Untold Dylan

A list of earlier episodes of this series appears at the end of the article.

By Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan ended 1962 by writing three highly exploratory songs.  Hero Blues puts forward the proposition that one should be wary when your girlfriend loves you because you are famous.   The Ballad of the Gliding Swan says that life can throw up every surprise at you, but life still goes on.   While the final song of the year, Whatcha Gonna Do? was an unlikely venture in that it asks how we will be placed at the time of the second coming.

But unlikely though that final work may be for a young man, the music overall is stunning. Having started the year with a truly remarkable blues in terms of Ballad for a Friend, Bob ends it with something of almost the same stature.

By my rough and ready calculation Dylan had written on the following themes in the previous year

• Protest / social commentary / civil rights: 9 songs
• Lost love / leaving / moving on: 8 songs
• Change: 5 songs
• Blues: 3 songs
• Comedy: 3 songs
• Moving on, gambling: 2 songs
• The way we see the world: 2 songs
• Love / desire: 2 songs
• Do the right thing: 1 song

These are of course approximate totals – merely a guide to the type of lyrics that Dylan was writing, and one can always argue about the central message of this or that particular song.  But although approximate it is nonetheless interesting because his key themes were still there at the start of the new year; a new year which began with five songs that fitted completely into those top two categories of protest and lost love.

But we must step back a little for at the end of 1962 Dylan gained another valuable and insightful experience, which was going to benefit his songwriting enormously; an experience that came through Philip Saville who had heard Bob perform in Greenwich Village.

Philip Saville had become known in England as an actor before becoming a screenwriter and then a man whom the British Film Institute’s website calls “one of Britain’s most prolific and pioneering television and film directors”.  At the time he saw Dylan he was working on the TV series “Armchair Theatre” – although to UK audiences he is best remembered for his later work with the series “Boys from the Blackstuff”.

It should also be remembered that at this time British television had developed in a very different way from that in America, with only two channels licensed by the government, the commercial ITV and the non-commercial BBC (the third channel, BBC2 still being a couple of years away).  Therefore audiences for both channels were huge and appearances even by unknown artists would always generate a lot of interest and comment.

Philip Saville invited Bob to perform three songs in a live TV drama “Madhouse on Castle Street”.   “Blowin’ in the Wind” was used at the start and the end of the programme over the credits.  Dylan also performed two traditional English folk songs, “Hang Me, O Hang Me”, and “Cuckoo Bird”, and then “Ballad of the Gliding Swan” for which Saville had written the words (but which, it is said, Dylan changed during the actual performance).

Philip Saville had heard Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” one morning while Dylan was staying in his house.  On that basis the arrangement to use Dylan was made.

The programme might have been just a footnote to Dylan’s extraordinary work in 1962 were it not for  the fact that while in London Dylan spent time also visiting the clubs in what was now a very vibrant folk scene.  Here, traditional songs, contemporary re-writes and newly created pieces in the British folk style were performed one after the other and through visiting the clubs Dylan got to know people such as Martin Carthy (pictured left, now Martin Carthy MBE in recognition of his lifetime’s work) and Bob Davenport.

Martin Carthy is reported to have taught Bob Dylan his arrangement of “Scarborough Fair” which Bob then re-worked as it became the basis of “Girl from the North Country“.  Another well-known British folk song “Lady Franklin’s Lament” that Martin Carthy taught Dylan became the melody for “Bob Dylan’s Dream”.

https://youtu.be/l1NgNpeyU80

If you have never heard Lord Franklin I would (if I may) urge you to listen to the recording below.  I have had several occasions over the years where I have invited friends who know Dylan’s work but who don’t know the song to listen to it, and mouths do tend to drop open.

Bob then went on to Italy, and during these travels wrote “Masters of War” which was quickly followed by Boots of Spanish Leather and Bob Dylan’s Dream

This was an extraordinary outpouring of songs, and yet it was just the start for in this year Dylan wrote 31 songs.   And while this was slightly fewer than the previous year, many more of the 1963 songs have reached a stature such that even casual Dylan fans will know them.   Indeed when one remembers that this year included the creation of not just the four songs mentioned above but also “Davey Moore”, “Seven Curses”, “With God on our Side”, “Only a pawn”, “North Country Blues”, “When the ship comes in”, “Times they are a changing”, “Hattie Carroll” “One to many mornings” and “Restless Farewell,” you can see what a creative explosion was happening here.  And those are just  the songs I’ve picked out as the ones I can instantly recall from this year without looking them up on Untold Dylan!  As we’ll see there are many more.

After returning to New York in January 1963 Bob wrote a collection of songs for Broadside, which also published “Masters of War” among others, as Bob turned his attention back to finishing what was become Freewheelin, now working with Tom Wilson as producer.

By April the album’s recordings were completed and Dylan’s fame had reached such a level that he was booked into the Ed Sullivan Show.  Here he decided to perform Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues which he had written the previous year and which was initially scheduled for inclusion in Freewheelin’.  There were however concerns that the John Birch Society might sue for libel, (and interesting thought from a 21st century perspective) and as a result of the arguments the song was dropped from Freewheelin, and Dylan did not appear on the Ed Sullivan show.   Commentators have spent quite a bit of time bickering with each other as to which came first – the dropping of the song from the album or the  refusal to appear on TV, but I must admit I personally find such matters of little importance.   In reality there was a huge amount of chopping and changing of the songs for Freewheelin going on irrespective of the John Birch issue, simply because Dylan was writing more and more songs of significant artistic merit.   And when the album was most certainly going to include “Don’t think twice” and “Blowing in the Wind”, along with “Hard Rain,” no one could surely think there was going to be much to worry about in terms of sales.

Indeed as the tracks were pulled together it must have been obvious to everyone what an extraordinary album was being created, for apart from those tracks it was by now clear that the album also had to include “Girl from the North Country”, and “Masters of War.” No matter what the other tracks were that collection was surely more than enough to keep audiences gaping in amazement.

But then as if to suggest that maybe those brilliant songs were not quite enough Dylan then also produced Bob Dylan’s Dream, and made it one of the most evocative pieces imaginable, especially for those who did not know the original.  It sounds as if it should have been written by an old man, or at least a man of middle age looking back on his life, but this is the young Dylan showing an utter maturity in his writing (even if it was re-writing of a traditional song) that is remarkable for his age.

Indeed, the “Dream” makes me think of Ballad for a friend – not because they are musically alike, but because of the maturity both of the music and the thought behind the song.  These songs sound as if Dylan had had his life and was looking back with fondness and sadness – and yet he was only just starting out.

Of course many will interrupt here and say but “he merely copied the music, the feel and the style of the original,” and yes, he has copied that folk song.  But the fact is anyone could have done this at any time and brought Lord Franklin into the contemporary world, yet no one else did.  There was, before Dylan, very little crossover between the phenomenally rich world of British folk songs, and contemporary audiences.  Martin Carthy and others kept the traditions alive and brought them to a new audience in the 1960s and thereafter, and for that those folk singers deserve our undying thanks, but it was Dylan who introduced a world-wide audience to this heritage.

The level of emotion in Dylan’s song is quite extraordinary; it is one of those songs that above all others has stayed with me from my young days when I heard it, not appreciating what it could be like to look back on a life where so many friends have now been lost.  Now I know, it hits me even harder.

But in terms of the writing, and leaving aside debates about what to put on the album, Dylan continued composing, going back to his own folk roots with Only a Hobo, before suddenly taking off in an utterly different direction with a song about boxing (a subject that was hardly on the agenda for the socially conscious young rebel) with Who killed Davey Moore?  one more based on the English traditions – this coming from the 18th century (if not earlier).  Indeed of that song one can also say not just “who writes songs about boxing?” but also, “who writes a contemporary song using Who killed cock robin?”

What also strikes me, and not for the first time, is that in this one year Dylan produced not only what would have been five years or more’s worth of composition, but he was so varied in his writing, for he then took in the theme of desolation with Seven Curses and then goes into desperation and hopelessness with God on our Side.

Quite how the young Dylan could jump from subject to subject I am not sure; I think in the end I just have to use the get out word, “genius”.  Yes he was borrowing themes and music from classic folk music, but even so… for before we can blink he is telling us in Eternal Circle that there is nothing we can do, for nothing ever changes.

This is, no matter which way you look at it an incredible tour de force.  Not just because Dylan wrote 20 glorious, memorable songs during the course of one year, but because in doing that he jumps from subject to subject to subject, from style to style, from subject to subject, to…

And, if you are still not convinced, consider what happens next, for now he suddenly diverts his talent once again and creates (or revises, opinions disagree on the dating of this song, just as the do on the implication and meaning) Gypsy Lou – a song which has caused a huge amount of debate during the years of creating this site.  And then we are travelling in another direction by suddenly taking in a Biblical theme with When the ship comes in.

The positivism of When the Ship undoubtedly paved the way for The Times they are a-Changing which goes back to the notion found in “Paths of Victory,” proclaiming that the future will be fine, just let it happen.  (Although many people have insisted in seeing Times as a call for the young to rise up, the lyrics actually suggest no such thing.  According to this song, it’s just going to happen and there’s nothing you can do.)

Indeed in many ways these songs are a very curious mix.  In the songs that led up to “Times” Dylan was upbeat with the metaphorical ship soon to be coming in, and then in Eternal Circle Dylan is telling us nothing can change and that we are all just stuck in our own circumstances – we are all pawns in their game.

The only implication I can take from this is that just as the songs are not coded messages (as many to this day, do insist that they are) they are also most certainly not a series of instructions on how to see the world.   Indeed while writing this piece I have read Jochen’s excellent article on this site in which he highlights the nonsense of claiming that “Louise in “Visions Of Johanna” is “actually” his wife Sara, and Johanna is “actually” the absent Joan Baez.”  Jochen describes these as “One-dimensional, superficial interpretations generally, which are, in fact, repeatedly refuted by the poet himself…”  Quite so, in my view.

And I would add to that view, the fact that Dylan’s ability to write about so many different topics in so many different ways adds to the inevitable view that Dylan is not offering us a unified view of the world but rather a set of constantly varying views.  What’s more, fully to understand Dylan we really do have to stop and consider the fact that Dylan is not writing all these songs because he believes in what the song says.  No more, indeed, than a novelist or writer of a film script believes in the story that he writes.  The storyteller tells stories because he/she likes telling stories, and finds it fun and can do it well.  The storyteller does not have to preach in each story – stories can be told for the enjoyment of others.  Story tellers tell stories (in my experience as an author myself) because they are good at it and from time to time readers or listeners are kind enough to say that they have enjoyed the work.

Thus I would argue (and although I haven’t checked with Jochen, I rather suspect he feels this also) that many commentators have tied themselves up in knots trying to explain each Dylan song in terms of one consistent moral code or vision of the world.

Times they are a changing tells us that the new, wonderful, vibrant, brilliant future is just around the corner and is going to happen no matter what we do, whereas Hollis Brown tells us the world is falling apart and the level of human misery our socio-economic system continues to generate is appalling.  Indeed at the risk of becoming incredibly boring, allow me just once more to make the point that on the Times they are a changing album most of the songs tell us that times are very much not changing by human design or God’s grand plan.   Not every Dylan song has a heart-felt message tucked away inside it, any more than does every piece of modern visual art, nor every piece of contemporary orchestral music.

Of course being Dylan, immediately he has started to explore such themes and contradictions as are in Eternal Circle and Times they are a changing, he’s back pulling at every emotional heart string and political sense of fair play with The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll before taking us into the world of nature with Lay Down your Weary Tune

And finally as if all this were not enough he then comes up with what I consider to be one of the greatest songs of leaving written in the 20th century: Restless Farewell, a song based on the Irish ballad “The Parting Glass”.

What is it, I therefore feel we must ask, that drives Dylan through this extraordinary creative output?

Of course he did have a strong engagement with the protest movement and with civil rights, I am not denying that.  Of course he was deeply concerned about the well-being of the rural poor through his upbringing, although he had been considering the urban poor in New York in his time there.  Of course he is concerned about justice.   But throughout all this there are two other factors we must acknowledge.  First Dylan is a natural storyteller, and second Dylan now has access to and knowledge of the vast wealth of music that is the Scottish, Irish and English folk traditions.  He knows the songs, he knows the themes, and he knows how to bring them into the modern day.

“Restless Farewell” is one of the absolute masterpieces of the early years of Dylan’s writing – a song written quickly as the whole message poured out of him, a song about getting up and being on the road once again.  It is a song that is a picture; a picture as powerful as anything he had produced up to this point.  A song as magnificent in its achievement as “Ballad for a Friend”, “Hard Rain” and “Bob Dylan’s Dream.”  Indeed if all he had ever achieved had been those four songs he should have been remembered as one of the great songwriters of the 20th century.  But even in this one year there was so much more.

That recording above, for the Sinatra concert, shows the absolute power and insight of this song.  This version is so very different from the original, but it adds even more power to the piece than the original.

So what we have here is a man drawing on many different sources of inspiration, and seemingly quite capable of being able to shift from one musical source to another as well as one lyrical theme to another, and all within a matter of days.  A man who can write songs that he himself can rearrange weeks, months or years later and find new and even deeper meanings reflecting his own life as well as those of a musician he admires.

Consider, for example, this much earlier version of Restless Farewell

Looking at the list of songs for this year one can fully understand why Dylan became rather fed up with being pigeon holed as a “protest singer”, because such utter masterpieces as “Dream”, “Ballad for a Friend” and “Restless Farewell” are not protest songs. To call him a protest singer is to ignore these early pinnacles of Dylan’s achievement; these early expressions of his genius.

What is missing in this year is much of a Robert Johnson input – although it would soon return.  Probably it went because Bob really was continuing to move in every direction at once.  And it was through this multi-directional approach that we do see the flowering of the songs of sadness and regret for what has been left behind, and what must be left behind.

Whichever way you look at Dylan in 1963, it was the most incredible, awesome achievement to produce not just this many brilliant songs, but this many songs in such diverse forms and with such diverse visions of the world.

Earlier in this series…

• A song is like a painting, you can’t see it all if you’re standing too close
• All directions at once: How Dylan’s lyrics empower those who wish to be empowered
• All directions at once: The prelude to the explosion
• All directions at once: The explosion (1962).
• All directions at once: Making a name, getting known, arguing about copyright

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

Previously in this series: She Belongs To Me (1965): I – No colours anymore

by Jochen Markhorst

II          Images which have got to come out

Those liner notes on Bringing It All Back Home should be a goldmine for the key-seeking Dylanologist, but most exegetes prefer to ignore them. After all, the most honest lines in them, I am about t sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes. tho I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening, do demythologise Dylan’s poetry quite a bit. To the dissatisfaction of the puzzling Dylanologist with crypto-analytic ambition, it is a fairly unambiguous art statement from a thoroughbred Impressionist.

Although there is no uncontroversial definition of “impressionism”, we do agree on its essence: the artistic expression of an impressionist is a notion, an impression of a moment. “Volatility” is another characteristic, and Renoir’s paintings, for example, illustrate this perfectly; paintings with the vagueness and ephemerality of a photograph taken from a passing car. Paintings that capture a blurred impression of a moment – seems like a freeze-out, as Dylan initially will call “Visions Of Johanna”, written shortly after “She Belongs To Me”.

In any case, “a nonunderstanding sketch of what is happening here”, the somewhat more cumbersome way of saying “impression”, does indeed seem to be an adequate choice of words to describe his own poetry, certainly that of these mid-sixties.

What the poet does perceive, which event does provide the impressions, the poet discloses right at the beginning of those revealing liner notes: “i’m standing here watching the parade”. Which is, added to the “sketch confession”, rather consistent with the observation that songs like “Just Like A Woman”, “Visions Of Johanna”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “Farewell Angelina”, to name but a few, are collage songs, sketchy images of the parade that goes on around here sometimes.

Such a vision clashes with the vision of interpreters who are so eager to explain that the lyrics are in fact one coded narrative, telling one life fact or event from the life of the human Dylan. And then – for example – argue that Louise in “Visions Of Johanna” is “actually” his wife Sara, and Johanna is “actually” the absent Joan Baez. One-dimensional, superficial interpretations generally, which are, in fact, repeatedly refuted by the poet himself – whatever that may be worth.

