Maggie’s Farm – Dylan’s Middle Finger to the Folk Scene
Written January 5th, 2025
Fresh from just watching the excellent new movie about Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown,” I suddenly find the man squarely back on my mind. Particularly the theme the movie centered around; that being his ugly divorce from the folk music scene. Times and tastes change with each generation, of course, and we’re accustomed to watching it all unfold in something close to an orderly fashion, but at that particular time in the early 60’s, battle lines were drawn, and relationships ended over Dylan’s simple desire to stretch out as an artist. The Beatles and Stones had made their initial splash, and Dylan clearly felt their gravitational pull.
My own introduction to Dylan is an easy one to recall. Naturally enough it began at a record shop at a local shopping mall, somewhere around 1981, when I walked by a bin of “bargain” cassettes…..old inventory the store was trying to off-load. And there I noticed Dylan’s “The Time They Are-a-Changin.” Now I had never paid any attention to him before and had never bought or listened to any of his records, but I knew that he had influenced John Lennon, my obsession at the time, and had inspired him to drop the adolescent love-song format of “Beatlemania” and encouraged him to express himself artistically, which in itself moved the needle of the coming decade in profound ways. So, the decision was quickly made to throw a few dollars to the wind and see what all the fuss was about.
From very the first song, what met my ears literally blew my mind. This was early Dylan, released in early 1964, not yet twenty-three years old. The album was pure folk music and consisted of just his voice, an acoustic guitar and harmonica. Compared to what I was listening to at the time, it sounded absolutely alien. The songs were incredibly intimate and stripped of all artifice, without a hint of studio gimmickry whatever. The arrangements were so sparse that if the words or vocals didn’t earn attention, the whole thing would have fallen apart. Yet, what I heard contained such lyrical clarity that I sat mesmerized. I had never heard lyrics anything like it before. The album was filled with heartbreaking imagery (The Ballad of Hollis Brown), thoughtful political commentary (Only a Pawn In Their Game), yet also contained beautifully phrased poetry (One Too Many Mornings). The wordplay alone was damn impressive, but even more surprising was the level of old-soul wisdom he gave expression to.
Of course, that comes with a caveat, because I heard “early” Dylan just twenty years after it’s original release, so it didn’t necessary shock my musical expectations, but any young person hearing it today, some 60 plus years later, will surely be dumbfounded. A mountain of sonic and artist innovations have taken place during that time, so listening to a young Dylan singing in the raw, folksy style of his hero, Woody Guthrie, is not likely to find it’s way to anyone’s play list. But if we can manage it, and put ourselves back into that musical era, then we would be as impressed as everyone else had been, because his lyrical depth was revolutionary and pointed to an entirely new paradigm for popular music. Just consider that Dylan had already written two full albums worth of socially aware, politically poignant songs by the time the Beatles had released, “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.” And this is a key factor that many people miss entirely when considering his influence; Dylan was an order of magnitude….or two, beyond any other lyrical songwriter.
Now, in order to lay down the proper context for my somewhat controversial title, I’ll need to step back to explain some background knowledge. First and foremost is that folk music was highly traditional, musically conservative, particularly during the early 60’s, with “standards” being passed down from generation to generation. As in other genres, quality songwriters were few and far between, so performers typically re-interpreted known songs, or the songs written by staff songwriters employed by the record labels and released them as “singles” for radio play with little attention to the album as a whole. Folk music thrived on this format because it had a deep collection of traditional songs that could be updated and recorded by any new artist they chose. Folk legends like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger had written a few popular songs in the 40’s and 50’s, but the songwriting talent pool in Folk was threadbare. Then out of the blue Dylan stepped through the door and turned everything upside down.
