First Listen - "Idiot Wind" by Bob Dylan (Hip Hop Fan Reacts) 

It’s amazing that in all his rage which is wonderfully displayed in this song he can still write a line like “you’ll never know the hurt I’ve suffered or the pain I rise above, and I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love, and it makes me feel so sorry”. So smart, so well wrought and self confronting. That’s what artistic genius is all about. Feeling your truth while understanding the deeper truth of the situation and the world.

"I can´t help it if I am lucky" Just brilliant!

That vocal delivery. Spitting out those invectives.

An amazing song that I've listened to literally hundreds of times. And, yes, he owns up to his part in the demise of their relationship. This goes so deep into his psyche.

This song is every bit as great as Hard Rain, Desolation Row, Like a Rolling Stone, Visions of Joanna.

He did great work before and great work after, but this is his pinnacle IMO. As you say, his vocals are somewhere between palatable and unfathomable, his lyricism is sharp like a stilletto, and of course it’s great electric rock. This is what I think of when I think of Dylan. Probably a top 10 album all time.

Please do "Simple Twist of Fate." "Youre a Big Girl Now" " Shelter From the Storm" Some of the best 70s Dylan songs. Period.

Where john lennon First heard tangled up in blue. He said dylan is several years ahead of us all again

Who else could write a song with this kind of incredible personal venom and yet make it come out with such clear lyrics and beautiful melody. His delivery, with the emphasis on the really angry parts, is unique to him.

"If You See Her, Say Hello" is an intensely personal song. THANK YOU.

I love that this song is about the media, his ex-wife, and himself all at the same time. And also how he sings the word slowly very sloowwwllllyyyy.

I usually much prefer studio for Dylan. But after listening to this, you should REALLY watch it live from 1976, even if just for yourself. You can see the rage and disgust on his face. Quite a performance.

This was anger & spite, songs on the album cover every emotion felt in a breakup through to magnanimity & optimism. When a lyrical genius like Bob Dylan is feeling that pain & turmoil, his mind buzzing, his heart pumping, you get a masterpiece & Blood On The Tracks is a absolute masterpiece.

I bought his alternative “Blood on the tracks” last year after listening to this for 30 years! The alternate version of idiot wind has been in a vault somewhere for 45 years and it’s that amazing! These archive albums are fantastic.

You have a new subscriber in this older person (73) who grew up with some of the greatest music ever - 60’s and 70’s - that I still love and listen to today. I truly appreciate your considered, insightful critiques, and especially your honest enthusiasm when discovering this great music, the important lyrics, and its creators. Have a great journey 🙏🏼😎

You need to watch the live version of this!

Great analysis. One of my favorite songs for 30 years and you’ve added some new layers of meaning. Thanks.

Bob follows up this spilling of guts with tender songs of remembrance and love. He pulls us in.

What a song genius songwriter 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿👍😄🎸

This was Dylan shitting on the press and obsessed fans/haters who couldn't leave him alone and not pry into his life, making up stories. So angsty, so hilarious, so much righteous indignation. A lot of the verses are also directed as his ex-wife, who seemed to (from his perspective) allow the stories to interfere with their marriage and the way she saw him. The final two lines could be seen as him acknowledging his culpability in it all.

Time for a deep dive into his song. Originally recorded in New York the song is much quieter and more sad than angry. It was rerecorded several months later in Minnesota which is the version you listened to. He first performed it in 1976. The live version on the Hard Rain album amps up the rage to a frightening level, probably because Sara was in the audience., having dropped in on the tour to confront him about his various affairs. He didn't perform it again until 1992 when the song became a very pensive, gentle and sad tale.

This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Every tract is pure gold.

If you want to hear more wordy, story-driven Dylan, definitely do a video of Brownsville Girl, one of his longest and densest songs!

Excellent review, as always. I was particularly impressed with how you researched the Talmud and the quotation about idiocy and sin.

