Queen Jane Approximately
"Queen Jane Approximately" is a song from Bob Dylan's 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. It was released as a single as the B-side to "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" in January 1966. It has also been covered by several artists, including the Grateful Dead and The Four Seasons.
Meaning
Similar to other Dylan songs of this period, "Queen Jane Approximately" has the singer criticizing the subject of the song, warning her of an imminent fall from grace. Although the song covers similar ground to "Like a Rolling Stone", "Queen Jane Approximately" is gentler and shows the subject some compassion. The main point of criticism is that the subject lives in an inauthentic world filled with superficial attitudes and people and meaningless, ritualized proprieties. However, the singer also invites the subject to come and see him if and when she is willing to break away from her superficial diversions and engage in an honest, authentic experience, or when she needs someone to ultimately pick up the pieces.The song is structured in five verses, in which the first two deal with Queen Jane's relationship with her family, the second two deal with her relationship with her "courtiers" and the last deals with her relationship with bandits. This structure essentially maps out a path from those closest to her to a way out of her current situation, preparing for the last lines of the fifth verse where the narrator offers "And you want somebody you don't have to speak to / Won't you come see me Queen Jane?" The song incorporates several attitudes towards the subject, including condescension, self-righteousness, contempt, compassion as well as sneering.
There is a minority interpretation which suggests a darker meaning. In this view Queen Jane represents Dylan's heroin addiction and the lyrics amount to the self-reproach of the singer as he finds himself within the depths of the drug. In the first verse he has alienated his family. His mother sends back all his invitations. He finds his inventions tiresome, and he resorts to Queen Jane. The metaphor continues evoking the poppy, “when all the flower ladies want back what they have lent you”, the blackness of withdrawal and the resentment of his children, he resorts to Queen Jane. He ends with a plaint about the futility and monotony of his life, the doomsayers and sycophants surrounding him, coming down to ‘wanting somebody you don't have to speak to’. And so resorts to Queen Jane.
This interpretation is more in keeping with the historical circumstances of Dylan's personal life and within the context the music he was making on Highway 61 Revisited. There is nothing sentimental or soft about this album. Every track is full of hard truths with little sense of forgiveness as is suggested by the more common interpretation of this song. Dylan has also apparently acknowledged being in the throes of heroin addiction near the time he was writing this material. He has written no other song which has characterized that experience and it would be an odd piece of omission that he would not have done so. This solves the problem when Gill calls this song "the least interesting track" on Highway 61.
Cash Box described Dylan's version as a "medium-paced, twangy heart-breaker." Cash Box described a cover version by the Daily Flash as a "funky, infectious, haunting reading of Dylan’s image filled tale of the travails of a young girl and a guy’s everlasting devotion."