Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost
For his book Dirty Boulevard – The Life And Times Of Lou Reed (2016), Aidan Levy interviewed childhood friend and bassist of Reed’s first band LA And The Dorados, Richard Mishkin:
“We really loved Bob Dylan,” Mishkin says. “We would sit around in Lou’s apartment and learn the chords and fingerings to every one of his songs.” Not only did Dylan have a nontraditional singing voice and a quirky style and phrasing to match, he didn’t have the typical good looks of a star. He was also a Jew. Despite all this, Dylan became the yardstick that his contemporaries were measured against. He never let the times shape him; he shaped the times. Lou idolized Dylan and aped his rhythm guitar style, but soon jettisoned the harmonica to avoid comparison to the throngs of campus Dylan imitators.
It is, John Cale tells, exactly what initially bothered him. He hears Bob Dylan, when Reed plays him “I’m Waiting For My Man” and “Heroin”. “I missed the point because I hated folk songs, and it wasn’t until he forced me to read the lyrics that I realized these were not Joan Baez songs.” But it is unmistakable, indeed. For the early Velvet Undergrounds song “Guess I’m Falling In Love”, Reed borrows the opening words of “Absolutely Sweet Marie”;
I got fever in my pocket
You know I gotta move
Hey babe, I guess I'm falling in love,
… and even more Dylanesque is the dismissed “Prominent Men” that Lou Reed recorded with John Cale in their little flat on Ludlow Street, just before the Velvet Underground really started, before Maureen Tucker joined the band;
The harmonica, the guitar playing, Reed’s nasal way of singing, the Dylanesque opening line Through all of the highways, the byways I’ve travelled and the linguistic pleasure of a socially critical text in a “One Too Many Mornings”-like verse like:
The streets that have life with the cat's underbelly
Aligned with their tracks of a thousand good-byes
A poor woman screams with the heat of disaster
As the prominent men sit and strengthen their ties
… it is quite understandable that John Cale thinks his new friend Lou is a Dylan clone.
But Lou Reed hears it too, throws away his harmonica and his acoustic guitar and – thankfully – takes new paths. He does not dismiss Dylan, however. In interviews he keeps expressing his admiration, he openly acknowledges Dylan as the greatest rock poet and his contribution to Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in 1992 is an undeniable highlight: a blazing performance of the obscure Infidels outtake “Foot Of Pride”. True love, we understand later, when Reed is asked about his remarkable choice of songs:
“It did that, because I thought it was one of the funniest songs ever written. I was listening to it almost every day because it made me fall down laughing. You know: Did he make it to the top? Well yeah, but then he dropped. Some really, really funny lines in that thing.”
And when, in the twenty-first century, he records Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (for Wim Wenders’ The Soul Of A Man, 2003), he almost automatically shifts into Dylan mode – presumably Lou got to know the song through Dylan’s version on his 1962 debut album. In between those embryonic Dylan copies, the open reverence and the late imitation, Dylan echoes keep recurring in Reed’s work. Like from “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” in a 1978 Street Hassle outtake, in “Here Comes The Bride”:
Somebody call his Aunt Carrie
And tell her that her nephew Jimmy
Is comin’ in from Vermont via the coast
And somebody call up his old man
Tell him that his son’s arriving
And he’s looking like a ghost
The song is released on Reed’s own Biograph-like compilation box, the less than enthusiastically received Between Thought And Expression (1992). The box, like many compilation albums in those years, is released in the wake of the success of Dylan’s Biograph, but like many of those releases, it too makes the mistake of being little more than a slightly pimped up Best Of or Greatest Hits.
Unfortunately, “Here Comes The Bride” is nowhere near the allure of “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, “Up To Me” or “Abandoned Love”, one of the many highlights of Dylan’s box set of original material. Lou Reed’s “Here Comes The Bride” suffers from exactly the same flaw that he blames others for: he doesn’t really try. It’s a song Reed can do in his sleep, a lazy mix of “Sweet Jane” and “Walk On The Wild Side”. But: with another Dylan echo, in this case a Jimmy who is arriving from the coast, looking just like a ghost. The beautiful title of the compilation box, by the way, Reed took from the very Dylanesque opening verse of his magnificent, hypnotic Velvet Underground song “Some Kinda Love”;
Some kinds of love
Marguerita told Tom
Between thought and expression lies a lifetime
Situations arise because of the weather
And no kinds of love
Are better than others
Dylan, for his part, still seems to be varying his Kerouac impressions in this sergeant-at-arms couplet. “Angel” is, obviously, one of the most frequently used nouns in Desolation Angels, and an angel-looking-like-ghost is also encountered, in Chapter 55:
“I look at Pat and he looks like somebody else—Not only that but soon as we’re in the kitchen and he’s walking beside me suddenly I get the eerie feeling he’s not there and I take a good look to check—For just an instant this angel had faded away.”
… although images and word choice may have entered Dylan’s associative mind from other angles too, of course. Anyway, the verse breathes the same uncanny atmosphere as the superhuman couplet from “Desolation Row”,
Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
… with the threatening, alienating presence of a nameless authority abusing its power. The same oppressive menace as in Kafka’s The Trial – although this particular Tom Thumb couplet pushes the Kafka associations more towards the fascinating, gruesome short story The Penal Colony (1919). The story in which the soldier is cruelly punished, though not for leaving his post, but because he fell asleep at his post. One of the very few stories, by the way, that received kind-of-approval from Kafka himself. Close friend and executor of the will Max Brod found a short note in Kafka’s study, addressed to him:
“Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these: The Judgment, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Country Doctor and the short story: Hunger-Artist. . . When I say that those five books and the short story can stand, I do not mean that I wish them to be reprinted and handed down to posterity. On the contrary, should they disappear altogether that would please me best. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them.”
When Brod read that, Kafka had already succumbed. Starvation, presumably – the tuberculosis had so damaged his throat that he could no longer eat. On his deathbed he edited his last work, The Hunger Artist. And then he left, looking just like a ghost.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part VI:
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Who is the most profound and insightful reader? An academic? A student, perhaps? A literary critic?
Well, none of them. At least the way I see it; the greatest attention to the various levels of any text is paid by its translator. And why, you may ask. Because to translate a piece of prose or poetry and to do it properly and adequately you need to fully understand (and enjoy) the original.
As far as I could judge so far, none of the regular Untold Dylan contributors are currently translators (although one was in the past I believe). If I’m wrong, just correct me and tell me to go somewhere else where I rather belong.
But if I’m right, I assume this is partly why nobody here has written anything about Tarantula. The possible authors either read it and didn’t like it at all or the they didn’t read it (I mean, really READ it) so they don’t have much to say about it.
I translated Tarantula into Polish three years ago. I was even nominated in 2019 for the most important Polish award in translation (I lost but so did three other nominees, still, it was one of the five best translated books in 2018). But I write this not to boast but rather to explain I really had to dig deep into the matter and found some revelatory material there.
Of course, I’m a foreigner to the English-speaking world, to the American culture and spirituality of the Sixties. Therefore I can’t understand each and every possible level of meanings and senses hidden within Tarantula. What I could – and had to – do was to project myself on the text and at the same time to imagine a Polish world of Tarantula, its Polish sensibility, its Polish resonance, its first reason for being translated. To put it shortly, I had to READ it core-deep.
When the publishing house I collaborate frequently with asked me if I could face the task I said, “no”. Not because I didn’t like it. But because I didn’t know it. All I knew was the pusillanimous gossip, ironic hearsay, disdainful remarks by people very proud of their own mediocrity who just “knew better”. I said no because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through and succeed. And afraid all my effort and hard work would be in vain because nobody would read it. Who needs Tarantula?
Eventually, I agreed because they told me no one else would. I thought it might cost me, maybe, a whole year to do it. I finished my translating job in three months. As I explained later, I’d been in a trance, and that trance was arguably the only reasonable way to say the same thing in Polish. A shot of Tarantula language proved enough. Those who read the original and then my Polish version said later on, I succeeded. Polish Tarantula is adequate, is Dylan-resonating, is in harmony with the original.
Asked to write an intro spur on the back cover, I wrote a pastiche of what waited for the readers inside (here’s my rough translation into English): “reader / at home in a bus on a beach & wherever you may be holding this book / stop wondering if it’s a novel & how t call what you try t read / reader you’re much wiser & bolder than yr habits / tarantula is a spider / tarantula is a trance”.
What struck me when I started a hard job to promote the book all over Poland was that the book really worked when read aloud. The things that seemed enigmatic, confusing or horrible at first sight proved entertaining and funny when they were put into sounds. My friend, an avant-jazz clarinettist even planned to record his improvs around my Tarantula readings. Perhaps one day we’ll do it. All in all, people looked incredulously into the book but they immediately queued for it when they heard it read. (It’s the best way to absorb poetry, by the way – to read it all by oneself, aloud).
But what was really revelatory was its content, as I saw while translating. Maybe Tarantula is a bit outdated nowadays in America but it really sounds very up-to-date in Poland. In 1966 when it was mainly written, in 1969 when it was “booklegged,” or in 1971 when it finally came out officially, we were still deep in the gloomy reign of so-called communism where life was stable, dull (or tragic at times) and very quiet, with a quietude of a concentration camp. People loved and hated, were born and died, worked and bought food but had just three newspapers, three radio and two TV channels to choose from (and each and every one sold the same bullshit). We didn’t know all that media hullabaloo and political racket you Westerners ate each morning for breakfast.
What I’m trying to say is Tarantula is so rich, vibrant and cacophonous that it resembles the modern world. It arguably IS the modern world. The way the words climb on each other, their hasty running hot on each other’s heels, their chaotic hubbub – ain’t it just like the day you go into a shopping mall? With so many different musics coming from each shop, meddling and mixing into an end-of-the-world soundtrack? Ain’t it just like the night you surf the Internet among hyperlinks, headlines, pop-up ads and news, each one pretending to be the most important?
The abundance of people, creatures, objects of desire and of repugnance, factitious fictions and fictitious facts, figures, proverbs and off-the-cuff quotes within Tarantula is overwhelming. It may not be the book you like or want to return to. It certainly is not something we would talk about had Bob Dylan not written outstanding songs before publishing it. But it is not gibberish. There’s much more to it than meets the common sense. (Neither our world nor Tarantula observe the rules of common sense).
For me, Tarantula is a photograph of our world. And if somebody translated it into Polish back in 1972 it would not have been understood at all, nobody could have grasped its warning. I was lucky and happy to be able to do it in the last weeks of 2017 because then I knew what I was dealing with.
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Text by Larry Fyffe, recordings selected by Tony (with a plea that you please listen to this cover of Duquesne while reading Larry’s commentary)
* * *
If one were inclined to do so, many of the rhymes for ‘door’ employed by Bob Dylan might be considered to come from his unconscious ‘collective’ memory. That is to say: once upon a door in the deep blue Jungian Sea, five poets float – all influences on singer/singer. They are by name: Edward Taylor, Ralph Emerson, Henry Longfellow, Edgar Poe, and Emily Dickinson.
Ancient Rhymers they be ~
And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore
I find the the bread of life in it at my door
(Edward Taylor: A Kenning Through Astronomy Divine)
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried, and failed to find the door
(Bob Dylan: Love Is Just A Four Letter Word)
Turn the key, and bolt the door
Sweet is death forevermore
(Ralph Emerson: The Past)
From behind the curtain, the boss crossed the floor
He moved his feet, and he bolted the door
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)
Barefooted Dervish is not poor
If fate unlock his bosom’s door
(Ralph Emerson: Saadi)
Was a friend to the poor ….
He opened many a door
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)
Behold, he watches at the door
Behold his shadow on the floor
(Ralph Emerson: Saadi)
Babe, I couldn’t even find the door
Couldn’t even see the floor
Bob Dylan: If Not For You)
While thou sittest at thy door
On desert’s yellow floor
(Ralph Emerson: Saadi)
Forever at my door …
While being chained to the floor
(Bob Dylan: You Changed may Life)
Out of an unseen quarry evermore …
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door
(Ralph Emerson: The Snowstorm)
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
(Bob Dylan: Maggie’s Farm)
And next the deacon issued from his door …
A suit of sable bombazine he wore
(Henry Longfellow: The Birds OF Killingworth)
Smoke pouring out of a boxcar door …
In the final end, he won the war
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)
Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more
The feathered gleaners follow to your door
(Henry Longfellow: The Birds Of Killingworth)
Open the door, Richard ….
But I ain’t gonna hear it said no more
(Bob Dylan: Open The Door, Homer)
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door …
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
(Henry Longfellow: Divine Commedia)
Lean against your velvet door …
Who crawls across your circus floor
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
At the end, an open door
Squares of sunshine on the floor
(Henry Longfellow: The Ropewalk)
Your lover who just walked out the door …
Has taken his blankets from the floor
(Bob Dylan: It’s All Over Now Baby Blue)
Through the pale door …
And laugh – but smile no more
(Edgar Poe: Haunted Door)
I can’t shoot them anymore …
I feel I’m knocking on Heaven’s door
(Bob Dylan: Knocking On Heaven’s Door
Then shuts the door …
Present no more
(Emily Dickinson: The Soul Selects Her Own Society)
I can’t use it anymore …
Feel I’m knocking on Heaven’s door
(Bob Dylan: Knocking On Heaven’s Door)
That I could fear a door …
And never winced before
(Emily Dickinson: I Laughed A Crumbling Laugh)
Blowing like she never blowed before …
Blowing like she’s at my chamber door
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
Out of the foxglove’s door …
I shall but drink the more
(Emily Dickinson: I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed)
Throw my troubles out the door
I don’t need them anymore
(Bob Dylan: Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You)
Finally, the assonant ‘rhyme’ ~ ‘door’/’Lord’:
But Thou, sweet Lord, has with the golden key
Unlocked the door, and made a golden day
(Edward Taylor: Reflection)
Closed the door behind him …
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
(Bob Dylan: George Jackson)
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Up on Housing Project Hill
It’s either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are
to be what they claim
If you’re lookin’ to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don’t need you
And man they expect the same
In its April 2003 issue, Spin Magazine publishes an amusing Top 5: “Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars”. Henry Rollins, Jim Morrison, Jewel and Nick Cave, respectively, are number five through two, and the list is proudly headed by a line from Dylan’s prose debut Tarantula:
“Now’s not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns.”
A totally random choice, of course. Tarantula has at least ten phrases on every page that are exactly the same in terms of “intelligibility”. Spin Magazine went no further than page 3 and – again, completely at random – highlighted a random phrase. At least, it is unlikely that anyone will think that an equally random phrase on, say, page 82,
“i, who am holding a glass of sand in one hand & a calf’s head in the other – i look up & say “are you hungry?”
… or on, say, page 128,
“she is not going on any goodwill tours this year – there is a false eyelash in her transmission… there is not many places she can taste”,
… is more or less intelligible than the chosen phrase.
