Untold Dylan

We All Live In A Blue Jungian Sea

Posted on December 15, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

The poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, who is credited with coining the words ‘cubism’ and ‘surrealism’, are not all filled with dark humour; there be light-humoured poems as well. The Rimbardian fairy-tale-like poem by Apollinaire given below creates ancient mythological correspondences with the human condiction in modern times. Sigmund Freud does much the same thing.

Apollinaire, in his long poem, does so more directly than do the lyrics of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan in his song ‘Man Gave Names To All The Animals,’ which alludes to religion:

And Adam gave names to all cattle
And to every fowl of the air
And to every beast of the field
(Genesis 2: 20)

In ancient mythology, Orpheus plays a lyre made from a tortoise shell given to him by the Sun God, Apollo, whose sister is the Moon Goddess, Diana; Orpheus grows up in the Thrace region of Greece; Eurydice becomes his wife – she dies from a snakebite, and Orpheus fails to get her all the way out of Hades because he’s told not to look back at her, and he does.

Orpheus accompanies Jason on a sea journey in quest of the Golden Fleece, the skin from the Holy Ram of the Thunder God, Zeus, that’s guarded by a dragon. On the way back, Orpheus with his lyre drowns out the seductive voices of the dangerous Sirens. Winged Medusa, with her hair of poisonous snakes, turns men into stone who look at her face; she gives birth to Pegasus, a winged horse, ridden by the Greek hero who slays the monster that has a head of a lion, a body of a goat, and a tail of a serpent.

In his song lyrics, Bob Dylan refers to bears, bulls, cows, pigs, snakes, and sheep; Guillaume, in his poem, to lions, horses, serpents, tortoises, elephants, mice, and more.

Following are some verses of “The Beastiary Or Orpheus’ Procession” by Gùillaume Apollinaire (translated by Kline):

From magic Trace, O delirium!
My sure fingers sound the strings
The creatures pass to the sounds
Of my tortoise, and the songs I sing
(The Tortoise)

My harsh dreams knew the riding of you
My gold-chariot will be your lovely car
That for reins will hold tight to frenzy
My verses, the patterns of all poetry
(The Horse)

The fleece of this goat and even
That gold one which cost such pain
To Jason's not worth a sou towards
The tresses which I take
The Tibetan Goat)

You set yourself against beauty
And how many women have been
Victims of your cruelty!
Eve, Eurydice, Cleopatra
I know three or four more
(The Serpent)

Bob Dylan obliquely alludes to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the following song lyrics; the writer changes the artist into a woman who looks not back but to the present for inspiration to create art:

She's got everything she needs
She's an artist, she don't look back
She can take the dark out of the night-time
And paint the daytime black
(Bob Dylan: She Belongs To Me)

Apollinaire looks back to ancient mythology; he brings into the present in order to objectify human emotions and sexuality in the context of modern times.

The story of Medusa is called upon:

Medusas, miserable heads
With hairs of violet
You enjoy the hurricane
And I enjoy the very same
(Guillaume Apollinaire: The Jellyfish)

In the following song lyrics, there’s an allusion thereto as well, but it’s not so direct:

See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneezed
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

There also be a well-hidden mythological allusion to Venus, the Goddess of Love, giving her shield, adorned with a goose, to her son:

Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese
(Bob Dylan: When I Paint My Masterpiece)

Referencing:

And there the silvery goose flying through the gilded
Colonnades cackled that the Gauls were at the gate
(Virgil: The Aeneid)

Religion is not left untouched by Guillaume Apolinaire’s sexually suggestive humour:

Dove, both love and spirit
Who engendered Jesus Christ
Like you I love Mary
And so with her I marry
(Guillaume Apollinaire: The Dove)

The singer/singer, as mentioned, messes around with stories in the Judeo-Christian holy book:

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face, and my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)

https://youtu.be/-NBWMK0CV0Y

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members. (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm). Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews

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Dylan, McGuinn, Hillman, Clark… part 1: Dylan and Roger McGuinn

Posted on December 14, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron Galbraith

I’ve been lucky enough in my life to see both Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman live in concert, although unfortunately Gene Clark died before I was of regular concert going age, he died in 1991 and I was only 14. I have also got to see, another ex-Byrd, David Crosby on many occasions…but he will be covered in a future article in this series, with his band mates in Crosby, Stills and Nash.

