Untold Dylan

by Jochen Markhorst

PLAYBOY: Do you think you have a purpose and a mission?
BOB DYLAN: Henry Miller said it: The role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusionment.
Playboy interview, March 1978

They met once, Dylan and Henry Miller, but that wasn’t really a success. Dylan is with Joan Baez in Big Sur, California, in the late summer of ’63, and Baez casually mentions that Miller lives nearby. She happens to know him. The fan Dylan wants to meet him, and after the Baez concert in Los Angeles (October 12th), where Dylan makes his Hollywood Bowl debut as an opener and accompanist for Baez, she takes him and sister Mimi to the famous writer. In the liner notes of Another Side Of he incorporates an impression of that encounter:

henry miller stands on other side of ping pong table an’ keeps talkin’ about me. “did you ask the poet fellow if he wants something t’ drink” he says t’someone gettin’ all the drinks. i drop my ping pong paddle an’ look at the pool. my worst enemies don’t even put me down in such a mysterious way.

At that time, August ’64, it still seems to be a somewhat surreal memory of a fictitious encounter. But Henry Miller is indeed a fanatical ping-pong player, and in the same Playboy interview in 1978 in which he quotes the above words of Miller, it seems to be a real, true memory: “Yeah, I met him. Years ago. Played ping-pong with him,” which he repeats a year later, in the interview for L’Expresse with French journalist Philippe Adler (“we played table tennis”).

Years later, February 1975, when asked about Dylan in the Rolling Stone interview with Dylan fan Jonathan Cott, Henry Miller remembers:

“I have no way of knowing whether Bob Dylan was influenced by me. You know, Bob Dylan came to my house ten years ago. Joan Baez and her sister brought him and some friends to see me. But Dylan was snooty and arrogant. He was a kid then, of course. And he didn’t like me. He thought I was talking down to him, which I wasn’t. I was trying to be sociable. But we just couldn’t get together. But I know that he is a character, probably a genius, and I really should listen to his work. I’m full of prejudices like everybody else. My kids love him and the Beatles and all the rest.”

Dylan remains an admirer. He often mentions Miller when asked about his favourite writers, Miller drops by in Tarantula, and in 2000 that enigmatic line from the Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed” (I feel like putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street) seems to be a paraphrase of an excerpt from Miller’s Tropic Of Capricorn: “Sometimes he’d stand her on her hands and push her around the room that way, like a wheelbarrow.”

Overlapping is the love for songs by both greats. Quantitatively less often than in Dylan’s Chronicles, of course, but in any Miller book about every four or five pages a song, a musical scene or a memory of a song comes along.

At the crossroads of both declarations of love lies John Jacob Niles. Miller writes full of admiration in Plexus (1952):

“Over the coffee and liqueurs we would sometimes listen to John Jacob Niles’ recordings. Our favorite was “I Wonder As I Wander”, sung in a clear, high-pitched voice with a quaver and a modality all his own. The metallic clang of his dulcimer never failed to produce ecstasy. He had a voice which summoned memories of Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere. There was something of the Druid in him. Like a psalmodist, he intoned his verses in an ethereal chant which the angels carried aloft to the Glory seat. When he sang of Jesus, Mary and Joseph they became living presences. A sweep of the hand and the dulcimer gave forth magical sounds which caused the stars to gleam more brightly, which peopled the hills and meadows with silvery figures and made the brooks to babble like infants.”

In every respect (content, stylistic and even word choice) comparable to Dylan in Chronicles (2004):

“I listened a lot to a John Jacob Niles record, too. Niles was nontraditional, but he sang traditional songs. A Mephistophelean character out of Carolina, he hammered away at some harplike instrument and sang in a bone chilling soprano voice. Niles was eerie and illogical, terrifically intense and gave you goosebumps. Definitely a switched-on character, almost like a sorcerer. Niles was otherworldly and his voice raged with strange incantations. I listened to Maid Freed from the Gallows and Go Away from My Window plenty of times.”

Well-chosen words, from both writers. And Dylan implicitly reveals the sources for two of his songs. “Maid Freed From The Gallows” has given him the plot for “Seven Curses” (1963), and “Go Away From My Window” leaves traces, too:

Go away from my window
Go away from my door
Go away way from my bedside
And bother me no more

…so, the opening line, the rhyme scheme and the theme for “It Ain’t Me, Babe”.

John Jacob Niles, however, has the words spoken by the girl, the girl with whom the narrator is in love and by whom he is rejected. According to his own words, this is a true story. At least, that’s how Niles introduces the song, in 1957:

“I wrote Go Away From My Window for a girl, with blue eyes and blond hair, and the year was 1908. I was exactly sixteen years of age. The girl didn’t think much of the song, she didn’t think much of me. Since then, a great many people have sung Go Away From My Window.”

Touching. Though not very believable – it is not very likely that a sixteen-year-old boy in love would try to charm his chosen one with a song in which the woman says that the guy should get lost. And “I wrote” also could do with some nuance; the Roud Folk Song Index dates the first of a long, long line of “Go From My Window” songs 1611, and the title is even mentioned as early as 1578. With a different tenor, though; usually these are songs in which the woman tries to warn her lover, who is standing outside under the window, that her husband has come home unexpectedly – it is the first example of the intrigue ballad of the night visit.

Niles changes the plot, and Dylan eventually tilts the motive. This brings him back to the narrative of the seventeenth century “Go From My Window”, with a different, much more vicious mentality, of course, and even with the same constellation of persons:

Go melt back into the night, babe
Everything inside is made of stone
There’s nothing in here moving
An’ anyway I’m not alone

 In Dylan’s song the third party returns, present behind the back of the speaker, just like five centuries ago the party with whom the protagonist will spend the night.

“It Ain’t Me, Babe” makes a huge impression. Joan Baez loves the song and records it as early as 1964 for her album Joan Baez 5 (which also includes her cover of Niles’ “Go Away From My Window”); it becomes a year later the breakthrough hit for The Turtles, still in 1965 Johnny Cash scores a hit with it as well, with future wife June Carter; Jan & Dean; Nancy Sinatra; Peter, Paul & Mary; Bryan Ferry through Bettye LaVette in 2018… the song has been continuously covered in all echelons of the pop world for over fifty years and the end is not yet in sight.

As a catchphrase, the song title has long since penetrated into the collective cultural baggage. In lawsuits, for example.  Like in New York 2003, in the case Kinkopf v. Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority. An insignificant dispute about whether or not tolls have been wrongly collected, on which the judge rules in writing:

“Rather than provide any documentation to support his contention such as showing that his vehicles were elsewhere at those times and places, claimant offers the Bob Dylan “It Ain’t Me, Babe” plea.”

A feminist magazine from Berkeley calls itself It Ain’t Me Babe in 1970; a writer of an erotic novel uses the title in 2014; magazine articles; episodes of TV series; titles of graphic works of art; and in 2005 a racehorse is born and is given the name It Ain’t Me Babe, the poor soul.

The biographical crime film Blow (2001, Ted Demme), starring Johnny Depp, goes one step further. George Jung (Johnny Depp) is arrested with 660 pounds of marijuana and the judge asks: how do you plead?

George: [stands] “Alright. Well, in all honesty, I don’t feel that what I’ve done is a crime. And I think it’s illogical and irresponsible for you to sentence me to prison. Because, when you think about it, what did I really do? I crossed an imaginary line with a bunch of plants. I mean, you say I’m an outlaw, you say I’m a thief, but where’s the Christmas dinner for the people on relief? Huh? You say you’re looking for someone who’s never weak but always strong, to gather flowers constantly whether you are right or wrong, someone to open each and every door, but it ain’t me, babe, huh? No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe. It ain’t me you’re looking for, babe. You follow?”

It is a brilliant, absurd monologue, which does justice to music historical cross connections; George connects Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe” with a verse from Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd”, which Dylan in turn has quoted in “Song To Woody” and paraphrased in “Absolutely Sweet Marie”.

Part of the Olympic magic the song owes to contrast; the lyrics are blunt and mean, almost cynical, but set-up, composition and structure of the musical accompaniment do not match that; the introductory lines to the chorus promise a We Are The Champions-like hymn, the chorus itself is, well, jubilantly comes pretty close. “It’s not me!” the narrator cheers triumphantly.

Quite indestructible, the combination of these lyrics with this magnetic melody. Thus, almost all covers are fun, at the very least – you have to dress it up very, very corny to compromise the power of the song. The downside is: it is apparently difficult to add something. All those nice covers are actually quite interchangeable. Only radically different arrangements stand out. Not necessarily better than the original, but some of them do surprise, at any rate.

At the top of that category: the old-fashioned, glowing soul approach by Bedford Incident, a completely unknown band with a completely unknown single from May 1969 – with a magnificent harmony-intermezzo and an overflowing, irresistible arrangement. Horns, violins, four male vocalists and a complete band – fortunately, Bedford Incident completely fails in Henry Miller’s function-requirement to inoculate the world with disillusionment. Although… Bedford Incident’s single never got any further than “Best Leftfield Pick” on Radio KIBH in the remote village of Sewald, Alaska, August 1969.
Which, with all due respect for Sewald and Radio KIBH, is a bit of a disillusionment, obviously.

And in case of difficulty, here’s an alternative source…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frVt1jGDS6Y

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

By Mark Thompson

Stanza 1:

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews, and Catholics, and the Muslims all pray
I can tell they're Proddie from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it's just what I need

The opening stanza makes most sense in conjunction with the second, but, briefly, note the stock metaphor of “women in powder and paint,” an image which is usually deployed to connote insincerity or artifice.  As this stanza and the next are about religion, it is worth noting that one thrust of the Protestation Reformation and Henry VIII’s schism was the removal of painted statues and much of the adornment and ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church.  This association is reinforced by the second couplet, in which Protestants appear in a separate reference from the other three named religions; in the third, the singer calls for that “old-time religion,” a phrase generally associated with Baptist and related  fundamentalist Protestant sects in rural America.

Thus, the first stanza sets up a commonplace contrast between artifice and something more intense.  The items in the contrast are religions and it may make some uncomfortable to read this as an explicit preference for the fundamentalist style of religious experience instead of endorsing politically correct diversity.  It’s possible to read the contrast in a way that the religions are merely metaphors for, say, contemporary media versus the old time music that Bob venerates.

Some have noted that the Proddie reference invokes an association with Van Morrison, who covered some Jimmy Reed songs.  It is also worth noting that Van has been known to drop in and sing during services at a fundamentalist church in Southern California, not at all far from Dylan’s Malibu residence. It’s thus possible that this stanza and the next are written with Van in mind, and might even stem from a conversation between them on Jimmy Reed.

Stanza 2:

For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory
Go tell it on the mountain, go tell the real story
Tell it in that straightforward, puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person's alone
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, godspeed
Thump on the Bible, proclaim a creed

In calling on a deceased person to speak, and tell a story, the second stanza reminds me of the similar conjuring of the spirit of Wolfman Jack in “Murder Most Foul,” although here the invited guest will talk about himself and not the historic events narrated in the other song.

This stanza is a fairly straightforward continuation of the prior one. The first line is a phrase appended initially, by Protestant sects, to the “Lord’s Prayer” and “Go Tell it on the Mountain” is an African-American spiritual; it’s also the title of a 1953 James Baldwin novel about the importance of the a Pentecostal church in African-American life. It makes perfect sense in a song about a bluesman to invoke these associations.

The next couplet relates back to the contrast in the first stanza, calling for “the real story” to be told “straightforward” and in “puritanical” tone, i.e., no powder and paint.

And last, the singer asks  the spirit he’s summoned up to be a “Bible thumper,” another stock fundamentalist image.

As before, if the religious preference makes one uncomfortable, you can always metaphorize it as a contrast between a purer form of art, say the blues or folk music, and more powdered and painted forms.

The singer calls on the spirit of Jimmy Reed to “proclaim a creed” but actually the spirit delivers an autobiographical sketch in three Dylanized stanzas.

Third stanza:

You won't amount to much, the people all said
‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took off my shoes, throw 'em in the crowd
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye, goodnight
Put a jewel in your crown and I put out the lights.

Per genius dot com, the line about playing guitar behind his head refers to other black musicians, such as Charley Patton, perhaps even Hendrix, who did that on occasion. Also, the line about “jewel in your crown” refers to the inlays of Jimmy Reed’s guitar.  So basically, this stanza is portraying Jimmy Reed as a live performer.

Stanza 4:

They threw everything at me, everything in the book
I had nothing to fight with but a butcher's hook
They had no pity, they never lend a hand
I can't sing a song that I don't understand
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye, good luck
I can't play the record 'cause my needle got stuck

This stanza, I believe, conveys two facts about Jimmy Reed’s life offstage,  First, like so many bluesmen, he did not get paid all his royalties or other earnings for the songs he wrote and the records he made.  The people who robbed and cheated him are the “they” referred to several times in the stanza.  Second, the reference to “a butcher’s hook”  makes sense when one learns (see Wikipedia entry on Jimmy Reed) that, after WWII, Reed worked in a meat-packing plant in Akron Ohio. It’s a very economical way to squeeze that fact into the larger context of a bluesman not making enough money off his calling.

Stanza 5:

Transparent woman in a transparent dress
Suits you well, I must confess
I’ll break open your grapes, I’ll suck out the juice
I need you like my head needs a noose
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long
I thought I could resist her but I was so wrong

This is where the muses separate the Nobel laureates from the rest of us.

In reading Jimmy Reed’s obituaries online, it seems he died while on tour in San Francisco, trying to make a comeback after losing years to alcoholism.

Picture a bottle of really cheap vodka in your mind, then read the stanza again.

Clear liquid? Clear bottle? I thought I could resist her but …

This stanza is a poetic, to say the least, reference to Reed’s alcohol addiction.

Stanza 6:

God be with you, brother dear
If you don't mind me asking what brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I'm just looking for the man
Need to see where he's lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, and everything within ya
Can't you hear me calling from down in Virginia?

This closes the song and doesn’t’ require much exploration.  Bob continues his late period cinematic technique of composing lyrics that are basically movie dialogue.

The specific exchange here reminds me of news articles about Bob visiting the boyhood homes of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps he made a visit to Reed’s birthplace, although that is in Mississippi and not Virginia.  But word swap is a common Dylan trick, and in this case “down in Virginia” is the title of one of Reed’s songs.

I picture Bob making pilgrimages during the Never-Ending Tour to sites that are associated with his musical inspiration.  I don’t know if he really does, but it’s a nice image.  Maybe he sees them as shrines to the patron saints of the old time musical tradition he seems to venerate (go back to stanzas 1 and 2).

Now that we’re at the end of the song, and we see how “Jimmy” responded to the call at the end of Stanza 2 to “proclaim a creed,” we can perhaps infer that, to Bob, a song and dance man on a Never-Ending Tour, one’s “creed” is not one’s formal sect, but how one lives one’s life.

Borges wrote, “Every poem, given enough time, becomes an elegy.”  Here is a fine elegy for a deceased fellow craftsman of Bob.

It blows me away that Bob is nearly 80, probably a billionaire, and he has both the mental capacity and the commitment to craft such a heartfelt tribute to a man like Reed.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

By Tony Attwood

Boom Boom Mancini was written by Warren Zevon and is a song about a boxer – as we all know Bob Dylan has a particular interest in boxing and has recorded Hurricane and Davey Moore.  He also sang “The Boxer” on Self Portrait.

Ray Mancini was born in 1961, competing as a professional boxer from 1979 to 1992, and then after retirement worked as an actor and commentator.   He held the WBA lightweight title and took his nickname from his father, also a boxer, Lenny Mancini.

The issue most people in the world of boxing recall about Mancini was his fight with Korean challenged Duk Koo Kim which Mancini won in 14 rounds.   However immediately after the fight Kim collapsed and four days later he died.

Mancini was deeply affected by the tragedy, for which he is said to have blamed himself.  Kim’s mother committed suicide three months after the fight and the referee of the contest committed suicide the following year.

The song was written and recorded originally by Warren Zevon.  Here are the lyrics

Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon

From Youngstown, Ohio, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
A lightweight contender, like father like son
He fought for the title with Frias in Vegas
And he put him away in round number one

Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon

When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can't take the punches, it don't mean a thing

Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon

When they asked him who was responsible
For the death of do Koo Kim
He said, "Some one should have stopped the fight
And told me it was him."

They made hypocrite judgements after the fact
But the name of the game is be hit and hit back

Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon

Here is Warren Zevon’s version…

Warren William Zevon who wrote the song was born January 24, 1947 and died in 2003.  He started out as a session musician, jingle composer, songwriter, and bandleader, and his career took off when Linda Ronstadt started to record his music.

Thereafter he particularly became known for “Werewolves of London” and “Lawyers Guns and Money” recorded by himself, and a series of hits recorded by other performers such as “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, “Accidentally Like a Martyr”, “Mohammed’s Radio”, “Carmelita”, and “Hasten Down the Wind.”     He also recorded “Knockin on Heaven’s Door.”

Here is Bob’s one off performance of Boom Boom.

https://youtu.be/eNKWLfwJEKk

This was performed in Key Arena, Seattle WA, on 4 October 2002.

Farewell to the Gold

https://youtu.be/to6z40EzWhg

This was from November 1992 in Youngstown Ohio and it gives me a chance to promote one of my favourite songs…

It was written by Paul Metsers a New Zealand folk singer who has spent a lot of time in the UK, but who seemed to stop writing and performing sometime around his 50th birthday.  A ludicrously early date but it did at least give him time to write and record “Farewell to the gold.”

Shotover river, your gold it is waning
It's weeks since the colour I've seen
But it's no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming
So I'll pack up and make the break clean

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see you gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

It's nearly two years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound
With Jimmy the prospector - he was another
For the hills of Otago was bound

We worked the Cardrona's dry valley all over
Old Jimmy Williams and me
But they were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover
So we headed down there just to see

We sluiced and we cradled for day after day
Making hardly enough to get by
Til a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July

By Larry Fyffe

During the American Civil War, general Stonewall Jackson is accidentally shot by his own men. Surgeon Zimmerman puts the monstrous Civil War back together by gathering alliterative parts and pieces from different poets in his song ” ‘Cross The Green Mountain”:

From Julia Howe:

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
(The Battle-Hymn Of The Republic)

To this:

Altars are burning, the flames falling wide
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From William Yeats:

Black out; Heaven blazing into the head
Tragedy wrought to the utmost
(Lapis Lazuli)

To this:

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

From Nathaniel Shepherd:

For the foe had crossed from the other side
That day, in the face of murderous fire
That swept them down in its terrible ire
And their life-blood went to colour the tide
(The Roll Call)

To this:

The foe has crossed over from the other side
They tip their caps from top of a hill
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From Henry Timrod:

But still along yon dim Atlantic line
The only hostile smoke
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine
From some frail floating oak
(Charleston)

And from Henry Melville:

The ravaged land was miles behind
And Loudon spread her landscapes rare
(The Scout Toward Aldie)

To this:

All along the dim Atlantic line
The ravaged land lies miles behind
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From Henry Flash:

Not 'mid the lightning of the stormy fight
Nor in the rush of the vandal foes
Did kingly Death, with his resistless might
Lay the great leader low

(The Death Of Stonewall Jackson)

To this:

Close the eyes of our captain, peace may he know
His long night is done, the great leader is laid low
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From Robert C. Waterston:

The memory of the just
Shall still be dear, whatever their earthly lot
Dust may return to dust
But Virtue lives, and cannot be forgot
(The Departed)

To this:

Pride will vanish, and glory will rot
But virtue lives on, and cannot be forgot
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From William Gannett:

Only ten miles from the city
And how I am lifted away
To the peace that passeth knowing
And the night that is not day
(Sunday On The Hill-Top)

To this:

I'm ten miles outside the city, and I'm lifted away
In an ancient light that is not day
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From Walt Whitman:

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better ....
While they stand at home neat the door, he is dead already
The only son is dead
(Come Up From The Fields Father)

To this:

But he will better soon, he's in a hospital bed
But he'll never be better, he's already dead
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

From Henry Longfellow:

And I saw a vision how far and fleet
That fatal bullet went speeding forth ....
And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town
For one who had passed from cross to crown
(Killed At The Ford)

To this:

The bells of evening have rung
There's blasphemy on the end of the tongue
Let them say that I walked in fair nature's light
And that I was loyal to truth and to right
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

There be biblical allusions in ‘Cross The Green Mountain’:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea
And saw a beast rise up out of the sea
Having seven heads and ten horns
And upon his heads the name of blasphemy
(Book Of Revelations 13:1)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

by mr tambourine

Time Out Of Mind is the most unique album in Dylan’s career for many reasons.

First of all, the timing of its release is very specific in itself.   Seven years without any new original material (since Under The Red Sky), Bob having heart problems that almost killed him (giving the critics a warmer approach to the album) and a lot of experimentation and uncertainty, that almost lead to the album not even being released.

Bob’s sessions usually pass quickly. Sometimes there’s a lot of uncertainty and experimentation too, but the album always gets rushed and released as soon as it can be.  However Time Out Of Mind wasn’t such a case. Bob took his time more than ever.

The entire process started in what seems to be middle to late 1996, and the album was finally released in September 1997.   A full year of Dylan overthinking an album. Unheard of!

Despite so much going on, we have very little access to this album’s background and we’re not sure how many songs were there and when they were recorded.

However one of the few pieces of information that I have collected in my years as a Bob researcher, is the so called “Oxnard Demos” which could have been recorded in 1996.

Apparently, these songs were demos only, but still, some of them are probably worthy.  But the good news is, the Bootleg Series team, has found a lot from Time Out Of Mind and they’re definitely working on it, but it’s not sure when they’re gonna release it.   It might as well be the next bootleg series: Volume 16.

Along with the Oxnard Demos, we could see the second appearance for some songs on the Bootleg Series.

On Tell Tale Signs, Bootleg Series volume 8, we have witnessed some mighty fine performances.

Dreamin’ Of You – what appears to be an early version of Standing In The Doorway, but an entirely different song. It even has an official video on Bob Dylan’s official YouTube channel. It would be nice to see how this song came about and did it actually turn into Standing In The Doorway, or was it just another song that just had very similar lyrics.  There’s an Untold review of the song with the video here.

Marchin’ To The City – this one sort of seems like an early version of ‘Til I Fell In Love With You, also containing some of its lyrics. Again, it would be nice to find out if it’s actually the same song or was it just another song.

This song has had two versions on Tell Tale Signs. Both versions are far from a finished song in my opinion, but it does show some promise.

Red River Shore – this song is actually seen by many as a lost masterpiece. I’m one of those people that agrees with that. It’s a heartwrenching ballad filled with touching lyrics, but also the one that’s very comforting on dark lonely nights. It doesn’t seem finished though.

We also have two versions of this one, but both lack a few details to be finished and released songs. Maybe there are more and better versions during the sessions?

I have heard that there might be a version that has the lyrics of Not Dark Yet “she wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind”, unless it’s an error. The two versions on Tell Tale Signs do not contain that lyric. Maybe there’s another version.

Mississippi – originally recorded for Time Out Of Mind, it came as a highlight on Love And Theft in 2001 and one of Dylan’s late career triumphs. Written in 1996 apparently, we have witnessed three different versions on Tell Tale Signs, more than any other song from that Bootleg Series volume, maybe meaning that it was a song which Dylan experimented with the most?

The three versions we’ve heard sound very charming and in some parts better than the L&T version, but as a whole it can not eclipse the released version. Still, it would be nice to see if there might be some really masterful versions out there.

Can’t Wait (alternative) – we have had a chance to hear two versions of this song. One with much clearer vocals and different lyrics (some lyrics that later ended up on Sugar Baby from Love And Theft!) and the other with similar, but still different lyrics and the arrangement similar to Love Sick, maybe even more dark!

Those two versions definitely are one of my highlights of Tell Tale Signs, which to this day is my favorite Dylan bootleg series volume probably.

That should be all that we have so far.

There’s this one song I found listed that’s called “All I Ever Loved Is You”. Could it be a Dylan original or perhaps a cover or maybe even just a sheet title or an alternative name of a song we already know?

People have said that there’s an alternative version of Not Dark Yet, that’s much more beautiful than the album version and also, Highlands is said to be more than 27 minutes long in its alternate form! That confirms the rumors about one of Bob’s interview answers. When asked “were there shorter versions of Highlands” he replied “this is the short version” when talking about the released album version, which is “only” 16 minutes long.

You thought Murder Most Foul was long?

I heard a few more stories.

One is that Daniel Lanois ruined the final production, which probably swallowed the songs more than it should. Although I like Time Out Of Mind in many ways, I do feel that it’s missing something. So maybe it is true? Maybe the session performances were much better than the final cuts?

Also, one interesting story.

As we know, Time Out Of Mind has had 11 songs.

One person sort of familiar with the album said that there were 13 songs total recorded for Time Out Of Mind. That makes me ask “just 13?”.   I would be surprised if Dylan didn’t do any covers during the sessions, because he always seems to do so.

Along with the 11 we already know, he said that there’s Mississippi as the 12th and he said something very interesting then.

“I always wondered if the 13th song was actually Things Have Changed”.

What?

This raises a lot of questions then?

If that’s so, then the list looks like this

1. Love Sick
2. Dirt Road Blues
3. Standing In The Doorway
4. Million Miles
5. Tryin’ To Get To Heaven
6. ‘Til I Fell In Love With You
7. Not Dark Yet
8. Cold Irons Bound
9. Make You Feel My Love
10. Can’t Wait
11. Highlands
12. Mississippi
13. Things Have Changed (?)

What about Red River Shore? Could that mean that Red River Shore might’ve been an early version of Not Dark Yet, based on the lyric “she wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind”? I mean, everybody knew about Red River Shore before it even got released on Tell Tale Signs and everyone was waiting to hear that one more than anything. How come this guy didn’t mention it as the 13th song? Maybe he knows something we don’t know?

Maybe Red River Shore is actually Not Dark Yet. And I never thought of this until writing this very article. I can definitely see similarities between the two songs.

“I followed the river (Red River) and I got to the sea”. Puzzles everywhere.   We gotta find the code somewhere.

This would also mean that Dreamin’ Of You did become Standing In The Doorway and Marchin’ To The City did become ‘Til I Fell In Love With You?

What about the lyrics “my back is to the sun because the light is too intense, I can see what everybody in the world is up against”, early lyrics of Can’t Wait, later used for Sugar Baby? Was Sugar Baby in the mix here too?

Was there maybe a song out there that could be like a hybrid of Things Have Changed and Sugar Baby?

Then again, what’s with this song “All I Ever Loved Is You”?

Could that be the alternate name for one of the songs or an early version of some of the songs that ended up on the album? Like maybe “Make You Feel My Love”? Or was it another song, that hybrid of Things Have Changed and Sugar Baby?

Let’s try again.

1. Love Sick, other than the released version, nothing else. Was there maybe an acoustic demo out there somewhere? Or piano demo? Anything?
2. Dirt Road Blues – again, nothing
3. Standing In The Doorway / Dreamin’ Of You
4. Million Miles – nothing … I do see it resemble Marchin’ To The City a little, but is it actually it? Probably not.
5. Tryin’ To Get To Heaven – again, nothing, maybe some previous demos…
6. ‘Til I Fell In Love With You / Marching To The City
7. Not Dark Yet / Red River Shore + a version more beautiful than the released one
8. Cold Irons Bound – nothing…
9. Make You Feel My Love / perhaps an early version is “All I Ever Loved Is You”?
10. Can’t Wait – multiple alternate versions – very similar to Love Sick in one of those versions and contains future lyrics for Sugar Baby and lyrics that ended up on Tryin’ To Get To Heaven (“you think you’ve lost it all, there’s always more to lose” turned into “when you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more”).
11. Highlands – lasted as long as 27 minutes in its alternate form
12. Mississippi – multiple versions exist, one of the three has lyrics that open the song going like this:

I'm standing in the shadows
With an achin' heart
I'm looking at the world
Tear itself apart
Minutes turn to hours
Hours turn to days
I'm still lovin' you
In a million ways

13. Things Have Changed (?)

Time Out Of Mind definitely has more speculations than the actual trustworthy sources, but it’s certainly an album of experimentation. Tell Tale Signs gave us a hint.

Time Out Of Mind seems, of what we have so far, like a goldmine of great songs (same fate as Infidels it seems) that have uncanny resemblance and connection. It seems like Bob was all over the place with the lyrics. If he didn’t like the lyrics for one song, he was gonna try them on the other.

I’m still surprised that it’s only 13 songs in the mix, but then again, one Dylan song goes through many transformations, it feels like there’s actually 10 different songs that ultimately turn into one.

Forget the Cutting Edge or More Blood More Tracks… This should be the most interesting album step by step walkthrough ever. This needs the Cutting Edge/More Blood More Tracks approach to it. It needs that step by step, chronological order of the entire sessions. I heard that most of it, if not all of it, can be found somewhere.

That would be great because it would give Dylan fans a chance to see the entire sessions for one of the Mod-Bob albums (a popular term among Dylan fans used for a streak of albums from Time Out Of Mind to Rough And Rowdy Ways). We don’t have almost anything from those albums. Love And Theft for example has nothing else but the album itself in circulation. No information about the sessions even.

We know a few things about Modern Times and Together Through Life, but not much. Tempest, not so much either.

Only Time Out Of Mind and Modern Times were covered in Tell Tale Signs, but not as much for us to have any details about how the sessions went.

Hopefully, soon…

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

(I Must) Love You Too Much (1978)

by Jochen Markhorst

 Will Freeman, the protagonist of Nick Hornby’s filmed novel About A Boy (1998), lives a luxurious, empty life in London and can afford it thanks to his father’s inheritance; Dad wrote the Christmas evergreen “Santa’s Super Sleigh”, and his son Will sees the annual royalties from it pouring in by buckets and barrels.

For the plot of book and film adaptation (2002, by the Weitz brothers, starring Hugh Grant) this fact is not too relevant; the Christmas hit is more like a MacGuffin to explain the financing of Freeman’s life. Yet it intrigues. Can an heir to a decades-old Christmas hit live off the royalties? In 2005, a reader of The Guardian wonders about that in a reader’s letter, and the answer comes a week later, November 9, from an experience expert in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, Greg Lake:

I can tell you from experience that it’s lovely to get the old royalty cheque around September every year, but on its own, the Christmas song money isn’t quite enough to buy my own island in the Caribbean.

Greg Lake scored a huge hit in 1975 with “I Believe In Father Christmas”, a song that at the time of his readers’ letter, thirty years later, is still one of the most popular Christmas hits in England, so he has a right to speak.

In February 2014, Greg is told he has pancreatic cancer with metastases. He can still process the bad news in his autobiography, which should have been published in 2012, but will eventually be published posthumously, six months after his death in December 2016. The book, Lucky Man (2017), is a pleasant, sympathetic autobiography, written by a pleasant, sympathetic musician without too much pretension, literary or otherwise. The title refers to Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s first big hit, the 1970 “Lucky Man”, a song Lake wrote as a teenager, and it refers to the moving closing line of the autobiography, written in the face of impending death: “I have been a lucky man.”

Entertaining and interesting enough, all of it, Lake’s memories of ELP, King Crimson, his solo work and his contributions to various occasional projects (such as The Who and Ringo Starr’s All Star Band), though especially interesting for the Dylan fan is his background story to “(I Must) Love You Too Much”.

“(I Must) Love You Too Much”, or “Love You Too Much”, or without brackets (there are several titles in circulation) is one of the “Helena Springs songs”, one of the songs Dylan writes in 1978 together with the young singer from his background choir. He doesn’t record it, but apparently Dylan attaches more importance to it than to “Walk Out In The Rain” and “If I Don’t Be There By Morning”: the song is played live twice, and used a few times at a sound check.

Those live performances are pretty fun. Power rock, propelled by Jerry Scheff’s thundering bass, sharp, Stones-like rhythm guitar and even a concrete riff in the middle-eight… it’s quite a boost. Dylan places the song well, at number 12, between “I Shall Be Released” and “Going, Going, Gone”, just before the break, and both times the end falters a bit (Dylan: “Thank you. We almost played that one right”), but still: both times it is a nice, solid rocker.

For Street Legal, the song is too late anyway. That album was released June 15, the first performance of “Love You Too Much” is September 24th; considering the mistakes while performing, the song hasn’t been rehearsed much yet and probably only recently written. The next album is the first evangelical record, Slow Train Coming, and of course the song doesn’t qualify for that, although on closer inspection a not too dramatic lyrical intervention could have made the song reli-proof. If the you is Christ, the lyrics would have the same, somewhat disparagingly complaining, tone as “I Believe In You”.

Anyway, Dylan rejects the song. But he doesn’t completely forget the song. Two years later, in 1980, Greg Lake calls in. Through an intermediary:

For my debut solo record, I wanted to pay tribute to Bob Dylan by recording one of his songs. I had always been a huge fan of Bob and his songwriting, and I felt that this was as good a time as any for me to pay my respects. The only thing was that I did not really want to do one of his big hits, but rather something less well known. Just purely by coincidence, Tommy Mohler, one of my tour managers at the time, used to work for Bob. He asked him if he had any unreleased material that I could record. Bob explained that he didn’t have any completed songs, but that he did have one song that was halfway written and that he would be more than happy for me to complete it. The title of the song was ‘Love You Too Much’. As a result, I share a co-writing credit with the legendary Bob Dylan (plus Helena Springs). Having finished the writing, I began to record the track at Abbey Road.

That recording is, as can be expected from Greg Lake, a smooth, flawless interpretation, performed by world-class hard rocking musicians, with the only drawback being the sterile 80s sound of the Miami Vice synthesizers. Its strong point is Gary Moore’s Formula 1 guitar solo, which also makes Greg Lake’s jaw drop:

“I asked him if he would like to come into the control room and take a listen to the track but he said that he would rather just play along in real time. […]. Gary’s track was done in one single pass having never heard the song before. To be honest, we were all absolutely floored by his performance.”

Greg asks him on the spot for his band, and Moore accepts. So he is standing next to Lake at the King Biscuit Flower Hour on November 5, 1981, when he plays another superlative of that studio part.

Lake has added and changed some lyrics, but hardly distinctive changes. The original text isn’t really a poetic masterpiece anyway – there’s not much to spoil about it. “(I Must) Love You Too Much” expresses in interchangeable verses the suffering of a loser in love with the wrong woman. His mother warns him, but in vain; he sure wishes he could leave her – but he loves her too much;

Well, my mama said the girl’s puttin’ you down
She’s gonna ruin my life
I must have loved you too much

…and variants thereof. Not surprising, and not too original either – in the blues canon dozens of variants of the same approach can be found, in any case. Arthur Crudup’s classic “Mean Frisco Blues”, for example, from which Dylan drew earlier, for the Basement gem “Santa Fe”;

Well, my mama, she done told me
And my papa told me too
A woman that gets in your face
Lord, she ain't no friend for you

Or Lead Belly’s equally influential “Fannin Street”;

My mama told me
“Women in Shreveport, son
Gonna be the death of you”

… more variants of the song in Dylan’s personal Top 10, the song which echoes in seven, eight Dylan songs, of Harold Arlen’s “Blues In The Night”, one of the many highlights on Sinatra’s Sings For Only The Lonely (1958):

My mama done tol' me, when I was in knee-pants
My mama done tol' me, “Son a woman'll sweet talk
And give ya the big eye, but when the sweet talkin's done
A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing 
        who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night”

 A third life gets “(I Must) Love You Too Much” in 1996, when The Band releases the peculiar album High On The Hog, after Jericho the second reunion album without Robbie Robertson, this time without really strong songs. The interpretation is not substantially different from Dylan’s original approach – funkier and tighter, but otherwise almost identical; also driven by a thunderous bass of presumably Rick Danko, a similar ladies’ choir (with Garth Hudson’s wife Maud), an identical tempo. However, “I Must Love You Too Much” is the most ferocious rocker of the otherwise mediocre, rather colourless album.

Richard Manuel’s replacement, ex-Beach Boy and “secret weapon of The Rolling Stones” (according to Ron Wood) Blondie Chaplin modestly participates in the background and donates one of the most beautiful songs on the album, “Where I Should Always Be”. Toe-curling lyrics, though. About a boy. In love with the wrong woman. No sustainable Christmas hit potential, unfortunately.

You might also enjoy “Unravelling the origins of Dylan’s rarely heard ‘I must love you too much’.”

==========

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

By Tony Attwood

In this series of articles I have been trying to look at each and every Dylan composition and summarise in one or two words the theme within the song.   This has proved reasonably straightforward much of the time (love, lost love, moving on, the blues, surrealism, faith…) but as time passed by it got harder. And in the 21st century, things really get a lot more complex.

I’ve tried to show in these articles (and there is a full year by year index here) that we can tell a lot about where Bob’s thoughts and interests lay by looking at these lyrics, song by song.  Not because the lyrics in detail relate to his real life, but rather that through the generality of the songs’ subject matter we can get an insight into the idea of Bob Dylan the man, and what was concerning him.

Bob has often said that he doesn’t know where his lyrics come from – they come from within, presumably influenced by his emotions, what he has been reading, the music he has been listening to, what films he has seen and so forth.   So my theory is simply that we can get a much better insight into what is on his mind by starting from the premise that what pops into Bob’s mind reflects his current state of thinking and his current interests and feelings.

I also do feel that there has been a strong tendency among commentators to follow Heylin’s lead and primarily to see each song in isolation from those written around the same time.  That approach fails to spot the flow of thoughts and ideas whereas by looking year by year we get a deeper insight into the general flow of thoughts behind the lyrics, in my opinion.

And indeed it’s not been too hard a slog to put this together, at least up to this point.  And so consider the current point in this series, we can note that by 2005 Bob was recognised as the definitive master songwriter of the age, and in response to this he clearly felt even more free that before to meander as and where he liked.  Of course this had always been the case, as witness the subject matter of songs assigned through the Basement Tapes period, where Dylan seemed to be writing and improvising without constraint.

And now, unshackled by any over-arching concern or interest or drive Bob was letting his inner thoughts be expressed in the lyrics more than ever before.

In what follows I am omitting Waiting for the morning light here as I am still not sure of its provenance.  Which leaves us with 13 songs… as ever the simple summary of the subject matter appears in brackets after each song title.

• Tell Ol’ Bill  (It’s just life)
• Can’t escape from you (Lost love)
• Thunder on the Mountain (It’s just life, its complex, don’t try to tie it down)
• Spirit on the water (Love)
• Rollin and Tumblin (Lost love, trying to put it all together)
• When the deal goes down (Death)
• Someday Baby  (Lost love, Love gone wrong)
• Working Man’s Blues #2: (Economic woes in capitalist society)
• Beyond the Horizon: the sources and the meaning (Love, hope)
• Nettie Moore (Lost love)
• The Levee’s Gonna Break (Life’s going to change, time to move on…)
• Ain’t talkin’   (I live among the barbarians)
• Huck’s Tune (Lost love, Moving on)

So, in my usual attempt to draw these categories together I bring the list down to….

• It’s just life / change: 3
• Lost love / moving on: 5
• Love: 3
• Death: 1
• Economic woes / living with the barbarians: 2

Thus the old favourites of love, lost love, and moving on, are still there at the top of the list as they have been throughout so much of Bob’s writing career.  But we may also note that Bob is concerned particularly with change and moving on.

In the last article in this series I looked at the songs written around 2001 and reached the conclusion that Dylan at that time was writing primarily about chaos.   Adding together the subject headings I get for that year we had

• Chaos: 3
• Disaffection, disorientation: 2
• Leaving: 1
• Living lie a contrarian / crazy world: 4
• Coming to the end: 1
• Happiness is a state of mind: 1

So the emphasis has changed somewhat, but it is similar; the world is turned upside down, but we just keep on living in it, trying to do our best.

Tell Ol’ Bill, the song that I ceaselessly rave about to anyone who is crazy enough to listen, contains the lines

You trampled on me as you passed, Left the coldest kiss upon my brow, All my doubts and fears have gone at last, I’ve nothing more to tell you now.

Those are the lines of the ending time; the world marches on and tramples on ordinary people trying to make the best of the world they find themselves in.  In these strange  times Bob knows where he is; he has no more need to shout out the message.  He’s done his bit.

As the reviews of Dylan decade by decade (listed below) show, Bob Dylan has never stood still in his choice of themes for his work, but in the 21st century Bob has been either treading new ground, or tackling where he has been before in a new way.

We we have three more major songwriting periods to cover before our series is done (assuming Bob doesn’t fool us and bring out another new album or the record company don’t give us the outtakes of Rough and Rowdy).   So three more episodes before I can start drawing my final conclusions.

Meanwhile if you are interested in seeing the details of Bob’s songwriting year by year, that is brought together in five files, with each having links to the reviews of each and every song.

• Dylan songs of the 1960s
• Dylan songs of the 1970s
• Dylan songs of the 1980s
• Dylan songs of the 1990s
• Dylan songs of the 21st century

This article continues from The Symbolism of the Red River Part I

by Larry Fyffe

Regular British troops and Canadian militia under Colonel Garner Wolselley put down the ‘Red River Rebellion’ in Manitoba; inhabitants of the the area, including its Metis population, led by Louis Riel, rebel against the authority of the Canadian federal government because their rights are ignored; however, Riel is forced to leave the country, and he settles in Minnesota for a time (the US state from whence singer/songwriter Bob Dylan hails). Louis becomes a bit of a religious fanatic; returns to Canada; ends up hanged.

The eastern militiamen remain in the Red River Colony to maintain law and order, some forming relationships with Metis – women biologically part European, part native ‘Indian’.  Out of this historical setting arises a song that expresses the sorrow these women feel when their lover heads back home:

There could never be such a longing
In the heart of white maiden's breast
As dwells in the heart you are breaking
With love for a boy who came west
(Red River Valley ~ traditional)

The song changes over time, but its origins can oft be detected. In the very-much-revised song lyrics below, the narrator thereof figuratively tranforms into Louis Riel; the girl, into his love – Manitoba.

Not all that crazy of an idea really:

Well, I knew when I first laid eyes on her
I would never be free
One look at her, and I knew right away
She would always be with me
Well, the dream dried up a long time ago
True to life, true to me
Was the girl from the Red River shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)

The Red River flows into Lake Winnipeg, and eventually into often ice-bound Hudson Bay by way of the Nelson River, near where Gods River enters by way of the Hayes.

The song below at first appears to have somewhat the same Canadian theme as “Red River Shore”:

I got a house on a hill, I got hogs out lying in the mud
I got a long-haired woman, she's got royal Indian blood ....
Well, I'm driving in the flats in a Cadillac car....
Standing on God's River, my soul is beginning to shake
I'm counting on you, love, to give me a break

(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

https://youtu.be/TjFnzUgDzbc

But it’s a crazy idea – the Canadian name has no apothrophe in it. God’s River likely refers to the Mississippi River in that no Cadillac car is going to be found driving on the shores of Hudson Bay.

The song lyrics below are jokingly and falsely attributed to Bob Dylan:

We were all just hanging around
Down at Ed's Cafe
Everybody had too much beer
And nothing to say
Overlooking Hudson's Bay

(More Or Less Hudson’s Bay ~ Masked Marauders)

While the following lyrics do refer to the Minnesota/Manitoba border:

If you're travelling to the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
For she was once a true love of mine

(Bob Dylan: Girl From The North Country)

The lyrics below have a Canadian reference. Charottetown, the capital of the province of Prince Edward Island, gets its name from the queen consort of George III:

In Charlottetown, not far from here
There was a fair maid dwelling
And her name was known both far and near
And her name was Barbara Allen

(Bob Dylan: Barbara Allen ~ traditional)

https://youtu.be/pkOH7Rdfnkg

The Canadian province of Alberta takes its name from a daughter of Queen Victoria:

Alberta, let your hair hang low
I'll give you more gold
Than your apron can hold
If you only let your hair hang low

(Bob Dylan: Alberta)

But alas in the song ‘Red River Shore’, no matter what, the sun is simply not going to shine for its narrator – not even with thoughts of the miracles performed by Jesus Christ:

Well, I heard of a guy who lived a long time ago
A man full of sorrow and strife
That if someone around him had died, and was dead
He knew how to bring them on back to life
Well, I don't know what kind of language he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
'Cept the girl from the Red River Shore

(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)

The girl from the Red River is gone.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

By Tony Attwood

What Chrissie Hynde has done is, to me, an example of artistic inspiration of the highest order.  We’ve already covered “In the Summertime” when  Jochen picked this video for his review of the song.  But Aaron had actually got there first with Play Lady Play, shot of love, infidels, empire.  (You did realise that this site is nothing but a competition between the writers, didn’t you?)

So, we’ve all given that track a very big thumbs up, and now it is time to encompass the entire collection of songs that Ms Hynde is releasing.

And thus moving on to number 2 – “You’re a big girl now”

I found myself about to write “there is an earthiness to this rendition” but realised that I had been watching the video, and that would be pretty crass.  So I won’t.

What is so wonderful is the relationship to the lyrics, while not in anyway falling into the trap of doing what Bob has done.   That cascading steel guitar chord on 2 minutes 25 seconds as she sings

I can make it through
You can make it too

adds such a wonderful edge – it is so simple but so perfect.

Thereafter we have the chords building a wall of sound but with variations coming in over the top.   The change in the weather takes us back down, but with the piano picking out raindrops (which sounds naff but is the only way I can describe it).

What they’ve done here is build without going over the top; the drone is still there but it is perfectly acceptable because of the total orchestration.  Fantastic.

And now, the song that gave me the idea of doing a complete review of this collection, even if no one else wanted to read it.   But as you are still here, just listen to “Standing in the doorway” with its piano accompaniment.  And just listen to that final line “You left me standing…” if it doesn’t give you shivers then I guess nothing in music can.

The point about this rendition, and the others, is that they force me to listen and listen although I know the songs so well, and have heard so many people try their hand at them.

As I have written about this song before, the core of its phenomenal power is the key change and it is a challenge for anyone entering the realms of the piece to be able to handle it in a way that makes lyrical and musical sense.

