Crying by the second stanza. I was in High School when the news came through...screams and tears filled the halls, tears on teacher's faces shocked us, we'd never seen them vulnerable. At home my mom surrounded by neighbors, radio blaring. We all walked around in a daze and we never got over it. Nothing was ever the same again. We still love and miss him. He gave us hope and put us on a mission to help the world be better place.Young people felt needed in the world. God bless you, President Kennedy.

Bob Dylan has been a passion of mine since the early '60's. He was the spokesman for so many of us against society as we saw it. We devoured his records, books and public rebukes since he said what we could not in incredible ways. My 4th grade teacher could not stop crying that infamous day and had to be led from the classroom and we stayed home from school some days afterward to see the terrible aftermath on black and white TV screens. I lived in Massachusetts and the grief may have been even keener there but surely it was profound everywhere throughout the world. Being almost 70 now, I had left current music mostly behind years ago to get closer to the music of my generation, though including my son's preferences of their own generation into our shared musical experiences. This song of Dylan's had not crossed my path, I had last seen him in concert in 2006. It is obvious that his poetry skills had not diminished as of this writing in 2020, (or whenever he wrote it). I have now heard it once and will have to hear it more to answer my own questions of meanings contained. In fact people will discuss and debate meaning from his songs forever. I did hear many references on first listen to songs, artists, events that spanned the decades from 1963, (and even before), to now and I do not think, (right now), that they have a single, common theme such as you wonder about in your commentary, unless it be a more broad theme, mankind itself, maybe. Dylan has often name-dropped in his lyrics this way and I think sometimes it is critical to the narrative and sometimes it is just a clever shoutout or criticism he could work into the song maybe only closely related to the main theme. (Helps if it rhymes, too). I am glad I saw this reaction video of yours, if only so I can reacquaint myself to Bob Dylan and check out some later content I may have missed. One more comment on reactions. All these reactions by younger members of our society from many different backgrounds to the songs my generation grew up with are probably one of the greatest things the internet has brought to us old rock and rollers. It is so enjoyable to get your thoughts on what made us what we became. I thank all of you.

Bob's gift to the world during the covid lockdown. A beautiful meditation, such a moving piece. Reduced me to tears then, and does today.

“Tommy, can you hear me? I’m the acid queen.” Allusion to Tina Turner in the movie Tommy. There are a ton of quotes in this song that can take you down a multitude of rabbit holes. Incidentally, Murder Most Foul is Bob’s only #1 single- it was a number one digital download.

America lost its innocence on 11/22/1963. Our world and all we knew would be changed forever.

Dylan's final Masterpiece at age 80 sums up all the culture my Generation lived through that led up to the most foulest murder that changed the World for the worse forever.

I was watching after the fact. They sent us home from school after a prayer for President Kennedy. It was a defining moment in our history.

Bob’s Last Masterpiece to leave us … Brings American History and Culture from 50 Years ago to Now .. Amazing !!

This strikes really hard...amazing piece by Dylan...he can string words together like no one else. Creates images in the mind

It's Dylan's magnum opus , his statement about the times he is living in. History, politics, art, music, culture. It's all there. It would have been a different world if JFK had not been killed.

Good analysis A+ Never fails...Dylan with a deep message delivered with direct poeticism. Incredible And why do we love poetry, someone may ask. Well, we love deep poetry because they help us to see life through a clearer lens. But at the end of the day, it's just good music. Great reaction, thanks for sharing 🎶👍

I remember that day. My mother cried and we watched the funeral and the news all weekend. 😢👵🏼💜☮️

Released at the time we get Covid upon us , Dylan may have had these lyrics and thoughts since about 1963 ish .... the music references run deep and a plenty in this one ...