Most emotionally at that eruption from the stage in England, in the Royal Albert Hall, 27 May 1966: “I’m sick of people asking what does it mean. It means nothing!” And equally convincing in calm interviews, such as in the captivating SongTalk interview with Paul Zollo (April 1991), when the interviewer wants a reaction to another high point of the mercury years, to “Absolutely Sweet Marie”, and then specifically to that one verse I stand here looking at your yellow railroad in the ruins of your balcony. That’s just true, Dylan says at first, “Every single letter in that line. It’s all true. On a literal and on an escapist level,” to come back to it a little later:

“So you must make yourself observe whatever. But most of the time it hits you. You don’t have to observe. It hits you. Like “yellow railroad” could have been a blinding day when the sun was so bright on a railroad someplace and it stayed on my mind.  These aren’t contrived images. These are images which are just in there and have got to come out. You know, if it’s in there it’s got to come out.”

… words of a full-blooded Impressionist. Spoken a quarter of a century after those liner notes from Bringing It All Back Home – at the very least, these code-crackers and key seekers could consider taking the words of the artist himself just a tiny bit seriously. And if not, the words the poet spoke, again a quarter of a century hereafter, at the Nobel Prize speech 2017:

“I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means.”

It is not that difficult, after all, to take the sobering self-analysis of the poet a bit seriously; both the characterization “sketched observations of fleeting impressions” and the self-analysis “images which are just in there and have got to come out” fit wonderfully well on most of his lyrics.

The same could apply for the tremendous number 2 of Bringing It All Back Home, for “She Belongs To Me”. The communis opinio seems to be that Dylan sings Joan Baez here. Gray, Shelton, Heylin… they all feed the thought that is being expressed even more widely on fan forums: Dylan once gave Baez an “Egyptian ring” (whatever that may be) and therefore this song must be about her.

It is, apart from rather thin evidence, a somewhat ludicrous statement. Not only does such a sentimental “interpretation” trivialise the lyrics, it is also difficult to keep the statement upright if you do take it seriously and put the other lines of text next to it. The opening, to begin with:

She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black

The only words that could apply to Baez here are “she” and “artist”. As for the rest, for the narrative content of the verse lines: it is quite difficult to maintain that they have any relationship with the Queen of Folk. As a certified fighter for the Righteous Cause, Baez is constantly protesting, is at the forefront of demonstrations and protest meetings and lends herself at least once a week to the dernier cri du coeur. No, she is not really a lady who got everything she needs.

Equally inappropriate is the qualification she don’t look back. Three-quarters of Baez’s repertoire consists of reinterpretations of ancient songs, by now she has already written memoirs twice and she is by no means a progressive, avant-garde artist – one of her few good self-written songs is “Diamonds And Rust”, which is reflecting and looking back all the way.

Finally, the paint it black lines can at best be interpreted as a far-fetched, ironic reversal on Baez. Whatever else one may think of her, she is undeniably an angelic appearance with an ethereal, vibrating soprano – more of a light-bringer than an eclipse. Dylan himself would agree on that, as can be deduced from his autobiography Chronicles; “She had the fire,” he says, and “a voice that drove out bad spirits.” The opposite, in short, of a creature that darkens the daylight.

On the other hand, already the title is an ironic reversal, as the second verse shows;

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees

… this storyteller cannot claim with a straight face that she belongs to me – on the contrary, he is the slavish part of this dubious relationship, allows himself to be forced to his knees and also reduces himself figuratively by fulfilling her immoral desires, to steal anything she sees.

The contrast hereto, the dominant, unassailable opponent, is bluntly painted in the next verse.

To be continued. Next up: She Belongs To Me part III: Walking in darkness

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

There are over 40 previous articles in the “Why does Dylan like” series and they are indexed here.

“Lady came from Baltimore” has been on my list of Dylan rarities to write about for some time, but for me it comes with baggage.  Nothing personal at all, but simply the tragedy of an oh so talented composer.

In my youth I loved the music of Tim Hardin – his first album had “Reason to Believe” as the opener on side two, and when I started to perform in folk clubs some years later I always sang this.  It simply was the type of song I always wanted to be able to write – something so clear and simple and yet so magical – but at the same time musically it just is so different from everything else in the repertoire.

Indeed it is one of the most powerful short songs I have ever come across – how he puts across so much in such a short song is completely beyond me.  Although that unexpected chord change at the start of line three has a lot to do with it.

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 
But still I'd look to find a reason to believe...
Someone like you makes it hard to live
Without, somebody else
Someone like you, makes it easy to give
Never think of myself

If I gave you time to change my mind 
I'd find a way to leave the past behind
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried
But still I'd look to find a reason to believe...

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe it's all true
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried
Still I'd look to find a reason to believe...

Tim Hardin’s second album included his song, “If I Were a Carpenter” which surely everyone knows, and also therein is “Lady came from Baltimore”.

According to Dick Weissman’s book, “Which side are you on?: an inside history of the folk music revival in America” the song was written about his courtship and marriage to actress Susan Morss.

According to Bob Dylan Tour stats Bob performed this song twice on 6 and 13 April 1994.

It is a beautiful and delicate song, just like so many of Tim Hardin’s pieces.

Here is Tim Hardin

Tragically Tim Hardin died of a heroin overdose on 29 December 1980.  Here’s Reason to Believe.  It still after all these years has that same emotional pull…

Now to help me recover, something utterly different.  Trail of the buffalo

Bob played this 43 times in in 1991 and 1992.   It has of course turned up in many forms including with the name “The Buffalo Skinners” and “The Hills of Mexico”, telling the tale of a buffalo hunt in 1893 – or perhaps it was 1873.

As for why Bob likes this, apart from it being a reflection of a core part of American history, and the song allows the singer to deliver a full-on solo, without it sounding like anything else.

And moving on to the final selection…  Confidential.

Confidential was played 12 times by Dylan between 1989 and 1995.  It was written by Dorlinda Morgan in 1955, by which time she had been writing songs for some 25 years with tracks recorded by Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, and many others.  Dorlinda Morgan passed away in 1988.

This song was Sonny Knight’s biggest hit although he is noting for also writing The Day the Music Died, under his real name Joseph Coleman Smith a fictionalised account of racism in the American music business in the 1950s.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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 article continues from

• Stuck inside of Halifax with the Tombstone Blues Again
• Bob Dylan: The Titanic Tombstone Blues (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

The Untold Office received a call back from Bob Dylan in which he apologizes for not telling the whole truth about his time-travel journey back to the Titantic right before the steamer slams into the iceberg. “Scotty never beamed me up”, he says.

“I didn’t want anyone to know that I had violated ‘the Prime Directive’ not to interfere in past history when coming from future times”, he explains. And the songster adds that what really went down is encoded in the lyrics of “Romance In Durango”:

Sold my guitar to the baker's son
For a few crumbs of bread, and a place to hide
But I can get another one
And I'll play for Magdalena as we ride

(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)

Tells ‘Untold’ that Luigi Gatti is the manager of a high class restaurant on the Titanic, and that the restaurateur wants to buy a gift for his son Victor back in England, and so the singer/songwriter sells ‘the baker’ his guitar. Says Dylan, “He hides me on a lifeboat in which, purely by coincidence, ‘Jack’ Astor is able to get his pregnant wife Madeleine a seat before the New York businessman drowns in the deep dark ocean”.

Anyway, Luigi doesn’t make it either; ends up buried in Halifax. To make a long story short,  the rescue ship ‘Carpathia’ picks up Dylan and Madeleine, and drops them off in New York, and they eventually wind their way to Durango, Colorado.

Turns out that ‘Jack’ Astor and Madeleine Force hightail it to Egypt after the wealthy businessman divorces his wife, and marries Miss Force who’s 29 years younger than he is. They are returning to New York City aboard the Titanic when the disaster happens to her husband Astor, from which she escapes.

Apparently, the singer/songwriter calls her ‘Mary’, and she moans “Oh, Jesus” a lot. Madeleine tells everyone she wants to be alone, gets “Jakey” looked after in New York once he’s born, and no one is  the wiser. Widow Madeleine will lose her money from her drowned husband if she remarries. Time-traveller Dylan just shrugs it off, and muses that he can’t help it if he’s lucky.

Meanwhile, of course, the time-line of the unfolding Universe has been broken all to threads. Things start to go terribly wrong for our wandering troubadour. It turns out that Ramona with the ‘cracked country lips’ is a man, and the singer shoots the ‘floater’ down like a dog:

Then I see the bloody face of Ramon
Was it me that shot him down in the cantina
Was it my hand that held the gun?
Come let us fly, my Magdalena
The dogs are barking, and what's done is done

(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)

Suddenly, the ‘future’ doesn’t look so bright for Bob:

Was that the thunder that I heard?
My head's vibrating, and I feel a sharp pain
Come sit by me, don't say a word
Oh, can it be that I am slain?

(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)

In another song our roving gambler encodes the message that he deals the “Zeus card” from the bottom of the deck, and saves himself from certain death:

Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape
And while everybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)

In any event, the Captain of the Titanic gets most of the blame for the seafaring disaster:

Captain Smith must have been drinking
Not knowing that he done wrong
By trying to win the record
He let the Titanic go on
The band was loud a-playing
It playing far out on the sea
They spied the Titanic was sinking
Played 'Nearer My God To Thee'

(Carter Family: Titanic ~ Maybelle/Sara/A.P. Carter)

But I can’t think for you, you have to decide: should Bob Dylan, when he was aboard the Titanic, have gotten Zeus on the passengers’ side?

And saved everybody on the ship before it went down.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

So far in this series

• A song is like a painting, you can’t see it all if you’re standing too close
• All directions at once: how Dylan’s lyrics empower those who wish to be empowered
• All directions at once: The prelude to the explosion
• All directions at once: Part 4. The explosion (1962).

By Tony Attwood

We left Bob Dylan having written his first absolute masterpiece, “Blowing in the Wind.”   He now followed it up with

• Honey just allow me one more chance
• Rocks and Gravel
• Quit your Lowdown Ways
• Baby I’m in the mood for you

Relationships, the ending of them, and moving on, were clearly on Bob’s mind, and as time past.  And we must remember that we are still in 1962, with the PPM version of Blowing in the wind not being released until the following year.  So Dylan was not yet wealthy – but he was getting known, as we shall see.

His first album had come out on 19 March 1962, and although sales were very modest (only 5000 copies were pressed of the first edition) the recording of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (provisionally titled at the time as Bob Dylan’s Blues) began the following month – and continued until April 1963 with the album being released on 27 May 1963.  The Wiki entry for Freewheelin’ includes the comment, “Dylan recorded four of his own compositions: “Sally Gal”… but I can’t see any evidence anywhere to back up the claim that he did write “Sally Gal”.  But he clearly liked “Sally Gal” and played it at early gigs – and it is a jolly, rousing, lively piece, exactly the way to get  the session going.

So what we now have is Dylan the songwriter continuing his work, completing on average three new songs a month, (once more reminding us of Irving Berlin, the only American songwriter who seems to have written consistently at this sort of speed).  At at the same time he was performing, and on occasion recording his compositions including Death of Emmett Till, “Rambling Gambling Willie “, and “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues“.   (Although I must add that there are two “Rambling Gambling Willie” songs in Dylan’s collection.  The original one from the era we are dealing with is discussed here). He also recorded the traditional, “Going To New Orleans” and the 1920s song “Corrina, Corrina”, plus Hank Williams’ “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle”

Dylan continued recording a wide range of his own recently complete compositions and classic folk and blues, songs from “Let me die in my footsteps ” through to “Talkin Hava Negeilah blues”  which was written the previous year.   He was obviously getting used to the studio just as they were getting used to him, and although these recordings are a goldmine for researchers, in the end none of the early takes were used in Freewheelin.   And indeed when we consider that he hadn’t actually written “Don’t think twice” yet and had only recently completed “Blowing in the wind” we can see why many of these early recordings were never used.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” was first performed at Gerde’s Folk City on 16 April 1962 and recorded on 9 July along with “Bob Dylan’s Blues “, “Down the Highway “, and “Honey just allow me one more chance “.  But still other songs (such as “Baby I’m in the mood for you“, were being tried out.

The fact that as we can see, ideas were pouring into Bob Dylan’s head through this, the most productive year of his songwriting, and then being tried out in gigs and in  the studio, reveals completely just how Bob was learning his craft and experimenting as he went along.  It really was a year of a talent utterly exploding in (to use my phrase again) all directions at once.  And we must be thankful that Bob did record so many of these songs.  A lot of them were rejected, inevitably, but these recordings give us a real insight into how his talent was developing.

And of course the potential of this talent was being recognised, as with the fact that the first contractual battles appeared at this time with Albert Grossman (angling to be his manager) and John Hammond (who had signed him for CBS) fighting for control over the emerging talent.  Dylan watchers see this battle as an event that changed Dylan’s personality, perhaps making him more reclusive.  I am not so sure of that – certainly they had no impact on Dylan’s creative output, which is often (among people with this level of creative talent) the first thing to falter when life beyond their art starts to contain difficulties, rows, arguments, disputes or any of the other nastier elements within life.

Indeed if anything Bob’s creativity continued to grow apace.  For what we also see is the evolution of Dylan the showman with his appearance of Dylan at the Carnegie Hall Hootenanny.  What is so interesting here is that although the recording of the show does not allow us to hear exactly what Dylan is saying, it is obvious that he already has command of his audience and is in full control of his own on stage persona.  No one is pulling strings – this is Dylan being himself and it is fascinating to compare this with the hesitant, apologetic young man who was falling over his own words to excuse his errors, after he had recorded Ballad for a friend just a eight months earlier.

The 22 September gig was called “Hootenanny At Carnegie Hall” and was presented by “Sing Out!” magazine. Dylan came on second out of six performers, the star of the show being Pete Seeger.  Dylan performed

• Sally Gal
• Highway 51
• Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues
• Ballad Of Hollis Brown
• A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Thus self-evidently Dylan was writing songs and then almost immediately performing them on stage.  No period of reflection, no thought of re-writing the lyrics or amending the melody or chords.  Write the song, move on to the next, seems to have been the order of the day.

But this is not to say Bob was not affected by events around him, both in terms of his success on stage and in terms of his private life.  For we may note that following “Blowing in the Wind”, five of his next eight compositions were on the theme of lost love.  Ain’t gonna grieve is a civil rights song, Long Ago Far Away has political connotations suggesting nothing is changing, Long Time Gone  returns to the moving on theme.

But then, seemingly out of nowhere (other than the fact that Bob was writing, writing, and writing some more)  we hit two masterpieces one after the other, both with political connotations and both deadly serious: Hard Rain’s a gonna fall concerning the worries about a possible nuclear war (made all the more relevant by the revelations of the USSR using Cuba as a nuclear arms base one month later), and Ballad of Hollis Brown which is probably the most hard hitting attack on the plight of farmers in the USA ever written.  Even if the ideas for these two songs were not directly related to the need for material for the forthcoming concert, it seems very likely that the concert itself focused Bob’s mind in terms of what the audience might want to here.

Certainly at this time it appears that Dylan wanted to show off all sides of his ability so he gave his biggest audience so far (in order) the knock about, the blues, the humour, the contemporary tragedy and the warning of the future.

After these recordings Bob then wrote on more protest song, John Brown – an anti-war song, before he brought in another new composition, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right“, on which more in a moment.  That of course made the cut for Freewheelin, but Hollis Brown was omitted. 

On 6 December there was a final recording session of the year which included “I shall be free” and “Whatcha gonna do”, the latter being the last song Bob wrote in the year.  If we look at this list of the last 13 songs of the year we can see the incredible range of topics Dylan was covering in his songwriting….

• Don’t think twice (Song of Leaving)
• Mixed up confusion (Rock n roller is confused)
• I’d hate to be you on that dreadful day (Bob gets the ship ready to come in)
• Paths of Victory. (The future will be fine)
• Train A Travellin’  (Stand up and protest about what’s going on around you)
• Walking Down the Line (keep on moving on)
• Ye Playboys and Playgirls  (Stand up and change the world)
• Oxford Town (Racism Protest)
• I shall be free (comic talking blues)
• Kingsport Town (lost love, moving on)
• Hero Blues (beware when your girlfriend loves you because you are famous)
• The Ballad of the Gliding Swan (Life throws up every surprise, but life goes on)
• Whatcha Gonna Do? (How will you be placed at the second coming)

The Freewheelin version of “Don’t Think Twice” was recorded on 14 November and has widely been noted as an autobiographical response to Bob’s girlfriend prolonging her stay in Italy.  And we can also note that as with many other songs, Bob was utilising earlier material as the basis for his writing.

