IT’S ALRIGHT MA (I’M ONLY BLEEDING)
is a seven minute explosion of verbal dexterity, spiritual longing and anti-establishment bile that could be described as the ultimate blues song. Originally released in acoustic form on Bringing it All Back Home in 1965, it became a staple of Bob Dylan’s set lists over many decades with very few lyrical alterations, although it was frequently rearranged as a dynamic full band blues/rock number. Addressed, as in blues songs like Hey Lawdy Mama, Sugar Mama and That’s Alright Mama, to a nameless and symbolic confessional figure who is as likely to be a lover as a mother, it is built around a tense repeated guitar riff.
A mere trace of a melody appears in choruses that are placed after every third verse. These choruses divide the fifteen verses into groups of three. The verses are made up of three couplets which repeat the same rhyme. Each ends in a line that rhymes with the last line of the other verses. Dylan sticks to this rigid format throughout, but allows many variations in tone to be modulated through his vocals as he declaims insistently in this extraordinary lyrical barrage.
In essence the blues is a form centred on the tension between musical simplicity and vocal expression, in which singers link personal feelings to universal concerns. In It’s Alright Ma Dylan uses this basic model to generate a philosophical diatribe against the ills of the world. He delivers an extended howl of pain in which he rails against false consciousness, psychological repression, fake spirituality and mindless conformity.
The song is distinguished by his use of luminous imagery, his unique talent at combining poetic and colloquial language and his quite astonishing ability to come up with distinctive phrases that can be applied to multiple circumstances. At moments he appears to be almost ‘speaking in tongues’, spewing forth observations not only on modern life but on the qualities and paradoxes of all human existence. The song is part conversation with death and part affirmation of life.
The lyrics are mainly presented as an address in the second person, with a few first person interjections in the choruses and the final verses. Each group of verses has a thematic link on which the choruses comment. It would thus be inaccurate to describe the lyrics, as some commentators have, as a ‘stream of consciousness’. Dylan moves quite deliberately from one theme to another, making his pithy observations in a highly structured and disciplined way. His scorn for the triviality of much of modern culture is unrestrained, as is his contempt for those who unthinkingly follow conventions. Above all, he champions the survival of the individual spirit and the right of each and every one of us to freedom of thought.
IT’S ALRIGHT MA
In the first set of three verses, Dylan presents a vision of the world in which it is necessary to reorder our senses so that we can begin to glimpse the nature of a deeper, richer and more rewarding perception of reality. The first four lines have a beguiling, hallucinatory intensity that almost defy categorisation. He opens with the dramatically apocalyptic and apparently contradictory…Darkness at the break of noon… a visionary description of a world in which the real nature of existence is hidden from sight. This is followed by a series of repeated rhymes in which this nightmarish scenario is made manifest in highly potent symbolic imagery: …Shadows even the silver spoon/ The handmade blade, the child’s balloon/ Eclipses both the sun and moon…
The lines play with grammatical sense. It is difficult to say whether ‘shadows’ operates as a noun or a verb here. We are given glimpses of several small objects – the spoon, the blade and the balloon – which appear to be ‘outsize’ because their shadows have created the unnatural darkness. Yet this is a darkness which many people are not even aware of – a sign of a world in which perception is severely limited.
