Bob Dylan – "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" (1966)

Your debutante just knows what you need

But I know what you want

What’s more important?  Having your needs fulfilled?  Or having your wants satisfied?

In today’s featured song, Bob Dylan seems to be saying that needs are less important than wants.

That’s true if you think of “needs” as including the bare necessities of life (e.g., food, water, shelter) but not the things that make life truly satisfying (e.g., love, sex, intellectual stimulation).

Debutantes

But there’s another way to think about wants and needs.  What if you use “wants” to describe those things that you consciously desire, while “needs” represent what your subconscious mind more deeply craves – and without which you will never be happy?

In that case, needs would be more important than wants.

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The “I” in the lines from “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” that are quoted above refers to a certain Ruthie, a seductress who has invited the singer of the song to visit her in the “honky-tonk lagoon” where she lives – and where she spends her nights waltzing in the moonlight and no doubt casting a spell on any man watching. 

The singer definitely wants to hook up with Ruthie, but he’s involved with this debutante – a girlfriend or fiancée who is probably from a socially prominent and wealthy family.

Ruthie acknowledges that the debutante can satisfy the singer’s needs – she presumably is equipped with all the basic female equipment. 

But what about all those naughty things that the singer really wants?  He may be too embarrassed to ask his debutante for them, but that’s not a problem with Ruthie.  

You see, Ruthie’s been around the block a time or two – she knows what he wants without him having to ask.

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What happens if we transpose “want” and “need” in Dylan’s lyrics?

Your debutante just knows what you want

But I know what you need

The debutante may be able to supply the things that the singer thinks he wants – youth and beauty and wealth – and she may be happy to offer all those things to the singer.  

But the more experienced and empathic Ruthie understands things about the singer’s most fundamental desires – desires that he may not be aware of, or be able to articulate.  She can look into his eyes and read his mind – he’s an open book to her.

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Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941.

When he was a student at the University of Minnesota, he started performing on occasion at a nearby coffeehouse.  He was thinking about calling himself Bob Dillon when he discovered Dylan Thomas’s poetry.  So “Dillon” became “Dylan.”

Bob Dylan in 1966

Why the name change?  According to Dylan,

You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents.  I mean, that happens.  You call yourself what you want to call yourself.  This is the land of the free.

Amen to that.

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“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” was released in 1966 on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde double album.

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