Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Introduction

Like Murder Most Foul this song concerns the assassination of Kennedy. Here we have the thoughts and memories of the assassin as he looks back on his crime, says how it came about and attempts to come to terms with it. These thoughts range over his birth, his upbringing, his youth and his attempt to achieve notoriety. Some thoughts occur at random, or one memory (for example, about searching for love) will spark off another from a different time (for example, about being in love), so that the later might seem to contradict the earlier. And sometimes his memory is faulty as when he treats Radio Luxembourg as a pirate station. The effect is to show that he’s looking back over many years. There’s no reason to doubt that the narrator is rational – a plausible, albeit flawed, human being with whom the listener can relate and perhaps even sympathise.

While the narrator is never explicit about his having been an assassin, there are numerous indications that this is the case. These range from otherwise inexplicable mentions of other presidents, allusions to Murder Most Foul, and implicit comparisons with another assassin – Lady Macbeth. An interesting feature of the song is the way it makes use of other songs, mostly from the 1950s, to bring out its meaning.

Throughout the song a complex picture is drawn of the narrator’s character. What he describes as a search for love is not what it seems. He’s depressed by the effects on himself of what he’s done but is too ready to lay the blame on others. Nevertheless there are indications that he has a glimmering of what he needs to do to regain his psychological and spiritual health.

The title refers to the narrator’s chosen retreat – an island in the Florida Keys archipelago. The sub-title ‘Philosopher Pirate’ perhaps indicates that the narrator is thinking things out in an attempt to come to terms with his past. It’s his thoughts which make up the entirety of the song. Despite the fact that Key West is associated with legends of pirates, there’s little to associate him with piracy beyond his misremembering being influenced by pirate radio and the fact that the song quotations he uses could be said to have been pirated.

McKinley

The idea of assassinating Kennedy seems to have come to the narrator when he heard the song White House Blues, concerning the death in 1901 of President McKinley.¹ His thoughts begin with the opening one and a half lines of that song:

‘McKinley hollered – McKinley squalled
Doctor said [to] McKinley …’

The narrator was at the time:

‘… searchin’ for love and inspiration’

and White House Blues seems to have supplied the ‘inspiration’, his aim being notoriety – or, as he calls it, immortality:

‘Key West is the place to be
If you’re lookin’ for immortality’

Assassination is not the only sense in which he might be trying to acquire immortality. At the end of the song he associates immortality with ‘paradise divine’ suggesting that his search is for spiritual reconciliation having come to regret his crime.

Mystery Street

The assassination of McKinley not only causes the narrator to remember its stimulus, the song White House Blues, but to notice other associations with Kennedy:

‘Mystery Street off Malory Square
Truman had his White House there’

In  remembering features of Key West which impress him, he comes up with Harry Truman’s ‘Little White House’. It’s as if by noticing something to do with a president, his subconscious is refusing to let him dismiss the assassination of Kennedy from his mind.

There is in fact no Mystery Street on Key West. The reference seems in part to be an allusion to the song Mystery Street (sung by Alma Cogan) which deals with the upsides and downsides of love.² The lines:

‘You may lose your heart
And then your mind’

suggest that when the narrator says about Key West:

‘If you lost your mind you’ll find it there’,

he has become mentally disturbed as a result of losing his heart – or sense of compassion – and committing the murder. He tries to dismiss his moral qualms about this lack of compassion by putting it down to the natural environment – ‘The fishtail ponds and the orchid trees’ – giving him, as he disparagingly puts it:

‘… the bleedin’ heart disease’.

In the context of the assassination the advice that he ‘ought to try a little tenderness’ seems dreadfully ironic.

The ‘Mystery Street’ reference is not just to the Alma Cogan song. ‘Mystery’ is in the title of one of the songs, Mystery Train, requested by the dying Kennedy in Murder Most Foul and thus reinforces the idea that it is Kennedy’s death which keeps coming back to haunt the narrator³:

‘Play Mystery Train for Mr Mystery
The man who fell down dead, like a rootless tree’

Other Murder Most Foul references

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

There is another oblique reference in the song to Murder Most Foul which adds support to the view that the narrator of Key West is suffering from the psychological consequences of being Kennedy’s assassin. It occurs when he’s again blaming the natural environment rather than himself:

‘The tiny blossoms of a toxic plant
They can make you dizzy – I’d like to help ya but I can’t’

The word ‘dizzy’ seems to look forward to a couplet from Murder Most Foul in which Kennedy, having been shot, is fusing the words of another popular song, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, with his own fate⁴:

‘You got me dizzy Miss Lizzy – you filled me with lead
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head’.

The phrase ‘I’d like to help ya but I can’t’ can be interpreted in two ways. If seen as addressed to Kennedy, it’s an indication the narrator now wishes he could undo the harm he’s done. If seen as addressed to himself, the narrator could be seen as giving in to despair as a result of what he’s done. Like Lady Macbeth he feels that, having committed the crime, there’s nothing that can save him from its consequences.

