Untold Dylan

Play Lady Play: A Simple Twist of Fate

Posted on July 10, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Music selected by Aaron Galbraith, commentary by Tony Attwood

Having written over half a dozen of these Play Lady Play articles I am getting to understand my own preferences for interpretations of Dylan’s music. And what it comes down to is simply this: that the performers recognise that they are handling a work of art by the greatest songwriter of the era, and either the greatest or second greatest popular songwriter of all time (the debate there being between Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan).

In doing this I want the artist to be give us her or his own interpretation, but also show respect to the original and the genius who composed it.

To use a Dylan song to show off one’s own virtuoso abilities is not a crime – providing that the performance also enhances our understanding of the song. If the song is used for self-aggrandisement, well it does nothing for me for it fails to recognise the integrity of the work itself, and its composer.

Embellishments are fine, but for me they have to add to the music not be a platform for the performer to shout LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME. Thus by way of example, no one can ever accuse Jack White of not embellishing the songs he works on, but he always manages to do it in keeping with the work and enhances it. And he does this by having an innate understanding of the music he is handling.

The ever dependable Judy Collins can do it too, by going in the opposite direction, stripping the song down to the basics, and then letting us hear and feel what the “Simple Twist of Fate” that is the heart of the song, actually does to the individual. The pain and the joy of random events, so perfectly portrayed. This is a perfect way to start our quest which is going to go to one or two rather strange places. (I hope you are prepared.)

Moving on, if anyone has an automatic understanding of Dylan it ought to be Joan Baez, with that extraordinary voice, and her long association with Bob.

Here she uses the harmonies that she offers us, very cautiously, and so they have a much greater impact. But also the orchestration is exquisite – kept perfectly under control but adding so much to the rock band.

I only have two complaints, both related to repetition. First the lead guitarist; having found that opening riff, delivers it about 20 times in the course of the piece, and really, we get the hang of it after a couple of renditions. Two at the start and two in the middle would have done me. The repeat we want, need and expect, is of the title phrase. No other repetition is required.

The other is that verse that Joan speaks in a mock Dylan voice. Maybe slightly amusing the first you hear it, but like the guitar riff, it is just boring if one plays the song several times. And really that’s the point. Dylan songs are meant to be played and played as we extract an ever deeper meaning from within. That’s why the greatest of recordings can be listened to across the years. And I’d happily listen to this again, if it weren’t for that twiddly guitar riff and knowing the silly spoken verse is about to come my way.

With Diana Krall, our next lady with the simple twist, we have another one of those frustrating situations where different videos seem to work on different continents. And really this is a general point; if any video doesn’t play where you are, do a Google search, and you might well find one that does work in your country. Aaron and I are (self-evidently) only checking these out for the USA and UK.

Here’s the link Aaron provided which is not working in the UK. And below is the recording I’ve heard…

This is an emotion-tugging beauty – if you listen to it and feel nothing, well, ok, maybe this isn’t the the song for you.

Dylan can deliver political messages, simple observations of life, religious treaties, humour, insights into the very depths of the human condition and emotional messages… and that’s hardly started the list of what he can do, and many of his songs can be treated in so many different ways because of the depth of the writing – as becomes evident here.

This performance pulls at my emotions more than I expected. I know what the song is, and in writing this I am listening to the songs in the order Aaron presented them, not in an order of my choice, but at this moment I am wondering if I don’t need a break in order to come back to this later.

But no, I’ve given myself a deadline, and I must push on. But really, after Diana Krall’s performance I am thinking I might need a break. Not yet time for the coffee however, so I move on.

And the point then of course is, in choosing to go on, am I going to be able to appreciate further manipulations of my emotions. And in this regard Kristin Lomholt’s performance takes me aback by its totally unexpected opening.

It is certainly a way of getting attention, but then so is the way she deals with the melody. And this is not me complaining about divas showing off their range – there is none of that. The lady plays with the melody, but in a way that is totally acceptable.

Personally I don’t feel the wordless sung interludes give me anything new – somehow I feel the continuity of the lyrics through the song are part of what makes the song work. Fate keeps coming along and taking over, no matter much you try and keep it at bay, it is inexorable.

And at that moment with the chorus singing its wordless part once more the lady loses me – but that’s not her fault. And if I now write “Wyrd bið ful āræd,” it is unlikely that you will have the slightest notion what I am saying. It is Norse for “Fate is inexorable.”

Now you may well be seeing if there is a psychiatrist handy in my part of England given that I have meandered into an ancient tongue, but there is a point here. These songs, at their most powerful, should trigger not just emotions, but also associations so that one’s mind is invited to drift, to explore, to consider… That is what good music should always do. It doesn’t matter that I travel to “Wyrd bið ful āræd,” and no one else has a clue what I mean. The point is that great music opens the door to journeys like this, and great performers realise that and make further journeys possible. Time to move on…

Concrete Blonde certainly offer us a different set of journeys with their guitar opening and the lady’s deeper voice, and Concrete Blond do take us somewhere completely new, but that is only half the point.

The personal issue is whether or not I want to go there, and here the answer for me is “in part” The point is that the verses that are half sung and half shouted really don’t do it for me. I get the feeling from the song that the singer is in despair in terms of what fate does. But I have never had the feeling that there is anger in the phrase “blame it on a simple twist of fate,” so it doesn’t work for me.

What I don’t know, and Aaron, maybe you’d like to tell all of us, whether the order that you provide the songs in is carefully selected by your good self, or whether it is random. After that concrete pain, I’d like to think you are giving me a chance to come back down to earth in a relatively gentle way.

But actually what happens to me here is that I rather wish I’d not listened to Sarah Jarosz’ version with that wonderful double bass accompaniment straight after Concrete.

If you don’t know the work of Sarah Jarosz you really should go exploring. The New York Times said of her that she is “widely regarded as one of acoustic music’s most promising young talents: a singer-songwriter and mandolin and banjo prodigy with the taste and poise to strike that rare balance of commercial and critical success.”

So now, clear your head of all other thoughts, reset the recording above and listen again, and just think, could anyone else have created that?

Maybe the best thing is to continue through this little set of reviews, and then make a diary note to come back to this track tomorrow. This lady really is something else.

What I can say is that if you just jump forward into the track of Barb Jungr, then it is best not to do it while undertaking heavy lifting.

For we are now somewhere very different, not least because this version totally removes the rhythm and takes us towards a modern jazz that was delivered by Dave Brubeck in the 1960s.

But that comment is in reality a reflection on my ignorance – I had a bit of background knowledge on this but it was lost deep in my past memories. If you would like to know more about what is going on in the next example, then after the video of “Twist of Fate” I have added a second video (sorry Aaron I know it is your department) in which Barb Jungr explains a little of what she is up to, and then performs “Blind Willie McTell” – which I think is a much more approachable performance. In fact I would go so far as particularly to recommend you do listen to Blind Willie, although maybe not to interrupt Aaron’s selection here.

Here’s the second vid with the explanations and Blind Willie

So, enough of my diversions, back to Aaron’s selection, with Dave’s True Story, a much more relaxing approach; the sort of version that reminds me of what I thought of the song when I first heard it 45 years ago. (Oh my it really was 45 years ago. What happened?)

This is a beautiful relaxing version that really does make me think of the past, remembering if I can when I first heard the song, where I was, what I was doing, what I hoped for in my life, and what actually happened. Somehow I find myself thinking, did I get it right? Did I do the right things? Have I lived a good life? Have I behaved like a decent person should? As one approaches later life such questions seem important although impossible to answer, and rather painful to ask. But perhaps not so pointless as they might seem.

And so we come to the end of the journey with Stacy Sullivan

It is as if Aaron knew I was going to be sinking into some sort of morbid reverie and wanted to jerk me back to today.

And I think we are not doing Stacy Sullivan justice by having her at the end of the review. This isn’t a shockingly different piece but the lady and her band do more than justice to this wonderful song. If you are ever minded to return to this little adventure, maybe it would be an idea to work backwards next time, in order to appreciate the new meanings she put into this song.

I think I’ll make a note in the diary to play it again tomorrow, rather than rush straight back to the earlier songs.

I must say I am drained having listened to each song and written each little review. My emotions have been pulled thither and yon as they used to say (at least in England they used to say that), I am stretched and exhausted, battered and needing a strong coffee.

Thankfully it is now after 10am, and by my acupuncturist’s rules I am now allowed my second (of three) cups of the day.

And I am also grateful Aaron left it at this point, for in his final note he added,

“As you can see it’s a very popular song to cover, there were many many other versions I could have chosen… KT Tunstall does a great live version, Aimee Mann covered it during the lockdown Dylanfest last week (maybe we can do a look at lockdown covers…I’ve seen many of them), a Dutch singer Stevie Ann sang it on a Dutch TV show amongst many others, but the ones I selected above seem to be trying something different with the track, unlike , say KT Tunstall’s version, which whilst fantastic is more of a “straight” cover.”

Aaron, my dear chap, I’m so glad you stopped where you did. There is only so much emotional heart wrenching a poor reviewer can take.

Play Lady Play: some earlier editions

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

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Mississippi-series, part 8: Pretty Maids All In A Row

Posted on July 9, 2020 by TonyAttwood

The Mississippi-series, part 8

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.

VIII Pretty Maids All In A Row

Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinkin’ ’bout the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleepin’ in Rosie’s bed

“I didn’t really have to grapple much. It’s the kind of thing where you pile up stream-of-consciousness verses and then leave it alone and come pull things out.” That’s what Dylan says in response to “I Contain Multitudes” in the 12 June 2020 New York Times interview.

It is a pleasant, worth reading interview with a grand old man reflecting on his own work with attractive modesty and a strange mix of wonder plus resignation. We were already familiar with the tenor of his self-analysis; in earlier interviews Dylan often tells us that he has no idea where those songs come from. But by now he is almost eighty and chooses his words more soberly than ever – and at the same time with a kind of self-evident acceptance of the magic behind them. He calls his creative phase “trance writing”, he doesn’t plan his songs, songs come “out of the blue, out of thin air”, and:

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

Beautifully phrased, with a charming touch of mysticism – but meanwhile the old bard really could add the proviso that the songs do not come entirely “out of the blue” or “out of thin air”. That the “songs seem to know themselves” has a rather earthy explanation: large parts of his songs already exist. For decades, usually.

So, in this verse “devil in the alley” comes from Dorsey Dixon, and most other words don’t come falling from the sky either, but from other people’s songs.

“Mule’s in the stall” Dylan borrows – consciously or unconsciously – from an old acquaintance, from Howlin’ Wolf, from “Evil (Is Goin’ On)”:

Well, long way from home and
Can't sleep at all
You know another mule
Is kickin' in your stall

Written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Howlin’ Wolf as early as 1954, but in ’69 he scored his last hit with a re-recording of the song. It’s a cool swinging Chicago blues from which Dylan will also lend the sound and stomp, for songs like “Lonesome Day Blues” and “Cry A While”, for example.

The “blue” out of which I was thinkin’ ’bout the things that Rosie said seems to fall is somewhat more unlikely, at least until 2020, when Dylan lists his long list of request numbers in part 4 of “Murder Most Foul”. Apart from usual suspects like “The Long, Lonesome Road”, John Lee Hooker, “Mystery Train” and “I’d Rather Go Blind”, the narrator requests DJ Wolfman Jack to play surprising, undylanesque songs like Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” and Beethoven, and in between, among those surprising requests is equally striking: “Play Don Henley – play Glen Frey”.

Interviewer Douglas Brinkley did notice it too, and in that New York Times article he enquires:

Your mention of Don Henley and Glenn Frey on “Murder Most Foul“ came off as a bit of a surprise to me. What Eagles songs do you enjoy the most?
“New Kid in Town,” “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Pretty Maids All in a Row.” That could be one of the best songs ever.

Every artist in the world will be particularly flattered when one of his songs is awarded by Bob Dylan as “one of the best songs ever”, but it’s a bit sad for Joe Walsh that Dylan seems to think it’s a Henley and Frey song – this is the only song from Hotel California that was written by Walsh (although he also gets a co-credit for the guitar lick of “Life In The Fast Lane”). As a consolation: the list of songs that the Nobel Prize winner calls “one of the best songs ever” is already a few pages long.