I decided this time to focus purely on the three ex-Byrd’s solo endeavours and ignore, for the time being their excellent work in the Byrds as a group (I might get around to them in a future article).

First up in this article, let’s look at Roger McGuinn’s dalliances with Dylan. Straight away on first album “Roger McGuinn”, track one is “I’m So Restless”, which not only has a verse about Bob but he also shows up on harmonica!

Hey, Mr D., do you want me to be
A farmer, a cowhand, an old country boy?
To get up in the a.m. and tend to the chore
And leave all my troubles behind a locked door
Laying with my lady and strummin' on my toy
Oh, I know what you mean and it sounds good to me
But, oh, Mr D., I'm so restless

On the third album “Roger McGuinn & Band”, McGuinn started a run of three albums in a row which contained a Dylan composition.

Here we have “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” from “Roger McGuinn & Band”

“Cardiff Rose” was recorded hot on the heels of McGuinn’s participation in Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Much of the album was co-written with Jacques Levy, and it was McGuinn who introduced Dylan to Levy in the mid-70s. Levy would go on to co-write “Desire” with Dylan. “Cardiff Rose” contained the first released version of the amazing “Up To Me”.

“Thunderbyrd” followed in 1977. This time the Dylan track was “Golden Loom”. Again, this was the first time this track appeared on record.

In 1989 Roger McGuinn teamed up again with Chris Hillman and the Nitty Gritty Road Band for their “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Volume II” album. McGuinn and Hillman duetted on a fine version of “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”.

Since around mid-96, Roger McGuinn has run a website called the “Folk Den”. Every month or so he uploads a new song, so far there are a couple of hundred tracks and you can listen to or download each one for free(!!). Each track is McGuinn’s own version of an old folk, bluegrass or other old-timey song. You can spend hours there just browsing through his back catalogue. He usually writes a little bit about each track such as the origins of the track and how he learned it. It really is an outstanding piece of work. Please do check it out at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/

Amongst the many, many gems you will find several tracks you would also associate with Bob Dylan including “This Old Man”, “Barbara Allen”, “Pay Me My Money Down”, “O Come All Ye Faithful”, “Silver Dagger”, “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, “Delia’s Gone”, “House Of The Rising Sun”, “Lily Of The West”, “Dink’s Song” and “Golden Vanity”.

From time to time he will also release a specially curated CD of some of the tracks from the Folk Den including “CCD”, “22 Timeless Tracks” and “The Folk Den Project” 4 disc set. And from “Limited Edition” here is “Shenandoah”

A second version of “Up To Me” was released on a cover mounted CD called “Dylan Covered” given away with the Mojo magazine in the UK in 2005. The whole CD is excellent if you can find it. Here is McGuinn’s contribution.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Pressing On, after the thunder, a declaration

Posted on December 13, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

When Modern Times is released, in August 2006, the old master has achieved a status that a new album immediately hits the top of the charts and is breaking news in a wide range of the most diverse media. Enough is to be said about this particular album, but the trending topic is the surprise that the starlet Alicia Keys is being sung in the opening song “Thunder On The Mountain”

I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn’t help from crying
When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line
I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be
I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee.

It is quite an issue. “A declaration of love,” some think, others consider it a bit creepy, and many are surprised at Dylan’s factual knowledge – Keys does come from New York’s problem neighbourhood Hell’s Kitchen and indeed did disappear, for three weeks in 2006, after the death of her grandmother.

Alicia herself has no idea either to what she owes the name check, and she acts incredulously pleased and honoured. Dylan chuckles and confines himself to a brief explanation when Rolling Stone’s Jonathan Lethem asks: “I remember seeing her on the Grammys. I think I was on the show with her, I didn’t meet her or anything. But I said to myself, there’s nothing about that girl I don’t like.”

We probably don’t need to look for much more behind it. The master recycles here, as he re-launches and re-uses a lot on this album anyway, a few lines from “Ma Rainey”, an ode from and by Memphis Minnie from 1940:

I was thinking about Ma Rainey, wonder where could Ma Rainey be
I been looking for her, even been ‘n old Tennessee
She was born in Georgia, traveled all over this world

https://youtu.be/0iyiJCfhDsQ

And also the words living down the line and couldn’t keep from cryin’ do come along in this song, confirming that the Alicia Keys verse is not much more than a playful paraphrase. Nevertheless, Keys may feel honoured, obviously, and she repeatedly expresses the hope that she may one day meet Dylan. The more optimistic followers now expect an answering song on her next album, but Alicia finds that a bit too pedantic. Her poor excuse is bad, cowardly and charming: “The problem is, nothing good rhymes with Dylan. And Zimmerman is worse.”

