5 June, 2017
Nobel Lecture
When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to
wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to
reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to
articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way,
but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.
If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I’d have to
start with Buddy Holly. Buddy died when I was about eighteen and he was
twenty-two. From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin. I felt
related, like he was an older brother. I even thought I resembled him.
Buddy played the music that I loved – the music I grew up on: country
western, rock ‘n’ roll, and rhythm and blues. Three separate strands of
music that he intertwined and infused into one genre. One brand. And
Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative
verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the
archetype. Everything I wasn’t and wanted to be. I saw him only but
once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a
hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn’t disappointed.
He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was
only six feet away. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands,
the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the eyes behind the
glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit.
Everything about him. He looked older than twenty-two. Something about
him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction. Then, out of the
blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me right straight dead
in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I didn’t know what.
And it gave me the chills.
I think it was a day or two after that that his plane went down. And
somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record
with the song “Cottonfields” on it. And that record changed my life
right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known. It
was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and
all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody
laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.
It was on a label I’d never heard of with a booklet inside with
advertisements for other artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, Jean Ritchie, string bands. I’d
never heard of any of them. But I reckoned if they were on this label
with Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I needed to hear them. I wanted
to know all about it and play that kind of music. I still had a feeling
for the music I’d grown up with, but for right now, I forgot about it.
Didn’t even think about it. For the time being, it was long gone.
I hadn’t left home yet, but I couldn’t wait to. I wanted to learn
this music and meet the people who played it. Eventually, I did leave,
and I did learn to play those songs. They were different than the radio
songs that I’d been listening to all along. They were more vibrant and
truthful to life. With radio songs, a performer might get a hit with a
roll of the dice or a fall of the cards, but that didn’t matter in the
folk world. Everything was a hit. All you had to do was be well versed
and be able to play the melody. Some of these songs were easy, some not.
I had a natural feeling for the ancient ballads and country blues, but
everything else I had to learn from scratch. I was playing for small
crowds, sometimes no more than four or five people in a room or on a
street corner. You had to have a wide repertoire, and you had to know
what to play and when. Some songs were intimate, some you had to shout
to be heard.
By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs
yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in
the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian
ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn
the details.
You know what it’s all about. Takin’ the pistol out and puttin’ it
back in your pocket. Whippin’ your way through traffic, talkin’ in the
dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a
good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you’ve heard
the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic
sink in a boggy creek. And you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the
wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that
played lowly. You’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his
wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen.
I had all the vernacular down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went
over my head – the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries –
and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. I could
make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When I started
writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I
knew, and I used it.
But I had something else as well. I had principles and sensibilities
and an informed view of the world. And I had had that for a while.
Learned it all in grammar school. Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities,
all the rest – typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of
looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to
measure things by. I took all that with me when I started composing
lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my
songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs
unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.
Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way
back in grammar school – I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.
Moby Dick is a fascinating book, a book that’s filled with
scenes of high drama and dramatic dialogue. The book makes demands on
you. The plot is straightforward. The mysterious Captain Ahab – captain
of a ship called the Pequod – an egomaniac with a peg leg pursuing his
nemesis, the great white whale Moby Dick who took his leg. And he
pursues him all the way from the Atlantic around the tip of Africa and
into the Indian Ocean. He pursues the whale around both sides of the
earth. It’s an abstract goal, nothing concrete or definite. He calls
Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment of evil. Ahab’s got a wife
and child back in Nantucket that he reminisces about now and again. You
can anticipate what will happen.
The ship’s crew is made up of men of different races, and any one of
them who sights the whale will be given the reward of a gold coin. A lot
of Zodiac symbols, religious allegory, stereotypes. Ahab encounters
other whaling vessels, presses the captains for details about Moby. Have
they seen him? There’s a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels,
and he predicts Ahab’s doom. Says Moby is the incarnate of a Shaker
god, and that any dealings with him will lead to disaster. He says that
to Captain Ahab. Another ship’s captain – Captain Boomer – he lost an
arm to Moby. But he tolerates that, and he’s happy to have survived. He
can’t accept Ahab’s lust for vengeance.