It's probably a little much. But this is cool, and real for 1978. Really, everyone was playing folk-rock which was inspired by Dylan: "Lady-killers load ice on me behind my back, while imitators steal me blind".

Hi Syed, please listen to the live version from the 1976 album "Hard Rain" and/or the video of the same performance from Fort Collins, Colorado which is floating around here on RU-vid. Momumental...the lyrical invective is raised to another level in front of this lucky audience. There are interesting lyrical revisions too, which Dylan is wont to do, even up until this day. I think you will really enjoy it. Really enjoy your channel. Nice one !

Oh, have you listened to Positively Fourth Street yet? If not, well, get ready! It's so nice to see you enjoying Dylan more and more. I wasn't quite sure when I saw your first video but he's grown on you. Yay!!!

You must also listen to the slower, reflective version on Bootleg 1-3, just acoustic guitar, some lyric changes I love it too

Dylan wrote from life. No formula. Extremely varied. Life goes in cycles, many cycles repeating.

I’m so loving your reactions to Dylan

Interestingly, this Dylan's second attempt at this song. He had previously recorded an alternative version of the Blood on the Tracks album in New York City with spare, acoustic accompaniment. The stripped down versions of "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Idiot Wind" can be found on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 as well as a more comprehensive collection called "More Blood, More Tracks," which details the entire Blood on the Tracks sessions. I highly recommend checking them out!

Oh man! It's me commenting a year after you've put the video up. That song is so fiercely angry and denigrating, Keep it up and please come back from wherever you are.

I noticed he really sings in this exaggerated tone. Heavy "aarrrss" "striiiiikkes"., moreso than other songs on this album. Could he have been doing this on purpose.? Either, as you said, angry Dylan, or to mock the audience/listener?-- Give 'em what they think I am like.

Check out the angry version from the Hard Rain album or 1976 live (same) and the sad version from the Hard Rain New York Sessions

The ending of this means absolutely everything, do take heed. After laying everything nakedly bare & excoriating all the faults of his ex-wife that tormented a good man, all very valid & on point, perhaps, by switching from you to we he acknowledges that after all his rightful righteous indignation he is just as much to blame as her. Or maybe that blame itself is as irrelevant as his righteousness. I've been down the same road in an abusive relationship so I hear the message. As a good well-meaning person, after all the invectives are released & no matter how true they are, you always eventually arrive back at humbling yourself & wondering if you are crazy & you were the abusive one mistreating HER somehow in someway.

This is my favourite Dylan album.

I first heard this back in 1975 when I was 17 years old, and my socks are still in the stratosphere to this day - an amazing piece of writing and performing - as others have said, the live '76 version is a must.

I often say this is one of the most intense love songs. The way he comes along to talk about her beauty and her love, then hooks it around and says, yeah, we're both to blame here.

Great song from a great album. While not my favorite song on this album, this is my favorite album of his from the 70s. There are still many really good songs to cover on this album.

The sing is a catharsis. It starts off with Dylan describing his anger at his treatment by the press and the fawning fans he dealt with who would even come up to his home in Woodstock to bother him. Then, he describes his anger at Sara and the dissolution of his marriage. At the end, he realizes his own role in all of it and is left sorry about the misunderstandings and frailties which wrecked the marriage. With this, his sympathy and love for Sara come through. This kind of brutal honesty laid bare in public is rare for anyone, but Dylan does it with artistry.

Genius.

Bob Dylan has a wonderful way of telling a story that the Sheep can follow and the wolves cant quite grasp, but the Shepard's hear a completely different narrative hidden in plain sight

Go back to the album and listen to the love songs that follow Idiot Wind.

My first studio album by B.D., a masterpiece with his companions The Band, vocally still with "round bows". In addition to the well-known radio songs, he first inspired me with his live retro side on The Concert For Bangla Desh 1971/George Harrison. At that time he set new accents with Desire 1976 and Slow Train Coming 1979, without "giving himself away", evident in the voice.