In the end, her reverence is much more elegant than a sung reply in a song. For the documentary Muscle Shoals (2013), about the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Keys opts for an interpretation of Dylan’s “Pressing On”, a song he recorded there in 1980, again with producer Jerry Wexler, for his second evangelical album, Saved. It is a tasteful and actually brave choice. From the rich history of the studio, she could have picked dozens of other, more famous and perhaps also better matching songs, but she goes for a forgotten gem of one of Dylan’s most maligned albums. And then produces a beautiful cover thereof, by the way – apart from being a nice lady, she is most certainly a gifted musician too.

Of the evangelical phase, Saved has been burned down the most enthusiastically, on both fronts. Granted, some reviewers do a very one-dimensional job, but still: filtered, the criticism is justified. Musically most of the songs do not reach the average level of Slow Train Coming and Shot Of Love, which is even sort of recognised by Dylan himself:

“Slow Train was a big album. Saved didn’t have those kinda numbers but to me it was just as big an album. I’m fortunate that I’m in a position to release an album like Saved with a major record company so that it will be available to the people who would like to buy it.”

… lyrically the album is generally too preachy, overdramatic even, and too fundamentalistic to be covered up by a mantle of love. That only works in those few moments when the power of the music overshadows the message; at “In The Garden” for example. And “Pressing On” too.

“Pressing On” has stood the test of time, and Keys is not the first to notice it. In the intriguing film I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007), the Dylan split-off Jack Rollins / Father John treats a pitifully sad room on a masterful version of the song – actor Christian Bale convincingly playbacks John Doe’s performance (much more convincing than the musicians in the accompanying band, in any case). That version also goes back to the original, which at the time, when it was released, was considered by most critics to be one of the few bright spots of the album.

That album version is beautiful. Effectively arranged; after the lonely, driving piano, the female singers, drums organ, bass and guitar drip in. Not a too original structure, of course – but irresistibly exciting with the right melody. The leading role is for the gospel ladies, the starring role for master drummer Jim Keltner, who will remain Dylan’s loyal – and devout – companion for these evangelical years. Keltner counteracts the criticism of the album with references to the quality of the live performances; the excitement and intensity of some evenings: “…it’s a pity those songs were recorded in the studio, instead of live.”

Now, Keltner is a certified hypersensitive emotional person, an endearing man who sits sobbing behind the drum kit, overwhelmed by the beauty or content of a (Dylan) song. This has been the case since his third Dylan session (after “Watching The River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”), since “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” in 1973: “It was such a touching song. It was the first time I actually cried when I was playing.” And not the last time, by his own account:

“So I went over to his studio in Santa Monica to listen to the album. I was put in a little room with a chair and some speakers. There was a box of Kleenex on the table next to me, and by the third song I started to cry and cried practically all the way through the end of the tape.”

But he definitely has a point here. Live recordings from before the studio recording (the beautiful Warfield ’79, for example) do illustrate that this is really a song for the stage, or even better, for Sunday mass in a wooden church somewhere in Alabama.

Covers abound, especially in Christian circles. The Chicago Mass Choir gospel choir with Regina McCrary is impressive and the many crackling amateur recordings of church orchestras on YouTube demonstrate that “Pressing On” can hardly be ruined. Although … the Irish songwriter Glen Hansard is a talented Dylan disciple, performed as his support act (Australia ’07), but is also a devout follower of Hare Krishna. And consequently his, otherwise skilled, version lacks the je-ne-sais-quoi (on Bob Dylan In The 80s, a very sympathetic tribute album from 2014).

But above all covers, the “secular” Alicia Keys shines – perhaps mostly because of the dry, warm sound of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, bringing her recording back home.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Bob Dylan And The Oak Tree

Posted on December 12, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

The oak tree is a symbol of durability and wisdom – in ancient mythology, oaks are believed to whisper the will of Zeus, the God of Thunder.