This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same
experience. A lot of Old Testament, biblical allegory: Gabriel, Rachel,
Jeroboam, Bildah, Elijah. Pagan names as well: Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo,
Fleece, Starbuck, Stubb, Martha’s Vineyard. The Pagans are idol
worshippers. Some worship little wax figures, some wooden figures. Some
worship fire. The Pequod is the name of an Indian tribe.
Moby Dick is a seafaring tale. One of the men, the narrator,
says, “Call me Ishmael.” Somebody asks him where he’s from, and he
says, “It’s not down on any map. True places never are.” Stubb gives no
significance to anything, says everything is predestined. Ishmael’s been
on a sailing ship his entire life. Calls the sailing ships his Harvard
and Yale. He keeps his distance from people.
A typhoon hits the Pequod. Captain Ahab thinks it’s a good omen.
Starbuck thinks it’s a bad omen, considers killing Ahab. As soon as the
storm ends, a crewmember falls from the ship’s mast and drowns,
foreshadowing what’s to come. A Quaker pacifist priest, who is actually a
bloodthirsty businessman, tells Flask, “Some men who receive injuries
are led to God, others are led to bitterness.”
Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible,
Hindu myths, British legends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they’re
all whalers. Greek mythology, the gory business of cutting up a whale.
Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil – good for
coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry. Whale
oil is used to anoint the kings. History of the whale, phrenology,
classical philosophy, pseudo-scientific theories, justification for
discrimination – everything thrown in and none of it hardly rational.
Highbrow, lowbrow, chasing illusion, chasing death, the great white
whale, white as polar bear, white as a white man, the emperor, the
nemesis, the embodiment of evil. The demented captain who actually lost
his leg years ago trying to attack Moby with a knife.
We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below
any way we see fit. Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids,
and sharks and vultures follow the ship. Reading skulls and faces like
you read a book. Here’s a face. I’ll put it in front of you. Read it if
you can.
Tashtego says that he died and was reborn. His extra days are a gift.
He wasn’t saved by Christ, though, he says he was saved by a fellow man
and a non-Christian at that. He parodies the resurrection.
When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the
angry captain snaps back, “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man, I’d strike
the sun if it insulted me.” Ahab, too, is a poet of eloquence. He says,
“The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul
is grooved to run.” Or these lines, “All visible objects are but
pasteboard masks.” Quotable poetic phrases that can’t be beat.
Finally, Ahab spots Moby, and the harpoons come out. Boats are
lowered. Ahab’s harpoon has been baptized in blood. Moby attacks Ahab’s
boat and destroys it. Next day, he sights Moby again. Boats are lowered
again. Moby attacks Ahab’s boat again. On the third day, another boat
goes in. More religious allegory. He has risen. Moby attacks one more
time, ramming the Pequod and sinking it. Ahab gets tangled up in the
harpoon lines and is thrown out of his boat into a watery grave.
Ishmael survives. He’s in the sea floating on a coffin. And that’s
about it. That’s the whole story. That theme and all that it implies
would work its way into more than a few of my songs.
All Quiet on the Western Front was another book that did. All Quiet on the Western Front is
a horror story. This is a book where you lose your childhood, your
faith in a meaningful world, and your concern for individuals. You’re
stuck in a nightmare. Sucked up into a mysterious whirlpool of death and
pain. You’re defending yourself from elimination. You’re being wiped
off the face of the map. Once upon a time you were an innocent youth
with big dreams about being a concert pianist. Once you loved life and
the world, and now you’re shooting it to pieces.
Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. You’re a
cornered animal. You don’t fit anywhere. The falling rain is
monotonous. There’s endless assaults, poison gas, nerve gas, morphine,
burning streams of gasoline, scavenging and scabbing for food,
influenza, typhus, dysentery. Life is breaking down all around you, and
the shells are whistling. This is the lower region of hell. Mud, barbed
wire, rat-filled trenches, rats eating the intestines of dead men,
trenches filled with filth and excrement. Someone shouts, “Hey, you
there. Stand and fight.”
