Untold Dylan

Note from the publisher: if you are outside the UK you might find one or more of these videos unavailable in your country.  If so, it is always worth going onto your search engine of choice and simply typing in the details of the video (eg Series of Dreams, Di Gregori) and it might come up.  I can’t guarantee it, but it happens quite often.

———–

by Geoffrey Morrow

I thought I’d get in touch with you after many years of enjoying your vast and enduring
enthusiasm for someone I’ve also always greatly admired since my own mid-teenage
years in 1964-65.

Like many people, besides the music, I’ve long been interested in the visual
minutiae of all things Dylan and I thought I would provide you with some facts that
might interest you, by giving you а little, perhaps new, background information
regarding what is considered to be by many of us the best authorized video made for
а song in BD’s vast catalogue; А Series of Dreams.

The official directorship of the video has always been given to the then LA-based Miert Avis, who, at the time, worked for the newly instigated Santa Monica-based wing of Dublin’s Windmill Lane recording and production studios.

While the production was in fact under his directorship and guidance, I’ve always felt that the much more significant contribution to the project was provided by my old friend Charlie Whisker, whose early and newly absorbed (1990) computer animation skills and personal art imagery suffuse the entire video.

I understand that this is all a bit old, but I still imagine that you and the team there might be interested in some of the background details of this production being fleshed out а little, with information on how the vibrantly interconnected imagery came about.

First a little background about Charlie’s and my long friendship and my subsequent
association with him on this project. We met while attending art college in Belfast from
1966 to1970. We both studied painting there and have continued to be connected to
the art world both as painters, and in my case, predominantly in the art conservation
side of things.

Charlie has lived for extended periods in London, California and Ireland where he still is а well known and highly regarded artist, unfortunately now in the descending grip of early on-set dementia. In а way this awful fact over the last 6-8 years has instigated the sending of this to you. I would like more people to know of both his own art and his important contribution to the world of BD studies that still resonates for many of us through this one magnificent work of video art, before he slips further away.

We’ve both spent time in BD’s company in the past and the possibility of somehow contributing even in а very small way to his art (that presented itself when Windmill Lane Santa Monica won the job of making the Series of Dreams video in 1990-91) gave us both great happiness at the time and still does.

Charlie’s association with Windmill Lane Dublin is closely connected to both his and his ex-wife’s friendship with and the early beginnings of U2, who have recorded most of their records there. That’s а whole other story but directly connected to Charlie leaving the world of teaching painting in the Dublin art college, to his working at Windmill Lane West in Santa Monica as an artist and video animator.

In 1990 the team from Windmill Lane West was given access to BD for only а few hours
in New York City in which to shoot some useful film footage but very little of that (the B&W meat market scenes where Dylan points and laughs at а sign saying ‘Т-Bone
Automotive services’) survives in the completed video.

From that afternoon’s shoot, those few seconds were all that was considered in any way usable. It seemed to have been а calamitously blown opportunity at the time and the dilemma for the team was how now to save the project and make а video worthy of the soon to be released ‘new’ song that would be the first track of what was to be the very first triple disc of the still continuing Bootleg Series of releases.

When back in Santa Monica, all turned to Charlie in the hope that he could conjure something out of almost nothing using previously existing footage for what was considered a very important project by the whole team. That’s when Charlie called me here in Ottawa and we began to discuss what might be possible.

Sony were happy to allow the use of just about anything they had as far as already available and unreleased film footage was concerned. This led to the previously unreleased Eat the Document being provided, along with some other bits and pieces of film. It was а scramble but it was something to be going along with and sections of film that could be coordinated and aligned with the lyric of the song began to be selected out of the film imagery they had given permission to use.

There  was still а lot of song/sound running time to be somehow filled-in with relevant
visuals that would enhance the quite different and strange world being called into
vision by the lyric and slightly ominous sound of the song’s trajectory and thrust.

When Avis gave Charlie permission to go for anything he could put together, further discussions began to form into what would result in the final flow of film imagery, photographs and hand-written words in the completed video. Much of the painted or drawn background imagery (apart from well known artworks by famous painters such as Bosch or Piranesi etc.) is taken directly from Charlie’s own artwork, mostly seen as the backdrop to animated sequences in the final video.

Among photographs of our collective heroes such as Rimbaud, Lenny Bruce and Dylan Thomas were several photographs inserted into existing footage that were taken by either Charlie or myself at various times over the course of our lives. The one of Charlie sitting directly across the street from Umberto’s Clam Bar in New York’s Little Italy (where Joey Gallo had been gunned down years earlier) I shot in 1987 while we were in town for а U2 concert at Madison Square Gardens. The same image, of his head only, repeats in the mirror behind the merging and distorting faces of BD and ‘the science student’ from Don’t Look Back а little later.

On top of this shot of Charlie’s head is an inscription resembling that seen in the convex mirror background of the famous Jan Van Eyck painting of the Arnolfini Wedding, on which Van Eyck has inscribed ‘I Jan Van Eyck painted this’ as а tribute to that wonderful work, except in the video it says, ‘I Charlie Whisker painted this’.

All of the varied written inscriptions seen throughout the sequences are in Charlie’s distinctive handwriting referring to various different things. Rimbaud’s poetry as an example can be seen referenced in the sequence of coloured vowels at the end of the video in а homage to his famous poem ‘Vowels’. We were having fun with all this of course.

It wasn’t until Charlie had completed the video and sent me а copy on VHS tape that I realized that he had also slipped an image of myself into the mix. In the longer train carriage sequence about two thirds of the way in, where the 1965 BD is peering out the window from within а British train carriage from Dont Look Back footage, the outside passing landscape has been altered and changed into passing images of various things and people; from а Piranesi drawing of а dungeon to Napoleon on а White horse and Jack Kerouac smoking а cigarette.

I was delighted to find there too was a brief and fleeting image of myself passing by, holding at arm’s-length а fabricated (in being computer-drawn rather than actual) but rather real looking poisonous monitor lizard by the tail. He had taken аn earlier photograph of me from 1977 that I’d sent to him among others just after my wife and I had arrived here in Ottawa from London (where he still lived at the time) and which he had then reused all those years later for this purpose.

