Bob Dylan wrote an infinite song. Not only because his “Murder Most Foul”, published on March 27, is the longest song of his six decades of career at 16:57 minutes, but because infinity was inscribed in it: The last verse ends with the words “play ‘Murder Most Foul'”.
As soon as you have reached the end of this sparingly instrumented and hypnotizing chant, you are asked to start all over again. There is no way out of this song, the wheel of time has closed.
“Murder Most Foul” is a quote from “Hamlet”, a play that also plays with the circular form. At the very end of Shakespeare’s longest drama, the dying Prince of Denmark asks his friend Horatio to stay alive to tell his story. “The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” can be read as a result of this effort.
Life to tell
With Hamlet’s “tell my story” request, everything starts all over again. If you were actually caught in this cycle, “Hamlet” would probably be dense enough to provide reading material for a lifetime. It is similar with Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul”.
The potentially infinite text emerges like a glass into which America’s entire history has been emptied, especially its musical history: Over 75 songs are mentioned – by musicians such as Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Wanda Jackson, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Burt Bacharach, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Etta James, Marilyn Monroe, Nina Simone, The Eagles, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Nicks, Miles Davis and Woody Guthrie.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination
The starting point of the trip is the murder of John F. Kennedy on a “dark day in Dallas, November ’63”. Dylan approaches America’s traumatic experience from various angles, does not shy away from conspiracy theories, and ultimately even changes into the perspective of the President himself.
“The day they blew out the brains of the king” is the day on which America lost its innocence and the downfall of the country began, which has not been stopped since then. To call Kennedy “king” here refers to the murdered king in “Hamlet”, who mentally describes his own death as “murder most foul”, which in August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translation becomes a less haunting “bashful, outrageous murder” .
As early as November 22, 1963, Dylan knew that this day was setting the course for history, a crossroads like the “Cross Road Blues”, in which a singer named “Bob” sold his soul to the devil. Dylan states: “The age of the Antichrist has only just begun.”
A comment on Coronavirus and Trump?
If the time of evil began in 1963, where do we stand today? Perhaps it was this question that prompted Bob Dylan to release “Murder Most Foul” right now. Garnished with a few personal lines, Dylan put the song online last Friday, thanking his fans for their many years of loyalty and concluding with “Stay safe, stay alert”. Dylan thus expresses the topicality more clearly than he has since his early years as a protest singer.
A curfew gift
Maybe he just wanted to keep his loyal followers busy at home for the time of the coronavirus. Because the global community of dylanologists will remain in voluntary isolation long after the curfew has been lifted to unravel all the puzzles that their master has worked into this song.
Dylan himself finds it hard to stay at home, he had to interrupt his “Never Ending Tour”, which has led him around the world since 1988. His appearances in Japan have been canceled and the American tour from June 4th is in the stars.
So while other musicians use the time of quarantine to stream concerts from the kitchen table, Dylan unexpectedly released the most monumental song of his career. “Murder Most Foul” is not entirely new, it was “recorded a while ago,” as he writes. In the song itself, he says that people have been searching for the reasons for Kennedy’s murder for fifty years, which suggests that it occurred around 2013.
Again and again Shakespeare
“Tempest” was released in 2012, the last album to date with original songs by Dylan, since then there have only been cover versions. So “Murder Most Foul” probably dates from this period, with the title “Tempest” also referring to Shakespeare, namely “The Storm” from 1611.
This is not accidental, as Dylan himself draws parallels to the great English bard in his Nobel Prize speech and claims: “What I tried in the songs is roughly what Shakespeare tried in the theater.” Perhaps these attempts are to be able to record the infinity of all things in a finite text.
The record cover of “Tempest” strangely adorns a figure from the fountain in front of the Vienna Parliament, which the dylanologists are still biting their teeth on. In the new song there are no references to Austria anymore, it is too much about reappraising American history.
Lists for infinity
When “Murder Most Foul” gradually says goodbye to its initially chosen theme, it mysteriously gains more and more energy and reaches a climax when shortly after half the song the legendary DJ Wolfman Jack is asked to play songs.
From now on, each verse begins with the word “play”, and one of the most impressive lists in literary history is created. Only the really big writers manage to generate lists from the infinite world that can stand for themselves and for the universe at the same time. Jorge Luis Borges’ lists in the story “The Aleph” are the unmatched example of this. From now on you can also refer to Dylan.
And then there is still a reference to Vienna, which fits wonderfully with the Beethoven year 2020: “Play Moonlight Sonata in F-sharp”, asks Dylan the DJ. The soundtrack for the setting world would not be complete without Beethoven. That the moonlight sonata is actually in C sharp minor is forgiven, because “c-sharp minor” could not even have rhymed Bob Dylan with the “king on the harp” of the next line.
–