I have to do my comment as a smattering of thoughts: 1. I was 12 when it happened, and we kids were also sent home. Many of my fellow students were at least somewhat politically aware at the time -- it wasn't just the teachers who cried that day. I watched the news for several days and watched the funeral on TV; I think that was the first time in my life that I ever experienced a depressive episode. A few years ago, a high school student I tutored, as part of his social studies assignment for school, interviewed me about these events. I realized as I talked to him that I had experienced the assassination as a trauma and that it had stuck with me. 2. For years, I've had to avoid movies and TV shows about it. It's been almost 61 years, and it's still "too soon." I 'd seen the title of your reaction video a few days in a row, and I avoided it, because I knew it could trigger me. But I was curious to see what Dylan would say, because back in the 60s, although he wrote about many heavy subjects, as far as I know, he never wrote about this one. So here I am. I turned to my son, a millennial, who sat next to me and listened with me. I said "It took him all this time to finally write about it ." My son said that maybe this was the first time he felt he could. And I agreed: It was always "too soon." 3. I was struck by your first comment -- that Dylan usually was so metaphorical, but this was literal instead. But this piece is poetic, nevertheless. He used allusions to other events, people, thoughts from the times. Their mentions were metaphoric ; often metonymy. Many of the songs named were about loss and/or grief. The Beatles came to the US slightly over a year afterwards, and their hit song was "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (a teeny-bopper love song) -- its name used here to remind us of the grief we felt, when we really could have used someone to hold our hands and soothe us. Dylan mentions the source of evil going after JFK's 2 brothers. Well, Robert was assassinated 5 years later, when I was in high school. I could be wrong, but I don't think the second was his literal brother; I think it was his spiritual brother who was killed a couple of months before Robert: Martin Luther King, Jr. 4. It's a long piece; I'd need the lyrics written out on a page in front of me, in order to do a more thorough analysis -- one that would give it its due -- to do it justice.

He's not saying it's heralding the age of the anti-Christ. He's saying that it's so evil that people FEEL that way. I was in 1st grade when this happened. Someone came in and whispered in our teacher's ear and she burst into tears, told us he'd been shot and they sent us home. I was too young to really understand but everywhere adults were crying so I knew it was significant. In Reno, Nv. it was the only time I ever saw the casinos close. They turned off the neon. Then Ruby shot Oswald. Another shock. First time I ever heard my parents express any suspicions about a cover up. Then Ruby died of pneumonia and a real solid distrust of the "government" set in. Folks began to wise-up.

Thank you. I was in high school and when I walked into study hall the teacher was crying. My friends and I looked at each other we didn’t know why or what to do. Then the assassination was announced over the loud speaker. A day forever etched in my brain.

"you need good people who can take down bad people" That's true.. Recently read that in ten years, the percentage of countries with genuine democracies has decreased from 30% to 14%... . This is poetry with background music, just like Leonard Cohens poems (You could do him too) . I like it when you are serious about songs like this and the analysis is great

Never has a shout-out list sounded more profound.

WOW hey thanks! I was 5 in my kindergarten class. Everyone was crying and I felt the deviating sadness even that young. I've never heard this poem. I grew up with dylan music but didn't appreciate it if course till I was older. Piano so beautiful. Politics always dylan activist lyrics. So deep.

That was the day before my 19th birthday and it was a brutal day. Seemed as though hope died that day also. They will never convince me that a lone gunman did this.

He's got Kennedy hallucinating, passing through thoughts and music while dying, like lines out of Joyce's Finnagan's Wake.

Boy do I remember the assassination of President Kennedy, announced in my 6th hour class in 9th grade, 1963. We stayed home from school & watched his funeral all the next week, that never leaves your mind. Watched his brother, Bobby got assassinated yrs later, can’t remember the year. Sad times back then.😪♥️

With God on our side. A pawn in their game. Boots of Spanish leather. Girl from the north country.

I was in the fourth grade and school was in session. They called us all to the auditorium and told us and then we all went home and watched it on TV. The same thing happened when Martin Luther King, jr. was murdered five years later.

Big song very clever all about history and music❤

Wolfman Jack was the great D.J. in America with his enthusiastic, gravelly voice. He calls on him as a Muse that can provide solace in the face of Reality. Idealism took a big hit, he was close to all of it.

