Ah Graley, what a wonderful and entertaining piece, thank you – I actually laughed out loud at the juxtaposition of Tootsie and the picture from the Masked & Anonymous premiere, that’s hilarious!
I’m honoured that my episode and the conversation with Rebecca (which I loved so much) helped inspire you to write this. And I’m so glad that you keep returning to the topic of burlesque and explorations of gender and queerness, because I love the sensitivity and humour you bring to this subject. I think there’s a book in there…
This might be very close to a point that you already made here, but in the midst of all the drag performance, I can’t help but think of the moment when women entered into male-dominated workspaces as a drag performance. The “power dressing” of 80s suits with strong shoulder pads to seem more imposing and masculine. Like Lady Macbeth “unsexing” herself in order to shed herself of “feminine” emotions and softness and instead become ruthless and cruel, all in subservience to her ambition. What happened to the sweetheart?
Re Pirate Jenny – having been part of a production of Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper back in high school, I want to add that pirate jenny is not actually a character in the play. The song is sung by Polly Peachum at her wedding to Mack the Knife (although I just looked it up, and in some productions it appears later in the opera, sung by the prostitute Jenny, Mack’s lover). So she’s a character played by another character – and is pirate jenny masquerading or fantasising. It all adds another level of performance and performativity!
Speaking of the original video idea of two women who play the same role but are two different women – I guess Dylan finally realised that vision in the Tight Connection to My Heart video, which features two women who are sometimes dressed alike. In the end, the role that both women play is that of Dylan’s sweetheart of course.
This has given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure more thoughts will follow – thank you for always pushing the conversation forward, your writing is so unique.
Wow! Thanks for inspiring this piece in the first place, Laura, and thanks again for such a thorough, perceptive, and generous response to it.
I love that idea of women entering the workplace as being treated like a form of drag performance. The image that immediately popped in my head was the famous poster of Rosie the Riveter. It's like the only way a woman can do a so-called "man's job" is by pretending to be a man. I love how that image has been reclaimed by feminists, but I bet the original designers were coming from an entirely different gender angle.
Thanks for setting me straight on the Brecht/Weill play. You were in a production--how cool! My high school was putting on Bye Bye Birdie and yours was putting on Die Dreigroschenoper--I gather that you were not raised in Baxter, Tennessee! I didn't encounter the play until grad school, and I had forgotten that it was a performance within a performance. But you're absolutely right that this extra level of masquerading only enhances the appeal when compared to "Sweetheart Like You."
Nice catch on the connection to "Tight Connection to My Heart." Your verbal description of the imagery reminds me of the first verse of "Too Late": "There were just two women on the scene at the time / Neither one of 'em saw a thing / Both of 'em were wearing veils." Well, who isn't wearing a veil in Dylan's world? The trick is trying to find a face behind it.
Looking forward to continuing to dig deeper into Dylan with you in the future, Laura! You put on your [whatever they call the helmet with the light on it] and I'll grab my pickaxe.
I made it to the end and along the way accumulated quite a treasure trove of deep research that so characterizes your work, plus a bucket overflowing with ideas. Thanks for being the heavy hitter on any Dylan lineup.
Graley, thanks to you and Laura, I continued to contemplate Sweetheart Like You. And thoughts would pop into mind. What I ended up with is simple-minded, but another way into the general idea of "Dylan singing to himself".
Here are some of the thoughts:
It started this way: It occured to me that a more misogynist formulation would be different: what's any woman doing in Carnegie Hall? In Sweetheart Like You, he perceives this woman as a sweetheart--as someone who is sensitive and vulnerable, perhaps performing songs of yearning, heartbreak, or love, and doing so sweetly. The song fears this sweetheart is going to get crushed in building a career--it implies, Dylan has been there and had to deal with crushing forces.
I think Dylan was hardened by the process of becoming famous. Surrounded by questioners and competitors, fighting his way in, being rejected for how he looked or sounded. Being booed. Trying to protect his creative instincts. Maybe all performers go through this conflict and disillusionment--to make a name for themselves is not just about they wrote or sang a song beautifully or brilliantly. There are times when it is like crawling through cut glass.
Maybe the sweetheart child in Bob did get crushed, at least in the persona singing this song. One could argue he is singing to or about his own softer and naive side. She is a sweetheart; but in the song we learn that he was once called "sweet daddy" long ago, labeled this by a woman who wanted a whole man not just a half. He is reminded now of that and of another lost love. Who is the queen that you have to make disappear? Joan and Sara always seem queenly, but, with regard to "when I was only a child", I zero in on Suze, who was quick to laugh ('you remind me of her when you laugh'). Suze saw what fame was doing to him and that part of him was going him away from her. He had to have solitude--when he is in the darkness, why must she intrude? The man is "half" because he is split between the woman and the alone time he needs to create--a conflict between love and his commitment to finding his way as an artist.