In short, he had not been able to resist the opportunity of embedding the both of us in this video and to this day I still get an enormous kick out of being seen in the thing for about one second. If I was а BD aficionado who loved this video at the time and still possibly did, I know I would have studied every frame of its packed overflow of references and wondered who the hell is that passing by just after Jack Kerouac and would’ve been stumped. I just thought you’d like to have this (vast and highly important) mystery revealed. So now you know. As I say, we were having а bit of fun with it.

The bald chap (Charlie) and the other one with the hair (me) will be travelling the universe
forever with our greatest hero and now lifelong inspiration. What a trip for us it’s been.

So, as I reach the age of 72 and whose daily routine still includes checking out your
wonderful website, I’d simply like to thank you for all you do by providing this little
snippet of obscure information for your files. If you would like to hear about the
afternoon I spent hanging out with BD and his crew in the cinema he later appeared in
that same night on May 6th 1966 in Belfast (smuggled in by the dear but quite recently
departed Mickey Jones, who admonished me as we passed through the stage door “Don’t tell anyone I brought you in here, OK”.) I’d be glad to relay the strange and awesome afternoon I had there observing and listening quietly from the side-lines for those few hours that are still seared into my memory of that unique day. Just let me
know. I’d be happy to do so.

As а skinny 17-year-old grammar school kid with a sketch pad under his arm and а determination to draw my God-like hero, I was close to both а nerve wracking kind of heaven and my first true out-of-body experience. And unfortunately as it turned out, and to my dying shame, towards the end of that afternoon, to be the recipient of Bob and his band’s (later The Band) quite terrifyingly confrontational displeasure. They didn’t even know I had been there for those few hours.

The concert that night knocked all new doubts (as to what strange behaviour by mere
mortals I had witnessed over that afternoon) out of my mind as I tried to absorb this new
and utterly visually altered version of an artist who was so fаr ahead of his UK audience back then as to be barely recognizable.

I hope that you and anyone else reading this will check out Charlie Whisker’s paintings
on-line and think of his wonderful contribution to this still riveting video as he himself
slips further into an uncertain future in Dublin.

Thanks for your attention and all your great work.
Geoffrey Morrow

Untold Dylan

We are approaching article 2000 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 Patrick Roefflaer

This is article number 30 in our series reviewing the art work of Dylan’s albums.  An index to all the articles can be found here.

• Released:                       October 19,1970
• Photographer                  Len Siegler
• Art-director                     ?

Bob Dylan & Victoria Spivey

“I think one of the best records that I’ve ever been a part of was the record made with Big Joe Williams and Victoria Spivey. Now that’s a record that I hear from time to time and I don’t mind listening to it. It amazes me that I was there and had done that.”

Bob Dylan , Rolling Stone Magazine, November 22, 2001

Barely three months after Self Portrait, there is a new Dylan album in the shops. The press regards the title as telling: New Morning, a new start after the double album that has been reviewed as the nadir in the career of the great singer-songwriter.

Obviously, the man himself denies such a thing. Regarding that title, he reminisces in his Chronicles, Volume One (2004): “[The producer Bob] Johnston had asked me earlier, “What do you think you’ll call this record? ” Titles! Everyone likes titles. There’s a lot to be said in a title. I didn’t know, though, and hadn’t thought about it. […] I had just heard the song “New Morning” on the playback and thought it had come out pretty good. New Morning might make a good title, I thought and then I said it to Johnston. “Man, you were reading my mind!” That’ll put them in the palm of your hand – they’ll have to take one of them mind-training courses that you do while you sleep to get the meaning of that.”

Dylan immediately adds that he already had an idea for the cover: “…a photo of myself and Victoria Spivey. […] I knew that this photo would be on the cover before I recorded the songs. Maybe I was even making this record because I had the cover in mind and needed something to go into the sleeve.”

Said photo was taken on March 2, 1962, in the Cue Recording Studio in New York. That day Dylan was invited to play harmonica during a session of Victoria Spivey with Big Joe Williams.

Victoria Spivey is a singer who began her career in 1918, at the tender age of 12, and enjoyed success in the vaudeville and blues genres. Unlike many other musicians, the Great Depression didn’t stop her career, as she had moved on by then to musical films and stage shows. Spivey retired from show business in 1951.

Towards the end of that decade however, jazz historian Len Kunstadt lured her out of retirement and gave her a regular column in his Record Research magazine, entitled “Blues Is My Business”.

Kunstadt became her agent, manager and her husband. To give her career a second wind they founded their own record label: Spivey Records. The aim was to regularly release albums by Spivey, each time collaborating  with different musicians.

One of the first sessions was in March 1962. Big Joe Williams, who happened to be in town for a two week stint in Gerde’s Folk City, was invited. The Delta blues singer/guitarist is probably best known for popularizing the blues songs “Baby Please Don’t Go” (1935) and “Crawlin ‘King Snake” (1941).

Big Joe brings a guest to the studio: a young aspiring folk singer he met in October 1961, when playing a previous series of gigs at Gerde’s. During that two week period, Bob Dylan frequently sat in to accompany the singer-guitar player on harp (harmonica) and backing vocals. By the end, they were billed as Big Bill and Little Joe.  The two got on so well, that Dylan states in his Chronicles Volume One: “I´d played with Big Joe Williams when I was just a kid.”

The album Dylan so fondly remembers is Three Kings and a Queen, released on Spivey Records in October 1964. The queen of course is Victoria, while the three kings are guitarist Lonnie Johnson, pianist Roosevelt Sykes and Big Joe Williams. Dylan can be heard playing harp behind Williams driving guitar and raspy vocals on “Sitting on Top of the World” and “Wichita”.

During the session two photographs were made: the one, Dylan wanted on the cover of New Morning eight years after the fact, portrays a confident Bob standing with his right hand on Williams’ beat up Supertone guitar (converted into a 9 string). Sitting next to him, in front of the piano is Victoria Spivey, beaming up at the young man, looking immensely pleased.

There’s a second photograph, in which all those present are shown: Dylan, Spivey, Kunstadt and Williams.

New Morning

Visit my website https://vinyl-records.nl for complete album information and thousands of album cover photos

In late Summer 1970, plans have obviously changed, a photo of Bob Dylan face is made for the front sleeve of the New Morning album. The bearded Dylan gives the listener a serene and determined look.

