"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
Subterranean Homesick Blues cover.jpg
Single by Bob Dylan
from the album Bringing It All Back Home
Released April 1965
Format 7" single
Recorded Columbia Recording Studios, New York
14 January 1965
Genre Folk rock
Length 2:21
Label Columbia Records
Producer(s) Tom Wilson
Bob Dylan singles chronology
"The Times They Are a-Changin'"
(1965)
"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
(1965)
"Maggie's Farm"
(1965)
"The Times They Are a-Changin'"
( 1965)
"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
(1965)
"Maggie's Farm"
(1965)

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song written by Bob Dylan, originally released on the album Bringing It All Back Home in March 1965. The following month it was issued as a single, becoming his first Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hit and going Top 10 in the UK. It was subsequently re-released on numerous compilations such as Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (1967). One of Dylan's first 'electric' pieces, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was also notable for its innovative film clip, which first appeared in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary, Dont Look Back.

Contents

References and allusions[edit]

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" was, in fact, an extraordinary three-way amalgam of Jack Kerouac, the Guthrie/Pete Seeger song "Taking It Easy" ('mom was in the kitchen preparing to eat/sis was in the pantry looking for some yeast') and the riffed-up rock'n'roll poetry of Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business".[1]

While Dylan was not a member of the original Beat circles of the 1950s, Kerouac's The Subterraneans, a novel published in 1958 about the Beats, has been cited as a possible inspiration for the song's title.[2] Stretching further back, the title alludes to Notes from Underground, a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose works were popular with Beat writers such as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.[citation needed]

The song's first line is a reference to the production of LSD and the politics of the era: "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine / I'm on the pavement thinkin' about the Government".[3] The song also depicts some of the growing conflicts between "straight" or "square" (40-hour workers) and the emerging 1960s counterculture. The widespread use of recreational drugs, and turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War were both starting to take hold of the nation, and Dylan's hyperkinetic lyrics were dense with up-to-the-minute allusions to important emerging elements in the 1960s youth culture. According to rock journalist Andy Gill, "an entire generation recognized the zeitgeist in the verbal whirlwind of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'."[3]

The song also throws up a number of references to the struggles surrounding the American civil rights movement ("Better stay away from those / That carry around a firehose"). In spite of the political nature of the lyrics, the song went on to become the first Top 40 hit for Dylan in the United States.[4]

Influence[edit]

Listed by Rolling Stone magazine as the 332nd "Greatest Song of All Time",[5] "Subterranean Homesick Blues" has influenced many groups and individuals.

The Swedish singer Håkan Hellstrom parodied the video of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in his 2002 music video for the song "Kom Igen Lena!"

Promotional film clip[edit]

The clip was originally a segment of D. A. Pennebaker's film, Dont Look Back.
The three locations for the"cue card" clip as seen in Dont Look Back; the film can be seen on Sony BMG's site.

In addition to the song's influence on music, the song was used in what became one of the first "modern" promotional film clips - the forerunner of what later became known as the music video. Although Rolling Stone lists it as the 7th on its list of "100 Top Music Videos",[10] the original clip was actually the opening segment of D. A. Pennebaker's film, Dont Look Back, a documentary on Bob Dylan's first tour of England in 1965. In the film, Dylan, who came up with the idea, holds up cue cards for the audience, with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The cue cards were written by Dylan himself, Donovan, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth.[3] While staring at the camera, he flips the cards as the song plays. There are intentional misspellings and puns throughout the clip, for instance when the song's lyrics say "eleven dollar bills" the poster says "20 dollars". The clip was shot in in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel in London where poet Ginsberg and Neuwirth make a cameo in the background. For use as a trailer, the following text was superimposed at the end of the clip while Dylan and Ginsberg are exiting the frame: "Surfacing Here Soon | Bob Dylan in | Dont Look Now by D. A. Pennebaker".

In addition to the Savoy Hotel clip, two alternate promotional films were shot: one in a park where Dylan, Neuwirth and Ginsberg are joined by a fourth man, and another shot on the roof of an unknown building (possibly the Savoy Hotel). A montage of the clips can be seen in the documentary No Direction Home.

Similar videos[edit]

The "Subterranean Homesick Blues" film clip and its concepts have been popularly imitated by a number of artists. Influenced and imitative videos of note include:

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]