by Tony Attwood

Dylan songs are different; different because in most cases the first time we know about the song is through a Dylan recording, and the temptation is to hear that first song as the “real” version, the “definitive” version.

But even if that view wasn’t overthrown before, it was certainly challenged by Jimi Hendrix’ “Watchtower” and the fact that Dylan himself adopted the Hendrix version as his own concert ender for a number of years.

And as we have noted, Dylan has occasionally recorded two or more different versions of his own compositions before deciding which is the one he wishes to release.  He has also regularly revisited many other compositions of his own, producing completely new musical versions, and indeed often changing the lyrics.  Surely the point (and indeed the message, from Dylan) is that there is no definitive version of any song.  The songs are there for interpretation.

And surely we should not ever challenge such a thought.  After all, aficionados of the classical romantic tradition of instrumental music will have their favourite renditions of the masterpieces – and there we have all the notes written down, and even the tempo indicated by the composer.

Indeed perhaps we are misled by the phrase “cover version” because that makes it sound as if what is offered to those of us interested, is a mere copy or even a pale rendition of the original masterpiece.

But in fact it can be argued that by giving us different versions of some of his songs Dylan has not only opened the door for those of us who enjoy his work to understand that the songs can be rendered in very different ways, and that in so doing, our understanding and enjoyment can be enhanced.

And with works as complex as some of Dylan’s, that can be very important because there is so much in some of the songs, alternative approaches to the music do indeed give us deeper understandings of what it is that is within the song.

For this is the real point: the songs are living entities bequeathed by Dylan to the world, and I suspect that he if he were ever to express and opinion on the matter he would suggest that the continuing reworkings of the songs enhance their meaning and their value.  Certainly I would argue that it is the fact that so many of his songs invite us to reinterpret them that proclaims their value.

Of course other songwriters have had their songs reworked by other artists, but I am struggling to think of many songs that have evolved so comprehensively as some of Dylan’s work through this re-working.

Let me give but one example.  You would not be here, kindly giving me a few moments of your time, if you did not know the original version, but just in case you haven’t played it for a few years here it is…

Earlier this year, Far Out magazine wrote on this piece, “Arguably one of Bob Dylan’s most beloved songs of all time, the singer was only 21-years-old when he wrote the number. Debuted in the smoky Gaslight Cafe in New York, Village performer Peter Blankfield, who was there, recalled: ‘He put out these pieces of loose-leaf paper ripped out of a spiral notebook. And he starts singing [‘Hard Rain’] … He finished singing it, and no one could say anything. The length of it, the episodic sense of it. Every line kept building and bursting’.”

But now consider the Rolling Thunder version.  Here the song has a bounce and vigour completely missing in the original.  Not that the original needed a bounce, because when we first heard that acoustic version it was utterly new, amazing, shocking and overwhelming.  Simply to be there was enough.

In 1962 nuclear war and the falling of Hard Rain was not only a real threat; what was threatened was the end of civilisation; quite possibly the end of the world as we knew it.  And we have to remember that the song was written in the summer of 1962, before the Cuban missile crisis (16 October 1962 – 28 October 1962), even though in 1965 Bob suggested he had written it after the crisis (he later recanted).

In 1975 he could look at it again, and this time put in a bouncy beat and an almost jaunty rhythm, almost making it a celebration of the fact that the end of the world had not happened.   I hear it now as a way of punching the air as if to say to the world, it doesn’t matter what you do to me, I am still here, so is my blue-eyed son, so is my darling young one.   Remarkably the song which seems so portentous at first, is now bouncing along saying, “You won’t get us, it doesn’t matter what you do.”

But allow me for a moment to jump forward again because I would like to go onto Laura Marling whose version of the song I discovered through having the TV series “Peaky Blinders” play it.

It was not so much that this version of the song related to the series, but rather that it seemed to me to be part three of a song that was with me all through my life (I was alive but rather young when Freewheelin’ came out).  But in my teens I understood the threat of nuclear war, and so just the Rolling Thunder version seemed like a song saying “We’re still here”, hearing the new version in 2017 with its extra pace and additional vitality really did make me stop and think, “my goodness, against all the odds I seem to have survived.”

And indeed I can remember on the evening that I first heard this version thinking, “I have lived through some of the most extraordinary parts of my country’s and this planet’s history.  The threats, the dangers, the poverty, the hypocrisy… they are all still here, but we are still here too.   We haven’t conquered the solar system, nor put an end to war, nor eradicated disease (quite the reverse if 2020 is anything to go by) but we are amazingly still here, and (I’m rather glad to say) so am I.

I can still listen to all three versions that I have selected here, (and of course there are many, many more) with great joy, for they illustrate the power, and the energy, and the pure timelessness within the song.

Earlier today I suggested to Jochen that we might do a new series of articles on Dylan covers, and I wondered if he would be interested in contributing.  In reply he said, “On my external ‘Dylan Hard Drive’ are more than ten thousand covers by now… Lovely, lovely idea. And of course I’d be happy to put forward names & titles for your shortlist.”

We haven’t agreed a format, or an approach, or anything else, although we have looked into this arena before.  Indeed the article “The 100 Greatest Cover Versions of Bob Dylan songs ever” is one that gave me huge pleasure, because through it I discovered all sorts of versions of Dylan songs that I would never have otherwise come across.  Indeed “De swalkers flecht”  is still played from time to time in my house, even if it is never heard anywhere else in England.

What I do want to do is build an even larger index of the best cover versions of Dylan songs, and collect together some articles (with musical illustrations of course) examining why these cover versions are to be cherished.  And as we go, we’ll build an index.  You may know the Alphabetical Index of Dylan songs on this site; I am thinking we could have a second copy of the index to the songs, but just for cover versions.   So the same list of 623 Dylan compositions, and each time we have a review of the cover/s of that song, or indeed a review of the way Dylan himself has changed that song, it would be indexed there.

It’s a big project, but then, so was doing a review of each of the 623 songs.

If you want to take a song and write about the way it has been changed over time, as ever just write it in Word (if at all possible, it really does make life easier) and provide the links to the examples.  And unless I have a real problem with it (which is very rare) I’ll publish it.

And if you just want to say draw our attention to an unusual cover version, without giving us your  thoughts on why you like it, ok, I might still put it up so that others can share your enthusiasm.

If however you feel this is a tedious load of old balderdash (which is to say, nonsense) never mind, I’m sure another idea will be along shortly.

If you have an idea or an article, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk and in the subject line write “Beautiful obscurities.”  And as I say, please do send your article in Word, if at all possible.

And in case you missed the relevant episode of “All Directions at once” this is the sort of extraordinary reworking that I have in mind.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

Previously in this series

• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway?
• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway? (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

In a number his song lyrics Bob Dylan mixes ancient Greek/Roman mythologies, and stirs in pieces of the Jewish and Christian religions, wherein featured are great escapes from death, and narrow escapes they are. In “Drifter’s Escape”, the person on trial, who is easily conjectured to be Jesus, is saved from being crucified when a lightning bolt strikes the court house; thrown down by (who else?) Zeus, the Thunder God. In a typical Deconstructive reversal of the standard model, Christ is saved from sacrificing Himself; He is supposed to die for the good of all humankind.

Zeus also pops up in the aforementioned “Jokerman”. Part of the song references the a mythological story about the Thunder God in which he disguises himself as Alcmena’s husband; has sex with her, and out of the union the strongest man in the world, Hercules, is born. Needless to say Hera, Zeus’ wife, is as mad as a hurricane, and sends a couple of poisonous snakes at midnight to bite Hercules, and Alcmena’s other child. Hercules grabs a snake in each fist, and strangles them both. The young Hercules laughs – he’s not going to be sacrificed for someone else’s misdeeds:

You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

As he grows up, Hercules is subject to fits of mad rages and consequently kills a number of innocent people due to his strength, and so he decides to sacrifice himself. But he’s rescued from the flames by Hebe, the Goddess of Eternal Youth; she’s the daughter of Zeus and his older sister Hera; Hebe’s associated with spring, and Hercules gets to stay forever young with her on Mount Olympus:

Shedding off one more layer of skin
Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

According to the Holy Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, has a dream about an idol that’s  broken up into prices by a stone. That stone, according to the Hebrews, represents Jehovah; and Christ, according to Christian authorities; some consider the rock as symbolizing the apostle Peter. In any event, the idol that’s said to represent earthly kings is destroyed:

This image's head was of gold
His breast, and his arms of silver
And his belly, and his theighs of brass
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron, and part of clay
(Daniel 2: 32, 33)

Playing humorously with myths and religion which many Post Modernist-influenced artists are wont to do, in the lyrics below, the above idol gets turned on its head, perhaps indicating like a stern father, Jehovah’s a-gonna crush the human Jesus with stones, and sacrifice Him for claiming He’s God’s son, that He walks on the Sea of Galilee, and calms the stormy weather –  miracles that, of course, only Daddy can do:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread
While the eyes of  the idol with the iron head
Are glowing
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

The King also gets angry at three Jewish servants who will not worship the golden idol that he erects to himself; decides to sacrifice them in a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar witnesses them being rescued from the flames, akin to Hercules, by what he calls an ‘angel’ sent  by Jehovah; the name ‘Jesus’ is not uttered – it’s the Old Testament:

I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire
And they have no hurt
And the form of the fourth is like the Son of God
(Daniel 3: 25)

The singer/songwriter of  “Jokeman”  continues on with the fun – the only thing we’re sure about Bob Dylan is that his name is not Bob Dylan:

A friend to the martyr
A friend to the the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace
See the rich man without any name
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

Mary Magdalene is oft considered a former prostitute, and tradition has it that Peter is crucified upside down in Rome at his own request.

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

By Tony Attwood

Updated 6 March with a third cover included – see below.

Dylan Obscuranti is an imaginary album consisting of both lesser known Dylan songs performed either by himself or other people, and re-worked versions of songs which take the song into somewhere completely different.

This is not the first Dylan album we have created.  Earlier we invented “Bob Dylan 1980” and we have also created “The Lost Album” which could have replaced “Down in the Groove” and (in our view) done a much better job of it!   Now I am at it again with Dylan Obscuranti.  You can hear the opening tracks on our You Tube channel or via the articles…

• Track 1 – Angelina but not as we know it
• Track 2 – Tomorrow is a long time
• Track 3 – I’m not there
• Track 4 – Mama you been on my mind
• Track 5 – Love is just a four letter word
• Track 6 – To fall in love with you
• Track 7 – Restless Farewell sung for Frank Sinatra
• Track 8 – Ballad for a Friend

Track 9 is Dusty Old Fairgrounds, recorded on 12 April 1963.

This song was written in 1963 (the year that began with “Masters of War” as part of a “moving on” series of songs written one after the other:

• Only a Hobo
• Ramblin Down Thru the World
• As I rode out one morning
• Dusty Old Fairgrounds

 This track was apparently intended to appear on the album “Bob Dylan in Concert”, planned for release in 1964 but then seemingly cancelled.  It seemingly appeared on what is called the “hard-to-find 50th Anniversary Collection 1963′,” although I can’t verify that.

As for the lyrics – the song is pure description.  There is no message – it is totally a case of scene setting.   Haiku 61 came up with a good summary

Melancholy clowns
From one fairground to the next
Ride the blue highways.

I would single it out for inclusion in my make-believe Obscuranti album not just because it is not known by many Dylan fans, and not just because it is such an accomplished piece of writing, and such an accomplished performance of what is a long piece, but also because I fear some may have not bothered to find the piece given that Heylin described it as another “outlandish account of his youth.”

However there is nothing here to suggest that Bob is seriously suggesting that this is the life that he has had in the past.  What he does is the opposite of this: he gets inside the music and the lives of other people are presents their realities through song.

Heylin’s comment seems to me to be at the very heart of the misunderstandings many people have about Dylan, that the listener has to believe everything he writes and sings, and that all of his work has to be taken as a statement of things that have happened to Dylan or what he feels and believes is true.

It is a discussion I have been trying to raise in relation to songs like “Joey”.  I cannot see why Dylan is not allowed to be a writer of fiction, and a writer of contemporary folk songs that do what historic folk songs have done – that is to say they exaggerate the past.  He is not a historian and has never set himself out to be: he’s an entertainer who has moved through multiple forms of writing.

