Untold Dylan

This is part 24 of “All Directions at Once” which attempts to look at Dylan’s songwriting in a way that is slightly different from that used by other commentators.

An index to the  previous articles in this series is given here.   The previous entry which particularly looked at “Dirge” was 1973: prepare for the journey from hell to heaven

————–

By Tony Attwood

https://youtu.be/tKD40Vny2T4

While with Dirge we have the verbal evidence that the song was written in response to a jokey comment about Dylan’s sentimental change as he got older, with “Wedding Song” (the last composition of 1973), we have no such extraneous commentary to go on.  But we can still make a few assumptions based on what we do know.

It is reported that the original version of Dirge was recorded on guitar before being re-worked on piano.  Here, we have the counterpoint.  Dirge begins, “I hate myself for loving you,” while “Wedding Song,” accompaniment on the recording and on stage by solo guitar begins “I love you more than ever.”

And there is of course a link with “Restless Farewell,” the last song written in 1963, just before he embarked on his first world tour (which ran off and on through much of the year) because by the time Dylan wrote “Wedding Song” he was gearing up to go back onto the road.  And it is worth, I think, pausing for a moment to consider the momentousness of this.

The last grand tour of Dylan before 1974, was in 1966, and it took in the United States, Canada, Hawaii, Australia, Scandinavia, the UK, France, and then finally ending back in London.   Two months later there was the motorbike accident, and that was that after a tour of 47 shows.

The 1974 tour ran from 3 January to 14 February and took in 40 shows.  In the early part of the tour some Planet Waves songs were included but over the course of the tour these seemed to be reduced in number, with only “Forever Young” and occasionally “Wedding Song” remaining on the set list.

That was then the end of the tour for the year, but this time there was eight year gap – Dylan came back 18 months later with the Rolling Thunder Review.

This return to touring is, I think, historically very important, not because of what ultimately happened to create the Never Ending Tour which I think we can best date from 1987 onwards (others put 1988, but let’s not quibble), but because actually going on the road was itself a major change.  It was, I think, a try out, not just for Bob, but for members of The Band themselves who in the intervening years had had their own issues.  They had retired from touring in 1971 (although they did the occasional one-off gig), not least because Robbie Robertson was said to be trying to overcome his writer’s block, (and indeed such work as he created from around this time was never published), while Richard Manuel was said to have addiction problems.

The tour was noted for the re-writing of the arrangements (not to say melodies and lyrics of some compositions – something which Dylan had not previously indulged in, at least not in such a wholesale way), and the use of a very early synthesizer.

It was very much a joint affair with Dylan performing with the Band, Dylan acoustic solos, and the Band playing their own songs without Dylan.  Extracts from the tour were ultimately released as “Before the Flood”.

Planet Waves songs were included at first, but after a short while only “Forever Young” stayed as a regular in the repertoire, which increasingly relied on the most famous songs from Dylan’s repertoire.  But they were helped along by contemporary events, as was evident from the cheers every time Bob sang, “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked” – which had an extra resonance as this was the time of the Watergate affair.  Applications for tickets exceeded the number available many, many times over.

So although this was not its original purpose, ultimately “Tour 74” allowed space for the artistic endeavour and creativity that during the rest of the year and into next year resulted in a staggeringly brilliant collection of new songs.  The tour proved Bob still had an audience (and how!) but he was forced to realise that those those attending didn’t want his more recent compositions such as “Dirge” and “Wedding Song,” no matter how brilliant and revolutionary they might be.

So we have a significant disconnect between the tour and the last album.  “Dirge” and “Wedding Song” seem to have been written quickly and indeed recorded even faster, and Dylan obviously knew how incredibly good they were, and yet the crowds wanted the old numbers, not this modern stuff.  These seemingly urgent and occasionally desperate statements from a man who just has to say it, and has to say it now, were nothing to the fans at the shows.  They didn’t want Bob to “tell it like it is,” they wanted him to “tell it as it was” before the Basement, before the accident, and most of the time before JWH.

And yet, and yet, “Wedding Song” really does take us back to a much earlier Dylan, both because it is acoustic, and because it is strophic – (the verse – verse – verse) formulation without any break into a variant section and because of its sheer urgency and vitality.

Image falls onto image as thought pushes thought out of the way, but there is that unrelenting vision that he is not the Leader, he is not here to change everything, certainly not here to tell us what to do.  In the words of the “Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” (a British radio series that started five years later, became phenomenally popular, and still is fondly remembered and regularly re-broadcast) “he’s just this guy, you know.”

It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge

Put another way it is “It ain’t me babe” in the sense that I am not a man who tells you what to do, but it is me babe in terms of the man who loves you “more than ever, more than time and more than love” all the way through to that ending, “I love you more than ever now that the past is gone”.   (Which immediately makes me think we really should have an index of last lines, as well as our aborted attempt at an index of first lines).

I don’t feel that Dylan was writing about himself or his own experience here, any more than he was in Dirge, any more than most novelists cast themselves as the central character in each novel, any more than an actor plays himself every time he gets on stage.  But whether he was or not, this now became irrelevant.  The lesson to be learned was that if Bob was going to tour again, and to perform his contemporary compositions, those compositions had to be more immediately accessible to the fans than the final two compositions of 1973.   Not personal songs, but something else.  The questions was, what?

And yet there is a tremendous sense of power and liberation that comes from his saying goodbye to the “haunted rooms and faces in the street, To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun” – to the self torment, and to the artificial worlds and false people that were portrayed in the Basement Tapes.   In the final pre-tour composition there is a new life, reflecting the fact that “I love you more than ever and I haven’t yet begun,” which makes the view of the fans more ironic than ever.

In short, he doesn’t say, “I’m nothing without you,” but says “you make my life richer”, in a much more interesting way.    And he did try to get his fans to understand, for Wedding Song was played nine times between 7 January and 11 February.  The tour itself ran from 3 January to 14 February, so he gave it a fair shot, but by and large it wasn’t what the fans wanted.

Of course not every line in Wedding Song is perfect.   “Your love cuts like a knife” is as old as pop music, and probably much older.  But it is delivered so rapidly amongst all this relentless power, the whole thing simply knocks one sideways and we stop worrying if any of the images have been heard before.

I’d sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood
And if there is eternity I’d love you there again
And I love you more than ever with that love that doesn’t cease
Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone

Yet Bob had produced an album that overall looked deeper into the heart of emotions than he had ever had before – consider what was explored in “Going Going Gone” in that middle 8 that still so occupies my thoughts so many years later…

Grandma said, “Boy, go and follow your heart
And you’ll be fine at the end of the line
All that’s gold isn’t meant to shine
Don’t you and your one true love ever part”

Indeed Forever Young itself now takes on a new meaning – stay forever young so you don’t get close to what I explore in the rest of these songs.

It is sometimes said that as soon as one sees the title “Wedding Song” one must think of Dylan’s own wedding.  And maybe that would be true if the song was presented on its own.  But it is not.  It was presented after Dirge (which of course was never played on this tour, nor indeed on any tour ever), and at the end of the collection.

Above all I reject the notion that “Dylan recorded it [Wedding Song] more or less in the same slapdash style as he did his acoustic albums”.  He recorded it in a way that gives it the total power it deserves.  The power of one man on his own, the wind buffeting his face as he sits on a rock next to the lady he loves trying to explain himself, stumbling over the words, not quite able to find the right phrase, finding his voice is occasionally lost in the wind, as he says, “I love you” the roar of the wave drowns out the sound of his words.

(Incidentally Heylin’s use of “slapdash” has always struck me as the final proof that the man has no concept of artistic creation.  Does he really think that all great art is created by hours and hours of tedious and meticulous work?  Sometimes yes of course, but sometimes most certainly not.  The merit of great art is not measured by the time it took to create, but by the genius of the conception.  If that were not the case we could simply note how long it took each work of art to be created and the one that took the longest could be proclaimed the greatest art on the planet.  Stonehenge maybe?)

Wedding Song is a glimpse of real life through a song in an age of technical production, and all the better for that.  But it is true that it was not what the fans brought to the concerts by the promotional hype of watching Bob back on stage for the first time in so many years, had been sold.

Where I differ from many commentators (as so often is the case) is in thinking that when Dylan mentions three children, there is some secret point here.  For me, he is writing a piece of astoundingly powerful fiction, in which I can empathise with the character at the centre of the story. Bob is a genius songwriter.  He doesn’t have to experience this love to write about it.  He doesn’t have to have (or have had) “hardly a penny to my name” to be able to write “Tell Ol Bill”.

So was Wedding Song, “Dylan’s last Hail Mary shot at reconciliation with his wife” as has been suggested?  No not for me.  On its own I might be persuaded, but why on earth would a man who wanted to plot a reconciliation do it in public on an album with a song that followed a piece that started out,

I hate myself for lovin’ you and the weakness that it showed

No, he wrote it because he wanted a contrast with Dirge.  And he wrote it because he could.  Yes “Forever Young” might have been written for his child, but if it was, that still doesn’t mean “Dirge” and “Wedding Song” were also written for real people relating to real events.

My thought is quite simple: just listen, enjoy some of the most powerful emotions ever expressed in popular or folk music, and then be ready for the monuments that followed.

Here’s a list of the most regularly performed Dylan song from the tour…

• Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
• Lay Lady Lay
• Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
• Rainy Day Women
• It Ain’t Me, Babe
• Ballad of a Thin Man
• All Along the Watchtower
• Ballad of Hollis Brown
• Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
• The Times They Are A-Changin’
• Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright
• Gates of Eden
• Just Like a Woman
• It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
• Forever Young
• Something There is About You
• Highway 61 Revisited
• Like a Rolling Stone
• Blowin’ in the Wind

Thus Bob was left with a huge problem.  He had written Planet Waves which includes songs that he must have recognised were brilliant pieces of songwriting. and yet going back on tour he had had to retreat into performing he greatest hits, which is probably why he was dissatisfied and unhappy with the tour.