In the Bible, the Hebrew God speaks through one of his prophets about destroying a personified people who transgress:

Whose height was like the height of the cedars
And he was strong as the oaks
(Amos 2:9)

The dark-humoured singer/songwriter in the song beneath speaks of a woman who is initially strong just like any “Oak Lea”:

When I met you, baby
You didn't show no visible scars
You could ride like Annie Oakley
You could shoot like Belle Stars
(Bob Dylan: The Real You At Last)

The following song is heard in Bob Dylan’s film “Renaldo And Clara” – it’s played during his “Rolling Thunder” tour as well. The wisdom expressed through metaphor is that even mighty oaks do not last forever:

I leaned my back against an oak
Thinkin' it was a trusty tree
But first it bent, then it broke
Just like my own false love to me ....
But loves grows old, and waxes cold
And fades away like some mornin' dew
(Bob Dylan: The Water Is Wide ~ Cabrieres/traditional)

Alluding back to:

For ye shall be like an oak whose leaf fadeth
And as a garden that hath no water
(Isaiah 1: 30)

The endurance of an oak tree is objectively correlated to emotion (tough not tender)in the
song below:

I've been meek, and hard like oak
I've seen pretty people disappear like smoke
(Bob Dylan: Buckets Of Rain)

Relevent to the song below, and its title, ‘du chene’ is French for ‘oak’ (“do shane” v.s. “do cane”):

The lights on my native land are glowin'
I wonder if they'll know me next time 'round.
I wonder if that old oak tree's still standin'
That old oak tree, the one we used to climb
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)

A lesson there be in the following song, and the same rhyme as there’s in ‘Buckets Of Rain’:

Build me a fire with hickory, ash, and oak
Don't use no green or rotten wood, they'll get you by the smoke
(Bob Dylan: Copper Kettle ~ A F Beddoe)

There’s wisdom spread around allegorically below in the form of a burlesque song. According to the Holy Bible, a tax collector for the Romans invites Jesus home for a feast:

And as Jesus passed forth from thence
He saw a man, named Matthew
Sitting at the receipt of customers
(Matthew 9: 9)

In the song lyrics, seems Mary, the mother of Jesus, ends up delivering her son to a gowned priest.

In any event, things don’t turn out that well for Him:

Matthew met Mary on a clear cool market day
Said Mary to Matthew
"I'd like to give my child away"
Said Matthew to Mary
"I got a pheasant farm, and I'll take good care of him
There's a diamond spring, and a big oak tree
And he can climb on every limb
A thousand doors couldn't hold me back from you"
Said Mary to Matthew
"You know this may never be
I'm not goin' to give my child away for nothin' but an old oak tree"
Just then a man wearin' women's clothes began to hop around
(Elvis Costello: Matthew Met Mary~ Dylan/Costello)

Reminding of:

Maggie and Milly, and Molly and May
Went down to the beach to play one day
(EE Cummings: Maggie And Milly And Molly And May)

The biblical prophet Samuel relates the story of the rebellious son of David fleeing from the King’s servants:

And Absalom met the servants of David
And Absolom rode upon a mule
And the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak
And his head caught hold of the oak
And he was taken up between the heaven, and the earth
And the mule that was under him went away
(II Samuel: 18:9)

The singer/songwriter is not that eager to make the same mistake that Absolam makes:

The devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anythin you want to, I've heard it all
I was thinkin' about the things that Rosie said
I was dreamin' I was sleepin' in Rosie's bed
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

The Rose of Sharon’s bed be in the Promised Land.

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What was Dylan writing about? The 20 songs of 1964.

Posted on December 11, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan composed 20 new songs in 1964 – although as you can read from the notes (just follow the link) the first song on the list is not a “real” Dylan song in that he only wrote the lyrics – and those were written as a poem and can’t be seen as an unfinished song.

But looking at the 20 songs he did finish, we can say that this was a year dominated by songs of lost love and moving on, on the one hand, and the issue of how we see the world on the other hand.