Besides, cartoonists can do it with illustrative art, why can’t we have a cartoonist musician?  (Hence the image chosen for the top of this little piece).

Indeed, if I may say so, the fault is not in Dylan, but in the critics who have utterly failed to understand the traditions of music that Bob Dylan draws upon.

Imagine if Dylan had sung “Nottamun Town” with verses such as

I rode a grey horse, a mule roany mare
Grey mane and grey tail, green striped on his back
Grey mane and grey tail, green striped on his back
There weren't a hair on her but what was coal black

She stood so still, She threw me to the dirt
She tore-a my hide, and she bruised my shirt
From saddle to stirrup I mounted again
And on my ten toes I rode over the plain

they would probably have complained that the lines didn’t make sense and besides Nottingham isn’t like this, oh and it isn’t clear if he is getting on or off the horse, running or riding over the plain and anyway he’s spelled the name wrong.

Folk music and blues music are the traditions that Bob’s music has emerged from and they are traditions that have nothing to do with exact references to how life is.   So I see nothing in this to suggest that Dylan is trying to claim this is autobiographical.  Heylin to me seems to be one of those weird people for whom the whole notion of fiction and exaggeration as an art form does not exist.

In fact it is a fine representation of a way of life – not the daily 9 to 5 grind, but of travelling with the fair ground through all the different weathers and situations, living a life on the road – that image that has so engrossed Dylan across the years.

Having published this Jochen has pointed out that a missed out another cover…

The other one I had found is on the album “No More, No Less”, by Blue Ash, released in 1973.  I am told that the album was re-released on CD by Collector’s Choice Music 2008.

Dusty Old Fairgrounds starts at 3 minutes 10 seconds

Here are the lyrics

Well, it’s all up from Florida at the start of the spring
The trucks and the trailers will be winding
Like a bullet we’ll shoot for the carnival route
We’re following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

From the Michigan mud past the Wisconsin sun
’Cross that Minnesota border, keep ’em scrambling
Through the clear county lakes and the lumberjack lands
We’re following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

Hit Fargo on the jump and down to Aberdeen
’Cross them old Black Hills, keep ’em rolling
Through the cow country towns and the sands of old Montana
We’re following them fairgrounds a-calling

As the white line on the highway sails under your wheels
I’ve gazed from the trailer window laughing
Oh, our clothes they was torn but the colors they was bright
Following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

It’s a-many a friend that follows the bend
The jugglers, the hustlers, the gamblers
Well, I’ve spent my time with the fortune-telling kind
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Oh, it’s pound down the rails and it’s tie down the tents
Get that canvas flag a-flying
Well, let the caterpillars spin, let the Ferris wheel wind
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Well, it’s roll into town straight to the fairgrounds
Just behind the posters that are hanging
And it’s fill up every space with a different kind of face
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Get the dancing girls in front, get the gambling show behind
Hear that old music box a-banging
Hear them kids, faces, smiles, up and down the midway aisles
We’re following them fairgrounds a-calling

It’s a-drag it on down by the deadline in the town
Hit the old highway by the morning
And it’s ride yourself blind for the next town on time
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

As the harmonicas whined in the lonesome nighttime
Drinking red wine as we’re rolling
Many a turnin’ I turn, many a lesson I learn
From following them fairgrounds a-calling

And it’s roll back down to St. Petersburg
Tie down the trailers and camp ’em
And the money that we made will pay for the space
From following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

by Jochen Markhorst

I           Lousy poetry

The song lyrics Dylan writes together with Helena Springs, or the songs that are in both their names anyway, mostly have a cut-and-paste character, do make a hybrid impression. Not in a positive sense, not with the synergetic added value that songs like The Beatles’ “Getting Better” and “A Day In The Life” have thanks to collaboration, or like the chilling “Where The Wild Roses Grow” by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue.

Or Freddy Mercury and David Bowie’s majestic world hit “Under Pressure”, the song with the number one “bassline of all time”, according to Stylus Magazine‘s Top 50 Basslines Of All Time in 2005 (i.e. before Chic’s “Good Times”, before Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and before “Walk On The Wild Side”, Pink Floyd’s “Money”, “Fever”… – so, quite debatable, all in all).

Dylan doesn’t seem to take the collaboration very seriously anyway. None of the Dylan/Springs songs are selected for recording, only a fraction of the bulk of probably about twenty songs get an occasional live performance. Which seems to be due to the most likely explanation: Dylan himself is not too impressed by the songs either. Only “Stop Now” is said to have been a candidate for Street-Legal for a while – but it has since floated away over the waters of oblivion, too.

The lyrics of “More Than Flesh And Blood” are perhaps the most unbalanced in that hybrid club, or at least the most frown-inducing. Just take the opening couplet:

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong, I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And it’s more than flesh and blood can bear

The first main clause introduces a “you” who does not have it easy: he is “fighting for existence”. In the art of song an unusual and somewhat peculiar opening. It’s a choice of words that Sir David Attenborough would use as a voice-over for the footage of a lonely penguin chick on an icy polar plain, or perhaps the caption of a poetically inclined artist under the photograph of a dandelion growing through the deck of an asphalted parking lot.

Either way, Springs and/or Dylan choose these words to introduce an antagonist. Which promises, at the very least, the portrait of a tormented soul. But in the rest of the lyrics, he turns out to be on a roll at night, hanging around at parties, driving a Cadillac and being intellectually superior (“In order to keep up with you I must go back to school,” as Helena sings in the third couplet). No elaboration, in any case, of that dramatic introduction, not even a hint of an existential struggle. The only clue is in that same opening line: you hate me cos I’m pure.

Peculiar. It is rather immodest, not to say ridiculous, to characterise yourself as “pure”, and it does not exactly push the listener’s sympathy towards the I-person. Awkwardly, it even pushes the associations to Biblical distances, to Paul in Galatians 4: “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?”

The uncomfortable confusion evaporates – briefly – in the second line, which is reassuringly “normal”. You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure seems to come from a Dylan on autopilot, from the walking jukebox that effortlessly finds fragments of other people’s songs to shake a copy/paste line out of his sleeve. You put a hurting on me must have come from Etta James;

Something's got a hold on me that won't let go
I never thought it could happen to me
Got me heavy without the misery
I never thought it could be this way
Love's sure gonna put a hurting on me

… from “Something’s Got A Hold On Me”, Etta’s oft-covered 1962 hit, and in all likelihood the only song in Dylan’s baggage to contain that phrase put a hurting on me.

Just as effortlessly, the songsmith finds a rhyme to that silly you hate me cos I’m pure; skilfully in the same metre, casually assonant, he plucks you make me insecure from the catalogue. From the “Stevie Wonder” drawer, presumably;

I feel so insecure 
In my mind, I can picture 
Losing you for sure 
And the pain I can't endure

There are not many songs with the word “insecure” in them anyway. The Beatles “Help!” (But every now and then I feel so insecure), but Stevie’s 1968 hit “I’m Wondering” is about the only one in which it is also rhymed with “endure” – just like Dylan/Springs’ third line does. That third Dylan/Springs line is again unendurably weak: But to be strong, I must be weak or else I won’t endure.

Joan Baez once declared with infectious self-mockery that Dylan called her self-written songs “lousy poetry”. It makes one curious about the qualification Dylan would give to a verse like this.

Motivated, probably, by Dylan’s fondness for the paradoxical inversion. Like “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” from “My Back Pages”, or like “He could die happily ever after” from “Tombstone Blues”, or like “If your memory serves you well” from “This Wheel’s On Fire”, and many more. But then again – in those mercurial sixties’ songs, the paradoxical reversals do have substance, a philosophical undercurrent or at least a comic effect. There’s none of that here; apart from the stylistically embarrassingly weak phrasing, the meaninglessness, the pretension and the lame argumentation – you make me insecure but to be strong I must be weak (?) interferes. With some good will, one may regard it as an allusion to Jean de la Fontaine’s “Le chêne et le roseau” (1668), the fable about the bragging, strong oak tree that goes down in the storm and the weak reed that survives precisely because of its weakness. However, this still does not erase the astonishment about the elementary school level of the style.

It is not a slip. The fourth line, I love you, but I love you unaware is just as clumsy as the first and third lines. If the “I” means that the antagonist is unaware of her love for him, the sentence is simply wrong. And if she means she is unaware of her own love for him, the sentence is completely bogus; after all, you don’t know what you don’t know. Either way, it remains a clumsy, laborious expression of feeling. Neither fish nor fowl.

Or rather: neither flesh nor blood.

To be continued. Next up: More Than Flesh And Blood part II: Johnny, that’s called songwriting.

—————————

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (only German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

By Tony Attwood

• All Directions 36: all hail the new direction
• All Directions 37: but which direction? Bob’s 1977 solution
• All directions 38: the end of Street Legal – filling in the gaps.

A full index of the articles in the series appears here

And so we are in 1978, which as we have seen, opened with three songs written with Helena Springs and then the final two songs required to get Street Legal up to the regulatory LP size.  After that came the rest of the co-compositions, some for which we have recordings, others being never recorded, or are simply lost.

There are seven songs listed as written with Helena Springs of which recordings have been found,  and the last time I looked only one of these is listed on BobDylan.com, although it seems his company owned the copyright to the whole collection, until this was sold to Universal.

It is commonly said that these songs were written by Dylan with a very small input by Ms Springs, but this is normally stated without any evidence.  Supporting the claim is the fact that although Ms Springs has had an illustrious career as a backing singer, she’s not known as a solo artist or composer, and indeed even Wiki, which seems to have a page on almost everyone who has recorded anything, doesn’t have a page on her.

Ms Springs later worked with the Pet Shop Boys and appeared as a backing vocalist on some of their early hits such as “West End Girls”. In 1986 she signed a solo deal with Arista records and released the singles “I want you” and “Paper Money”.

If you want to see a list of her performances as a backing vocalist – and there is no doubt she is a very good backing vocalist – there is a list on rateyourmusic

So moving on with the list of songs Dylan is credited with writing, and for which we’ve got recordings, the next song in the Dylan/Springs collection was “Walk out in the Rain”, which again Clapton recorded.

The lyrics most certainly could be Dylan’s, given all that had gone on in the previous year…

Walk out if it doesn’t feel right
I can tell you’re only lying
If you’ve got something better tonight
Then don’t mess up my mind with your crying

Just walk out in the rain
Walk out with your dreams
Walk out of my life if you don’t feel right
And catch the next train
Oh, darling, walk out in the rain

However the melody in the second and fourth lines of the verse doesn’t sound very Dylan at all, although the chorus, including its “train” certainly could be.  So it seems like a genuine co-composition. It certainly is a song that lends itself to multiple interpretations and this version makes the most of the gorgeous melody.

Next up was “Coming from the heart (the road is long)”.   Dylan did say that a full band version of it was tried out at the time of Street Legal and Helena Springs confirmed in an interview that it was the third song that she and Dylan wrote together.    Heylin liked it and included it in his list of lost Dylan gems.

Dylan did indeed play this once in 1978, and the lyrics are provided on BobDylan.com along with a recognition that it is a joint composition.

We have got to come together
How long can we stay apart?
You may get it maybe never
But it’s coming from the heart.

Your life is full of indecision
You can’t make up your mind.
We must get it in position
And move it on down the line.

‘Cause the road is long, it’s a long hard climb
I been on that road too long of a time
Yes the road is long, and it winds and winds
When I think of the love that I left behind.

But to me, the words are not very inspiring.  I looked at it about five years ago, and it didn’t do anything for me then, and it doesn’t do anything as I return to it in 2021 while writing this series – except when it hits the title line at the start of the chorus; there the emotions do work.

Maybe Bob was still thinking of his work with Jacques Levy and that he could reach those heights again through another collaboration – but I don’t think this was a period that could bring lines such as these from “Romance In Durango”

At the corrida we’ll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We’ll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon.

