Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul”
Dylan’s First №1 Song was 60 years in the making
“It was a dark day in Dallas / November ’63 / A day that will live on in infamy,” the nearly 17 minute epic dirge-like song begins. If you are more than a casual fan of Bob Dylan’s work and life like I am, you get the feeling right from the start that “Murder Most Foul” is one of the most important songs Dylan has ever written and recorded. Let me book-end this for you:
By 1963 a young Bob Dylan was already a very well known and highly regarded songwriter and public figure. His early “protest” songs (whether he would agree or not makes no difference) defined a generation. He stood with Dr. King and sang at the March on Washington. His scathing anti-establishment, anti-war, pro-civil rights protest songs were rallying cries for an entire generation of disaffected youth. He had the ear of the nation.
21 Days after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Bob was the guest of honor at the Tom Paine Awards. He was there at the banquet on December 13th, 1963 to accept the Tom Paine Award for his work. The nation was grieving. Many turned to the young folk singer from Duluth, Minnesota for some sort of spiritual guidance. But that’s not what they got on December 13th.
Dylan was by all accounts noticeably drunk when he approached the mic to deliver his acceptance speech. Everyone was sure he would address the assassination. And he did. This is what he said:
“I’ll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don’t know exactly where — what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too — I saw some of myself in him. I don’t think it would have gone — I don’t think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me — not to go that far and shoot.”
The most popular president in recent American history had just been murdered in a very public way. Footage would be replayed over and over. An entire nation would see the leader of the free world’s head blown off. And here the so-called voice of the generation publicly claims he sees himself in Lee Harvey Oswald. What?
“President Kennedy was a’ridin high / a good day to be livin / and a good day to die”
At many points in his now six decade career, Dylan has been a topical songwriter. He penned songs about Emmitt Till, Woody Guthrie, Hattie Carrol an African American bartender who was murdered by a wealthy white tobacco farmer. He even later wrote a song that helped win Hurricane Carter a re-trial that would eventually get his murder conviction over-turned.
His material has often came straight out of real life without apology. If anyone could have written a song to help the nation mourn the loss of President Kennedy, it would have been Bob. But that’s not what happened in ’63. He drunkenly confessed his empathy for Oswald, insulted the “old people” in the crowd, sided with the young people in Cuba, and left the stage. That was that. No apology. No comment. No song about Kennedy. No healing. Nothing.
A year later he would go electric at the Newport Folk Festival and all but abandon his topical protest folk songs, which made him world famous and fairly wealthy. He went electric, got himself a backing band, and went on what has been dubbed the first true rock-n-roll world tour. He only did his folk songs for a half a set to appease concert promoters who booked the folky Dylan.
By ’68 he was spun out and newly married, which turned his material again away from the topics of the era and more toward the introspective or rock-n-roll influenced. No material about the assassination of Dr. King, a close acquaintance of his. Very little if any material about the Conflict in Vietnam (except maybe “Masters of War”). Nothing political. Nothing to rally behind. Nothing made for radio play. (His songs would run 8 to 10 minutes sometimes). Then he crashed his Triumph cafe racer motorcycle near Woodstock, NY and dropped out of the public eye.
He has always had an audience; however, he never found an audience like his first audience. The Bob Dylan of 1960–1964/5 was IT. The Voice of a Generation. What happened? Why did he say that about Oswald? Why did he completely change his style of music, and dress, and personality, and everything? Why did he turn away from the music and fans that made him Bob Dylan?
Maybe it was the assassination. He was quoted several times shortly after, most notably by friend and lover Joan Baez, that he did not want to write songs about “we” anymore. He wanted to write songs about “me.” Baez and others said Bob changed when Kennedy was killed. He traveled to Dallas the week after the assassination and just wandered around Dealy Plaza for hours. He told David Crosby he didn’t want to write protest songs anymore. He did not want to write songs for the communal experience. He seemed to all at once lose that hopeful and fiery innocence that was the drive of most his early work.
It makes me wonder: is Dylan’s first №1 Hit a song he has been trying to write and sing for almost 60 years? It is his longest recording by several minutes. It’s the longest №1 Hit rock-n-roll song in American recording history. But is this the topic he has been trying to get at and never could? I can’t answer that. I do not want to. But listening to it as many times as I have now (over 50 probably), and considering how the assassination affected him, I think this is the one. This is the song Bob has been trying to write since 1963, a song that at almost 17 minutes you feel like he doesn’t want it to end, that he doesn’t want to quit singing about it. Almost like if he quits singing about it he will finally have to accept that it’s over.
“Murder Most Foul” is the work of a Nobel Laureate in Literature. A master craftsman at the height of his abilities still after six decades. A man whose Neverending Tour will in fact come to an end sooner rather than later. He will be 79 this year. 17 minutes. I would listen over and over if it twice as long. I don’t want it to end either.
At his last request, “play Murder Most Foul.”
