In 1969, Chicago Transit Authority recorded “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” which began
Then in 1983 Bob Dylan recorded “License to Kill” that had the refrain
Both the unnamed “man” in the Chicago song and the unnamed “woman” in the Dylan song are archetypal human beings used to put across a philosophical point. The songwriters just introduce them to put words in their mouths.
It just made an impression on me the first time I heard “License to Kill” how striking it was to find a woman appearing as the archetypal human instead of a man. In 1969 when Chicago made their first album, it was considered normal and unremarkable for a man to be considered the default human, the representative of Everyman. When Dylan used a woman as his spokesperson, I had to listen over and over in amazement and growing delight. It suggested to me how far feminism had succeeded in getting its message across to the American collective psyche in just 14 years.
Now, granted, two songs over 14 years is not much of a statistical sample, but anyway this is the impression of cultural change they made on me.
You may have a point, I’m not sure. Then it makes it all the more striking when Dylan sings of a woman with the extra syllable. Wait, that can’t be right, because there are tons of love songs that use either word freely.
My OP was limited to philosophical songs. Love songs are about specific individuals but in philosophical songs the man or woman represents John Doe or Jane Doe.
The only other example I can think of right now is “The No No Song” written by Hoyt Axton and recorded by Ringo Starr in 1974. Its three stanzas introduce “a lady” from Colombia, “a woman” from Spain, and “a man” from Tennessee-o. So this song is transitional between the other two. “Two out of three ain’t bad.” Although it isn’t a very positive portrayal because these three characters are drug pushers.
Jomo, is the song House of the Rising Sun a philosphical one? Because if it is, then the original version has a spokewoman, and I think it was recorded prior to 1983.
Still, I think in the majority of the philosphical songs, the man is the spokeperson, not the woman.
[quote]
The purpose of a man is to love a woman,
And the purpose of a woman is to love a man,
So come on baby let’s start today, come on baby let’s play
The game of love, love, la la la la la love
pointless hijack–
My friends and I came up with this Led Zeppelin drinking game, where we each chose one of following words–baby, babe, woman, oh yeah, little girl, or oooooooooooh–and take a drink each time Robert Plant says one of them. We were playing it last weekend with the first album, and I, totally forgeting that the second song on that album is “Babe, I’m gonna leave you”, chose the word “babe”. I was trashed less than ten minutes into the album.
Yeah, ThisYearsGirl, especially since the chorus of that song is just one word repeated…
Often have I pondered what a vast world of difference there is between
the Beatles’ languorous sighing “Ah! Girl, girl…”
and Robert Plant a few years later howling out “Woman!!! WOOMM-MM-AANN-NNNN…” in a savage cry of pain.
Covers the whole expressive gamut of rock-‘n’-roll.
Also in the second verse of “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?” the narrator’s encounter IS with a woman, although she’s referred to as a pretty lady: “A pretty lady looked at me and said her diamond watch had
stopped cold dead.”
I was waiting for someone to point that out. This line is obviously pre-women’s lib. A “pretty lady”? With a “diamond watch”? :rolleyes: Yeah, right, in Chicago’s worldview women are merely decorative dolls, being adorned with diamond jewelry by their sugar daddy. Dylan presented Woman as an independent person speaking out with a mind of her own. (BTW, in the Rolling Stone interview that accompanied the release of this album, Infidels, Dylan commented: “Women run the world. They always have.” Huh, Bob???)
Well, yeah, but at least the woman has a watch, and is concerned that it’s not running. The mope of a man in the first verse is clueless. He doesn’t have a watch, and the narrator (presumably also a man) is wearing a watch, but is only good for spouting banal philosophy when asked the time!
My thoughts on that Chicago Transit Authority song.
It’s stupid.
It’s old.
I’m really tired of hearing it.
I really, really wish Burger King would stop playing it.
Hey, I’m a Hawaiian, whaddya expect?
(Aside - I hope that wasn’t a literal little girl Steppenwolf was taking on that magic carpet ride. There are laws against that sort of thing, you know.)
It’s not as if Bob Dylan was the first songwriter or poet to use a woman as a symbol of humankind, and it’s not as if 1983 marked the beginning of a new age.
Heck, look at the most heavily played song in rock history, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” recorded in 1972. It’s a lady who’s seeking enlightenment, not a man.
I never really saw that line as coming from “Everyman”. I always thought of it as an old woman, living by herself–a widow, maybe, or a bereaved mother, or maybe both. She already knows what the rest of the world has yet to figure out–that when all the killing is done, there is nothing but emptyness left over.
Then again, I could be over-reading it. I think it’s incredible that Dylan could write one line that inspires this much discussion, though.
astorian, you’re right! “Stairway to Heaven” is the song I was trying to think of. The verse about “a lady” fits right in with this thread. Then the same lady (or is it a different “a lady”?) reappears in the last verse as she shines bright light. Here she seems to be revealed as a goddesslike figure; she reminds me strongly of the Tarot card #2, The High Priestess.
DoctorJ, in keeping with the goddesslike apparitions in these songs, I am tempted to see the woman in “License to Kill” as the Great Mother archetype, which your suggestions prompt me to think. But Dylan was still going through his Christian phase when he wrote this (he’d quit thumping his Bible by the time of Infidels, but a Christian outlook still informed the background of his work), so maybe the woman is Mary.
I’m also not sure, Jomo, why you insist the woman is an archetype rather than a woman. I mean, what makes a figure in a song (or a poem for that matter) into an archetype for you?
Apropros of nothing, is the person being addressed in “Like a Rolling Stone” a woman?
Bob also sang about the “pretty dancing girl” in “Went to See the Gypsy.” So he has no monopoly on feminism. Far from it.
But I strongly feel that the “woman on my block” in “License to Kill” really is an archetypal Woman. She comes across to me that way, especially because the song begins with “Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do whatever he please” — and then the opposing voice is Woman who injects a note of sanity. Yeah, works for me.
