Anyone who follows this blog (and, admittedly, that would be mostly me) will notice I come around to certain subjects on a cyclic basis. Having heard and been completely entranced by Bob Dylan's latest album, recorded when he was 79 years old and apparently in yet another flowering of his startling lyric genius, I'm now in a Dylanish, Bobbyish phase once again.
I have my favorites, but because he has written so many hundreds of songs it's hard to pick just one, or even just a dozen. I became attached to one of his earlier albums, Desire, in part because of the unusual violin stylings of Scarlet Rivera, but largely because of some truly kick-ass songs. It isn't Dylan at his best, but it's a more relaxed and self-revealing Dylan than most, with some memorable and sweetly pining love songs. One More Cup of Coffee stands out for its breathtakingly succinct language:
Your sister tells the future, like your mother and yourself
You never learned to read and write, there's no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits, your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
How Dylan can cram an entire biography, not to mention a family history, into a few deft lines is completely beyond me - but that's genius for you. You can't define it, but you know when you are in its presence.
But while wandering around inside this one-of-my-many-favorite Dylan albums, I rediscovered a tender love ballad called Oh, Sister - and remembered that this song led to a famous, if not infamous, musical feud.
It was obvious to anyone who knew the situation that Oh, Sister was written - not for, but AT Joan Baez, expressing some obvious hurt and self-pity for having been "wronged" by someone he felt so close to that they could have been (ick!) brother and sister. Dylan doesn't have a sister, and it's kind of evident by these sentiments. But it's also pretty manipulative stuff, and as usual with Dylan, you kind of have to pull it apart to really get at it.
Oh, Sister Bob Dylan
Oh, sister, when I come to lie in your arms
You should not treat me like a stranger
Our Father would not like the way that you act
And you must realize the danger
Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you
And one deserving of affection
And is our purpose not the same on this earth
To love and follow his direction
We grew up together
From the cradle to the grave
We died and were reborn
And then mysteriously saved
Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door
Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow
Oh, sister - where do we start? This is a really short song, but as usual, it's packed with megatons of import. The first couple of lines aren't just reproachful: they actually contain the word "should", as if he has the right to dictate how she feels about him. From the erotic reference to lying in her arms (which can also be seen as a mother thing), he quickly segues to "Our Father", as if he's suddenly saying the Lord's Prayer. Dylan's entrenched religiosity can be a real ambush which is difficult to endure right in the middle of a supposed love song.
And as for the line "realize the danger" - of what? Even if we don't go there, we find in the next stanza that he thinks he's "deserving of affection", which she is obviously withholding. He also jumps the gun on not only HIS, but HER purpose here on earth, assuring her (and assuming) that he knows more about it than she does, though it's doubtful he ever asked.
"We grew up together/From the cradle to the grave" - well, it WAS the '60s, wasn't it, and they were in a kind of glamourous blaze of folkie love, but that "cradle to the grave" bit also seems to jump the gun. Not only are they not dead yet, they're still only in their thirties. And all that died-and-reborn stuff is a little heavy for a love ballad. Dylan is still hiding behind his heavy-handed Christianity - but wait, this was BEFORE all that happened! The symptoms of the disease were already there: self-righteousness mascarading as piety.
The last verse is deceptively beautiful, but similarly "loaded": if she dares turn him away, she's going to "create sorrow" - not just for him, but for both of them, if not the whole world. Ahem! "You may not see me tomorrow" sounds almost like a threat. Is he going to die or what? Come on, Bob, make it clear.
The funny and really Dylan-ish thing about this song is that, when you hear him sing it, it sounds sweetly sentimental, full of lyricism and longing, not the piece of subversive abuse that it truly is. Dylan manipulated Baez like a yo-yo for years, jerking the string just as she was getting over him (see the truly incredible Diamonds and Rust, the only song she ever wrote which was a worthy adversary of the Dylan one-two punch). She STILL isn't over him, if a recent PBS special is any indication - she goes all dewy-eyed and then even apologizes for his cruelty to her, saying she just didn't understand back then what he was all about. (As if he wasn't busy telling her that, not to mention what SHE was all about.)
But at the time, some time in the '70s, Baez's reaction to Oh, Sister was one of white-hot fury. Dylan had the effrontery to keep his marriage to Sara Lowndes a secret, not just from the whole world but from the woman he supposedly cherished as a soul mate. Baez didn't even know about Sara until she heard Bob was sick, popped in to see him, and his wife, who happened to be a dark-eyed fashion model, opened the door. It was one of the worst betrayals in popular music history, and the song is one long vomit of the toxins his deception created.
I had trouble even posting it here because it seethed and fumed and even spewed vitriol. Because Baez is Baez and unable to cram all this into one line like "you'd know what a drag it is to see you", it goes on for verses and verses. I watch true crime shows, though I probably shouldn't, and when someone is stabbed to death, they are always stabbed 47 times, and it always turns out to be a family member or spouse. It's called "overkill", something that can only be perpetrated by someone with intense feelings for the victim.
The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference. Baez takes a lot of verses to purge herself, is as nasty as she knows how to be, and even uses a refrain (take it easy, but take it) that comes directly out of a Woody Guthrie song.
I do wonder, if Dylan paid any attention to this at the time, how much it affected him. Though I always saw something one-sided in their immortal Darby-and-Joan (or Bonnie and Clyde) connection, Dylan rhapsodized about Baez during an interminable acceptance speech he gave for some award or other a few years ago. Who knows what THAT was about. He talked for half an hour, when it's more normal for him to just take the award and run.
This never gets resolved.
Dylan will turn 80 in a couple of months - yes, eighty freaking years old, and Baez might be there already. Dylan has suddenly hit the jackpot - AGAIN - proving he has more creative lives than a wildcat (bobcat?), and isn't finished with us yet. Are these two extremely old people still attached by some freakish umbilical cord born of history, twins like Castor and Pollux (excuse me, I've been listening to Dylan's latest album and it's chock-a-block with mythology)? Or did they just get thrown together by a simple twist of fate?
Oh, Brother! Joan Baez
You've got eyes like Jesus
But you speak with a viper's tongue
We were just sitting around on earth
Where the hell did you come from?
With your lady dressed in deerskin
And an amazing way about her
When are you going to realize
That you just can't live without her?
Take it easy
Take it light
But take it
Your lady gets her power
From the goddess and the stars
You get yours from the trees and the brooks
And a little from life on Mars
And I've known you for a good long while
And would you kindly tell me, mister
How in the name of the Father and the Son
Did I come to be your sister?
Take it easy
Take it light
But take it
You've done dirt to lifelong friends
With little or no excuses
Who endowed you with the crown
To hand out these abuses?
Your lady knows about these things
But they don't put her under
Me, I know about them, too
And I react like thunder
Take it easy
Take it light
But take it
I know you are surrounded
By parasites and sycophants
When I come to see you
I dose up on coagulants
Because when you hurl that bowie knife
It's going to be when my back is turned
Doing some little deed for you
And baby, will I get burned
Take it easy
Take it light
But take it
So little brother when you come
To knock on my door
I don't want to bring you down
But I just went through the floor
My love for you extends through life
And I don't want to waste it
But honey, what you've been dishing out
You'd never want to taste it
And if I had the nerve
To either risk it or to break it
I'd put our friendship on the line
And show you how to take it
Take it easy
Take it light
But take it
SPECIAL BONUS RECORD. Like those cereal-box records I collected as a kid, I can't help but share the magic of this. It's just one of the songs on Dylan's latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, which is among the best he has ever done. Though it might be said the song is about Joan, I think it more likely that it's about his most faithful love: the love of his Saviour, his truest friend always, the Son of Man.
