The songs Bob wrote and then ignored.
- Ballad for a Friend and the issue of originality
- Dirt Road Blues and Too Much of Nothing
- The utterly brilliant Angelina, plus Maybe Someday, Under you spell
- The album title songs Dylan wrote and ignored: JWH, Nashville Skyline.
- The songs Bob has never performed: Temporary Like Achilles
- No time, time passes and Dirge
- World Gone Wrong, She’s your lover, Foot of Pride
- Abandoned Love and Up to Me
By Tony Attwood
There is of course nothing wrong with a songwriter composing a song, making a recording (perhaps so he might come back to it later) and then leaving it alone. I suspect all song writers do it – just as many novelists confess that they have stashed away somewhere the openings of half a dozen novels that they just couldn’t get right, and so abandoned, thinking maybe they would come back to them one day (but often never do.)
But even so, I still do have a great fascination with songs that Dylan composed and thought enough of to put on an album, but then never performed at all. Of course some I feel about in the opposite way – I mean why record the 45 four-line verses of Tempest, all unvarying in their musical approach, just three chords, and a solid steady beat, and lines such as
Lights down in the hallway Flickering dim and dull Dead bodies already floating In the double bottomed hull
Certainly if I were to have been asked at the time (which of course I was not) I would have said, “Bob, come on, you must have something more entertaining than that – and if not in your current output, then I can point you to the hundreds of songs from the past that you have left unplaced on an album. Choose one of them.”
But of course Bob is Bob and he can do what he likes and the fact that there are hardly any covers around a fair number of Dylan songs suggests that the artists who look for covers can on occasion be as shortsighted as me.
But the issue remains – if Bob really rated this piece, why did he not deliver it in a concert? Or if he didn’t rate it, why put it on the album?
Moving on however, a different sort of song all together that got the “no plays” treatment was “You Wanna Ramble.” And one of the oddities about this song is that the Bob Dylan Project, who know a thing or three about Dylan’s songs, say of this it was “Composed by: Herman Parker Jr. (composer, lyricist), Bob Dylan (lyricist)”
It is a 12 bar blues with variations, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It is a good lively piece in a recognisable tradition. And here once again we have that contradiction. Bob thought enough of it to put it on the album (which probably means recording it quite a number of times) but then nothing more….
But then again, maybe at some stage the inheritors of Little Junior Parker’s estate suggested that perhaps they were owed some royalties. Junior Parker died in 1971 – and not being a US citizen my knowledge of copyright for the USA is limited, but I do know that for music first published prior to 1978, the term of the copyright will vary. Maybe the copyright owners demanded more than Bob’s agents wanted to pay, if he went out and played it, and rather that fight the legal case, or pay up, Bob dropped it.
From the same album, but utterly different in every way was another song never played live: “They killed him”.
This song was written by Kris Kristofferson who according to reports was knocked out by Bob putting the song on an album – but then again, if it was good enough to put on the album, why didn’t Bob perform it? It is after all, a very attractive and interesting song.
Of course, sometimes the issue is a little more readily understandable as we can see if we switch the album, Before the Flood. This album contained a series of songs written by Robbie Robertson which Bob didn’t record such as The Shape I’m In, Up on Cripple Creek, When you Awake and Endless Highway.
There are of course other specific albums that Bob didn’t take on tour such as “Christmas in the Heart” and “Fallen Angels” and there are other songs Bob didn’t write which turn up on albums but didn’t make any playlist.
Many of these we can understand readily enough as they relate to specific places and specific times, but even so, I feel a sadness that we didn’t get to hear some of these on stage. What could Bob have made of this for example….
And yes maybe Bob didn’t feel he could sing Alberta live for some reason – perhaps fearing it might not be heard properly above the noise of a raucous audience but even so, it would have been so good to hear it just once, live.