He must have known that he was truly back into form as a songwriter, but the fans just wanted  the old stuff.  So what to do?

The answer had to be either to create a new musical form, or to take an old musical form and re-create it in a way that no one had ever heard before.  And that motivation to create a new type of song, a song that told a story that as has so often be reported, “couldn’t be found in a movie” post-tour became the driving force in Bob’s creative life.

It would take much of the rest of the year to get the songs written, but goodness, wasn’t it worth it.

The series continues…

By Larry Fyffe

Polish-American writer Isaac Singer, influenced by the slave/master writings of Fredrich Nietzsche, pens a modern short satirical story “Yentl, The Yeshiva Boy” that brings attention to the rift between mystical and traditional aspects of the Judaic religion.

Advocates of the mystical view seek an emotional connection to a mysterious and transcendental God while those of the rational view focus on laws studied exclusively by males in Yeshiva schools – laws that, for example, place the female for the most part in the kitchen; even shaven-headed and walled-in at times. Singer’s story shows that he clearly sides with the former view.

Yentl rebels against the social order imposed upon her, dresses up as a man, and studies Judaic law with a male partner; her male friend marries a woman whom he’s expected to because the gal he really loves, is told to reject him. Yentl, though she falls in love with her Yeshiva partner, gets hitched to the traditionally minded gal. Avoids having sex with her, and then divorces the devoted girl in order that the Yeshiva school mate can leave his unhappy marriage to be with the one he loves.

In the meantime, doesn’t he fall in love with Yentl who reveals her secret to him – she’s actually a lady. Yentl tells him that she’s not interested in furthering their love relationship because she wants to continue on with her Judaic studies as painful as that may be. Not exactly a joyous Romantic ending to the story.

The Yentl story is made into a movie starring singer Barbara Streisand. The songstress doesn’t make a convincing looking male on the screen by a long shot. The movie ends with Yentl quite contentedly heading off to America in search of herself – her syrupy songs not befitting the original story by Singer:

Oh why is it that every time
I close my eyes he's there
The water shining on his skin
The sunlight in his hair
And all the while I'm thinking things
That I can never share
With him

(Barbara Streisand: The Way You Make Me Feel ~ A&M Bergman/Legrand)

Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan messes around with Isaac Singer’s story and film.

In the double-edged lyrics below, said to be written for Streisand, the singer/songwriter provides a response to the cross-dressing lady’s song above –  in it, the narrator suggests how Yentl can relieve her sexual tension:

Lay, lady, lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay
Stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day
Let me see you make him smile ....
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing in front of you
(Bob Dylan: Lay, Lady, Lay)

Innovating on the rather sexually charged metaphors found in the Holy Book:

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood
So is my beloved among the sons
I sat down under his shadow with great delight
And his fruit was sweet to my taste
(Song Of Solomon 2:3)

Reverting to the old way of dealing with a non-submissive, independent-minded female ~ do away with her altogether ~ be frowned upon in the song lyrics following:

She said, "No dear"
I said, "Your words are not clear
You better spit out your gum"
She screamed till her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor
And I covered her up, and then
Thought I'd go look through her drawer
(Bob Dylan: Fourth Time Round)

Nor, below, is doing away with an unfaithful partner considered murder most fair:

Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back
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)

Doing away with an artistic competitor by other means be apparently a different matter.

Untold Dylan

There are getting on for 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Paul Robert Thomas

We just recorded our latest song ‘Marilyn Monroe – Endless Night‘ that was of course inspired by Mr. Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul‘ and is about the suspected murder of M.M. and has numerous references to the people in the plot and is put together like an Agatha Christie play and includes a number of her play names that are highlighted in the lyrics.

Anyway, please take a listen at

https://www.paullyrics.com/album/scared-america-volume-three/marilyn-monroe-endless-night

It is from our next Dylan inspired album – Scared of America – Volume Three at

https://www.paullyrics.com/album/scared-america-volume-three.

Like a well written mystery
Played out on the stage of history
All the actors played their part
From the 1st scene to the last

The world saw the opening scene
The plot was cruel, the plot was mean
‘Happy Birthday Mr. President, you fill me with glee
How I wish you felt the same about me’!
The same about me’!
Wish you felt the same about me’!

John, Bobby, Jimmy and Sam
Each one an influential man
The big four always knocking on your door
In the end they didn’t want you no more

Love from a stranger
A stranger in the night
The curtain came down
On an endless night

The C.I.A. and The Mob one time
Were both together partners in crime
They wanted Fidel out of the scene
He was polluting their American Dream

Some say it was a put-up-job
By the C.I.A. and The Mob
You’ve had a red or two in your bed
Is that why they wanted you dead?

Sam warned you not to sing
Keeping quiet wasn’t your thing
Who were those uninvited guests
Cleaning up all the mess?

There was nothing, nothing you wrote
Not in black and white
You didn’t leave a note
On this endless night

Before the end you took a personal call
There’s an unfinished portrait hanging on the wall
The scene was clean, it was complete
The maid furiously washing the sheets

They said you went at half past ten
Were you alone or surrounded by men?
There were bruises on your back
Like you’d been beaten and attacked

Your stomach was empty, it was clean
There were no needles found at the scene
Something seemed foul, something was wrong
Your secret red diary was gone

The deed had been done
They turned out your lights
They didn’t do it with a gun
On this endless night
On this endless night
On this endless night

Well, The big four met grisly deaths
Staring down a barrel as they took their last breaths
John, Bobby, Jimmy and Sam
Were you their Sacrificial Lamb?
Their Sacrificial Lamb
Were you their Sacrificial Lamb?

Judy’s ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’
Played as they lowered the casket of Monroe
No-one said Kaddish over her grave, no-one cried
Who was really shocked that Marilyn had died?

Now the orchestra is quiet, there’s no more song
All the leading actors are long gone
The stage is dark and without light
On this lonely cold endless night

The stage is dark and without light
On this lonely cold endless night
The stage is dark and without light
On this lonely cold endless night
On this lonely cold endless night

Thank you, Paul

Also from Paul Robert Thomas on Untold Dylan

Dope fiend robber: the Paul Robert Thomas version

John Wayne by ‘Les Paul’s’: more Dylan references than its possible to count

Bob Dylan Showcase – “Listen Robert Moses”

Untold Dylan

There are getting on for 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

Tombstone Blues (1965) part VI

by Jochen Markhorst

• Tombstone Blues I: Daddy’s looking for the fragmentation bomb’s fuse
• Tombstone Blues II: Duck back down
• Tombstone Blues III: Let’s Go Get Stoned
• Tombstone Blues IV: Medicine Man
• Tombstone Blues V: He was kidding me didn’t he?

VI         Under the Yellow Angel

The king of the Philistines his soldiers to save
Puts jawbones on their tombstones and flatters their graves
Puts the pied pipers in prison and fattens the slaves
Then sends them out to the jungle

After 13 July 2014, Mario Götze will be the world’s most famous and sung Götze even in academic circles; in the 113th minute of the final of the World Cup in Brazil, he scores the only, and thus winning, goal against Argentina, yielding Germany a world title for the fourth time around.

As a successful player of Borussia Dortmund and later Bayern Munich, Götze has of course long been a well-known, great player in the world of football, but until July 2014, in academic circles, “Götze” refers first and foremost to the distant ancestor Georg Heinrich Götze (1667-1728), the Lutheran theologian, superintendent and polywriter from Leipzig. The VD18, the Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 18. Jahrhunderts (“Index of the 18th century prints published in the German language area”), the immense project that collects all German printed works from the eighteenth century, already counts 84 Götze titles, the VD17 eighty titles; sermons, biographical writings and disputes, mostly.

In his days, the popularity of his printed sermons even leads to language innovations. For example, the sermon in response to riots at a pub in Jena at the end of the seventeenth century, when Götze is a superintendent in that student town. At the Löbdertor, in the former Carmelite monastery, there is an inn, Zum Gelben Engel (“Under the Yellow Angel”), at that time. Frequented by both bourgeoisie and students, and that of course sometimes goes wrong. As on a Friday evening in 1693, but this time it does go very wrong indeed: after the fight, the corpse of a student remains on the street.

Götze is furious. Two days later, Sunday, he preaches vehemently in church against this scandal, and shouts at the congregation: “Es ist bei dieser Mordhandel hergegangen wie dort stehe geschrieben: Philister über dir, Simson! – This murder has gone down as it has been written there: Philistines upon thee, Samson!”

It catches on. That same Sunday, roaring students go through the town of Jena with their new battle cry. “Philistines upon thee, Simson!”  From now on, the citizens of Jena will be called Philistines by the academic part of the city. It soon blows over to other cities, and already in the middle of the eighteenth century Philistine is synonymous with “anti-intellectual”, a swear word to indicate that someone despises beauty, art, intellect and spirituality, or is too stupid to understand it. In the nineteenth century, the Prince of Poets Goethe eventually elevates the new meaning to the dictionary once and for all:

Was ist ein Philister?
Ein hohler Darm,
Mit Furcht und Hoffnung ausgefüllt.
Daß Gott erbarm!

(What is a philistine?
A hollow gut,
Filled with fear and hope.
God have mercy!)

… and in this same nineteenth century it is adopted in that sense by the English poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold for the English language area (in Culture and Anarchy, 1869).

In 1965, when Dylan uses the word in “Tombstone Blues”, it is used in that condescending sense by Ginsberg, by Kerouac, by Richard Fariña, and presumably Dylan also comes across it with Proust (it is one of Proust’s favourite insults), or perhaps with Chekhov (“though they are Philistines, yet they have a charm of their own”), but either way: Dylan too undoubtedly associates “Philistine” with art-barbarism. His king of the Philistines, after all, has quite a distaste for cheerful street musicians, so he has all the pied pipers locked up in jail.