Still, a bit mysterious Dylan’s praise is; the bard undoubtedly belongs to a very small minority of music lovers who will regard “Pretty Maids All In A Row” so highly – indeed, few people will find it even the album’s best song. Objectively, if that is possible at all, songs like “Hotel California” or, say, “The Last Resort” are just better songs.

Anyway, it seems to have animated Dylan to follow the men’s solo careers as well, and the otherwise rather insignificant “I Got Love” of Glen Frey’s solo album The Allnighter (1984) apparently kept wavering in the thin air:

Jumped on the freeway with this song in my head
I started thinkin' 'bout the things we said
I said I'm sorry; She said I'm sorry too;
You know I can't be happy 'less I'm happy with you.

…from which both that thinkin’ about the things we said and I said I’m sorry; she said I’m sorry too seem to descend into “Mississippi”. Surprising, yet in line with other unlikely sources for Dylan’s production – such as a Japanese gangster epic, obscure nineteenth-century poets and a 1961 Time magazine.

The closing lines of this quatrain, in which a certain “Rosie” is sung, more or less bring the song “home”- after all, the refrain line of the poem originates from the song recorded by Lomax, from “Rosie”.

In the same 2020 New York Times interview, Dylan reveals how he writes “most of my recent songs”, yet again in response to “I Contain Multitudes”. Not only the qualification trance writing stands out, but also Dylan’s own analysis of the trigger for those stream-of-consciousness verses:

“In that particular song, the last few verses came first. So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line. It’s one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state.”

This is about a song he (presumably) writes in 2020. But it seems to apply one-on-one to a song he wrote a quarter of a century earlier, to “Mississippi”. Just like Dylan uses the lines with the Walt Whitman quote as a starting point for “I Contain Multitudes”, the obvious starting point here is Lomax’ Only one thing I did wrong / Stayed in Mississippi a day too long – and then the stream-of-consciousness starts to flow.

“Rosie” bubbling up halfway is, all in all, not that surprising anymore.

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part IX: Abandon all hope

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

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

1989: the menace emerges

Posted on July 9, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

In this series I am looking at the themes of the song lyrics written by Dylan each year and noting how they change, year by year.

In the years leading up to 1989 I summarised the articles through these titles:

1984: Back to the old ways (again)
1985: Bob Dylan slips back into negativity
1986: The year Dylan slowly turned himself all around
1987/8: Possibly the greatest trilogy of compositions in Dylan’s career

The “old ways” of 1984 were love and lost love, but as the titles above suggest, the return to the song themes that have occupied Dylan more than any others did not give him a long term satisfaction, for in 1985 the negativity was there with songs primarily of lost love (and no love song counterbalance) sadness, chaos, and ultimately the statement that life is a mess. I don’t know if there is a more negative year in Dylan’s recordings but I can’t immediately think of one.

1986 started out with negative themes such as being unfaithful, lost love and saying goodbye, but then along came Robert Hunter and we got two love songs and a song about turning one’s life around. It looked a lot more positive.

My view is that this allowed Bob to write what I have called the greatest trilogy of compositions in Dylan’s career:

From there on we got a mixed series of songs as Dylan found himself seemingly unable to hold onto the intensity of those three titles, and drifted into themes of life being tough, sex, strange events and lost love. But to be fair he was distracted by the agreement to work with the Wilburys.

So where could Dylan turn next?

In his Christian years Dylan saw the Devil as the menace, threatening to overthrow the world of Jesus, threatening your soul and your civilisation. As least that menace is known. Here it is just out there. There is darkness and menace, which has no form.

Looked at in this way it is not surprising that Dylan sought to find a way out of his difficulties by touring, although I introduce this theme with some trepidation. For at the opening of his unique and brilliant series on the Never Ending Tour, which I feel honoured to be publishing on this site, Mike Johnson quotes Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, a Persian poet from the Thirteenth Century who wrote, “Study me as much as you like, you will never know me. For I differ a hundred ways from what you see me to be … I have chosen to dwell in a place you can’t see.”

Now in that first article Mike wrote “The misleading popular press would have it that Dylan was ‘in a sad place’ in 1987, in the months leading up to the tour. We are led to believe that he was ‘lost’ and ‘in search of directions.’ Maybe so, but this is not reflected the performances of that year, which are full of power and vigour.”

Far be it from me to agree with the popular press – indeed the other blog that I oversee (Untold Arsenal) spends much of its time exposing the perfidious nature of the popular press, but this time, I think they got it right. And it is interesting (for me at least) that I got to this conclusion completely independently of anyone else’s historical comments, simply by following the thematic content of Dylan’s songs, in this series of articles, giving each song a simple category in relation to the lyrics.

In short, without thinking about where this was taking me, I found that the topics Dylan covered song by song, reflected what the media of the time were saying.

And indeed my first article on the subject of 1989, written in 2017, when I began the preliminaries for this whole project of analysing the subject matter of each song in a way that allowed the movement of Dylan’s thinking to be considered in a more straightforward manner, was called 1989: Bob Dylan stalked by the darkness

But now I am wanting to add another point: that in coming to this year, Dylan had set out his manifesto in that magnificent trilogy:

That is the backdrop. Mike’s three articles on this year of the tour are

Early on Mike quotes these lines as he opens the first 1989 review

‘If I just turn my back
while you silently die
what good
am I?’

And as we now come to look at the songwriting, that I think is worth holding in mind. Here is the list of songs written in 1989.

Born in Time (Lost love)
God Knows (We can get through)
Disease of Conceit (Fooling ourselves)
What was it you wanted (The old certainties are gone)
Broken Days / Everything is Broken (The old certainties are gone)
Ring them Bells (Times are changing)
Series of Dreams (Dreaming, thinking, wondering)
Most of the Time (Sadness)
TV Talking Song (TV is rubbish)
Where teardrops fall (Lost love)
Shooting Star and see Shooting Star and Hendrix (Lost love, the world falling apart).
Man in a Long Black Coat (the menace emerges)

If you have been with me through this long series of articles on the subject matter of Dylan’s songs year by year, you will have noticed that I have introduced some new subject summaries. I have tried really hard not to do this, because I have been trying to compare one year with another.

If there is a central theme here it is that the world is falling apart and we are fooling ourselves. In 1979 there was no doubt as Dylan wrote 19 songs all about his new faith; the only year of multiple compositions in which every single one was on the same subject.

The following year he wrote Making a liar out of me which if you are a regular reader you will know (because I hammer the point over and over and over again) I regard both as a work of genius and as an utterly pivotal moment in the way Bob Dylan’s thinking was developing.

Now ten years on Dylan is lost. He starts out with a standard theme of lost love (Born in Time, before telling us God Knows but then says we are fooling ourselves (Disease of Conceit

Then we have three songs which tell us that everything is changing, a meander through his dreams, a reflection on sadness itself and the appalling of television (and we may recall that Bob’s hero Elvis Presley was reportedly notorious for smashing up televisions, a couple of diversions into the old favourite theme of lost love, and then concluding with Man in a Long Black Coat which I can only summarise as “the menace emerges”.

This is not just the world gone wrong, this is something much deeper. This song owes a lot to the Scottish song “The Daemon Lover” in which a devil-like lover appears and convinces a woman to leave her husband and child – a typical devilish activity.

The menace can of course be the devil, it can be one’s own inner dark nature, it can be anything nasty. But whatever it is, it is frightening.

And yes I know Dylan related “Man in a long black coat” to “I walk the line” in Chronicles, and maybe he was indeed thinking of “I walk the line” in writing the black coat, but really the songs have nothing in common at all. “I walk the line” is a promise to be faithful. The Coat is all about evil.

These last two songs are highly disturbing songs of moving on and the world and the singer’s psyche are both falling apart. This was not a positive way to end the year.

There's smoke on the water it's been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted beneath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating on a dead horse

How dark would you like it to get?

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

NET 1992 – Heading for the Promised Land Part 1

Posted on July 8, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson (kiwipoet)

Watch out, Lester
Take it, Lou
Join the monks
The C.I.O
Tell 'em all that Tiny Montgomery says hello

Part 1 – The Promised Land in sight.

Going from 1991 to 1992 is a bit like going from the desert to the Promised Land. We find a cornucopia of riches. At least at first sight. We have a lot to look forward to in the next few posts.

Dylan expanded the band by adding multi-guitarist Bucky Baxter and having two drummers, Charlie Quintana and Winton Watson. That duo lasted from April until September when Quintana left the band. With the slide guitar and dobro (Hawaiian guitar), Baxter would soften the sound of the band, but also add a richer, ‘orchestral’ effect which won’t come fully into play until 1994/5.

Dylan’s voice hasn’t improved much, if at all, but the band is on fire. I could hardly credit that the jazz guitarist that comes racing out in some of these tracks is the same John Jackson who blundered along with Dylan in 1991. This jazzy turn sees the band kicking along in a way we’ve never heard before. It certainly gives a boost to the great apocalyptic ‘All along the Watchtower’.

Within that jazzy framework, Dylan’s harmonica too becomes more adventurous, more open and free. No other year quite captures that emergent spirit, the sense of joyful innovation. (Readers of my Master Harpist Series will recognise this track from Part 1 of that series)

Watchtower

Same goes for Dylan’s great seventies epic ‘Tangled up in Blue’.This broken, fragmentary narrative, as the singer faces his painful, confused and confusing past, gets full epic treatment here. At nearly eleven minutes, with a medium tempo beat, this is the first in a long line of epic performances of this song. But Dylan’s interest here is not so much in story telling, as he drops out the third verse anyway, but in musical exploration – Dylan taking long guitar and harp breaks.

Tangled up in Blue

At this stage the guitar breaks are quite tentative (they will fully come into their own in 1993) compared to the confident, high flying harmonica. Baroque musical extensions work okay with songs like ‘Watchtower’ and ‘Tangled,’ which have an inherently Baroque reach, but what about the more minimalist songs?

‘I and I’ started life as a sweet/bitter little ballad on Infidels (1984) and became a loud, thumping crowd pleaser during the Tom Petty years. It resurfaces here as an eight minute epic with its own apocalyptic subtext to the fore. Dylan scratches away at the lyric as best he can with that sandpaper voice, showing his voice no mercy ‘in creation where one’s nature neither honours nor forgives’. It turns into a powerful vocal performance, scratch and all.

The bulk of the performance, however, is taken up with Dylan and John Jackson working with, and sometimes against, the textures Bucky Baxter is creating with those long, drawn out notes. This collaboration won’t fully pay off until the following year for this song. But it’s Dylan’s musical development, in particular developing his own unique approach to the guitar, that is his main focus here. More Baroque developments to come.

I and I

Dylan might have stopped writing topical protest songs in the mid sixties, but I have argued that he extended the range of his social critique with so-called attack songs like ‘Just like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Ramona’, and ‘Just Like a Woman’ to include living blindly and in bad faith – those ‘unlived meaningless lives’ (False Prophet).

But he also continued to write politically, and one of his most political songs is ‘Union Sundown’, also from Infidels, a song attacking the loss of US productive capacity. An early insight into the pitfalls of globalisation

When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else

But it aroused the antagonism of Dylan’s more left wing audience, as it seems to blame the greedy unions and government regulations for America’s decline.

I can see a time coming when even your home garden
is gonna be against the law

However, these sentiments are balanced with a deeper dig into what’s going on politically. The last verse is as succinct and sharp as anything Dylan’s written in terms of direct social commentary. The rhythms wouldn’t fit, but the sentiment could have come from ‘It’s All Right Ma’ back in 1964.

Democracy don't rule the world
You better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid
From Broadway to the Milky Way
That's a lot of territory indeed
And a man's gonna do what he has to do
When he's got a hungry mouth to feed

The song has only rarely been performed. This is the only recording of it that I have, although others may exist. But is this ‘Union Sundown’ at all? I can’t match any of the words except the chorus, at least those words I can make out. Is this another off the cuff performance, or has Dylan rewritten the song? I’d love to see a transcript of this, although I don’t have the ear or the patience to do it. The song rocks along and the band is pretty tight, but Dylan’s vocal delivery gets messy. I feel like I’m back in 1991, with a shambles just around the corner.