The original version was, “Who’s gonna buy your chickens when I’m gone” which over time, through numerous re-writings had mutated into “Who’s gonna to buy your ribbons when I’m gone.”

The melody and some lines of the lyrics use by Dylan were taken straight from Paul Clayton’s re-working of the folk song from “Who’s gonna buy you chickens” into “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone?”

Now what we have to note here is that Dylan and Clayton knew each other and were on friendly terms, and Clayton recorded his reworking of the traditional “chickens” song two years before Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.”

This then raised a copyright issue, as Dylan’s version included lines from Clayton’s song such as “T’ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, darlin’,” and, “So I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road,” along with much of the melody, but the question then was, how much of the lyrics and music that Dylan used came from the original “chickens” song which was long since out of copyright and now considered “folk music” and thus copyright free with no composer assigned the piece, and how many came from Clayton’s own re-working of the folk song.

Even more confusing is the point that when first performing the song Bob Dylan changed some of the Clayton lyrics, but Clayton’s original lyrics did gradually drift back into Dylan’s performances as time when by.

Clayton performed in Greenwich Village and was friends with Dylan in his early years, but the use of the song by Dylan did result in a legal case between each artists’ respective publishers, fronted by the duo’s respective recording companies.  Inevitably the case was settled out of court, almost certainly (although obviously I don’t have access to the legal documents so I can’t prove this) because of the difficulty of considering the copyright ownership of a traditional song which had already mutated over time, and already been re-written for contemporary use.  In other words, did how much copyright did Clayton actually own in terms of his recording, given that he had himself borrowed it from a traditional folk song.  I suspect both sides realised that the case could cost a fortune, with neither side being certain to win, and an out of court settlement would be the best way forwards.  It appears that some of Dylan’s earning from the song would go to Clayton, and it is reported that Dylan and Clayton remained friends.  Sadly however Clayton suffered from severe bouts of mental illness and ultimately committed suicide in 1967.

The song has of course turned up many times over the years in films and TV programmes, and its simple message of “Don’t worry about it” is in fact quite different from the message within the original folk song in which the woman left behind after her benefactor has died, has a lot to worry about.

“Don’t think twice” is itself a summation of Bob’s numerous lost love songs and songs of leaving of this period.  In the months prior to writing “Don’t think twice” Dylan wrote Corrina Corrina,  Honey just allow me one more chance,  Rocks and Gravel, Down the Highway, and Tomorrow is a long time all of which dwell on the theme of the end of the affair, leaving and walking away.   This song summed it all up, although with that underlying feeling of putting on a brave face by walking away first, while there is the suggestion that at least some of the anguish and hurt is still there, underneath.

As I said at the opening of this piece, relationships, the ending of them, and moving on, were clearly on Bob’s mind.

The series continues…

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

I:  No colours anymore

Mick Jagger is a fan. In her memoirs (Faithfull; An Autobiography, 1994) Marianne Faithfull tells about her copy of The Basement Tapes: “I drove Mick crazy playing it over and over again,” but Jagger has been making it clear in various ways for almost sixty years now that he is and remains an admirer. Quite outspoken, even. When Mick Jagger is a guest on a Dutch talk show in 2001, the renowned interviewer Sonja Barend tries to make a point of his age in a cumbersome way. Laboriously searching for words, she stumbles over a series of half sentences that eventually lead her to some kind of a question: whether Jagger isn’t afraid that he will come across pathetic when he is sixty (he is 57 now), jumping and running over a stage. Miss Barend also seems to sense that this is becoming somewhat awkward, but Sir Michael Philip Jagger is every inch a gentleman and accordingly answers elegantly:

Jagger: Do you like Bob Dylan?
Barend: Yes, I do like Bob Dylan…
Jagger: Well, he is over sixty and I quite like watching his shows. I think it’s quite fun and I enjoy watching him performing.
Barend: Yes, I enjoy watching him, but his voice is…
Jagger: You don’t like his voice? It’s a funny voice. It’s like… it’s a voice that’s never been one of the great tenors of our time…
Barend: No… [audience laughter, Jagger smiling patiently]
Jagger: … but it’s got a timbre, it’s got a projection and it’s got a feeling. And you were talking earlier about getting older… you know as you get older, your voice takes on a certain different resonance and a different pitch… so, there’s something to be said for that.

It is not a one-off outpouring. Throughout all the decades Jagger confesses his admiration. In 2012 he posts on his Facebook page Bob Bonis’ photo Mick Jagger with Bob Dylan album, Savannah, Georgia, May 1965 #1 (the album being Bringing It All Back Home, obviously), at the memorial service for his partner L’Wren Scott he sings “Just Like A Woman” and when interviewers start talking about the assumed depths or the poetic beauty of his own lyrics, Jagger almost always brushes it off by pointing out the quality difference with Dylan. As in the Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Cott, in 1968:

What about people who see your songs as political or sociological statements?
Well it’s interesting, but it’s just the Rolling Stones sort of rambling on about what they feel.
But no other group seems to do that.
They do, lots of groups.
What other group ever wrote a song like “19th Nervous Breakdown,” or “Mother’s Little Helper”?
Well, Bob Dylan.
That’s not really the same thing.
Dylan once said, “I could have written ‘Satisfaction’ but you couldn’t have written ‘Tambourine Man.’”
He said that to you?
No, to Keith.
What did he mean? He wasn’t putting you down was he?
Oh yeah, of course he was. But that was just funny, it was great. That’s what he’s like. It’s true but I’d like to hear Bob Dylan sing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

Dylan’s influence on Mick’s lyrics is fairly obvious on Between The Buttons (1967). And on the overall feel as well; “She Smiled Sweetly”, incidentally the first Stones song without a guitar, is in a few ways a “Just Like A Woman 2.0” – the mercury organ sound, Jagger’s way of singing, the waltz tempo and the atypical lyrics, with Dylan echo’s like

There's nothing in why or when
There's no use trying, you're here
Begging again, and over again

That's what she said so softly
I understood for once in my life
And feeling good most all of the time

That Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde have been on Jagger’s turntable a lot is even clearer in the most Dylanesque song in the Stones catalogue, in one of the other highlights of the underrated Between The Buttons, in “Who’s Been Sleeping Here?”:

Don't you look like, like a Goldilocks
There must be somewhere, somewhere you can stop
Yes there's the noseless old newsboy the old British brigadier
But you'll tell me now, who's been sleeping here  

… a fairy tale reference, a hallucinatory procession of Dylanesque archetypes like an “old British brigadier” and a “noseless old newspaper boy”. Elsewhere in the song “a laughing cavalier”, “the three musketeers” and “cruel old grenadiers” pop up, Brian Jones plays his utmost Dylanish harmonica, couplets ending with a recurring verse line … it’s a great, folk rocking Dylan song, larded with vile Stones rock and some psychedelia.

But the album Jagger so impressed is admiring, on that beautiful pool photo in Savannah, provides the inspiration for one of the greatest Stones songs ever, for “Paint It Black” (Jagger prefers writing it without a comma);

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

… words that may already be bubbling up as Sir Mick is listening to “She Belongs To Me” by the poolside, listening to

She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black

Jagger doesn’t call himself a poet, and he may always quickly be pointing to Dylan, but meanwhile, he does deliver superb, poetic hits. The interviewer complimenting “19th Nervous Breakdown” does have a point;

You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal, dull affairs
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud, running up and down the stairs
Well, it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years
And though you've tried you just can't hide your eyes are edged with tears

… is, of course, thematically a “Like A Rolling Stone” decoction, and indeed written shortly after its release, but apart from that a beautiful, well-nigh literary quatrain, which – like Dylan so often does – conceals by its layout that a classical, medieval template is the basis. In this case this quatrain is “actually” a sestain with an aabccb-rhyme scheme:

You're the kind of person
you meet at certain
dismal, dull affairs
Center of a crowd,
talking much too loud,
running up and down the stairs

… a “restructuring” which can be applied to each verse of “19th Nervous Breakdown”. The song actually has the same rhyme scheme as Dylan’s “She’s You Lover Now” and (later) “No Time To Think” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, and, moreover, the same scheme as one of the absolute highlights of French literary history, Paul Verlaine’s brilliant masterpiece Chanson d’automne (1865).

Which is not to say that Jagger deliberately copied this template or made a study of French classical poetry, but it at least shows that – despite himself – he is a poet, an artist who at least has an intuitive sense of rhyme, rhythm and reason. “I watched in glee as your Kings and Queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made” is a delightful, flowing, extremely musical and frightening verse (from “Sympathy For The Devil”). The fact that Jagger not only points to Dylan when mentioning “19th Nervous Breakdown”, but also in relation to “Mother’s Little Helper”, is understandable too:

"Kids are different today"
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day

… the mockery and sarcasm of the best of Dylan’s mid-60s work, like Dylan’s best songs conveyed in superior rhyme, rhythm and reason.

And in this “Paint It Black” a fine verse like I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky does have a highly visual, apocalyptic, Dylan-worthy quality in terms of content as well – the Glimmer Twin should be proud.
“i am called a songwriter,” the heartbreakingly young Rolling Stone reads, as he studies the Bringing It All Back Home’s liner notes, in Savannah, May 1965, “a poem is a naked person … some people say that i am a poet.”

————–

To be continued. Next up: She Belongs To Me part II: Images which have got to come out

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

By Larry Fyffe

This article follows on from Stuck inside of Halifax with the Tombstone Blues Again

In an exclusive interview at the Untold Offices atop the St. James Hotel in New York City, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan talks about another one of his time-travelling experiences – this time back to the sinking of the steamship ‘Titanic’ in the Atlantic after it struck an iceberg – that he recalls in the song ‘Tempest’.

{The Interview}

Untold –

To whom are you referring in the lines quoted below?:

"Wellington was sleeping
His bed begins to slide"

Dylan –

Not sure. When I first came on board the sinking ship, I thought I heard someone yell, ‘Wellington, never mind the bra. No time. Grab a life jacket.” But it might have been “Willingham” instead, or something like that.

Untold –

Everyone wants to know whom you are talking about in the lines given below?:

"Calvin, Blake, and Wilson
Gambled in the dark
Not one of them would ever live to
Tell the tale of the disembark"

Dylan –

A little poetic licence here and there. Like Davey the Pimp, and Jim the Dandy. And ‘Cal’ refers to the bad guy in the movie “Titanic” – the name’s short for Caledon there, not Calvin. However,  Blake and Wilson are the names of actual people I met on board the Titanic when I dropped in for the visit. There was Bert Wilson, second engineer, who did not survive; said for me to call him ‘Bertie’. There was Helen Wilson,1st class, she survived….I lied about her. She managed to make it back alive after having travelled to Egypt.There was crew member Percival Blake, worked with the coal, who also survived. Known as ‘Nunk’ he was. There was Stanley Blake, son of a William Blake, a short fellow with brown hair, a mess steward; he did not survive. And Thomas Blake, another coal worker, who did not make it either.

Untold –

What about this line: “Leo said to Cleo ‘I think I’m going mad’ “?

Dylan –

Lots of people think I’m referring to the movie actor Leonardo DiCaprio who starred in the movie ‘Titanic” as J. Dawson. No, I ran into my namesake on my time-travel trip; had a little chat with him. Leo Zimmerman, in 3rd Class, headed for Saskatoon. I found out later that he did not survive. A German farmer on his way to visit his brother. I just threw in Queen Cleopatra because it rhymed, and Egypt was a popular place for the wealthy to visit at the time.

Untold –

You spoke with John Astor, the wealthy businessman on board?:

"The rich man, Mister Astor
Kissed his darling wife
He had no way of knowing
Be the last trip of his life"

Dylan –

Yes, in 1st class. He and his wife were headed back to New York after visiting Egypt. He told me to call him ‘John’; sadly, he did not survive though he helped his wife escape into a lifeboat.

Untold –

And the following lines?:
"The captain, barely breathing
Kneeling at the wheel ....
Needle pointing downward
He knew he lost the race"

Dylan –

Here, I’m talking to Captain Edward Smith, and the ship starts really sinking. The captain in the tower didn’t survive, as you know. He told me that he blames himself for the disaster, for steaming too fast through Iceberg Alley –  told me so just before I opened up my communicator, and said, “This is ‘Cupid’ – Scotty, beam me up!”

{End of Interview}

Conducted by myself in secret …

I swear all this is true…

Cross my heart.

Recent Posts

• Dylan’s Rarities: Nadine, More and More, Money Honey, Milkcow and Maggie
• False Prophet: ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?’
• Dylan pulling The Band into Nazareth II: who wrote what?
• All directions at once: Part 4. The explosion (1962).

By Tony Attwood

This series giving videos and recordings of songs Bob has only ever performed once or twice or maybe even three times on stage, now has its own index here.   The most recent articles are…

• Bob’s live rarities, from a bottle of bread to mountains of Mourne (and rock n roll)
• Bob’s live rarities: As I went out, Billy, Get out of Denver.
• Bob’s once only songs: 12 gates; one morning; Viola Lee

So we start today with Nadine, a song which Jochen has mentioned in some detail in his review of Subterranean Homesick Blues

Setlist.fm has this recording coming from The Muny, St. Louis, MO on June 17, 1988.  The video itself has the same year but sets it in New York.  Setlist says this is the only time Dylan sang the song, but maybe not… which is exactly why we changed the name of this series from the “Once only file” to “Rarities”.

The song, as of course you will know, comes from Chuck Berry – here’s a latter day recording.

The song was the first that Chuck Berry released after coming out of prison having served a sentence under the Mann Act, which relates to immorality, prostitution and debauchery.  He was sentenced to 3 years inside – not the only famous person to be caught by the act (which has long since been amended).   Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright were also prosecuted under it.

The track was released in 1964 having been recorded the previous November and is in fact a reworking of of Chuck Berry’s own song, Maybelline.

And at this point I want to turn to Allmusic, because it has two interesting and separate points to make about this song.   The first is about the song itself and Allmusic notes its similes, which are not unknown in pop, but still not that common.  Such as, “She moves around like a wayward summer breeze; Moving through the traffic like a mounted cavalier; and I was campaign shouting like a Southern diplomat.”

Allmusic also says the song had a “profound influence” on Dylan, particularly with “Bringing it all back home”.  Bruce Springsteen, it notes, was also a fan of the lyrics.

So now moving on, we come to Milkcow’s Calf Blues, a Robert Johnson song which Bob recorded in the Freewheelin sessions.

Here is the original…

This is a different song from Milkcow Blues written and originally recorded by Kokomo Arnold in the 1930s.  Here are the lyrics…

Tell me, milkcow, what on earth is wrong with you
Hoo hoo, milkcow, what on earth is wrong with you
Now you have a little new calf, hoo hoo, and your milk is turnin’ blue
Your calf is hungry, and I believe he needs a suck
Your calf is hungry, hoo hoo, I believe he needs a suck
But your milk is turnin’ blue, hoo hoo, I believe he’s outta luck
Now I feel like milkin’ and my, cow won’t come
I feel like chu’in’ and my, milk won’t turn
I’m cryin’ pleease, pleease don’t do me wrong
If you can old milkcow, baby now, hoo hoo, drive home
My milkcow been ramblin’, hoo hoo, for miles around
My milkcow been ramblin’, hoo hoo, for miles around
Well, she been troublin’ some other bull cow, hoo hoo, in this man’s town

Now for a bit of sorting out.   I found this on the internet….

But that ain’t the Bob Dylan I know.  I mean that really is not him at all.  In fact I think this is Barbara Dane, although quite a few sites seem to suggest it is Dylan.   But take a listen…

However Bob has sung the song as we will soon see.

“Little Maggie with a Dram Glass in Her Hand” is a bluegrass song that originates in the  Appalachian song tradition and as ever, appears in many different formats, but invariably in the mixolydian mode (which is a scale that was used prior to the dominance of the major and major scales we have today.  Its notes are C D E F G A Bb C.)

The song was recorded by the Stanley Brothers in 1946, when their music was more old-time than bluegrass in style.  Here is Bob’s recording of it while in Scotland…

Bob also recorded it for “Good as I’ve been to you.”