Next up was “Wandering Kind” which could well be a Dylan composition throughout.  It’s a hell of a story encapsulated in a short song: you could make a whole movie out of this.  And isn’t that the way so often with Dylan?

https://youtu.be/qM_Ax0_kRgA

Continuing the co-writing affair, next is “More than Flesh and Blood”, which again does have the sound of being a Dylan rock blues song.  I think what gives me that feeling is simply how well it works; it just has a natural feel – the verse is almost totally on one chord, and then the chorus provides a relief.  There’s a progression in the lyrics too, and the band has taken care over the production with the addition of a background sax section.  Yes, I’d put this down as a Dylan composition definitely.

Of course this is not to say it is a great song by Dylan standards, but it is lively, bouncy and entertaining, and not every Dylan composition is an absolute masterpiece (although of course many of them are!)

With profound thanks to Jack Aldworth and Eduardo Ricardo from Edlis Cafe we actually do have the lyrics – they’ve appeared on Untold Dylan before but in case you’ve missed them, they are published here again below.

I would argue that although one can’t say lines such as, “But to be strong I must be weak or else I won’t endure I love you, but I love you unaware,” to make them fit with the music is pure Dylan; we can indeed say that they are the lyrics of  very practised and accomplished song writer.  Indeed if Dylan were to say “no, I didn’t write that” I would still doubt that Ms Springs did, because these lines have a sense of maturity I don’t think she had as a songwriter; they feel like the lines of a songwriter who has written shedloads of lyrics, not just turned to the job the first time.

Lines such as, “The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse” are not profound but they are fun, illuminating, and just plain different.  If the line was there without the last four words it would be nothing of interest.  Add those four words and suddenly you have to take note.

I also love, “You drive off in your Cadillac and leave me with the mule”.  Where did that come from?

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong  I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear


I see you at the party baby trying to converse
The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse
Don't give into the spirit, the spirit is adverse
Beware because your feeble mind will tear
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Don't discard the lily like the garment that you wear
It's more than flesh and blood can bear


Time regards a pretty face like time regards a fool
You drive off in your Cadillac and leave me with the mule
In order to keep up with you I must go back to school
I see that in the wicked way you stare
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Do yourself a favour cos I know you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear

I'm going down to find a church that I can understand
I need new inspiration and you're only just a man.
And with the blackjack table I can't play another hand,
The meat you cook for me is blood red rare 
It's more than flesh and blood can bear 
More than flesh and blood can bear 
Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair 
More than flesh and blood can bear.

And that last verse, if Ms Springs did write that then where is the rest of her writing?  You can’t create lines like that in a song and then stop composing.  No, this one is real Dylan – and interestingly Dylan moving into a sense of humour rather than resource and regret.  He’s worked his way out of this end-of-marriage woes.

Moving on from the lyrics what have a we got?  A bouncy three chord song with hints of concern about the “true religion” he was in the process of finding maybe.   If my understanding of the opening line is right then she’s saying that he’s trying to get into the church, while she is already there.

But what we also have is Dylan firmly moving away from the style and approach of both lyrics and music in the last album, and really writing a clever, interesting piece.  Not a great work of art, but a jolly, amusing, enjoyable sketch.

And besides, who but Dylan could or would write

Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair

And this I think is the whole point of the Dylan/Springs era.

Bob had created a new set of styles and a radical new approach to songwriting both in terms of lyrics and music with the songs of the previous year.  He now needed to break away from that and find a new muse, and at the start of the collaborations, I think Ms Springs really did have quite an input.

So the songs we get are  “paying dues” and “having fun.”   But although, as I have indicated, there are items which Ms Springs is more likely to have written than Bob, simply because they are not Bob’s style, as we work through the series we get more and more of the vibrant, innovative and experimental Bob returning, after exhausting himself with the album material, and all the emotions, of the previous year.

Thus by the time we get to “I must love you too much” we can really hear that Dylan is once again enjoying himself.  Compare and contrast with the heartfelt angst of last year’s songs – this is now fun.  He’s found a new mode of expression.

Heylin makes an interesting comment that around this time Dylan started playing with the lyrics of some of these songs when they were used in sound checks, which again must have helped him move into his new mode of writing.

There were apparently more songs that were written in the Dylan/Springs era but I have not laid my hands on recordings of any of them so we have to stop here.

However I would suggest there is enough above to reveal that this was not a simple collaboration but an evolution away from the songs of the previous year, with Bob sometimes engaged more, sometimes less.

These songs emerged in different ways, and dismissing all the songs from this period as trite and of no interest is wrong… some are not that memorable, true, but others are, and should be noted.  And they are a sketchbook via which Bob cleared his mind of last year’s songs and got ready for whatever was to come next.

Expecting Rain provided a list of songs I’ve missed

• Baby Give It Up (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Her Memory (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs-Ken Moore)
• One More Time (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Responsibility (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Someone Else’s Arms (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Tell Me The Truth One Time (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• What’s The Matter (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Without You (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Take It Or Leave It (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Your Rockin’ Chair (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs) [Title uncertain?]

while Heylin went further and added another five

• Afternoon
• Romance Blues
• Satisfy Me
• Brown Skin Girl
• Miss Tea and Sympathy

and he states that over time all the songs were copyrighted.

So there we are.  Another period of Dylan’s life comes to an end.  And what next?  Well,  clearly Dylan was ready to take another leap forward.  But where?

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

Part I: Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway?

By Larry Fyffe

Taking ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’ as an allegory pertaining to the Holy Bible, Rosemary represents Samaria, and Lily, Judea. Big Jim represents King Solomon, ruler of the Promised Land; punished for his wayward ways by having his United Kingdom divided in half. Pick a card – Jack represents the One Almighty Jehovah, or both God and Jesus.

In the Old Testament, Aholah, akin to Rosemary, represents the northern part of Israel, and Aholibah, akin to Lily, the southern part. Displeased with their whoredom, Jehovah is not at all forgiving; there be no Jesus around in those days:

And the company shall stone them with stones
And dispatch them with their swords
They shall slay their sons, and their daughters
And burn up their houses with fire
(Ezekiel 23: 47)

In the New Testament, analogous to a divided kingdom, Jesus, Son of Jehovah, alias the Lamb, is born in a manger, but He’s said to be destined to re-unite everybody by sacrificing Himself; seems His Father is reluctant to sacrifice Himself:

And there shall be no more curse
But the throne of God, and of the Lamb shall be in it
And His servants shall serve Him
(Revelation 22: 3)

The Christian allegory breaks apart in ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’ unless one takes the Gnostic view that the spirit of Jesus has no beginning, and and has no end, just like His Father.  Both in love with the Jack of Hearts, Lily and Rosemary conspire with him to get rid of diamond-studded
Big Jim:

Backstage the girls were playing five-card stud by the stairs
Lily had two queens, she was hoping for a third to match her pair ....
She called another bet, and drew up the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Things happen pretty quick, and we are not sure Jack did it, but Jim ends up dead with a penknife stuck in his back. Jack’s a chip off the old block so to speak, a Jokerman; he has no intention of being sacrificed like a lamb, and like Jesus with Simon of Libya, Rosemary of Samaria takes the fall, double-crossed for the very last time:

And Rosemary on the gallows, she didn't even blink
The hanging judge was sober, he hadn't had a drink
The only person on the scene missing was the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

As goes the allegory, having seen to it that sinful Samaria has fallen, Jack/Jehovah/Jesus being concerned at the moment with the gilded Lily, with Judea, is determined to rebuild His Temple in its capital Jerusalem:

The cabaret was empty now, a sign said 'Closed For Repair'
Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair
She was thinking about her father, who she very rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary, and thinking about the law
But most of all, she was thinking about the Jack Of Hearts
(Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

by Jochen Markhorst

“Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow”, as Baretta’s Theme is actually called, is the title song of the TV series with which Sammy Davis Jr. scores a big hit in 1976, number one even in the Netherlands and in Sweden. It’s not an all-too-common expression, this sparrow monitoring, but it does occur, every now and then. An old gospel hymn is called “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” (1905) which is based – of course – on the Bible, on the sparrows in Matthew 10. Dylan is also browsing through this particular Bible book at the time of Shot Of Love (1981), as evidenced by the falling sparrow reference in “Every Grain Of Sand”, but Dylan is probably experiencing a déjà vu thanks to his old friends Peter, Paul and Mary. Though in their “Single Girl” (1964), it sounds hardly biblical, but rather corny cautionary:

When a fella comes a' courtin' you,
and sits you on his knee,
Keep your eye upon the sparrow
that flits from tree to tree

The Baretta song lacks a religious connotation as well. The little bird is mainly chosen for its playful, but otherwise empty rhyme:  

Keep your eye on the sparrow
When the going gets narrow,

and especially because it fits with the self-indulgent rhymes in the verses. Don’t go to bed with no price on your head and don’t roll the dice if you can’t pay the price and ain’t gonna fight with no thief in the night. But the best-known line is of course the one Dylan copies almost literally: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

“Heart Of Mine” is a bit of an oddity in Dylan’s catalogue. Apart from that one one-liner, the bard also adopts the empty rhyming; in fact, Dylan writes five identical couplets under the motto rhyme over reason. The musician Dylan overrules the poet Dylan this time; rhythmically, it is indeed a sparkling, outstanding song text, with a rhythm that varies as often (almost per line) as the melody.

The opening is already special. Dylan starts singing on the second beat, like a percussion guitar plays reggae (on the second and the fourth beat), shifts to assonating triplets in the next lines (don’t let her know that you love her), leaves whole bars almost empty… particularly in combination with the melody changes, it works wonderfully.

Content-wise he limits himself, unfortunately, to five times the same message: look out kid, don’t fall in love. It may be inspired by Dylan’s own diary – biographers look for and do find candidates for the forbidden love sung about here. However, Dylan has produced better poetry to express complex feelings. Idiomatically, it is very monosyllabic (literally; of the 200 words, only thirteen have more than one syllable). In itself, that is hardly a weakness, obviously, but here the monosyllabism is embedded in easy rhymes and empty talk. In terms of word choice, only the archaic so malicious and so full of guile stands out, echoing 1 Peter 2:1 (“Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile”) – but still: this one-time outpouring of stately terminology amidst all the simple talk is alienating. It does suggest, in fact, that the poet was inspired not so much by the Bible, but by a colleague: by the brilliant, tragic Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

Dunbar’s parents were slaves in Kentucky, but the underprivileged Paul Laurence seems to have overcome his disadvantage at an early age; at sixteen, his talent is recognised and his first poems are published (in his hometown, in the Dayton Herald). Yet despite the recognition and support of big names like Frederick Douglass, of successful schoolmates Wilbur and Orville Wright, and of rich, white admirers, Dunbar has a short life of trouble. After financial misery, racially motivated opposition, alcohol and recklessness, he dies of tuberculosis at 33 in his native Dayton.

His name and his work survive. And especially his poetry – in anthologies, schoolbooks and songs. And as an echo, too, in Dylan’s “Heart Of Mine”, which thematically mirrors Dunbar’s wonderful “The Made To Order Smile” anyway:

When a woman looks up at you with a twist about her eyes,
And her brows are half uplifted in a nicely feigned surprise
As you breathe some pretty sentence, though she hates you all the while,
She is very apt to stun you with a made to order smile.

… the first of four stanzas, in which the narrator, like the narrator of “Heart Of Mine”, warns of the devastating consequences of falling in love with a fatal woman. The choice of words in the third stanza reveals that Dylan does know Dunbar’s poem:

I confess that I'm eccentric and am not a woman's man,
For they seem to be constructed on the bunko fakir plan,
And it somehow sets me thinking that her heart is full of guile
When a woman looks up at me with a made to order smile.

… the maliciousness Dunbar warns about in general and the heart full of guile specifically, seem to inspire the opening line of Dylan’s final couplet, “Heart of mine so malicious and so full of guile”. Dylan’s twist, reversing the perspective, is more attractive, though; in Dunbar’s poem, the first person accuses the women of malice, while Dylan’s narrator searches closer to home, in his own heart, and acknowledges that his own feelings are betraying him.

Awkward, finally, is also the rather disrespectful way in which the master himself presents the song to the world: for the official release, on Shot Of Love, he chooses the sleaziest and most chaotic recording made of it, the half-serious one with Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr, somewhere listlessly rattling a tambourine. The decision even leads to a rare, vague mea culpa in an interview, 1984: “I chose it because Ringo and Ronnie Wood played on it.” Nevertheless, it quickly becomes clear that the song hides a small masterpiece, and the live version selected for Biograph (1985) does make up for it. On the bootlegs that have surfaced over the years, there are other, wonderful, “ordinary” recordings to be found. The one on Between Saved And Shot (1999), for instance, with a Dr. Hook-like approach, very driven vocals and an unparalleled band that is both tight and frayed at the same time.

