Lenny Bruce Never did make it out of Babylon

Bob Dylan likes to update and change up his lyrics from time to time.  Sometimes there are major changes; sometimes it is not all that significant.  He likes to rearrange the instrumentation as well so that he is never really singing or playing the same song twice in the same way.  A new arrangement of his song Lenny Bruce appeared last week (October 12th, 2019) and it is pretty good for a 78-year-old man.  It was the first performance of the song in 11 years according to the official Bob Dylan site:  https://www.bobdylan.com/setlists/?id_song=26130.  The new performance is posted here:  https://youtu.be/i3-eq8EEK7o  by a poster known as Jack Frost with comments turned off.  Jack Frost of course is the pseudonym of  Bob Dylan when he is working as a producer.   

But we are rewarded with some interesting insights by paying very close attention to some of what at first glance may seem to be minor lyric changes that have emerged in the new arrangement of "Lenny Bruce" (© 1981).  The song was reborn and unveiled last week on October 11th, 2019 in Irvine, California.  But for us to understand the significance of the lyric changes we really need to be familiar with the original lyrics first which we can find on the official Bob Dylan website:

"Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on
Never did get any Golden Globe award, never made it to Synanon (i.e. initially a drug rehabilitation program in Santa Monica before becoming one of the “most dangerous and violent cults in America.”)
He was an outlaw, that’s for sure
More of an outlaw 
than you ever were
Lenny Bruce is gone 
but his spirit’s livin’ on and on
Maybe he had some problems, 
maybe some things that he couldn’t work out,

But he sure was funny and he sure told the truth 
and he knew what he was talkin’ about
Never robbed any churches (This was an important theme in this era, corrupt religious leaders)

nor cut off any babies’ heads  (More on this important lyric in a minute)
He just took the folks in high places 
and he shined a light in their beds
He’s on some other shore, 
he didn’t wanna live anymore."

Now the reference to "cutting off babies heads" is surely an allusion to the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion where even the description of the enormity of the procedure is too gruesome even to be described.  It is probably best to just let the poet summarize it for us as he does here.  So we have updated our post (below) on Bob Dylan as a pro-life advocate to now include this important reference.

But now, today, the new reborn version has:

"Lenny Bruce is dead 

but his ghost lives on and on
Never made it to the promised land, 

never made it out of Babylon"
He was an outlaw, so sad but true,
More of an outlaw than even he ever knew."

So what is the significance of these minor lyric (marked in bold) changes?  Well, first of all, these are not minor lyric changes!  Now they have become a declaration regarding the probable eternal state of Lenny Bruce.  No longer are we just talking about whether he ever picked up any old Golden Globe award, instead, we are discussing Lenny’s eternal reward!  Poor Lenny never "made it to the promised land," he "never made it out of Babylon."  This change also adds poignancy and clarification to the original final lines in the song:

"Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the [spirtual] brother that you never had." 

Wow!  There is a lot to ponder there.  And while Lenny's outlaw status remains unchanged in the new version, now it is "so sad, but true" tragic actually that he was an outlaw and now he is no longer being compared to the lessor outlaw Bob Dylan (Alias) as formerly, now he is more of an outlaw "than even he ever knew."  

In other words, Lenny spoke for more than himself, he spoke for his own and future generation just beginning to wake up to the hypocrisy of a status quo and an older generation that was in need of a major shakeup, maybe even a revival, because of the "Slow Train Coming."  There were 

"folks in high places [think JFK’s sexual depravities in the White House swimming pool] and he [Lenny] shined a light in their beds."

In this way, Lenny was "ripping off the lid before its time" and when he passed away in 1966 it was of a drug overdose at just the tender age of 41.  Now in the new version, Lenny is no longer just a heroic outlaw, now Lenny is a truly tragic hero since the poor guy never made it to the promised land and he never did make it out of Babylon.  The plaintive violin and the piano solo pick up on this idea and now express the sadness of the whole situation. 

It was a memorable ride that they shared together in that taxi once, there was a lot of commonality between the two travelers as each had to fight some wars on a battlefield but only one of them lived to tell the tale.  This brief encounter in the taxi was similar in nature to the one Bob Dylan describes when as a 17-year-old young Bobby Zimmerman went to see Buddy Holly perform as part of the "Winter Dance Party" at the Duluth Armory just a few nights before Buddy went down in a fatal plane crash at age 22.  Bob says something happened in their brief encounter, something was exchanged, and the taxi cab ride with Lenny which seemed to "take a couple of months" sounds like a similar moment.  One that Dylan hopes he is honoring with this sad song of remembrance.