Dylan's Best Song from his Worst Album

There is this terrible thing about Bob Dylan — and, if you're still able to escape, then it's you I am talking to:

It's the slipperiest slope, listening to Dylan. You soon hit a patch, slip, fall, and then you know: you're just another Dylan tragic, hooked, damn well hooked, on this wily troubadour's tunes.

And here, in Brownsville girl, just as we did with Tangled Up in Blue, in Subterranean Homesick Blues, in Lily, rosemary, and the jack of hearts, in Rolling Stone, Tambourine Man, we find ourselves hung up again, reeled in, filleted.

Brownsville girl is a Bob Dylan song that has been described as:

his best song from his worst album.

It is 11 minutes long. it meanders, it drifts. But ultimately: it stuns.

You have the distinct feeling of having been hit on the side of the head with a hockey stick, Warren. Death is quite romantic.

There are particular lines within the lyrics that one person after another has flagged as bearing a particularly strong resonance. It echoes about in people's very souls. Kind of thing.

And yet. Here we go.

Always the victim. In verse 13 Dylan makes this plea:

[Verse 13]
...
If there's an original idea out there I could do with it right now.

BOOM!

Lemme repeat that — after 12 incredible verses, and many amazing lyrical images and ideas — that's just within this song alone — and with many more verses and some amazing lyrical inventions ahead of him — just within this song alone — this utter utter punk Dylan utters:

If there’s an original idea out there I could do with it right now.

Wow!

And yet... it's kind of plausible isn't it? It's not a false modesty. He's never pretended to find it easy, not once in fifty years, has he?

Some of the best lyrics

This is a small sample of some of the best lyrics in Brownsville girl, drained of all context, and without the complex tensions built into the melody, chords and delivery of the song. Listen first to the song itself in a suitable listening environment, perhaps while driving all night through Texas, with the song blasting on the car’s stereo, and while thinking, always thinking, about that girl you still love.

[Verse 8]
... you can tell she was so broken-hearted
She said, "Even the swap meets
Around here are getting pretty corrupt."

For a lot of people, this is the most memorable line in the song:

[Verse 11]
I didn’t know whether to duck or to run, so I ran

Here’s one of those fauxpologies/justification you can pick up and reuse in your own defense, any ol’ time —

[Verse 13]
Now I've always been the kind of person
That doesn't like to trespass but sometimes
You just find yourself over the line

and the previously mentioned....

[Verse 13]
... If there’s an original idea out there I could do with it right now.

And with this line he inhabits a character completely …

[Verse 13]
... You know, I feel pretty good
But that ain't sayin' much. I could feel a whole lot
Better

There’s a line earlier in the song, listen for what the character Ruby says —

Ruby was in the backyard hanging clothes, she had her red hair tied back. She saw us come rolling up in a trail of dust
She said, “Henry ain’t here but you can come on in, he’ll be back in a little while”

…and the delivery has this fantastic impersonation — I do not know what it really means but I’ll tells you this: I’m pretty sure Henry ain’t gonna be back in a little while. That line alone is enough to put this song into my list of “songs with an unreliable narrator.”

And this — the greatest lyric of all in my estimation —

[Verse 15]
The only thing we knew for sure about
Henry Porter is that his name wasn't Henry
Porter

This could be the first line of a novel, a short story, a song, a newspaper article for a wanted criminal, an op-ed about a conman, the biography of an enigmatic folk singer, the eulogy for a mysterious stranger —

It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a puzzle inside a paradox inside a conundrum inside a cryptogram inside an enigma.

I am strongly of the opinion that "Henry Porter" here is a reference to the writer "O. Henry" — born "William Sidney Porter", later changed to "William Sydney Porter" — who (amongst other things)(/henry-porter) wrote stories under pen names including "O. Henry". The song visits many locations connected to William Porter — San Antonio — Texas and features scenes and situations reminiscent of O. Henry's stories.

Strange how people who suffer together
Have stronger connections than people who
Are most content

You always said people don't do what they
Believe in, they just do what's most convenient
Then they repent

This is reminiscent of a bunch of different quotes, aphorisms and philosophies.

Particularly the military aphorism made popular by Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

It's better to ask forgiveness than permission

External Sources or References

• Spotify: Brownsville girl
• Quote Investigator: It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission
• A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma -- Churchill | Library of Congress

See also

• Henry Porter
• Come Back, All Is Forgiven