In the list below I have once again added a short note about the types of song that Dylan wrote during 1964:

Guess I’m doing fine (I’m hurting; way we see the world)
Chimes of Freedom (Protest, the future will be fine)
Mr Tambourine Man (Surrealism; the way we see the world)
I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met) (Lost love)
Spanish Harlem Incident (Love)
Motorpsycho Nightmare (Humour)
It ain’t me babe (Song of Farewell)
Denise Denise (Taking a break, having a laugh)
Mama you’ve been on my mind (Lost love)
Ballad in Plain D (Lost love)
Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)
I shall be free number 10 (Talking Blues; humour)
To Ramona (Love)
All I really want to do (Song of Farewell; Individualism)
I’ll keep it with mine (Don’t follow leaders; individualism)
My back pages (Individualism) See also Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”. He was so much older then.
Gates of Eden (Protest, Individualism, A world that makes no sense)
It’s all right ma – 2013 review (Protest; Individualism, A world that makes no sense) It’s all right ma – 2015 review
If you’ve gotta go, go now (Song of Farewell; Individualism)
Jack o Diamonds (This song was evolved from the sleeve notes to the “Another Side” album and the date of writing those is uncertain).

Taking these I have added the totals that we have had from previous years of writing, in terms of the subject matter. Where no new song is added, then using my cataloguing approach, Dylan wrote nothing new with those lyrics or in that style in 1964.

I’ve included some songs in more than one category, where that seems appropriate. The total at the end reflects the total number of songs written in that category by Dylan, from 1962 onwards.

I would add that this is not supposed to be a definite analysis, as obviously anyone can do this sort of work. But I think it gives us an insight into the key forms and subject matter of songs that Dylan was working on at the time, and how (if at all) it was different from earlier years.

Here are the 20 songs placed within the categories I’ve adopted.

The Blues (5 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 1 in 1964). Total: 6)

Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)

Love / desire (3 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 2 in 1964). Total: 5)

Spanish Harlem Incident (Love)
To Ramona (Love)

Gambling (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 0 in 1964). Total: 1)

It’s just how we see the world (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 2 in 1964.) Total: 3)

Guess I’m doing fine (I’m hurting; way we see the world)
Mr Tambourine Man (Surrealism; the way we see the world)

Personal commentary – do the right thing (2 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total: 2)

The future will be fine (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 1 in 1964. Total: 2)

Chimes of Freedom

Lost love / moving on (7 in 1962, 5 in 1963; 4 in 1964. Total 12)

I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met) (Lost love)
Mama you’ve been on my mind (Lost love)
Ballad in Plain D (Lost love)
Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)

Travelling on / songs of leaving / songs of farewell (8 in 1962, 5 in 1963, 4 in 1964. Total: 13)

It ain’t me babe
Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)
All I really want to do (Song of Farewell; Individualism)
If you’ve gotta go, go now (Song of Farewell; Individualism)

The tragedy of modern life (3 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total: 3.)

Death (3 in 1962, 1 in 1963, 0 in 1964: Total: 3.)

Humour / satire / talking blues (7 in 1962, 2 in 1963, 3 in 1964. Total: 12)

Motorpsycho Nightmare (Humour)
Denise Denise (Taking a break, having a laugh)
I shall be free number 10 (Talking Blues; humour)

Patriotism (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 1.)

Social commentary / civil rights (4 in 1962, 2 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 6.)

It’s just how we see the world, individualism (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 5 in 1964. Total: 6)

I’ll keep it with mine (Don’t follow leaders; individualism)
My back pages (Individualism)
Gates of Eden (Protest, Individualism, A world that makes no sense)
It’s all right ma – 2013 review (Protest; Individualism, A world that makes no sense)
If you’ve gotta go, go now (Song of Farewell; Individualism)

Personal commentary – do the right thing (2 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 2.)

Nothing changes (3 in 1962, 1 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 4)

Protest (war, poverty, society…) (6 in 1962, 10 in 1963, 3 in 1964. Total 19)

Gates of Eden (Protest, Individualism, A world that makes no sense)
It’s all right ma – 2013 review (Protest; Individualism, A world that makes no sense
Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)

The future will be fine (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 1 in 1964. Total 2.)

Chimes of Freedom

The second coming / religion (1 in 1962, 1 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 2)

Justice (0 in 1962, 2 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 2)

Art (0 in 1962, 2 in 1963, 0 in 1964. Total 2)

Thus after three solid years of writing we can now see these themes emerge from Dylan’s work:

Protest (war, poverty, society…) 19 songs so far
Travelling on / songs of leaving 13 songs so far
Lost love / moving on 12 songs so far
Humour / satire / talking blues 12 songs so far

Now very clearly the travelling on category and the lost love category are very similar indeed – and this category, and the “protest” category in which Dylan tends to note the state of the world rather than encourage people to correct it, dominate Dylan’s writing since he started composing.