Union Sundown

‘Cat’s in the Well’ from Under the Red Sky (1991) is another very political song, but the politics of Under the Red Sky are very different from Infidels. ‘Unbelievable’, off the latter album, delivers swift judgment on what might have happened to the Promised Land.

Once it was a land of milk and honey
now they say it’s a land of money
who’d ever thought, they could make that stick
it’s unbelievable, you can get this rich this quick.

‘Cat’s in the Well’ puts the critique on a different level by using animals from fables. A menacing air is created at the beginning of the song.

Cat’s in the well and the wolf is looking down
he got his big bushy tail dragging all over the ground

A cat in a well of course is a desperate creature. That same desperation lies behind our polite facades.

The cat's in the well
and the servant is at the door.
The drinks are ready
and the dogs are going to war.

Dylan’s outrage at the state of the world is no less than it was, back in the early sixties, in his protest day.

The cat's in the well and grief is showing its face
The world's being slaughtered and it's such a bloody disgrace.

Dylan was often to use this song as a rocker to close gigs, and it was often rushed through or turned into a guitar fest, but this is a pretty clean performance.

Cat’s in the Well

While on the subject of Under the Red Sky and Dylan’s ongoing political commentary, we find a little song called ‘2 by 2’. In their eagerness to dismiss the album, and write off ‘2 by 2’ as song writing by numbers, the commentators miss once more the engagement with social issues of these songs.

How many paths did they try and fail?
How many of their brothers and sisters lingered in jail?
How much poison did they inhale?
How many black cats crossed their trail?

It has a catchy melody and beat, but the song never quite came over, and Dylan rarely performed it. In this performance he misses out the chorus I’ve quoted in favour of repeating the last chorus twice, which is somewhat more generalised in terms of social critique.

How many tomorrows have they given away?
How many compared to yesterday?
How many more without any reward?
How many more can they afford?

Listen out for Bucky Baxter’s nice slide guitar work, and an arresting ending to the song. No spoilers!

2 by 2

We can’t leave Under the Red Sky without that much despised song ‘Wiggle Wiggle.’ I offered some defence for that song when looking at 1991 (See NET 1991 Part One), suggesting that it was a deliberate and provocative attack on human sexuality, and as such a powerful song. So powerful it got everybody offended and up in arms. They came to see ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and got ‘Wiggle Wiggle’. Quite an effective way to destroy your legend.

Here it is, with the lyrics restored. There’s some pretty fancy guitar work here by John Jackson. This jazzy extension seems to be what interests the musicians. The audience seem to get it, and have a good time. ‘Wiggle you can raise the dead!’ Oh Lordy.

Wiggle Wiggle

Well, I’m going to wiggle right out of here and prepare the next post, which will check in on how the Oh Mercy songs are developing, plus some other goodies.

Be well

Kia Ora

The index to all the articles covering the Never Ending Tour from 1987 onwards can be found here.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Song to Bonny: another unfinished Dylan set of lyrics now set to music

Posted on July 7, 2020 by TonyAttwood

The idea of the Bob Dylan Showcase is twofold. One part of it allows anyone who has recorded a Dylan song and who is a reader of our site to submit the recording and we’ll put it up.

The other surrounds the issue of a number of Dylan songs for which we have the lyrics and not any music.

Now I don’t know whether when we first stumbled on this project of writing the music to Dylan’s songs it attracted several talented writers along, and this put everyone else off, or whether people just got bored. But one way or another, the entries have declined. As a result we really have had to wait for the music to “Song to Bonny” to emerge, but now we have it.

And thus it is formally classified as “Song to Bonny” by Bob Dylan/Paul Robert Thomas.

Here is the music

Song To Bonny

And the lyrics

My Mother raised me tenderly
I was her pride and joy
She never meant for me to be
No wanderin’ homeless boy

I’m writing a song to a girl I once knew
It wasn’t so long but it seems so long ago
This ain’t no love song, none of its kind
It’s a song of remembrance of a girl in my mind

Hey Bonny I’m singing to you now
This song I’m singing is the best I know how
The songbirds are singing their voices do ring
And I’ll think of you as long as they sing

Hey Bonny Beecher I think that you know
What I am doing and where I must go
Can’t give you no ring of diamond or gold
But I’ll think about you wherever I go

Springtime’s a comin’ and the grass will turn green
The flowers’ll bloom and the leaves on the trees
Will all turn in color and all seem to shade
The wild Mississippi where you sit and wait

Where you sit and wait

Hey hey Bonny I wrote you a song
Cause I don’t know if I’ll see you again
I want you to know whatever I do
I’ll always remember that I once was with you

Remember me baby I’s good to you one time
I’m a wandering boy and you’re in my wandering mind

Spring Time's a comin’ and the grass’ll turn green
The flowers will bloom and the leaves on the trees
Will all turn in colors and all seems to shade
The wild Mississippi where you sit and wait

Where you sit and wait

Bob Dylan/Paul Robert Thomas

P.S. All of the songs from this Dylan project can be checked out on my website at https://www.paullyrics.com/album/dylan-found/

Here are some other entries into the Bob Dylan Showcase. If you want to join in, please write to Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Bob Dylan And Frankenstein (Part II)

Posted on July 7, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan And Frankenstein (Part II)

This article continues from Bob Dylan and Frankenstein

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan is rather consistent in the themes that he expresses though his often dark-humoured song lyrics – consistent yes, yet very innovative at the same. For instance, Dylan turns two central stories from the Holy Bible into a Gothic Romantic musical masterpiece – the Almighty creates a perfect, beautiful Satan who then rebels against his authoritarian Creator:

For thou hast said in thine heart
"I will ascend into Heaven,
I will exalt the throne above the stars of God
I will sit on the mount....
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds
I will be like the Most High"
(Isaiah 14:13,14)

The Almighty then creates Mankind in His own image, and, sure enough, look what happens:

And the Serpent said unto the woman
"Ye shall not surely die
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof
Then your eyes shall be opened
And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" ......
And a tree to be desired to make one wise
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat
And gave also unto to her husband with her, and he did eat
(Genesis 3: 4,5,6)

God’s not happy with his authority being challenged by these upstarts, and, to show who’s the boss, He throws Satan, Eve, and Adam out in the streets, so to speak.

Satan, he’s his own boss, and he ain’t gonna stand for it, ain’t gonna take it anymore:

"So farewell hope, and, with hope, farewell fear
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost
Evil be thou my good"
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book IV)

A creator of a novel revises the story a bit, makes it darker – therein, God-like Dr. Frankenstein rejects his own creation:

"I, the miserable and the abandoned ....kicked, and trampled on
Even now my blood boils at the recollection of the injustice
Evil thenceforth became my good"
(Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Or The Modern Prometheus)

The singer/singer takes on the persona of Mary’s creature in the lyrics below:

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All my doubts and fears have gone at last
I've nothing more to tell you now
(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

Victor Frankenstein’s side of the story is later related by Bob Dylan to his listeners/readers; Doctor Victor wants everyone to stay forever young:

All through the summer, into January
I've been visiting morgues, and monasteries
Looking for the necessary body parts
Limbs and livers, and brains and hearts
I'll bring someone to life, is what I wanna do
I wanna create my own version of you .....
One strike of lightning is all that I need
And a blast of electricity that runs at top speed
Shimmy your ribs, I'll stick in the knife
Gonna jump-start my creation to life
I wanna bring someone to life, turn back the years
Do it with laughter, and do it with tears

The melancholy ghost of John Keats haunts the song – a young boy, beloved by Apollo, accidently spears his pet deer; the son of Zeus, the God of Thunder, turns the boy into a cypress tree so that the boy can weep forever:

Is there light at the end of the tunnel, can you tell me please?
Stand over here by the cypress tree
(Bob Dylan: My Version Of You)

Brilliant!

Untold Dylan: The YouTube channel what you’ll find there

What Rolling Stone had to say about Untold Dylan and Tell ol Bill

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line 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

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Play lady play: the strange ones, the eccentric, and the beautiful

Posted on July 6, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Research by Aaron Galbraith, Text by Tony Attwood

In this series of articles, Aaron casts his net across the range of lady signers who perform Dylan songs, and offers Tony a number of video links with the instruction, “review these”.

This time Aaron wrote,

“The first four are pretty “out there” in terms of arrangements and the last four are edging towards the far reaches of Dylan’s discography… the last, in particular I hesitated to include but then I though what the hey…this is Untold Dylan after all and I’m pretty certain not many will know that this is a Dylan co-write and even less who would know that someone actually covered it!

“I’m sure some of these you are going to hate! But maybe some you will love, who knows! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for these! Enjoy!”

And now, if you don’t want to read Tony’s chit chat comments you can just listen to the music on the Untold Dylan: The YouTube channel

—————–

And Tony answers…

What is the point of singing Dylan like Dylan? Or indeed of having the same accompaniment as Dylan has chosen? After all, it has already been done. By Dylan.

So I fully applaud each and every attempt to take Dylan song into another dimension. The one thing I wish I was party to is the discussions by each band and vocalist into exactly what they are going to do.

Take Diva De Lei with “Senor” – where did they start in working on this arrangement? The vocal, the accompaniment, or the introduction of the backing chorus? What is so amazing is that the song starts at such a pitch of intensity it is hard to imagine it can get much higher.

But oh my, it most certainly does. I love it.

And so moving on, is there any way of following that?

This is Patti LaBelle with “Forever Young” at Live Aid.

Now if you have been following this series, you may recall my criticisms concerning the way some lady singers use the songs to show off their vocal ranges in a way that seems to have little relationship with the song itself.

This is just my problem, and I find it again here as the meaning of the song vanishes in a sea of vocal acrobatics. By the three minute mark we could be listening to any song; the meaning has gone, the lights have gone out, the door has been shut, the audience has gone home, the planet has left its orbit, the sun has dimmed…

Obviously not for the audience here. It’s my failing that I just don’t get it. And I do love the song.

Angela Aki – Knockin On Heavens Door

Now I don’t have such problems with foreign languages – I don’t need to hear the lyrics in English, and indeed the sound of the lyrics in a foreign tongue that I can’t speak raise all sorts of possibilities.

Here we get the occasional line in English, but that’s neither here nor there. What is utterly exquisite is the piano playing, the change in emphasis, and the later introduction behind the piano of the band, who know exactly where they should be – behind this magnificent lead musician.

I even love the extension of the title line in the grand fortissimo section around the three minute marker.

And what a beautiful combination is her voice and piano performance; my goodness this lady really does have it all, and she uses it all to fulfil the meaning of the song. Now she is a performer I would travel to see.

MB14 & Tamara – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

Where do we go next?

To a totally different arrangement and a different understanding of the song. And it is good indeed to hear this street band who are phenomenally resourceful in their use of resources.

I never once get tired of the singer’s voice, nor the way the band use their resources. I found myself wondering if the lady singer could actually perform in any voice other than this. But just as I was wondering, we get to the harmonies that conclude the piece. Oh that is clever. That is really good.

Are they really a street band, or was that just an act for the video? Probably, but hey, it was a good act.

The Omagh Community Youth Choir – Love Rescue Me

This is one of those videos which seems to have a copyright problem in different countries, so here are two approaches – hopefully one will work where you are.

One version

https://youtu.be/5xNmhhB3fjw

The alternative is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YcLlURCLIU

School and community choirs are not what we are normally about but this should be an exception because of where the choir is based and what the community had been through. The point was, they clearly got everything out of making this recording, and surely that is what a community choir is all about.

And the sound is beautiful.

Lily Kershaw – Wagon Wheel

One of the problems with trying to write a review of each of these songs is that there are going to be occasional Dylan songs performed that I don’t care for, and others I really do hold in my heart. Not to mention performers I like, and others that are not my first choice.

Here we have personal choices in both zones – one of my favourite Dylan pieces, and Lily Kershaw does it for me.

Now of course one of the absolute must-not-dos is to quote oneself in reviews, but well, Untold is about breaking rules, so this is what I said in my original review

“He knocks out a few lines and makes up a few more plus the accompaniment and melody on the spot, he does a very hard to understand rough recording, and then they don’t use the song in the film. Except it gets picked up years later and becomes a monumental hit.”