Regarding your observation of his opaqueness, perhaps Joan Baez said in best in "Diamonds And Rust": "You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague."

Some of his earlier takes of this song are sadder and more haunting. Same song (with a lot of different lines) but a completely different feeling. By the way, sitting through the entire album from beginning to end is well worth it!

The inclusion of Chestnut Mare leads me to believe that some of his venom in this is towards Roger McGuinn of The Byrds.

I have listened to this so many times and it never fails to me. Watching your reaction made me look up who was playing the organ on this track - much to my surprise it was none other than Dylan himself.

Unfiltered genius...without woke niceties

His live version of this on the 2nd portion of the Rolling Thunder Review tour, is high energy, angry, gritty. He throws the emotion of this song at you. He plays electric guitar along with others in the band. There's a documentary, I believe by Martin Scorsese about the Rolling Thunder Tour that included several other musicians mixed in at different shows like Joan Baez, Roger McGuin.

Great insight on the Talmudic wind of idiocy. That adds value to what Dylan was trying to say. Thanks.

I liked your interpretation. I think there’s a lot of people it could be about. Maybe it’s a compilation including himself. Great reaction. More Dylan please .

There’s an earlier bootleg version with a completely different vibe and dome different lyrics. Also worth checking out for comparison.

You got it spot on. He's addressing his ex-wife. It's all the anger & spite from his divorce directed against her, i.e. she's the babbling idiot who he's accusing of never having understood, respected or loved him, and he's spitting that out bitterly to her face. Every song on the "Blood on the Tracks" is a reaction to his divorce. But they're all different reactions - some hurt, some sad, some terribly depressing, some reminiscent, some sweet, some hopeful, all self-pitying to a degree. This one is the "angry reaction". You're right on the the change of tone at the end. A slight acknowledgement of his own responsibility for the mess to grind down the edge of the message. Funny note: the original song was written for a slower tempo & more melodically. But when it came time for recording, Dylan upped the tempo and blasted the lines out. It was not only written angrily, he was in quite a mood when he recorded it.

You need to hear the superb first version of this song. I couldn’t say which is better, both astonishing.

But the scathingness comes full circle in the last verse when he says, "We are idiots, babe." In Homeric Greek, too, the main word for idiocy (or delusion, ruin, and blind folly, rash action and reckless impulse that would led people down the path of ruin) Ἄτη (Até) originally meant 'wind' (actually related to English 'wind' and to Latin 'ventum').

I enjoy you insightful analysis of songs. May I recommend anther band you will probably like: "The Band" They were Bob Dylan's backing band when he went on his "electric" tour. Eric Clapton was a big fan of The Band. He spoke at their induction into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. I hope you keep making great videos.

Dylan was not receiving great songs through a 'channel'. He worked endlessly towards perfection. Dylan was continually misdirecting his listeners. Bob had a longtime friendship with Leonard Cohen, who said of Bob something close to, "Giving Bob Dylan a Nobel Prize is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the biggest mountain." Cohen told Bob how how many years (3-5 years) it took him to finish Hallelujah and then he asked Bob how long it too him to write one particular song. I forget which song. Bob replied, "About 15 minutes." In addition to his lyrics, vocals and the crafting of his on stage perona, Bob wrote books, and found, cut and welded large beautiful metal works. His work in the visual arts included portraits and landscapes - pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, oil, pastels and charcoal. When Bob dies, the skies and a large part of humanity will be crying. Penn Jillette: Beatles Bootlegs, Bob Dylan and Artistic “Genius” ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UN25ZLderVw.html

Excellent reaction video, Syed! The first time I listened to this (the record version from Blood on the Tracks), I thought it was one of the meanest songs ever written - until the last verse, when he said We, not You.

Leonard Cohen said about Dylan's Nobel Prize "It's a bit like pinning a badge on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain."

