The song that almost led Bob Dylan to boycott England for good in 1966: “It’s just vulgar”
In 1964, Bob Dylan sang ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’. Two years later, he’d feel the force of just how rapid that transition had become.
A few months after going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966, Dylan played a UK tour, whereby the first half of his set was solo acoustic, and for the second half, he was joined on stage by his band for an electric finale. “A year ago, I saw him at the City Hall,” one fan declared.
Adding, “And I thought he was magnificent, I thought he couldn’t improve if he tried. Then the next thing that happened is he went really commercial with this backing group and I didn’t like that very much. […] I think he’s prostituting himself.”
And another fan simply added, “Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half.”
Funnily enough, the times were moving so swiftly that at this stage in his electric transition, he was used to this backlash. But the press was determined to find a new angle to stir up this Dylan derision in a different way. They found one when it came to ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’ and its thorny lyric, “Everybody must get stoned”.
Dylan would argue that this line was a biblical allegory, but the papers pinned him as a drug pusher. Evidently, as he stepped out onto the stage at the Royal Albert Hall in ‘66, it was all getting a bit much for poor young Bob. “I’m not going to play any more concerts in England,” he raged before a shocked audience.
Before citing his reasons, “I’d just like to say that the next song is what your English musical papers would call a ‘drug song’. I have never and never will write a ‘drug song’. I just don’t know how to. It’s not a ‘drug song’. It’s just vulgar.”
In fairness to the papers, it’s easy to see why the swaying waltz of ‘Rainy Day Women’ and its constant barking of the word “stoned” might have seen it described as a ‘drug song’, but Dylan’s gripe was that this was a damaging, surface-level interpretation. And it was damaging.
At least his electric songs were still being played on the radio, no matter how divisive they were proving, but ‘Rainy Day Women’ was swiftly banned in both the UK and the US. As the Times wrote shortly after its release, “In the shifting, multi-level jargon of teenagers, to ‘get stoned’ does not mean to get drunk, but to get high on drugs…a ‘rainy-day woman,’ as any junkie [sic] knows, is a marijuana cigarette.”
As comical as that sounds, the only line Dylan would’ve appreciated was “the shifting, multi-level jargon”. That’s not far from a perfect description of his songwriting at that time. As his decree to the Albert Hall crowd continued, “I like all my old songs. It’s just that things change all the time. Everybody knows that.”
“Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment.”
Bob Dylan
Dylan was determined to reflect change, and if Britain wanted to remain in the dated past, then he was happy to leave them there and never come back. I mean, the same situation was unfurling in the States with perhaps even more ferocity, so it’s unclear where he would’ve gone, but he would’ve gone somewhere.
After all, he always said, “Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment.” So, if this was going to be his last show in England, he was determined to let the crowd know that it was his own artistic integrity driving him away (in every which way). “This music you are going to hear… if anyone has any suggestions on how it could be played better, or how the words could be improved,” he continued.
And then he laid out his claim that it was far more authentic than any Brit could care to consider. “We’ve been playing this music since we were 10 years old. Folk music was just an interruption and was very useful. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. This is not English music you are listening to,” he said before beginning his eclectic second half.
“You haven’t really heard American music before. I want now to say what you’re hearing is just songs. You’re not hearing anything else but words and sounds. You can take it or leave it. If there is something you disagree with, that’s great. I’m sick of people asking: ‘What does it mean?’ It means nothing,” he concluded, winking wryly in the direction of ‘Rainy Day Women’, which is absolutely not a drug song… honest.
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