John Brown is a song which, when sung these days by Bob Dylan in concert, reinforces the already firmly-held belief of many that he is using his set list to comment on current events. It’s easy enough to find these kinds of comments on internet message-boards, or hear them made as you’re filing out of a show, or chatting in a friendly fashion to fellow fans. Many listeners feel that John Brown is an eloquent anti-war song that is perfectly appropos to the current conflict in Iraq, and that Dylan is conscious of this and singing it for that very reason. Indeed, Dylan has featured it in his set lists seventeen times this year (2005); out of a total of about 113 gigs (numbers taken by me from Bill Pagel’s Tour Guide).

This song that Dylan wrote in 1962 (available on the Live at The Gaslight 1962 CD from Starbucks) tells the story of a young man (John Brown) proudly marching off to war expecting to find glory and win medals … only to return many months later “all shot up,” with a disfigured face, and barely able to talk. He tells his mother of his horrible experience on the battlefield, and how he felt like a “puppet in a play.” The song ends with him dropping his medals into his mother’s hand. Many find it to be a devastating anti-war statement. The writer Mike Marqusee has said that in this song Dylan told the story of Ron Kovic (the disabled Vietnam veteran become anti-war activist, portrayed by Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July) seven years before Kovic actually had his experiences. In his 2003 book Chimes of Freedom, he continues:

… in its repugnance at jingoism, glancing references to class, filial rage, and anguished opening to an internationalist vision, the song shows Dylan working to synthesize something new, a contemporary folk music that was emotionally raw and politically uncompromising.

Well, case closed, right? Dylan wrote a powerful anti-war song back in 1962, and his repeated singing of it in recent times can only be targeted at our current allegedly blood-stained leaders.

There are, however, a couple of factual problems with this (although facts are quite pliable things for some minds). Number one: Dylan has said on more than one occasion that he doesn’t write “anti-war” songs. Some old quotes to that effect were even reproduced recently in his tour program. Talking of the song Masters of War, he says:

Every time I sing it, someone writes that it’s an anti-war song. But there’s no anti-war sentiment in that song. I’m not a pacifist. I don’t think I’ve ever been one. If you look closely at the song, it’s about what Eisenhower was saying about the dangers of the military-industrial complex in
this country. I believe strongly in everyone’s right to defend themselves by every means necessary…

Number two: if you look back over the long-term history of when Dylan has performed the song John Brown, it gets a bit harder to make the case that he is reacting to current events by including it in his set list. Trusting the database at the Dylantree, one finds that he sang it a few times in ‘62 and ‘63 (pre-Vietnam war, of-course), and then not again until 1987. From then on, it’s been featured in his set lists each and every year except for 1993 (when U.S. forces under President Clinton were seeing action in Somalia, Bosnia, and in the skies above Iraq), and except for 2003 (the very year that President George W. Bush launched his “illegal war” against Saddam Hussein).

So what’s going on here? Does any of this make sense? Is it just the “man of many faces,” the constantly-changing chameleon that the experts tell us Dylan is, confounding us once again with his contradictions?

Well, I would raise two possibilities. First, that there is perhaps more to this song than just a statement about war. And secondly, that to the extent that the song is reflecting on war, it is making some timeless observations about the nature of conflicts between nations, and about human nature, without saying that war need not or should not ever take place.

As to there being more to the song than just war, Dylan himself has sort-of pointed the way, in his recent book Chronicles. It is in the section where he describes his meetings with the poet and writer Archibald MacLeish, which would have taken place in 1968. MacLeish, or “Archie,” as Bob calls him, says that Dylan’s song John Brown is a favorite of his (interesting, by the way, since it had not been officially recorded by Dylan at that time. I guess Archie had a bootleg collection?) [Addendum 04/13/06: wrong! see note at bottom *]

According to Dylan:

Archie said he liked a song of mine called “John Brown,” a song about a boy that goes off to war. “I don’t find the song to be about this boy at all. It’s really more of a Greek drama, isn’t it? It’s about mothers,” he tells me. “The different kinds of mothers—biological, honorary … all the mothers wrapped into one.” I’d never thought of that, but it sounded right.

