My Third Summer Reading Review: The Old, Weird America

Our American Age

Yesterday I completed the third and final book on my summer reading list, The Old, Weird America (originally published as “Invisible Republic”, the author, Greil Marcus, intended the former title).  The subtitle tells it all: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, referring, of course, to the musical ferment occurring in upstate New York in the basement of a rented house in 1967, involving Dylan and members of what would become The Band.

The book tells of those storied sessions, and their origins in the compilations of songs from the dawn of mass market audio recording in the 1920s.

What comes across is a lament for the rich multiplicity that was early America.  With the advent of television, a stifling conformity is all but erasing that diversity.

In our age, when being brief is essential, Marcus seems to take on more than need be; though when written, 20 years ago, his would've been considered a slim volume.

So, with brevity in mind, I'll focus on a single song from those tapes, Tears of Rage, with lyrics by Bob Dylan, song by Richard Manuel, and give my take.  And though the music is a wonderful thing, indeed, I'll focus on Dylan's words.

Most theories hold that the song describes a father-daughter relationship, which could also pass for a generational indictment of new by old.  That may well be, though Dylan usually weaves together many threads, allowing the reader/listener multiple choices, so that we're left to construct our own treehouse, out of the available bits in the shed.  

The song's three verses and chorus, as quoted below, are a bit more polished than those sung on the basement tapes, but are a bit easier to read:

1.

We carried you in our arms on Independence Day
And now you throw us all aside and put us all away
Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun could treat her father so
To wait upon him hand and foot, yet always tell him no

(Chorus)
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief
Come to me now, you know we're so alone
And life is brief

2. 

It was all so very painless when you ran out to receive
All that false instruction which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse
But, oh, what kind of love is this which goes from bad to worse

(Chorus, repeated)

3.
We pointed you the way to go and scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more than a place for you to stand
I want you to know that while we watched you discover no one would be true
That I myself was among the ones who thought it was just a childish thing to do

(Chorus, repeated)

With Dylan’s words before us, check out the second verse’s third and fourth lines. Most people read this as a father upset with a daughter wanting financial assistance, or as Dylan upset with commercialization in general.  But could there be an additional, fun message, tucked in there, too?  If we take the word “bad” and count letters upwards a little ways, we get “dad”, which would confirm a hunch, if we were, in fact, onto something.  The ‘worse’ would then be ‘fad’, which is fading into ‘had’, which does sound plenty worse.

Another find: Dylan’s original words for the ending of the first verse’s fourth line is not “yet always tell him no”, but instead “…answer no”, which if you think about it, reminds one of a young person who thinks he'll ‘know’ the answer.

And what if that ‘dear daughter’ is getting up there in years, but still a child—which fits these words—say, eleven?  A father’s concern for a daughter at this stage is almost always that she wait till she's older.  Thus the earlier part of that “answer know’ line: “To wait upon him hand and foot…” is how a daughter treats a boyfriend before getting serious at a later stage: tuning in, being attentive, pleasant, helpful, but always saying ‘no’ to the inevitable request for hurry.  Practice makes perfect.

If this is indeed a father thinking about an 11-year-old daughter, what’s with the “why must I always be the thief?”  The obvious interpretation is that the father is always taking away what the daughter wants.  But, it also might make sense if the father’s name were “Robert”, which has the word ‘rob’ in it.  In its best sense, robbing, or taking, is showing someone something meaningful, taken from a different time and space.  For example, The Band taking a photo of their assembled relations and placing it in their album, as if to say: “we have roots”.  In a relationship with a child, the adult can show symbols that represent a deeper message, but the child usually can’t do this, let alone understand.  Thus, a parent’s frustration, or “rage” and “grief”, when “point(ing) you the way to go…” (third verse, first line), and the child misunderstanding, thinking the name in the sand was a place to stand.  Or--and Dylan’s messages can often be seen from both sides—the daughter does understand, and these lines are all to be seen as a treasure map that's been successfully discovered and decoded.

Maybe, you say, but what about the chorus’ “Come to me now, you know we’re so alone, and life is brief.”  Well, one could say the father is what an 11-year-old daughter needs in order to spread her wings and fly away in just a few years.  Ok,  but what about “so alone”?  They're uniquely suited to be teacher and student, for one another—but just for a few short years.  

What about the song’s second line: “And now you throw us all aside and put us all away?”  The obvious answer is that of course the child looks beyond her parents and prefers friends and independence.  But doesn’t the wording sound awkward?  It would be, except that Dylan is making a joke.  Remember, this was written in the age of records that had ‘A’ sides and “B’ sides.  So, he's chuckling while accusing us of putting away the record before discovering the ‘B’ side.

This is making sense, you say, but what about the “false instruction” part?  In the second verse the first clue is “all so very painless”, which of course can be thought of as ‘also', ‘vary', and 'paying less'.  And what does “when you ran out” make one think of?   Sure, running somewhere, but we'll soon come to ‘gold’ in a ‘purse’, so ‘running out’ is instead not having money, which is why as a child it’s “all so painless” “to receive” money when it’s needed.  This “false instruction” sets the child up for the shock of not having enough money once independent, which makes it hard to leave one’s parents.  There's the added fun of “ ..which we never could believe”.  That’s because the sentence could also read “which whenever, could be, leave—three stages, perhaps, in the eventual flight out of the nest.

Which only leaves the final two lines in the third verse.  What's all that mean?  Did Dylan get tired and just throw something together to finish up?  Maybe.  But if you look at the third verse, it has the same three word phrase, “thought it was”, twice, in the second and fourth lines.  And if you pair up this twin phrase and count off the remaining words in both lines, you find that there are an extra three words the first time around: “..you to stand.” [note: legs look like an ’11’].  In this context, the father is, in effect, saying that the sea's waves will eventually erase your name, meaning you’ll find someone, and change your name, once you leave the nest.  Farfetched?  Now compare those twin lines again.  The first is three words, before hitting the twin phrase, the second, eight.  Looking at the third line in between, you'll find the mid-point between three and eight, 5-6, correspond to the words “know” and “that”.  Plus, the third and eighth words are “you” and “we”; so, you-we-know-that, or know-that-you-we.  A girl born in 1956 would be eleven years old in 1967.

Huh?  But Dylan didn’t have children that old, you say.  Well, perhaps he’d recently met parents with a charming, precocious daughter, or had dreamed of one.

And that, folks, is a wrap: The Old, Weird America reviewed.