Who knows how long this mess will go on? Warfare has no limits.
You’re being annihilated, and that leg of yours is bleeding too much.
You killed a man yesterday, and you spoke to his corpse. You told him
after this is over, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking after his
family. Who’s profiting here? The leaders and the generals gain fame,
and many others profit financially. But you’re doing the dirty work. One
of your comrades says, “Wait a minute, where are you going?” And you
say, “Leave me alone, I’ll be back in a minute.” Then you walk out into
the woods of death hunting for a piece of sausage. You can’t see how
anybody in civilian life has any kind of purpose at all. All their
worries, all their desires – you can’t comprehend it.
More machine guns rattle, more parts of bodies hanging from wires,
more pieces of arms and legs and skulls where butterflies perch on
teeth, more hideous wounds, pus coming out of every pore, lung wounds,
wounds too big for the body, gas-blowing cadavers, and dead bodies
making retching noises. Death is everywhere. Nothing else is possible.
Someone will kill you and use your dead body for target practice. Boots,
too. They’re your prized possession. But soon they’ll be on somebody
else’s feet.
There’s Froggies coming through the trees. Merciless bastards. Your
shells are running out. “It’s not fair to come at us again so soon,” you
say. One of your companions is laying in the dirt, and you want to take
him to the field hospital. Someone else says, “You might save yourself a
trip.” “What do you mean?” “Turn him over, you’ll see what I mean.”
You wait to hear the news. You don’t understand why the war isn’t
over. The army is so strapped for replacement troops that they’re
drafting young boys who are of little military use, but they’re draftin’
‘em anyway because they’re running out of men. Sickness and humiliation
have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, your
schoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government.
The general with the slowly smoked cigar betrayed you too – turned
you into a thug and a murderer. If you could, you’d put a bullet in his
face. The commander as well. You fantasize that if you had the money,
you’d put up a reward for any man who would take his life by any means
necessary. And if he should lose his life by doing that, then let the
money go to his heirs. The colonel, too, with his caviar and his coffee –
he’s another one. Spends all his time in the officers’ brothel. You’d
like to see him stoned dead too. More Tommies and Johnnies with their
whack fo’ me daddy-o and their whiskey in the jars. You kill twenty of
‘em and twenty more will spring up in their place. It just stinks in
your nostrils.
You’ve come to despise that older generation that sent you out into
this madness, into this torture chamber. All around you, your comrades
are dying. Dying from abdominal wounds, double amputations, shattered
hipbones, and you think, “I’m only twenty years old, but I’m capable of
killing anybody. Even my father if he came at me.”
Yesterday, you tried to save a wounded messenger dog, and somebody
shouted, “Don’t be a fool.” One Froggy is laying gurgling at your feet.
You stuck him with a dagger in his stomach, but the man still lives. You
know you should finish the job, but you can’t. You’re on the real iron
cross, and a Roman soldier’s putting a sponge of vinegar to your lips.
Months pass by. You go home on leave. You can’t communicate with your
father. He said, “You’d be a coward if you don’t enlist.” Your mother,
too, on your way back out the door, she says, “You be careful of those
French girls now.” More madness. You fight for a week or a month, and
you gain ten yards. And then the next month it gets taken back.
All that culture from a thousand years ago, that philosophy, that
wisdom – Plato, Aristotle, Socrates – what happened to it? It should
have prevented this. Your thoughts turn homeward. And once again you’re a
schoolboy walking through the tall poplar trees. It’s a pleasant
memory. More bombs dropping on you from blimps. You got to get it
together now. You can’t even look at anybody for fear of some
miscalculable thing that might happen. The common grave. There are no
other possibilities.
Then you notice the cherry blossoms, and you see that nature is
unaffected by all this. Poplar trees, the red butterflies, the fragile
beauty of flowers, the sun – you see how nature is indifferent to it
all. All the violence and suffering of all mankind. Nature doesn’t even
notice it.
You’re so alone. Then a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head and you’re dead.
