Untold Dylan

By Larry Fyffe

In the song lyrics quoted below, a melancholic electric bluesman plays and sings about a lost lover:

I went out in Virginia, honey, where the green grass grows
I went out in Virginia, honey, where the green grass grows
I tried to tell myself that I didn't want you no more
My baby told me, stop doing me wrong
My baby told me, stop doing me wrong
Well, I telling you, honey, 'cause I'm tired of living alone

(Jimmy Reed: Down In Virginia ~ J&M Reed)

The passing of the blues singer from the face of this earth, though life thereon be no paradise, is lamented in the the verse below:

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?

(Bob Dylan: Goodbye Jimmy Reed)

The sentiment of loneliness expressed through Reed’s music and lyrics echo in the lines below:

I'm giving myself to you, I am
From Salt Lake City to Birmingham
From East L.A. to San Antone
I don't think I can bear to live my life alone

(Bob Dylan: I’ve Made Up My My Mind To Give Myself To You)

Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan looks abroad to a Prussian author of pre-Freudian Gothic Romantic stories. Ernst Hoffman satirizes the mechanization of life wrought by contemporary industrialized socio-economic conditions that fragments, but fails to displace the organic imagination of creative artists.

Ernst is the Jungian kinsman of the American Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe, both being accompanied by their alchemic transmutation symbols of earth, air, fire, and water.

A lover hyperbolically idealized in the Rococo-like verse below:

Thou wast that all to me, love
For which my soul did pine
A green isle in the sea, love
A fountain, and a shrine
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers
And all the flowers were mine

(Edgar Allan Poe: To One In Paradise)

“The Golden Flower Pot” by Ernst Hoffman features a student apprenticed to an alchemist who is hired to copy ancient Arabic and Egyptian manuscripts. The young man is beloved by a pretty maid named Veronica; he’s soon able to decipher the writings, and reads that the alchemist is the Spirit of Fire exiled from the spiritual underwater world of Atlantis. Turns out that his boss needs to find a suitable husband for his daughter if he is ever to get back home. Serpentina is her name, and she’s a loving green-gold skinned, tree-dwelling lamia with blue eyes. The Spirit of Earth gives the alchemist a golden flower pot to present to a husband noble enough for Serpentina; a wicked witch tries to steal the golden pot, but the alchemist transforms her into a beet. Veronica marries a practical man, and Serpentina and the student run off together to watery Atlantis; they marry. The sorcerer’s apprentice has found his Muse.

In the following song lyrics, we discover such an apprentice:

I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my world
I want to do things for the benefit of mankind
I say to the willow tree, "Don't weep for me"
I'm saying to hell to all things that I used to be

(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)

In the song lyrics below, the narrator thereof is quite willing to go with a blue-eyed Serpentina archetype wherever she wants to go:

Take me out travelling, you're a travelling man
Show me something that I'll understand
I'm not what I was, things aren't what they were
I'll go far away from home with her

And the apprentice is more than happy to marry his new Muse:

I've travelled from the mountains to the sea
I hope the gods go easy on me
I knew you'd say yes, I'm saying it too
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

(Bob Dylan: I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You)

The chief song source is:

Would you lay with me in a field of stone ....
Would you go away to another land
Walk a thousand miles through the burning sand
Wipe the blood from my dying hand
If I give myself to you?

(Johnny Cash: Would You Lay With Me ~ David Coe)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

This article continues from It takes some getting used to. Rough and Rowdy Ways Part 1

by Stephen Scobie

“False Prophet”

The words of the song are always disclaimers, in the negative – “I ain’t no false prophet” – but the title remains obstinately affirmative, in the positive – “false prophet.”  Is the singer saying that he is a prophet, but not a false one?  Or is he saying that he’s no prophet of any kind, false or otherwise?  Which double negative takes precedence: “ain’t no” or “no false”?  Remember the very early Dylan song “Long Time Gone,” with its evocation of the Prophet Amos: “I know I ain’t no prophet / And I ain’t no prophet’s son”  (for a detailed exploration of that early song, see my book Always Other Voices).

And while we’re on the topic of ambiguous claims to authority and authorship, let’s acknowledge the wholesale appropriation of the musical arrangement (which is wonderful) from Billy (the Kid) Emerson, 1954.  Love and Theft.  Billy, you’re so far away from home.

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

When I first listened to the album, I heard this as “the world caved in.”  I have since seen at least one internet posting with the same mistake.  I’m not at all sure I don’t prefer it.

My fleet footed guides from the underworld

“Fleet footed” is a classic poetic epithet, often apped to Hermes/Mercury, messenger and trickster.  But it is also, of course, self-quotation.  In 1965 “Maggie comes fleet foot” in the underworld  Subterranean homesick blues.

I’m first among equals, second to none
The last of the best, you can bury the rest
Bury ‘em naked with their silver and gold

OK, this is a tricky one.  I see an odd string of references here, but I acknowledge that I may be letting my fancy run away with me.  These links may exist more in my imagination than in any legitimate reading of the text.  But I can’t resist them.

To begin with, “first among equals,” or in its Latin form, “primus inter pares,” is an equivocal concept, both self-aggrandizing (first) and modest (among equals). It’s not a stable condition: many or even most “first among equals” relationships have ended up in civil strife and the attempted dominance of the one.   One example would be the Roman triumvirate of Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Lucinius Crassus.  Dylan’s keen interest in Caesar is evident throughout RRW, but for the moment, my interest is in Crassus, the richest man in Rome.  (For my generation, the definitive portrait is Laurence Olivier’s towering performance in Stanley Kubrick’s film Spartacus (1960).)

But before I get back to Crassus, what about Dylan?  If the narrator of this song regards himself as first among equals, who are “the rest”?  If he is “the last of the best,” then who remains to be buried?  And one possible answer, though I feel rather queasy advancing it, is “them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.”  That use of “bad boys” seems rather condescending, more part of the Stones’ early-60s publicity image than of their mature accomplishment.  But there is the unavoidable fact that both Dylan and the Stones lay claim to the use of the proverb (not to mention Muddy Waters; not to mention Jann Wenner).  If  Dylan is “the last of the best,” last left standing of the rock gods of the 60s, can he finally “bury” them bad boys with their “silver and gold”?  After all, the Stones did in 1969 release a song called “You got the silver, you got the gold” (notable in that the lead vocal is by Keith, not Mick).

And here is where these two stray threads of association I have been uneasily following suddenly loop back together.  In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones are “them British bad boys.”  In 1965, Dylan records “Like a Rolling Stone.”  In 1969, the Rolling Stones record “You got the gold.”  In 1960, Olivier defines Crassus.  The film, however, does not include Crassus’ death.  In legend, after (let us hope, after) Crassus was killed in battle, his victorious enemies mocked his status as the richest man in Rome by pouring molten gold into his mouth.  On RRW, Dylan sings “Bury ‘em naked with their silver and gold,” and then, just two verses later, he adds:

Open your mouth, I’ll stuff it with gold.

Which just leaves second to none, which will reappear, startlingly, at the very end of the album.

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

Somebody’s.  Could be anybody’s.  Blood Feuds aren’t particularly discriminating.

The city of God is there on the hill

Conflation of several texts:

• City of God, 5^th century AD treatise by Saint Augustine of Hippo (I dreamed I saw… )
• “A city set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5.14)
• sermon on this text by John Winthrop, preached in Boston in 1630, widely quoted (and, arguably, misinterpreted) by Ronald Reagan, and by all of his successors.  For its connections to Dylan’s Basement Tapes, see Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic.

Dylan himself wrote a song called “City of Gold” (1980), which was performed on the Gospel tours, and released on “Trouble No More” (2017).

I’m nobody’s bride

Hard to see Bob as a bride, even in the context of time running backward, or waiting at the altar.  But stranger things have happened – see another strange wedding in “Key West.”

Can’t remember when I was born and I forget when I died

Definitive statement of being beyond or outside of time.  Maybe it comes from some old blues – wouldn’t surprise me – but so what?  He knows what to do with it: place it at the end of a song in which he claims that he is/is not a false/not false prophet.

“My Own Version of You”

I have by now read on line several dozen reviews of RRW, and when they come to this song, they invariably mention Frankenstein.  Fair enough – but the reference exists only in the cultural intertext, not in the text itself.  The name “Frankenstein” is never mentioned in the actual song.   I’ll try to stay away from it for as long as I can.

I’ve been visiting morgues and monasteries

Compare “Thunder on the Mountain” (2008):  “Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches / I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages.” I know it’s a tenuous echo, but hey, any excuse to quote that rhyme!  “Brando / commando” is pretty good too.

Lookin’ for the necessary body parts
Limbs and livers and brains and hearts

In medieval troubadour poetry, there was a rhetorical convention in which the poet assembled an idealized lady by combining features from several famously beautiful women: one woman’s eyes, another woman’s hair, another woman’s lips.  However, it never got down to the anatomical level of livers and hearts.  Leave it to Dylan to make the rhetorical conceit literal.

I wanna create my own version of you

It is of course a highly problematic wish, even before it gets literalised into livers and brains.  The narrator refuses to accept his lover as she is, but rather regards her as material to be shaped according to his own desires.   Later, he phrases it as:

I’ll bring someone to life, someone for real
Someone who feels the way that I feel

But how can she be alive or real if her existence  depends on replicating his feelings?

It must be the winter of my discontent

Shakespeare again, first line of Richard III.   But the original is “our,” not “my”: it expresses (and derides) the collective delight of the victorious York dynasty in deposing its enemies, a delight which Richard does not exactly share.  For him, the discontent still exists, and he will follow it through until he himself attains the crown – by way of means of, to switch plays, murder most foul.  And Richard’s “discontent” goes deeper than his regal ambition: it is, fundamentally, rooted in his own physical deformity, the hunchback, which is the main topic of the rest of this opening speech.  Maybe he should look for repairs in some morgue or monastery.

I pick a number between one and two
And I ask myself what would Julius Caesar do?

 There is of course no whole number between one and two, so the line expresses a paradox, or an impossibility.  Or a preference for fractions. The following phrase is commonly used as “What would Jesus Christ do?”  Dylan exchanges one JC for another.  And if we again think of the Shakespearean tragedy, note how these references – Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III, Julius Caesar — are all plays dealing with the violent overthrow or assassination of a monarch.  Lying in waiting for JC is JFK.  And William McKinley.

Leon Russell / Liberace / Saint John the Apostle

Another unlikely trio, where the bizarreness of the combination (and the delight of the rhyme) is probably more significant than any precise association for each of the names.

I’ll be at the Black Horse Tavern … Two doors down,
    not that far to walk

Would a black rider drink in a Black Horse Tavern?  Or if he were in Greenwich Village, might he not walk (not that far) to the White Horse Tavern, where in 1953 a certain Welsh poet called Dylan quite literally drank himself to death? Riding a pale horse.

You can bring it to St Peter, you can bring it to  Jerome
You can … bring it all the way home

A somewhat less incongruous pairing, between the founder of the church and the translator of the Scriptures.  So the singer is “bringing it all back home,” to an album title from 1965.

Can you tell me what it means, to be or not to be?

            Hamlet again, with a question which remains as inscrutable as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Can you help me walk that moonlight mile?

There are probably dozens of references for “Moonlight Mile,” but my favourite would certainly be the sublime 1971 recording by them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.

I can see the history of the  whole human race

Most of which – the crusades, England, America – seems to deal with slavery, and thus with the question of what it means to be “human.”  Did Jefferson consider his slaves as “human”? Which is, in turn, the question of Frankenstein: is his creature “human”?

Trojan Women

Greek tragedy by Euripides, notable for its focus not on the heroes of war but its victims.

Some of the best known enemies of mankind …
Mr Freud with his dreams, Mr Marx with his axe
See the rawhide lash rip the skin from their backs

Even by the standards of recent Dylan, this is a remarkably violent, even sadistic image.  It’s one thing to disagree with Freud or Marx; it’s quite another thing to conjure up and appear to take relish in such specific and grisly punishment.

Yet the singer immediately does an about-face, evoking an immortal spirit, [which] creeps in your body the day you are born.   Or, perhaps, at the moment when some strange creator brings you to life with a blast of electricity?

The whole song is caught up in what Leonard Cohen called “the tangle of matter and ghost.”  It longs for the “immortal spirit,” but it keeps on snagging on the crudely material: bodies which can be ideally assembled, or else flogged apart.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, “Mississippi” can’t really be dealt with in one article. Too grand, too majestic, too monumental. And, of course, such an extraordinary masterpiece deserves more than one paltry article. As the master says (not about “Mississippi”, but about bluegrass, in the New York Times interview of June 2020): Its’s mysterious and deep rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. […] It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood.

XV       Gaze into the abyss

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Friedrich Nietzsche most certainly has a thing for music. As early as at the age of fourteen he writes:

God gave us music so that we, first and foremost, will be guided upward by it. All qualities are united in music: it can lift us up, it can be capricious, it can cheer us up and delight us, nay, with its soft, melancholy tunes, it can even break the resistance of the toughest character.

