Critical Responses
Critical responses are ambivalent. The common thread is that Dylan is pointing the finger of refusal and declaring his self-possession.
For example, "Maggie's Farm" is described by Salon.com critic Bill Wyman as "a loping, laconic look at the service industry." Music critic Tim Riley described it as the "counterculture's war cry," but he also notes that the song has been interpreted as "a rock star's gripe to his record company, a songwriter's gripe to his publisher, and a singer-as-commodity's gripe to his audience-as-market." However, Allmusic's William Ruhlmann also notes that "in between the absurdities, the songwriter describes what sound like real problems. 'I got a head full of ideas/That are drivin' me insane,' he sings in the first verse, and given Dylan's prolific writing at the time, that's not hard to believe. In the last verse, he sings, 'I try my best/To be just like I am/But everybody wants you/To be just like them,' another comment that sounds sincere." One of the critical responses to the song, favored by many contemporary fans, is Todd Haynes'. In his Dylan biopic "I'm Not There," the song debuts at the Newport Folk Festival, with Dylan and his band firing machine guns at the crowd. At the conclusion of the performance, Haynes' Dylan declares to a cartoonish folk-protest audience: "I'm sorry for everything I've done, and I hope to remedy it soon."
Read more about this topic: Maggie's Farm
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