If you are still with me, allow me to try and explore this with verse three which starts after the instrumental verse at around 3 minutes 28.

Maybe they’ll get me and maybe they won’t
But not tonight and it won’t be here
There are things I could say but I don’t
I know the mercy of God must be near
I’ve been riding the midnight train
Got ice water in my veins
I would be crazy if I took you back
It would go up against every rule
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Suffering like a fool

The first four lines are as we expect; the song is plodding along through its message of misery – and I don’t mean that disparagingly, misery is a plod; just ask anyone who has been abandoned.

So the first four lines of the verse just express utter desperation; the misery is destined to go on and on until the Almighty sends some blessed relief.

OK you can’t get any lower than that in a song of this nature, but then what Dylan does is changes key, taking us up to the subdominant – the fourth note of the scale, and suddenly we are not sitting alone in desperation, but freezing to death through the night.

It was a clever move by Bob, but the singer and arranger still has to handle this in a way that makes sense without make the song sound as if it has just suddenly taken off and travelled into another land.   And just listen to Chrissie (if I may be so familiar as to call her Chrissie) handles this to perfection.  She has been lyrical, gentle, but then a grit turns up in her voice for two lines before the voice almost breaks as she sings “I would be crazy…”

These are all details, but the details add to perfection.

And then the final twist – there are five long verses in this song, and most people trying the piece just plough through it, relying on the lyrics to carry them on. But listen to how Chrissie takes on the final verse.  If you have heard this before and not noticed this change, then that is a mark of the genius of this arrangement… and we are still unprepared for what she does to the ultimate line, “Blues wrapped around my head”.

I am going to stop now, and come back to the series anon; there is only  just so much emotion a man can take at times like this.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

In the Play Lady Play series Aaron selects the music, and Tony on the other side of the Atlantic writes the commentary on it.  There is a list of earlier episodes from this series at the end of the piece.

Aaron: This time I took a look at instances when a woman covered a Dylan song, with Bob in her band! I was able to find just a few instances, so I’ll give you the background on each track and what Bob is doing.

First up, and to keep things complete (maybe someone, somewhere will use this list as a complete account of Dylan appearing on Female led covers of his songs, who knows!) we’ll start with one we’ve already covered, and which Tony did not like too much, but maybe he’ll change his mind when he discovers it’s Bob on guitar and harmonica.

Stevie Nicks – Just Like A Woman

Tony: Obviously I spend my time running Untold Dylan because I am a great admirer of Bob’s writing, and indeed his performances of his own material – including his regular re-working of his own songs.

Bob came into music in an era when the norm was for bands to play their hits on stage exactly as it sounded on the record, while on TV often simply miming to the record, and of course he went in the opposite direction, finding new dimensions in the songs he performed live.

So I continue to look for new dimensions in the songs when they presented by others, and still coming back to Stevie Nicks – even knowing Bob was in the band – I just don’t find that extra something in there that makes me want to play the track twice.  It’s ok, but it doesn’t add anything new for me.

Aaron: Next up, from her 1976 album “Songs For The New Depression” it’s Bette Midler with Bob on backing vocals and guitar on her version of “Buckets Of Rain“.

Tony: From the off this is exciting – we can hear what the song is even if no one tells us in advance, but this instrumental opening is really interesting, as is the vocal introduction.

So this is a perfect example of a re-working that is, for me, worth it.  It takes the old song and transforms it while leaving just enough for us to remember where we started.  And in doing so it gives new insights into and meanings of the lyrics.

Basically it sounds like fun; even the instrumental breaks are interesting, amusing, challenging… and so it goes on, with Bette’s long fade out …  OK I don’t want the musicians to sound like they are having fun when singing “Desolation Row” but here, yes I do.  Even the corny bit of singing “Bobby, Bobby” works.

Aaron: Now, as an added bonus, something I just stumbled across, is this practice session between Bob and Bette. Wonderful to hear. I love stuff like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYmeDej1X4o

Tony: Oh that is a find and a half – I’ve never come across this before.   What is so interesting is how much fun they are having in the rehearsal.  That must be where I went wrong – my band’s rehearsals were always too serious.  If reincarnation is actually real, I’ll try and remember that next time around.

Aaron: Next up, it’s Nanci Griffith’s with “Boots of Spanish Leather”. Not only was this recorded in Dylan’s home studio, but he plays the harmonica. From her 1993 album, “Other Voices, Other Rooms”.

Tony: Can you imagine playing in Bob’s own studio?  I mean, just the thought of that would make me play everything wrong.  Well, ok no change there, but more wrong than normal.

Now, this is interesting indeed because I have gone on and on about the need for a recording of a Dylan song to bring something new to the song, to make it interesting and worth listening to.   I love this version (and not for the harmonica part which I find unnecessary) but I can’t work out why.  What does Nanci Griffith bring to this song that we didn’t know before?   The addition of the percussion later on is interesting, but it is not that.

I think it is that her voice is utterly suited for the song, and she doesn’t try to do anything special – she just sings.  Perhaps it is the wistfulness in the lady’s replies to the offers of something being brought back from Spain – I really believe her when she says there is nothing she wants other than your sweet kiss.

It is an extraordinary feat to carry off what is a long two part conversation in song in this way.  But no matter how well we know the words, when this lady sings “The same thing I would want today I will want again tomorrow” it goes straight to my heart, not least because we all know what comes next.  And even here she doesn’t change her voice, and yet it is still perfect.  Yes there is a moment of additional edge in, “I’m sure your mind is a-roaming”.  But even “I’m sure your thoughts are not with me” is perfect.

I don’t think I have ever heard a better version of this song, and if I need to offer just one line to show why, listen to the very last line.  Of course we all know every line of this classic off by heart but somehow, by making no change in the way she sings that final line, there is an extra 2000% in the line.

Truly, I don’t know how she’s done it, but I am once again utterly moved by a song I have known most of my life, and have heard a million times.  Amazing.

Aaron: Next, and this is one I really like, so be kind Tony, it’s Carlene Carter with her cover of “Trust Yourself”. Bob appears on backing vocals and guitar. He mainly sticks to the background but you can hear him clearly around the 1:10 mark. This is something of a rarity. It was only released in Germany (I believe) as an extra track on the 1994 CD single “Sweet Meant To Be”. It might have appeared later on the 1996 compilation album, “Hindsight 20/20” but as I don’t own the CD I’m not sure about that.

Tony:  Yes Aaron, I get it.  And it works because the singer / arranger / producer / director whoever has gone back to the meaning of the song and started from first principles to make it a new song.

The opening tells us this is going to be a fully produced piece with lots of overlays; sometimes that can make me groan, but each and every diversion raises issues that add to the fun.

The harmonies too are great fun; in the wrong hands some of them would be horribly corny but no, they just keep us going.   Even the little technique of stopping after “if you want somebody you can trust” and then stopping, works.   After the heart-pulling exquisite pain of Spanish Leather, this was quite a relief!  And an enjoyable one.

Aaron: Now, I’m sure Tony has covered this one before, but again for the sake of completeness let’s finish up with Lone Justice, featuring Bob on guitar and harmonica.

Tony: Did you know that Maria McKee is related to Bryan MacLean who was part of Love who recorded “Forever Changes”?  I thought I’d mention that as I saw Love on their final tour just before the passing of Arthur Lee, playing in a small night club in Birmingham.

I just throw that in as it is one of my all-time enduring memories – and yes I know I said the same thing in the in the original review but well, that was a little while back.   There’s quite a bit of background on the song and the connection between Dylan, Bryan MacLean and Maria McKee – as I explored last time.  It’s fun, I do enjoy it.

Thanks Aaron.  That was a really interesting selection.

• Play Lady Play: Shot of love, Infidels, Empire
• Play Lady Play: foreign language lady-Dylan like you have never heard.
• Play Lady Play: Time out of mind
• Play Lady Play: the alternative rockers
• Play Lady Play in the 21st century
• From “me me me” to exquisite interpretations
• Play Lady Play: the joyful remembrance of staggering performances
• Play lady play: Bettye LaVette – and a kiss on the mouth
• When a woman sings Just like a woman and beats the bass issue
• Play lady play: I believe in you.
• The strange the eccentric and the beautiful
• Play Lady Play: A simple twist of fate
• Play lady play: the strange ones, the eccentric, and the beautiful
• Knocking the pony with the sisterhood
• Play Lady Play: female cover versions of Basement Tapes songs

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

by Larry Fyffe

James Arness stars as Marshall Matt Dillon, and Ken Curtis as his Deputy in the TV series western series called “Gunsmoke”. The singer/songwriter Robert Zimmerman is said to have taken the name “Bob Dylan” from that show rather than from poet Dylan Thomas as others claim.

Known for certain is that Ken Curtis be a member of the western singing group ‘The Sons Of The Pioneers’ along with the  ‘King of the Cowboys’ Roy Rogers, Tim Spenser, and Bob Nolan (from Winnipeg who spends part of his youth near Saint John in the Province of New Brunswick).

In the song below, lyrics are changed a wee bit from the original when sung by Ken Curtis:

Warm as the spring
Gentle and sweet
True as the Alamo
You'll find the world at your feet
Wherever you go

(Ken Curtis: Blue Bonnet Girl ~ Glenn & Tim Spenser)

https://youtu.be/-yuLW20GhmQ

The following lyrics stick to the original:

Soft as the springtime
Gentle and sweet
True as the Alamo
You'll have the world at your feet
Wherever you go

(Bob Dylan: Blue Bonnet Girl ~ G.& T. Spenser)

https://youtu.be/RFd2X-QKhuk

Here’s a song from an episode of the TV western series ‘Have Gun Will Travel, starring Richard Boone:

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

(Ken Curtis: Dink’s Song ~ traditional)

Below, the same song performed by Bob “Dillon”:

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)

Now a song written by the former New Brunswicker:

I'll know when night has gone
That a new world is born at dawn
I'll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong

(Ken Curtis: Tumbling Tumbleweeds ~ Bob Nolan)

Note the Dylanesque ‘rhyme twist’ in the song lyrics quoted below ~ ‘along’/’song’/’belong’;

‘song’/belong’:

Well, I'm a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I'll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will give me a song

(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)

The song above has its roots in the one below:

From this Valley, they say you are leaving
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened my pathway a while

(Ken Curtis: Red River Valley ~ traditional)

https://youtu.be/fn-F-QN9mWo

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

by Jochen Markhorst

Joni Mitchell owes her breakthrough to Judy Collins, who recorded the immortal “Both Sides Now” of the then still completely unknown Canadian in 1967 for her seventh album Wildflowers. It is also released as a single and it scores well: just like the album, it’s a Top 10 hit.

Still, Mitchell does have mixed emotions about the Collins recording, which can be felt. Wildflowers doesn’t stand the test of time well at all – it’s an over-orchestrated, partly cloyingly sweet collection of essentially brilliant songs – and Collins’ version of “Both Sides Now” is accordingly corny. There are three Leonard Cohen songs on the album, also appearing earlier than the artist’s own performance: apart from the less famous “Priests” the classics “Sisters Of Mercy” and “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”. The best that can be said of them is that Judy Collins (who on her previous album was the first to record “Suzanne” as well) paves the way for Cohen to be able to record the songs himself in October ’67 – in the superior, breath-taking performances on Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967), which most certainly do survive.

A second merit of the now dated album is that it draws Dylan’s attention to both Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. Echoes thereof, of the introduction to Collins’ Wildflowers and “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” can be found in the Desire-outtake “Golden Loom” (1975), one of Dylan’s most “Cohen-like” songs (with the little cryptic reference “and then you drift away on a summer’s day where the wildflowers bloom”) – and in “In The Summertime”.

“In The Summertime” is in more ways an outsider on Shot Of Love. Literary, for starters. All other verses on the album are written in the ordinary rhyme scheme aabb, for this song the poet imposes on himself the age-old, in pop music quite unusual aaab-cccb:

I was in your presence for an hour or so
Or was it a day? I truly don’t know
Where the sun never set, where the trees hung low
By that soft and shining sea
Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do, or for keeping it hid?
Did I lose my mind when I tried to get rid
Of everything you see?

This particular form goes back all the way to one of the Founding Fathers of the Art of Song, to William IX of Aquitaine (1071-1126), nicknamed The Troubadour. William, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine (present-day Dordogne) was one of the most powerful feudal lords in Europe, an unsuccessful crusader and a bad, womanising husband, but a brilliant entertainer and brilliant song poet. His early songs are still rather jocular and aim at a howling and roaring male audience, but his later work is more refined, elegant and experiments with poetry techniques that are gratefully copied in the following centuries. As in one of his last songs, probably written in 1125:

Pos de chantar m'es pres talenz,
Farai un vers, don sui dolenz:
Mais non serai obedienz
En Peitau ni en Lemozi.

Qu'era m'en irai en eisil:
En gran paor, en gran peril,
En guerra, laisserai mon fil,
Faran li mal siei vezi.

Since I feel like singing,
I'll write a verse I grieve over:
I shall never be a vassal anymore
in Poitiers nor in Limoges

For now I shall be exiled:
in a dreadful fright, in great peril,
in war, shall I leave my son,
and his neighbours shall turn on him.

…the very first song with this remarkable rhyme scheme.

Kindred spirits throughout the ages feel challenged by this form. Dylan uses it for the first time in one of his most beautiful love songs, in “Mama, You Been On My Mind”, and is probably triggered once again by Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”;

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

In the spring of 1981 Dylan chooses the form one more time, this time for the small masterpiece “Angelina”. However, that song is rejected for Shot Of Love (perhaps out of dissatisfaction with a few too far-fetched rhymes on Angelina, such as “subpoena”, “concertina” and “hyena”). The selected “In The Summertime” seems older, though.

Not only rhyme technical-wise. Stylistically the song is different as well. The dramatic monologue, the poetic form in which an I addresses a fictional audience or a silent opponent, is also a form that suggests that Dylan has been walking around with “In The Summertime” for some time now. On Blood On The Tracks (1975) the song poet likes to use it, and parallels might also be drawn there in terms of content. To “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”, for example. Thematically anyway (a melancholy look back on a summer in love), but also by choice of words: But there’s no way I can compare / All those scenes to this affair from “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome” is very similar to But all that sufferin’ was not to be compared with the glory that is to be, just like the decor, the idealized landscape;

Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy
Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme
Blue river runnin’ slow and lazy

 versus

Where the sun never set, where the trees hung low
By that soft and shining sea

…like the whole song actually is a kind of a best of Dylan’s love poetry.

The beautiful opening “I was in your presence for an hour or so / Or was it a day? I truly don’t know” masterfully expresses Dylan’s eternal theme Time Passes. And specifically the elusive, deceptive experience of Time that the poet on Blood On The Tracks mentions in songs like “You’re A Big Girl Now” (time is a jet plane) and “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome” (I could stay with you forever and never realize the time), too. And before that in “Time Passes Slowly” and later in “Series Of Dreams” (where time and tempo fly, in an earlier version where time and tempo drag), up to and including the songs on Rough And Rowdy Ways (2020), where the passage of time is mentioned in almost every song. Already in the opening lines (Today and tomorrow and yesterday too), and more explicit in verse lines like Everything’s flowing all in the same time and How can I redeem the time? (“Crossing The Rubicon”)… well, Time Passes has been a constant in Dylan’s oeuvre since 1962, and still is in 2020.

And like this, almost every verse line of “In The Summertime” skims past an earlier work. This reflection on the experience of time is followed by the familiar description of the set, and after that

Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do, or for keeping it hid?