He remains faithful to music throughout his life, studying music theory and piano with zeal, writing some seventy classical compositions (mostly for piano), and even playing with the idea of becoming a professional composer – but both Wagner and Hans von Bülow advise against it. He’s just not talented enough. Von Bülow’s rejection, after Nietzsche sent him his “Manfred-Meditation”, has an entertaining, Nietzschean cruelty, by the way:

“I could not discover in it the least trace of Apollonian elements, and, as for the Dionysian, to tell you frankly, it made me think of the morning after a bacchanalian orgy rather than of an orgy itself…. Once again — don’t take this too badly — you yourself say your music is “detestable” — it is, actually, more detestable than you believe.”

And a little further on Von Bülow even calls the piece a “rape of Euterpe”, a rape of the muse of flute playing and lyrical poetry.

Well, that might be a little too rich. Nietzsche’s music really isn’t that awful. “A gifted amateur” is the friendlier, and a better qualification. And with the miraculous, enchanting “Das Fragment an sich” (The fragment by itself, 1871) Nietzsche actually writes, twenty years before Satie, the first piece of minimal music in music history. Moreover, in 1896 his philosophical and literary work inspires Richard Strauss to write the overwhelming symphonic poem “Also sprach Zarathustra” (which will become the soundtrack to the endless emptiness in 2001: A Space Odyssey), and inspires Gustav Mahler to write music to “O Mensch! Gib Acht!” (O man! Take heed!) from his greatest work, the Third Symphony; hardly insignificant contributions to classical music, all in all.

An important part of his modest oeuvre consists of songs. And although Nietzsche certainly is a great poet, he prefers to set other people’s poems to music – which often have similarities with Nietzsche’s thinking and works. Like “Aus der Jugendzeit” (From the times of youth), by Friedrich Rückert, in which emptiness is the theme, the emptiness one experiences upon the realisation: you can’t go back all the way:

Ist das Herz geleert, ist das Herz geleert,
Wird’s nie mehr voll.

(Once the heart is emptied, the heart is emptied,
it never becomes full again.)

The French phenomenon Jules Michelet (1798-1874), who like Dylan in his later work tries to recreate the past, is touched by Rückert’s poem and incorporates parts of it in his poem “L’Hirondelle” (The Swallow, 1861):

Mais le vide du coeur reste, mais reste le vide du coeur,
Et rien ne le remplira

(But the heart’s emptiness remains; its emptiness remains,
And nothing will make it full again)

… which again is picked up by Vincent Van Gogh, who quotes it when he tries to express in his letters to brother Theo how much and why he is touched by the endless emptiness. This one example is from the letter to Theo of 10 April 1882, but emptiness and endlessness is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Vincent throughout his creative life, as well as an image of doom, as can be seen with increasing frequency from the letters just before his end:

“I can’t precisely describe what the thing I have is like, there are terrible fits of anxiety sometimes – without any apparent cause – or then again a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the mind.“

Vincent writes this to his sister Willemien a year before his death. Thematically similar to one of his last letters, two weeks before his suicide:

“Knowing clearly what I wanted I’ve painted another three large canvases since then. They’re immense stretches of wheatfields under angry skies, and I made a point of trying to express despondency, extreme loneliness.”

It is of all times, the fascination for the Void, the endless emptiness and the Nothing. The Nothing has occupied philosophers since Democritus, twenty-five centuries ago, most religions begin with a Nothing from which a world is created and it inspires artists like Ovid, Homer, Dante, Blake with his obsession for “the abominable void”, “the endless abyss of space and the curtains of darkness round the Void”, it inspires Baudelaire staring from his balcony into the espace profond, into the deep void, Rimbaud, whose Season in Hell is a “fall into the void” and Kerouac, who tries to ward off the void on almost every page of Desolation Angels.

But closest to the poet Dylan is, of course, Allen Ginsberg:

not even the human
imagination satisfies
the endless emptiness
of the soul
                ("Over Kansas", 1954)

For this last quatrain of “Mississippi”, Dylan only borrows that image of the endless emptiness, without further thematizing it – just like the following cold as clay is an atmospheric and melodic, but hardly eloquent cliché. They are fragments that, as Dylan says in that beautiful New York Times interview, “write themselves”, floating around somewhere in that stream-of-consciousness and now surfacing.

The word combination cold and clay then probably entered Dylan’s vocabulary via “Tom Dooley” a long, long time ago:

I dug a grave four feet long, I dug it three feet deep,
Throwed cold clay o’er her, and tromped it with my feet.

“Tom Dooley” is the Kingston Trio’s biggest hit in 1958 (estimated sales between four and six million singles), and according to music historians, John Fogerty and Joan Baez is the spark that ignited the folk revival. The song is an arrangement of a nineteenth-century folk song about the Southern soldier Thomas C. Dula, hung in 1868 after the murder of his fiancée Laura Foster. The impact of that story on him, or at least the impact of the song, Dylan does not hide; as early as 1965 he mentions Dooley in the liner notes of Highway 61 Revisited:

when tom dooley, the kind of person you think you've seen before, 
comes strolling in with White Heap, the hundred Inevitables all say 
"who's that man who looks so white?"

…and in 2020 the old murder ballad is apparently still floating around in that stream-of-consciousness: Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung, says Dylan in “Murder Most Foul.” And he’s not the only one who is struck by Tom Dooley and that cold clay. Elvis Costello lends the image for even two songs, as he tells in his autobiography Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink:

“I could point you to lines in my songs that use the language of folk songs: from the allusion to Barbara Allen in I Want You to the cold clay pulled out of Doc Watson’s rendition of Tom Dooley, which turns up in Suit of Lights and then again in Tramp the Dirt Down.”

The poet Dylan’s grandeur shines in the sequel, setting those half-known images of despair into the crown borrowed from Henry Rollins: You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way. After all, the emptiness remains – an emptied heart never fills up again.

Or, as Nietzsche would say: if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche – Das Fragment an sich: 

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part XVI, the final: Between Point Dume and Oxnard

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

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

by Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: I thought I’d look at more alternative rock acts to see if they a) consider Dylan cool enough to cover and b) if they are able to do something interesting enough with it to make it worth a listen. For me, the answer to both would be a resounding “yes”, you may feel different of course…so here we go again!

PJ Harvey

Tony: OK this fooled me, and in case you don’t know this track I’ll warn you, it starts very quietly.  As in very very very quietly.

Now my approach to unusual musical arrangements is to ask “is this just done to be different? or does it have a meaning integral to the composition?”

The lyrics of the song “Highway 61 Revisited” are a challenge to all our understanding of the blues, as I think Dylan intended, for as he said, “Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors … It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood.”

And of course others come along and want to sing it and it is NOT their place in the universe.   Highway 61 goes through Duluth, they were not born in Duluth.  But Dylan was, and Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, and Charley Patton were all born near its route. And there is the eternal Robert Johnson story too.

So yes for people who come to this song NOT born close to the highway, the song has a different meaning.  And yes, the silence has a meaning for those not born there which is different.  A silence is a way of symbolising it and indeed it reminds me of what’s going on here.  I’ll go for that.  

And indeed having got over that uncertainty I go for the whole re-working.  The blues like rock n roll is the music of the people, everyone can treat it as they want.   And in fact I do love the shouty insistence that says “I want to be heard”.

What I didn’t realise was that Polly Jean had been awarded an MBE (the order of most excellent member of the British Empire).  Shows how out of touch one can get.

Shot of Love

Here again all the original meanings from Dylan’s song are stripped away.  And I did feel the need to go back to Bob’s original after listening to PJ, before then playing her version again.

This really is a way of turning a song upside down, inside out, back to front and round and round.  And that’s just the intro.   Try it  – as PJ’s version ends, play Dylan’s version below and then go back to PJ.  If you are short of time, the first 30 seconds will do in each case.

https://youtu.be/LUq9tawI_0k

Courtney Love & Hole: It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Again from the very first second we know something has been re-written here, and oh yes it sure has

I do like the arrangement of the musical interludes between the verses.  It is all too easy to continue at the same powerful rate of performance without giving the audience a chance to take a breath, but that is exactly what we need here.  And so we are given it.

The re-arrangement of the lines at the end of the song helps us keep focus and allow us to accept the very different ending too.  I enjoyed it, and it did really make me want to hear Dylan’s versions again — for all the right reasons.

Karen O (singer from the Yeah, Yeah Yeahs): Highway 61 Revisited

I am not sure why we’ve been taken back to “61” but  a re-visit is always welcome, although here we are getting Dylan’s lyrics, melody and  the essence of the original accompaniment.  But still it’s lively, it’s fun.

Maureen Tucker: I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

Maureen Tucker joined the Velvet Underground when Angus Maclise left because he felt the band sold out when it took a paying gig.   At least that is the story.  I must say I never did that.  But then I never had a chance of fame.

And the story of this version of “I’ll be your baby tonight” is… well, in essence, that Maureen sings out of tune, and the instruments play out of tune.   And…

Rolling Stone called it “counter culture cool”, and yes I did get a lot of the Velvet Underground and what they were doing, and indeed went to see the band several times, and bought the albums, etc, but eventually got fed up with the approach.  After all, how many times can you play a track like this and feel it is enjoyable, or that you are getting something special out of it, or…

But once was enough and it was as relief to see that the next artist Aaron selected was Chrissie Hynde.  And just the introduction of this next piece is enough to make me feel that earlier thoughts were not too unworthy.

This is a fantastic re-working of song I find hard to admire because my views on religion, (in the same way that many might find a song which urges young men to leave their homes, join the army and march to war as a song that is worthy of praise) but this piece always fascinates me because of what happened to Bob in the months after writing this song.

As far as I know Bob has never played this in concert; an interesting thought in itself.  And then when we remember what came next – the set of songs that took Bob away further and further from the earlier Christian songs, from Every grain of sand to the song I know everyone has got so bored with me going on and on and on about over and over again “Making a liar out of me”…. all written in the space of a few months after “Property”.

But despite my prejudice, this version did make me listen again, not just to the musical quality and the arrangement but to the actual lyrics.  And that lovely harmonica interlude.  Just listen to that last verse as Chrissie speaks it

You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games
You think that when you rest at last you’ll go back from where you came
But you’ve picked up quite a story and you’ve changed since the womb
What happened to the real you, you’ve been captured but by whom?

Where was Bob (metaphorically, emotionally, intellectually) when he wrote those lines.  If I had the chance to ask him one question that would be the one.

Patti Smith

And now what would the punk poet laureate make of Changing of the Guard?

Oh, that is good.  Not a version I have heard before (which generally means that the recording was a number 1 hit from a platinum album while I was meandering around China), and I love the way she insists that it is lyrics that are the key to everything here: we will listen.  Yes we will.

Because we don’t have a backing group repeating certain lines, those lines become more important, and the occasional lines sung as harmonies manage not to stand out while standing out.  OK, that’s nonsense, but I can’t think of any other way of expressing the astonishing effect of certain lines sung in close harmony and others not, within the song.

No, this isn’t good.  This really is stunning.  What the band does when Patti isn’t singing is brilliant, and even the bass guitarist needs a mention here, for being neither invisible nor visible (which is also a dumb statement since I am writing about music, but again I am stuck for words.)

This singer and this band has done something utterly brilliant with this song.  I am overwhelmed.  Even the la-la-la at the end is imaginative and perfect.

Siouxsie And The Banshees

Having been overwhelmed I am not any more.  This is all right, but, well just that.   I am committed to reviewing the songs in the order that Aaron presents them to me, but if I were not I’d have this one earlier in the list, so I could have finished with Patti Smith.

So I will

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

by Stephen Scobie

 When I first listened all the way through to Bob Dylan’s new album,  Rough and Rowdy Ways (RRW), I felt a bit like the English poet Basil Bunting encountering Ezra Pound’s Cantos:

There they are, you will have to go a long way round
if you want to avoid them.
It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps,
fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble!

The album is so epic, so immense, that it seems impossible to write any kind of conventional “review,” any neat summation of themes, any reductive analysis or critical evaluation.  It’s just too big; it takes some getting used to.

So this article is not a review.  It doesn’t pretend to have a coherent, unified viewpoint, from which every odd detail can be slotted into place.  Rather, it is a series of rough notes on individual lines and phrases which particularly struck me in the course of my first few listenings.

Many of these notes involve quotations: identifying sources, references, echoes, allusions.  Much of this work has already been done by assiduous commentators on the internet; I cannot claim credit for being the first to discover and point out most of the identifications (though I do think I have pinned down a couple of references which I have not yet seen identified on the web).

Nor do I intend to pay any attention here to the vexed problems of allusion, intertextuality, or plagiarism, which I have extensively addressed elsewhere.  Certainly, I make no pretence at completeness.  There are many references which I have omitted, knowingly or unknowingly.  Some I may have added in, hearing echoes where none is intended.  This is not a coherent argument: these are first-draft impressions, preliminary reactions, rough and possibly even rowdy.

Packaging…

Could scarcely be more minimal.  The musicians are barely listed; the production (presumably by Dylan himself) not at all.  The front cover photograph is by contemporary English photographer Ian Berry,  The original image was in black and white; the sepia colouring enhances the illusion of a time past – suggesting some 1920s juke joint in the Deep South, but actually taken in London in 1964.

