"You Don't Need To Be a Weatherman..." (Lyrics to Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues')

several sources | several authors

[ETL]

"Those who later formed the Weatherman organization produced a paper at the Students for a Democratic Society Convention in Chicago in June of 1969. With a nod to Bob Dylan, the sponsors titled their epistle: 'You Don’t Need A Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Is Blowing.'"
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26243

"Dubbing itself the Weathermen, this new organization took its name from a line in Bob Dylan’s 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'—'you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows'—and within months had set off bombs at the National Guard headquarters and set in motion plans to bomb targets across the country"
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/weatherunderground/film.html

Unless I (and HumanEvents) got the time line wrong, and he wrote the song AFTER the bombings began, this is really weird. Check out the following lyrics from the Dylan tune. It almost seems like he knew in advance what Ayers and company were planning. Yet Dylan claims today he wasn't even in to the radical politics of the sixties and seventies.

Here, from BobDylan.com, are the first four lines from his 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'...

"Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government"

Here's some other interesting lines...

"Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D. A.
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try 'No Doz'
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows"
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/subterranean.html

I report, you decide.

[3AngelaD]

Nostradamus!! Dylan was a prophet! Or...everybody who was around at the time knows this was about dope.

[ETL]

“”Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot”?

[buffyt]

I was in college 1969-1973 and my cousin who is just a bit older than me told me all about the SDS. Now my mother, an Oklahoma Democrat, thinks that cousin is a wierdo. Even my mother has been fooled by the liberal democrat party. When you try to tell her about the Weathermen and SDS and liberals taking over her party she thinks the messenger is nuts. She won’t believe it. Well, I lived it, and it is true, they took over the Democrat party. It is sick and sad.

[3AngelaD]

He disliked women wearing eyeliner.

[don-o]

I report, you decide.

I have decided that this is my nominee for "Lamest Post of the Year"

[ETL]

"liberals"?

Please refer her to my home page:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/

[Riverman94610]

What about the line,”The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handle”?

[Riverman94610]

My guess is that he was referring to white women putting on a “black pose”to be more authentic.
Kind of similiar to the line in Like a Rolling Stone that goes,”You used to be so amused,by Napoleon in rags and the language that he used,go to him now,you can’t refuse,when you ain’t got nothing,you got nothing to lose”
To me,an obvious reference to the white liberal guilt tendencies of the time.

[metesky]

I thought Maggie owned a farm...

[ETL]

You’re probably right. But with the situation at the time and many other artists writing alarmingly anti-American lyrics, it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Never mind.

[facedown]

Sometimes these work and sometimes they don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xIulyVsG8

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues

[ETL]

What about the line, "The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handle"?

Have no idea. Does it have something to do with today's high gas prices? You mean he knew that ahead of time too! :)

[ETL]

Nostradamus!! Dylan was a prophet!

I wasn't claiming he was a fortune teller predicting the future, but rather that he might have been in with the young revolutionaries. There are lots of artists and entertainers today who are still calling for revolution. Maybe he thought he cleverly coded the message and that law enforcement would be too dumb to figure it out.

[Riverman94610]

I think Dylan was thinking more in terms of”monkey wrenching”along the lines of the Earth First clique.

[Betty Jane]

There is a major difference between now and then. Now, the American people will fight back. These revolutionaries had a pass during the 70’s. They’ll try, especially if Obama loses.

[Billthedrill]

I wouldn't put too much credit to it. The Left celebrated Dylan but found he couldn't be used.

But that isn't the first time he's been accused of clairvoyance. He did actually begin performing A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall some time before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Creeped a lot of people out.

There are some people who don't like his voice - the Guardian once called it a "catarrhal death rattle." I sense a certain negativity there...

[ETL]

There is a major difference between now and then. Now, the American people will fight back.

Are you kidding? The state of the country is much worse today. There are more wussies around than ever before -a direct result of "liberal incrementalism".

[Betty Jane]

Maybe some are wimpier, but not everybody. And those are the ones who will not back down to these cretins.

[ETL]

I actually have one of his CDs, but only care for a handful of songs. Yes, his voice on some tunes can curl the varnish off a coffee table.

In his song about boxer 'Hurricane Carter', he has a line: "and to the white folks, he was just a revolutionary bum". I suspect Carter, like many black (and white) celebs today, had ties to some revolutionary orgs.