Dylan in 1968 likely hadn’t thought much about John Brown in a long time. It was a song he hadn’t released on a record, and hadn’t performed since 1963. And here was this storied and respected poet telling him that this nearly forgotten song of his had something less obvious going on in it, and that “sounded right” to the songwriter.

Like all the reminisences in Chronicles, this one is selected by the author. Of-course, Dylan has been accused by some of “selectively” telling his story in his book, as if any memoir isn’t composed of selected memories (otherwise, they would all begin with stories of scraped knees and end many volumes later with “I am now putting down my pen …”). Dylan doesn’t tell us much about any of innumerable conversations he must have had with everyone from Albert Grossman to his family doctor or real estate agent—or even his wife. This is not a slight on any of those people. He is recalling moments which resonated with him in some way, and which also open a window for his readers to aspects of his art. And far from being a cagey and niggardly piece of writing, Chronicles is, I think, very generous in the windows that it opens. I would suggest that Dylan spends this time recalling the words MacLeish said to him because those words struck a chord with him, and matched the way that Dylan liked to think of his own songs; as living things, and as having a nobility within themselves, and definitely not as polemic.

So, what of this idea that John Brown is about “mothers”? Well, first it should be understood that John Brown is a song with some very clear “parents” of its own. Comparing Dylan’s song with the similar ones that were in his head when he wrote it might shed some light on what it is about this song that made it distinctive, and made it worth Dylan’s while to write.

This idea of a young man going off to war and coming back with his body broken was not a new one. Many people, including Dylan’s Irish friends the Clancys, sang an old song called Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye. The song is sung from the point of view of a “damsel” who spots her former lover on the road, returned from the war:

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg,
Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg
Ye’ll have to put with a bowl out to beg
Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye

They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo
They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo
They’re rolling out the guns again,
But they never will take our sons again
No they never will take our sons again
Johnny I’m swearing to ye

The damsel doesn’t exactly see Johnny as merely a victim of circumstance. There’s no mistaking her anger at him, and her resentment of the fact that he left her to go off to war. Note:

Where are your eyes that were so mild,
When my heart you so beguiled
Why did ye run from me and the child

and:

Where are your legs that used to run,
When you went for to carry a gun
Indeed your dancing days are done

These lines are bitter and mocking. This soldier, who apparently preferred the army to family responsibilities, has not exactly come home to sympathy, hugs or kisses.

Another Irish ballad that concerns boys going off to war—and in this case involves a mother too—is Mrs. McGrath. The similarities here to John Brown are so dramatic that one should read the entire lyric—the better to also appreciate the differences.

Oh, Missis McGrath, the sergeant said,
Would you like to make a soldier out of your son, Ted?
With a scarlet coat, and a three-cocked hat,
Now Missis McGrath, wouldn’t you like that?
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Oh Mrs. McGrath lived by the seashore
For the space of seven long years or more;
Till she saw a big ship sail into the bay,
Here’s my son, Ted, wisha, clear the way!
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Oh, Captain, dear, where have ye been
Have you been in the Meditereen?
Will ye tell me the news of my son, Ted?
Is the poor boy livin’, or is he dead?
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Ah, well up comes Ted without any legs
An in their place he had two wooden pegs,
She kissed him a dozen times or two,
Saying, Holy Moses, ’tisn’t you.
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Oh then were ye drunk, or were ye blind
That ye left your two fine legs behind?
Or was it walkin’ upon the sea
Wore your two fine legs from the knees away?
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Oh, I wasn’t drunk and I wasn’t blind
But I left my two fine legs behind.
For a cannon ball, on the fifth of May,*
Took my two fine legs from the knees away.
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Oh, Teddy, me boy, the old widow cried,
Yer two fine legs were yer mammy’s pride,
Them stumps of a tree wouldn’t do at all,
Why didn’t ye run from the big cannon ball?
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

All foreign wars I do proclaim
Between Don John and the King of Spain
And by herrins I’ll make them rue the time
That they swept the legs from a child of mine.
Wid yer too-ri-aa, fol de diddle aa
Too-ri-oo-ri-oo-ri-aa.

