On a hot, muggy night, in the attic room of an old school administration building, I sit nursing a case of undergraduate angst: what am I doing with my life? Should I drop out? Get a job? Hair grows over the collar of my shirt. In the comer a small AM radio plays softly. I hear a sharp crack and then a drum, organ, electric guitar, harmonica, and the voice of Bob Dylan:
Once upon a time, you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime
Didn’t you?
People’d call. say. “Beware, doll, you ‘re bound to fall ”
My ears perk. Dylan’s voice is, as usual, snarling. But what is this backing? I rush across the room and crank up the volume. Dylan’s voice rides over the sound of the organ.
You’ve gone to the finest school all right. Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it.
Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you’re gonna have to get used to it …
As I’m walking quietly along a country road, a car screeches past and a beer bottle careens toward me, barely misses, and shatters on the street. “Get a haircut!” An arm’s thrust out the window, the middle finger erect. “Asshole!” Voices yell. “Faggot!”
Dylan sings.
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say “do you want to make a deal?”
I walk into a restaurant where a group of five jocks sit in a booth. Silence at first. Stares. Then, in a stage whisper, one of them asks, “Hey. What’s that? A boy or a girl?” Gales of laughter. They slap each other on the back. (High fives weren’t invented yet).
Dylan snarls:
You used to he so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
Go to him now he calls you. you can’t refuse
When you got nothing you got nothing to lose
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a Rolling Stone?
Harmonica wailing into the distance. The Lone Ranger never made such an impression with a single visit. On the record cover Bob Dylan sits holding dark glasses, wearing an open neon-bright shirt and underneath a T-shirt with a motorcycle on it. On Highway 61 Revisited there are no folk or “protest” songs as we had come to expect.
