Untold Dylan

Research by Aaron Galbraith; silly comments by Tony Attwood

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Prelude: If you’ve not come across articles by Aaron and myself before, I should explain.  We live on separate continents, we’ve never met and we’ve never even talked on the phone.  Aaron does the research, and gives some basic guidelines.  I never know what’s coming up and I try to write comments as the song plays.   And when I am trying to comment on a video, that is quite hard.

Tony

———

Aaron: For this article I thought we could leap forward to look at a few videos from the mid to late 2000s. Don’t worry we’ll go back in future entries in this series and review the other 80s and 90s videos.

 “When The Deal Goes Down” from 2006.

Judging by the videos we’ve looked at in the first article, would it be too cruel to say that in this instance they hit upon the magic formula for making a Dylan video. That is hire a great director, get Scarlett Johansson to star in it and keep Bob as far away as possible!

This was director by Bennett Miller. He directed movies such as Moneyball, Capote and Foxcatcher and has been Oscar nominated twice.

In the video Scarlett Johansson stars in a series of 50s era home movies, depicting fun scenes, scenes of melancholy and just everyday life in general. There are several nice touches, a glimpse of a Woody Guthrie book here, a Buddy Holly album cover there. I really love this video, for me it brings to life lines in the song such as :

“More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours”
“I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys”

A wonderful piece of work.

Tony: I really do know very little about film, so there’s no need to read my commentary, and most certainly no need to take it seriously.  I’m a writer and was a musician and those are the arts I understand.  Film – I enjoy watching, but I’m not a critic, so this is tough…

Here this doesn’t work for me because Bob is singing a lilting lullaby while the movie is jogs around and often goes at speed.   If anyone else feels this too, I’d like to know, because I’m seriously thinking of backing out of this double feature and letting Aaron (who of course selects the films as he selects the music in our other series) write the whole thing.

The problem is the video doesn’t hold my attention, whereas the music does.  I want to hear the lyrics and I am engaged by the gentle lilt of the song.  This is a distraction, and this column ain’t going very well is it?

Dreamin of you

Aaron:  Moving on to the next piece we have “Dreamin’ Of You” from 2008. An interesting video for this previously unreleased track from the Time Out Of Mind sessions, first released on Tell Tale Signs.

It stars Harry Dean Stanton as a Bob Dylan Bootlegger. The video follows his life as he travels from town to town, and gig to gig recording the shows and then compiling them into Dylan Bootleg CDs and DVDs to sell. It seems a pretty solitary life and seems to be bringing no joy to the man. In fact he looks down right miserable.

Again, I think this is a great piece of work and top marks all round for everyone involved! I was unable to find the name of the director anywhere but still kudos to him or her!

Tony:  Oh thank goodness.  This one I get and I like it.  And I disagree Aaron.  I think he does get into Bob’s music.  He lives a solitary life, but this music is all he can relate to.  Some people just can’t do social interaction – that’s this fellow’s problem.  But at least this way he can survive and admire from afar.

The light in this place is really bad
Like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now
I’m expecting to wake up from a dream

That verse above from the start of the song is where the guy is… in this strange dream world, where in a tiny way he can touch Bob and feel part of his greatness.

Means so much, the softest touch
By the grave of some child, who neither wept or smiled
I pondered my faith in the rain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane

Just listening to the music as he copies it, he finds his connection with Dylan.  What really works is that as I listened I could imagine this being the music written to the video, as much as it is the other way round.

Maybe they’ll get me, maybe they won’t
But whatever it won’t be tonight
I wish your hand was in mine right now
We could go where the moon is white

He doesn’t want to be alone, he doesn’t want to be this outcast, but it is all he has.  There is nothing else.

And if a final confirmation was wanted just watch the ending.  I believe in the song, I believe in the film.  It works.

Maybe you were here and maybe you weren’t
Maybe you touched somebody and got burnt
The silent sun has got me on the run
Burning a hole in my brain
I’m dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do
But it’s driving me insane

“Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”.

Aaron: This one was directed by Nash Edgerton who is primarily a stuntman/stunt coordinator for many big budget movies (he was Ewan McGregor’s double in the Star Wars movies) but he also directed four videos for Dylan, so we’ll see more of his work in a future article in this series.

If you’re finding it hard to find any meaning within the video as it relates to the song then that might come down to how much access the director had to the track prior to filming the promo. Edgerton said of his approach by Dylan’s team to making the video “usually, you get sent a song and you listen to it a bunch and then you write a treatment. But because it was Dylan, and piracy and all that, I only got to hear the song once over the phone”.

Maybe Dylan and his people were concerned the guy from the “Dreamin Of You” video might get a hold of the song!

For me, it works as a short film. I love the way he introduces sound elements from the film to the soundtrack, keys jangling, doors closing, punches landing and a head being smashed into a wall! There is a moment when she slams the car door and it seems to fit perfectly in time with the music.

Maybe this video doesn’t provide any deep insight to the song, which is understandable in the circumstances but for me that’s ok in this instance. As it was for Dylan and his management team also as they invited the director back to make 3 further videos, so he must have done something right!

Tony:  Again a big yes from me.  The horror of the man who needs the woman so much that he has to restrict her to his apartment.  And all the way through to that ending.  Yes this works for me.  They can’t live together they can’t live without each other.  Beyond here lies nothing.  Absolutely.

So what am I concluding?  That somehow the beat and the rhythm of the music has to fit with the beat and the rhythm of the video.  Oh yes, and I like stories, rather than just a set of scenes.

OK, I’m not resigning.  Let’s give it another shot.

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by Jochen Markhorst

• Highway 61 Revisited (1965) part I: Look out kid
• Highway 61 Revisited (1965) part II: On a desert island

1          Captain Arab & Pirate Jenny

Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61

Debatable, but “your temperature’s too hot for taming” from “Spanish Harlem Incident” (1964) is perhaps the first: catachresis, the “wrong use”, the unknown, renewing combination of incompatible words, which nevertheless seem familiar, seem to have an old-fashioned power like proverbs or clichés. The poet has recently discovered the potential of abusio (as catachresis is also called). In “Farewell, Angelina” and especially in her twin sister “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (seasick sailors, empty-handed painter and the saints are coming through, for example), in “Mr. Tambourine Man”, continuing it on Blonde On Blonde and in the Basement songs.

A first definition of this specific language error goes all the way back to Alexander Pope (1688-1744, the poet to whom we owe fools rush in where angels fear to tread), but in the twentieth century it is elevated to a figure of speech, to a literary artifice by Dadaists, Beat Poets and Jacques Derrida.

It is a stylistic feature that derives from nearby association – grist to the mill of a stream-of-consciousness poet like Dylan in these mid-sixties. Apart from metaphors and character descriptions, he occasionally uses it for naming too: Captain Arab in “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” is a first (the nearby association being, obviously, Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab), on this album a Saint Annie comes along, and in the Basement Dylan juggles with half-familiar names like Tiny Montgomery and Quinn the Eskimo. All too often the bard does not play with names, though – it easily degenerates into silly puns, after all.

Still, in “Highway 61 Revisited” he succumbs again.

God and Abraham in the first verse, two old song-characters in the second verse, and in the third verse the beat poet leaves the ground again: both protagonists in this verse are catachreses, recognizable names, though fictional, only through nearby association.

“Mack the Finger” is a rather witty trivialisation of Mack The Knife, the English name of one of Brecht’s most famous protagonists, Mackie Messer from the Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, 1928). Brecht has left more footprints in Dylan’s work in previous years, which should be traced back to his girlfriend Suze Rotolo. Suze works behind the scenes in the Theatre De Lys on Christopher Street, and sometimes invites her boyfriend to drop in. In her memoirs (A Freewheelin’ Time, 2008) she talks about the explosive impact on Dylan of visiting Brecht on Brecht, a kind of best of compilation of Brecht songs, poems and theatre fragments (George Tabori, 1962). Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles confirms the event and its impact, and elaborates on the song “Pirate Jenny”,

“… a wild song. Big medicine in the lyrics. Heavy action spread out. Each phrase comes at you from a ten-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another one comes like a punch on the chin.”

And he concludes the long hymn of praise to the song with the observation that it has been a turning point; from now on he writes totally influenced by “Pirate Jenny”.

In the same Brecht On Brecht, at the very beginning of the First Act and again as a finale, that famous murder ballad “Mack The Knife” comes along, but of course Dylan is already familiar with that particular song – Ella Fitzgerald has just received a Grammy Award for her recording, and in ’59 Bobby Darin scored a huge hit with it.

2          Louie, Louie

The abusio “Mack The Finger” gets an equally half-familiar opponent in Dylan’s song: Louie The King. Some commentators try to draw a line to the French royal family from there, but that seems a bit too far-fetched. Mack The Knife, Brecht, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin… a musical colleague is more likely. Another faction of analysts therefore jumps to King Louie from Jungle Book, unforgettable thanks to Louis Prima’s brilliant performance in one of the film highlights “I Wanna Be Like You”.

It seems obvious, indeed. King Louie, Louis Prima, and a first and perhaps even better candidate for the role was Louis Armstrong (eventually Disney didn’t dare to give a black artist the role of a monkey). But Dylan most certainly is not inspired by it; Jungle Book is a 1967 film, released two years after Highway 61. It is true that the film is based on Kipling’s book from 1894, but there is no King Louie in the book, or any monkey king at all, for that matter – the swinging orangutan really is a Disney concoction. Later Highway 61-listeners may, naturally, find enlightenment in the link, but in 1965, when writing song, the associative leap from Louie the King to King Louie is impossible.

No, the same Brecht song is nearer. The last four strophes list the victims of Macheath, nicknamed Mack the Knife, and the first name mentioned is Louie:

From a tugboat by the river
A cement bag's dropping down;
The cement's just for the weight, dear.
Bet you Mackie's back in town

Louie Miller disappeared, dear
After drawing out his cash;
And Macheath spends like a sailor.
Did our boy do something rash?

The song poet Dylan slaloms in the third verse of Highway 61 around the mercury ing-sound (Finger – strings – ring – things – King – think – think – everything), which is a more probable motive for renaming Louie Miller to Louie the King.
“It’s the sound – words don’t interfere with it. They… they… punctuate it,” as Dylan later tries to explain to journalist Ron Rosenbaum (Playboy interview 1977).

3          Brother Bill

The plot of this stanza seems to draw more from absurdist theatre than from a Brecht song. For some unfathomable reasons, Mack seems to be stuck with a handful of shoelaces and a cartload of defective telephones. Equally unclear is why he – somewhat panicky – would need Louie’s advice and directions to dump the entire package somewhere.

Sound and association have probably been the leading inspirators. Shoestring because he intuitively searches for an “ing-sound”, after finger and king, and through the expression shoestring operator the jumpy mind comes out at telephones ring. Perhaps. True, “shoestring operator” is a quite archaic term, but we know that Dylan is a William Burroughs fan, these days – according to Iggy Pop the “Brother Bill” in “Tombstone Blues” – and there are enough traces on the album to suggest that Burroughs’ The Soft Machine (1961) is on Dylan’s bedside table:

“Pantless corpses hang from telephone poles along the road to Monterrey – Death rows the boy like sleeping marble down the Grand Canal out into a vast lagoon of souvenir post cards and bronze baby shoes – “

…for example, which is only a small step towards the opening of “Desolation Row”. And Dylan has already put a mental dog-ear at shoestring operator before this fragment (Chapter 4, “Trak Trak Trak”: “Others are shoestring operators out of broom closets and dark rooms of the Mugging Department”).

Anyway, it opens another gate for the industrious Dylan interpreters. The first takes (to be heard on The Cutting Edge, 2015) are still somewhat less absurd; “I got a thousand red white blue shoestrings / and a bunch of telephones that don’t ring”, but that cannot really influence the tenor of meaning seeking Dylan exegetes.

“Telephones that don’t ring”, whether a bunch or thousand, is still a relatively unambiguous metaphor. Faulty communication, loneliness, dependency on technology… pick your choice.

The shoestrings are less unambiguous. Dylan starts the recording day, 2 August 1965, with a thousand shoestrings, but loses quite a few along the way; at the last take (the ninth recording, which will end up on the album) he has already lost 960, as there are only forty left. Which does not affect interpretation all that much, obviously. Red white blue is, of course, a well-known, loaded word combination, but shoestrings are completely unusual accessories in the art of song, nor bearers of meaning in poetry at all – let alone tricolour shoelaces. Alright, a B-side of a recent Jimmy Reed single (“I’m Going Upside Your Head”, 1964) is called “The Devil’s Shoestring”, but that is an instrumental number. And occasionally the word shoe-string appears in a Kipling poem, but there are not many more laces to be found in Dylan’s record cabinet and bookcase. Apart from Burroughs, that is.

