For the Sake Of The Song: Bob Dylan “It’s alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

The original premise of this feature was to allow AUK writers to celebrate a favourite song and explain why they so favoured it. Fair enough, but in these blighted times it can seem shallow or even frivolous to simply pick a song just because it tickles one’s fancy. No offence intended to my fellow writers who have delivered some wonderful pieces on some wonderful songs but for me there needs to be a push which elevates the song and allows it to resonate. Last time around I wrote about Randy Newman’s evisceration of the USA’s institutionalised racism on his song ‘Rednecks’ and when it came to my turn again to chose a song, I couldn’t resist trying to find one which spoke, in whatever manner, on the ghastly state of the USA today as Trump and his minions (and oligarch buddies) attempt to turn it into an authoritarian neo-fascist country.

I considered Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention song ‘It Can’t Happen Here’, named after Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian 1935 novel which depicts the rise of an American dictator. However, much as I admire the song it isn’t exactly Americana. Instead, given that it’s the President of The United States who is the malefactor these days, I was increasingly drawn to a line from Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’. It’s a line that, when I first heard it sung live on Dylan and The Band’s 1974 live album “Before The Flood”, resonated hugely with the audience. As Dylan sings the words “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked” the crowd go apeshit, understandable, of course, as the president at the time was Richard Nixon, soon to resign in disgrace, mired in the Watergate scandal. Tricky Dicky was the nadir of all of the modern POTUS’ until he was eclipsed, not one but twice, by a man who makes Nixon seem like a minor pickpocket.

‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ first appeared on Dylan’s 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home”, a disc which bridged his transition from folk-like songs to mercurial rock’n’roll. The song is on the mainly acoustic second side of the album and is one of his premier forays into the oblique lyrical mannerisms which have fed a huge industry of Dylanologists over the years. The original version is delivered with a scathing sense of urgency, Dylan almost spitting out the words and it remains one of his most played live songs. Delving into it as I write, it’s surprising how one can interpret many of the lyrics as pertaining to our modern times. There is of course the pointed declaration that “Money doesn’t talk, it swears“, a truism that is timeless but there are also lines such as “From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn plays wasted words” and “While one who sings with his tongue on fire gargles in the rat race choir”, either of which could pertain to the perma-tanned man child’s incomprehensible rants and ramblings. There are more lyrics one could invoke and that’s the beauty of Dylan, he is, in this song at least, timeless.

The song has been described as Dylan’s then anger at the “perceived hypocrisy, commercialism, consumerism, and war mentality in contemporary American culture.” Plus ça change then.  Most chilling are the closing lines where Dylan sings “And if my thought-dreams could be seen they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” The words echo Orwell’s notion of thought crimes and it’s not a huge stretch to imagine that the multitudes of Americans imperilled by Trump’s United States and who are guilty of nothing other than failing to worship him could face dire consequences for having the “wrong” sort of thought-dreams.