Notice the relationship here. The mother doesn’t encourage the son to war with thoughts of glory. The recruiting sergeant talks it up, but we don’t know what Mrs. McGrath says. The son goes, in any case. The mother is worried about her “poor boy,” is he “livin’, or is he dead?” She kisses him on his return, and yet doesn’t relieve him of blame for his own condition. He’s lost the fine legs she gave him, and there’s a distinct harshness to her lament: “Them stumps of a tree wouldn’t do at all / Why didn’t ye run from the big cannon ball?”

The song ends, similarly to Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, with a more general rejection of the idea of going off to “foreign wars.” Both of these songs come from Ireland, of-course, which was ruled by foreigners for hundreds of years, and where joining the army meant joining the English army, and fighting England’s enemies.

So, having reflected a bit on the relationships implied in those older songs, now let’s consider Dylan’s John Brown. It begins thus:

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore.
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all.
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin.

“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine,
You make me proud to know you hold a gun.
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get,
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home.”

Mom is no bystander or victim here. She grins, and gives her approval to her son based on how good he looks in his uniform, and instructs him to follow his captain’s orders. You can get the idea that the son wasn’t exactly basking in his mother’s approval before this; but now he makes her proud.

And also consider what’s missing, in mom’s exhortations to her son. There’s nothing about defending his country, defending freedom or the innocent—no talk of sacrifice for the sake of his family and loved ones. The goal here is to please her, and to please the captain and those that award the medals (the honorary mothers, as Archie would have it?).

As time passes, she doesn’t worry about her boy, but instead boasts to her neighbors:

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door.
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun,
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war.

When her son gets back, she goes to welcome him with no fear of what she might find. When she finally locates him, he is “all shot up,” and his hand is “all blown off,” (not just a little blown off, you understand). She asks him to tell her “what they done” to make him this way. She cannot conceive of herself being responsible at all. And so it is left to her son to spell it out:

“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home, acting proud.
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes.”

“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’.
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine.”

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink,
That I was just a puppet in a play.
And through the roar and smoke, this string it finally broke,
And a cannon ball blew my eyes away.”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand.
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand.

Well, this is powerful stuff. He reminds his mother that it was she who thought going to war was the “best thing” he could do. In fact, he has no knowledge of a purpose for being there other than doing her bidding. He finds himself “a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’.” He has no hatred for the enemy he is fighting, but rather sees that “his face looked just like” his own. He can empathize with the soldier on the other side who may be fighting for just as specious a purpose. Contrast his recognition of himself in the enemy’s face with his mother’s failure to recognize his face (or voice), in the seventh verse:

He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know,
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face.

We might be being led to wonder how well she ever knew him at all.

The son sees himself as a “puppet in a play;” one of the manipulators of his strings is clearly none other than dear old mom. (On just a literary level, I love the the couplet: “And through the roar and smoke, this string it finally broke, / And a cannon ball blew my eyes away.” There, we’re hearing Bob Dylan, for sure.)

In Dylan’s ballad, it is not the abandoned damsel or mother who delivers the harsh rebuke, but the wounded soldier himself. He calls her to come over to him, not for a hug or a kiss, but to give to her all that she apparently ever wanted from her son. “But as he turned to go, he called his mother close / And he dropped his medals down into her hand.” Devastating? It sure is. As devastating as any case where a mother or parent’s love is conditional to a child living up to some expectation, even if it kills him, or her.