No, looking for hidden meaning behind forty red, white and blue shoestrings is a dead end highway.

“It’s the sound…” though this time, the words do interfere.

To be continued. Next up: Highway 61 Revisited – part IV

 ———

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

By Peter McQuitty

Joni Mitchell’s comments about Bob Dylan’s “plagiarism” have surfaced again in recent Untold Dylan postings. Mitchell told the LA Times in 2010  that Dylan “is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.” Mitchell’s comments are unfortunate but useful because they shine a light on how Dylan’s art works.

Mitchell’s comments come from a Romantic creative ethos where individual authenticity and personal experience are at the heart of artistic expression. Confessional poets such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are kindred spirits. This ethos drives Mitchell’s own art and Blue, Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, for example, are sophisticated albums which broke new ground in popular music, not least because they focused directly on women’s experience. What Mitchell refers to as Dylan’s “plagiarism” is not really plagiarism at all, just the product of a different creative culture which she chooses not to acknowledge.

There is plenty of “me” in Dylan’s work and his songs obviously draw on personal experience.  However, Dylan is a post-modernist before he’s a Romantic and his songs are as much about the art that goes into making them as they are about his own personal experience. Everybody now knows that Dylan’s sources are extraordinarily diverse – folk, blues, rock and country music, Classical and Biblical literature, American literature, and more.  And that he draws very freely from them. His achievement is to take from so many different sources and shape that material into his own art. It is this breadth, depth, and facility that Leonard Cohen was referring to when, in Musician (1988), he described Dylan as the Picasso of modern music.

Dylan has never tried to hide his sources and in this way he draws attention to the processes involved in his artistic production. Contemporary folk practitioners were fully aware of Lord Randall, Chimes of Trinity, and The Patriot’s Game and even Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone? It is the differences between these sources and the songs that Dylan made from them that is the point of his art, like the differences between the songs on the three overtly Christian albums and the Biblical texts from which the lyrics are largely lifted.

Over time, Dylan’s references – Homer, Ovid, Juvenal, Timrod etc – become more obscure but only for those not familiar with the sources.  The references – which provide depth, resonance and cultural perspective to the songs – are there to be enjoyed by those who have the cultural knowledge and to be discovered by those who do not. That “useless and pointless knowledge” sneered at in Tombstone Blues turns out to have a purpose after all. Part of Dylan’s artistic mission as he ages is, as he says (quoting Ovid) in Rollin’ and Tumblin’, “conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs.”  Or selected bits and pieces from the long dead, as he suggests on My Own Version of You.

T.S. Eliot wrote in Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) that great works do not come from the artist’s personal feelings and emotions alone, but from the artistic process whereby the artist synthesises personal experience with impersonal external elements. The great poet “will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest” and then “weld(s) his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” This is Dylan. Eliot writes about “the intensity of fusion” which can occur between individual experience and this external material.

This is also Dylan.  Isis and Changing of the Guards are unusual in that the fusion between personal experience and, in these cases, ancient mythology is extremely intense and almost total.  However, this fusion occurs in various forms throughout Dylan’s work. For me, the whining police siren that introduces the very colloquial confrontation between God and Abraham on Highway 61, is just one powerful example. Eliot’s theory of art turns out to be an accurate description of Dylan’s approach to making art much later in the century.

Joni Mitchell, still searching for personal authenticity, claims that Dylan’s voice is “fake”. In a 2013 interview, she said that “He’s invented a character to deliver his songs … it’s a mask of sorts.” Well, Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue provoked a lot of discussion about masks so she was onto something there.

Dylan’s work has never been about his own personal authenticity, his own voice. He has invented different masks for a number of different characters over the course of his career. And they all have different voices, each reflecting the particular issues that he is exploring at the time.

We know the main voices: the harsh voice of the downtrodden common man who is only a pawn in the games played by the powerful; the alienated but super-cool individualist who knows how society works and who rejects it; the mellow family man who really enjoys pies and other country matters; the illiberal born-again Christian ranting from the stage that Jesus can transform all human problems in an instant; and, in more recent years, often the voice of regret and bitterness.

For me, these are often more than just different masks and voices. It is as though Dylan, at different stages of his career, has adopted and completely inhabited different personas. At his strongest, Dylan was not so much a singer as a Brando-style method actor, passionately inhabiting his various roles and living out all the different dimensions within them. Ronnie Hawkins, quoted in Michael Gray’s The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, says: “But Bob is like a – what’s the word? – a schizophreniac . . .  I’m sure he’s not like that but he has different personalities for different things”. Hawkins isn’t the only person to have made that observation. This is the difference between Dylan performing his songs and others singing them. Joan Baez might make a sweeter sound but, for me, she drains the songs of personality and impact.

Dylan may have been a consummate actor, but he has always been fully conscious of the different roles and voices that he is manipulating. He makes a joke at the expense of the authentic voice in his version of The Boxer on Self Portrait where he performs a duet with himself by double tracking two of his different voices.

Joni Mitchell’s comments are sour and a bit sad. However, they can take us away from spurious notions of authenticity and point us to a greater appreciation of the multitudes contained within Dylan’s art.

Peter McQuitty.

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/musician Bob Dylan writes the following humourous, albeit rather dark, song lyrics:

What I want to know, Mr. Football Man, is
What do you do about Willie Mays and Yul Brynner
Charles De Gaulle and Robert Louis Stevenson?
(Bob Dylan: I Shall Be Free)

But he records:

What I want to know, Mr. Football Man, is
What do you do about Willie Mays
Martin Luther King, Olatunji?

(Bob Dylan: I Shall Be Free)

Why the lyrics are changed is not known. Perhaps the western movie that Brynner acts in a bit earlier ends on a slightly too pessimistic note. Yul Brynner stars in the film “The Magnificent Seven” in which seven hired gunslingers protect farmers from a bunch of marauding bandits; in the gun battle that follows, the bandits are either killed or flee; all but three of the Magnificent Seven die:

At the end of the movie, Brynner says, in a rather unRomantic tone:

“We lost….we’ll always lose”.

Not happily Romantic is the following poem; the French writer thereof seeks refuge in the irony-filled poem from the boring routine of life, from love lost, and from thoughts of death:

Ah, then it is no longer autumn
Or exile, but the sweetness
Of legends, once more the age of gold
Legends about Antigones

A sweetness that makes me wonder

"Now when did that take place?"

(Jules Laforgue: Legends ~ translated)

In the mythological legend ‘Seven Against Thebes”, Antigone faces death that is decreed by the new king; she takes it on herself to bury her brother who leads an army with six other chieftains against the Greek city in a failed attempt to gain the throne from his younger brother; both the male siblings die when they fight one another – the deceased king is given a decent burial; all but one of the invading chieftains are killed; they are left on the battlefield to rot.

Says Antigone (in ancient play based on the legend):

Behold me, what I suffer
Because I have upheld that which is high

On this dark side of the human condition dwell many of the narrators in Bob Dylan’s song lyrics:

I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests ....
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a- gonna fall
(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall)

In the mythology of moon-goddess Diana and the sun-god Apollo, the cypress tree be a symbol of death and the underworld:

The priest wore black on the seventh day
And sat stone-faced while the building burned
I waited for you on the running boards
Near the cypress trees, while the spring turned
Slowly into autumn

(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

The sorrowful sentiments of Jules Laforgue’s symbolic poetry again expressed in the song lyrics below:

Seven days, seven more days, she'll be coming
I'll be waiting at the station for her to arrive
Seven more days, all I gotta do is survive
She been gone ever since I been a child
Ever since I seen her smile, I ain't forgotten her eyes
She had a face that could outshine the sky

(Bob Dylan: Seven Days)

And to cap it all off, there’s this tragic song:

These be seven curses on a judge so cruel
That one doctor cannot save him
That two eyes cannot see him
And that three healers cannot heal him
That four ears cannot hear him
That five walls cannot hide him
That six diggers cannot bury him
That seven deaths shall never kill him

(Bob Dylan: Seven Curses)

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood

In my article “Bob Dylan and the Blues: leaving town in all directions at once” I put forward the opinion that Bob “knew from the very start that he could take any form and make a success out of it.   Which is basically what he did from here on in.”

That revelation for me started with two pieces: first the 1962 work of utter genius Ballad for a friend in which Bob took the blues and turned it into something utterly extraordinary and amazing and different.  Quite why this song was then left behind I have no idea.  How could someone so young write something so brilliant, and then leave it?

The second thought along these lines came with “Times they are a-changin’,” when it suddenly struck me that this was not a protest song at all, even though most people called it that.  The lyrics say very simply that the world changes, and there is nothing we can do to hold those changes back.

As such it is the antithesis to a protest song.  Encyclopedia.com defines the phrase “protest song” as a “Term which gained currency (first in USA) in 1960s for song which voiced feelings of protest about some social or political injustice, real or imagined, or about some int. event which aroused strong emotions, e.g. America’s part in the Vietnam war. A famous example is ‘We shall overcome’.”

Yet Bob Dylan was of course a protest singer-songwriter sometimes because of songs like “Masters of War,” but not it seems in his most famous “protest” song of all!

I made that comment about Dylan’s very early compositions as I was starting to work out how I could write a series about the lyrical themes within Bob’s music.  Having puzzled over it for quite a while I decided that the only thing I could do was try and write a series about Bob’s music year by year and see if, in doing that, I could draw any conclusions.  You may have noticed these pieces in passing – we are now right up to the most recently works – where are reviewed in this way, below.

Thus I started writing this little series in which I have tried to give a two or three word explanation for the subject matter of each and every song Bob Dylan has written, but it took me a while to get the hang of what I was trying to do – which is why, having now made some sort of attempt to bring the series up to date I am going to have to go back and re-work some of those early articles.

Although by 1964 I think I’d got the prime idea of what I was trying to do and for that year – and thereafter – came up with a list of songs and the short explanations of what they were

1. Guess I’m doing fine (I’m hurting; way we see the world)
2. Chimes of Freedom (Protest, the future will be fine)
3. Mr Tambourine Man (Surrealism; the way we see the world)
4. I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met) (Lost love)
5. Spanish Harlem Incident (Love)
6. Motorpsycho Nightmare  (Humour)
7. It ain’t me babe (Song of Farewell)
8. Denise Denise  (Taking a break, having a laugh)
9. Mama you’ve been on my mind (Lost love)
10. Ballad in Plain D  (Lost love)

and so on.

And it did make a certain amount of sense as some key themes kept coming up over and over again.  You’ll see in the list above “lost love” comes up three times.  That’s how it goes throughout most of Dylan’s career – certain subjects like “love” and “lost love” keep coming up.

Having realised this I gradually made the subject headings tighter, and discovered that the subject matter in Dylan’s songs was very different from that which I had anticipated.  The protest songs and political or social commentary were among the most famous, but in terms of quantity, not nearly as commonplace as Dylan’s songs about love, lost love and moving on.

Through some 50 episodes I have been exploring ways of classifying Dylan’s choice of subject matter – and above all I have realised how Bob’s chosen themes have changed year by year.  Yes of course I knew that, because each album  was different from the last, but just how much Bob could swerve around in terms of content was not clear to me before that.

But within all this there has been another thought.   Most writers (I am tempted to say almost all writers) have chosen to comment on Bob’s songs individually, without particularly referencing one song back to earlier songs, or seeing it as a preparation for later songs.   As a result, themes tend not to emerge.  Albums are of course considered together, but I’ve not seen years as a whole taken together very often.  Sometimes but not much.

Indeed it is remarkable that in his 1200 pages of recording Bob’s songs Heylin spends so little time looking for consistent themes.  It is as if each song exists on its own – a standalone with no point of reference in front of it or behind it – which to me is ludicrous.

I really don’t think that is the way to consider, or indeed comprehend Bob’s songwriting.  We do need (in my view) to consider how he moved around through the themes, and nowhere more so than in considering “Rough and Rowdy Ways” – obviously the final chapter (at least for now) in my quest.

And not just the final chapter, but the most fiendish.

But let us start at the beginning, for this section also has to include one song written in the year before “Rough and Rowdy”….