The ‘silver spoon’ is an image of privilege, which in itself generates a kind of blindness towards the fate of the less fortunate. The ‘handmade blade’ suggests a tendency towards personal violence, in contrast to the symbol of innocence that follows. The ‘child’s balloon’ may represent the freedom we have in childhood to let our thoughts ‘float way’ freely. But of course a balloon is a very fragile object that can easily be burst (particularly by a ’handmade blade’). Here, however, that spherical object performs an apparently magical function, by blotting out the sources of light that should illuminate us. If one holds an object close enough to one’s face, even the infinity of the sky itself will be ‘eclipsed’. Such an action is by its very nature a deliberate choice. Tragically, this kind of ‘eclipsing’ of true imaginative reality can often begin when we are very young. The creative imagination is frequently suppressed in childhood by the demands of society, its oppressive ideologies and its moral constraints. Trying to prevent this happening can appear to be a hopeless task. As Dylan puts it …to understand you know too soon/ There is no sense in trying…
The process by which, in our ruthlessly competitive and ‘blinded’ society, our ‘balloons’ may be burst, is then outlined. We are warned that …Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn/ Suicide remarks are torn/ From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn/ Plays wasted words… The developing child is confronted by ‘pointed threats’ that assume human shape. The ‘fool’ (who traditionally is the only person allowed to mock a king) speaks, through his ornate ‘gold mouthpiece’ – another symbol, perhaps, of blind wealth and privilege. He is apparently playing a deathly tune of ‘wasted words’ on a ‘hollow horn’ – thus merely dispensing ‘hollow’ nonsense.
In reality, however, a ‘horn’ (whether it be a primitive instrument made of bone or a sophisticated modern one like a saxophone) is always hollow. The fool’s supposedly ‘wasted words’ take the form of a highly resonant aphorism: …He not busy being born/ Is busy dying… suggesting that, in order to remain truly alive and creative, we must continue to preserve our childhood consciousness of wonder at the world. The alternative, it seems, is a kind of spiritual death – a state of being ‘at war’ with ourselves, a place where we will be forced to…watch waterfalls of pity roar… But even acknowledging this now seems pointless, as it would result in …one more person crying…. In the short melodic interlude of the first chorus the narrator attempts to provide a soothing voice: …Don’t fear if you hear/ A foreign sound to your ear/ It’s alright, ma/ I’m only sighing.. But he is powerless to prevent the process which is being described.
In the next set of verses, various ways in which those who influence us try to distort our view of the world are outlined. Multiple voices whisper contradictory messages: …Some warn victory, some downfall… Many of the false and selfish messages that these voices deliver are especially malevolent: …Private reasons great or small/ Can be seen in the eyes of those that call/ To make all that should be killed to crawl… while other voices are apparently more benign: …They don’t hate nothing at all but hatred…
These contradictory and confusing signals are summarised in the ‘sound metaphor’ of …Disillusioned words like bullets bark… as if they are being ‘shot’ into us. The confusion that results is exacerbated by the promulgation of supposed spirituality by so-called ‘human gods’ who, in another highly ambiguous and resonant visual image, create …flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark… another remarkably evocative phrase that evokes the commercialism and thus the cheapening of religious impulses. The narrator then intervenes with his own ‘disillusioned words’, sighing sadly: …It’s easy to see without looking too far/ That nothing much is really sacred…
The roles of the religious and education systems in this process are then graphically outlined: …While preachers preach of evil fates/ Teachers teach that knowledge waits/ Can lead to hundred dollar plates/ Goodness hides behind its gates… Our imagination is thus constrained by being told by our religious leader that we are ‘born in sin’, while we are encouraged to believe that the main purpose of education is to achieve material wealth. In a bitingly sardonic aside, the narrator warns that …Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked... In other words, even those who rise to the heights of material wealth and secular power will, at some point, be forced to confront their own inner consciences. In Dylan’s 1974 shows, performed as the revelations of the Watergate scandal were in the process of bringing down the Nixon presidency, these lines drew huge cheers from audiences. The narrator then warns that …Though the rules of the road have been lodged, it’s only people’s games that you have to dodge… His attempt to remain positive: …But it’s alright ma, I can make it… can provide only limited reassurance. Those ‘mind games’ that preachers, teachers and politicians play are never easy to escape from.
