The controversy over the new video for Bob Dylan’s song Beyond Here Lies Nothin’, from his album Together Through Life,is starting to poke its way into the media generally. This piece from Dean Goodman of Reuters comments upon it and provides some new information on who knew what, and when: “Another side of Bob Dylan: Kinky domestic violence.”

Bob Dylan is entering the torture-porn comedy arena with a new video from his chart-topping album.

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His Columbia Records label does not know if he has even seen it. The company has carte blanche with his videos, and its main job is “to push the envelope, to try not to be predictable,” said Greg Linn, Columbia’s vice president of marketing.

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Linn said “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” was chosen over other cuts from “Together Through Life,” because it’s a thought-provoking tune that “sums up the whole record.” Romantic musings are prevalent on the album, but there’s also a dark side, and label executives started “vamping” from there in sketching out the video’s concept, he said.

The song could be seen as slightly creepy. “Oh well I love you pretty baby, You’re the only love I’ve ever known,” Dylan sings. “Just as long as you stay with me, The whole world is my throne.” Or it could just be a simple love song.

The creepiness is arguably only there if you fail to figure God or biblical concepts into the song at all. But I already made my own commentary in the previous post. I had also speculated that Dylan might not even have seen the video, and this now appears to be a stronger possibility, based on the remarks of that Columbia marketing guy. It may well be that neither Dylan nor, say, Jeff Rosen, gave personal approval to the video at all, but have simply given a blanket approval to whatever Sony/Columbia wants to do in the marketing department. If so, I can’t imagine that they conceived that something like this would one day come out of the “vamping” of record company executives. It would be gratifying to see some assertiveness in getting the thing pulled, but I’m not holding my breath. Dylan’s very good at ignoring things that he doesn’t consider relevant to him, and if he’s decided that he doesn’t care what the record company does to promote his album, he may well just stick to that.

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