 … which again inevitably evokes “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, the song Dylan worked on for almost two years, from June 1964 to February 1966, finally rejecting it, with its equally melodious, equally poetic paradox:

you might think I’m odd
If I say I’m not loving you for what you are
But for what you’re not

So, we have: the rhyme scheme of “Mama, You Been On My Mind”, a very simple three-chord scheme (I-IV-V, in this case: A-D-E) which Dylan uses for dozens of songs (here it does smell like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” as well as “No Time To Think”), the theme and the choice of words (echoing among others “Don’t Think Twice”, “Idiot Wind” and “Slow Train”)… yes, “In The Summertime” truly is a Dylan mosaic, a culmination of Dylan’s most beautiful love lyrics. Including, alright, some winks to the evangelical phase from which Dylan releases himself on this record (the winks being hardly loaded jargon like before the flood, the glory that is to be and unto eternity) – but then again: these are hints that without too much creativity also might fit into the more graceful love lyrics à la “Wedding Song” or “If Not For You”.

The potential of the song, which could have had the detonating power of a “Shelter From The Storm” for example, seems to have escaped Dylan. He spends little studio love on the song, the recording of especially the vocals is downright sloppy, and he hides the song in a meaningless place, somewhere halfway Side Two. In the year of its conception, 1981, the song is on the playlist about twenty times (usually somewhere as the ninth or tenth number), but after that the song is pretty much discarded – apart from an unexpected revival in 2002, when Dylan plays it about ten times again, and now puts it on an ear-catching, honourable second place.

Real rehabilitation the song receives in 2020, thanks to the enchanting Mrs. Chrissie Hynde.

The veteran (Hynde has been the singer and driving force of The Pretenders for forty-two years) feels an urge after the release of “I Contain Multitudes” (April 17, ’20), as she tells in an interview with Rolling Stone, July 30. The song is “fucking devastating” and makes her realize that now is the perfect time to honour her idol, “a man who had inspired me for most of my life”, with a tribute. She chooses a particularly successful form. Since she can’t tour, because of the corona restrictions, and is mainly at home, she decides, together with Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne, to record a Dylan cover and to post it on YouTube.

“I sent James a rhythm track on my phone, he added to it, and I put a vocal to it. Then we sent it to [engineer] Tchad Blake, who is out in the wilds of Wales, to mix it.”  

At the end of April, ten days after the release of “I Contain Multitudes” it is on YouTube.

It’s a bewitching version of one of Dylan’s forgotten masterpieces, and it tastes like more; a pleasantly surprised Chrissie decides to start up “The Lockdown Series“; about every fortnight Mrs. Hynde releases another Dylan cover. “Standing On The Doorway”, “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight”, “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”… one is even more attractive than the other. The charm and intimacy of living room recordings, Chrissie Hynde’s knife-like vocals and – as in “In The Summertime” – Walbourne’s brilliant, goosebump-inducing keyboards; pearls, all of them.

Number two in the Series is “You’re A Big Girl Now”, by the way. Time is a jet plane.

You might also enjoy:

• Is Dylan slowly revealing his movement away from faith
• Play lady play: Shot of love, infidels, empire

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

I thought you might enjoy this Bob Dylan tribute song I wrote, using Bob’s Song To Woody as inspirational template…

As you may know, alongside this blog there is a Facebook group.

Recently there was quite a bit of political discussion, which I (as moderator) found it very hard to moderate, so we decided to hive off that part of the discussion into another separate group on Bob Dylan Politics.

If you are interested, it is just starting up (by which I mean there are two of us), but if you want to get involved simply go to…

https://www.facebook.com/groups/627237784857751

I’d appreciate it if Dylan’s politics are not discussed on the Untold Dylan Facebook site, which you can of course join if you are not a member.  Just click here.

Thanks

Tony Attwood (publisher, Untold Dylan)

Bob Dylan’s Allusions to A Tale of Two Cities in “I Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.”

by John Radosta

On the morning of March 27, 2020, with the world in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, Bob Dylan provided light, of a kind, by releasing a new single.

The 17-minute epic “Murder Most Foul” is ostensibly about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Despite its length and the darkness of its topic, “Murder Most Foul” became Dylan’s first ever Number 1 single, and was widely read as a way to give hope to a nation beset by the ravages of a virus. Alluding to nearly a hundred songs, films, and plays, many in the form of “requests” to Wolfman Jack, the song encapsulates not just a moment, but a cultural history of the nation, and so gave perspective on how a country can deal with trauma by turning to art, particularly performative art.

The songs and other performances he refers to all captured the popular imagination in their time, providing relief or respite from other crises. In the months after the song was released, the nation also began to rise up against police brutality, demanding justice first for the murder of George Floyd and then expanding to a massive movement calling for the restoration of civil rights in general. The protests have exposed wrongs and inequities that have long been ignored, forcing us to confront ourselves in ways few living people have had to do. It was—it continues to be—the worst of times for the country.

And then, in the midst of all of it, Dylan released his first album of original material in eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways.

As with much of his work, especially in the 21st Century, Rough and Rowdy Ways is a kaleidoscope of cultural references that go far beyond the song requests in “Murder Most Foul.” Others have already pointed out the strong connections the album has to ancient history, especially in “Mother of Muses” and “I Crossed the Rubicon.” In “I Contain Multitudes” Dylan not only conjures up the ghost of Walt Whitman, but also compares himself to Anne Frank, Indiana Jones, “and those bad boys from England, the Rolling Stones.”^[i] All of these examples of intertextuality have the effect of conflating history. As he says in the deliciously creepy “My Own Version of You,” “I can see the whole history of the human race / It’s all right there – it’s carved into your face.”^[ii] But it’s the next track—I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”—sung as an earnest and sweet love song, that provides a most subversive and intriguing comment on our not-so-unique moment in history.

“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” is a slow, spare love song that sounds as though it would fit on his recent albums of Great American Songbook. Certainly, having recorded five disks of standards, he’s absorbed, as he does so well, the rhythms and word play that mark that style and has become adept at writing his own. The words flow gently, with familiar images and simple rhymes that lend themselves to a universal understanding of the singer’s emotions. In the second stanza, Dylan croons,

I saw the first fall of snow
I saw the flowers come and go
I don’t think anyone else ever know
I made up my mind to give myself to you.[iii]

It’s a lovely sentiment, at face value.

However, the song takes its initial stanza not from the pages of the American Songbook, nor from traditional lyrics of love, nor even this nation’s history. In fact, it draws its words from a satirical chapter of a book set in the “best of times and the worst of times.” In his Nobel Lecture, Dylan attributes his songwriting abilities not only to his knowledge of musical history, but also his “principles and sensibilities and an informed view of the world.”^[iv] He gained those, he says, through typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by.”^[v] Among the novels he lists as foundational to his principles is Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

A negative example seems to have developed some of those principles regarding romance. The novel’s central love triangle, in which Lucie Manette chooses Charles Darnay over the brooding Sydney Carton, is actually more of an intersection where three roads meet, with Lucie as the central point. She has one more, oft-forgotten, suitor: C.J. Stryver, the buffoonish lawyer who lets Carton do all the work, and then takes all the credit. Stryver “shoulders his way” through the story, trying to live up to his name, and always failing. In the ironically-titled chapter “The Fellow of Delicacy,” Stryver, based only on the fact that others have pursued her, decides he is in love with Lucie. He embarks on a campaign to marry her, supported by absolutely no conversation with the lady to encourage him. Here is the opening paragraph of the chapter:

“Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor’s daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary.”^[vi]

Notice the phrasing “having made up his mind” as well as “whether he should give her his hand.” Dylan recasts those lines of resolute but misguided belief in the second half of the first stanza of “I Made Up My Mind,” saying, “Been thinking it over and I thought it all through / I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you.”^[vii] Right from the start, Dylan casts doubt on the narrator’s sincerity and chances, while simultaneously sounding sincere and successful.

In both cases, the character has no apparent encouragement from the object of his desires, but has utterly convinced himself of the result. Compare these two lines, first from the novel:

As to the strength of the case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict…it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it…After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be.^[viii]

Similarly, Dylan’s narrator insists,

No one ever told me, it’s just something I knew

and later,

I knew you’d say yes - I’m saying it too.”[ix]

Yet we never hear at all from the person—presumably a woman—and so can’t imagine whether this “gift” is welcome or not. It is significant, too, that the idea of “giving one’s hand” is generally a phrase used to describe a woman’s betrothal in marriage. In both Dylan and Dickens, the men in question might have broken the strictures of a gender-normative society. Much more likely, though, is that they have cast themselves in a position of weakness, not from romantic vulnerability, but from a complete lack of desirability. All to comic effect.

What follows in the novel is that Stryver’s attempts to court Lucie are continuously repelled, until he must present himself to the family friend Mr. Lorry for advice. Lorry, attempting diplomacy, suggests that “there really is so much too much of”^[x] Stryver for Lucie to handle, but that doesn’t deter his ardent wooing. Only later, after having spoken to Lucie himself, does Lorry deliver the message that she is not interested in Stryver (however, nothing of scene is ever shown in the book, and the reader is left wondering if, in his visit, Lorry ever even broached the subject to Miss Manette). Styver blusters his way through the heartbreak, denying he had ever fully committed himself to such a course of action, but the chapter ends with him “on his sofa, winking at his ceiling,” an image quite close to Dylan’s lines, “Sitting on my terrace lost in the stars / Listenin’ to the sounds of the sad guitars.”^[xi] Both Stryver and Dylan’s narrator, forced to confront their unrequited realities, begin to cry, and both stare sadly upwards.

But Dylan’s narrator, as so often happens, is not so one-dimensional as Stryver. Unlike Dickens’ lawyer, Dylan’s narrator is capable of growth and resurrection. That ability Dickens ascribes to Sydney Carton, the dissolute drunk who is introduced as being spiritually, almost literally, dead. In the second half of “I Made Up My Mind…,” the narrator gains empathy by looking beyond himself, in the same way that the “resurrected” Carton does. “I traveled the long road of despair,” Dylan says. And while he claims to have “met no other traveler there,”^[xii] he still understands that his own travails are not unique.

A similar formulation can be found in the novel. As a mid-July storm approaches, Lucie stands at an open window with her two rivals, Carton and Darnay, and her father. Listening to people dashing out of the rain, she tells them that she imagines the echoing footsteps, “to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives.”^[xiii] It is her prescient foreshadowing of the French Revolution that shows her deep love for both Paris, where she was raised, and London, where she was born. Her travels make her “the golden thread”^[xiv] that ties the two cities together. Dylan’s line, “A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew”^[xv] echoes these thoughts, but now they’re in the mind of the song’s transfigured narrator, whose self-awareness connects him more strongly with Carton than with Stryver and teaches us that the best path to peace is to understand those who are different from ourselves.

The famous opening of A Tale of Two Cities describes a period of time when the world was tossed between poles of prosperity and poverty, belief and superstition, hope and despair. It was, he writes, “in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”^[xvi] That “present period” was of course 1859, two years before the American Civil War, but Dickens knew that his description would be apt at any period and any place in history. In fact, his central goal was to stave off an American-style revolution right in England.

So, too, could it describe how the pandemic has created a turbulent, almost revolutionary, atmosphere in America, and how many of the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs speak to this moment. But Dickens offers a path out of the prospects of a devastating social cataclysm: inspiration and sacrifice, personified by Sydney Carton. In the reflecting chapter (the novel is full of mirror images), “The Fellow of No Delicacy,” Carton also declares his love to Lucie, but knowing that he has wasted his life and is not eligible, he asks only that she allow him to periodically visit. He tells her, “Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.”^[xvii] He continues, “For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything.”^[xviii]

Of course (here there be spoilers), when he climbs to the top step of the guillotine platform in place of Lucie’s beloved Darnay, his last thoughts are, “…it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,”^[xix] because at last, through Lucie’s guiding light, he has found his respite. Dylan distills this declaration and sacrifice into the lines, “I’m not what I was, things aren’t what they were / I’m going to go far away from home with her.”^[xx] The addition of that last phrase, “with her,” sets up an ambiguity, though. Is this character, unlike Stryver or Carton, going to be successful in attaining his beloved? Or does the echo of “far,” (as Lucie’s fancy about the footsteps), suggest his resurrection will be because of, but not in the physical presence of, her? It all turns on whether that “home” is an actual place, or, since the experience of loving her has been transformative, giving him the ability to rise above his habitual failings, and through her become more compassionate and humane.^[xxi]

In the same climactic scene, after foreseeing the deaths, some imminent, some distant, of all the main characters of the novel, the prophetic Carton also imagines that “I see her [Lucie] and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.”^[xxii] Dylan uses the same image, but cuts out the middle man in the lines, “I’ll lay down beside you, when everyone is gone.”^[xxiii]

One final connection between the song and novel can be found in the third stanza. To illustrate the vastness of his love, the narrator tells his beloved that he’s giving himself to her “From Salt Lake City to Birmingham / From East L.A. to San Antone”^[xxiv] (these two sweeps from west to east parallel the direction he takes in “Idiot Wind”: “From the Grand Coulee dam to the Capitol”^[xxv]). Not once, but twice, he lays out connections to two cities.

It is significant that of all the American cities that Dylan could have chosen, each of these four have been associated with some kind of popular uprising or revolutionary activity: the Native Americans living in the area that became Salt Lake City were decimated by disease brought by Brigham Young’s LDS followers, who were seeking to establish their own religious state beyond the borders of the United States; Birmingham, of course, was the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (who appears several times on Rough and Rowdy Ways) gained international renown; in 1968, East L. A. witnessed the “Chicano Blowouts”—student-led protests demanding better conditions and curricula in the high schools.

But it is the final city, “San Antone,” that draws a direct connection with Dickens’ novel. In A Tale of Two Cities, the Defarges’ wine shop, the central hub for the Jacquerie plotting the revolution, is located in the district of Saint Antoine. The neighborhood is such a powder keg that when a cask of red wine breaks, the starving residents of the neighborhood spring to life to drink it up, even from the mud, since in Saint Antoine, “cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence.”^[xxvi] It is one of the “raindrops,” along with the storm Lucie and her coterie observe, that Dickens uses as a symbol of the coming Revolution. Most likely, Dylan wrote this song before the protests that now grip the United States, but they, too, are a predictable shower of “raindrops” in reaction to oppressive actions. Dylan’s act of twice pairing two cities, including one that plays such an important part in the novel of revolution and resurrection, is a clear indicator that we must bend toward justice.

The message, of course, is that only though sacrifice can the depredations of an oppressive regime be stopped. Through compassion, empathy, and love, we can “see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”^[xxvii] Dylan’s lovely song, spoken almost as a lullaby, allows us to experience the development from self-delusion to universal love, and maps out the course.

Bibliography

• Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Dover. 1999.
• Dylan, Bob. The Nobel Lecture. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2017.

Discography

• Dylan, Bob. “I Contain Multitudes.” 2020. Track 1 on Rough and Rowdy Ways. Sony. Compact disc.
• ———. “Idiot Wind.” 1975. Track 4 on Blood on the Tracks. Columbia. Compact disc.
• ———. “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.” 2020. Track 4 on Rough and Rowdy Ways. Sony. Compact disc.
• ———. “My Own Version of You.” 2020. Track 3 on Rough and Rowdy Ways. Sony. Compact disc.