The photo is printed in sepia and edged with a pale brown-orange-ish frame. For the third time in a row, both the title and the name of the performer are missing on the front of the album’s sleeve. Perhaps Dylan just wants to give his fans a hard time?

In the booklet of The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3 (1991) in a very similar photo is printed,but this time in colour. So we learn that the vest he is wearing is blue and white striped.

But there’s more. When the 1962 photo of young Bob on the back is mirrored and put next to the 1970 Bob of the New Morning sleeve, there’s a similarity that simply cannot be coincidence. Exactly the same angle of the face is used and exactly the same look on both faces.

Len Siegler?

Who wielded the camera is unclear. Dylanologist Michael Gray mentions Len Siegler as a photographer in his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (2006), but notes that the original remained in the possession of Len Kunstadt for many years. That also matches the credits on the cover, where only Siegler is credited as photographer.

In his series of articles in The Telegraph “Looking Up Dylan’s Sleeves” (1995-1996), Rod MacBeath calls Len Siegler a “Columbia staff photographer.” There is no further information at all about the man. Specialized sites such as Allmusic and Discogs do not mention any other album sleeve to which Siegler has contributed – remarkable for a staff photographer of a record company, isn’t it? It seems like Siegler has only taken a handful of photos in his entire career, all of Bob Dylan.

In fact, in the book accompanying The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 – Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) there’s about a dozen photographs related to Len Siegler – and yet his name is not mentioned anywhere.

This lead me to think that perhaps Len Sigler and Len Kunstadt are one and the same. In November 2018, I  mailed this suggestion to Alan Fraser (from the beautiful site Searching for a Gem). After consulting Rod MacBeath (The Bridge), the following text appeared on the New Morning entry on Searching for a Gem: “[…] This leads Rod MacBeath to conclude that, because the photos from the Aug or Sep 1970 session are the only ones known to be credited to Len Siegler, he and Len Kunstadt are the same person!

I recently put the question regarding Len Kunstadt/Siegler to the spiveyrecords.com blog and got a very friendly mail back from Lisa Weiner. “I am sorry that I do not have any insight for you.  Len Kunstadt was my uncle.  I have never heard him referred to as Len Siegler, and there is no Siegler in my extended family. That said, Lenny certainly did things his own way, so it is possible that he decided to use another name for some reason — I do not know.”

So, I’m afraid it remains an unsolved mystery who Len Siegler is.

Notes

1. The New Morning pressing on Deutsche Schalplatten has a different back cover, with the photo showing Bob and Victoria replaced with one from the mid-1960s of Dylan alone at the piano.
2. There’s one more photo of Bob and Victoria together. It’s made by Rowland Sherman, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, where they both appeared.
3. In her column for the April 1965 issue of Record Research, Spivey wrote about Bob Dylan the heading ‘Luck Is A Fortune!’:
   ‘If you live long enough your luck is bound to change. I was just thinking about little BOB DYLAN. The years flashed back to 1961 when I first met him at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, New York City. He was the sweetest kid you would ever want to meet. Just a bundle of nervous energy. He would say Moms, this Moms, that Moms, always trying to get my attention, He was a doll. I was so proud of him then because he really had some talent which was just ready to explode. And did it! Just a couple of years later he was on his way to becoming a world idol in his field.
   ‘
   

   Visit my website https://vinyl-records.nl for complete album information and thousands of album cover photos

   Speaking about idols! Bob used to tell us all about his childhood and how he used to get next to the Chicago blues people. He had an idol too, among others, and he was none other than the great country blues singer, Big Joe Williams. A dream came true for Bob when Big Joe was here in New York for a Gerde’s engagement. Bob knew about my little record company SPIVEY and my plans to record Big Joe, and he wanted “in” too. What a sight as little Bob was carrying Big Joe’s unusual guitar to the studio! And did they play well together! Like they were together for 50 years! “Come On Big Joe Little Junior, Play your harp.” That’s the way Big Joe proudly gave Bob the cue to “take off” on one of the titles. Yes, this was Bob before Dame fortune was to reward him for his great talent.

‘When I see him now he still gives me that big baby kiss and hug. He’s still the same Little boy to me and I am so happy for him. On a recent Les Crane TV show Bob was simply great. I believe he could become a great comedian in addition to his writing and singing.

‘So Bob! keep up the good work and stay the same young man you were in 1961, and you won’t have to look back.’

Untold Dylan

We are approaching article 2000 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 Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

The news that Bob Dylan was selling the copyright of 600 of his songs to Universal Music reminds me of a story I read somewhere about how assiduous the young Dylan was in amassing that intellectual property. Dylan would haunt the folk music shows, soak up melody lines and arrangements by such groups as the Clancy Brothers, write his own (brilliant) lyrics to the melodies and rush off to get them copyrighted.

The Clancy Brothers would find that some song they’d been singing now, technically at least, belonged to Bob Dylan.

From that time on, while he did some crazy things like giving songs away, in the main he jealously protected his intellectual property. He was fine giving permission for the hundreds of cover versions of his songs, but made it very difficult for writers who wanted to quote him, other than in critical works or blogsites such as Untold Dylan.

He was dead set against bootleggers ripping off his performances, and for many years there was constant battle between the bootleggers and the Web Sheriff on You Tube – an ongoing war, and a losing one, against copyright infringement. Videos would appear and disappear and reappear again. This still goes on to some extent, despite the flood of material onto You Tube.

Looking at this history, we see a Dylan very concerned with the integrity of his property, with a fierce sense of propriety when it came to his songs.

Now he’s cashing out. Or as some prefer to see it, selling out to the big musical corporates. Not everybody is comfortable with that.

When the news came out, The Guardian newspaper somewhat gleefully commented: ‘The fact that he’s ceded control of how the songs are used might cause palpitations for a certain kind of Dylan nut. Will this Nobel prize winner’s hallowed oeuvre now be allowed to play on the soundtrack of anything, no matter how inappropriate, so long as someone stumps up the requisite cash?’ (Bob Dylan’s rights sale all part of his freewheelin’ approach to business, Dec 7).

Judas! I can hear someone yelling from the middle rows.

Not happy with this sideswipe at Dylan’s admirers, The Guardian goes on to list all the adverts Dylan has been in, or his songs have been in, and comments, ‘If you look online, you can find Dylan fans tying themselves in knots attempting to square his fondness for adverts with their image of him as an artist above petty materialistic concerns but, in truth, after a tricky start – he dissolved his relationship with his 1960s manager Albert Grossman after discovering that his hastily signed contract entitled Grossman to 50% of his song publishing rights – he’s become impressively savvy when it comes to business.’

