hour of my deepest need." Or this from stanza two: "Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear / Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer." I think a person needs to hit bottom in one form or another a couple times in their lives (it doesn't have to be outwardly drastic), if only to gain a little humility and attendant gratitude. To get a proper perspective. To know that there but for the grace of God go I. And, of course if you are an artist you acquire some needed gravitas. (When I wrote about Taylor Swift as the Dylan of her generation I wondered if she really has the insight born of really having felt like everything was lost. I don't know.) Crisis also teaches the lesson that in life there is a lot you don't control. Letting go they call it. In "Every Grain" there is a sense of all things being fated, or, as I discussed in this piece, a conviction or apprehension of predestination: "In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand / In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand." The point of a song like this for me is not that one must be a religious believer, but that there are questions about life that can be gotten at best with what might be called a spiritual point of view. Or at least a hunch, as the gospel song says: "Farther along we'll know all about it / Farther along we'll understand why."

10. "Idiot Wind" (1975)

My slam dunk top Dylan song, period. There is no competition. Okay, there is plenty of competition, thus my agonizing over this list, but once I decided on its place in my Dylan cosmos, that was that. I did a verse-by-verse close reading of "Idiot Wind" earlier in this series, but let me just talk in some broad strokes here about this masterpiece. Famously considered a howl of rage aimed at his wife as their marriage was disintegrating, the song is so much more than that reductive analysis. As I've discussed elsewhere, every song has an impetus, something which compels it to come into being, which is not the same as a song's "meaning" or its purpose, both of which are frames that are in many ways irrelevant to the aesthetic power of a composition, or for that matter any work of art. In my view, "Idiot Wind" mixes three sources of inspiration: first, the aforementioned divorce; second, Dylan's dissatisfaction with being identified as a prophet and "voice of his generation"; and third, the influence of his painting teacher of the time, who loved the word 'idiot' and railed against the pervasiveness of idiocy in our world. In a way it's a trivial word, but that just adds tension and a punk attitude to the song, which simultaneously includes some of the most sophisticated verses and striking imagery in all of Dylan. My favorite: "There's a lone soldier on the cross / Smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door / You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done / In the final end he won the wars / After losin' every battle." This is the quintessence of Dylan, and a capsule rendition of everything that brought me to Dylan, The hobo, the outsider, the countercultural seeker is cast as a Christ figure, whose chosen path outside the strictures of proper society is ultimately revealed to be the one attuned to the spiritual essence of life.


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