Many of his protest songs displayed a level of empathy rarely before delivered in the history of popular music. His songs of love and loss offered the kind of insight and nuance that left his songwriting peers struggling to play catchup.
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But then there are those songs when Bob Dylan gets a little angry. Check out, for example, “Pay In Blood”, a 2012 track where Dylan oozes ornery attitude. It must have been as cathartic for him to sing as it was for us to hear.
“Blood” and Guts
Ever since the release of Time Out Of Mind, a 1997 comeback from both a major health scare and creative doldrums, Bob Dylan has released a series of steadily brilliant LPs. If there was one hiccup, at least based on the consensus of Dylanologists, the 2009 album Together Through Life would have to be it.
That album featured Dylan ceding some lyrical duties to former Grateful Dead wordsmith Robert Hunter. While well-recorded and energetically performed, the songs just didn’t quite rise to the level of brilliance that fans had become accustomed to hearing.
No worries, though, because Dylan bounced back in a big way with Tempest three years later. None of the songs on this album receded in any way. Dylan took a series of bold swings, including an epic song about the Titanic (“Tempest”) and a sweet tribute to John Lennon (“Roll On John”).
Then there’s “Pay In Blood”. Musically, his deft band sinks into a classic rock groove a bit more modern than the old-time jump blues Dylan often prefers for his uptempo material. In the lyrics, Dylan gets as confrontational as we’ve ever heard him. While we don’t know the identity of his target, we feel sorry for them based on the lyrical assault leveled in their direction.
Exploring the Lyrics of “Pay In Blood”
Dylan’s narrator is coming from a place of misery to start. “Nothing more wretched than what I must endure,” he moans. But that also means that he has nothing to lose when he turns his attention to his enemy. “I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you done,” he wails.
He’s willing to be patient in his pursuit: “Sooner or later, you’ll make a mistake.” That allows him plenty of time to deliver some vividly worded threats. “I got something in my pocket make your eyeballs swim,” he warns. “I got dogs that could tear you limb to limb.” No pulling punches here.
Throughout the song, he continues to veer back and forth between these insults and threats and his own personal laments. “You could put me in front of a firing squad,” he defiantly swears, not long before questioning the parentage of the person he’s addressing. Later, he bluntly plots violence: “Come here, I’ll break your lousy head.”
In the final verse, he comes on like a kind of divine avenger. “Our nation must be saved and freed,” he says. “You’ve been accused of murder, how do you plead?” Finally, Dylan paraphrases Mark Antony, making his famous Shakespearean quote sound somehow more sinister and menacing in the context of this song: “I came to bury, not to praise.”
“I pay in blood, but not my own,” Dylan croaks in the refrain. It’s one of those lines that immediately landed in the pantheon of his most memorable rejoinders. And it’s just one of the recommending characteristics of “Pay In Blood”, a prime spewing of eloquent bile.
Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images
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