Followers enough, too. Veteran Maria Muldaur calls her tribute album Heart Of Mine: Love Songs Of Bob Dylan (2006) and, among the other rather colourless, but okay covers, delivers a nice version (still, the opening “Buckets Of Rain” is the only real highlight of the album). Mountain’s hard rockers imagine themselves in a stadium, with lighters and all, and the Amnesty contribution by Blake Mills and Danielle Haim (Chimes Of Freedom, 2012) at least approaches the dry, garage rumble atmosphere of the original.

Much more appealing is the most famous rendition, the one by Norah Jones (together with the Peter Malick Group on New York City, 2003). Bluesy and sultry, beautiful piano, great musicians and of course she can sing, Ravi Shankar’s daughter. Her textual intervention is defensible; the cheesy If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime apparently goes a bit too far for her and is changed into the more charming Do the time, don’t do the crime, heart of mine. Still not Nobel Prize-worthy, but what the heck.

Arguably the most beautiful cover. The competitor is the relatively obscure Jason Shannon from Minneapolis. Shannon chooses an original, propulsive percussion cadence (it sounds a bit like the rattling of bare hands on a leather sofa) and superimposes rolling guitars, a tasteful organ and a modest bass. Just as restrained, and just as tasteful, is the female second voice.

Heart of Mine

According to Jason, he submitted the song for the I’m Not There cover competition. Not chosen, only awarded with an honourable mention from Columbia Records: best runner-up.

Which is like making someone happy with a dead sparrow, as the Dutch call it.

 ———-

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

By Larry Fyffe

Not unlike that of Christianity, there’s the Gnostic view that Jesus be a spirit split off from the far off Monad.

Jesus, not of the flesh, is able to inhabit the physical bodies of actual human beings –  like He does with that of the Libyan Simon on the way to the crucifixion.  Simon’s horribly executed on the cross, but Christ of course feels neither pain nor suffers death; in fact, so the story goes, Jesus laughs to Himself because of the cruel joke He’s played on His followers and on His enemies alike; the oh-so-alive “Son of God” then surprises His disciples by visiting them after He is supposed to be dead.

Another legend has it that Jesus is indeed of the flesh, but He conspires with others to have Simon compelled to take His place on the cross; then sails off to sea somewhere with Mary Magdalene:

And as they led Him away
They laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian
Coming out of the country
And on him they laid the cross
That he might bear it after Jesus
(St. Luke 23: 26)

Such a tale of so miraculous an escape apparently inspires the following song lyrics:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
Distant ships sailing into the mist
You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with truth so far off, what good will it do
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

The songwriter above takes on the persona of the Jokerman:

Jokerman
Dance to the nightingale tune
Birds fly high by the light of the moon
Ooooohoh, Jokerman
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

With lines inspired by:

There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams
(There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding ~ Elliot/King)

In the following song lyrics, it looks like the narrator thereof is going off to see whether or not Jesus is indeed an everlasting Gnostic spirit whom he suspects has encased Himself in the reincarnated body of Simon the Cyrenian; living now in Libya with His spirit-partner Mary Magdalene. One thing is for sure – Mary has lots of oil to rub on His feet:

Well, I'm going off to Libya
There's a guy I gotta see
He's been living there three years now
In an oil refinery
(Bob Dylan: Got My Mind Made Up ~ Dylan/Petty)

Which brings up the possible allegories in ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’. If two-timing Big Jim is Solomon therein, then he’s confronted by Jehovah, the Jack Of Hearts (JOH) who punishes the wayward King of the diamond mines by breaking up the  United Kingdom of Israel – Lily symbolizes southern Judea, and Rosemary, northern Samaria.

Lily and Rosemary end up united only in their unhappiness with Big Jim:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys ....
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved,
That ye tell him that I am sick of love
(Song Of Solomon 2:1; 5: 8)

If the Jack Of Hearts is instead considered to be a Christian-like combination of Jehovah/Jesus, He must be a timeless spirit. As it is claimed by the Gnostics, since otherwise the Song of Solomon allegory does not work – it’s written long before Jesus is said to be born in a manger.

In the song lyrics below, it seems that Lily cares little for the prospects of a re-united kingdom, and decides instead that she likes the Son of God’s curls (especially now that they’re sparkling with stolen gold dust) more than she loves her Father who turned against the King of Diamonds:

She  was thinking about her father, who she very rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary, and thinking about the law
But most of all she was thinking 'bout the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts)

Turns out lusty Lily is just another manifestation of the Gnostic spirit that also inhabits the physical bodies of Jungian Mary Magdalene archetypes; they are always running off with adventure-seeking, shape-shifting Jokermen, whereupon they always end up in quite a pickle:

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face, and my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango )

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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 article is part of our on-going series tracing the Never Ending Tour, with commentary and audios of the performances.

A full index of all the articles tracing the tour from 1988 onward, is available here.  The previous articles about the Prague concerts of 1995 are…

• 1995, part 1: The Prague Revelation and other astonishments
• 1995, part 2: The Prague Revelation – Salt for Salt, Peak Prague
• 1995, Part 3, The Prague Revelation – down in the flood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Of course, Dylan’s revelatory three day residency on Prague was not the end of the 1995 story, just the beginning. He went on from there to performances equal to Prague, but not with the same consistency.

His three day residency in London, from the 29^th to the 31^st of March at the Brixton Academy, is a good example. It may well be that the recording of the London concerts was not as good. Despite their obvious audience source, there is something about the Prague recordings, how they capture the echo of the venue, and the clarity of the sound, that was not sustained in London. Yet there were some outstanding moments in London, such as this ‘Masters of War’, which equals the best of Prague:

Masters of War

For my ear, we have a ‘best ever’ performance of this song, at least in terms of acoustic versions. In my post for Master Harpist 2, I wrote regarding this performance: ‘Dylan can let rip with this song, and turn it into a howling rocker, but this performance is all restraint, a sense of holding back that emotion, which just breaks through the voice here and there, until we get to the harp, where we get a sharper, more trenchant comment. Listen to the way the guitar and harmonica surge back and forward in a syncopated manner, while Dylan’s vocal and harmonica phrasing drive the song forward. Hard to find a better Dylan performance than this.’

Another London performance we can’t overlook is this ‘Senor’, a song that takes us right to the borderlands of spiritual despair. It’s a wonderful moody song from  Street Legal (1978) and never fails to create a spooky atmosphere on stage. There is a pretty good video of this performance, and you see Dylan, once more without guitar, putting on a very Prague-like performance. (I have added the audio link in case the You Tube clip disappears)

Senor

The London concerts are remarkable for a most rare performance of ‘Joey’ off  Desire (1975). ‘Joey’ has never been my favourite Dylan song, as it appears to lionise a mafia figure. How different from ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol’ (1964) which  presents us with a harrowing tale of how a poor black woman was randomly killed by a rich crook who might have been Joey, or at least a Joey type figure. As a story, this epic failed to move me, but if any performance of the song was going to move me it would be this one. Whatever you think of the song, the power of this performance turns it into a passionate narrative of betrayal. A remarkable vocal.

Joey

‘Dignity’ was written in 1989 for Oh Mercy, but Dylan was dissatisfied with the versions they tried out. He re-recorded it in 1994, and many of us first became aware of the song from the 1994 MTV Unplugged concert. A derisive humour lies behind this song. Dignity can no longer be found no matter where you search:

‘I went down where the vultures feed
I would've got deeper, but there wasn't any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn't any difference to me’

You can listen to it as if dignity was a person, and the effect is quite odd.  I’ve just added the capital D to dignity.

‘Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve
Somebody said Dignity was the first to leave
I went into the city, went into the town
Went into the land of the midnight sun’

This 1995 London performance recalls the MTV performance of the year before, but to my mind has the edge on the earlier performance, being a bit sharper and rougher.

Dignity

What I like about Dylan’s 1995 vocals is the understated softness of his voice when he needs it. Yes, he can yell it out, and often the songs build from soft to loud, but in the case of the London performance of ‘She Belongs to Me’ he pretty much keeps it soft and intimate, as if it were a love song instead of a cautionary account of how one can be bewitched and end up ‘peeking through a keyhole down upon your knees.’ The woman in question is a charmer for sure – but what is the cost of getting involved? Serving another’s ego?

She belongs to me.

Feel like kicking back with a bit of rock blues? A song that belts along with a steady rock pace? Something to dance to? Try this London performance of ‘Tombstone Blues’. On the album (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) the song happens at quite a frantic pace, thirty years later it rollicks along. The lyrics come over nice and clearly too.

Tombstone Blues

Throughout Dylan’s songs there is a resistance to over-educated intellectualism. Dylan loved baiting intellectuals, wanna-be intellectuals and pretenders. In ‘Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart’ he complains about ‘too much educated rap.’ There is an intellectual force behind his wild whirling words however, but it leans to the anarchic, the chaotic and the revelatory. In ‘Tombstone Blues’ we find this:

‘I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge’

And this fucked up world is sure going to make you sick.

‘Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please, make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"’

A regular on Dylan’s set list, ‘If You See Her Say Hello’ wasn’t played at Prague, so it’s a pleasure to pick it up here, in London. These London performances make a nice complement to Prague.

The vocal is restrained, the harmonica sharp-edged and guitarist John Jackson gives the song a country twist. Again we get that easy, mid-tempo, catchy rhythm that makes these songs fun to listen to. It is less wrought than the album version (Blood on the Tracks, 1974), but no less nostalgic for that.

If you see her say hello

Before leaving the London concerts behind, here’s an unusual performance. On the last night, the 31^st of March, Dylan is joined onstage by Elvis Costello for a rousing performance of ‘I Shall Be Released.’ Dylan’s distinctive voice and vocal phrasing do not make him an easy partner in any duet. But here they take turns and sing together only on the chorus and it turns out pretty okay. The video of this one is pretty cool too.

I shall be released.

We now move from London to Edinburgh, 7^th April, for another rarity, the last ever performance of ‘What Was It You Wanted?’ (Oh Mercy 1989)

I have always admired this song for its portrayal of devastating emotional disconnection. Imagine two people sitting at a table. They are apparently having a conversation but what we hear is what just one of them is saying, or perhaps thinking. Are you listening to me? Are you there at all? It’s the ultimate disconnect.

‘Whatever you wanted
Slipped out of my mind
Would you remind me again
If you'd be so kind
Has the record been breaking
Did the needle just skip
Is there somebody waitin'
Was there a slip of the lip?’

This verse is obsessively repetitive, the same notes repeated eight times before a chord change, making it sound as if the needle really is skipping on the track itself. Very clever. Structurally it’s relentless, as is the alienation it portrays. Do we even know whom we’re talking to or what about?

‘What was it you wanted
I ain't keepin' score
Are you the same person
That was here before?
Is it something important
Maybe not
What was it you wanted?
Tell me again I forgot’

Of course people want something, even if they don’t come out and say it. So what’s their angle?

‘Whatever you wanted
What can it be
Did somebody tell you
That you could get it from me
Is it something that comes natural
Is it easy to say
Why do you want it
Who are you anyway?’

This kind of hidden agenda makes us suspicious. ‘Are you talking to me?’ Do these two people even know each other? Self doubt intervenes.

‘Is the scenery changing
Am I getting it wrong
Is the whole thing going backwards
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?’

I don’t know why he left it behind after 1995, for by the sound of this performance Dylan is fully engaged with the song. It’s a great performance although Dylan’s voice is a bit soft or under-recorded at the beginning.

What was it you wanted?

While on the subject of songs from Oh Mercy, and still in Edinburgh, we find an equally committed performance of ‘Disease of Conceit.’ In 1996 this song too would be dropped from Dylan’s repertoire. It’s a very explicit song. There is nothing elusive in its imagery. It’s almost embarrassingly direct, and so suits Dylan’s understated, 1995 style.