You’ve been ruled out, crossed out. You’ve been exterminated. I put this
book down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel
again, and I never did.
Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all
this. It’s called “You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me,” and the lyrics go like
this:
I saw a sign in a window walking up town one day.
Join the army, see the world is what it had to say.
You’ll see exciting places with a jolly crew,
You’ll meet interesting people, and learn to kill them too.
Oh you ain’t talkin’ to me, you ain’t talking to me.
I may be crazy and all that, but I got good sense you see.
You ain’t talkin’ to me, you ain’t talkin’ to me.
Killin’ with a gun don’t sound like fun.
You ain’t talkin’ to me.
The Odyssey is a great book whose themes have worked its way
into the ballads of a lot of songwriters: “Homeward Bound, “Green,
Green Grass of Home,” “Home on the Range,” and my songs as well.
The Odyssey is a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man
trying to get home after fighting in a war. He’s on that long journey
home, and it’s filled with traps and pitfalls. He’s cursed to wander.
He’s always getting carried out to sea, always having close calls. Huge
chunks of boulders rock his boat. He angers people he shouldn’t. There’s
troublemakers in his crew. Treachery. His men are turned into pigs and
then are turned back into younger, more handsome men. He’s always trying
to rescue somebody. He’s a travelin’ man, but he’s making a lot of
stops.
He’s stranded on a desert island. He finds deserted caves, and he
hides in them. He meets giants that say, “I’ll eat you last.” And he
escapes from giants. He’s trying to get back home, but he’s tossed and
turned by the winds. Restless winds, chilly winds, unfriendly winds. He
travels far, and then he gets blown back.
He’s always being warned of things to come. Touching things he’s told
not to. There’s two roads to take, and they’re both bad. Both
hazardous. On one you could drown and on the other you could starve. He
goes into the narrow straits with foaming whirlpools that swallow him.
Meets six-headed monsters with sharp fangs. Thunderbolts strike at him.
Overhanging branches that he makes a leap to reach for to save himself
from a raging river. Goddesses and gods protect him, but some others
want to kill him. He changes identities. He’s exhausted. He falls
asleep, and he’s woken up by the sound of laughter. He tells his story
to strangers. He’s been gone twenty years. He was carried off somewhere
and left there. Drugs have been dropped into his wine. It’s been a hard
road to travel.
In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You
too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed
with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices,
sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have
been so far blown back. And you’ve had close calls as well. You have
angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this
country all around. And you’ve also felt that ill wind, the one that
blows you no good. And that’s still not all of it.
When he gets back home, things aren’t any better. Scoundrels have
moved in and are taking advantage of his wife’s hospitality. And there’s
too many of ‘em. And though he’s greater than them all and the best at
everything – best carpenter, best hunter, best expert on animals, best
seaman – his courage won’t save him, but his trickery will.
All these stragglers will have to pay for desecrating his palace.
He’ll disguise himself as a filthy beggar, and a lowly servant kicks him
down the steps with arrogance and stupidity. The servant’s arrogance
revolts him, but he controls his anger. He’s one against a hundred, but
they’ll all fall, even the strongest. He was nobody. And when it’s all
said and done, when he’s home at last, he sits with his wife, and he
tells her the stories.
So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have
been influenced by these very same themes. And they can mean a lot of
different things. If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I
don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things
into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means.
When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific
theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and
sailing ships and whales into one story, I don’t think he would have
worried about it either – what it all means.
John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of
Shakespeare, wrote these words, “The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts.
Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests.” I don’t know what it
means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound
good.
When Odysseus in The Odyssey visits the famed warrior
Achilles in the underworld – Achilles, who traded a long life full of
peace and contentment for a short one full of honor and glory – tells
Odysseus it was all a mistake. “I just died, that’s all.” There was no
honor. No immortality. And that if he could, he would choose to go back
and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he
is – a king in the land of the dead – that whatever his struggles of
life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place.
That’s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the
living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not
read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the
stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page.
And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way
they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however
people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer,
who says, “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.”
