17/01/2009 by Tony Attwood.

According to Wikipedia Series of Dreams is “One of Dylan’s most ambitious compositions.”   It is difficult to see quite why such a claim should be made, and in typical Wiki fashion there is no attempt at all to justify the claim. 

The song was omitted from “Oh Mercy” and only emerged on the Bootleg Series 1-3.  This omission comes at the same time as the omission of Dignity from the same album, and thus Series of Dreams invites us to start with this issue: why cut it?

Dylan’s ability to omit from albums songs that are thought by many to be his strongest pieces has caused much comment and bemusement, but if you read the comments of those who were there at the time, (a point on which Wiki is more helpful), and indeed if you simply listen to the songs that are cut it becomes clear that Dylan has two reasons for omitting a song.

Either it is no good, or it is very good, but not quite complete, not quite perfect.   The latter case is the one that can make omissions hard to understand.  How can he omit (for example) Blind Willie McTell?  The answer is that he knows what it might have been if only that final key could have been entered into the lock – that final door opened.   He knows it is a great, but flawed song, and can’t get the flaws out of it.   Without that final twist to resolve the problem the song is more frustrating than any of the more ordinary songs – and so gets cut.

So it is instructive to Series of Dreams from this perspective: it is almost right but not quite.   Indeed, being able to see where the problem is, is easier for us, at a distance.  It is notoriously hard for the artist who is “inside” the piece and living its very existence.

The problem here is with the concept of dream itself.  Dreams are confusing, surreal, mystifying, muddled, even muggy.  As such they are well suited to Dylan who has repeatedly introduced us to surrealism and “unclarity” in his songs.

The opening verse with its lines “Where nothing comes up to the top” and “Nothing  too very scientific” get this perfectly, and everything in the song is set fair.  It is general – a backdrop to something we have all experienced.

Verse two keeps up the promise… “And there’s no exit in any direction, ‘Cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes”  That odd feeling about dreams, that there was something more, except you can’t quite see it…

And then, suddenly Dylan stops talking about the general, the uncertain, the obscure, the surreal, and takes us into certainty.   Of course that happens in dreams – you do get dreams where an umbrella is opened – perhaps for no reason.  I can just imagine saying, “I had this weird dream last night – I had an umbrella, and I wanted it shut and put away, (I don’t know why, but it was important in the dream) but it kept opening, and every time I shut it, it came open again…”

That is what dreams can be like – but that gives us no insight into dreams in general, it is just a quick morning comment about last night’s dream.  And that is the key difference – “dreams in general” against the oddity, and ultimately the total insignificance of last night’s dream.

That is why the “middle 8” (the “bridge” as it is called in some commentaries – the B section in the classic ternary AABA form, which this piece is in) falls apart.  The music is perfection – after the exclusive use of the three major chords we suddenly hit the minor, completely unexpectedly.  But that line (“Dreams where the umbrella is folded”) lets us down, and lyrically the song fails at that point, because suddenly it is talking about trivia.  (“I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours” was a much better line, from 30 years earlier).

Then we are back to the A section, and Dylan is now securely fixed into telling us the details of the dreams. 

In one, numbers were burning
In another, I witnessed a crime
In one, I was running, and in another
All I seemed to be doing was climb

And that’s the problem – the song attempts to be about dreams in general (where it works perfectly) and dreams in particular, (where it is certain to fail, unless you are going to get into Freudian dream analysis where each element means something.)

To write a song which explains the meaning of dreams would be incredibly difficult – to write a song that we want to listen to which had that as its base would surely be impossible.   Dylan does not go down that route – he just tells us bits about the dreams, but leaves the purpose of this discourse open.  

Hence the opening of the song, with its discussion of dreams, and how one might think about a series of them, works wonderfully, and is interesting at every level.  The music flows, the production is very unusual for Dylan, and the notion of moving away from the normal Dylan guitar sound fits with the subject matter.  But the moment we move on and get into this subject specific content, there is nothing to hold our attention.  Since we most likely have not had dreams about umbrellas or climbing, it has no significance.

To enjoy the song therefore we have to stop listening to the lyrics in the second half, and that of course is not good when the composer is Dylan.   My belief is that he knew that, but because of his proximity to the moment of creation, he couldn’t see the way out.  That’s not to say that I could see how to solve the problem – only that with the benefit of distance (in terms of years and culture) I can at last spot of possible source of the problem.

© copyright Tony Attwood 2009.

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11/01/2009 by Tony Attwood.

It doesn’t quite matter how you approach Foot of Pride, there’s something very odd about it.  According to the booklet notes it is very rarely commented upon, and one can understand why.  Apart from the fact that it never made it onto a mainstream album (it’s an outtake from Infidels, along with Blind Willy McTell) it is, well, quite plainly, odd.