Indeed if we chose to combine the travelling on and lost love categories we have 25 songs there, making this the dominant theme of Dylan’s first few years.

I’m hoping to keep going with this series, at least to take us through the 1960s.

Elsewhere in the series

Other articles in this emerging series about Dylan the composer in the 1960s

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I Want You: the King of Rhyme seeks the outrageous enjambements

Posted on December 10, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

“We are a nation of undertakers,” a cockily content Dutch Prime Minister Den Uyl speaks in the 1970s to a group of undoubtedly bewildered American entrepreneurs. Had Dylan been there, he most likely would have applied for a residence permit on the spot. Graveyards, gravestones, death, funeral directors … they colour more than hundred, more than fifteen percent, of all his songs – enough to assume a morbid fascination, anyway.

The undertaker comes along in four songs and especially the one from “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, which in itself is already a Stones pastiche, seems to have evolved into the Brian Jones-like figure from the latest verse: Well, the undertaker in his midnight suit / Says to the masked man, “Ain’t you cute!”

A vicious Dylan turns the suit into a Chinese suit, in which Brian Jones indeed does parade around, he takes his flute (which the multi-instrumentalist plays among others on “Ruby Tuesday”) and voilá: the dancing child has a face and a name. And to rule out any confusion, Dylan underlines with a reference to the Stones hit “Time Is On My Side” (“because time was on his side”).

As a result of this bullying, of this Brian Jones-harassment, it becomes tempting to look for the identity of the so badly wanted lady in the overlapping circles of both gentlemen: Edie Sedgwick and Nico then are candidates, and Sara also sat between them at a table once. Such an assignment, however, would degrade the preceding couplets to stuffing – if Dylan really wants to sing Edie, Sara or Nico, then we would have recognized her in the words before. However, she cannot be found therein – nor any other lady, actually.

More conclusive is the interpretation that the poet finds the images here to articulate a transcending, not tied to one person, theme: the sweet torment of a strong desire. A cinematic opening, in which a suffering young person sits in a jazz café, lonely, languishing, at closing time, and the tired band plays a final, melancholic ballad. Ben Webster’s “Stormy Weather”, something like that. The bridge and the second and third couplet have no epic ambitions; this is where the linguistic pleasure of the word artist dominates, the enjoyment of a poet milking an ingenious rhyme scheme.

That rhyme scheme is unusual: aaab cccb. Unusual, though not unique. The nineteenth-century English poet Swinburne, whose spirit seems to float over more than one Blonde On Blonde song, also occasionally uses this schedule (“Before Dawn”, for example), Robert Louis Stevenson, Longfellow, Ira Gershwin … and after Dylan the more ambitious pop poets sometimes venture into it. Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” is the best known:

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

Not too long ago Dylan himself is inspired by the binding corset of this strict form, in “Tombstone Blues”. Therein, his rhyme mastery manifests itself mainly in the b of aaab cccb: nervous rhymes with commerce, boys in with poison and sick in with chicken.

In “I Want You”, the King of Rhyme seeks the challenge in the a‘s and c‘s and finds outrageous enjambements to rhyme – which are indeed only to be heard; on paper, in the published lyrics, the rhyme hides unobtrusively behind its gates. Immediately in the first verse, for example:

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you

… the reader reads, but the listener hears:

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I s-
-hould refuse you

The enjambement is the style figure that Dylan milks further; in almost every verse he hides one or two rhyme finds. In the continuation of this first verse again:

The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it’s not that way
I wasn’t born to lose you

… which is cccb in sung form:

The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it’s not that way I wasn’t born
to lose you

… en passant, the poet serves the successful rhyme of the b, from refuse you – to lose you. And thus, the couplets are not seven-line, but actually eight-line.

Even more elegantly, the Bard models the second verse around this refined frame:

The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep,
they wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin’ from my broken cup
And ask me to Open up
the gate for you

… with not only the successful enjambement between broken cup and open up, but also the perfect rhyme of the b: they wait for you / the gate for you.

It also marks the point at which Dylan’s fondness of gates (or/and doors), begins to stand out. On Blonde On Blonde alone there are three ladies behind the gate (the Sad-Eyed Lady and Sweet Marie too, and likewise the worshiper from “Temporary Like Achilles” is excluded).

