Bob Dylan
Rough and Rowdy Ways

Album Release Date: June 19th, 2020

Bob Dylan turned 79-years-old about a month before Rough and Rowdy Ways was released, his 39th official studio album in a seven-decade career, and he shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, some consider this album a comeback after his last three releases of old standards and Frank Sinatra covers which many thought he'd end his career with (2015's Shadows in the Night, 2016's Fallen Angels, and 2017's triple-LP Triplicate). With a catalogue as lengthy—and creatively varied—as Dylan's, this is far from his first album to engender the "comeback" label. 

In any case, the icon who many regard as the greatest songwriter of the 20th century—or one of the greatest artists of all time of any medium—is back with ten original songs. No track on the album is under 4 minutes long, and most are over 6 minutes. And because his longest recorded song to date, "Murder Most Foul", clocks in at 16 minutes and 54 seconds (the equivalent of five or so pop songs of usual length), it's officially a double album. "Murder Most Foul" solely occupies the vinyl's Side D.

Something immediately apparent about this album from the first song, carried out through the last, is that it's jam-packed with cultural references. I'm sure the Dylanologists out there have compiled lists, because Rough and Rowdy Ways features upwards of two hundred or more call-outs to people—living or dead, real or fictional—places, songs, poems, books, lyrics, quotes, movies, and historical events. Here we have Dylan as a wise old poet showcasing his dusty library filled with spellbooks and myths, an arbiter of dreams and ancient tales conjuring up cryptic fables and haunting metaphors, brooding and earnest—although not without moments of humour, too.

The referentiality starts right away with album opener "I Contain Multitudes", a line lifted from Walt Whitman's 1855 poem "Song of Myself". With a sparse musical arrangement and slow tempo, Dylan speak-sings with the voice of an aged narrator who's seemingly at peace with himself. On the surface he's simply reflecting on his own multifaceted identity, with phrases like "I paint landscapes / and I paint nudes / I contain multitudes". But the song also displays a longstanding Dylan quality of concurrent sincerity and irony, and there's a hint of self-mockery with the seemingly arbitrary grouping of people who he is "like", as in: "I'm just like Anne Frank / Like Indiana Jones / And them British bad boys the Rolling Stones". If written by someone other than Dylan, this may seem like somewhat lazy songwriting—or else perhaps as an intentional cue for mild parody of self-aggrandizement.

Dylan expounded on the meaning of "I Contain Multitudes" in a June 2020 New York Times article—the only promotional interview he conducted for the album—describing it as a "stream-of consciousness" song written in a "trance state" in which "the lyrics are the real thing, tangible, they're not metaphors." When asked what made him decide to mention Anne Frank next to Indiana Jones, Dylan responded:

A down-to-earth answer from a man whose every word has been tirelessly pored over in endless efforts to extrapolate profound hidden meaning. Further references in "I Contain Multitudes" include Edgar Allan Poe ("Got a tell-tale heart like Mr. Poe"), William Blake ("I sing the songs of experience like William Blake"), Beethoven, Chopin ("I play Beethoven's sonatas, Chopin's preludes"), and others. Dylan ends the song with "I'm a man of contradictions / I'm a man of many moods / I contain multitudes". Indeed. And so the stage is set, as the following nine tracks go on to illustrate the man's contradictions and many moods, to characteristically enigmatic effect.

Continuing the theme of contradiction, the second track "False Prophet" strings together some contrasting—or perhaps complementary—images and concepts. Over a stomping electric guitar blues riff, Dylan barks out "I sing songs of love, I sing songs of betrayal", exemplifying classic Dylanesque poetic lyricism with lines like "Can't remember when I was born and I forgot when I died", and even including a Zen Buddhist koan with "I climbed a mountain of swords on my bare feet". The song feels like Dylan's commentary on his regard as a modern-day "prophet", a designation he's repeatedly rejected with attempts throughout his career to debunk his own mythology. Midway through the song he proclaims, "I ain't no false prophet / I just said what I said."

With a steady midtempo beat and a hypnotic descending bassline, "My Own Version of You" has Dylan going full crypt-keeper mode, croaking out lyrics about creating his own Frankenstein monster out of historical figures' various attributes. Possibly an elaborate metaphor for Dylan's songwriting process, it's again fraught with references; Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Liberace, Freud, Marx, and St. John the Apostle are among people Dylan names. He also quotes Shakespeare; "to be or not to be" from Hamlet and "the winter of my discontent" from Richard III. With much nighttime imagery—"after midnight", "walk that moonlight mile", "do it in the dark, in the wee small hours"—and the explicit allusion to Mary Shelley's gothic horror classic Frankenstein, it all makes for a spooky, darkly entertaining, and sometimes comical number that registers as an unusual entry in Dylan's repertoire.