The disease of conceit

That’s it for now. Next time we’ll be looking at some more compelling sounds from 1995. Until then, stay safe and happy listening.

Kia Ora

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

(I shall be released)

Senor

• Jet Pilot (1965) part I: Greetings from Vermillion
• Jet Pilot (1965) part II: I threw it all away
• Jet Pilot part III: A whole lotta woman
• Jet Pilot part IV: What is the most important thing in your life?

by Jochen Markhorst

V          The mixed up, muddled up, shook up world

She got all the downtown boys, all at her command
But you've got to watch her closely 'cause she ain't no woman
She's a man

“Down Town” is still in the air, when Dylan shakes his verse with the downtown boys out of his sleeve. In the third week of 1965, Petula Clark is number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first in a long line of American hits for Petula. On the day Dylan records “Jet Pilot”, 5 October, “Round Every Corner” has just entered at no. 85, after she has scored a Top 3 hit with “I Know A Place” (and the next no. 1 hit, “My Love”, follows). A good year, then, for Petula, but Dylan cannot complain either; in this same week chart (3-9 October 1965), three Dylan songs are making money: “Like A Rolling Stone” on 33, “Positively 4th Street” on 34 and The Turtles’ Top 10 hit “It Ain’t Me Babe” is also still there, on 29.

But downtown boys is of course not the punchline, or the earcatcher of the rejected miniature “Jet Pilot”.

Transgender protagonists, and themes such as transsexuality and gender confusion, have been bon ton in pop music since the 1990s. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, Blur’s “Boys And Girls”, “A Girl Called Johnny”, Green Day’s “She”… with Christina Aguilera’s “Reflection”, the theme has even entered the mainstream and Disney films in a watered-down form.

The way was paved twenty years earlier by superstars like David Bowie and Lou Reed, who not only thematised gender confusion in world hits (“Walk On The Wild Side” and “Rebel Rebel”, for example), but also made it part of their image. T. Rex’s Marc Bolan is the pioneer in 1971, but the success of Reed and Bowie breaks the dam. Glam rock becomes a new sub-current – the long-haired, eye-shadowed, rouged, lip-sticked and androgynously dressed men of bands like The Sweet, Mott The Hoople and Queen.

As a punchline of a pop song, it is of course a bit older than Marc Bolan. “Lola” has the scoop on that. After all, it is only in the last verse that it becomes clear that Lola is a man;

She said, "Little boy, gonna make you a man"
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola
Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

In the same borderland, Pink Floyd had already done pioneering work three years earlier, when the genius crackpot Syd Barrett still has some sense and is able to write brilliant gems like “See Emily Play” and “Lucifer Sam”. The first single “Arnold Layne” (March ’67) sings about a cross-dresser, with, intentional or not, a small Dylan reference;

Arnold Layne had a strange hobby
Collecting clothes moonshine washing line
They suit him fine
On the wall hung a tall mirror
Distorted view, see through baby blue
He dug it

Incidentally, based on facts, according to Roger Water: “Both my mother and Syd’s mother had students as lodgers because there was a girls’ college up the road so there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and ‘Arnold’ or whoever he was, had bits off our washing lines.” The Arnold in the song does not end well. They gave him time, doors bang, chain gang he hates it.

But even the unbridled taboo-breaking free-thinker Syd Barrett is not the first to visit these caverns. In that October week in 1965, when Dylan runs his finger through the Billboard Hot 100 to see how his new and his old single are doing, he undoubtedly lingers at number 55.

Radio broadcaster Dylan announces the band with some sympathy, in November 2007 (Theme Time Radio Hour, episode 57 “Head To Toe”):

“There’s a lot of groups that people think are one-hit-wonders. One band that always ends up in that list, is the Barbarians. Their drummer was named Victor Moulton, but everyone knew him as “Moulty”. At age 14, a home-made pipe bomb exploded and he lost his hand. He got a metal hook, much like Captain Hook. He was still a great drummer, and I think, that hook brought a certain punk credibility to the band.”

That’s what Dylan tells us in introduction to a sort of autobiographical song by drummer Victor Moulton, to “Moulty”, a catchy “Hang On Sloopy” rip-off from 1966. But that’s not the hit he refers to when the DJ calls The Barbarians a one-hit-wonder – that would be the modest hit “Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl”.

The song achieves a certain status because it is often selected for compilation albums, notably on the 1998 re-issue of the legendary Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. Actually, though, like the band itself and the rest of their output, it’s rather trite. Their only, quite forgettable, LP from 1966, is otherwise filled with two songs of their own and poor covers of modern classics like “Susie Q” and “Memphis, Tennessee”. Especially The Barbarians’ adaptations of “House Of The Rising Sun” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” are deplorable, despite their “punk credibility”.

Still, the pop premiere for a song thematising gender confusion is in their name, with that song reaching its top position in Billboard on the same day when Dylan half-improvises: you’ve got to watch her closely ’cause she ain’t no woman, she’s a man.

https://youtu.be/yDpGsFI3WNg

Dylan, however, does give it a “Lola” charge. The Barbarians articulate, ironically, conservative wailing from a disapproving old nag;

Are you a boy, or are you a girl?
With your long blond hair you look like a girl
Yeah, you look like a girl
You may be a boy (Hey) you look like a girl

… and continue with a somewhat obvious, yet charming nod to The Beatles and to Dylan:

You're either a girl or you come from Liverpool
(Yeah, Liverpool)
You can dog like a female monkey, but you swim like a stone
(Yeah, a rolling stone)
You may be a boy (Hey) you look like a girl

The reassurance that it is ironic can be distilled from the appearance of the band; although no wildly waving blonde manes, no freak flags flying, they are indeed – by the standards of 1965 – long-haired themselves.

It’s a pity, though, that Dylan leaves it at this one unfinished sketch, rejecting “Jet Pilot” on the same day again, 5 October. After all, it could have been the blueprint for “Lola”, for “Walk On The Wild Side”, for “Rebel Rebel”, for all those little masterpieces that thematise female he’s and male she’s. Fortunately, they achieved immortality on their own, without “Jet Pilot”, making the world a little more beautiful in doing so. Although never on the astronomical level of the stoning scene in Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, obviously. Where men who play women have to dress up as men to avoid being seen as women. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

A new Dylan Album

By Tony Attwood

Dylan Obscuranti is an imaginary album consisting of both lesser known Dylan songs performed either by himself or other people, including re-worked cover versions of songs which take the song into somewhere completely different.

This is not the first Dylan album we have created.  Earlier we invented “Bob Dylan 1980” and we have also created “The Lost Album” which could have replaced “Down in the Groove” and (in our view) done a much better job of it!

Now I am at it against with Dylan Obscuranti.  You can hear the opening tracks on our You Tube channel or via the articles…

• Track 1 – Angelina but not as we know it
• Track 2 – Tomorrow is a long time
• Track 3 – I’m not there
• Track 4 – Mama you been on my mind
• Track 5 – Love is just a four letter word
• Track 6 – To fall in love with you
• Track 7 – Restless Farewell sung for Frank Sinatra

As you can see it is a totally personal collection: the album I would put together for commercial release if anyone was crazy enough to do invite me so to do.

“Ballad for a Friend” is a song I have raved over on this site since I first reviewed it.  It has however not been given massive prominence on this site however because in the past I have not been able to find a copy on the internet to illustrate my points.  It is here now (below) but if it vanishes by the time you are reading this, go to Spotify or Amazon or buy the album.  It is worth it for this one track alone.

Most of us had never heard of it at all until it turned up on The Bootleg Series, Vol 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 and then the genius of the piece hit at least some of us.

The authenticity is there both at the start and the end – the start because the tape is not running at full speed as Bob starts playing, and the end as he jumps in with his nervous explanation about how he didn’t get the words right.

Everything about this song is utterly amazing.  1962, when this was written, was  the year Bob exploded on the scene writing 36 songs including “Hard Rain”, “Don’t think twice” etc.  So it was a year of genius.

But this was the first song of that year.  Prior to this song, Bob had written 14 songs – and to illustrate my point about this being an explosion, here are those 14

1959/60 

1. Hey Little Richard
2. When I got troubles
3. I got a new girl
4. One eyed jacks
5. Bonnie Why’d You Cut My Hair
6. Talking Hugh Brown (humour)

1961

1. Song to Woodie
2. Talkin New York 
3. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.
4. Talkin Folk Lore Centre Blues
5. Talkin Hava Negeilah blues
6. Man on the street
7. Hard times in New York Town
8. On Wisconsin (lyrics only)
9. I was young when I left home

There is very little there to prepare us for this masterpiece.  “Man on the street” gives the slightest hint, but really it is only “I was young when I left home” that can be seen as a precedent.

That song above is indeed the warm-up to “Ballad for a Friend”  and paved the way – and why neither song gained bigger prominence in the world of Dylan I can’t really say.  Neither gained a performance in public as far as we know.

But not only was Bob inexperienced as a songwriter when he wrote “Ballad”, he was also just 21.  And indeed just how new to the music scene he was can be heard by his chatter at the end.  He was incredibly nervous in making this recording.

And we can’t just say it is the guitar work, or the melody or the lyrics that stands out – the whole composition is a masterpiece.   Dylan interprets the situation as one that would affect the character in the song so much that he would have no option but to pull back from the world and just tell the story.   There’s no false emotionalism there – he just tells the story, as one can imagine the character to whom this happened, doing.

But we have to note that this is not the typical songwriting style that Dylan took up in this and the next year in which he wrote 67 songs (you’ll find the whole list in the order of composition in our article on Dylan compositions in the 60s).

What makes the melody work against the accompaniment is that the melody is based fairly and squarely around the notes of the chord of A major (A C-sharp E).  Not exclusively, but mostly.  Against this melody the guitar is playing the alternating chords of A major and D major, and then when there is no melody, Dylan throws in the blues notes of C and G.  This whole arrangement shows a rare maturity – the sort of ability and insight that one would normally associate with a much older performer.  It works because the movement of the two chords is in perfect liaison with the melody and because the blues guitar only clocks in after the singing has stopped.  The signing reports the events, it is the blues guitar that gives us the musical commentary on the horror of what has happened.

I find this remarkable, because I would have expected Dylan at this time either to be using a blues template or a Woody Guthrie approach, but this is neither.  Also it is interesting that he doesn’t indulge in any emotion.  He is numb, he just sings it.   Further, by ending each verse at the top we are pushed forward onto the next verse, and on and on.  It is like the truck rolling down the hill, it comes on and on, and nothing is going to stop it.

This theme of loss of course became one of Dylan’s favourites over  the years, but this is the loss of friendship not  the loss of a loved one, as most of Dylan’s “loss” songs are.  As such it is the precursor of “Bob Dylan’s Dream” – although there the friends are lost through the passing of time, not through a single dramatic, horrific event as here.

Some commentators have said that something akin to this story actually happened to Dylan’s friend, although the young man was severely injured but didn’t die.  I can’t verify that, but either way it doesn’t affect the utter brilliance of this conception.

The guitar is tuned to open A; the territory is the North Country, of course, the language is the desperation of the blues, but with life continuing.  This is just what happens.  Just watch it unfold.

Sad I’m sittin’ on the railroad track,
Watchin’ that old smokestack.
Train is a-leavin’ but it won’t be back.

Years ago we hung around,
Watchin’ trains roll through the town.
Now that train is a-graveyard bound.

Where we go up in that North Country,
Lakes and streams and mines, so free,
I had no better friend than he.

Something happened to him that day,
I thought I heard a stranger say,
I hung my head and stole away.

A diesel truck was rollin’ slow,
Pullin’ down a heavy load.
It left him on a Utah road.

They carried him back to his home town,
His mother cried, his sister moaned,
Listin’ to them church bells toll.

Why did Dylan never perform the song?   Probably because he was so busy writing, and indeed eight songs later he wrote the piece that was to make him a multi-millionaire all on its own: “Blowing in the Wind.”  And when placed next to that song, maybe we can understand why it didn’t get onto Freewheelin’.   It just isn’t Freewheelin’.