• Gone but not forgotten. (Lost love)

That wasn’t too hard.  But after that there is no escaping Rough and Rowdy Ways.   And nothing I have worked on in the previous 50 articles has given me a grid or set of guidelines through which I can work.

So what do I have?  How about this….

• Murder Most Foul (A thousand influences on my lifetime)
• I Contain Multitudes (I am influenced by everything around me)
  
• False Prophet (I am the product of my past, not a vision of the future)
• My own version of you (I see the world and mix it all up)
• I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you (I am the sum of my past)
• Black Rider (Famine has been with us so long, in all aspects of life)
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed (All the past influences us but is then is left behind)
• Mother of Muses (Reflections upon receiving the Nobel Prize medal)
• Crossing the Rubicon (I have at times crossed the line)
• Key West (Reflections on the lives I’ve lived and might have lived)

That is the best I can do at this moment.  I am sure you’ll disagree.

Of course the argument may well be that these songs are far too diverse and complex to be treated in this way, reduced to just a few words, and no benefit comes from trying to reduce such complex works to a few lines.  It is a bit like reducing War and Peace to one phrase [The lives of three characters as Napoleon invades Russia] – but yes it can be done and I have found it informative.

Each short statement about a song is, of itself, not especially helpful, but… when one has such a list it helps one look at the songs in a broader context.

And ultimately that is what I have been struggling towards: seeing Dylan’s work not as a set of isolated songs, and not as works of literature to be explored in terms of influences and borrowed lines, but as the work of a songwriter with the ability to write songs covering numerous musical themes, moving through the years responding to the world around him, his own emotions, the music he loves, reflections on his past, thoughts of people he has known…

It may sound ludicrously pretentious to say that this is a way of looking at Dylan that others have not tried before, for I am sure others have worked along these lines – at least not through Dylan’s whole career.  But even if no one else has found it interesting, it has given me insights that I did not have before.

Now as I think of returning to the start of the series in order to bring the knowledge I gained in later episodes to the earlier ones, and not least now knowing what the end is going to look like, I think I might be able to add a few further insights.

What I can say is that I am absolutely convinced that the key to grasping the essence of Bob Dylan’s songs is his commentary about not knowing where the phrases that he uses in his songs come from.  That I am sure is the truth and also the key to Dylan’s songwriting.  The phrases appear in his head, they meld together in a song, and from there a meaning of sorts may emerge or may not.

The work of Jochen in showing us all the relationships between Bob’s phraseology and the musical, film and literary works of others is incredibly helpful and important not just in this study but in all studies of Bob’s writing, and I’ve been enormously aided by that.  But what I am trying to do is see how all these inputs flow across  the songs, to reflect what was in Bob’s mind as he moved through the years.

In a way this is similar to what Mike Johnson is doing here in musical terms, as he explores the way Bob has performed on the Never Ending Tour.  I guess the ultimate understanding of the evolution of Bob Dylan’s thinking will incorporate Jochen’s knowledge of the lyrics, Mike’s reporting of how Dylan’s music evolved on the NET, and then to a degree, what I am trying to add in terms of the themes and subjects that occupied Bob’s thoughts each year in the music that he composed.  I feel the need to go through my contribution again to make it even partially worthy of having this input alongside the work of my friends on this site.

If this all reads as a tedious and indeed pompous  load of tripe, don’t worry – the rest of the gang will (I hope) continue to be writing about Dylan in their own way.  There’s no obligation to read everything, or indeed anything.  Just as with an album, you don’t have to listen to every track.  You don’t have to buy the album.

So that’s it.  I have done what I set out to do – given every Dylan song as simple a meaning as possible concerning its lyrics.  Now I am going to try and turn that into a coherent journey, which I’ve not always been able to do through the individual articles.  So now the next step is to return to those early songs from the late 50s and early 60s, knowing now about how things developed year on year.

(PS – I’ll keep calling the articles “The themes within Bob’s music” so you’ll be able to spot them and easily ignore them if you find this all too boring, or maybe even too esoteric.  The great thing is we have well over 1800 articles here, and my series represents only 4% of the total.  There is plenty more to distract your mind.)

The series from start to end

Bob Dylan’s songs: the themes

You might also enjoy, from this series:

• Bob Dylan: side man. Farina, von Schmidt and Bob
• Dylan with Belafonte, Hester and Big Joe Williams

By Aaron Galbraith

For this episode in  the series in which we look at Dylan supporting other artists, we’ll take a look at Dylan’s work on Barry Goldberg’s self titled album from 1974.

Barry Goldberg was part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and indeed played keyboards for Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when he first went “electric”. Besides his own solo work he has played on a number of classic albums including those by the Flying Burrito Brothers, Leonard Cohen and The Ramones. Nowadays he is a member of Stephen Stills’ excellent new band The Rides.

Now onto this album, which is, in my opinion, the one “Dylan As Session Man” that every Dylan fan should own. Now that’s not because it has Dylan’s best performance (for my money that would be Carolyn Hester’s Come Back Baby) or indeed the best song (maybe Sammy’s Song by David Bromberg). No, the reason to own this one is because for the first and only time Dylan produced another artist’s album.

Dylan co-produced the entire album with Jerry Wexler and played some percussion and sang backing vocals on five tracks on the album. He worked closely with Goldberg on the vocal tracks and mixes. And then Wexler came in and made Goldberg redo several of his lead vocals and remixed the whole thing. So it would seem to me Dylan produced the album and then Wexler came in at the last minute and suggested they change some things, unnecessarily.

“Bob told me, ‘Leave the vocals just like they are, they’re fine. Don’t let anybody mess with them.’ They had a vibe to them,” Goldberg recalled.

But Wexler came in and told Goldberg they had to re-work the vocal tracks, and that’s where things went wrong. “It’s bothered me all these years,” Barry said. “Here I had this great opportunity to work with Bob, to have him produce me–which he never did for anybody, ever–and it just didn’t turn out right.”

Then in 2009, in preparation for the CD reissue, he was able to revisit the album and use Dylan’s original mixes and vocal tracks.

The original “Dylan” mixes are a revelation. How could they not be? What with those fine Muscle Shoals musicians, Goldberg himself along with Dylan’s excellent production.

Here are the five tracks with Dylan’s percussion and backing vocals :

Stormy Weather Cowboys

It’s Not The Spotlight – co-written by Gerry Goffin and later covered by Rod Stewart, Bobby Bland and Beth Orton amongst many others.

Silver Moon

Minstrel Show

Big City Woman

Jerry Wexler went on to produce Dylan’s Slow Train Coming album. In 1989, Barry Goldberg returned the favour to Bob and produced his version of “People Get Ready” for the movie Flashback.

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

• NET 1993 – Mr Guitar Man Steps into the Light: Part One – Tangled up in guitars
• There is an index to all the Never Ending Tour articles here.

———

By Mike Johnson (Kiwi poet)

You won't amount to much, the people all said
'Cause I didn't play guitar behind my head…’ (Goodbye Jimmy Reed)

In the previous post (1993, part 1, Tangled up in Guitars), we saw the emergence of Mr Guitar Man (Dylan on lead guitar), and something of a renaissance in Dylan’s voice. And we saw some long, epic performances of ‘I and I’, ‘God Knows’ and ‘Tangled up in Blue’. I’ll be following these development in this post.

Performing extended, epic versions of his songs is a feature of 1993. Often the last verse will come about half way through the performance, with the rest given over to harp and guitar breaks. In some ways this is backward looking, as the great age of rock guitar solos probably petered out in the 1970s. Endless blues solos became de rigueur for rock performances, and after a while they became boring as they really added nothing much to the songs, but rather became occasions for a lot of showing off.

By my reading of these songs however, Dylan is not showing off, and his baroque extensions usually add to the song in some way. In my Master Harpist series, I showed how Dylan uses that little instrument to up the emotional ante of the songs, to give them an emotional colouring – sudden moments of whimsicality or a piercing sadness. Dylan’s subversive guitar work may have a similar purpose, for it never allows a song to become just pretty or catchy. It often provides a disturbing undercurrent of dark sounds. We can never quite relax and just tap our feet with Mr Guitar Man keeping us on edge.

While we can still find some epic, extended versions fuelled by Mr Guitar Man right up until Dylan put the instrument down in 2002, after 1993 he was to rein in the songs. It is as if, in 1993, Dylan wanted to let his hair down and to allow himself and the band to rip loose. The evolution of the NET is towards more disciplined sounds, so I suggest we enjoy these free flowing epics while we can, even when things get a bit messy.

Take ‘If Not for You’. It’s a modest little love song, really. At least it started out that way. There’s a lovely, plaintive version on the ‘Alternative Self Portrait’, official bootleg. In this 1993 performance it gets pushed out to 13 minutes. He keeps the tempo slow, slower than the released versions, which brings out the anthemic property of the song. It’s not long before Mr Guitar Man begins to play around with the melody, but not in the fast, hard driving way we heard  in part 1. He doesn’t alter his punky sound, but shows how he can work it at a more gentle level.

If not for You

You could say pretty much the same thing about ‘Lay Lady Lay’. Part of what made that song a hit is its modesty and apparent simplicity. It’s a lot more like a three-minute pop song than a lot of Dylan songs. And quite seductive when Dylan sings it in his Johnny Cash era voice on Nashville Skyline (1969). The song became pretty raucous during the Rolling Thunder years with the band joining in on the vocals.

None of this, however can prepare us for this impassioned nine and half minutes. Gone are the modulated vocals of the original, this is a raw appeal for love, ripped from his throat. Not quite so seductive. As he sings, his Stratocaster keeps up a constant dark under-thread, but stays in the background.  He keeps it pretty minimal through some of the choruses as well, keeping the song dampened down. He finishes the verses in about four minutes, and the next five minutes is given over to Mr Guitar Man exploring some of the softer edges of his sound.

Lay Lady Lay

It’s hard to know just quite how to take this. This style of playing does not hark back to the endless blues solos of the 1970s. It’s not blues. It’s a lot more like jazz, where the tradition of the lead instruments taking long breaks survives. And it’s not necessarily pleasant listening; it’s not supposed to be.

‘She belongs to Me’ makes three of a kind here, although this song is not quite as modest as the other two. The original album version takes only 2.48 mins to make its statement. This 1993 performance runs to 8.30 mins. He slows the tempo right down, which adds to the time, but by 4.48 mins he’s finished the last verse and we are treated to another four minutes of nicely lazy instrumental. Lead guitarist John Jackson sounds very sweet here, but Dylan doesn’t. After all, it’s not a sweet song. There is a bitter pill.

She belongs to Me

At just under five minutes for the Blonde on Blonde album version, ‘Just like a Woman’ can hardly be described as a modest little number. And it’s neither simple nor a love song. I’ve said it’s a song about vulnerability in love. I’ll go further now and suggest that it is a song about wounding and being wounded; at least that’s the way it comes over in this 8.30 min version.

It’s a song better suited to epic treatment than the previous three, and Dylan is in fine vocal form. This would have to rank as one of Dylan’s finest performances of the song. It sounds to my ear as if he’s singing a full octave above the studio version, at least in parts, but it’s in a different key as well, so I can’t be sure.

Once again, the last verse is completed about half way through the performance, and we have another three and half minutes of Dylan and Santana working their way through several choruses. At about 6.15 mins Dylan quietens it all down for a while until his Stratocaster gets to work again, and we have another round hammering on the strings in the key of Dylan.

Just like a Woman.

Phew! It’s a bit too easy to say that Dylan is ruining these performances with his kind of atonal guitar playing, but I’m sure tempted to stop listening after the last magnificent verse.

‘I Believe in You’ is another song that lends itself to epic treatment, since it’s something of an epic expression of faith. I don’t think there’s any performance to match the Toronto 1980 show, but he does it full justice here, despite messing the words up a little at the end. This nearly nine minute version holds to the pattern we have seen in this post. In this case, the song finishes at about 5.30 mins, and in the guitar work that follows we get one of the clearest demonstrations of Dylan’s method. John Jackson plays high and melodic, cruising on those sweet chord changes, while Mr Guitar Man pecks away those same sweet chord changes from below, threatening to overwhelm them.

I believe in You

‘One More Cup of Coffee’ is another inherently epic song. None of us will be able to forget the soaring Rolling Thunder performances, when the song really had its day. Dylan’s 1993 voice is up to the challenge, and he soon works his way into a passionate rendition, raspy as it might be, but the lucid beauty of those 1975/6 performances cannot be repeated, at least not with Mr Guitar Man eating away at the melody line with his guttural tones.