It is a bit ironic, though. Spin Magazine manages to select one of the very few sections of text with a fairly unambiguous sneer; by garbage clowns, the young, hounded poet is no doubt referring to the relentless, sensation-seeking journalists. Also, just as ironically, this is the only sentence in that Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars that is misquoted (in Tarantula on page 3 it says to act silly, not to get silly). And the dozens of magazines, newspapers and websites that report on Spin‘s amusing list all unerringly copy that incorrect quotation.
The experimental prose poem Tarantula (written ’65/’66, published in 1971), which is signed “Homer the slut”, is not really a highlight of Dylan’s output. In fact, it seems mainly an attempt to copy Burroughs’ cut-up technique, as well as a half-hearted attempt to cash in on Dylan’s then emerging literary status. Dylan himself turns his back on it, after its publication. He insinuates that it is more manager Grossman’s idea than his own, and demonstrates little pride:
“That was an opportunity for me to write a book rather than a book I wanted to write. I just put down all these words and sent them off to my publishers and they’d send back the galleys, and I’d be so embarrassed at the nonsense I’d written I’d change the whole thing. […] The trouble with it, it had no story. I’d been reading all these trash books, works suffering from sex and excitement and foolish things which only happen in a man’s mind.”
(Hubert Saal interview for Newsweek, 1968)
But on another level, it is fascinating indeed; Tarantula offers some insight into the meandering, poetic part of Dylan’s creativity during the mercurial 500 days, the days from Bringing It All Back Home to Blonde On Blonde. Almost all the supporting characters from “Desolation Row”, for example, appear in Tarantula as well. Noah, Einstein, Romeo, Robin Hood, the hunchback and the good Samaritan, Neptune, and Ezra Pound, just like the scenery (the Titanic, beauty parlor)… and like this, every page offers aha moments, remarkable idioms, striking scenery and exceptional supporting characters we meet again in the mercurial songs.
This starts already on Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965). The closing line of the opening track “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (the vandals took the handles) is also the title of a Tarantula chapter, three chapters after the Subterranean Homesick Blues & The Blonde Waltz chapter, by the way. Another chapter echoes “Mr. Tambourine Man” (Sacred Cracked Voice & the Jingle Jangle Morning), three quarters of the nouns from “On The Road Again” can be found (Napoleon, Santa Claus, milkman, hot dog, mailman, cane), and so on.
The next album, the Highway 61 Revisited-album with “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Desolation Row” and this “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, again offers dozens of intersections. And similar echoes of likely sources of inspiration; Tarantula, too, is a gathering place of legendary, fictional folk characters as well as blues artists and historical figures. The song character Willie Moore, traces of whom we hear in Sweet Melinda and Saint Annie, is mentioned on page 87, in the same breath as Willie’s colleagues Lord Randall, Sir James Fanny Blair, Matty Groves and Barbara Allen – mainly protagonists of murder ballads, by the way, that resonate somewhere in Dylan’s sixty-year song catalogue. And likewise, names like Bo Diddley, Delilah, Gypsy Davy, the pretty things and Galileo come along both on Highway 61 Revisited and in Tarantula.
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” bubbles up from a chapter like Hopeless & Maria Nowhere, apparently set in Mexico, in which a “Maria” says that the narrator is a foreigner and in which the protagonist admits: “ok. so i shoot dope once in a while.” Apart from that we find, like in most mercurial songs, in Tom Thumb almost all words that can also be found in Tarantula. Peasants, gloom, howling, cops, silly… and if we can’t find it in Tarantula, we’ll find it in Dylan’s bookcase or in Dylan’s record collection. Like the aforementioned Housing Project Hill in Kerouac’s Desolation Angels (although the unusual housing is also found in Dylan’s novel; “from the pay phones to the housing developments,” p. 6) and Poe’s Rue Morgue.
The unspectacular fame or fortune in this fourth verse could be a rare Smokey Robinson reverberation. Less far-fetched than it seems; when Dylan is asked in 1965 about his favourite poets, he mentions Smokey Robinson in the same line-up as Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg. And at the time of Tom Thumb’s conception, Robinson has just written one of his greatest hits, “My Girl”;
I don't need no money, fortune or fame
I've got all the riches baby
That one man can claim
… from which both that fortune or fame and the rhyme with claim do descend in this Tom Thumb verse.
Four years later though, in the Rolling Stone interview with Jann Wenner, November ’69, Dylan distances himself from his admiration for Smokey Robinson’s poetry:
JW: What about the poets? You once said something about Smokey Robinson…
BD: I didn’t mean Smokey Robinson. I meant Arthur Rimbaud. I don’t know how I could have got Smokey Robinson mixed up with Arthur Rimbaud. [laughter] But I did.
… which is verifiable hogwash. In 1965 Dylan said:
What poets do you dig?
BD: Oh, Rimbaud, I guess. W. C. Fields. The Family, you know, the trapeze family in the circus; Smokey Robinson, Allen Ginsberg, Charlie Rich… he’s a good poet.
So, there is most certainly no question of a “mix-up” with Rimbaud. On the other hand, we don’t have to take him too seriously here. Dylan surely is a fan of Charlie Rich, and as a radio broadcaster (he plays the Silver Fox four times in Theme Time Radio Hour) he carries his admiration out into the twenty-first century – but even a commercial and artistic highlight like “Lonely Weekends” does poetically not offer much more than
You said you'd be (ooh-wah) good to me (ooh-wah-wah)
You said our love (ooh-wah) would never die (ooh-wah-wah)
You said you'd be (ooh-wah) good to me (ooh-wah-wah)
But baby, you didn't even try.
No, Smokey Robinson, W.C. Fields and Charlie Rich are, with all due respect, not poets who can be nominated for membership of the Pantheon with any chance of success.
Unless you’re lookin’ to get silly.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part V: The ghosts of our people
———-
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
English poet William Blake opens the door for personal mythologies – no adherent to the Established Church is he:
If the doors of perception were cleansed
Every thing would appear to man as it is - Infinite
For man has closed himself up
Til he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern
(William Blake: The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell)
According to the pre-Romantic above, although man’s brain be enclosed in a skull, the intuitive imagination of the mind is capable of communicating to others via creative language a vision of happiness that exists beyond bodily sensations.
According to Blake, orthodox religion pre-empts the expansion of the human imagination by building solid walls of dogma designed to prevent even the experiencing of physical joy on the part of i parishioners.
A vision by the Daniel-like poet:
And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door ....
And priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds
And binding with briars, my joys and desires
(Willian Blake: The Garden Of Love)
The season of winter, personified as an old bearded man by Blake, is a tyrant who bounds humanity in the iron chains of law and reason:
O winter, bar thine adamantine doors
The north is thine, there hath thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation; shake not thy roofs
Nor bind thy pillars with thine iron car
(William Blake: To Winter)
Below, the energetic, high-flying spiritual eagle is led astray by the materialistic city-dwelling crow:
The eagle never lost so much time
As when he submitted to learn from the crow
(William Blake: Proverbs Of Hell)
Having dealt extensively with Blakean mythology in a number of previous articles, let us move on to the personal mythology of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. He envisions the United States as a Promised Land that’s been corrupted. Spiritualism has gone with the wind; America (it’s national Seal being that of an eagle grasping arrows in one of its claws) becomes the New Babylon where lots of its people worship the golden calf of the Almighty Dollar – a materialistically oriented religion that includes the commercialisation of love and sex.
In the song below, it’s a hell of a place from which to escape, or so the song can be interpreted; escaping is worth a try even if it’s only through the creative imagination:
I'm gonna walk across the desert 'til I'm in my right mind
I won't even think about what I left behind
Nothing back there anyway that I can call my own
Go back home, leave me alone
(Bob Dylan: Narrow Way)
Seems to say the song ~ it’s now up to God to show if things are going to change, and He needs to hurry up about it:
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you
You'll surely have to work down to me some day
(Bob Dylan: Narrow Way)
In days of yore, according to the Holy Bible, God has no trouble dealing with the wayward King of Babylon who gets his due punishment, and it has the desired effect – Nebuchadnezzar changes his evil ways:
And he was driven away from men
And did eat grass as oxen
And his body was wet the dew of heaven
Till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers
And his nails like birds' claws
(Book Of Daniel 4:33)
Venom-mouthed Dylan paints a word picture of the New Babylon, the Mother of Harlots and the Abominations of the Earth; it’s certainly not a flattering portrait. But the gal’s attractive, and hard to resist:
I got a heavy stacked woman with a smile on her face
And she has crowned my soul with grace
I'm still hurting from an arrow that pierced my chest
I'm gonna have to take my head, and bury it between your breasts
(Bob Dylan: Narrow Way)
Thus speaks the walking contradiction – partly truth, and partly fiction.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
View from the crowd, ABC Ritz Cinema Belfast, May 6th 1966 (Note wrought iron railings and Compton Melotone organ under tarp at foot of the stage) photo by Tiger Taylor, found on Twitter
By now it must be obvious to any reader of this site that, in the UK at that time, everything as far as the music media went, arrived in the form of photographs. Indeed even some LPs became available quite a bit after they were seen and heard in the States.
The Bob Dylan that we last had a visual reference to was from his short news-based television appearances while touring in Britain a year previous to this in 1965, and the cover photograph of his last album Highway 61 Revisited.
Even then, it was mostly only through the form of the publicity photographs in the music press of the time that we could tune into him visually, unless you had been among the lucky audiences of the previous year’s concerts in what we in Northern Ireland would refer to as, ‘Across the water’. They had all been acoustically presented and the Dylan that was seen by very few even then, most people wouldn’t catch up with until the film of that tour, Don’t Look Back, was first shown in ‘art’ cinemas beginning in the States two years later.
Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album would not be released for another two months and the rail-thin Medusa-haired figure on the double-disc folding album cover with his out-of-focus scowl and checkered scarf hadn’t been seen on this side of the Atlantic yet. It wasn’t that future version of him I was scanning around the inky precincts of the cinema for. I didn’t know it, but I was still looking for someone who had already been left far behind. Where the hell was that Bob Dylan? He was nowhere to be seen, but he must be there somewhere out in the darkness. And with an even bolder quick body craning and neck stretching scan of the whole front of the stage expanse, I spotted someone way far over on the other side of the theatre sitting completely alone. A slumped figure under a hazy mop of explosive hair was sitting sunk down low in the front row of the cinema seats, crossed-legged and completely still. It could only be him. He was wearing dark glasses in the dark. My heart began again to turn into one continuous thrum. This was it. The moment I’d come up to Belfast for was here.
Turning to the left and almost crouching, I tip-toed along the length of the dark and narrow corridor that allowed the musicians of the orchestra to take their places up in the pit on both sides.
As I arrived at the short set of steps that rose over at his position, I gradually and quietly emerged up to the second step from the top to see directly in front of me, exactly the above image. I was quite shocked years later to come across a photograph of Dylan in the identical position that he had taken up that day. It was first seen in the booklet accompanying the 1998 Bootleg series volume 4 that captured the sounds and atmosphere of these Ireland/UK 1966 concerts, of which this was the second to be played in Ireland before going on to play other dates in Britain.
As far as I know, this image had never been published prior to these recordings being released 32 years later. There was the same pale face and dark glasses under the penumbra of dark curls that I rose up the steps to behold that afternoon. I was about ten feet away from the slouched figure and at the same slight angle where this shot was taken from and barely able to breathe from the sheer terror that I felt coming over me from my side of the elaborate railings separating our two completely different worlds.
What was I to do? I couldn’t begin to even think of simply standing up and exposing my existence to him. As it was, I was barely able to think. So, I decided what I really should do was absolutely nothing. Just sit there trying to get control of my emotional response to this series of events. I could not get my heart to quieten down. I was convinced that he could hear it. Gradually, as things began to settle a bit, I began to realize that the strange young man sitting right in front of me was fast asleep. With the swirling phantom of the opera crescendos flying out from the various keyboards and fingers of Garth Hudson I couldn’t imagine how he could be, but there he was; completely sphinx-like and unmoving. He was dead to the world in the cacophony of microphones being plugged in with “testing, testing” and all the other rackety goings on from the stage.
I took up my sketchpad and began to draw, barely able to see the surface of the paper in the darkness. I completed one quick sketch and began another on the same page. Completed that one and began a third and then sat back and waited. An hour went by and I swear that every minute seemed like ten. I began to wonder if he was alright. He literally hadn’t moved a muscle. After about an hour and a half sitting down there in the dark, I noticed the beginnings of a slight movement. The leg was slowly uncrossed, and the hands rose in front of a long and back arching yawn. He was alive. Very gradually he shifted in his seat and began to slowly get to his feet. The curled fingers went up to the curls on his head and started that now well known “I fuss with my hair” pincer movement starting at the back of the neck and working upwards.
He looked over to his left towards the small group of people gathered around the camera set-up at the other side of the stage. How he could see anything through the dark glasses in this gloom I simply didn’t know, but he began to stroll over in that direction with a bobble-headed shoulder stretching gait that gradually took him the distance across the front of the orchestra pit railing and almost out of my sight. I sat there completely stunned.
I’d never seen a human being who looked like that before. Was that actually my poetically complex singing hero Bob Dylan?
I decided that I would follow his lead and crept back along the under-stage corridor to the position that I had started from just below the small group gathered around the camera; a gathering of four or five people that now included Dylan. Arriving back there and still in darkness at the bottom of the five or six stairs at that side of the orchestra pit again, I took up my old position and sat down on the bottom step.
Different people (I recognized no one then of course apart from him, but can now identify one or two of them) were looking through the camera and fiddling about with various accoutrements to do with that operation. There was a lady (Jones Alk) with a silk scarf tied over her head leaning on the rail, a couple of guys with slightly long hair for the time, one of them likely Bob Neuwrith and a bigger man with a beard; a couple of other guys now recognizable as members of the band, later ‘The Band’. Technical details were being dealt with and there seemed to be a fair amount of coming and going. Someone joined the throng from the door on the right side of the cinema and the group drifted over to the left out of my view leaving the rail above free and enabling me to emerge a little higher out of the darkness at the bottom of the steps and almost fully into the still fairly dim available light above.
I could see Dylan again now, sitting on an equipment case facing another one directly in front of him. On the edge of the case he was facing, someone had laid out about six different chocolate bars in their wrappers. He picked each up and studied it and replaced it on the case. Beginning again at the end of the row he slowly unwrapped the tip of each candy bar and nibbled at the exposed contents, like a wine connoisseur tasting a precious vintage, then set it down again. He did exactly the same thing with each bar, lost in a concentrated taste test of each one and then setting each one back down. Nothing was said that I could hear. No report on the merits of each bar, just something approaching a kind of awe at the sumptuous range of ‘new to him’ delicacies available in this foreign country that had been specifically brought to his notice and for his exclusive delectation. It was the strangest behaviour by the strangest looking adult that I had ever witnessed.
The lady with the headscarf and Dylan eventually idled back over towards the curving railing they had previously occupied and I slid back down into the darkness like a cautious moray eel below a pair of threatening divers. There were quiet discussions I couldn’t quite make out going on and every so often I could hear Dylan’s distinct timbre of voice inquire as to when the taxi was coming to take him back to the hotel. My astonished young ears couldn’t quite believe how he phrased these inquiries. “When’s the fuckin’ taxi comin’ man, I wanna get back to the hotel”.
