Murder Most Foul Revisited

On Dylan, JFK, Wolfman Jack, and Walt Whitman

This updated column appeared in a slightly different form in PS Audio’s Copper magazine, where I do an occasional column, Wayne’s Words. This one is about Bob Dylan’s 2020 song about Texas and guns, as well as his appearance on the Walt Whitman Show.

 Murder Most Foul: A Lamentation

I Contain Multitudes: A Song of Himself

By Wayne Robins

Murder Most Foul was released two years ago. The song, 17 minutes and change, is about as long as Desolation Row and Like a Rolling Stone combined. It was followed by I Contain Multitudes, with a doff of the Dylan cowboy hat or whatever he's wearing these days, to Walt Whitman. These songs were the warm-up acts for the then-79 year old Dylan's 2020 album triumph, Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Murder is Bob’s longest single studio recording, coming in about 23 seconds longer than the entertaining Dylan dream that was Highlands from 1999’s Time Out of Mind. I’ll always have a fondness for Highlands, for its scene in a coffee shop, where the waitress bets Dylan that…