The packaging includes the hagiographic pose of JFK, but not the lurid image which accompanied the pre-release of “False Prophet,” showing a skeleton in a top hat wielding a hypodermic needle.  There is a photo of Jimmy Rodgers, but none of Dylan himself.

Title

The title is rather odd.  “My Rough and Rowdy Ways” is a 1929 song by Jimmy Rodgers.  Dylan is a big fan, having produced a whole tribute album to the “singing brakeman.”  But RRW, other than the title and inside cover photo, contains (as far as I can tell) no other reference or quotation from Rodgers.  Neither is it especially rough – the production is meticulous – or rowdy – even at its most energetic, it’s not going to have your neighbours banging on the wall.  That’s not a criticism: the music is excellent.  But quietly excellent.

“I Contain Multitudes”

The Walt Whitman quote, or at least the idea of it, has been hanging around Bob Dylan critical circles for a long time.  I’m not sure if anyone has actually used the line, though it wouldn’t surprise me if someone has.  Anyway, Dylan has now done it for them.  But it’s one thing to have this Whitmanian (Whitmaniac?) virtue ascribed to you by a critic; it is quite another thing (as Walt himself must have known) to claim it for yourself.  It may be useful for sidestepping accusations of inconsistency or self-contradiction; but identifying yourself with Whitman does carry elements of bragging and egotism.  So, as we will see, such claims are occasionally undercut by wry self-deprecation or deliberate exaggeration.

Today and tomorrow and yesterday too

Possibly a distant echo of Macbeth – “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow … all our yesterdays”?  There is an air of Shakespearean tragedy all over this album.  Lady Macbeth will appear close to the end, over an hour from now.

Follow me close, I’m going to Bally-na-Lee    

Where?  After the obvious Whitman reference, here comes Dylan in the third line throwing a curve ball to all potential transcribers and annotators.  Where is this place, and how do you even spell it?  Turns out it’s a village in Ireland, associated with a 19^th century Irish poet, Antoine O Raifteiri, whose work Dylan has reportedly discussed with Shane MacGowan, lead singer of The Pogues.  (There may also be an echo from Thoor Ballylee, the home of W.B. Yeats.) As such – a distant location, out on the edge, with a few literary ghosts – perhaps it functions as a bookend to the penultimate song of the album – Key West.

I fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds

Sets up the first of a series of rhymes for “multitudes.”  I wrote above about Dylan using self-deprecating humour to undercut the possible arrogance of equating himself with Walt Whitman.  The line juxtaposes the trivial with the profound.  “Blood feuds” is only the first of a long series of images of justice as vengeance, judgements rendered as acts of extreme and personal violence.  (This theme has become increasingly prominent in Dylan’s work over the last twenty years.)  It pierces to the heart of the debate between public justice and private revenge, society’s transition from the endless extension of “blood feud” to the rule of law, in which the state claims a monopoly on violence.  This debate continues to this day, but was most memorably articulated by, yes, Hamlet – “Murder Most Foul.”

Yet here, this intensely serious theme is casually paired with “I fuss my hair.”  Now, I would readily agree that there are few heads of hair in the world more worth fussing with than Bob Dylan’s, especially circa 1966 (as ultimately portrayed by the late Milton Glaser).  But it scarcely equates with “blood feuds.”  The coupling here urges you to see an element of irony in Dylan’s commitment to revenge.  The language of “blood feuds” is always, knowingly, a bit over the top.

1. But it turns out we’re not yet quite finished with “fuss.”  But for that, you’ll have to wait until I get to “Mother of Muses.”

Got a tell tale heart like Mister Poe

Volume 8 of Dylan’s “Bootleg Series,” which covers the years around Time Out Of Mind, is entitled Tell Tale Signs (2008).  In Poe, the “heart” belongs to the victim of murder, whose beating heart remains audible as an accusation beyond death.  In Dylan, the role of victim is ascribed to the singer himself, the author of the “signs,” and the signs are the songs, or at least the alternative takes and rejected drafts of songs which, once buried, are now permitted to sound beyond the walls of their tombs.

Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache

Classic rock and roll song by Warren Smith (1957), covered by Dylan (2001).  The recording was used as a TV commercial for

Cadillac cars and trucks.  Dylan has cheerfully allowed his songs to be used to advertise all kinds of products, from Victoria’s Secret lingerie to (just this last weekend) Travelers Insurance golf tournament.   Purists have been distressed, but hey, why not?  If you contain multitudes, why shouldn’t that include salesman for ladies’ underwear? But the Cadillac will also show up later on RRW, as will “red.”

I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana            Jones
And them British bad boys, the Rolling        Stones 

This is the first, and perhaps the most unsettling, instance of a device which Dylan uses throughout RRW, and which eventually consumes it entirely: a list of culturally well-known names (authors, singers, titles) arranged in groups of two or three, held together by rhyme, as if each pairing was a mini-collage, in which the significance was to be found not in the terms themselves but in the very act of their juxtaposition.  Sometimes the names in the list support each other; at other times they seem bizarrely incongruous, even indeed in violent conflict with each other – as here.

What do these three names possibly have in common with each other (aside from the tenuous link that Indiana Jones fought Nazis)?  Indeed, the placing of Anne Frank’s name in this company may be regarded as offensive.  Or the lines may be subject to the criticism levelled by Samuel Johnson against John Donne: “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”

In the next lines, Dylan ventures that all these characters “go right to the edge … go right to the end.”  Fair enough: but the question remains: of all the characters in human history who have gone to the edge, why these three?  In his New York Times interview with Douglas Brinkley, Dylan admits that basically, he just doesn’t know:

“Those kind of songs for me just come out of the blue, out of thin air… 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.”

Or in other words: I contain multitudes.

Everything’s flowing, all at the same time

In Greek, panta rhei: all things are in flux, unstable, impermanent.  Central tenet of the Greek philosopher Heroclitus.  In 1919, faced with the complete collapse of European civilisation over the previous five years, Ezra Pound, already “fighting in the Captain’s tower,” wrote: “’All things are a flowing,’ / Sage Heraclitus said.”

I live on a Boulevard of Crime

This was the name colloquially given in the mid-19^th century to the stretch of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris housing the popular theatres – tragedies, comedies, melodramas, musicals, mime shows.  Its name came from the prevalence of petty crime: pickpockets, muggings, blackmail.  It was the setting (though that is far too weak a word) for the film Les Enfants du Paradis  (Children of Paradise), written by Jacques Prévert, directed by Marcel Carné, filmed more or less clandestinely in Nazi-occupied Paris, released after the war to become one of the great classics of French cinema – and also, as it happens, to become one of Bob Dylan’s all-time favourite movies.  It is a dominant influence on mid-70s Dylan, especially on the Rolling Thunder Revue and Renaldo and Clara.  The aim of that movie, Dylan once told Allen Ginsberg, was to “stop time.”  What art could do, then, was to counter the sense that all things are flowing.  Indeed, throughout RRW, Dylan offers various images of time suspended, time cancelled.  And here comes the first one:

I sleep with life and death in the same bed

Red blue jeans

Has “blue jeans” become such a generic term that their colour doesn’t matter?  Are “red blue jeans” what you wear when crossing the Red River in red Cadillac?

I carry four pistols and two large knives

The first in a formidable arsenal wielded by the singer throughout the album.

I play Beethoven’s sonatas, Chopin’s preludes

 I look forward to hearing the bootlegs.

================

 This series of articles continues.  Meanwhile you might also be interested in some of the other articles we have published on Rowdy Ways.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

The Mississippi-series, part 14

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, “Mississippi” can’t really be dealt with in one article. Too grand, too majestic, too monumental. And, of course, such an extraordinary masterpiece deserves more than one paltry article. As the master says (not about “Mississippi”, but about bluegrass, in the New York Times interview of June 2020): Its’s mysterious and deep rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. […] It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood.

XIV      Unca Donald

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind
So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine

Claustrophobic words indeed, the words with which the narrator describes his current state of mind. Of course, the most famous scene of a hero trapping himself in the corner while painting is Donald Duck, but there it is not oppressive. Donald locks himself in to avoid an obligatory “social” with Daisy, so as not to have to accompany her to one of those stupid social events where Daisy is always so eager to show up.

At first it is tempting to take the opening metaphor literally; wet clothes sticking to his skin… maybe he really did swim across that wide river to reach his beloved. But no – the second line, with the paint metaphor, suggests that the image of the wet, sticky clothes is a first step to yet another accumulatio, in this song the third accumulation of more or less similar images.

In terms of content we are back to the first accumulatio, in which the narrator also indicated to be “boxed in”, “trapped”, with “nowhere to escape”. This quatrain provides the corresponding images: the anguish of the tight, sticky clothes, and like Donald, painted into the corner, nowhere to escape.

The coincidental resemblance with Duckburg’s most famous resident will receive a remarkable psychological deepening in the next line.  Fortune waiting to be kind are striking words to characterise the Donald Duck as it was created by Carl Barks. The brilliant Carl Barks, who managed to transcend the anonymity of “the good Duck artist”, is the creator of Duckburg, the creator of Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander, of Neighbor J. Jones and the Beagle Boys, in short: of the Donald Duck as etched in our collective memory. He is the man who turns the side-figure Donald, the impetuous, frantic pusher next to Mickey Mouse (in The Wise Little Hen and in Orphan’s Benefit, 1934) into a protagonist with the image as we know him today: the Eternal Loser, the schmuck. Similar to Charlie Brown, for example, or Basil Fawlty – and to the narrator of “Mississippi”.

They are usually popular heroes with the public. Perhaps even more popular than the underdog, who usually wins at the end of the film or story. Dramatists can explain that phenomenon: a bad ending “you take home with you”, lets you lie awake at night. Shakespeare, Lessing, Brecht… that’s why they like to write tragedies, plays in which the main character has to die – because the impact is many times greater than a happy ending. The original storytellers were aware of that too, by the way. At Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood is eaten, and finito. No fuss with some hunter cutting open the wolf’s belly, and whatnot (Le petit chaperon rouge, 1697).

The less poignant variant of those fatal tragedies are the stories with the schmuck, who at least does survive his adventure. In Jewish humour and literature, the schmuck has existed as an archetype for centuries; in Western culture it has become increasingly popular since the second half of the twentieth century. Culminating in the 1990s, when Beck scores a mega hit with the schmuck’s signature song “Loser”, when The Big Lebowski becomes the new cult hero, when entire halls roar along with Radiohead’s “Creep” and comedians like Louis C.K. and Seth Rogen lay the foundation for their success: the loser personage.

The most heart-breaking then are the losers like Donald Duck and Charlie Brown, the unlucky ones who so often have happiness at their fingertips. In the music it is most movingly portrayed by John Hiatt in the beautiful song “You May Already Be A Winner” (Riding With The King, 1983):

Dry your eyes pretty girl
I just got news from the outside world
I don't know how they got our names
But yesterday this letter came
“Mr. and Mrs. Resident Dweller, your lucky number is…
You may already be a winner!”

Well, I've suspected this for years
Still in all its good to hear
They're pulling for us in the post
To you my dear, I raise this toast

But the most beautiful words for exactly this state of mind are of course chosen by the Nobel laureate: “I know that fortune is waiting to be kind”.

Variants of the one-liner can be found in Dylan’s record cabinet. With Charlie Daniels for instance, on his rather obscure, nameless debut album from 1970, which he is allowed to record after he assisted Dylan on Nashville Skyline and on Self Portrait. It is a remarkably rugged, kaleidoscopic country rock album by an untamed, extremely talented ruffian (highlight is the closing “Thirty Nine Miles From Mobile”, a hard rocking, Allman Brothers-like jam), with halfway through the beautiful “Georgia”, which sounds like a left-over from Music From The Big Pink. In which Charlie sings:

All of my life I've been told
That the LA streets was paved with gold
Fame and fortune waiting to reward ya
But it didn't take long to understand
California ain't the promised land
But at least a man's a man in Georgia

A more improbable, but bizarrely more striking source is an English Puritan Baptist preacher from the nineteenth century, the “prince of preachers” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a prolific author of Christian books, hymns and sermons that are still popular in Calvinist circles today. In 1866 he collects all the psalms and hundreds of Christian hymns in Our Own Hymn Book, and number 499 therein, attributed to one Hewett, is called “Seek And Ye Shall Find”:

Come, poor sinner, come and see,
All thy strength is found in me;
I am waiting to be kind,
To relieve thy troubled mind.

Still, Dylan does use the most unlikely sources. More attractive, however, is a source like Charlie Daniels. Or the so admired Bing Crosby (“quite a man, quite a singer,” as Dylan says in Theme Time Radio Hour), whose charming “Meet The Sun Half-Way” also has such a similar “fortune waiting to be kind”-oneliner:

Stop hiding behind a pillow whenever the dawn looks gray,
Get up, get out, and meet the sun half-way!
There may be a fortune waiting, or maybe an egg souffle,
Get out, get out, and meet the sun half-way!