LYNDON JOHNSON (US PRESIDENT 1965)
The third set of verses continues to explain ways in which all the propaganda we are subjected to can strip away our uniqueness and capacity for creativity. In another series of insistent rhymes the focus is now on the vacuity of the mass media: …Advertising signs: they con/ You into thinking that you’re the one/ That can win what’s never been won/ That can do what’s never been done… These are all, of course, false dreams, designed to detach us from the real world: …Meantime… Dylan points out …life goes on all around you… The result is that the victims of these ‘mind games’ will have both their innocence and their individuality stripped away. But then something changes: …You lose yourself, you reappear… he sings …You suddenly find you’ve got nothing to fear… At the very point of desperation, when our open hearted innocence appears to have been stolen from us, we may hear a ‘trembling voice’ in the distance. It may be that …Somebody thinks they’ve really found you… Although this voice may be faint, it is the voice of hope, telling us that our power to think independently is still there, reminding us in no uncertain terms that …it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to… In the following chorus, the narrator admits, in another highly quotable couplet, that …The masters make the rules/ For the wise men and the fools… He then makes a steadfast declaration of not being bound by such restrictions: …I got nothin’, ma, to live up to…
At this point, the narrator’s stance shifts. He stops being a passive observer and drops the second person address. In the next set of verses he gives vent to some genuine anger and disgust, first pouring scorn on …them that must obey authority/ That they do not respect in any degree/ Who despise their jobs, their destiny/ Who speak jealously of them that are free… Such people have become soulless husks who …do what they do just to be/ Nothing more than something they invest in… There is a strong implication in the next verse that these are exactly the kind of people who go into politics or become leaders of established religions. Their lives are just like a series of commercial transactions. Dylan scathingly describes them as having been: …on principles baptized/ To strict party platform ties… They become members of …social clubs in drag disguise… presenting a bizarre image of members of respectable social clubs as being disguised ‘in drag’ – not necessarily dressing up as members of the opposite sex but being (in contemporary colloquial terms) ‘a drag’.
The narrator does not hold back in his contempt for such individuals, who in their supposedly elevated positions in the social hierarchy…freely criticize… any ‘outsiders’ who do not share their blinkered views. The only message they can convey to their critics is to tell them …who to idolize/ And then say “God bless him”… Naturally (to paraphrase one of Dylan’s earlier songs) they assume that ‘God is on their side’, and thus feel that they can patronise the powerless. The narrator picks out an example of such a narrow minded representative of the ‘establishment’, describing him in scathing terms as …one who sings with his tongue on fire… thus dispensing lies. Dylan then extends the ‘throat’ metaphor into…gargles in the rat race choir… giving us an absurdly comic image of the rich and powerful ‘masters’ singing along together but making a dreadfully distorted noise. Such a person is …bent out of shape by society’s pliers/ He cares not to come up any higher/ But gets you down in the hole that he’s in… In the chorus the narrator drily observes that he will ascribe no blame …on anyone who lives on a vault…, presumably meaning a person who is so obsessed by the accumulation of wealth that he actually resides in such a ‘hole’, locked up with his money. The narrator then shrugs nonchalantly: …But it’s alright ma, if I can’t please him…
The tone of defiance continues into the final set of verses, which do not let up in their condemnation of ‘uptight’ individuals. The narrator begins by extending his criticism to those who attempt to control people’s intimate lives: …Old lady judges watch people in pairs/ Limited in sex they dare/ To push fake morals, insult and swear… He implies that such people are not necessarily actual ‘old ladies’ or ‘judges’. They may well be politicians or religious leaders who attempt to arbitrate the sexual morality of others, so contributing to general social repression. Then we are presented with one of Dylan’s most iconic lines: …Money doesn’t talk, it swears… which appears, if taken in isolation, to be a straightforward condemnation of materialism. But in the context of the verse it is crucially coupled with the following line …Obscenity? Who really cares?… The narrator dismisses such a judgemental attitude as ‘propaganda’, declaring it all to be ‘phony’.