Left/Right

A further reason for seeing the murderer as an assassin is the presence of left/right  imagery of the sort also to be found in Murder Most Foul. There left is associated with the victim, Kennedy, at the point of his assassination:

‘I’m leaning to the left, got my head in her lap’

and right is associatedwith his assassins:

‘We’re right down the street from the street where you live’

A similar left/right distinction is evident In Key West when the narrator puts himself in the position of a Roman emperor deciding that a defeated contestant in the Coliseum should die:

‘Got my right hand high with the thumb down’

Not only does having his ‘thumb down’ make the narrator a killer, but that it’s the thumb on his right hand associates him with the assassins in Murder Most Foul.

The left/right distinction occurs again in verse ten:

‘You stay to the left and then you lean to the right’

He’s being presented as the opposite of Kennedy who was ‘leaning to the left’. He seems to be admitting that while he does what is acceptable, he has no qualms about doing what is unacceptable – in other words, killing. Because he’ll be only leaning to the right, what he’s doing won’t be obvious. It’s a subterfuge.

A related tactic is in evidence when he declares:

 ‘I play both sides against the middle’

In other words he associates himself with the left side when it suits him and with the right side when it suits him.

In verse 11 the distinction occurs again:

‘I do what I think is right – what I think is best’

Since what he thinks is right is assassination, doing what he thinks is right is not as morally acceptable as it implies.

Last Request

A final indication that the narrator is being haunted by his assassination of Kennedy is the line:

‘… I heard your last request’

Murder Most Foul contains numerous requests by the dying Kennedy for songs. The ‘last request’ referred to is for Murder Most Foul itself. By recalling the title of Kennedy’s last request, the narrator is subconsciously recognising the assassination, which he seems to have thought right at the time, as foul.

Conscience

It is apparent, then, that the assassination of Kennedy is plaguing the narrator’s conscience. His reaction is to try to convince himself that it was necessary. Twice he’s explicit about this:

‘I do what I think is right – what I think is best’

and

‘I’ve never …
… wasted my time with an unworthy cause’

That he feels guilty, though, is apparent at various points in the song. Right at the start he misremembers the third line of White House Blues by quoting it as:

‘Say it to me if you got something to confess’

This is significant because there’s no mention of confession in the original. It’s almost certainly the narrator rather than McKinley who has something to confess. The narrator is simply – perhaps unconsciously – transferring his own need to confess onto McKinley. We can assume that, Like Lady Macbeth, he is now regretting his action – while thinking that ‘what’s done cannot be undone’⁵. And, like Lady Macbeth, he is losing his mind.

In Macbeth the doctor says about Lady Macbeth, just prior to her suicide:

‘More needs she the divine than the physician’⁶

– meaning that her suffering is psychological or spiritual rather than physical. The narrator also needs the divine. In fact he holds out hopes that Key West will be:

‘… paradise divine’

He presents it as an ideal, a state associated with redemption and spiritual ‘purity’ and ‘immortality’, and so a cure for his current state of spiritual ill health. Once he has reached this ideal state, he will have been restored to sanity. But, despite yearning for it, he – like Lady Macbeth – sees it as unattainable. It’s:

‘… on the horizon line’

However much you approach the horizon, it keeps its distance from you. Because of this he decides, it seems, to stay on the road to perdition.

Hard Done By

At the time he was searching for ‘inspiration’, the narrator was also searching ‘for love’. In his subsequent account of a relationship the narrator is either fooling himself or being intentionally devious:

‘Twelve years old and they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute’

It seems likely that this is an exaggeration and, to the extent that it’s true, not the whole story. It seems far more likely that he got a girl pregnant – which would be the reason for his being required to marry her – and that he’s calling her a prostitute is to divert blame due to himself onto her. At the same time the carping tone of ‘they put me’ – when he doesn’t even say who ‘they’ is – suggests he’s content to see the world as against him.

That he wants to be seen as a victim is again apparent when he says:

 ‘I was born on the wrong side of the railroad track’

This may be true. The reference to a ‘convent home’ in verse eleven suggests that he’s an orphan. That he feels disadvantaged by his upbringing is supported by his mentioning about the ‘prostitute’ he was supposedly forced to marry that there were:

‘… gold fringes on her wedding dress’?

He seems to be showing resentment at the disparity between her lot and his – someone ‘from down in the boondocks’. In fact it doesn’t seem that he was hard done at all because his poverty has turned out to be no obstacle to his marrying well.⁷

However, to drive home the point he comes up with a ludicrous comparison. He’s:

‘Like Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac
Like Louis and Jimmy and Buddy and all of the rest’

If he’s disadvantaged to the extent of every other writer or singer, then he hasn’t been disadvantaged. At worst he’s average. And even to the extent that those in his example were disadvantaged, they were still able to achieve. They didn’t need to use their upbringing as an excuse.