Once more the last verse is sung by 4.30 mins, and we get three more minutes of guitar work. Hard-edged and trenchant, the Dylan/Santana combo manages to pull this one off, fully exploiting the grandeur and pathos of the original.

One More cup of coffee

An odd thing happened to me while listening to this substantial performance of ‘Just like Tom Thumb Blues’. I had been listening to some 1940s big band swing to take my mind off Dylan for a while, and for a moment, listening to Tom Thumb’s Blues, I got my signals crossed and I transposed the guitars to horns, saxes and trumpets, and I was suddenly back in the big band era. Dylan swings this junky’s lament. Try it for yourself when the full band cuts in around three minutes and again at six minutes. I can see Stan Kenton smiling and tapping his feet.

Dylan throws himself into the vocal while Mr Guitar Man and Santana do the swinging. Some great driving drum work too from Wilson Watson. This one just seems to fall together as they hit the groove.

Just like Tom Thumb blues

‘Under the Red Sky’ brings us back to quieter, more modest songs, in this case rather sly and laconic as Dylan songs go. It has a dry, doleful edge to it, but in this 7.30 min version the sweetness of the melodic line is nicely set up by Bucky Baxter’s gentle slide guitar. A vibrant vocal from Dylan. The last verse is over by 4.30 mins, and we get another couple of minutes of comparatively muted guitar work by Santana and Dylan, until the climax that is.

Under the red sky

So ends our survey of the epic, 1993 adventures of Mr Guitar Man. In later years he was to moderate his approach, and it is hard to know, when you boil it down, just what to make of it all. Is this genius or madness? Does Dylan really know what he is doing? Obviously that punky, key of Dylan sound is deliberate; there’s a strategy behind it, the question is, does it come off?

Your call.

Next post we’ll discover what happens when Mr Guitar Man picks up the acoustic guitar.

Kia Ora for now

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

Highway 61 Revisited (1965) part I: Look out kid

by Jochen Markhorst

1          Mozart is my man

In 2015 Keith Richards is promoted to castaway on BBC Radio 4 and is granted to present his eight Desert Island Discs in one of the world’s longest running and most popular radio shows. It’s a cast-iron, simple and brilliant concept: a guest has to choose which eight pieces of music he would take with him to a desert island, plus one object and one book. It leads to often frank and revealing conversations with usually interesting guests – and to useless but always entertaining statistics.

The show has been on since January ’42, so over twenty-five thousand pieces of music have been chosen by now.

Classical composers win on all fronts. The whole Top 10 consists of classical pieces (at the top “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth, and Beethoven is still three more times in the Top 10), the Top 3 of most requested artists is Mozart, Beethoven and Bach.

They are not in Richards’ Top 8. Keef does surprise, though, with Vivaldi’s “Spring” from the Four Seasons, with an equally surprising, sheer poetic argument:

“I was agonizing over this list, ’cause Mozart is my man, you know, basically. But then I found out, reading some of Mozart’s letters, that the only good word he had to say about any other composer in the world was Vivaldi. And then I tried to put this together with being on a desert island, and I’m thinking: desert island – no seasons. So when I came down here, I picked the Spring section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I think he’s a brilliant composer.”

…but otherwise there are few real surprises. Chuck Berry, Hank Williams, Etta James… songs and names that just as easily could have been chosen by a Paul McCartney or a Bob Dylan, for example. That certainly applies to the Rolling Stone’s finale: “Key To The Highway”, the classic that Richards wants to hear in the rendition by Little Walter.

 2          Key To Highway 61

“Key To The Highway” is an indestructible monument. Little Walter’s update from 1958 to a raw Chicago blues has become the standard, the exercise on the legendary LP Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek And The Dominos (1970), with Eric Clapton’s and Duane Allman’s brilliant guitar dialogue has elevated the song to the aristocracy, and the same Clapton has been convincing every new generation for half a century now – in concert, unplugged or as an accompanist, as in 2013 with Keith Richards at the Crossroads Guitar Festival, and with B. B. King on the occasional project Riding With The King (2000).

Dylan acknowledges the importance of the song too, and underlines that importance in his MusiCares-speech, 2015:

“Big Bill Broonzy had a song called “Key to the Highway.” I’ve got a key to the highway / I’m booked and I’m bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin’ because walking is most too slow. I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you just might write…

Well Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose
Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes
He asked poor Howard where can I go
Howard said there’s only one place I know
Sam said tell me quick man I got to run
Ol’ Howard just pointed with his gun
And said that way down on Highway 61”

… the entire second verse of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, the Georgia Sam stanza.

It is not that easy to follow, though. The other examples Dylan mentions to downplay his songwriting skills, or at least to put them into perspective, are clearer. From when you go down to Deep Ellum to when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue, the bridge from “Deep Ellum Blues” to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is imaginable; John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down as inspiration for “Blowin’ In The Wind” can also be recognised, as can the sources Dylan mentions in this speech for “Boots Of Spanish Leather” and “The Times They Are A-Changin'”.

But “Key To The Highway” seems at first sight only to provide that one word highway plus a tense of the verb to run. Besides that, the song is just a traditional lament, a ten-a-penny blues dirge of a poor loser who, after a broken love affair, starts wandering again. Which in any case has little in common with Dylan’s song, and certainly not with this one verse, this Georgia Sam stanza which, after all, is quoted by Dylan to demonstrate how self-evident the line from “Key To The Highway” to “Highway 61 Revisited” is.

3          Georgia Sam Blues

Dylan’s text is hardly a run-of-the-mill lamentation. This verse, for example, is a sample of the best that Dylan’s song art has to offer in these years: a surrealistic tableau in which an alienating clash of archetypes from various artistic disciplines is painted – all in a rhythmic barrage bursting with linguistic delight. We’ve already heard a first run-up to the style on The Freewheelin’ 1963), in “Bob Dylan’s Blues” (The Lone Ranger and Tonto they are ridin’ down the line), the style that will climax on Blonde On Blonde (1966) and which Dylan will still be reaching for in 2020 (“I Contain Multitudes”).

Here Dylan is still quite close to home. Blind Willie McTell, the blues legend that is a thread in Dylan’s oeuvre anyway, gets a name-check through Georgia Sam, one of Blind Willie’s recording names. At least, that’s the “fact” that is stubbornly mentioned in every story about “Highway 61 Revisited” and is now even invariably mentioned in articles about McTell. The source of that statement, the statement that “Georgia Sam” is one of McTell’s “recording names”, can no longer be traced, but it has already been copied thousands of times, so many times in any case, that it now is regarded a music historical fact.

It is quite debatable. The Georgia-born William Samuel McTier indeed made recordings under a number of pseudonyms, between 1927 and 1950: not only as “Blind Willie McTell” but also as “Blind Sammie”; “Georgia Bill”; “Hot Shot Willie”; “Blind Willie”; “Barrelhouse Sammy” and “Willie Samuel McTell”. But never ever as Georgia Sam. Bizarrely enough, even on tribute sites, on which all McTell recordings and his recording names are collected, the fun fact that Dylan in his song name-checks McTell with his recording name “Georgia Sam”, is always served out. After which, usually on the very same page, the complete discography is listed – without a single Georgia Sam.

Now, the alleged reference is not too far-fetched, obviously. Both “Georgia” and “Sam” are two occurring names among all those pseudonyms, and Blind Willie did come from Georgia and was called Samuel. Nevertheless, the rock poet Dylan does not seem to refer to McTell, but simply, really, literally, to a real “Georgia Sam”: to the protagonist of the single “Georgia Sam Blues / Cool Daddy Blues” from one of the forgotten blues ladies of the early days, from Anna Lee Chisholm, 1924:

In a southern town far away,
There’s a man they call Georgia Sam
There were times I used to love him dear
But now he’s gone astray

Granted, quite obscure, but then again: Dylan’s encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure songs is proverbial. More fitting anyway, since Sam’s opponent in Dylan’s song, “poor Howard”, is a fictional character as well, also from an old song, from “Poor Howard”. Recorded by Lead Belly, and quite recently by Robert Plant, and in a harmless, boring, bloodless version by The Weavers in 1949, but Dylan’s baggage probably contains the black humour version by Eddy Arnold:

Poor Howard's dead and gone, left me here to sing his song
Poor Howard had a wife and she nagged him all his life
So he used his butcher knife---like I said he had a wife
Now poor Howard's dead and gone...

4          A sweetheart like you with a bloody nose

So, the protagonists of this second strophe from “Highway 61 Revisited” are probably inspired by two song characters, one of whom has a nosebleed, wardrobe problems and an urge to flee, and the other only serves as a signpost. Still, he points the way with his gun, which does add some colour. Context is completely lacking, like with “All Along The Watchtower” for example, thus throwing the doors wide open to every conceivable interpretation. For the poet himself, however, as so often, the sound of the words has undoubtedly been decisive.

It does have impact anyhow. A bloody nose has never been an element of description in song art. Sure, black eyes, broken noses, or just plain “blood” often enough, obviously, but a bloody nose is simply a bit too childish, too corny. Until now, that is. Just like Dylan has made the word “clown” salonfähig, artistically acceptable (Lennon: “I objected to the word clown, because that was always artsy-fartsy, but Dylan had used it so I thought it was all right”), after  “Highway 61 Revisited” bloody nose has become acceptable. Elton John (“Made In England”, 1995), Billie Eilish (“Bad Guy”, 2019), Kings Of Leon, Bon Iver, The Who (“Doctor Jimmy”, 1973), John Mellencamp… Dylan has used it, so it’s all right.

The most beautiful bloody nose is on Gillian Welch’s thrilling masterpiece The Harrow And The Harvest (2011), an album studded with subtle and less subtle Dylan references anyhow. As in the moving “The Way The Whole Thing Ends”, in which verse fragments such as standing in the doorway crying and once you had a motorcycle but you couldn’t ride it right are explicit enough already, and the verse:

Momma's in the beauty parlor
And Daddy's in the baseball pool
Sister's in the drive-in movie
Brother's in the old high school

 … which is winking pleasantly, unobtrusively at “Tombstone Blues” and “Desolation Row”. And just as charming Gillian incorporates a playful nod to “Sweetheart Like You” and to “Highway 61 Revisited”:

Now what's a little sweetheart like you
Doing with a bloody nose?

5          P.S.

In June 1995, England’s national treasure, the irresistible Marianne Faithfull, is invited to be the castaway at Desert Island Discs. Number four on her list is “Highway 61 Revisited”:

“One of my greatest all-time favourites. I couldn’t live without it.”

To be continued. Next up: Highway 61 Revisited – part III

—————

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

By Larry Fyffe

Looking back at rhyme part 1

Let us go you and I to where some lyrics from poems and songs are spread out in Bob Dylan’s song lyrics  – for example, we’ve recently looked at poets Robert Frost, Anthony Raferty, Robert Browning, and Edward Taylor.

Here be more tributes – this one to the blues song below:

AlI I could see was the rain
Something grabbed a hold of her
Felt to me honey, Lord, like a ball and chain
(Janis Joplin: Ball And Chain ~ 'Big Mama' Thornton)

Switching the rhyme from ~ ‘rain’/’chain’ to ‘brain’/’chain’ in the following revenge-filled lyrics:

You lost your mule
You got a poison brain
I'll marry you to a ball and chain
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

Beneath, Bob Dylan pays tribute to a melancholic song:

Each place I go only the lonely go
Some little small cafe
The songs I know only the lonely know
(Frank Sinatra: Only The Lonely ~ Heusen/Cahn)

In the following lyrics,the singer/songwriter sticks to the same rhyme ~ ‘go’/’know’:

I ain't no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

Now a a tribute paid to a melancholic Gothic Romantic poet- quoted below:

My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
(John Keats: Ode To A Nightingale)

Changes ~ ‘pains’/’drains’ to ‘pain’/ ‘drain’:

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
And my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

As indicated in the lines above,  a true artist fears not intellectual contradictions, ambiguity, and confusion – so too in the lines below in which fame is compared to an alluring woman:

Make the best bow to her, and bid adieu
Then if she likes it, she will follow you
"You cannot eat you cake, and have it too"
(John Keats: On Fame)

Ah yes, why not grasp contradiction; this time play your hand outright; invert the sentiment and gender; and at the same time retain most of the rhyme ~ ‘adieu’/’you’/’to’?:

You can have your cake, and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing in front of you?
(Bob Dylan: Lay, Lady, Lay)

Keeping on keeping on – a nod to a Romantic Transcendental poet, an optimist in the days of youth:

There was a time when every meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem apparelled in celestial light
The glory and freshness of a dream
(William Wordsworth: Imitations Of Immortality)

Below, the Romantic poet’s theme of the innocence of youth lost in th sorrows of adulthood; keeping the rhyme ~ ‘stream/’dream’:

I cross the Green Mountain
I slept by a stream
Heaven blazing in my head
I dreamt a monstrous dream
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

In short, a goodly part of the artistic creative process involves borrowing from the lyrical art of yesterday, and adding appropriate musical accompaniment in order to make it appealing to today’s audiences of the popular entertainment business.