Oh, where is little Maggie
Over yonder she stands
Rifle on her shoulder
Six-shooter in her hand

How can I ever stand it
Just to see them two blue eyes
Shining like some diamonds
Like some diamonds in the sky

Rather be in some lonely hollow
Where the sun don't ever shine
Than to see you be another man's darling
And to know that you'll never be mine

Well, it's march me away to the station
With my suitcase in my hand
Yes, march me away to the station
I'm off to some far-distant land

Sometimes I have a nickel
And sometimes I have a dime
Sometimes I have ten dollars
Just to pay for little Maggie's wine

Pretty flowers are made for blooming
Pretty stars are made to shine
Pretty girls are made for boy's love
Little Maggie was made for mine

Well, yonder stands little Maggie
With a dram glass in her hand
She's a drinking down her troubles
Over courting some other man

Hope you enjoyed one or two of those pieces.  Maybe we’ll find some more anon.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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 Bob Jope

‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?’

With characteristically fastidious self-deprecation, TS Eliot’s Prufrock, in a poem alluded to – almost quoted from – by Dylan in ‘Desolation Row’, announces:

I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter

Dylan, by contrast, insists over and over, with an unPrufrockian defiance reaffirmed by a driving blues beat:

I ain’t no false prophet

The insistence draws attention to the telling epithet, ‘false’, as much as to the key word ‘prophet’, and there’s a typical ambivalence here, something that underscores the song and its possible meanings: by declaring that he’s not a ‘false prophet’ is the speaker here denying prophetic qualities or affirming that he’s not ‘false’ – ie he is prophet of sorts, and one we can trust, or should pay heed to? I’m very much inclined to the latter.

It’s a cliché to say that we live in an age of ‘fake news’, but like so many clichés (it’s how they become them) it contains a truth: we’re confronted and affronted everywhere by fakery and falsehood, by lying politicians and their sycophantic media cronies inventing ‘facts’. By insisting on not being a false prophet the voice of the poem is setting itself apart from and in opposition to fakery.

The claim to be a prophet is a large one, but it calls to mind William Blake (whose ‘Songs of Experience’ are referenced in ‘I Contain Multitudes’) and his vision of the poet as seer, possessing a wisdom, an ability to see what others are blind to, a prophet who speaks truth to the present day from the perspective of an outsider, even a voice in the wilderness, one, perhaps, who goes ‘where only the lonely can go’:

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees

Blake claims that Milton, for example, was ‘a true poet’ who regarded that kind of Energy ‘call’d Evil’ as the ‘only life’. Blake considers Energy to be opposed to Reason, the force which, he believes, restrains desire. He exalts the life of the passions over that of Reason and the true poet/seer/prophet should exalt passionate life and deny imprisoning restraint, the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ (in ‘London’) that chain us down. Comparably, Dylan’s prophet declares:

I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life

(Intriguingly, too, where Blake is the enemy of reason (mocked punningly as a god, Urizen) Dylan’s prophet – or seer – declares himself ‘the enemy of treason’.)

This elevation of Energy led Blake to believe that Milton in Paradise Lost was unconsciously on Satan’s side: the reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Dylan’s ‘enemy of the unlived meaningless life’ can appear to be something like an embodiment of that Blakean Energy and Passion as he declares with a kind of snarling swagger:

I’m first among equals - second to none
I’m last of the best - you can bury the rest

Don’t care what I drink - don’t care what I eat
I climbed a mountain of swords on my bare feet

The extravagant boasting culminates in a reference to Wumen Huikai  a Chinese Chán (in Japanese: Zen) master during China‘s Song period, apparently famed for the 48-koan collection The Gateless Barrier, including this:

You must carry the iron with no hole.
No trivial matter, this curse passes to descendants.
If you want to support the gate and sustain the house
You must climb a mountain of swords with bare feet.

The commands are knowingly absurd, the feats demanded hyperbolic. That’s their point. Dylan’s Prophet, though, will have us believe that he’s achieved at least one of them.

In fact, as elsewhere on this multitudinous album – ‘Key West’, for example, is a rich, mesmerising dramatic monologue – we find ourselves wondering about the voice we’re hearing, who we’re hearing, as Dylan again appears to be adopting a persona – and part of the challenge of engaging fully with the song’s meaning(s) is coming to terms with that persona, or in this song’s case, personae? After all, ‘I is another’: ‘I and I’.

The image accompanying the early-released single offers a cryptic clue. It’s a loaded pastiche of the cover image for The Shadow #96, featuring the stories ‘Death About Town’ and ‘North Woods Mystery’. (Death About Town, we also read, ‘stalks rich and poor alike’.) The skeletal figure is The Shadow himself:

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Every fan of old-time radio, the fruit of a “golden age” on the American airwaves which lasted from the 1920s until television took hold, can tell you the answer: The Shadow knows.

http://www.openculture.com/2016/04/orson-welles-stars-in-the-shadow.html

The Shadow knows the evil lurking in men’s hearts and here he (or a version of him) carries a syringe with an intention we can only guess at (poison or a vaccine?) while behind him the silhouette of a hanged man has a Trumplike forelock. Dylan’s speaker stalks the land, and like The Shadow, ‘I just know what I know’.

Then again, ‘It may be the Devil, it may be the Lord…’ The persona, the voice, swings from boasts and vengeful threats, like an Old Testament Jehovah (Blake’s ‘Nobodaddy’) ‘here to bring vengeance’, to inveigling seducer as oily as Satan – who can also, of course, come disguised ‘as a Man of Peace’ –  tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden:

What are you lookin’ at - there’s nothing to see
Just a cool breeze encircling me
Let’s walk in the garden - so far and so wide
We can sit in the shade by the fountain side…

Shade cast by the Tree of Knowledge, Blake’s ‘Poison Tree’?

Tracking the voice as it addresses us through the verses, we begin with a world-weary, even cynical note of resignation:

Another day without end - another ship going out
Another day of anger - bitterness and doubt

Shadows are falling but it’s a day without end, dragging towards eternity, ships ‘going out’, their journeys unnamed, unremarked upon. Days wearily repeat themselves, full of tellingly unspecified ‘anger’ and coloured by ‘bitterness and doubt’. The near-hopelessness, though, shifts to something closer to a worldly knowingness, the voice of a prophet looking back, one who’s seen it all, who saw, too, what was coming  – ‘I know how it happened – I saw it begin’ – but one who also suffered, martyr-like, in his truth-telling and in his searching, we later hear, for ‘the holy grail’:

I opened my heart to the world and the world came in

If you ‘open your heart’ to someone, you tell them truths, your real thoughts and feelings, because you trust them – but in doing that you’re at the same time rendering yourself vulnerable, opening yourself to another’s exploitation if that trusted person turns out to be anything but trustworthy: you can be taken advantage of, something that’s implied here by the embittered follow-on, sung with a tired sense of seen-it-all beforeness: ‘and the world came in’. You ‘open your heart’ to or confide in usually one person, not to ‘the world’, but the speaker’s naïve mistake was perhaps to have assumed that his audience would listen and respond with generosity of spirit rather than seizing an advantage, moving in and, as it were, setting up camp *. Perhaps that’s why the speaker now seeks refuge in isolation, the safety of being ‘where only the lonely can go’, the prophet’s wilderness…

(*There’s likely to be an autobiographical note here, of course: the world-addressing, world-admonishing proselytiser – ‘so much older then’ – found himself claimed, owned even, as a voice or ‘spokesman’, a mouthpiece for others and their causes.)

On the other hand, while he may go where ‘only the lonely can go’, he’s not unaccompanied:

Hello Mary Lou - Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet footed guides from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business and I do too

‘Hello Mary Lou’ is pretty harmless pop stuff but Jimmy Wages’ ‘Miss Pearl’ sounds more like trouble:

Miss Pearl, Miss Pearl
Daylight recalls you, hang your head, go home…

Whatever she gets up to at night in her ‘underworld’ before daylight ‘recalls her’ we can only guess –  the admonishing singer sounds desperate –  but Dylan’s False Prophet welcomes his Miss Pearl and Mary Lou as ‘guides from the underworld’, subterranean muses calling to mind Maggie who once came ‘fleet foot Face full of black soot’. Ready now to do business, the three form a threateningly unholy trio – that ‘I do too’ is added with sardonic relish. The Shadow and his ‘guides’ are, as Elvis sang, ‘Lookin’ for trouble’.

That troublesome ‘business’ is intimated in the next verse with its implied declaration of intent, listing the enemies, the targets to be taken on:

I’m the enemy of treason - the enemy of strife
I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life

Another intriguing trio: treason, strife and life not fully lived.

Treason, an act of criminal disloyalty, typically to the state, is a crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against the nation (or its sovereign). It implies betrayal, and the voice here might well have in mind both personal experience (reminding us of the ‘world’ that ‘came in’ when he opened up his heart?) and something grander: a political leader (I can’t help but think again of that Trumpean silhouette)who betrays his own nation and all that it stands for. ‘Strife’ might well have a contemporary relevance, too, suggesting as it does, ‘angry or bitter disagreement over fundamental issues’, or ‘vigorous, bitter conflict’: a nation at war with itself – and with a leader at war with his own nation.

The lines, then, a condemn betrayal and destructive conflict, while, again, Blake comes to mind in the enmity towards ‘the unlived meaningless life’. Treason and strife are, by implication, life-denying, dark negatives, symptoms or products of the ‘Mind-forg’d manacles’ Blake hears in ‘London’, manacles that a lived, meaningful life would presumably be free of, the ‘chains’ that Rousseau and, later, Marx, saw as denying life and liberty. The speaker’s own freedom is expressed, in fact, in the triumphant separateness of the declaration that follows:

I’m first among equals - second to none
I’m last of the best *

(*Robert Currie’s Genius has a lot to say about this essentially Romantic concept, the creative artist as the One versus the Many, reaching something of an apotheosis in Nietzsche’s notion of ‘Man and Superman’: or ‘Man and The Shadow’?)

Michael Goldberg’s thoughts come to mind here:

The funny thing about ‘False Prophet’ is that when Dylan sings, “I ain’t no false prophet/ I just know what I know,” he could be indicating that he’s actually the real thing…In this new song he also sings,

“I’m the enemy of treason…
“Enemy of strife…
“Enemy of the unlived meaningless life.”

That final line is a theme of the Beats, as I was recently reminded when I read three books by the novelist/memoirist Joyce Johnson, who in her youth was Jack Kerouac’s girlfriend when On the Road, written in 1951, was finally published in 1957. “Enemy of the unlived meaningless life.” It’s as relevant today as a philosophy of life as it ever was.

https://rhythms.com.au/the-shadow-knows-what-he-knows/

The triumphant note is sustained in the next snarled insistence:

you can bury the rest
Bury ‘em naked with their silver and gold
Put ‘em six feet under and then pray for their souls

The implication seems to be that ‘the rest’ are those whose (‘unlived meaningless’) lives have been dedicated to – and wasted – on material, earthly pursuits, falling in love ‘with wealth itself’ (‘I Pity the Poor Immigrant’). Wrong-footing us again, though, a sudden, challenging question, ‘what are you lookin’ at?’, turns into an ambiguous reassurance, ‘There’s nothin’ to see’: he’s invisible now, but, as I suggested earlier, there’s a possible dark undercurrent here, the invitation to ‘walk in the garden’ on the one hand possibly innocently meant but on the other calling to mind the wily serpent (hinted at in the wind’s winding movement, ‘encircling me’)in the Garden of Eden, not actually invisible but, of course, the Devil in disguise, something picked up on a few lines later:

You don’t know me darlin’ - you never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest

Again we’re left wondering about the voice, its tone (Inviting? Reassuring? Deceitful? Boastful?) and its intention: who, exactly are we hearing and ‘What was it [he] wanted?’ Unsettling us still more, the swaggering shifts into vengeful mode again:

I’m here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head

That ‘somebody’s head’ is particularly unnerving – somebody could be anybody – and the ‘ghostly appearance’ is now still more insubstantial, ‘nothin’ to hold’ where a hand should be. The threat of vengeance, on the other hand, is horribly actualised or particularised, stuffing with gold the mouth of the ‘poor Devil’ who can, perhaps, only look up and see, not ever reach or experience the City of God – the new Jerusalem, or Paradise: Paradise lost to Adam and Eve, corrupted by Satan – who himself was hurled out of Heaven:

Put out your hand - there’s nothin’ to hold
Open your mouth - I’ll stuff it with gold
Oh you poor Devil - look up if you will
The City of God is there on the hill

This already cryptic, allusive song (addressed by whom, and to whom?) concludes on yet another dense and enigmatic note, loaded with questions:

Hello stranger - Hello and goodbye
You rule the land but so do I
You lusty old mule - you got a poisoned brain
I’m gonna marry you to a ball and chain

You know darlin’ the kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile - something’s got to give
I ain’t no false prophet - I’m nobody’s bride
Can’t remember when I was born and I forgot when I died

Ambiguities, uncertainties abound: the voice of a/the Devil, or a/the Devil addressed? Hello – and goodbye –  to a stranger who rules the (strange?) land –  ‘but so do I’? Once again: ‘I and I’? And that stranger is now a poison-brained ‘lusty old mule’ who’s threatened with marriage, but not a marriage to a wife, instead – vengeance again – an ironic, punishing  ‘ball and chain’, calling to mind, for me, Shakespeare’s Lucio who’s punished by, in his words, marriage to ‘a punk!’(By delightful chance, Cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife’ is not, of course, ‘ball and chain’ but ‘trouble and strife’,  while in Janis Joplin’s song, Love is the ‘ball and chain’ that drags her down.)

The voice, meanwhile , telling us again that he’s no false prophet, adds that he’s ‘nobody’s bride’ (not ‘Nobody’s Child’), whereas, we might remember (and Dylan reminds us in ‘The Groom’s Still Waiting’) the church is the ‘bride of Christ’ in John’s Gospel. Mischievously, too , the voice, the Prophet or Seer – Blake’s eternal Bard – not only can’t remember when he was born but, weirder still, ‘forgot when I died’.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

This article continues from Dylan pulling The Band into Nazareth: 1 – Lessons from the master craftsman

The song indeed is in Robbie’s name, and in his autobiography Testimony he devotes more than five hundred words to the genesis of the song. In doing so he insists that he wrote it all by himself. The opening words I pulled into Nazareth, for example:

“Upstairs in the workroom across from my bedroom on Larsen Lane, I sat with a little typewriter, a pen and legal pad, and a Martin D-28 guitar that said NAZARETH, PENNSYLVANIA on the label inside the sound hole. I revisited memories and characters from my southern exposure and put them into a Luis Buñuel surreal setting. One of the themes that really stuck with me from Buñuel’s films, like Viridiana, was the impossibility of sainthood—no good deed goes unpunished. I wrote “The Weight” in one sitting that night.”

A little further on he emphasises that “The Weight” is “something I had been working up to for years”, he claims that an impressed producer John Simon confides to him that he’s fascinated by the lyrics, that the guys from the band “reacted very strongly to the song,” and that a speechless Dylan wants to know who wrote that “fantastic song”. “Me,” I answered.

It’s an annoying element in Robertson’s memoirs: the blowing on his own horn. Virtually always through a transparent, quasi-modest detour; Robertson lets interlocutors burst out in hymns, jubilation cantatas and exalted tributes. If you believe him, Robbie spends large parts of his life making his way through crowds of devout Robertson fans like John Simon, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Albert Grossman, Elton John and Van Morrison, who are alternately stunned, furiously patting Robbie’s back, delighted, confessing to be inspired by him and breathlessly admiring him.

It’s a bit sad and moreover unnecessary; Robertson has toured the world with Dylan, is a great guitarist, has timeless songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Davy’s On The Road Again” and “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” to his name, the world’s top directors ask him to make the film music (Raging Bull, The Color Of Money, Any Given Sunday, and many more), he wins awards and scores hits – the well-deserved recognition and appreciation is there.

And maybe he wrote “The Weight” all by himself, who knows. But especially Levon Helm has reservations:

“The main thing was the spirit. We worked so hard on that music that no matter what the song credits say—who supposedly wrote what—you’d have to call it a full-bore effort by the group to show what we were all about.”

And in interviews he sharpens that further, claiming that the lyrics might be about sixty percent Robbie’s, the rest is written by Danko and Manuel and a bit by himself, and that the music should be for a large part on Garth Hudson’s account.

