You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

–

E/E: Who is Mr. Jones, in Ballad Of A Thin Man?
BD: He’s a real person, you know him, but not by that name.
–Ephron & Edmiston Interview, NY – 1965

..one of the purest songs of protest ever sung, with its scathing take on the media, its interest in and inability to comprehend [Dylan] and his music.
~Mike Marqusee (from wikipedia)

This song is almost as good as “Like A Rolling Stone”.. they feel very much alike.. and again it’s a song impossible to tire of.

Now.. I guess Time reporter Horace Judson was one of Dylan’s many Mr. Jones’s:

I was over in England one time doing a press conference. And that was the first time I ever gave a press conference where I didn’t want to answer any of the questions. I didn’t answer any of ’em. From that point on I stopped answering questions. People wanna know just all about your personal life you know, where I came from anyway. That’s very impolite. Anyway I wrote this thing here. Try to have my say again, I don’t know if it ever reached anybody who’s supposed to reached, actually got hurt, but it made me feel better to write it.
~Bob Dylan (before Ballad Of A Thin Man -Tokyo, Japan – 5 March 1986)

The original version in all it’s glory:

Continue reading Bob Dylan’s best songs – Ballad Of A Thin Man #4 →