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by mr tambourine

As we begin a new series on this massive page, in this very first episode I would like to start from the more recent cases and go further to the past.

The focus should be mostly on Dylan originals, maybe a collaboration with someone else in the songwriting process here and there too. But no covers.

The first one we can mention is “Narrow Way” from Tempest, a heavy blues where Bob “raps” typical Dylanesque lines, which many people view as an unfortunately what-seems-to-be buried song already. Maybe not?

We don’t know what the future holds for Dylan’s live performances. But never say never. Still, at this moment, it’s untouched live and we have to try and understand why.

Tempest currently, compared to other Mod-Bob albums (albums from Time Out Of Mind onward, without Rough And Rowdy Ways in this case since it never even had a chance to be promoted live in concert) has three songs that are untouched live.

All three of those, to be fair, to me at least, look like very expected and understandable choices.

Those songs are along with Narrow Way: Tin Angel and Tempest. Three very lengthy pieces.

So we ask ourselves now, why Narrow Way?

Aside from being lengthy and would need Bob to either memorize a lot of lyrics, or have him sit on the piano while reading the lyric sheets?

First of all, Dylan is no stranger to ignoring bluesy numbers.  Previous albums had their own ignored blues numbers: Dirt Road Blues, Someday Baby, Shake Shake Mama.

But why Narrow Way? It seems like a song Dylan could play. If he did Rollin’ And Tumblin’ and Highway 61 Revisited and similar styles, why ignore this one?

I’m not a fan of this song, to be honest. I don’t like the studio version. I do find a lot of brilliance in the lyrics. And I’m not saying the song is bad. For my taste, it’s too repetitive. I’m not sure I ever finished it unless I decided to listen to the full Tempest album.

That’s not to say that live it wouldn’t be better. Maybe it would. Still, I’m glad it was rejected.

I have barely swallowed Summer Days and its 800+ live performances over the last 20 years now. Or even Thunder On The Mountain which improved in the 2017-2019 period.

I’m pretty sure that if Bob ever debuted this one, it would get 500 performances at least and other songs like Early Roman Kings and Pay In Blood would be played less because of this one.

Luckily for me, unluckily for some fans of this song, it never happened.

But still… Why?

I really can’t say, other than the song is pretty tricky because of its length and the lyrics that keep spinning around.

The sound of the song is very easy for his band to catch, and Charlie Sexton would probably be the leader in those arrangements, and I can absolutely see it working on piano for Bob.

But then again “it’s a long road, it’s a long and narrow way”, lyrically speaking. It would probably feature a lot of lyrical revisions too.

I would imagine this song sounding its best in 2014 and 2015. Bob’s voice would be perfect then for this song. Mixing standards with this one would have been some great gigs for sure.

Maybe we’ll get to hear it some day live if all goes well?   But until then, it’s a long and narrow way.

You may also enjoy

Narrow Way available free on Spotify

Narrow Way, Bob Dylan’s absolutely ultimately most brilliant blues ever 

By Tony Attwood

August 16 2009, Bob Dylan decided to play a song for the one and only time.  It was “Heartbreak Hotel”.   The venue was Harvey’s Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena, Stateline, NY.

https://youtu.be/-uiBGiIivCE

So why that song on that day?  Well, that’s where you come in, because I don’t know.

The Elvis single was recorded on 10 January 1956 in Nashville, and issued two and a half weeks later.

The song was co-written by Tommy Durden and Mae Boren Axton who is also credited with introducing Elvis to Colonel Tom Parker, and was involved in getting RCA to sign Presley to their label.  The song then got into the top of the Country and Western, pop, and Rhythm ‘n’ Blues charts simultaneously, which when one comes to think of it, is rather bizarre.

Durden began writing the lyrics for “Heartbreak Hotel” when he was inspired by a Miami Herald story about a man who committed suicide, leaving a note that read “I walk a lonely street.”   However I suspect Durden did not get his songwriting contract properly sorted because although he wrote songs for  Tex Ritter, Johnny Cash and Johnny Tillotson he later worked as a dishwasher repairman which is really sad.  I think we should honour the composers (even part composers) of masterpieces.  He died in 1999 at the age of 79.

Heartbreak Hotel was top of the Billboard and Cashbox charts for seven and six weeks respectively and became a millon seller.  Elvis last performed in on 29 May 1977.   In 1995 (four years before its co-writer’s death) “Heartbreak Hotel” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.  I can only hope someone remembered to invite its co-composer.

It is just about the only song I can think of that has its first chorus accompanied only by the double bass.  Indeed the whole accompaniment is a stunning masterpiece.  Even if you know the song inside out, I’d urge you to play the Elvis version and try (if possible) to ignore the voice and just listen to how the accompaniment changes, verse by verse.  It really is adventurous orchestration – especially considering when it was written.

As for my second selection from the once only files today, this is just absolute pure emotion on my part, for I don’t think I have ever been so upset at the passing of one of my life time heroes as I was when the news of Tom Petty’s death was announced.

Bob played “Learning to Fly” on 21 October 2017, just under three weeks after Tom Petty’s passing on 2 October.  The venue is 1st Bank Center, Broomfield, CO, USA

There are so many recordings of Learning to Fly that could be inserted at this point but I am going to cheat and insert a double header “I Need to Know” and “Learning to Fly”.  If you want to skip the first track starts at 2’43”.

Well, some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I've started out for God knows where
I guess I'll know when I get there

by Jochen Markhorst

Broadcaster Dylan only once plays one of his songs, a song from the legendary Bascom Lamar Lunsford (“Poor Jesse James”, in episode 92, Cops And Robbers). By way of introduction, he tells a few things about the archetype Jesse James, but nothing about Lunsford. Just as The Minstrel Of The Appalachians is mentioned twice in Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles, both times without further introduction:

“Logan was from Kentucky, wore a black neckerchief and played the banjo…was an expert in playing Bascom Lamar Lunsford songs like “Mole in the Ground” and “Grey Eagle.”

And a little further on:

“Elliott was far beyond me. There were a few other Ramblin’ Jack records that he had, too — one where he sings with Derroll Adams, a singer buddy of his from Portland who played banjo like Bascom Lamar Lunsford.”

Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1882-1973), apparently, needs no further introduction, but is a point of reference in itself; Dylan only uses his name, remarkably, to introduce other supporting actors. Like saying “he sings like Caruso and plays guitar like Hendrix” – you don’t need to explain further who Caruso and Hendrix are, they are, on the contrary, themselves the points of reference to describe the qualities of a character.

Well, maybe Lunsford does have that status, this “being beyond explanation”, for Dylan. References and borrowings can be found throughout Dylan’s entire oeuvre, after all. From the two Lunsford songs alone on the ground-breaking compilation album Anthology of American Folk Music, Dylan draws for three, four songs.

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a three-part double album compilation from 1952 with eighty-four folk, country and blues songs, collected by the eccentric amateur music-anthropologist Harry Smith. “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” is on Volume 3, containing the famous lines Dylan will reuse in “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”:

Oh, I don't like a railroad man
No, I don't like a railroad man
A railroad man, they'll kill you when he can
And drink up your blood like wine

 As it is, Dylan has an unlikely memory of songs he has heard once, but these lines come flying by more often. The aforementioned album he is referring to in Chronicles, that Ramblin’ Jack Elliott with Derroll Adams record, is The Rambling Boys from 1957. The last song on it is the pleasantly unpolished “Roll On, Buddy”:

Well I never liked no railroad man
I never liked no railroad man
Cause the railroad man will kill you if he can
Drink up your blood like wine

(and in the following verse “I slept in the pen with the rough and rowdy men”, by the way). The rest of the track list also suggests that Dylan has played the album more than once: “Buffalo Skinners”, “Danville Girl”, “East Virginia Blues”… all songs whose echoes descend in Dylan’s work over the years.

The other Lunsford song on that Anthology is on side 4: “Dry Bones” (not to be confused with “Dem Bones”, the hit of the Delta Rhythm Boys from the 40s).

Lunsford records “Dry Bones” in 1928, after he learned the song, according to his own words, in North Carolina from one Romney, an itinerant black preacher. It is a powerful, simple song with a colourful, biblical text. The five short verses meander haphazardly through the Holy Scriptures, as through Genesis in the first verse:

Old Enoch he lived to be three-hundred and sixty-five
When the Lord came and took him back to heaven alive

The next stanzas pluck from Acts, Exodus and Ezekiel, so criss-cross from the Bible. The first great aha moment for the Dylan fan is the chorus:

I saw, I saw the light from heaven
Shining all around.
I saw the light come shining.
I saw the light come down

… an inspiration for one of Dylan’s outside category songs, for “I Shall Be Released”. The second eye-opener is the third verse:

When Moses saw that a-burning bush
He walked it 'round and 'round
And the Lord said to Moses
"You's treadin' holy ground"

(Bascom Lamar’s recording is a historical treasure, but unfortunately quite rough and rowdy. The Handsome Family’s rendition from 2003 is beautiful:

The structure of “Highway 61 Revisited” is the structure that keeps on fascinating Dylan, for the time being. Five unrelated verses, only held together by the same decor which is always revealed in the recurring refrain line: Highway 61, indeed. The same set-up as “Desolation Row”, “Stuck Inside Of Mobile”, “Watching The River Flow”… up to and including “Crossing The Rubicon” (2020), the poet Dylan remains attracted to this topographical variant of the medieval François Villon ballad structure.

The rhyme schemes are just as archaic, for that matter; Dylan varies on abab ccc and on aaaa-bbb – schemes that we have known since the Romans and that are still popular in 21st century rap music. Dylan uses it in two of the five verses in the classical way; in the fifth line, the line that breaks the rhyme, the perspective shifts. In the other three a monologue continues; all too conscientiously the lieder poet did not shape his text.

That decor, finally, is well known and loaded. The highway running from Dylan’s hometown of Duluth to New Orleans, the U.S. Route 61, is a 2300 km long highway that roughly follows the Mississippi and is called the Blues Highway. Along the way, the highway cuts through quite a few mythical places. Elvis’ Memphis, for example, Chuck Berry’s St. Louis, Muddy Waters’ hometown Rolling Fork, the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil and whatnot.

Officially the name has existed since 1926, completed the Highway was in 1929 – and it has been sung at least since 1932, since Roosevelt Sykes recorded his “Highway 61 Blues”. Between Sykes in 1932 and Dylan in ’65 a good dozen songs about Highway 61 were written and recorded, so Dylan’s addition “revisited” also has a music historical connotation. The walking music encyclopaedia Dylan is probably familiar with most of those predecessors, as well as with related songs like Big Joe Williams’ “Highway 49” and – of course – Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues”. But neither in content nor in stylistic terms does Dylan’s song have much in common with all those Highway 61 songs; for that the poet especially thanks Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Minstrel of the Appalachian, the banjo-playing lawyer, who with his “Dry Bones” provides the template for that crushing opening stanza:

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

… the comic effect achieved by trivialising Holy Scripture, by putting popular slum jargon in God’s and Abraham’s mouth, Dylan has learned from Lunsford. Dylan amplifies the effect by shortening the name of the patriarch to the buddy-buddy variant Abe and by making God talk like a Mafia boss – although the latter, with some flexibility, can be heard with Lunsford too. The Lord said to Moses: “You’s treading holy ground” could be understood as “Look out kid”, after all.

But that’s another story and shall be told another time.

To be continued. Next up: Highway 61 Revisited – part II

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

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by Larry Fyffe

As illustrated previously, Bob Dylan travels back in time in order to stimulate his creative juices; drops hints of what poems and songs he sources by employing the same rhymes or twisting them a bit.

