"Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", also known as "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" and "Talkin' John Birch Blues", is a protest song and talking blues song written by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 1962. It is a satirical song, in which a paranoid narrator is convinced that communists, or "Reds" as he calls them, are infiltrating the country. He joins the John Birch Society, an anti-communist group, and begins searching for Reds everywhere. The narrator decries Betsy Ross as a communist and four U.S. Presidents as Russian spies, while lauding Adolf Hitler and George Lincoln Rockwell. After exhausting the possibilities of new places to find communists, he begins to investigate himself.
Dylan was given the opportunity to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show and wanted to sing "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" on the program. CBS worried that including the song on the show could result in a defamation suit from members of the John Birch Society. Dylan refused to perform a different song on the show, and he walked off its set; the incident garnered publicity. The controversy surrounding the song caused Columbia Records to remove "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" from subsequent copies of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), though it was released on later Dylan albums. The song has been praised for its humor and deemed politically relevant decades after its release by both progressive and conservative publications.
Composition and analysis
Bob Dylan wrote "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", a protest song and talking blues song, in 1962. The song was inspired by an incident where George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party and an anti-communist, arrived in a Nazi uniform outside a theater showing Exodus (1960), a film about the founding of Israel. It is a satirical song, in which a paranoid narrator is convinced that communists, or "Reds" as he calls them, are infiltrating the country. He joins the John Birch Society, an anti-communist group which asserted that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a "dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy."
The song's protagonist begins searching for Reds everywhere: under his bed, up his chimney, down his toilet and in his glove compartment. The narrator says he and other members of the Society agree with Adolf Hitler's views despite the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, concluding that Hitler's fascism was irrelevant since at least he was not a communist. The narrator believes Betsy Ross was a communist because she designed the American flag with red stripes and accuses U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and "that Roosevelt guy" of being Russian spies. He also says that "To my knowledge there's just one man/ That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell/ I know that he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus". After exhausting the possibilities of new places to find communists, the narrator begins to investigate himself.
In Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, Seth Rogovoy wonders why "picketing Exodus would indicate anti-Communist tendencies". Rogovoy theorizes that Dylan could be referencing the alleged association between Jews and communism or the fact that Exodus was scripted by Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted for being communists. Rogovoy also notes that the song's reference to Exodus illustrates Dylan's love of that film; the singer would later introduce performances of "All Along the Watchtower" with a snippet of the "Theme from Exodus" by Ernest Gold. A writer for PBS interpreted the song as being about the importance of freedom of speech. David E. Kaufman says in Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity that "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" includes some of Dylan's few explicit references to his own Jewishness, though none of its lines are "exactly a ringing endorsement of his identity as a Jew."