The other ingredient is the place: she doesn't belong in this dump (however, maybe she belongs in a coffee show, singing on small stage, albiet not a large audience, hence not a sustainable way of life). Is the dump a step towards a career or is it a stop on a dead end street for a has-been or never-was? Is it a good relationship or will it go sour--no way to tell by that first kiss. On might accuse Dylan of "mansplaining" or arrogance here. He labels her, assumes she isn't strong enough, he explains how hard it is since he's already been through it, he wants to be the wise man warning her, as he wishes someone had warned him (or that he regrets not being a whole man and therefore not more successful in love), he's become hardened, but he's potentially lost something that he now sees in her. Had he known, would he have built himself a cabin in Utah sooner? What would the man in him do?
The sweetheart may not belong in the dump, but Dylan has lived there, reconciled to it for a long time. He’s now an outcast from any cheerful sweetness. He paints lonely drikers in film noir bars. So in the song maybe he is looking at his sweeter self and realizing what he gave up, or has barely managed to hang on to and only sometimes? He had to do lots of bad things, evil deeds, to get there.
So it's another way the song is singing to himself.
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful response, Peter. This is very much the direction I was headed in the section where I consider Dylan singing to himself (You = I), but you go way deeper down the rabbit hole than I did. I like it! Love all your allusions to other Dylan songs along the way, too.
I don't know a ton about Carl Jung, but someone who did could probably talk about the Anima and Animus as different aspects of the self, which seems compatible with some of your interpretations.
You make a couple New Morning references ("Sign on the Window," "Man in Me"), so it's probably also worth mentioning that there's an explicit "sweetheart" reference on that album. On "Day of the Locusts" he apparently refers to Sara when he sings: "I put down my robe, picked up my diploma / Took hold of my sweetheart , and away we did ride / Straight for the hills, the Black Hills of South Dakota / Sure was glad to get out of there alive." I guess the "dump" here is Princeton University! Of course, I suppose the "sweetheart" could be David Crosby. The honorary doctorate was only a couple years after another sweetheart found herself in another dump--The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
More sweethearts and dumps than you can shake a stick at, Peter!
Wow you stepped through so many doorways and peered through so many curtains with this fascinating essay - I loved how many masks and worlds you were able to uncover and glimpse in the world of one song. And I loved living here inside this world too, thanks so much for reading and including my inner dialogue with Uncle Bob too, what an honour!
I'm star struck! I appreciate you taking the time to read my essay, Lo. I absolutely love your answer song to "Sweetheart Like You," and your essay on the back story is super fascinating. It was fun and illuminating for me to read/listen/watch so many perspectives by women on this underappreciated song and put you all in conversation with each other and with Dylan. But I never imagined I'd be in direct conversation with you myself--thanks, Lo!
I could swear that Dylan mentioned this song in an interview that he was staying in NYC at a fancy hotel, maybe The Plaza or The Ritz, and very late a beautiful woman in bad shape, disheveled, tears in her eyes got into the elevator he was in, didn’t say a word. I feel like there was a mention of obviously a hooker. And Dylan wrote the song for her. It tracks that he would call the place a dump, not worthy of her.
I also feel like it was not in a serious interview mag like Rolling Stone but something like People, where I was surprised to find a Dylan tidbit I’d never read.
That story definitely tracks with "Sweetheart Like You," like you said Ada. I read your comment and thought, "Yeah, I remember that story. Where did he say that?"
I just found it. It's in Chronicles, and he was actually talking about another song, "Dark Eyes": "I was staying at the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street and had come back after midnight, went through the lobby and headed upstairs. As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming toward me in the hallway—pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat—high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart. She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she'd been beaten up and was afraid that she'd get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. 'I'm just dying for a drink,' she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world. Poor wretch, doomed to walk this hallway for a thousand years" (210).
What a great passage! Different "sweetheart," same vibe. Thanks for reading, Ada!
Thanks, Terry! And especially thank you for your book on Infidels. Top notch archival research, and your interview with Mark Robinson was indispensable, too. It seems like such an answerable question: Who played the cleaning woman in the video? Of course, if we knew the concrete answer to that question, I would never have spiraled down this rabbit hole, so I'm kind of glad it remains a mystery!
Yeah, it is curious that there is no name attached to that interesting face. I can come up with all kinds of theories but I’ll just accept Mark Robinson’s explanation while not really believing it.
So funny, the dylan in drag suggestion! I love this song, and to your bit about it coming from a woman: it has personally been a hit for me at karaoke 😎
Ah Graley, what a wonderful and entertaining piece, thank you – I actually laughed out loud at the juxtaposition of Tootsie and the picture from the Masked & Anonymous premiere, that’s hilarious!
