@@tylercooper1551 Who cares? I happened to see this video a minute after it was posted, I made a silly joke about it. No reason to get worked up about it mate, you're the one who wasted your time responding to it :)
I've always seen the sword-swallower as Dylan himself. Kneeling down to the media at first so he could use their voice (or throat). He then took it and used it to speak and get his ideas out into the world. Then when he was all done with it, he asks them how it feels, making them think about something real. After that he dropped the media and went on to use his own throat; "here is your throat back, thanks for the loan."
Mr Jones was probably gay...I think that's all it means...he probably remembers some uptight fake pressing dylan with questions that showed he wasn't really interested in dylan as an artist just was on a job to wrote about him..looking for a a scoop butting having to pick out the bones as dylan says...he was probably a bit camp and dylan wanted to make sure the person knew who the song was about without giving to much away to anybody else...
Should have shown the clip when Dylan was asked if he thought of himself as a singer or a poet. Dylan’s response - “I consider myself more of a song and dance man”
Bob Dylan aside from being a songwriter and performer is such an interesting figure of the 20th Century, I love the Beatles but he is something totally different on his own, it’s really quite something. The way that he can paint a picture of a fictionalized version of himself in songs like this is so ahead of its time for me
As did The Beatles. They did it in a more playful and mischievous way, but they were still all incredibly quick-witted and made the stuffy old journalist look really dumb and lame.
@@aliviamason533 you're welcome the song title is YER BLUES ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HEQQ-1rd4A0.html and a special rendition with his friends eric clapton keith richards and mitch mitchell ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JeFwaWFTGYU.html
@Baron Butt tangled up in blue is the other vid he did, I mistook him for another youtuber who also made a Dylan video, I thought he made 3 lmao my bad.
@@quadeca5617 Nerdwriter1. great channel. they're focusing mostly on movies and other forms of media and rarely on music. He deconstructs the philosophy of the subjects.
" Mr Jones" is a generality. Dylan was always talking about society. Mr Jones is a common name, someone on one "side" of society...a square, not hip. Dylan was the New Voice. Not necessarily just a blanket "other side", but more as a reporter of the burgeoning Youth Movement. The press was naive at this time, old school. It could have been Mr. Smith. But phonetically, Jones just sounds better to use.
I always feel like Polyphonic looks at my recently listened to and then makes a video. Ballad of a Thin Man has been on heavy rotation recently and I love this song. Good video as always
Regarding the line, " you see somebody naked". Perhaps the person is not actually nude, but performing? Bob once said that when performing, the artist is naked. So maybe, mister Jones walks in with a pencil to do a review of a artist? An artist who is exposing his inner thoughts and feelings. And all mister Jones can think off asking is who is he?
The complete works of Bob Dylan is staggering. No one wrote songs as good or original as Dylan. He is in a category of his own no one else comes close not even Cohen or Mitchell.
One thing one should never do is try get the deeper meaning out of dylan lyrics the main reason Is he really didn't know what he was saying he would laugh and say in 20 years people are going to have a lot of different meaning about this song and I have no idea what it's about are were it comes from he would say stuff like that typing and laughing he really didn't have any clue what he was talking about 😂I think that's the great thing about the guy people have always thought he had the answer but really he had nothing but a bunch of song that seemed to come out of thin air it's true
Mr Jones is an institution asking questions that lead nowhere while actively (if unconsciously) working to fetishize the freaks, and Mr Jones is a freak who refuses to face himself and come out of denial. I dig it, and this probably explains why I like the song so much more now than I used to.
Simon Schoeters Yes, do a video on Woody, my grandfather knew him in the late 20s maybe early 30s in Okema Oklahoma where Woody grew up.. I have a rich memory of my mother making me listen to a phone call recorded from the John Birch society talking about Woodys communist affiliations, she was angry with them, although Woody certainly was a Communist in the 1930s.. My grandmother was also close to Woodys sister. A true American icon his music and ideology that was inspired during the depression is a true contribution to our culture.
@@LK_Ireland "I ain't a Communist, necessarily, but I've been in the red all my life." - this quote was first presented to me as him denying being a Communist, but the qualifier, " _necessarily_ ", sounds to me like a winking confirmation.
