The liner notes to Springtime in New York cite several interviews from the time of Infidels’ release: “‘That was one of them Caribbean songs,’ Dylan told interviewer Paul Zollo about ‘I and I.’ ‘One year, a bunch of songs came to me hanging around down in the islands.’ Talking to Kurt Loder in 1984, he named ‘Jokerman’ another. The song’s genesis and recording have strong connections to the Caribbean Islands. The sociologist Ernest Cashmore states that Rastafarianism’s “acknowledgement of the inherence of God in man” came to be expressed “in the principle of ‘I and I’ the unity of all people” (Cashmore 1979: 26). It is a key part of Rastafarian vocabulary. The phrase “I and I” has several possible levels of significance. How can we unpack the modalities of “I and I” both in terms of the phrase itself and the song as a whole? The title phrase, repeated several times in the song’s chorus, has long fascinated me as a pithy statement of the complexity of selfhood and individuality. Dylan has performed this song more times than any other from Infidels: 204 times from to November 10, 1999, according to his website. Rolling Stone classifies “I and I” as one of Bob Dylan’s best songs from the 1980s. I’ve always thought that the song “I and I” is one of the record’s strongest. With the release of The Bootleg Series Volume 16: Springtime in New York 1980-1985, I’ve been revisiting tracks from my favorite album from that period, 1983’s Infidels. “I and I”: Bob Dylan and William Shakespeare’s King Richard III
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |