On truth, Bob Dylan and our world

Hearing "It's All Right, Ma" sort of clears things up, doesn't it?

Our friend Mark Twain once suggested “Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”

This phrase was much in my mind while listening to the 100 minutes of blather delivered to the joint session of Congress last night. Depending on what you read and where you read it, what was the percentage of truth in last night’s endless diatribe, an address empty headedly, rousingly, wildly cheered by one side while the other held up signs and solemn faces?

Twenty percent? Is that about where we are now? Eighty percent exaggerations, lies, falsehoods, brags and bluster? Unless you’re a MAGA supporter where truth clearly has no meaning in your life, the address was not only disheartening, it was, as The Orange One warned/bragged, “only the beginning.”

Dylan sang “It’s All Right, Ma” 49 times on tour with The Band in 1974. Let’s hear it again!

Funny enough, thinking about truth and precisely where we’ve unflinchingly heard it in its purest form, the moment that immediately came to mind for me was a song, Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic, “It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). It was a song I remembered hearing so very long ago, a song that struck me as being as true a portrait of the world we live in as anything I’ve heard ever since. I was thinking of Bob’s words as I suffered through what I heard last night…

“Pointed threats they bluff with scorn suicide remarks are torn from the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying”

Pointed threats, bluffs, “the fool’s gold mouthpiece, the hollow horn” — is there a better description of The Orange One? “plays wasted words,” and they were wasted, though adored by his adorers – we’re well past supporters now, aren’t we? Except Dylan goes on to suggest “he not busy being born is busy dying.” Here, you could apply that to our country, our democracy, dying before our very eyes.

We’ve de-volved to a place where a charlatan liar can stand before our citizens, all our elected representatives and say whatever he wants, firehose out more lies and exaggerations than the media can keep up with — his brilliantly devious plan all along — and roughly half of the country nods and says, “OK. Tell me more.”

Bob Dylan was 23 years old when he wrote and recorded that song on January 15, 1965 on a chilly New York afternoon at Columbia’s Studio A, along with “Maggie’s Farm” (a first take), “On The Road Again” (first take), two takes of “It’s All Right, Ma,” one take of “Gates Of Eden,” the master cut of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” one take of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and for fun, several takes of “If You’ve Gotta Go, Go Now.” Pretty good afternoon.

There was so much more truth in the air in those three hours in Studio A than maybe we’ve heard in the halls of Congress ever since. And as The Orange One blathered on, I kept hearing Bob’s words.

“As some warn victory, some downfall, private reasons, great or small can be seen in the eyes of those that call to make all that should be killed to crawl while others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred.”

Hatred. From one side to the other. From The Orange One to anyone who dared oppose him. From so many on one side to the poor, the weak, those who came from the horrors of another country seeking asylum and hope here. So much hatred everywhere in that cursed room.

Bob went on… “Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark. Make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark.
It's easy to see without lookin' too far that not much is really sacred.”

Like, say, democracy. Or a differing point of view. Fairness. Justice. Equal rights for all, even those without stock portfolios and fat wallets and yachts and mansions. “Disillusioned words like bullets bark…” Likely that’s how that address felt to millions of Americans who were able to look past the bluster and the sneers and see his — and their — targets – Them! Somebody, always somebody to blame.

“Preachers preach of evil fates. Teachers teach that knowledge waits. Can lead to hundred-dollar plates. Goodness hides behind its gates. But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”

When Bob Dylan performed that song on January 14, 1974 in the Boston Garden and got to that line, a knowing roar went up from the crowd, including me. Our President, embroiled in scandal, would be tossed from the Oval in a few months, standing naked before a country that at that time, was proud enough and honest enough to reject the lies, the dirty tricks, the cover-ups. And we had representatives of both parties who would not stand for the corruption any longer and told him flat-out that he had to go. And he went, in disgrace.

That’s not a word thrown around much these days, disgrace. We’re past that, it seems. We expect that, our expectations are so dumbed down. “They all do it,” we hear, like that’s acceptable, just the way it is, no way to fix it.

We elected a convicted felon, no disgrace in that, was there? Or all the court cases he slithered past on his ample belly, taking aim now at all who dared oppose him, billionaires in fear of losing their fortunes, lined up behind him, doing his bidding.

The internet says Bob Dylan has performed “It’s All Right, Ma” some 772 times over the years. The last time was in the London Palladium on October 23, 2022, or 820 days before we swore in — no hand on the Bible — our new leader. Maybe we need Bob to bring it back on his set list.

Or better yet, let Bob stand before Congress on March 4 and let them hear something they’ve evidently forgotten what it sounds like. The truth, that is.

John Nogowski is the author of “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography, 1961-2022” available on Amazon.

HERE’S BOB, PERFORMING THE SONG IN 1986 IN AUSTRALIA