Steven Tyler appears in drag on "American Idol" and quotes Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues."

He came out as if he were the last contestant and maybe it took half a second to recognize the big rock star (who was on the judge's panel last season). The news reports of the little stunt emphasize the drag and the (miniscule) surprise, but even where the lyric is quoted, the attribution to Bob Dylan is missing. Here's the NY Daily News:

"What the, what?" Randy Jackson said when he got a first glimpse of his former co-star on stage.

"My name is Pepper. I'm going to sing a song called 'Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa, Our Love Going to Grow, Wah Wah,'" he joked to judging panel. "But before I do I'm going to judge you all (bleeps) first."

I'm not finding any news reports that place the lyric — which I have engraved on my brain — in the old Bob Dylan song. "Talkin' World War III Blues" has 12 verses of Bob talking his way through a dream he had about walking through post-nuclear NYC, with all the people gone from the "lonesome town." Here's the 9th verse:

Well, I remember seein’ some ad
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”

Tyler said "Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah," by the way, just like Dylan, not "Wah Wah," as the Daily News would have it.

Now that you get the reference, is there anything to be made of it? Maybe Dylan was making an in joke at the time and Tyler was referring to that joke. Maybe Tyler wanted to alert us to the threat of nuclear war. Maybe Tyler wanted to wink at Dylan fans. But the best clue I found — as I did a Google search to see if anyone had recognized the Dylan quote — was an article from back in November about  friction between Tyler and current-season judge Nicki Manaj. Tyler had said in an interview:

“If it was Bob Dylan, Nicki Minaj would have had him sent to the cornfield! Whereas, if it was Bob Dylan with us, we would have brought the best of him out, as we did with Phillip Phillips....”

Manaj thereafter tweeted:

“Steven Tyler said I would have sent Bob Dylan to a cornfield??? Steven, you haven’t seen me judge one single solitary contestant yet!”

And:

“I understand you really wanted to keep your job but take that up with the producers. I haven’t done anything to you. That’s a racist comment.” 

Racist because it's against her... or because sending someone "to the cornfield" is a reference to slavery?

“You assume that I wouldn’t have liked Bob Dylan??? why? black? rapper? what? go f— yourself and worry about yourself babe.”

To quote Bob Dylan — especially while dressed in a garish blonde wig and big inflated breasts — is to tweak Nicki. Talking blues is related to rap, somewhere in the ancestry. The quoted line, which is talked, is about singing, singing like a rockabilly guy — "Rock-a-day Johnny" — and Tyler was acting as though he were going to sing the song Bob Dylan heard. Dylan is all alone in his dream, looking for company, and in his desperation, he turns on the radio, and then puts on a record, and it's this pop culture idiot, singing nonsense — ooh-wah, ooh-wah —but it's very poignant, because, after the war, Bob is longing for any kind of a voice. In the 10th verse, he calls the telephone number where a recorded voice says the time, and he listens to that voice, repeating the same time — 3 o'clock, the time the war started — for over an hour.

So Steven Tyler had a lot to say, if anybody wants to notice. He's saying we don't get artists like Bob Dylan anymore. The music industry — like NYC after the bomb — is devoid of real people. We're desperate for a human voice. And Nicki Manaj is the embodiment — for all her voluptuous physicality — of emptiness. He was spoofing her, critiquing everything, crying out for real human art, which — for him — Bob Dylan embodies.

But did anyone hear him? He pranced out as a clown. He was dressed as a woman. It resonated in the hollowness that has always been television. In drag, with that wide smile, he even looked like Milton Berle.



IN THE COMMENTS: In this post where I chide others for missing the Dylan reference, Mumpsimus dings me for missing a reference:

"To the cornfield" refers to the SF/Horror story "It's A Good Life" by Jerome Bixby. Or, more likely in this context, to the Twilight Zone episode based on that story.

Dust Bunny Queen links to this TZ clip.

Is this Mariah-Nicki thing going to work?

Is anyone watching?

We watched the first hour last night (with the rest saved on DVR), and, well, it seems the problem is that Nicki Manaj came to play. She's prepared. She's like the Tracy Flick of "American Idol." She's studied, and she's ready. If this reality show were "Survivor," she's be voted off immediately, because she wants it so bad. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey obviously believed she could simply swan in and be Mariah. That's enough in itself. How awful to have to be one of 2 women, when the other woman wants it so bad. It's like the wife and the mistress.