Dylan’s first association, however, goes back to the source, is the association of the Bible reader; Judges 15, Samson and the Philistines. Particularly traceable by the king’s somewhat bizarre grave decoration, of course (“Puts jawbones on their tombstones”):

And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.

(Judges 15: 15-17)

… which may be seen as an expression of bad taste, to adorn the gravestones of his fallen soldiers with the very weapon with which they were killed. But then again, on the other hand, perfectly fitting within the Christian tradition. After all, Jesus’ instrument of execution, the cross, has not only become the Christian symbol, but also the shape of most tombstones – although the Messianic story gives little reason to think that this is the symbol with which Jesus would want to be worshipped, commemorated and celebrated.

Immediately following this traceable Philistine-Samson-jawbone-pied piper association series, the poet breaks the relative narrative logic again. The king fattens the slaves. “Slaves” may well be inspired by Dylan’s pleasure in finding rhymes “that have never been rhymed before” (it’s safe to assume that the rhyme flatters their graves with fatten the slaves has never, ever been used before), but from which dark, subterranean corners of the mind this rather specific, completely unusual word combination pops up, is rather hard to follow. From the New York Public Library newspaper archive, perhaps.

In Chronicles the autobiographer Dylan recounts how in the early sixties, when he starts to feel the itch to become a songwriter, he feels the need “to slow my mind down”. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for, but he does know where to find it: in newspaper articles from the nineteenth century – which can be read on microfilm in the New York Public Library. For a page and a half, Dylan then sketches a colourful mosaic of themes, impressions and memories from all those articles in newspapers such as the Memphis Daily Eagle, the Savannah Daily Herald, the Pennsylvania Freeman and the Brooklyn Daily Times. In that 670-word sketch of the “godawful truth”, the phenomenon of slavery is a chorus; Dylan mentions eleven times a slavery related subject (abolition, slave-free, plantation, slavecrats) as an example of what he finds there – “it’s all so unrealistic, grandiose and sanctimonious at the same time.”

And among all these godawfully truthful reports, his eye may have stuck on the article “Fattening Slaves To Kill” in the Sacramento Daily Union, 3 October 1889:

Fattening slaves in a park and feeding them up like animals destined for the table, and then leading them to a shamble where they are slaughtered like oxen, cut into pieces and shared bit by bit among hungry cannibals — such is the practice which is permitted, according to M. Fondese, a French explorer, in some of the French, Belgian, Portuguese and even British territories in Übanghi.

… a unrealistic, grandiose report that baffles the reader from one bewilderment to the next. And one may be inclined to let pass that these cannibalistic practices are taking place in the French, Belgian and Portuguese jungle territories, but it is happening even in the British territories. That gruesome detail must have shocked the young, receptive Dylan even more – at least enough to grant that fattening the slaves a permanent place in the creative part of his brain. From which, four years later, when the beat poet seeks a rhyme for flattering their graves, it reappears.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part VII

———

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)

Untold Dylan

This is article 1,968 on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Tony Attwood and Tim Johnson

We recently posted a piece trying to unravel the song “Ride this train” and separate it from a song called “Riding on Train 45”.  In this short piece we are going to update that information, and clear up any misunderstandings over these two songs, plus a third called “Train of Pain”.

And because “Train of Pain” is the latest edition to this collection we will start with that.

Train of Pain

In 1986 on the tour of New Zealand, Bob Dylan played “Train of Pain” several times.  Each time it is an instrumental.

Heylin has a note about this song and says that at first Dylan “opened shows in New Zealand with an instrumental jam (later known as “Train of Pain”, after the girls sang this repeated refrain on the one occasion it gained a lyric.”  But he reports that by the time the band to to Australia this was replaced by “Justine” (“a Don and Dewey song”).

Here is the original…

Later this was replaced by the re-working of “Uranium Rock” which emerged as “Rock em Dead” which we reviewed here.

The video we used on that review has now vanished, but we have another one.  It’s not as good as the previous one, but it will have to do.

https://youtu.be/k8w2JFJbESE

Now the 1986 NZ “Train of Pain” tracks are all instrumental, but basically the same arrangement as “Riding on the Train”.

There are 3 versions of Riding on the Train, but only two of  them are available (February 12 and 13 1986)

https://youtu.be/UYtdD2Tdl1Y

They different night’s songs both have the same chorus but different lyrics which suggests they are improvised which actually makes them pretty unique but at the same time the words are a bit meaningless.

On our listing of Dylan songs we have a piece called “Ride this train”.   That is a 1986 song, and I’ve dropped the recording in at the end of this piece, which came at the same time as the wonderful “To fall in love with you”.

Riding on the train

......   I'll tell ya
I swear I can be there
and yeah I can be there
I'll tell ya   on the beat
all night mama till you reach the top
one more mama (I'll take care of you}
on the train   of pain
on the train   of pain
(oh so)   I saw her
I see high (her)   I see riding
ahaa...I see ...    
on the feeling
one more time baby keep on riding
one more time baby cause
you're riding on the train
the train of pain
riding on the train  the train of pain
riding on the train   the train of pain
aaah riding on the train
on the train of pain
riding on the train
riding the track (train)
one last… mama can you come on back
......tell you all the time
on the train riding on the train of pain
aaah

So we have one more song giving us 622 songs on the complete alphabetical listing.

Very many thanks to Tim for not only noticing this song but also persevering with me after I lost the first email!

Untold Dylan

This is article 1,968 on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

This is part 23 of “All Directions at Once” which attempts to look at Dylan’s songwriting in a way that is slightly different from that used by other commentators.  An index to the 22 previous parts is given here.

By Tony Attwood

I see the songs of 1973 as being of major importance if we truly wish to understand the work of Bob Dylan, not because most of us would call all or even most of them major classics among his work, but because without the explorations and different directions taken in the 1973 songs and the final two which I do declare to be masterpieces, I doubt that Bob could have produced the great works of 1974, works which are indeed considered by many to be among his most exciting and creative works of his career.

The point being, as you will appreciate if you have been with me so far, that after John Wesley Harding Bob Dylan moved away from writing songs that we might remember for years and years to come.  We had one song in 1968, a collection of country songs in 1969 which many find to be not among his greatest works, the New Morning collection in 1970, which again does not contain any songs that most fans would rate among his best, and then a couple of years where occasional songs were of particular interest, but in which there was little to grab everyone’s attention.

But then in 1973, for the first time in a number of years we found Bob Dylan breaking new ground.  Not every song could be called ground-breaking but the last two songs of that year seemed to say to many of us, if Dylan keeps on digging like this, surely he is going to find gold.

And then we had “Dirge.”

I have suggested elsewhere on this site that it is possible that Dylan wrote the piece just to show he could do bleak and morbid, as well as lively and jolly, and it fits with the fact that musically there are links between this piece and “This Wheels on Fire” which uses a similar musical approach to accompany a completely different set of lyrics.

The result really is something new.  It is not just that I don’t think Bob had done self-loathing on this level before, but it was the sheer magnitude of Dirge as a conception, the absolute completeness of the message, the overarching totality of the horror at what he had become that marks this out not just from every other Dylan song, but from virtually anything ever written by a rock or folk songwriter before.

Yet not that many people do indeed “mark it out”.   While Wikipedia can go into page after page of analysis of some Dylan songs, here they say

“Dirge is a song by Bob Dylan. It was released on his 14th studio album Planet Waves in 1974. After recalling his band to re-record the track “Forever Young,” Dylan recorded ‘Dirge’ on just the second take. The song was labeled on the studio tape box as ‘Dirge for Martha.’ Notable for its acidic tone, “Dirge” has never been performed in concert.”

And that’s it.  Heylin on the other hand (and to give him credit where due) does grasp what is going on here, and although he devotes most of his time to discussing the how where and why-fore of the recording sessions, he does see the importance of what happened here.

But then despite the way the song is often idgnored, it is hard not to get.  When have we ever heard

I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed
You were just a painted face on a trip down to suicide road
The stage was set, the lights went out all around the old hotel
I hate myself for loving you and I’m glad the curtain fell.

As the piece progresses there is an other-world remoteness about the lyrics, which have the feeling of fiction not autobiography.  None the worse for that of course, it is a very fine piece of writing – and it is the writing Dylan can do with assurance – the description of the down and out and life gone wrong.   The way of writing he learned from all those years with the blues, but now with a completely different musical accompaniment.

This is the “World Gone Wrong” one more time, both in general terms about the world in which he lives.  And although it sounds as if it could be directed at one person I think really it is directed at our whole civilisation.

Heard your songs of freedom and man forever stripped
Acting out his folly while his back is being whipped
Like a slave in orbit he’s beaten ’til he’s tame
All for a moment’s glory and it’s a dirty, rotten shame.

His own desperation with the world around him, rather than a particular person is played out in these verses, and there is, perhaps, a desperation in the failure of the protest movement to make any change at all.

Yet at the same time here comes the first big hint that something very special is about to happen in the world of Dylan…

There are those who worship loneliness, I’m not one of them
In this age of fibreglass I’m searching for a gem
The crystal ball upon the wall hasn’t shown me nothing yet
I’ve paid the price of solitude but at least I’m out of debt.

And here’s a thought for those who love to believe that lines in the songs always refer back to Dylan’s own world, rather than being works of fiction, “at least I’m out of debt” might mean he had finished creating the albums he was contractually obliged to make.  It does also fit with the liberation that was to come in terms of creating a completely new type of song – which would suggest “I’m out of debt” means “I’ve paid my dues” in the musical sense.  Maybe not, but for once I think it could be.

But whatever the detail means, this really is about the world that has gone utterly wrong.

So sing your praise of progress and of the Doom Machine
The naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen
Lady Luck who shines on me, will tell you where I’m at
I hate myself for loving you but I should get over that.

