I.
Bob Dylan is the greatest artist of our lifetime.
II.
But Lee Harvey Oswald did it.
III.
Okay, my second proposition is debatable.
But after I’d stopped practicing law – and abandoned my first choice for my Golden Years, mid-way through Chapter Two of “Blues Harmonica For Dummies” – I’d devoted my free time to the Kennedy assassination. Besides sharpening my analytic powers – and marveling at the stum-bumbling of others – it assured me space at the café. “What are you working on?” someone’d ask. “Who killed Kennedy,” I’d say. They’d leave me alone for days.
Not wanting to bother with – and maybe not having the life expectancy for – the entire 26-volume Warren Commission report, I selected three or four books which detailed a Deep State conspiracy to which my friend Potemkin subscribed. Subscribed, in fact, with such dedication he refused to discuss it with me, because to discuss it was to imply there was something to discuss, which would itself be supportive of the cover-up foisted upon the American people by Warren.
I took the salient points from these books. I took salient, contrary points from three or four which defended the commission.[1] I stacked these points head-to-head, toe-to-toe as if for combat. I blogged my findings for my six or eight readers. Potemkin told me I was either a fool or CIA.[2]
Time passed, Suddenly, without warning or explanation,[3] Dylan released on-line, free, “Murder Most Foul,” a near 17-minute epic, addressing the killing.
My blogs appear to have eluded him.
IV.
Dylan characterizes JFK’s murder as the moment “the soul of (the) nation had been torn away,” “beginning… (its) slow decay.” Now everyone’s entitled to the wisdom of hindsight. But I can’t help pointing out that in the months preceding November 22, 1963, neither Dylan nor any of the folkies he was hanging with in Greenwich Village were strumming or hooting in support of Kennedy’s actions in Cuba or Vietnam or on civil rights. In fact, three weeks after the assassination, receiving an award from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Dylan told the assembled he “saw” in Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he, by the way, specifically fingered as “the man who shot President Kennedy,” “things that I felt in me.”[4]
And as for “decay,” I have to ask from what? A nation where segregation was still the law? In which women’s lib had not – metaphorically – burnt its first bra? Where behaving like any normal, red-blooded gay could get you jailed?
I see it as part of a process. The more you believe Kennedy presided over Camelot, the harder to believe a lone looney had slain him. It must have taken Mordred and his legions.
V.
So Dylan 2020 seems to accept, not only that Kennedy represented an American golden age, but that others besides (perhaps, not even including) Oswald knocked him off. Early on, he sings, “(T)hey blew off his head” and “We’ve already got someone here to take your place.” (Emp. Supp.)[5] The patina of conspiracy deepens when he reports that, even though thousands looked on, “no one saw a thing.” implying the public’s perception of Oswald’s sole culpability resulted from sleight-of-hand, misdirection, the “greatest magic trick ever…”
Dylan studs his song with “neutral” signifiers to establish his familiarity with the scene. Here is Elm Street, location of the building from which Oswald was said to have fired, Here is Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was taken. But other references come loaded with menacing associations. The grassy knoll and triple overpass, where some said shooters lay. The three tramps (“three bums”), whom others suspected of participation. The eyebrow-raising removal of Kennedy’s brain is name-checked. So too the even more suspicion-stoking “magic bullet,” blamed for more wounds than many believed possible.
When Dylan switches from a third-person outsider’s recitation of events to Kennedy’s voice (Verse 3), in recognizing himself as “a patsy,” he echos Oswald’s own claim.[6] When Dylan/Kennedy speaks of having been “led into… a trap” and of never having “shot anyone from in front or behind,” he alludes to the conspiracists’ belief in multiple shooters. Then, in a final (Verse 5) nod to the scope and power of their evil web, the murderers reply to the threat of revenge by Kennedy’s brothers, “We’ll get them as well,” an accommodation to those who believe JFK’s killers also killed Robert, maybe Martin Luther King, Jr., even Malcolm X.[7]
Where Dylan’s knowledge comes from is unclear. He sings that he viewed the Zapruder film 33 times – which only means he devoted 33-minutes of the last 56-years to research. Otherwise, he seems to have become informed by the blowings in the zeitgeist’s wind. And it isn’t clear whom he holds responsible. Among the contenders (or, as Terry Malloy, who shows up in the song, would have it “contenduhs”) cited in the literature, aside from the somewhat amorphous Deep State, are Jimmy Hoffa; the Mafia; the CIA; rogue agents within the CIA; pro-Castro Cubans; anti-Castro Cubans; a cabal of prominent New Orleans homosexuals; an alliance between the NKVD and American leftists; and an alliance between an American power elite and extra-terrestrials, who shot Kennedy with an extract made from shellfish toxins.[8][9]
VI.