And yes I still think that but somehow this version never takes off in the way that Old Crowe makes it work. Why is that? The harmonies in the Old Crowe version for one thing. The combination of violin and banjo for another. And then the harmonies again which change here and there as the piece continue. And it is one of my favourite videos too, but let’s not dwell on that.

There’s nothing wrong with Lily’s version, it is just that one either has to do something very different or a lot more with a Dylan song to make a big mark, or outshine earlier versions, and I don’t think she does either here.

Maria Muldaur & Mavis Staples – Well, Well, Well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orr03NB0iVA

Well, well, well, is another song I gave a rave review to and again I’m struggling to keep my interest. This is a clever and well thought through treatment of the song, but this doesn’t do anything for me, other than leaving me thinking it is clever. Come the end I don’t want to play it again (which when I do is surely is the mark of a great rendition).

If you haven’t heard the original click on the review link, skip forward through the co-composer’s chit chat and give yourself a treat.

Silvia Braga – Vomit Express

Aaron’s note to me says, “Apologies for presenting that last one and for making you listen to it..maybe it will make you appreciate the original a little bit more now!” The original is available on Untold’s earlier review (which in case you need them, contains the lyrics).

These two versions are completely different from each other, but my reaction is, “why bother?” It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like the original, as I didn’t and still don’t see the point of the song. If it were not for the fact it was written by Bob and Alan, would anyone remember this? Nice tenor sax though.

But I really didn’t want to end of this little piece on a negative. So instead I went back to what I, in my strange little world, in a village listed in the Domesday book, tucked away in the Northamptonshire countryside in middle England, find to be a really moving performance of a beautiful song…

Angela Aki – Knockin On Heavens Door

Aaron, thank you, I really enjoyed this selection.

And to you, dear reader and listener, having got this far, thank you. I hope you enjoyed it too.

tony

You can find the selections from all the previous editions of Play Lady Play on the Untold Dylan: The YouTube channel what you’ll find there

Play Lady Play: earlier editions

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Mississippi series VII Dorsey Dixon

Posted on July 6, 2020 by TonyAttwood

The Mississippi series

by Jochen Markhorst

VII Dorsey Dixon

Rowland Sherman is the photographer who will later take the famous picture of Dylan used for Greatest Hits. “With that blue light, with the white halo,” as Sherman says, adding:

“And it won a Grammy Award! I didn’t think much of it, but now it turns out that that shot is one of the icons of the ’60s. Quite proud of it, but at the time I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

That picture was taken in Washington in 1965, but Sherman has known Dylan for a long time. He’s there, 28 July 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival, when the scruffy vagabond is catapulted by Joan Baez and becomes the new king of folk music. That’s how the photographer sees it, anyway:

“There was a crowd of maybe 60 or 100 people. And then Joan Baez sat in with him, and all of a sudden the crowd was two or three hundred people. It was all his stuff, and she was singing the harmonies to them. Fabulous stuff. The crowd got bigger and bigger, and everyone was enthralled. It was because if Baez is singing with this guy, he must have something.”

And at the end of the weekend, when Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul & Mary, The Freedom Singers and Joan Baez form his background choir on “Blowin’ In The Wind”, it is evident: Dylan is the star, “he was untouchable”.

Dylan’s presence is also fairly prominent in the 32-page program booklet. One and a half pages with an ode-like contribution he wrote about folk artist, harmonica player and music critic Tony “Little Sun” Glover (“- for Dave Glover”), the lyrics of “Blowin’ In The Wind”, and so on. Yet Dylan is not on the record that will be released six months later, Old Time Music At Newport (Recorded Live At The Newport Folk Festival 1963) – a strange blunder from record label Vanguard, which still does have complete, officially unreleased, recordings of all the Dylan appearances that weekend.

An interesting record it is nevertheless – if only because it reveals a few sources of Dylan’s later repertoire. The young Dylan (he’s 22 by then) kept his ears and eyes open for three days, visited the workshops and attended the performances, and that record was probably on his turntable too.

The LP opens with four songs by Doc Watson, the man from whom Dylan learned “Naomi Wise”, and “Lonesome Road Blues”, “Freight Train Blues” and “Lone Pilgrim”, “Handsome Molly” and “Little Maggie”, the songs, in short, which lay the foundation of his oeuvre and which he still has on a pedestal today.

The same goes for the artist and the repertoire of the next artist on that Newport record: Clarence Ashley. Another admired musician who Dylan meets and hears playing in the Village, and here Ashley performs his version of “Little Sadie”, the version that a few years later, on Self Portrait (1970), seems to be the template for Dylan’s recording.

Similar aha-moments delivers Side 2, with the legend Dock Boggs. Boggs, whose “Danville Girl” in the 80s via the detour “New Danville Girl” will lead to “Brownsville Girl”, here plays his classic “Sugar Baby”, the namesake of the brilliant finale of “Love And Theft” (2001).

And in between, between Dock Boggs and Clarence ‘Tom’ Ashley, opening Side 2, the misunderstood Dorsey Dixon shines.

The invitation to perform at Newport is a late, meagre recognition of the forgotten Dorsey Dixon’s music historical importance. Born in 1897 in Darlington, South Carolina, Dorsey has worked in the local textile factory since he was twelve, as do his father and his six siblings. Sister Nancy has been a spinster since she was eight, and brother Howard has been on the loom since his tenth birthday.

Dorsey and Howard are musical, they perform and make their own songs about their lives in the factory, the miserable living conditions and the exploitation by the manufacturers. Locally known, popular at demonstrations and trade union activities, but they don’t make money with it. At the age of forty, Dorsey still works in a textile factory, now fifty miles away, in East Rockingham.

In 1936 a gruesome car accident happens near the factory, in which two fellow locals are killed. Dorsey sees the car wreck, the blood and the shrapnel. He writes a song about it, “Wreck On The Highway” (though he originally calls the song “I Didn’t Hear Nobody Pray”). The song penetrates the canon quite smoothly:

Who did you say it was brother?
Who was it fell by the way?
When whiskey and blood run together
Did you hear anyone pray?

I didn't hear nobody pray, dear brother
I didn't hear nobody pray
I heard the crash on the highway
But, I didn't hear nobody pray

But it won’t make the Dixons rich either. Howard and Dorsey are allowed to record sixty songs for record company Victor, but they don’t have a clue, of course. A&R guy Eli Oberstein sells the copyrights of all of them. Country hero Roy Acuff hits the jackpot with “Wreck On The Highway” and scores a big hit (the ungrammatical double denial in the original title is considered too rustic). Unscrupulously and speciously, Acuff puts his name under the song, and only years later, when Dixon finds out he did miss out on quite a lot of money, he sends in a lawyer. In 1946 he gets the copyrights back, an unknown percentage of “future royalties” plus $1,700 – a pittance, of course.

It takes until the end of the fifties – Dorsey is already in his sixties – when some recognition comes up. His songs are discovered by folkies, in 1961 he is given the opportunity to record an album (Babies In The Mill – the title song is, obviously, about the disgraceful practices of child labour in American textile factories, in the first half of the twentieth century) and Pete Seeger introduces him at his first major performance, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

Dylan’s in the audience and pays close attention. Dorsey (brother Howard died in 1961) opens with his bitterly comical “Intoxicated Rat”, which is on the repertoire of Doc Watson, Cisco Houston and The New Lost City Ramblers, and – unlikely enough – even on Brook Benton’s.

Then Dixon plays his big hit, which he now calls “Wreck On The Highway” too, and finally he plays his “first blues” (as he says himself), “Weave Room Blues” which he wrote more than thirty years ago, in 1931. In the thirties that song was on the repertoire of every trade union activity around the textile factories, as well as in the variant “Cotton Mill Blues”, but no one knows it was written by Dorsey Dixon. Pete Seeger sings it, The New Lost City Ramblers record it in 1961 for their hit album Vol. 3, but even in the standard work American Folk Songs Of Protest by the highly educated John Greenway (1953), in which the song is extensively discussed, Dorsey’s name is not mentioned.

But his work will stand the test of time. Dylan does his bit and takes that beautiful image devil’s in your alley to the twenty-first century, to “Mississippi”:

I've got the blues, I've got the blues,
I've got them awful weave-room blues;
I got the blues, the weave-room blues.

Harness eyes are breaking with the doubles coming through,
Devil's in your alley and he's coming after you,
Our hearts are aching, well, let's take a little booze;
For we're simply dying with them weave-room blues.

Newport, and the recognition by greats like Seeger, Cisco Houston and The New Lost City Ramblers, comes too late for Dixon. He’s half-blind, old, has a few heart attacks in ’64, has to move in with his son in Florida and dies in 1968.

Thus, he again misses out on a shipload of money four years later, when Roy Acuff’s version of “Wreck On The Highway” is released on The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s platinum hit record Will The Circle Be Unbroken. On which – finally – the song is not attributed to Roy Acuff anymore. But erroneously, to add insult to injury, to a “Dorothy” Dixon.

The devil was in the alley again, probably.

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part VIII: Pretty Maids All In A Row

=====

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

==========

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dylan’s lost 1966 album: time to put it back together

Posted on July 5, 2020 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron Galbraith

In the Deluxe edition of the Cutting Edge box set, the book states that Dylan could have put out another album after Blonde On Blonde using the remaining tracks from the 1965-1966 sessions, if he had been so inclined. So, spurred on by the success of Tony’s “Dylan 1980” album, I thought I’d have a go at compiling it!

Now this does not mean that we are going to put out endless invented albums – the main point about these “invented” albums is that they have a logic – “1980” took all the songs of that year because the songs mark a transformation in Dylan’s thinking, while “Sheep In Wolves Clothing” is the album Dylan could have created that year, instead of the one we actually got.

You can hear both albums plus the tracks from the Play Lady Play series on our new YouTube site. If you want to create your own Dylan album for us to publish, the best bet is to sketch out the idea first and send it to Tony@schools.co.uk, before you start putting all the videos together and writing about each song.

But now, back to the Cutting Edge. My first port of call was the “Dylan songs of the 1950s and 60s” section of this site, this gave me the links to listen back to all the songs from those years, which helped to reacquaint myself with the tracks when compiling my album.

My criteria for inclusion was twofold.

1) There has to be a version by Dylan available (so no “Love Is A Four Letter Word”, unfortunately)

2) There has to be a complete (or almost complete) take available (so no “Jet Pilot”).

So, here is the track list I came up with for the mythical lost Dylan album from 1966.

Side 1.

Positively 4th Street (3:54)
Farewell, Angelina (5:27)
Sittin’ On A Barbed Wire Fence (3:54)
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (4:04)
She’s Your Lover Now (6:10)

Side 2.

Tell Me Momma (5:10)
If You Gotta Go (Go Now) (2:56)
Long Distance Operator (3:38)
I Wanna Be Your Lover (3:27)
I’ll Keep It With Mine (3:39)

If you squint hard at all of this it could be telling the story of a lost love, the sorrow, the anger and then acceptance of the situation on side 1. Then the moving on with your life and finding someone new on side 2. If you squint real hard!

Now what to call this collection? Dylan is not against using a song title as an album title, although he has only done it 8 times in his career, plus 3 times he has used a partial song title, Nashville Skyline, Slow Train Coming and Hard Rain. Only one time, I think, he has used a line in a song to name the album (Knocked Out Loaded). So that means that less than a third of the time a song has named the album.

As I don’t have access to Dylan’s brain at this time for an original title, I thought I would use a line from a song, just this once. I tried to encapsulate the journey of a love affair using a line or two from the available songs.

Here are my suggestions for a title:

A Fistful Of Tacks
The Bells Of The Crown
Bulldog Bite
The Felony Room
Long Distance

So now what I would like you to do is design a sleeve for this album using one of the titles I came up or, indeed use one of your own. Send it in to Tony and he will publish it on this here site.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Why does Dylan like Tampa Red?

Posted on July 5, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood and Aaron Galbraith

During 1978 Bob Dylan performed “She’s Love Crazy” – a Tampa Red song from 1941. In all Dylan sang it 48 times – he obviously liked it. He also dipped into “Love her with a feeling”.