We can also pencil in the political time period as the early 60’s found the country, at least its youth, beginning to wakeup and reject the fearmongering conservatism (and racism) of McCarthy’s patriotic dogmatism, and were beginning to embrace a liberal, more inclusive path forward, symbolized by the folk scene of Greenwich Village. There a subculture of young people began to emerge rebelling against the puritanism of Eisenhower’s America their parents adored. Through the growing popularity of folk, with it’s politically charged lyrics for social awareness, a new way forward was coming into focus with an unlikely 22 year old Dylan leading the pack. In fact, the 1963 New Port Festival witnessed Dylan’s maiden appearance there and catapulted him to the front of the line, not as much with general popularity, but in influence, because a surprising number of artists were turning his songs into hits before the general public had ever heard his name.
Dylan’s story begins when he hitchhiked his way to New York in 1961 and quickly impressed the movers and shakers of the folk scene enough that he was signed within the year by the legendary talent scout, John Hammond, and released his first album (1962). But as mentioned, folk music was heavily traditional, so with this initial album, 11 of the 13 songs were folk standards, with only two originals written by Dylan. It would be his next album, “The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan”, that exposed his emerging songwriting talent as it contained 11 originals, including several songs that would become regarded as among his best, and became classics of the 60’s folk scene, such as “Blowin In The Wind”, “Masters of War”, and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
A significant subplot at this point is that folk music had always been aligned with the struggles of the poor and oppressed and often aligned itself with political causes, so when the Civil Rights movement gathered steam in the early 60’s, folk music was there to lyrically frame the struggle and amplify its message. The famous protest folk singer, Pete Seeger, was highly impressed with Dylan early on and quickly became one of his biggest champions. With Dylan’s emerging talent, together with his social and politically charged lyrics, Seeger surely saw his dream of folk music exploding into the main stream to affect social change finally coming to fruition, which in fact it did.
With that growing momentum, together with the political climate heating up across the country, Dylan released his third album, the afore mentioned classic, “The Times They Are a-Changin,” with the perfectly timed title track that spoke directly to a divided nation leading the way, catapulting Dylan unto a national scene. He even sang “Only a Pawn In Their Game” live at Martin Luther King’s “March on Washington” in 1963.
It has been speculated by some Dylan critics that he tailored his political lyrics on this record to seized the moment with commercial motivations in mind, and that may have been a back-of-the-shelf consideration, artists need to eat, after all, but I believe it reflected the influence of his hero, Woody Guthrie, far more. His girlfriend at the time would have also provided some convert influence. Suzy Rotolo was a teenaged daughter of politically active, Socialists parents, and was herself a young activist, having already joined picket lines against Woolworth’s for their discrimination again black Southerners and was even removed from her high school for distributing anti-War pamphlets. Dylan admitted years later that she indeed was a significant influence at that time in his life.
Looking back on it all now it’s easy to see that Dylan was the zeitgeist who inspired the “the 60’s” as we know it today, he was the “dot” marking the beginning of something entirely knew. But that was not an opinion anyone would have likely shared at the time. Let’s face it, if we consider the young Dylan as a “package” being offered up for popular consumption, what did he have going for him? He did not have the looks; he was no Elvis. And his voice? Again, no Elvis. That much was plain to see and hear. So, what was it?
Well clearly it was the strength of the material itself and the lyrical depth pouring out of him. Take two early songs from his second album, such as “Masters of War”, written during the Cuban missile crisis, and another, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, written in a question/answer format between parent and child during the height of the Cold War with its threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over everyone. Here Dylan, at just twenty-one, expressed a deeply poetic warning to the “grown-ups” and the world they were creating for their children. It is impossible for us now to appreciate what Dylan unleashed on the music scene at the time, because the public had never heard this level of brute honesty before.
In the new movie mentioned earlier, a scene stood out on this particular point, when Pete Seeger (Ed Norton) referred to all the other folk acts taking their little “spoons” to scoop up sand in order to add weight to the bucket of folk music’s popularity. All the best folk acts at the time were dutifully scooping their spoons to help to fill up the folk music bucket, but Seeger then mentioned that Dylan had a “shovel.” And that was the reality of the matter, stated as simply as possible. Songwriting and lyrics were Dylan’s currency, the one thing that could not be manufactured, and everyone knew it. By 1964, no less than fifty (50) different artists had recorded his song “Blowin In the Wind”. Even grown men who had spent years managing record labels understood they were powerless to control the narrative that Dylan was beginning to sketch out for himself.