Hearing Dylan say the word fuck actually surprised me no end for some reason. It wasn’t like I had never used it all too often myself, but weren’t deities supposed to be different, somehow above all that? A few minutes later. “Come on Richard, where’s the fuckin’ taxi man”. Getting slightly more exasperated with each asking and then back to quieter conversation with the lady in the headscarf at the railing. Something had to give. I had to make something happen before I lost my chance and he disappeared without my even being noticed by him. I decided very gradually to make my presence known and accept the consequences, good or bad. I just hadn’t reckoned on what was about to happen could possibly be that bad. My fall from grace was imminent.
Once again I positioned my sketchpad at an appropriate angle with my pencil poised and very gradually, I eased myself upwards and into the half light of the third or fourth step. The headscarf lady noticed and turned her head and looked down. She stared at me in the gloomy shadows and turned towards Dylan leaning at her shoulder on her immediate left about eight feet directly above me and said, “There’s someone down there drawing you”.
Dylan looked down at me for what seemed about ten very long seconds and said in a slightly louder voice, “I’ll fuckin’ draw him”. It was at this moment that I distinctly felt my mind separate from my body, and, as I began to stand up and very slowly, with all my effort, managed to make my disembodied and bloodless legs work hard to push me upwards towards the top of the steps to where I then stood quite close beside the two silent staring figures to my right on the other side of the railing.
They said nothing. I didn’t look at them directly and just kept moving forward as I slowly passed them until I reached the front and lifted my right leg over the top of the railing. I’d just finished lifting my left leg over when I was surrounded by what seemed to be about five or six very startled members of the group of guys moving around close to us who had sprung into action and had become a tense wall of protection between me and Dylan.
“Wadda ya doin’ here, wadda ya want?”. “Wadda think yer doin’ man?” “Where did youcome from?” they all seemed to say at once. I stammered something like, “I’m not doing anything, just drawing” and literally just stood there and hung my head like a thief caught in the act. There were lots of other things being said but it all became a complete blur of voices as I very gradually walked away from the angry Dylan protectors towards the seats at the front of the cinema and then over to the centre aisle leading up to the back of the stalls.
I didn’t look back. I proceeded slowly up the aisle towards the chest-high wooden wall behind the back row of seats and when I reached that spot, I slowly turned around. Dylan was striding up the same aisle after me with some determination. I stepped to the left behind the chest-high barrier and put my hands holding the sketchpad on the top.
“Hey Bob, the taxi’s here” someone shouted up the incline of seats and Dylan suddenly stopped absolutely still facing me about 15 feet away. I could see the subdued glow of the stage lights reflecting on one side of his highly pronounced jawline with his facial muscles clenching and unclenching in a quickly pulsing rhythm of anger and disdain. I saw the light softly accentuating his enormous cascade of curly hair above an odd over-size military-style suede jacket with epaulettes at the shoulders and his boldly pinstriped pants.
I had half my face hidden behind the sketchpad that I was now instinctively holding vertically on the top of the wooden wall, for either something just to hide behind or for real physical protection. He just stood staring at me through his dark glasses. “Hey Bob, come on the cab’s waiting man”, the same voice said loudly from down front. At this point I really didn’t know what was going to happen. Was he going to continue towards me? Was he going to shout at me or even start a physical fight? I was at a point of complete terror that I was literally going to either turn around and run away from or start crying. I honestly didn’t know which would’ve been the more embarrassing.
At that moment he then turned on his Cuban booted heel and started back down the aisle towards the group moving away from the stage railing and off towards the door at the left side of the auditorium without saying a word. I watched him go all the way and breathed again in what seemed like a very long time. A flood of relief washed over me and I put my head down on my hands on the barrier wall and felt I’d just come through something both ominous and truly frightening.
But also I felt that I somehow had been terribly in the wrong. I can still feel the emotions of that moment now as I type, 55 years later. I walked down the incline of the aisle and, hesitating until they had gone, I followed the group out of the side door and turned a sharp right walking away quickly along the alley to the corner where it joined the street. The first of two black taxis arrived as I turned around to see Dylan sitting in the back seat staring out of the window. As the taxi stopped before turning left I was once again in his dark glasses-fixed stare. I was wondering if he even realized that I was the same kid he’d just reduced to a quivering jelly in the darkness of the cinema. I watched as they both turned and disappeared into the traffic knowing that my life had been completely altered in an inexpiable way.
The concert that night was one for the ages. Anyone that has reached my present vintage (72) who was there for any one of the concerts during that tour in 1966 knew they had witnessed something difficult to begin to describe. Something unique and special and precious to have been part of, even at a time of grave turmoil and horror on the other side of the world in Vietnam and Cambodia.
The supposed culpability for this American war of death and destruction (quite apart from his departure from their ‘purest’ ideas regarding the amplification of his music) being laid on the slim shoulders of a young man not yet 25 at the time by a few booing sign holding protesters during the beginning of the amplified second half of the concert, must’ve been soul destroying. Certainly far beyond what we in the rest of the utterly mind blown audience’s imaginations could fathom.
We felt cringingly embarrassed for these idiots. The sheer pressure of his daily existence would’ve laid waste to a lesser mind. The anger and exasperation that I felt truly terrified by earlier in the day, I know now was coming from a person hanging on by his very fingernails to reality and sanity and had been resorting to what C.P. Lee referred to as, a kind of “alchemical pharmacy in order to carry on”.
I’m so glad to have had a long lifetime’s journey within the same timeline of his astounding ability to, not only survive this period in his life, as many close to his world did not, but to have continued to give us his all … and for our what? Our education? Our elucidation? Our entertainment? I say all of the above. I’ve never felt in the least way let down by him at any stage along the way. I’m sure I feel as we all do for just being offered a ticket to come along for the amazing ride: eternal gratitude.
It was only sometime after the above events when I had grown up a bit that I began to come to terms with feeling so guilty about having done something both wrong and sneakily intrusive on that day in May. I would eventually recognize that I’d been just one of the thousands of young people that had made his life a misery everywhere he went back then, “hunted like a crocodile”, and that it was just part of the times we were all living in. What we know now we didn’t know then.
Eleven days later in Manchester he would endure the sheer impertinence of being loudly called ‘Judas’ halfway through a concert. An accusation that would go down in musical history on a night that C.P. Lee brilliantly captures in his 1998 publication Like the Night : Bob Dylan and the Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall. Or that a couple of months after that he would disappear from view for a full eight years, retreating away from this on-the-road madness and try to get back to as normal a life as possible after falling off his motorcycle near Woodstock on July 29th.
A certain chapter in the life of the young Bob Dylan had come to a necessary stop. In a contemporary letter to his late childhood friend Tony Glover recently sold at auction, he explained that in the months that followed the 1966 tour “it took a long time to get all that out of my system”. I don’t know if he was referring to the insanity of his reception during the tour, or the ‘alchemical pharmacy’ required to get himself through it. Perhaps both.
If you have read my recent post here about my old art college friend Charlie Whisker’s input into the making of the Series of Dreams video 25 years after the events described above in 1991 (Series of Dreams : who and how) you’ll know that my fascination with Bob Dylan’s art has never waned and it continues to this day. I’ve never considered myself an ardent Dylanologist or an overly obsessive collector of his work; just an average but focused appreciator of a unique talent who has given me a sort of innate aural soundtrack to this life in all its mystery and grandeur and sometimes, yes, its utter confusion.
For songs to work well they must first let you in… but they must also let you out again. Bob has always invited us to come and go as we please. I can’t think of anyone as constant and as generous with their genius as he has been in the modern world of music and song. From Highway 61 all the way down to Key West, it’s been a great privilege and an enormously enduring pleasure.
My three drawings from that day burned up in a house fire that also destroyed a lot of the film archive of another art college friend, John T. Davis. John is a well known and highly regarded Northern Irish documentary filmmaker (Shell Shock Rock, Dust on the Bible, Hobo and The Uncle Jack) and a talented singer/songwriter among many other gifts (Indigo Snow). He was also the cameraman hired by his friend Van Morrison to film Van singing, and Bob pretending to, outside on a hillside in Athens a few years ago that gets posted regularly on sites such as this one.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Here are song lyrics by Bob Dylan that use ‘door’ as rhyme word.
From behind the curtain, the boss crossed the floor
He moved his feet, and he bolted the door
Shadows hid the lines in his face
With all the nobility of an ancient race
(Tin Angel)
Well, I see you got a new boyfriend
You know, I never seen him before
Well, I saw you making love with him
You forgot to close the garage door
(Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowing like she never blowed before
Blue light blinking, red light glowing
Blowing like she's at my chamber door
(Duquesne Whistle)
All night long
I lay awake, and listen to the sound of pain
The door has closed forevermore
If indeed there ever was a door
(Forgetful Heart)
To protect you, and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But It ain't me you're looking for, babe
(It Ain't Me Babe)
I've heard it said before
Open the door, Richard
I've heard it said before
But I ain't gonna hear it said no more
(Open The Door Homer)
Well I rush into your hallway
Lean against your velvet door
I watch upon your scorpion
Who crawls across your circus floor
(Temporary Like Achilles)
She said, "Would you like to take a shower?
I'll show you up to the door"
I said, "Oh, no, no
I've been through this movie before"
(Motorpsycho Nightmare)
Was a friend to the poor
He travelled with a gun in every hand
All along this countryside
He opened many a door
(John Wesley Harding)
Pretty maids all in a row lined up
Outside my cabin door
I've never wanted any of them wanting me
'Cept the girl from the Red River shore
(Red River Shore)
All your sea sick sailors, they are rowing home
Your empty-handed army is going home
Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken his blankets from the floor
(It's All Over Now Baby Blue)
If not for you
Babe, I couldn't find the door
Couldn't even see the floor
I'd be sad and blue
(If Not For You)
Come baby find me, come baby remind me of where I once begun
Come baby show me, come baby show you know me, tell me you're the one
I could be learning, you could be yearning to see behind closed door
But I'll always be emotionally yours
(Emotionally Yours)
Throw my ticket out the window
Throw my suitcase out there too
Throw my troubles out the door
I don't need them anymore
(Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With
He asks you with a grin
If you're having a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
(Maggie's Farm)
Outside the crowd was stirring
You could hear it from the door
Inside the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more
(Drifter's Escape)
Mama, take this badge off of me
I can't use it anymore
Getting too dark, too dark to see
Feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door
(Knocking On Heaven's door)
I ran right through the front door
Like a hobo sailor does
But it was just a funeral parlor
And the man asked me who I was
(115th Dream)
Smoke pouring out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end, he won the war
After losing every battle
(Idiot Wind)
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried, and failed to find the door
I must have thought there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four letter word
(Love Is Just A Four Letter Word)
The call of the wild is
Forever at my door
Wants to fly like a eagle
While being chained to the floor
(You Changed My Life)
Now I'll cry tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I'm 'leased on the highway
But I dream about the door
(I'm Not There)
Footnote from Tony:
This series has really got me thinking about the words people use in their songwriting and I came across a piece of research into how various best selling songwriters use words.
The artist with the widest vocabulary was reported as Eminem, using 8,818 words in the songs studied with a note added to the effect that he uses a word he has not previously used every 11 words. Following on are Jay Z, Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and then Bob Dyal on 4,883. The Beatles are 76th.
Of course it is not just the words that are important, but getting them in the right order helps as well.
———–
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
This is episode 32 of the series “All Directions at Once” which considers Bob’s compositions not as a series of isolated songs, but as a constant evolution of Dylan’s talent, with each song related to the world around him, and what had gone before.
A full index of the articles in the series appears here
Thus the last song we dealt with was Isis, which raised the question of whether it matters or not what a poet (or any other form of artist) says when it comes to the truth. And this question now reaches a new height as we move on to “Joey” (and indeed thereafter, “Rita May”), the next two songs Bob Dylan wrote. This article confines itself to Joey, and the issue of truthfulness in songwriting.
Joey and Rita May have each caused a lot of argument and controversy (Jochen’s piece on Rita May is particularly interesting in this regard I think, if you want to leap forward and not bother with my ramblings below).
For whatever our position on such matters, we can see that by now the two writers were settling down with each other, flexing the songwriting muscles (if there are such things) and seeing what they could do together. And this brings us right up against the issue of facts and accuracy.
And as I have tried to point out in a previous article in this series, (When it comes to Bob, does truth matter?) I don’t think the issue of accuracy really is as straightforward as some commentators make it out to be.
In terms of “Joey,” Dylan has always seemed to like outlaws and indeed the song composed immediately before “Joey” (“Isis”) could be seen as a song about a person living her own life, beyond the law and beyond the control of others.
But, critics will in general have none of this, for when there is a fight to be had with Bob, many will immediately take up the cudgels, not least because it gives them something to write about while suggesting the writing is not simply “a fan”, but is instead a “proper critic”.
Thus the discussion of this song has focused much of the time not on the song itself but on who Joey Gallo was and what he did, a focus sharpened by Lester Bangs and his article “Dylan Dallies with Mafia Chic” sub-headed, “Joey Gallo was no hero”.
Dylan is thus criticised not for writing about real-life characters but for getting the facts wrong. But that to be is a really silly stance to take. What have the critics had to say about the historical accuracy of thousands of other songs which relate to contemporary and historic events, none of which are accurate because they are not histories, they are…. songs. Not much I feel. Dylan, it seems to me, comes in for special treatment.
Indeed I am reminded of the PG Wodehouse comment, “A certain critic — for such men, I regret to say, do exist — made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.’ He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against “Summer Lightning”. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.”
In short, while it might be true that the biographer aims to understand the character he studies and writes about, and is required by his genre to be factually correct while exploring the relevant history, motives and outcomes, the poet, like the painter, like the playwright, like the novelist, like the songwriter, is not there to do the historians job. And the songwriter is most certainly not there to be a biographer with added music. He is there to entertain, to go beyond the bounds of mere fact, to play with possibilities, to explore new options…
It matters not that Wodehouse created his characters but made some of them caricatures of archetypal members of the prewar British aristocracy; they were his characters and he could do with them as he pleased. And although Dylan takes actual real-life people and turns heroes into villains, and vice verse, that is his choice as an artist.
I would have thought that it was clear enough that he is not a biographer, but is a songwriter, just as Wodehouse felt it ought to be clear enough that it was up to him how he created and manipulated the characters he invented. Certainly if the biographer claims his work is a truthful review of his subject, then that’s what he must deliver. But Dylan the songwriter does no such thing. He wrote songs that made no claim to be anything other than songs. Songs are not biography; if they were they would be called, err… biographies. Just as Wodehouse’s comic novels which make fun of the British aristocracy, are comic novels. It is so simple a point, I can’t understand why some commentators don’t get it.
