Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as the old saying went – and became, almost literally, in this record. We have a song that starts each line with “They’ll stone ya” and which ends “everybody must get stoned!”.
So like Duchamps famous Toilet, Dylan simply says, “take that and work it out for yourselves.” But as I will try and show below, I think it is also about the whole nature of being a creative person in a society of critics.
In short everyone wanted Dylan to do what they wanted. So it seems we have to take it into serious consideration, even if it sounds like a knock about.ĭylan has always loved the standard three chord 12 bar blues, and I think he probably wanted this knock about farce as the opening to stick his fingers up at all sorts of people the pretentious who (like me, I must admit) were reading deep meanings into his lyrics, the purists who refused to go beyond the first three albums, the protesters who wanted more “Times they are a changing”, the post-modern poet-musicians who wanted more “Please Crawl Out your Window”, and the social commentators who wanted more “Desolation Row”. And it has appeared on around a dozen Dylan LPs. Here’s Old Crowe taking in on with great gusto and fun… it is the sheer energy I love here, and it was this version that brought me back to the song after years of not hearing it.īob has played the song nearly 1000 on stage shows, so clearly he has enjoyed the knockabout throughout much of his career. How silly do you want to be? And if that’s not enough, consider the Mighty Quinn. Just consider for a moment the lyrics of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat: He gave us vicious songs, love songs, atmospheric songs and yes comic songs.
But in a sense yes, because Dylan had been giving us, with the rock band, incredibly serious and insightful, often mournful songs, songs which compound metaphor upon metaphor, challenging us to see everyday life in a totally new way. Of course it is hard to compare Rainy Day with Rolling Stone or Subterranean. No one could ever accuse Dylan of standing still. And then in 1966 we were offered Blonde on Blonde which opens with Rainy Day. “Highway 61” opened with Rolling Stone (perhaps one of the greatest Dylan songs of all time) and ended with Desolation Row (ditto). “Subterranean” which opened “Bringing it all” was a bit of a knock about extended 12 bar blues but it has meaning and message and it gave us a merging of beat poetry and rock.
He played it once as an instrumental and once put the lyrics of “Watching the River Flow” to the tune in a show in 1991.Īnd Dylan does like to mix things up. Well part of the answer was that it got to number 2 in the charts. Allegedly the final title came from Proverbs 27 v 15, “A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike,” the religious input coming from the fact that the accompaniment (and afterthought once the recording session was underway) was added to give it a “Salvation Army” appeal.Īnd so we ask the question: why bother? Why produce this song? Why put it as the opening song of your first double album? Updated 8 August 2018 with occasional text changes and four new video presentationsĬan you perform a 12 bar blues using a trombone, tuba, piano, bass, percussion, and a constant tambourine sitting on each and every beat? And a load of extras shouting interruptions and comments too?Īnd if you could would you call it “A long haired mule and a porcupine”? That was, it seems the working title.
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