And this Bing Crosby song becomes even more attractive when the last verse is sung:

You may be a new Dick Tracy, conducting an exposé
Get up, get out, and meet the sun half-way!
Now don’t you blame your luck, say, do you want to sound like Donald Duck?
You know, when you smile, you throw yourself a big bouquet!

But then again, Donald Duck would, obviously, have swam to the other side of that wide river without any problems.

And finally, the sweet closing line So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine completes the eclectic character of this exceptional quatrain.

Jesus has a small supporting role in Monty Python’s Life Of Brian (1979). We see him in the scene “Jesus’ Lack of Crowd Control”, the scene in which Brian and his mother, on their way to the stoning, do happen to pass by Jesus, just starting his “Sermon on the Mount”.

It is hardly a spectacular performance. Jesus speaks insecurely and too soft, the audience is noisy and easily distracted. “Mr. Cheeky” (Eric Idle) can’t stay focused either, and finds it more entertaining to harass the nose picking “Mr. Big Nose”.

MAN #2: You hear that? Blessed are the Greek.
GREGORY: The Greek?
MAN #2: Mmm. Well, apparently, he’s going to inherit the earth.
GREGORY: Did anyone catch his name?
MRS. BIG NOSE: You’re not going to thump anybody.
MR. BIG NOSE: I’ll thump him if he calls me ‘Big Nose’ again.
MR. CHEEKY: Oh, shut up, Big Nose.
MR. BIG NOSE: Ah! All right. I warned you. I really will slug you so hard–
MRS. BIG NOSE: Oh, it’s the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it? I’m glad they’re getting something, ’cause they have a hell of a time.

The poor, pathetically awkward Jesus is played by Kenneth Coley, who can be admired in these same months in the BBC production Measure For Measure, the television adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Coley will have seen the link with the “Sermon on the Mount” when rehearsing his text for Life Of Brian: For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (Matt. 7:2).

Kenneth Coley is standing at the same crossroads of Shakespeare and the Bible that will inspire Dylan more than once. “The Sermon on the Mount” provides references and idiom for songs like “Up To Me”, “Buckets Of Rain”, “Angelina”, “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”, and delivers in these same days of Life Of Brian and BBC’s Measure For Measure jargon and theme for “Do Right To Me Baby” (don’t wanna judge nobody, don’t wanna be judged).

Dylan used Measure For Measure’s plot a long time ago for “Seven Curses” (1963), although the format for this particular song probably is the old folksong “Anathea”. Presumably, 21-year-old Dylan is not yet that familiar with Shakespeare’s use of the same storyline – the plot around the dirty old judge who falsely promises a fair maiden to save her lover from the gallows in exchange for sex.

The young bard soon fills the knowledge gap. Shakespeare and his oeuvre still get only superficial name checks in “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Desolation Row” and “Stuck Inside Of Mobile”, but from The Basement Tapes Dylan processes longer quotes and paraphrases with more substantive relevance for the lyrics in question. “Tears Of Rage”, of course, and “Too Much Of Nothing” in particular, and Professor Christopher Ricks ultimately finds a total of forty references in Dylan’s oeuvre – although it should be noted: sometimes very far-fetched.

Not too far-fetched is this one appropriation in “Mississippi”, literally lifted from Measure For Measure:

DUKE VINCENTIO
If he be like your brother, for his sake
Is he pardon’d; and, for your lovely sake,
Give me your hand and say you will be mine.

From the last act, in the BBC adaptation faithfully, spoken verbatim by Kenneth Coley, who in 1979 is the physical manifestation of the Dylan Crossroads, somewhere in Mississippi; the crossing of Shakespeare Alley and Sermon Mountain Row.  

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part XV: Gaze into the abyss

The Mississippi series

• The Mississippi-series, part 1; no polyrhythm here please
• The Mississippi-series, part 2: the line that never was.
• The Mississippi- series, part 3: Belshazzar on the steppe
• The Mississippi-series, part 4: Bertolt, Bobby, Blind & Boy
• The Mississippi-series, part 5: Frost in the room, fire in the sky
• The Mississippi-series, part 6: Charades
• The Mississippi series: part 7 : Dorsey Dixon
• The Mississippi-series, part 8: Pretty Maids All In A Row
• The Mississippi-series, part 9: Abandon all hope
• The Mississippi-series, part 10: Eyesight To The Blind
• The Mississippi-series part 11: Bonnie Blue
• The Mississippi-series, part 12: Roses Of Yesterday
• The Mississippi-series, part 13: Down in the Groove

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

By Tony Attwood

Reaching the end of the working day I occasionally mooch around (as my dear mum used to say – meaning, meander aimlessly), surveying Dylan facts and figures, with no particular destination in mind.  And doing this yesterday I found myself chancing upon the list of songs the Bob has played once, and only once on tour.

Now the first song I tried out was “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, and playing it I felt I could see and hear why it was tried only once – it sounded to me singularly unrehearsed, and not really something I cared to share with my esteemed audience at large.

But I decided to try my luck again and so moved on to 10,000 Men which was played at Keaney Gym, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, on 12 November 2000.  It’s the original song ok, but not all the verses are covered.

https://youtu.be/s3GJ2W3ZZ8Q

It’s a fun and bouncy

Ten thousand men standing on a hill
Ten thousand men on a hill
Some of them going down, some of them going get killed

Ten thousand men dressed in Oxford blue
Ten thousand men dressed in Oxford blue
Drumming in the morning, in the evening they’ll be coming for you

Ten thousand men on the move
Ten thousand men on the move
None of them doing nothin’ that your mama wouldn’t disapprove

Hey! Who could your lover be?
Hey! Who could your lover be?
Let me eat off his head so you can really see!

Ten thousand men looking so lean and frail
Ten thousand men looking so lean and frail
Each one of ’m got seven wives, each one of ’m just out of jail

Ten thousand women all sweepin’ my room
Ten thousand women all sweepin’ my room
Spilling my buttermilk, sweeping it up with a broom

Ten thousand men digging for silver and gold
Ten thousand men digging for silver and gold
All clean shaven, all coming in from the cold

Ooh, baby, thank you for my tea!
Baby, thank you for my tea!
It’s so sweet of you to be so nice to me

It is a song from the generally forgotten “Under  the Red Sky” album and came at a time when Bob was searching to find a new way to write protest songs.  The songs of that time are generally appearing to be about childhood or adaptations of nursery rhymes but in the end are about something much darker.  Here’s how I categorised them in the review of songwriting in 1990.

• Handy Dandy (Contradictions)
• Cat’s in the Well (It’s all over, there’s no way out)
• 10,000 men (All is not as it seems)
• Unbelievable (We are being fed a pack of lies)
• Under the red sky (Our childhood has been obliterated)
• Heartland with Willie Nelson (Capitalism is destroying us)

I think this live version goes rather well; there’s nothing wrong with it as a rocking R&B song.  Good entertainment all round.

So having started with a song sung only once, which starts with a number, I then found another: 20/20 vision a song by Jimmy Martin.  It was performed at City Coliseum, Austin Tx on 25 October 1991.

I been to the doctor he says I'm all right
I know he's lying, I'm losing my sight
He should have examined the eyes of my mind
20/20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

She's gone and left I feel so alone
I carry a heart as heavy as stone
?
20/20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

With my eyes wide open I lay in my bed
If it wasn't for dying, I wish I was dead
But this is my punishment, death is too kind
20/20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

You just couldn't know her the way that I do
You say that she's wicked and I know it's true
I know that she cheated, I knew all the time
20/20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

Since she's gone and left me I feel so alone
I carry a heart that is heavy as stone
I know she cheated, I knew all the time
20/20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

She's gone she's gone oh what will I do?
I bet your not happy if she's there with you
The eyes of your heart will have trouble like mine
20-20 vision and walkin' 'round blind

20-20 vision and walkin' 'round blind...

By Larry Fyffe

In “Murder Most Foul”, Bob Dylan refers to a number of singers/songs that he likes to hear.  Can direct links to Dylan’s own song lyrics be found?

Let’s see.

Therein, the song “Twilight Time”; in it rhymes ~ ‘done’/’sun’:

Deepening shadows gather splendour as day is done
Fingers of light will soon surrender the setting sun
I count the moments darling till you're here with me
Together at last at twilight time
(The Platters: Twilight Time ~ Ram/Dunn/M&A Nevins)

Rhymes ~ ‘sun’/’begun’ in the song lyrics below:

Beyond the horizon, behind the sun
At the end of the rainbow life has only begun
In the long hours of twilight beneath the stardust above
Beyond the horizon, it is so easy to love
(Bob Dylan: Beyond The Horizon ~ Kennedy/Grosz/Dylan)

The song “Memphis In June” makes the list; therein rhymes ~ ‘moon’/’June’:

With sweet oleander blowing perfume in the air
Up jumps the moon to make it much grander
It's paradise, brother take my advice
Nothing half as nice as Memphis in June
(Hoagy Carmichael: Memphis In June ~ Webster/Carmichael)

Found is a tight connection to the figurative diction in the lyrics below:

Well my heart's in the Highland, gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow
Well my heart's in the Highland
(Bob Dylan: Highland)

The song title is noted in the lyrics below; so is the “rhyme” ~ ‘moon’/’June’:

Well, they're not showing any lights tonight
And there's no moon
There's just a hot-blooded singer
Singing 'Memphis In June'
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)

Mentioned in “Murder Most Foul” is “Driving Wheel’:

My baby don't have to work, my baby don't have to rob and steal
I give her everything she needs, I am her driving wheel ...
Got up this morning, man, said she'd be back soon
Be back early Friday morning, either Saturday afternoon
(Roosevelt Sykes: Driving Wheel)

Paid tribute to in the song lyrics below; rhymed is ~ ‘rob’/’job’ rather than ~ ‘steal’/’wheel’:

Well, she can make you steal, make you rob
Well, she can give you the hives, make you lose your job
Make things bad, make things worse
She got stuff more potent than a gypsy curse
(Bob Dylan: My Wife's Home Town ~ Dylan/ Hunter/Dixon)

Mentioned too is “Love Me Or Leave Me”; Frank Sinatra, for one, sings it, but not Bud Powell as Dylan suggests:

Love me or leave me, and let me be lonely
You won't believe me, and I love you only
I'd rather be lonely
Than happy with somebody else
(Frank Sinatra: Love Me Or Leave Me ~ Kahn/Donaldson)

Below, another song by Frankie ‘blue eyes”; rhymes ~ ‘garden’/’pardon’:

A country dance was being held in the garden
I felt a bump, and heard an oh, beg your pardon
Suddenly I saw polka dots and moonbeams
All around a pug-nosed dream
(Frank Sinatra: Polka Dots And Moonbeams ~ Burke/Van Heusen)

Which is paid tribute in the following lines ; note the rhyme ~ ‘garden’/’pardon’:

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden ...
Someone hit me from behind ...
Excuse me, ma'am, I beg your pardon
There's no one here, the gardener is gone
(Bob Dylan: Ain't Talking)

https://youtu.be/Hx6fHd99SxA

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

by Rolf Säfström, Sweden

I have now listened, for more than a month, to the latest Bob Dylan Album, ”Rough and Rowdy Ways”. I’m thankful for being in the same historical time that Dylan gives us so much of his art.

Now I just want to share with you, one of the many thoughts I have about this beautiful album – and in fact simply about one of the songs, ”Mother of Muses”.

I have a theory about it, which I would like to present to you, along with the arguments supporting my point of view that the first spark of inspiration for the idea of writing the lyrics to this song, came to Bob Dylan in the afternoon of 1st April 2017!

I don’t know how long he worked with this song after that moment. But the more I listen to it, the more I am convinced that this is another masterpiece; one of the several he has ”painted”, so far.

He has put in so much of himself, and how thankful he is over the gift he is given, and his ability to be the artist he is.

So what is the source of my theory?

On a Saturday, 1st April 2017, Bob Dylan started his European Spring Tour.

The concert started at 8 pm, in Stockholm. I was there, with my youngest daughter Moa, and I had bought VIP tickets ( 2nd row) for us. I had a little hope that he would receive the Nobel medal on the scene, so I wanted to be there in the historical moment.

We took our seats, half an hour before the concert, filled with expectations.

Just then, a few minutes later, I recognized some well-known people took their places, some rows back, to the left above our seats. It was a handful members of The Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, Horace Engdahl and some more!

I became more excited and I decided to walk up to them and asked, “Has he received his medal already today?”

One representative of the Academy answered, very politely, “Well, this is not official yet, but yes he has!”

So the concert (my 18th since 1978) took place as normal, but that is not a part of this story.

Later the same year Sara Danius, secretary of the Swedish Academy,  wrote a little book about Bob Dylan. (”Om Bob Dylan”, S Danius, Ad Libris 2017) and there she gives us an inside story, about Dylan receiving his Nobel medal, earlier the same day.

It was a small ceremony with just the Academy, Dylan and some of his nearest men. No press, journalists nor photographers. Dylan wanted it that way. Danius writes:

When he had the golden medal in his hand, he turned the backside up, looked at it for a long time and seemed amazed about the motive.

This is a picture of Dylan’s original medal, and it is of ”Mother of Muses, sing for me…”  

The other picture is of my daughter, just outside the concert hall. As you know, there is no cameras allowed inside, which we all should respect.!

