Highway 61 Revisited, visited

[satan_s_onion]

Yes, this is that article I said I'd write weeks ago. Only...in the interim I've gotten several new Bob Dylan albums. I tried to hold off on listening to them until I'd gotten done with this article, because part of the fun is sharing my reactions with the big wide Internet (and both the people who actually read this), but a couple of weeks ago...I

Comments

[chickenbrutus]

I don't personally believe that Ballad of a Thin Man is INTENTIONALLY about a repressed homosexual, but, if you listen to it, it's hard to find a single metaphor that doesn't work on that level as well. I think it's just one of Poetry's Great Coincidences, to be honest. It's certainly fun to think of that way, but you're exactly right when you mention that saying any Dylan song is "about this" you are limiting your enjoyment thousandfold. One of the best things about Dylan is that any song (well, any of the good ones) can mean anything to anybody...and it means them all SINCERELY

[satan_s_onion]

Y'know, I can see where you're coming from about "Desolation Row"; the level of detail he supplies could just as easily be gleefully malicious as an attempt to inspire sympathy. Maybe I've been seeing this song through the prism of his earlier protest work--or at least the semi-social-justice-commentary stuff like on Bringing It All Back Home--like "he was writing with a social-justice bent before, this is probably how he's approached it now". It's a hell of a song that can produce two equally valid interpretations so substantially different from each other.

[nikose]

oh noes you got spammed, Onion.

Delete it! DELEEEEEEEEEEEEETE IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

[satan_s_onion]

Can't now; apparently he's been suspended. But if I could, I would.