By Tony Attwood
If you are kind enough to have meandered a little around this site with its 3741 articles (making this number 3742) you may have noted a modest series about the songs that Dylan has only played once or twice in public. (A list of those articles is at the end of this piece)
That series is far from comprehensive because it turns out that quite a few of the songs Dylan has performed once or twice in public have no recording available on the internet of Dylan’s performance, although sometimes a site proclaims to have a live version only for it to turn out to be the recording of the song made in a studio, not a live performance in front of an audience at all. And I must admit that some of the others where there is a recording, are recordings of performances which really don’t have too much to say that we can comment on. That’s not to say the performance wasn’t worth hearing at the time, but now, looking back, I don’t find that version to have added much to the original.
But that leaves approximately 360 songs that Dylan has himself recorded, but for which there is no live performance by him of the song – and here I do simply mean a live performance, not a live performance which happens to have been caught on tape, or more recently recorded digitally.
And I find that an interesting thought, and not just because 360 is a pretty large number of songs to have recorded and then not performed. For in each case it means Bob went through the whole process of either writing or learning someone else’s song, and in many cases playing it through with a band in order to make the recording, but then never felt like adding it to a live show.
Now there are something like 620 songs listed on the official Dylan site that Dylan has either performed in public, or recorded and had released on record. So, to get the numbers straight, of that 620, 360 have been recorded and are available on one of the albums or collections, and 260 have turned up in a performance but not been released on an official album.
So, as is my way, while walking around the rather wonder countryside surrounding the village in which I live, I got to thinking about some of these songs that Bob has never performed in public, and I wondered why he hasn’t performed them, what it tells us about Bob (if anything!), and then asking, “has anyone else had a go with that song?”
Take for example the four songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan that (and as always I am taking my “facts” from the official site) Dylan included in the album, but then abandoned.
Put another way, why did Bob want to put Black Crow Blues, I Shall be Free No 10, Ballad in Plain D, and Motorpsycho Nightmare, on the album and then do nothing more with them?
I am not going to try and answer that for all four songs, but here I will just “Ballad in Plain D” whose non-appearance in public is the easiest one to answer – it is long (over eight minutes, delivering 13 verses all of identical music, and 438 words), and is said to be about the end of Dylan’s relationship with Suze Rotolo (which is why perhaps it has never been something he wanted to sing in public – although he obviously wanted to put it on the album.) Besides which, to retain the essence of the song it is difficult to do much in the way of musical variation.
In fact I have always thought (until this week) that to vary the music of that song as it progresses from one verse to the next would be to destroy the song, the whole essence of which is about the bleak sadness of life once one’s partner has gone – no matter what turmoil there might have been in the relationship while it was still there.
And because of that I felt also that it is difficult to think of any sort of arrangement that could be made of the song which would work, both musically and lyrically.
Except, I have found this one: Paul Anquez and Isabel Sorling.
I really do love this performance, and indeed I think it is fair to say that the first time in many years I have actually found a recording of this song that I want to listen to all the way through. The pianist is inventive but also totally sympathetic to the vocalist – which is very hard to do with a song that is strophic, and this long. There is, in short, variation and consistency in balance.
Indeed if you are not convinced do listen to how the duo perform the ending…
All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night Leaving all of love’s ashes behind me
and keep listening to that final verse and that haunting final line “Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?” If then you are not convinced, ok, I’ve done my best and can say no more.
But if you enjoy the recording above you might be interested in some of the couple’s performance of Joni Mitchell songs such as “All I Want” which is also available on line.
So my point in bringing this up, is that I wonder if there really are any Dylan songs which no one has been able to re-interpret in an interesting way, and that even Dylan has not offered us a variant performance himself. If you know of any please do write to me Tony@schools.co.uk ideally with a link to the performance in question, and I’ll try and put a piece together (unless you wish to write a whole piece yourself, which I would very much welcome).
Here’s a list of the “Once or Twice” articles.
- A satisfied mind
- All over you
- Blood in my eyes
- Buckets of Rain
- Caribbean Wind
- Corina Corina
- From a Buick 6 – see “Meet me in the Morining” below
- The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore
- He was a friend of mine
- Highway 51 revisited
- Lay Down your weary tune
- Lily, Rosemary and Stage Fright
- Long Time Gone
- Meet me in the morning and From a Buick 6
- North Country Blues
- Only a hobo
- Oxford Town
- Restless Farewell
- Roll on John
- Sally Sue Brown
- Seven Curses
- Spanish Harlem Incident
- Stage Fright
- Talking New York
- You Angel You
What about Billy,
I think 2009 is the only time Dylan has played Billy 4 live. 3-22-2009, Stockholm, Sweden.
I was there, at Berns Salonger, and immediately at the intro a lot of us thought we were hearing something special, you can maybe hear the surprised mumble.
Link:
https://youtu.be/jD-NNnr6MSU
Harmonicas play skeleton keys reminds that songwriter Dylan searches about for associations to go with his rather Gothic story lines. As noted by others, in pulp fiction magazines such as : Issue Jan. 1939 Spicey Adventure Stories for cover of Knocked Out Loaded; Issue July, 1942 The Shadow ~ the skeleton poster for False Prophet; upon the table in the 1964 Quest video that promotes a Dylan record, lies a Detective pulp magazine. Frowned upon by artists fond of “high art”, I’m sure.