No man alive will come to you  With another tale to tell
But you know that we shall meet again  
     If your memory serves you well

The stage was set, the lights went out all around the old hotel
I hate myself for loving you 
             and I’m glad the curtain fell.

• Part 1: Bob Dylan: Fearful Symmetry
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part II)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part III)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Sympathy (Part V)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan  And Fearful Symmetry (Part VIII)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part IX) 

By Larry Fyffe

Poet William Blake presents his readers with a rather dark Existentialist point of view – bound we be in Poe-like chains of circumstance – even before the experience of adulthood has a chance to cloud up the innocent sunshine days of childhood:

My mother groaned, my father wept
Into this dangerous world l leapt
Helpless, naked, piping loud
Like a fiend hid in a cloud
Struggling in my father's hands
Striving against my swaddling bands
Bound and weary, I thought it best
To sulk upon my mother's breast
(William Blake: Infant Sorrow)

Akin to the sentiment expressed in the following song lyrics:

If I had some education
To give me a decent start
I might have been a doctor or
A master in the arts
But I used my hands for stealing
When I was very young
And they locked me down in jailhouse cells
And that's how my life begun
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of Donald White)

Less serious other artists be as they attempt to lighten up the sorrows that exist in the human condition by cooking up a batch of dark humour – as pointed to by Jochen Markhorst:

I took me a wife 'bout five years ago
We got one kid, he's just about four
He gets up at the table, and slaps his ma
Rubs flashes in my hair, says:"ain't you my pa?"
Runs string beans up my nose
Sticks potatoes in my head
(Chris Bouchillon: New Talking Blues)

Likewise dark-humouredly done so in the song lyrics quoted below:

She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
And I said, "Oh, I didn't know that
But then again there's only one I met
And he just smoked my eyelids
And punched my cigarette"
(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)

There be these lines as well:

Mama's in the pantry, preparing to eat
Sister's in the kitchen, a-fixing for the feast
Papa's in the cellar, a-mixing up the hops
Brother's at the window, a-watching for the cops
(Chris Bouchillon: New Talking Blues)

Echoed in the song lyrics below:

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
(Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues)

In these ones too:

Well I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head, and I gave a yell
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man"
A shotgun fired, and away I ran
(Bob Dylan: Talking World War III Blues)

Poet William Blake never has to worry about the Atomic Bomb:

Go away, you Bomb, get away, go away
Fast, right now, fast, quick, you get me sick
My good gal don't like you none
And the kids on my corner are scared of you
(Michael Montecossa : Go Away You Bomb ~ Dylan/Montecossa)

Untold Dylan

This is article 1,967 on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

by Jochen Markhorst

• Tombstone Blues I: Daddy’s looking for the fragmentation bomb’s fuse
• Tombstone Blues II: Duck back down
• Tombstone Blues III: Let’s Go Get Stoned
• Tombstone Blues IV: Medicine Man

V          He was kiddin’ me, didn’t he?

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?”

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, “Death to all those who would whimper and cry”
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky
Saying, “The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken”

  Oscar Hammerstein II is one of the Very Greats who, in collaboration with among others Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, has contributed abundantly to the American Songbook. Dylan sings his “Why Was I Born?” for example, and “This Nearly Was Mine” and “Some Enchanted Evening”. He celebrates huge successes with musicals such as Oklahoma! and The Sound Of Music (“Edelweiss” is the last song he writes), winning eight Tony Awards and two Oscars throughout his career.

Rather underexposed remains Hammerstein’s influence on songwriting in the second half of the twentieth century. By a lucky coincidence, ten-year-old Stephen Sondheim moves in next door, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, shortly after the divorce of Sondheim’s parents. Hammerstein becomes a surrogate father – especially when young Stephen writes his first musical at the age of fifteen, which is then skilfully and constructively slammed by Hammerstein. “In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theatre than most people learn in a lifetime.”

Sondheim gets to be one of the best musical composers and songwriters of the twentieth century, mainly because of his talent of course, but also because of his mentor’s guidance. He writes the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and after that his career is a succession of hits (Sweeney Todd, “Send In The Clowns”, Folies, Company – to name but a few examples). His nickname “Shakespeare of the musical” really is not too exaggerated; his lyrics are poetic, the characters have depth and are often fascinatingly ambivalent, and Sondheim’s command of the language is sublime.

His admiration for Dylan, which he expresses every now and then, will be mutual; both Jewish language artists have an infectious weak-spot and enormous talent for rhyme. And they also seem to borrow from each other at times. Far-fetched maybe, but Dylan’s of course-horse-endorse from the first verse vaguely echoes Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962);

No royal curse,
No Trojan horse,
And a happy ending, of course!...

… but less far-fetched is the origin of Sondheim’s rhyme find in “The Day Off” from the brilliant, award-winning musical Sunday In The Park With George (1984), the musical adaptation of Seurat’s immortal masterpiece Dimanche d’été à la Grande Jatte:

Bits of pastry...
Piece of chicken...
Here's a handkerchief
That somebody was sick in.

There are probably only two songs in the entire Western art history in which chicken is rhymed with sick in… this musical song by Stephen Sondheim from 1984 and Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” from 1965. It is a brilliant, Cole Porter-like rhyme find, and Sondheim is certainly more than capable of crafting such rhymes himself – but this one he has copied, consciously or unconsciously. Which will hardly bother the thief of thoughts Dylan, of course.

Sondheim’s many reflections thereon in interviews demonstrate an identical love for the power of a good rhyme. The musical composer attaches particular importance to surprise, which he shares with Dylan. Sondheim loves words that are spelled completely differently, but still rhyme, and believes in their special power. As he tries to explain to Jeffrey Brown in the PBS News Hour interview, December 2010, using the word rougher. You can of course rhyme it with, say, tougher, says Sondheim. But if you use suffer instead, you really engage the listener;

Sondheim: I think we see words on — as if they’re on paper, sometimes when you hear them. I don’t mean it’s an absolutely conscious thing, but I’m absolutely convinced that people essentially see what they’re hearing.
Brown: Yes. So, I’m hearing rougher and suffer rhyme, but I’m… and then I quickly think…
Sondheim: And you think… and that’s a surprise. I have got a rhyme in “Passion,” colonel and journal. Now, you look at them on paper, they seem to have no relation to each other at all. So, when you rhyme them, it’s, ooh, you know? It’s – it – I really may be wrong about this. It’s just something that has struck me over the years.

The passion and enthusiasm with which the here 80-year-old Sondheim tells his story is contagious. And recognizable – that’s how Dylan talks about rhyming; with the same, semi- apologetic conviction regarding its power and importance. Looking back at “Like A Rolling Stone” in 1988, he is still blown away by the unusual rhyme find in the opening. “The first two lines which rhymed kiddin’ you with didn’t you just about knocked me out.”
Still more explicit Dylan is in the beautiful SongTalk interview with Paul Zollo (1991):

SongTalk: Is rhyming fun for you?
Dylan: Well it can be, but, you know, it’s a game. You know, you sit around… you know, it’s more like, it’s mentally… mentally… it gives you a thrill. It gives you a thrill to rhyme something you might think, “Well, that’s never been rhymed before.” […] My sense of rhyme used to be more involved in my songwriting than it is… Still staying in the unconscious frame of mind, you can pull yourself out and throw up two rhymes first and work it back. You get the rhymes first and work back and then see if you can make it make sense in another kind of way. You can still stay in the unconscious frame of mind to pull it off, which is the state of mind you have to be in anyway.
SongTalk: So sometimes you will work backwards, like that?
Dylan: Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of times. That’s the only way you’re going to finish something. That’s not uncommon, though.

It gives a thrill to rhyme something “that’s never been rhymed before”, you start there, then you work backwards, staying “in the unconscious frame of mind”… here Dylan actually seems to describe a fairly accurate working method for the creation of a song like “Tombstone Blues”. In any case, it makes more sense than commentators who see an “indictment of the American Dream” in the lyrics (Williamson), or “a harsh serving of cinema verité” (Bracy), Shelton sees that “allusions to Vietnam are apparent throughout”, with which John Hughes agrees (“the song’s dream-like distortions are the means by which it mirrors society’s own distortions”) and Robert Polito analyses “war rooms, sexual maneuvering for City Hall, the University, and Vietnam” as well.

Similarly, analysts feel a lot of expressiveness in the appearance of actors like the Commander-in-Chief and John the Baptist, but the ease with which you hear Dylan change names, sentences and attributes in preceding takes (on The Cutting Edge, 2015) rather undermines its importance. John the Baptist, for example, is first a “blacksmith with freckles”, and in a next take “John the blacksmith”, before Dylan finally decides on going with the legendary prophet.

Dylan himself won’t mind, all those pompous and weighty interpretations. “I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means,” as the Nobel laureate says in his lecture. Or, to put it more poetically: the poet provides the colouring picture, we may colour it ourselves. Wrong colours do not exist. So, you can colour Einstein like Robin Hood, the house over yonder is red, the rain is purple, and the sun is not yellow – it’s chicken.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part VI

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

• 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)

By Tony Attwood

This is part 22 of “All Directions at Once” which attempts to look at Dylan’s songwriting in a way that is slightly different from that used by other commentators.  An index to the 21 previous parts is given here.

Bob Dylan composed between 12 and 14 songs in 1973 depending on your point of view, (Wagon Wheel and Sweet Amerillo are argued about by some who dispute his co-authorship, and if we do accept Dylan was a co-composer, we don’t really know how much he was involved).

Whether the number was 12 or 14, either way it wasn’t a high number when compared to earlier standards, but in contrast to more  recent years, and in terms of variety, quality and quantity, it most certainly showed that when it came to Bob’s creative muse, something most certainly was afoot.

After several years of very limited writing, the revival in his interest in song writing that dates from “Paint my masterpiece” could so easily have faded away by now, but no, it seemed to have taken hold.  He was once more on the move.