In short, the moment the critic loses touch with the simple reality that his subject is a writer of songs, and that songs are not accurate history but vehicles to express emotion and feeling, then the critic has, I fear, slipped into a fantasy world of his own aggrandisement, believing he can tell us mere mortals not just what is good and what is bad art, he can now also tell us what is and what is not real – as if we can’t tell for ourselves.
Dylan, in short, like songwriters throughout the ages, is spinning tales. He is doing what artists do: playing with and manipulating reality so that the rest of us are given the chance to be able to perceive the world around us in new ways.
And my point, in case I am getting rather obscure here, is that Bob has always understood this. Which explains why Ewan McColl got so angry with Bob – because of the way Dylan manipulated folk songs, and merged the oeuvre with pop and rock instrumentation. McColl appreciated the traditional British folksongs as the pure art of the 19th working man, an art form that should be preserved and not mucked about with. Dylan saw it as the foundations on which he could build something new, something as relevant as “First time ever I saw your face” was relevant to McColl when he wrote it, and as songs such as “Butter and Cheese” were relevant to rural folk in 1820s England.
Lester Bangs asks the question as to whether Dylan really cares about these people he writes about or whether he is using these people to ensure his own relevance. To me that is like asking whether PG Wodehouse cared about his characters such as The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Bertie Wooster and the butler, Jeeves. The answer is obviously yes, because both artists care about their creations. People don’t write songs about others they are not interested in.
But take the song above. We can have a laugh at what is going on in the song, and we can care about the characters at the same time. And if we change the song – so what? Does that show disrespect for the people who sang it 100 years ago? Songs are not real life any more than the novels of PG Wodehouse with all their preposterous characters living 100 years ago, are real life. They are windows on the possibilities and options that life gives us.
So when “Hard Times of Old England” turns up with a full rock band, does that destroy the memory of the people who toiled away for a pittance in the 18th century? Are the starving families now long since passed away lessened in some way by our recreation of the songs that they had, reworked in a pop rock format?
I think not. In fact, if we want true reflections of the real world, then we read serious, well-researched history, or listen to the songs written at the time and make sure they are preserved – which of course we can do, and many of us still choose to do. But that does not stop us listening to re-worked versions, any more than it stops us both listening to Dylan’s song “Joey” and also reading a serious historical account of Joey’s life. We can do both if we wish – the mere existence of Dylan’s song, does not stop me going to the bookshop.
When I earned a living for a while arranging traditional English songs in a contemporary style so that children could experience, understand and enjoy them, was I acting in some evil way, destroying the past? Personally I don’t think so, and thankfully no one ever accused me of that, even though the arrangements were quite widely used throughout UK schools.
But this is Dylan, so it seems different rules apply. But the reality is that if you want history as history read the works of historians, but if you want to know about the feelings of people, feel their lives and then consider these in relation to today, you also need the work of artists.
And of course this reworking can go on and on through all directions at once…
So my point is, there is a place for understanding the exact reality of the past, and that is what we do through the academic study known as history. But there is also a past for exploring, sharing and making it relevant to what we are now. And thus there is a place for the creative artist to re-write history, just as has always been the case.
Does it worry us that the Robin Hood who supposedly lived in Sherwood Forest was nothing like the image used by Nottingham City Council to bring in millions of pounds each year to the city’s coffers? Those who get particularly worried by this should avoid the city work as a historian. But those not so worried can appreciate the art – the songs, the drawings, the theatre. After all, if you wanted to know about the life and death of Hamlet, the last thing you’d consult would be a play written by a guy from Stratford living in London who never travelled overseas, writing 300 years after the events portrayed.
Of course I have no idea what Bob’s motivation was in writing about Joey Gallo, but I treat the result as a work of art, just as I treat Hamlet as a work of art. If we are to criticise Dylan, the only criticism I would level is that Abandoned Love, is a much better song than Joey, and yet it was dropped to make way for Joey. It seems Bob’s love of the outlaw motif won the day and he sang the song of an outlaw.
As for whether Dylan has always been interested in his own image, and has created stories and myths to enhance the image of Dylan, I would ask what artist who releases his or her work to the world isn’t interested in the world’s reaction? If the artist is not interested in putting across ideas, thoughts, concepts and the like, then she or he can keep the works secret.
Which would explain why “Joey”, “Blind Willie McTell”, and other biographical songs such as Rita Mae (which turns up next) are fantasies. Although it is interesting that few people if anyone really get worked up over the fact that “Blind Willie McTell” has little, musically or lyrically to do with Blind Willie McTell and his music. Don’t worry about the old blues man, let’s get worked up about the guy in jail.
Bangs’ article gives us a run down (accurate or not I don’t know) of mafia development and claims that Dylan wove his song out of the mythology. But if that were all it was, it would be just another Bangs article – well written, well argued, and having a bash at a well established artist, or a piece of music or point of view. But it is the end of the article – the final column in the Village Voice version which takes us somewhere else.
Bangs had a phone call or meeting (I think it was the former) with Levy and asked him about the writing of the song. Levy said that he suggested the song to Dylan, and Dylan was excited about the idea, emphasising the point that Dylan was always interested in outlaws, citing the JWH album by way of example. Levy put forward a strong defence of the Gallo family saying, “I think calling Joey [a hoodlum] is labelling someone unfairly, and he wasn’t a psychopath either. He was just trying to build something to help his people and family, and I don’t mean in a Mafia sense.” His view is he and Dylan worked on the song together.
It goes on to say that Joey was the victim of social circumstance, and that it was never proven that the Gallo family killed anyone. When Bangs argued that Joey claimed to have killed Anastasia, Levy argues back that this was just his bragging style.
Dylan’s view on the other hand is that Levy wrote the words, countering Levy’s view that they knocked around the ideas together. Either way it seems that as Bangs says, Dylan didn’t do much or any research. And what I am trying to say is that because Dylan is a songwriter not a biographer, that doesn’t matter. Dylan in fact is being true to the tradition of songwriting. It exaggerates, it changes, it re-interprets, it re-works.
In short, if someone writes a biography of you, they’ll probably be pleased. If someone writes a song about you… you might not recognise the result. And that is simply how it is. Once upon a time people composed and sang sea shanties about mermaids. Are those songs now of no value because we don’t believe in mermaids any more?
Or, more worryingly, is Bangs on the side of Plato, and like Plato would rather like to ban the poets from society because they don’t tell us the truth?
Bangs’ article is, as I suggest, really worth reading in depth. Unfortunately what most people know about Bangs and this song is his comment in Creem, calling the song,“One of the most mindlessly amoral pieces of repellently romanticist bullshit ever recorded.” Heylin by and large has the same doubts, but being a lesser writer reduces it all to one sentence, “Gallo was just plain nuts.” I could say, “Plato was just plain nuts,” but I fear neither Bangs nor Heylin would quite know what I was talking about.
The series continues (when I get my breath back)
———–
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
On this day so long ago, I was a skinny seventeen-year-old schoolboy with a sketchbook under my arm and a singular determination. Instead of taking the train from my small seaside town of Whitehead in County Antrim to go to grammar school in Larne, I travelled 17 miles in the opposite direction to the city of Belfast. I was setting out on a determined and audacious quest to draw Bob Dylan from life that afternoon before he played his second concert in Ireland, the day after his first the night before in Dublin. What could possibly go wrong?
I had been accepted to begin a new life as a student at art college in Belfast the following September, so my credentials as a ‘real’ artist would carry the day and I would be given full access to Dylan to make my portrait of him and impress them all with my talent. As I approached the last stop in Belfast, I began to wonder how I was going to pull this off, but I was still confident as I headed off on foot into the city from York Street station.
There were only three or four major hotels in the centre of the city back then and he was bound to be in one of them. As I approached the first one on Royal Avenue, I was brought up short by the sight of a tall guy in a startlingly green corduroy suit standing just inside the hotel entrance combing his longish fair hair in the reflection of the plate glass. He was obviously an American.
I went into the lobby and said, “Hello, are you with Bob Dylan?” “Sure am, what can I do for you?” I’d hit pay dirt without the anticipated long and arduous search for my hero and I could hardly believe my luck. I explained my mission and held up the sketchbook like a letter of introduction and asked if he could help me find a way to fulfill my very important artistic challenge.
He stopped combing and looked at me in a friendly and smiling way, comb in hand. He turned his regard towards a long haired, white-bearded tramp who had stopped right outside and was peering in at us through the window and said, “Man that cat looks just like Walt Whitman, whadda you know, I thought he’d died a while back. I’m just waiting here for a cab to take me round to the concert hall, an’ I’m wearin’ my green suit to charm all the Irish girls”.
I didn’t quite know what to say, but, because I knew the songs of Bob Dylan, I also knew the poems of Allen Ginsberg, and because of reading Ginsberg I had also read Walt Whitman, so I tried to say something funny about his suit colour and Leaves of Grass and he laughed and put his comb away.
“Come on with me and I’ll take you over there but don’t tell anyone I brought you in and be sure to be very polite. Just ask if you could draw Mister Dylan an’ see what happens”.
A black taxi pulled up to the curb and we both got in. He shook my hand and said his name and got mine, but it would be quite a while before I could tune in to what he was saying as I was beginning to settle into a slight state of shock. Here I was, actually in a moving cab with one of Dylan’s band members and just about to be delivered into the presence of someone I had regarded as a deity ever since I first heard his second album three years earlier. What the hell was I going to say? My hands were starting to shake slightly, and I was beginning to feel a little nauseous, but there was no turning back.
The taxi barrelled around the ornate wedding cake-like edifice of the city hall and after a few quick turns left and right we stopped in an alley behind the opulent ABC Ritz cinema and were walking up a sloped ramp to the stage door of the venue. He seemed to know where he was going, and I remembered that I too had been there just the year before to see the Rolling Stones.
“Now remember. I didn’t bring you in here. Through these doors and you’re on your own man. Good luck”. And with the flick of his well combed hair, Mickey Jones and his moss green suit completely disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the door.
I stepped forward with some trepidation and found myself walking directly onto the stage and into a confusing scene of electrical cables snaking all over the floor, amps being rolled around, and instruments being set up on stands and boxes with drums being disgorged in what seemed to be a completely chaotic mess of activity amid shouted instructions in American accents.
Someone immediately challenged me with “What are you doing up here?” I mumbled something along the lines of “Ah nothing I’m just doing some drawing” and I turned around to see somewhere to get off the stage and disappear to before I was kicked out. I stepped back to my right and took some stairs going down at that side of the stage behind the curtains and quickly found myself in a dark and narrow tunnel running directly underneath the full length of the stage above.
There was another short set of steps going back up from there to the stage right side of an orchestra pit, behind a decorative wrought iron railing that curved around from one side in front of the stage to the other. I sat down on the bottom step as my heart was pounding like I’d never known it to before. I thought that I’d just stay here and try to avoid being confronted again until I got my bearings.
After a few minutes my eyes were beginning to get accustomed to the low levels of light and I felt it was safe to very gingerly poke my head up, just enough to see where I was and if any one of the various people busy bustling about resembled any of the last visual iterations of Bob Dylan that Irish and British fans had a slightly dated version of.
Where was the pale-faced young fellow with the cuff links on the swirling cover of Bringing it All back Home or the Triumph motorcycle tee-shirted guy squatting on the steps of the Highway 61 Revisited album?
He was nowhere to be seen as I scanned the goings on to my left from there beside the stage. After a few minutes, a large dark shape at the centre of the orchestra pit began to slowly move, upwards. Rising like a dark and ominous tank, the multi-keyboarded Wurlitzer organ (that would’ve been played during film intermissions and for special occasions in the 30’s and 40’s) came to life with a seat-rattling roar.
The organ’s soaring sound from beneath the stage began again tentatively but soon rose to a deafening hurricane of symphonic arpeggios and declarative scales that filled the vast dark and empty theatre like a murmuration of phantom bats taking musical flight. It was manned centrally by a slickly dark haired and long side-burned man some in Northern Ireland would have referred to, not very sympathetically, as a Teddy Boy. I know now it was a young and beardless Garth Hudson. He seemed to be in some sort of heavenly trance as he worked the foot pedals and tugged at the colourfully lit-up curves of multiple organ stops like the demented driver of some other-worldly space train. He seemed to be ecstatically happy. I put my fingers in my ears and crouched low, completely mesmerized.
ABC Ritz Cinema Compton Melotone Organ (1936)
A group of people had begun to gather just above me as they set up a film camera on a tripod and connected various cables and other pieces of equipment. I was in complete darkness just below them and felt that I was safe enough down there and couldn’t be seen. The camera was just inside the railing around the orchestra pit and seemed to my young eyes like a serious piece of kit and meant that the concert that night would be filmed. Somehow this struck me as being very important and that these people really meant business.
All very fascinating and awesome, but where in this throng of activity was the subject of my endeavour, the would-be sitter for my audacious artistic quest? HE was nowhere to be seen or heard from and there was much to be seen and heard, some of which shocked my youthful mind and ears.
There was much banter about something coloured that you take! “I took a couple of those blue ones, man they were great, did ya try any of them?” There was quite a bit of this kind of banter going back and forth. I had only a slight inkling of what it all meant. Don’t forget, I was a beardless boy of seventeen and could’ve probably passed as a year even younger than that who had hardly ever even had a sip of beer at this stage in my life.
I knew that rumours of drug taking were rife in the world of music and art, but that was all ahead of me; but not too far ahead. By my second month of art college five months forward from this moment, I would step into that world with my first LSD trip and enter a new life of the chemically enhanced mind. But for now, I was untouched by this unfolding future world being spoken of approvingly just above me by the boys in the band. I was hanging on their every word.
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them a personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. You can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one off article. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we’ll may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
Finally, we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
In the studio Dylan does, by his standards anyway, put on quite a struggle to capture the right atmosphere, the je ne sais quoi. It is a hardworking day, 2 August 1965, but a very productive one too; the final versions of “Ballad of A Thin Man”, “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Highway 61 Revisited” are recorded this day. But the lion’s share of the recording day goes to Tom Thumb. Not until the sixteenth take (!) do the musicians succeed in capturing that feeling of detachment and loneliness to Dylan’s satisfaction. Questionable, by the way: the first takes are slower, more tired and more lounge-like – which actually suits the detached narrator, who hazily wanders exotic places, disoriented and all.
Anyway, knowing that Dylan struggled so much, the paradoxical interpretation is tempting: the poet expresses here his exhausting toil with failing take after failing take in the studio. Negativity don’t pull you through, my fingers are all in a knot, I don’t have the strength to get up and take another shot, she takes your voice, you must pick up one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim – well, I’ll just go back into town, I think I’ve had enough. All of them frustrated sighs of a hard-working studio musician who, take after take, cannot find the right tone.
Tempting, and it would yield a fresh, Inception-like understanding of the song, attributing prophetic gifts to Dylan. But hardly serious, obviously. The lyrics, as we can hear on the twelve takes on The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 (2015), have been more or less fixed from the first recording; there are only minor textual differences between take 1 and the final take 16.