But also maybe because it was a song related to his hometown.  “Susan” in commentating on my original review of this song wrote, this comment reproduced below, which I find helpful in fixing the images in the song…

“In Ballad for a Friend, Dylan describes the North Country as “Lakes and streams and mines so free”. Hibbing, Minnesota is a small city that’s part of what we call the “Iron Range”, an area of the state where enormous taconite mines have provided the economic stability, or instability, of everyone who lives there. Taconite pellets were transported from the mines — via trains — to far-away places where they were made into steel.
Dylan was a “Ranger” (lived on the Iron Range), and he grew up as all Ranger kids did… with taconite mines and railroad tracks a part of the landscape, and where long, dirty, and loud trains were part of daily life as they rolled through town.
Although those things are reflected in this song, there is another piece to living on the Iron Range that I think might be referred to in at least one Dylan song, although I’m not familiar with all of his work. That piece is that everyone growing up on the Range internalizes the reality that they are all economically connected to the international marketplace for taconite pellets.
Might this be reflected as a metaphor somewhere?”

There is no other song like this that I know.  Nothing.  Indeed both when I originally heard the song, and now, having not played it to myself for a while I need nothing else.  Not tonight, not tomorrow.  Not for a long while.

It utterly deserves a place on my imaginary “Dylan Obscuranti” album.

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

Previously in this series:

• The Mythology Of Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s Mythology (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

History shows that John Calvin’s Puritan theology with its doctrine of ‘original sin’ has a big impact on the development of the “American Dream”:

No mother's son but has misdone
And broken God's command
All have transgressed, even the best
And merited God's wrath
(Michael Wigglesworth: Day Of Doom, stanza LXVI)

Religious thinkers have their parts to play in the mythological visions of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. According to Calvin, an individual is a member of God’s Elect from the get-go, and any doing of ‘good works’ down on Earth ain’t a-gonna help him or her make it to Heaven after death. The Almighty God plays no favorites with the life and death of his creations – as expressed in the following song lyrics:

When the Reaper's task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loveliest, and the best
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

John Wesley’s Methodist theology opens up the possibility of everyone gaining God’s grace, but his keeping of the doctrine of ‘original sin’ lends itself to satire – as the song lyrics below demonstrate:

John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor
He travelled with a gun in every hand
All along this countryside, he opened many a door
But he was never known to hurt an honest man
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

The restrictive Calvinist doctrine ensures that the feeling of guilt is everywhere among its followers since only a relative few of them get a free pass to salvation, and even then those selected to the Elect do not know that they are; outsiders receive no such tickets for sure.

Guilt is everywhere; everyone ought to feel guilty because Eve allowed herself to be seduced by the  earth-bound Devil, and God sacrifices His Son to save us:

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine)

Just like Anthony Quinn says in the pirate movie:

"Zac, you must be guilty of something"
( "A High Wind In Jamaica")

Repeated in the following song lyrics:

Whatever you got to say to me
Won't come as any shock
I must be guilty of something
You just whisper it into my ear
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)

The lambasting of the ‘original sin’ doctrine makes up a part of Dylan’s personal mythological vision right from its early construction:

My trip has been a pleasant one
And my time, it isn't long
And I still do not know 
What it was that I've done wrong
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)

Fredrich Nietzsche called the waiting for spiritual salvation in the afterlife, instead of seeking to achieve material success it in this one, the ‘morality of slaves”; it is said by sociologist Max Weber that the early Calvinists considered material success a worldly “sign” that they be indeed members of the Almighty’s Elect.

…..And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

By Tony Attwood

This is episode 38 of All Directions of Once.  The last two articles were…

• Where now Señor? There’s more than enough time to think
• But which direction? Bob’s 1977 solution

Please do click on the link above for the index to the whole series.  This article deals with the final compositions for Street Legal, and the opening work with Helena Springs.

—————

After writing “No time to think” in 1977, a song which I argued in my last piece in this series is an absolute masterpiece, Bob Dylan composed three more songs in the year, all of which were included in Street Legal: “True Love Tends to Forget”, “We better talk this over” and “Where are you tonight?”

And we can imagine that Bob was having some difficulties here.  First, “No time to think” an utter monument, which must have been exhausting to write.  In any other situation, we might have expected the artist to now have a break, but of course with the demand of an album, and all the inner turmoil of the end of a marriage that was not possible.   Dylan had to keep writing to enable all his thoughts to come out, and he knew he also had to complete the album.

But by way of introduction, let’s experience once more the extraordinary piece that Dylan now had to set aside in order to write something fresh…

Not surprisingly the level of extraordinary brilliance seen so far could not be maintained, and “True Love” which came next is in almost every way is a less entrancing song.  “Almost every way” because it still has a lyrical and musical highpoint in the very unexpected middle 8:

I was lyin' down in the reeds without any oxygen
I saw you in the wilderness among the men.
Saw you drift into infinity and come back again
All you got to do is wait and I'll tell you when.

And indeed Dylan must have known he’d created something special because very unusually for a middle 8, it is repeated, and repeated, in fact taking the place of a chorus.

This mid-section of the song opens by moving down a tone into the blues-orientated flattened 7th, going back to the tonic, back down to the 4th, then suddenly into the minor…  Musically it is extraordinary.   Far more powerful than the music in the rest of the song!

And the lyrics – any attempt at a literal meaning is pointless, for there is none beyond the fact that he saw her and was overwhelmed by her, but he isn’t quite ready.

“True love tends to forget” is as the title suggests a song of regret and moving on – and it is a song that outside of the middle 8 contains none of the intricacies of “No time to think” either in its musical construction, its lyrics or its rhyme.

And it is curious that this is followed by “We better talk this over”, since “True Love” suggests there is nothing to talk over.  But then, when the mind is in turmoil over the end of a relationship, logic rarely gets in the way.

Given that we have no indication of any songs that were tried out and then not used on  the album it really does look as if Bob was writing to order – and as such the quality was extraordinarily high.  We can hardly complain if the occasional song slips from the extraordinarily high standards set elsewhere.

Here we have yet another lost love song.  The explanation is that it is over, but he wishes (sometimes) it wasn’t or even thinks (sometimes) maybe it isn’t.  Or it is, but he knows he can’t accept it.

But most interestingly from a musical point of view is the fact that once more we have a song saved by a middle 8 – Bob has clearly taken note of what he has experiemented with previously.  The rhyme is perhaps somewhat forced but the meaning and the music are both so powerful.

You don’t have to be afraid of looking into my face
We’ve done nothing to each other time will not erase

And the other constant through these songs is still there, for Dylan is above all in these masterful works playing with words, seeing where they will take him.  Just consider…

Let’s call it a day go our own different way
Before we decay.

Who else would even consider that?  It just stops us short.

But the end is something else in terms of the end of the relationship.  Has anyone ever described such a moment like this before?

I guess I’ll be leaving tomorrow
If I have to beg, steal or borrow
It’d be great to cross paths in a day and a half
Look at each other and laugh

But I don’t think it’s liable to happen
Like the sound of one hand clappin’
The vows that we kept are now broken and swept
’Neath the bed where we slept

The one-off final performance of the song shows us exactly what this could be, but seemingly Bob just couldn’t quite find the way to express his emotions constantly at the time.  And given the high quality of his writing during this period we can hardly blame him for that.

And so we come to the last song in the sequence… Where are you tonight?  (Journey through the Dark Heat).

Here, we might feel, as with several other songs in this collection, that each line is a song in its own right, but there is more to it than that because of the length of the verse – no matter how many times one hears it, the fact is that the second four lines catch one out – it feels like we have had the bulk of the verse after four long lines, but then another four come tumbling in, all with the same melody and that same, incredibly simple, endless, I IV chord sequence. The pressure builds and builds, and only then do we finally hit the dominant chord and find a way out.

Then it’s back to that relentless I IV…

There’s a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much 
but she’s drifting like a satellite.
There’s a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze, 
laughter down on  Elizabeth Street

This is extraordinary writing and it works because the images are so visual, so varied and hence so powerful, and most of all it works because the music is so fitting.

And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone 
where she bathed in a stream of pure heat.

It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not.  It simply is Hard Rain, re-worked years later.   This is where the darling young one has been, and in the end the lines tell us where we are, what sort of world we are in…  It is the summation of all the songs already written for the album.

For no, he hasn’t gone out and revealed the truth everywhere as he promised with lines such as

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Likewise, he has not always spoken out

Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'

Because somehow, it seems, the song was never fully learned for …

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, 
to live it you have to explode.

And it all came down to personal relationships as

She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair 
and discovered her invisible self.

And we hear the conclusion with the last selection of I IV chords ends…

If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise, 
remind me to show you the scars.

Was Dylan reminded of this, years further on, when he said, “I’ve still got the scars that the sun doesn’t heal?” Quite possibly – it’s hard now not to listen to “Not Dark Yet” and not remember this earlier venture into such thoughts.

And yet despite this failure to deliver on the message of hope that was offered in Hard Rain, he can still rejoice in the fact that he is still here, still alive, still singing…

There’s a new day at dawn and I’ve finally arrived.
If I’m there in the morning, baby, you’ll know I’ve survived.
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m alive,
But without you it just doesn’t seem right.
Oh, where are you tonight?

Has the situation of lost love ever been summarized so perfectly?  The man who sang of his love in “Isis” is back, and he’s just had some more amazing experiences.  He’s “stayed at a lot of people’s houses which had poetry books and poetry volumes” and he’s read them all.

And yes of course there is a train, there’s always a train.  Train’s were there as early as 1962 in the first, stunning, overwhelming masterpiece

Sad I’m sittin’ on the railroad track,
Watchin’ that old smokestack.
Train is a-leavin’ but it won’t be back.

But just as “Ballad for a Friend” is, as far as we know, fiction, so “Where Are You Tonight?” does not have to be the truth.  Maybe it is, but that is not the point.  It is just an expression of feeling, not reality.

If you want to know more, I thoroughly recommend Jochen’s consideration of the piece.  It’s fun, and it really reveals where the notions in the song come from.

•  “Where Are You Tonight?” Chanson d’automne
• The first two Spanish sestets
• From Rapunzel to the Battle of Passchendaele

But as Jochen notes, ‘In the end, the poet Dylan uses the images from Grimm’s fairy tales only superficially – just as superficially as, for example, the references to Roman mythology in “Changing Of The Guards”, to Charley Patton in “New Pony” or to Jesus in “Señor”.’

Indeed, Dylan had found a way to use the turmoil of emotions and feelings that he felt over the breakup of his marriage and the fight over access to his children, to create a set of what I find some of the most amazing and extraordinary pieces of music he has ever written.  And why not bring in some fairy tales?  As I said, he was after all, fighting over the issue of access to his children.

The only problem musically was, he didn’t yet have an album’s worth.

1978

The remaining two songs from the album were written the following year – “New Pony”, and “Baby Stop Crying”, while in between Bob’s new-found hobby of writing songs with Helena Springs was being explored for the first time.

Perhaps it was through feeling exhausted from his earlier writing, or perhaps through having simply run out of ideas, or perhaps because he couldn’t write anything more about his marital disharmony, Dylan now went back to his traditional approach: he picked up a Charley Patton song from 1929, “Pony Blues” (1929) and it got his brain going once more.  The image of the new pony is sexual – it always has been through the blues; the story is about the end of a relationship (ditto).

Even the name is amended from elsewhere (Jochen has saved me the trouble of looking it up: it is Arthur Crudup’s “Black Pony Blues” recorded in 1941, with bits of Dylan put in between).

It’s a fun reworking of the traditions and there’s nothing wrong with that, but given that all of the songs written so far have a theme, it is strange to have this piece plopped down among the rest of the album.  But then, that has often been the way through the history of pop and rock.  The music is controlled by the medium – the allotted length of the 45rpm single, the LP and then the CD, not to mention the unwillingness of radio DJs to play anything over three minutes long.  Pop and rock have always been art forms controlled by the medium.

And then, after one derivative piece we get another: the joint composition, “If I don’t be there by morning” written with Helena Springs – one of many joint compositions that followed.

There’s again a borrowing here, this time from “Friend of the Devil” written by Robert Hunter and Gerry Garcia and recorded by Grateful Dead.

Blue sky upon the horizon,
Private eye on my trail,
And if I don’t be there by morning
She’ll know that I must’ve spent the night in jail.