Here’s a list of the 1973 songs.

1. Goodbye Holly
2. Wagon Wheel (Rock me mama) (Dylan’s input contested)
3. Sweet Amerillo (Dylan’s input contested)
4. Knocking on heaven’s door
5. Never say goodbye
6. Nobody cept you
7. Going going gone
8. Hazel
9. Something there is about you
10. You Angel You
11. On a night like this
12. Tough Mama
13. Dirge 
14. Wedding Song

The subject matter of the songs in recent years

In 1970 Dylan had introduced another new theme to his writing by thinking about the environment and how it relates to, and to an extent how it effects, the world and the way we see the world.  Five of the songs from that year have environmental elements in them, as well as other issues.

The only other topic or theme that occupied Bob Dylan for more than one song that year was his eternal favourite: love, of which there were four songs.   This does not mean Bob was in love, although it is quite possible he was.  It is just that he has always found love songs an absolute natural format for him to work with.

In that original article about 1970 I concluded that from the start of his writing in 1959 up to that moment, the most popular of themes in his catalogue behind the love songs were songs of lost love (a total only slightly fewer than the love songs – 31 lost love to 35 love.

After that the most common themes in Bob’s lyrics was protest (20 songs) and moving on (16 songs).

As such, in terms of subject matter across the years Bob Dylan had been much more conventional in his writing than generalised articles sometimes recognise, with his emphasis above all else on songs of love, lost love, moving on, and desire.

Yet he had often delved into other areas and had only occasionally stopped exploring other themes.  So now, having had quite a pause in his song writing, as he began to get his work as a composer going again, it is perhaps not surprising that he turned to a variety of lyrical themes old and new, in an effort to bring forth songs that he found to be of interest.

Returning for a moment to the songs of 1971 and attempting to classify their subject matter of those songs we might come up with this extraordinarily varied set.

1. Vomit Express (postmodernist blues; cheapest seats on the cheapest flight)
2. When I paint my masterpiece (art, Rome, the environment)
3. Watching the river flow (The artist as observer, the environment)
4. George Jackson (protest)
5. Wallflower (asking for a dance)
6.  For you baby (love)

Which shows us just how varied Bob’s ideas were at this time.  I think “Wallflower” was Bob’s first dance related song.  I am not sure how many he wrote after that.

Moving on to 1972, as we have seen that year gave us an even shorter list of new songs:

1. Forever Young – (Love and hope for a child)
2. Billy 1, 4, and 7 and the Main title theme – Billy the Kid (Being trapped)

1973 brought another 14 songs, and again love songs came out as the most popular theme of the year, with five titles.  The only other topic that got near was “moving on” with three songs on that theme.

Pulling these three years together we get these subject totals which in 1971-3 were taken up by Dylan in his compositions more than once…

• Love: 7
• Moving on: 3
• The environment: 3
• Lost love: 2

So we can see that just as in the 1960s, Bob still focused on love as the prime topic to write about in his songs.  But he was most certainly trying out other ideas.

Heading towards the cliff edge

Returning to my chronological theme, at the end of the last episode in this series (After the river) I left the final five songs composed in 1973 for us still to contemplate, starting with You Angel You – which Heylin dismissed with the words, ““His fans had already had enough of this kind of song.”

It is a comment that sticks in my mind because it suggests that Bob Dylan had this gift as a songwriter, and so could do anything any time, and had he been bothered could have knocked out another “Visions” or “Rolling Stone” and was either being bloody minded or just plain lazy in not giving the fans what they wanted.

This view is, to me, utterly absurd.  It takes no account of what artistic creativity is all about; the fact that for most artists, creative flair and the success in creating and completing a work, comes and goes, and neither is under the artist’s control.  Where the creative drive takes the artist depends on how the artist is feeling in terms of emotions and mental health, and what is going on in the world around the artist.  Not what his fans (or come to that his agent or his record company) happen to demand.

The notion that Dylan could somehow turn on the tap and come up with another “Visions” or come to that “Drifter’s Escape” is just plain bonkers.  Indeed the reason that a disproportionately high number of artists in all forms of art suffer from mental health problems, drug and alcohol abuse issues, and what is often referred to as “writers’ block” is because writing a song or painting a picture or any other artistic activity is nothing like turning up for work, answering customer emails, checking the accounts and then coming home again to put one’s feet up and watch TV.

Heylin himself gets around this issue by writing books that record the basic facts about Dylan’s work (who was there, where it was, when it was) without seemingly being able to contemplate either the artistic flow of Dylan’s work, or the flowing river that conveys the essence of Dylan’s artistic genius.  But without such contemplation, to me at least, the result is not much more than the telephone directories of days of yore.   A useful tool of reference, but not actually very insightful.

And yet surely, we all know from everyday observation that we can have good days and bad days, and most of us learn to carry on with our lives in the bad days, hoping that some better days might be around the corner.   On the bad days maybe we don’t do our job as well as we might on other days, maybe we are a bit short with our partner or our children, but we carry on, get the children up the next morning, go to work, prepare the food, watch TV, go out for a dance or go to the bar, listen to music, have a drink…

What people who are not working in the creative arts perhaps don’t realise is that the absolute essence of life is utterly different for those working creatively.  It isn’t a case of getting up, writing a song, polishing it off, having lunch and going to the golf course.  Especially when not only does the song not “come” today, it didn’t come yesterday or the day before and the chances of it turning up tomorrow are pretty remote as well.

Thus for those who see past, present and future as a connected form (a set of waves always seems to me to be the best way to think of the movement of time, but that’s just me), this moment in Dylan’s life in 1973 is part of the moving wave (or if you prefer another very important step) along the road which led to the explosion once more of his genius, opening with Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, and followed by Tangled up in blue the following year.

But before we get there Bob had another cliff edge to peer over.

And yet again I get ahead of myself, for I shall be leaving the cliff edge that is “Dirge” for the next article.   What I am trying to argue in my usual laborious manner is that starting in 1971 with “When I paint my masterpiece” Bob Dylan was riding a new wave, slowly pushing himself through the artistic gears, exploring, experimenting and constantly edging forwards to the moment in 1974 when he could create the utterly incredible set of songs that he produced that year.

Seen this way, all the songs of the year preceding 1974 are vitally important for anyone who is seriously interested in seeing how Dylan worked his way through the long years when the muse was not upon him.  This collection is Dylan’s equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook, sketching out the visions that prepared the way for “Tangled”.

In “You angel you” we find Dylan taking the absolute classic pop music format: A A B A – where “A” is a verse and “B” is the “middle 8” variant section that helps the simple piece jog along by giving a spot of variety.  In classical terms it is Ternary Form, one of the three standard ways of writing songs that have existed for hundreds of years. There is strophic (verse, verse, verse), Binary (an A section then a B section and ternary.

Heylin (and others of course, it’s not just him, but he does seem to want to suggest that he is the arbiter in these matters) wants genius all the way, and so not only dismisses “You angel you” but also On a night like this.   But again it is a successful song, in that it is memorable, and an enjoyable listen and as a piece of entertainment it works.  Criticising a piece like this is rather like looking at a house and criticising the foundations for not be innovative enough.

If Dylan was (as I suspect) proving to himself that he could knock out perfectly decent pop songs again Tough Mama showed a little bit more experimentation.  The musical structure of the song certainly takes in some different territory as about 80% of the way through each verse, having been solidly in the key of D we suddenly find ourselves in G for a couple of bars before dropping back.

The effect is quite unsettling.  I am not trying to say that this transformation is a moment of inspiration or genius – rather I think it is a moment of experimentation, of looking, pushing, puzzling, just seeing where this song could go.  More getting ready for the future.

Lyrically we are in the days of “coming back” – the days of writing more than just a few songs, and the days of experimentation.

And that experimentation was now going to hit us full in the face in a way that surely no one who was able to follow Bob’s musical progression as it happened, could really have been ready for.

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Sir Hardly Anyone,

Senior lecturer in Childhood Studies at the Dept of Dylanology, University of Certain Things, Duluth.

As you will know, these are exciting times for those of us who spend our moments researching all things Dylan, what with the developments that have already been reported in this excellent organ, through the articles The Lost Bar Mitzvah Tapes, and then The Childhood Tapes.

I was delighted to see this reportage as it brings forth, and indeed to the fore, the dedicated research that my department, and indeed many other university and institute faculties, now undertake on a daily if not hourly basis in discovering more about the origins or otherwise of the creative forces that drive our cultural heritage back and forth, to and fro, in and out.  And so forth.

My colleagues and I in the Department (or Dept as it has been renamed by errant journalists who drop in from time to time and steal letters from our door, as is their wont) have been particularly focused in recent years in analysing the early sounds made by children who in later life become famed as musicians.

Of course we are not alone in such an utterly pointless excavation, as many other august institutions (or Insts as they are known in the trade) have copied our lead and have likewise been analysing the early scribbles of those who were to go on to become great artists, poets, and (for reasons which will not become clear in this article) bricklayers.  The patchwork quilt of random words spoken by our soon-to-be poets of a generation is indeed a rich minefield, they tell me, explosive in its hidden treasures.  I take them at their word.

This work is of course of utterly vital importance, for as we often are reminded during coffee breaks and the like, what more we could have known of the writings of Shakespeare, to name but a few, if only his mother had had the foresight to jot down his early speeches as a child.  I mean, we know from the diaries of his schoolteacher Arbuthnot Merryweather that Master Shakespeare opened an essay on the work of Plato, “Foresooth herewith, this question I am not fit to answer…” although it seems his teacher agreed, giving him a delta minus for the effort.

And so my colleagues have for years been turning over the desks in the classrooms of Hibbing High School (or Hibbing High as it is known to us academic investigators) looking for any scratch or mark made by Robert Zimmerman while he was interred therein which might give us further insights in the people trapped in the room perceived through Johanna’s Visions.

