Music / Bringing It All Back Home

"Well, I wake up in the morning, fold my hands and pray for rain / I got a head full of ideas that are drivin' 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!"

Bringing It All Back Home is the fifth studio album by Bob Dylan, released in 1965. It is generally seen as one of his best works and an important New Sound Album in his catalogue due to Dylan's use of electric guitar which upset Folk Music purists. The song is best remembered for the hits and fan favorites "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Maggie's Farm", "Mr. Tambourine Man", "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue".

Also known in some countries as Subterranean Homesick Blues, after the leadoff track.

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (2:21)
2. "She Belongs to Me" (2:47)
3. "Maggie's Farm" (3:54)
4. "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (2:51)
5. "Outlaw Blues" (3:05)
6. "On the Road Again" (2:35)
7. "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" (6:30)

Side Two

1. "Mr. Tambourine Man" (5:30)
2. "Gates of Eden" (5:40)
3. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" (7:29)
4. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (4:12)

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It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Troping):

• Age-Progression Song: "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
  Get born, keep on, short pants, romance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success, please her, please him, buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift, twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift
• Alliterative Name: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue".
• Anti-Love Song: "She Belongs to Me".
  Bow down to her on Sunday
  Salute her when her birthday comes
• Applied Mathematics: "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is an equation. "Love - 0 / ∞"
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: "Maggie's Farm" was directed at the folk music scene and their purist expectations of Dylan as their spokesman.
  They say sing while you slave
  I just get bored.
• Call-Back: 52 years after loosely parodying Moby-Dick in "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", Dylan discussed it as one of his favorite novels in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Capitalism Is Bad: "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".
  Money doesn't talk; it swears.
• Continuity Nod: "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is a Call-Back to "Bob Dylan's Dream" from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
• Distinct Double Album: While being only one disc even in the vinyl era, the album could still be considered a variation of this trope because the first side is electric and the second side is acoustic.
• Face on the Cover: Dylan is shown sitting in a living room (specifically, the living room of his then-manager Albert Grossman's house in Woodstock, New York; the woman is Grossman's wife Sally).
• Failure Is the Only Option: "Love Minus Zero".
  She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all.
• False Utopia: "Gates of Eden" describes a dream-like environment where everything is perfect, but turns out to be false.
• Fish-Eye Lens: The cover has a bulbous, fish eye effect.
• Henpecked Husband: The man in "She Belongs to Me".
  Bow down to her on Sunday
  Salute her when her birthday comes
• Hilarious Outtakes: The false start to "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", complete with producer Tom Wilson's helpless laughter.
• I'm Okay!: "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".
• Is Nothing Sacred?: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
  Disillusioned words like bullets bark
  As human gods aim for their mark
  Make everything from toy guns that spark
  To flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark
  It’s easy to see without looking too far
  That not much is really sacred
• Lucky Charms Title: "Love - 0 / No Limit". The title is meant to be expressed as a mathematical problem, pronounced "Love minus zero divided by no limit". The quotient, according to Dylan, is "absolutely unlimited love". This title confused some fans, who thought the track was a medley of two songs called "Love Minus Zero" and "No Limit," although it is clearly only one song. Many cover versions list the title as just "Love Minus Zero."
• Mind Screw: The second verse of "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" especially, where what is believed to be a newly discovered America is revealed to be already populated by its crazier twentieth century inhabitants.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: From "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream":
  Well, by this time I was fed up
  At tryin’ to make a stab
  At bringin’ back any help
  For my friends and Captain Arab
• New Sound Album: This album was an important break with Dylan's previous output, because he moved from acoustic folk to electric guitar. (That said, as noted above, only the first side is electric).
• Obsession Song: "She Belongs to Me".
  Bow down to her on Sunday
  Salute her when her birthday comes.
  For Halloween buy her a trumpet
  And for Christmas, give her a drum.
• One-Man Song: "Mr. Tambourine Man".
• The Power of Rock: "Mr. Tambourine Man".
  Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
  I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
  Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