I think there's a case to be made that "Mr Jones" is Horace judson. You should see the infamous interview he did with the reporter from Time magazine where you just tears into him. Pretty much the lyrics mirror Dylan's responses to the Judson. Telling him that he even if you went to one of his concerts he couldn't hear and he couldn't see what was really going on. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mnl5X5MQKTg.html
Dylan and The Beatles always had stupid questions thrown in their direction to the point that they began to despise press conferences. Fortunately Dylan and The Beatles were quick witted and often shot right back. Especially Dylan in his acidic way.
I swear I think this song is about Hunter S. Thompson. Mr. Jones ..being just a common name. The Great Gatsby .. Hunter learned how to write by copying this book. The Hells Angel book had a lot of gay tones in it.. And Hunter had multiple personalities.. Just a myth of mine..
Been a Dylan fan for 25 years and know most of his songs by heart but the number of them where I'm sure what I know what he's talking about is probably in the single digits. It's stream of consciousness poetry that's beautiful and I don't try to dissect it. Some lines I hear for years and they just pass thru my brain w/o making contact and then something in my life will happen, a new experience and then the next time I hear that "nonsense lyric" I burst out laughing coz I finally have something to associate it with. I still don't think it means "I've understood what he was talking about" only that I finally related to something he said in a song.
“Three things will continue; Life, Death and the lumberjacks are coming” How Bob ends his only novel which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. ‘Tarantula’ Be careful of that black tarantula among the boatload of bananas on Day-O
No mystery. Keep up with the Joneses. Middle America...primrose lane. Can't dig what's goin' on in this wild new way of thinking and living. Once the main man, in the circus, an outcast.
What "chiopix2" is probably referring to is Idiot Wind's opening verses. Dylan storms into the song with a dryly ironic mini-rant, whereby he caricatures the scandalizing faux-exposés of tabloid press, even while slightly humoring it by framing the song's first "persona" voice as a sort of villainized celebrity outlaw: "Someone's got it in for me; They're planting stories in the press! Whoever it is, I wish they'd cut it out quick. But when they will, I can only guess! They say I shot a man named Gray And took his wife to Italy. She inherited a million bucks. And when she died, it came to me..." Of course, if we were to take some presumed literal interpretation of these lines as being directly autobiographical, then Dylan would be technically "exaggerating", himself serving up "distorted facts" ("fake news"?). Yet, since it is hardly ambiguous that the songwriter had indeed remained by the mid 1970's a frequent target of overzealous media scrutiny - sometimes consisting of wild guesses and even outright fabrications - it is difficult to call his attitude quite "paranoid" either. Arguably, this odd tension between the simultaneous air of fanciful extravagance and of real palpability within his opening rant is just one of many levels of tension Dylan seems to set up... in the first verse alone! And the way some of this tension is resolved by the verse's "punchline" of "I can't help it if I'm lucky!" is merely a further testament to Dylan's crafty prowess. And, in any case: yes, he Is indeed talking about the press here. Nevertheless, Dylan being Dylan, even when he's talking about the press, he's not Only talking about the press. Specifically, he is also using the press here as a way to frame another discourse; namely, one concerned with his marriage. At select points of the song, Dylan does seem to use his 'song persona" to speak directly To his wife. So, both commenters are correct. And Dylan here is speaking about the press And about Sara. Yet, even to say that the song is an address to Sara would be over-reductive. Sure, Jacob Dylan's famous musing that songs on "Blood on the Tracks" are his "parents talking" seems most apt in reference to "Idiot Wind". However, one of the great things about this album is that, even if this is correct to some degree and even if this serves as the central expressive "intention" of the song as a whole, it still does not work as a "skeleton key" to every line. Because it is not just Dylan talking to his wife. Rather, it is both of them talking to each other! Indeed, the song's perspective seems to shift between different speakers from verse to verse. And whenever Dylan sings "you", the pronoun refers to different people throughout the song. Sometimes it's him speaking to Sara. Sometimes it's Sara speaking to him. Sometimes it might be a character from a movie or a book. Sometimes a sort of a dream or imaginary self ("the murderous outlaw" aka "righteous defender of truth" certainly makes reappearances). During one of the rare