The Gates of Eden – A History in Performance
Part 1: 1964 Ancestral voices prophesying war
Part 2: 1974 – 1991 A crashing but meaningless blow
Part 3: 1991 – 2001. Where Babies Wail: A Spooky Grandeur
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 third and final article on the second track, ‘Gates of Eden.’ You can find the second article here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/29447]
I finished the previous post, ‘Gates of Eden Part 2’ with a You Tube clip from Dublin 1991 Feb 5th, and I was ready to move on to 1992. I have belatedly discovered, however, that some of these You Tube recordings I have been using are inferior to the mp3s taken directly from the concerts. The Dublin 1991 recording is an excellent case in point. It is now included within the second article (see link above).
To compare, I suggest you return to the previous article and listen to that last recording, then listen to the additional one added. They are so different I had to double check to make sure they were the same performance. This problem doesn’t apply to all You Tube clips, but enough of them to complicate my job. This has forced me to re-evaluate my use of You Tube clips, and to go back to the drawing board for this and future articles, making sure I have the best recordings available.
In 1992 Dylan expanded from a four to a five-piece band, bringing in Bucky Baxter to play steel guitar/dobro, enriching and softening Dylan’s sound. The effects are not immediately obvious, however, in performances of ‘Gates of Eden’ which remain acoustic. The song was performed some 20 times in 1992 but the performances are much of a muchness and not terribly exciting. Dylan was struggling with his voice in the early 90s, and the strain is evident in this recording. It’s great, however, to have a video of his performance although no date is provided for it.
New York 1992
Good as it is to see Dylan in action, that may not be the best performance of the year. Although Dylan’s voice is as rough as it gets, this Ottawa performance (22 08 1992) is full of power and passion, Maybe the best of the 1992 crop. The full band is backing him here, but subtly adding musical texture.
1992 Ottawa
1993 was the year of epic performances, with extended guitar breaks and long endings. Twelve-minute performances of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ and this ten-minute version of ‘Gates,’ the longest version that I’m aware of. (Toulouse, 30th June) I wrote about this performance in my NET series (1993 Part 4 https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/17246). It’s not just the guitar work, but the way Dylan builds up the vocal, stretching his voice, which is beginning to recover its power.
1993 Toulouse
Dylan did not perform the song as often as in 1992, and the following years would see a further decline in the number of performances. Not all 1993 performances were so epic. This seven-minute version from Seattle, August 21st, is worth checking out for the video, although I’m not sure that the performance matches Toulouse.
1993
1994 saw a further reduction in the number of performances, but Dylan’s revived voice and more confident backing gives us some outstanding shows. I wish he’d included the song in the MTV Unplugged concert of that year. If he had, it might have sounded a bit like this:
1994
You can hear Dylan stretching his voice in one from Burlington of the same year (11 November).
By this time Dylan has fully integrated the band with the acoustic feel of the song. The effect is tasteful compared to the previous three years, gentle, with the beauty of the chord structure fully in evidence. This is a song for dreaming, and Baxter’s echoey slide guitar helps lend it the eerie effect that works so well with its ancient feel. The song is losing the stridency of the original 1964, and 1988 performances that made it sound more like a protest song than it does by 1994. Dreamlike alienation is the ruling spirit here, as it would be for ‘Lovesick’ that within a couple of years, Dylan would be writing, although, as I have been arguing in this series, the acoustic songs off side 2 of Bringing It All Back Home retain an edge, maybe the aura, of protest. It is the human condition as Dylan finds it that is being protested.
At dawn my lover comes to me And tells me of her dreams With no attempts to shovel a glimpse Into the ditch of what each one means
Behind these lines lie the idea that our subconscious minds, the source of dreams, is like a dirty ditch hiding all kinds of nightmares and sins, maybe the very kind that inhabit the song itself, beauty and terror all mixed up together. This song does not stand in contrast to his later Christian conversion, as has been suggested, but may underpin it by locating the true source of spiritual power beyond human chaos and confusion as a brooding presence within the gates of Eden. No false paradise there. In 1979, with his conversion, Dylan finally storms the gates of Eden.
1995 was a peak year for Dylan, the year of those remarkable concerts in Prague I covered extensively in my NET series, and once again I can only regret that Dylan didn’t perform the song during his three-day epic stint in that city. However, he does fourteen other performances of the song, although these are not as inspired as some other of his 1995 performances. At this point it feels as if the song has nowhere new to grow.
For my NET series I used this one from Manchester
1995 Manchester
There’s not a lot to distinguish these 1995 performances from 1994, but I do like this one from Berkeley. Dylan’s voice has a wonderful luminous quality that marked the best performances of that year. You can certainly add this one to your 1995 playlist. It sits well with the Prague performances.
1995 Berkeley mp3
At this point, when the song has never sounded better, there is an abrupt drop in the number of performances, with only three in 1996 before the song disappears altogether for three years. It surfaces again in 2000 for a few outstanding performances, followed by two in 2001, before being dropped for good. I speculate that the new tranche of songs that arrived with Time Out of Mind in 1997 pushed ‘Gates’ off the setlists for those three years, and Dylan never attempted to adapt the song after his shift from guitar to the keyboards in 2002. Thus, this wonderful visionary song was lost to history.
The three 1996 performances were unremarkable. The audience talks its way through this Albuquerque performance (23rd Oct) which is solid but not inspired.
1996 Albuquerque
The song’s brief return in 2000 is however, a different story. The performances of that year represent the pinnacle of achievement for this song. Unlike ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ which spluttered on until 2010, ‘Gates’ finishes at a high point.
I wrote about the Köln performance (May 11th) in my Master Harpist series (Master harpist 2,), quoted myself from that article for my NET series (https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/20825), describing the performance as ‘exquisitely spooky,’ and I won’t go over that ground a third time. All I can say now is that this performance has remained at the top of my ‘best ever’ list and as one of Dylan’s finest performances ever in my opinion. The song is revealed in its full grandeur. It feels ancient, and the wailing harp makes me think of lonely bagpipes over a stricken battlefield. Protest? You bet – of war and peace the truth just twists… And something more that comes bursting out of our collective unconscious. The song is shown to have the scope and solemnity of a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch, all that beauty and terror I mentioned given musical focus. Make sure you have a clear eight minutes when you play this one. Be prepared to fall under its powerful, magical spell. This performance is on You Tube, but the Mp3 is of far better quality.
Outstanding too is the audience response. They’re loving every moment of it.
2000
The song sounds almost as good without the harmonica but with strong guitar work, the same lilting, mesmerizing beauty. (Stockholm, May 18)
2000
Can this really be the end? Yes, except for two more performances in 2001, sans harp, but as powerful as the 2000 versions. Catch the complex acoustic guitar playing at the end of this one (Osaka March 7th)
2001
And, although it doesn’t add much, here for the sake of it is the last ever performance (Ballina March 31st)
2001 Final performance
So it ends, beautifully performed, as mysterious and evocative as ever. Jung once commented to the effect that the unconscious communicates with us through the language of dreams. We can feel the effect of the communication when we listen to this song even if we can’t quite pin down those lyrics. They weren’t meant to be pinned down or reduced to rational explanation but, carried by those epic chords, to speak directly to our imagination in the language it knows best, the language of imagery.
That leaves our world, and our psyches, on the very edge:
All in all it can only fall With a crashing but meaningless blow
Those lines seem to apply today as never before.
That’s it for ‘Gates of Eden.’ I’ll be back soon to look at the next song on side B of Bringing It All Back Home – ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’
Until then
Kia Ora