One version of a song:
The evening sun is sinking low
The woods are dark, the town is too
They'll drag you down, they run the show
Ain't no telling what they'll do
(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

The rhymes above ~ ‘low’/’show’; the rhymes below ~’know’/ ‘snow’

Whose these woods are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He'll not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow ....
He only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep

(Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening)

Another example, and with ~ ‘too’/’do’ again:

Today and tomorrow and yesterday too
The flowers are dying like all things do
Follow me close, I'm going to Ballinalee
I'll lose my mind if you don't come with me
I'll fuss up my hair, and I'll fight bood feuds
I contain multitudes
(Bob Dylan: I Contain Multitudes)

Note the Dylanesque “rhyme twist” ~ ‘Ballinalee’/’me’ – from the above song;

~ ‘Bally-na-Lee’/’Raferty’/’me’ – from the following Irish ballad:

On my way to Mass to say a prayer
The wind was high, sowing rain
I met a maid with wind-wild hair
And madly fell in love again ....
A table was set with glasses, and drink was set
And then says the lassie, turning to me
"You are welcome, Raferty, so drink the wet
To love's demands in Bally-na-Lee"
(Anthony Raferty: The Lass From Bally-na-Lee ~ translation)

The following song lyrics also go back in time:

And you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fear
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tear ...

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six month sentence
Ah, but you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fear
Bury the rag deep in your face
Now is the time for your tear

(Bob Dylan: The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll)

There’s the rhyme ~ ‘disgrace’/’face’in the above song; ‘disgrace’/’face’/’erase’/’place’ – from the dramatic monologue below:

Take the cloak from off his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of man!
Death has done all death can ...
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace? ....
I stand here now, he lies in his place
Cover the face!

(Robert Browning: After)

Looking back at another example:

With your silhouette when the night dims
Into your eyes were the moonlight swims
And your matchbook songs, and your gypsy hymns
Who among them would try to impress you?

(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Above ~ ‘dims’/’swims’/’hymns’; below ~ ‘dim’/’within’/’swim’ – from a Baroque poem:

You want clear spectacles: your eyes are dim
Turn inside out, and turn your eyes within
Your sins like motes in the sun do swim: nay, see
Your mites are molehills, molehills mountain be

(Edward Taylor: The Accusation Of The Inward Man)

Now a Dylan song that makes reference to a bluegrass tune:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

(Bob Dylan: It's Alright Ma)

Thusly ~ ‘fates’/’waits’/’plates’/’gates’/’states’; and ~ ‘fate’/’wait’/’late’:

Why meet a terrible fate
Mercies abundantly wait
Turn back before it's too late
You're drifting too far from the shore
(Monroe Brothers: Drifting Too Far From The Shore ~ C. Moody)

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 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

By Aaron Galbraith (song selection and introductions) and Tony Attwood (meandering pontifications while the music plays).

This time we have looked for John Wesley Harding covers.   So without further ado…

Indigo Girls – All Along The Watchtower.

Aaron: I liked this version a lot; lots of passion. Even if you don’t, you should be happy as I also found a 12 minute prog rock version by a group called Affinity! But I decided to include the Indigo Girls one – I just couldn’t do that to you!

Tony: I don’t know this band but on hearing the instrumental introduction I thought, “Wow this is going to be good,” but then the lead vocalist came in, and for me, as soon as she pronounced, “I gotta tell you now” it all fell apart.  I suppose that is my prejudice – I just don’t think you do that in a Dylan piece – quite simply because Dylan eschews the commonplace conventions.  He doesn’t tell us he’s going to tell it like it is, because he’s so far beyond that, it would be nonsense.  (See also the end of this article in about half an hour’s time).

It does come across to me as a shout, and that is a great shame because in the instrumental interludes this really is fine music.  Ah well…

Aaron: Now here are two tracks by a lady called Jessica Rhayne. They are from her Dylan covers album Just Like A Woman. I loved both of these so decided to include both.

Jessica Rhayne: I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine

Tony: If you’ve read my ramblings in this series before you’ll know I try and write the the commentaries as I hear the songs selected by Aaron, and thus it was that I heard “Watchtower” without any idea what was coming next.

But this is beautiful.  And the harmonies – the bass player has such a beautiful tenor voice to sing along with Jessica Rhayne; it was elegant and delightful before the verse where he entered, but that voice of his added a lot to it.   Very taunting of the director not to let us see the bass player when he first comes in.

This really is how a song like this should be undertaken – understanding the original and exploring it to see if it can be taken further – which in this case it can.  Of course Hendrix didn’t do that with the Watchtower; he took the original and tore it apart – as needed to happen (see also the final review in this article) but doing that is a once every five or ten years event.  Anyone can do it, very very few can do it well.

Jessica Rhaye: As I Went Out One Morning

Oh wow this bassist has a range and a half, and it really does fit with Ms Rhayne.   What is really impressive here is that these songs are all very simple – most of them are straight three verses and that’s that.  So there is not much to work with, but as far as I remember that second chord the group put into lines one and two was not in the Dylan original.  They use it later as well, and it works perfectly.

There is no temptation to go over the top, even with the slightly distorted guitar near the end.   This really is a re-interpretation that carries on the tradition and feeling of the original song.  It is music that I want to come back to and experience again, no matter how well I know the songs.

Joan Baez – I pity the poor immigrant.

Aaron: Thea Gilmore does this one also but I love Joan’s version best.

Tony:  With Joan we know that we are fairly likely to get an understanding interpretation, with gentle reworkings, delicately handled.  And that is exactly what we have here.

The only problem is that I find many of Joan Baez’ reworkings so respectfully handled that there are no surprises, and somehow I find that I like and want surprises.  I love the original Dylan recordings, but the covers that really move me are the ones that go that little bit further.

The pianist does his/her best within the context but it still doesn’t make think, “oh wow I am hearing elements in this song that I have never heard before”.  Yes it does make me hear that title line more uncomfortably, and that I guess is part of the purpose, but not that much more.

It’s nice, it’s worthy, but I am not moved to play it again.

And yes Aaron I have noticed that you have passed Thea Gilmore aside.  You won’t get away with it you know.

Rita Coolidge – I’ll be your baby tonight.

Aaron: Lastly [actually no Aaron, as I’m slipping in an extra one as you probably guessed I would] we’ll finish up with one of the most covered of all Dylan songs – I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. I listed to a fair few of these before deciding which to select, including Marianne Faithful, Maria Muldaur, Barb Jungr, Judy Rodman, Norah Jones and (better than I expected) Goldie Hawn.

Although the Norah Jones version is excellent and definitely worth seeking out., I eventually went with this one by Rita Coolidge. It’s interesting and a different arrangement than I’ve heard before plus she’s an artist we’ve not covered in this series before.

T0ny: Spot on choice here Aaron.  This is what music sounds like with a good producer.  You’ve got a whole lot of quality musicians in here all using their instruments to say “listen to me, listen to me” and somehow, almost all of the time, they are kept under control.

Just listen to the harmonica and twangy guitar playing a duet in the instrumental break.

And the great thing is that they are not afraid to take it down and make it nice and reserved again, without the musicians falling over each other.  Bob’s original meaning of the song is retained too, which is always a bonus.

Aaron: P.S. here’s that Affinity track (turns out I could do that to you 😀)

Tony: And one returned to you… just keep scrolling down.

Tony: This works for me at first because it is interesting and original at every turn.  We know from the first second what the song is, but the vocalist keeps us fascinated as we ponder where she is going – the fade out and down at the end of the first verse is totally unexpected and allows the instrumentalists then to take us in a different direction.  Very clever arranging in my view.

OK so the keyboard player sounds like he is stuck somewhere around 1969, but well, some 1969 keyboard playing was quite enjoyable in its way.   The problem though is that hearing the first prolonged instrumental break once is fine, but if I had the album I am not sure I would play is twice.  Especially not when know just how many minutes of my life are going to be taken up listening the the organist indulge his/her fantasies.

But, yes, it is fun to be taken back to the old days.   I can almost see the leader giving the nod to say “ok that’s enough extemporisation” while the pianist keeps his eyes shut tight – but still does end as required.

It almost makes me want to get my old Yes albums out.  Almost.  Not quite.  But almost – and that was because of the second solo.  I’d got the idea with the first one, and there is nothing more in the second break to be heard.  In my mind I see 20 something gentlemen with exceeding long hair, nodding away with hair flapping about from side to side.  They could have cut a lot and made the track shorter, and rather more enjoyable.  But then it wouldn’t be the 70s would it.

But now, if you have waded through all eleven minutes of the Watchtower you’ll need to recover.  If you are still listening, just stop it, it doesn’t change.   What happens next however, if you don’t know it, will (as we used to say in the ancient days) “blow your mind”.   Besides in the above version of Watchtower, the song ends on the subdominant rather than the tonic, which is extremely uncomfortable.  It is, if I might put it crudely, rather like going to the toilet, and then leaving, knowing that there was more to be done.

But enough of such comparisons, let us move on…

Thea Gilmore Drifters’ Escape

Tony: If you are a regular on this site, you will have probably stumbled across the fact that I rate the largely ignored “Drifter’s Escape” as one of Dylan’s great, but mostly unnoticed, works.  It is the perfect example of his Kafkaesque period in which nothing at all makes sense although on the surface it momentarily appears that it should do.

Sadly I never found Dylan’s live reworkings of the song did it justice – it was as if he knew he had something there, but wasn’t quite sure what.

And so it all remained until Thea Gilmore came along – as I have mentioned on this site before.  Quite often.  Rather a lot in fact.  I imagine Aaron left it out from his selection just to taunt me.

I have tried a thousand times to explain my devotion to this song, and the contrast between line one and two in this version goes some way.  As does the addition of the harmony vocal on the third line.

And we end that first verse with the line, “And I still do not know what I’ve done wrong.”  And isn’t that just how it always is?

This is the story of chaos, in a land in which nothing makes any sense at all – which is by and large what the whole JWH album is about.  But here the music adds to the context of looking at something which ought to make sense but doesn’t.

The crying out of the attendant and the nurse is one of the most magic moments in Dylan – totally illogical and weird, and here treated in a way that pushes us on into the chaos of people who ought to be making sense but aren’t.   Probably only Talking Heads with the Stop Making Sense tour got as close to this feeling that really nothing does make any sense, but it just is, and we are in the middle of it.

This really is an utterly sublime moment of interpretation of Dylan; Dylan in one of his most difficult phases with the words given their most fulsome, fearsome, chaotic meaning.

Yes of course Hendrix did this with the Watchtower, that equally meaningless picture of senselessness, but I suppose I have lived my whole life with Watchtower as the expression of Dylan and Kafka.  It was, I guess, with an utter sense of relief that I found a second rendition of this song that made the nonsense make no sense in a perfectly sensible kind of way which somehow I had always felt ought to be possible.

If you see what I mean.

Thanks Aaron.  Great fun.  Really enjoyed it.                                                                Tony

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 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan’s release of a seventeen-minute song about the assassination of President Kennedy strangely coincided with the Corona lockdown, taking the world by surprise, even more so, as it perfectly blended in with the gloomy atmosphere of the time. The song was released, alongside nine others, on Dylan’s new double album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” on 19 July 2020.

By Leo Ensel

Perfect timing to a fault.

In approximate synchrony with the beginning of the global Corona lockdown, the almost 79-year-old Bob Dylan, who had not released a new song in eight years, unexpectedly returns to the world to show once again with a precise strike where God lives in the singer-songwriter scene. And this with the longest song he has ever written.^[1] It is, irritatingly enough, a lamentation about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, almost 60 years after the event.

Beyond Time

The song appears to come out of nowhere only to lose itself in infinity. Its magnificence and its heartbreaking beauty only reveal themselves little by little. It is a song that begs to be discovered and mulled over—over and over again—as an infinite loop, because, as it finally turns out, this is how it was designed.

But is this even a song? On the first listening, it appears to set the field for a huge surface of sound. Then, sparingly orchestrated, it creates an atmosphere in which music and time stand still, generating one never-ending moment. Harmonies are reduced to the minimum three chords of the cadenza scheme. Light years away, traces of a modified blues scheme appears to shimmer through.

And is it even singing? The Dylan of our time rambles or chants­—much like a priest would read his litany, or a rabbi his Kaddish—his endless requiem. He recites most of the lines almost exclusively on one note, which, in combination with the extraordinary length of the song and its endless loop character, lures the attentive listener deeper and deeper into trance, during which—like in a dream—the described events step out of time, break the chronology, and overlap each other.

