The 500 - #174 - Desire - Bob Dylan

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #174
Album Title: Desire
Artist: Bob Dylan

Genre: Folk Rock

Recorded: Over six days, at Columbia Studios

Released: January, 1976

My age at release: 10
How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all

Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Hurricane

The opening track to Dylan's seventeenth studio record, Desire, is the song Hurricane, an historical protestation about the wrongful conviction and incarceration of middleweight boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter. Carter and his friend, John Artis, were falsely implicated in a shooting at the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Despite limited evidence and testimony from a couple of ne'er-do-wells who were in the area committing a robbery of their own, African Americans Carter and Artis were convicted by an all-white jury. Carter continued to proclaim his innocence from behind bars where he wrote his autobiography, The Sixteenth Round. The bio was a desperate effort to secure a retrial. It worked and he was released in 1985 after serving 20 years for a crime he did not commit. The complete story was told marvelously in the 1999, Norman Jewison film The Hurricane, featuring Denzel Washington in the titular role.

Movie poster for The Hurricane (1999).

Dylan was inspired to compose Hurricane after receiving a copy of Carter's autobiography from the author. At the time, Dylan was committed to social causes supported by the United States' Civil Rights Movement during the sixties and seventies. It was during that period that Carter and Artis were battling the legal system for a re-trial. Their campaign and the song highlighted the inadequacies of the American justice system and the systematic racism that persisted, despite advances that were achieved during the Civil Rights era.

Written as a political anthem, Hurricane represented the ongoing struggle for equality, understanding and justice. On December 5, 1975, Dylan performed a concert at Clinton State Prison, where Carter was incarcerated. Carter took to the stage and answered questions from reporters, including representatives of People Magazine, which published an article about his plight on December 22.

December 22. 1975 issue of People Magazine, Dylan article
highlighted by star.

Storytelling, narrated or in song; as oral history or in celebration, have been with us for thousands of years. The practise is as old as human language. Indeed, before literacy came to the masses, stories and songs were the primary means of passing along evidence of a society's existence, culture and history from one generation to the next. I am a sucker for a good narrative song, and The 500 list is brimming with lyricists and musicians who make storytelling an essential part of their craft. Beyond Dylan, there are the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Tom Waits, Nas and Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.), each of whom has combined melody with rich and vivid imagery.

Hurricane is a story-telling masterpiece, constructed with 11 verses and 11 chorus sections which share the same musical motif but have distinct lyrics. It is a story of injustice told over 22, four-to six-line stanzas. Dylan brilliantly captured the voices of those involved in the crime, investigation and criminal trial, while detailing the historical events of half a century ago. In the 18th stanza, he makes a bold choice by using the "N-word". While the pejorative is taboo for most today, it can be used freely by African Americans -- whose voices Dylan was adopting when he sang:

And to the black folks he was just a crazy n****
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

Clearly, Dylan did not use N term as a racist epithet; the entire point of the song is to shine a light on racial injustice. So, should a songwriter get away with such language? 

Often, when teaching poetry, I remind my students to refer to the "speaker" when talking about the meaning of a poem or lyric. In Dear John when Taylor Swift sings, "I lived in your chess game/But you changed the rules every day", she is likely speaking from personal experience. However, she may be writing in the voice of a character escaping a manipulative relationship. Consequently, we say "the speaker says..." not "Taylor Swift says..." when discussing the lyrics.

Still, it was a dicey choice for Dylan back then and, on first listen, I bristled. Much like comedians, I admire an artist taking a risk. But I hope we have the wherewithal to distinguish between when a word is used maliciously and when it is used to emphasize a statement.

In the 1985 hit song Money For Nothing, songwriter and singer Mark Knopfler adopted the third-person perspective of a simple-minded, homophobic character decrying the state of modern music. He used a terribly nasty pejorative for gays and has faced mounting criticism in recent years. He now substitutes the word "Queenie" when performing the song live. I wonder if Dylan also found a less inflammatory word for subsequent performances of Hurricane?

The video for Money For Nothing featured a small-minded
blue collar worker who criticized pop stars with the F-word slur.

It would be nice if, as a society, we took the time to understand art before we judged it or dismissed the uncomfortable parts.  Dylan is not a racist and Knopfler is not a homophobe. In fact, they made lyrical choices intended to make audiences uncomfortable, hoping to make them more sensitive to our changing society. I suspect, that was the aim of Dylan and Knopfler when putting those bold words on paper in the first place.