What this article doesn’t say is that all the young Dylan had to do was look around at the way managers treated Elvis Presley and Jimmy Hendrix, to get the picture.

However, fair to say there has been some agonizing on the Untold Dylan Facebook page, with wounded declarations that ‘these are his songs and he can do what he likes with them.’

I have no intention of ‘tying myself in knots’ defending the Great Cashout. My approach to Dylan has been solely through the songs and the way he sings them, not because of some idealized image I have projected onto him. I love and admire the songs and performances, not Dylan, whoever he may be. It is the songs and the performances that show the artist, not what he does with his money or how he disposes of his property.

Famously, Shakespeare left their marriage bed to his wife, specified in his will (but nothing else, it seems) and people have expressed surprise that the great artist who had plumbed the depths of tragedy and scaled the heights of comedy should be so downright bourgeois in his worldly ambitions. People also expressed amazement that Kahlil Gibran, the great mystic poet and author of that best seller, The Prophet, should die of alcoholism and despair. I just wrote The Prophet, Gibran complained, I wasn’t the prophet. The famous Chilean Marxist poet, Pablo Neruda, who identified himself with the working man, also owned several large houses. And so on and so on.

We may build up expectations of artists because of their work, and our response to it. Arguably, this has been made worse by the ‘follow’ culture, but it’s all about projection rather than hypocrisy.

I have only one thought to offer here. I’m going to suggest, with a full awareness that this is mere speculation, that the Great Cashout may have a spiritual function or dimension. I see it not so much as a sellout but a divestment. Property can become a burden. Fussing over it, defending it from rip-off merchants, hoarding it, growing it, all this activity can become wearisome.

By renouncing that which has occupied his whole working life, the 79 year old Dylan takes a step towards freeing himself from the material concerns of the world, an important step in preparation for death.

‘Three miles north of Purgatory
one step from the great beyond ’

he sings in Crossing the Rubicon. At times during his last album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, we get the feeling that he is entering some intermediary zone between life and death, and I suspect you can’t enter that zone carrying your property on your back.

Life is enacted in three parts, and the third part is a period of preparation for death and ‘the great beyond’. To some extent I want to evoke the spiritual journey evident in Dylan’s evolution as an artist. Christianity is not the only religion that requires us to ‘lay our burden down’, but it comes to mind where Dylan is concerned.

I am suggesting that it is the renunciation of ownership that lies behind the Great Cashout. The Great Cashout is, at the same time, the Great Disowning. The Great Letting Go. We could push this further and suggest that, as the spirit approaches the Great Beyond, ownership becomes meaningless. You can’t own the wind.

Am I conveniently forgetting the cool $300 million now in the singer’s back pocket? Hardly. Cash is not property. Cash is more ephemeral than a song. Cash can turn to ashes in your mouth if you have to sell that which is most precious to you to get it. But look at it this way – Dylan is now finally free. He is no longer ‘Dylan’, owner operator of his own intellectual property. Now he has no property; he is no longer Bob Dylan in the sense we knew. He has effected a separation from his life and work. He is already a shade.

One final point. The Great Cashout is also the Great Dispersal. All those amazing lyrics, which grew out of the popular culture of which he was a part, have now returned to the cultural cauldron from which they arose, the cultural cauldron celebrated in ‘I Contain Multitudes’ and ‘Murder Most Foul’. Dust returns to dust. Since Universal Music can now slice and dice, mix and remix his words, use them as they want to sell what they can, the very sense of a ‘Bob Dylan song’ may become problematic as time goes on.

Picture a man in a bar, alone. As he watches a woman leave, some mood music swells. A male voiceover says, in an insinuating voice, ‘Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?’ The man grins ruefully. The camera focuses on a bottle of whisky: Heaven’s Door, the most expensive on the shelf.

‘But life sure has its compensations,’ the voiceover says. ‘And you ain’t goin nowhere.’

Ain’t that the truth?.

Bob who?

Untold Dylan

We are approaching article 2000 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:

• Tombstone Blues  part 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 part IV    Medicine Man
• Tombstone Blues part V: he was kiddin’ me, didn’t he?
• Tombstone Blues  part VI: Under the Yellow Angel
• Tombstone Blues part VII: Found someone, you have, I would say

by Jochen Markhorst

VIII       Ninety Nine Years

The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter

 In 2012 Monty Norman explains one more time, in the BBC’s The One Show, how he came up with the legendary theme tune for the James Bond films, probably the most recognisable tune in cinema history. Producer Cubby Broccoli happened to hear his music for the flop musical Belle or The Ballad Of Dr. Crippen (1961), is impressed and remembers Monty’s name when he has bought the film rights of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels shortly afterwards. Monty is actually too busy with two stage shows at the time, but Broccoli makes him an offer he can’t refuse: a paid holiday for him and his wife in Jamaica, where the filming takes place, “to find inspiration”.

“Well, that was the clincher for me! I thought, even if Dr. No turns out to be a stinker at least we’d have sun, sea and sand to show for it!”

He finds inspiration indeed. Not so much for the theme music, but still for all the other music. “Underneath The Mango Tree”, for example, the song Honey Rider sings, Ursula Andress in her unforgettable opening scene, like an Aphrodite rising from the sea.

Monty finds the well-known motif (dum diddy dum dum dum) in, as he puts it himself, his bottom drawer; it is an re-working of a piece he had recently written for a musical adaptation of V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas. The musical was shelved, but the song “Good Sign, Bad Sign”, an Indian-inspired song with sitar accompaniment, is too good to leave in the drawer.

“I thought: what would happen if I split the notes. So I went … [plays the same notes ‘split’]… and immediately, the moment I did that, I realized that this was what I was looking for. His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness – it’s all there in a few notes.”

The young John Barry is recruited as arranger, which has some consequences. Barry provides the rather thin motif not only with a jazz arrangement, but also with countermelodies and ostinati, and thinks, rightly or wrongly, that the music should at least partly be in his name. Monty thinks otherwise, and the judge agrees with him, twice even (most recently in 2001).