More striking lyrically, or at least leaving more lasting impressions than those intertwined fingers, are the ladies in the second and third verses. In these mercurial years, it is almost a stylistic feature of Dylan’s songs; somewhere in the song two ladies are introduced, whose characters are not or only sketchily explored. Miss Lonely and the Princess on the steeple, Belle Starr and Jezebel the nun, the graveyard woman and the soulful mama, the fifth daughter and the second mother, Ophelia and Cinderella… And on Blonde On Blonde this goes on for a while (Johanna and Louise, the Queen of Spades and the chambermaid, Mona and Ruthie, and so on).
In “Just Like A Tom Thumb’s Blues”, we are superficially introduced to one Saint Annie and one Melinda. Again, without much background. “Saint Annie” has – of course – a religious connotation, a connotation that is reinforced by the ambiguous “my fingers are all in a knot”, which might suggest praying. However, the suggestion is undermined by that banal “Annie”; a respectful, serious Christian would, of course, have called her Saint Anne. But then again – the appearance of Saint Anne, Mary’s mother and thus the grandmother of Jesus, pushes the song to unintended and undesirable extremes, to a protagonist in a crisis of faith, or something like that.
The faction of Dylanologists who delve into Dylan’s private life, in the apparent conviction that Dylan’s lyrics are laboriously encoded diary entries, also have to back out here. A first inclination to see, say, a Joan Baez in Saint Annie, is immediately dashed; the words simply offer too few handles, are too exotic and not at all coherent – even the most inventive codebreaker cannot find more than half a hint.
In these days, August ’65, Robert Shelton has a telephone interview with the poet for the New York Times. It is, of course, not very enlightening:
“If anyone has imagination, he’ll know what I’m doing. If they can’t understand my songs, they’re missing something. If they can’t understand pornographic ashtrays, green clocks, wet chairs, purple lamps, hostile statues, charcoal… then they’re missing something, too… It’s all music, no more, no less.”
And a little further on, the quotation that later, distorted, is usually placed in the context of John Wesley Harding (among others by Wikipedia): “What I write is much more concise now than before. It’s not deceiving.”
At second glance, Dylan’s “explanation” is less absurd than this accumulation of catachreses, of incompatible concepts such as pornographic + ashtray, would suggest. “I paint pictures,” the poet actually says here. Just as you don’t try to “understand”, say, a Cézanne or a Míro – the images do touch you, or don’t touch you, just like the way much of Dylan’s mercurial lyricism does; it evokes feelings, an atmosphere or a mood. And in the finale of Dylan’s excursion there is actually a deeper layer: “It’s all music, no more, no less.”
That, music and songs, indeed seem to be at least as influential sources as Kerouac. “Come Away Melinda” has been dancing in the back of Dylan’s mind since 1963, ever since Harry Belafonte recorded the song for Streets I Have Walked. And certainly since Dylan put Judy Collins’ third record, with the catchy title Judy Collins 3 (1963), on his turntable – that’s the record on which, apart from a very rootsy “Come Away Melinda”, Collins also sings the format for Dylan’s “Seven Curses”, the cruel “Anathea”;
Lazlo Feher stole a stallion,
Stole him from the misty mountain
And they chased him and they caught him,
And in iron chains they bound him.
And especially the record with which the then still young, relatively unknown troubadour scores recognition; Collins records both his “Farewell” and his “Masters Of War” – it’s safe to say that Dylan has played Judy Collins #3 more than once and has therefore heard “Come Away Melinda” more than once.
Moreover, the hook “Melinda” had been in the musical part of Dylan’s brain since his teenage years, ever since the young Little Richard fan wore the single “Long Tall Sally” out. On the B-side thereof is another rock ‘n’ roll monument, “Slippin’ And Slidin'”:
Oh, Malinda
She's a solid sender
You know you better surrender
Oh, Malinda
She's a solid sender
You know you better surrender
Slippin' 'n' a-slidin'
Peepin' 'n' a-hidin'
Won't be your fool no more
… which in terms of harmony is a nicer source anyway; on side 1 of Highway 61 Revisited, the echoes of “Long Tall Sally” can be heard in “Tombstone Blues” – an echo of “Long Tall Sally’s ” B-side on side 2, would bestow upon us a poetic, subtle reverence indeed.
Coincidence, of course – but still a nice coincidence.
Through that same opened floodgate of Dylan’s stream of consciousness, “Annie” presumably floats to the surface. From the antique folk song “Willie Moore” then, from
Sweet Annie was loved both far and near,
Had friends most all around;
And in a little brook before the cottage door,
The body of sweet Annie was found.
… the melodramatic story of Sweet Annie, who is forbidden by her parents to marry Willie and then throws herself into the water like an Ophelia. Dylan probably knows the song thanks to Joan Baez, who has the song on her repertoire these days, or else Doc Watson, but most of all: the song is featured on Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology Of American Folk Music, the six-album compilation that Dylan plundered from front to back and top to bottom.
It’s all music, no more, no less.
—————-
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part IV: Charlie Rich… he’s a good poet
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Singer/singwriter Bob Dylan makes use of the word ‘door’ as a rhyme in at least twenty of his songs.
Including in the following one about a “Peeping Tom”:
Standing on your window, honey
Yes, I've been here before
Feeling so harmless
I'm looking at your second door
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
The alliterative song lyrics below take a poke at the Deconstructionists who claim that a word, whose meaning depends upon its relation to other words, can never adequately describe that which the word signifies – feelings of ‘lust’ and ‘love’, for example:
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried, and failed at finding the door
I must have thought that there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four letter word
(Love Is Just A Four Letter Word ~ Bob Dylan)
As Edgar Poe shows, as the Bible shows, and as Bob Dylan shows, the word ‘door’, as well as being easy to rhyme, signifies the separation, and, at the same time, the connection between the physical and spiritual aspects of the human being –‘door’ be more than just a four letter word.
Accompanied by music, written or spoken words in their context, as Dylan demonstrates, can come close enough to expressing what they signify – as the hyperbolic verse below illustrates:
If not for you
Babe, I couldn't even find the door
Couldn't even see the floor
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)
Bluesmen are particularly fond of the metonymic door – employed to depict the physical side of human nature.
Expressed with sadness in the lyrics below:
Don't drive this wolf from your door
Oh, have mercy darling
If God forgive me
I won't let you make me howl no more
(Howling Wolf: The Wolf Is At Your Door)
Upbeat in the lyrics of the song below:
The call of the wild is
Forever at my door
Wants to fly like an eagle
While being chained to the floor
(Bob Dylan: You Changed My Life)
Then down again in the following:
Well, the sun went down on me a long time ago
I've had to pull back from the door
I wish I could have spent every hour of my life
With the girl from the Red River shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
Humorously expressed in the following:
I even got a hole in her bedroom floor
I got twenty-nine ways to make it to my baby's door
But if she needs me bad, I can find about two or three more
(Willie Dixon: Twenty-Nine Ways)
And very sorrowfully emoted in the Poe-like verse beneath:
Forgetful heart
Like a walking shadow in my brain
All night long
I lay awake, and listen to the sound of pain
The door has closed forevermore
If indeed there ever was a door
(Bob Dylan: Forgetful Heart ~ Dylan/Hunter)
Untold Dylan
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Peter Krauth translated Key West into Hungarian, (quite a task to undertake) but found a few troubling phrases in Dylan’s original that caused him a few difficulties. Tony wrote a review in which he too picked up certain phrases that puzzled him – finding in fact that sometimes American English, doesn’t easily translate into English English.
Peter and Tony then had this exchange of thoughts by email, on some of the phrases. With Peter’s permission, Tony has taken that email exchange to create the article below, in the hope that one or two readers on Untold might find this exploration of meaning interesting…
Throughout, please do remember that Peter’s first language is not English, and that for Tony, American English is often quite different from English English.
Peter: In the song, there is a reference to “Budapest” on which you commented as “I am not familiar with the history of pirate radio in Hungary; maybe it’s just that Budapest rhymes with Key West.”
I agree with the latter sentence, and unfortunately I do not know of any pirate radio in Budapest either, although I have been living in Budapest for 66 years. However, I have an idea what the meaning of this reference could be.
In 1974, one of the most famous Hungarian rock groups (Locomotiv GT – or LGT) made a tour in US and recorded an album under the direction of Jimmy Miller (Rolling Stones’ production manager on some of their albums). I think it was the first rock group from Eastern Europe to make a tour in US. In 1974, Locomotiv GT‘s Locomotiv GT (Dunhill Records 811) album was released with the slogan “Radio Budapest Loves You!”. A couple of articles appeared in rock magazines lamenting that “the next.wave of rock n roll might come from the Eastern block” which could lead to the singer saying at concerts in the USA, “… you know guys, we travelled ten thousand miles away, to play some fuckin’ communist rock n roll to you!”
Gabor Presser who was a songwriter with the group and played synthetizer, is the only member of the group still alive. The other three members were: Tamas Barta – guitar (shot dead years later in US), Joseph Laux – drums (became a music producer/manager in the USA, died 2-3 years ago) and Tamas Somlo – (bass and trumpet, also died 2-3 years ago).
I have no information why this slogan was used in marketing the album and what its real meaning is. Gabor Presser can still be contacted to get information on this, but I guess that the slogan and magazine articles might have reached Dylan, and at that time (or in retrospective) it might have been considered by him as potential source of “inspiration”. It is also interesting that the word “love” is in the slogan and this word appears also in the verse containing the reference of “Budapest”.
Tony: I’ve got two other theories about Radio Budapest. One is irony, the other is that there may be no meaning here at all.
We all know of Radio Luxembourg which broadcast from the principality to England, when England had no popular music stations. During the 2nd world war the long wave transmitter was taken over by Germany for broadcasting propaganda by William Joyce, while post-war the medium wave transmitter broadcast in German and Dutch through the day and played English and American pop music at night.
Radio Luxembourg always aimed to be a lively upbeat station; in wartime William Joyce’s use of swear words and his commentaries in general were not only anti-UK but also utterly different from the stiff middle class language generally heard on the BBC, which is one reason why he gained such an audience. After the war there were no commercial stations in England, and the radio programmes (apart from a few comedy series) generally remained very formal. Radio Luxembourg played the latest pop and rock records – which could not be heard on British radio.
So Radio Luxembourg was lively and teenager base, and I think Radio Budapest being under communist control was found to be anything but that. So the notion that Radio Budapest could be a hip, exciting station was ironic. It would be a bit like calling the House of Lords (the very formal upper chamber of the British parliament) a hip swinging joint where the honourable members let it all hang out.
The other point comes back to an issue I’ve raised a few times – that not every line Dylan writes has a meaning. So the reference to “Radio Budapest” perhaps was indeed basically selected because of the rhyme with “Key West,” and nothing more than that.
Peter: What are boondocks?
Tony: This is where American readers are going to fall about laughing. Of course people from England and the USA understand each other, but we do have a lot of words that exist only in one of those countries not the other. So with questions like this I am going to guess, and hope that American readers might help clarify points, as there will be a lot of other people who don’t understand. I think it is an isolated or remote area,
Peter: Philosopher pirate?
Tony: I would guess he is a thinker whose thoughts are radical enough to mean that applying them would take one outside the law. Or maybe a law breaker who is also a deep thinker. Or again, just two words that when put together are fun because they are so unexpected. In short, an oxymoron. Indeed if we accept that Dylan enjoys oxymorons, lots of phrases suddenly become easier to understand.
Peter: “Under the radar under the gun.”
Tony: “Under the gun” is not a phrase I’m familiar with in English English, but I think in America it refers to being under pressure. As in Trump was under pressure to condemn the demonstrators at the Capitol. “Under the radar” means arriving unnoticed. Here I suspect Bob may have just liked the two phrases that start “under the” and used them together, without any specific meaning.
Peter: “China blossoms”
Tony: I think they are cherry blossoms that grow in China, but horticulture is not my subject!
Peter: Does “You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right” refer to the approach to Key West from the mainland?
Tony: I have no idea. I interpreted it as a comment about a person who changes his/her mind a lot, as in having left wing (ie tending to socialist) views, but in a discussion then supporting right wing ideas (as in Conservative in England). But it could be an Elvis single…
Peter: Does”not that far from the convent home” reaffirm his religious commitment?
Tony: I really have no idea! Please, someone who lives in the USA, help me out!
Peter: “I heard your last request” is potentially a reference back to the opening McKinley scene?
Tony: I guess it could be. I just heard it as a phrase that sounds good. Indeed onomatopoeia and alliteration are perfectly respectable devices within poetry. So a cuckoo is called that because it makes a sound like that (onomatopoeia). Alliteration also links the sound of words and what they describe (“the buzzing of innumerable bees” when said, sounds bit like the buzz). So it is possible to have phrases that in a more abstract way seem to have a meaning, but we don’t know what it is. (Is there a word that describes such a phrase? If so will someone please tell me what it is!!!)
Peter: How can we interpret “hot down here, and you can’t be overdressed”? If it is hot then you will be overdressed in any case. I would expect “under-dressed”.
Tony: “Hot” can describe actual temperature, but also in slang describes somewhere that is exciting, a great place to be, or it can be somewhere where trouble is brewing. A situation which is described as hot, could mean that a crime is being committed and the police are on their way. The use of hot in that way was later replaced by “cool” which is rather confusing! Under-dressed means being dressed too informally (wearing a t-shirt at a wedding) – the opposite of overdressed, not meaning too many clothes but actually meaning being too formally attired. I think Bob is playing again with multiple meanings. We have no idea which one he is referring to, and that is part of the fun.
Peter: “Playing both sides against the middle”
Tony: In England (if nowhere else) I think we are more likely to say, “Playing both ends against the middle” meaning trying to get two opposing factions to fight it out, so a third faction can move in and take control. The third faction positions themselves by implication, as the reasonable, balanced people in the middle, who are not extremists and so not involved in the fighting.
Peter: Would you think that the line “I’m so deep in love that I can hardly see” in the second verse is a forward reference to “Fly around, my pretty little Miss I don’t love nobody, give me a kiss” to the affair with the “friendly” prostitute in the last verse?
Tony: I think that is possible, but I really don’t know. My view of Bob is that he is very skilled at finding these phrases that can mean many different things, and he doesn’t seem to explain them.
To give one example: where I sit and write each day I look out onto the English countryside, and above and beyond I can see the sky. Today it is a beautiful blue, which in English romantic literature is associated with warm weather, going out in a t-shirt and shorts, relaxing in the sun. But in fact I write this in January, the depth of the English winter, and I know that if I want to go out I am going to need a very warm coat, and a hat covering my ears, thick socks… The exact opposite of how I will dress in July.
So the world is often misleading, just as words are often misleading, just as people are often misleading.
Thus if I had to give one key explanation of Bob’s lyrics it would be that the world is not as it appears. We have multiple questions all day long, but the obvious answers are often not the right answers. So “the answers are blowing in the wind” does not mean, the answers are out there if you would only look, but rather that the answers are changing all the while because nothing is clear and nothing is fixed. The answers are being blown around by the wind and we can’t grab them.
