Bob Dylan / 5:59
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, piano
Mike Bloomfield: guitar
Al Kooper: organ
Paul Griffin (or Frank Owens?): electric piano
Harvey Brooks: bass
Bobby Gregg (or Sam Lay?): drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 2, 1965
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Sound Engineers: Roy Halee and Larry Keyes
The Thin Man (1934) is a comedy-mystery film starring William Powell and Myrna Loy and directed by W. S. Van Dyke. It is based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Thirty years later, the Thin Man movies inspired one of Bob Dylan’s most enigmatic songs. The story concerns a Mr. Jones, apparently very respectable, who is locked in a room where a Dantesque spectacle take place: “You hand in your ticket / And you go watch the geek / Who immediately walks up to you / When he hears you speak / And says, “How does it feel / To be such a freak? / Because something is happening here / But you don’t know what it is / Do you, Mister Jones?”
It is difficult to know to whom or what Bob Dylan is referring. In August 1965, when interviewed by Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston about the identity of Mr. Jones, he gave an explanation as strange as the song itself: “He’s a real person. You know him, but not by that name… I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, ‘That’s Mr. Jones.’ Then I asked this cat, ‘Doesn’t he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?’ And he told me, ‘He puts his nose on the ground.’ It’s all there; it’s a true story.”20
All the explanations giving by Dylan are plausible. “Ballad of a Thin Man” may be an allegory about the awakening consciousness of the baby boomers; that is, the shock of a conformist (“Jones” being the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of “Mr. Everyone”) discovering the burgeoning counterculture. It may also be an implicit reference to homosexuality and oral sex: “Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you / And then he kneels / He crosses himself / And then he clicks his high heels.” In March 1986, Dylan told his audience in Japan, “This is a song I wrote a while back in response to people who ask me questions all the time.” Consequently, it is more likely that it is just an attack on journalists and critics, always ready with a pen in hand, who ask questions all the time: “You walk into the room / With your pencil in your hand / You see somebody naked / And you say, ‘Who is that man?’ / You try so hard / But you don’t understand.” There is been some speculation that Max Jones, a writer at the New Yorker, is targeted. In 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, Jones clumsily interviewed Bob Dylan about the role of the harmonica in modern folk music. This made Dylan angry because he had just converted to electric rock.
Other “Joneses” are also possible, starting with Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones and a friend of Dylan who had begun to decline in 1965, and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), a noted writer of the African-American revolt and close to members of the Beat generation in Greenwich Village. Perhaps even Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, or the folk scene, which did not understand Dylan’s artistic development, is hiding behind the name. Also note that the word Jones is a word used to describe a fixation, typically for a drug such as heroin.
Four takes of “Ballad of a Thin Man” were made on August 2, 1965. The third was selected for the album. Musically, “Ballad of a Thin Man” is the most ambitious song on the album, and also the strangest. Al Kooper describes the track as “musically more sophisticated than anything else on the [Highway 61 Revisited] album.” The harmonic descent would certainly not have displeased John Lennon. Lennon claimed he felt as suicidal as Mr. Jones in his 1968 song “Yer Blues,” which the Beatles recorded for the White Album. For the first time since “Black Crow Blues” on Another Side of Bob Dylan, the songwriter played piano. The backing musicians included Al Kooper on organ, playing in a style recalling intonations so essential to Alan Price or Booker T. Jones (Jones!). A third keyboard part played by Paul Griffin appeared for the second time on one of Dylan’s records (the first was on “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” recorded January 15, 1965, and released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3). It is probably an electric piano, a Wurlitzer or a Hohner Pianet with its characteristic vibrato. Mike Bloomfield provided an accompaniment with finesse and restraint (despite an average guitar tuning). The rhythm part is most likely by Bobby Gregg. He described “Ballad of a Thin Man” as a “nasty song.” The talented bassist was Harvey Brooks, performing thanks to his friend Al Kooper. In 2011 Brooks gave us some insight into how Dylan worked: “Bob would play the tune a couple of times, and as he played we would sketch out the tune for the chord progression, the form and any special parts that related to our instruments. As soon as Bob was ready we had to be ready!”53 Finally, it appears that the fourth take was recorded to be inserted, in part, into the third take. If this is the case, the insert is completely undetectable. Since the concert at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, on August 28, 1965, Bob Dylan has performed this song onstage more than a thousand times. There are several live versions: Before the Flood (1974), At Budokan (1979), Real Live (1984), The Bootleg Series Volume 4 (1998), and The Bootleg Series Volume 7 (2005).