Barry’s claim does have some ground, though (the chord progression of the opening is at least as well known and distinctive as the guitar motif), but his point loses weight when listening to “Softly”, a piece Henry Mancini wrote two years earlier for the TV series Mr. Lucky (1959) with an identical chord progression. And Mancini, in turn, copies it from Guy Mitchell’s hit “Ninety Nine Years (Dead Or Alive)” from 1956 – the simple, ominous chord progression is apparently very inspiring.

Apart from being a primal model for the James Bond theme, “Ninety Nine Years (Dead Or Alive)” has a second merit, of which we hear an echo in Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues”. Mitchell’s song (written by regular purveyor to his majesty Elvis, by Sid Wayne) is the first lyric with this rather recent expression:

Now today I’m thinking ’bout that courtroom trial
I was so sad, baby, saw you weepin’ like a child
Ah, the jury found me guilty, wouldn't listen to my plea
And the judge said Mercy, threw the book at me

“Throwing the book at someone”, as a metaphor for sentencing to the maximum sentence, is an expression that has, oddly enough, only existed since 1932. The few songs that use the expression after Guy Mitchell’s hit do safely stick to the same legal connotation (Oscar Browns hilarious “But I Was Cool”, 2Pacs “When I Get Free”). But a playful Dylan in top form – of course – freely and merrily misuses it: Galileo’s book, probably Il Saggiatore from 1623, or else Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche from 1638, gets thrown at Delilah – the lawbook is turned into a mathematics book and is thrown not metaphorically, but really, physically, at a notorious nasty lass.

The image offers an inexhaustible number of possibilities for interpretation, which are gratefully used. Polizotti suspects something like an unholy alliance of the scientific and the spiritual, Andrew Brown discovers something with God’s justice and his mercy and the beauty of “perfectly arranged and balanced fixed forces” (in The Independent, 4 October 1997), and actually only Robert Shelton in his No Direction Home has an eye for the poetry:

“One impudent image reminds us that Dylan’s control of language was absolute: The geometry of innocence flesh on the bone/Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown.”

But there it is a little awkward that Shelton quotes exactly that one line with a spelling error as an example of “Dylan’s control of language”. Both in the studio and on stage, Dylan sings quite clearly “The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone”, which has indeed been spelled out erroneously as innocence since the first edition of the lyrics up to and including the official site. And Shelton has apparently also missed the wordplay with the expression throwing the book at someone. The thrust of his compliment, however, is to the point; this verse demonstrates the skill of a language artist.

Throwing the book may indeed trigger associations with Law, natural laws, mathematical laws, with Galileo, but the choice for that name nevertheless seems more a result of sound, of Dylan’s receptivity to the sound of the surrounding words rather than the meaning – the poet here dances with a succession of “e-o” sounds (geometry, innocent, flesh-on, the-bone, get-thrown) and in between a name like Galileo fits perfectly. Cleopatra could have done the same trick, but then it might have become too much of an extract of Burroughs’ Nova Express (in which Cleopatra passes by a few times). Napoleon has been used a few times too much already (in “Hero Blues”, in “On The Road Again” and in “Like A Rolling Stone”). And Romeo is reserved for “Desolation Row”, so: Galileo it shall be.

In that corner, in the corner of sound and rhythm rather than rhyme and reason, Delilah’s enigmatic, absurd “sitting worthlessly alone” should probably be placed too. After all, content-wise the unusual combination of words would imply that there is also such a thing as “sitting worthwhile alone” or “sitting valuably alone”, and that this darn, unruly girl cannot even show the decency of sitting worthfully.

No, “it’s the sound and the words. Words don’t interfere with it,” as Dylan later tries to explain to interviewer Ron Rosenbaum (Playboy interview 1978).

In the meantime, James Bond throws knives, cushions, grenades, villains, shoes, snakes, punches, bowler hats, flames and attractive ladies all through the sixties and beyond, but never a book. Least of all a math book.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part IX

——-

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

We are approaching article 2000 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 25 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: creativity as a wave form.

An index to the  previous articles in this series is given here.   The previous entry was Bob’s 1974 return to touring – listen to the concert, as the fans demand “Tell it like it was”   That article plotted the journey from the end of Planet Waves through to the first tour in many years and the preparation for writing “Tangled up in blue” and the other masterpieces that were to come.

By Tony Attwood

The thesis behind this series of articles is that Bob’s creative life can be best understood seen as a wave.  From the outset he rode quickly to the crest of a creative wave and stayed surfing along it from 1962 to 1966 with the most incredible creativity amounting to 138 songs in five years – many of which became absolute classics.

Then with the muse still upon him, but a desire to hide away Dylan retreated to the Basement, thereafter seemingly writing a new album only because of a contract (1967) rather than because of a desire to write.  The fact that the album (JWH) is so interesting lyrically and musically tells us (as if we didn’t know) what an extraordinary talent we were beholding.  He could be stunningly amazing, even when hardly trying.

On the other hand, the fact that two country-style songs that are utterly different from everything else on the album and which had no connection with the themes of the album, were simply bolted on the end, does suggest that Bob was not giving any thought to the overall artistic feel of the LP.

That feeling of a lack of interest, with the wave now on a serious down curve, is enhanced by the fact that he then all but abandoned writing (1968), returned to a spot less-demanding (for a composer) country music (1969), hid away in the mountains and completed another contractual obligation (1970), took it really easy and tried out a couple of nifty ideas (1971), took it even easier and came up with one memorable work (1972).  The curve of the wave had up and down ripples in it, but basically it was operating at a much lower level than in the earlier years of Dylan’s initial triumphs.

But then the wave started on a new upturn, and Bob settled down to some serious writing, which just got better and better as time went by, (1973), before putting his first tour since 1966, (in 1974).

So self-evidently he was by that time, re-energised.  He had written some seriously powerful pieces in 1973, and shown himself (if he needed showing) that he could still sell out the biggest auditoria many times over.

Now all that would be needed was an album that brought all that new found energy and a new style of writing, and which successfully put it in one box.  New songs that took both the musical and lyrical experiments of Planet Waves a step further and made them not just new songs, nor just new songs in a new form, but beyond that new songs in a new form that the fans would want him to play instead of endless re-runs of Tambourine Man.  After all there was no much point writing “You Angel You”, “On a night like this,” “Tough Mama,” “Dirge,” and “Wedding Song” which broke new boundaries, if no one really wanted to hear them at a live show.