The song is not listed on BobDylan.com as a Dylan composition although the Clapton album clearly lists it as Dylan/Springs.  (And I wonder in passing if Dylan’s share was sold along with all the rest of his publishing rights.  I guess so).

It’s a 12 bar blues, and Clapton doesn’t have much commercial success with it, but unlike Dylan who won’t touch it, Clapton can’t leave it alone.  And it is certainly possible to see what attracted him.

First, it is written (or at least it is performed by Clapton) in B.  Which is very, very unusual.  Indeed I can’t think of any pop or rock song I’ve ever been asked to perform in B (although that could just be my memory failing as I get older).

But then we have the middle section which is, well, even odder than B.  It’s not really a middle 8 at all, it is an appendix to the verse.  The lyrics are simplicity themselves ( see below) but the chords….  Well!  Not only is it in B but it is now going

F#m,  B,  E,  F#m,  B,  C,  C#,  F#

OK if you are not a musician that is just a load of gibberish, but believe me it is strange.  F sharp minor (F#m) is not a chord one generally finds in the key of B, and yet we go straight from it back to B, and then E (a chord you would expect to find when playing in B).

And then towards the end of the middle 8 we have B, C, C#, F# – no wonder Clapton loved this because the guitar maestro is given opportunities here that he surely had never contemplated before.   Believe me you simply don’t write songs that go B, C, C#…

All of which makes me think that either Bob was larking around with his newfound friend, or else Ms Springs was thinking, “I’ll show Bob I can write original stuff too”.  Either way when we have

Finding my way back to you girl, Lonely and blue and mistreated too. 
Sometimes I think of you girl, Is it true that you think of me too?

Dull words, but musically it works.  And yep, in my band playing days if someone had given me a song with that middle 8, I’d have grabbed it.  The fun you can have…

I’ve not read a definitively assertive note about who wrote what in this co-composition, but the general view is that Ms Springs always took second place to the maestro in the songwriting department.  But no, I don’t hear it like that.  Perhaps (although I doubt it) Bob wrote all the lyrics, but to argue he wrote the music means accepting he then decided suddenly to use a musical construction he never ever used before or since in a solo song (and to good effect, within the context).  Or at the very, very least we have to allow that Ms Springs wrote the middle 8.  And if she wrote that, she probably wrote most of the rest of the music, which, in comparison, would have been much easier to write.

I suspect, contrary to most other commentators, Helena Springs wrote most of this song, Bob added a few bits, but later it was agreed to put it in the Dylan catalogue to maximise sales – and possibly give a few pennies to Ms Springs as and when the entire catalogue was sold.

That’s a guess of course.  But it’s less of a guess than simply asserting Bob wrote it, without any evidence or commentary on the construction.  I’m sure, Bob just wouldn’t write that chord sequence.  Nor, in my view, those words, although that’s a harder one to prove.

Footnote: Sorry these pieces are getting so long.  It’s not deliberate, it just seems to take quite a while to unravel the ebb and flow of Bob, his life, and his writing.  And here’s a funny thing: there is no Wikipedia article on Helena Springs.

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

by Jochen Markhorst

• Jet Pilot (1965) part I: Greetings from Vermillion
• Jet Pilot (1965) part II: I threw it all away
• Jet Pilot part III: A whole lotta woman

IV         What is the most important thing in your life?

She's five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch

The forged entrance gates with which Dylan surprises in 2013 are elegant, playful and funny examples of craftsmanship and artistic pleasure. Within a tight framework of iron, the welding artist Dylan fills the void with alienating compositions of scrap metal, motorbike parts, a meat-mincer, a horseshoe, bicycle chains, cogwheels and: tools. One or more tools are incorporated into each gate. Spanners, socket wrenches, combination pliers, pincers… and an occasional monkey wrench. The publicity photos shot for the first exhibition (Halycon Gallery, London) show staged photographs of Dylan in his workshop: a medium-sized room with wooden shelving along the walls, overflowing with scrap metal and iron objects, by the look of it sorted by shape. A collection of monkey wrenches is not to be seen. If there are any, they are obviously too precious to him to incorporate into his fences.

He does seem to have a thing for it, in the first half of the 1960s. Already in “Bob Dylan’s New Orleans Rag” (1963) the singer describes a long-legged man coming down the hall,

He muttered and he uttered
In broken French
And he looked like he’d been through
A monkey wrench

Two years later, on 5 September ’65, a month before he records “Jet Pilot”, the plumber’s tool is apparently still bouncing around in the back of his mind, as Dylan slaloms through the mostly stupid questions of journalists at the press conference in Beverly Hills. Like “what is the most important thing in your life these days?” The correct answer to that would be: “My towel,” as we all know from Chapter 3 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. But Dylan is no Ford Prefect nor Arthur Dent, and answers: “Well, I’ve got a monkey wrench collection and I’m very interested in that.”

Susan Edminston and Nora Ephron, who interviewed him a few days later for the New York Post, did also notice, and they check, just to be sure:

BD: I don’t know what the songs I write are. That’s all I do is write songs, right? Write. I collect things too.
E/E: Monkey wrenches?
BD: Where did you read about that? Has that been in print? I told this guy out on the coast that I collected monkey wrenches, all sizes and shapes of monkey wrenches, and he didn’t believe me. I don’t think you believe me either. And I collect the pictures, too. Have you talked to Sonny and Cher?
E/E: No.
BD: They’re a drag. A cat gets kicked out of a restaurant and he went home and wrote a song about it.

The latter is a false sneer at “I Got You Babe”, the world hit about which Cher indeed reveals that Sonny Bono wrote it after they were banned from a restaurant because of their attire. Why Dylan is so condescending about the song is puzzling. It is a song beyond criticism and four weeks earlier it had knocked the Herman’s Hermits’ abominable “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” off the top of Billboard’s Hot 100. That alone deserves respect and gratitude, but perhaps Dylan is plagued by competitive pressures; these same days, The Beatles (with “Help!”), The Beach Boys (“California Girls”), The Righteous Brothers (“Unchained Melody”) and Dylan’s own “Like A Rolling Stone” are all trying to knock Sonny & Cher from first place (The Beatles win the race; on 4 September, “Help! “, after three weeks of “I Got You Babe”, tops the charts). And the song is in a double sense, both lyrically and musically, the mirror image of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” – perhaps that itches too.

Anyway – monkey wrench collection. According to the respectable and distinguished Guardian journalist Ed Vulliamy, Dylan is still a collector twenty years later. In his 2018 memoir, When Words Fail: A Life with Music, War and Peace (published in America as Louder Than Bombs), Vulliamy recalls the press conference in London to promote the mediocre film Hearts Of Fire, in 1987. The journalists present bombard Dylan with questions as empty, useless and unanswerable as those in 1965 Beverly Hills, and a weary Dylan answers accordingly absurdly;

A pompous journalist from the Sunday Times challenged the bard to come clean about what interested him. “I’ve got a monkey-wrench collection in my garage back home, and I’m mighty interested in that,” came the reply.

Vulliamy’s integrity and professionalism are actually beyond question, but here he seems to be slipping into a constructive memory. Other coverage of the same press conference does mention the annoying questions and conflict seeking remarks by the Sunday Times journalist (it’s Philip Norman), but an answer like the one Vulliamy quotes is nowhere to be found – this monkey wrench answer that also sounds suspiciously literal like Dylan’s answer in Beverly Hills, back in 1965. Vulliamy’s own questions can be found too, and they show that The Guardian’s star reporter chose wisely, not to pursue a career as a master interviewer (first question: “Do you like England?”, second question: “What are your thoughts on this country at the moment?”).

Still, the monkey wrench does reappear, years after those first unserious uses. Over the years, Dylan has developed an irregular habit of introducing his band members to the audience at the end of the concert, just as irregularly provided with nonsensical, humorous biographical details. “Over here on violin is the youngest member of the group, never been away from home before, David Mansfield,” for example. Or “And Tony Garnier’s been with me longer than I been with myself, playing bass guitar.”

The same loyal Tony Garnier is at four concerts in June 1995 introduced with:

“On bass guitar Tony Garnier is playing tonight. I know that he tried to milk a cow with a monkey wrench, I know that.”

Dylan speaks that nonsensical introduction on 2 June in Seattle, and it’s not a slip of the tongue or anything. On 4, 6 and 21 June, he introduces Garnier in much the same words, each time with the nonsensical biographical fact that Tony once tried to milk a cow with a monkey wrench.

Clearly, it is a word combination that keeps on imposing itself on Dylan, that does not lose its attraction even after more than thirty years. The language artist is, presumably, touched by the intrinsic absurdity of the combination monkey + wrench, a combination that indeed has the power of a catachresis, of an incompatible set of words. Comparable to a honky-tonk lagoon (“Stuck Inside Of Mobile”), to seasick sailors (“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”) or to curfew gull (“Gates Of Eden”), to unusual combinations of words, in short, which through the combination take on a dry-comic charge. The actual etymology of “monkey wrench” is unclear, by the way. Presumably the adjustable spanner was so named, because adjustable ship parts also had the modifier monkey (monkey foresail, monkey bridge).

So: an overweight lady with the physique of a man (thanks to data collected from the federal Centers for Disease Control, we know that five feet nine has been the exact average height of an American man for over half a century now, compared to five feet four for a woman), evidently blessed with an irresistible sex appeal to all the downtown boys, walking around with a monkey wrench.

Granted, it is an intriguing image.

To be continued. Next up: Jet Pilot part V: The mixed up, muddled up, shook up world

—————

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

by Larry Fyffe

According to the mythological visions of Bob Dylan that are transported through his music and lyrics, we observe in the early history of ‘discovered’ America, the mill wheel of life grinding along quite simply, and rather smoothly.

According to the Puritan Calvinist point of view, those of the Elect are destined for Heaven; those not, doomed to Hell for all eternity, never to escape its fiery pits.

Well, perhaps not forever … maybe when Hell freezes over, or:

When Heaven is Hell, when ill is well
When virtue is vice
When wrong is right, when dark is light
When nought is of great price
(Michael Wigglesworth: A Short Discourse On Eternity)

As goes Dylanesque mythology,  nowadays things have changed, have gotten more complicated in the hustle and bustle, ups and downs of modern times. Appears that everything is broken.

Fredrich Nietzsche launches his ships, and looses Hell upon the New Babylon:

Now everything's a little upside down
As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad, what's bad is good
You'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

The Romantics and Transcendentalist writers have fled into the hills. In the mythology proffered by the singer/songwriter/musician, childhood is the only chance left to enjoy life before happiness is trampled asunder by the walking dead. One has his/her choice of poison in regards to how this is to be achieved – whether overseen by overly strict, or by uncaring, or by corrupt officialdom:

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a gypsy queen
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle all dressed in green
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle 'til the moon is blue
Wiggle 'til the moon sees you
(Bob Dylan: Wiggle Wiggle)

(Please note there is a 17 seconds introduction on the recording below)

The loss of hope, and the possibility of its regeneration be a motif in Dylan’s mythological outlook.

Where have all the heroes gone long time ago, those individuals who took a stand against corrupt authorities?  Below,  song lyrics that reference the movie ‘On The Waterfront’, starring Marlon Brando, and Karl Malden – “You lost the battle, but you have a chance to win the war”:

Your didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end he won the war
After losing every battle
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

In these modern times, the oft sorrowful loss of love be another theme:

If you travelling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to the one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The North Country)

In these modern times, self-sacrifice seems to have flown out the window; religious dogma like ‘original sin’ is scoffed at  ~ while the shortness of life reminds the wise to seize the day:

Shake the dust off of your feet, don't look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation's not an easy thing, Adam given the Devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run in my vein
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

Apparently, what the mythology declares most of all is that the walls of platitudes are full of holes:

Never could learn to drink that blood
And call it wine
Never could learn to hold you, love
And call you mine
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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 article is part of our on-going series tracing the Never Ending Tour, with commentary and audios of the performances.

A full index of all the articles tracing the tour from 1988 onward, is available here.  The two previous articles about the Prague concerts of 1995 are…

• 1995, part 1: The Prague Revelation and other astonishments
• 1995, part 2: The Prague Revelation – Salt for Salt, Peak Prague

————

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

In the first and second of these posts on his March, 1995 Prague concerts (see links above), I covered some of the finest performances of the 1990s phase of Dylan’s Never Ending Tour.  “So what is left but the leftovers?” you might ask. And it’s a valid question, but with Prague, even the leftovers make a wonderful feast.