  In the jingle-jangle morning, I come following you.
• Properly Paranoid: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".
  And if my thought-dreams could be seen
  They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
  But it's alright, Ma, it's life and life only.
• Protest Song:
  • "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
  I'm on the pavement thinking about the government
  • "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".
  But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.
• Reaching Between the Lines: From "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream":
  A pay phone was ringing
  It just about blew my mind
  When I picked it up and said hello
  This foot came through the line
• Shout-Out:
  • The cover photo shows Dylan surrounded by such LPs as The Impressions' Keep On Pushing, Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers, Ravi Shankar's India's Master Musician, Lotte Lenya's Sings Berlin Theatre Songs by Kurt Weill and Eric von Schmidt's The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt. Out of shot, but visible in other photos from the same session, is Françoise Hardy's EP J'suis d' accord. Also visible is Dylan's album cover of Another Side of Bob Dylan and the Lord Buckley album The Best of Lord Buckley.
  • "Subterranean Homesick Blues" pays homage to Jack Kerouac's novel The Subterraneans.
  • "On the Road Again" references Napoléon Bonaparte.
  Your mama, she's a hidin' inside the icebox
  Your daddy walks in wearin' Napoleon Bonaparte mask.
  • "Outlaw Blues" name-drops Jesse James and his assassin Robert Ford.
  I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like a Jesse James.
  • "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" references Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick, but refers to him as "Captain Arab".
  • Dylan claims that "Mr. Tambourine Man" was inspired by La Strada, which seems a bit opaque, since the film is about a traveling carnival performer, rather than a street musician. But, the fact that his assistant is a woman who plays a trumpet and a drum suggests that it may have influenced "She Belongs to Me" too.
  • The radical left-wing group the Weathermen was inspired by the following lyric from "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
  You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
  • The band Firehose was inspired by the lyric:
  Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose
  • Jet named their debut album "Get Born" after "Ah get born, keep warm."
  • "Subterranean Homesick Alien" by Radiohead from OK Computer is a reference to "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
  • The Byrds named their album Mr. Tambourine Man after the Dylan song they covered on that same record.
  • Cutting Edge, a 1986 horror fiction anthology edited by Dennis Etchison, had a sectioned titled "Bringing It All Back Home".
  • Beastie Boys rap "he ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm anymore" during "Johnny Ryall" from Paul's Boutique.
  • The album's liner notes, written by Dylan himself, reference Humphrey Bogart, Jayne Mansfield, Sleepy John Estes, Mortimer Snerd (ventriloquist dummy of Edgar Bergen), The Supremes, Allen Ginsberg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Hank Williams, Norman Mailer, Leo Tolstoy, Joe Hill (the folk singer, not the author), Gertrude Stein, and James Dean.
• Something Blues and 12-Bar Blues: "Outlaw Blues".
• Starting a New Life: It can be said that "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" represents a change on Dylan's part^note who may or may not be Baby Blue himself - other speculations point to the political left, Joan Baez, folk singer Paul Clayton (a blue-eyed man with whom Dylan had a nasty We Used to Be Friends breakup) or the folk music audience itself, something which got cemented by Dylan's choice of performing it as his last acoustic song at the infamous Newport Folk Festival of 1965, after having had his electric set met with boos (as you can see and hear in Murray Lerner's film The Other Side of the Mirror). In a sense, it can be directed to himself (to leave the acoustic performer self behind), in order to no longer deal with what the folk and political communities think, say or do.
  Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
  Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
  The vagabond who's rapping at your door
  Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
• A Storm Is Coming: "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
  It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
• Studio Chatter: "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" opens with a take that quickly breaks down as Dylan (or his producer) bursts out laughing and says, "Start again, start again."
• Take That!: "Maggie's Farm" (written long before Margaret Thatcher's time, although the later covers by The Specials and Rage Against the Machine did not overlook the coincidence).
• Trope Maker: This is effectively the first folk-rock album, although it is roughly concurrent with The Byrds' electric cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man" (which also appears on this album in an acoustic version).
• Walking the Earth: "On the Road Again".
  Then you ask why I don't live here?
  Honey, how come you don't move?
• Word Salad Lyrics: Most of the songs. The liner notes also have a similar feel to them.

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"Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue."

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