Details
Bob Dylan
A rare working draft of a poem typed and annotated by Bob Dylan with numerous deletions and alterations, [n.d. but circa 1962, New York], the four-page poem beginning:
Oh yes I could've gotten the money I suppose/t pay my fine/out 'f the King's jail...yes I could've sent back t friends or friends 'f friends... continuing in the vein that he could have paid his fines but chose not to and on reaching jail
...the first thing I found out was that every body else there was in for the same reason I was Cause theeir [sic] fines weren't paid...I met...ramblin college students runnin high school hoboes mad sons 'f a millionaires and the faggots...But the rest could not raise the money An they either knew nobody that did or else they were too bad a risk... in his poem Dylan bemoans check book justice throughout
.."How sick it seems" I thought while talkin t myself in a strange cell "that those that buy away their penalty never have a prison record...how safe they must feel when talk about criminals with their friends an the neigbors that drop in for a game 'f golf..., he continues with a running argument between one view:
...the poor need money in the hand not social workers at the head there should be high schools private schools college schools religious schools in the outside world that supposed t teach 'm how t get a job an live there without breakin no law... and the opposing view:
...that aint no good/yes it is no it aint oh? cause then the poor'd have money too! right! an they'd spend it like the rich yeah an they'd buy their way free just like all the other rich....so the answere [sic] don't lie with money no it lies with the judge yeah...it lies with standin equal in front 'f the judges stand... 4pp. (4)
Provenance
The Personal Archives of Suze Rotolo.
Literature
HEYLIN, Clinton, Behind The Shades, Penguin, 2002, p. 28

Lot Essay

As a songwriter and performer who has consistently been inspired by "injustice", Dylan has often displayed a sympathy with those held in prisons and other institutions. His epic protest song Hurricane is the most famous example of this trait in his work. In the early sixties, he composed a song entitled Walls Of Red Wing about a boys' reformatory. Dylan biographer, Clinton Heylin also speculates: According to a psychiatrist who was there at the time, the young [Dylan] spent some time at what has been described as a 'country club reform school' in Pennsylvania in the late fifties...It is not known how long [Dylan] was in Pennsylvania, but it seems likely that he drew upon the experience when writing about the somewhat stricter regime of a reform school in the 1963 composition 'Walls Of Red Wing'... Whether or not the poem in this lot has any autobiographical significance, its message reflects common themes in Dylan's early work: the corrupting influence of money, and the different treatment meted out by the law to rich and poor.

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