I’ll start…Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.
I’d LISTENED to the song many times…but on a strange, eerie night in 2000, at age 16, I finally HEARD the song.
I bawled my eyes out. And was officially a full convert to the Religion of Bob.
Never looked back.
👉 P.S. Along with your song, please share a short little anecdote about your “Come to Bob” moment.
Obviously, it’s difficult—and for me personally, my preferences change quite often—but it can be useful for discovering or rediscovering music.It’s simply a space for seeing people's opinions, points of view, or arguments.
ALSO: Do you remember what song he opened with (w/o looking on boblinks.com)?
I’ll start…August 25th, 2001…Antelope Valley County Fair. I was 17 years old.
I’m pretty sure he opened with Hummingbird!
P.S. I’ll be very curious who goes the furthest back on this thread 👀
MAYA ANGELOU
The truth is, Bob Dylan is a great American artist. His art, his talent, is to speak to everybody, and so when I say American, I think he’s a great African American artist, he’s a great Jewish American artist, he’s a great Muslim American artist, he’s a great Asian-American artist, Spanish-speaking artist — he speaks for the American soul as much as Ray Charles did.
There was a time when Bob Dylan was the young kid on the block. We all sang at the Purple Onion and the Hungry I and at folk-music clubs. When Bob came along, everyone loved him because he was what we all had meant to be; he spoke for all of us. And he was known to be honest, which is what a great American artist is. It may not be expedient, but the audience can trust the artist who is honest, and Bob Dylan followed what he said in his lyrics by his actions. He supported the human being, the spirit of being an American — of knowing that the mountains and the rivulets and the voting booths belong to all of us, all the time.
https://www.bobdylan.com/news/comments-about-bob-dylan-aarp-magazine/
Hey r/bobdylan! Welcome to this week's song discussion!
In these threads we will discuss a new song every week, trading lyrical interpretations, rankings, opinions, favorite versions, and anything else you can think of about the song of the week.
This week we will be discussing Farewell.
Gotta love the far-reaching consequences of being a Dylan fan. The man truly pulls from the entire breadth of the American music tradition, thus honoring it and promoting it to a wider audience. Nothing better than discovering the long threads of inspiration tied into seemingly distant or uncharted territory. There is a comfort in knowing how connected we all are, musically and otherwise. Dylan is the embodiment of this, a mysterious figure standing at the crossroads of American music, finger on the signpost pointing down each long twisted path. Dylan has already walked these roads, he can only direct you to where you must explore for yourself. His music has opened many a musical door for me. Dylan is something of a curator and this line is the perfect example of such. As a young angry star and an aged king from another time, Dylan continues to show his love for American music.
Downloaded cursed blonde on blonde😭
I often ramble about Dylanology to my girlfriend. Recently, I showed her “All the Tired Horses.” She asked if the lyrics have any subtext, like all the others I’ve gone on about. It was an amazing question. I’d never considered it.
I told her that the album was a response to the attention and scrutiny Dylan was getting at the time as the potentially-lapsed “voice of his generation,” and that the release of this album of covers amounted to an insistence on Dylan’s part that he was not seeking that role. That his passions lay more with the music than with writing, at least at the time.
She suggested that the second line of the song is a pun. As in,
“All the tired horses in the sun,
How am I supposed to get any [writing] done?”
I was floored. I love her reading. It’s so compelling that I can’t now discount the possibility that Dylan saw the same pun, even intended it. The first line is still opaque to me. Does anyone else have anything to add? Do you see more subtext in the lyrics?
It would be so profound to hear Dylan sing his iconic lyrics against the backdrop of amazing visuals created by the Sphere team. Thoughts?
After he sings, “He’s eatin’ chitlins”, he makes a little noise. Sort of a squeak? What is that called?