But there isn't even a husband. Unless America is the husband. But America, in "American Idol," is a whole lot of young girls. And what do they care about a wife and a mistress clawing it out? Poor Mariah! Don't tell me Keith Urban/Randy Jackson count as the husband who will step up — in this exaggerated TV sitcom — and choose the right woman, the true sweetheart, the wife, Mariah. These men are oblivious to the psychodrama. They're floating along aimlessly as if the only thing really happening is a talent show, where various young people try to sing as well as they can, and modestly knowledgeable judges give honest assessments.

Oh! My heart breaks for Mariah. But I must say, Nicki has won it all. She came to win and she crushed the competition in the first hour. Congratulations! But... is anyone watching?

Mariah Carey becomes an "American Idol" judge.

Which means Randy Jackson is staying (since he is her manager).

Carey was a guest mentor on "American Idol" in 2008, and she did an excellent job. I see I wrote: "Kudos to Mariah for doing the show the Barry Manilow way." The link goes to a post of mine that criticizes Dolly Parton for not guest-mentoring the Barry Manilow way. Here's the really old post, from 2006, praising Barry Manilow:

I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.

I don't know who the third judge is going to be in the new "American Idol," but I'd be perfectly happy to have Barry Manilow.

Condoleeza Rice is "either very worried about a socialist threat to America, or she wants to be Vice President."

Said a "Romney surrogate" about the 13-minutes speech Condi gave at a recent "closed-door fundraising retreat" for Romney in Park City. Audio of the speech at the link.

I arrived at that link via Drudge, who is pushing the Condi-for-VP story big time. Here's what Drudge looks like as I write this. Continuing with its recent black-and-white design theme, Drudge has a big photo of Condi, with a headline leading to a Drudge Report "exclusive":

Late Thursday evening, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign launched a new fundraising drive, 'Meet The VP' -- just as Romney himself has narrowed the field of candidates to a handful, sources reveal.

And a surprise name is now near the top of the list: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice!

The timing of the announcement is now set for 'coming weeks'....

It was Condi who received two standing ovations at Romney's Utah retreat a few weeks ago, and everyone left with her name on their lips.

Rice made an extended argument for American leadership in the world.

Romney could use a sidekick who will speak with gravitas about foreign policy. But does Condi know how to run for office? (She knows how to behave in the national spotlight, so she's in a better position to jump into this role than Sarah Palin was, even though Palin had run for office in Alaska.) What about the fact that Rice supports abortion rights? (Romney is going to need a lot of votes from people, like me, who support abortion rights. If we are willing to vote for him even though he opposes abortion rights, pro-lifers should be able to deal with a pro-choice VP.)

Drudge links to 3 more Condi stories, from 3 influential Republicans contemplating the prospect of Romney choosing her: Peggy Noonan, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill Kristol. 

Back to the topic of the design of the Drudge page and the mystery of the black-and-white. Right now, only black people are pictured on the page. In addition to Condi, who's giving us a very serious sidelong glance, there's Michelle Obama and Randy Jackson. Michelle has been carefully posed, it seems, by one of those portraitists who believe faces are improved by the proper arrangement of hands. Drudge tends to do things with hands, with multiple pictures and hands of different individuals matching or contrasting interestingly. But Michelle's are the only hands on the page right now. I expect more hands to accumulate on the page today.

The photo of Randy Jackson is rather nondescript and doesn't properly balance the very striking photos of the 2 women. But he's there, and they are there, and those are the only images on the page right now. We'll see what develops later. As Drudge says: "Developing...." The Drudge page is always developing. Someone should take the Drudge archive and run it as an animation using, for frames, the pages from the archive, going back as far as it goes.

For the moment, it's Condoleeza Rice, Michelle Obama, and Randy Jackson, in black-and-white, and yet I don't think Drudge means to be saying something about race — other than teasing readers (viewers?) into thinking he is.

Developing...

"When [Randy] Jackson (who’s been married since 1995) learned [Condoleezza] Rice wanted to meet him..."

"... 'he was sort of mystified ... but he went.'"