So that’s my theory, and the argument to prove it. I think it is a bit of the truth, but who knows? / Rolf Säfström, Sweden

Best wishes and may God be with You!

Footnote, from the Untold team.  Here’s the setlist from the gig that Rolf attended

Mother of Muses: From Mnemosyne to Elvis, Talking Heads to Leonard Cohen

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

Tony Attwood

The Mississippi-series, part 13

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, “Mississippi” can’t really be dealt with in one article. Too grand, too majestic, too monumental. And, of course, such an extraordinary masterpiece deserves more than one paltry article. As the master says (not about “Mississippi”, but about bluegrass, in the New York Times interview of June 2020): It’s mysterious and deep rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. […] It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood.

XIII       Down In The Groove

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interestin’ right about now

“What would I say if I met Dylan?” His answer, in keeping with his stylish image, is elegant: “I hope you don’t mind.”

Bryan Ferry is being interviewed for his Dylan album Dylanesque (2007), a tribute project arousing rather diverging opinions. The title is a red rag: the Dylan covers by Ferry, the grand master of irony, are anything but Dylanesque – smooth polished, tastefully arranged, wrinkle-free produced… in short, Ferry-esque. Hardcore Dylan fans are rarely tolerant of covers anyway, but the less rabid fans also miss the rough and rowdy, the jagged edges and the raw emotion.

However, the more neutral listeners are generally positive. Also because songs like “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” have a magical, almost indestructible power – they are almost impossible to mess up. And Ferry’s adaptation of “Positively Fourth Street” actually has an enriching quality. The acoustic package (piano and Spanish guitar, mainly) plus Ferry’s somewhat plaintive, high pitched vocals do have an unreal, alienating effect; the contrast of the graceful recitation with the mean, snarling lyrics is fascinating.

Anyhow, it’s quite likely that the bard at that fictional meeting with Roxy Music’s old foreman would say: “I most certainly don’t mind. On the contrary.”

Ferry has been lining Dylan’s pockets since 1973, when the single from his first solo album These Foolish Things, an equally alienating version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, became a big hit. The royalties for “It Ain’t Me, Babe” from the successor Another Time, Another Place – again gold – and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Don’t Think Twice” from the well-selling album Frantic (2002) are not bad either and are increased fivefold by the equally well-selling Dylanesque.

Apart from that financially motivated, obvious approval from the master, Dylan might also have artistic appreciation. Dylan repeatedly confesses, both in Chronicles and in interviews as well as in his MusiCares speech, his gratitude and sympathy for all his colleagues who cover his songs. Bryan Ferry probably even has an edge.

The contemporaries (Dylan is four years older) largely share the same musical taste, the same missionary drive and even an overlapping choice of repertoire. Years before Dylan’s “Sinatra albums” Ferry already has success with his declaration of love to the same American Songbook, the gold-scoring As Time Goes By (1999).

This shared, wide-ranging taste is perhaps best noticeable on Ferry’s third solo album, Let’s Stick Together (1976). A tasteful adaptation of the long-standing “You Go To My Head”, which Dylan will record for Triplicate forty years later, “Shame, Shame, Shame” from Jimmy Reed, sung on Rough And Rowdy Ways, Ferry’s own ode to Dylan’s cast-iron art motto “Re-make/Re-model” (“next time is the best time, we all know”), his ode to Humphrey Bogart (“2HB”) and the opening song, the song with which Ferry scores his biggest solo hit: “Let’s Stick Together”.

Dylan chooses “Let’s Stick Together” as the opening track for his maligned album Down In The Groove (1988) and most music lovers will agree that Dylan can’t match the excitement, drive and pure musical pleasure that bursts from Ferry’s arrangement. Or from the original, by Wilbert Harrison, 1962.

Wilbert Harrison has earned his ticket to the rock ‘n’ roll Olympus three years earlier, with “Kansas City” – the song from which Dylan lovingly steals for “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (they got some hungry women there is a hardly disguised derivative from Wilbert’s they got some crazy women there) and for “High Water” (He made it to Kansas City, Twelfth Street and Vine is literally copied), and the song from which radio maker Dylan says in 2006: “You all know this song, and it’s always good” (Theme Time Radio Hour episode 20, “Musical Map”).

Harrison himself edited “Let’s Stick Together” in 1969 and turned it into “Let’s Work Together”, with the classic line Together we will stand, divided we’ll fall. He scores a modest hit with it. But in 1970 it becomes for Canned Heat the biggest hit in the band’s long career (number 2 in the UK, bigger than “On The Road Again” and “Going Up The Country”). However, both Ferry and Dylan prefer the less preachy, more pure rock variant “Let’s Stick Together”.

It is, after “Shenandoah”, the second time that thematic or textual lines can be drawn from Down In The Groove to “Mississippi”, providing yet again some insight into Dylan’s working method and sources of inspiration, and illustrating Dylan’s own wording of his working method:

“What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it’s a proven fact that it’ll help them relax. I don’t meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song. I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds,’ for instance, in my head constantly — while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I’m talking back, but I’m not. I’m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”

(Robert Hilburn interview, 2003)

In the run up to “Mississippi” quite a few songs are playing in the head, apparently. And Down In The Groove reveals some of them. The stick with me from “Let’s Stick Together”, the hopeless narrator in “Sally Sue Brown” is goin’ south to humiliate himself in front of Sally Sue again, and the desolate state of the protagonist in “Mississippi” is an echo of what Dylan already heard from his beloved Stanley Brothers, in “Rank Strangers To Me”:

I wandered again to my home in the mountains
Where in youth's early dawn I was happy and free
I looked for my friends but I never could find them
I found they were all rank strangers to me

Still, the apotheosis, the brille of the final line things should start to get interesting right about now does not come from a song that haunts Dylan, but is one of the three or four selfless contributions by soulmate Henry Rollins:

I shook 1992 by the neck
The road shot into me
Now there's only 1993
Don’t attach
Hit hard
Disappear into the treeline
Keep moving
It gets harder to get up in the morning
Lines on my face
It should start getting interesting right about now 

(Now Watch Him Die, 1993)

Rollins, the great, multitalented artist from Washington D.C., and in every conceivable respect the opposite of the distinguished Geordie Bryan Ferry from Washington, County Durham.

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part XIV: Unca Donald

The Mississippi series

• The Mississippi-series, part 1; no polyrhythm here please
• The Mississippi-series, part 2: the line that never was.
• The Mississippi- series, part 3: Belshazzar on the steppe
• The Mississippi-series, part 4: Bertolt, Bobby, Blind & Boy
• The Mississippi-series, part 5: Frost in the room, fire in the sky
• The Mississippi-series, part 6: Charades
• The Mississippi series: part 7 : Dorsey Dixon
• The Mississippi-series, part 8: Pretty Maids All In A Row
• The Mississippi-series, part 9: Abandon all hope
• The Mississippi-series, part 10: Eyesight To The Blind
• The Mississippi-series part 11: Bonnie Blue
• The Mississippi-series, part 12: Roses Of Yesterday

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

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

Tony Attwood

The Symbolism Of The Pine Tree (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

This article continues from The Symbolism of the Pine Tree I 

In ancient mythology, the Mother Goddess, is depicted as hermaphroditic before being transformed into a female; s/he is associated with the coniferous pine; son Attis turns into a sweet-smelling evergreen tree with needled leaves. . The Hebrew God by some is considered at first to be hermaphroditic, but the female aspect soon disappears from the Judaic/Christian Bible:

And God said "Let us make man is our image
After our likeness, and let them have dominion ..."
So God created man in His own image
In the image of God created He him
Male and female created He them
(Genesis 1: 26, 27)

In any event, the coniferous juniper tree appears later on in the Holy Bible, standing over the prophet Elijah, protectively and mother-like:

And he lay and slept under  juniper tree
Behold, then an angel touched him
And said unto him, "Arise and eat"
And behold there was a cake baken on the coals
And a cruse of water at his head
And he did eat and drink
And laid him down again
(l Kings 5, 6)

In the song lyrics below, the deciduous Dionysus, the “Semi-God” of the Vine from Roman/Greek mythology, appears beside the motherly juniper in the form of an ash, hickory, and oak tree:

Build you a fire with hickory, ash, and oak
Don't use no green or rotten wood, they'll get you by the smoke
We'll just lay down by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight
(Bob Dylan: Copper Kettle ~ Albert Beddoe)

The year-round shelter, smell, and warmth provided by the pine tree serves it well as a symbol for matronly comfort.

As illustrated by the following song lyrics:

You can smell the pinewood burning
You can hear the school bell ring
Gotta get close to the teacher
If you wanna learn anything
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

According to Greek/Roman mythology, Titan Saturn (Cronus), is overthrown by the Olympian Zeus, the Sky God of Thunder. The ancient Romans celebrate Saturn, the God of Agriculture, at the winter solstice, a sign of spring in the offing. The Romans hang evergreen boughs in their houses and temples, and the tradition is taken up by the followers of Christianity:

Though the years we all will be together
If the Fates allow
Hang a shiny star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas
(Bob Dylan: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas ~ Martin/Blane)

The mythological Fates be three females figures:

• Clotho – the Spinner – spins the thread of life
• Lachesis – the Alotter –  assigns destiny
• Atropos – the Shearer –  cuts the thread at death

The following song lyrics could be a depiction of Clotho:

First we wash our feet near the immortal shrine
And then our shadows meet, and then we drink our wine
I see the hungry clouds up above your face
And then the tears roll down, what a bitter taste
And then you drift away on a summer's day where the wildflowers bloom
With your golden loom
(Bob Dylan: Golden Loom)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

Tony Attwood

An index to the series thus far is published at the foot of this article.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

We finished Part 1 of this tour through some of Dylan’s 1992 performances by considering some of the songs from Under the Red Sky (1990) on his setlist that year. Now we turn to his previous album, Oh Mercy (1989), and catch up with some of those performances.

The four Oh Mercy songs Dylan presents this year were all first performed in 1990 and 1991. Two of these songs, ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ and ‘What good am I?’ would stick around, and would be further developed, whereas ‘Most of the Time’ and ‘Everything is Broken’ would fade away.

That makes the performances of the latter two songs all the more precious, especially ‘Most of the Time’, as it is a masterpiece of ironical undercutting. In 1990 we heard a passionate presentation of the song which was anything but reconciled to the song’s contradictions.

This 1992 version creates a mixed impression. The sound is richer and more laid back, with Bucky Baxter again creating some fine musical textures. It all sounds pretty good. Then Dylan starts to sing and the whole thing becomes a lot more fraught. It’s a strange, almost strangled performance, full of odd timing, moments of bitterness – and maybe he’s not quite remembering the lyrics, the order of the verses. It’s all pretty hair-raising, and far from the triumphant 1990 performance.

It’s a pity that the harp break at the end is not better articulated. It strikes me that Dylan is just not able to find his way into this song in terms of performance, and it is perhaps not surprising that he drops it from his setlists.

Most of the time

‘Everything is Broken’ fares much better. The band sounds good and strong with a rocking beat. Dylan sounds a little diffident at the beginning but soon warms to the vocals. Like a lot of Dylan’s protest songs, this one is couched in terms which manage to be both specific and general.

Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin',
Everything is broken

I quote these particular lines because they could have been written yesterday – or tomorrow. That ‘feel like you’re chokin’ reminds me of ‘I can’t breathe’ which has become the rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement. By these mysterious means Dylan songs stay relevant. When I hear ‘broken laws/ broken bodies, broken bones’ I see scenes of police violence in the streets of American cities right now.

Everything is broken

‘What good am I?’  is a song full of self doubt, often performed with Dylan on the piano. Not in this case, however. A soft easy rhythm is established against which Dylan delivers a passionate, quivering vocal. As I suggested when looking at the 1990 performance, I find this song seems to gain in contemporary relevance as the years roll on, and all those things we might turn a blind eye to have just grown worse. The question ‘what good am I?’ confronts us in the face of growing injustices, social and environmental.

What good am I?

Arguably ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ is the jewel in the Oh Mercy crown, and Dylan worked hard at developing the song over the years. The direction of that development is towards great grandiosity, as the drama enacted in the song evolves from the swampy horror story of Lanois’ album production into a cosmic tragedy – the seduction of innocence on a grand scale. Moral doubt and self-reflection play a large part in the album, including, ‘What Good am I?’, ‘The Disease of Conceit’, ‘What was it you wanted?’, and ‘Shooting Star’. This shows up in ‘…Black Coat’, in lines that cast doubt on the function of our consciences:

Preacher was talking there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied

This is the human paradox; morally, we can’t trust ourselves. This is a shot across the bows of anybody who appeals to their own conscience alone as justification for their actions. That twisted sanctimoniousness that would take the word of scripture and turn it to evil purposes.

Somebody said from the bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat

Perhaps what makes this song special in the Dylan canon is that the devil himself puts in an appearance, sinister and dramatic. I can’t think of any other Dylan song, even from his gospel period (1979 -1981), that so vividly personifies the seductive power of the devil.