Oddly enough, no one mentions Dylan’s influence. That’s also noticeable in the otherwise captivating episode “The Band” in the series Classic Albums (1997), a very successful television documentary series that highlights the ins and outs of classic rock albums for an hour. Actually, this episode focuses on the “brown album“, The Band from 1969, but in fact it has become a kind of mini documentary about the first two albums and the Big Pink-experience at all. Here too, the name Dylan barely stands out, and not at all in relation to the songs the men from The Band write there in that big pink house.

The peculiar Garth Hudson, who does speak out about Dylan’s influence in 2012, is hardly present in this documentary. The documentary makers do try it, up to two times even, but Hudson continues to play jazzy chords and funky riffs half in a trance deep over his keys. Garth talks with music.

Recognition of the influence of Dylan’s songs is at most indirectly spoken, by Levon Helm, not coincidentally in response to the success of “The Weight”:

“Of course, the Dylan connection helped. The funny thing was, when Capitol sent out a blank-label acetate of Big Pink to press and radio people, everyone assumed ‘The Weight’ was the Dylan song on the album. The Band fooled everyone except themselves.”

Levon finds it funny that everyone thinks “The Weight” was written by Dylan, but of course it’s rather obvious. The opening lines are a copy of the opening lines of “Lo And Behold!”, the song features Basement-like supporting characters like Old Luke and Crazy Chester, and in idiom and less tangible features like colour and atmosphere, songs like “Tiny Montgomery”, “Million Dollar Bash” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry” resonate.

This is true for most of the songs of Music From The Big Pink; lines to the Dylan songs and the covers the men have heard, played and recorded over the past few months are easy to find. In the beautiful “To Kingdom Come” for example, in a quatrain like

Don't you say a word
Or reveal a thing you've learned
Time will tell you well
If you truly, truly fell

…in which pieces of “Frankie Lee And Judas Priest”, “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” and “Odds And Ends” resonate. Or the boisterous rhyme, alliteration and rhythm fun of “Caledonia Mission”:

She reads the leaves and she leads the life
That she learned so well from the old wives
It's so strange to arrange it, you know I wouldn't change it
But hear me if you're near me, can I just rearrange it?

…which Robertson would never have written if he hadn’t heard “To Ramona” dozens of times, if he hadn’t experienced twenty takes of “Fourth Time Around” or hadn’t witnessed how Dylan dashes off “Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread”.

“Yazoo Street Scandal” is a “Tombstone Blues” 2.0, and just as Dylanesque sounds “Chest Fever”:

I know she's a tracker, any scarlet would back her
They say she's a chooser, but I just can't refuse her
She was just there, but then she can't be here no more
And as my mind unweaves, I feel the freeze down in my knees
But just before she leaves, she receives

 …an eloquent rhyming, rhythmic barrage à la “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

In 2000 Capitol Records releases the remastered versions of the first four albums (Music From The Big Pink, The Band, Stage Fright and Cahoots). Band biographer Barney Hoskyns writes extensive, rich and loving liner notes for all four albums, but these are rejected by Capitol and/or Robbie Robertson and Canadian music professor Rob Bowman is recruited to write new ones.

Hoskyns publishes his rejected liner notes on Rock’s Backpages and opens the door to the slightly paranoid suspicion that Robertson has dismissed those lyrics because Dylan is too prominent in them; alone in the liner notes to the first record, Music From The Big Pink, the name “Dylan” is mentioned eighteen times and his impact is fully acknowledged and articulated.

Rick Danko says they wouldn’t have been more than a pub band if Dylan hadn’t given them the freedom to develop and that those “one hundred and fifty songs we recorded in about seven, eight months led us to start getting our writing chops together – we started learning how to write songs.”

Robertson is quoted as saying it was on Dylan’s insistence that The Band started recording at all:

“There was nothing that we had to do, no obligations. But Bob had been wanting us to record for a long time, and our fun was beginning to run out. We needed to take care of business a little.”

Hoskyns further argues that the unfashionable, traditional, rootsy arranging and production technique is a result of Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and calls Robertson’s song “To Kingdom Come” (admiring) Dylanesque.

It all doesn’t detract from the beauty of both albums, from Music From The Big Pink and The Band, obviously. The men are widely recognized as the founders of the successful music movement Americana, still winning new fans half a century later and in 2018 the anniversary release, the 50th Anniversary Edition, the “CD Super Deluxe Box” with six outtakes and alternative versions, is once again a success.

But downplaying, covering up, ignoring Dylan’s influence, “our fearless leader” (according to Robertson), remains a bit peculiar.

https://youtu.be/ZiE0fHX-HFc

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

So far in this series

• A song is like a painting, you can’t see it all if you’re standing too close
• All directions at once: how Dylan’s lyrics empower those who wish to be empowered
• All directions at once: The prelude to the explosion

By Tony Attwood

As you can see above, the previous episode of this series was called “The prelude to the explosion”.

The point of that title was simple this: from 1959 to 1961 Bob Dylan wrote 14 songs.  Their subject matter consisted of…

• Blues: 2
• Love: 1
• Humour / talking blues / satire: 7
• Travelling on: 1
• Social issues: 2
• Celebration of one place: 1

There is some variation there, and as a newcomer to the art, writing 14 songs across the three years is a very decent output indeed.

But then in 1962, Bob Dylan settled down to writing seriously.  In fact having written 14 songs across three years he now wrote 36 songs of which we have copies (and probably more that have been lost) in one year.  It was a huge step forward.  But more than that he wrote them on a wide variety of topics, some of which he had never touched before.

And the songs included some utter masterpieces, two or three of which most people who listen to music today will probably know, and which anyone who confesses to like Dylan’s music will most certainly know.  Songs written some 58 years ago (if you are reading this in the year I wrote it – 2020) and yet songs of which millions can still quote the lyrics, unprompted

Three of the first four songs of 1962 were blues, Ballad for a friend, Poor Boy Blues, and Standing on the highway, and one of those three – the very first song of the year – turned out to be a sublime masterpiece and a great curiosity.  A curiosity because nothing in the earlier years of writing seems to have prepared either Dylan as the writer or those of us in the audience, for it, and yet it takes Dylan to new ground.  And also a curiosity because it remains unknown save by those who know every piece Dylan has composed.

If you are not familiar with the song and that video above has vanished by the time you get here, it is available on Spotify (no subscription is required) and I would urge you to listen – indeed even if you know it and haven’t played it for a while I would urge you to listen.

Despite the fact that the song has been highlighted on this blog since our earliest days, no one seems to have picked up on it, the covers are very basic affairs by amateur musicians and have little to recommend them, and despite years of searching I still can’t find an antecedent to the song.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but it is interesting that no one else seems to have found one either.

Dylan was 21 when he recorded “Ballad”, and even after all these years of playing the song over and over I find it by itself an extraordinary achievement in both composition and performance.  Taking into account the composer’s age, it’s unimaginable. When talking at the end of the piece (to explain away a mistake) he sounds like a nervous uncertain 15 year old.  Musically he has reached absolute maturity, and thus perhaps it is no surprise that just a few months later he came up with a billion dollar hit.

What Dylan does in “Ballad” is throw away all the conventions of the blues, apart from the fact it deals with sadness.  The song itself doesn’t actually sound sad, but that works because Dylan is not raging against the world; he is just desolate, reporting what has happened, removed from the reality.  When I first wrote about this song I described him as “Numb, desolate, far too distraught to cry,” so “he just tells the story. There is no dressing up of the reality, no repeats, no chorus.  It just was.  It just is.”  That still feels right to me.

The language is old-time blues, and this is perhaps why Dylan doesn’t revisit the song, lyrically it is not the Dylan that we got to know during the rest of this year, so it remains a sketch, a one-off, an oddity…

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

Now over the years we have become used to Dylan, the singer songwriter who can cover all subjects, but at the start of 1962 when Dylan’s talent exploded across different topics in his songs, he opened cautiously.

The first four songs of the year primarily concern the blues and the traditional blues themes of death and moving on.

Then suddenly Bob changed course and after four blues songs we had four songs of social commentary: Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues, Death of Emmett Till, The Ballad of Donald White, and Let me die in my footsteps. Bob in four songs was taking on right wing politics, bigotry and social injustice.

“Let me die” is a remarkable song about the situation in the USA at the end of the 1950s when as a response to the Cold War people were buying or building their own fallout shelters to protect them in case of nuclear war.

Again this is an incredibly assured piece of writing.  Dylan himself said in Chronicles he took the melody from a Roy Acuff ballad – although the first Bootleg album says that it is Bob’s first original melody.  I think the point is that it sounds like it ought to be a Roy Acuff ballad, but the fact that not many (if any) people have identified which ballad suggests that one might better say the song is in the style of Roy Acuff.

In all, there we were, eight songs written in quick succession at the start of the year, following some standard themes – but containing two stunning (if now somewhat forgotten) masterpieces in “Let me Die” and “Ballad for a friend”.   But what strikes me about both these songs is their assured quality of writing and delivery.  There is nothing hesitant in the composition of either of the lyrics or the music – these are well-rounded songs that make sense and have an impact at every level.  And Dylan wrote them after just a couple of years of songwriting in which he explored a few themes across 14 interesting, but not outstanding songs.

These two songs (“Let me Die”, and “Ballad,”) written in the early part of 1962 show an assured writer, confident, in command of both his musical and literary worlds.  And the fact that these two great songs are so different in style and language suggests very strongly that there is much more to come.  And so it turned out to be.

I have the feeling that after writing “Let me Die” and “Ballad for a friend” Bob Dylan absolutely knew that he could “do it” whatever “it” might happen to be.  He didn’t have to write another blues, or another song protesting about the current state of America.  He could do something totally different.  Or not, as the case might be.

And so he wrote “Blowing in the Wind”.

Dylan himself has said that the melody came from “No more auction block” and one can certainly hear that…

… but that is simply the start of the journey of Blowing in the wind 

Dylan also said in an interview early on that, “Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that.”   And certainly there is no answer in “Blowing in the Wind”, other than the fact that there might be an answer out there somewhere.

In my earlier series which gave a very short summary as to the subject matter of each Dylan song, for “Blowing in the Wind” I chose “It’s not the world, it’s the way you see the world” – and now some years later, that still seems fair enough.   In short, you choose the answer – it’s out there, just take your choice.  I’m not going to tell you how to see the world.

Now that seems at one level an incredibly simple a vision, but it is equally incredibly complicated.  We live in a world in which people tell others what to do, what to believe and how to behave.  From parents to school teachers to politicians to religious leaders, from people on Facebook to, well, everyone, people seem to want to tell everyone else not just how to behave, but how to see the world, what’s right and what’s wrong.   Everyone seems to want to have a say.  Everyone not only has an opinion, everyone wants to have their opinion noticed.

But go further and we realise it is the decision making which decides what is to be debated, that can be more important than the outcome of the debate – and that particular approach to questioning what the question is, did not arise until much later in popular music.

And yet it is here in this song.  So we must ask, if we really want to get inside the music of Bob Dylan, how did Bob come to write this utter gem early in 1962 after just a couple of years sketching out songs with varying success in a variety of forms?

We certainly can’t say he was working his way up to it.  If we take the songs that lead up to Blowing in the Wind we find

• The Ballad of Donald White
• Let me die in my footsteps
• Blowing in the wind 

“Let me die” we have mentioned, but if you are not aware of “Donald White” then you will most certainly be in the majority.  It’s a song that was quickly put away by Bob and not returned to after he had given it two outings, once in September and once in October 1962.  You may not want to play the whole piece, but just a few moments give us an insight.

I am not suggesting that this is not a worthy piece, but rather saying that it is a worthy attempt which does not stand any comparison with “Blowing in the Wind.”

So how could Bob write something of perhaps moderate interest to Dylanologists but not many other, as with “Donald White”, then compose the powerful protest song but still ephemeral “Let me die,” before composing a song that is still performed constantly today “Blowing in the Wind”.

Certainly the title itself is of interest.  The use of “wind” to suggest change or randomness or chance goes back a long way.  The word “windblown” dates from the 16th century, and turned up in the phrase “blown by the wind” which in the present tense became “blowing in the wind.”  And when transferred to everyday language “blowing in the wind” comes to embody the meaning of being “out there” but hard to grasp or hard to define.  But it certainly is “out there” and that is the important thing.  It is there if you look hard enough.

It is not quite the reverse of the belief of our ancestors (at least my ancestors, being English).  For in the dark ages those who lived where I now sit would have said “Wyrd bið ful āræd.”   Fate is inexorable.  But no, Dylan will have none of fate.  Yes there is chance implied in “Blowing in the Wind” but also the notion that we can all go out and create our futures.  It is there for us to choose, to do with as we please.  We are no longer ruled by the gods.  The future is out there, go make it.

I think “Blowing in the wind” is still popular not just because of the universal appeal of its core message, and because of its inherent ambiguity, but also because it does imply both this hope and this freedom to make of life what we can.  Whatever “it” is, it is still out there being blown around waiting for us to get hold of it.   “Blowing in” also suggests that randomness and chance is very much part of everyday life today, rather than something that has occurred in the past or something that is laid down at our birth.  It gives it a sense of “now” and possibility which of course was how the song came to be a favourite of the civil rights movement.  “They” might be planning for wars and telling us to build air raid shelters, but we can make another life.

Thus the song has that feeling of multiple interpretations.  There is no fixed answer any more, which moves us onto dangerous ground, because if there are no fixed answers then there is no right or wrong.  Which in turn is an interesting contradiction from Bob’s alternative mode of writing at the time, as with the four songs that Dylan wrote immediately before “Blowing in the Wind” which took a very different stance

• Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues
• Death of Emmett Till
• The Ballad of Donald White
• Let me die in my footsteps

These songs all take a stand and a position which is on the civil rights side of American politics.  But now with “Blowing” we are being told the answer is out there, which is reassuring to some degree, but not quite as reassuring as having someone telling us what that answer actually is.

So did Bob change his mind after writing those for songs?   I personally very much doubt it.  For here was a man who could write songs at the drop of a hat (as we have noted he wrote 36 songs this year that survived in a recorded form, and goodness knows how many more that were written an abandoned).

Listening to each of these songs in turn it seems to me that Bob deals in ideas, lyrical phrases and musical phrases.  Put the three together and (obviously) you get a song.  I suspect the phrase “Blowing in the Wind” came to him, a musical phrase came to him, and then suddenly he had, “The answer is blowing in the wind”.  Add four chords, a melody forms above, and there we are.

This is not to denigrate Bob’s song writing or the fact that “Blowing in the Wind” is a magnificent work – it wouldn’t have lasted this long had it not been.  But rather, put the phrase in front of the master songwriter in the making, and off you go.  It was probably the same with Irving Berlin, the only American songwriter who can be compared to Dylan.  I suspect that when the phrase “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” occurred to him, the rest probably just fell into place.  What rhymes with “band”?  “Hand”.  “Sand.”  “Land”… right let’s get writing.

Come on and hear, come on and hear, Alexander's ragtime band
Come on and hear, come on and hear, it's the best band in the land

But to return to Dylan’s song, and again to travel in a slightly odd direction, although everyone associates “Blowin’ in the Wind” with Peter Paul and Mary the first cover version of the song was recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio (pictured at the start of this article), but it is said that their record company would not release the song as it included the word “death” which was against company policy!  How to throw away a lifetime of fame.

And so the version we remember came from Peter, Paul and Mary.  It sold over a million copies, and Bob Dylan made his first serious money as a songwriter.  It is said that he was (to put it mildly) rather surprised when he got the first cheque.

Now, it would be easy to stop at this point and move on to the next song Dylan wrote, but there is another issue I feel the need to raise here – and that is to consider the element of chance.

Self-evidently, no one planned this string of events.  Dylan was writing and having written he moved on, and in passing he happened to write one of the classics of the 20th century.

Indeed we can tell that because the next song Bob added to his repertoire was not another song of his own, but rather “Corina Corina” which the record company and his official web site later insisted on noting as WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN (ARR).  If you have been around this site for a while you’ll be yawning here knowing that I am about to start shouting “What does that mean?????”  He either wrote it or he arranged the work of another composer.  Not both.

It is in fact a simple 12 bar country blues first recorded by Bo Carter in 1928 and copyrighted by Mr Carter four years later.