Tampa Red was born Hudson Woodbridge in 1903, and was later known as Hudson Whittaker after his parents died during his childhood. He died in 1981, and was one of the great Chicago blues men.

His first step towards fame came when accompanying Ma Rainey, the lady mentioned in Tombstone Blues, and in 1928 he started recording with Georgia Tom (Thomas Dorsey) particularly with the Hokum Boys. Hokum was a form of blues that had sexually explicit lyrics and occasional rhythmic changes.

Here’s the Tampa Red Hokum Jug Band

Tampa Red then became known for a bottleneck style and was later known as The Man with the Gold Guitar.

This recording has examples of his solo guitar playing

https://youtu.be/g-5M–sc5lY

He was often recorded playing single-string runs – one of the first performers to do so.

“It hurts me too” was one of his best known songs…

And here is “She’s Love Crazy” which Dylan performed

https://youtu.be/uW1oNg51vHo

Tampa Red created a number of blues songs which became a staple part of the blues genre.

Bob Dylan performed the song in 1978 – at a time when Tampa Red was still with us – he passed away in 1981.

https://youtu.be/vjfo45qWOY8

Interestingly Dylan played about with the song on the tour, changing both the speed and the key.

https://youtu.be/JXRjPc3euEQ

As for Dylan’s tributes to him, perhaps it was an awareness of Tampa Red’s last years that caused Bob to pay an extra tribute to him.

Tampa Red’s wife died in 1953 and it is reported that after that he took heavily to drink, making his final recordings in 1960. He died destitute in Chicago at the age of 77 in March 1981.

Why does Dylan like (the series)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. 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

But what is complete is our index to all the 611 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page. I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information. Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Untold Dylan: The YouTube channel

Posted on July 4, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Words by Tony Attwood

Hard work and technical knowledge by Aaron Galbraith

It is often suggested that I am still stuck in the 1950s, playing Dylan records on a trusty record player at 33 and a third revs per minute, and that Untold Dylan is written on parchment with a quill pen, my trusty associates then typing the texts up beore handing them over to more modern folk who eventually see to things and get my words of wisdom before the contemporary world by placing these musings upon the Internet.

Well yes, up to a point. But fortunately some around me are of a more modern inclination, and as such have now taken Untold Dylan further forward with a You Tube channel.

I must admit I am not quite sure what this is but I am told that if you take a peek via the link below you will see wonders upon wonders.

We have for example six Play Lady Play playlists taken from the articles from that series, meaning you can play the list in sequence while reading the article. There is a list of the articles below to help out.

We also have a full play list for our invented album “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” including

Track 1 Twist and Shout
Track 2: Just when I needed you most
Track 3: Willie and the Hand Jive
Track 4: Important words
Track 5: Uranium Rock (Rock ’em dead)
Track 6: Lucky old Sun
Track 7: Got Love If You Want It
Track 8: Treasure of Love
Track 9: Sidewalks Fences and Walls
Track 10: Let my people go.
CD Bonus Tracks: Thank God, Old Five And Dimers (Like Me)
Album Cover 1
Album Cover 2

And (and this is the bit I really love) my own invented album (“Dylan 1980”) now exists as a YouTube album. You can follow that extravaganza via these links.

Bob says to Tony, “Make me an album”
Make me an album part 2
The hopes and fears and dreams of the discontented

Untold Dylan: The Youtube channel

And seriously, a million thanks to Aaron for getting the channel going and setting out the selections.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bob Dylan And Faith (Part VIII): Nietzsche

Posted on July 4, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan and Faith

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

Bob Dylan And Faith (Part VII): Nietzsche

by Larry Fyffe

Some examiners of the song lyrics of Bob Dylan claim that in the song ‘Cry A While’ , the line “A nasty, dirty, double-crossing, back-stabbing phony” refers to Anglo/Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith, who in his scramble to keep out of debt, pens ‘hack’ works that appeal to the religious outlook of the Anglican Establishment, ie, ‘The Ballad Of Edwin And Angelina’), akin to the sentiments expressed in the writings of Robert Southey (who comes along later in history); tales in which the good and bad get their just deserts as God preordains they will – all’s well that end’s well.

However, the ‘light-tragedy’ of William Blake is a personal mythology with no happy ending; therein, the time is out of joint – rational science sees to it that objectively-driven material production triumphs over that which is lovingly produced. According to the symbolic poet, the industrial Tiger eats the caring Lamb; in the Land of Diestic Enlightenment, the imagination of the creative artist is chained up; sexual energy is driven underground; there is no escape from a ‘dark’ life of drudgery.

Christ is crucified; Satan wins:

The virgin started from her seat with a shriek
Fled back unhindered till she came into the vales of Har
(William Blake: Book of Thel)

Deconstructed, Blakean mythology’s still rather paternalistic – much like the viewpoint of orthodox religion (and those of the NeoChristianity of Emanuel Swedenborg) that Blake supposedly rebels against; he wants to have his cake, and eat it too.

An irony not lost in the song lyrics below; time is short, baby; forget St. Paul, ask the Rose of Sharon – she knows that experiencing sexual relationships after the innocence of youth is what makes a gal wise to the ways of the world.

To wit:

Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts
Karl Marx has got you by the throat, 
       Henry Kissinger's still got you wrapped up in knots ....
Well, the Man on a cross, and He's been crucified
You know who He is, and you know why He died
When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up, strengthen the things that remain?
(Bob Dylan: When You Gonna Wake Up)

Seems that the new boss is quite like the old boss – Eve gets the blame for the human alienation in the New Babylon as she does for the troubles in the Old Babylon of the Holy Bible.

What happened to the lusty Abel? Where is the demon lover Lilith when you need her?

Poetic philosopher Frederick Nietzsche dreams that he was amongst the ones who put the earthy Dionysian god to death – the ‘god’ who needs not to wait for a heavenly ‘afterlife’ to find spiritual happiness.

Nietzsche is not altogether dead:

Preacher was talking, there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved
You can not depend on it to be your guide
When it is you who must be satisfied
It ain't easy to swallow, it sticks in your throat
She went with the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)

In the song lyrics below, the narrator thereof dreams that he kills St. Augustine, a convert to Christianity, who turns away from the Persian religious founder Mani, the prophet of forces ‘dark’ and ‘light’; the saint develops the concepts of ‘original sin’ and of the timeless Jesus:

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine)

https://youtu.be/9shcE0VYeN4

Concludes the orderly Apollonian songwriter, and musician:

I'm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go where where all things lost are made good again
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
(Bob Dylan: I Contain Multitudes)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

NET 1991 part 3: King of the Unsteady

Posted on July 3, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

By listening to the performances, we are starting to get a feel for that difficult and contentious year, 1991. Not quite the train wreck that the commentators claim, the year comes across to me more like a year of on-stage rehearsals, with Dylan trying out new arrangements and new musicians in front of audiences. This attempt to make old songs new again would not fully pay off until later years. Here we see them in their raw state, and the results are more gritty than pretty.

There is something of a deconstructive urge at work that I detected in the 1988 performances. The results can sound quite harsh and uncompromising. The tendency to flatten the melodic line with his scratchy voice, and so leach much of the drama from the songs, is evident in this performance of his 1966 epic ‘Visions of Johanna’. Lacking the soaring spookiness of his 1966 live performances, or the midnight sinuousness of the album version, this 1991 performance lacks atmosphere, despite some energetic acoustic guitar. And, at least to my mind, the up tempo versions of the song fail to capture it in all its glory. He rattles through it well enough, but often those incomparable lyrics get blurred or rushed over. Verses get dropped out, and although he works the song up to a strong ending, the ultimate result is less than electrifying.

Visions of Johanna

We get a better result with ‘Simple Twist of Fate’. He keeps the tempo slow and takes his time with the lyrics. The vocal works okay, with some interesting lyrical variations, but there is some dissonant guitar work from Dylan that puts us on edge. A trenchant harp break helps give the song some push, but the overall effect is of a sound that hasn’t quite jelled. And I’m not sure about that ‘trick ending’ as Dylan describes it to the audience at the end of the song. It sounds to me as if he didn’t quite know when and where to end it.

Simple Twist of Fate

That other classic from Blood on the Tracks, ‘Shelter from the Storm’ does not fare so well, although the vocal is not rushed and there’s some nice jazzy harp. The real issue is with the overall sound and the general messiness of it. And we have to finally ask if Dylan is playing in the same key as everybody else. His tendency to play under the note, and to give even these semi-acoustic performances a punk like sound, makes for uneasy listening.

It seems that whatever the key of the song, Dylan always plays in the key of D – that is, the key of Dylan. The presence of Dylan as Mr Guitar Man is only just beginning to assert itself, and will become an increasing factor in the following years. A movement is taking place from Dylan as purely rhythm guitar, chord keeper, to Dylan the lead or assistant lead guitar. The results, particularly in 1991, are not easy on the ear.

Shelter from the Storm

On the other hand, the other guitarist, I assume it’s John Johnson, doesn’t help much either, with some odd tuning to his own guitar. Whoever it is, the overall effect is scrappy.

You notice some difference when Dylan is not playing the guitar, as on this rough and ready but serviceable performance of ‘Under the Red Sky’. Dylan is on the electric piano, although not obtrusively, and although we have that scratchy voice to deal with, the performance carries us along okay. We are reminded once more of how good this droll song is.

Under the Red Sky.

Dylan’s 1984 ‘Man of Peace’ gets a nice nineties chuggy beat (where have I heard that beat before?) and works well with Dylan on piano once more. It’s a foot-tapper, but doesn’t really take off. You can hear Dylan trying hard with that voice, but again, the strain is evident. The song doesn’t have such a great reputation, but I think it sums up well his post Christian doubt.

Man of Peace

‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ is one of Dylan’s most famous songs, and he has never let it drift too far from his setlist. This semi-acoustic version builds well, Dylan again on electric piano, with a lovely, free flowing break. Again, however, I’m less impressed with the guitar work. The vocal is up front, and while that same strain is evident, we can hear Dylan reaching for a new vocal line and not falling back on old tried and true formulations. It’s not my favourite version, but it has a certain raw authenticity to it. It struggles rather than soars, but that fits the song too.

Knocking on Heavens Door

Then, out of these dusty corners there rolls another gem, Dylan’s gospel classic from 1980, ‘I Believe in You’. The pure, bluesy, opening harp break would alone justify its inclusion here, and once more I wonder where this song was hiding when I did my Master Harpist series. And while Dylan’s washed-out voice doesn’t have the richness of the 1980 Toronto performances, he takes to the song with a will, and all goes well until he flubs the lyrics, mixes the lines, and can’t seem to recover the momentum of the song. For all that, however, it’s a spirited performance well worth the listen.

I Believe in You

‘Just like a Woman’ has never been my favourite Dylan song, and this not my favourite performance of it. Nevertheless it is a sustained performance, with an intensification of the vocal towards the end. The tender vulnerability of the album version is lost, however, and the music meanders on for a few choruses after the verses to little effect. Just marking time, it seems to me.

Just like a Woman

We can, however, quite safely kick our shoes off and do a little soft-shoe shuffle to ‘I’ll be your Baby Tonight’. It all seems to come together. Dylan sings with plenty of verve and imagination. The band seems to settle in too. You sense Dylan and the band are having the kind of good time the song promises as they chug along. It’s about as laid back as Dylan gets. The jazzy harp sets it up nicely at the beginning, and finishes it off nicely at the end. Only towards the end of the song do we hear Dylan’s dissonant Stratocaster messing with our heads. This is another from the summer tour.

I’ll be your Baby Tonight

‘Senor’ is another regular to Dylan’s set list. It’s a great vocal, but he misses out the crucial last verse and the song chugs along for another two minutes without much happening. The sense of oppression this song can build up, and the drama of it, are largely lost here, not so much because of Dylan’s vocal but because the looser chuggier beat doesn’t suit the song, which Dylan will later learn how to build into a crescendo.

Senor

Songs like ‘Senor’ and ‘Visions of Johanna’ are mood songs – as is ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’. But while the former two songs lost much of their atmosphere, ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ must be one of the strongest performances of the year. Despite the tendency to flatten the melody somewhat, Dylan delivers a pungent, emotional performance, his voice once again seeking new ways through the melodic line. This performance has none of the polished grandeur of the 1995 Prague performance (see Master Harpist 1), but, in keeping with the year, it has a harsh, raw power.

