Dylan Song by Song: "Maggie's Farm" Quiz

Answer: 1965

"Bringing It All Back Home" was Bob Dylan's fifth studio album, following "Another Side of Bob Dylan" in 1964 and preceding "Highway 61 Revisited," which was also released in 1965. The Single for "Maggie's Farm" was released in June of 1965, with "On the Road Again" on the B-side. It peaked at number 22 on the U.K. Singles Chart.

Answer: Mike Bloomfield

Chicago-born American guitarist and composer Mike Bloomfield played a role in the popularization of blues music in the 1960s and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012. "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked him 22nd on its 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

At his 1965 press conference in San Francisco, Bob Dylan conceded that at the Newport Festival, "Well there was booing [. . . ] Ya, that was at Newport. Well, I did this very crazy thing, so you know? I mean, I didn't really know what was going to happen. But, ah, they certainly booed, I'll tell you that."

The live version of the song played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was released on "The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home," which is the soundtrack to the 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan by Martin Scorsese.

Answer: Down on Penny's Farm

"Down on Penny's Farm" depicts the complaint of a sharecropper against his unscrupulous landlord, George Penny:

"It's hard times in the country,
Down on Penny's farm. . .
He'll come around to plan and plot,
Till he gets himself a mortgage
On everything you got.
You go to the fields
And you work all day,
Till way after dark, but you get no pay,
Promise you meat or a little lard,
It's hard to be a renter on Penny's farm. . . "

Not much is known about the Bentley Boys, but this song was included on Harry Smith's "The Anthology of American Folk Music," a six-album compilation released by Folkways Records in 1952, and that was probably how it became familiar to Bob Dylan.

Answer: insane

These lyrics may be the most personal in the song and could be a description of Bob Dylan's own creativity - a whirlwind of thoughts that might be the seeds for new songs.

According to the Official Bob Dylan website, Dylan first played "Maggie's Farm" live on July 25, 1965, and as of December 2019, he had played it live over one thousand times, including at the 2011 Grammy Award Show, where he performed alongside Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers.

Answer: scrub the floor

This song depicts - at least on its surface - the hard life of a farmhand laboring to earn his keep, this time under the tyranny of a family of eccentric and controlling landlords. The singer wakes up early, hopes for rain, and has to get right to work: "It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor." The singer is thrilled to escape the drudgery of his life in service to the landholder: "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more."

Answer: slam the door

"Nah, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
And he hands you a dime
And he asks you with a grin
If you're havin' a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door."

In June of 2008, "Rolling Stone" magazine reported that Barack Obama felt the "political rhetoric" of "Maggie's Farm" was especially appealing to him. Although the song has often been appropriated for political purposes, and is viewed by many as an anti-government song, Dylan himself has never claimed it has a political meaning.

Answer: Maggie's pa

"I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks."

According to the "Bob Dylan Commentaries" blog, there has been speculation that the title for this song "came from Magee's Farm, the correctional institute where Dylan performed 'Only a Pawn in Their Game' during a trip through the South that Dylan made . . . as part of a civil rights effort to promote voter registration."

Answer: The National Guard

"His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
I ain't gonna work, nah
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more."

The first African-American R&B artist to cover a Bob Dylan song covered "Maggie's Farm." Solomon Burke released a single of "Maggie's Farm" as the B-side to "Tonight's the Night" shortly before Dylan released his own single. Burke's version peaked at number two on the Billboard R&B song charts.

Answer: Maggie's ma

"Everybody says
She's the brains behind pa."

Versions of "Maggie's Farm" have been included on more than ten different Bob Dylan albums. Concert versions can be found on the 1976 "Hard Rain," the 1979 "Live At Budokan," and the 1985 "Real Live." You'll also find the song on "Greatest Hits Volume II," "The Essential Bob Dylan," "The Bootleg Series" Volumes 7 and 10, "Dylan" (2007), "The Original Mono Recordings" (2010), and "Live 1962-1966."

Answer: 68

"She's sixty-eight, but she says she's twenty-four
I ain't gonna work for, nah
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more."

Maggie's Ma is 68 years old, but she lies about her age. She claims to be either fifty-four or twenty-four, depending on which version of the song you're listening to. In the original version, she said she was fifty-four. At the Newport Folk Festival, however, Bob Dylan sang the line as "She's sixty-eight, but she says she's twenty-four." Subsequent versions of the song, including many covers, used "twenty-four," but you can also find versions using "fifty-four." The Official Bob Dylan Website contains "twenty-four" in its lyrics for this song, while older publications of Bob Dylan's lyrics say "fifty-four."

Answer: law

In "Song and Dance Man III," Michael Gray calls the overall portrayal of Maggie's ma "compassionate." He explains, "She's an impossible, puffed-up old battle-axe rasping out dreadful philosophic homilies" to the servants, a woman who no doubt takes advantage of her workforce, "but all the same we smile for her on catching her at that little impotent touch of pretense, patting her hair into place and claiming to be 'only' fifty-four.'"

Answer: them

"Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more."

Davis Inman of "American Songwriter" magazine sees these particular lines as a possible "kissoff" to the folk scene, which expected Dylan to conform to a certain image and genre of music. These lyrics could, he argues, "set up a distinction between singing traditional songs and the more challenging work Dylan sought, writing original songs and forging new musical directions."

Answer: Richie Havens

The music of Richie Havens blended folk, R&B, and soul, and he was the opening act at Woodstock. His version of "Maggie's Farm" was recorded on "Something Else Again," which was released in 1968 and included such songs as "The Klan," "From the Prison," and "Don't Listen to Me."

Answer: Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine, or RATM, or Rage, released "Renegades," an album consisting entirely of covers, in 2000. It was their fourth studio album. In addition to "Maggie's Farm," it contained covers of songs such as "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones and "The Ghost of Tom Joad" by Bruce Springsteen.

Answer: Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, known as "the iron lady," served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. Her government fueled a number of rock protests songs, including Morrissey's "Margaret on the Guillotine," The English Beat's "Stand Down Margaret," and Elvis Costello's "Tramp the Dirt Down."

Bob Dylan's song "Maggie's Farm" was also taken up by some British musicians as a sort of protest anthem. The Blues Band recorded a version of the song in 1979 that made some lyrical changes, such as replacing "the National Guard stands around his door" with a line alluding to the SPG (Special Patrol Group), a London Metropolitan Police unit that quelled protests at the time.