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Line By Line Bob Dylan ‘Murder Most Foul’ Lyrics Meaning

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Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul Lyrics Meaning

I constantly relish Bob Dylan‘s songs. The catch is I enjoy them as long as they are sung by someone else. This is a joke, do not come at me. At midnight on the 27th of March 2020, Bob Dylan dropped “Murder Most Foul“. This is his first official release since 2017’s Triplicate and since the first individualist track drop since 2012’s Tempest. Let’s uncover the quality meaning behind the lyrics of the epic new song by Bob Dylan ‘Murder Most Foul’, only at Laviasco, which is about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Here, gives his iconic “I contain multitudes” statement.

Introduction: Murder Most Foul Lyrics

With a title for ‘Murder Most Foul’ probably borrowed from Hamlet by Shakespeare, the lyrics of the song by Bob Dylan centers around the occurrences during President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and its arising consequence on contemporary society, giving rise to numerous quotations to music, movies, performers, artists, and idols who would emerge to fame in the years coming after President Kennedy’s demise. He remarked on Twitter that his lovers “might discover [the track] intriguing” and also to “stay safe, stay observant”.

Murder Most Foul Lyrics Meaning

Let’s uncover the meaning behind the lyrics of the epic new song ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan about JFK, exclusively at Laviasco, with the “I contain multitudes” line. The song is 16 minutes and 55 seconds long. It is the lengthiest track in Dylan’s discography, defeating “Highlands” from 1997’s Time Out Of Mind.

[Verse 1]

Let’s dissect the meaning behind the lyrics in the first verse of ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan in parts as follows:

Part I

Bob Dylan starts up his 17-minute eulogy for the lyrics of ‘Murder Most Foul’, for President John F. Kennedy with some startling analysis, using pitiful illusion to predict the awful incidents that would transpire that day. It also comes out that the climatic conditions in Dallas on that day has a better correlation to Kennedy’s infamous assassination. Documents imply that six inches of rain had already fallen when Kennedy reached at the Love Field airport on that murky and dreary morning.

If it had been raining, a plexiglass drip would have been employed on Kennedy’s convertible car for the parade ceremonial overdue that day to safeguard him and the First Lady from the rain (as well as possible armed men). Nevertheless, by the time the ceremony commenced at 11:50 AM, it was a cheerful day, 70°F, directing the President to “complete” the parade without the guarding protrusion and almost guaranteeing the likelihood of assassination, i.e. Murder Most Foul.

Part II

The second line of ‘Murder Most Foul’ is crediting to this different fiasco in American yore, i.e. Pearl Harbor attack. Bob Dylan puts up the controversy for this to be the following “day of infamy”. The phrase “Sacrificial lambs” has the conventional meaning of those who perish for someone else’s wrongdoings. Bob Dylan doesn’t hesitate to dive into the theory of the then Vice President of the USA conspiring against John F. Kennedy to take the office at The White House by “someone here to take your place.”

Despite the evidence that hundreds of people observed JFK’s assassination, no one could truly comprehend what was transpiring, both precisely in the litigation of who actually shot him, and figuratively in the assassination of a perching president, something that appeared to be almost unthinkable at the time. Bob Dylan also infers to Kennedy as “the king” refers to the assassinated king in Hamlet as well, whose ghost cries out: “Murder most foul!”, which has very well inspired the title and the lyrics for ‘Murder Most Foul’.

[Verse 2]

Don’t ask what your country can do for you

John F. Kennedy

Similar to that of the first verse, we are going to subdivide the meaning behind the lyrics of the second verse of ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan as follows:

Part I

Hush Little Baby” is a prominent song for children, the phrase which is used in Mockingbird by Eminem as well, which links into the aforementioned line that begins with “Rub-a-dub-dub”. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is an outstanding track by The Beatles and commemorated their success in the United States. This had fittingly taken place in late 1963, promptly before John F. Kennedy’s unforeseen massacre. Bob Dylan is admittedly a huge fan of this track as he cites the song in the lyrics of his masterpiece, ‘Murder Most Foul’, giving it a different meaning.

Promptly after, Beatle-Fandom had influenced American culture. In changing positions on the stress of prominent lineage from the Kennedy Assassination, The Beatles “held the hand” of residents influenced by the disaster and encouraged them to move on from it. A famous tale gets on that Bob Dylan originally misinterpreted the line “I can’t hide” for “I get high” and hence the citation on the lyrics for “Murder Most Foul”. When he encountered The Beatles, he was startled that they didn’t smoke mar**uana and tete-a-tete submitted them to this narcotic.

Part II

Bob Dylan mentions “Ferry Cross the Mersey” on ‘Murder Most Foul’, which is an outstanding 1964 track by Gerry and the Pacemakers. The Mersey is the central river that streams through Liverpool, the hometown of The Beatles, who are referred to in the previous part of the second verse. Then, Bon Dylan refers to the men famously remembered as “the Three Tramps”, who were photoed by numerous Dallas journals under cop attendant in Dealey Plaza on the day of Kennedy’s assassination. Many traditional conspiracy ideas have been formulated about their personalities and probable share in the assassination.