Dylan will not let it go, neither as a metaphor nor in a literal sense. In his songs, gates keep opening and closing, shutting out protagonists and symbolizing insurmountables. “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”, “Golden Loom”, “When He Returns”, and in “Can’t Wait” he is once again waiting at the gate – to name just a few examples.

And in the twenty-first century, Dylan the Metalworker puts on his welding glasses and, after all those paper gates and doorways, constructs real, tangible, physical gates made from scrap and metal objects.

Still, in 1966 we are not there yet; for the time being the gates are solely literary objects. His rhyme and reason mastery the poet demonstrates often enough after Blonde On Blonde, but it will take until Street Legal (1978) before so much language fun, ingenuity and play with classical poetry come together again (like in “No Time To Think”).

The card metaphor, the Queen Of Spades in this case, also comes by every few years and will mainly have been chosen here to add a pinch of mystery, just as Dylan also frequently portrays the character of the failing politician without further deepening. However, those little-telling verses have the same attractive punch line: closing the overflowing, inscrutable and baroque flood of words with the simplistic chorus contributes greatly to the irresistibility of the song. It certainly does the job. The verses run like a charm and the catchy chorus is very user-friendly – Dylan rarely writes a chorus so poppy, ready-made for a Top Of The Pops audience.

Underneath this pop quality is a country song in a semi-country arrangement. Charlie McCoy usually plays the muffled staccato accompaniment of the second guitar for Johnny Cash, the acoustic country guitar sounds familiar too, as well as the soothing bass and the cheerful guitar lick – and especially the rolling lick of sixteenths with which Nashville Cat Wayne Moss repeatedly, seemingly casually introduces the chorus is astonishing: “The first time he came up with that, my jaw dropped — not only for the lick but for the effortlessness he played it with,” says Al Kooper.

For the record, Kooper should also have distinguished the restrained, but oh so mood-determining, driven drum work by that other Nashville studio musician, Kenny Buttrey, but he is forgiven. “I Want You” is the last recorded song for Blonde On Blonde, there in Nashville, with the stress of time and a waiting plane in Kooper’s neck; according to the organist, Dylan kept postponing the recording of Kooper’s favourite song just to tease him.

At three o’clock in the morning, after Dylan has wasted some more time with provocative directionless blues noise, the master finds that Kooper has suffered enough and at seven o’clock in the morning of 10 March 1966 the fifth, definitive take is on the tape.

The hit potential is obvious and of course Columbia decides to release it as a single. It does quite well (top 20 scores on both sides of the ocean) and is still a favourite in fan circles to this day – though mainly because of the B-side, the beautiful live version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. However, it will not be the hit from Blonde On Blonde. That shall be, bizarrely, the chaotic and unconventional “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35” (which even reaches place 2 in the Billboard Hot 100).

Covers abound in every corner of the music industry. Moaning French girls, ambitious entertainers, serious folk singers and jazz combos, Italian, French, German, Swedish and Dutch translations … the song has a universal appeal, apparently. The interpretations differ accordingly.

Bruce Springsteen honours his idol live in 1975 with a compelling torch version, the endearing Mexican star Ximena Sariñana captivates with a very neat, intimate and loving version on the Amnesty project Chimes Of Freedom (2012).

and James Blunt (2005) perhaps does sing a bit too theatrically every now and then, but he does score bonus points with his beautifully constructed, supercooled arrangement.

Moaning Mrs Caroline Doctorow also scores those points (2003), plus the bonus, for the loose but driving up-tempo beat and, very stylish, the choice to have a sort of Serge Gainsbourg come along at the end.

Despite all the genuine love, the craftsmanship and the respect, even the most beautiful covers rarely come close to the original. Dylan is at a creative high point in February 1966, the mix of musicians at Studio A in Nashville is a golden flash in the pan and the thin wild mercury sound provides the song with a shine that is unmatched. Any attempt to equal the beauty is, in short, a bold undertaking and does require some exceptional undertaker.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Bob Dylan As Teiresias

Posted on December 9, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Sophocles of Thebes writes a tragic play about the mythological King of Thebes, named Oedipus, who tries to avoid his fate. A female oracle of Truth, of Apollo the Sun God, lets it be known to his father that he’ll be killed by his son who will then marry his mother. So the father decides to get rid of his baby son, but the babe’s rescued, and adopted. He’s given the name Oedipus, and goes on to become king because the people of the city are grateful that he solves the riddle of the man-eating Sphinx who then perishes. Oedipus believes he’s safe from fate when his ‘father’ dies. His wife tells him that oracles are not to be trusted. However, it turns out that his wife was married to the man that Oedipus killed while on the road to Thebes, the very man who thought that he had gotten rid of his son. The truth uncovered, Oedipus’ wife hangs herself, and her son/husband then puts out his own eyes.