This 1992 performance is certainly the best so far, with a sharp, telling harp break at the end, doing what Dylan’s harp does best, elaborating and exploring the emotional valences made possible by the song. It’s a wonderful performance, and a stepping stone to even greater performances in 1995

 Man in the long black coat

We move the clock back now to Blood on the Tracks (1974), and catch up with how Dylan has been working with those songs. We heard a scintillating performance of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ in Part 1, 1992, and we now turn to those other perennials, ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ and ‘You’re a Big Girl Now’, songs Dylan has been cultivating since they were written.

‘Simple Twist of Fate’, with its famously shifting pronouns is a quiet reflective song, and the effectiveness of Bucky Baxter’s dobro in creating long sustained sounds behind the verses is evident. I nearly dropped this song out because of the rowdy audience. The background noise is frustrating, especially at the beginning when a quiet, melancholy mood is being set, but things quieten down somewhat after a while and Dylan delivers a moody, if scratchy vocal. The expression ‘ships that pass in the night’ is what passes through my mind when I think about this song. A connection made, but only just. A one night stand that turns sad with the dawn. A memory that will never fade. The one that got away will always haunt.

He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere
He told himself he didn't care
Pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside

Except in this variation Dylan sings:

He told himself he didn’t care
But he pushed back the blinds
Found a note she’d left behind
To which he just could not relate
Any more than that simple twist of fate

 A simple twist of fate

There is a gorgeous harmonica break, sweet and sensitive, against the rolling thunder of the drums, but audience noise once more distracts us from the beautiful quiet ending.

More darkly driven than ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, ‘You’re a Big Girl Now’ registers the anguish we might all feel when someone grows away from us, grows out of us as if we were clothes that had grown too small. The one that got away is the one most bitterly regretted.

Oh, I know where I can find you, oh
In somebody's room
It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way

Dylan’s in fine voice for this performance, and once again we hear how this band can create quiet, more intimate music without having to be acoustic. Baxter again creating a rich, ‘orchestral’ texture. Dylan can go softly with the voice or hard; give it a harsh edge, or sound thin and vulnerable.

You’re a big girl now

As far as I know, 1992 was the last year Dylan attempted to perform that great splenetic masterpiece ‘Idiot Wind’ on stage. It must be a hell of a song to sustain, all that outrage and anger, over so many verses.

And it’s not the kind of song that offers alternatives in terms of musical interpretation or reworking. It flashes like fire or not at all. It can’t be tamed. There is no sweetening the bitter pill. It is an aggrieved beast. I think the 1976 Rolling Thunder versions are probably the best in performance terms, but Dylan gives this 1992 performance his all, using ‘upsinging’ (raising his voice at the end of every line) to keep it rolling. The harp break keeps up the brittle edge of the song, but, perhaps in the final analysis, Dylan’s voice, although he’s trying hard, just isn’t quite up to it – it’s your call.

I’m going to finish this post with a song that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else, ‘Seeing the Real You at Last’. Off the 1985 album, Empire Burlesque, it’s one of the new songs from that album that Dylan keeps coming back to from time to time. In one performance he had the stage lights directed at the audience when he hit the chorus line, suggesting that it might be us he’s singing about. We, the audience, lurk behind the figure of the girl, but eventually we are exposed for what we are. Or again, the woman in the song could be a personification of America, the promised land which doesn’t turn out to be quite what was promised but just a set of filmic projections.

I'm hungry and irritable
And I'm tired of this bag of tricks
At one time there was nothing wrong with me
That you could not fix.

Well, I sailed through the storm
Strapped to the mast
Oh, but our time has come
And I'm seeing the real you at last.

The strapped to the mast reference is to Odysseus, who straps himself to the mast so he can hear the song of the sirens and not be lured to his death, as the travellers pass that island.

But there is no escaping paradox:

From now on I'll be busy
Ain't going nowhere fast

When I take a look around me, I see a whole world busy going nowhere fast. Maybe we are all seeing the ‘real you’ at long last – and it’s not a pleasant sight.

Seeing the real you at last

Take care and stay wise. I’ll be back soon to look at some of Dylan’s acoustic performances in 1992

Kia Ora

• The Never-Ending Tour: 1987 – Farewell to all that
• NET 1988: Desperate stratagems, Part 1: Heroes and Villains
• 1988 Part 2: The 60s revisited
• 1988 Part 3: Absolutely still on the road
• 1989 Part 1: A sharper edge
• Never Ending Tour 1989 Part 2 – A fire in the sun
• 1989 Part 3: Blown out on the trail
• 1990 Part 1: Vomiting Fire
• 1990 Part 1: Vomiting Fire
• 1990 Part 2 – Songs of love, songs of betrayal
• 1991: Part 1 Hidden Gems in a Train Wreck – The Undesirables
• The Never Ending Tour 1991 Part 2 – Feet walking by themselves
• NET 1991 Part 3: King of the unsteady
• 1992: Heading for the promised land

By Tony Attwood

As you may know one of the more unusual things we have done here is to invite readers of Untold Dylan to look at Dylan lyrics which have never been put to music.

The most recent that we have had completed is Song to Bonny and there are details of other such songs below.

Recently I announced another song we’d found: Tioga Pass.    Thus far no one has ventured to add any music to that song, and unless someone does I am going to be adding my own music and I am not sure you want that.  So that offer is still there.

But if you don’t fancy Tioga Pass, we now have one more.  Here’s the original

This was discovered by Aaron and is Bowling Alley Blues.   Aaron says of this, “I tried to work out the lyrics from the typed up sheet and left out some bits from the top of the page which seemed incongruous with the rest, like he was trying something out before moving on to the real work of the day.

“It turned up in Writings and Drawings, and here’s what I came up with”

I got your letter today
And I’m glad to hear you’re doing fine
I see you still got your habit
And I’m so happy to hear it isn’t mine

I read your name in the paper again
Going out with Mr So and So
So the news is out and you can’t pretend
That you did not know

Maybe tomorrow morning
When you wake up and find
That your dear sweet daddy’s got fed up
And has left everything behind

Or why wait for tomorrow
When you can find this out today
So just be good and do like you should
And don’t spend your time throwing it away!

I love a switchboard operator
She’s the only one for me
I love a switchboard operator
She’s the only one I wanna see

Anytime I need some money
I just call her on her line
And she always tells me looky honey
Everything will soon be fine

I love a switchboard operator
And she’s the one that I desire
And of course I’m bound to see her later
And we’ll go dancing on the wire

On the wire
Sing something safe
Is it right to think about what one can do
Or is it right to think about what one has done

So there we are – you now have two songs to play with, through which you can achieve immortality by writing your own version of the music.

When you have done your work, just send me a music file to Tony@schools.co.uk   An MP3 or MP4 will be fine, and we’ll publish the result here and add the song to our list of 616 compositions by Dylan already covered on this site.

Here are some of the songs we have had completed so far…

• Don’t let anyone write your story – original renditions
• Don’t let anyone write your story, Rob Beretta
• Don’t let anyone write your story, Paul Robert Thomas
• Don’t let anyone write your story, fourth edition
• Listen Robert Moses: Chris Sheriden
• Song to Bonny Paul Robert Thomas
• Don’t Let Anyone write your story: Claudio Diarni
• Dope Fiend Robber Nick Juno.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

Tony Attwood

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

Selection and introduction by Aaron, other comments by Tony

Aaron: Now those of us from the British Isles will recognize the Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger cover of This Wheel’s On Fire used as the theme song to the “Absolutely Fabulous” TV show. How many of us would then know that for the Ab Fab movie national treasure Kylie Minogue sang the same track!? I’m not even sure if I like what she does here, but I do love that fact that Kylie has a Dylan cover in her back catalogue!

https://youtu.be/8GEl78He2Kg

If that recording doesn’t work in your part of the world try this link.

Tony: I don’t know if I came to like this version through watching the series on TV, but this version still gives me goose pimples.   I think maybe it is the harmonies in the chorus – indeed the only thing that I don’t like is the backing vocals of “oooooo”.

The solid beat seems to me to work perfectly with the notion of the song – it is after a wheel that is travelling and on fire.  It just keeps rolling on and burning all the way through.

Next,  Barbara Dickson doing Tears Of Rage and again two links depending on where you are in the world

and the alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA3xdpV-oP0

This song gives me a lot of problems – and I am sure they are just mine.  The song is so desperately emotional (what could possibly be more emotional than having a child turn away from a parent) and perhaps because I actually have two friends to whom this has happened, I feel the issue very strongly.   I’m incredibly lucky in that my three daughters have grown up to be my closest friends and allies, but I think of my friends and their lives without contact with their siblings and grandchildren, and I feel so much for them.

And that’s the issue with songs about deep emotions – if one is at all emotional, then one can be touched by events, even when they happen to others – and remembrances of such events are not always welcome.

I can take Dylan’s version because, I guess, I can focus on the music not on the lyrics.  But here Barbara Dickson makes the lyrics to be of prime importance, and so it is not for me.  But of course that is just me – and that is why I am so enjoying this series of “Play Lady Play” articles.  If I was selecting the songs as well as writing these commentaries, I’d never have put this track in the selection – but the deal is that Aaron selects and I comment, and I’m not breaking the contract!

Barbara Dickson was described by The Scotsman newspaper  as Scotland’s best-selling female singer in terms of the numbers of hit chart singles and albums she has achieved in the UK since 1976 and she is also a two-time Olivier Award-winning actress.  Hard to argue with that.

Aaron: Next up, with possibly the best track from The New Basement Tapes, Kansas City, it’s Jessica Paige

Tony: My review of the original release of this track opened with, “May I say from the start I utterly love this song and since discovering it, have played it over and over, time and time again.”

Jessica Paige is not an artist I know, so I had to go searching for her online and found her own site which opens “I spent most of my childhood  running around our Kansas Farm.”

For me Ms Paige’s version doesn’t add anything to the New Basement version of Kansas City which is one of those real standout pieces of music for me from that collection, but she has an excellent voice and the arrangement is very well done.   But that is the problem with covers of Dylan songs – I think the singer and arranger really has to go somewhere else to make the new version something that stops one in one’s tracks.

However, to be fair, the lady is from Kansas, so her recording it makes sense, and she really does have a good voice.

Now Peter, Paul & Mary with Too Much Of Nothing

I doubt that there are many people, in fact I doubt that there are any people, who have been following my ramblings on this site since the days when I wrote a negative review of this song on the original Basement Tapes without realising that there was this second version (which turned up on the complete Basement Tapes) recorded by PPM.  A silly mistake on my part.

I’ve updated my commentary and this site also has a very different take on the song: that of Jochen.  As so often if the case, we take the same song and go our different ways.

Next, The Roches – Clothes Line Saga

This is all about the harmonies, and oh they work perfectly, giving us a clear link back to the original.   And I have to say hearing this version is the first time ever I have really enjoyed this song as a piece of music.   It is also the first time I’ve felt that something really good could be made out of an opening that reads

After a while we took in the clothes
Nobody said very much

Absolutely love it – not least because the music keeps changing to reflect the words.  If you don’t know this, do listen, or if you are familiar with Bob’s version and the original never did anything for you, do try it.   It is wonderful.

Big Mama Thornton with I shall be Released

Now if you have been with us through this series over a period of time, you might have realised that I don’t really have too much time for lady singers who use Dylan compositions as an excuse to show off their extensive vocal range and ability to shout.  I leave this one with you.  Which brings us to…

“Last up today it’s the amazing Sandy Denny (with the equally amazing Richard Thompson on guitar and duet vocals) – Down In The Flood”

That comment was written by Aaron, and I (Tony) looked forward to this as the final track …

… but oh, it is so… ordinary.  Like a track filler.  I love the music of these two and had the honour of meeting them both in the early days.

And so I am going to cheat here.  Earlier this week I offered up a little article on “Why does Dylan like ‘Black Jack Davy’?”  Here’s Sandy Denny and her band with a version of that ancient song.

https://youtu.be/00hpupoh4eU

Sandy died tragically young in April 1978, after a very troubled life, but having known her briefly I have always felt there was such natural talent in her, and still love to come back to her music, even after all this time.

• 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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

By Larry Fyffe

The narrator in the poem quoted below compares himself to William Shakespeare’s character Hamlet and finds that it is the Prince who is lacking in fortitude:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was I meant to be
Politic, cautious, and meticulous
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times almost ridiculous

(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock)

The narrator in the following song lyrics asserts that, unlike the Danish Prince, neither is he cowardly:

You don't know me, darling, you never would guess
I'm nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain't no false prophet, I just said what I said
I'm just here to bring vengeance on somebody's head

(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

As we shall see, Bob Dylan intends to have his revenge on TS Eliot for the poet’s critique of Shakespeare’s Danish play.

