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Ballad of a Thin Man

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"Ballad of a Thin Man"
Song

"Ballad of a Thin Man" is a song written and recorded by Bob Dylan, released on the album Highway 61 Revisited in 1965.

Meaning

A dark and menacing song, "Ballad of a Thin Man" comments on a conventional "Mr. Jones", who walks into a room of intentionally bizarre circus freaks and doesn't "know what's happening".

The "identity" of Mr. Jones has long been in dispute. When asked about it in an interview in 1965, Dylan responded:

"He's a pinboy. He also wears suspenders. He's a real person. You know him, but not by that name... I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, "That's Mr. Jones." Then I asked this cat, "Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?" And he told me, "He puts his nose on the ground." It's all there, it's a true story."[1]

The opening lines of the song, "You walk into the room, with your pencil in your hand," appear to lend credence to the notion that "Mr. Jones" may have been a journalist. In a mid-1980s interview with Q magazine, Dylan appeared to identify Mr. Jones as Max Jones, a former Melody Maker critic, supporting the theory that "Mr. Jones" was simply one of the many music critics who didn't "get" Dylan's songs, especially the more allegorical ones he wrote in the mid-1960s.[citation needed] Another theory is that the Jones in question was Jeffrey Owen Jones (later a film professor at Rochester Institute of Technology). As an intern for Time Magazine, Jones had interviewed Dylan just a day before the musician's legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.[2]

In Todd Haynes' 2007 surrealist Dylan biopic I'm Not There, actor Bruce Greenwood plays "Keenan Jones", a journalist who doesn't understand the meaning behind the song writing of the Dylan-esque character Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett). In the film, Jones is sent through a hallucinatory nightmare sequence while Stephen Malkmus' cover of "Ballad of a Thin Man" plays in the background. Greenwood also plays Pat Garrett in the Richard Gere segment of the film.

It has also been speculated[by whom?] that the song is about Brian Jones, co-founder and guitarist of The Rolling Stones. Dylan was a friend of Jones and watched his lengthy downfall.

Apart from all of these possible Dylan-specific references, the term "Mr. Jones" is in general broadly understood as an allusion to the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses" – a reference to the prototypical materialistic American family, so at odds with the outlook on life espoused by Dylan and the counterculture of the 1960s.

Releases

It was originally released in 1965 on Highway 61 Revisited, with live versions released on Before the Flood (1974), Bob Dylan at Budokan (1979), Real Live (1984), Hard to Handle (video, 1986), The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1998) and on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (2005). "Ballad of a Thin Man" has been extensively performed live throughout Dylan's career, up to this day.nik;on'p '

References by other artists

Songs by other artists that allude to "Ballad of a Thin Man" include "Yer Blues" from The Beatles' White Album ("I feel so suicidal, just like Dylan's Mr. Jones...")[3] and "Who Is Mr. Jones?" by Momus[4] (which succinctly argues that "Mr. Jones is a man who doesn't know who Mr. Jones is") from his album Little Red Songbook. English rock band The Jam reference the song with the line "Mr Jones got run down" on their song Down In A Tube Station At Midnight.Some believe that the Mr. Jones referred to in the Counting Crows song "Mr. Jones" is a thinly veiled reference to the protagonist of "Ballad of a Thin Man" -- a theory supported by the lyric "I wanna be Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky." Additionally, the Cold War Kids track "We Used to Vacation" includes the lyric "just give a cheque to tax-deductible charity organizations". "Mr. Jones", a song by Talking Heads on their 1988 album Naked, similarly describes a Mr. Jones in the third person, who may be derived from Dylan's character. ("He is not so square" is a lyric in that song.) Country Joe and the Fish included the line "Mr. Jones won't lend me a hand", in their song "Flying High".

Covers

References

  1. ^ Trager, Oliver, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, page 24. Billboard Books, 2004. ISBN 0823079740
  2. ^ Spevak, Jeff, "Bob Dylan muse, RIT professor dies at 63", Democrat and Chronicle (Retrieved November 13, 2007).
  3. ^ The Beatles, Lyrics of Yer Blue Thebeatles.com - Retrieved: July 3, 2007.
  4. ^ imomus [1] - Retrieved: November 24, 2007.
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