It’s All Right Ma: A History in Performance, Part 2: 1975/81. Stuffed graveyards and false gods.

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 third track, ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ You can find the previous articles in this History in Performance in the link at the end of this article.  But in case you missed the first part of It’s All Right Ma is here…

We’ve already covered tracks one and two in some depth, and links to all those articles are at the end of this piece.  Meanwhile this is second episode of It’s all right ma, and you can read part one of this section here…

It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – A History in Performance, Part 1

———-

‘All in all it can only fall
with a crushing but meaningless blow’

You can find these lines, of course, in ‘Gates of Eden,’ the song that precedes ‘It’s All Right, Ma’ on the album but they could easily have occurred in that song as the sense of impending doom hangs over both songs. However, to my mind, the true precursor to ‘It’s All Right, Ma’ can be found in ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,’ a poem that Dylan, in a rare moment, read aloud to a lucky audience in April 1963.

As with the song, images flash by in a bewildering hurdy-gurdy. No sacred cow is safe from Dylan’s slashing wit, no crime against the spirit escapes his condemnation. Rank materialism comes under a bombardment of images. The poem is about encountering those ‘stuffed graveyards and false gods’ the song confronts.

Cause you look an' you start getting the chills
Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house

And, as with the song, the fight for personal autonomy is forefront:

You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat

Both poem and song celebrate a hard-won resilience and a fierce sense of personal autonomy. They signal resistance, a very live and active bullshit detector, a refusal to be a part of any group-think. It helps us chart our way through the chaos of opinions, those places for lost minds we nowadays call rabbit holes. You may lose yourself, but you have to reappear. That’s the trick of it:

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

You won’t find a more forceful declaration of personal autonomy than that.

In the previous article we noted that tempo is all-important with this song. Dylan often delivers it at breakneck speed and that seems to suit the song. No time for pause or reflection. The song is like a shower of shooting stars and, in the 1974 performances, it comes across as a howl of pain, but still at breakneck speed.

After being performed regularly in 1974, some forty times, it almost disappears in the first year of the Rolling Thunder tour in 1975, when it was performed only once. I suspect that it was pushed aside by all the new songs from Blood On The Tracks and the even newer songs that would shortly appear on Desire.

That single 1975 performance is, however, a beauty, delivered with the quivering intensity that marks Dylan’s performances in that year, arguably one of his best ever performance years. Interestingly, he slows it down, doesn’t howl it out as in 1974, but finds a new balance between restraint and forthrightness. (Providence, Nov 4th)

1975

The song was only performed four times in 1976, a year marked generally by a harder edged sound than 1975. We have a great soundboard recording from Mobile, April 29th, (evening performance) the last for that year. Again, the tempo is slower, and we note a melodic variation in the vocal as Dylan seeks new ways to deliver the song.

1976 Evening

By the time we get to the 1978 big band tour, the song has fully reestablished itself in the setlist and is regularly performed. For the first time we find a major revamping of the song as it moves from a solo acoustic performance to a big, big band production, Dylan’s first, and successful attempt to turn it into a rock song. In the following years Dylan would return to the acoustic roots of the song, and not everybody likes the bombastic feel of the 1978 version, but I like it because it swings. You can get up and dance to it. And the lyrics have lost none of their sting. Here it is from the famous Budokan concert at the beginning of the tour in February.

1978 Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo

But that is not necessarily the best performance. For my money, some of the greatest 1978 concerts can be found at the end of year, the American leg of the tour. As a contrast to Budokan, try this one from Charlotte, Dec 10th.

1978 Charlotte Dec 10 1978

The feel here is looser, more frenetic and ecstatic. The audience too seem to be in a state of high excitement. The whole atmosphere is a lot buzzier than Budokan.

The song was dropped in 1979, which was dedicated to the new crop of gospel songs, and only began to creep back at the end of 1980 with two performances, both in Portland in December. This one’s from Dec 3rd and sounds like a solo acoustic performance, greeted ecstatically by the audience. Many Dylan fans had had their fill of preacher Bob with his tub-thumping Christian songs and joyfully greeted the reappearance of their old, protest Bob, perhaps not realizing how well the song fitted with the new Christian Dylan, its moral denunciation of the fallen world in which ‘not much is really sacred.’ Indeed, listening to the song in this setting makes us wonder if this upsurge of gospel songs wasn’t a throwback to the years of the apparent moral certainty of the old ‘protest’ Dylan, before the realisation that things are not so black and white, a realisation expressed in ‘My Back Pages’ in 1964. Maybe these Christian songs are another kind of protest song.

Whatever, Dylan too sounds happy to have rediscovered the song after a couple of years break, and it sounds fresh and vibrant. He’s picked up the pace again, the song races along, and Dylan is in wonderful voice. 1980/81 are peak years for Dylan’s vocals. Everybody’s in a state of high excitement. A wonderful performance.

1980 Portland

In 1981, the last year of the gospel concerts we find over twenty performances of the song, scintillating, rapid-fire performances that are hard to beat. There’s something of a hysterical edge to Dylan’s 1981 concerts which makes them outstanding. Although they’re pretty similar, I’ve chosen two recordings from 1981 (sorry, no dates for either of them), if only because it’s one of my favourite years for live Dylan. He’s never sounded better, and maybe will never sound as good again.

If anything, he pushes the song along even faster than in 1980, or indeed any previous performance. The images race by, but Dylan never loses control. He’s right on top of the song. And the guitars (I think there are two acoustic guitars going for it here) set a hectic pace. Wow! is all I can say. What a blast!

1981

And again in 1981

In the next article I’ll be jumping to 1984.

In the meantime, don’t fall for ‘pettiness which plays so rough’ and stay with it.

A: Tambourine Man

B: Gates of Eden

C: It’s alright ma

One comment

  1. hi,
    Seems like Portland and Charlotte are switched&mixed up, changed places?
    More important: thank you for showing some of the development of this extraordinary song & his writer&singer
    Best Regards, Markus

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