Released in 1965, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was Bob Dylan's first top-40 hit. It was also the lead cut on his fifth album, "Bringing It All Back Home," which featured electric tracks on one side and folk-acoustic cuts on the other side. I was a 16-year old high school senior at the time, writing my honors English term paper on Dylan's lyrics — for which I had to get the teacher's special permission because such a thing had never been done — and the fifth album really caused me a problem. Not only was it half-electric, it had no political protest songs, other than the implicit rebellion against the bourgeois world. I cannot remember if I recognized the similarity to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business," which Dylan acknowledged decades later, but nobody thought anything about borrowing tunes back then. I am pretty sure that I mentioned the obvious Kerouac influence.
Don't miss Allen Ginsberg in a tallit and the Ginsberg-inflected clips at the bottom of this post.
Dylan also pioneered the music video with this clip:
Music begins at 0:24
This clip is reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg's cameo on the video:
Rather than go into Bob Dylan's penchant for "borrowing", I'll just point out this is the song that gave the radical group, The Weathermen its name (offshoot from SDS). Bernardine and Bill should pay Dylan royalties.
Don't forget about Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTWmUlTEqE
"I was a 16-year old high school senior at the time, writing my honors English term paper on Dylan's lyrics — for which I had to get the teacher's special permission because such a thing had never been done"
Of course! By 1966, NO ONE IN AMERICA had written an English term paper in high school (or otherwise) about Dylan's lyrics!
This was right about the same time that Steve was inventing the internet!
The Dylan signboard clip is the opening scene in Pennybakers' Dylan cinema vertie "Don't Look Back"
" You don't need to be a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
In an interview Dylan claimed that he didn't write protest songs; just songe about discontinuities in modern American life. maybe this is Dylan being coy but he did not participate in the anti-war protests.