So Bob did not follow up “Blowing in the wind” with a series of similar or related songs.  Instead he worked on

• Corrina Corrina (Lost love)
• Honey just allow me one more chance (Lost love)
• Rocks and Gravel (lost love, moving on)
• Quit your Lowdown Ways (do the right thing)
• Baby I’m in the mood for you (Absolute desire)

And seeing that list one might well wonder what happened to the writer of “Blowing in the wind”.  Certainly there is no follow up.  Three lost love songs, followed by a song telling the lady to stop misbehaving and do the right thing, followed by a little exploration of absolute desire.  Because of it being recorded so many times, many of us would have known “Corrina Corrina” anyway.  “Honey” might be remembered because it was on Freewheelin’ but the others…

Bob Dylan, having written an absolute masterpiece, was once again, travelling in all directions at once.  And he still had 22 more songs to write before his third year of composing, and his first serious year of songwriting, came to an end.  What on earth could he come up with next?

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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 Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Bob performed Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread live twice. First in 2002 at Madison Square Garden, where it appeared as the second song in the set. Right at the end he says, “that was a request”.  I believe it was from someone he was talking to backstage just before they went on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI1kt4xUOyk

Clearly though there has been some rehearsal as the guys in the band know when and how to come in with the vocal accompaniment.  I called it “abstract weird” when reviewing the song   But if you really want an in depth analysis of what is going on here, Jochen’s review takes us through every highway and byway that could have anything to do with the song.  His conclusion was that “Although similar in structure, melodic charm, catchiness and humbug, “Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread” never reaches a status like “Quinn The Eskimo”, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” or “Million Dollar Bash”.”   But he still finds some fascinating covers of the song.

Bob performed it once more in London in 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-bjl6QHqpc

Performing off the cuff like that (if that is what he was doing, and I am not convinced) is not too hard musically as it is a simple musical piece, but the fact is that he can remember all the lyrics – that is an extraordinary feat of memory, and gives quite an insight into the way his brain works.

Now the Mountains of Mourne – all fifty seconds of it.

https://youtu.be/Ogd_3MpKFqo

It was played at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, February 3, 1991 – a fact that explains why the audience was so enthusiastic about the performance.

The song opened the performance before Dylan went into Subterranean Homesick Blues!  The piece was written by 19th century songwriter William Percy French, who is also known as a watercolour artist.

And now for something completely different.   “Shake Rattle and Roll”

This came from the Leyendas de la Guitarra concert on October 17, 1991.

It is a classic 12 bar blues, and was written in 1954 by Jesse Stone (known as Charles E Calhoun for reasons that will not become clear at this point), and recorded by Big Joe Turner.   That version was a hit, but it became an even bigger hit for Bill Haley and His Comets – one of a long series of hits the band had.

by John Radosta

When Dylan started singing the song that followed “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” at the City Coliseum in Austin, Texas, fans might have been forgiven for thinking that they were listening to an acoustic version of “Lonesome Day Blues.” It had the same vocal rhythms, the same rhyme scheme. The two long lines to start each verse, both with that characteristic pause, before getting resolved in the second half of the verse. It was all the same. But the lyrics would have confounded them. There was that one line, “Since she’s gone and left me” but it didn’t seem to fit in to the rest of the stanza.

Except they couldn’t have confused it for “Lonesome Day Blues,” because the date of that show was October 25, 1991, almost exactly a decade earlier than the release of “Love and Theft.”

As Tony Atwood noted on this site in July, Dylan was singing a Gene Autry tune for the first, and perhaps only, time ever, called “20/20 Vision.” Dylan’s arrangement and phrasing bear no resemblance to Autry’s recording, though “Walls of Red Wing” and some of his late ’60s country songs, like “I Threw it All Away” and “Waltzing With Sin” (on the Basement Tapes Complete collection) have recognizable echoes. Instead, he’s taken a composition stored in that vast warehouse of his mind, and transformed it entirely.

Here’s Dylan’s version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr28R_yicb0

And here’s Gene Autry’s:

After taking it for a spin, Dylan put it back on the shelf, but clearly never forgot it. In keeping with the blues tradition of recycling elements such as riffs, rhythms, and rhymes, when Dylan came to record tracks for “Love and Theft,” his one-off performance was still rattling around in his brain.

“Lonesome Day Blues” incorporates all of these particles. As I mentioned above, only a single phrase, “gone and left me” connects this song with Autry’s. Instead, Dylan used the structure to combine any number of other bits of literature—it’s this song that famously includes lines from Junichi Saga’s Confessions of a Yakuza, Virgil’s Aeneid, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and others. Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, provides a rack on which to hang many hats.

Here’s Dylan singing “Lonesome Day Blues” at Madison Square Garden, just a few weeks after its infamous release on 9/11:

This isn’t the only time Dylan has stored away a tune for use many years on (I’m putting aside completed songs that got repurposed, such as when “Phantom Engineer” became “It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” or “Danville Girl” formed an early draft of “Brownsville Girl,” or “Dreaming of You” donated lines to “Standing in the Doorway”).

On The Cutting Edge, the collection of tracks from his epic mid-60s trilogy, Dylan sings the fragment “Lunatic Princess.” It was recorded in January of 1967, during the Blonde on Blonde sessions. The frantic lyrics are tossed off vitriol of a lesser vintage of “Positively 4th Street.” But Al Cooper’s driving organ riff is extremely familiar: it forms the backbone of “Dead Man, Dead Man,” recorded in the spring of 1981 for Shot of Love.

Here’s a side by side comparison:  first Lunatic Princess.

If you are not able to play that video try here.

and now “Dead Man, Dead Man” in London, 1981:

Again if you can’t play that one try this

It’s a cinch that there are hundreds of tunes swirling through the mind of Dylan; his encyclopedic knowledge of American music across two centuries or more, demonstrated in his one-offs, and snippets of lyrics scattered across his catalogue, prove it. It’s why we keep listening, storing away the bits for future illumination and fascinating connections.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

At the beginning of December ’67 it starts to itch, with The Band (which doesn’t have a name at that time – but in the village, in Woodstock, the boys are always called the band). Dylan has been away three times in the past six weeks. To Nashville, to record John Wesley Harding in three shifts. In the meantime, the men, now with Levon Helm, have merrily continued playing. Levon remembers:

“When I reported for duty in the basement the day after I arrived in Woodstock, they were working on “Yazoo Street Scandal.” Richard was playing drums. (…) I was uptight about playing, because I’d been away from it for so long, but soon they had me working so hard, there wasn’t anything else to do. Richard was writing and singing up a storm. We cut his “Orange Juice Blues” (also called “Blues for Breakfast”), with Garth playing some honky-tonk tenor sax. Richard sang and co-wrote (with Robbie) “Katie’s Been Gone,” and Garth overlayed some organ. Rick and Robbie did a great song called “Bessie Smith.”

(This Wheel’s On Fire, Levon Helm, 1993)

Robbie Robertson expresses the creative explosion in a similar way. They decline Dylan’s offer to play on the album, but are happy to accept his painting for the cover (which includes the elephant, five musicians and a sixth character supporting the pianist), and it’s also pretty clear that they want the Dylan song “I Shall Be Released” and both co-productions “Tears of Rage” and “This Wheel’s on Fire” on the album, despite the abundance of their own songs to choose from:

“Rick felt quite strongly about “Caledonia Mission” and wanted to give that a go. We all agreed. I definitely thought “Yazoo Street Scandal” was right up Levon’s alley. (…) I wrote “The Weight,” which was also becoming a contender. “Chest Fever” too, with its crazy “basement” words, and Garth’s new “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” intro, borrowed from Bach. We had to choose between “Lonesome Suzie” and “Katie’s Been Gone.” Both had Richard’s sympathetic sentiments. I liked that “Katie’s Been Gone” had no intro and that Rick’s harmony in the ending had a touch of Pet Sounds influence, but “Lonesome Suzie” was so moving. I suggested we let John Simon decide.”

And Richard Manuel’s anecdote about the genesis of “Tears Of Rage” illustrates with what ease and how quickly, off the cuff, all those beautiful songs from the masterpiece Music From The Big Pink came into being:

“He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper … and it was typed out … in line form … and he just said “Have you got any music for this?” I had a couple of musical movements that fit, that seemed to fit, so I just elaborated a little bit, because I wasn’t sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn’t run upstairs and say, “What’s this mean, Bob?” “Now the heart is filled with gold, as if it was a purse.”

(Conversations with the Band, The Woodstock Times, 1985)

… virtually the same lightning process as that other masterful co-production from the Basement, in “This Wheel’s On Fire”, about which Rick Danko says in the same interview series in The Woodstock Times:

“We put together about 150 songs at Big Pink. We would come together every day and work and Dylan would come over. He gave me the typewritten lyrics to “Wheels on Fire.” At that time, I was teaching myself to play the piano. Some music I had written on the piano the day before just seemed to fit with Dylan’s lyrics. I worked on the phrasing and the melody. Then Dylan and I wrote the chorus together.”

Technically, we owe the Basement Tapes to Garth Hudson, who has been conscientious from day one about recording and archiving those around 150 songs.

He’s the best musician in The Band, and also the taciturn one. At least, he rarely gives interviews, and in those few interviews he gives, he doesn’t let himself be tempted to look back too deeply into the past – Garth talks with music, period. He thinks “Yazoo Street Scandal” is one of the best songs Robbie Robertson has written, and in he admires his skilfulness “with the legal pad and pencil”.

And in the same interview with Mark T. Gould for Sound Waves Magazine, November 2001, he mentions Dylan’s influence, but on a surprising level:

“He gave me the greatest lessons I ever learned about how to work in a studio. He would go in with us, play a new song only partway through, we wouldn’t much rehearse or much less play it all the way through to learn it, and he’d turn on the tape, and we’d get it down in a first or a second take.”

But then it’s 2012. Hudson helps a Canadian friend, the archivist and producer Jan Haust, who is already preparing for The Basement Tapes Complete, listens to all those tapes, selects what has survived and can still be listened to in terms of sound quality, and Garth is willing to reminisce a little more about that special summer of 1967 – for the first time in forty-five years. Mumbling, hesitating and not always coherent he does his story for the documentary Down In The Flood by Prism Films. In it he is the only band member who clearly, in so many words, recognizes Dylan as the architect of The Band, calls him a master craftsman and an educator, a teacher, and tells:

“He would sit at the coffee table, on an old Olivetti I think it was, and type out a song and we’d go downstairs, in the basement, and record it. And we watched this happen. He worked also with Richard and Rick on lyrics. I think he saw that we were all songwriters to some extent and he would show us a talent that… he was sure of what he could do, and I don’t know how many songwriters do this, but he would make a song up on the spot. Very quickly.”

And the men are good students. All the songs of Music From The Big Pink and part of the successor The Band (“The Brown Album“) are written in Woodstock – two undisputed pop monuments.

The prize song for Music From The Big Pink is “The Weight”. That is a great song, which understandably has a position on the various lists of “Hundred Best Songs All Time”, “Most Beautiful Songs From The Twentieth Century” or whatever those senseless and always fun elections are called.

But it’s one of the nails on The Band’s coffin as well. Halfway through the 70’s, a separation arises between especially Robbie Robertson and the rest of The Band, and that has a lot to do with dissatisfaction – the dissatisfaction that Robbie puts a bit too generous royalties on his own name, copyrights on songs to which the other band members feel to have contributed as well. “The Weight” is an example thereof.

To be continued. Next up: Part II – Our fearless leader

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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 Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: Bob was pretty busy as a sideman in the 80s and beyond but we have already covered several of these in other articles in the past.

Bob’s session work for Stevie Nicks, Lone Justice, Carlene Carter and Nanci Griffith are discussed here.

Other sessions for Tom Petty (Jammin’ Me), U2 (Love Rescue Me), Kurtis Blow (Street Rock), Gerry Goffin (Tragedy Of The Trade & Time To End This Masquerade), Ronnie Wood (King Of Kings) and Mudbone (Home) have been discussed on their respective articles for each song.

One thing you’ll notice about all these mentioned above is that Bob is the writer or co-writer on each piece.

So, this piece will concentrate on the remainder of his session work from these decades where he was not the writer of the song. The first three in this list really show where Bob’s head was at during the early 80s. They are all over the place!

First up, Bob plays harmonica on the Keith Green track “Pledge My Head To Heaven”. This appears on his 1980 album So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt.

Now to be honest, the music is ok, but I absolutely HATE the lyrics! Although in Green’s favour this was the album were he adopted the “pay what you want” policy for albums and concerts – so you could get it for free if you wanted. Bob was good friends with him at this time and maybe he shared similar views, such as this horrendous little nugget:

Well I pledge my wife to heaven, for the Gospel,
Though our love each passing day just seems to grow.
As I told her when we wed, I'd surely rather be found dead,
Than to love her more than the one who saved my soul.

Green was killed in a plane crash in 1982.

Tony: Just to explain a little further, 1979 was the one and only year in which Dylan wrote a collection of songs, every single one was on the same subject.  Where he normally meandered from blues to love to lost love to moving on etc etc, in this one and only year every single song was on the subject of his religious faith.  From Gotta Serve Somebody, via When you gonna wake up and When He Returns onto What can I do for you? and See by faith

Aaron: For the second piece I couldn’t find the version with Bob’s playing online anywhere. But here is a version of the track without Bob so you can get the idea. It’s The Cruzados with Rising Sun.

The alternative version has Bob on harmonica. Recorded in 1983 but not released until 2000, on the album “Cruzados – Unreleased Early Recordings”. It was also released as a bonus tracks on the Dylan tribute album “May Your Song Always Be Sung – Vol 3”. The Cruzados shared several members with The Plugz, who backed Dylan on the Letterman show performance in 1984.

Tony: Frustratingly although part of “Unreleased Early” is on Spotify this song is not included, so if you want to hear it the only way is to buy a copy of the single track from Amazon.

Aaron: Next up, in 1985 Bob played harmonica on Sly & Robbie’s track No Name On The Bullet.

Sly and Robbie had played on Infidels and Empire Burlesque so this is Bob repaying the favour.

The last few are more renowned artists so I’ll just rattle through these ones quickly.

Bob plays harmonica on the Warren Zevon track The Factory, from 1987.

Tony: Here is one I really like, as it sounds like Dylan and what he does fits exactly into the music and meaning of the song.  It’s not a great piece of music and the lyrics are pretty obvious, but at least it is a bit of fun rebellion.

Aaron: Bob plays organ on the U2 track “Hawkmoon 269” from the 1988 Rattle and Hum album, which also includes Love Rescue Me.

Tony: Quite a brave move to say to Bob, come and play the organ on our album, as you know he’s going to do something unusual.  But again it really works.  My kind of music – and Bob gets it just right listen to it around 3 minutes 25 seconds… you wouldn’t normally even notice the organ, but it plays its part in continuing the drive forward without it being repetitious.  Simple but very effective background.

Aaron: Last one for this article is Bob’s second contribution to Ronnie Wood’s 2001 album, “Not For Beginners”. He plays guitar on the track Interfere.

Tony: An interesting choice of track for Bob to be asked to play on.   And I wonder how they get Bob there on the right day.   Could it really be that Ronnie phones Bob and says, “Hey Bob you doing anything this afternoon?”

Aaron: Bob also contributed vocals (and appears in the videos) for the two charity singles by USA For Africa (We Are The World) and Artists United Against Apartheid ((Ain’t Gonna Play) Sun City).

Next time, we’ll move back to the 70s and take a look at some of Bob’s work with Doug Sahm.

