What does “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” mean?
Bob Dylan is just as much of a poet as he is a musician. Revered for his lyricism, he’s a writer through and through, as his songwriting has been considered, from the very start of his career, as sitting at the absolute pinnacle of greatness. Artists ever since have looked in his direction for guidance and inspiration when it comes to crafting their own works, as Dylan is a master at writing meaning into unique phrasings, including this one; “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
Plucked from ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, that’s just one example of Dylan’s poetry. As a man who has forever and famously avoided press or prying questions about his life, the meaning of his lyrics falls into the category of things he’s private about. Dylan has never been one to sit down and explain to the masses, line by line, what his songs are about. Even the clearest ones that sing of love, loss, conflict or any other more universal experience, the people and things that inspired the works are already hidden behind veils of metaphors and wordplay.
Nothing is as simple as it seems, especially in his early work. It’s been a mystery ever since the song was released as people wonder what Dylan truly meant when he sang, “The answer is blowin’ in the wind”. To this day, people are still unpacking the layers of meaning in a song like ‘Desolation Row’. But one of the heaviest and most lyrically dense pieces Dylan ever shared has to be ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ where the meaning of the song sits under level upon level of metaphorical meaning, and even a music video packed full of random words and phrases held up on flashcards by the artist as if he’s trying to throw fans off even further.
There is no one simple answer as to what the song is about or what inspired it. The title seems to reference Dylan’s early interest in the Beat Generation, nodding to Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans. It also touches on the bubbling and brewing social unrest of the time between the mainstream “squares” and the countercultural sect, often clashing at major protests. It’s also seemingly about the ways people distract themselves from all of this as he sings in the open line, “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement thinkin’ about the government”, alluding to people medicating themselves to avoid the state of the world.
But one of the most poetic and curious lyrics comes at the end of the second verse as Dylan declares, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
But what does it actually mean?
Alluding back to ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, this image is a key one for Dylan. But while the visual in his earlier song feels softer somehow, more spiritual, in ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, it feels like a storm is brewing.
If the lyric in ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ is about trusting that the answer to life’s various questions is all around us, the version in ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ is about listening and paying attention to the answer. It’s about listening to your gut and trusting that no one needs an authority figure to tell them what’s going on.
Same as how no one needs a weather man to tell them if it’s raining outside, you just have to go out and take a look, Dylan is imploring people to do the same. He’s saying that you don’t need the news or political leaders or anyone to tell you that things are getting tense or that the world is in disarray, as this lyric caps off a whole verse about protest and clashes with the police. Instead, he’s telling people that they simply need to pay attention to see and understand things for themselves.
In the 1960s, the wind was blowing in the direction of civil unrest. Dylan is saying that no man in charge should have to tell anyone that; the people should see it, feel it and pay attention to it on their own.
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