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"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
Single by Bob Dylan
from the album Bringing It All Back Home
Released	1965
Format	7" single
Recorded	1965
Genre	Folk rock
Length	2:21
Label	Columbia Records
Producer(s)	Tom Wilson
Chart positions
#39 (USA)

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song written by Bob Dylan originally released on the album Bringing It All Back Home in 1965. It was also released as a single in 1965 and it became his first top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hit. It was re-released on numerous other Dylan albums such as Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.

Contents 1 References and allusions 2 Influence 3 Music videos 3.1 Similar videos 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[The song] was, in fact, an extraordinary three-way amalgam of Jack Kerouac, the Guthrie/Pete Seeger song "Taking It Easy" ('mom was in the kitchen preparing to eat/sis was in the pantry looking for some yeast') and the riffed-up rock'n'roll poetry of [Chuck] Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business". [1]

While Dylan was not a member of the original Beat circles of the 1950s, Kerouac's The Subterraneans, a novel published in 1958 about the Beats, has been cited as a possible inspiration for the song's title. [2] [3] Stretching further back, the title alludes to Notes from Underground, a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose works were popular with Beat writers such as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

The song's first line is a reference to the production of LSD and the politics of the era: "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine / I'm on the pavement thinkin' about the Government". The song also depicts some of the growing conflicts between "straight" or "square" (40 hour workers) and the emerging 1960s counterculture. The widespread use of recreational drugs, and turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War were both starting to take hold of the nation, and Dylan's hyperkinetic lyrics were dense with up-to-the-minute allusions to important emerging elements in the 1960s youth culture. The song throws up a number of references to the struggles surrounding the American civil rights movement ("Better stay away from those / That carry around a firehose"). Despite the political nature of the lyrics, the song went on to become the first top 40 hit for Dylan in the United States [4].

Being listed by Rolling Stone magazine as the 332nd "Greatest Song of All Time" [5], "Subterranean Homesick Blues" has influenced many groups and individuals.

• Most famously, the song's lyrics were cited as inspiration by the American Maoist group the Weathermen, (a breakaway from the Students for a Democratic Society); the group took its name from the line "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". [6]

• Alanis Morissette performed this song, as well as Blowin' in the Wind for a Bob Dylan tribute at The UK Hall of Fame in 2005.[7]

• The song was parodied by Simon and Garfunkel in "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Lyndon Johnsoned Into Submission)."^{[citation needed]}

• The song has proven to be popular with other musicians. It has been covered by artists as diverse as Harry Nilsson and the The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• The title of Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is taken in part from the title of Dylan's song, and Robert Wyatt's 1997 "Blues in Bob Minor" uses it as a structural template. [8]

• The houston punk rock band 30 Foot Fall has a song entitled "Subhumanitarian Homewrecked Blues". Aside from the title parody, the two songs have nothing in common.^{[citation needed]}

• In 2003 the rock band Jet named their album Get Born after the lyrics from the last verse ("Ah get born, keep warm / short pants, romance, learn to dance").^{[citation needed]}

• The American stand-up comedian, satirist, and social critic Bill Hicks sometimes used the start of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" as the opening to his act; it can be heard on the bootleg I'm Sorry Folks - Part 1.

• The second album by Californian punk band Strung Out was called "Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues", released in 1996.^{[citation needed]}

• The second episode of Law & Order's premiere season was called "Subterranean Homeboy Blues".[9]

• Influential Memphis indie band the Grifters released a b-side in 1996 titled "Subterranean Death Ride Blues". It was re-recorded with the vocalist's side-project, Those Bastard Souls, as "Subterranean Death Ride Blues, Pt.2".^{[citation needed]}

• The second track of 3rd Wave Ska-Punk band Mustard Plug's album "Evildoers Beware" is titled "Suburban Homesick Blues" .^{[citation needed]}

• An amalgam of musicians, including Jools Holland and Stewart Copeland, performed the song under the name of Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve on an episode of BBC situation comedy The Young Ones, although contractual issues forced its removal when the series was released on DVD.^{[citation needed]}

• In the November 2006 issue of the popular Dutch music magazine OOR, R.E.M.'s singer Michael Stipe admits to having written the lyrics to the bands 1988 single "It's the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel Fine)" in the same (random-sounding) style as this song.