Footnotes

• ^[i] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/i-contain-multitudes/.
• ^[ii] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/my-own-version-of-you/.
• ^[iii] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[iv] Bob Dylan, The Nobel Lecture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 6.
• ^[v] Ibid.
• ^[vi] Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: Dover, 1999), 108.
• ^[vii] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[viii] Dickens, Tale, 108-9.
• ^[ix] Ibid.
• ^[x] Dickens, Tale, 110.
• ^[xi] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[xii] Ibid.
• ^[xiii] Dickens, Tale, 78.
• ^[xiv] Dickens, Tale, 162.
• ^[xv] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[xvi] Dickens, Tale, 1.
• ^[xvii] Dickens, Tale, 116.
• ^[xviii] Dickens, Tale, 117.
• ^[xix] Dickens, Tale, 293.
• ^[xx] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[xxi] Thanks to Henry Bolter for this suggestion.
• ^[xxii] Dickens, Tale, 292.
• ^[xxiii] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ive-made-up-my-mind-to-give-myself-to-you/.
• ^[xxiv] Ibid.
• ^[xxv] Bobdylan.com, http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/idiot-wind/.
• ^[xxvi] Dickens, Tale, 22.
• ^[xxvii] Dickens, Tale, 292.

An index to all the articles on Rough and Rowdy Ways published on Untold Dylan can be found here.

By Tony Attwood

In this series of articles I’m picking out a few of the songs that Bob has played just once in a live show, and then never returned to the song at all.  They are not coming out in a particular order, and I’m open to suggestions for performances that could be featured.  Otherwise I’m just selecting some of the songs I happen to like.

A list of the earlier articles in the series is given at the end.

B-Thang

In late August/early September of 1989, Dylan went through a stretch of opening shows with instrumentals. Three of these are suggested by some reviewers to be improvised by  Dylan and his band, and were given the names “B-Thang”, “E-Thang” and “G-Thang”.

This was played at Park City UT September 1, 1989

https://youtu.be/RhjrrlyKg20

Now the few people who have bothered to mention this piece of music have tended to call the work “improvised” but I really don’t think it is – the chord changes do not follow a regular enough pattern, although the piece does move into a 12 bar variation mode after a while. But then there are once more some variations are there.  They are not extensive but enough to throw anyone who has not played along with Bob off the track.

Moving on, we have “Blue Bonnet Girl” which Bob performed on 1 November, 2000 in Bloomington, Indiana.

https://youtu.be/xyEKQriqyBE

The tune was written in 1936 by Glenn Spencer for his brother Tim who performed with of the Sons of the Pioneers, and who recorded the best known version of the song.

Here is a Roy Rogers / Sons of  the Pioneers version.  I wonder if Bob came across this while watching a movie.

Now just one more for today which comes from 23 November 2005 at the Carling Academy Brixton, London: “Blue Monday” but this one is rather an important piece in the history of rock n roll.

It is also one of the songs for which there is a lot of false information around – SetList FM for example leading us to a song by Bill Monroe and  the Bluegrass Boys which is not what Dylan is performing at all.    Maybe they do that just to see if people like me simply cut and paste without checking.  But really, if I did that, what would be the point?

https://youtu.be/Pruiqx4BtU8

For as it happens I’m writing this little series, because I really do enjoy these pieces of music, and although a few take me by surprise, I do claim a bit of knowledge of the old songs largely because of my own ancientness.

And really it only takes a few moments to think on hearing Bob, “that surely is going to be a Fats Domino song”, and yes it is.   What’s more there are videos of the great innovator performing it…

Now when I say this is a Fats Domino song I don’t mean he wrote it – rather he recorded it, and gave it his trademark piano style and really made it famous.

But it was written in 1953 by Dave Bartholomew, who was the man who got Fats Domino’s career moving, and it was in fact first recorded that year by Smiley Lewis.  Fats Domino got hold of the song in 1956 and from then on the song was credited to both Bartholomew and Domino – which seems a bit generous by Bartholomew, but I am sure he knew how to keep an artist happy.

Indeed Dave Bartholomew was no slouch when it came to songwriting, and this was not just a one off hit for he also wrote  “I Hear You Knocking”, “Blue Monday”, “I’m Walkin'”, “My Ding-A-Ling”, and “One Night” – the last for Elvis Presley.

Here is the original of Blue Monday…

https://youtu.be/uc-Clo2IdHg

But it was Fats Domino’s version that turned up in the 1956 movie “The Girl Can’t Help It” – one of the early rock n roll movies that made legislators get twitchy and suggest that rock n roll music should be banned as immoral.

It really is one of the classics of rock n roll.

And please don’t forget we have this series on our You Tube channel Dylan’s once only file: the concert. 

Dylan’s once only file: earlier editions

• Dylan’s once only file: You’re too late and the Old Rock n Roller
• Dylan’s Once only file “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” “Blue Moon” “Weeping Willow”
• Dylan’s “Once Only” File: 10,000 men and 20/20 Vision
• I defy you not to play this song twice

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

by Jochen Markhorst

Stanley Kramer’s Inherit The Wind from 1960, with Spencer Tracy in a starring role, is a classic that owes its classic status mainly to the court duel between attorney Henry Drummond (Tracy) and prosecutor Brady (Frederic March). Around it, the present-day viewer may stumble over the melodramatic staging of some scenes, but the story has a timeless, eternal value still. It is based on a true event, on the lawsuit against a teacher in Tennessee who was indicted in 1925 for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution – the famous “Monkey Trial”. In 1960, however, the story may just as well be understood as a satirical attack on the repugnant practices of communist hunter McCarthy, and in 2020, sadly, the petty attacks on dissenters are just as topical still.

However, when writing “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” in 2020, Dylan seems to be mainly inspired by the religious component, by the oppressive, narrow-minded fanaticism of the creationists in the village of Hillsboro, the short-sighted reverend and prosecutor Brady. The last line of the first verse quotes the song with which the film opens, and which is later sung again by half the village, welcoming Brady: “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”. The variant of the film opening is a cappella, terrifyingly sung by Leslie Uggams and sets an ominous, suffocating tone. But especially that second time, the massive variant with bells and whistles, sung by half the village, marching along with the smug Brady, gives the old, nineteenth-century gospel song an almost creepy, fascist charge; the camera gives all the attention to the irreconcilable, fanatical heads of the front line – all ladies who would be called “Karens” today.

The old gospel song comes to Dylan after that opening with saint and churches and Jews, Catholics, Muslims and Protestants – and that, that “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”, in turn, opens the gate to the second verse with the Inherit The Wind-associations: “thine is the kingdom”, the “straight forward puritanical tone” and especially the bible-thumpers, the rabid zealots who in their blind faith destroy much more than they could ever repair.

And none of it has anything to do with Jimmy Reed.

Brinkley: “On the album Tempest you perform “Roll on John” as a tribute to John Lennon. Is there another person you’d like to write a ballad for?”

Dylan: “Those kinds of songs for me just come out of the blue, out of thin air. I never plan to write any of them. But in saying that, there are certain public figures that are just in your subconscious for one reason or another. None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written. They just fall down from space. I’m just as bewildered as anybody else as to why I write them.”

The interview with Douglas Brinkley that the New York Times publishes around the release of Rough And Rowdy Ways in June 2020 is a delightful, worth-reading interview with a grand old man who reflects with attractive modesty and a strange mix of wonder plus reliance on his own work. We are already familiar with the drift of his self-analysis; in previous interviews Dylan often confesses that he has no idea where those songs come from. But by now he is almost eighty and chooses his words more soberly than ever – and at the same time with a kind of self-evident acceptance of the magic behind it. He calls his creative phase “trance writing”, he doesn’t plan his songs, songs come “out of the blue, out of thin air”, and:

“The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”

Beautifully phrased, with a pleasant touch of mysticism – although the old bard recognizes elsewhere in the interview that the songs do not entirely come “out of the blue” or “out of thin air”. Regarding the opening song “I Contain Multitudes” he analyses:

“It’s the kind of thing where you pile up stream-of-consciousness verses and then leave it alone and come pull things out. In that particular song, the last few verses came first. So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line. It’s one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state.”

No doubt that’s no different with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” – a title line as a catalyst for an entire song, and the lines to that title line come in a “trance state”. In any case, there are hardly any references to the historical, actual Jimmy Reed in the song. Actually, quite similar to that other ode to a blues legend, to the granite masterpiece “Blind Willie McTell”.

“Blind Willie McTell” was initially rejected by Dylan himself and passed over for the 1983 album Infidels. To the dismay of producer Mark Knopfler, who, just like the rest of the music-loving world, found the song an inexorable masterpiece, the inevitable high-light of the album on which he had worked so passionately. But Dylan deemed it “not finished”, and Dylan’s word is – unfortunately, in this case – law.

Maybe at the time, almost forty years ago, Dylan thought that the flag didn’t cover the content; “Blind Willie McTell” is certainly not about Blind Willie McTell, but is an impressionist masterpiece that evokes the slavery history of the Southern states. And biographically, Blind Willie Johnson would fit more than McTell. Hence perhaps Dylan’s uneasiness with the song; the refrain line Nobody could sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell does not really meet music history. Only after bootleggers illegally distribute the rejected recordings, which are then hailed by fans and music lovers as a masterpiece, and after The Band puts it on the setlist, Dylan surrenders – the song is released on the first Bootleg Series box in 1991. Since 1997, Dylan is fully aboard, playing it live for the first time. To his satisfaction, apparently: since then he has played “Blind Willie McTell” more than two hundred times.

The title line of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” has just as little relationship with the rest of the lyrics, but in 2020 that doesn’t bother the maestro anymore. On the internet forums biographical lines are enthusiastically laid to Van Morrison, in this case.  “I can tell a Proddy from a mile away”, for example; Van the Man was a Proddy, a Protestant in Northern Ireland. Morrison sometimes took off his shoes on stage (“Never took my shoes and threw them into the crowd”), mystic is a “Van-word” anyway and, well alright, the words from the closing couplet I’m just looking for the man, I came to see where he’s lying in this lost land could just as well be a reference to “The Man” and to his native Northern Ireland.

Not too convincing, any of it, but at least the song has a lot more in common with Van The Man than with Jimmy Reed. But then again, a first association with I didn’t play guitar behind my head is Jimi Hendrix, the man Dylan honours in that wonderful, fascinating MusiCare speech, February 2015:

“He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and brought them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere.”

Although in this context the internet forums eagerly share knowledge of useless but always entertaining facts about unorthodox playing techniques. It seems that already Charley Patton did pull stunts like that, for example – just like those bare feet insignificant, anecdotal frills; after all, despite its title, the song is not a coherent tribute or in memoriam.

The beautiful lines, for instance, with the see-through woman in a see-through dress,

Transparent woman in a transparent dress
It suits you well – I must confess

…do on the one hand paraphrase Charlie Rich’s “Easy Look.”

She sits there at the bar
Her feelings standing bare
Open as a see-through dress
She always wears

But might on the other hand have flowed into Dylan’s “trance-like, stream-of-consciousness” through Big Joe Turner’s ancient “Shake, Rattle And Roll”.

Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin’ through
Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin’ through
I can’t believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you

By the way, Walt Whitman haunts this place just as inspiringly, this “thin air” and “blue” from which Dylan, according to his own words, as a kind of telegrapher, drops his impulses on the notepad in front of him. In the same collection of poems from which Dylan gathered I contain multitudes, a butcher’s hook and mystic hours can be found, and the line go lull yourself with what you can understand is the positive variant of Dylan’s I can’t sing a song that I don’t understand.

The same goes for almost every song fragment. Most of them can be traced back to songs in Dylan’s book or music library. Or to his home cinema, like Inherit The Wind.

Only at the very end of the song, at the very last three words, down in Virginia, we find a first, literal reference to Jimmy Reed, to his song “Down in Virginia”.

None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written. They just fall down from space.

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

By Kevin Saylor

• Dylan’s Christian Anthropology: An exploration of Rough and Rowdy Ways. Part 1 – multitudes
• Dylan’s Christian Anthology part 2: False Prophet & My own version of you
• Dylan’s Christian anthology 3: Black rider and Made up my mind
• Dylan’s Christian anthology 4: Jimmy Reed; Crossing the Rubicon

An index to all the Untold Dylan articles on Rough and Rowdy Ways can be found here.

The last two songs on “Rough and Rowdy Ways” run for a combined 26-plus minutes. On the CD release, “Murder Most Foul” occupies its own second disc, so perhaps it is best to see “Key West” as the true final chapter on the album, with “Murder Most Foul” as an extended coda.

In many ways, “Key West” serves the same function as the album finale that “Highlands” did for Time Out of Mind. In “Highlands,” Dylan, riffing on Robert Burns, says that his heart is in the highlands, a paradisal, otherworldly place (although it is simultaneously described as an actual geographical location), even as his physical body remains in this world while he is alive. He calls the Highlands his home even though he currently is far away “like a prisoner in a world of mystery.” Like Dylan’s Key West, his Highlands is a liminal space, “way up in the border country.”  “Key West” plays a similar role. It is described as “the place to be,” “fine and fair,” “on the horizon line,” “the place to go,” “ the gateway key,” “the enchanted land,” “the land of light,” and “paradise divine.” Clearly, Key West is a place set apart from and superior to all other locales in which the rest of the songs on Rough and Rowdy Way are set. The singer of “Key West,” released 23 years of “Highlands,” is closer to his final destination than the singer of the earlier song. “Highlands” ends: “Well, my heart’s in the Highlands at the break of day/ Over the hills and far away/ There’s a way to get there and I’ll figure it out somehow/ But I’m already there in my mind/ And that’s good enough for now.” In the new song, he is already in Key West, the borderline city on the horizon, the place of passage to our ultimate goal.

But why Key West? It is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States. (Since many aging retirees migrate to Florida, there is perhaps a submerged joke about Florida being “God’s waiting room.”) In the song’s description, Key West resembles the Blessed Isles of Greek mythology. The previous song had ended with the “killing frost…on the ground,” but with the singer looking to the rising sun. In Key West, however, “winter…is an unknown thing.”  Key West is thus a land of blessedness and contentment, a place where every tear shall be wiped away.

But Dylan wants to insist that this Key West is a real place, not an imaginary island. Immediately after singing, “Key West is the enchanted land,” (n.b. “the” not “an”) the perona says, “I’ve never lived in the land of Oz/ Or wasted my time with an unworthy cause.” (There are other references to The Wizard of Oz in the lyrics). Key West exists not somewhere over the rainbow, but “down by the Gulf of Mexico.” Dylan mentions actual locations in the Florida city: Amelia Street, Bayview Park, Mallory Square; and historical facts: “Truman had his White House there.” In other words, the Key West he describes is a real place, although not identical with the city in Florida. Like the Scottish highlands in the earlier song, Key West is a symbol of an actually existing paradise divine, not the bogus land of Oz. Trying to construct “My Own Version of You” is an “unworthy cause”; trying to make your way to this city “on the horizon line,” the City of God that is the true destiny of all souls who have won the hard hope achieved in “Crossing the Rubicon,” is an admirable goal. It is the ultimate and perhaps the only true goal. It is not some head in the clouds opiate of the masses; in this Key West the singer has “both [his] feet planted square on the ground.” It is the “gateway key” to St. Peter’s gate, the key that the persona of “Crossing the Rubicon” turns before crossing the river.

