This song is a welcome, if sadly belated companion to the Phil Ochs masterpiece The Crucifixion, which is among the best rock-poem lyrics ever scribed and which handily beat Dylan at his own rock-poet game; this is prime Dylan, I believe, older, older, wizened and wiser, but a man aware of his legacy and reputation as an artist who needs to put life into perspective, the ways in which he emerged after the Fall From Grace, meaning the assassination of JFK and the end of the myth of an American Camelot, a sprawling attempt to reconcile what seemed to be promised by the Presence of John F. Kennedy under whose direction a country could transcend the differences that separate us and have us join together in common cause of a creating a more perfect union and the witnessing and not wholly disguised disgust toward the same culture that, in the current climate, is drunk on personal pronouns and the assumption that gross materialism and mythological entitlements come with the words that refer to oneself as the only agent of action that matters.
Dylan's finds himself in a universe crueler, stupider, more self-seeking than when he started, and finds himself spoken of as deity, philosopher, poet, all manner of seer, sage, and prophet who is supposed to tell what to do and how to think about a reality does not yield its activities to the dictates to personal whim or the mythology of immutable laws of history. The only law of history is that there is no law of history. The undercurrent in Murder Most Foul's seventeen-minute reach is that for Dylan, a man who has been alive long enough to see the major movements of American life, that nothing has changed in terms of what American feels it needs, which is the belief that we as a Nation are number one in the history of all things, that we are a nation of men with unlimited liberty, that self-seeking is a virtue that cures every perceived ailment; we find that the passage of time has changed the fashions, the furniture, the architecture of appearances, but the stupidity remains. This stupidity is not an element that goes deep, but rather THE WHOLE THING we base all we tell ourselves on. Murder most foul is loopy, long, prolix, an overstuffed set of luggage filled with name checks and the like, and likely could have benefited had it been cut to , say, ten minutes, but it is the work of a fine poetic mind that has woken up, or at least discerned a way to discuss what's been brewing in that brain these so many years.
Despite its dirge-like quality and slow-crawl pace, "Murder Most Fowl" has flashes of Dylan's sly mordant humor that I like: "There's three bums comin' all dressed in rags
ReplyDeletePick up the pieces and lower the flags
I'm going to Woodstock, it's the Aquarian Age
Then I'll go to Altamont and sit near the stage
Put your head out the window, let the good times roll
There's a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll..."
On the other hand, the name-checking of people and songs and stuff in general Dylan likes in the final verses is tedious and weakens what comes before. Bob needs a blue pencil here. This is not a sweeping Blake-like vision a la "Chimes of Freedom" -- more like a secular extension of his Christian jeremiads. I respect Dylan for not pretending he is a young snotty word-slinger anymore. I do wish he'd pull back from the role of a garrulous old finger-wagger a little.