Ballad Of A Thin Man
You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Well, what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel to be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible!" as he hands you a bone
And something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
You have many contacts among the lumberjacks
To get you facts when someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect, anyway they already expect you to all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations
Ah, you've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well-read, it's well-known
But something is happening here and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice, he asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan"
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Now, you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word "Now"
And you say, "For what reason?" and he says, "How"
And you say, "What does this mean?" and he screams back, "You're a cow!
Give me some milk or else go home"
And you know something's happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Well, you walk into the room like a camel, and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you comin' around
You should be made to wear earphones
'Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
People have debated endlessly about who Mr. Jones is, whether it's Albert Grossman (the manager who boosted Dylan's fame, then took him for a ride that didn't end until the 1980s, when Dylan found out he'd been swindling him for years), or the journalists who kept asking him lame questions like "Why don't you write protest songs any more?", or the "over-30s" who were then seen as the enemy (Dylan was, after all, only 24 when he recorded this dire masterpiece) - or - or -
I've always believed, almost from first listening, that this song is autobiographical. It's an attempt to capture the chaotic nightmare he found himself trapped in, bizarrely self-created by an almost grotesque level of fame, the kind that eats people raw. Dylan by this time looked terrible, was underweight, pale as a ghost, smelled bad (according to the many bios I've read, he's not much of a bather), had hair like a wild bird's nest, didn't eat, slept even less, and was fuelled mainly by cocaine, LSD and speed. The famed "motorcycle accident" that brought this hell to a screeching halt may well have been a planned exit from a lifestyle that was sucking him down into a hellish vortex. Had he continued, he might not even had made it to age 27, when so many rock legends were cruelly harvested.
I don't need to say that Dylan is one of the great minds of our time, but the fact that he squeaked through this drug-soaked period, dragged down by sycophants and hangers-on, attests to both his inner strength and the stable, happy childhood that launched his confoundingly unique artist's life. Say what else you will about him, Dylan is a family man, and it is this solid foundation that has kept him from flying off the edge of the world, both then and now.
Of all the songs in this particularly fruitful period, when his creativity was in constant overdrive, this one gets closest to expressing the horrifying dystopia he found himself in: the queasy shifting and lurching of reality, the draining and soul-sucking parasitic "relationships" which he knew were false and phony (and LORD how Bob Dylan hates a phony!), and the dissolving of a real sense of self, a lapsing of identity which must be the most frightening experience there is. It is a hollowing-out, a stealing of one's humanity, and Mr. Jones is enmeshed in it, with no idea who, what or where he is at any given moment. Or how to get out.
You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
It isn't just the words, which are harrowing enough, but the delivery, which is so full of pain that it's hard to listen to now that I hear Dylan so differently. I'm noticing aspects of his voice in listening to pristine re-released/cleaned-up recordings on a quality headset in the middle of the night, especially when I've had a wee nip of cannabis oil (purely medicinal, but my how it brings those songs into focus). People would complain he was a lousy singer, but particularly at this time in his career, when he was riding out on the far fringes of existence, his voice is so raw that it grabs you where you don't even know you live.
This isn't just dada or nonsense or surrealism or anything else that can be labelled. This is writing on the level of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, brought up to date for 1965. Dylan lays heavy on the keyboard on this one - I can tell it's him because he's not a very sophisticated pianist, but wrings the guts out of it anyway, each chord reverberating with a sense of doom.
I still haven't gotten it, have I? How can you begin to analyze a song that contains the lines, "You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground"? This is why I kept not writing about it, though I have analyzed the hell out of Desolation Row and a few others. If Ballad of a Thin Man (and Dylan was practically transparent at this point) were a painting, it would be by Hieronymus Bosch, dismembered human body parts crazily rearranged and reality disassembled and shot all to shit.
I still find it hard to listen to, and that moan at the end seems almost like a last gasp. We know it isn't true, that right at this moment he's probably lounging in one of his many mansions (he owns property all over the world, and why shouldn't he? Who has worked harder to attain what he has and who he is?), coming up to his eightieth birthday, maybe hanging out with some of his family (and at this point we know he has at least six kids and multiple grandkids) - the genius has come full circle and is now living comfortably with people who love him.
But the shadow remains. This man's eyes are haunted, incandescent with knowledge of things we probably were never supposed to know. The realm of genius is lonely, and at such high altitude the air is rarefied and very thin. He came in with this near-freakish gift, I'm convinced, will go out with it, and never chose it. He has no idea where the songs come from, but knows it's his duty to write them down, work them through, refine them and give them back to the world.