Oh baby, baby, baby blue
\n You’ll change your last name too
\n You turned your hair to brown
\n Love to see it hanging down.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[One message is consistent throughout the oeuvre: Bob wants your hair long, girl. He’ll break up with you if you cut it.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIdiot Wind\u201d
\n Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
\n Blowing down the back-roads heading south
\n Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
\n You’re an idiot, babe
\n It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
\n You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies
\n One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzing around your eyes<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Even the insults and threats are completely incompetent.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIsis\u201d
\n Isis oh Isis you’re a mystical child
\n What drives me to you is what drives me insane<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSara\u201d
\n Whatever made you want to change your mind
\n Sara, Sara
\n So easy to look at, so hard to define
\n Sara, Sara
\n Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life
\n Sara, Sara
\n Radiant jewel, mystical wife
\n Sara, Sara
\n Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress
\n Sara, Sara
\n You must forgive me my unworthiness
\n Sara, Sara
\n Glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow
\n Sara, Sara
\n Don’t ever leave me, don’t ever go<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Kinda makes you feel for Sara, the virgin angel, mystical wife, scorpio sphinx, glamorous nymph, etc. Aging out of your teens can be hard on a muse.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Pony\u201d
\n Everybody say you’re using voodoo, your feet walk by themselves
\n Well, everybody say you’re using voodoo, I seen your feet walk by themselves
\n Oh baby, that god you been praying to
\n Is gonna give ya back what you’re wishing on someone else.
\n Come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you
\n Well, come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you
\n Well, you’re so nasty and you’re so bad
\n But I swear I love you, yes I do.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[More romantic words were never uttered than “I wanna climb up one time on you.” It’s a double entendre! Get it, pony?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIs Your Love in Vain?\u201d
\n Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
\n Do you understand my pain?
\n Are you willing to risk it all
\n Or is you love in vain?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Looking for a woman to cook for me and fix my clothes. Otherwise women are useless. Believe me, though: she’ll end up feeling “my” pain.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
(2) Generally or miscellaneously ridiculous lyrics<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall\u201d
\n And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
\n And what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
\n I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’
\n I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
\n Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
\n Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[For real, it’s a-gonna a-fall. Pellets of poison are flooding, are they?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBob Dylan’s Dream\u201d
\n With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
\n We never thought we could ever get very old
\n We thought we could sit forever in fun
\n But our chances really was a million to one<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cOxford Town\u201d
\n Oxford Town in the afternoon
\n Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
\n Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon
\n Somebody better investigate soon<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Lynching really got the purported Dylan’s goat, as it did the whole generation. Somebody better investigate, eventually! Chant it in the streets.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cChimes of Freedom\u201d
\n Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
\n The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
\n That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
\n Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
\n Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
\n Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
\n An’ the poet an’ the painter far behind his rightful time
\n An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.
\n In the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
\n For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
\n Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
\n All down in taken-for granted situations<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[This is a comprehensive lesson in how not to write. Empty and impossible, yet so overwrought. As is the next, and many others. Sub-Ginsberg pseudo-Beat.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBallad in Plain D\u201d
\n With unseen consciousness, I possessed in my grip
\n A magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped
\n Noticing not that I’d already slipped
\n To a sin of love’s false security.
\n From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace
\n Answers of emptiness, voice vacancies
\n Till the tombstones of damage read me no question but, “Please
\n What’s wrong and what’s exactly the matter?”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Though its heart being chipped?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d
\n And but for the…
\n I’m ready for to fade<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Any time you’re ready for to, man, go right ahead.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues\u201d
\n Better jump down a manhole
\n Light yourself a candle
\n Don’t wear sandals
\n Try to avoid the scandals
\n Don’t wanna be a bum
\n You better chew gum<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[It sort of rhymes! But it definitely doesn’t scan. Important advice on how not to be a bum, though.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d
\n Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
\n My senses have been stripped
\n My hands can’t feel to grip
\n My toes too numb to step
\n Waitin’ only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
\n I’m ready to go anywhere
\n I’m ready for to fade
\n Into my own parade
\n Cast your dancing spell my way
\n I promise to go under it<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[I wonder what it’s like to have your senses stripped. One of the most interesting incidents in \u201cDylan”s bio is that one time in 1967 his heels wandered off without his boots, then his boots wandered off without his legs, then his legs wandered off without his torso, then his torso wandered off without his head, and then his head rolled down into a sort of puddle, where it remains today.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[The whole of the miserable song “Gates of Eden” is a decisive and permanent refutation of \u201cDylan\u201d the writer. Here are a couple verses. It’s some kind of symbolist poem?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
\n And then complains
\n Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
\n But still remains
\n Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
\n At ships with tattered sails
\n Heading for the Gates of Eden
\n With a time-rusted compass blade
\n Aladdin and his lamp
\n Sits with Utopian hermit monks
\n Side saddle on the Golden Calf
\n And on their promises of paradise
\n You will not hear a laugh
\n All except inside the Gates of Eden
\n The motorcycle black Madonna
\n Two-wheeled gypsy queen
\n And her silver-studded phantom ’cause
\n The gray flannel dwarf to scream
\n As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
\n Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
\n And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Bro. Begging you to stop shoveling out this horseshit unto us. Remember Chuck Berry or something! What are you doing?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s Alright, Ma\u201d
\n While some on principles baptize
\n To strict party platforms ties
\n Social clubs in drag disguise
\n Outsiders they can freely criticize
\n Tell nothing except who to idolize
\n And say “God Bless him.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBallad of a Thin Man\u201d
\n Now you see this one-eyed midget
\n Shouting the word “NOW”
\n And you say, “For what reason?”
