" Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song by Bob Dylan, originally released as a single on Columbia Records, catalogue 43242. Later she participated in a bank robbery with other members of the SLA.File:Subterranean Homesick Blues cover.jpgĬolumbia Recording Studios, New York: 14 January 1965 Hearst sent a letter to her parents that read “Mom, Dad, I’m with a combat unit that’s armed with automatic weapons…Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people”.
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She eventually voluntarily joined the group and assisted in their actions. An even more radical splinter group of the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. Towards that end, they carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots. They advocated the overthrow of the government. The Weathermen were a splinter group of the more mainstream Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Weathermen, a radical political organization in the sixties, took its name from Subterranean ( “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”). Dylan wrote many similarly themed songs during that time period, such as Absolutely Sweet Marie, Like a Rolling Stone, and Maggie’s Farm. During the sixties, Dylan clearly identified with the outsider culture. Subterranean is an “outlaw song”, what Woody Guthrie called songs that sided with society’s outsiders. There are certainly some similarities in the cadence and themes. Like his ‘That’ll Be the Day.’ I read somewhere that it was a line he heard in a movie, and I started realizing you can take things from everyday life that you hear people say.Īnother possible, although much less likely, source for the song is Lewis Carroll’s poem Rules and Regulations. “Buddy Holly’s songs were much more simplified, but what I got out of Buddy was that you can take influences from anywhere. “Chuck Berry wrote amazing songs that spun words together in a remarkably complex way,” he says. It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of “Too Much Monkey Business” and some of the scat songs of the ’40s.”…. Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!ĭylan told a journalist in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: Too much monkey business, too much monkey businessĭylan’s echoes the same theme, but with additional sophistication:ĭylan also echos Berry’s protests against the military life, the fallback career of many poor whites and blacks:Īrmy bunk – army chow – army clothes – army car, aah! No need for me to complain – my objection’s overruled, ahh! Same thing every day – gettin’ up, goin’ to school For example, Barry takes umbrage at going to school and ending up, after all that effort, in the work-a-day world. Dylan takes Berry’s phrasing and even his attitude but sharpens it and gives it a Beat-inspired “outsider” perspective.ĭylan incorporates some of the same themes Barry touches on. Like most Dylan songs, it has its roots in the past, in this case, the recent past of early rock ‘n’ roll: namely Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business.ĭylan cops Berry’s rapid-fire approach to the language:Ĭompare this with Dylan’s lyrics below.
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#SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES FULL#
It is also full of drug references, one of the Beats’ favorite obsessions. The lyrics are full of outsider, anti-establishment themes. The very word subterranean – meaning underground, hidden, secret – refers to the outsider world of the Beats that Dylan clearly felt a strong connection with. It is likely that the title was influenced by Jack Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans. Subterranean is one of Dylan’s most Beat-influenced lyrics.
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It was more like Dylan launched himself into another stratosphere. He did more than move in a “new direction”. Dylan didn’t just “go electric” with this album. Imagine, the poet laureate of folk music, the author of Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are A’Changin’, suddenly leading a raucous, hell-raising electric band and spitting out harsh lines of gritty street poetry that foreshadows Public Enemy by thirty years. I can’t imagine the shock the average circa 1965 Dylan fan must have felt when he put the needle on Bringing and out came this cacophony of sound. John Lennon once said Subterranean Homesick Blues was so good that it made him wonder if he could still compete in the field of pop music.