“You’re not a folk singer. You’re a journalist.” That’s what an irritated Bob Dylan said to Phil Ochs when the latter gave him a less-than-favorable opinion on his song “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” Dylan had just played the tune for Ochs while the two rode together in the back of a limousine, according to There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs.(Unfortunately for Ochs, his honesty got him kicked out of the car.)
The thing was, Ochs wasn’t the only person to be underwhelmed by “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” Recorded in 1965, the song features Dylan backed by the Hawks, later known as the Band: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm, keyboard player Richard Manuel on piano, and Garth Hudson on organ.
Released as a single in 1965, Dylan had high hopes for the song’s potential as a hit…but it didn’t make much of an impression on the charts.
“Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” peaked at #58 in the U.S., though it did slightly better in Canada, going to #23, and had even more success in England, making it to #17. Of course, countless songs that came to be recognized as classics over the years never had a major chart presence, and years later, the song still endures. In his autobiographical book 31 Songs, Nick Hornby wrote an entire chapter praising “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” despite being “not a big Dylan fan,” in his words. As Jochen Markhorst wrote for Untold Dylan, it “really is a fine, genuine Dylan song,” and one that shows off his “very (very) nasty side,” at that.
Markhorst has a point. Never one to hold back, Dylan definitely has a lot of not-that-nice things to say about somebody in these lyrics (as is his fashion, he’s never confirmed who the song is actually about).
He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacksPreoccupied with his vengeanceCursing the dead that can’t answer him backYou know that he has no intentionsOf looking your way, unless it’s to sayThat he needs you to test his inventions
Hey, come crawl out your windowUse your hands and legs, it won’t ruin youHow can you say he will haunt you?You can go back to him any time you want to
Then again, Dylan could get even more vicious when he felt like it. Take, for example, “Idiot Wind” from his 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Tracks:
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouthBlowing down the back roads headin’ southIdiot wind, blowing every time you move your teethYou’re an idiot, babeIt’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
Unsurprisingly, Dylan has never spilled the beans on the inspiration behind “Idiot Wind,” either, but whoever it was probably got the message. As artist, activist and famed Dylan muse Suze Rotolo explained in A Freewheelin’ Time, “When he was on his ‘telling it like it is’ truth mission, he could be cruel.”
“Though I was never on the receiving end of one of his tirades, I did witness a few,” she continued. “The power he was given and the changes it entailed made him lash out unreasonably, but I believe he was trying to find a balance within himself when everything was off-kilter.”
Related: 1975 Bob Dylan Hit, Ranked Among ‘Greatest Songs of All Time,’ Took ’10 Years to Live and Two Years to Write’
It seemed Dylan didn’t hold a grudge against Ochs, ultimately. In a 1969 Rolling Stone interview, Jann Wenner asked Dylan about his influence on other musicians and writers, mentioning Ochs by name. Dylan was careful to point out that Ochs wasn’t merely one of his disciples, as he was already writing music before he became part of the Greenwich Village folk scene.
“I remember when he came to town,” Dylan said. “He was doing his ‘Stand Tall Billy Sol’-type songs. I mean, he had it then. I think he made it, there being a certain amount of momentum — he pushed — from being on the scene. But he did bring his own thing in, when he came in. He didn’t — as some people — come in as a dishwasher, to dig some sounds and suddenly put down the broom, and pick up the guitar. You know what I mean?”
Getting back to “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” it was only played live once, in 1965. Dylan wasn’t thrilled with its chart performance and seemed ready to put it behind him. It wasn’t until 20 years later, when the song was included on the Biograph compilation, that it finally reached a wider audience…Hornby among them, apparently.
Related: 1968 No. 1 Song, Written by Bob Dylan, Became a Major Hit for a Totally Different Band
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