\n And he says, “How?”
\n And you say, “What does this mean?”
\n And he screams back, “You’re a cow
\n Give me some milk
\n Or else go home”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[If \u201cmidgets\u201d aren’t deep symbols of something, “Dylan” and David Lynch are in trouble.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cDesolation Row\u201d
\n Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
\n They’re getting ready for the feast
\n The Phantom of the Opera
\n In a perfect image of a priest
\n They are spoon-feeding Casanova
\n To get him to feel more assured
\n Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
\n After poisoning him with words
\n And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
\n “Get outta here if you don’t know”
\n Casanova is just being punished for going
\n To Desolation Row.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Praise be to Nero’s Neptune!]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI Want You\u201d
\n Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit
\n He spoke to me, I took his flute
\n No, I wasn’t very cute to him – Was I ?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAll Along the Watchtower\u201d
\n “There must be some kind of way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
\n “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
\n Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
\n None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
\n “No reason to get excited”, the thief, he kindly spoke,
\n “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Hendrix’s cover was a lot better, but the lyrics were never going to make any sense, said the Jester to the Ladies in Waiting and Midget Monks of Ithaca, or whathefuckever.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI Am a Lonesome Hobo\u201d
\n I am a lonesome hobo.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[Are you, though?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Wicked Messenger\u201d
\n Oh, the leaves began to fallin’
\n And the seas began to part
\n And the people that confronted him were many
\n And he was told but these few words
\n Which opened up his heart
\n “If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any”.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[It seems like if the leaves began to falling, then the seas should begin to parting. If the seas begin to part, however, it seems like the leaves should just begin to fall. The faux-Biblical, merely-senseless clip clop is very typical, however, as is the final arrival at a mere clich\u00e9.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cCountry Pie\u201d
\n Give to me my country pie
\n I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[He definitely will, though.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n (3) The Western
\n Many, many Dylan songs are kind of sketches or scenarios for, or from, Western movies and television shows; it’s all gunfighters and gamblers, sheriffs and hanging judges and drifters and whores. He was writing as the Western was dying as a dominant strand in American and world entertainment. Why did he keep returning? What did any of it mean? I’ll just “throw up” a couple of examples.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cLily of the West\u201d (Traditional folk song)
\n I courted lovely Flora some pleasure for to find
\n But she turned unto another man who sore distressed my mind
\n She robbed me of my liberty, deprived me of my rest
\n Then go, my lovely Flora, the lily of the west.
\n Away down in yonder shady grove, a man of high degree
\n Conversin’ with my Flora there, it seemed so strange to me
\n And the answer that she gave to him it sore did me oppress
\n I was betrayed by Flora, the lily of the west.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[The guy sore distressed his mind; the gal sore did him oppress. Badly translated from the Malay, perhaps? Remember when he was ready “for to” fade? “For to” is his go-to. No it adds nothing. That’s why he’s sore.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBallad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest\u201d
\n Well, Frankie Lee he panicked
\n He dropped ev’rythimg and ran
\n Until he came up to the spot
\n Where Judas Priest did stand
\n “What kind of a house is this”, he said
\n “Where I have come to roam?”
\n “It’s not a house”, said Judas Priest
\n “It’s not a house, it’s a home.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cJack of Hearts\u201d
\n The backstage manager was pacing all around by his chair
\n “There’s something funny going on” he said ” I can just feel it in the air”
\n He went to get the hanging judge but the hanging judge was drunk
\n As the leading actor hurried by in the costume of a monk
\n There was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cShelter From the Storm\u201d
\n I was burned out from exhaustion buried in the hail
\n Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail
\n Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn
\n Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
\n But nothing really matters much it’s doom alone that counts
\n And the one-eyed undertaker he blows a futile horn
\n “Come in,” she said
\n “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[As usual, he’s throwing around sub-Jungian archetypes and dream images. But really, “hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn”? The one-eyed undertaker blows a futile horn?]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cTombstone Blues\u201d
\n Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
\n With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
\n With a fantastic collection of stamps
\n To win friends and influence his uncle
\n The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
\n Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
\n At Delilah who’s sitting worthlessly alone
\n But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
[“Win friends and influence his uncle” is what passes for a joke in this body of work. Galileo throwing a book at Delilah! It’s symbolic! It’s not really anything, though. Let’s add us some random pronouns.]<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I intend this to amount to a decisive, irrefutable demonstration that the alleged Bob Dylan can\u2019t write worth a damn. I don’t care if everyone in the world and the Nobel prize committee disagree. How can they? The man wrote all of this and so, so much more.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I intend to leave Dylan alone now, forevermore, having destroyed him once and for all beyond hope of resuscitation. But in a month or two, I swear, I’ll do the same thing to the Beatles.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell<\/em><\/p>\n
\n <\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.splicetoday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In\u00a0my recent takedown of the Beatles and the purported Bob Dylan, I promised to prove the assertions I made, at length. Here\u2019s the refutation by quotation of “Dylan.\u201d I’ve attacked this person’s art for a long time; call it 50 years, since I was arguing with my brothers in 1971. But it never sticks. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2200055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2200054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A-New-Refutation-of-Bob-Dylan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2200054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200056,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200054\/revisions\/2200056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2200054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2200054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2200054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}