Previously in this series…

• Bob Dylan: side man. Farina, von Schmidt and Bob
• Dylan with Belafonte, Hester and Big Joe Williams
• Dylan and Barry Goldberg
• Jack Elliott, Geoff Muldaur, Neill Young (plus Carolyn Hester)
• Dylan the sideman: Bromberg, Booker T, Priscilla Jones, David Blue

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

Previously in this series…

• The Heart of Darkness Part I 
• Bob Dylan And The Heart Of Darkness (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

Mentioned previously be the following lyrics of a rather sardonic poem:

About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters: how well they understood
It's human position; how it takes place ....
In Brueghel's "Icarus", for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster.....
and the delicate expensive ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky
Had somewhere to get to, and sailed calmly on
(WH Auden: Musee Des Beaux Arts)

That human nature places one’s own interest first and foremost is a theme expressed below in the lyrics of a popular satirical song:

He takes me deep-sea fishing in a submarine
We go to drive-in movies in a limousine
He's got a whirly-bird, and a twelve-foot yacht
(Dodie Stevens: Pink Shoe Laces ~ Grant)

All the gal gets out of the relationship is what she takes after her boyfriend dies – the stuff that Dooley wanted to be buried in:

He give me tan shoes with pink shoe laces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band
And a big Panama with a purple hat band
(Dodie Stevens: Pink Shoe Laces ~ Grant)

The consequences even worse in the following song – an East Indian island sinks beneath the waves:

I was sitting at home alone one night in L.A.
Watching old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news
It seems that there was a earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn't seem like much was happening
So I turned it off, and went to grab another beer
(Bob Dylan: Black Diamond Bay ~ Dylan/Levy)

“As the last ship sails, and the moon fades away”, nothing’s happening except, amidst other goings-on, there be gambling, a Greek hanging himself, a woman in a Panama hat preparing to leave a hotel, a volcano exploding, and an island sinking.

There’s a picture on the Dylan album cover of Joseph Conrad, author of “Victory, An Island Tale”, in which it is stated that ‘the slight indentation for a time was known officially as Black Diamond Bay’ (Part Four, chapter 5). Unlike the novel with tragedy lurking everywhere, the movie based on  Conrad’s book (that stars Jack Hart who wears a white Panama hat with a black band) has a happy ending, a victory, after the detached protagonist Heyst discovers that compassion has taken a hold of him; in both the book and the silent movie, the volcano does no more than threaten the island.

Not so in the song below:

The tiny man bit the soldier's ear
As the floor caved in, and the boiler in the basement blew
While she's out on the balcony, where a stranger tells her
"My darling, je vous aime beaucoup"
She sheds a tear, and says a prayer
As the fire burns on, and the smoke drifts away
From Black Diamond Bay
(Bob Dylan: Black Diamond Bay ~ Dylan/Levy)

WH Auden be influenced by Karl Marx and TS Eliot in content and style – two writers, caught between heaven and hell, whose differing views on alienation are not at all easy to reconcile:

Key West is the place to be
If you're looking for immortality
Key West is paradise divine
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you'll find it there
Key West is on the horizon line
(Bob Dylan: Key West)

Seems everybody is stuck between dreams and reality:

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free
'Neath the Panamanian moon
And I say, "Aw, come on now
You know you know about my debutante"
And she says,"Your debutante just knows want you need
But I know what you want"
(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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 John Henry

“My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” is one of, if not the most iconic of Scottish songs. Written by Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, in 1794, it is a moving statement of the singer’s love for his beloved. It has been sung, if not recorded, by every Scottish singer worth his or her salt, and by many more besides; it has been a perennial favourite ever since it was written.

But, perhaps the most significant thing to be said about it in this context is that Bob Dylan once declared his own love for the song in no uncertain terms. In an advertising campaign launched by HMV under the title “My Inspiration”, Dylan was asked in 2008 to name the lyric that had had the most impact on his life. Dylan cited Burns’s “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose.”

Evidently, this became news and The Guardian newspaper shortly after included a piece under the headline: “Bob Dylan: Robert Burns is my biggest inspiration.” Guardian readers were told: “Dylan has revealed his greatest inspiration is Scotland’s favourite son, the Bard of Ayrshire, the 18th-century poet known to most as Rabbie Burns. Dylan selected A Red, Red Rose, written by Burns in 1794.”

The song is a declaration of undying love, and one of the most appealing, the most captivating, aspects of the lyric are those places where Burns/the singer illustrates the never-ending quality of his love by saying it will last “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,/And the rocks melt wi’ the sun” (for those not familiar with Scots patois, “gang” here means “go”). He continues: “I will love thee still, my dear,/While the sands o’ life shall run.” In the final verse, the poet switches from vast expanses of time, to distance. Evidently, he must leave his true love for a while, but he assures her “And I will come again, my Love,/Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”

This kind of imagery was picked up subsequently by the wonderful Scottish duo, The Proclaimers, in the second of our two Scottish songs, their wonderful 1988 release, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”  Much more down to earth than Burns’s romanticism, they stick to vast distances:

But I would walk 500 miles,
And I would walk 500 more,
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door.

Their repetition of this refrain, and the fact that they incongruously squeeze 500 miles into the title,  would surely result in reminding any Scot of Burns’s “I will come again, my Love,/Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”

But there are wonderful contrasts between the two songs. There is a melancholy about Burns’s song, an underlying sadness. It’s a song about the heartache of love, about its insecurities. The singer is trying to convince his love that he really loves her: “As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,/So deep in love am I.” But this makes us think that perhaps she doesn’t trust him, is not as sure of him as he wants her to be. There’s an air of desperation, maybe even neediness, in what the singer sings.

There is nothing sad about the Proclaimers’ song. Leonard Cohen insisted that love was not a victory march, but the Proclaimers know different. “I’m Gonna Be” is a triumphalist shout from the roof tops that the singer has won his girl and knows he’s going to be with her:

When I wake up, well I know I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you.
When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you.
If I get drunk, well I know I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you.

While Burns is romantic, the Proclaimers write of a relationship which is much more rooted in daily life:

When I'm working, yes I know I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you;
And when the money, comes in for the work I do,
I'll pass almost every penny on to you.
When I come home (when I come home), well I know I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you.

But even so, they sing of a love that will last, not until the rocks melt in the Sun, but as they grow old: “And if I grow-old (when I grow-old), well I know I’m gonna be,/I’m gonna be the man who’s growing old with you.”

“I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” is a great song in its own right, but it is also a tribute by its Scottish authors to the great Scottish song, “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose.” For all the differences in tone—from love’s insecurity and heartache on the one hand, to the overwhelming confidence that comes from finding love on the other—the songs are clearly related. In both songs, the lover demonstrates his love by his willingness to cover impossible distances to return to the beloved: ten thousand miles, or one thousand.

Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” of 1997, is his own tribute to the song that we know means so much to him. It’s partly for that reason, that I want to include it here as a third Scottish song. Clearly, I’m stretching the point, but let’s not forget that the album in which this song appears has Scottish features. There’s “Highlands,” for a start:

Well my heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam;
That’s where I’ll be when I get called home.
The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme,
Well my heart’s in the Highlands,
I can only get there one step at a time.

There’s an obvious Scotticism too in “Not Dark Yet.” The official lyrics on bobdylan.com give the fourth line as “I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal,” but what Dylan sings on the album is “…that the sun didnae heal.” “Didnae” is how Scots say “did not.” It seems clear that Dylan’s love of Scotland pre-dated his purchase of Aultmore House in Strathspey in 2006. Strathspey is where the renowned Speyside whiskies are distilled, including those miracles of the distillers’ art Cragganmore and The Glenlivet. And it was just a couple of years after this that he cited Burns’s wonderful love song as one of his favourite songs.

So, is “Make You Feel My Love” a tribute to “Red Red Rose”? It is, of course, different from Burns’s original and from the Proclaimers’ later echo of it, because the singer does not yet have the girl. “Make You Feel My Love” is a song of seduction. The singer is trying to persuade the girl that he loves her, and that she should trust him enough to allow herself to feel his love.

But the characteristic similarities with “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” are there—the impossible times and distances. “I could hold you for a million years/To make you feel my love,” he sings in the second verse; and in the final two lines he says he would “Go to the ends of the earth for you/To make you feel my love.” Introducing a variation, he also sings of “crawling down the avenue.” There’s nothing so impressive about doing that for the woman he loves, you might think. But it’s clear that he’s proposing doing it when he’s in no fit state to do so—hungry, and black and blue, presumably after having been beaten up:

I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue,
I’d go crawling down the avenue.
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
To make you feel my love

It’s the third line here that confirms that the two preceding lines are meant to convey extreme difficulty. For good measure, Dylan repeats the phrase “Nothing that I wouldn’t do” in the final verse.

Unlike the Proclaimers’ upbeat and uplifting tribute to Burns’s song, Dylan’s reverts to the melancholy of the original. We might also say it echoes the desperation of the original, and maybe even the neediness of its singer. Where Burns was trying to reassure his lover that he really did love her, Dylan is trying to convince his would-be lover that he really does love her. Consider the difference between the two couplets:

As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I.

And,

I know you haven’t made your mind up yet,
But I would never do you wrong.

Burns is trying to hold on to his bonnie lass, Dylan is trying to get hold of the lass who isn’t yet his. But just as Burns manages to suggest that perhaps his lass doesn’t believe him, so Dylan’s song conveys an implicit despair—a feeling that perhaps his attempts to win her won’t succeed. Consider, for example, the way he rapidly suggests this in a few deft lines:

The storms are raging on the rollin’ sea,
And on the highway of regret;
The winds of change are blowin’ wild and free;
You ain’t seen nothin’ like me yet.

Nothing is certain, or secure, and there have already been many things to regret, but in a final desperate move, he tries to make out that he’s capable of rising above all his past failures.

So, for me, Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” feels like a Scottish song (certainly much more so than “Highlands” could be said to be Scottish). It feels Scottish because it so obviously echoes and pays tribute to “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose.”

And, of course, these three Scottish songs have something else in common, they are all brilliantly captivating songs, and each of them has proved to be perennial favourites. Singers will continue to sing them, and audiences will continue to listen, till a’ the seas gang dry.

John Henry
Edinburgh
Scotland (where else?)

https://youtu.be/lIm2XepYq1o

By Tony Attwood

Previously in this series

•  A song is like a painting, you can’t see it all if you’re standing too close
• All directions at once: how Dylan’s lyrics empower those who wish to be empowered

To the best of my knowledge, Bob Dylan wrote five songs in 1959 and 1960 that of which we have clear details, and we can be fairly sure that they were his compositions.  In 1961 he wrote another nine songs.

So these two years were Dylan’s formative moments as a song writer, and it is interesting to see what he was writing about at the very start.  Here’s the list of songs with the subject matter in brackets.

1959/60 

1. When I got troubles (blues but with hope for the future… maybe)
2. I got a new girl (love, but maybe she’s two-timing me)
3. One eyed jacks (blues)
4. Bonnie Why’d You Cut My Hair (humour)
5. Talking Hugh Brown (humour)

1961

1. Song to Woodie (Travelling on, remembering those who have gone before)
2. Talkin New York  (Talking blues, humour)
3. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.(Talking blues, humour)
4. Talkin Folk Lore Centre Blues (Talking blues, humour)
5. Talkin Hava Negeilah blues (Talking blues, humour)
6. Man on the street (Tragedy of life, the lack of humanity in urban communities)
7. Hard times in New York Town (satire on urban life)
8. On Wisconsin (lyrics only, date within the year not certain; the drifter going home)
9. I was young when I left home (tragedy of the lonesome traveller)

The following year was the year in which Dylan truly exploded onto the music scene with compositions ranging from now largely forgotten works of sublime genius such as “Ballad for a Friend” through to songs that marked him as far more than a blues and talking blues singer, “Blowing in the Wind”, “Don’t think twice,” “Hard Rain”, “Hollis Brown,” etc etc.

The extraordinary thing is that that year of explosion – 1962 – was not just a year of writing at least 36 songs (an extraordinary number given the quality of longevity of the works), but it is also extraordinary given the huge variety of the writing.  For we need to recall that 1962 was not just the year of writing “Hard Rain” but also Tomorrow is a long time – which if you have not heard it for a long time you might want to divert from this piece for a moment and play it.  The moments we are considering in this piece are those that were the prelude to the big time arrival of the artist whose work we have been celebrating ever since.

Thus my point here is not that there was nothing of particular note in 1960/61 but rather that there is little to prepare us for what happened in 1962.

Here is the list of the topics of the 1960/61 songs, taken from the listing above…

• Moving on: 4
• Talking blues (humour): 4
• Blues: 2
• Humour: 2
• Love: 1
• Tragedy of modern life: 1

These classifications are contentious of course because a “moving on” song can also be heard as a blues etc etc.  But they are provided to give us at least the start of a grid concerning what Bob was writing about.

And my point here, as exemplified by the use of the phrase “Travelling in all directions at once,” is that from the earliest moment, even before he exploded onto the music scene as a fully formed genius the following year, at a time when Dylan’s music was restricted to the forms others had invented before him, he had mastered the musical forms that he knew from his life in New York.

Bob Dylan didn’t do anything much to develop or change the talking blues (although if Talkin’ Hava Negeilah blues was an original thought, then he most certainly added an extra layer of humour to the humour normally found in the talking blues) and the songs of “moving on” are the classics of the type of music Bob really enjoyed and valued.  So at this moment in his life, before he started writing the songs which gave him his worldwide fame, Bob aged 20 was already utterly embedded in the tradition of the blues and popular music.

But… there is sitting in the midst of these derived song formats, something quite remarkable and unexpected: “Man on the Street”

Musically it is not particularly advanced, but this lyrical concept of observing tragedy and doing nothing about it is incredibly poignant, and not so often heard.  The blues singers had tragedy in their own lives, and they sang about that.  Some urged us to fight against the system, join the trade union, work for a better world for all working people.  But this song, which is in my opinion, the bedrock of a major strand of Dylan’s work across the years, gave us the tragedy of one man whom Dylan observed to have been trapped in contemporary society.  Musically it draws on the Almanac Singers which included Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and it sets out the inequalities and dehumanisation of contemporary urban life, but now the singer outside of the situation.   It just is.  This is the world we inhabit.

My point is also that Dylan’s stance on humanity is there from the very start, before he wrote any of his songs that have remained famous.  And I think this point is important because we see Dylan’s consciousness about the poor and disadvantaged (which found such a powerful expression in Hollis Brown a year later) here from the very start.

Yet at the same time he was writing humour, and although the humour in music became far less important across the years for Dylan – it never vanished completely.  But the tragedy of life, the notion of moving on, and thoughts about love… these themes all grew from this early moment.

If we listen today to “Man on the Street” we hear no moralising; it is as if Bob was painting the scene.  There is no comment, for none is needed.  The dehumanising actions of the police officer say it all.

Indeed much of  the music of these two early years would not mark Bob Dylan out from tens of thousands of other musicians trying to get a gig – “When I got troubles” falls into that category; a piece of writing in a standard genre.  OK in itself but not stand out.

But there are these moments, these fragments that insist that we sit up and take notice.    For when we listen to these, our perspective of this young man expands even further.  For example…

To me this song is completely overwhelming and outstanding.  Dylan was 20 when he wrote this, and what we have is someone who has grasped the essence of the “moving on” genre utterly perfectly, not just in the lyrics, melody and accompaniment, but the entire deeper essence of the song.   We know it can’t possibly be true, and yet everything about the song makes us feel that it is.  If it was sung by a gnarled 50+ man we would absolutely believe it.

Thus for me what happened in these two introductory years, was that Bob Dylan accumulated every ounce of knowledge and background he could, he developed his guitar and singing style, listened to every scrap of music he could find, and opened the doorway to a lifetime of songwriting.

The power of this song is shown by the fact that it has since been taken in two directions.  as it has stayed with the public consciousness by being reinterpreted.  Just listen to this …

And I would urge you to listen to this all the way through, there are some wonderful moments throughout, all of which spring from the song Dylan wrote aged 20, when he cannot possibly have experienced all that he is expressing with such feeling and emotion.  Plus if you can take more, I would urge you to try this second version by “Big Thief” that is also extremely informative and illuminating in its interpretation.

Now it can be argued here that all Dylan did was to take another composer’s song and re-work it.  In this case the song is “500 Miles” by Bobby Bare, which in turn came from a Hedy West song written in 1961.  Before that there was the folk song “900 miles” and the fiddle song “Train 45”.  In short the young, inexperienced Bob Dylan was able to join in that process of writing and re-writing and did so in a way that was not just another version of an old song, but a re-write which made a real mark on the landscape.  It turned what we had into another much more powerful song.

Thus my point here is not that Bob Dylan copied and adapted the music – in fact lots of people do that.  Every 12 bar blues is an adaptation of someone else’s work for example. But rather I argue that the result that Dylan produced was one of great subtlety and beauty which is remarkable for a 20 year old singer songwriter and which was part of the foundations of what happened later.

The issue of where the song came from is, for me (and of course I am only writing about my reaction here, and offering it in case it is of any interest to you) is secondary.  Dylan has adapted and changed a traditional tune and created something new and quite stunning out of it.  Others also did.  He did it more powerfully, and more engagingly.

