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Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window…
was released as a standalone single in December 1965. In terms of its musical construction and the biting tone of its lyrics, it is very much a follow up to Like a Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street, both of which had charted respectably. Can You Please, however, was only a very minor hit. This is not surprising, as it is a quirkily uncommercial song with a rather convoluted chorus which can hardly be called ‘catchy’. Dylan made several attempts at recording it during the Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde sessions. The released version featured his current touring band, consisting of four members of what would later become The Band, with Paul Griffin on additional piano and Bobby Gregg on drums. The recording confirms Dylan’s immersion in and experimentation with a bluesy rock sound. The music has a slightly chaotic and ‘jumpy’ feel to it (which ties in with the continually disarming lyrics) that fascinated Jimi Hendrix, who played it live in a number of his shows. It would certainly never have functioned effectively as an acoustic song.
CRAWL OUT YOUR WINDOW….
What really distinguishes Can You Please Crawl its razor sharp lyricism. It three verses are crammed with radically striking imagery that shows the influence of surrealism and symbolist poetry. The narrator seems to be a rather jaundiced figure who takes it upon himself to give advice. The main subject of the song is a manipulative, controlling man who appears to be exercising what could almost be called a demonic power over the person receiving the advice. We may assume that the ‘victim’ is a woman, although this is far from certain. This may be a song in which the narrator is imploring an abused woman to leave her tormentor. Or it may be that the manipulation is on a political, religious or psychological level. Fundamentally the song is an appeal to the oppressed person (or people) to assert themselves. Yet despite its rather dark subject matter, it also has an undercurrent of ironic humour, with Dylan clearly revelling in the song’s highly distinctive use of language.
The song has three repeated choruses. In the ‘official’ lyrics the first line is the title phrase …Can you please crawl out of your window?… But this is actually difficult, even for Dylan, to fit into the rhythmic structure of the line, so he sings …Hey! Come crawl out your window… encouraging her to escape from the clutches of this rather scary figure. The following line has a particularly unusual verbal construction: …Use your arms and legs, they won’t ruin you… He seems to have been participating in some kind of discussion with her, in which she has justified not making her escape for fear of retribution …How can you say he will haunt you?… he asks rhetorically. The use of ‘haunt’ even suggests that he may be a ghost – perhaps a ‘phantom’ from her past – the memory of whom is holding her back. The last line is the rhythmically complex and surprising …You can go back to him any time you want to… Perhaps the narrator is giving her some leeway to make her own choices here, although he seems to be strongly pointing her towards the idea of escape. It may be that the last line is nothing but a sarcastic riposte, acknowledging the fact that she seems inexorably drawn to her manipulator.
The next lines are particularly surreal: …He looks so truthful, is this how he feels/ Trying to peel the moon and expose it… giving the impression of possible megalomania as the man exercises his power even over heavenly bodies. This is followed by the wonderfully evocative …With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel… Dogs, of course, do not generally kneel, so one may assume that the ‘bloodhounds’ are human – perhaps other people he is controlling. This phrase is memorably juxtaposed against the marvellously prosaic phrase ‘businesslike anger’, suggesting that – like a Mafia boss – his feelings will always be sublimated to a devotion to ‘business’. The following line delivers another surreal twist …If he needs a third eye, he just grows it… This is the first real comic intervention. The idea of a ‘third eye’ emanates from Hinduism, in which it represents perception beyond everyday sight. Given that ‘growing an eye’ is obviously impossible, we now get the impression that the man may be some kind of pseudo-religious trickster.
STILL ON THE ROAD – ALL DYLAN’S GIGS
THE CAMBRIDGE BOB DYLAN SOCIETY
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