instances when Dylan allows himself to talk somewhat openly about the specificities of his craft (was it in Chronicles?), he provides a sizable hint as to his own methodology in writing "Blood on the Tracks": he compares the album to a Chekhov play. This may seem confusing to some people. As if Dylan is merely putting us on. Isn't he know for that sort of thing? Indeed he is. Always hiding his tracks! (Though not quite because there's blood on them. More like magic. Is he maybe afraid to jinx his own creative muse?). However, despite Dylan's real slipperiness, in this instance, I do imagine that he is being earnest. Whenever I really let myself stop and think about the lyrics at length, I am struck by how various lines throughout the album seem to relate to each other, by how they "talk" not only to the listener, but also "among themselves". As such, I've come to consider "Blood on the Tracks" to be one on the more complexely and innovatively "theatrical" of Dylan's albums. Something that gives even more credence to such an interpretation of Dylan's lyrical method with "Blood on the Tracks" is even a cursory glance at where the songwriter took his art next. After all, it's a well known fact that Dylan pursued his exploration of this "song as mini play" mode even further, when he was writing his follow-up to "Blood on...": "Desire". Dylan cowrote the latter with his friend Jacques Levy, a seasoned playwright and theater director. I suppose, after having been thrust into a life where he was constantly surrounded by people who wouldn't know "how to act" around him, it may have seemed to Dylan like a wise move to turn his song world into a sort of a semi-secreted metaphorical theater stage, one where real life and artifice would fuse together and begin to echo and quote each other. And if, per one of Dylan's many heroes - Shakespeare, all the world is indeed a stage and everyone mere players, then perhaps, by trying to make a theatre of his art and life alike, Dylan hoped that people around him might, at the very least, feel more inclined to let themselves grow into better actors. Whatever his real private reasons, the 1970s was when Dylan the actor-singer-poet had suddenly become a playwright as well. Moreover, soon after that he would expand his already long list of creative roles even further, adding to it the role of a film and a theater director (see Rolling Thunder Revue and "Renaldo and Clara").
Well the naked one is not a man with no cloaths. Its Dylan itself being himself free and honest, others who are this understand this, but Mr jones is too keen and apart that he cant understand what he sees, and need to know cous he needs to write something when he gets home to print. And the bone is not a bone. Its a helping hand, or an invitation. But true, the words naked, bone, camel, paints a ridgid picture, to feel the literal meaning punsh but have a opening reaviling what happening. Camel being a cigarette but its a snarling remark to get even with the guy, cous you picture a strange animal
No mention of Rolling Stone Brian Jones... who, it is reported, was teased by Bob for being “Mr Jones” Brian was extremely talented and admired by Bob, by all accounts, but also very paranoid, insecure and easily wound up which is no way to be in the nightclubs and bars populated by acidic and speeding successful rock stars in 1965-66
The sword-swallower line is so clever. Mr Jones had loaned his throat (perhaps a metaphor for something else) without realising. The Sword-swallower, having slashing up the insides of it with swords, (again, metaphor) gives it back, and only then Mr Jones realises he's been out done by the younger, smarter, freaky generation of the 1960s. That's how I've always imagined it.
I always thought Mr. Jones was Dylan and that the song was autobiographical. It reflects the alienation, confusion, surrealism, constantly shifting and tilting identity and nightmarish Dada-esque world he finds himself mired in while in the thick of his fame. All the stuff about the professors and F. Scott Fitzgerald's books is the way the press treats HIM and the literacy they expect of him as the "spokesman of his generation". The nightmarish circus atmosphere is very similar to Desolation Row: "the beauty parlour is filled with sailors/The circus is in town." I think he is looking into a mirror here. Surprise.
"Who is Mr. Jones" Jfc, I feel like it's so obvious that Ballad of a Thin Man is about journalists, or at the very least an older man that clearly doesn't "get" Dyland and the then new age of music. And then in comes this bozo to ask Dylan to spell it out to him. Like imagine if you wrote a song about a guy named Jack who goes around in clown face paint and asking stupid questions, and then a clown asks you with complete sincerity "Who's Jack?"
Awesome! This song always felt, to me, like Dylan had just finished Naked Lunch and was using that “twisted-circus” setting to make the Mr. Jones character feel dizzy and lost. It feels so hot and hazy, I can smell the smoke in the room.