Footnote: Because I (Tony) am responding to Peter’s enquiries, I have had the last word throughout, and have thus constructed the debate around my thoughts. Peter, if (as I suspect) I have taken your thoughts and questions down a route you did not intend, please forgive me. As ever, my enthusiasm for words and language has got the better of me, and I have just let my imagination take over. But I am most grateful for your email, because I found unravelling some of the phrases you mentioned a really interesting and challenging job.
And do remember, I’m English, and Bob is American. We don’t speak the same language.
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Everyone’s favourite obscure track, “To fall in love with you” has been reviewed over and again on this site, but nothing compares, in my opinion, with Jochen’s wonderful point that,
“Dylan tackles this song as he will later weld his large, metal gates: a fixed fillet and a strong framework, filled with an explosion of erratic, alienating objects.”
The point about the song, for me, is that having created the chord sequence and melody, but not been able to find the lyrics, Bob then didn’t go back and pick up what for many lesser songwriters would have appeared to be a masterpiece in waiting.
He didn’t go back, I think, because it didn’t quite fit the type of song he wanted to write at the time. Not because it wasn’t right, but because it wasn’t right for that moment.
So he just leaves it. The lyrics are unfinished, but the music is there ready, waiting, like a child outside the school gates when all the other children have been picked up and taken home. Forgotten, alone, until some kindly strangers come along to the rescue.
But there was something very strange going on here because this was not a period like the early parts of Dylan’s writing career where songs were just pouring out of him day by day. The song was recorded at the end of August 1986, so I think it is fair to take it that since it is unfinished the melody and chord structure were created just before the recording. Here are the antecedents.
To my ear this quite a collection of songs that have enormous potential. I won’t go through the whole list because they are all reviewed on this site, but I would single out “Rock em Dead” (which I have on my list as a possible contender for this imaginary “Obscuranti album). Likewise “Had a dream about you baby” is also not a song to be cast aside quite so readily as Bob did, in my opinion. Not as magical as
But this was a time when Bob was playing other people’s songs full-time, and it maybe that he was searching for something that simply wasn’t there – searching for an ideal song in such a way that anything that didn’t reach the pinnacle of what he was seeking was simply cast aside.
For maybe he realised how influenced the song is by all the cover songs he had been singing of late. Indeed as Jochen pointed out,
“The tears also flow in “Crying In The Rain”, in “That Lucky Old Sun”, and in Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town”, for example, the rhyme right and night Dylan also sings in “Justine” and in John Lee Hooker’s “Good Rockin’ Mama”, mind and find in “What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted” and in “So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye”, it is also dark in the daytime in “Trying To Get To You” by Elvis, in Ray Charles’s “Lonely Avenue” and in Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” and so on – one can find almost the entire vocabulary of “To Fall In Love With You” including matching rhyme in those fifty covers Dylan sang over the previous months.
“Characteristic of the poet’s artistry is that from all those pieces welded together a coherent image emerges nevertheless; that of some pitiful fellow who is kept afloat by that one bright spot in his life, by his crush on a you, a Don Quixote that conquers all setbacks because there is a Dulcinea. And along the way a few Dylanesque oneliners pop up too. I see it in your lips, I knew it in your eyes for example, and The day is dark (or: done), our time is right; enthralling, poignant verse lines of poetic beauty.”
And there is the point that as all of us who did this hunting around to try and understand what Bob was up to have noted, the song is not even listed on BobDylan.com – which is interesting given the endless debates there have been about Bob and co protecting his copyright, while nicking other people’s lines.
Indeed in the light of the recent sale of all of Bob’s copyrights for multiple millions of dollars, I wonder if “To Fall in Love With You” was included in the list (or whether they cheated and added “and any other songs Bob wrote which we have forgotten to include” to the bill of sale).
It is also strange because no one tries to cover it either.
What is it that stops everyone having a go at the song? I must say I don’t really know, but then given that I am writing this at a time when I am forbidden from going out of my house except for essential purposes (like buying food or taking a walk for the purposes of exercise) I ask myself why, just for my own amusement, don’t I have a bash at recording the piece.
And the answer is, well, actually, I wouldn’t know quite where to begin. There is something about it, musically, that is really odd, and which needs resolving. It’s not that I don’t feel able to fill in the words and make a recording which could be put up on this site, it is rather I don’t feel I could even play it on guitar or piano.
There is indeed something very strange lurking in the midst of this piece, which I can’t explain. That is why we need it on this album. It is haunting, it is strange, it is unfinished.
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you
Easter Day falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, and can therefore only fall between 22 March and 25 April. Precisely the two months that it is driest in Juarez, which already is so dry as it is; the average rainfall in both months is 0.2 inches (5 mm). That is virtually nothing. Meaning, you really must have quite a serious form of water phobia to feel lost in those few droplets of virtually nothing.
In short, we can assume that the poet here is not trying to communicate his travel impressions from a holiday trip. The less critical minds who see drug references in every sixties song do seem to have a point this time; a poetic reference to marijuana use is more obvious than a clinical travel review with weather reports, indeed. “Rain” as a metaphor for marijuana is perhaps not too common, but at least since “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35” (“Everybody must get stoned”) it has acquired that nudge-nudge-wink-wink-angle. The Beatles’ “Rain” doesn’t escape that interpretation (“It’s just a state of mind”) either, and the brilliant Nick Drake, a recognised pothead, writes in his ode to marijuana “The Thoughts Of Mary Jane” (1969):
Who can know
The thoughts of Mary Jane
Why she flies
Or goes out in the rain
Where she’s been
And who she’s seen
In her journey to the stars
Despite Dylan’s denials that Rainy Day Women is a drug song, by the way. The same Dylan who has been quoted stating: “Marijuana isn’t a drug like the others” (Philip Adler interview, 1978).
Still, the song is not necessarily an impression of Dylan’s own drug use, obviously. As in many places on Highway 61 Revisited, traces of Jack Kerouac also do appear in “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. Dylan has just devoured Desolation Angels, and impressions thereof descend into “Desolation Row”. “Her sin is her lifelessness” comes almost literally from Kerouac’s work, for example, just like “the perfect image of a priest”.
In Tom Thumb we come across the literal quote Housing Project Hill, but before that, in these opening lines, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels already echoes through. Kerouac, or rather his alter ego Jack Duluoz, is also in Juarez, marijuana fumes throughout the book, even at Easter; “When we got to the top of the Pyramid I lit up a marijuana cigarette so we could all examine our instincts about the place. Not to mention your Easter bunny” (and later on, in Paris, it is Eastertime again). And gravity is apparently a thing for Kerouac as well (“Here I sit upside-down on the surface of the planet earth, held by gravity, scribbling a story,” to quote just one of the examples).
On Blonde On Blonde, Dylan’s next album, Desolation Angels resounds too. We come across the rainman from “Stuck Inside Of Mobile” in the last chapter of Part I (“Desolation In Solitude”), for example, as well as the peculiarity of identifying drugs as medicine. Dylan’s travelling companion Allen Ginsberg plays a fairly prominent supporting role in the book (as “Irwin Garden”), which probably triggered Dylan’s receptiveness to the work.
The lock to the stream of consciousness is now open. The poet Dylan freely allows fragments, paraphrases and half quotes from high and low culture to flow in. Rue Morgue Avenue comes of course from Edgar Allan Poe, from The Murders In The Rue Morgue (1841), the first modern detective story, the hungry women there paraphrases “Kansas City” and don’t put on any airs is perhaps an echo of Fiddler On The Roof (from the highlight “If I Were A Rich Man”; I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock). The musical premiered a few months before Tom Thumb’s conception, has already conquered Broadway and just won a Tony Award; the hit is inescapable in the days when Dylan writes his song. Incidentally, based on the story Tevye And His Daughters by Sholem Aleichem, the father of Dylan’s art teacher in 1974, Norman Raeben.
The comments often refer to Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece Under The Volcano. Which is mainly triggered by something as elusive as a similar atmosphere, a similar mood – this protagonist is lost, too. Although the work is set in Mexico, Juarez is not a decor, nor are marijuana, rain or Easter mentioned, let alone a Melinda or a Saint Annie.
Content does not seem to be too important – the lyricism all the more so. The poet apparently wants to convey a sense of detachment, desolation, loss, and apart from otherwise unrelated images – instinctively, presumably – opts for a particularly unusual, very fitting metrum: the five-footed anapest (da da dum times five).
As is often the case, the layout of Dylan’s lyrics in official publications (on the site and in Lyrics, for example) hides the “actual” form. Officially the song consists of six eight-line verses, but rhyme scheme, Dylan’s recitation, chord scheme and the metre reveal: four-line verses, rhyme scheme aaaa, anapestic pentameter:
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they really make a mess outta you
The musician Dylan does feel when he has to break the rhythm with, for example, a spondee (two stressed syllables, like put-on) or an inserted third unstressed syllable (they got some), but the basis, that five-fold da da dum, is unmistakable.
It is a brilliant way of making slow-flowing time tangible, and rather unusual in the art of song. Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” (Oh the Sisters of Mercy, they are not departed or gone) comes to mind, but there are not many more examples. Eminem sometimes resorts to the anapest (“The Way I Am”, for instance; I sit back with this pack of Zig-Zags and this bag), but his verses have the more usual four-footed metre – as do many of Dr. Seuss’ nursery rhymes, by the way.
Dylan will not extend it throughout the whole song either – the trap – sedating, monotonous droning – is almost inescapable. But it does set the tone. The gravity fails.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part III: Annie & Melinda
———
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
Both Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Allen Zimmerman know well the verses of the Holy Bible; therein the word ‘door’ often serves as a figurative entrance separating the physical plane from the spiritual plane.
Without much effort, biblical verses containing the word ‘door’, as translated in the King James version, can be transformed into verses that rhyme.
Thusly, below ~ ‘door’, and ‘before’:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door
Of the sheep
All that ever came before
Me are thieves, and robbers
(John 10: 7:8)
Likewise below ~ ‘door’, and ‘four’:
No, not so much as about the door
And He preached the word unto to them
And they came unto Him, bringing one sick of the palsy
Which were borne of four
(Mark 2: 2,3)
Some more transformated Bible verse ~ ‘door’, and ‘for’:
For
A greal door
And effectual
Is opened unto me
(I Corinthians 16: 9)
And further more:
Furthermore
When I came to Troas to preach Christ's gospel
And a door
Was opened unto me of the Lord
(II Corinthians 2:12)
And so on ~ door’, and ‘before’:
Grudge not one against the other, brethren
Lest ye be condemned
Behold, the judge standeth before
The door
(James 5:9)
And so forth ~ ‘door’, and ‘therefore’:
Be zealous therefore
And repent
Behold, I stand at the door
And knock
(Revelations 3: 19, 20)
Again from the Bible transformed:
I know thy works
Behold, I have set before
Thee an open door
And no man can shut it
(Revelations 3: 8)
Above ~ ‘before;’ and ‘door’; and then ~’before’ and ‘door’ in the song lyrics below:
Blowing like she never blowed before
Blowing like she's at my chamber door
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
Now back to the Bible transformed – a rhyme that’s off a bit ~ ‘doors’, and ‘parlour’:
And behold, he opened not the doors
Of the parlour
Therefore they took a key, and opened them
And behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth
(Judges 3: 25)
The rhyme somewhat fixed up by the single ‘door’ in the song lyrics below ~ ‘door’, and ‘parlor’:
I ran right through the front door
Like a hobo sailor does
But it was just a funeral parlor
And the man asked me who I was
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)
Untold Dylan
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
In this series we look at songs that have an identical title to one of Bob Dylan’s works…
Time for episode 4…this time One More Night.
Aaron: Yet another in a long line of song titles that everyone seems to use.
Tony: But before we take a look at a couple, may I be so egocentric as to quote myself in terms of this song by Dylan. Here’s a little bit from the original review on this site:
“…what makes it interesting is just how completely Dylan does that country music thing of utterly detaching the meaning of the lyrics from the music – something he never did in any of his earlier years of writing. Compare and contrast for example with “Like a Rolling Stone” where you just feel the meaning of the lyrics via the music from the very start.
“But for this approach Dylan needs country music. Although it is possible, of course, that Dylan is making fun of country music which so often seems to deliver lyrics that revolve around appalling and awful situations (being in prison, death, suicide, losing a lover…) with that same inevitable happy spring in the musical accompaniment, I don’t think this was in his mind at all. I think he wanted to write a standard country song.”
So now to move on
Aaron: This first couldn’t be farther from Dylan’s use of the title. It’s German experimental rock band CAN. (We have another of those situations where the link that Aaron can use in the United States, doesn’t work for Tony in England. So two links are on offer…)
Aaron: This comes from the hugely influential 1972 album Ege Bamyasi. The track has a decent groove but, for me, it goes on too long and becomes monotonous. Maybe that’s the point, maybe I just don’t understand the genre, but it’s not for me!
Tony: For once I am the positive one out of the two of us. Immediately I hear a track like this I can lose myself in it, sometimes by imagining how I might choreograph it, sometimes by thinking of an additional musical accompaniment I might find. That’s not to say that it would be a brilliant dance routine, or that my extra line of music would add that much (or indeed anything), but I find the whole thing stimulating and engaging, I guess because I can get “inside” the music. I want to be part of it. And I think that is what the band (who I don’t know at all) were doing.
Aaron’s score : 1 out of 5
Tony’s score : 4 out of 5
Next we have the Phil Collins’ US number 1 hit.
It’s a surprisingly restrained performance from Phil, very soulful vocal and minimalist backing track, using just a shaker and a synth. Thematically it covers much the same ground as Bob’s track. I love it, and I don’t care who knows it!
Tony: Phil Collins has a very special place in my life, and I have always loved the fact that his brother and sister have made such a contribution to life, one being an ice skater the other a cartoonist. Collins himself was an actor playing in Oliver! in the West End. Quite a talented bunch. And he worked with Brian Eno on Taking Tiger Mountain which is as good as it gets in my wider musical world.
I still have all the Genesis albums, and even play some of them occasionally… so yes I am hopelessly biased. Except… although the guy has been a part of my life through all the ups and downs, the later solo career didn’t do so much for me, and it seems to do even less now.
But that is probably me just moving on. But sitting here playing a few tracks while I write this really does give me a little lift in what are difficult times (you may have heard we have something of a lockdown in Britain at the moment – when you live on your own and are hardly allowed out, music is rather important I find.)
Going back to Phil Collins this morning I must admit it doesn’t give me the same buzz any more, which is probably just me getting old. Or being old. But still, it’s nice to look back and it really does make me want to dig out those Genesis tracks again.
Aaron’s score : 5 out of five
Tony’s score : 3 out of five.
Tony’s PS
I love that.
Untold Dylan
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
There is a full index to the series which traces Bob’s work in the order in which it was composed, here.
————-
By Tony Attwood.
The songs that Bob Dylan wrote in the run up to composing “Isis” and the remaining songs composed for “Desire” were, I would submit, by and large of the highest quality – with the possible exception of “Money Blues” which is a straightforward 12 bar composition. It’s not a bad song, just not a great song.
