Richard Hell’s favourite Bob Dylan song: “There’s no explaining it”
There is something inexplicably universal about the music and lyricism of Bob Dylan. As one of the defining voices of the 1960s counterculture age, Dylan’s discography certainly transcended his folk roots, with each new generation finding something to hold onto within his long and illustrious body of work. Even during the punk age, which sought to tear down the musical establishment and rebuild from the rubble, nobody could quite bring themselves to denounce the literary genius of Bob Dylan, least of all Television’s Richard Hell.
The exact origins of punk rock are endlessly disputed, but there are a handful of figures who were undeniably pivotal to its development. One such figure was the Kentucky-born musician Richard Hell, who became a cornerstone of the early punk scene after moving to New York in the early 1970s to pursue poetry. First with Television, and later as Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Hell was instrumental in the creation of various early punk anthems, blazing a trail that countless other artists would eagerly follow.
Despite the popular portrayal of punk as a rebellion against the musical establishment of the time, there were a few established artists who were seemingly given a free pass by the punks. Dylan was firmly within this group, likely as a result of his complex lyricism and inherently political existence aligning quite nicely with the ethos of punk. Hell was always a fan of Dylan, going as far as to relocate to New York to pursue poetry and music just as Dylan had done the decade prior.
If you move in music-centric circles, eventually, you will be asked for your favourite Dylan track. For Hell, the answer to that deceptively difficult question comes in the form of the folk hero’s 1975 track ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’, from Blood On The Track. “Talking about Dylan is too complicated for just a few words,” Hell told Mojo, “It seems that anyone who likes him at all has a relationship with him, whether they admit it or not. He’s been that useful, meaningful and exasperating all your life long. No wonder he resents his fans”.
Expanding upon his love for ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’, the ‘Blank Generation’ singer revealed, “This song is the one for me that’s the most revealing of his bewildering powers because it’s the one that has the greatest distance between its emotional impact and its actual words.” That same synopsis could equally be attributed to a variety of Hell’s own work, which seems simple but manages to convey deep emotions. “How does he make those silly words so affecting?” the singer pondered, “‘Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.’ Where is the poetry in that? The metaphor is obvious and the observation commonplace. But in the song, it breaks your heart”.
“I think maybe it’s something about both his openness and the way his mind skips around in his condition,” continued Hell, in his analysis of Dylan’s inexplicable brilliance, “somehow indicating the shape of everything, and I mean everything. It’s how the lines turn into each other. No one line is much more than banal, but it’s how they follow from each other that makes that ‘I can change, I swear’ choke me up every time”.
This is a track and a topic of conversation that Hell has clearly pondered over for some time, yet he seems no closer to pinning down the exact appeal of the song. “Or is it his delivery?” he questions, “Or the melody? Or the weird way saying ‘You’re a big girl now’ is inherently sarcastic, when obviously what’s going on is he wants her more than anything? It’s all the currents in something apparently so simple and ordinary,” after attempting to explain the genius of the song, Hell eventually admits defeat, conceding, “There’s no explaining it”.
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