Musically it is a variant 12 bar blues – but greatly extended.  In B major you get the B, B, E, B section that you’d expect, and then a chorus section with the repeated “Well there ain’t no going back” bit.

The 12 bar format, we must never forget, was created for the simplest of popular music: the blues.  It is the chordal format for “Well I woke up this morning, blues falling down like hail” – that simple yet elegant statement of falling into the abyss.  It was never intended for something as complex as Foot of Pride with its internal rhymes and lines of ever changing length.

It is probable that this is what Dylan was wanting to play with – just how far can you stretch the old 12 bar format without it breaking.  And the answer is, well, this far.  Which is a long way.

What works here is Dylan’s performance.  If he hadn’t been100% with the lyrics he’d never have got his way around them.  The band hold themselves together in the face of this torrent of words, although they do speed up slightly (shame on you Mr Knoffler).

But for what purpose?  Or is it just an experiment?

Even the opening two lines take us to another world, where the realities of our domain don’t apply.

“Like the lion tears flesh off of a man

So can a woman who passes herself off as a male”

You see my point.  It isn’t actually anything.  That’s not to say it isn’t about anything – it is beyond that.  It isn’t anything.  

The booklet that comes with the boxed set of the Bootleg 1 to 3 collection makes a decent fist of the problem, but even so…   There’s Christian religion allusions mixed up with people who are self-possessed, self-obsessed, inward looking, defensive…  But that first verse really doesn’t quite fit, and the people we are hearing about change from verse to verse without any explanation.

What it reminds me of – and it is a strange think to think about when hearing a piece of Dylan obscuranti – is the cover of Strange Days, by the Doors.  All these freaks and oddities, there for no reason.

It is a really interesting song, not least because of the quality of singing and playing, but above all if you listen to it too much, instead of insight and awareness, the only thing you are left with is madness.  When Dylan says, “I’m going to look at you, til my eyes go blind,” you want to say, “Oh if only I had thought of that.  When he says, “Your time will come, let hot iron blow as he raised the shade,” you are thinking, “I am so glad I never thought of that.”

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24/12/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Amidst all the moral relativism of Dylan, all the references to the fact that “you are right on your side, and I’m all right on mine”, all the comments about not following leaders, and the commentary that says that everyone is just a pawn in everyone else’s game, suddenly like a beacon of certainty there is When the Ship Comes In.

Never has Dylan been more certain than here that there is an answer, that you are wrong and these guys (whoever they are) are right.   There is a truth, and I am part of it.

The image of the ship itself takes us back to earlier days – to the time when the British explored the new world.  Wealthy men paid for the ships to sail to the Americas, and if one ever returned then even greater wealth and fortune was yours.  Your ship came in, and you really were made for ever more.

Dylan retains the nautical imagery through the opening verse and a half, and its all a jolly caper of exploration, until we suddenly have

And the words that are used for to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.

The song is now so familiar to us after all these years it is hard to remember what a jolt those lines brought on first hearing.  Words getting the ship confused?   What is all this about?   Every reference until then has been to the nautical adventure.

Then he is back to talking about the ship literally, until  it is the final verse where Dylan suddenly develops this alternative theme, and takes us into a realisation that the ship is a metaphor for change.  We are the new army.  We are the revolution.  Stand aside, for we are the future.  Times they are a changing.  We are David, you are Goliath.

The trouble is we have no idea who or what we are – at least not from this song.  Are we the Jews entering the promised land?  Or the young throwing aside the President of the United States?  Are we overthrowing capitalism, or are we saying no to war and bringing in the world of peace and love.

We don’t know.  In the end it is the sheer vigour and vitality of the song and the guitar playing that carries us through so that after a couple of listens we really don’t care.   It is enough to know that somewhere there is an answer.

The classical structure of the song (every chord is one taken from the major scale – no flattened sevenths or thirds here), emphasises the straightness of the song – this is the positive side of folk singing (a total contrast to North Country Blues.)

We can join in the celebration – and indeed we should.  Because the whole wide world is watching.  Who cares if we don’t know why.  Let’s just enjoy it while we can.

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29/11/2008 by Tony Attwood.

There can be few opening chord sequences as distinctive as Dylan’s minor-4^th, 5^th, Tonic sequence which opens “Idiot Wind”. And there can be few opening lines to a song as distinctive as “Someone’s got it in for me, they’re printing stories in the press.”

Within those six bars – and that is another distinctive factor, for it is only six bars – we have the landscape set out. There is a coldness about that minor fourth, like a cliff face with the wind howling, which tells us this is not going to be an easy ride. There is a coldness about the words – the mere fact that it is “someone” not an identified person who is doing the mischief makes it even more chilling.