But my personal speciality, and the issue to which I wish to draw your attention today, and indeed tomorrow when you come to read my little note again, thinking perchance that what you remember from yesterday cannot be real, is with the younger Bob.  The Bob aged one or two as he learned our native tongue and explored the sounds his throat could make.  Was he quiet and complacent, or did he shout and scream?  When faced by a loving parent making gurgling sounds did he laugh and giggle, or did he cry out “Help me in my weakness”?  This we need to know.

And this indeed sums up the academic work of my department.  To find the primitive sounds of Dylan the Youngster and explore within early signs of Desolation Row, Dirge and of course (following a most generous request by Tony Attwood, the publisher of this august site) “Tell Ol Bill”.

Indeed the search for early signs of Ol Bill in the gurglings of the younger Bob is a major part of our work, and in this regard we have been much aided by a generous bequest from the Institute of Useless and Pointless Knowledge in Rome.

Thus our work progresses and we have found much.  A dog whistle believed to have once been blown by Bob but then jettisoned, on the ground it was in the wrong key, is one of the Institute’s prize possessions as indeed is a box that is said once to have housed a cup that one day he picked up by mistake.

But of course this work is expensive, and you, naturally, as a devotee of Bob can make a difference.  A donation, no matter how large or small, can help the continuance of the exploration of our Dylanesque heritage.   Which, unless I am very much mistaken, brings me to my point.

You will have heard (or you would have heard if you had been paying attention) of the Bar Mitzvah Tapes and the Childhood Tapes.  Well, my department is now leading the search for the cello tapes.  It is time consuming and expensive work and your donation could make all the difference.  Please send cash to The Cello Tapes Fund, Institute of Unrealistic Hope, University of Certain Things, North Circular Road, London N1.

• Part 1: Bob Dylan: Fearful Symmetry
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part II)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part III)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Sympathy (Part V)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan  And Fearful Symmetry (Part VIII)

by Larry Fyffe

According to William Blake, Eve represents the life force within Nature; she rebels against the lone male God of the Old Testament who creates Adam and then Eve to exist forever in a sexless ‘Eden’; not a word does Eve say to her mate Adam when she willingly entwines herself with a snake-shaped interloper hidden in a tree of Eden (Lilith in disguise, maybe). As things turn out, Adam and Eve both get locked out of the supposed Paradise.

In a rather different version of the Old Testament story, screeching Lilith, Adam’s first wife, refuses to be subservient to her mate, and flies away from Eden though it’s by no means a sexless place. She apparently gets a mention in the King James Bible where therein she’s metaphorically compared to a ‘screech owl’:

The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet
With the wild beasts of the island
And the satyr shall cry to his fellow
The screech owl shall also rest there
And find for herself a place to rest
(Isaiah 34:14)

Going back to ancient Greek mythology, tyrannical God Zeus has sex with the beautiful Queen of Libya, and his wife Hera seeks vengeance against her; Lamia ends up as a nasty snake-woman who eats children. And in a reversal of the New Testament story, God’s son Jesus escapes crucifixion – outsmarts both the Devil Serpent and Mary-seducing God –  by having a Libyan take His place.

Goodness, for all we know, maybe Jesus goes off to Libya to visit Lamia and/or Lilith – matters get very mixed up and rather confusing.

So confirms the song lyrics beneath:

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)

The archetype of the long-lived, poisonous female (mercury lips), albeit softened, makes an appearance in the song lyrics below:

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke, and your prayers like rhymes
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh, who do they think could bury you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Harsher she be depicted in the following lines:

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me, and nothing behind
There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got asssssin's eyes
I'm looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

Much of the time, but not all the time, the female is considered by the singer/songwriter to be a Muse rather than a Lilith or Lamia:

I'm falling in love with Calliope
She don't belong to anybody, why not give her to me
She's speaking to me, speaking with her eyes
I've grown so tired of chasing lies
(Bob Dylan: Mother Of Muses)

Poet William Blake metonymically associates the human female with moon that’s close to earth, and shines in the night –  her life energy cannot be destroyed because she gives birth to children:

If not for you
Babe, I'd lay awake all night
Wait for the morning light
To shine in through
But it would not be new
If not for you
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)

https://youtu.be/tctzUNMp5po

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Shmuel Berger

“There have long been rumors that Mr. Dylan had stashed away an extensive archive. It is now revealed that he did keep a private trove of his work, dating back to his earliest days as an artist, including lyrics, correspondence, recordings, films and photographs.”

http://www.nytimes.com

Just recently, the discovery of a very early recording of Dylan at age 13 was met with disbelief in some quarters.  Well, as it turns out, this was not the only example of recently discovered materials from Bob’s childhood….

Busy being born: Bob Dylan’s The Childhood Tapes Released!

1: The First Cry

Happened right after the umbilical cord was snipped.

Here we hear Bob Dylan cry for the first time.

The cry after the cutting of the umbilical cord is thought to have been revisited later with “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mama, can this really be the end?”

Dad Abe Zimmerman caught it all on film, including Mom Beatty begging little Bobby not to cry.

Thought to be the inspiration for “Baby, Stop Crying”

2: The Bris Tape

This is the second known recording, taped at 8 days of age. The scream upon the circumcision blade incising is also thought to have been revisited later in “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mama, can this really be the end?”

3: The Potty Trained Photo

This is a rare photo of actual Dylan feces, in celebration of his first successful defecation into the potty. Later Dylan converted the photo into the cover of Self Portrait, which caused Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone to begin his review of the album by asking “What is this shit?”     After that review, Dylan reportedly said: ““Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mama, can    this really be the end?”, but apparently in a cynical and sarcastic tone.

4: T he Bicycle Crash

Abe Zimmerman caught Bob on a primitive camera here. Bob, while trying to learn how to ride, crashes the new bicycle he got for Chanukah.

After the bike crash he wanted to go to this Big Pink house in Woodstock New York and chill out, but his parents wouldn’t let him because he was like 9 years old.  After the bike crash he wrote a letter (with a Sharpie) to his Mom and said “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mama, can this really be the end?”

And then he added: “To be stuck inside of Hibbing with the Woodstock Blues again”. So this is a HUGE finding for Dylan scholars.

And then he ran away and joined the circus, if you ask him.

5: The Bar Mitzvah Tapes

This is the jewel in the crown of the Bob Dylan Childhood Tapes.

Here the just turned thirteen Bob Dylan slips in, before his weekly parsha reading – the chutzpa of it! – imagine – shocking as The Rites of Spring – he slips in “God said to Abraham kill me a son/ Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”/God says, “Out on Highway 61””. The congregation was stunned. The folk were electrified, so to speak.

Then in the sermon the Rabbi said mockingly: “of course, there’s no Highway 61 in the Bible” and Bobby stands up and yells “There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is? Do you Rabbi Cohen?”

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Tony Attwood with very many thanks to Tim Johnson

On our listing of Dylan songs we have a piece called “Ride this train”.   That is a 1986 song, and I’ve dropped the recording in at the end of this piece, which came at the same time as the wonderful “To fall in love with you”.

That song was noted by Untold a while back, but when I wrote that little piece I missed another song, “Riding on the  train.”   However Tim Johnson has picked me up on this, and sent me a recording of “Riding on the train” – and persevered with me even when I then didn’t reply, and kept on until finally I did wake up and get my house in order.  As a result thanks to his endevours, we do have another song, which is not “Ride this train” (and which is also not Riding on Train 45 which is not a Dylan song at all) but  which turns out to be a different song.

The two gigs at which the song was played were both in Sydney on concurrent days, 12 February and 13 February 1986, by Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.  BobDylan.com agrees on the dates but carries no detail.

But Tim Johnson has gone even further by having a bash at the lyrics

Riding on the train

......   I'll tell ya
I swear I can be there
and yeah I can be there
I'll tell ya   on the beat
all night mama till you reach the top
one more mama (I'll take care of you}
on the train   of pain
on the train   of pain
(oh so)   I saw her
I see high (her)   I see riding
ahaa...I see ...    
on the feeling
one more time baby keep on riding
one more time baby cause
you're riding on the train
the train of pain
riding on the train  the train of pain
riding on the train   the train of pain
aaah riding on the train
on the train of pain
riding on the train
riding the track (train)
one last… mama can you come on back
......tell you all the time
on the train riding on the train of pain
aaah

So we have one more song giving us 622 songs on the complete alphabetical listing.

Very many thanks to Tim for not only noticing this song but also persevering with me after I lost the first email!

https://youtu.be/UYtdD2Tdl1Y

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

by Jochen Markhorst

• Tombstone Blues (1965) part I: Daddy’s looking for the fragmentation bomb’s fuse
• Tombstone Blues part II: Duck back down
• Tombstone Blues (1965) III         Let’s Go Get Stoned

IV         Medicine Man

The hysterical bride in the penny arcade
Screaming she moans, “I’ve just been made”
Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade
Says, “My advice is to not let the boys in”

Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside
He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride
“Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride
You will not die, it’s not poison”

Cocaine, heroin, morphine, alcohol … the popularity of many “medicines” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is partly due to ingredients that have lost much of their beneficial image today.

Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup is “perfectly harmless and innocent” and fully accepted to give to “fussy children” to grant them a “natural quiet sleep, relieving the child from pain”. It is, in fact, a mixture of morphine and alcohol.

Cocaine is in everything from cough syrup to tooth powder, menstrual pains are fought with every conceivable opiate, and even Thomas Jefferson, despite being a critical and educated man, fights his chronic diarrhea with laudanum. With addicting outcome; on his estate in Monticello he grows his own opium poppy. He does like it; “with care and laudanum I may consider myself in what is to be my habitual state,” he writes to a friend (in which of course the word habitual stands out). Recruiting words apparently; later, Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd also develops quite a laudanum addiction.

