It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – A History in Performance, Part 4: 1988 – The darkness at the break of noon
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 fourth 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 series here:
If you have been following this series you may have noticed that I like to begin each article with a comment on some aspect of the song before getting into the performances themselves. In this post I’d like to begin by considering the first line of the song: ‘The darkness at the break of noon.’
What is this darkness? I suggest it is not the same as the darkness in this line from ‘Love In Vain’ (1978) – ‘When I am in the darkness, why do you intrude?’
That darkness I take to mean that introspective space we can get into, our own personalised rabbit hole, dark night of the soul.
Nor is it quite the same as the darkness in this line from ‘Precious Angel’ (1979) when, with regard to his ‘so-called friends,’ he sings:
But can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high When men will beg God to kill them And they won’t be able to die
That I take to mean the cosmic, apocalyptic darkness that Christians believe will fall during the last days of the world.
‘The darkness at the break of noon’ which ‘shadows even the silver spoon’ to my mind refers to the shadow of hypocrisy and bad faith that serves to occlude the sacred. The sacred is nowhere to be found, no matter where you look in this world given over to materialist values. That is the message to be found in the lines I quoted from ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Gutherie’ in my second article on this song:
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
What is the ‘it’ you can’t find? The really sacred – the true and the real. And the innocent. The ‘flesh coloured Christs that glows in the dark,’ seems to refer to the commodification of religion. That’s a false glow. That line reminds me of ‘turning virgins into merchandise’ (Making A Liar out of Me –1979). Lost innocence. It’s amazing how consistent Dylan’s critique of society has been over the years.
The ‘silver spoon’ is a reference to inherited riches (born with a silver spoon in your mouth, as the saying goes). This spiritual darkness in ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ shadows the light of midday and all earthly riches. It is the veil of illusion and lies that separates us from reality.
This veil of darkness lies over the whole song. The condemnation of materialist values couldn’t be plainer – ‘money doesn’t talk, it swears’ – and sooner or later, we will have to shed that veil and ‘stand naked’ in sight of God, no matter who we are, even if we’re ‘president of the United States.’ You won’t be able to hide behind wealth and privilege or ‘fake morals.’
All that is not sacred is false and phony, advertising and propaganda.
Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony
Dylan performed the song only three times in 1988, the first year of the Never Ending Tour, and I was going to pass over it until I realised that there were a couple of interesting aspects to the Los Angeles performance. Except for 1978, when the song came roaring in with a big band backing, Dylan had stayed with an acoustic presentation, often just solo guitar.
The first thing to notice in this 1988 recording is the backing. An augmented acoustic? An early attempt to turn it into rock song, perhaps.
Around three minutes into the song, delivered with the same almost breathless energy that marks these 1988 performances, Dylan seems to lose track of the lyrics. He does a good job of blurring it over, but what’s interesting is that when he comes out of it, he’s singing the verse ‘One who sings with his tongue on fire…’ The first time we’ve heard it since the 1960s. I suspect it was not intentional, but with Dylan you can never tell. (Los Angeles, Aug 4th)
Dylan brought the song back into prominence in 1989, when it was performed over twenty-five times. We’re back with a purely acoustic sound again. I’m uncertain as to the date of this recording but is, to my mind, better than what I could find on YouTube. It rattles along, and Dylan sounds fully committed to the song.
1989
1990 was a big year for the song, with over forty performances. This one from Berlin July 5th is as good as any. Despite a subtle bass and the gentle pattering of drums, Dylan keeps it acoustic. The song becomes an acoustic centrepiece in concerts largely given over to rock songs and GE Smith’s twanging electric guitar.
1990
In 1991 the song almost disappears again, being performed only once, in London (Feb 12th). Again, I can’t know why Dylan didn’t perform it again that year except to speculate that because he did eight concerts in London, and likes to do at least some different songs each night, he could have pulled ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ out of the bag. By 1991 his voice is starting to crack, but he delivers a vibrant performance, marred only by flubbing the lyrics again towards the end of the song. Of special interest are the guitar breaks with two acoustic guitars going for it.
1991: London
1992 was the year of The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, held at Madison Square Garden, New York in October 1992, an event that Neil Young described as ‘a Bobfest.’ A range of performers, including Stevie Wonder and Johnny Winter, came forward with their chosen Dylan song. The concert was professionally recorded and released on a double album. It is significant, I think, that Dylan, who was the last performer, chose ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ as the song to represent him and his thirty years of performing and recording. It is after all, arguably, his greatest protest song.
It’s an electrifying performance. A flat, nasal delivery, with Dylan sounding as if he was tearing the song out of his throat. If you haven’t already heard it, you have a treat in store. Undiluted Dylan.
1992
He performed it half a dozen times in 1992, but nothing quite lives up to that Anniversary Concert recording.
At this point something strange happens. While we have become used to Dylan seeming to blow hot and cold on the song, almost dropping it some years, and stacking the setlists with it other years, that doesn’t prepare us for him abandoning the song for seven long years. We thought we’d lost it. Then, in 1999, it comes back from the dead, but will be radically re-imagined musically. Why did Dylan drop the song? And why did he pick it up again after all that time? There’s no knowing.
But it’s to 1999 that we will turn in the next article. We might find the answer there.
In the meantime, watch for those who would ‘push fake morals, insult and stare.’
Kia Ora