I love your videos, but I also like to imagine that sometimes the artist actually didn't carefully craft their song to have a complicated poetical meaning and that they just thought it sounded good. I once went to a modern art museum and took a tour where the artist was present. after talking about one of his pieces and explaining all of the emotional baggage behind it, the tour guide asked the artist if he was correct. The artist answered with "No, it just looked good, so I kept it." I like to think that sometimes music is the same way, and artists just use peoples interpretations as a meaning so people stop asking about it. Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven" for example, I always kind of thought that they might have put a message in that song, but it was mostly just a song that sounded good. That's why I always find it almost funny when I see people analyzing any form of art. That said, I really do love your videos, you clearly are well-read and know what you're talking about.
Well, it's true what you said but if there's ever a song in Dylan's work that does not fit the "just sounds good" it's Mr Jones.....lol Besides I think the "oh there's no meaning at all" take is as much an interpretation of the artist's intentions as any other even though it's normally thought to be "neuter" or "truer".
I was there too. Dylan and his band gave us an absolute masterclass in American music. Fantastic show. I couldn't believe how good he was at 78 years old.
I love music. I'm 25 and every year of my life i have appreciated music more and more, and now i make my own music. Life without music isnt worth living in my opinion. Music has literally saved my life in more than one way. I see my friends and family talk about or listen to music in such an unaffected and stoic manner compared to me. It's like some people just don't hear good music the way others do. I think to some music is an addictive drug, whereas to some it's just catchy noises.
i feel like music is a drug too, and sometimes my only coping mechanism. i think what brings me towards dylan is i can relate to the melancholy in his soul
@@asarogers5786 me? All im saying is that many people are seemingly less affected by music than others. Do you not agree? I was pointing out how strange it is that the music is being heard the same, but it is perceived different. My siblings for example admit that they may go all week without playing music and they don't know but a hand full of artist and thats only because they are trending in the top 10 right now. Its a good thing we all have different interest and taste. I was simply thinking out loud because this video inspired me to think about variations in musical taste. I'm not implying that music people are objectively superior humans. I didnt intend to come off condescending.
Mr Jones is anyone who mindlessly follows trends but doesn't have any real idea the larger movement. OR, someone who thinks there is a larger movement, when actually it is all simply about creativity. With that said, Dylan told Brian Jones of the Stones that he was Mr Jones, because he would always be so paranoid at parties that the Stones were becoming irrelevant. (this made Jones even more paranoid! ). Dylan was an artist of complete integrity; which is what these press noobs could not get! If you can profile someone, catergorise them, then you can package and sell them. Dylan would not allow that, and he maintained that mystery right to the present day - total integrity.
I've heard the theory that this is an attack on the press but every time I listen to it and pay attention to the words I find it really hard not to believe that this is a song about closeted homosexuality. The 'you' aka Mr Jones in the song is, if not Dylan himself, someone he knows or a fictional character struggling with their sexuality. No prizes for guessing who (or what;)) the 'one eyed midget' at the end is supposed to be
It’s not Dylan’s struggle with sexuality, rather he’s calling Mr. Jones a messy party bottom. And in the context of the mid sixties this was a harsh insult, rather than in 2024 where that’s a badge of honor.
It's interesting the irony this song takes in the wake of the Ok Boomer meme, the Mr. Jones of today are people who were once part of that counter culture Dylan represented.
That’s a tack piano Dylan is playing. That’s a a standard piano with tacks applied to the hammers inside to create a more metallic sound that eliminates the sustain.
It’s also worth identifying how Fitzgerald had remarkably similar origins. Although fitzgerald spent less time there, they were both born in Minnesota, then matured and achieved initial success on the East coast. I’ve always thought of that as a subtler extension of Dylan’s insistence that he wasn’t the voice of his generation and his unwillingness to analyze or explain the meaning behind his own lyrics, by trying to equate his music and lyrics with the relatively slim and often overinflated work of Fitzgerald.
Damnit what is that journalists name who went at him so harshly in No Direction Home, he was in London at the time. I feel pretty confident in saying that he was definately one of the inspirations for this track.
If I'm understanding this correctly, these reporters were trying to understand Dylan almost as anthropologists, but were taking an ethnocentric approach (or etic vs emic approach if you know the vocabulary). Interesting application here; nice video.
