Bob Dylan’s “Tempest” and Why He Doesn’t Care if It’s “Untruthful”

Music lovers, historians, writers, and critics have been voraciously dissecting the meaning behind Bob Dylan’s lyrics since the late 1960s, but when it comes to his 2012 track “Tempest,” he’s insisted there’s no deeper meaning to be had. (Of course, this declaration rings a bit thin, considering Dylan has built an entire career on being metaphorical, mythical, and oppressively opaque.)

From its massive 45 verses to his lyrical anachronisms that range from humorous to heinous, Bob Dylan’s “Tempest” is an aptly named thunderstorm of a song—according to him, the kind of storm you let pass by without thinking too deeply about it.

Why Bob Dylan’s “Tempest” is Untruthful

The title track of Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album Tempest is a lyrical beast of a track, featuring a whopping 45 verses detailing the historical (and not-so-historical) events of the sinking of the U.S.S. Titanic. As he explained in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan called upon the folk tradition of putting tragedy to song. “I was just fooling with that one night,” Dylan said.

“I liked that melody—I liked it a lot. ‘Maybe I’m gonna appropriate this melody.’ But where would I go with it?” Dylan ended up going down a path laid somewhere between fact and fiction. Although some facts, like the date and certain elements of the ship’s design and decoration, were true, he tinged other parts with the glitter of Hollywood. Dylan mentions Leo with his sketchbook, referencing Leonardo DiCaprio’s role of Jack in the 1997 film.

“People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful,” Dylan told Rolling Stone. “But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”

A Song Simultaneously Full and Devoid of Meaning

In another interview with Rolling Stone one month later, Bob Dylan twisted a paradox only someone as masterfully vague as he could conjure. Dylan’s “Tempest,” he argued, was both devoid of meaning and entirely imbued with it. First, the latter: “If you’re a folk singer, blues singer, rock and roll singer, whatever, in that realm, you oughta write a song about the Titanic because that’s the bar you have to pass,” he argued.

“Today, we have so much media that before something happens, you see it,” Dylan continued. “You know about it, or you think you do. You don’t need a song about the fire that happened in Chinatown last night because it was all over the news. In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn’t see and weren’t there for, and you have to do it as if you were.”

This, Dylan said, was his goal when writing “Tempest.” He denied writing the 45-verse song from a social injustice perspective. There was no commentary on human consumerism or men’s folly. “I try to stay away from all that stuff,” Dylan said. “I don’t imply any of it. I’m not interested in it. I’m just interested in showing you what happened on the level that it happened on. That’s all. The meaning of it is beyond me.”

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