Take ‘Just Like a Woman’, for example. Dylan performed this controversial song twice at Prague, on the 11^th and 12^th of March. It’s controversial because of the sweet savagery of the lyrics and its outright attack on ‘Queen Mary,’ the subject of the song. Is this yet another example of Dylan putting down women?

There is too much contempt in it for us to feel easy with it. And that ‘breaks just like a little girl’ at the end feels like a final kick in the guts. Or is it the line ‘you fake just like a woman’ that does it, as if being fake is particular to women?

Interestingly, Nina Simone, a powerful woman if ever there was one, could take it to heart, identify with it, while avoiding the ‘fake’ line. Here’s her version of the chorus:

‘I take
Just like a woman
Yes I do
And I make love
Just like a woman
And I ache
Just like a woman
But I break
Just like a little girl’

But doesn’t the singer indicate that he too might break like a little boy? Look at this last verse:

‘It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse is this pain in here
I can't stay in here

Ain't it clear that I just can't fit
Yes, I believe that it's time for us to quit
But when we meet again, introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world’

Ashamed of his neediness? And vulnerable. Miserable in the rain, compelled to go to her.

Also it strikes me that the real target here is not the woman so much as pretentiousness and falsity. The fakery of masks. The same target we find in a range of songs from ‘Ramona’ to ‘She’s Your Lover Now’.

Listening to these Prague performances, I hear the song as a love song, that desperate edge of a love that just can’t fit. It’s a confession, and we shouldn’t be deceived by the opening line, ‘nobody feels any pain’, as the whole song is reeking with pain, and it might be that which saves it from its contempt. We often turn our vitriol on those who have exposed our weaknesses.

Here’s the first, from the 11^th. Hard to find a more anguished performance. Or more wonderful harp work.

Just like a woman (A)

The performance on the 13^th is somewhat more muted, perhaps a little more reflective. I like the strength of the first version, but the second is better structured, with the harp break taking us right to the end, rather than letting the band do the last chorus alone.

Just like a woman (B)

Time to kick back with something a bit more relaxed and watch the river flow. The easy beat of ‘Watching the River Flow’ (1971) might disguise the heavy dose of fatalism that runs through the song. A rather tongue in cheek expression of ‘go with the flow’ hippie philosophy. According to the session men, Dylan wrote the lyrics in a few minutes in the studio.

‘Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow’

I love the down-home, gutsy sound of the band on this one.

Watching the river flow

Speaking of the blues, and songs penned in 1971, this performance of ‘If Not For You’ is given a bluesy twist here, especially when Dylan pulls out the harp at the end. Those interested in the origins of the song could do no better than check out the version on  Another Self Portrait (Bootleg Vol 10).

This one, from the 11^th, kicks along nicely.

If not for you

I still think the song ‘God Knows’ reached its performance peak in 1993, with Mr Guitar Man playing a guttural, intricate weave of sound (See, NET, 1993, Part 1). I don’t know if Dylan picked up the guitar for this one on the 11^th of March, but it sure sounds like it. Dylan is in great vocal form. The song is a somewhat frantic mix of despair and hope:

‘God knows it's fragile
God knows everything
God knows it could snap apart right now
Just like putting scissors to a string’

God Knows

Since 1992 Dylan had been developing slow, bluesy endings to his performances. Some of these endings last almost as long as a whole pop song. ‘Don’t Think Twice’, especially when sung in a fast, peppy manner, lends itself to a slow, thumping end, which is what we get here. There is an unexpected emotional sophistication in what sounds like a bit of ditty, the title being a throw-away line.

‘I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' walkin’ way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul’

We might be hard put to explain the difference between heart and soul here, but we can feel the difference. Some people just want to consume you. They don’t want you to be your own person, and Dylan is all about being his own person.

In the last lines I detect a touch of tragedy. There’s nothing worse for the artist than being trapped in a time wasting relationship. There’s a deeper calling for the ‘road’, the dark side. The road would become perhaps the defining motif in Dylan’s songs.

‘I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right’

This situation is repeated years later in ‘Caribbean Wind’, (1981).

‘Would I have married her? I don't know, I suppose.
She had bells in her braids and they hung to her toes
But I kept hearing my name and I had to be movin' on.’

And again in ‘I And I’ in 1984.

‘Noontime, and I'm still pushin' myself along the road, 
    the darkest part
Into the narrow lanes, I can't stumble or stay put
Someone else is speakin' with my mouth, 
    but I'm listenin' only to my heart’

In this performance Dylan keeps the bounciness of the original, and delivers another soft, intimate vocal.

Don’t think twice.

‘I Don’t Believe You’ is another song from Dylan’s early acoustic era that has gone through many changes.  The original was a wildly sarcastic romp, which turned into a wailing screamer during the 1966 tour, which turned into… this upbeat 1995 version, with that easy, catchy, mid-tempo beat that Dylan had been working on for the last couple of years. It works as a foot-tapper. My complaint about these later versions is that they don’t capture the wry self-irony of the original, the humour inherent in the situation that lifted it above being a mere complaint.

I don’t believe you

Dylan performed ‘All Along the Watchtower’ twice, on the 12^th and 13^th. There is little to choose between the two performances. I once used the term ecstatic rock to describe this frantic, full on guitar fest. This one is from the 12^th.

All along the Watchtower

‘Maggie’s Farm’ may be a rejection of stifling conformity, but it is also a good, beaty, hell for leather rock song. Who can forget the moment during the 1964 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan first belted out his new rock sound. This is the song Dylan chose to finish the shows on the 11^th and 12^th (with encores to follow). This one is from the 12^th, and you can hear Dylan introduce the band which is: Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar),Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar), John Jackson (guitar), Tony Garnier (bass) and Winston Watson (drums & percussion).

Maggie’s Farm

‘Just Like a Rolling Stone’ may be Dylan’s most iconic hit. It was the way the song caught the public that did it. It is Dylan’s sharpest ‘attack’ song, portraying a rich girl blinded to her own pretensions and having to face the truth about herself. Voted by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest rock song ever, it was a wonderful way to finish the last evening of his Prague residency. A triumphant finish to three triumphant performances.

Like A Rolling Stone

Of course the year didn’t end with Prague. Rather it started there. In the next post I’ll be looking at 1995, post Prague to see what goodies we can discover. Until then, all the best and happy listening.

Kia Ora

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 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

by Jochen Markhorst

• Jet Pilot (1965) part I: Greetings from Vermillion
• Jet Pilot (1965) part II: I threw it all away

III         A whole lotta woman

Well, she's got Jet Pilot eyes from her hips on down
All the bombardiers are trying to force her out of town

From jet pilot to bombardier is indeed a small associative leap, but it still is, of course, a completely unusual word in a rock song, or in song culture at all. Bing Crosby had a hit in 1942 with the propagandistic, martial Lorenz/Hart song “The Bombardier Song”, an unimaginative confection song, which hardly could have made any impression at all on Dylan. It’s an archaic word anyway (bombardiers were the artillerymen who operated the mortars until the nineteenth century). Maybe Dylan has Rudyard Kipling on his bedside table; Kipling uses the word with some regularity (‘Is girl she goes with a bombardier / Before ‘er month is through).

However, the rest of the song fragment, despite the alienating monkey wrench, varies on a much more common theme; on the attraction of a big fat woman.

She's five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch

Once upon a time it was a beauty ideal, the Big Fat Woman. Rubens’ (1577-1640) paintings document in great detail the ideal of voluptuous bosoms, flabby flesh and legs like tree trunks. So much so that Rubenesque has become a term in the dictionary, where it is defined as: plump or rounded usually in a pleasing or attractive way; full and shapely; voluptuous.

From the eighteenth century, the Western ideal of beauty shifts to slim and small-waisted, and slowly “fat woman” in the arts descends into a physical quality characteristic to achieve a comic effect – being fat becomes ridiculous.

Rarely vicious, by the way. In most poems and song lyrics in which fat women are sung, the protagonist is indeed in love, he loves his fat wife in spite of, or precisely because of, her impressive size – the comic note is usually good-natured mockery. As in Leadbelly’s straightforward miniature “Big Fat Woman Blues” from 1944, which is skilfully enriched with two extra verses by Tom Rush in ’63 (on Blues, Songs and Ballads):

She's a fine lookin' woman, got great big legs
Big Fat Woman got great big legs
Ev'ry time she moves, move like a soft boil'd egg

… like Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls”, Mika’s “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”, Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious”, Status Quo’s “Big Fat Mama”; all of them declarations of love. Only Joe Tex’s 1977 comeback hit, “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)”, is questionable – but then again, that one is still funny. A true renaissance takes place with the rise of rap music; obesity is praised so structurally and passionately that the Rubenesque ideal of beauty seems to be back. The heavy ladies are more often described as “chubby” or “curvy” than as “fat”, though, and the fascinated gentlemen call themselves chubby chasers – a term that, obviously, is considered offensive outside rap circles. But shared still; Quentin Tarantino has a good sense of the zeitgeist, of the revaluation of Rubenesque proportions, and in his breakthrough film Pulp Fiction (1994) he lets Fabienne dream of a pot belly;

fabienne

No. Pot bellies make a man look either oafish, or like a gorilla.  
But on a woman, a pot belly is very sexy. The rest of you is 
normal. Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but 
with a big, perfectly round pot belly. If I had one, I'd wear 
a tee-shirt two sizes too small to accentuate it.

The standard-bearer of all Fat Woman-odes is written in 1977, and is of course AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie”. She ain’t exactly pretty, ain’t exactly small (“Fourt’two thirt’ninefiftysix, you could say she’s got it all”) and she’s certainly not a lightweight:

Ain't no skin and bones
But you give it all you got
Weighin' in at nineteen stone
You're a whole lotta woman
A whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie

Based, as a matter of fact, on a real Rosie, a heavyweight lady from Tasmania (nineteen stone is 266 pounds, 120 kilograms), a one-night stand of singer Bon Scott, according to goofy guitarist and composer Angus Young, in an interview with Vox Magazine, 1998:

We’d been in Tasmania and after the show [Bon Scott] said he was going to check out a few clubs. He said he’d got about 100 yards down the street when he heard this yell: ‘Hey! Bon!’ He looked around and saw this leg and thought: ‘Oh well!’ From what he said, there was this Rosie woman and a friend of hers. They were plying him with drinks and Rosie said to him: ‘This month I’ve slept with 28 famous people,’ and Bon went: ‘Oh yeah?!’ Anyway, in the morning he said he woke up pinned against the wall, he said he opened one eye and saw her lean over to her friend and whisper: ’29!’ There’s very few people who’ll go out and write a song about a big fat lady, but Bon said it was worthy.

Which further suggests that as a rock star, you don’t have to be too witty, ad rem or eloquent (“Oh yeah?”) to find a bed partner.

Dylan does sing them too, every now and then. In “California”, the primal version of “Outlaw Blues”, the narrator goes south, and there some fat momma kissed my mouth one time. The john in “Goin’ To Acapulco” looks forward to goin’ down to see fat gut – goin’ to have some fun and in “High Water” he has found shelter with one Fat Nancy.

In the throwaway “Jet Pilot”, the narrator expresses this specific physical quality with the mercurial, surreal elusiveness which characterises the poet’s output these years: She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch. A semantic hair-splitter might argue, of course, that this does not necessarily indicate that the “she” is obese, but Occam’s razor has a strong argument; any blues text mentioning the weight of a lady, always depicts a heavy woman. It is unlikely, though, that the poet was inspired by a real Rosie. But if so, then she can be proud that her size inspired something infinitely more poetic and wittier than she’s a whole lotta woman.

Peter Paul Rubens, by the way, was married twice. The first time to Isabella Brant, who died of the plague in 1626 at the age of 34, and four years after Isabella’s death to the then 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. Isabella was slim, Hélène at most slightly chubby, according to the portraits. No chubby chaser himself, old Peter Paul.

To be continued. Next up: Jet Pilot part IV: What is the most important thing in your life?

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville

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