Since the narrator gives himself good advice prior to becoming an assassin:

 ‘Stay on the road – follow the highway sign’

his impoverished upbringing would seem irrelevant to his becoming a murderer. That he’s capable of directing the course of his life is also shown by his decision not to put aside his old self:

 ‘… I’m stickin’ with you …’⁸

He should have realised that the narrator of the song I’m Stickin’ With You from which he quotes is utterly naïve.

There is another hint of disingenuousness. And there seems to be an appalling acceptance of a need to kill when after saying ‘Got my right hand high with the thumb down’ he comments:

‘Such is life – such is happiness’

‘Such is life’ is usually said when one resigns oneself to things that have gone wrong, not when you deliberately bring about death.

Sexual exploitation

There are also indications that the narrator is not being honest when giving the account of his marriage. One occurs when he says about the account he’s given:

‘That’s my story …’

Since ‘story’ can be used as a synonym for ‘lie’, the use of the word suggests he’s covering something up.

It’s doubtful that the ‘happy ending’ is to be taken at face value either:

‘She’s still cute and we’re still friends’

The word ‘still’ is significant. It suggests not only that he thought the girl ‘cute’ when he first met her but that it’s only because she’s still cute that he continues to have anything to do with her. We can take ‘still friends’ with a pinch of salt too. Since he was exploiting her before, the implication is that he’s continuing to exploit her now. He is making no attempt to reform and so achieve the psychological and spiritual solace he craves.

That the narrator is being disingenuous is backed up by a line in the next verse which quotes the title of a traditional song Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss. In the Patty Loveless version of the song (called just Pretty Little Miss) the girl is twelve:

‘Mama says he’s not my type
He really loves another
But he’s gonna marry me
When I turn twelve this summer’⁹

This might appear to suggest that narrator in Key West is transferring the girl’s age to himself so that it’s not the narrator who was twelve, but the girl. This would be consistent. He did something similar when he transferred his own need to confess onto McKinley. Presumably his aim is to gain sympathy which is really due to the girl. If so, it casts doubt on his claim that she’s a prostitute.

A further indication of the narrator’s true attitude to love is given in the line which follows the reference to Pretty Little Miss:

‘I don’t love nobody – gimme a kiss’

This is a heartless approach to relationships consistent with his dismissal of compassion as:

‘… that bleedin’ heart disease’

A similar heartlessness is also indicated in his report of advice he’s been given. The word ‘try’ in:

‘… I oughta try a little tenderness’,

suggests that any tenderness will just be an expedient, a means of achieving some end. If tenderness doesn’t work, he’s implying, he could try something more forceful.

It’s possible too that he’s being devious when he says about hibiscus flowers:

‘If you wear one put it behind your ear’

There’s a tradition for the hibiscus to be worn so by young women as a sign that they are marriageable. One suspects that in encouraging this, the narrator is hoping to provide himself with an excuse for dissolute behaviour. It’s what one might expect of someone who admits to:

‘Walkin’ in the shadows after dark’

Key West as heaven

The narrator remembers Key West from his past and wants to be once again immersed in the positive qualities he remembers. He sees it as representing his salvation. This is the case in two different ways. He thinks it will cure him spiritually (or morally). He also thinks it will cure his psychological problems resulting from his act of murder. It’s to be seen as a spiritual heaven as well as a heaven on earth. It’s not always clear to what extent he distinguishes the two.

That he sees Key West as a cure for his psychological state is stated explicitly:

‘If you lost your mind you’ll find it there’

He’ll become sane again once he has come to terms with his crime.

And while on a surface level it’s presumably psychological healing he has in mind when he refers to:

‘… the healing virtues of the wind’,

the application of the concept of ‘virtue’ suggests that – perhaps at a subconscious level – it’s a more spiritual form of wellbeing he’s convinced he can aspire to.

This would seem to be so when he sees the island as an imparter of spiritual solace:

‘…  the gateway key
To innocence and purity’.

Key West is also:

‘…  the place to be
If you’re looking for immortality’

which, again, suggests that it is spiritually reforming – provided ‘immortality’ is taken in a spiritual sense.

At the end of the song the narrator judges Key West, in language apposite to the Christian heaven, as:

‘… paradise divine’.

Key West as hell

The above shows that the narrator is open to salvation, both mentally and spiritually, in a way that Lady Macbeth was not. But it’s made equally clear that the possibility of redemption goes hand in hand with the possibility of damnation. He recognises that Key West has adverse qualities, two of which are characteristics of hell. It’s:

‘hot …’

and

‘… down …’

The latter idea is present at the beginning of the song where we’re told that McKinley, yet to confess, was ‘going down slow’. The word ‘down’ occurs twenty-three times in the song, enough to render ‘paradise divine’ a ludicrous hyperbole.

