We Shall (All) Be Released

A Meditation on Joni Ernst

I was trying to figure out a guitar strum to Bob Dylans’s song, “I Shall Be Released,” when I came across a video from the 1969 pilot of the Mama Cass Television Show. That show never went farther than this memorable pilot, but YouTube showed me a clip of Cass Elliot, best known for her alto voice in the Mamas and the Papas, singing the song I was researching. The instrumental accompaniment was a little cheesy, and not helpful in my guitar quest, but that wasn’t what I focused on: to Cass’s right sat Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary fame. On her left, Joni Mitchell, famous all on her own. Each woman sang a verse and then “put on a harmony,” as Joni would say (in her song “For Free”). Elliot wore an amorphous rainbow- colored gauzy cape, Travers,a spangled silver sheath. Joni’s red gauzy skirt had some kind of silver strip down it, accented by a bright marigold blouse and pumpkin vest. Flower child days. My first thought was, “They are so young.” My second that two of the three are gone, Cass at 32 of a heart attack, Mary at 72 of leukemia. Of course, we have all marveled at Joni Mitchell’s remarkable comeback from a brain aneurism, a masterful musician even at 81, and, obviously, I’m still here, but these two stars of my past are no longer on the earth.

The song “I Shall Be Released” has been covered by dozens of musicians, but it became a part of my life when I first heard it on The Band’s album, Music From Big Pink.

I was living in a hippie commune in Seattle then, and we played LP’s on a record player, this song on repeat for me, featuring Richard Manuel’s falsetto on lead vocals, backed up by the tight harmonies of Rick Danko and Levon Helm. They’re all gone too.

Probably the most famous version of that song is the concert recording, near the end of Scorsese’s great rock and roll movie, The Last Waltz, The Band’s farewell concert. Dylan himself sings the lead through most of that all-star performance. It was Thanksgiving, 1976. By then, I’d gotten married, become an earnest worker at a non-profit. I didn’t see the film until years later when it became one of my favorites ever.

Like so many of Dylan’s songs, “I Shall Be Released” has an enigmatic meaning. On the surface, it looks like a song about a man looking to be released from a physical prison. But there are many metaphorical prisons in the world. Dylan himself references different ones in various commentaries on the song. And according to many folks’ spirituality, life can be one of those prisons; death the ultimate release.

Which brings me to the words of Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. Last week, when a constituent at a town hall meeting shouted, “People are going to die,” referring to the impact of the current spending bill before the Congress which is estimated to strip Medicaid benefits from millions of Americans, Ernst sensitively responded, “Well, we are all going to die.” The next day, rather than modifying her statement, she doubled down.

If she’d asked me, I would have said, “Joni, we all know that. And we also know that decent people do what they can to care for people who are dying, to get them medical treatments that folks with good insurance or plenty of money receive. Or maybe preventative health so they’ll live longer.”

We all die, it’s true. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. There is no fairness at play here. Even when we might do our best to stay in good shape, it comes, for some, very young. Few of us welcome it, though it may be a “release” from pain and suffering. So, good Lord, Joni Ernst, can’t we do what we can to at least provide decent health care to all? And show a little compassion, for heaven’s sake (literally.)

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I’ve attached The Last Waltz version here. Fun activity: how many old rock stars can you name. If you want to be morbid, how many are still alive? (Most, I think.)

[If you want to see Mama Cass and her girls, you’ll have to find them on your own, because it is not the best musical representation of any of them, and surely, as talented musicians, that is how they would choose to be remembered.]