The title of “Murder Most Foul”, as the net community was quick to point out, has its roots in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (I/5), a literary allusion by which Dylan taps into a historic and associative space. The seventeen-minute song spirals around the events of 23 November 1963, the “Dark day in Dallas, November ’63 / A day that will live on in infamy”. It approaches Kennedy’s murder from a thousand perspectives and ends in a gigantic, almost endless lament for the dead.

A narrator, eyewitnesses, real or fake murderers – who can tell the difference in this confusing kaleidoscope? – they all appear in the song to act out their part, including the dying victim himself, in whose comatose inner monologue shreds of third party communication show up, uttered by speakers who are pretending to care about the dying man, when in reality being busy covering up the traces of the most foul murder of the century. The song juxtaposes powerful images, such as “Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die” or “Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing”, lyrics that have the potential to become classic quotations right away and reveal Dylans genetic fingerprint on the spot.

For Dylan, the murder of John F. Kennedy, the “murder most foul”—that much even listeners unfamiliar with the events will understand—is the result of a scandalous conspiracy. Characters like the official lone gunman Lee H. Oswald and his murderer Jack Ruby are “Only a pawn in their game”, as a Dylan song from the year after Kennedy’s murder has it. – But who are ‘they’, the apparently well-organized men behind this timeless crime? Dylan leaves this open for our speculation – which only makes the pale scenery of the song even more eerie.

Voices: Tommy, Pussycat, Lady Macbeth and the Dying President

The song begins with an exact recount of the time and place of the events. But linearity soon gives way. When at the end of the first verse the singer calls on Wolfman Jack, the legendary US disc jockey of the sixties and seventies, to lament for the dead and quotes the title-giving Shakespearean words “murder most foul” for the first time, all contours begin to blur. To an increasing extent, both the meticulous account of the murder’s fragmented details and its cover-up, are mixed and contrasted with snippets from songs and films, with myths and figures of American pop culture from the 1920s to almost the present day. Condensed into archetypes, these figures reappear to surround the scene of the murder like ghosts from ancient and timeless spaces.

First there are the Beatles, who—so it is promised—come to hold the hand of distraught “little children” (the children of the murdered president?); from Liverpool’s River Mersey, the lyrical subject is drawn to the legendary Woodstock ‘Love & Peace Festival’ – only to land directly in front of the stage of its West Coast antipode the Altamont Speedway immediately afterwards. (Where, and there is no need to mention this association in the song, the hippie movement lost its innocence in December 1969, when, in front of the eyes of Mick Jagger singing “Under my thumb”, the African American Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a member of the biker gang Hells Angels).

Armies of classic and long forgotten heroes and figures from the early days of silent movies, from the Rhythm & Blues of the 50s, Rock ’n’ Roll, early Beat and late Rock music, Pop and Jazz, embodied in artists like Buster Keaton, Little Suzie, and the ‘dizzy’ Miss Lizzy, like Scarlett O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind”, The Who’s Tommy and his poisonous Acid Queen, Marilyn Monroe and Lady Macbeth, all dancing round the deadly wounded president and making comments, partly in sympathy, partly maliciously cynical, on his slow glide over into that other world. Dreams, nightmares, witches, real and false good fairies, saints and Judases, pop icons and real persons of contemporary history are mixing, overlapping, reminiscent of ancient nursery rhymes in sound and form, like an ancient choir. All this constitutes the invisible background of the ‘murder most foul’.

And, as usual in his late work, Dylan assembles countless set pieces and quotations from more or less well-known songs from the entire Pop universe into his own lyrics, which thereby grow into a tremendous patchwork. At the same time, some passages, such as “Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb”, “We’ll mock you and shock you, we’ll grin in your face” or “They killed him once and they killed him twice / Killed him like a human sacrifice” almost compellingly evoke associations with Jesus’ death on the cross.

The silhouettes blur, the voices overlap: victims, murderers, spectators, narrators, the countless ghosts in the background. In the feverish hallucinations of the president in a coma, all this flows together into a single broad stream of unconsciousness beyond time.

Lamentation of the Dead

And then the song rises to the most powerful litany of the dead in pop history. It is the ‘Ghost’ of the President himself—“Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack”—whose body is on its way to his pompous funeral—“Play it for me in my long Cadillac”—beckoning the legendary disc jockey to perform the president’s own requiem. The entire universe of American popular culture—folk, beat, rock, jazz, film—and yes, even Shakespeare and Beethoven are called upon, summoned to the most grandiose lamentation of the dead. And instead of the Latin “Ora pro nobis!” (“Pray for us!”) the litany that the 25-years deceased Wolfman Jack is supposed to celebrate for a US president assassinated over half a century ago, laconically repeats: “Play!”

For seven long minutes the ‘prayer’ ritual lingers, and at times it seems that it has no end. As the logic of time has already been suspended and borders everywhere have become permeable and dissolved, songs and film scenes that Kennedy might have known appear, just as they would in a dream, blending together with songs and myths that were created long after his death.

It is a song litany that will give lyrics-oriented dylanologists enough interpretation homework for the next months, if not years. The international fan community already claims to have found at least 75 references to other songs in “Murder Most Foul”. The listing seems endless, whereas the mood is familiar. It is impossible not to be reminded of Dylan classics such as “Hard rain’s a-gonna fall”, “Chimes of freedom” or “Ring them bells” from time to time.

And to come full circle, the litany finds an ending, which is really not an end, by including itself in the list of songs to be played:

“Play ‘Murder Most Foul’!“

There is a boundless sadness in this song, in its thrifty and therefore most potent pathos. This culminates in the small pauses between the verses, when violin and cello come to the fore for a brief moment and give free rein to their longing. But the strangest thing about this song so rich in remarkable details is that it never gets boring despite its endless length and monotony! How Dylan managed to pull this off will probably remain his secret.

Presidential Assassination and Corona Freeze

It is well known that the Kennedy murder has been on Dylan’s mind since “November ‘63”. And this song proves that he must have been deeply involved in the details of the events. But why is Dylan writing this requiem almost sixty years after the event, and why is he releasing it now of all times, at a moment when—for the very first time ever —the entire globe is forced into a pandemic state of shock? What associations, what fantasies is he trying to evoke?

In any case, Dylan’s timing could not have been more precise. The singer takes nothing less than the entire Corona-solidified globe as his resonance chamber. And in its ghostliness the song fits exactly into this bleak and gloomy time of the global lockdown.

And this lockdown has very real, almost physical consequences, even for a Bob Dylan.

Something that no event and no person had been able to achieve or predict: an invisible virus is threatening the life’s work of the author of this song himself on a worldwide scale. Dylan’s famous Never-Ending Tour, a continuous loop of hopping around the globe, has been stopped for the first time in over 30 years. And, sadly, this appears to be the status for the foreseeable future.

Let’s hope the virus is not successful.

It would be the second –

Murder most foul!

There is an index to other articles on Rough and Rowdy Ways here.

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 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by Larry Fyffe

Over time, lyrics of folk or country songs often become entangled up with one another, deliberately or otherwise:

On the wings of a snow-white dove
He sends his pure sweet love
A sign from above
On the wings of a dove
(Ferlin Husky: On The Wings Of A Dove ~ R. Ferguson)

Referencing a biblical verse:

And the dove came to him in the evening
And, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off
So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth
(Genesis 8:11)

The biblical verse referenced again in the song below:

If I had wings like Noah's dove
I'd fly the river to the one I love
Fare thee well, my honey
Fare thee well

(Bob Dylan: Dink’s Song ~ traditional)

A Nova Scotian performs a related song:

Please do meet me tonight in the moonlight
Please do meet me tonight all alone ....
Oh, if I had the wings of a swallow
Over these prison walls I would fly
(Wilf Carter: Prisoner's Song ~ traditional)

Another Nova Scotian performs the same song:

Please meet me tonight in the moonlight
Please meet me tonight all alone ....
Now if I had the wings of an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly
(Hank Snow: Prisoner's Song ~ traditional)

The song is alluded to in the lyrics below:

The branches cast their shodows over stone
Won't you meet me out in the moonlight alone?
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)

And ‘angels’ there be in the song quoted beneath:

He spoke of his angel, a dear baby girl
He loved every footstep, he loved every curl
But she went to heaven, just one year ago
The angels came for her, at the first fall of snow
(Molly O'Day: At The First Fall Of Snow ~ Lorene Rose)

The bluegrass song gets alluded to in the following lyrics:

I saw the first fall of snow
I saw the flowers come and go
(Bob Dylan: I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You)

Reminds one as well of a famous poem:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock)

The singing of such songs are divided by some analysts thereof into two eras:

ie, ‘PM’ ~ Pre-Maritimers taking over the world; ‘AM’ ~ After-Maritimers take over the world.

A traditional ballad from the lumber woods of New Brunswick:

I landed in New Brunswick close by the lumbering country .....
Oh, there is danger on the ocean where the waves roll mountains high
There is danger on the battlefield where the angry bullets fly
There is danger in the old north wood for death lurks silent there
(Bonnie Dobson: Peter Amberley ~ traditional)

The above song from the Maritimes paid tribute to in lyrics below that involve a murder:

And there's danger on the ocean where the salt sea waves split high
And there's danger on the battlefield where the shells of bullets fly
And there's danger in this open world where men fight to be free ....
Farewell to the old north woods of which I used to roam
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of Donald White)

The following performance features yet another singer from Nova Scotia:

Well, I'm walking down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
"Goodbye" is too good a word, babe
So l'll just say, "Fare thee well"

(Ann Murray – with Glen Campbell – : Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright ~ Bob Dylan)

https://youtu.be/x8IclOl9emI

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 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

Maggie’s Farm (1965) part II – Even the president of the United States

by Jochen Markhorst

The former President is a fan. Since 2015 Barack Obama annually publishes his Spotify playlist. On the first, his August 2015 summer holiday list, Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” is ranked fourth on the “Summer Day List”. In August 2020, “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”, which has just been released, is among the 53 songs of the “2020 Summer Playlist”.

The president’s lists are quite eclectic, similar in colour to an average episode of Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. If he really, really had to choose, Stevie Wonder would be his all-time favourite, but Dylan surely is a contender and does reach his personal Top 3. “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music,” as Obama says at the 2012 Medal of Freedom ceremony. This is, of course, partly the usual trumpet of praise that goes with an award ceremony, but sincere as well. As Obama’s awe also resounds when he talks about the one time he had the chance to get to know Dylan personally.

That was in February 2010, when a Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement is organised in the White House. Surprisingly, Dylan accepts an invitation. About what he will play he remains vague until the last moment, but eventually it is a breath-taking performance of “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, accompanied only by piano and double bass. Later, Obama tells Rolling Stone the details of his “meeting” with the legend.

“He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal. Usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played The Times They Are A-Changin’. A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage – I’m sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it – then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”

Two years before that, during the 2008 election campaign that will end with his first victory, Obama has already revealed part of his playlist, again to Rolling Stone, demonstrating his Dylan love:

“I have probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod. “Maggie’s Farm” is one of my favorites during the political season. It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric.”

… Obama thus assigning a kind of therapeutic, or at least inspirational, value to “Maggie’s Farm”. And then explicitly to its words – which he apparently interprets in a way that appeals to him.

Despite its apparent clarity and simplicity, the song, like the Very Great Dylan songs, indeed offers a multitude of interpretation possibilities. In that respect “Maggie’s Farm” has the Kafkaesque quality of the John Wesley Harding songs Dylan will write two years later.

At universities it is an intellectual finger exercise for Kafka students: “write a historical, a biographical, a Marxist and a religious interpretation of (for example) Kafka’s Der Aufbruch” – an extremely short story (145 words), written in extremely clear sentences and simple words that nevertheless allows a multitude of interpretations. A similar task has never been given to the Dylanologists, but that – obviously – does not stop the multitude of interpretations coming in.

The anti-political, socially critical interpretation is a fairly popular one. And one for which the average student of literature would not turn his hand. “Maggie’s Farm” symbolises “society”, the successive archetypes (Maggie’s brother, pa and ma) can easily be seen as social institutions, (respectively the exploitative market economy, the repressive legislator and enforcer, and the manipulating press, for example). Surrounding songs on Bringing It All Back Home, like “Gates Of Eden” and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” could support this viewpoint; both songs can effortlessly be interpreted as expressions of systemic, anti-establishment beliefs, too.