But that only explains half of the equation. The literary talent was plan to see, but that wasn’t enough to explain the cultural shift. Simply put, Dylan rewrote the terms of the contract, as it were, of how the public, and the music business itself, were forced to consider artistic individuality on its own terms. By refusing to compromise and submit to the ground rules presented to him, he shifted the paradigm. No longer would music be categorized by the genre, but rather by the artist themselves exercising their freedom to create wherever their passion leads them. That was the fight at hand for Dylan in 1965, the dragon that had to be slain.
We all know the history of it now, but in all the excitement Dylan was thrust into a role that he did not audition for……. the role of “voice of a generation.” With songs that cried out for social justice, he was giving voice to the voiceless and did so with potent imagery. At the time, popular music kept strictly to the safe themes of love and heartbreak, not songs calling for social and racial justice. But for those who were socially and politically aware, and also cared deeply for poetic, meaningful lyrics, it must have felt they were witnessing the arrival of a songwriting “Shakespeare”, which had to be intoxicating to watch unfold in real-time. But more importantly, I also believe it was at this point that Dylan began looking for an exit, not only from political themes, but also from the creative straitjacket of folk music itself.
Now fast forward to early 1965, just a single year after “The Times…”, when he released “Bring It All Back Home”, which left no doubt about his flirtations with electric music. “Subterranean Homesick Blue”, the first song on the album and one of my all-time favorites was clearly positioned to shock folk purists right out of the gate. I implore you, whoever you may be, to listen to “The Times They Are a-Changin”, then to “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Then come to grips with those two songs being only a single year apart. Dylan the songwriter was evolving fast…….but there were those with vested interests to the folk gravy-train who did not welcome the change.
At this point we will necessarily bump into the summer of 1965 and the “New Port Folk Festival”, with Dylan clearly penciled in as the main attraction and closing act. It should be noted that purest exist in many different genres, but folk music, particularly at this time, considered authenticity as something bordering on a fetish, and were clearly not advertising for a Rock-n-Roll upgrade. Of course, we are accustomed to our modern understanding that artists are free to roam however they choose, but in the early 60’s, an artist was expected to stay in their lane. Artists carved out a market “niche” and were expected to stay put. What an artist brought to the genre was the main selling point.
This presented quite a dilemma for Dylan, as one could imagine, because he had just released his intentions a few months earlier with “Bring It All Back Home, a sacrilege to folk purest. For the organizers of the festival, the obvious fear would be that Dylan planned to play his newfangled rock and roll at their folk festival and not “honor” their appeals to simply play his hits.
This is where I give lavish props to Dylan, for unlike a “band”, say like the Beatles or the Stones, Dylan was by himself and was forced to weather all the bitter crosswinds alone. His decisions and their consequences were his to bear and no other. So, at New Port, the question became exposed for all to see, would he bow to everyone’s expectations or bite the hand that fed him? There were countless voices in his ear, friends, management, industry bigwigs, all requesting, some demanding, that he do what “they” wanted.
Of course, he did what any legitimate artist would do and stuck to his guns by playing a loud set of rock and roll. I believe he understood the time had come to rip the bandage off, regardless of the initial pain. And as expected, that pain came in the form of complete mayhem at the festival, with a sizable portion of the crowd booing and a few organizers scrambling to end Dylan’s performance by attempting to cut power to the stage. They all failed.
But that isn’t the focus of my note here. What I am far more interested in is the very first song he chose to play, “Maggie’s Farm,” with it’s defiant opening line clearly expressing his intent for the evening, “I ain’t going to work on Maggie’s Farm, no more.”