"Black Rider" also shows a dark, cryptic Dylan, narrating his tale to a slow, sparse, haunting acoustic guitar- and mandolin-driven melody, with five single percussion claps—one at the end of each verse. While downcast and somber, it has one of his most unexpected and funniest lyrics; he starts the last verse with "Black Rider, Black Rider, hold it right there", then suddenly blurts out "The size of your cock will get you nowhere". The first-person narrator expresses acceptance of, and resistance to, the distress caused by the Black Rider, the mysterious adversary whom he addresses: "Black Rider, Black Rider, all dressed in black / I'm walking away, you try to make me look back / My heart is at rest, I'd like to keep it that way / I don't want to fight, at least not today".

With a lilting, lullaby-like melody featuring background vocal humming, "I've Made up My Mind to Give Myself to You" is reminiscent of Dylan's best torch ballads the likes of Time Out of Mind's "Make You Feel My Love". It's the album's only overt love song, and the gentle sweetness of lyrics like "I saw the first fall of snow / I saw the flowers come and go /I don’t think anyone else ever knew / I've made up my mind to give myself to you" offer a welcome juxtaposition to the solemn intensity of many of the other songs.

The title Rough and Rowdy Ways is a bit at odds with the album's content, and its cover for that matter (a blurry 1964 photograph of a well-dressed couple dancing), standing in contrast—perhaps intentionally ironically on Dylan's part—to its generally stripped-down, mellow sound. The title is likely a reference to the 1929 song "My Rough and Rowdy Ways" by Jimmie Rodgers, and the album insert contains a 1931 photo of Rodgers with the Carter Family.

Another "Jimmy" is spotlighted directly, in "Goodbye Jimmy Reed"—Dylan's tribute to the 1950s/'60s blues giant. It's the album's only song with Dylan playing harmonica, the first time he's done so on a record since 2009's Christmas in the Heart. It's also the only real rocking, uptempo number on an LP predominantly comprised of slow-to-mid-tempo songs. "Mother of Muses" is a meditative, acoustic tune yet again filled with references to a number of famous figures, from Elvis Presley to Martin Luther King, and Calliope from Greek mythology—the Muse of eloquence and epic poetry. And so the song is most obviously about creative inspiration, resonating as a prayer-like ode. And "Crossing the Rubicon" is an electric blues number that draws from classical antiquity and particularly Julius Caesar, who committed himself to war when he crossed the Rubicon river. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" can be interpreted literally here, as if Dylan is singing from the first-person perspective of Caesar, as well as figuratively as in passing the point of no return in any of life's undertakings.

The album's second-to-last track, "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)", is also its second longest at 9 minutes and 34 seconds. It begins with Dylan's narrator hearing—on the radio in Key West, Florida—of U.S. President William McKinley's assassination. Although radio wasn't yet commonplace when McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Dylan then names other locations, including Luxembourg, Budapest, and "the land of Oz", as well as people; "Like Ginsberg, Corso, and Kerouac / Like Louie and Jimmy and Buddy and all of the rest". Allen Ginsberg, who was close friends with Dylan, wrote a poem entitled "Walking at Night in Key West", in an example of this album's Rube Goldberg-esque quality whereupon examination of virtually any lyric reveals intertextual references within references—whether via Dylan's application of allusion, quotation, and/or pastiche. The song's Key West functions as both a real geographical location and a metaphorical spirit realm, or a state of inner peace, a paragon of hope in the darkness; "Key West is the gateway key / To innocence and purity", sings Dylan, and, "Key West is the place to be / If you're looking for immortality".

Among Rough and Rowdy Ways' many themes are death, mortality, and murder—as the assassinations of Caesar, McKinley, and JFK are all alluded to. The album's final track is also its first released single; "Murder Most Foul"—a sweeping epic about the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy, among other things. The title is from Shakespeare, spoken by the ghost of Hamlet's dead father. In one of the album's few guest features, songstress Fiona Apple plays piano, along with a plodding instrumental backing of violin and quiet percussion. At times "Murder Most Foul" sounds like something the master songwriter Bob Dylan might've penned over his morning coffee, which nonetheless generated an enormous amount of commentary and had critics and Dylan fanatics scrambling to analyze its dozens of historical, literary, cinematic, and musical references. But even rambling lyrics written by someone this masterful come across as effortlessly constructed and infinitely more interesting than the most toiled over songs by virtually any other musician. There's of course the dominant thread of Kennedy's assassination, but the relentless cascade of both esoteric and mainstream references gives a first impression of structural formlessness and thematic restlessness.