My view is that with his creative wave rising, and emboldened by this new way of thinking, and those final Planet Waves compositions that had emerged in the highly energised works of 1973, Bob had the confidence to plot a new album reflecting a new vision through a new type of music.

In his earlier mega-productive period 1962-6 Dylan wrote the songs which came out of the  traditions of folk music that he had learned along the way.  These had morphed into the famous protest songs, and then headed onto creating his own new types of lyrics: the songs of disdain, the surreal visions and the Dadaesque pieces, followed by his unique use of Kafkaesque stories which came out of this.

Now, I believe, he was under no pressure, he could consider the options, look at the landscape, consider the form, and when ready, start writing.  Everything he needed was there.  He didn’t need to start reading Kafka again.  He didn’t have to think how he could write songs about a chance encounter in a new way, or reconsider how to present a rambling love affair over time.  He knew.

The format he chose for his first attempt (or at least the first attempt that we know of) merged the writing of a story from the epic ballad of centuries gone by, with Kafka’s world where things don’t always make sense.  The not-making-sense side was toned down a lot from that experienced in the JWH songs, but it was still there; songs at the opposite end of the lyrical spectrum from “New Morning”.

What Dylan did was reign back the craziness that we found in “The Drifter’s Escape” where absolutely nothing makes sense (as in, where on earth did that nurse come from?), but still keep a certain haziness within the opening song.   This time the song would make more sense, although not so much that no one would mind if the last verse was missed out from the recording!

Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts certainly did take us on a new journey which, I suspect, many of the people who have heard it would find hard to re-tell as a coherent tale without a lot of thinking.  Indeed we are not helped by the fact that one of the four main characters, Big Jim, is not actually mentioned in the title, and no reason for this seems to be forthcoming.

Of course many have worked hard to tell us that the story is indeed coherent, and it may be, although the fact of that missing verse does suggest that this is not the point.  That last verse reads, apparently,

Lily's arms were locked around the man she dearly loved to touch
She forgot all about the man she couldn't stand, 
                    who hounded her so much
"I've missed you so," she said to him, and he felt she was sincere
But just beyond the door he felt jealousy and fear
Just another night in the life of the Jack of Hearts.

In fact the reality that the last verse is missing and that Dylan didn’t mind really does tell us that the story isn’t the point.  The setting, the people, and the approach – that is the point; taking the old ballad form and not just transforming it into a more contemporary setting, but removing the notion of a complete story with a moral, and instead giving us a feel, a scene, some characters… – indeed some characters who, if we wish, can take on a life in our minds after the song is over.  In this regard Dylan had bridged the past and the future.  (But not the present, because no one else was writing songs like this at the moment Bob did.)

It was of course the technique that he was going to take much further forward in his next song,  Tangled up in blue, but we can see the generation of the idea in the Jack of Hearts.  In the first song of this series, time isn’t completely mixed up, it is more like the whole story isn’t fully drawn – but then given the lack of diamond mining in the USA nor is the notion of “the town’s only diamond mine”.

In short reality is being shifted. Not huge amounts, but enough.  And now in the next song, this notion was taken a step further, wherein time itself shifts around in an extension of the most exciting of the John Wesley Harding pieces, wherein Dylan loses cause and effect.

Losing the inevitable arrow of time so that we are not quite sure where we are has been used by film makers for decades, why not in songs?  Thus this is, I feel, Kafka with some of the more extreme edges removed.

Now for most song writers, the Jack of Hearts would be a masterpiece, a stand alone monument of this year and probably the next five years.  But no, because next Dylan wrote the almighty Tangled up in blue.

“Tangled” is surely a song that is equal (at the very least) in merit and inventiveness to the ultimate classics of the 60s.  A song I would put alongside “Desolation Row”, “Rolling Stone”, “Johanna”,  “When the Ship Comes In”….    A song, seemingly out of nowhere, taking us into totally new ground, but in which is nothing of the kind…

For  as I am trying to argue, it wasn’t out of nowhere – it was out of the experimentation that had come earlier, which led to Dylan seeing songs as a set of images and ideas wherein the storyline doesn’t have to be complete – or indeed doesn’t have to exist at all.

For me, “Tangled” really, really is that.  It has that quality of “Visions” in which you can’t quite get a grip on who is where and what is what or indeed (and this I think was the new element), When is when.   It really is an absolute ground-breaking event in the history of 20th century music.

But it was more than that, for it is a template for ceaseless modifications, thus in one swoop Dylan has created a new art form – a song that is designed to be changed and re-written as it goes.

Indeed if you listen to the performance on the album and compare the lyrics with those of the original the differences are tiny, but they are there and they feel deliberate.  But why?  It is a question worth asking as those changes evolved further over time.

For what it is worth, my view is that by making changing to the song time and again Dylan is adding to the fluidity of time; expressing the notion that nothing is fixed.  Time is that dimension or sense of whatever we wish to call it, which cannot be touched, retrieved, manipulated or comprehended.  It is there in the sense that new things happen as the clocks go around, but it is not there is the sense that our memories are unreliable and incomplete.

This is not a subject that few songwriters (if any) had really explored in popular music until this point, as far as I know, and it was an amazing project to take on.  Of course, what we do know is that Bob has always been fascinated with changing melodies, lyrics, chords, time signatures  – in fact everything in a popular song.  But this was different, this was telling us that the very ground on which we stand, on which we base our lives and our determination of who we are, is not solid.  It is fluid.

Such a vision emerges, I feel, from the eternally changing realms of Kafka wherein nothing is allowed to settle or make long term sense.   We are there, we our own lives, but we can be knocked around in the slip stream and be unable to anything much about it.

The song in its original LP version is scattered with clues –

All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now

and a little later

Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doin’ with their lives

Oh yes.

Untold Dylan

We are approaching article 2000 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 Tim Johnson

I’ve been a Bob Dylan fan since the early 60’s. Influenced by my dad’s eclectic music taste, I was already collecting country blues records and everything I could find by Woody Guthrie, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers and so when I read about the first Dylan LP I immediately ordered a copy. I was there at the Sydney Stadium on 13th April 1966 for the first  concert of the Oceania leg of the world tour and for almost every Sydney concert thereafter. Along the way a number of interesting things happened….