I’m honoured that my episode and the conversation with Rebecca (which I loved so much) helped inspire you to write this. And I’m so glad that you keep returning to the topic of burlesque and explorations of gender and queerness, because I love the sensitivity and humour you bring to this subject. I think there’s a book in there…
This might be very close to a point that you already made here, but in the midst of all the drag performance, I can’t help but think of the moment when women entered into male-dominated workspaces as a drag performance. The “power dressing” of 80s suits with strong shoulder pads to seem more imposing and masculine. Like Lady Macbeth “unsexing” herself in order to shed herself of “feminine” emotions and softness and instead become ruthless and cruel, all in subservience to her ambition. What happened to the sweetheart?
Re Pirate Jenny – having been part of a production of Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper back in high school, I want to add that pirate jenny is not actually a character in the play. The song is sung by Polly Peachum at her wedding to Mack the Knife (although I just looked it up, and in some productions it appears later in the opera, sung by the prostitute Jenny, Mack’s lover). So she’s a character played by another character – and is pirate jenny masquerading or fantasising. It all adds another level of performance and performativity!
Speaking of the original video idea of two women who play the same role but are two different women – I guess Dylan finally realised that vision in the Tight Connection to My Heart video, which features two women who are sometimes dressed alike. In the end, the role that both women play is that of Dylan’s sweetheart of course.
This has given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure more thoughts will follow – thank you for always pushing the conversation forward, your writing is so unique.
Wow! Thanks for inspiring this piece in the first place, Laura, and thanks again for such a thorough, perceptive, and generous response to it.
I love that idea of women entering the workplace as being treated like a form of drag performance. The image that immediately popped in my head was the famous poster of Rosie the Riveter. It's like the only way a woman can do a so-called "man's job" is by pretending to be a man. I love how that image has been reclaimed by feminists, but I bet the original designers were coming from an entirely different gender angle.
Thanks for setting me straight on the Brecht/Weill play. You were in a production--how cool! My high school was putting on Bye Bye Birdie and yours was putting on Die Dreigroschenoper--I gather that you were not raised in Baxter, Tennessee! I didn't encounter the play until grad school, and I had forgotten that it was a performance within a performance. But you're absolutely right that this extra level of masquerading only enhances the appeal when compared to "Sweetheart Like You."
Nice catch on the connection to "Tight Connection to My Heart." Your verbal description of the imagery reminds me of the first verse of "Too Late": "There were just two women on the scene at the time / Neither one of 'em saw a thing / Both of 'em were wearing veils." Well, who isn't wearing a veil in Dylan's world? The trick is trying to find a face behind it.
Looking forward to continuing to dig deeper into Dylan with you in the future, Laura! You put on your [whatever they call the helmet with the light on it] and I'll grab my pickaxe.
I made it to the end and along the way accumulated quite a treasure trove of deep research that so characterizes your work, plus a bucket overflowing with ideas. Thanks for being the heavy hitter on any Dylan lineup.
I’m going to lock myself in a room, read this like ten times, and then get back to you🤯
Golly. Well, she couldn't have been Dylan because, first, she doesn't have a mustache and beard, and second, her eyes are brown.
Graley, thanks to you and Laura, I continued to contemplate Sweetheart Like You. And thoughts would pop into mind. What I ended up with is simple-minded, but another way into the general idea of "Dylan singing to himself".
Here are some of the thoughts:
It started this way: It occured to me that a more misogynist formulation would be different: what's any woman doing in Carnegie Hall? In Sweetheart Like You, he perceives this woman as a sweetheart--as someone who is sensitive and vulnerable, perhaps performing songs of yearning, heartbreak, or love, and doing so sweetly. The song fears this sweetheart is going to get crushed in building a career--it implies, Dylan has been there and had to deal with crushing forces.
I think Dylan was hardened by the process of becoming famous. Surrounded by questioners and competitors, fighting his way in, being rejected for how he looked or sounded. Being booed. Trying to protect his creative instincts. Maybe all performers go through this conflict and disillusionment--to make a name for themselves is not just about they wrote or sang a song beautifully or brilliantly. There are times when it is like crawling through cut glass.
Maybe the sweetheart child in Bob did get crushed, at least in the persona singing this song. One could argue he is singing to or about his own softer and naive side. She is a sweetheart; but in the song we learn that he was once called "sweet daddy" long ago, labeled this by a woman who wanted a whole man not just a half. He is reminded now of that and of another lost love. Who is the queen that you have to make disappear? Joan and Sara always seem queenly, but, with regard to "when I was only a child", I zero in on Suze, who was quick to laugh ('you remind me of her when you laugh'). Suze saw what fame was doing to him and that part of him was going him away from her. He had to have solitude--when he is in the darkness, why must she intrude? The man is "half" because he is split between the woman and the alone time he needs to create--a conflict between love and his commitment to finding his way as an artist.
