Refer to the lyrics at www.bobdylan.com
[email protected] wrote:
I think the most popular interpretation has it being about an "underground"
drug culture running up against the government/police/"straight" society.
Though this could of course be wrong, here are some of the details you
might want to mention if you take this line:
"Johnny's in the basement mixin up the medicine
I'm on the pavement thinkin bout the government"
The "basement" echoes the song's title -- Johnny is a "Subterranean" -- a
member of society's "underground." (Was Dylan influenced by Kerouac's "The
Subterraneans"?) He is mixing up illegal drugs.
Someone here just recently mentioned an old song with similar lyrics which
apparently deals with bootleg alcohol, so the drug idea seems like a pretty
reasonable one.
Meanwhile, the second line could bring to mind the "Homesick Blues" part of
the title -- wandering the streets of the big city. Alternatively, the
singer may have just been knocked down to the pavement by a cop, and is
thinking about the government as a result.
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The man in the trenchcoat with his badge out might be a corrupt police
officer. He wants to get some free "medicine" for his "bad cough." Or he
wants to be "paid off" in cash to keep from arresting the drug dealers.
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"Look out kid, it's something you did
God knows when but you're doing it again"
I think all the "Look out kid" choruses suggest the general irrationality
of the oppressive rule-makers. (See also *Rainy Day Women* for a similar
mixture of drug/persecution imagery -- "They'll stone you when....")
Throughout the song the singer himself is throwing out various "rules for
living," and I imagine he thinks some of them are actually good advice,
while others are just parroting those of the straight society, and some are
simply absurdities mixed in to call into question the whole idea of
"rules."
"Look out kid" would be an example of good advice. "Don't wear sandals/Try
to avoid the scandals" would be "straight" tips on how to "be a success;"
and "Don't wanna be a bum, you better chew gum" would be the sort of
ridiculous advice offered by the advertising slogans we're all bombarded
with.
I think the idea of consumerism running wild is one that Bob has dealt with
repeatedly and which turns up a few times in this song -- "Hard to tell if
anything is gonna sell;" "Try to be a success/Please her, please him, buy
gifts;" "Man with a coonskin cap wants 11 dollar bills and you only got
ten."
(And from the same album, see also *It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding],*
whose title suggests someone who maybe wasn't looking out carefully enough,
and which also features "advertising signs that con...," and suggests the
false nature of society's so-called "rules": "Though the rules of the road
have been lodged/It's people's games you got to dodge;" and, "Though the
masters make the rules, for the wisemen and the fools/I got nothing, Ma, to
live up to")
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Some other points you might want to elaborate on:
"Maggie comes fleet foot, face full of black soot...."
This verse may suggest that police want to arrest the drug sellers and/or
"users" (a word which, I think, has at least two meanings in the song --
people using drugs and people trying to use you; perhaps you could note the
overlap of "above-ground" and "underground" consumerism -- is the man in a
coonskin cap your standard shill or a dealer tormenting a junkie who's
short on cash?)
In any case, the cops have put "plants" in the bed -- microphones to gather
evidence (phones are also tapped), or "planted" evidence, to make a
conviction easier ("Must bust in early May").
Also, Maggie's face full of "black soot" could be seen as more
"subterranean" imagery -- as though she's just crawled up from a coal mine.
Some other possibilities along these lines would be "Better jump down a
manhole, Light yourself a candle" and "Write Braille" (because it may still
be too dark to see down there).
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I think you could sum up the whole conflict between the underground and the
"straight" society with these lines:
"Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift"
Bob has romanticized outlaws in a lot of his work and I think these lines
suggest a possible reason: the members of society who are breaking its
"rules" are doing so because the alternative -- "the day shift" -- is
*deadly* dull. (See also, from the same album, "I got a head full of ideas
driving me insane/ It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor/I
ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more." [The same Maggie?])
An alternative to the day shift may be to "get born" again, to take a
different route than the standard one that Bob outlines in the last verse
of the song. Or to put it in different terms, you may want to "drop out" of
"normal" society -- "better jump down a manhole" -- because, as Bob sings
in "It's Alright, Ma," "He not busy being born is busy dying."
