The Gates of Eden – A History in Performance, Part 1: 1964 Ancestral voices prophesying war
By Mike Johnson
[I read somewhere once that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the second article on the second track, ‘Gates of Eden.’ You can find the first one here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/29258]
After performing ‘Gates of Eden’ live in 1965, there was a nine year gap, taking us through to 1974, before Dylan again picked up the song, now already ten years old. The song became a feature of the 1974 tour, being performed some twenty-five times. 1974 saw Dylan’s last tour with The Band, and many fine rock performances came from that tour, but Dylan delivered an acoustic, solo, stripped down performance of ‘Gates,’ singing all nine verses at a faster tempo than we heard in 1964/65. The following performance is at Madison Square Garden, New York City, January 31st (evening).
Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY – January 31, 1974 (Evening)
Good as it is, and a beautifully clear recording, I can’t help feeling that something has been lost – the eerie spookiness of the song, perhaps, the ambience or atmosphere of the song. This is very much a matter of personal taste. While I admire the performance, it doesn’t move me, lift the hairs on the back of my neck the way the 1960’s performances do. The performance is professional rather than inspired.
There’s not a lot of variation in the 1974 performances, although this one, from Ann Arbor on February 2nd, although not as well recorded, has more the feeling of a poem being recited, especially the first, unaccompanied verse. I get more of the atmosphere of the song from this one, although it still feels a bit rushed to me.
Ann Arbor
As an admirer of the song, I’m disappointed that Dylan did not perform it during the two years of the Rolling Thunder tour (1975/76). He did perform it once in 1976, at Salt Lake City in May, but there is no known recording of that concert. Given the marvellous performances of Rolling Thunder, we can only regret he didn’t include it.
We have to jump to the 1978 tour to pick up the song again, although he only performed it half a dozen times. Again, on this tour marked by some radical new arrangements with a nine-piece band, Dylan’s approach to the song is little changed from 1974 – solo acoustic with a brisk tempo. I was at the Blackbush concert and remember the crowd’s enthusiastic response to Dylan appearing without the band for this one. It was a moment’s nostalgia for the acoustic, pre electric Dylan.
Once more, there’s not a lot of variation in the 1978 performances. I have chosen this one from Paris (July 6th). Dylan drops the second to last verse (‘The foreign sun it squints upon…’) in favour of a much-welcomed harp break, very much in the style of this 1960’s harp sound.
1978 Paris
These 1978 performances sound better to me than 1974. There is a trembling vulnerability in Dylan’s vocals which marks these recordings out. There’s an edginess to these performances that gives it that feel of a protest song, a protest at our surreal, violent and twisted world, which is just as surreal, violent and twisted now as it was in 1964 when it was written. This strange, nightmarish song has not lost its relevance. Its protest arises from the spiritual anguish that drives it. Let’s look a little more closely at verse 4 to get a feel for that anguish:
With a time-rusted compass blade Aladdin and his lamp Sits with Utopian hermit monks Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf And on their promises of paradise You will not hear a laugh All except inside the Gates of Eden
The ‘time rusted’ (‘rusting’) compass cannot show us the way in this fallen world any more than the fairy tale of Aladdin and his lamp. Alas, Aladdin’s magic lamp is a fantasy, just as the ‘promises of paradise’ made by ‘Utopian hermit monks’ is a fantasy.
When Moses came down from the mountain bearing the stone tablet on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed, he found his people had strayed from God’s path and were worshipping the Golden Calf, in other words, money, worldly riches. The hermit monks can be seen to represent the spiritual materialism that Dylan has consistently railed against throughout his career. I take their sitting ‘sidesaddle’ to indicate effete privilege. Their ‘promises of paradise’ are empty and hollow since they are founded on the love of gold rather than the love of God, and are mocked by the real and transcendent spiritual forces that lie inside or behind the gates of Eden.
Dylan did not pick up the song during his gospel years (1979 – 81) and we have to jump another ten years, to 1988, the first year of the Never Ending Tour, before we encounter it again – this time much transformed.