Lyrically, the song has lots going on. It's not strictly about Kennedy's assassination, but about all of American culture, its history, its collective spiritual past—a spirit that was fractured on, as Dylan opens the song with, that "dark day in Dallas, November 1963". Dylan has many songs dedicated to real-life people, such as "Hurricane", "Joey", "Lenny Bruce", "John Wesley Harding", and "George Jackson"—subjects who share the common trait of having been outlaws and rebels whom he wrote of with honour and respect. But JFK was the President of the United States of America, chief of the world's highest office. Dylan's "Masters of War"—incidentally released in 1963—is a scathing indictment of the immorality of military superpowers, whom his narrator wishes death upon. And so one might think that a young Bob Dylan—labelled a "protest singer" and a countercultural "voice of a generation" (labels he nonetheless spurned)—might be indifferent to Kennedy's murder, an authority figure occupying the uppermost level of a corrupt imperialist power structure who became a victim of the violence he represented.

But here Dylan doesn't moralize on whether JFK was a good or bad leader, rather describing his assassination as a shocking event: "Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb / Say 'wait a minute boys, you know who I am?' / 'Of course we do, we know who you are' / Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car / Shot down like a dog in broad daylight / Was a matter of timing and the timing was right / 'You got unpaid debts, we've come to collect / We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect'." So rather than a patriotic brand of sadness that the song initially appears to evoke, it's perhaps more so a reflection on one of many traumatic events that haunt America, ultimately resonating as a strange tale about the tragedy of violence, committed so publicly before such a large audience, and the mystery and conspiracy theories that shroud the incident to this day; "The day that they blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing."

At about 10 minutes in, Dylan launches into a litany of references that lasts the duration of the nearly 17-minute-long song, citing specific song and film titles, artists, and fictional characters across various media and genres (NPR compiled a list of 74 named songs—but some are still missing). His measured vocalizations are like a spellbinding incantation, as Dylan sings "Play another one, and 'Another One Bites the Dust' / Play 'The Old Rugged Cross' and 'In God We Trust'." He continues listing songs to "play", with names that include Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Stevie Nicks, Ella Fitzgerald, Jelly Roll Morton, Buster Keaton, Marilyn Monroe, Lady Macbeth, The Birdman of Alcatraz, and dozens more. At the song's end Dylan sings "Play 'Love Me or Leave Me' by the great Bud Powell" before signing off with a self-reflexive twist: "Play 'The Blood Stained Banner' / Play 'Murder Most Foul'."

In the New York Times interview, Dylan was asked if "Murder Most Foul" was written "as a nostalgic eulogy for a long-lost time". He answered, "To me it's not nostalgic. I don't think of 'Murder Most Foul' as a glorification of the past or some kind of send-off to a lost age. It speaks to me in the moment. It always did, especially when I was writing the lyrics out." As the closing chapter to Rough and Rowdy Ways, the song epitomizes that American ethos Dylan has explored many times over; simultaneously celebrating and criticizing his homeland as a complicated paradigm manifesting both immense injustice and opportunity, oppression and liberation, beautiful dreams and devastating nightmares.

Rough and Rowdy Ways was recorded in early 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic ran globally rampant. The album's three singles were released throughout the spring as restrictions were implemented and the virus continued to spread and cause widespread turmoil, and to the backdrop of George Floyd's murder by police and the subsequent series of protests. This all followed several years of increasing racial and social unrest in Trump's America, and across the world. As such, the album registers as a fittingly dark and multilayered soundtrack for the chaotic, politically charged, seemingly dystopian times in which we live. Rough and rowdy ways, indeed.

Like many Dylan works, Rough and Rowdy Ways will take time to digest, with deeper meaning certain to emerge. It's sonically minimalist but lyrically dense, understated yet majestic, a sprawling poetic and philosophic treatise on the plight of humankind, a compendium of intense tales of crumbling empires and fallen kings, spiritual teachings and mystical yearnings, a dreamworld collage of images and ideas spanning millennia. It all adds up to a rich work that requires repeated listens, and is worthy of the acclaim it has received. With the one-of-a-kind, unparalleled talent of the songwriting genius that is Bob Dylan, only time will tell how many lesser masterpieces he'll record before he makes his next comeback album at age 90.
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
August 1st, 2020