MURDER MOST FOUL

By John Nogowski 
Published May 28, 2024. 

“When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” Some of us
remember that vintage TV commercial, where two
businessmen are retrieving their bags at a luggage
claim. As soon as one of them begins to speak, everyone
stops to listen, hanging on his every word.

Bob Dylan had a moment like that, probably his last,
on March 27, 2020, four long years ago. Somehow it
seems even longer than that.

It was late on a Friday night in March of that year,
a fearful nation hiding inside their homes, wondering
if the plague of COVID might strike them, when
unannounced, Dylan quietly decides to slip out his
first new composition in eight years, a haunting 16:56
elegy for all he – and we – had seen and heard since
that fateful November afternoon in Dallas when
assassins – nobody knows how many – snuffed out the
life of our youthful president. Dylan then issues a
brief statement on Twitter.

“Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude
for all your support and loyalty across the years,”
Dylan tweeted that Friday night. “This is an unreleased
song we recorded a while back that you might find
interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be
with you. Bob Dylan”

Stay safe. Stay observant. May God be with you, an
absolutely unexpected blessing from one of our great
voices of freedom. To some, it was a reminder to all
that we’d been through impossibly awful, ugly moments
before and we could – and would – carry on. To others,
it was Bob Dylan’s conscience speaking up for everyone,
telling all of us we’d be OK.

America was listening. Even at almost 17-minutes
plus – an unspeakable length for radio – “Murder Most
Foul” went to No. 1 on Billboard. A first for a
79-year-old! And also his first No. 1 record after all
those years! Imagine that.

Turning 83 on Thursday, Dylan will resume his 2024
tour in Atlanta on June 21 as part of the Outlaw Music
Festival, sharing the stage with Willie Nelson, Robert
Plant (formerly of Led Zeppelin) and Alison Krauss and
will play on through the summer. He’s done 24 shows
this year so far, 76 last year, 82 the year before
that. In all, 3,066 going all the way back to when he
started in the early 60’s, a precocious, whiny-voiced
20-year-old from Minnesota singing about “A Hard Rain’s
Gonna Fall” or “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “The Times Are
A-Changin’.” They certainly were.

To many, he was the voice of that change, speaking
out against war, injustice, racism, the politics of the
era before picking up the beat from The Beatles and
leaving his acoustic anthems behind and creating his
own distinctive, influential brand of poetic rock and
roll in the mid-sixties and was booed for it. “Judas”
one unbeliever cried in an British ballroom.

From there, Dylan ventured into country music, a
brief swipe at middle-of-the-road music, then the
starting confessional “Blood On The Tracks”, a
patriotic “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour and shows and
movies and more shows all the way through now.

Along the way, he won the Nobel Prize for
Literature, an Academy Award for the wry tune “Things
Have Changed,” was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, toured the world, wrote a couple of acclaimed
books, dj’d 100 episodes of a fabulously imaginative
radio show (“Theme Time Radio”) for Sirius, created a
brand of whiskey, paintings and iron gates (!), made a
few movies that, at best, were quirky, and whether
you’re a fan or not, Dylan has been an unrelenting,
unstoppable creative force in American popular culture
for, why, half a century now.

And you can still go see him, like I did in
Jacksonville about a month ago. Sure, I admit that even
though I knew the song list, few of his songs were
recognizable from the first few notes, some were
unfamiliar halfway through but that’s Bob. Having
written three books about the guy, followed him for
50-plus years, he’s not trying to please anybody. Never
has.

As he sang on one of his most popular and recent
songs “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” – “Never pandered, never
acted proud, never took of my shoes, threw them into
the crowd.”

Instead, he’s followed his own, often inexplicable
path through the world of popular music, even when it
seemed America wasn’t listening. Which is why, to me,
that moment in March, four years back, was so poignant.
Imagine having the nerve to release a 17-minute song,
your first original material in eight years, those
haunting, elegiac words and hypnotic music echoing from
coast-to-coast…

It was like, well, dammit, Bob Dylan had something
important to say and share. One more time.


John Nogowski is the author of "Bob Dylan: A
Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography:
1961-2022, (3rd edition)" available on 
amazon.com - .co.uk - .de