Suzanne Vega’s captivating response to Bob Dylan’s ‘I Want You’
It’s tough to find any folk artist who is not a Bob Dylan fan, but it would be even more challenging to try to find one who is as big a fan as Suzanne Vega. Emerging and rising to the top in the late 1970s and ‘80s, Vega came just a little too late to be in Dylan’s scene, but she’s undeniably been following in his footsteps.
It’s almost impossible not to, though. As Martha Wainwright said, “He is the artist that all artists are led to.”
To put it more succinctly, she declared, “All roads led to Bob Dylan.”
Especially for any artist working in the world of folk, it would be impossible to truly escape. The impact of his lyrics, the style of his guitar playing, the evolution of his folk to include more electric instruments, too, the entirety of modern folk is undeniably shaped in his image.
But after a whole career of being influenced by Dylan, Vega took it further to consider his lyricism more literally, as much as that’s ever possible. “Well, I return to the Queen of Spades / And talk with my chambermaid / She knows that I’m not afraid to look at her,” Dylan sings on ‘I Want You’. It’s a song with a simple chorus premise, declaring “I want you” over and over in an admission of longing. But with each verse, it gets more metaphorical, more confusing, and more veiled in regards to what, or who, he’s actually talking about.
That interested Vega. Dylan has always been cautious and extremely avoidant when it comes to sharing any details about who certain songs are about. There are always theories about the moments that Joan Baez pops up in a line, or even with this song, whether Edie Sedgwick was the girl he wanted. But who is the chambermaid? What’s her story?
“I woke up one morning with this odd notion that I’m Bob Dylan’s chambermaid,” Vega told Uncut. “I went to explore it, and the whole song came flying out”. Diving into this character mentioned only once with no story or surrounding, the singer merged her interests in Dylan with untold stories.
“I’m the great man’s chambermaid / I’ve seen where his hallowed head is laid / I revere the places he has stayed / And clean crumbs from his typewriter,” Vega sings, taking the melody from ‘I Want You’ while flipping the switch. While some of the original lyrics from Dylan’s song float in and out, she’s looking at it from a different perspective. She considers this woman watching his life but also creating a kind of half love story for a woman loving a great man, while revealing it as an ode to the many women often caught in the shadows of men like that.
“I finger sentencеs he’s made / I follow evеry curving of his brain,” she sings in this story, but it also rings true of her experience as a Dylan fan, a devotee of his legacy, and someone who has clearly poured over his words.
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