Sixteen Years: Bob Dylan's Run-Up to "Street-Legal"

Everyone knows that “Street-Legal” before “Time Out of Mind” is possibly Bob Dylan’s darkest and most intense album. It is properly dark and scary with some incredible apocalyptic lyrics. From the beginning of his career with his self-titled album, “Bob Dylan”, he has been consistent with his darkness though and honestly, I don’t think many people see this. I also think that this is because Bob Dylan has never really made it very much known except when he is actively portraying the atmosphere as dark and intense in itself as an active part of the narrative. Let us have a look at some of these songs back from when Bob Dylan released his self-titled album all the way through to “Street-Legal” and thus, that is sixteen years of songs.

“Song to Woody”

Bob Dylan’s very famous song written for Woody Guthrie is a heavily recognised acoustic folk song by the minds of the folk scene. If you read a book called the Everyman Pocket Poets’ Poems for Songs and Singers, you will be able to find one about when Bob Dylan went to visit Woody Guthrie. When we really think about this song though, even though it is not a dark song on the surface, we realise that this song is written because both Bob Dylan and his hero knew that death was coming. Woody Guthrie was dying and Bob Dylan was well aware that this was his chance to write a kind of elegy for him. This makes the song seem very dark indeed.

“Masters of War”

The song that is one of the many anti-war anthems written by Bob Dylan, this has become famous for its very direct approach to the message of the song. The lyrics are incredibly direct about the message of how war is not progressive and how these people are just dying for no reason other than a bunch of rich people sitting behind a desk making random laws for world politics and being mean to other countries. But it is the last verse that I want to look at. If you listen to the last verse, we get this angry, dark and intense Bob Dylan who could not be more repulsed by these people. Let’s just put it this way, the verse starts with “And I hope that you die and your death will come soon…”

“Ballad of a Thin Man”

The famed line that has practically become one of the most used lines in rock music outside of song in the world: “Do You Mr. Jones?” is also contained in one of Bob Dylan’s darkest and most insulting songs. Bob Dylan takes the piss out of Mr. Jones by stating that he is not in with the actual events he is constantly speaking about. He apparently cannot understand the subtext and Bob Dylan jumps on this to state that this Mr. Jones, though trying to make Bob Dylan look a bit loopy, cannot understand Bob Dylan at all. You can say that this, alongside “Positively Fourth Street” is probably the first ‘diss track’.

“Idiot Wind”

Again, this song is a direct insult to a former lover in which Bob Dylan basically states that his former lover, because of various things like infidelity and distrust has become a brainwashed ‘idiot’. This song is definitely very dark because he not only talks about the lover being an ‘idiot’ but there are also very apocalyptic images throughout the song. It is a very vengeful song in which Bob Dylan talks about burning buildings, a car that is apparently smoking or on fire and even his ex-lover’s tomb and dead body with flies around it. I know, right. I don’t think I have to explain this one.

“Hurricane”

Bob Dylan’s most famous anthem against false imprisonment and racism is again, a very dark song. The sound of this song is dark, the topic is dark and the lyrics are incredibly dark. Based on a true story, this was Bob Dylan attempting to show the public one of the most angering stories of the century, the false imprisonment of Rubin ‘the Hurricane’ Carter, a boxer. In order to do this, Bob Dylan has to create the correct atmosphere and he does this with the incredibly intense violin skills of the legendary Scarlet Rivera.

When we look at Bob Dylan’s dark songs leading up to “Street-Legal” over the course of sixteen years, we can definitely see that “Street-Legal” may be dark, but it definitely is not alone here.