Bob Dylan Song #73: Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Having been a Beatles fan practically since puberty hit, I've had the chance to hear my share of obscure stuff, such as the home demos John Lennon recorded during his exile from the music industry in the mid-to-late '70s, some of which are on the Lennon Anthology box set (like most box sets, an example of having to wade through a sea of mud to find some pearls). That's where I got to finally hear Lennon's infamous "Serve Yourself" parody - overrated, lest you were wondering - as well as a few other jabs at Bob's expense. I can't remember, though, if I heard one in particular, in which Lennon apparently excerpted a number of newswire articles and strung them together into a semi-coherent babble, then "sang" the "lyrics" in a Dylan-like voice, ending with the amusing phrase "stuck inside of a lexicon with the Roget's Thesaurus blues again". It doesn't take too much of a brain surgeon to see where Lennon's going with that, of course. Lennon's never had a problem taking the piss at Dylan's expense, even in his older and wiser days.

What I find funny about that parody, other than Lennon apparently making some sort of commentary on Dylan's lyrical style, only about a decade too late, is that, in a certain way, Dylan was doing what Lennon had done before in his music - hiding real feelings of isolation and loneliness in music meant for popular consumption. Everyone knows that "Help!" was Lennon's real cry for help in the midst of the furor of Beatlemania, when he was at his most frightened and overwhelmed by his sudden and immense fame. And while Lennon's lyrics were direct and not difficult to decipher, the bluntness was still obscured by the jangling guitars and tight harmonies of the Beatles at their poppy best (one imagines that Lennon could've brought in "My Mummy's Dead" in 1965 and the band could've turned it into another smash). Dylan's lyrics in "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" are much less direct, full of the same glorious insanity as much of Blonde on Blonde, but at the core the song is summed up by one line - "deep inside my heart/I know I can't escape". No matter the craziness of the verses, between neon madmen and punching cigarettes and the like, Dylan's narrator can only bemoan his fate, stuck in the same kind of purgatory found in "Visions of Johanna".

In generally I try to stay away from too much psychoanalysis of Dylan's songs on this blog - both because it's been done to death by better writers, and because I freely admit that I'm not good at that sort of thing. And yet with Dylan in 1966, it doesn't seem like a stretch to see instances of isolation in his lyrics, no matter how arcane they may seem at first glance. From anecdotal evidence and many indications, this was a lonely, lonely man. Many geniuses often find themselves lonely anyway simply by virtue of their minds acting as buffer from the rest of society, but Dylan's is a case shared by precious few other human beings. And whereas the Beatles had each other to share the burdens of fame and Elvis had the Memphis Mafia to keep himself busy, Dylan (aside from a few companions and The Hawks in 65/66) was basically taking on an incredible tidal wave all by himself. Phrases like "spinning out of control" and "he doesn't want you to see him this way" pop up in Behind The Shades' retelling of this period, and we can only imagine how much further he could've gone before the motorcycle accident. It must've been hard enough on the "Don't Look Back" tour, having to deal with audiences in love with a version of you that you wanted nothing to do with anymore. One can only imagine the psychic blows he took every night in 1966, high as a kite and being booed for making incredible music.

The 1966 tour had not happened by the time "Stuck Inside of Mobile" had been recorded, but there was still enough insanity ruling Dylan's life to allow the feelings of loneliness to creep into his writing. And, in a lot of ways, the imagery of that song, as hard to fathom as it is for many of us, surely felt like a natural reaction to the Dylan of that time - another piece of his suit of armor, so to speak. I mean, here's a man dealing with reporters asking him questions that must've made him want to tear his hair out, with fans begging for a piece of him, no matter how small or - ahem - important to him, with an audience demanding his old self and another one clamoring for his new one, with a private life that involved dumping a huge music star and sparking a new relationship practically at the same time, and with all the madness that comes with being recognized all across the world. How does a man with "twenty pounds of headlines/stapled to his chest" even come close to that sort of mind-bending loony bin lifestyle?

As with the rest of the album, the crack band provides a spoonful of sugar to help the (Texas) medicine go down - in particular, Robertson's miniature solos bubbling to the surface, coupled with that cartoonish organ wrapping itself around Dylan's words. The backing track neatly walks a fine line between underplaying the oddity of the song and actually being too bizarre; one shudders to think about how a lesser band might have ham-handed it up on the organ, or provided a colorless backing to lyrics that demanded an exciting approach. But the band rises to the occasion, and delivers a fine backing performance in spades. And so Dylan, much like his old friend and erstwhile kinda-sorta pupil Lennon, manages to use a brilliant group to disguise his true feelings in a cloak of musical genius. Dylan may not have been crying out for help, but it doesn't take a lot to hear that he needed it.