Happy Birthday Bob
Bob Dylan is 70. His birthday made me get out the old records to see if Dylan really is what I thought he was back when I used to listen to him. There are plenty of bootleg releases too now, of course, which catch him even more ragged and real than on the studio records, including a 1963 concert at Brandeis University (it’s under four quid on iTunes, amazingly, perhaps because it’s in mono).
Listening to the performance of ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ from this set it hit me what the Blues do, and what Dylan does, that The Reader Organisation relies on in its work: gives voice to a story at a pace that means you can’t escape it and don’t want to. It’s the slowness. The lines are repeated. There’s the unrelenting guitar in between. There’s something about it that has you caught as the words keep coming in his ordinary human voice, seeing things, in patterns that let you anticipate where you’re going. And then there’s the inevitability of the conclusion. ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ is a true story and it’s a perfect song for a live audience.
People always say of Dylan that he brought poetry to popular music, fulfilled the Beatnik hopes, but in a song like this, he seems more the storyteller. I don’t know if it will read off the screen the way it sounds. (I searched on YouTube for a recording but can find only covers.) Perhaps looking at the time-scale will help to unlock that ‘live’ feeling – you’re listening to the whole story (Hollis Brown is dead and gone), but the telling puts you into a ‘now’ where his experiences are too acute to belong to the past. The shift happens almost as soon as the address changes from ‘He’ to ‘You’. It’s desperate:
The Ballad of Hollis Brown
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
With his wife and five children
And his cabin broken down.
You looked for work and money
And you walked a ragged mile
You looked for work and money
And you walked a ragged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don't know how to smile.
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breathe.
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there's anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You ain’t got that much money boy
You ain't a-got no friend.
Your babies are crying louder now
It's pounding on your brain
Your babies are crying louder now
It's a-pounding on your brain
Your wife's screams are stabbin' you
Like the dirty drivin' rain.
Your grass is turning black
There's no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
There's no water in your well
Your spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells.
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That's a-hangin' on the wall.
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you're holdin' in your hand.
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around your cabin door
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean's pounding roar.
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere’s in the distance
There's seven new people born.
In ‘Masters of War’ Dylan blames the Cold War politicians for throwing ‘the worst fear that can ever be hurled / Fear to bring children into the world’, and the angry song is one of the great protest songs. But the regret of ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ is harder hitting still. Like most blues and folk music, it doesn’t seem to have been written so much as you feel it’s always existed, part of an ongoing cycle.
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