The other ingredient is the place: she doesn't belong in this dump (however, maybe she belongs in a coffee show, singing on small stage, albiet not a large audience, hence not a sustainable way of life). Is the dump a step towards a career or is it a stop on a dead end street for a has-been or never-was? Is it a good relationship or will it go sour--no way to tell by that first kiss. On might accuse Dylan of "mansplaining" or arrogance here. He labels her, assumes she isn't strong enough, he explains how hard it is since he's already been through it, he wants to be the wise man warning her, as he wishes someone had warned him (or that he regrets not being a whole man and therefore not more successful in love), he's become hardened, but he's potentially lost something that he now sees in her. Had he known, would he have built himself a cabin in Utah sooner? What would the man in him do?
The sweetheart may not belong in the dump, but Dylan has lived there, reconciled to it for a long time. He’s now an outcast from any cheerful sweetness. He paints lonely drikers in film noir bars. So in the song maybe he is looking at his sweeter self and realizing what he gave up, or has barely managed to hang on to and only sometimes? He had to do lots of bad things, evil deeds, to get there.
So it's another way the song is singing to himself.
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful response, Peter. This is very much the direction I was headed in the section where I consider Dylan singing to himself (You = I), but you go way deeper down the rabbit hole than I did. I like it! Love all your allusions to other Dylan songs along the way, too.
I don't know a ton about Carl Jung, but someone who did could probably talk about the Anima and Animus as different aspects of the self, which seems compatible with some of your interpretations.
You make a couple New Morning references ("Sign on the Window," "Man in Me"), so it's probably also worth mentioning that there's an explicit "sweetheart" reference on that album. On "Day of the Locusts" he apparently refers to Sara when he sings: "I put down my robe, picked up my diploma / Took hold of my sweetheart , and away we did ride / Straight for the hills, the Black Hills of South Dakota / Sure was glad to get out of there alive." I guess the "dump" here is Princeton University! Of course, I suppose the "sweetheart" could be David Crosby. The honorary doctorate was only a couple years after another sweetheart found herself in another dump--The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
More sweethearts and dumps than you can shake a stick at, Peter!
Wow you stepped through so many doorways and peered through so many curtains with this fascinating essay - I loved how many masks and worlds you were able to uncover and glimpse in the world of one song. And I loved living here inside this world too, thanks so much for reading and including my inner dialogue with Uncle Bob too, what an honour!
I'm star struck! I appreciate you taking the time to read my essay, Lo. I absolutely love your answer song to "Sweetheart Like You," and your essay on the back story is super fascinating. It was fun and illuminating for me to read/listen/watch so many perspectives by women on this underappreciated song and put you all in conversation with each other and with Dylan. But I never imagined I'd be in direct conversation with you myself--thanks, Lo!
Can’t wait to read more Graley! I love thinking about everything that comes together to create a song ❤️
I could swear that Dylan mentioned this song in an interview that he was staying in NYC at a fancy hotel, maybe The Plaza or The Ritz, and very late a beautiful woman in bad shape, disheveled, tears in her eyes got into the elevator he was in, didn’t say a word. I feel like there was a mention of obviously a hooker. And Dylan wrote the song for her. It tracks that he would call the place a dump, not worthy of her.
I also feel like it was not in a serious interview mag like Rolling Stone but something like People, where I was surprised to find a Dylan tidbit I’d never read.
That story definitely tracks with "Sweetheart Like You," like you said Ada. I read your comment and thought, "Yeah, I remember that story. Where did he say that?"
I just found it. It's in Chronicles, and he was actually talking about another song, "Dark Eyes": "I was staying at the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street and had come back after midnight, went through the lobby and headed upstairs. As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming toward me in the hallway—pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat—high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart. She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she'd been beaten up and was afraid that she'd get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. 'I'm just dying for a drink,' she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world. Poor wretch, doomed to walk this hallway for a thousand years" (210).
What a great passage! Different "sweetheart," same vibe. Thanks for reading, Ada!
Oh thanks for finding it. Yeah maybe People made it into an article via Chronicles. But I’ve read Chronicles many times, should have remembered.
You sure covered a lot of bases.
Thanks, Terry! And especially thank you for your book on Infidels. Top notch archival research, and your interview with Mark Robinson was indispensable, too. It seems like such an answerable question: Who played the cleaning woman in the video? Of course, if we knew the concrete answer to that question, I would never have spiraled down this rabbit hole, so I'm kind of glad it remains a mystery!
Yeah, it is curious that there is no name attached to that interesting face. I can come up with all kinds of theories but I’ll just accept Mark Robinson’s explanation while not really believing it.
So funny, the dylan in drag suggestion! I love this song, and to your bit about it coming from a woman: it has personally been a hit for me at karaoke 😎
That I would love to see! I had you pegged for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at karaoke :-) Thanks for helping inspire this piece, Rebecca!