Man in the Long Black Coat

That brings to an end our tour of Dylan’s 1991 performances, and what a difficult and puzzling year it is to come to grips with. Not quite the train wreck of reputation, but things weren’t right much of the time with the Undesirables. The band never really jelled. Painful when you compare it to the precision machine Dylan now has, evident on Tempest and Rough and Rowdy Ways. The overall sound was often discordant and sharp, especially when Dylan began to test his Mr Guitar Man fingers.

And there was a certain amount of deliberate jettisoning of the legend, and the image of the legend. Dylan’s approach to the vocals was spirited, but he often elided words or forgot them, or left off verses. And there were unrehearsed and inconclusive endings to some of the songs. Messy endings.

Yet there was a spirit of innovation in the air. Dylan playing electric piano. Dylan playing increasingly jazzy harp breaks, sounding thin and mercurial. Dylan stretching his often strained voice in new directions, seeking new ways of resonating with the songs.

All this shemozzle would start to pay off in 1992. There was nowhere left to go but up.

Kia Ora, and see you next time.

You might also like to note…

Dylan and T.S Elliot meeting in the Captain’s Tower

And… Mike’s previous megaseries for Untold Dylan: Bob Dylan Master Harpist contains six articles which between them offer the most comprehensive guide to Dylan’s harmonica techniques ever assembled.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. 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 5500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Mississippi-series, part 6

Posted on July 3, 2020 by TonyAttwood

The Mississippi series

by Jochen Markhorst

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.

VI Charades

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Ineradicable, and sometimes tiring, are the many, many Dylan admirers and exegeses who persistently try to interpret Dylan songs biographically. It leads to puzzling with facts and names from the man’s life, to often rather embarrassing “analyses” that try to prove that one you “actually” is Dylan’s wife Sara, another her “actually” Joan Baez, and a baby in a third song “actually” Edie Sedgwick, or something like that.

In doing so, the puzzlers trivialise – unintentionally, we may hope – Dylan’s poetry, downgrading it to petty settlements, childishly encrypted diary entries and small-minded gossip. Inappropriate, and unworthy of a great artist. Of course; private impressions and personal observations do whirl down into Dylan’s work, as with any true artist. You can’t describe a train journey poetically if you’ve never been on a train, you can’t describe jealousy poetically if you’ve never experienced this particular emotion, and you must have been confronted at least once with leopard fur and women’s hats to be able to use it effectively as an accessory in lyrics. And more than that it is not – “These are images which are just in there and have got to come out,” as the writer says in the SongTalk interview with Paul Zollo, 1991.

Dylan himself declares since the 60’s, following Rimbaud, that je est un autre, that the self in his songs is not the same as the writer of the song. As the then only sixteen year old Rimbaud writes in the same Lettre du Voyant: “La chanson est si peu souvent l’oeuvre, c’est-à-dire la pensée chantée et comprise du chanteur – the song is so rarely the work or the sung thought of the singer himself.”

The statement is beautifully illustrated by a witness statement, by Malcom Burn, musician and recording engineer of Oh Mercy, in the fascinating Tell Tale Signs Special interview series in Uncut:

“Nothing on the record took a lot of takes really. The only thing we took a lot of time getting – and this is another interesting thing about is approach – is like, if he was fixing a vocal part. Y’know if he wanted to punch in just a part of a song again. It was never about whether it was in tune or out of tune or anything like that. It would be – let’s say he’s singing a replacement line – he’d sing it and you’d try to mix it into the original track, he’d listen to it and he’d say, “Ah, nah, nah, nah. That’s not the guy.” And I’d say, “The guy?” And he’d say, “Yeah. It’s not the same guy.”

“It’s not the guy,” it’s not the person whose character the performer Dylan takes on for this particular song. Burn learns a lot from it, he says. It’s not so very important whether a verse sounds a little out of tune, or not quite in time, that doesn’t interest Dylan in the least – the personality, “the guy” has to be right. It is, in short, acting; je est un autre.

So the man who, in these verses of “Mississippi”, says that he has such great powers of expression and such sublime thoughts, is not Dylan himself. Any doubt about this is definitively dispelled by Elton John, in his disconcerting, very witty and shameless autobiography Me (2019):

“Simon and Garfunkel had dinner one night, then played charades. At least, they tried to play charades. They were terrible at it. The best thing I can say about them is that they were better than Bob Dylan. He couldn’t get the hang of the ‘how many syllables?’ thing at all. He couldn’t do ‘sounds like’ either, come to think of it. One of the best lyricists in the world, the greatest man of letters in the history of rock music, and he can’t seem to tell you whether a word’s got one syllable or two syllables or what it rhymes with! He was so hopeless, I started throwing oranges at him.”

Now, Elton’s memories aren’t necessarily very reliable. This is at a time when Sir Elton Hercules John is a renowned bulk consumer of liquor and drugs, and the orange scene has to be told to him the next morning by others, to his own horror, but the core of the story, Dylan’s clumsiness at a game of Charades, must be true.

And meanwhile Elton of course recognizes the greatness of Dylan’s lyrics. He surely recognizes the tenor of these verses, of

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme.

After all, the Rocketman himself has had a Dylan song on the shelf for years, for which he just can’t find the right je-ne-sais-quoi:

“There are words that Bernie’s written that I’ve never managed to come up with music for. He wrote a great lyric called ‘The Day That Bobby Went Electric’, about hearing Dylan sing ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ for the first time, and I just couldn’t get a tune I thought was right; I tried four or five times.”

Probably early 1980, for the 21 At 33 album. The leaked demo is quite nice by the way, but is not about “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. Elton’s regular lyricist Bernie Taupin closes in the last verse:

The day that Bobby went electric
I was struggling through my teens
And when he plugged in up at Newport
I was caught up in a dream

… so that must have been “Maggie’s Farm”.

As far as the content of these “Mississippi” lines is concerned, the message is not too earth-shattering, obviously. “There are no words to describe your beauty” is actually a rather corny compliment. And the easy way out for the failing poet, who, after all, is paid to find the words to describe beauty, feelings, emotion at all. Sarah Vaughan’s “Words Can’t Describe”, “I Don’t Know How To Say I Love You” by The Superlatives, Sinatra’s “How Deep Is The Ocean?”… it is of all times and apparently even the biggest guns do have the odd off-day – and then turn need into a virtue, creating from the search for the right words a masterpiece that thematises exactly that very speechlessness. Shakespeare, of course (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), Goethe’s Werther, Rimbaud (“ne sachant m’expliquer sans paroles païennes, je voudrais me taire – unaware how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather be mute”)… and Dylan, of course.

In an uninspired past, the bard has sought refuge in that escape route. In “Never Say Goodbye” for example:

You’re beautiful beyond words
You’re beautiful to me

As well, in a sad variant, in the mean “Ballad In Plain D” (“The words to say I’m sorry, I haven’t found yet”) – but there it is still more beautifully, poetically phrased than in “Never Say Goodbye”. And again, in the twenty-first century, Dylan does find another poetically successful way of saying that he doesn’t know what to say: I’m searching for phrases to sing your praises (“Soon After Midnight”, 2012).

And the same paradoxical achievement comes from the guy from “Mississippi”, thanks to screenwriter Dylan: he finds great words to say he can’t find words.

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part VII: Dorsey Dixon

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. 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 5500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

But what is complete is our index to all the 604 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page. I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information. Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You. And Offenbach and Johnny Cash.

Posted on July 2, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Lots of people have said a few words about this song, but sadly those few words are often wrong. At least I think they are wrong. So, I’ll try and explain and justify.

One of the first reviews I read said, “Here’s a love song in 3/4 time,” but even that starter is wrong, at least in my opinion. And as I don’t often get a chance to show off a bit of my classical music education I’ll utilise it now.

The song is pretty much a straight copy of Offenbach’s Barcarolle from “Tales of Hoffmann,” So we can start there.

Jacques Offenbach was a 19th century German-French composer and impresario. known for his operettas. His single opera “Tales of Hoffman” (which was never completed), is still a key part of the repertoire of opera companies today.

Here’s the original

So barcaroles were not in 3/4 time (as in three beats in a bar) as indeed this one isn’t. They are in 6/8, which sounds quite different. 6/8 is six beats in a bar in two groups of three, moving

1 2 3 1 2 3 / 1 2 3 1 2 3

and so on – generally quite quickly as here. The usual description is that this music is lilting. Barcaroles do give a feeling of relaxed sentiment. This comes from Act 2 if you want to listen to the whole work.

So what it is not, is a reference back to “Got my mind made up” by Tom Petty, which Dylan did record, but I can’t find a copy freely available on line. So here’s Tom larking around with it.

But that’s got nothing to do with it, so we should quickly return to Bob and agree that what he has done is taken a popular piece of operatic music and put lyrics to it with a new accompaniment (but keeping the same melody and chords).

Incidentally for those who like to claim that Bob is a musical thief and he should be prosecuted for stealing all these old songs, the work of Offenbach is out of copyright.

Here are the lyrics

Sitting on my terrace lost in the stars
Listening to the sounds of the sad guitars
Been thinking it over and I thought it all through
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

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

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 could bear to live my life alone

My eye is like a shooting star
It looks at nothing, neither near or far
No one ever told me, it’s just something I knew
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

If I had the wings of a snow white dove
I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real - a love so true
I made up my mind to give myself to you

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’m going to go far away from home with her

I travelled the long road of despair
I met no other traveller there
A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

My heart’s like a river - a river that sings
It just takes me a while to realise things
I’ll see you at sunrise - I’ll see you at dawn
I’ll lay down beside you, when everyone is gone

From the plains and the prairies - from the mountains to the sea
I hope that the gods go easy with me
I knew you’d say yes - I’m saying it too
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

The line that gives all the problems in one go is “Take me out travelling, you’re a travelling man”. Up to this point it is all fairly comfortable with lines such as

Been thinking it over and I thought it all through
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

That sounds like a relationship proposal, and since this is Bob Dylan and we know a bit about his life, and his loves, we might assume the song is sung to a lady. Especially as later we have

I’ll see you at sunrise - I’ll see you at dawn
I’ll lay down beside you, when everyone is gone

but then we have the “Take me out travelling, you’re a travelling man.” So is he suddenly back to giving himself up to Jesus all these years after running away from the Christian Church? I have seen that proposed but it seems deeply unlikely to me and besides might Bob not have described “you” as “You” in that case?

Besides Bob Dylan knows about the travelling man, as does everyone whose been brought up through popular music and the blues. Indeed Bootleg 15 was “Travelling through”. (That’s the one that starts with the alternate version of “Drifters Escape”; almost as if the guys at the record company had been reading Untold Dylan and knew at once what the most important Kafaesque song of the “travelling through” era was).

The one thing that did strike me however was the comment in Rolling Stone (what an excellent magazine that is) about the Bootleg 15 set where they said, “It’s rare to hear Dylan sound like a fan trying to be a peer, but that’s what’s evident here.” That is in relation to him singing with Johnny Cash. So is he here giving a tribute to the great master, the man he admires so much? In that case the “lay down beside you” is easily recognisable as saying he will always give tribute to Johnny Cash, no matter what.

Of course it might just be a throwaway line. I know that is not a popular idea – that the mighty Bob Dylan might on occasion just throw in lines that are there because they sound good, but why not? Does every single Dylan line really have a great powerful meaning? (Incidentally when I was studying classical music we did occasionally use the phrase “Mozart on an off day” for a brilliant section of the score which seemed out of context. Why not “Dylan on a off day” as well? He couldn’t find a line that worked so dropped that in.)

But no, I’m going with the Travelling Man being either Johnny Cash, or just a phrase that means a person who keeps on keeping on, rather than necessarily a specific man. So in the lyrics we ought to write

Take me out travelling, you’re a "travelling man"

We will of course continue through the whole album until everything is reviewed. Here’s what’s be done so far. Hope you enjoyed my little meander.

