Is Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ Video one of the most Copied of All Time?

Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was a music-video model– it’s been copied since. Evening Standard/Getty Images

Wanderercalled Beyoncé’s “Formation” the biggest video of perpetuity in 2021. When it comes to the most prominent, very first location can perhaps go to a clip that isn’t even an appropriate music video– and was shot in black & & white 60 years back.

Recently, Margo Price launched a jaunty brand-new single, “Don’t Wake Me Up,” accompanied by a video in which she holds up white cards with bits of lyrics– amongst them, “cow pasture cemetery,” “honky tonk leaking camping tent,” “dive bar,” “insanity”– as the tune plays. It didn’t take a classic-rock historian to see the video as a nod to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the canonical video of the young Bob of 1965 in a London alley holding, and discarding, cards with littles the tune’s lyrics; in the background is poet Allen Ginsberg speaking with off-screen Dylan buddy Bobby Neuwirth.

Not a real video, the scene was the opener of documentarian D.A. Pennebaker’s permeating 1967 movieDo Not Look Backshot throughout Dylan’s U.K. trip of 2 years previously. As Pennebaker later on stated, the idea originated from Dylan himself:”He stated, ‘I’ve got this concept for a movie where I take a lot of sheets of paper and compose lyrics for a tune, and hold them up as the lyrics turn up in the tune and after that I simply toss them away. ‘And I stated,’That’s a wonderful concept.’ We brought along about 50 t-shirt cardboards.”

The video was shot in the street behind the Savoy Hotel in London, and according to Pennebaker(who passed away in 2019 ), a few of the handwritten lyrics were provided by Joan Baez and Donovan, who were both in Dylan’s area(and crosshairs)at the time.

As soon as the MTV period started, the series, fairly primitive as it was, was viewed as a video model and started to motivate knockoffs and homages.” When Margo approached me with the idea, I did a deep dive on groups who had actually done comparable jobs with poster cards or hint cards and was surprised to see the number of there were,” states Hannah Gray Hall, who directed Price’s “Don’t Wake Me Up. “”It’s like keeping a custom going.”

The very first might have been”Misfit,”the 1986 video by the elegant British pop band Curiosity Killed the Cat, which included Andy Warhol dropping white cards throughout a quick cameo.

The list below year, INXS ‘”Mediate”raised the Dylan tribute to another level. Beginning with vocalist Michael Hutchence, all the band members held up and consequently dropped lyric cards in series. “You needed to get the timing right,” INXS’ Andrew Farriss informsWandererof recording beyond Sydney in the band’s home nation of Australia“You needed to ensure the cards landed.” In another salute to the Dylan video, a few of the words on the cards were deliberately misspelled.

In an indication that not whatever was quickly offered on YouTube in 1987 (naturally, YouTube was yet to exist ), Farriss states he wasn’t knowledgeable about the source product at the time.” I’m not exactly sure if it was the director’s concept or Michael’s, however I need to confess that I didn’t even understand Bob had a video like that,”he states.”Maybe a few of the other guys did. All I understand is that it seemed like an excellent concept. I saw [the original] later on and went,’Oh, wow.'”The leisure was so apparent that a person critic at the time kept in mind that “both the filmmaker [Pennebaker] and his subject [Dylan] should assemble the legal representatives,” however that didn’t avoid the tune from winning Video of the Year at the 1988 MTV Music Video Awards, in combination with the band’s buddy clip for” Need You Tonight. “

Ever since, a home market of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” videos has actually risen, each honoring the initial in various methods. Just Like Curiosity Killed the Cat, some approached their remakes as parodies. “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bob,” in 2003, discovered everybody’s preferred satirical hero with a Dylan wig, vest, and alley of his own, a pretend Ginsberg behind him, as Yankovic tweaked Dylan’s modernistic images (“Rise to vote, sir/Do geese see God/Do 9 guys interpret/Nine guys, I nod”).

Despite the fact that “Subterranean Homesick Blues” isn’t among Dylan’s topical tunes, others have actually utilized the setup for demonstration shots of their own. Les Claypool and the Frog Brigade’s “Buzzards of Green Hill” has normally carnivalesque Claypool lyrics, which might be about the dangers of intoxicated driving, for this reason Claypool’s usage of hint cards in the tune’s video.

Previously this year, Kim Gordon renovated the packing-list lyrics of”Bye Bye”into a minimalist anti-Trump demonstration tune, “Bye Bye 25!,”total with a video with Gordon holding cards with the brand-new lyrics(“immigrant,”” hate,””oppression”). Artist Ed Ruscha has a Sonic Youth connection of his own(the band called its tune”Brave Men Run” after among his paintings)and a Dylan one too: In 2012, his provided a lyric-card tribute, honoring buddy and conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner with bits of Weiner’s own words.

Wir sind Helden’s 2005 video”Nur ein Wort”(“Just One Word”) included the now-defunct German pop band in their own street, dancing and cavorting as they flashed their lyric sheets. (Since the tune has to do with motivating a personal individual to reveal themselves–“your silence is your camping tent”– using words in the video made conceptual sense. ) And before he was slaying zombies, Andrew Lincoln was charming Keira Knightley inLove Actuallywith, yep, words on white cards.

When it comes to Price’s video, director Hall states Price’s group approached her about doing something comparable to Dylan, “however they stated to make it my own and do a modern take on it.”Utilizing 77 various poster-board cards for her shoot, Hall believes those lyric bits likewise link to the tune’s style and to Dylan’s own tradition:”Margo and I didn’t discuss it in depth, however to me, it speaks really greatly to our present social environment and individuals being separated in their own methods and not checking out other individuals’s viewpoints. It’s more social commentary than demonstration tune.”

For Farriss, something joins almost 40 years of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” tributes. “It’s basic,” he states. “Just since something’s made complex does not imply it’s always excellent.”

From Wanderer United States.