But otherwise these are remarkable works, and if one had a remarkability chart (or come to that if “remarkability” were actually a word, and one could judge each song that way) we might note a rise in just how extraordinary each song from this period was, as we progress through the timeline that brought us One More Cup of Coffee,Golden Loom,Oh Sister and Abandoned Love.
But it is most certainly fair to say that even so, nothing, but nothing, prepared us for Isis.
But what makes “Isis” such a great song? Indeed, what sort of song is Isis?
It can be argued that the lyrics mean something as a story in their own right. Alternatively “Isis” could be an individual the composer knows. Or the song might just be about Egypt, or it might not. On the other hand it could be just a set of interesting lines strung together with a great beat, and fine melody and a bass guitarist who really understands what it is all about.
But out of these points, for the moment I want to focus on one of them: the interesting lyrics. And here I think it is time to ask if a set of interesting but random phrases which are simply strung together, can be rated as part of the creation of a great piece of music? Does it matter if the lyrics of Isis (or indeed any other song) are actually about anything coherent at all? Does it matter if the story in Isis (if there is one) is truthful or coherent or both, or not? In short, can a great song be created out of lines which are often disconnected from each other?
And moving on from there, does it even matter if any set of lyrics in a song are truthful or even coherent?
In my country we have a highly patriotic song, “Rule Britannia” which I suspect most British citizens know at least the first and last two lines of:
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
It is obviously untrue and irrelevant in today’s world, being as it is a piece of music that celebrates the days of the British Empire, but it is sung with the same sort of gusto as “If you want me to, Yes!” in Isis. And it is still sung by a lot of people at an event (The last night of the Proms) each year – or at least each year when there is no pandemic.
These are questions I could have asked from the very start of this series of articles, or indeed anywhere in this blog, because from the very start Dylan and a truthful representation of the world around him have not gone hand in hand. Take “I was young when I left home,” which was the last song written by Bob in 1961, and as far as we can tell, the 15th song he wrote and kept.
I was young when I left home
But I been out a-ramblin’ ‘round
And I never wrote a letter to my home
To my home, Lord, to my home
And I never wrote a letter to my home
It was just the other day
I was bringing home my pay
When I met an old friend I used to know
Said your mother’s dead and gone
Baby sister’s all gone wrong
And your daddy needs you home right away
Of course it’s not true at all. But has anyone ever worried about that? I don’t think so. Indeed, the next song composed, at the start of 1962, (Ballad for a friend) is just as fanciful, as far as we know. There was no friend; there was no death. Certainly on the recording where Bob explains why he sang the verses out of sequence his voice doesn’t sound as if he is singing about a lost friend. But does any of that matter? It seems not.
And indeed it appears that no one seemed to mind much about such issues early in Dylan’s career. For example when he wrote
I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
in 1961, I don’t think anyone bothered to check the mileage (although yes New York is over 1000 miles from Duluth) nor how many princes and kings Bob had met by then (probably none).
But ten years later when Bob wrote George Jackson arguments raged about whether Jackson was an innocent victim or not. So it seems the issue of truth (or if you prefer “accuracy”) only matters sometimes, and it is the critics who want to decide when it matters.
Of course issues of accuracy are considered important sometimes when a newspaper or website which purports to be presenting the news, sets out “information” which others believe is completely false. Indeed at the moment I am writing this, this debate over the corona-virus vaccines falls into this category. Such matters are dealt with by recourse to factual evidence and science; some deny the validity of both evidence and science.
But mostly through history we have not treated works of art in the same way as newspaper reports. By and large we don’t demand that art is a strict factual representation of the truth – for it is were, it would just be history. Which is why individual passport photographs are not normally called art while photos in other circumstances can be called art. Art in all its forms, from symphonies to poetry, is not normally seen as a truthful representation of a person or situation or group of people. It is “art” – it sees things from a new direction, it exaggerates, it twists reality, it gives a new perspective and creates new worlds. That’s the point.
As a result art can often “say” one thing but be interpreted as meaning another, or indeed it may have no meaning at all but instead just be. In this regard, in this series and elsewhere, I’ve often cited the large Jackson Pollock and Bridget Riley reproductions hanging in my house. They have no meaning I can express in words, but they hang in my house as each provide me with meanings that cannot be expressed in other means.
What’s more, even if there is meaning in an artwork it can often be the case that the meaning the creator intended is not the meaning perceived by the critics or indeed when it comes to popular music, the fans. The lyrics of “Times they are a changing” observe the everyday fact that the world and society keeps changing. Not always for the better not always for the worse and certainly not always at our behest. Stuff happens, things change. The music expresses this relentless change through its plodding beat which goes 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 over and over, symbolising the slowly ever-changing reality.
Does it matter if a lot of people take this to mean not that the world just simply changes all the time (which is what the lyrics say), but rather that we can rise up and change this world and make it better? Does it matter that musician Tony Glover looked at the lyrics of “Times” and allegedly said, “What is this shit?” to which Dylan apparently replied “it seems to be what the people want to hear,” when in fact many people took the song to suggest that Dylan himself believed that change could be effected by the protests of the masses and that he would be there leading the charge?
And then what about the John Wesley Harding songs – does it matter that the hero’s name is spelled wrong, and that the hero of the song bears no resemblance to the character of the same name without the “g” in real life? Or that songs such as “Drifter’s Escape” makes no sense at all unless one bends and twists the meanings, ignores certain lines and makes a whole load of assumptions?
Pulling this theme together, as we approach “Isis” we find ourselves in a situation in which we must know (if we have been paying any attention) that Dylan’s songs are by and large fanciful, playing with reality, re-writing history, mixing fiction and fact, while allowing the mists to shroud any certainty as to the “real” meaning, all to such a degree that there is no “real” meaning any more. If there are meanings, there are only the meanings we, the listeners, impose.
Unfortunately, many critics of and commentators upon Dylan’s work fail to see that many Dylan songs are self-evidently not based on fact, but still try and find links between Dylan’s lyrics and reality, when it fact it is much easier to examine, consider and enjoy Dylan’s work without that battle.
Indeed as Jochen has so recently pointed out when Dylan talks about the writing of his songs, he doesn’t cite events, movements, beliefs etc (with the exception of his short period of writing only overtly Christian songs) he cites the musical antecedents.
So, to return (at long last) to Isis, my point is that when Bob Dylan wrote Isis he was already well established as a writer of fiction in songs, and by far the easiest way to see Isis is as both fiction, and also lines that are not necessarily connected (as can be the case in an abstract painting).
Thus within Isis the two writers bring in a fictionalised person into a fictionalised account of a very unclear set of events, which is simply another way of writing. For its effect and success it depends on a clear and solid beat, an unusual time signature (for popular music), a very energetic accompaniment and exclamations in the vocal line (as in “If you want me to, Yes”). There’s no need to try and see Isis as a real person; indeed to do that takes us into a wholly different world without any evidence at all, and almost certainly gives a wholly false reading of the lyrics.
Likewise there is also no need to try and link anything in the song with the Egyptian myth of Isis (which involves the resurrection of her husband, and helping the dead enter the afterlife, while also befriending all those at the edge of society – slaves, workers, the poor. Isis gave the disenfranchised hope – but not hope of working harder for salvation. Simply hope). Yes of course that could accord with Bob’s visions of the world, and one could work out a whole set of meanings starting, “I found hope on the 5th day of May”. But then, where does it go? Nowhere better. Sticking with Isis, it’s more fun, so that’s what they do.
Thus the simplest interpretation of this song and indeed most songs by Dylan, is that he has made up a story and/or people and/or a situation, and embellishes it with interesting words and phrases. Thus the songs are not clearly “about” anything in particular, even if they appear to be about something.
Such a view of Dylan’s work, in cases like Isis, is that it not only offers an explanation as to what is going on in the lyrics, it also allows us to enjoy the phraseology of the song as we are drawn along by the music, rather than spending time pondering phrases such as “pyramids all embedded in ice.” True, we do get the full Egyptian bit with the breaking into the tomb, the casket being empty and all that. But it is not related to anything real.
And as it happens, in this case, I write as one who has been right inside the Great Pyramid and can concur with the comment on Travel Trips USA that “the reality rarely lives up to fantasy, and a trip into the heart of one of the great pyramids might not be as glorious as you imagine.” Very true, so it is fortunate that I have this song as well.
Moving on, just as the people in songs don’t have to be real, so there is nothing that says the story has to make sense – exactly as we found when we contemplated the JWH songs. They can be the antithesis of making sense in the style of Kafka or simply disconnected irrational images moving from one episode to another.
Yet as humans we do wish to find meaningful sequences, because that is what our brains do – we make sense of the world to try to control it. What we have to do however is let go and just accept that “I gave him my blanket; he gave me his word” says something which cannot be translated into any other words, which when one thinks about it, is quite a trick.
Indeed there is something wonderfully playful about
The wind it was howling and the snow was outrageous
When he died I was hoping that it wasn't contagious
which considering it is about death, is quite a trick to pull in a set of lyrics.
Indeed ever since I first heard that line I have kept the notion of outrageous snow with me. I have no idea what it means, but that doesn’t matter. I just love “outrageous snow” on a level that has nothing to do with meaning.
Thus in this approach words and music become playthings, just as they were when James Myers changed his name to Jimmy De Knight and then co-wrote “Rock Around the Clock” with Max C. Freedman. It’s not really saying that people should try and dance for 24 hours solid and then start all over again. It is just there for the fun.
This notion of exaggeration and the removal from reality is part of popular music and folk music. Sometimes the songs tell fictional stories, but even then they generally exaggerate in order to make the stories interesting.
When as children some of us (in England at least) learned
It was Friday morn when we set sail,
And we were not far from the land
When our Captain he spied a mermaid so fair
With a comb and a glass in her hand.
we knew it wasn’t really true – or at least if we didn’t know that straight away, we were soon told. Fantasy, in short, has forever been part of songwriting. It might be a story, or it might just be a collection of images. Either way it is not there to describe the truth.
Indeed even the great folk song tradition so beloved of Ewan MacColl as part of the heritage of the English working classes were not truthful portrayals of the past, but an interpretation.
Now I’ve written this little tirade of mine at this point because having written Isis, the two composers sat down and penned “Joey”. Which in turn annoyed a lot of people who wanted to tell us that Dylan was glorifying someone who most certainly didn’t do what’s in the song. But seen in the context of the songs Dylan was writing, that is hardly relevant.
Rolling Stone made the point that, “When Bob Dylan sings about historical figures, he often gets a lot wrong. “Hurricane” is riddled with errors, and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is almost worse.”
But that is only a relevant comment if Dylan the songwriter is setting himself up to be a chronicler of the truth. Yet clearly he is not. He’s never claimed to be, and having had the experience of a very simple song like “Times they are a changin” being utterly misunderstood why would he ever think he could be?
What makes this debate interesting to me is that in other art forms this naive desire to relate the art to truth doesn’t happen. No one is bothered because Guernica by Picasso doesn’t reflect the actual scene of desolation (although I sometimes wonder what would happen if some renowned Dylan scholars took up art criticism).
Visual artists regularly take people, situations, artefacts, landscapes and anything else, and distort them. So do novelists. Do we worry that in writing Hamlet, Shakespeare didn’t get the 13th century Danish story right? (If anyone does, I must have missed that debate). So why do songwriters have to answer to a different set of commands which require accuracy and realism in their story telling?
Perhaps it is because the critics of popular music feel that it has to be judged against different criteria from that used in other art forms, and that telling the truth (as the individual critic perceives it) is vital.
Maybe, but why would anyone ever think such a thing? Why would anyone ever assume that folk music or popular music would portray the world accurately, any more than contemporary art seeks to do this?
In fact, artists do the reverse. Artists challenge and change reality. It is also what cartoonists do; it is what songwriters do. Truth matters if you are discussing something from the point of view of historical accuracy, but not when handling the subject as an artist. Nor come to that, does it matter in religion. Do we worry that Jesus may not have looked as he is portrayed in uncountable pictures, suffering on the cross?
I do find this strange. While other creative people are expected to manipulate reality within their creations, Bob Dylan is expected to stick to the facts.
Untold Dylan
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
You’d have written that too. There’s nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that’s all enough, and that’s all you know. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense. “When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women on Deep Ellum put you on the rocks.” Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too / And your gravity’s down and negativity don’t pull you through / Don’t put on any airs / When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue / They got some hungry women there / And they really make a mess outta you.” All these songs are connected.
(Dylan, MusiCares speech, 2015)
It is and remains a beautiful speech, the speech that Dylan surprisingly delivers when he receives the MusiCares Person Of The Year 2015 Award. One of the highlights is the passage in which he tries to put his exceptional talent, or at least his craftsmanship, into perspective. “These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” he says by way of introduction, and then lists seven examples of classics that have given him the format. If you’d sung “John Henry” as many times as I have, you’d get to “Blowin’ In The Wind” too, Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key To The Highway” automatically leads to “Highway 61 Revisisted”, “Sail Away Ladies” to “Boots Of Spanish Leather”.
Charming and modest. And, as is often the case with Dylan, not entirely enlightening. “Sail Away Ladies” starts with It ain’t no use to sit and cry, and thus seems to be an inspiration for “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. A connection between “John Henry” and “Tell Me, Momma” is easier to see than a connection with “Blowin’ In The Wind”, and that Key-Highway 61 linkage doesn’t actually go much deeper than that one word “highway”.
Comparably blurred is the alleged bridge from “Deep Ellum Blues” to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. All right, there is a similarity between when you go down to Deep Ellum and when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue, and both songs warn of certain women, but on a literal level “Kansas City” is a better candidate:
They got some crazy little women there
And I'm gonna get me one
… versus Dylan’s
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you
… from Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City”, which gets such an unambiguous tip of the hat in “High Water” (“Twelfth Street and Vine”).
None the less, the thrust of Dylan’s argument remains intact, the argument he builds around the hypothesis that he is just a link in the chain, that he only builds on what others have come up with before him – the Isaac Newton argument, as it were (“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”, from Newton’s letter to Robert Hooke, 1675). Still, it is remarkable that only five years later, in the New York Times interview with Douglas Brinkley, June 2020, Dylan claims the exact opposite with exactly the same choice of words:
“On the album “Tempest” you perform “Roll on John” as a tribute to John Lennon. Is there another person you’d like to write a ballad for?”
“Those kinds of songs for me just come out of the blue, out of thin air. I never plan to write any of them.”
On that track there are more exceptionally talented songwriters, when they try – out of false modesty, sheer cluelessness or otherwise – to put their exceptional talent into perspective. In the beautiful Bee Gees documentary How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (2020) Barry Gibb puts it in a similar way:
“It’s a sort of… like a radio transmitter. It’s almost as if somebody’s already written the songs in the air and they’re giving them to us.”
Practically identical to Dylan’s words in that Douglas Brinkley interview:
“The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”
And Coldplay’s brilliant songwriter Chris Martin says the same thing in the same documentary, but expresses it a little more poetically:
“Like surfers with waves. Surfers don’t make the waves. Fishermen don’t make the fish. Songwriters don’t really write songs. You receive songs.”