Anger covered by sarcasm covered by imagery, all covered by a critique of societal norms. Signature Bob Dylan.

There's the test pressing version, which is nothing like the album take and is my favourite ever version. It still isn't actually available officially, other than on a limited vinyl release, despite being one of his greatest recordings!

Blood on The Tracks is my favorite Dylan album. Been a Dylan fan since first seeing him live in 1984. Such a great storyteller.

Syed, "Blood on the Tracks" is my favorite Bob Dylan album, and along with Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" and Richard and Linda Thompson's "Shoot Out the Lights", one of the great albums about the devastating loss of a marriage. "Blood on the Tracks" is an all-time top 10 album for me, acoustic driven and consistently great song after song. I bet it'll be one of your most favorite Dylan albums once you experience it in its entirety. It's probably his most popular album of his career. Biographers have written that Sara was the love of Dylan's life and he's never been the same without her. They had a son named Jacob Dylan who has a nice rock band called the Wallflowers. Jacob has some of his father's songwriting talent. Please consider "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall", a 1963 song that has top tier Dylan poetry. Every line could be the best line in most songs. To me, it's a kindred spirit to the Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" and Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks". That he wrote this masterpiece so early in his career was a foreshadowing of his talent. NOTE: (Richard Thompson is an English guitarist and songwriter who's a favorite guitarist to anyone who finds his music. Incredibly talented Eric Clapton level guitarist with songs of great heartbreak and biting humor.)

Sometimes darker music or that has a dark tone doesn't mean it is great or good music.....Boston...YES....Moody Blues are musicians Art music that bring people hope and light in a very artistic high level way.!!!!!

Do I have it completely wrong, or was his name in the Traveling Wilburys 'Lucky'? Edit: he "(I) can't help it if I'm lucky"(!!) Edit #2(!): I was waiting for a pause or other opportunity to add: "scathing indeed" when you said it for me. Thanks for trying to save my typing finger, but I'm alright 👍 in spite of using this finger 🖕at this point in the day, it's in no way a reflection on, or not so subtle message to you 😀 😂😉 😮😊😅😂❤🎶🕊

You should consider comparing Blood On the Tracks with the Bootleg More Blood More Tracks. Same songs but a different sound and feel. These two are a story unto themselves. Additionally the Rolling Thunder Revue has the same songs, yet again slightly rearranged but delivered with a full band live on stage.

You're very perceptive (and you pay close attention) when you listen to these Dylan songs, so you pick up all the little nuances. The most striking thing about this musical tirade is his turnabout at the very end where he admits to his own part in the "idiocy" and the breakup. He recognizes her "holiness and her kind of love" and faces the fact that while she failed to understand him, he also failed to understand her. Such honesty is rare in popular music. I'd count this among the 20 or so greatest songs of his career, and "Blood on the Tracks" among his very greatest albums. (It's damn hard to say which is the "best" one, and probably shouldn't even be attempted.) Yes, he embarked on his marriage with Sara in 1965, so at the time of "Highway 61 Revisited", and it was a very close and apparently happy marriage for the next 8 years (after that, problems began to arise, and they divorced in 1977). Sara had 4 children in that first 8 years. It's pretty clear from the many love songs that Bob wrote during those years that he considered that marriage, Sara, and the children to be the very foundation of his life and the realization of his fondest hopes. He no doubt expected it to last a lifetime (as his parents' marriage did). There's no greater shock to most people than facing the collapse of a marriage that they've put all their hopes into. So, his anger in this song is understandable. It is the toughest thing to go through, seeing one's marriage fall to pieces bit by bit. This article has plenty of good information about Sara Dylan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Dylan

The last song on his next album, _"Street Legal",_ _"Where Are You Tonight"_ is much nicer take on this break up. And a truly underappreciated song of his.

Please play more dylan songs.....u actually think about what u say....u are awesome

Lucky Wilbury!