The first one relates to Bob’s on stage poetics at the 1966 concert. “This isn’t my guitar” he drawls as he endlessly tunes the guitar, “my guitar got broken here in Australia”. My girlfriend at the time knew the luthier who was repairing it. Apparently Bob had damaged his guitar by closing the lid of the guitar case on it and had been lent the luthier’s own guitar as a temporary replacement. This explains the slightly different sound on the acoustic set of the Sydney concert.

At a 1978 concert at the Sydney Showground One More Cup of Coffee was starting up and just as the chorus began a girl sitting next to me said “would you like a cup of coffee?” and handed me a cup of coffee. That’s a strange coincidence I thought.

Then in 1986 I got a phone call from artist Brett Whiteley. “Guess who’s coming to my studio?” he said. “Aaah, Bob Dylan?” I guessed. “Yes and I’m only inviting you and Martin Sharp”. Brett’s studio was being used for the Bob Dylan press conference at the start of the Australian tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was an event to remember and afterwards I said to Brett, “You know your studio is a sacred site now”. In Australia sacred site’s are important because of  their place in traditional Aboriginal culture. It turned out I was right because after Brett died in 1992 the studio was turned into a public museum and is now visited by thousands of students, tourists and art lovers every year.

At the State Theatre in 1992 where Bob did seven concerts we used to run to the front of the stage after a few songs. When I got there, standing right in the middle, a girl next to me threw rose petals onto the stage in front of us. Bob was impressed and came forward to take a look at her and then took a look at me. Later he sang All Along the Watchtower, looking straight at me, tilting his head from side to side and kind of smiling at me as he sang. I didn’t know quite how to react as he was only about 6 feet away, so I eventually smiled back at him. When I did that he immediately looked away and that was it. My friend standing on the other side of me said “did you see that? – he was singing to you”.

Another time when I was late for a show at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney in 1998 I was hurrying across from the carpark. I was walking past the back of the theatre when a limo drew up beside me. Out stepped Bob looking at me before going into the stage door. It would have been so easy to say something but I thought “silence” was the appropriate response and just gave him a nod and a smile.

At the Entertainment Centre in 1986 he sang Happy Birthday. “We have a very special friend here tonight whose birthday is today. So if you all wanna help me out here, I want to sing Happy Birthday to my very special friend. Her name is Queen Esther. So, you know Happy Birthday. You know how it goes. It goes like this.” and we all sang Happy Birthday together. Then Bob says “Anyway, I had to do that, because I forgot to get her a birthday present, thank you, alright”

Being a bit self centred I wondered “what’s he going to give me” as I drove home later. When I got there I saw a For Sale sign had gone up on the house next door while I was at the concert. In the morning I looked out the window and saw that my daughter Ruby had thrown my copy of Tarantula out the window and it was propped up against the wall of the house next door. I thought that’s auspicious and rang my father in law, a bank manager, who came over to see the house and offered to lend me the money to buy it, which I did. After a year or so he said that I didn’t have to pay the money back so I got the house for free. I always think of it as a gift from Bob.

Tim Johnson

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

• 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?
• Tombstone Blues VI: Under the Yellow Angel

by Jochen Markhorst

VII        Found someone, you have, I would say

Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle

Francis Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads mentions eleven variants of the song no. 200, “The Gypsy Laddie”. The song has been floating through the Anglo-Saxon world for about 250 years, with varying lyrics and different titles (“The Gypsy Laddie”, “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy”, “Seven Yellow Gypsies”, “Johnnie Faa”, to name but a few) and tells the story of a Lady who leaves her husband and her rich life out of love for a gypsy. In the oldest version she is enchanted, in other versions abducted, but the punch line is (mostly) the same; when the abandoned Lord has tracked her down, she refuses to return home with him. In 1992, Dylan records it as “Black Jack Davey”, thereby revealing his lyrical interpretation for one of his most beautiful songs from his early years;

Well, she pulled off them high-heeled shoes
Made of Spanish leather.
Got behind him on his horse
And they rode off together,
They both rode off together.

…for “Boots Of Spanish Leather”. And in 2012 Dylan will copy the plot for his own “Tin Angel” – the centuries-old song has been floating through Dylan’s catalogue as well, for over half a century.

Woody Guthrie calls the seductive gypsy “Gypsy Davy” (1944), and that is how he gets a name-check in “Tombstone Blues” in 1965, though not much more than a name-check. The original Gypsy Dave doesn’t have a Pedro on his side, nor does he destroy camps in a jungle. And certainly not with a blowtorch. By the way, this particular soldering tool again seems to have come from Brother Bill, from the same Nova Express fragment that delivers idiom for the second octave (poison, medicine, doctor): “And The Sailor goes into his White Hot Agony Act chasing the doctor around his office like a blowtorch.”

No, the emergence of “Gypsy Dave” has no particular, content-related relevance. It does fit in with Dylan’s sense of tradition, though, like more lyrics in this “rock phase” do echo antique songs – Dylan’s alleged “betrayal” of folk music is quite an exaggerated qualification, in any case. “Desolation Row”, “Queen Jane Approximately”, “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Tell Me, Momma”… in more than a handful of the mercury songs the rocker Dylan warmly greets old folk and blues songs. And apart from alienating attributes like that blowtorch, or that collection of stamps, and apart from the scraped-together character of personal constellations like “Gypsy Davey and Pedro”, and “Belle Starr and Jezebel the nun”, the syntax, too, confirms the suspicion of cut-up in this octave. Or at least the suspicion that Dylan here is trying to suggest cut-up.

Even more striking on this point in the lyrics is the repeated repetition of the subject. In line 2 this happens for the first time (“The city fathers they‘re trying to endorse”), in line 5 again (“The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits”), and in the second octave Dylan is just as lavish with the – superfluous – repetition of the subject:

Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside
He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride

Superfluous, and certainly in the English language actually ungrammatical – a “repeated subject” is simply incorrect. Now, poets sometimes resort to it to make a sentence fitting. For the rhythm, for example (“My love, she speaks like silence”), or to work out the metre (“All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home”), or for a rhyme. But for the medicine man line none of these excuses apply, nor does it for, for example the city fathers line; a grammatically correct line like “The city fathers are trying to endorse” has no interfering consequences for rhyme, rhythm or metre.