The faction of Dylanologists who see the song as an encryption of personal, biographical worries of the artist Dylan is larger. “Maggie’s Farm” then expresses the reckoning with the folk movement, marking Dylan’s conversion to rock music and farewell to one-dimensional, finger-pointing songs. These interpreters of course point to verse fragments such as I got a head full of ideas and especially to the last verse:

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

… and find confirmation in the special circumstances of the live debut, that earth-shattering premiere at the Newport Folk Festival, in the biographical fact that Dylan played the archetypal fingerpointing song “Only A Pawn In Their Game” at Silas McGee’s Farm, and in the cynical put-down they sing while you slave.

All right and all wrong, of course – as it should be, with the Very Great Dylan songs. Dylan himself, however, sees no exceptional metaphorical power or value.

It seems that Dylan dashes this song off, casually during a spare quarter of an hour. It’s the only album track of which only one take exists, judging by The Cutting Edge (2015), the collection of all studio recordings for the magical trio Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. For comparison: even album-filler and later B-side “On The Road Again” gets thirteen takes. The missing poetry is a further indication of an ad hoc theory; unlike most other album tracks, the lyrics of “Maggie’s Farm” contain no surrealism, no literary curiosities, no “brilliant way of rhyming and putting together refrains, and his pictorial thinking”, as the Nobel Prize Committee will characterize his mid-60s work later.

“Maggie’s Farm” is recorded at the beginning of the third and final Bringing It All Back Home session, 15 January 1965. Neither after this one and only take, nor after its release on the LP (22 March), does Dylan himself seem to recognise its quality – nor does he seem to attach any particular importance to it. In February and March, he performs on the East Coast, in Canada and in California, in April and May he tours England, but “Maggie’s Farm” does not once appear on the set list. CBS nevertheless sees something in it; in June the song is released on single in the States as well as in Europe (only to flop on both sides of the ocean).

The decision to perform it at Newport is probably opportunistic. Dylan doesn’t have a band of his own yet, and for a band scrambled together on the spot (with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band who happen to be present) “Maggie’s Farm” is simple enough to perform without significant rehearsal time.

It’s Dylan’s first electric performance and it’s likely that he hasn’t foreseen the impact at all. Which is understandable; after all, at the same festival Paul Butterfield and Howlin’ Wolf also play electrically, and that goes without any fuzz. A year later, after being jeered at, being booed and being angrily heckled dozens of times, Dylan still has trouble understanding all this hullabaloo. He addresses the English public in London on 27 May 1966:

“What you’re just hearing here now is the sound of the songs…you’re not hearing anything else except the songs, the sound…of the words…and sounds…so, you know, you can take it or leave it. (…) I’m sick of people asking what does it mean. It means NOTHING.”

Anyway, the choice of “Maggie’s Farm” at Newport is a fortunate one. Its performance elevates the song to the canon, to one of the milestones of the 60s. The song is quoted in songs, films, newspaper articles and novels, catering establishments and beer producers borrow the name and in the 80’s, when Maggie Thatcher divides and rules, the song gets an unforeseen, further deepening and topical value. It is, obviously, covered in all corners of the music world, from bluegrass to blues to heavy metal to folk. Blues suits the song best, probably.

Eventually, Dylan did roll over; after having more or less ignored the song for ten years, it has been on the set list with great regularity since 1976 – in 2020 “Maggie’s Farm” is, according to Olof Björner, in the ninth place of Dylan’s Most Performed Songs, with 1064 performances.

And still in the twenty-first century, forty-three years after that one and only volatile take on a freezing cold Friday in New York in January ’65, even the President of the United States puts “Maggie’s Farm” on a pedestal.

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

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 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

By Aaron Galbraith

Dylan’s first recorded and released work was as harmonica player for Harry Belafonte on his version of “Midnight Special” – mentioned recently in part 1 of Jochen’s commentary on “Maggie’s Farm” 

This was released on the album “The Midnight Special” in 1962, and has appeared on various Belafonte “best of” collections many times over the years.

An alternative, previously unreleased take 1 was included on the “May Your Song Always Be Sung Again” Dylan tribute album. So here we have Bob Dylan’s first ever performance in a studio environment, June 1961.

Belafonte talks about the incident in his book, My Songs. The original player, Sonny Terry, called in sick to the session, so Dylan was drafted in at the last minute. He turned up with a bag of cheap harmonicas, found the right one, blew it for a few takes, took his $50 and left the studio, tossing the harmonica in the trash on the way out (they were so cheap after you blew them a few times they were useless).

Moving on to Dylan’s second ever appearance on record, again, backing an established singer on harmonica, this time it’s Carolyn Hester. Three tracks appeared on her self titled 1962 album.

Saving the best to last is this version of “Come Back Baby”. Just listen to what Dylan does in the solo, kicking off around the 1:50 mark. He stays on the same note for almost 20 seconds – making it six bars long. You’d have to be brave, foolish or extremely confident in your abilities to attempt something like that in one of your first sessions as a performer. Dylan absolutely nails this one.

(Tony adds: In case you are interested, the band is playing in the key of A, and Dylan’s held note is an E.  That is fine for the opening chord, but as the song moves onto the chord of D, the E note that Dylan is holding clashes with the straight D major chord, and makes it sound like the more exciting D9.  D9 is a perfectly acceptable chord, although not often used, and it gives the instrumental section more spice, which is helpful since the band is in essence continuing to play the same music as it plays when the vocalist is singing.   Dylan’s not the only harmonica player to have done this, and certainly not the first, but he finds a moment to make it work, adding more (the D9) by doing nothing (holding the same note).  It certainly works).

Dylan’s final session as a side man from 1962 was as a harmonica player, and occasionally backing vocals for Big Joe Williams and Victoria Spivey on a series of recordings released in 1962 and a follow up volume in 1972. A picture from these sessions was used on the back cover of New Morning, yes, that’s Bob with Victoria Spivey.

The original album released in 1962 was called “Three Kings And A Queen”, the three Kings being Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes and Lonnie Johnson with the Queen being Victoria Spivey herself.

The original album released in 1962 was called “Three Kings And A Queen”, the three Kings being Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes and Lonnie Johnson with the Queen being Victoria Spivey herself.

The original album released in 1962 was called “Three Kings And A Queen”, the three Kings being Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes and Lonnie Johnson with the Queen being Victoria Spivey herself.

Dylan appears on two tracks with Big Joe Williams, “Sitting On Top Of The World” and “Wichita”. Only the first track is available on line to listen to, and it’s a revelation. Dylan’s performance is amazing and he is even allowed a line or two of vocals on his own.

A second volume from the sessions was released in 1972, called “Kings And The Queen, Volume 2”. Unfortunately nothing is available on line to listen to but the songs with Dylan are “It’s Dangerous” (with Spivey) and the intriguingly titled “Big Joe, Dylan & Victoria”.

If you want to hear those extra Dylan tracks you’ll have to search out original copies of the 2 volumes, they will likely set you back $25-$50 for the first volume and anything up to $100 for volume 2.

Dylan was obviously impressed by Big Joe Williams at that time. He was playing a version of Big Joe’s “Baby Please Don’t Go”  in 61/62. It was dropped pretty quickly and strangely he never returned to it again in a live setting.

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 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

by Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Please note, since we put this post on line we have had a report that the videos themselves are not visible in all parts of the world.  If you find you can’t access any of  them please do write in, saying which country you are in.  If you can find the official video of the song elsewhere please do send in (using the form below) the complete link to the file page and a note of which country you are in.  Thanks.

Always on the look out for something different to contemplate in the Universe of Dylan, we (well, Aaron actually) had the idea of looking back at the official Dylan videos for individual songs.

And so for the first in this series Aaron has selected the three official videos produced for the Empire Burlesque’ singles: Tight Connection, Emotionally Yours and When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky.

Aaron:   First up, Tight Connection. Now I did a bit of a deep dive on this, because to be honest, I don’t get what’s even happening here!

It was directed by Paul Schrader who, amongst other things, wrote the screenplay for four Scorsese movies, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation Of Christ and Bringing Out The Dead. He’s even got an Oscar nomination, so that’s not a bad C.V.

But somehow we ended up with this strange video, Dylan’s “acting” is awkward at best and the less said about the 80s fashion sense the better.

Perhaps Tony, with his creative writing skills can come up with a narrative that brings all this together in a way that is understandable.

I read a piece online which describes the video, “True to form for both artists, the video is an elliptical and visually ambiguous affair, something either half-remembered or imagined all together.

Schrader envisions a glittering, metropolitan Tokyo, wrapping our hero up in a surreal web of mistaken identity, dreamlike romance, Cold War geopolitics, and Yakuza/punk rock conflict. Wide pans and sudden zooms only add to the disorienting effect, as Dylan wanders the city, searching for something we wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe”.

Schrader, while working on the video for “Tight Connection,” said: “Bob, if you ever hear I’m doing another music video, take me out in the backyard and hose me down.” True to his word, this was the only music video he ever made.

Tony: One of the things that anyone who works in the arts normally realises early on is that just because you can work in one art form that does not mean you necessarily know how to work in another.  What can turn out as a sublime moment of creativity and originality in one’s normal medium and mode of working can equally look forced and fake if one changes media.  And that’s what seems (to me) to happen here.  Bob looks utterly misplaced, the surrealism looks amateur… it is all pretty horrible.  Mind you, I don’t care for the track much either, so that doesn’t help.

I really can’t find one redeeming feature, and I do hope someone will write in and point out to me what is good about this video.

Thus I turn to the next piece with concern if not trepidation…

Aaron: The next two videos for Emotionally Yours and When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky are more straightforward, shot in artful black and white and focusing more on a performance of the song.

Here is Emotionally Yours

Aaron:  This one was directed by Dave Stewart and features Mike Campbell. For some reason Dylan sits next to a piano but chooses to strum on his guitar despite the fact that the piano is the main instrument in the song and there is only the barest trace of acoustic guitar in the music! I suspect the director expected Dylan to mime the piano but Bob being Bob chose the guitar. There is also some business going on with Dylan and a girl swinging in a tree, Bob seems to say something that upsets her and she runs off. He doesn’t seem too bothered.

Tony: OK Aaron, you don’t really need me on this do you?  You’ve nailed it.  The only thing I wondered was whether Bob or someone else said, “There’s got to be something weird in this; it is too straightforward.”  Hence the guitar.

Sadly, I find, as with the previous piece, nothing at all to draw me into this video – if it were not for having agreed with Aaron to write the review, I’d just listen to the music.

The only thing I found interesting was when the lead guitarist turns up, they share the table to sit on, only it seems to have moved a bit to accommodate them.  And when one starts noticing things like that it suggests the video is not really working.

As for the last ten seconds, I found that utterly horrible.  Really, really awful.

Aaron: Now, “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky”.

The directors are Eddie Arno  and Markus Innocenti and this time Dave Stewart is in the band. The band all pile in the bus and head off to the gig and have to learn the song on the way. It is a fairly straightforward performance video but there is a side story going through of a girl in the crowd and some kids outside trying to look in and falling off some trash cans. All very standard 80s MTV stuff but at least the video gives us an otherwise unavailable edit of the song and Bob and the band attempt to invent a new dance craze about half way through. This suffered the same fate as the attempted one near the end of the Tight Connection video and roundly failed to catch on.

Tony: OK one reason why I turned into being a guy who writes about music, rather than a reviewer of videos is because I find the music much more interesting.

Please tell me, what actually is there that is worth watching in this video?  I can list one hundred things that are worth contemplating in the song itself, and then again in this version of the song, but not in relation to the video.

In fact I really would love someone who knows about the videos to tell me what actually appeals here.   Is there a reason why we get one shot rather than another?  That is what is puzzling me.

But please don’t take this to mean that I am against all Dylan videos.  I haven’t gone back and watched it in a long time but I seem to recall a video for the Wonder Boys promotional video using “Things have changed” which was really intriguing.  But I am really struggling here.

What audience is this made for?  Obviously not me, but for whom?  Is it for us real Dylan fans?  Or is it to attract non-Dylan fans in for the first time?

And I mean this: do we have any kind reader who can explain to me something in any of these featured videos that makes it actually worth watching?

Please either write in, in the normal way, or if you would like to have an article of your own in response to my negative comments here, just write it out as a word document, and email it to Tony@schools.co.uk and you can show me why I am so utterly wrong about these videos doing nothing to enhance the songs, or our image of Dylan.

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 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood