Flashback Friday: Dylan's She Belongs To Me, Regenerated

Haight-Ashbury Mural, 2008

This week I've been having a blast playing with an A.I. writing assistant called Sudowrite. What follows is a blog post from seven years ago this week about Dylan's "She Belongs To Me." As an addendum I've added Sudowrite's reconfiguration of the lyrics. Or rather, I have used four lines from the first stanza as a seed prompt to see what Sudowrite would generate. At the end of this post you'll find three versions using the same prompts. 

EdNote: It will be awhile before A.I. can outdo Dylan, but the results are still curiously fun.

24 November 2014

As everyone following the current edition of the Never Ending Tour is aware, the playlist is pretty much set in stone, beginning with "Things Have Changed." Most of the songs in the two-part show are of more recent vintage, many from his last studio album Tempest. The second song of the set, "She Belongs To Me," is not. With the exception of his eternal classic "Blowing in the Wind" which has become the kickoff to his encore, it's the only one from the Sixties, with Bob at center stage and Donnie on pedal steel.

"She Belongs To Me" is a song Dylan has now performed 362 times as of Saturday night, and in some ways it seemed a curious selection considering all the scintillating songs of that period. But then, there may be good reasons for its inclusion.

First off, maybe it gives him a chance to play his harp early in the show, though a hundred songs could have given him that chance. So maybe the answer lies elsewhere.

It's a truly intriguing song. When you inhale the lyrics you find it contains a variety of flavors difficult to identify. Perhaps when released on Bringing It All Back Home it got lost between the kicker "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which opens the album and "Maggie's Farm" which produced a deep resonance with a portion of that generation, my generation, when it appeared. In fact, that whole album is so loaded with treasures it's easy to see how a subtler, nuanced song might get lost.

The song's structure is traditional blues where the first line is repeated twice followed by a payoff. The Delta blues classic "Rolling and Tumbling" is an example of such a structure, recorded by a host of performers from Muddy Waters and Cream to Jeff Beck and Fleetwood Mac. (Dylan himself created a whole new set of lyrics for his Modern Times CD, only retaining the first lines, tune and structure.)

"She Belongs To Me" carries this same format, but what a marvelous piece of lyrical craftsmanship. John Hinchey, whose book Like A Complete Unknown analyzes the poetry of Dylan's Sixties music, writes this about the song:

"She Belongs to Me" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" are the other two songs that magnificently manage to escape the limitations of the simplistic myth that informs side one. [of Bringing It All Back Home] In both songs Dylan invokes his muse -- perhaps for no better reason than to flaunt her before the bourgeoisie -- but having invoked her, he finds himself in the presence of someone beyond his reach. Her very inaccessibility seems to activate Dylan's deepest artistic impulses, forcing him to acknowledge -- and provoking him to attempt to overleap -- the limits of his imagination.

"She Belongs To Me" demolishes bohemian sentimentalities from the inside, with a surprising portrait of the muse as unapproachable yet imperious dominatrix.

The song's complexity is part of what makes it compelling. And if you've ever been there, you understand.

SHE BELONGS TO ME

She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees

She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She’s nobody’s child
The Law can’t touch her at all

She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique

Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween give her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
 

* * * 

She Belongs To Me, Regeneration One

She’s got everything she needs

She’s an artist, she don’t look back

She can take the dark out of the nighttime

And paint the daytime black

She’s got everything she needs

She’s got a strong foundation

She can build a bridge to the other side,

Or just use the walkway over the river

She can take a stand or sit on a bench

She’s a woman, she don’t need no man

She’ll do it all by herself,

she don’t need nothing at all from nobody.

Sitting here, I can hear her singing

I can hear her voice in the wind, wild and clear

She’s got everything she needs.

She Belongs To Me, Regeneration Two

She’s got everything she needs

She’s an artist, she don’t look back

She can take the dark out of the nighttime

And paint the daytime black

She can cause commotion

She can put your house out of order

She’s got everything she needs

She knows if she don’t look good

She ain’t going nowhere

She’ll wear high heels just to go shopping

She can shake, shake, shake

It don’t matter to her if it rains or freezes

She’s got a lot of love to give away

And there ain’t no way she can lose

She can give you everything, everything, everything, ooh

And you know that she loves you

And you know that she cares.

She Belongs To Me, Regeneration Three

She’s got everything she needs

She’s an artist, she don’t look back

She can take the dark out of the nighttime

And paint the daytime black

She takes the sorrow out of the morning

And throws it all away

She’s got everything she needs

And if you ask her how she’s doing

She don’t look back that way

She’s got everything she needs

And if you want to leave her

Well, that’s just a mistake

She can take the guilty out of the guilty 

And throw it all away. 

I’m not what I appear to be 

I’m just a poor boy in a rich man’s world. 

Oh, when you ask me what I want in life 

I tell you that I’m not a woman, I’m a man 

Man with a capital “M” 

I want a woman with a capital “W” 

That’s what I want in life 

That’s what I am. 

I think I know who I am 

But you can never tell. 

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