Author Archives: TonyAttwood

  by Larry Fyffe Tossa’s Clorinda (like Virgil’s Camilla) is a literary archetype – a soul guided by the white-faced virgin Moon goddess Diana, a beautiful goddess who comes to be associated with Satan and ugly witches. Clorinda re-appears in … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood Stone Walls and Steel Bars was written by Ray Pennington and Roy Marcum and was originally recorded by The Stanley Brothers in 1963.  Bob Dylan first played it on 23 August 1997 and played it a total … Continue reading →

By Paul Hobson and Tony Attwood There is an index to this series at https://bob-dylan.org.uk/dylan-re-imagined  Mama you’ve been on my mind This recording “Mama you’ve been on my mind” comes from the late 1990s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5wL73ttio This is an approach to … Continue reading →

  By Larry Fyffe A number of songs by Bob Dylan are inspired by not-so-happy stories featuring ‘chivalrous’ romance, and ancient mythology: Gypsy Davey with a blow torch, he burns out their camps With his faithful slave Pedo, behind him … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the station. As I checked my watch against the tower clock I realized it was much later than I … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe To what extent Bob Dylan has read the works of any particular poet or writer of literature we may not know, but we do know that his song lyrics reveal that he’s been swimming in the Jungian … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst In a New York hotel room, as some guy named Joe from Minneapolis fables on songfacts.com, a Grateful Dead party gets out of hand. Dylan is there too and he is especially amused at the complaints of … Continue reading →

by Aaron Galbraith. In 2009 the Huffington Post ran one of Dylan’s greatest latter-day interviews, revealing his own favorite songwriters and thoughts on his own cult status. It is worth a moment of your time to take a read. Here … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe You darlings of the gods! Happy enough If it be given you to draw one breath Without some grief; and blest If you are cured of every grief by death (Giacomo Leopardi: The Calm After The Storm … Continue reading →

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood We have of late been dealing with several tribute albums Bob Dylan has performed on – and here we have another.  Indeed this is an album that Bob Dylan was centrally involved in, as … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Much of the time the song lyrics of Bob Dylan reflect the influence of the modernist poet, and short story writer, Delmore Schwartz. That is, caught as one is in the interconnected processes of a whirling universe, … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst https://youtu.be/CmoLawkkPso “People do wonder about what religion means to you,” journalist Ben Fong-Torres boldly states, in an interview for Rolling Stone (February 14, 1974). Dylan often gets the question and usually, up to his much-discussed conversion in … Continue reading →

Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet) [Advice to the reader. Please check out Tony Atwood’s probing account of Tangled Up in Blue here. My comments are incidental, and mostly directed to evolving performances of the song. Also note that this is a postscript … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe The ‘Untold Dylan’ offices have been inundated with letters. Writers thereof are shocked and appalled at the assertion that Bob Dylan imitates the form of the English sonnet when structuring some song lyrics; most of these letters, … Continue reading →

by Aaron Galbraith “When I first heard Elvis Presley’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe As opposed to the standard Christian interpretation often given to it, the song analyzed below can be viewed as a critique of social norms established by today’s religious and secular authorities. An unusual source that singer/songwriter Bob … Continue reading →

by Patrick Roefflaer This is the fourth article in our series on the artwork on Bob Dylan’s albums.  An index to the earlier articles can be found below, and in the index above, “Album artwork” Released:                     May 27, 1963 … Continue reading →

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood In the last article in this series we looked at “Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache” – a song neither of us knew before we started the research. Now here is another rather obscure … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe It’s all about the unrequited love for Laura: It was on that day when the sun’s rays Was darkened in pity for its Maker That I was captured, and did not defend myself Because your lovely eyes … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst In the beginning of his Nobel Prize Speech, after qualifying Buddy Holly and Leadbelly’s “Cottonfields” as his personal sunrise (“the dawning of it all”), Dylan refers to a list of songs that taught him the “lingo”, the … Continue reading →