Here, in the third octave, the poet continues to insert those superfluous repetitions;

Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps

… in which, as with the king of Philistines line, the persistent, peculiar, Yoda-like syntax is also starting to stand out. It’s true that this is not unusual for a poet either, to make a sentence “right”, fitting… but Dylan does it here so often that it seems he is using it as a figure of speech.

Yoda has a language of his own, and the reason why George Lucas has let him speak like this, can be followed. About half of Yoda’s text in the original trilogy (in The Empire Strikes Back and in The Return Of The Jedi) is “weird”; the syntax is wrong. English usually has, and quite strictly, as a word order subject-verb-object. Yoda, on the other hand, often chooses object-verb-subject. Not Vader is strong, but “Strong is Vader”. Not you still have much to learn, but “Much to learn, you still have”. Fronting, it is called, although that actually means that the verb is placed in front (which Yoda sometimes does; “Told you, I did”). Lucas himself describes Yoda’s language as “backwards”, but that is an inaccurate description. “Inverted” would be a better definition.

In languages with elevated cases, flexible or “inverted” syntax is more common than in English. In Latin, in a sentence like servus puellam amat (“The slave the girl loves”) it is perfectly clear who is in love with whom (the slave is in love with the object puellam). But in English, the tampering with word order, like Yoda does, creates an exotic effect. And more than that; it suggests archaic wisdom – exactly what Lucas needs.

Inspiration for the “Yoda-ish” was undoubtedly given to Lucas, like to Dylan, by Yiddish. Yoda has the aura and manner of speaking of an old, wise Talmud scholar, he talks – approximately – in a similar way. At least, as old, wise Jews are portrayed by the great Jewish writers, by the Austrian Joseph Roth, by the Czech Franz Kafka and by the Canadian Mordecai Richler.

Richler, the author of The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz (1959), writes like Dylan constructs his sentences in “Tombstone Blues”. “Of your father I won’t even speak,” for example, and “At the parochial school until he was thirteen years old Duddy met many boys” – a sentence structure identical to Dylans With Pedro behind him he tramps, and more lines in this song.

Archaic wisdom Dylan does not need to suggest in this song, obviously. But apparently browsing through Judges 15 and 16, the Samson-slaying-Philistines-with-a-jawbone-chapters, has triggered a receptivity to odd syntax. In “Tombstone Blues” over a third of the verse lines are “odd” – almost the same percentage, by the way, as Yoda achieves in his first film, in The Empire Strikes Back from 1980 (41%).

Truly wonderful the mind of a poet is.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part VIII

—————–

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

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 many thanks to Shmuel Berger.

You might also enjoy

• Bob Dylan: the childhood tapes
• Bob Dylan’s first songs: the cello tapes revealed and a plea
• The Lost Bar Mitzvah Tapes

The news that Bob Dylan’s catalogue of songs has been sold made the headlines this week, but tucked away in the small print were several issues that the mass media did not raise, and which really do need fulsome investigation.

One item of course, as you will have realised at once, is that the publisher only bought the rights to 600 songs, whereas as we know there are many more than this.  So the hunt is on for the missing songs from the publishers list which are presumably now owned by no one.

Untold Dylan has already stepped in with an offer of $30 for the lot (a reduced price given the fact that we have already done the work of finding them and putting them on this site). We’ll be publishing our list of copyright free Bob in due course.

But before that there is the issue of cleaning up the songs as the publishers have issued a list of words that will need to be removed from Bob’s songs.  These words fall into several categories, of which the first one we shall tackle is sexism.

So here we go with the reworked titles for sexually correct Bob as licensed by the new copyright owner.

She Belongs to Me  is a good place to start, as it involves issues both of sexism and modern slavery, and so that song now becomes “This person does not belong to me as possession of another person were not a crime in the United States and most of Western Society.”

She’s my baby will now be known as “If this person were a minor then I would have responsibility for that person but otherwise that person, whose sexual orientation is not an issue here, is a free individual.”

She’s on my mind again is henceforth to be known as “That person is on my mind, but not in any sort of nasty way and there is nothing possessive about it.”

She’s your lover now henceforth becomes “Why can’t we all just be friends”

Shelter from the storm has a title which of course is no problem at all but the opening line must be changed to “The person that I have met has everything that any free minded person in a liberal democracy would need and is entitled to, and is free to pursue her or his life in the creative arts but it would be wrong of me to comment upon her or his physical appearance.”   A little re-writing of the melody and rhythm might be required.

My Woman She’s a Leavin’ will now be known as “Everyone may come and go as everyone pleases as long as each person does not stray onto a military facility or other restricted area.”

I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met) is now “I don’t believe you, but this has nothing to do with your declared sexuality whatsoever.”

Covenant Woman (see She Belongs to Me)

Just like a woman Obviously this is now “Just like a person”.

Love Minus Zero.   A bit of a problem here but we might try

My love whose sexual self-identification I shall not mention says nothing,
My love has no need to speak as my love is true unto herself
Other elements may apply here
People carry roses, Make promises by the hours,
My love over whom I claim no possession, has a nice laugh
And we have nothing to do with outmoded symbols of possession

Someday Baby  is considered irredeemable and will be removed from the catalogue.

Rainy Day Women must now be sung as “Rainy Day People” of course.

Let me come baby has now been withdrawn from the internet for reasons that we cannot make clear at this point.

Baby coming back from the dead is henceforth to be referred to as “Reincarnation is open to everyone irrespective of their sexual orientation”.

Baby I’m in the mood for you is also having a name change to “I like everyone no matter what… etc etc”

Baby Stop Crying is “It it not appropriate for grown people of any orientation to shed tears except when happy and that person is in possession of a licence from the appropriate authorities, not that this is an authoritarian state of anything but we do need to keep things in order.”

Baby won’t you be my baby now will listed as “Person won’t you be my person?”  (Good punctuation is important).

I’ll be your baby tonight  is particularly problematic but for the moment will be listed in the new catalogue as “The swapping of children from one family to another without the agreement of the state is a crime in numerous jurisdictions.”

Additionally, when Bob resumes touring the announcer will not say “Ladies and Gentleman” when introducing “Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan.”   In fact it is just better if he remains quiet.

So there you are.  Just remember, “everyone belongs to the publishing company.”  Stay with that thought and you won’t go far wrong.

Untold Dylan

We are approach 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

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