Now if you do an internet search of the song and it’s lyrics, you’ll find many different opinions flying around, with one interpretation after another, but none strike me as satisfying. Of course, lyrics are metaphorical and open to interpretation, granted, but within the context just laid out, with Dylan absorbing new musical influences and his clear desire to shed his folk clothing, the aim of this song seems abundantly clear. So, whether I’m on target or delusional, allow me to throw my own thoughts to the wind.
******
Simply put, “Maggie’s Farm” is Dylan’s breakup song with the folk scene, and all the various parties that extended from it, and I believe that is precisely why he chose to open his New Port set with it…..he meant it as a middle-finger at anyone expecting to pin him down to their own expectations.
In all my years of studying Dylan, one thing I have learned is that he didn’t fear much of anything. He, Lennon, and I will include Cash, were unique in that way, but I do believe Dylan felt a mounting concern of becoming domesticated, of allowing himself to becoming a pawn in a game played by others. And I feel that is the calculous many staunch folk fans failed to consider at the time. They mistook the notion of “authenticity” as meaning that artists should remain “true” to the genre, instead of an authenticity to themselves as artists. Fans were screaming that he was a “Judas”, a sell-out for going electric, but they miss the more pertinent point that he would have been a true sell-out if he hadn’t.
So, after four albums of folk orthodoxy, fueled by the Beatles and Rolling Stones heating the airwaves to a boil, Dylan clearly felt the desire to jump ship. He knew his future existed beyond folk and wanted to breathe some of that fresh air for himself.
And he suggested as much in the very first verse, which I believe was aimed at the purest in the folk scene, those insisting that he keep writing and performing for “their” pleasure.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm, no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm, no more
Well, I wake up in the morning, fold my hands, and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas, that are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame, the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on, nah
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm, no more
Then the 2nd verse appears to take aim at the music business, the moneymen, and tour promoters who wanted him to keep the money train rolling.
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother, no more
Nah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother, no more
Well, he hands you a nickel, and he hands you a dime
And he asks you with a grin, if you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for, nah
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother, no more
The 3rd verse appears aimed at those at the top, the decision makers who can make or break an artist at will, who are so far removed from the street they can’t see the musical trends happening right outside their windows.
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa, no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa, no more
Well, he puts his cigar out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window it is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
I ain’t gonna work for, nah
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa, no more
The next verse seems to take aim at the leaders of the folk movement, such as Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax, preaching the gospel of folk purity. I particular like the reference to “Ma’s” age, which I believe clearly refers to those like Seeger and Lomax claiming that folk was young and vibrant, when in fact the genre sounded nearly extinct next to what was happening in the popular music scene.
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma, no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma, no more
Well, she talks to all the servants about man and God and law
And everybody says, she’s the brains behind pa
She’s 68, but she says she’s 24
I ain’t gonna work for, nah
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma, no more
In the last verse, I believe he takes aim at the whole lot of them. In the last line, simply replace “they” with “I” and you will see that it completes his thoughts from the previous two lines seamlessly. He is definitely referring to himself there.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm, no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm, no more
Well, I try my best to be just like I am
But everybody wants you to be just like them
They sing while they slave and they just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on, nah
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm, no more
To tie this off, it must be noted what he played after finishing his brief set. After completing just three songs, each electric, Dylan and band left the stage, apparently finished for the night. For Dylan, the bandage has been ripped off and now he aimed to leave it all behind. But as the movie suggested, those backstage, including his friend, Johnny cash, convinced him to do the right thing and play a solo acoustic set as a way to apply salve to the open wound he just inflicted.
He did, but his choice of songs were clearly poignant, with the first being, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, obviously signaling his departure from the folk scene. Then to extend a type of apology to all, he finished with “Mr. Tambourine Man”, a song that many folk purest considered the pinnacle of his folk catalog. If that was indeed his intent, it offered a gracious goodbye to an ugly divorce.
Here is the studio version.