Bob Dylan - Character songs?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan - Character songs?
From: Backstage Manager(inactive)
Date: 23 Feb 04 - 05:05 PM

I've always found that, rather than himself, many of Dylan's songs, particularly those that tell stories, are based on characters. Lately, I've been engrossed in Tom Russell's new CD, Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs, and he does two Dylan songs that fit into that category: Seven Curses and and amazing version Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts that he does with Joe Ely and Eliza Gilkyson.

Subject: Bob Dylan - Character songs?
From: alanabit
Date: 23 Feb 04 - 04:39 PM

Here's one for khandu and Little Hawk. I have been listening to some Dylan lately and thinking about some of the comments I have heard passed about him over the years: "He's a neurotic." "He's got all those hang ups..." etc.
Listening to songs like "Isis" or "Mississippi", they seem to make more sense if you take them as character sketches. The character in "Isis", for instance, comes over as a complete clown, who ends up crawling to the woman he has been trying to impress when he gets to the penultimate verse. I think it's hilarious. I also really enjoy the wry humour of the downbeat character in "Mississippi". For some reason, most people assume that Dylan is necessarily singing about himself whenever he uses first person narration. As folkies have always sung songs in which they take on the parts of farmers, industrial workers or bold robbers-o, doesn't it make more sense to assume that Dylan frequently tells stories from the standpoint of fictional characters?