The persona of the poet and of the singer/songwriter are both well aware of their mortality:

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought to me on a platter
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter
I have seen the moment of of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker

(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock)

Below, a metonymic piano serves to express the same sentiment:

You can bring it to St. Peter, you can bring it to St. Jerome
You can bring it all the way over, bring it all the way home
Bring it to the corner where the children play
You can bring it to me on a silver tray

(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)

Personification in the following lyrics summons a yawn:

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers
Asleep  - tired - or it malingers
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me

(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock)

Diction rather similar appears in the song lyrics below:

Deepening shadows gather splendour as day is done
Fingers of light will soon surrender the setting sun
I count the moments darling 'till you're here with me
Together at last at twilight time

(The Platters: Twilight Time ~ Ram/Dunn/A&M Nevins)

TS Eliot claims that the Shakespeare’s Danish play fails to capture the disdain that the Prince has for his mother’s marriage to Hamlet’s uncle; there are no adequate ‘objective correlatives’ therein to invoke the mood of her son, says Eliot; the play is not so much about Hamlet’s revenge for his father’s death as it is about his emotional struggle due to Gertrude’s lascivious behaviour.

Bob Dylan is not anxious to make the same mistake; the song “Murder Most Foul” centres on the assassination of President John Kennedy – it draws on Shakespeare’s play:

Murder most foul, as in the best it is
But this most foul, strange and unnatural

(William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act I, sc. 5)

The music surrounding those days, and after, that Dylan listens to, including the Platter’s song quoted above, the singer/songwriter tells his listeners to play in order to catch the mood of the times when the murder happens.

Some of the musical ‘objective correlatives’ listed are:

• Cry Me A River
• Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
• Saint James Infirmary
• Driving Wheel
• Memphis In June
• Lonely At The Top
• Love Me Or Leave Me
• Nature Boy

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

The Mississippi-series, part 12

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, “Mississippi” can’t really be dealt with in one article. Too grand, too majestic, too monumental. And, of course, such an extraordinary masterpiece deserves more than one paltry article. As the master says (not about “Mississippi”, but about bluegrass, in the New York Times interview of June 2020): Its’s mysterious and deep rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. […] It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood.

XII        Roses Of Yesterday

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin’ fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me

For many fans of the song, the favourite quatrain. The opening accumulatio indeed has a crushing, pleasantly archaic and terrifying visual power (plus a cheap, yet irresistible alliteration in split to splinters) – but the exceptional beauty of these four lines is due to the contrast, to the completely unexpected and beautifully poetic change to gentleness and bonhomie in the third line.

“Willkommen und Abschied” (Welcome and Farewell) is the best known of Goethe’s so-called Sesenheimer Lieder, a collection of poems to which Goethe contributes around the age of twenty-one. The young law student then lives in Strasbourg and befriends the theologian and art theorist Herder. Johann Gottfried Herder is only five years older, but he becomes Goethe’s literary mentor, teaches him Rousseau, Shakespeare and Homer and opens his eyes to the beauty of Volkslieder, of folk songs. Goethe already had some literary ambition – and now it’s taking shape. The inspiration, lastly, lives forty kilometres away, in the Alsace village of Sessenheim: the eighteen-year-old minister’s daughter Friederike Brion.

The two portraits that exist of Friederike do not really reveal her attraction, but apparently there is something about her – after Goethe has left Friederike, the young poet Jakob Lenz, who is just as madly in love, reports for duty. Lenz will write the remaining Sesenheimer Lieder.

Goethe’s genius awakes here and now, in the poems he writes being in love with Friederike. In “Willkommen und Abschied“, the young Sturm & Drang poet lyrically recounts how he does not think, but rather acts, on a whim, jumping on his horse late at night and galloping out of town, through the dark forest, the forty kilometres to Friederike. The second verse reveals his affinity with the narrator of “Mississippi”:

From out a hill of clouds the moon
Mournful gaze through the mist:
The winds their soft wings flutter’d soon,
And in my ear horribly hissed;
The night a thousand ghouls had made,
Yet fresh and joyous was my mind;
What fire within my veins then play’d!
What glow was in my heart shrin’d!

Darkness and horror, yet fresh and joyous was my mind. The secret of this untouched, uncluttered mind is clear: the narrator is in love, is wearing his rose-coloured glasses, is on his way to his lover – by whom he is indeed welcomed “with tenderness” in the next verse.

At Dylan’s protagonist, the source of his “light and free heart” is less unambiguous. If this verse had stood alone, it would unmistakably be a death scene. “My ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin’ fast” would then be something like “my life is done” or “my mind is leaving me”, just as the Dantesque “drowning in the poison” evokes a life farewell rather than an “ordinary” gloomy, pessimistic state of mind.

Appropriate then is the closing line, in which the narrator speaks mild, resigned and summarizing deathbed words: “I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me”.

Only the beautiful, aphoristic got no future, got no past fits less supple in such an interpretation. It seems to derive from that corny inspirational quote, which gets new life thanks to Kung Fu Panda (2008). It is the aphorism the old Master Oogway, the guru-like turtle, shares with Panda Po in the face of his approaching death:

Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
Today is a gift –
That’s why we call it the present

Corny enough to brighten up kitchen tiles, calligraphed wall posters and Facebook statuses of unimaginative house mothers, and does indeed approximate something like no future, no past. By the way, it is attributed rather stubbornly to Alice Morse Earle, the American historian and writer, and would then have come from her fascinating study Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902), but really cannot be found therein.

More obvious is that the poet Dylan incorporates an echo of his Bible studies, the same notion he already incorporated in “Born In Time”: that God and Jesus were always there, “outside of time”, and Jesus is born in time only for those few earthly years. God, as Dylan learned at the Bible study, is an Eternal Being – He has no past and no future, being “outside of time”.

However, to extend the impact of these words to “Mississippi” goes far too far; it would imply that the I-person, who with these words places himself outside of Time, imagines himself divine. No, this verse fragment is probably another example of “words that just come up”, as Dylan often says about his own song writing. Like in the conversation with Happy Traum:

“There are times you just pick up an instrument – something will come, like a tune or some kind of wild line will come into your head and you’ll develop that. If it’s a tune on a piano or guitar – you’ll just uuuuuuhhhh [humming] whatever it brings out in the voice, you’ll write those words down. And they might not mean anything to you at all, and you just go on, and that will be what happens.”

That’s what Dylan says in 1968, and almost half a century later he repeats it in slightly different words in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

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

And somewhere in between, between 1968 and 2016, he records “Mississippi”, in which he also writes all kinds of things. Like got no future, got no past.

“I don’t know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good.”

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part XIII: Down In The Groove

The Mississippi series

• The Mississippi-series, part 1; no polyrhythm here please
• The Mississippi-series, part 2: the line that never was.
• The Mississippi- series, part 3: Belshazzar on the steppe
• The Mississippi-series, part 4: Bertolt, Bobby, Blind & Boy
• The Mississippi-series, part 5: Frost in the room, fire in the sky
• The Mississippi-series, part 6: Charades
• The Mississippi series: part 7 : Dorsey Dixon
• The Mississippi-series, part 8: Pretty Maids All In A Row
• The Mississippi-series, part 9: Abandon all hope
• The Mississippi-series, part 10: Eyesight To The Blind
• The Mississippi-series part 11: Bonnie Blue

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

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

The full index to this series which considers how the subject matter of Bob Dylan’s songs changed over time, can be found here.

The essence of this series is simple: to take each song written by Dylan in a single year, and try to express the meaning of the lyrics of each song in a word or simple phrase, such as “love”, “lost love”, “protest”, or “faith.”

This worked perfectly well up to 1978 for during that period Dylan not only offered up a variety of songs topics, but it turned out to be fairly easy to put each song into a classification.

By 1977 we could see clearly what Dylan’s favourite topics were.  Since the 1950s Dylan had written over 10 songs on each of these ten topics or themes…

• Being trapped/escaping from being trapped (being world-weary): 12
• Blues: 11
• Environment: 17
• Humour, satire, talking blues: 13
• Lost love / moving on: 43
• Love, desire: 56
• Moving on: 16
• Randomness: 11
• Surrealism, Dada: 15
• Travelling on, leaving, farewell, moving on: 16

1978 however seems to be a troubled year for Bob as the topics in his songs as they were virtually all about negative subjects:

• Moving on: 4
• Love: 3
• Blues: 3
• Lost love: 3
• Treating me badly: 1
• Come back to me: 1
• Legionnaires Disease: 1
• Let me be me: 1

Bob was clearly a troubled man, and as we all know that he resolved his dilemma very clearly in 1979, writing 19 songs in that year all of which were about his new found faith.  It was the only year when he wrote over ten songs with all of them on just one topic.

In 1980 Bob opened the year by continuing to write about fundamental Christianity and the thought that salvation was assured.  But then after asserting that God made the world in Every grain of sand, everything changed.  Dylan now wrote a series of five songs starting with Caribbean Wind and its theme of the end of relationships and indeed pretty much everything else, concluding with Making a liar out of me which appears to reject all of his faith and commitment that has gone before.   As a set of songs it is an amazing journey from utter faith, to the rejection of faith.

So Bob was now back writing on a variety of topics, and in 1981 three themes dominated Bob’s writing:

• Love: 9
• Religion / Christianity: 3
• Uncertainty / doubts / don’t believe: 5

But then in 1982/3 Bob seemed to turn away from most of his previous themes as he began to explore what he could say in songs in a new way.  If there is a central theme to 1982/3 it is that nothing is what it seems – which is as big a rejection of a previously held religious faith as it is possible to imagine.

Nothing symbolised this contradiction more completely than Blind Willie McTell, a song seemingly about a famous blues singer, saying that the blues can describe the world, but with that message encapsulated in a piece of music that has nothing to do with the work of Blind Willie.  Although it was not a consistent theme, the notion that nothing is really as it might seem and that life is chaos became a dominant thought expressed by Bob in such songs as Man of Peace, and Someone’s got a hold of my heart / Tight connection to my heart.

As the year progressed so did the notion that not only is nothing what it seems, but also that there is no going back which occurs in Neighbourhood Bully (a song on which I had to stop accepting comments from readers, so angry did the debate become), Tell Me, Foot of Pride, Julius and Ethel and even Death is not the end (in which Bob seems to conclude that yes there is an afterlife, but there still ain’t no going back).

In 1984 Bob seemed to resolve some of these problems as he returned to some more traditional themes, and my article on that year defined the subject matter of the songs as:

• Blues/moving on: 2
• Love: 4
• Lost love: 4
• Moving on: 1
• Tedium, the bad life: 1

which looked much more liked a Bob Dylan year from earlier days.  But if love and lost love could be balanced in 1984 it was only a temporary reprieve from the troubles, and by 1985 there was no chance of this, for that was the year in which lost love, and just being lost, dominated his thoughts.  The analysis of the most common topics of the songs that year gives us

• Lost love: 12
• Love: 6
• Chaos / criminals escaping / life is a mess / being lost: 6

So what would Bob offer in 1986? My first article on this year was called  Experiment, experiment, experiment, genius, ignore which was the only way I could find of summarising a year in which Bob ended up creating To fall in love with you – a song that many of us consider one of his most incredible pieces, but then ignoring it.

Indeed he didn’t just abandon it, he did so to work on two songs Silvio and Ugliest girl in the world in which he didn’t write the words.  Indeed I would suspect many Dylan fans would find it hard to remember the songs that preceded the Robert Hunter co-compositions other than “To fall in love with you”, but the only one I have found myself singling out repeatedly is Rock em Dead – and that is a song which owes a lot to “Uranium Rock” by Warren Smith.

So we are left puzzled – the great masterpiece of “To fall in love” is abandoned while other songs from the era and either nowhere near that standard or are derivative.

And yet then, suddenly, we get what I have noted as Possibly the greatest trilogy of compositions in Dylan’s career:

• Political world
• What good am I
• Dignity 

These songs, written one after the other, tell us the world’s gone wrong, the man’s gone wrong, but if we work at it we can as individuals, try and pull ourselves together.

Because Dignity was not released at the time of its writing, the three songs are not normally seen as a trilogy,  Yet playing Dylan’s compositions in the order of composition (especially if we play the early, shorter, acoustic version of Dignity) certainly give us that feeling.

Thereafter Bob handed himself over the the Travelling Wilburys before going on tour – and not just any tour, for 7 June 1988 was the start of what we now call the Never Ending Tour.

In my review I called 1989 the year in which The menace emerges  meaning that Dylan in his songs of that year recognised that we are often fooling ours, that the old certainties are gone (What was it you wanted, Everything is Broken) while out there in the darkness a menace emerges (Man in a Long Black Coat.)

This now is a completely different Dylan in terms of his songwriting, a Dylan with a message about the world falling apart.  This is not “Times they are a changing” (which suggests whether we do anything or not things are going to be different, and probably better) but much more following up on that other early theme of “Darkness at the break of noon”.  Except that now this is most certainly not all right ma.  For here we have songs of contradictions, songs which tell us there is no way out (such as Cat’s in the Well) , songs which tell us all it not as it seems (such as 10,000 men), songs which tell us that we are all being fed a pack of lies (Unbelievable), songs that tell us our childhood has been obliterated (Under the red sky)  and songs that suggest that capitalism is destroying us (such as Heartland written with Willie Nelson).  It was, The re-birth of protest, before the end of all songs.