Long live Dylan❤❤❤

Maybe his finest

Dylan has been single for the last 30 years and you never hear even a faint rumour of any lover since. The Dylan girlfriend NDA must weight at least 20lbs. "Positively 4th Street" is much better than this song. Bob's to into himself in this song, as if it was all her fault and he's done no wrong .. so Bob's saying don't put me on a pedestal but also saying I'm flawless in all this mayhem - there's a contradiction to this song that makes it sloppy. Not one of his best.

Does anybody think that any of the verses are the voice of the woman in the crumbling relationship?

From blame and murderous intent towards her to a sudden ending of realising blame for both! Great breakdown 👍🏼

Brilliant.

Hey, how about doing your take on "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"?, and also "Black Diamond Bay".

love is love, even when it might be buried under hate. and it has a way of rising above the hate so we can be nourished again.

Yeah, my favorite Dylan song all-time. Funny and angry. Good analysis.

If you want another post-divorce song, check out “Sara”. It’s explicitly about his ex-wife.

syed i like your way of breaking into a dylan songs and lyrics analysing, I want from you if you can to listen to one more cup of coffee , it's dylan with beautiful voice and mysterious images ,thank you

This is an awesome song on an awesome album. Definitely the best or at least one of the best Dylan albums. It’s my favorite. If you have the money, and you like Dylan, the Bootleg series Volume 14 is well worth the money. Dylan recorded the Blood on the Tracks album in one city, didn’t like it, and re-recorded it in another city! The Bootleg you get both so it’s like two albums. Some of the Bootleg series I think is as good as the originals. You can stream at least part of the bootleg. It depends. Some streaming services only give you a sampler. Others give you the whole thing. ❤❤❤

You've got to do Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, one of the best Dylans or even best written songs ever.

Idiot Wind is S tier angry Dylan right up there with Positively 4th Street. idiot Wind has lines for days

Apparently Dylan overdubbed the organ himself.

Listen to "Sarah" from the Desire album

We all do stupid stuff. Understand, apologise and forgive.

Thanks!

None of the music is pre planned, by the way they play the song lots if different ways, and Dylan plays it slightly different every time as well , often changing lyrics as well The counter to this is his only acoustic Acoustic version, The New York sessions Its less angry and more vulnerable and hurt

Hey Syed! If you want to introduce your audience to some great modern day rap/hip hop you should start doing some reactions to Ren, an artist who has really blown up on the reaction channels (all eras and genres) since the release of "Hi Ren" in December. His lyrics and delivery are brilliant. He also performs in multiple genres, both solo and in collaborations. His Bob Marley cover of "I Shot the Sheriff/Road to Zion/Hip Hop" that he does with his band The Big Push on the streets of Brighton England is incredible (he has many videos busking on the streets of Brighton with great audio quality). "Hi Ren" should be the starting point, which deals with his own battles with mental health and Lyme disease that has had a huge emotional impact on those who react. It also deals with the inner dialogs of an artistic type person. Once you have shown his brilliance in his songs that are not heavy on the rapping and hip hop, you can then introduce his more pure hip hop songs. The hip hop reactors say he is "next level" and has inspired them to up their game. He has also brought in new fans, such as myself, to the art of rapping and hip hop. Very meaningful lyrics that apply to the times we live in.

Your videos are so so good, my friend, I hope you'll do more soon

“There’s a lone soldier on the cross “ Christ reference

I like how he changes the narrative at the end to "us" and "ours" and "we."

A bit repetitive? A bit long? You'll need to do some exercise to tackle Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. That is an epic listen. So much imagery. Classic 60's Dylan almost hypnotized you with the music to make you listen to the lyrics. His Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes acknowledge this unique aspect of his song writing.

the version from hard rain is even better IMO

"I Dreamed i Saw St Augustine" is the Dylan song to review. One of his best. THANK YOU for this, though.

Bob was pist! Wow! Great reaction as usual

Positively IV Street . Part ll.

for me one of the best dylan tracks