Love in the Time of the 70s

In this decade, Bob Dylan is possibly most famous for his albums such as “Blood on the Tracks”, “Desire”, “Self Portrait” and even “Street-Legal”. But he is famous for one more thing as well. He is famous for his divorce from the stunning Playboy Model, Sara Lowndes, his wife of over ten years and mother of the majority of his children. This was a big deal since of course, everyone remembered the song “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” which he wrote for her and confirmed in the song “Sara” from the album “Desire” in the seventies.

We can clearly see that there are two main types of ‘love song’ in the seventies era of Bob Dylan’s career. The first one is the standard love song and has all the tropes of common romance - it’s just written better than everyone else’s songs about the same situation. The next type of love song is the anti-love song, not the break-up song per se, but the anti-love song is a love song which attacks the lover or the love itself. It doesn’t ‘break up’ with the person but insults them and tries to reason with the reason for insulting them. So let’s have a look at some of these songs which definitely come out of a dark place for Bob Dylan when he was dealing with his divorce at the same time as trying to change up his career a little bit.

The first near anti-love song I want to cover is “Isis” since it is not as clear as the others. This is an anti-love song which deliberately focuses on leaving Isis behind as the narrator grows past himself as a person and an artist. When the other rider dies, the narrator returns but it is not clear as to whether he stays with Isis or not. This, I think is directly relative to Bob Dylan’s growth being one of the causes of him splitting from his wife. But again, it is not about the break up, it is about how he had to leave Isis behind and insults her suggestively in stating that he only thought about Isis in the ‘devilish cold…’ It is a strange thing but it is a shrouded insult that I think is both clever and a little bit harsh.

The next anti-love song is possibly the most famous one that I want to cover and that’s “Idiot Wind”. “Idiot Wind” has an entire premise of berating and insulting the other person but not actually breaking up with them because I believe that this song is set after the break-up. The song is actually about this sort of unresolved trauma and unresolved remorse that the narrator has towards his lover. The fact that he says that he took someone else’s wife to Italy makes us actually believe that the entire song is about Sara Lowndes, but I do not think we will ever really know.

The third anti-love song I want to have a sort of look at is “Is Your Love in Vain?” which again, is not a break-up song. Instead it concentrates on an insecurity and and something shaky within the relationship which, at the moment, is making it really suffer. I do not think that anyone will know whether this is referencing to his past and whether this is about anything to do with his relationship with Sara Lowndes. The song concentrates on the insecurities of both sides with the first line being “do you love me?” and I think it is really important to focus on the fact that Bob Dylan never really writes a love song without sneaking something shaky into the mix because it is very important to understanding his anti-love songs, because they do the opposite. Some people think that this song is misogynist but I think it is actually Bob Dylan being more metaphorical than observational.

When it comes to the anti-love song, there are many including: Tangled Up in Blue, You’re a Big Girl Now, Simple Twist of Fate, If You See Her, Say Hello, One More Cup of Coffee, Black Diamond Bay and there are probably more. But we can honestly see that there are anti-love songs that are at least partially linked to his own position in love.