The “women’s disease” hysteria is no less spectacularly treated, from the Middle Ages until Freud. Initially it is suspected that the uterus is searching for a child, which then causes the hysterical attacks, later it is generally agreed that a lack of sexual contact must be the cause. Until well into the nineteenth century, there was medical consensus on the treatment as well: vaginal massage by a midwife or doctor. Liberating orgasms should cure the patient from her suffering.

Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics on the success of treatment.

Freud, as he usually does, puts an end to the fun. Although the Viennese doctor’s diagnoses usually target pubic areas, and although he is not at all averse to cocaine, he tries to treat precisely female hysteria with “normal” therapy. Well, with what we call “normal therapy” these days, anyway. His Studien über Hysterie (1895) describes five case studies and is in fact the beginning of classical psychoanalysis.

However, Dylan’s hysterical bride seems to fall into the hands of an old-fashioned therapist. At any rate, her psyche is not being analysed.

The hysterical bride part is the most compact octave of the song, suggesting, more than the other five octaves do, a rounded tableau with the promise of a real narrative and thus seems more like a preliminary study for a “Desolation Row”-couplet.

The archetype hysterical bride is here, by Dylan standards that is, surprisingly true to character. Her whereabouts, the penny arcade, may be alienating, but apart from that she meets the norm: she screams, moans and is weeping. Granted, “screaming she moans” is an unusual word combination, but both verbs do fit hysteria.

Her opponent, the doctor, is introduced with a rather lame but still effective pun; the doctor who pulls down the shade – in other words: a shady type, a dubious subject who wants to escape the daylight. He is further characterised by his walk; swagger and shuffle suggest a philanderer type and an unprofessional, groping continuation. A suggestion reinforced by his choice of words: “Swallow your pride, you will not die, it’s not poison” at least insinuates an (oral) rape scene.

It is not unambiguous. The change of job title (from doctor to medicine man) and the word poison do point to nineteenth-century medicine as well; to opiates, in other words. Not too far-fetched. Dylan has used the word medicine only three times in his entire career. All three times in these five hundred mercury days, and all three times in an ambiguous, drug-inducing context:

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
("Subterranean Homesick Blues", January ’65)

Now the rainman gave me two cures
Then he said, “Jump right in”
The one was Texas medicine
The other was just railroad gin
("Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again", February ’66)

In these same days, spring 1965, Dylan sits with Brother Bill, with William Burroughs, in a pub in Greenwich Village. Dylan is a fan and does not hide his admiration. In March ’65, just before the songwriter produces “Tombstone Blues”, he is interviewed by Paul J. Robbins, and he says:

“I’ve written some songs which are kind of far out, a long continuation of verses, stuff like that – but I haven’t really gotten into writing a completely free song. Hey, you dig something like cut-ups? I mean, like William Burroughs?”

The similarities between Burroughs’ work and Dylan’s experimental novel Tarantula are unmistakable anyway, but cut-up also leaves its mark on the songs from this period. Perhaps the songwriter – mentally at least – even did cut and paste from Burroughs’ work; not “completely free”, but still. A word like medicine Brother Bill uses in every book, usually as a euphemism for mind-expanding drugs. As in Junky:

The guard says to me, “Drug addict! Why you sonofabitch, you mean you’re a dope fiend! Well, you’ll get no medicine in here!”

And in Nova Express (1964) we find enough words in a single paragraph to cut and paste a Dylan couplet:

“We hit the local croakers with “the fish poison con” – “I got these poison fish, Doc, in the tank transported back from South America I’m a Ichthyologist and after being stung by the dreaded Candirú – Like fire through the blood is it not? Doctor, and coming on now” – And The Sailor goes into his White Hot Agony Act chasing the doctor around his office like a blowtorch He never missed – But he burned down the croakers – So like Bob and me when we “had a catch” as the old cunts call it and arrested some sulky clerk with his hand deep in the company pocket, we take turns playing the tough cop and the con cop – So I walk in on this Pleasantville croaker and tell him I have contracted this Venusian virus and subject to dissolve myself in poison juices and assimilate the passers-by unless I get my medicine and get it regular.”

Poison, medicine, doctor, and the opponent is called – what’s in a name – “Bob”, on the pages before and after there is striking idiom such as screaming, hysterical and penny arcade to be found… reading Brother Bill’s work has given a great thrill, that much seems obvious.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part V

———–

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)

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

Bob Dylan and the Faithful Symmetry

• Part 1: Bob Dylan: Fearful Symmetry
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part II)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part III)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Sympathy (Part V)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VII)

by Larry Fyffe

Physical barriers create a garrison to provide protection against the environment, but they can also isolate individuals, sexes, ‘races’, classes, and cultures from one another

How the chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackening Church appalls
And the hapless soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls
(William Blake: London)

As Harold Bloom asserts, a Gnostic-like vision can be detected in the art of William Blake  –  and in the poetry of Robert Frost. In their vision, a symbolic ‘wall’ separates the blackened material world from the warm light that’s emanates from an ideal spiritual plane.

So expressed in the song lyrics below:

There's a wall between you, and what you want
And you got to leap it
Tonight you got the power to take it
Tomorrow you won't have the power to keep it
(Bob Dylan: The Groom Is Still Waiting At The Altar)

Gnostic-like, in mytonymical diction below, the horse and drum be associated with the horrors of war.

Kill the beast, and feed the swine
Scale the wall, and smoke the vine
Feed the horse, and saddle up the drum
It's unbelievable, the day would finally come
(Bob Dylan: Unbelievable)

A spiritual plane there be though sorrowfully only a few human beings are capable of getting in touch with it:

Far way in the stormy night
Far away and over the wall
You are there in the flickering light
Where the teardrops fall
(Bob Dylan: Where Teardrops Fall)

Indeed, getting in touch, and keeping in touch, with the far away absolute Spirit of Love, the so-called Monad, is not an easy thing to do:

They say that every man must need protection
They say that every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above the wall
(Bob Dylan: I Shall Be Released)

Claimed it can be that it’s a vision of both darkness and light that the singer/songwriter above, or at least his persona, has consistently held – even during his “Christian” phase.

In the song lyrics below, the metronomical watchtower stands for the whole wall, and, as the poet Frost suggests, there’s something running beneath it that “makes gaps even two can pass abreast”:

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
Outside in the distance
A wildcat did grow
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Rather ambiguous all the lyrics above be, but maybe in the last song lyrics quoted the two riders approaching are William Blake and Robert Frost, or perhaps Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg.

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Gabriel Emanuel

Pastor Wendell Helgason of the Wesley United Methodist Church, in Hibbing, Minnesota discovered a rare artifact in the basement of the Church last Easter Sunday. It was an audio tape recording from the days before the Church moved in and took over the mortgage from the former owners, the Agudath Achim Synagogue which closed its doors in 1964 due to a dwindling local Jewish population.

When Pastor Helgason dusted off and activated the old Sony reel to reel he was intrigued at first by the melodic chanting which he assumed to be the young men’s Hebrew choir. It turned out to be the Synagogue Cantor’s own recording of each boy’s Bar Mitzvah rehearsal. He was about to turn off the tape when he heard a distinct voice that he immediately recognized. “I would know that nasal sound anywhere,”Pastor Wendell said, bursting with hometown pride. “No mistaking that voice belonged to the prodigal son of Hibbing.”

What Pastor Helgason had uncovered in the basement of the old Synagogue turned Church was none other than the original audio tape from the Bar Mitzvah rehearsal of one Robert Alan Zimmerman.

The date inscribed in faded ink on the inside of the old Sony reel, May 22,1954, indeed coincides with  the actual date of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony that was held at the Agudath Achim Synagogue on 2nd Avenue.  Nearly the entire Jewish community that inhabited Hibbing and surrounding Iron Range, (consisting of some several dozen members at its peak), had gathered to mark the auspicious occasion. Abe and Beatty Zimmerman ‘s son had reached his thirteenth birthday, which according to the tenets of the faith marks the day that a Jewish boy becomes a man.  Little did anyone present know that this would also mark the first public performance ever to be given by the future world famous singer and Nobel Prize laureate for literature.

“It’s been a challenge to authenticate the tape since most of the Jewish community of Hibbing has migrated to the twin cities (Minneapolis and St.Paul) and places beyond,” says the Pastor, himself a third generation native of Hibbing of Scandinavian heritage. But at least one old time resident, Isadore Goldfine, of Goldfine & Sons Fine Furniture on Main Street, swears by the tape. “That’s him alright”, says the seventy-seven year old Goldfine after the Pastor plays a sample from the tape, the warbling shrill resembling more the high notes of the famous singer’s harmonica than his gravely voice today.

“I was at Bobby’s bar mitzvah and let me tell you he was no Pavarotti and no Sinatra either,” recounts Goldfine who still bides his days puttering around  the furniture shop now run by his son, Stan.  “He was just like the rest of us Jewish kids who took lessons after school from an old, itinerant Rabbi with a white beard and black hat who lived above the juke box joint.  Abe and Beatty – Bobby’s parents – had promised Bobby a transistor radio and a guitar for his Bar Mitzvah. I guess they had some kind of an idea where he was headed, though Bobby never kept in touch with anyone after he left, at least not as far as I know.  They say he’s been back once or twice but never let anyone know.”

“Well, he sure put Hibbing on the map, wouldn’t you say, Izzy?”

“Him and Roger Maris of the Yankees,” said Goldfine, pointing to a framed black and white photograph of the baseball star hanging on the wall above the Living Room sofa display.  “See, I’m more of baseball fan, myself.  Roger was only a few years older than us and born just around the corner from here.  He went on to beat Babe Ruth’s home run record for a single season.” Not missing a beat, the elderly gentlemen gave a thumb’s up to the picture, beamed and announced proudly, “Sixty-One in Sixty-One.”