Entirely in line, again, with the words of Dylan in 2020, who does try to define it a little more mystically, though (“It’s one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state”), but all still contradicting Dylan’s much more down-to-earth words in 2015, “These songs did not come out of thin air.”
For the sake of convenience, we can assume that in 2020, Dylan means “The subject of a tribute song comes out of thin air”. So: “John Lennon”, or “Jimmy Reed”, or “Lenny Bruce”… I’m not planning to write a song about, say, Lenny Bruce, Dylan apparently means, but somehow that name swirls down into my mind. Still, the words he writes around this swirled down name are traceable, do not come out of thin air – as Dylan so aptly analyses in 2015. That goes for the songs on Tempest, and on Rough And Rowdy Ways, for that matter, and similarly more than half a century before that, for the songs on Highway 61 Revisited. Like for “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part II: The Thoughts Of Mary Jane
————–
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site. You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.
Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc. We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down
The year 2020 will not be fondly remembered by the world, that much is quite clear. However, one ray of light for many music fans in 2020 was the release of Bob Dylan’s 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. It was Dylan’s first batch of original songs since 2012’s Tempest.
The album contains the sort of extraordinary array of breath-taking intertextuality as well as historical and cultural references and illusions which have come to characterise much of the singer’s work since 1997. A couple of the references that jumped out most for me came on Goodbye Jimmy Reed, where Dylan references “Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray” and My Own Version of You, in which Dylan sings of studying “Sanskrit and Arabic to improve (his) mind.” These references to the three Abrahamic faiths and the Arabic language drew my mind to the Middle East, a region which I studied closely as a postgraduate. These references made me think of some of the other times Dylan has referenced the Middle East and more specifically, its politics. And that is what I will be discussing here.
Sheikhs walkin’ around like kings
There can be little doubt that Dylan and the Middle East is a strange cross-section and one that not many people are aware of. There are two songs that most spring to my mind in which Dylan speaks explicitly and at any great length about the region.
The first of those comes on his first Born Again Christian album Slow Train Coming, released in 1979. On the song Slow Train, Dylan appears to bemoan the way in which countries like Saudi Arabia were able to hold the USA to ransom after the oil price crisis that came about earlier in the decade following the Yom Kippur War of 1973. “All that foreign oil controlling American soil/ Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed/ Sheikhs walkin’ around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings/ Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and Paris.”
Without doubt, the narrator takes a very definite and one-sided view of this situation. The lyrics paint a broadly economic nationalist or realist view of international relations. It could be argued that Dylan’s words are tinged with some degree of orientalism. However, it should be highlighted that Dylan is speaking about a very specific class within a specific set of Arab societies. The lyrics are not, as Yo Zushi refers to them in a New Statesman article from 2017, about “Arabs” as a whole group. The use of the word “sheikhs” demonstrates Dylan’s desire to show frustration the ruling class within the Gulf monarchies. Thus, it is not as simple as Dylan “punching down”. In fact, it might even be the case that one could place these lyrics within the long tradition of Dylan taking aim at those who are in positions of power.
On the whole, the lyrics perfectly portray a genuinely popular political perspective which questions US reliance on Gulf oil. However, let there be no doubt that these words, powerful as they are, pay no mention to what those countries exporting that “foreign oil” were trying to achieve through their actions. Dylan’s foray into the Israel-Palestine debate was to arrive the following decade.
Infidels’ Outlier
By far Dylan’s most explicit piece of work looking at the region came four years after Slow Train Coming, on the 1983 album Infidels. I have a strong affection for this record after playing it countless times in the music section at the Champs Libres library while living in Rennes. I think that seven of the eight songs on the record range from good to brilliant. Though, that leaves one outlier, Neighborhood Bully.
This is a controversial song, even by Dylan standards, and one which is seemingly dedicated to defending Israel. It’s a curious case for me, as it is for a great many Dylan fans. Here I should say I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for my friends and people in general who “don’t get” Dylan. The mere thought of not being able to appreciate Dylan’s work terrifies me. And yet, Neighborhood Bully is that one song that I just can’t get on. Suddenly, for almost five whole horrifying minutes, I become one of those people who just don’t get it.
For a little context, Infidels is commonly regarded as Dylan’s first “secular” album since 1978’s Street Legal and came on the back of three Born Again Christian records, the aforementioned Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980) and the criminally overlooked Shot of Love (1981). While some listeners claim that Infidels hasn’t aged particularly well, it received a decent level of praise at the time of its release with many music critics expressing their relief at Dylan’s supposed loss of interest in the Gospels.
Aside from Neighborhood Bully, there are a handful of other songs on the album which could be regarded as somehow political. Across those songs, some broad themes emerge, namely the corruption of political leaders, man’s greed and vanity, the old warning of a wolf in sheep’s clothing (or Satan coming as a man of peace), a profound scepticism towards neoliberalism and free-trade, warnings over American decline and even some supposed eye-rolling at trade unions in the USA. According to the understanding of many commentators, there is an underlying anger at the presidency of Ronald Reagan as well, especially on the opening song, Jokerman.
A great many of those other songs, however, are vague and couched in metaphor. Neighborhood Bully, on the other hand, is a straightforward defence of Israel’s right to exist and more so its right to defend itself. In many other articles touching on the song, a lot is made of Dylan’s connections to Israel and figures within Israeli politics. I have no interest in Dylan’s alleged political affiliations, so, will only be looking at the song.
Timing
Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the song is its timing. Infidels was released in 1983, just one year after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, part of a wider operation in Lebanon in which the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) sought to eradicate the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. During the massacre, the IDF (at best) stood by and allowed a paramilitary group close to the Lebanese Christian Kataeb Party to slaughter hundreds (more likely thousands) of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shiites. The massacre received plenty of condemnation in Israel itself and marked something of a change in Western coverage of Israel’s foreign policy which up until that point had been largely unquestioned. Hence, when one acknowledges this timing, the song comes to feel ill-judged.
Though, it shouldn’t be seen as altogether surprising. Dylan is no stranger to the controversial. After accruing a legion of adoring folk fans during the early 1960s, Dylan distanced himself from the “protest” scene with the song My Back Pages (1964), before “going electric” during the Newport Folk Festival of 1965. He further angered significant sections of his core audience in 1979 with his decision to put out Christian music (Heylin, 2017). Then, in 1985 during the first ever round of Live Aid concerts, Dylan took to the stage and questioned whether a fraction of the money raised for those starving in Africa could be re-allocated to farmers who were struggling in rural America. In 1991, shortly after George H. W. Bush’s decision to go to war in the Gulf, Dylan performed a barely recognisable version of his 60s classic, Masters of War.
Neighborhood Bully
Turning our attention to the actual song, what is it like? Dylan uses sarcasm to address much of the negative press that Israel was receiving at the time and personifies the country as a neighbourhood bully in the region. Its snarling tone (which is common in much of Dylan’s best work), musical arrangement and even its (AABB) rhyme scheme are rather reminiscent of the superior Property of Jesus which appeared on Dylan’s previous album, Shot of Love. However, while I know some people would discount both tracks as filler, I feel that Neighborhood Bully lacks the conviction of Property of Jesus. And that’s the first problem for me. The usual passion and verve seem to be lacking. It’s probably worth noting here that, according to Dylan’s own website, he has never bothered to play this song live which may allow us to question the extent to which he rated the song, himself.
The second issue is that lyrically the song is some way off the rest of the album, especially the stronger songs, I and I and Jokerman. The lyrics are so straightforward, lacking in the way of Dylan’s usual use of literary devices and is also overtly political. This is the biggest disappointment for me, as if anyone could make a strong song either defending Israel or espousing its virtues, it would be Dylan. Of course, one doesn’t have to totally agree with a song’s message to appreciate its beauty. My former landlord, a very firm atheist, spent many an evening listening to Dylan’s Born-Again Christian music with me, which he regarded as some of Dylan’s best work. I’m no American patriot but as stated above, I have a great appreciation for Dylan’s ability to articulate a position on the Oil Crisis of the 1970s.
Equally, one doesn’t have to be of a certain land to appreciate the beauty of another person’s writing about it. A great many of my favourite songs explore a singer’s adoration for a land that isn’t my own, Dougie McClean’s Caledonia, La Complainte du Partisan (Anna Marly), This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie), Un Canadien Errant (Antoine Gérin-Lajoie), Petit Pays (Gael Faye) and any number of the subtle songs that Dylan has written depicting the wonder of his America. When one also considers the quiet beauty of the picture on the Infidels’ inner sleeve of Dylan examining the soil of Mount Olive with Jerusalem behind him, it feels as though the stage was set for him to put forward a subtler piece of art depicting his feelings towards Israel or the idea of a Jewish homeland. ****
However, what we get is a song that does not match the sweetness of the photograph. There are one or two instances where the song does a neat enough job of exploring the historical persecution of the Jewish people which it then seeks to tie into the fortunes of Israel. Indeed, for the most part, the lyrics of Neighborhood Bully take a scattergun approach to its defending of Israel, putting forward a plethora of talking points that one would associate with neo-conservative thinking. An article by Gabe Friedman in the Times of Israel recollecting the song states some of the lyrics sound like they could have been taken from a Benjamin Netanyahu speech.
The overarching narrative of the song is that Israel is a tiny country constantly under threat of being attacked by much larger neighbours (with little made of its military and technological superiority or its allies, “He got no allies to really speak of/ What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love”). At this point it’s probably worth remembering that Israel is the USA’s top ally in the region and currently receives around $4billion in aid annually. Even at the time Dylan composed the song, the level of aid per year from the US to Israel was into the billions. The song also makes a further common neo-conservative argument, that Israel has performed something of a miracle by turning almost empty desert land into a near paradise while also generating incredible developments in medicine, “He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth/ Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health”. This is, of course, a feat that was made somewhat easier by the aforementioned levels of financial support.
However, as grating as some of these lyrics may seem, there is no explicit advocacy of offensive conflict by Dylan. Therefore, the lyrics when taken on their own don’t necessarily go against Dylan’s previous messaging. Rather, the writer bemoans what he sees as Israel being told that it doesn’t have the right to defend itself, “He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin/ He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in”. There’s no advocation of Israeli expansionism, the illegal settlements (as categorised by the UN) or occupations. Equally, they aren’t condemned or questioned, or mentioned at all, in fact.
The main point of contention, as I see it, is the issue of what Dylan refers to as “fighting back”. This actually gets to the heart of a lot of the debates on Israel’s foreign (and even domestic) policy. What is fair fighting back? This is where the historical context may be of some importance. Were Israel’s actions in Lebanon merely “fighting back”? For many people, many of their actions during the 1980s were disproportionate, as they were in 2014 siege of Gaza. Of course, there’s some irony in the fact that the IDF was involved in a great deal of doors being “kicked in” as it ravaged southern Lebanon and Beirut in pursuit of PLO fighters.
Last Thoughts on Neighborhood Bully
So, how does one look at this song? I’ve listened to it about half a dozen times while writing this article and it has actually helped me realise that it isn’t quite as hysterically pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian as I remembered it. A song defending Israel doesn’t necessarily have to be considered an endorsement of every policy of the most militaristic governments the country has seen, be they in the 1980s or the current administration. While there are refutable claims and significant factors ignored during the song, the lyrics in their own right seem to be about giving Israel a fair chance to defend itself militarily.
My unease with the song largely stems from its timing which can have a massive impact on how one interprets it. It has certainly led some observers, such as Nima Shirazi to question Dylan’s “progressive” credentials. I think it’s very misguided to try and box Dylan in politically as this will likely always push him to defy the conventional wisdom. Though, at the same time, Dylan’s contribution to progressive causes through song should never be doubted (whether they were intentional or otherwise).
From an artistic point of view, many Dylan fans struggle to relate to Neighborhood Bully. From my point of view, it isn’t focused enough and doesn’t have the romantic sensibilities or subtility which speak to me so profoundly when he writes about his own country. For those reasons, Neighborhood Bully is one of a handful of Dylan songs that I don’t consider to be good. Its convenient historical inaccuracies and its unwelcome timing are even enough to make it bad. That said, it doesn’t make a dent in what Dylan brought us with his words over the course of nearly six decades, it also shouldn’t detract from the strength of Infidels as a piece of work.
Neighborhood Bully
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully
He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully
Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully
What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully
I hope I can be forgiven if any words of mine offend.
References
Heylin, C., 2017. Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years: what Really Happened. Lesser Gods.
Editors footnote: Because of past experience with comments on this song, I’m continuing the policy that comments which consist of political, religious or economic assertions without evidence will not be published. That’s not the case elsewhere on this site, but seems to be necessary in relation to this song.
Gothic poet Edgar Allan Poe is noted for his influence on the French Symbolists. And, at least by me, also for his fondness for the metonymy* of the word ‘door’:
As in the lyrics below:
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She never shall force an echo more
(The Sleeper)
And again in:
I reached my home - my home no more ...
I passed from out its mossy door
(Tamerlane)
And again in:
Whose shadows fall before
Thy lowly cottage door
(To Isadore)
And again in:
From the open cottage door ....
And the dying sycamore
(The Village Street)
And…
By the lowly cottage door ....
Broken-hearted evermore
(The Village Street)
And again in:
Was the fair palace door ...
And sparkling evermore
(The Haunted Place)
And:
Through the pale door ....
And laugh - but smile no more
(The Haunted Door)
And again in:
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore ...
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
(The Raven)
And:
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ...
'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door"
(The Raven)
And:
Sir, said I, or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ...
And so faintly you come tapping, tapping at my chamber door
(The Raven)
And:
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
Perched, and sat, and nothing more
(The Raven)
And:
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore ...
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door
(The Raven)
And:
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door ...
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
(The Raven)
And:
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door
Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'
(The Raven)
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan shows Poe’s influence to the core:
Blowing like she's never blowed before ...
Blowing like she's at my chamber door
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
In the transmutation teachings of the ancient alchemists, the Raven represents the human mind’s initial passing through the doors of perception to encounter the inner soul.
*Editor’s note: This word in Larry’s script caught me out, and I had to look it up. In case it is a noun you are not familiar with here’s the Merriam-Webster definition: “a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (such as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”).” Other examples would be “turf” for horse racing, and “suit” for person working in businesses which still adopt formal procedures, such as banking. Now at least I know. Everyone else I am sure was already fully familiar.
For his book Dirty Boulevard – The Life And Times Of Lou Reed (2016), Aidan Levy interviewed childhood friend and bassist of Reed’s first band LA And The Dorados, Richard Mishkin:
On this day so long ago, I was a skinny seventeen-year-old schoolboy with a sketchbook under my arm and a singular determination. Instead of taking the train from my small seaside town of Whitehead in County Antrim to go to grammar school in Larne, I travelled 17 miles in the opposite direction to the city of Belfast. I was setting out on a determined and audacious quest to draw Bob Dylan from life that afternoon before he played his second concert in Ireland, the day after his first the night before in Dublin. What could possibly go wrong?
