Author Archives: TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood With much thanks to Aaron Galbraith for his help in unearthing this, and many of the other more obscure Dylan moments that we’ve added to the site of late. In terms of reviewing Bob Dylan’s compositions I think … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Robert Frost is a middle-of-the-road poet. In his lyrics about the cosmos, nature, society, and the individual, Frost swings back and forth between a gnostic-like vision and a romantic transcendentalist one: I’d like to go by climbing … Continue reading →

by Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet) ‘Cast your dancing spell my way I promise to go under it…’ Ever since Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, there has been a tendency to think that the best way to appreciate a … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst The Alabama woman who is introduced in “Slow Train”, has a motherly, stern message: Boy, without a doubt Have to quit your mess and straighten out You could go down here, be just another accident statistic Stop … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood After the Empire is a recording session in which Bob Dylan and his fellow musicians work through a number of ideas that are not particularly well evolved.  I have reviewed the first track elsewhere (Baby’s coming back … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe Songs sung by the late and great Paul Robeson have a tremendous impact on singer/songwriter Bob Dylan: Well, I don’t know how it happened But the riverboat captain, he knows my fate But everybody else, even yourself … Continue reading →

The Man In Me (1970) by Jochen Markhorst The colourful crackerjack guitarist and full-blooded musician Jack White may consider himself one of Dylan’s more intimate acquaintances and lives in a large house with a large piece of land in Nashville. … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood A song that I have missed while working through all the Dylan tracks, and (wrongly as it turns out) claiming that we have reviewed them all.  Apologies, this one should have been included long ago  It turns … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Right wingers in American politics, prior thereto and during the 1960’s, see a hard-line Communist behind every bush, as they still do today. The folk-singing ‘Weavers’ member Jackie Alper notes that Bob Dylan spends a lot of … Continue reading →

  by Jochen Markhorst When John Kiernan returns home from shopping, he sees two strangers standing in front of his house. He is not particularily alarmed. “Neil Young fan alert,” he says to his wife Patti Regan. Kiernan and Patti … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood This is a song by Jackie Leven and Bob Dylan set to a melody that combines (at least to my ears) elements of “One too many mornings” and “Times they are a changing”.  However the story presented … Continue reading →

  By Larry Fyffe Jean-Jacques Rousseau utters his famous cry that man is born free but is everywhere in chains, and though he idealizes the ‘noble savage’, he remains a man of Reason. Oliver Goldsmith loosens the chains that bind … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to keep your seat … When Dylan sings these words, it is only ten years after December 1, 1955, the day that Rosa Parks in a bus in Montgomery refuses to … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Usually containing the word ‘like’ or ‘as’, a simile is a trope that creates a vivid comparison between an object (or action), and a different thing that has some similar aspect. Bob Dylan constructs lots of similes … Continue reading →

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet) ‘Rosemary combed her hair and took a cabbage into town’ No. She didn’t. She took a carriage into town, but it’s easy enough to mishear Dylan. He has a way of bending words, and while he … Continue reading →

 A kind of quest… By Aaron Galbraith I was having a read through Tony’s 2015 review for If You Gotta Go (Go Now) and it spurred me to write a quick look at several of the more interesting versions of the … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood First off, let me reiterate – I’m an English guy who has visited the USA many times, but don’t consider myself to be immersed in its history and traditions.   I do my best, but the basic … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst “One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere,” Paul Simon says in the interview with Rolling Stone (April 2011). “I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Which side of the big Titanic metaphor is singer/songwriter Bob Dylan on? Do his song lyrics reflect a Hermetic view of the cosmos, or a Gnostic one? It’s a question many an examiner of Dylan’s music ask, … Continue reading →

Tell Me That It Isn’t True    by Jochen Markhorst “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” is the first song of the legendary Motown duo Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield and an indestructible classic right away. No chance hit either; … Continue reading →