In addition to the song's influence on music, the song was used in what became one of the first "modern" music videos. Although Rolling Stone lists it as the 7th on their list of "100 Top Music Videos" [10], the original "video" was actually the opening segment of D. A. Pennebaker's film, Dont Look Back (a documentary on Bob Dylan's first tour of England in 1965). In the film, Dylan, who came up with the idea, holds up cue cards for the audience, with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The cue cards were written by Dylan himself, Joan Baez, Donovan and others.^[1] While staring at the camera, he flips the cards as the song plays. There are intentional misspellings and puns throughout the video, for instance when the song's lyrics say "eleven dollar bills" the poster says "20 dollars". The original video takes place in an alley behind The Savoy Hotel in London where poet Allen Ginsberg and guitarist Robbie Robertson make a cameo. [11]

In addition to the Savoy Hotel video, two alternate videos were shot: one in a park where Dylan, Robertson and Ginsberg are joined by a fourth man, and another shot on the roof of an unknown building (possibly the Savoy Hotel). A montage of the videos can be seen in the documentary No Direction Home.

The "Subterranean Homesick Blues" music video and its concepts have been popularly imitated by a number of artists. Influenced and imitative videos of note include:

• The 1987 INXS track "Mediate" was likely inspired by the Dylan tune, and its video duplicated the format of the Dylan video, even in its use of apparently deliberate errors.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic did a song on his 2003 album Poodle Hat entitled "Bob". The lyrics are all palindromes, and the video depicts Yankovic dressed as Dylan dropping cue cards with each palindrome. One card shown during the song is not a palindrome, as it reads "Harmonica Solo", similar to INXS' "Sax Solo". Earlier on, he parodied a segment from INXS' "Mediate" video for "UHF." (See Windows Media High Quality or Windows Media Low Quality)
• The 1992 Tim Robbins film Bob Roberts features Robbins in the title role as a right-wing folk singer who uses the same cue-card concept as Dylan for his song "Wall Street Rap". [12]
• The video for "Buzzards of Green Hill" by Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade borrows the card idea from this Bob Dylan video.^{[citation needed]}
• After being fired from his record company, French singer Alain Chamfort made an exact replica of the original video for his song "Les Yeux de Laure".[13]
• Filk performer The great Luke Ski has recorded two Star Wars-themed parodies of "Subterranean Homesick Blues": "Star Wars Trilogy Homesick Blues", about the Original Trilogy, and "Star Wars Prequel Homesick Blues", about the Prequel Trilogy. He also filmed a video for the former, with Ski dressed as Dylan and dropping cue cards as in the "Subterranean" video. For live performances of the songs, Ski reprised the costume from the video and use cue cards appropriate to the song and poking fun at the subject matter (such as a card with the "Prequel" song lyric "Don't forget Jar Jar!" being followed with a similar card stating "Forget Jar Jar", referencing the general fan dislike of Jar Jar Binks)[14].
• The music video was referenced in Richard Curtis' film Love Actually (2003), in the scene where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) tells Juliet (Keira Knightley) that he is in love with her, by holding up cards with messages on them.
• The video for "Misfit" by 1980s UK pop band Curiosity Killed the Cat features Andy Warhol standing motionless in an alleyway, showing and dropping cue cards that are blank, while the band's singer energetically dances to the left of him. Warhol directed the video in New York's Greenwich Village, although the director credit is given to a pseudonym.^{[citation needed]}
• In Lost, Juliet holds up cards and removes them in a video she shows Jack to tell him that Ben is not wanted as a prominent figure in the Others community.^{[citation needed]}
• The Gothic Archies use this same cue card idea for their Scream and Run Away video.^{[citation needed]}
• The Canadian comedy group The Royal Canadian Air Farce had a segment on their TV show called "Bob Dylan News" which parodied this song's music video.^{[citation needed]}
• The Flaming Lips parodied the music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues in a television advertisement for their 2006 release At War with the Mystics. The clip shows singer Wayne Coyne holding cards informing the viewer on the release date of the record.^{[citation needed]}
• Directorial duo Greifer & Krötenbluth shot a promo for Wir sind Helden's "Nur ein Wort" which uses the Pennebaker concept combined with other effects [15].

Cue cards used in Subterranean Homesick Blues Video

• bbc.co.uk
• city-journal.org
• citypaper.net
• dvdverdict.com
• imdb.com (law and order)
• imdb.com (trivia)
• madison.com
• music.com
• rhino.com
• rockonthenet.com
• sundazed.com
• talkaboutabook.com
• uncut.co.uk

• bjorner.com A long list of covers
• bobdylan.com Lyrics and sound clips
• music.aol.com Music Video (windows media video)