The narrator then sneers at those who take religious texts at face value, and who consequently preach to others that the ‘life to come’ is more important than real life. He defines them as …those who defend what they cannot see/ With a killer’s pride… possibly implying that those who kill people before their time, perhaps in wars, should be ‘defended’ as dispatching those souls to a ‘better place’. We are then told that …security/ It blows their minds most bitterly… In 1965, the phrase ‘blows their minds’ was still not in the mainstream. Soon it would become a common expression of ‘acid heads’, describing how their consciousness had been expanded. But here it seems to have a darker and more negative meaning, as the process occurs ‘bitterly’ and is connected with ‘security’, which they appear to despise. Blinded by their ‘killer’s pride’, they prefer people to be insecure, so that they may take refuge in the thought of the afterlife. Dylan summarises his utter contempt for this ‘anti-life’ attitude in the highly memorable lines …For them that think death’s honesty/ Won’t fall upon them naturally/ Life sometimes must get lonely…
In the final verse the narrator sounds weary. This is hardly surprising after the effort of delivering such an extended and impassioned monologue. But he may also be somewhat exhausted because he knows that he has only been ‘preaching to the converted’. Those who never hear the song – and those who misunderstand it – will, it seems, have to carry on living lives which are undervalued and in which they will never reach real fulfilment. …My eyes collide…he tells us, sneaking in a clever self-reflexive rhyme …with stuffed graveyards, false gods, I scuff/ At pettiness which plays so rough… But the occupants of those ‘graveyards’ are not necessarily physically dead. In fact, they may be the ‘living dead’ whose lives have been rendered meaningless by the ‘masters’ who make the rules’ and who follow the ‘false gods’ of materialism. In his frustration the narrator feels trapped, expressing this in the surreal image of him walking …upside down inside handcuffs… He tries to free himself from these restraints as he decides to …kick my legs to crash it off… and then delivers a challenge to the oppressors: …OK, I’ve had enough… he declares …What else can you show me?… as if he is preparing for a fight.
Although there are moments in the song when liberation is glimpsed, the narrator still fears that he is a mere ‘voice in the wilderness’. In the final chorus he announces solemnly that …If my thought dreams could be seen/ They’d probably put my head inside a guillotine… The reference to the French Revolution is quite explicit here. But despite his long and passionate evisceration of the way human life is contained and limited by those in authority, he is quite aware that the ‘revolution’ he is proposing (which is not a political but a moral and spiritual revolution) is extremely unlikely to happen. So finally he signs off with philosophical resignation: …It’s alright ma… he sighs …It’s life and life only… But we sense that he will continue the fight. Not once does he admit that he is ‘only bleeding’.
It’s Alright Ma could thus well be called a ‘religious song’, albeit one which stands in opposition to the stifling moral and religious dogmas that Dylan identifies as controlling society. He hopes and pleads for a form of spiritual liberation which will free human minds and souls from centuries of oppression. In a way this song – although it does not deal directly with the themes he had previous tackled like war and racial discrimination – can also be seen as his final ‘protest song’ of the 1960s. Here he delves deep into the actual reasons why such terrible events occur and such bigoted attitudes are formed. In the tradition of the Beat Poets, and before them Whitman and the Romantics, he protests at great length against the spiritual corruption that he perceives all around him. After this, his work will become more self consciously ironic and he will fashion songs in which he allows many characters – some real, some historical and some fictional – to speak for him.
It is hardly surprising that this song, with its outright and sometimes outrageous contempt for authority, was hailed by the denizens of the burgeoning counter culture as a crucial text in the ‘revolution of the mind’ that they were trying to create, although perhaps many of them misunderstood its message. In reality the singer accepts that the ‘thought dream’ that such a revolution could really occur is, in current circumstances, impossible. The main function of blues music is not merely to complain about ‘bad times’ or the oppression of society. Blues singers generally accept that things are highly unlikely to change but their songs are intended to provide some hope and some consolation. In this extraordinary marriage of allusive poetry, libertarian philosophy and colloquial asides, Bob Dylan offers us words that we can use not so much to change the world but to help bring about a process of awareness within ourselves that may ultimately lead to spiritual transformation and an awareness of the real sanctity and preciousness of ‘life and life only’.
STILL ON THE ROAD – ALL DYLAN’S GIGS
THE CAMBRIDGE BOB DYLAN SOCIETY
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