But if this is the case, the song certainly commences in an odd fashion, with a murder: “McKinley hollered; McKinley sqaulled/ Doctor said McKinley, death is on the wall/ Say it to me, if you got something to confess/ I heard all about it, he was going down slow/ I heard it on the wireless radio/ From down in the boondocks, way down in Key West.” The opening couplet revises the beginning of Charlie Poole’s “White House Blues,” a song Dylan would have known as a young man from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. “White House Blues” uses a technique Dylan frequently employs: composing a topical song by incorporating floating verses from older songs. This allusion to Charlie Poole works on several different levels.

For one, it connects “Key West” to “Murder Most Foul,” itself an (ostensibly) topical song incorporating scores of references to previous songs. Each song uses the assassination of a president as a launching pad to engage in larger issues. “Murder Most Foul” includes a quote from “White House Blues”: “Hush, little children.” “White House Blues” and “Murder Most Foul” are both written well after the assassination and mention by name the presidential successors, Roosevelt and Johnson.

McKinley was murdered for political reasons by an anarchist and “Murder Most Foul” intimates Kennedy may have also been killed for political reasons. All three songs use art to confront and try to understand violence. In “White House Blues,” the doctor tells McKinley that he “can’t find the ball.” This is a specific reference to a particular shooting and a physician’s inability to help one patient by removing the shot from his body. In Dylan’s rewrite, “Death is on the wall.” As he did with the album title, Dylan revises to universalize. Ultimately, the writing is on the wall for all of us–death spares no one. Dylan’s doctor is also a priest, asking the dying, hollering McKinley if he has anything to confess, any burden of sin he needs to unload before meeting his Maker.

However, “Key West” is set in contrast to this world of violence. The persona hears the radio blasting the news from the safety of Key West. In fact, the city in the song is a place of reprieve from violence, even from death. As we near the end of the album, it may be worthwhile to stand back and consider its progress through the sequence of tracks. Rough and Rowdy Ways begins with the universality of mortality (“I Contain Multitudes”), manoeuvres past false prophets (“False Prophet”) and false idols (“My Own Version of You”), proclaims deliberate devotion to the God Who Is (“Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You), discovers the proper way to meet death (“Black Rider”) thumps a Bible and proclaims a creed (“Goodby Jimmy Reed”), asks for inspired wisdom and enacts a baptism (“Mother of Muses”), struggles through adversity to reclaim hope (“Crossing the Rubicon”), and finally arrives in the land of realized hope (“Key West”).

In the second verse, the singer changes the dial on the radio that brought the bad news of McKinley’s assassination. “I’m searching for love, for inspiration/ On that pirate radio station/ Coming out of Luxembourg and Budapest/ Radio signal clear as can be/ I’m so deep in love that I can hardly see/ Down in the flatlands, way down in Key West.” Instead of violence, he searches for love and inspiration, which can only be found on pirate, i.e. unofficial and unlicensed, radio. Pirate radio allows one to broadcast the naked truth, here the truth about love, considered taboo by the powers that be. (Interestingly Radio Martí, originally intended to be called Radio Free Cuba, was broadcast from Key West to Cuba while Castro was in power.)   When the clear signals come in from Luxembourg and Budapest, two cities famous for pirate radio, the singer falls deeply in love. The pirate radio broadcast is a metaphor for feeling the Holy Spirit which gives light and freedom as described in “Crossing the Rubicon.” To hear the unadulterated Truth is to fall in love and be set free. It is available to everyone who looks for it and discovers where to turn the dial.

The third verse then tells us, “Key West is the place to be/ If you’re looking for immortality/ Stay on the road, follow the highway sign/ Key West is fine and fair/ If you’ve lost your mind, you’ll find it there/ Key West is on the horizon line.” This stanza makes it fairly clear that Key West is a symbol for the eternal City of God where death is undone. Various roads scatter across Rough and Rowdy Ways. This road is Jesus’s narrow way that leads to life (Mt. 7:14), Dante’s straight path that does not stray into the dark wood of error and sin (Inferno 1), the “path in the mind” (“I Contain Multitudes”), the path on which you must travel light on the slow journey home (“Mother of Muses”). It is the King’s highway and the signs are posted if you know where to look. Hint, “thump that Bible” as in “Goodbye Jimmy Reed.” It is the place to find true sanity in God if you’ve lost your mind in the world. In verse six, it is the “key to innocence and purity.”

In verse ten, it is “under the sun/Son,” where you “feel the sunlight (light of the Son) on your skin/ And the healing virtues of the wind (Holy Spirit)/ Key West is the land of light.” Taken together, this description seems sufficient to indicate that in the song, Key West stands for the Christian Heaven, or at least as the place set aside for true believers who possess the expectant hope of salvation.

If so, it helps interpret one of the strangest verses on the album: “Twelve years old, they put me in a suit/ Forced me to marry a prostitute/ There were gold fringes on her wedding dress/ That’s my story, but not where it ends/ She’s still cute and we’re still friends/ Down on the bottom, way down in Key West.” On May 22, 1954, two days shy of his thirteenth birthday, Robert Allen Zimmerman celebrated his bar mitzvah. The choice was his family’s, hence he was “put into” a suit and “forced” to participate in the ceremony.

Dylan alludes to the prophet Hosea who was instructed to marry a harlot, Gomer, because “the land hath committed great whoredom” (Hos. 1:2). The gold fringes refer to a decorated Torah covering. So, marrying a prostitute at 12 years old is Dylan’s metaphor for his bar mitzvah, which he did not want. Yet he still finds much in his Jewish heritage that is attractive. He is on good terms with Judaism, if not a fully practising, Orthodox Jew. He has had his sons bar mitzvahed, been photographed at the wailing wall in Jerusalem, celebrated passovers, been spotted in Temple, raised money for Jewish causes, written a song defending the state of Israel (“Neighborhood Bully”), etc.

The references on Rough and Rowdy Ways to the Holy Spirit, Christian gospel, the theological virtues, baptism, and other aspects of Christianity suggest strongly, if not conclusively, that Dylan remains the believing Christian has continuously been since the late ‘70s. This, then, would seem to be as close as we are ever likely to get to an explicit declaration by Bob Dylan, ne Robert Zimmerman, that he is a messianic Jew. If that is correct, then the lines in stanza four–”Well, it might not be the thing to do/ But I’m sticking with you through and through/ Down in the flatlands, way down in Key West”–refer to Jesus, even if that is not a popular position to take, amongst most of Dylan’s fans or in the general political and social climate.

In “Key West,” Dylan sings beyond the genius of the sea. The subtitle of “Key West” is “Philosopher Pirate.” Throughout Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is a philosopher pirate broadcasting via his own version of pirate radio a semi-coded message of faith, hope, and love to a tangled and torn world. His music projects a philosophy of belief to people living under the tyranny of political correctness and media conformity, and even more under general depravity and corruption. As he says, “I’ll drink to the truth” and “I have no apologies to make” (“I Contain Multitudes”).

Finally we have the coda to the album, at nearly 17 minutes the longest song Dylan has ever released, dropped unexpectedly as a single in March. “Murder Most Foul” is a treasury of references, to American pop culture and history in particular, but also to Shakespeare, Beethoven, the Bible, and much else. I have tried to make sense of Dylan’s mosaic of allusions on the songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways, exploring how he employs them to create meaning in his lyrics. In truth, I have touched on only a small fraction of these allusions. I will not here try to make sense of the scores of references in this one song, although I strongly suspect Dylan’s choices are not promiscuous. Many of these references are far more straight-forward and recognizable than allusions elsewhere on the album. He cites well-known information about the Kennedy assassination. He names familiar names from contemporary culture, such as Patsy Cline, Marilyn Monroe, Don Henley and Glen Frey, Nat King Cole.  Whereas elsewhere it takes some digging or a broad knowledge similar to Dylan’s own to catch the allusions, here they are often on the surface.

In doing so, and by setting this artistic litany in the context of a traumatic national event, Dylan suggests the importance of the creative imagination in dealing with real-world tragedy. Kennedy’s murder is just the starting place, a synechdoche for all the violence, hatred, and darkness in the world. “Murder Most Foul” does something similar to the title song of Tempest, where Dylan uses the sinking of the Titantic to make more general comments on human responses to tragedy and death. The second line of the new song already expands its scope beyond the shooting of JFK: “‘Twas a dark day in Dallas–November ‘63/ The day that will live on in infamy.”

By quoting Roosevelt’s speech reacting to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a quote famous enough to be recognizable by most listeners, Dylan indicates that the event in Dallas was not an isolated occurrence, but a continuation of sanguinary human history that extends far beyond December 1941 to that primal eldest curse, Cain’s murder of Abel. The song takes on slavery and race relations in America as well. The lines “The day they blew out the brains of the king/ Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing” must refer primarily to the Kennedy shooting. The details don’t fit the assassination of Martin Luther King. But how can we not hear an echo of that act of hatred in the title “king”? And possibly, in a muted manner, we might think about the execution two thousand years ago of the King of kings. The line “Take me back to Tulsa, to the scene of the crime” certainly refers to the Tulsa massacre of 1921. It also refers to the Bob Wills song “Take Me Back to Tulsa” that includes the lines: “Little bee sucks the blossom/ Big bee gets the honey/ Dark man picks the cotton/ White man gets the money.”

Allusions extend further back to the Civil War, with references to Gone With the Wind, the Union song “Marchin’ Through Georgia,” and the Confederate “Blood Stained Banner.” And further back to Beethoven and Shakespeare’s violent tragedies. In “Murder Most Foul” the call to arms against the universal sea of troubles in human history is artistic not political. Or, if you prefer, it is politics by other means. The song calls for an imaginative more than an activist response to the hardness of human hearts. It bespeaks the healing power of art, and song in particular, in a fallen world where suffering is ineradicable. Throughout his career, Dylan has always believed that the key to genuine reform lies in changing hearts not changing laws. Or, if you prefer, that changing laws is only truly efficacious when hearts have been converted. As he sang in “Wedding Song,” “It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large/ Nor is it my intention to sound the battle charge.” But he does consider it his duty to lighten the world through the creation of beautiful and inspiring music. Music provides a tremendous reprieve from pain; it may even change people’s way of thinking and offer them a new set of rules.

Dallas, as the main setting of “Murder Most Foul,” provides a couple of coincidentally relevant names. The main waterway through Dallas is the Trinity River and the main airport in ‘63, Love Field. Roads and rivers are important throughout Rough and Rowdy Ways. In “Murder Most Foul” Dylan alludes to the the most famous intersection in American musical history, the crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil: “I’m going to the crossroads, gonna flag a ride/ That’s the place where Faith, Hope, and Charity died.” The devil always meets people at the crossroads, those moments when we must make crucial decisions about the direction our lives will take. The devil tempts us to take the broad road to perdition, to resist the yoke that comes with adhering to the theological virtues.

The persona of “Murder Most Foul” is not going to the crossroads to sell his soul; he goes to force the moment to its crisis, to choose the narrow path, reject sin, and keep Faith, Hope, and Charity alive. In the next verse he sings, “Wake up, Little Suzie, let’s go for a drive/ Cross the Trinity River, let’s keep hope alive/ Turn on the radio.” In the Everly Brothers’s “Wake Up, Little Susie,” a teenage couple falls asleep watching a movie getting Susie into “trouble deep” with her parents for breaking curfew by six hours. They fear Susie’s reputation will be ruined because her parents and their friends will assume they have spent the night in an amorous embrace. The boy calls her to wake up so they can avoid getting into further trouble. We’ve already seen in “Mother of Muses” how Dylan uses awakening as a baptismal metaphor for rejecting sin: “Take me to the river…Wake me, shake me, free me from sin.” And on Slow Train Coming he included a song based entirely on this idea, “When You Gonna Wake Up?” The point of the allusion then is wake up little Susie and stop sinning. In this context, Dylan puns on Dallas’s Trinity River as a place to be baptized into belief in a three-personed God, which if not the only is at least the best way to keep hope alive. Then he connects all of this with turning on the radio, reinforcing the idea that music helps to sustain hope and rousing belief. Dallas’s “Love Field is where [Kennedy’s] plane touched down/ But it never did get back up off the ground.” “Murder Most Foul” is Dylan’s wake-up call that the we need to start flying once again from “Love Field.”

Another river is mentioned on “Murder Most Foul”: “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey and go for the throat.” The English river provides Dylan with a homophone for mercy. Gerry & the Pacemaker’s hit single, though far simpler, actually has affinities with “Key West.” In Gerry Marsden’s song, the singer wants to stay in the place he loves, a place where people smile even at strangers and turn no one away, because elsewhere, “Life goes on day after day/ Hearts torn in every way,” and “People they rush everywhere/ Each with their own secret care.” In both songs, as in “Murder Most Foul,” the field of love, the place where torn hearts and secret cares are healed, lies across the river of Mersey/mercy.

In this examination of Rough and Rowdy Ways I have analyzed a small fraction of the allusions Dylan employs, trying to understand how he uses intertexts to create meaning. But of course Dylan’s collage technique works only if the songs are enjoyable, approachable, and to some degree understandable without recognizing and interpreting every (or even any) allusion. In the Divine Comedy Dante makes hundreds of allusions to scripture, Church fathers and doctors, Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, and scores of other sources. But, if we are not moved by the story of the protagonist’s journey through the realms of the afterlife, we will not bother to read the poem let alone exert the effort to interpret it.  To use an ancient formulation, art must delight as well as (before really) instruct. I have neglected to a large extent the ways in which these songs are simply appealing–the musical arrangements, the vocal performances, the sound of the words. In truth, these things constitute the primary importance of the album as a work of art. Yet, if we take the time to look more closely, Dylan’s achievement opens up for us on multiple levels of meaning and illumination.

I have tried further to argue that Rough and Rowdy Ways reveals, as I believe all of Dylan’s albums at least since Slow Train Coming if not before have always revealed, a Christian anthropology. The songs portray a world gone wrong moving inexorably toward apocalypse. But apocalypse, after all, is an unveiling, a revelation of the beneficent Creator’s true providential ends. Similarly, the songs portray fallen human beings, struggling against violence and malignancy both outside themselves and within, plagued by fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but who are nevertheless, through the grace offered by the Holy Spirit, open to redemption and capable of faith, hope, and charity.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Play Lady Play is a collection of articles relating to interpretations of Bob Dylan’s songs by lady performers.

Throughout the recordings are selected by Aaron Galbraith, based in the USA.  Aaron then sends his selection to Tony Attwood in England who then writes the commentary – and tries to complete each set of notes while the track is playing (although he does sometimes cheat).

You can find links to previous episodes of this series on the Play Lady Play homepage.

All of the episodes are on line as YouTube videos at the Untold Dylan Video Channel

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Aaron: For this episode I thought I’d look back at Dylan’s first 3 studio albums of the 80s, Shot Of Love, Infidels and Empire Burlesque and pick two female led covers from the three albums.

Shot Of Love

Aaron: Nana Mouskouri – Every Grain Of Sand. I thought I’d hate this when it first started, but I grew to kinda love it as it went along…it’s just so deliciously 80s! I think it came out in 1986. A second play is recommended!

Tony: It’s a very personal thing but for some reason I don’t like the excessive use of the vocal vibrato that seems to be part of Ms Mouskouri’s style. But I have to say this is an extraordinary rendition of this song.  The harmonies are staggeringly beautiful, and the orchestral arrangement is brilliant.

This is is exactly what one hopes for in a re-arrangement of a Dylan piece, bringing out the pure genius of the music and lyrics as a unity, rather than using the performance as an excuse for piggy-backing on Dylan’s genius.  I do want arrangers and performers to recognise that they are utilising works of brilliance, and add their own abilities to this – and when they can, the results can be exquisite.