The piano part from "I believe to my soul" by Ray Charles so that's where Dylan came up with the piano dirge part that he plays on "Ballard of a thin man" and I also love the analyg of the song I have highway 61 revisited on CD where that song is from.love the references and the phrasing of the lyrics.DYLAN IS THE MAN!!! Thanks for the info about the song.
*Feel Most Likely Starting with Music Managers (& their hypocritical & Secret & hypocritical perverted sexual Lives.) that BD SAW & discovered when he left small town Hibbing MN To NY City. He subsequently went down to Nashville!
One of my two favorite Dylan's songs, was also very much loved by Huey Newton and the Black Panthers' commanders who, allegedly, wrote their programme to its soundtrack.
So... mister Polyphony (if that IS your real name)... When are you going to talk about some ACTUAL polyphony? You know... Leonin, Perotin, Machaut, Ockeghem, Des Prez, Palestrina, Byrd... Maybe even the master of counterpoint himself; Bach? Yes I know I'm being all snobby here. but hey. I see a channel named "polyphony" and I expect some polyphony darn it! :P
You should make a video about the story of the "real" Mr. Jimmy from the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That would make a great Polyphonic video right there!
"The sword swallower" is a fellow musician, who has changed his style because of Dylan, and is flaunting how much more successful he's going to be with the stolen sound. Someone who is seen as being above everyone else and also wears heels. It's John Lennon. All The Beatles have said that hearing and meeting Bob Dylan changed everything for them but John specifically said he changed his writing style to be more like Dylan. He kneeled to his talent. The "it" when he asks how it feels, is the fact that despite the work Dylan put into his music he will never be as successful as the guy copying him. Or not. I just know the "sucking dick" interpretation doesn't work for me.
Mr. Jones is a metaphor and Dylan so much as said so. that's how we (boomers) always interpreted it. Mr. Jones is the "Man". every boys Father, school principal, authority.
Polyphonic try not to sound so sure. Bob Dylan is a Master of the art of rhetoric. His mind is filled with literature. Like the Greeks and the Sophists. Double speak Dylan is a true Alchemist who can turn words into gold! So we can never know what he really means. Your Mr. Jones!
I hate the whole advertisement inject on RU-vid. It makes it no better than local TV. 'Bob Dylan wrote about a man having dirt on his hands after he killed those two women. You know who doesn't have dirt on their hands? People who use Irish Spring Soap!' These ads just get worse and worse and when content developers try to merge the ads in it makes it cheap. Just like Irish Spring.
I was shocked at how many people were clueless to the meaning of"thin man." Some dimwitted SUNY professor wrote a book where he managed to misinterpret every single line of every single song.
Are you sure it wasn't Paul Griffin on piano? He and Al Kooper were paired off on "Like A Rolling Stone" so it would have been natural that they were both featured on this record.
This interpretation is way too nice. The song can be easily interpreted as saying Mr Jones ‘sword swallows’ men who ‘wear high heels’, and with so many randos he doesn’t even know who’s swords he swallowed, and goes into a room blindfolded ‘put eyes in his pockets’ and bends over ‘with his nose to the ground’ so all the cows in the room get milked.
I really like your channel. I can tell you are very passionate about music (as am I) and you do a great job of explaining music and its backstories. Keep up the good work!
I believe that the "Thin Man' here is meant to indicate that Mr Zimmerman will not allow, through his genuine responses to the press, to become their 'Straw-man'. How unfortunate that Mr.Zimmerman felt like he needed to lie about "workin' the streets'" and other hardships he alleged himself to have gone through. The press digs and snoops - they'll call you out if you aren't influential enough.
LOVE DYLAN SEEN HIM 50-60 TIMES PLUS HIS 30TH ANNIVERSARY DYLAN PLAYED THEY PRESS LIKE A 2 DOLLAR GUITAR ALWAYS TRYING TO FIND SOME DEEP MESSAGE AND DISSECTING HIS SONGS HE EVEN SAID YOU CAN DO IT BUT YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR GONNA FIND NOTHING HE INSULTED THEM WITHOUT THEM KNOWING HIS GENIUS IS ON SO MANY LEVELS
Just fyi that lyrics sheet is fake. Dylan says (maybe he’s lying) that you can always spot a fake cause they sign his name on the bottom. Nothing to do with the video but I thought it was interesting.