“Quite an accomplishment, alright,” said the Pastor, nodding his chin in agreement.  “But you know, Izzy,  that record has been broken years ago whereas the songs that Dylan has written I suspect will be around for a lot longer than even the iron ore in the mines. Why your old friend is just about as close to a national treasure as you can find anywhere in this country,” the Pastor said with a flourish.

“I suppose,” said Goldfine, polishing a wood cabinet, “nice family, too”.

And so what is the Pastor planning to do with the lost Bar Mitzvah tapes of Robert Alan Zimmerman, circa 1954?  “I’ve already had a surprising number of lucrative offers from private individuals, from top executives in the music industry and I’ve just been contacted by the new Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” he says with obvious pride. “But I’m going to do my best to see that these blessed Bar Mitzvah tapes stay put right here in Hibbing, Minnesota where they belong. ”

“We may have found a home for them,” he continues after a pause, “in Bob’s alma mater, the old Hibbing High School where he graduated from in 1959. Only problem is, we need to store them in a secure vault or the insurance won’t cover it,” he laments.

“The Governor has promised to get involved,” says the Pastor while continuing to ruminate aloud. “After all,” he says in earnestness, almost pleading, “We may have ten thousand lakes in Minnesota, but this is the only tape of its kind in existence.  Lord only knows if we will ever see another Bar Mitzvah like this one again.”

Tombstone Blues (1965) part I: Daddy’s looking for the fragmentation bomb’s fuse

Tombstone Blues part II: Duck back down

by Jochen Markhorst

III         Let’s Go Get Stoned

Let a deck of cards be my tombstone

I got the dyin' crapshooter's blues

Blues, country, R&B, folk… the tombstone is a popular piece of scenery in every genre and in every period. In 1965, the young Dylan undoubtedly can sing along with Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love”, Merle Haggard’s “Nine Pound Hammer”, Johnny Cash’s “The Ballad Of Boot Hill” and the Kingston Trio’s “Jug Of Punch” (“Tura lura lu, tura lura lu”). And with a hundred other songs, presumably. But closest under his skin is Blind Willie McTell’s “Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues”. Dylan’s later masterpiece “Blind Willie McTell” not only sings this blues hero, but also uses the same template as McTell’s “Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues”: the evergreen “St. James’ Infirmary”. Or maybe Dylan uses McTell’s song as a template, who knows.

In any case, the protagonist who sings:

Mama’s in the fact’ry
She ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley
He’s lookin’ for the fuse
I’m in the streets
With the tombstone blues

…seems like an archetypal lamenting blues protagonist. Plus, the octaves all refer directly or indirectly to dying or death;

– a reincarnation in the first octave;
– the shady doctor who says you will not die;
– death to all in the third octave;
– tombstones and graves in the king of the Philistines couplet;
– and Cecil B. DeMille could die happily after

… so the listener who chooses to deny the images a metaphorical charge can indeed agree with the title: this is truly a tombstone blues.

However, this is the young beat poet in his mercury period. “Maggie’s Farm” is not about an agricultural production company owned by one Margaret, “From A Buick 6” has nothing to do with a dated automobile and in “Rainy Day Women” no rained ladies are sung. As for the latter song: the jumpy mind of the young poet might have made a similar associative leap as for this “Tombstone Blues”.

The authority Robert Shelton, in his No Direction Home (2011), presents an attractive genesis regarding “Rainy Day Women #12 & #35”:

“Phil Spector was with Dylan in a Los Angeles hang-out, the Fred C Dobbs Coffee Shop, when they heard the Ray Charles Stoned on a jukebox. Both of them, Spector told me later, “were surprised to hear a song that free, that explicit.” A few months later, Dylan recorded Rainy Day Women.”

He is referring to Ray Charles’ hit “Let’s Go Get Stoned”, so that can’t be right; this single was not released until April ’66, a month after Dylan had recorded his song. But in essence it may be true; although the version of The Coasters hasn’t been a hit, it was the B-side of “Money Honey” and that one was released in May 1965 – two months before Dylan recorded “Tombstone Blues”, ten months before everybody must get stoned, before Rainy Day Women.

The Coasters’ repertoire leaves traces in Dylan’s oeuvre as it is. As a radio broadcaster Dylan plays four songs by the legendary Leiber/Stoller-vehicle (“There’s a whole lot of songs in their repertoire that are worth listening to”, announcing “Three Cool Cats”, 28 January 2009) and in the Basement Dylan quotes “Along Came Jones” (in “Million Dollar Bash”)… the thin Mr. Jones who in hindsight also seems to be the protagonist for “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, as novelty songs seem to inspire anyway, in these years. And still in 2020 – with some tolerance – both the protagonist’s character and the cover image of “False Prophet” seem to wink at The Coasters’ “The Shadow Knows” (1959).

So that remarkable “Let’s Go Get Stoned”, presumably admired by Dylan together with Phil Spector, probably also is The Coasters version. Remarkable the song, especially in 1965, certainly is:

Let's go get stoned, let's go get stoned
When you work so hard all the day long
And every thing you do seems to go wrong
Just drop by my place on your way home
Let's go get stoned

Curious, mainly because of the drug connotation, obviously. However, it is not at all intended that way, as writer Valerie Simpson (yes, of Ashford & Simpson) one more time explains in an interview with the Chicago Tribune (17 November 2011):

“It was a bit embarrassing, because some folks thought it meant doing drugs. It was originally about drinking. It was a hard song to totally defend. It was a hit, but you couldn’t take a full bow (laughs).”

The first verse indeed is quite clear thereon:

Let's go get stoned, let's go get stoned
When your baby won't let you in
Got a few pennies, a bottle of gin
Just call your buddy on the telephone
Let's go get stoned

Thus: getting stoned of gin, not drugs – as “stoned”, as a matter of fact, indeed is a synonym for “drunk” until the mid-1960s (Cole Porters “Well, Did You Evah”, for example, and John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”).

Still, Dylan’s alleged excitement at that jukebox in a Los Angeles café is of course due to its association with drugs, similar to the entertaining story telling how Dylan is so utterly enthusiastic about The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” because he misunderstands I can’t hide (instead impressed singing along I get high).

Meanwhile, Dylan solemnly states that he does not write about drugs, as in a press conference in May 1966: “I have and never will write a drug song” – a similar choice of words and tone to President Clinton’s solemn lie, “I never had sexual relations with that woman,” by the way. But in the Rolling Stone interview in 2012, he acknowledges: “It doesn’t surprise me that some people would see it that way”. One of those “some people” is, of course, Dylan himself; in ’65 Dylan is an intelligent young man from the big city, both feet on the ground, who reads beat poetry, admires the junkie king William Burroughs and who, as is now well known, introduces The Beatles to marijuana.

So he is not naive when he sings Everybody must get stoned. He also knows that “rain” is a euphemism for pot as he gives Louise a handful of rain (“Visions Of Johanna”), of course he already knows how lost in the rain in Juarez will be understood (“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”) or what is meant by the “cures” handed out by the “rainman” (“Stuck Inside Of Mobile”). The abundant use of ambiguous carriers of meaning such as stoned, rain, medicine and fog makes the idea that having the tombstone blues is a poetic, concealing metaphor for being stoned, suddenly not so far-fetched anymore.

Which does not turn “Tombstone Blues” into something as banal as a drug song, of course. The kaleidoscopic lyrics seem to bubble out of a stream of consciousness, are mainly playful and associative. Somewhere in the electric mind of the poetic song composer The Coasters – for example – bounce around. In this hour, while conceiving this song, apparently their oeuvre provides rhyming words, décor and idiom. “Riot In Cell Block Number Nine” is one of the very rare songs with the word “fuse” (next to Elvis’ “G.I. Blues”, Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”, Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential” and… The Coasters’ “Along Came Jones”);

Scarface Jones said, "It's too late to quit
And pass the dynamite, 'cause the fuse is lit"
There's a riot goin' on
There's a riot goin' on
There's a riot goin' on
Up in cell block number nine

… which gives Dylan a second rhyme for blues. The first rhyme, shoes, is not too remarkable, but The Coasters also happen to use it in the song in which, just like in Dylan’s song, a father and a mother appear one after the other, in “(When She Wants Good Lovin’) My Baby Comes To Me”:

She go to see her father when she wants some new shoes
She go to see her mother when she down and got the blues
But when she wants good loving my baby she comes to me

The Shadow’s victim in “The Shadow Knows” is in the alley, and “Let’s Go Get Stoned” is definitely one of those songs in their repertoire that are worth listening to and perhaps makes the playful, associative and jumpy mind bounce to tombstone.

Possible. But just as possible we owe “Tombstone Blues” to the fertile influence of Brother Bill, to William Burroughs.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part IV

———

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)

Untold Dylan

As we approach 2000 articles on this site, indexing is important, but sadly chaotic.  You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Larry Fyffe

• Part 1: Bob Dylan: Fearful Symmetry
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part II)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part III)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Sympathy (Part V)
• Bob Dylan And Fearful Symmetry (Part VI)

A man's worst enemies are those
Of his own house and family
And he who makes his law a curse
By his own law shall surely die
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Who blew the bellows of his furnace vast
Or held the mold wherein the world was cast ...
Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun
Who made it always when it rises set
(Edward Taylor:The Preface)

What the hammer, what the chain
In what furnace was thy brain
What the anvil, what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp
(William Blake: The Tiger)

"I think I'll call it America", I said as we hit land ....
When a bowling ball came down the road, and knocked me off my feet
A pay phone was ringing, and it just about blew my mind
When I picked it up, and said "hello", this foot came through the line
(Bob Dylan: One Hundred And Fifteenth Dream)

The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art
Science is the Tree of Death
Art is the Tree of Life
God is Jesus
(William Blake: Laocoon)

Something there is that doesn't love a wall
That sends the frozen ground swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast
(Robert Frost: Mending Wall)

Now there's a wall between us, something has been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn
"Come in", she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm"
(Bob Dylan: Shelter From The Storm)