And yet, looking back, it wasn’t the rebirth of protest, at least not in the purest sense, for this was more the announcement of the end, and in a very real sense it was the end of Dylan the songwriter, for after his time with the Willburys (in which he probably only wrote one song – the magnificent lost love piece Where were you last night) Bob stopped writing.   The man who had just gone on and on writing year after year with only the occasional pause, simply stopped.

True there are four songs that some commentators have as being written in 1995 but it appears these were actually originally put together in 1984.  It really was the first time since the launch of his career in the late 1950s that Bob Dylan stopped writing.

As to when he did start writing again in 1996 what we got were some of the darkest songs Bob had ever written:

• Dirt Road Blues (Blues, lost love, moving on)
• Can’t Wait (Emptiness, loss, desperation)
• Mississippi (Lost love)
• Highlands (Beyond death)
• Dreamin of you (Love disconnected from the world)
• Marchin to the City (Doing alright)
• Million Miles (Drifting, thinking)
• Not Dark Yet – (Dying)
• Red River Shore (Love is a hopeless myth)
• Standing in the doorway (The darkness)

Just look at the concepts within these songs – and if this does not convince you that Bob’s vision of the world had gone extremely dark, just stop everything you are doing, close your eyes and listen to this video.

https://youtu.be/9IyDZab3_Wc

I’m walking through the summer nights
Jukebox playing low
Yesterday everything was going too fast
Today, it’s moving too slow
I got no place left to turn
I got nothing left to burn
Don’t know if I saw you, if I would kiss you or kill you
It probably wouldn’t matter to you anyhow
You left me standing in the doorway crying
I got nothing to go back to now

The light in this place is so bad
Making me sick in the head
All the laughter is just making me sad
The stars have turned cherry red
I’m strumming on my gay guitar
Smoking a cheap cigar
The ghost of our old love has not gone away
Don’t look like it will anytime soon
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Under the midnight moon

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

When the last rays of daylight go down
Buddy, you’ll roll no more
I can hear the church bells ringing in the yard
I wonder who they’re ringing for
I know I can’t win
But my heart just won’t give in
Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
You left me standing in the doorway crying
In the dark land of the sun

I’ll eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry
And live my life on the square
And even if the flesh falls off of my face
I know someone will be there to care
It always means so much
Even the softest touch
I see nothing to be gained by any explanation
There are no words that need to be said
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Blues wrapped around my head

Bob had found religion, lost religion, looked around once more and found that the world really was a place he didn’t like.  He walked away from his old occupation of giving us insights into that world, and then, after five years out, he found the words and music to explain it all to us.

And pretty grim it was.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

By Tony Attwood

In Greek mythology, the original gods were thought to have been born out of the void – the gap created by the separation of heaven and earth.  These were the primordial deities Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky) and they created the Titans.

There were six male Titans, Oceanus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus, and six female Titans, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys.

Mnemosyne became the goddess of memory and remembrance and the mother of the nine Muses. And of course memory was of central importance the oral culture of the Greeks as much as it is to a performer of pop, rock and folk music today.

Zeus, the sky and thunder god appeared in the form of a shepherd, and stayed with Mnemosyne for nine consecutive nights, and as a result she conceived the nine Muses: Calliope (the muse of epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (music), Erato (lyric poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy).

Mnemosyne, the mother of Muses, is subsequently called upon by poets who seek her help so that they may correctly remember the lines that they are to recite – this occurs both in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Mnemosyne was thus worshipped in Ancient Greece and statues were erected to her while in drawings she is often shown alongside her daughters.   Thus in “Mother of Muses” Dylan, now aged 79, can be seen to be asking for a little help in remembering his lines.  Or he may just be reflecting upon the ancient Greek traditions.  Or both.

The Odyssey begins, “Sing for me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.”

Dylan then cites five generals from America, Russia and Britain, who created the modern world into which Bob’s heroes could create the world.

Mother of Muses sing for me
Sing of the mountains and the deep dark sea
Sing of the lakes and the nymphs in the forest
Sing your hearts out - all you women of the chorus
Sing of honor and fame and of glory be
Mother of Muses, sing for me

Mother of Muses sing for my heart
Sing for a love too soon to depart
Sing of the Heroes who stood alone
Whose names are engraved on tablets of stone
Who struggled with pain so the world could go free
Mother of Muses, sing for me

Sing of Sherman - Montgomery and Scott
Sing of Zhukov and Patton and the battles they fought
Who cleared the path for Presley to sing
Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King
Who did what they did and then went on their way
Man, I could tell their stories all day

Bob then focuses on one of the muses – Calliope, the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry who taught Orpheus verses that he could sing.  According to some tellings she was the wisest of the Muses, and the most assertive.

I’m falling in love with Calliope
She doesn’t belong to anybody - why not give her to me
She’s speaking to me, speaking with her eyes
I’ve grown so tired of chasing lies
Mother of Muses wherever you are
I’ve already outlived my life by far

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

Take me to the river and release your charms
Let me lay down in your sweet lovin’ 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 travelin’ light and I’m slow coming home

In this final verse Dylan refers to some of his favourite songs as he reviews his travels on the Never Ending Tour, and gives me a rare chance to include a Talking Heads recording.

“Traveling Light”, “Slow,” and “Going Home” are from Leonard Cohen.  Here’s just one of those…

Rough and Rowdy Ways

• My own version of you: Bob’s revenge; Bob’s desire
• I contain multitudes; where do we start, where do we end?
• False Prophet: the meaning of life
• Why Murder Most Foul?
• The Black Rider
• I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You. And Offenbach and Johnny Cash.
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed: Bob Dylan and the random-abstract song.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

The Mississippi-series, part 11

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier “Desolation Row” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, “Mississippi” can’t really be dealt with in one article. Too grand, too majestic, too monumental. And, of course, such an extraordinary masterpiece deserves more than one paltry article. As the master says (not about “Mississippi”, but about bluegrass, in the New York Times interview of June 2020): Its’s mysterious and deep rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. […] It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood.

XI         Bonnie Blue

Well I got here followin’ the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

One of the few successful songs on one of Dylan’s weakest albums, Down In The Groove (1988) is his version of the old folk song “Shenandoah”. It is, of course, a beautiful nineteenth century song by itself – almost impossible to ruin.

The origin of “Shenandoah” is unclear. Alan Lomax guesses it’s a sea-shanty, an old sailor’s song of French-Canadian origin, probably originated around 1810. Given the lyrics, other musicologists conclude, it might be a “river-shanty”, deriving its name from the Shenandoah River in Virginia. Why then the protagonist repeatedly sings he has to cross the Missouri River is unexplained, though – that particular river is almost a thousand miles away. “Shenandoah” is a singing, melodious name, that’s probably the best explanation.

Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Look away, you rollin' river
It was for her I'd cross the water.
Look away, we're bound away
Across the wide Missouri

Dylan sings the version in which the narrator so desperately seeks to reach “Sally”, across the wide Missouri, and she is the “daughter of Shenandoah”. Which could indicate an Indian tribe, or the name of the river where she lives, or, in the literal interpretation, the name of his future father-in-law. “Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter,” after all.

The Indian tribe-option is by far the most attractive to lay a line to “Mississippi”. The Senedos, a tribe along the Shenandoah River, are the obvious candidates – all the more so since Shenandoah in their language means “daughter of the stars”. Following the star, I crossed the river. Coincidence, of course, but certainly a nice coincidence.

The real link, however, is that ancient image of “crossing a river”, the metaphor to represent the effort the man makes to reach the woman of his dreams. We sang that already in the Middle Ages:

Het waren twee koninghs kindren,
Sy hadden malkander soo lief;
Sy konden by malkander niet komen,
Het water was veel te diep.

There were two royal children,
Their love was turned to grief.
They could not come together
The water was too deep.

 The “Song of the Two Royal Children”, about the regal kids who are not allowed to see each other. One king puts his daughter in the monastery, on the banks of the wide river. She puts a candle on the balustrade at night so that the king’s son on the other bank can orient himself as he swims towards her, in pitch darkness. An “evil nun” blows out the candle when he is halfway, the king’s son drowns, and when his beloved finds the body the next morning, she commits suicide out of desperation.

A familiar story which, of course, goes back to the age-old Greek myth Hero and Leander, the story that inspired hundreds of artists from Antiquity to the twenty-first century – it’s an ancient, popular and ineradicable image, the river separating lovers. Or as a metaphor for every figurative meaning of “border” at all; it is not a coincidence that watershed is synonymous with milestone, radical event, turning point. Which is how the poet Dylan uses river throughout his entire oeuvre. From “Watching The River Flow” to “Baby, Stop Crying” and from “Man In The Long Black Coat” to “Moonlight” and “Crossing The Rubicon”; the rivers symbolize turning points.

In “Mississippi” Dylan gives it an extra, mythical touch; the narrator follows the southern star that leads him to that turning point. Mythical, as a Southern star does not exist – unlike a North Star, Polaris, there is no fixed star in the southern sky. A less romantically inclined astronomer might argue that the Sun is “the star in the south”, but in the arts it’s usually a nickname (for a special diamond, for example, as in the film The Southern Star with Orson Welles and an Ursula Andress at her most beautiful, 1969).   It’s not really a household name, though.

Presumably the poet wants to avoid digressing – after all, the star in any other wind direction has additional meanings or associative consequences. The Star in the East leads to the Child Jesus, the aforementioned North Star, which is shining too in one of Joni Mitchell’s breath-taking songs, “This Flight Tonight”,

"Look out the left," the captain said
"The lights down there, that's where we'll land"
Saw a falling star burning
High above the Las Vegas sand

It wasn't the one that you gave to me
That night down south between the trailers
Not the early one that you wish upon
Not the northern one that guides in the sailors

…is an age-old orientation point. And a Western Star conjures up completely different images, obviously. So, all that’s left is a “safe”, a neutral southern star. At most it pushes the associations, especially in the light of Dylan’s enigmatic statement that the song is about “the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights”, towards the Civil War, to the Bonnie Blue Flag hoisted on the Capitol Dome of Mississippi in 1861.

That flag consists of a single, large, “Southern” star on a blue field. In the South it is popular, a hastily written song perpetuates its popularity and promotes the flag to become the first unofficial flag of the Confederate States of America:

We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood, and toil;
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far,
Hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a single star.

The song is sung in Gods And Generals (2003), the film for which Dylan writes the brilliant “Cross The Green Mountain” (well after “Mississippi”) and the cinephile Dylan will have noticed the song earlier in Gone With The Wind – Rhett Butler lovingly calls his daughter Bonnie “Bonnie Blue”, Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) says her eyes are “blue as the Bonnie Blue Flag”.

Too bad the movie’s in Georgia. And not in Mississippi.

The Bonnie Blue Flag – Gods and Generals

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part XII: Roses Of Yesterday

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

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

Bob Dylan: The Symbolism Of The Pine Tree
by Larry Fyffe

In Roman/Greek mythology, the One Great God is hermaphroditic; the Olympians, out of fear, castrate her/him, and she becomes the Great Mother Goddess, Earth. The detached male organ becomes a deciduous almond tree that falls on the lap of a river goddess, and she gives birth to Attis; so beautiful is Attis that the Mother Goddess falls in love with him; he goes mad, and cuts off his genitals; out of remorse, the Mother Goddess turns Attis into the long-needled, and sweet-smelling pine tree, forever green.

As previously noted, Dionysus is sired by the chief Olympian god Zeus; the mother of Dionysus is the human princess Semele who is tricked by Hera, the wife of Zeus, into getting herself  killed by Zeus’ thunder bolts; the vine-generating son of Zeus is condemned by Hera to spend half of his life in the Underworld; he returns to the ground above for the spring and the summer; frenzied and dancing female Maenads, befriended by Dionysus, carry pine-cone-tipped wands, and keep him company.

As a literary symbol, pine trees represent regeneration, longevity, peace, and security.
According to the Holy Bible, such trees will stand in Jerusalem:

The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee
The fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together
To beautify the place of my sanctuary
And I will make the place of my feet glorious
(Isaiah 60: 13)

The symbolism of conifer trees is not lost on the singer/songwriter in the following lyrics, whether they be considered addressed to a former girlfriend or, as others like the Transcendentalist Romantics or Orthodox Christians might suggest, to the crucified Jesus – a Dionysian archetype:

I'll remember you
When the wind blows through the piney wood
It was you who cut right through
It was you who understood
Though I'd never say
That I did it the way
That you'd have liked me to
(Bob Dylan: I'll Remember You)

The leaves of the ‘Semi-God” Dionysus tree be not permanently present:

The rocks are bleak, the trees are bare
Iron clouds go floating by
Snowflakes are falling in my hair
Beneath the gray and stormy sky
(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

Unlike the always-evergreen Mother Goddess tree that provides refuge though not necessarily warmth:

Little girl, little girl, where you been so long
Not even your mama know
In the pine, in the pine
Where the sun never shine
I shivered the whole night long
(Bob Dylan: In The Pines ~ traditional/various)

Indeed, the coniferous cypress tree symbolizes sadness:

The boulevards of cypress trees
The masquerades of birds and bees
The petals, pink and white, the winds have blown
Won't you meet me in the moonlight all alone?
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)

And this:

I waited for you on the running boards
Near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned
Slowly into autumn
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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