There are other adverse qualities. While there are beautiful flowers, he’s aware that there are also:

‘The tiny blossoms of a toxic plant
That can make you dizzy’

He characterises the island as:

‘… under the sun
Under the radar – under the gun’

While it’s relatively safe for those on the run like himself, in that it’s ‘under the radar’, it’s being ‘under the gun’ suggests it’s still a place of violence and coercion rather than a respite from such things. It’s a balance of good and bad.

There are also hellish qualities which do not seem apparent to the narrator. He sees Key West as being:

‘… fine and fair’

but the expression with its ‘f’ alliteration will make the listener think of the witches’ announcement in Macbeth that ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’.¹⁰ (And the implied need to substitute ‘foul’ for ‘fair’ once again reminds us of the ‘Foul’ in Murder Most Foul, thereby intensifying the need to see the present song as about Kennedy’s assassin.) Key West is less fair, and more foul, than is apparent. Ironically, his own role as a sexual predator is evidence for that. So is what seems to be an attempt to cover up his real nature by playing bogus (‘Gumbo Limbo’) spirituals so as to appear holy (‘blessed’).

***

The narrator is over optimistic in judging Key West to represent his salvation. His focus is on the place and what it can do whereas what he needs to do, it would seem, is transform himself. To put his faith in the place is absurd. Its being ‘under the sun’ suggests that there’s nothing new there – and hence that it isn’t significantly different from anywhere else. In verses six and seven, however, he seems to realise this. He first calls it ‘the enchanted land’ and then seems to contradict this when he says he’s never been ‘to the land of Oz’. The result, as far as we can tell, is that he gives up the quest for moral salvation and continues his life of dissolute behaviour.

Conclusion

A reason for suspecting the narrator of being Kennedy’s assassin is the otherwise apparent arbitrariness of his references to two other presidents, one of whom was himself assassinated. That he is in fact the assassin is reinforced by numerous references to Murder Most Foul, the final song on the album which concerns the assassination of Kennedy, as well as by allusions to various popular songs and to Macbeth.

An achievement of the song is in showing thought processes – in this case those of someone who is mentally disturbed. That this person is an assassin is important in that it enables the song to show how someone likely to be universally hated can in essence be no different to anyone else. Although the narrator is an assassin, the way he thinks is likely to be the way any one of us thinks, with – for example – a thought about searching for love sparking off another about being in love. Additionally we, like him, viewing our past life from the perspective of the present, will often fail to remember events in anything like their correct chronological order, and sometimes too the memories themselves will be faulty. More importantly, like him, we will not always distinguish between our possible motives for acting. Sometimes, too, we will behave inconsistently, just like the narrator in seeking redemption for one immoral act while continuing to commit others.

Because the song is written almost entirely in the present tense, it’s often not possible to tell which remembered events preceded or succeeded others. The uncertainty can result in a memory’s giving rise to more than one interpretation. Thus the meaning of the remembered advice to himself:

  ‘Stay on the road – follow the highway sign’,

will depend on when it was given. If it was given before the assassination, it might mean ‘Don’t go ahead with it’. If it was given afterwards, it might mean ‘Stay on the same immoral path’. Copious possibilities for similar multiple interpretations exist throughout the song. The narrator cannot be easily pinned down.

Key West, the island, is relevant in that the narrator associates it with various perfections which, perhaps unconsciously, he sees as reflecting the moral innocence he’d like to return to. Despite that, he realises Key West has negative qualities as well. It’s as much representative of hell as of heaven. As such, rather than representing an ideal to be aspired to, it’s where the narrator already is. He needs a more morally appropriate target.

 

Notes:

1. White House Blues was sung in 1926 by Charlie Poole but it’s doubtful whether he wrote it. The actual opening is:

‘McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled
Doc said to McKinley, “I can’t find that ball”’

2. Mystery Street by J. Howard, J. Plante, P. Gerard and J. Gleason 1953. The lyrics contain much that applies to Dylan’s narrator.
3. Mystery Train by J. Parker 1953
4. Dizzy Miss Lizzy by L. Williams 1958
5. Macbeth 5.1.63-4.
6. Macbeth 5.1.74
7. The narrator’s position is markedly different from that of the narrator of the song ‘Down In The Boondocks’ (by Joe South, 1965) which is being referenced here. There the narrator has a genuine cause for grievance in that on account of his poverty he can’t marry the girl he loves
8. I’m Stickin’ With You Bowen and Knox 1956
9. Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (trad.) Pretty Little Miss Patty Loveless 2001. The printed version of Key West on BobDylan.com gives the title as just Pretty Little Miss. The words ‘Fly around’ precede the title, but are not made to be part of it.
10. Macbeth 1.1.12