Bob Dylan then indicates his desire to be at a minor highland near where Kennedy was shot in the lyrics for ‘Murder Most Foul’. It was subsequent to the book repository and many bystanders were near it. Several fraudulent assumptions imply that there was an extra gunman behind the Grassy Knoll. Texas First Lady Nellie Connally prominently let out the terms “Mr. President you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.” to President Kennedy momentarily before he was assassinated. It is frequently believed that these were the final terms Kennedy had eternally heeded.

Part III

The Altamont Free Concert had assembled roughly 300,000 observers in December of 1969 at the Altamont Speedway in California to watch an enrollment of the bands that incorporated the Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones. It was aspired to be a West-coast edition of Woodstock, the well-known music celebration that had evolved as a character of the counter-culture Aquarian objectives of harmony and affection, which is eerily similar to the meaning of the theme and the lyrics for ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan.

Rather, the confusion which flared at the occasion would later appear to exemplify the verge of the integrity of the hippie period. The infamous incidents of the day comprised of the demise of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, Jr. who was murdered by units of the Hells Angels, who were operating as defensive patrols for the show. He was crushed and jabbed until demise near the scene while The Rolling Stones were dabbling with their guitars. Hence, “murder most foul”.

[Verse 3]

We are dissecting the meaning behind the lyrics of the new song ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan in the third verse as follows:

Part I

The identity of the Acid Queen exemplifies the psychedelic narcotic. Bob Dylan is commemorating the moment in the lyrics of ‘Murder Most Foul’, discussing the meaning of the narcotic lineage in the USA and, at a similar juncture, bestowing us the surrealist complexion of Kennedy’s carnage. Kennedy’s skull dangled to the left after he was shot and was supported in his wife Jackie’s lap. The term “leaning to the left” references how Kennedy’s strategies evolved to be increasingly further liberal tardily in his term as President.

The phrase “no quarter” used by Bob Dylan in the lyrics for “Murder Most Foul” means that no forgiveness will be capitalized. Rivals will not be safeguarded or seized as hostages but murdered. JFK has immediately taken to the Parkland Hospital but was of no use. Dylan mentions of mutilating and stealing JFK’s brain and torturing his soul even after his untimely demise. Due to his untimely death, Kennedy could never deliver to his commitments of entering “new frontiers” as he said in his acceptance speech.

[Verse 4]

It is unsure whether Wolfman Jack himself always enunciate in various dialects, but the radio stations where he specialized in his earlier days utilized to lease space to Pentecostal pastors who may have communicated in lingoes. Jack Ruby possessed and regulated the Carousel Club, a nightclub discovered in downtown Dallas and famous among units of the Dallas Police Department. Ruby slaughtered Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s asserted murderer, in the cellar of Dallas police bureau while Oswald was in detention. Again, the murder of the most foul!

“Tom Dooley” is an American folk song about the killing of Laura Foster in 1866 admittedly by her husband Tom Dula, who was sentenced and exterminated, though his remorse was controversial and yet continues to be a topic of assumption and tale. Thus, Bob Dylan delineates a resembling with Foster’s and JFK’s assassination in the lyrics for ‘Murder Most Foul’. He then positions the latter as the absolute phase in a lengthy ancestry of American conspiracies.

[Verse 5]

Love Field is the airport in Dallas where Kennedy docked prior to the ceremony, and later where his departed corpse was put up onto Air Force One. As Lyndon B. Johnson was vowed in as president on the airliner itself, this was technically the final moment Kennedy’s Air Force One landed, and hence it never “got back off the ground”. For Bob Dylan, Kennedy’s killing also exemplifies a swiveling degree in American yore (“the generation of the Antichrist has just begun”). Comprehended in this meaning of the lyrics for ‘Murder Most Foul’, Bob Dylan could be suggesting that America itself “never did get back up off the ground”.

Conclusion: Murder Most Foul Meaning

On the 22nd of November 1963, the obsolete president John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He was barely 46 years old at the moment of his demise, earning him the greenest president to perish, and is deemed one of the goods who departed young. In the final verse, Bob Dylan asks to play all the classics from the 1950s to the 2000s so as to relive history. What do you think is the meaning behind the lyrics of the epic song titled ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan? Let us know in the comments section below.

Read the meaning behind the lyrics of the song ‘Murder Most Foul’ by Bob Dylan on Genius in detail.

Laviasco

Laviasco is an entertainment website run by a single person, the Admin himself, Mr. Suraj Marahatta, from research to blogging to website maintenance. Here, I have been providing the meaning of the lyrics of the songs little by little since 2019. My goal is to provide authentic sources for the facts and stay up-to-date.

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