Understanding the “mother” theme that propels the song does not, of-course, take war out of it. The song is certainly about war, and in particular a certain kind of war, or perhaps any war participated in for the wrong reasons. Dylan’s line captures the spirit of it: “a good old-fashioned war.” This concept is reminscent of the spirit that existed amongst many Europeans prior to World War One (the war of which Dylan wrote: “the reason for fighting, I never did get.”). Most scholars seem to agree that there was something of an eagerness for that conflict to begin. A generation stood ready to prove its mettle and garner its medals. That spirit was certainly put paid to in the fields of France amongst the trenches, barbed wire, machine guns and corpses. And the scars left by that war, ironically, led to the unwillingness to confront Hitler when he might have been stopped at a price much less than the one that was paid a few years later, when Hitler had successfully rebuilt the German military, in World War Two. (So may pacifism lead to much greater eventual carnage.)

Thinking of World War One brings to mind another incarnation of the “wounded soldier returning from war” song. This one came after Dylan’s John Brown. In 1971, Eric Bogle wrote And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. The song is sung from the point of view of an Australian soldier wounded at the battle of Gallipoli in 1915 (WWI). This attempt to break the stalemate of the war was disastrous and enormously costly in lives for the Allies. (In another irony of-course, Winston Churchill was heavily responsible for the planning of that campaign, and it damaged his reputation for many years; until Britain turned to him for leadership in repelling the Nazis.)

Sometimes soldiers seem to be nothing more than “puppet(s) in a play,” and not just because their mothers encouraged them to enlist. Throughout history, powerful and usually unaccountable leaders have made the decisions that send millions into war, often for reasons very distant from the concerns of ordinary people. So it has always been, and, although we resist it, so it will always be—at least while the devil still rules the world. It is an important perspective, and one which song provides a way of preserving through generations. (In North Korea even at this moment, over a million conscripted soldiers stand armed and ready to defend a corrupt and murderous regime that keeps its military equipped while literally starving its own people.)

And as alluded to earlier, human beings are given to fighting and war-making for a myriad of reasons, most of them wrong. John Brown’s mother sends him off to fight for medals and for glory; not for the defense of his family or country. There is no glory in killing, or in being killed, in firing the gun at an enemy soldier, or having your body pierced by the bullet from his gun. It is difficult to imagine someone in the contemporary world (the post-Vietnam and Apocalypse Now world) seeing war as anything other than hell … but humans don’t change all that much, and will always be inclined to fall victim to the age-old fallacies. Wars have always been unspeakably horrible, and yet the last one has always been forgotten in time for another one to be started.

As someone said not too long ago, war is always a failure of humanity. Yet, the fact must be faced that humanity is fundamentally flawed, and will fail, and decisions must still be made by human beings about confronting an enemy—and sometimes about confronting that enemy before he can do his worst damage to the innocent. (While people are fond of describing Iraq as Bush’s “war of choice,” it is rarely remembered that Saddam had a choice until the very last day, of leaving Iraq for a third country with his sons, but chose instead to put his own grasp on power above the interests of a people whom he had already led into two cataclysmic wars in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Acknowledging that war is hell, and no place to look for glory, does not therefore negate the understanding that war can sometimes be both necessary and justified. A soldier seeking medals and the approval of his mother will always stare into the emptiness of such a purpose, when faced with the blood, gore and death of the battlefield. On the other hand, a soldier who has volunteered, in an act of knowing sacrifice, to fight for his country, for freedom and for the protection of the innocent, knows that his actions are not pointless, and that the mark he is leaving is one that others have left in the past for his sake. The bravery of such a soldier, and the respect he deserves from those of us he defends, signifies something far more sublime and precious than glory. Glory properly belongs only to God, as someone like the composer of John Brown would appreciate well. But, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

…

John Brown is available on the Starbucks/Gaslight CD, as well as on 1995’s MTV Unplugged album.

…

* NOTE 04/13/2006: I am grateful to Martin S. for e-mailing and correcting me as to the first official release of Dylan’s John Brown. It was actually released on the LP “Broadside Ballads Vol. 1″ (as in Broadside magazine) in 1963, credited to Dylan’s pseudonym “Blind Boy Grunt.” So, it is reasonable to assume that this is how “Archie” had heard it.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• More on President Bush and the troops
• Dark Eyes
• Google search victories