The one song Bob Dylan wants to delete from history: “I shouldn’t have used that”
Bob Dylan lives and dies by the sword. While he’s made choices throughout his career that have gone down like a led balloon, Dylan rarely looks back upon anything with an ounce of regret. However, there is one song that’s the exception to the rule.
Dylan’s decision-making process may not always please everyone, but to his credit, he’s always followed his gut instincts at every juncture. From bravely choosing to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to his born-again Christian stage, Dylan has gone against the grain too many times to count.
Every move Dylan has made throughout his career has been characterised by authentic honesty. This ingredient has made him such an appealing figure to millions, but by his own admission, he’s also made the mistake of going too far.
Considering Dylan has released 40 studio albums and a large portion of his lyrics related to his personal life, he’s risked offending the subjects of his songs on numerous occasions. While he’s developed a coat of armour that stops him from caring about what people may think, whether a muse, peer, or music critic, Dylan isn’t immune from feeling guilt. Admittedly, Dylan’s vast number of hits far outweigh his occasional misses, which is why he’s revered as the greatest living lyricist in music. However, while he may have a Nobel Prize to his name, Dylan is a human who makes mistakes like the rest of us, which comes from being a perennial risk-taker.
Never afraid to take direct aim at another artist or fire shots at society at large, Dylan’s honest songwriting can sometimes be too close to the bone. He fails to leave anything off the table when bearing his heart in the recording studio and has a history of forgetting his work involves real people whose words will impact.
The track from Dylan’s back catalogue that he’d love to delete from the archives is ‘Ballad In Plain D’, which appeared on 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan. To provide further context around the song, it’s a one-sided autobiographical version of events surrounding a domestic argument that reflects on the singer-songwriter in a terrible light. Therefore, it’s no surprise to discover his ill feelings towards ‘Ballad In Plain D’.
Throughout the eight-and-a-half-minute duration of the track, Dylan chronicles his relationship with Suze Rotolo. Their story began when he was nothing more than an emerging Greenwich Village singer-songwriter but a global megastar once it concluded. Although they spent only a few years together, Dylan’s life changed immeasurably during this period, and their relationship wasn’t strong enough to survive. Notably, Rotolo was the muse behind many classic love songs such as ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’, but it wasn’t all a bed of roses.
In addition to ‘Ballad In Plain D’ covering their initial honeymoon period, Dylan also covers his infidelities. Furthermore, he delivers a brutally scathing attack on her sister, who he labels a parasite. The nasty track concludes by detailing a vicious argument on the final fateful night of their relationship. In the song, he apologetically sings, “Myself, for what I did, I cannot be excused, The changes I was going through can’t even be used, For the lies that I told her in hopes not to lose, The could-be dream-lover of my lifetime.”
However, this goodwill for Rotolo is soon undone when he unleashes an attack on her sister, Carla. He cruelly croons: “For her parasite sister, I had no respect, Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect, Countless visions of the other she’d reflect, As a crutch for her scenes and her society.”
Even for Dylan, these lyrics overstepped the mark. After mulling over the song for two decades, in 1985, he finally opened up about his regret about airing his dirty laundry in public. Dylan said to Bill Flanagan, “Oh yeah, that one! I look back and say ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.”
He added: “I wouldn’t really exploit a relationship with somebody. Whereas in ‘Ballad in Plain D’ I did. Not knowing that I did it. At that time, my audience was very small. It overtook my mind so I wrote it. Maybe I shouldn’t have used that.”
When Dylan released ‘Ballad In Plain D’ his career was very much in its infancy. As a result of his newfound fame, he didn’t understand the distance these cruel words would travel or how long they’d linger in the air.
He spent three years of his life with Rotolo, and for the most part, it was a joyful ride. Therefore, immortalising their relationship under a dark cloud doesn’t fairly reflect the time they shared. Although Dylan can cope with portraying himself as the villain, his regret stems from dragging innocent people’s names through the mud, such as Rotolo’s sister, who had never asked for the public’s attention.
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