The Bob Dylan song that blew PJ Harvey away: “Absolutely astonishing”
In 1963, a young Bob Dylan released his debut album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and emphatically announced himself as the next great social commentator.
Because inside the walls of that rather scratchy acoustic guitar, were a catalogue of songs that spoke to the changing social consciousness of the swinging sixties. Dylan tapped into the mixed sense of confusion and optimism felt by a swell of political change and growing social liberation.
‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Masters of War’ showcased a young artist with more than just adolescent fury. This was an observer of social trends, with an acute ability to criticise and expose them within the delicate structure of a folk song. He was profoundly analytical and quickly gained a legion of fans, who doted on his every political word.
But 6 months after the release of that politically charged debut album, the biggest news story of the year and maybe even the decade took place. On November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Texas, sending shock waves through the world and providing a sobering reminder of just how uneasy the political ground beneath this changing decade really was.
Dylan never really addressed it directly in his follow-up records and instead waited until 2020. In a year fraught with political turmoil and change, Dylan clearly felt as though the time was right to look in the rear-view mirror as a means of understanding the present day, and so finally penned a song about the assassination of America’s 35th president.
Allowing the years of conspiracies to roll on, Dylan tackled the widely known subject with a sense of nuance by approaching the subject from the perspective of that conspiracy camp. Dylan rattles through America’s cultural history, citing artists and songs throughout the track to analyse how a moment of profound national trauma has shaped the country in a way that he thinks they’ve never truly recovered from.
While Dylan claimed it was “an unreleased song we recorded a while back,” the lyrics still view the tragedy as something that happened “50 years” back, and so still acts as a rather contemporary take on a historic event. In turn, it proved the great songwriter’s ability to be continually observational and sharp, even in the later stages of his career, which, to PJ Harvey, confirmed his status as a true great.
“I thought that was amazing,” she said of the song. “Bob Dylan, I mean ‘Murder Most Foul’ was absolutely astonishing. And I find no greater pleasure than when I see an artist who I’ve admired all my life, doing their best work as their most recent work. I think, ‘Oh, wow.’ That just fills me with such pleasure. And I felt that with Bob Dylan’s entire Rough and Rowdy Ways album.”
Perhaps even more astonishing was that despite being Dylan’s longest ever recorded song, at 16 minutes 56 seconds, eclipsing his Time Out of Mind track ‘Highlands’, which ran 16 minutes 31 seconds, it still managed to become Dylan’s first number one song on any Billboard chart when it topped the Rock Digital Song Sales tally. I guess it proved that no matter how much the times change, the world will always need Dylan’s voice.
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