Just listen to the line “Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me” – what they do is so simple, so relevant to the piece, so brilliant, so beautifully executed.

Aaron: Chrissie Hynde – In The Summertime. Very laidback…I wondered how they shot the video, any ideas?

Tony: In terms of shooting videos, my work in TV was a writer, which meant the guys making the shows would threaten the likes of me with death if I got anywhere near the studio, the editing room, or the set.  So no idea.

But it is a fantastic video, and it is so good to see the creative team being given the chance to make a video that is worthy of the song, and this certainly is.  In fact I forgot to keep writing and just watched the vid all the way.

This is one of few recordings that made me need (not want, but need) to go back and listen to Bob working on the song.   Just in case you get the need to do that here’s where I went .

It just reminded me how much more Chrissie and co have put into this recording, not just in the video but in the music.  And here again I am hearing the lyrics as I have not understood them before.

Strangers, they meddled in our affairs
Poverty and shame were theirs
But all that suffering was not to be compared
With the glory that is to be
And I'm still carrying the gift you gave
It's a part of me now, it's been cherished and saved
It'll go with me unto the grave
And into eternity.

Oh goodness me – that is good.  (OK I am being naive and simplistic now, but what else can be said about lines like that?)

I love this recording.  Certainly one of the ones I want to come back to.  Thank goodness of the Untold Dylan Video Channel.

Infidels

Judy Collins – Sweetheart Like You.

Aaron: Unusual. Breathtaking vocals. I closed my eyes whilst listening to “get in the zone” and just went with it. Excellent.

Tony: OK so I have declared my love for Judy Collins’ music many a time – but nooooooooo I do not take to lyrics spoken not sung.  They are there to be sung not there to be declaimed; for me it never works.

I guess there must be a lot of people in the world who actually like hearing song lyrics declaimed against music.   “You know you can make a name for yourself….”  just listen to that line here spoken not sung.   What is the point?

And then at around 2 minutes 33 seconds the percussion comes in and I thought what??????   I even went back and played the vid again, not able to believe my own ears.  What is going on here?

"Hey guys, I know, let's do everything they don't expect us to?"

"But why?  What's the point?"

"It's different."

Yes it is different.  But that’s not enough.  In fact that is quite often just the opposite of what is enough.  Sorry Aaron.  I think it’s awful.

Eliza Gilkyson – Jokerman.

Aaron: Nicely restrained, slightly countrified version. I enjoyed it.

Tony: Goodness I must be in a bad mood today – although I didn’t think so when I woke up.  But “A nod to Bob”   ?????????????????????   What person thought that this was a good name for any album, let alone an album of women singing Bob Dylan songs.

But she’s the sister of a member of Lone Justice, which puts her up there worthy of special attention in my book.  Yet somehow this version of the song doesn’t seem to do justice to the lyrics, in the way that Bob does.   It made me pondering what it is in the original that really makes the song work so well.  Is it the way the bass players quavers through the verses, against the laid back approach of the other instruments?  I suspect so.

If you (dear reader, not Aaron) have the inclination go back to Bob’s original version, and instead of listening to Bob and the lyrics, listen to what the band is doing and then see how they link the verse to the chorus.  It gives the song a rare magic, and I think that is lost here.   Maybe that “Nod to Bob” nonsense put the band off.

Bob doesn’t do choruses that often, but when he does he tends to put in something very special, and that needs to be considered carefully if one is going to offer a new version – in my opinion.  But then, that’s probably just me.

Empire Burlesque

Aaron: Bettye LaVette – Emotionally Yours. Surprising arrangement. Unsurprisingly great. Love it, especially the second half.

Tony: You’re cheating Aaron, we’ve been through the Lavette Dylan song book and I’ve already slipped in the track I really love (“Things have changed”), and I know how much you like the music of this lady.  But here’s another song used by the singer to show off her vocal acrobatics, even when they are not part of the song.

No, sorry not for me, but beyond any doubt our readers will be knocking out more of those emails suggesting you take over the site and push me into the garage (not I hasten to add, to make an album of my own but to try and work out what that strange knocking sound is everytime I start up the exceptionally old and now rather decrepit Mercedes).

Aaron: Thea Gilmore – I’ll Remember You. Wow. Man, what a voice. And that trumpet part towards the end. Genius, just genius.

(Two versions here, one of them doesn’t work in the UK but does in the US)

Tony: Now this is at the other end of the scale.  This is so wonderful, Aaron I forgive you all your meanderings into the strangeness.   She has a beautiful voice which she utterly understands, and an arranger who knows how to make instruments fit around her.

If you play this more than once then try this:  play it once just taking in the music, play it the second time listening to the exquisite vocalist and then play it again listening to one of the most unusual accompaniments ever put together for a Dylan song.  Somewhere around 2 minutes 37 seconds and onwards.  Oh that is so good, so clever, so unusual.  This is why I moved from being a musician to become a writer – I knew I could never have dreamed of putting that sort of arrangement together.

And just go on and listen to the subsequent instrumental break.  I know we are here to consider the work of the ladies, but oh that arranger is so utterly brilliant – she/he has the percussion taking the same routine over and over and yet it never sounds like mere repetition.

Genius all round.   (Incidentally, the second of the two videos (the one I can get to play in the UK) continues with the rest of the album – I don’t want to send you away from this article, but maybe come back later and play the whole album).

Aaron: Now let’s finish this episode the way Dylan signed off the Empire Burlesque album with this bonus track..

Judy Collins – Dark Eyes.

Tony: After my rude comments about Judy above, I hesitate.  Judy it seems knows how to move me to tears and also has me tearing what is left of my hair out.

This one I am sorry to say, doesn’t move me at all (so at least no more hair loss).  It is the twinkly piano that puts me off.  Dark Eyes is a dark song, and that piano is so twee.  It is not the wonderful Judy’s fault of course, I am sure she didn’t write the orchestration, and she probably doesn’t have the power to sack the arranger and demand someone else comes in.

It can work with a piano accompaniment to the fore, but not like this.  When the violins come in I thought it could be salvaged, but no.

I would say, just look in total silence at these lines, and then ask, does that twinkly piano at the end fit?

Oh, the French girl, she’s in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel
Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes

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Aaron:  Hope you enjoyed at least some of these selections!

Tony: Oh yes.  This is such fun.   Even if we have no audience left because they’ve got totally fed up with my negativity, can we do it again?

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

By Kevin Saylor

• Dylan’s Christian Anthropology: An exploration of Rough and Rowdy Ways. Part 1 – multitudes
• Dylan’s Christian Anthology part 2: False Prophet & My own version of you
• Dylan’s Christian anthology 3: Black rider and Made up my mind

“Goodbye Jimmy Reed” is a blues stomper. As in “Blind Willie McTell” and “High Water (For Charlie Patton),” Dylan turns a commemorative song into something much more and perhaps other than the legendary bluesman named in the title. The most puzzling thing about “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” is that the first verse seems to be set in Ireland: “I live on a street named after a saint/ Women in the churches wear powder and paint/ Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray/ I can tell a Proddy from a mile away.”

“Proddy,” an Irish-Catholic insult for a Protestant, would not likely be in the vocabulary of a Chicago bluesman born in Mississippi. Niall Brennan, however, has some interesting reflections on how phrases from this song might be a shout-out to fellow blues aficionado Van Morrison, which can be found here: https://www.highsummerstreet.com/2020/07/goodbye-jimmy-reed-hello-van-morrison.html#more

Whatever the case may be with the first verse’s odd diction and setting, the song contains themes consistent with the rest of Rough and Rowdy Ways, most notably the connection between music and religion.

In a 1997 interview, Dylan said, “Those songs are my lexicon and prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from ‘Let Me Rest On That Peaceful Mountain’ to ‘Keep On the Sunny Side.’ You can find all my philosophy in those old songs.

I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing ‘I Saw the Light.’ I’ve seen the light too.”  The first verse concludes, “Goodbye Jimmy Reed–Jimmy Reed indeed/ Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need.”

“Give Me That Old Time Religion” is one of those old songs that form Dylan’s lexicon and prayer book. Both the song and the old creed are just what he needs. Different versions of the song contain various lyrics, but a few seem particularly relevant to “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” for instance, “Make me love everybody,” “It can take us all to heaven,” or “It was good for the Hebrew children,” a line especially poignant for a Jew who has embraced Christ.

The second stanza namechecks another of those old songs (and a James Baldwin novel): “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory/ Go tell it on the mountain, go tell the real story/ Tell it that straightforward Puritanical tone/ In the mystic hours when a person’s alone/ Goodbye Jimmy Reed–God speed/ Thump on a Bible–proclaim the creed.” The lyric attaches the doxology to the Christmas carol, “Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born.” The Christmas story is the “real story,” as found in the  Bible, to be proclaimed straightforwardly as a creed.

Lust, or perhaps sin and temptation more generally, are also addressed in this song. “Transparent woman in a transparent dress/ Suits you well I must confess/ I’ll break open your grapes, I’ll suck out the juice/ I need you like my head needs a noose/ Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long/ I thought I could resist her, but I was so wrong.”

We deceive ourselves if we think we can resist sin on our own even though we know the wages of sin is the scaffold. In the final verse, the persona is either in a cemetery looking for Jimmy Reed’s grave or a church looking for the Lord: “‘God be with you, brother dear/ If you don’t mind me asking what brings you here?’/ ‘Oh, nothing much, I’m just looking for the man/ Came to see where he’s lying in this lost land.’”

“I’m just looking for the man” likely alludes to the Don Lee penned gospel song “That’s the Man I’m Looking For,” containing the chorus, “If you can remember ask Him what’s His name/ If He tells you Jesus just say we’re so glad you came/ Tell Him you know someone that still calls Him Lord/ Then send Him on to me cause that’s the man I’m looking for.” Whether it’s gospel, blues, or the old time religion, the end of the search is Jesus the Lord.

The hymn-like “Mother of Muses” invokes Mnemosyne, who in addition to birthing the muses is the goddess of memory. Given Dylan’s vivid and vast historical imagination, Mnemosyne serves as an appropriate presiding deity. He asks her to sing of nature but also of “honor and fame and glory be.”

He loves Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. Then, as traditionally in epic, though rather surprisingly in an American pop song from 2020, he praises military heroes who “struggled with pain so the world could go free.”

Today’s cognoscenti laud protesters and rioters not men of war, but Dylan knows that sometimes liberty must be protected with force. The American Civil War and World War II were fought to set and keep men free, so Dylan sings the praises of “Sherman, Montgomery, and Scott/ And of Zhukov and Pattton and the battles they fought/ Who cleared the path for Presley to sing/ Who carved the path for Martin Luther King.”

This song does not recant or nullify those from the young Dylan who wrote “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side.” Those songs opposed war profiteering and chauvinistic jingoism, but were not anti-war per se. Nor does “Mother of Muses” glorify acts of war. Rather it recognizes that sometimes evil must be cleared from the path to make way for artistic expression and peaceful reform. Dylan links two democratic kings, Elvis and MLK, who each strove to liberate in his own way. Honorable military leaders secure the necessary peace for art and social reform to occur.

The end of the song turns from world to personal history: “Mother of muses, unleash your wrath/ Things I can’t see, they’re blocking my path/ Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate/ Put me upright, make me walk straight/ Forge my identity from the inside out/ You know what I’m talking about.”

Men of war may be an unfortunate necessity, but the singer, like Solomon, asks for himself wisdom not martial glory. The muses’ wrath is important because sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword and is always the preferable means of settling disputes. Wisdom consists of discernment and rectitude. He asks to see the obstacles that keep him from walking in righteousness. He knows this is not a matter of identity politics. Identity must be forged from the inside out, not vice versa. We walk the straight path because of the content of our hearts and consciences, not because of any group we belong to.

In the last verse, he asks Mnemosyne, “Take me to the river, release your charms/ Let me lay down in your sweet loving arms/ Wake me–Shake me–free me from sin/ Make me invisible like the wind/ Got a mind to ramble, got a mind to roam/ I’m traveling light and I’m slow coming home.”

The river of the muses is Hippocrene, but the singer asks for absolution not inspiration. To be “woke” in this context does not carry the current slang meaning of adhering to a politically correct awareness of values defined by media culture. Rather, it means what it meant in 1980, when, quoting Revelation, Dylan sang, “When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?” He asks for baptismal rebirth that washes away sin, so the invisible wind is yet another reference to the Holy Spirit. To travel light is to remain unattached to the things of this world, which is not our true home, as when Christ advised the twelve to take nothing on their journey.

The hard-driving “Crossing the Rubicon” is a dark, obscure tale, but one that ends in hope. Crossing the Rubicon is obviously a metaphor for taking decisive action in uncertain times. The setting is not ancient Rome since there are explicit references to praying to the cross, the Holy Spirit, Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. The story opens in an infernal setting, “during the most dangerous month of the year/ At the worst time–at the worst place”; the persona has “abandoned all hope” yet he rises early to “greet the goddess of the dawn”; he then finds himself “three miles north of purgatory,” but praying to the cross; he wonders how he can redeem idly spent time in the “dark days” of a “world so badly bent”; he does not know how much longer he can continue but he embraces his love and crosses the Rubicon; next he is filled with rage, threatening to kill someone; he can find no righteous man, yet the sun shines down and he pays his debts; finally, he climbs a hill where he believes he will find happiness and love if he survives, pours a cup, and passes it along.

I have tried to reconstruct the narrative of the first half of the song, although, in fact, it is more disjointed than my summary allows. Nevertheless, it is clearly a story about how to maintain faith (prayer), hope (dawn, redeeming the time [cf Eph 5:16 and Col 4:5]), and love (found atop the hill) in a broken world. The persona knows he must act boldly without surrendering to despair, idleness, or indifference. But who is this “you” he threatens to kill? The saga only grows more mysterious as he accuses this “you” of “defil[ing] the most lovely flower/ In all of womanhood,” an act he finds intolerable and deserving of death. Yet he claims, “I’ll miss you when you’re gone.” He declares that, “You won’t find any…happiness or joy” here and so should “go back to the gutter…find some nice pretty boy.” Is this the same you that has been said to have a wife and to have defiled the flower of womanhood? Is this you bisexual? Or is the pretty boy a tool rather than a lover? Or, as seems more likely, is this “you” a personification of some malignant power? If so, what is this power? The story flirts with allegory, but resists any easy identification. Of all the songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways, I find “Crossing the Rubicon” the most difficult to get a handle on.

And yet, it contains one of the most important verses for understanding the album: “I feel the Holy Spirit inside, see the light that freedom gives/ I believe it’s in the reach of every man who lives/ Keep as far away as possible–it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn/ I turned the key and broke it off and crossed the Rubicon.”

Once the persona feels the Holy Spirit, although the world remains dark and bent, he finds the light of true freedom. In order to feel the Spirit, the speaker has had to take resolute action in the face of uncertainty and danger, engage in prayer and self-examination, pay his debts and drink his cup, and confront a menacing enemy. Having done these things, he revives in the understanding that it is always darkest before the dawn. The Holy Spirit allows him to trust a providential order in which the sun always rises. As the song ends, it is still winter, but he lights a torch, looks to the East, and soldiers on across the Rubicon. Equally important, he asserts that such freedom and grace are offered to everyone. However corrupt the world, redemption is available to all–except perhaps the song’s ‘you,’ another reason to read this character allegorically. Even if many of the details are difficult to sort out, “Crossing the Rubicon” offers a guide for surviving in a ruthless world, as it progresses from its hellish opening through purgatory and across the river, which by the end of the song has become the Jordan as much as the Rubicon.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do