Everyone who was school age or older then remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news about JFK's death. I was a nearly 8 year old 2nd grader who went home for lunch to find my parents at the dining table listening to the radio. We were in Pacific time and my dad worked swingshift hours, but my mom worked days as a bank teller and usually rushed to fix lunch for us so both of us could return to work and school on time. They told me the president was dead, and I was confused. I thought he was the youngest president ever, but they said someone killed him. I couldn't understand why. I still don't, even now at 68, though of course I know politics and/or mental illness are always possible motives. This is a long song and I'll need to hear it at least once more, but I'm glad you put it out here for your audience as I hadn't heard it before. (No surprise considering the subject matter.)

I’ve seen a compilation on KZfaq citing most of the musical references and other things that you could look up.

Lots of metaphors. The line "Living in a nightmare on Elm Street" refers to the street on which Kennedy was shot as well as Wes Craven's 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street. Slide down the bannister and ferry cross the Mersey = Guy Bannister (FBI) and David William Ferrie (a pilot) are said to have been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Play it for the dog that's got no master, could refer to the dog given to Kennedy by Khrushchev or the dog on "His Master's voice" Record label. To name just a few.

Bob has always done 'list songs', where he links many threads but with an underlying theme or message..

To me the song opens up in the context of the album. The album makes several references to Egyptian Book of the Dead, specifically a narrator voice that is giving instructions to someone who has died, on how to move on. That's a major theme - death, and limbo. Key West begins with the scene of another president (McKinley) slowly dying after being shot as well. Music is another theme, and how personal, and religious experience music can be, for example song Mother of Muses, or Goodbye Jimmy Reed where he asks Jimmy Reed to "tell the real story ... in the mystic hours when a person's alone". Murder Most Foul, then, has this scene of the fatally wounded president being driven in a car, and as his death is realized, we start to hear the titles of songs, plays, films - culture. Music is there to guide the person through death, and the nation through the trauma.

Dylan had become something of a vague legend by the time he released this bomb into the national conversation . Those with grey hair know of what he speaks .

President Kennedy's assassination truely changed and influenced two generations. My parents and my generation...

Dylan is acknowledging that the murder wasn't just some lone crazy gunman, but an assassination by (forces}. He knows who is culpable, and can't openly say, but he's saying it anyway.

I was in elementary school. I remember being let out early, led to the bus, and sad faces. It was my older sister's birthday, and she knew better what was happening, but we didn't hear much until we got home. Someone please refresh my memory, but Rosie Greer grabbed one accused shooters, either for JFK or Robert Kennedy.I remember Dad saying Rosie should have ended him, and I said, but then he'd go to jail😢. My father was a pacifist, so I knew he was really upset!

Here I am in Dallas.

Nonono, not how quickly people forget...The songs and artists Dylan mention here and asks the famous disc jockey Woolfman Jack to play....are here as a positive force in a cruel world. I think so. Songs from 1930 or older and songs from 20-30 years after the killing of Kennedy, play number 6 number 5 ( symphony by Beethoven ?)

"Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by" "We've already got someone here to take your place" .. So, Dylan is hinting at a cover-up? Here's more of the same hint: "What is the truth, and where did it go? Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know "Shut your mouth, " said the wise old owl Business is business, and it's a murder most foul" .. So, shutting your mouth is a wise idea?

Do modern artists quote Shakespeare? It was a common practice when Dylan was a younger man.

Bob Dylan Did Another Song You Need To Hear " Death Of Emmett Till

The songs and the artists renames in the song in my opinion are not related with the murder of Kennedy per se. I think he just likes those songs and those artists, they are part of western culture and they are dear to him and so he names them and he says to us: check them out, remember them, because they deserve to be remembered like John Fitzgerald Kennedy deserves to be remembered. That's just my opinion ofcourse.

I saw it on TV horrific

I was home from school because I had the mumps and Walter Cronkite came on the air and his words are burned into my mind. I had just seen the President speak 6 months before because my father was stationed at White Sands Missile Range when he visited the base.

Bob Dylan

Not sure why but this song makes me cry. 33 freemasons, sacrifices. Just saying.

Somber

Wolfman Jack

You call it very well for someone not around then...