And now looking back on it, how well we know that this is not an easy rise, for this is “Like a rolling stone” part 2. Of course there are differences – here in Idiot Wind, the guilt is at least partially shared. In Like a Rolling Stone there is only blame and finger pointing. In Idiot Wind there is uncertainty which was never there in the earlier song – but maybe that’s what getting older brings.

Just compare the openings…

“Someone’s got it in for me, they’re printing stories in the press”

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?”

Equally bleak but in different ways.

And when we turn back to the musical structure we find more similarity, because both these great songs are in 2/4 (rather than the conventional 4/4) and both work in six bar phrases. It is rare in Dylan – indeed it is rare in the world of pop and rock – and he reserves it for masterpieces of anguish and annoyance.

Pete Hamill’s notes to the album veer (at least to my eye) between insight and portentous wordiness. He suggests Idiot Wind is personal – I can’t see it myself, but then obviously Mr Hamill has access to Dylan that I can only dream about. If the bit about the shooting and the inheritance is real, then so be it, but it seems more like part of the painting of an imagined landscape – the background like the windmill in the Dutch masterpiece - from where I sit. But where he does strike the mark, I feel, is with the comment that “The idiot wind trivializes lives into gossip.” This is a theme of the sleeve notes essay – for earlier he says, “And through the fog of the plague, most art withered into journalism,” the plague being the descent of America from its high ideals into the politics of the 1970s.

Perhaps that points us to the biggest difference between Rolling Stone and Idiot Wind. In the latter Dylan says, “you are talking nonsense,” in the former he says, “you are nonsense.”

Much of its history pop and rock has been about love, lost love and dance. The lost love sub-genre has generally been of sadness and wanting the lover back. Dylan singlehandedly invented a completely new sub-genre: despair, disgust and dismay. “Like a rolling stone” was the first high mark of this style of writing, “Idiot Wind” the second. It may be extremely uncomfortable, but it is the ultimate antithesis of relativism. Every approach to life is not equally valid, equally understandable and equally excusable. There are people of whom we must say, “You are utterly wrong.” And that’s what he says here, even where he says, “yes I got it wrong sometimes too.” The latter does not excuse the former.

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12/11/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Blind Willie McTell

I suspect that for most of us, Blind Willie McTell was the name of a blues singer whose music we had never heard of.

I suspect also that for most of us it is unimaginable that such a wonderful piece of music should not appear on a mainstream album from Bob Dylan.

There have been other instances of such oddness on Dylan’s part – the delay in releasing Mississippi, for example, and the issues surrounding Dignity. In the case of the former, the original version was a love song that Dylan didn’t want to reveal – and he had to wait until he had re-written it as a political commentary. In the latter case, the piece is flawed. It is a masterpiece, but it isn’t right (as the multiple attempts to play it in different ways show. In effect it is hard to find the right way to cope with the piece – but more on that when I move on to that song).

But Blind Willie McTell falls into neither category. It is not only a perfect song, with not a word out of place, the classic recording that we have is itself wonderful. The slightly out of time piano works. The guitars work. Why not release it?

The first insight I can offer is that the song has nothing to do with the music of Blind Willie McTell. My source – “Atlanta Strut” – is a fine collection, and I am told it is representative of Willie McTell’s work. But it raises the question – what is the connection between the songs of McTell’s and Dylan’s song.

In fact, on the surface there isn’t a connection. He’s not singing at all about McTell – it is just a throw away line in the song, that no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. Where is the connection between the famous line about “power and greed and corruptible seed” and a song like “I got religion and I’m so glad”.

There is not even the fact that McTell suffered in the way that, for example, Skip James suffered.

Musically, Dylan’s song is a true masterpiece – although in effect a borrowed masterpiece. Back to strophic form, as it has to be for a song about the blues, it never tires through verse after verse, because of the unusual chord structure.

So we are edged towards the references to Willie McTell being a reference to the whole issue of slavery, and the music of the slaves and their descendents. “There’s a chain gang on the highway”… the humiliation of the people continues generation to generation. But even here it doesn’t quite work – because if humiliation is the theme, then Bilnd Willie McTell isn’t the man to cite.

In the end, we get a clue as to where we are going, appropriately, at the end…

God is in His heaven, we are what was His

But power and greed and corruptible seed seems to be all that there is

I’m gazing out the window of the St James Hotel

And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.

And that is the clue. St James Hotel was nothing to do with Willie McTell – except McTell did record the song St James Infirmary Blues (on which Dylan’s tune is based) under the title “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues”

The melody is a derivative, and I suspect Dylan wasn’t too happy with that fact, which probably explains why he didn’t put it on an album.

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