As a political thinker, Bob Dylan was terrific when it came to blowing winds and hard rains, changing times and ships coming in. (“Aspirational,” Dr. Tony[10] might have called him.) But when it came to specific cases…
Like if you were seriously concerned about “Who Killed Davey Moore?” didn’t the workers who stung the ring rope against which his neck snapped deserve mention?[11]
And while it lacked poetic resonance, it wasn’t your typical “poor white” “pawn” who killed Medgar Evers but a middle class fertilizer salesman.[12]
Even when it came to Hurricane Carter, and George Jackson, Dylan had his doubters, let alone Joey Gallo.[13]
He was more a big picture guy.
VII.
And “Murder Most Foul” is a beautiful, if woeful, one.
It is stately in pace and elegaic in feel. Dylan’s enunciation is clear and his emotions, while muted, sincere. A hero has fallen; much has been lost. The music is solo piano – then strings – then slight, distanced percussion.
At the center is Kennedy’s murder, adorned with religious efflorescence. A “sacrificial lamb” is invoked. A “cross(roads).” A “Trinity (River).” The “Anti-Christ” is ushered in. (“Trump,” said my wife, upon immediate hearing.) Shakespeare is present (not, this time, “in rags”). Nursery rhymes too. And Beethoven, FDR, and Native Americans. Immediately following the crime within the lyrics – and this may be my own, “Bob, you fool” association – as if they were diverting circuses offered the masses, march the Beatles, British Invasion, and Woodstock.[14]
I counted references to half-a-dozen movies, all American, dating to the ‘30s. I noted the names of 22 (19 dead) actors, gangsters, musicians, or singers, also American, also of the 20th century. I counted titles of 40 songs (39 American), rock and pop and blues, country and jazz and R&B, none more recent that the ‘70s, their titles pocked by “Blood” and “Death” and “Tragedy.” “Darkness” and “Twilight” and “Blue.” “Lonesome” and “Devil.” “Sin” and “Cry.”
VIII
“Murder Most Foul” is a musical Roda Tower of Americana, constructed by a guy nearing 79.
As I said, Big Picture.
Maybe trying to get our minds off COVID-19.
Maybe reminding us we all must go sometime.
So ride along on memories.
Poignancy and pleasure.
Regret and regeneration.
Footnotes
[1]. Whatever your conspiracy of choice, you only need one book of counter-argument. Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History is the most magnificent piece of investigative journalism, I have ever read. Until you have, do not twit me.
[2]. I know I am not C.I.A.
[3].There may be some by now, but once I decided to write this, I decided not to read anything by anyone else. So all mistakes here are mine. For the lyrics, I relied on the transcription at genius.com., which breaks the song into five verses. They begin with the lines starting “It was a dark day…”; “Hush, little children…”; “Tommy, can you hear me…”; “‘What new, pussy cat…”; and “Play ‘Please don’t let me…” I’ve accepted those reference points.
[4].Following the outcry his speech touched off, Dylan sent a remarkable poem/letter “Message” to the E.C.L.C., in which he said of Oswald, “I was not speaking of his deed if it was his deed,” thus recognizing at an early date the possibility of others’ involvement. Dylan’s speech, and “message,” can be found at https://www.corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm.
[5].This is a bit weird, since the Constitution mandates who succeeds a slain president, and Kennedy had selected Johnson as his Veep. So unless he was party to his own killing…
[6]. When asked by reporters the evening of shooting if he’d done it, Oswald replied, “No. They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.”
[7].I never heard anyone besides Dylan’s “brothers” group Ted Kennedy’s downfall in here. He is generally believed to have caused Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning on his own.
[8].Potemkin believed the Deep State fostered these other theories in order to discredit the single true theory – which was the one in which he believed.
[9].The only clue I picked up was the reference (Verse 1) to “unpaid debts.” Advocates of Mafia responsibility cite as its motivation the belief that Kennedy had been too hard on them, considering they had delivered Illinois’s electoral votes – and the presidency – to him.
[10].Anthony Faucci, M.D., as referenced by a friend formerly at N.I.H.
[11].Three neurosurgeons determined that to be the cause of death, not the blows of Sugar Ramos.
[12].Not to mentioned that he’d been orphaned at 12, fought with the Marines at Guadalcanal, and been wounded on Tarawa.
[13].The albums which most consider to be Dylan’s best, “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Blonde on Blonde,” and “Blood on the Tracks” contain no songs so narrowly focused.
[14]. This list omits the Newport where Dylan-Went-Electric, which I believe more socially consequential than anything he mentioned.