![]() ![]() It was the site of some of the infamous civil rights protests and violence that was happening around the time Blonde on Blonde was recorded. Mobile is a city in Alabama, one of the more racially segregated states in the country. The song has more characters than some movies.ĭylan probably chose the two contrasting city names, Mobile and Memphis, not only because the names sound good together, but also because of the contrasting history of the two towns. Like many songs on Highway 61 Revisited, the song features a host of proper nouns and characters – the Rag-man, Mama, Shakespeare, French Girl, Mona, Railroad Men, Grandpa, The Senator, The Preacher, The Rain-man, Ruthie, The Debutante, and Neon Madman. Then I whispered, “Not even you can hide.īring to mind Ballad of a Thin Man, another Beat-inspired lyric. The linesīut he cursed me when I proved it to him, A phrase such as “neon madmen” could have been pulled right out of an Allen Ginsberg poem. The influence of the Beat poets is obvious. The style of the lyrics definitely hearkens back to Desolation Row and Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. First of all, the sound is much more raucous and explosive than anything else on Blonde on Blonde, outside of maybe One of Us Must Know. Stuck Inside is a song that would have fit in well on Highway 61 Revisited. The song tells the tale of a man desperately looking for a way out of “Mobile’s Grand Street” and into some kind of sane world, such as can be found, apparently, in “Memphis”. Once again the theme is one of the outsider trying to escape square society. In performance, Dylan often swaps the order of several verses (often the third through the fifth). However, the verses are only connected by theme, not by any sense of linear storytelling. The lyrics clearly tell a story of some sort, a tale of loneliness, isolation, longing, desperation, and escape. Stuck Inside is another one of Dylan’s non-narrative narrative songs. ![]()
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