Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Tony Attwood Article amended 15 June 2017 Bob Dylan toured consistently in 1996 from April through to August, before finally taking a break.  And at this point, for the first time in over five years, he started writing and … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe Unlike many of the Romantic Transcendentalist poets, who seek to express through words an actual link they feel with Nature, Modernist poets often use language as a tool to make looser associations, comparisons, and analoies with natural … Continue reading →

. What Bob Dylan’s Nobel acceptance speech tells us about Dylan’s songwriting. By Tony Attwood Until now I have felt that the speech Bob Dylan gave at the Music Cares festival (and which I have often quoted elsewhere) was the … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe   Sometimes but not all the time, an Existentialist amoral outlook darkens Bob Dylan’s song lyrics – there’s no meaning to life’s existence, no feeling of a guiding spirit flowing through external Nature; only the presence of the violence-backed … Continue reading →

A Journey Through “Hell Time” With a Forgotten Dylan Gem By Steve Watson Bob Dylan wrote “Band of the Hand (It’s Hell Time Man)” as the theme to a 1986 film of the same name. In the film, a group … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe Social Darwinism is an ideology that sanctifies the control over the technological means of production by the capitalist class. Donning the mask of science, its advocates the claim that evidenced-based Darwinian natural selection explains the formation of … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood “Open the Door Homer” was produced during a prolific period of Basement Tapes writing and recording, but for me it is a song that doesn’t quite get to the heights of the songs preeceeding it.  Songs such … Continue reading →

Bob Dylan And Archibald MacLeish by Larry Fyffe   The imagery of the Romantic Transcendentalist poets tends to be organic and fluid; the benevolence of external Nature, with its regenerative and restorative power, is celebrated:   To me the converging … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood Prologue When working on the review of Someone’s got a hold of my heart / Tight connection to my heart it became clear to me (if it wasn’t already) just how many Dylan fans really believed that Dylan had … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood The lyrics of neither “Roll on John” song are on Dylan’s site, and the site says Bob has only played the 2012 version twice.   Certainly I heard it once in Blackpool, but the set list I … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood Odds and Ends is a curiosity – a straight forward 12 bar blues with Dylan half singing half speaking the lyrics – which include references to orange juice.  And such references I guess could be a reference … Continue reading →

by Tony Attwood I chose to call my review of Dylan in 1989 Bob Dylan stalked by the darkness – which is my interpretation of his mood that year.   The writing that year was, to my mind, brilliant, but Bob was … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood This review updated 19 July 2019 This love and theft composition is, I think, best understood by considering it in its chronological context (something which if you are a regular reader here, you’ll be rather used to … Continue reading →

by Tony Attwood Up to 1979 Dylan’s albums were big.   Very big.  Or to put it another way, very very big.  Etc etc.   Year after year, album after album, they went Silver, Gold and Platinum in all the … Continue reading →

This review updated November 2019. by Tony Attwood “Song to Woody” is counted by some as Bob Dylan’s first composition – although that needs to be clarified.  Bob did write some pieces before this date although mostly they were thought … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood I am placing these four songs (New Blue Moon, Wilbury Twist, Poor House and Cool Dry Place) together in one review, as I don’t think they really count as Bob Dylan compositions.  He was there of course … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood Every member of the Wilburys is credited with co-writing this song which was the opening of Volume 3 and the first single hit for the band from the album. It is listed as a Dylan composition on … Continue reading →

by Tony Attwood Shake Shake Mama, from Together through life, is a classic variant blues song for which the lyrics were written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter (of Grateful Dead fame), the music being credited to Bob Dylan.   … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood 1989 for Bob Dylan was the year of visiting dark places both real and imagined.  A year of getting stuck in the mud.  A year of dreams, wherein reality fades in and out until finally it can’t … Continue reading →

by Tony Attwood Seven Deadly Sins is one of the songs on Travelling Wilburys Vol 3 that has the sound and feel of being a Dylan song.  Indeed the video (below) makes this quite clear in the way that it … Continue reading →