1989. Cracks appear in the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union hoists the white flag. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, spilling crude across pristine Alaska. Thousands of pro-democracy students slaughtered as tanks roll into China’s Tiananmen Square. Everything was breaking. Now everything is broken.
Brexit. Trump. Johnson. Le Pen. Meloni. Melting ice caps. Rising sea levels. Plastic. Contamination. Crack. Prozac. Long Covid. Putin. Everything is broken. More than thirty years of disaster, flash fires, floods, sweltering summers, freezing winters. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza. To name but a few.
In 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union was like a key opening the door to a bright new democratic future – that thing we had until trickle down came along in ’79 and everything began to trickle up. The world took a gulp of fresh air. Everyone felt positive, optimistic, renewed.
Then there was Bob Dylan. He took a step back and what he saw was a world where everything was cracking like thin ice below the weight of its own fatalism and mediocrity.
Broken idols, broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
His 1989 song ‘Everything is Broken’ was released as a single from the album ‘Oh Mercy,’ where the word broken gets a really good work out:
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Everything is Broken Rewrites
‘Oh Mercy’ was produced by Daniel Lanois, who plays on several of the tracks. When Dylan wrote the song in March that year, the original title was ‘Broken Days.’ A month later, the song had been redrafted, restructured and retitled ‘Everything is Broken.’
‘I sat next to him for two months … and it was extraordinary. Bob overwrites. He keeps chipping away at his verses. He has a place for all his favourite couplets, and those couplets can be interchangeable. I’ve seen the same lyrics show up in two or three different songs as he cuts and pastes them around, so it’s not quite as sacred ground as you might think,’ to quote Lanois from Nigel Williamson’s 2004 ‘The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan.’
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
In their book ‘Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track,’ Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon characterise ‘Everything is Broken’ as a ‘Louisiana, or swamp blues.’ They describe the recording as ‘both nonchalant and rhythmic, punctuated by guitars with very pronounced vibrato,’ and praise Dylan’s harmonica solo as ‘exquisite.’
It’s always hard to know whether Dylan owns a crystal ball or his lyrics by some quirk of fate are an echo from the future. He was right on target imagining an approaching world where everything is broken. We must just hope (and pray if you’re a believer) that ‘Hard Rain’ is just a bad weather story not a warning that out there in the foggy ruins of destiny there’s a psychopath with his finger resting on the button.
Listen to – Everything is Broken on YouTube
0Oo
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Once again, thank you for your insights. Yet equally as important as your message, the illuminative and engaging style in which you present these ideas to your readers. Balanced thoughts so well-constructed, are anything but broken.