Postscript: As you will see from the comments, the song has been used before – something I was not aware of. Here is a link to the earlier version by Donald Peers from 1969.

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?

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

Bob Dylan And Faith (Part VII): Calliope

Posted on July 1, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan and Faith

by Larry Fyffe

William Blake laments the state of decline in the standard of poetry in his day; he draws upon Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo, son of Olympian Zeus, be the God of Music; Zeus fathers the female Muses referred to in the aforementioned William Blake’ poem “To The Muses”.

They are:

Calliope, The Muse of Epic Poetry
Clio, The Muse of History
Erato, The Muse of Love Poetry
Euterpe, The Muse of Lyric Poetry
Melpomen, The Muse of Tragedy
Polyhymnia, The Muse of Hymns
Terpsichore, Muse Of Dance
Thalia, The Muse of Comedy
Urania, The Muse of Astronomy

Blake takes the theme of the decline of contemporary artistic creativity from the following epic poem:

Here, O ye hallowed Nine! For in your train
I follow, here the deadened strain revive
Nor let Calliope refuse to sound
A somewhat higher song, of the loud tone
Which when the wretched birds of chattering note
Had heard, they of forgiveness lost all hope
(Dante: Purgatory, Canto I)

In the postmodernist movie ‘Deadman’, a native American “Indian”, an admirer of poet William Blake, pokes fun at the sorrowful state that the producers of American gun-shooting movies have fallen into – ‘Nobody’ parodies Dante’s plea: “He who talks loud, says nothing”.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan banishes loud rocknroll music from the following song:

I'm falling in love with Calliope
She don't belong to anybody, why not give her to me?
She's speaking to me, speaking with her eyes
I've grown so tired of chasing lies
Mother of Muses, wherever you are
I've already outlived my life by far
(Bob Dylan: Mother Of Muses)

Epic poetry involves time out of mind in which extraordinary individuals struggle with seemingly supernatural forces; a narrative poetry that endeavours to give a sense of transcendental meaning to particular events in human history – personified as Calliope who is considered the wisest of the Nine Muses; Titan Mnemosyne (Memory) is the mother of them all. Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ and Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ are famous long epics. The Gods therein possess human traits, and interact with mortals

Whereas Emanuel Swedenborg places the struggles faced by humans in realms beyond the physical world in which they bodily exist, the epics of Roman and Greek mythologies bring them back home to earth. In ‘Mother Of Muses’, Dylan mentions the leading British, American, and Russian heroes of World War II; dark days they were.

Robert Frost, who’s mother be a Swedenborg Christian, nonetheless himself stays halfway between heaven and earth; he’s middle-of-the-line in so as far as his poems are concerned, a part-time Romantic Transcendentalist at best.

In the following song, Bob Dylan (he’s older than that now) steps over the line a bit in the direction of a wistful wind from spiritual heaven:

Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things
I see you at sunrise, I see you at dawn
I'll lay down beside you when everyone's gone
I've travelled from the mountains to the sea
I hope that the gods go easy with me
I know 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)

Yet still, one can not pin Dylan to a creed:

The wind tapped like a tired man
And like a host, "Come In"
I boldly answered. Entered then
My residence within
A rapid footless guest
To offer whom a chair
Were as impossible as hand
A sofa to the air
(Emily Dickinson: The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man)

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

1987/8: possibly the greatest trilogy of compositions in Dylan’s career

Posted on July 1, 2020 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This article is part of the Bob Dylan themes series which considers the subject matter of Bob’s songs in the order they were written. There is an index to the series at The Themes index, year by year. The latest articles are…

1984: Back to the old ways (again)
1985: Bob Dylan slips back into negativity
1986: the year Dylan slowly turned himself all around

So now we move on the 1987/8

The thesis within this series of articles is that while it is most certainly very possible to get a lot of insights into Dylan’s thinking and the motivation behind his writing by analysing the lyrics of his songs in detail, it is also possible to get an insight into how the man was feeling, and how he was seeing the world during the course of a year, by looking at the themes within his lyrics over short periods of time.

And this is worthwhile because although Bob Dylan has given insightful interviews he has also sometimes answered in a way that might be thought to be a little flippant, if not downright misleading.

With this thought in mind I’ve been trying to place each song that Dylan wrote year by year into categories and see what (if anything) that tells us.

In 1986 Bob’s writing was dominated (I think for the first time ever) with tales of lost love – 12 of the songs being on that subject, with another six on themes relating to chaos, life being a mess, and generally being lost. Of the love songs, the lyrical approach that dominates most years, there only six.

1987/8 saw Bob’s name linked to 16 songs but these included a number of Wilburys compositions with which it is unclear how much input Bob had. What’s more two songs (You can blow my mind if you want to) and As we sailed into Skibreen: a Leven are particularly difficult to place, the former because the date is uncertain, the latter because it is a curious collaboration – and also again the date is unclear.

I want initially to deal with three songs which were nothing to do with the Wilburys, although it may well be that Congratulations (which became a Wilbury song) was actually written before these three. But these three really do stand out in a most amazing manner.

Even if Congratulations was written before these three, it was such a dashed-off piece of work that really it hardly counts. And removing it from the writing schedule shows us Bob taking a long break from song writing (and not for the first time) before suddenly charging off in a new direction with three, connected, but different, triumphs.

Political world is a song of the world gone wrong – which is in fact a dominant theme of 1985, wherein I came up with the classification, “Chaos / criminals escaping / life is a mess / being lost” – and found six songs to put in that group as I noted above.

This song now pulls all the thoughts of that chaos together

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last

This is followed by the same message but from an utterly personal perspective: What good am I? – a real self-battering. It is not just the world gone wrong, now it is the man gone wrong too. The title asks it all, and the answer is very dark indeed.

And then finally we come to Dignity: what we need to get out of this social and personal mess is the ability to hold onto ourselves, to keep our sense of self-worth, but not let it blow out of all proportion. For the issue we all face is not just the issue of the world around us (although that can be horrible enough) but the way we perceive the world.

Of course for those with strong religious beliefs, the issue is resolved, but for those who have had religious beliefs and now turned away, what is needed is a genuine self-respect based on honourable behaviour, through which we can (just about) survive by being good and reasonable people.

Thus in “Political world” Dylan is saying “The world’s gone wrong.” In “What Good Am I?” Dylan is saying we need honesty out of which we get engagement, sympathy, kindness, support, understanding, empathy… these are the qualities of the really human and humane person. And then Dignity encapsulates all the elements of being a good person. If you have engagement, sympathy, kindness, support, understanding, empathy, you can have dignity and with dignity you can survive.

This is an astounding trilogy of songs, of which the full emotional impact and musical genius can only be understood, to my mind, if heard as a trilogy. And the tragedy is that we don’t hear them as a trilogy, because they have never been released that way. As commentators tend to insist either on considering each song in isolation, or considering the lyrics of the song from a pre-defined standpoint, or simply reviewing an album, the essence of these songs is missed.

And in saying this I am not claiming to have some sort of special insight into Dylan. I had no idea of this link until I started to listen to Dylan’s songs in the order in which they were written. Only then did it hit me that Dylan, in these three superb songs, written one after the other, is engaging the ultimate questions of the world: if the world itself is such a mess, and if we by-pass religion, what should our personal response be?

If you have never tried this before, may I suggest you clear quarter of an hour or so and play these three without interruption. But compare not just the lyrics, but the whole sound of each of these three. From the power of “Political World” to

What good am I some like all the rest
If I just turn away when I see how you're dressed
If I shut myself off so I can't hear you cry
What good am I?

Fat man looking into shining steel 
Thin man looking at his last meal 
Hollow man looking in a cottonfield 
For dignity

This trilogy really is the world gone wrong and the response of an individual to that collapse. We’ve all been corrupted by the political, economic and social system. We are all searching for Dignity – and my choice of this partial recording of the song is deliberate. It is the moment that we see where Dylan was after those two earlier compositions, before he had the chance to start re-writing the words and trying to find an accompaniment. This for me is the perfect rendition for these lyrics.

But most of all, listen to and look at where this early demo version of the song ends…

Soul of a nation is under the knife
Death is standing in the doorway of life
In the next room a man fighting with his wife
Over dignity

That is where Dylan had got to – and given this, the previously made arrangement to go and write songs with the Wilburys was an absolute tragedy. Who knows what Bob might have come up with on his own, if that deal had not been there.

In terms of the Wilburys it is not always clear how much input Dylan had in each of the songs that followed, and I have elsewhere discussed at some length which songs contain enough elements of Dylan for them to be considered at least Dylan co-compositions.

Here’s the full list of songs that emerged with the usual briefest possible summary of the meaning of the lyrics…

Congratulations (Lost love)
Handle with care (Life’s been tough)
Dirty World (Sex)
Heading for the night (Life’s been tough)
Last night (Sex)
Margarita (Strange events)
Not alone anymore (Lost love)
Rattled (Lost love)
Tweeter and the monkey man (Drug dealing tale)
Like a Ship (Love)

I’d go with Congratulations, Tweeter, and Like a ship as the three compositions with any significant amount of Dylan within them.

But even though “Like a ship” was a Dylan song it was later changed quite considerably when Dylan was not around – here is the original version

There is one further song that dates from this year – As we sailed into Skibreen: a Leven for which Dylan is credited with the music. As we are focusing in this series on the lyrics, this one can’t be counted, but I would urge you to follow the link to the review where you can hear the song. It really is delightful.

So pulling all this together what have we got in terms of Dylan’s lyric writing

Political world (World is a mess)
What good am I (How can I respond to this world)
Dignity (It’s all a mess)
Congratulations (Lost love)
Tweeter and the monkey man (Drug dealing tale)
Like a Ship (Lost love)

One could link “Tweeter” back to the thoughts of the mess that the world is, as portrayed by the first three songs.

I keep getting the feeling that if the phrase “The world gone wrong” hadn’t been used by Walter Vison for his song Dylan might well have used it for an album which encapsulated the first three masterpieces in this list. What an opening to an album that would have been.

As it was, the agreement to work with the rest of the lads, followed by the tour, meant that those three utter masterpieces were all we got, and with Dignity being unreleased Oh Mercy was less of an album than it might have been. Especially if the tracks had been placed one after the other, and the lyrics of the acoustic version had been kept complete with its final verse, and omitting the other verses added later.

Fat man looking into shining steel
Thin man looking at his last meal
Hollow man looking in a cottonfield
For dignity

Wise man looking in a blade of grass
Young man looking in the shadows that pass
Poor man looking through painted glass
For dignity

Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve
Somebody said dignity was the last to leave
Went into the cities, went into the towns
To the land of the midnight sun

Searching high, searching low
Searching everywhere I know
Asking the cops wherever I go
Have you seen dignity?

Blind man breaking out of a trance
Puts both his hands into the pockets of chance
Hoping to find one circumstance
Of dignity

Stranger stares down into the light
From a platinum window in the Mexican night
Searching every bloodsucking thing in sight
For dignity

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Mississippi-series, part 5: Frost in the room, fire in the sky

Posted on June 30, 2020 by TonyAttwood

The Mississippi series

by Jochen Markhorst

Like earlier songs such as “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.

V Frost in the room, fire in the sky

Got nothin' for you, I had nothin' before
Don’t even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down
Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around

In 2007 DVD Talk interviews Henry Rollins on the occasion of his forthcoming concert registration Shock And Awe. The interview is largely about Rollins’ musical heroes, with Rollins acknowledging that he, too, is only a product of his time: “I’m not saying everything now sucks, but a record that I think is as awesome as Exile On Main Street or Houses Of The Holy? Noooo.”

Recognizable; the impact of music on a receptive individual in his formative years (Rollins is from ’61, so about twelve years when those records are released) is never equalled in later years. Yesteryear’s music is always better. For, as the German poet Theodor Storm says, “der Jugend Zauber hängt doch an dir – the magic of your youth is clung to it”.

He actually only knows one exception, Rollins says: the last record by Nick Cave (Abattoir Blues, 2004).

“His new collection is extraordinary, it blows the last album away. I wrote him a letter after I played it and said, “you and Dylan are like the only guys writing songs right now.” I think the last two Dylan records have just been incredible – Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft. Those were just amazing.”