And as a side note this is my answer to the people who often complain that Dylan is a plagiarist.  It never bothers me because if plagiarism instantly leads to beautiful and wonderful pieces of music, I would sooner have the beautiful and wonderful piece of music than never have it written because of arguments about legalities. If the work is “borrowed” ok, pay the originator, but let’s have the art.

So this was Dylan, 1959 to 1961.  A talent waiting to explode upon the public, but already showing us elements of what we might expect.  “Man on the Street” and “I was young when I left home” gave anyone who cared to listen at that moment, clues as to what Dylan could do, and thankfully he continued and then delivered.

His influences at this point are very clear.  The music of Guthrie, the talking blues and the notion that songs can be funny, the awareness of the degradation that urban life brings to the poor, and above all, I think, a sense of exploration.  A sense of wanting to explore what this world has, and I mean this both in terms of its music and in terms of it people and its society.  Everything I hear in this collection of 14 songs written across two years at the very start of his career shows me a man who had his eyes wide open.

There is a mention of his Jewish roots here, but there is no religious belief, no feeling of the all-powerfulness of God, any more than there is a feeling that many of the folk singers in the first part of the 20th century saw capitalism as evil.  “Man on the street” does not blame capitalism per se, it doesn’t blame anyone or anything.  It observes and leaves us to draw our own conclusions.

What we do have here are the roots of Dylan, the songwriter.  And I think they are important, for when someone suggests that all (or most) of Dylan’s songs relate to one particular subject or issue, I feel it is handy to turn back and look at the early days to see if we can find any sign of that in the early sketches.   Indeed such an activity is worth undertaking whether one looks at a painter or an actor or a novelist or any other type of creative person.

This was Bob’s base point.  After this, Bob was ready to tell us what the world is.  He didn’t often tell us what to do about it.  But he did tell us what it looked like, and as we shall see in the next episode he did that with a vengeance.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

In June and July my “Mississippi” series was published here on Untold. That was my attempt to write an article about that song, which got out of hand, just as before with “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”

Likewise, “Mississippi” is now bundled into a booklet, available on Amazon:

“Mississippi – Bob Dylan’s Midlife Masterpiece”

Below you will find an unpublished chapter from that book. I do hope you enjoy reading it.

The piano pounding madman

In 1979 Jerry Lee Lewis records a dazzling, steamy cover of Dylan’s throwaway from the Desire sessions (1976), “Rita May”, the only noteworthy cover of that particular song anyone has managed.

Lewis, according to legend, demonstrates his unworldliness afterwards, when he has asked producer Bones Howe, who wrote that song. “Bob Dylan,” Howe answers with a broad grin, for he is sure Lewis will be mighty surprised. But Lewis shows no recognition at all. “That boy is good,” says Jerry Lee Lewis, “I’ll do anything by him.”

“Anything” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but indeed: thirty-five years later, in 2014, Dylan producer Daniel Lanois will collaborate on Rock & Roll Time of the then 79-year-old rock ‘n’ legend. Lanois points to the existence of another forgotten little ditty, of “Stepchild” from 1978. Jerry Lee takes the bait and repeats his ’79 feat: the cover is undeniably the most exciting version of “Stepchild”; unwieldy, swampy and irresistible. Whether he by now knows who Dylan is, the historiography does not tell.

Conversely, there is a self-evident admiration. Most explicitly expressed in Theme Time Radio Hour, where radio maker Dylan finds, no fewer than seven times, an excuse to play a record by The Killer. Usually introduced with extensive information about “the piano pounding madman”, his tumultuous youth, his dubious predilection for young girls and its consequences, and remarkable facts from his career – such as Lewis’ role as Iago in Catch My Soul, the 1968 rock musical adaptation of Othello, which allows Dylan to play “Lust of the Blood” in episode 81, Blood…

“Ya know if anyone ever asks me why I do this radio show I can just play ‘em that. Jerry Lee Lewis singing Shakespeare — that’s what this show is all about.”

Episode 31 has the theme Tennessee, so Jerry Lee is unavoidable, as the DJ says (“You can’t stop off in Tennessee without paying a visit to the Killer.”) Dylan chooses “Night Train to Memphis”, and thus passes The Killer’s other ode to Memphis, “Memphis Beat” from 1966. Not out of ignorance; we know for sure that Dylan has the LP of the same name in his record cabinet.

Memphis Beat, like many other records of the piano beast, is a compilation of Jerry Lee’s compositions, songs written especially for Lewis, and covers. Half of the songs were recorded at the Phillips Studio in Memphis in January ’66, other songs have been waiting eight months to be released and were recorded in New York, and the album contains even two songs from a recording session in 1963. In all, less than half an hour, but it is still a reasonably successful album. The opener “Memphis Beat”, is an attractive run-of-the-mill smasher, written for Jerry Lee by two members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Allen Reynolds and Dickey Lee. The lyrics seem to come straight from the Memphis Tourist Office brochure:

Well they got people a-walkin'
And ridin' and swimmin'
Just tryin' to get a chance at them good lookin' women
Now we just march on down to the foot of Beale Street
Ah then dance all night to that Memphis Beat

Anyway, songwriter Dickey Lee is no small fry, of course. On this same album is Jerry’s cover of Dickey Lee’s biggest hit, the immortal, “She Thinks I Still Care”. Recorded by Elvis, Johnny Cash, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gene Pitney, John Fogerty, James Taylor and others – after acquiring its monument status through Dylan’s idol George Jones (1962), the country god of whom Dylan says:

“Looking through my record collection the other day, I’ve got about 70 George Jones albums. If you look at ’em all, it gives you a great history of men’s haircuts.”

In between are some more and less successful renditions of songs like Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” and Stick McGhee’s smoothly swinging “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee”, with which he will score another small hit. Downright awkward is the tear-jerking doo-wop “Too Young” (“They’re trying to tell us we’re too young”). Awkward not only because of the corny lounge arrangement, but especially because of the lyrics, sung by the man who torpedoed his own career by marrying his thirteen-year-old niece Myra.

Most curious, however, is the only self-written song on the LP, “Lincoln Limousine”.

“Lincoln Limousine” is Jerry Lee’s bizarre ode to Kennedy. According to biographer Joe Bonomo in the great biography Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost And Found (2009) “one the most peculiar tracks he’s cut in his career” and…

“Jerry Lee’s odd tribute to John F. Kennedy is simply weird, so ambiguous and amateurishly written that it’s impossible to determine exactly what motivated him to write it.”

The biographer does have a point. What to think of verses like:

Well they shot him in the back seat of a Lincoln limousine
Was a great, great leader by the name of Kennedy
He fought for right and freedom, tried to keep this nation clean
But they shot him in the backseat of a Lincoln limousine

And he had ten million dollars, had the world right in his hand
But a twenty dollar rifle cut the life of this great man
He had a lovely wife and two children seldom seen
But they shot him in the backseat of a Lincoln limousine

So clumsy it almost seems deliberate, indeed. Miles away from The Byrds’ “He Was A Friend Of Mine”, Kris Kristofferson’s “They Killed Him” or Dion’s “Abraham, Martin And John”, in any case.

It could not have inspired Dylan to his “Kennedy song” “Murder Most Foul” (2020) either, but “Lincoln Limousine” does have some impact: the intro, the first ten notes, Dylan copies almost one-on-one for the final “Mississippi” version, the “Love And Theft” version – the only studio version with this intro, by the way. The same lick is used as a bridge and the bard is very content with it, apparently: in the live performances of 2001 he plays the intro twice, in later performances the lick will be integrated in even more places in the song (as with Mark Knopfler in Zurich, 2011). But just as often he skips it, unfortunately.

https://youtu.be/Mi8HG_tugzg

In any case: at least once one little melody by Jerry Lee Lewis, despite all his qualities not a great songwriter, penetrates Dylan’s oeuvre. “He sings this song, he pounds the piano. He says he wrote it and that’s good enough for me,” as the DJ says in one of his last Theme Time Radio Hours, “Clearance Sale”, April 2009.

The song “Memphis Beat” gets a second life in the twenty-first century. Television company TNT produces the comic police series Memphis Beat in 2010 and blues musician and five-time Grammy Award winner Keb’ Mo’ is asked for the soundtrack. He has Jerry Lee Lewis on a pedestal and records a very nice cover of the song for the opening theme. The show is not a big success (after two seasons the plug is pulled again), but songwriter Dickey Lee can’t complain. “She Still Thinks I Care” is of course his goose with golden eggs, but:

“There are still seven or eight songs that have paid off consistently. I can’t believe it, but it’s still mailbox money.”
(interview Nashville Music Guide, February 14, 2012)

https://youtu.be/dFBPwqLGy_Y

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but 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 8000 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

A list of the full set of articles in this series which traces the Never Ending Tour from its origins to the present day are given at the end of the article

————–

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

In the previous two posts we have sampled the sound and style of Bob Dylan’s lead electric guitar work in 1993. When he picked up the acoustic guitar, however, Mr Guitar Man didn’t always sound like the strumming Bob Dylan of old, but rather played his acoustic as if it were an electric guitar.

This enables him to tackle his longer songs in a new kind of spirit. Rather than just strum along, he can push the song forward with his distinctive lead guitar style. The problem he has with live performances of long songs like ‘Desolation Row’ is their repetitive structure. Such songs lack any bridge passages and their momentum is generated by their lyrics alone. So the challenge is, how to prevent a ten minute song from becoming just the same thing over and over again.

Dylan solves this problem by using all the resources of his voice and his guitar to build the song to a climax. Typically these performances begin quietly, almost understated, then slowly build up energy. Sometimes reined in by a quiet harp break, as in the case of this 13.48 mins 1993 performance of ‘Desolation Row’.

Dylan keeps this performance pretty subdued until after the last verse when the guitars have a fair go. All through the song Dylan patters away against the melodic sounds of Bucky Baxter, but the effect is much easier on the ears than the Stratocaster.

Desolation Row

It’s not surprising that, when working out his acoustic setlists, Dylan should return to his early, acoustic period, songs written to be played acoustically in the early 1960s. Arguably ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ is Dylan’s first great post protest song. As he sings, it’s a song about ‘escaping on the run,’ and following the shaman wherever he may lead as long as it is ‘far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow’.

In this song we hear Dylan the master rhymer at work.

Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand
but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming

Reading lines like these, we have to conclude that Bob Dylan is the quintessential poet of alienation.

Dylan seldom messes up this song, and this powerful performance from his London show (02 – 07) is no exception. He plays it straight, no tricks, except the crowd teasing delay in getting his harp into action – and how they love it! Another gold star performance, with just the right amount of restraint and celebration.

After the harp break, around 5.15 mins, Mr Guitar Man steps in for some gentle notes before the last verse, which he builds vocally to a resounding ending. Wonderful. Then it’s back to the harp to finish the last couple of minutes. Hard to find better performance than this.

Mr Tambourine Man

Another beautiful collaboration between Master Harpist and Mr Guitar Man.

While on that subject, we can’t skip the gorgeous ‘Don’t think Twice’ from the Portland concert. Dylan was in very good voice at this concert. It’s a sensitive rendition, yet rousing too. The last line of the song, ‘You just kind of wasted my precious time,’ may seem cruel, but it reminds us that time is indeed our most precious commodity.

The same concern drives these lines written almost sixty years later:

‘I cannot redeem the time
The time so idly spent…’

(Cross the Rubicon)

Perhaps we all know people with nothing to do and who want you to do it with them. Time wasters. And, within the terms of the song, we can give our hearts but our souls belong to us, our soul’s journey, whether we’re on the ‘dark side of the road’ or not. Dylan wrote this one back in 1962, at the very start of his soul journey, if you like to see it that way. Again, at the other end of his life, he evokes the same imagery.

Take the high road, take the low
Take any one you're on

(Cross the Rubicon)

It’s curious that ‘the low road’ meant the road of death in the well-known Scottish ballad, just as the ‘dark side of the road’ puts the Dylan figure in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4) in the earlier song.

So here it is. Enjoy (Spoiler alert: exquisite harp work)

Don’t think twice (A).

It’s worth comparing that smooth performance with this one. Much rougher, and the harp solo more jagged. Same arrangement with the long slow ending, reminding us of how Mr Guitar Man slaughtered such endings in his electric sets (See 1993 part 1 – Tangled up in guitars and 1993, Part 2 – The epic adventures of Mr Guitar Man) with his Stratocaster.

Don’t think twice (B).

And while we’re in the 1962 zone, let’s drop back into the Portland concert to pick up ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’.

A lot of Dylan songs contain conversations and snatches of dialogue, but this song is a sustained conversation over nine verses, and by the end has build up considerable pathos. Dylan never wrote anything else quite like this. The language is that of an old fashioned love ballad, almost an air of the 19^th Century. Deep wells of sadness here, and right now I can’t think of a better performance.

Boots of Spanish Leather

From the same era, we have yet another gentle yet passionate song – ‘Girl from the North Country’. As written it is a neat piece of nostalgia, but somehow Dylan’s older, more cracked-voiced performance makes us really feel the distance of time. Like ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’, this song was remarkably mature, sensitively registering how the passing of time colours our memories and perhaps idealises our loves.

When Dylan was young, he liked to sing such songs in an ‘old voice’, with a put on crackle, as if he were much older than his tender twenty-two years. By 1993, he doesn’t have to put on any old voice; he’s got a crackle right at hand, forged in years of performance.

On the other hand, it is in performances like this that I think I detect a deliberate roughening of his voice. We can hear from his Portland and London performances of that year that Dylan can sing high and clear when he wants to, and that will become more evident in the next two years, but he can also sing rough when he wants to; when he wants to put a sandpaper edge on his voice. Go forward ten years to 2003 and that sandpaper edge has turned into a throaty roar, but I believe it all starts around 1992/3.

Another gold star performance.

Girl from the north Country

We only have to skip forward a couple of years, to 1964, to find one of Dylan’s most iconic songs, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. In previous posts I have described this song as love’s last song, the final, painful ending of a love.

I want to draw attention to it here, as performances will build up to epic proportions by 1995, and while this performance doesn’t scale those heights, it’s fascinating to hear Dylan pushing the song with his voice, reaching for its emotional depths. Yes, it’s hard and scratchy, but again I think some of that vocal texture is deliberate, pushing his voice for that emotional quality. The effect is a little spoiled by Dylan fumbling the lyrics at one point.

Towards the end of the song, after five minutes, you hear Mr Guitar Man playing his acoustic just as if it were his Stratocaster, driving the song along with his distinctive ‘off’ sounding guitar.

It’s all over now baby blue

Another song we have been following, and an acoustic favourite, is ‘Ramona’. In previous posts I have commented on this song quite fully, cautioning against seeing it as a love song despite that lilting melody. I have a soft spot for this song as it is my daughter’s favourite Dylan song, and she loves to quote to me these lines:

‘You say many times
that you’re better than no one
and no one is better than you
If you really believe that you know
you have nothing to win
and nothing to lose’

Classic Dylan lines, showing his love of what I call ‘parallelism’ (echoing structures), part of what makes his songs distinctive.

Ramona

That’s it for this little journey into Dylan’s early, acoustic songs as he played them in 1993. We’ve heard Dylan not just strum along but play lead acoustic in his recognisable yet contentious style.

For the next post we’ll drop in on Dylan’s famous Supper Club sets and see what all the fuss is about.

Take care in the big bad world.

Kia Ora!

Previous editions of this series

• The Never-Ending Tour: 1987 – Farewell to all that
• 1988: Desperate stratagems, Part 1: Heroes and Villains
• 1988 Part 2: The 60s revisited
• 1988 Part 3: Absolutely still on the road
• 1989 Part 1: A sharper edge
• 1989 Part 2 – A fire in the sun
• 1989 Part 3: Blown out on the trail
• 1990 Part 1: Vomiting Fire
• 1990 Part 2 – Songs of love, songs of betrayal
• 1991: Part 1 Hidden Gems in a Train Wreck – The Undesirables
• 1991 Part 2 – Feet walking by themselves
• 1991 part 3: King of the unsteady
• 1992 part 1: Heading for the promised land
• 1992 part 2: What good am I
• 1992 part 3 – All the friends I ever had are gone
• 1993 part 1 – Tangled up in guitars
• 1993, part 2 – The epic adventures of Mr Guitar Man