What strikes us about the history of this song up to 1988 is how little it changes. Except for some increases in tempo, it remains the solo acoustic song it was in 1964. In 1988 Dylan tore into his songs like there was no tomorrow, angrily ripping them out of his throat, and ‘Gates’ got caught up in that hurricane, for the first time as a rocker with a plunging electric guitar from GE Smith. The inherent grandeur of those chords make for a great rock song. We discover that ‘Gates’ can be delivered as an angry rocker with its roots deep in protest. Listening to this soundboard recording from Jones Beach (June 30th), we realize that the song is not just eerie and spooky, but a rage filled cry of despair:
The kingdoms of Experience in the precious wind they rot While paupers change possessions each one wishing for what the other has got and the princess and the prince discuss what’s real and what is not It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden
What a grim vision this is. Our experience is no help to us, and while there’s no escaping envy and greed and meaningless materialism, there are no consolations of philosophy either. Discussing ‘what’s real and what is not’ is as meaningless as greedily exchanging possessions. This is a protest, not against any particular this or that, but the human condition itself, and how well anger suits it! That tone is vengeful. Listening to this we wonder why we hadn’t noticed it before, the righteous fury and desolation driving the song. ‘All in all it can only fall…’
Jones Beach 1988
Dylan captures the same vocal power, even when delivered acoustically. At the New York concert (Oct 19th) we get, not quite a solo acoustic, for GE Smith is playing a second acoustic guitar, but a reassertion of the acoustic roots of the song. The fact that he played it both with electric backing and without in 1988 suggest he was still experimenting, looking for the right backing for its new vocal spirit. The acoustic setting, however, leads to a more restrained delivery than Jones Beach.
New York 1988
Both of these are magnificent performances and will remain unequalled for some years. Interestingly, despite the success of the electric version, he stuck to the acoustic version in the following few years.
In 1989 Dylan’s approach to the song has not changed, it’s just sloppier. We are now entering difficult years for the NET, the era of ‘The Untouchables,’ which would last through to 1992, when Dylan’s voice became patchy and concerts became scrappy. You can hear it in this Atlanta performance (August 16th), as he tries to recapture the spirit of the 1988 performances. It’s pretty good, but I noticed that he blurs the lyrics a couple of times, as if he’s forgotten them, his diction is not as clear and messiness seeps in. It sounds strained – to my ear at least.
Atlanta 1989
Atlanta is one of the better performances. There’s little point in adding more of the same, but this one from St Paul (Aug 3rd) caught me up, despite the annoying, chattering audience. This voice is starting to get that scratchy quality, that vocal fry I charted in my NET series (he started to pull out of it in 1993) yet nevertheless the passion of the song comes across.
St Paul 1989
Moving on to 1990 the acoustic approach remains the same, and things don’t improve much. The song gets shortened down to just over four minutes by dropping verses out. Despite all that, the performance quivers with passion; the spirit of the song shines through.
New York 1990
In 1991, however, at the end of the year, we hit upon an unexpected gem. For the first time since 1988, the conception of the song changes again, not the angry rock version of that year, but, with the addition of some gentle drumming and a lilting tempo, something more wistful and whimsical. The protest is still here, but the emotional framing of the past three years has softened; the world of the song may be grim and frightening, but it is also magical and strange. There’s powerful guitar work here, too, keeping the rhythm out of the dumpty-dum by syncopation and a surging back and forth, just as Dylan’s voice does.
And, at least for this performance, Dylan’s voice has clarified as he puts some drama into those vocals. We get a foretaste of how he’s going to sound, those clear soaring notes, in 1994/95.
Detroit Dec 11th, 1991
Again there is little point in needless repetition, but this Dublin performance (Feb 5th) caught my ear for its warmth and compelling guitar work.
Dublin 1991 Feb 5th
That’s it for this time round. Next time we begin in 1992, the year Dylan added a steel guitar/dobro to his line-up, changing his sound forever.
Let’s catch him then.
Until that time
Kia Ora
A crazy phase of our war torn world.
In the BBC series (created by Canadian Sydney Newman), Dr. Who, in a later manifestation of the time-and-space traveler (Hunters Of The Earth), the doctor warns of disturbing the course of hisory too much by interfering with major past events like floods, volcanoes, and fires; on the other hand, a little tampering with trivial personal relationships can be gotten away with. That message, he claims, a listener can find in Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin Album, ie, in Hard Rain and Blowing In The Wind. Previously published satires like Untold’s “Revealed, More of Dylan Time Travels” make fun of the trouble an individual can get into by messing around with time and space.
Singer-songwriter Dylan follows his own advice in reference to the music and lyrics of “Gates of Eden”; he’s careful not to travel very far along or venture down too many roads. Seems Eden’s a song that is not meant to be messed with much.