But a little further on he can explain in a more substantive way what repels him in a lot of recent music, and what he misses:

“But with music, in the 90’s something happened to the production where the Pro Tools started coming in, pitch correction started coming in – on rock music. All of a sudden it started to sound contained to me, quantized and contained, and that’s just not really what I want from my rock and roll. Where you listen to an older record and you say “yeah those are people in a room, really, really playing”. (…) I miss the space, I miss the sound of a guitar in a room where you can hear the air around it. Who makes records like that still? Tom Waits does, Bob Dylan does.”

Henry Rollins is an exceptional, tireless multi-talent with an enviable talent for finding the right words, as evidenced by his intelligent, sharp and often witty columns in LA Weekly. And as this interview excerpt shows – a “contained sound” is a clever formulation to express the increasingly sterile sound of rock music. Missing space, “the sound of a guitar in a room where you can hear the air around it” is a perfect, poetic description of the sound Dylan so emphatically seeks when he produces his own records as “Jack Frost”.

It’s surprisingly close to what Dylan’s employees say about the production of Time Out Of Mind and “Love And Theft”, the sessions that produced “Mississippi”. Pianist Jim Dickinson, session musician on Time Out Of Mind, remembers:

“One thing that really struck me during those sessions, Dylan, he was standing singing four feet from the microphone, with no earphones on. He was listening to the sound in the room.”

And even more right to speak has engineer Chris Shaw, from “Love And Theft” to Trouble No More Dylan’s recording engineer. In the same highly entertaining and informative interview series for Uncut, the “Tell Tales Special” on the occasion of the 2008 Bootleg Series 8 of the same name, Shaw discusses his experiences with Dylan in detail in the studio. “His idea was just, basically”, he explains, “get the whole band in the room and get them playing.”

Which creates specific problems for a recording engineer, but also explains the “room” sound as Henry Rollins so aptly calls it:

“And I’d say about 85 per cent of the sound of that record is the band spilling into Bob’s microphone, because he’d sing live in the room with the band. Most of the time without headphones. That’s why the record has this big, I think, almost kind of swampy sound to it, and he loves it, he really goes for that sound.”

But the groundbreaking Dylan researcher Scott Warmuth has an even better explanation for Henry Rollins’ outspoken love for particularly those two Dylan records: Rollins hears himself. Or rather: he hears his own words.

Warmuth, who admirably succeeds in tracing sources of Dylan’s songs, discovers four fragments in “Mississippi” that Dylan has lifted from Rollins’ work. The first one, your days are numbered, is arguably somewhat dubious, but the other three are obvious.

In See A Grown Man Cry, Warmuth finds:

I don't want to know you
I have nothing for you
I don't even have a self for myself anymore
People pick at your body like crows
You want a friend, go hang out with a big rock
It's not me you want
No matter what you think

See A Grown Man Cry (1992) is an overwhelming work. It consists, like other Rollins works too, of a long series of diary-like notes made by the poet during his many travels, and reveals an extremely sharp observing, eloquent and intelligent mind. Many of the notes express the thoughts of a tormented man who can barely contain his aggression, his frustrations and his senseless hatred, such as:

Nijamegan Holland
Forgotten thrown away
Cold raining outside
Hendrix blasting this bar
An asshole in the corner hands pounding the bar off time
I was here five years ago
Watched these guys beat each other up
It was more interesting than the set
Soon the hash bar will open

…others are philosophical reflections and yet others are actually little more than a situation report, like:

Germany
My body is covered with road stench
Diesel, tobacco, sweat, grease and dirt
Men‘s room, rasthaus, no sleep
I don‘t want to wash it off
It’s a second skin
Keeps my back straight
It insulates me from disease
Tonight I will sleep with it on

…lyrical in the true sense of the word – expressing feelings – and every note is poetic through and through. The whole (See A Grown Man Cry consists of more than a hundred pages filled with this kind of short, pointy notes) is strongly reminiscent of what Dylan reported in the Fiddler interview with Martin Bronstein, February 1966, about the creation of his own “Like A Rolling Stone”:

“I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit about twenty pages long, and out of it I took ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and made it as a single. And I’d never written anything like that before.”

And to Jules Siegel a month later about the same process of creation:

“It was ten pages long,” he says. “It wasn’t called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that’s a better word.”

Vomit, steady hatred, revenge… it sounds like a pointy summary of Rollins’ See A Grown Man Cry.

The subsequent Old Testament-like verse “Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down” tempts interviewer Gilmore (Rolling Stone, 2001) to inquire about Dylan’s prophetic qualities. After all, the album “Love And Theft” is unfortunately released on 9/11, the day of the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Gilmore: For my part, I’ve kept circling around a line from “Mississippi”: “Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down.” Is there anything you would like to say about your reaction to the events of that day?

Dylan: One of those Rudyard Kipling poems, “Gentlemen-Rankers,” comes to my mind:
“We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!”

A beautiful, poetic answer, in which Dylan – rightly so – completely fails to address the somewhat embarrassing implication that he would have predictive powers. After all, the choice of words for that ominous verse line is dictated mainly by the sound; two alliterations, inner rhyme and the pleasant rhythm of an anapaest – this truly is a lieder poet’s verse line.

To be continued. Next up: Mississippi part VI: Charades

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

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Why does Dylan like Gordon Lightfoot?

Posted on June 29, 2020 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron and Tony.

As ever the research is by Aaron Galbraith and the commentary is from Tony Attwood (but you probably know that by now)

Gordon Lightfoot was very much part of the folk-rock world which influenced Bob Dylan in his early years as a performer, and on through his life.

“Early Morning Rain” achieved popularity because it told a story that many could relate to, whether the simple events told therein had happened to them or not. It was created as songs were starting to have lyrics that meant something more than the early rock n roll and traditional country works and was very much central to that evolution.

Gordon Lightfoot’s work has been both highly regarded and highly successful through his career and the songs have been covered by everyone from Elvis Presley to Johnny Cash from Jerry Lee Lewis to Neil Young, from Judy Collins to the Grateful Dead. It was obvious that Bob would be interested.

Indeed Bob called him, “one of his favourite composers”. He has subsequently received many honours and was featured at the opening of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Canada.

This is the original Early Morning Rain, one of his most famous songs… do play this by clicking the link if you are not familiar with his music. It is one of the songs that if you were interested in the songs of the era you will not just remember but know by heart. We all heard it and those of us who aimed to be folk singers would perform it. (I don’t think my parents appreciated me singing the “cold and drunk as I might be” line).

In an oft-quoted comment, Dylan said that when he heard a Gordon Lightfoot song he wished “it would last forever”

Another international number 1 is “If you could read my mind” – an utterly exquisite song that works as beautifully and painfully now as it did 1970.

This piece from Wiki gives an insight…

“Lightfoot has cited his divorce for inspiring the lyrics, saying they came to him as he was sitting in a vacant Toronto house one summer. At the request of his daughter, Ingrid, he performs the lyrics with a slight change now: the line “I’m just trying to understand the feelings that you lack” is altered to “I’m just trying to understand the feelings that we lack.” (This version doesn’t).

He has said in an interview that the difficulty with writing songs inspired by personal stories is that there is not always the emotional distance and clarity to make lyrical improvements such as the one his daughter suggested.”

Moving on to “I’m Not Supposed To Care” – Bob first attempted it in 1989 in the studio, and then he brought it out for 3 live appearances in 1998, once in Toronto with the songs writer watching on from the audience.

I think you have somebody waiting 
Outside in the rain to take you away
You got places to go, you got people to see 
Still I'm gonna miss you 
But anyway

I wish you good spaces in 
The far away places you go
If it rains or it snows may 
You be safe and warm and never grow old
And if you need someone who loves you, why
You know I will always be there
I'll do it although I'm not supposed to care

I'll give you the keys to 
My flying machine if you'd like
I will show you the light and when you call 
I'm gonna come to you
And when you find someone who loves you, 
I'll know you would treat me the same
Just lie there, you're not supposed to care

I think you have somebody waiting 
Outside in the rain to take you away. 
That's some kind of a game 
Still I'm glad it came down 
To the final round
But anyway

If you think you need someone who needs you, 
You know I will always be there 
I'll do it although I'm not supposed to care
I'll do it although I'm not supposed to care

The 89 studio version…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLgPMlfe9Y

And the live Toronto version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IthZynmwRA

As you can hear it had mutated and evolved for Bob over the performances.

Bob played it just three times between 13 May 1998 and 29 October 1998.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bob And Faith: Religion (Part Vl)

Posted on June 29, 2020 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan and Faith

By Larry Fyffe

Mythology-inclined William Blake is influenced by religious leaders other than Abrahamic ones. Zoroaster founds a monastic Persian religion in which the light forces of order emanating from the benevolent One struggles with the dark forces of chaos; individuals have the choice of either practising good or evil social behaviour.

Mani, also a Persian, differs from Zoroaster in that he holds that all cultures possess a dualistic belief in an individual’s struggle between the spiritually good forces of light and dark physical forces of evil – the Neo-Christian religion that Swedenborg advocates would be an example,

British poet William Blake, in an attempt untangle such messed-up religious outpourings, is closer to the thoughts of Zoroaster in his poems; Blake depicts dark forces holding sway over individuals and societies-at-large because of the lack of a mutual balance in the way people treat one another.

Notwithstanding comments by the intellectual snob TS Eliot, Blake has lots of knowledge pertaining to Greek/Roman mythologies. Blake has visions of himself travelling back in time and conversing with the likes of Homer and Virgil, and with the Nine Muses of ancient mythology:

Whether on the crystal rocks ye rove
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wandering in many a coral cove
Fair Nine, forsaking poetry!
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you
The languid strings do scarcely move
The sound is forced, the notes are few
(Blake: To The Muses)

Blake criticizes the viewpoint found in a lot of the poetry of Robert Southey – his advancing of generalized ‘truths’ held by the established British society of the the day (for instance, African slaves ought to be physically set free, but then spiritually bound to the dogmas of orthodox Christianity).

A sentiment expressed in the song lyrics below juxtaposed with an objective correlative:

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"
And I answer them most mysteriously
"Are birds free from the the chains of the skyway?"
(Bodpb Dylan: Ballad In Plain D)

According to Southey, Satan’s punishment awaits all who disobey God’s commandants:

Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair
He cursed himself in his despair
The waves rush in on every side
The ship is sinking beneath the tide
But even in his dying fear
One dreadful sound could the Rover hear
A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell
The Devil was ringing his knell

(Robert Southey:The Inchcape Bell)

In the following song lyrics, the Almighty is not perceived as all that discriminating – God does not chose to save either a creative artist like William Blake, or a devout religious leader like John Calvin, from dire circumstances:

The watchman, he lay dreaming
As the ballroom dances twirled
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Into the underworld
Calvin, Blake, and Wilson
Gambled in the dark
Not one of them would ever live to
Tell the tale of the disembark
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

A view held apparently by a mentor of the above-mentioned songwriter:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness....
Mohammedan angels struggling on tenement roofs illuminated
Who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
Hallucinating Arkansas, and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war ....
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl))

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

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 who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 6500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Play Lady Play: A Simple Twist of Fate

The Mississippi-series, part 8: Pretty Maids All In A Row

1989: the menace emerges

NET 1992 – Heading for the Promised Land Part 1

Song to Bonny: another unfinished Dylan set of lyrics now set to music

Bob Dylan And Frankenstein (Part II)

Play lady play: the strange ones, the eccentric, and the beautiful

The Mississippi series VII Dorsey Dixon

Dylan’s lost 1966 album: time to put it back together

Why does Dylan like Tampa Red?

Untold Dylan: The YouTube channel

Bob Dylan And Faith (Part VIII): Nietzsche

NET 1991 part 3: King of the Unsteady

The Mississippi-series, part 6

I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You. And Offenbach and Johnny Cash.

Bob Dylan And Faith (Part VII): Calliope

1987/8: possibly the greatest trilogy of compositions in Dylan’s career

The Mississippi-series, part 5: Frost in the room, fire in the sky

Why does Dylan like Gordon Lightfoot?

Bob And Faith: Religion (Part Vl)

Blogroll

Meta

Recent Posts

Archives

Indexes and reference pages

Recent articles