Teiresias be a male soothsayer who’s turned into a woman for seven years by Hera, the wife of the God of Thunder. The transgendered soothsayer becomes a prostitute. Having been both, the soothsayer sides with Zeus when he says to his wife Hera that woman enjoy sex more than men….not a good idea. It’s claimed that Athena (Minerva) causes Teiresias to be blinded because he had gazed upon her, the virgin Goddess of Athens, while she was bathing. Or perhaps it was Hera because Teiresias struck a pair of copulating snakes. In any event, seeming to have learned his lesson, elderly Teiresias at first refuses to tell Oedipus anything when the soothsayer is instructed by the King to tell all. That is, until Oedipus calls him an ‘idiot’ and a ‘traitor’.

Guillaume Apollinaire, though born in Italy, becomes a French writer associated with the rather ill-defined Symbolist, Cubist and Surrealist movements of Modernist art. In order to get away from the ongoing Realist and Naturalist modes of writing of the time, the dark-humoured Apollinaire returns to the imaginative worlds of mythology and religion, turning them inside out and upside down, in an effort to unearth and grapple with the underlying mysterious reality of human existence ~ in regard to the alienation wrought by modern technology, coupled as it is with a search for hedonistic pleasures.

Following in the ancient footsteps of Sophocles, Apollinaire writes a play called “The Breasts Of Teiresias” in which, unlike Sophocles, and the modernist poet TS Eliot, its author does not place all the blame for the problems of the world on the shoulders of women. In the surrealistic play, a woman transforms herself into a man, and heads off to war – surely a good method of birth control. The task of giving birth is left to the husband at home whom she’s dressed as a woman; he somehow immediately overpopulates their imaginary world.

Apollinaire references actual historical events in his surreal writings. Below is a poem in translation:

You set yourself against beauty
And how many women have been
Victims of your cruelty!
Eve, Eurydice, Cleopatra
I know three or four after
(Guillaume Apollinaire: The Serpent)

The three women mentioned above – and Teiresias as well – are harmed in one way or another by snakes.

In his lyrics, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, whether through the direct reading of translations thereof, or from being in the company of other artists, shows that he’s familiar with the works of Sophocles and Apollinaire:

He saw an animal as smooth as glass
Slithering his way through the grass
Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake
{"Ah, think I'll call it a snake"}
(Bob Dylan: Man Gave Names To All The Animals)

The following song lyrics could have been uttered by the elderly Teiresias himself:

Oh, the leaves begin to fallin', and the seas begin to part
And the people that confronted him were many
And he was told but these few words, which opened up his heart
"If you cannot bring good news, then don't bring any"
(Bob Dylan: The Wicked Messenger)

https://youtu.be/c_1KkoVPLMA

Apparently, a motherly wife is what a husband needs – as expressed in the following double-edged lyrics:

Precious angel,  under the sun
How was I to know you'd be the one
To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone
How weak was the foundation I was standin' on
(Bob Dylan: Precious Angel)

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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The subject matter of Dylan’s songs of 1963

Posted on December 8, 2019 by TonyAttwood

Other articles in this emerging series about Dylan the composer in the 1960s

In 1962, the first major year of Dylan the songwriter, Bob Dylan composed 36 songs. In 1963 another 30 emerged. Actually, he probably wrote many more, but these 66 composed across two years are the ones that have survived by having been recorded either in a studio or at a concert.

Musically this was a time in which Dylan was often re-using the melodies and themes from traditional folk songs and re-writing them, as had been the tradition throughout the centuries of European folk music. However it was not the tradition of contemporary popular music, and some felt affronted by a traditional song being re-written, with Dylan claiming copyright on the words.

But we can readily understand why Dylan was doing this: to compose 66 original, interesting, singable, and memorable melodies in two years is a lot too ask. Maybe Irving Berlin did it, but I suspect even he was pushed to reach this level.

Now when, some years back I first attempted to do a very brief review of this year I called it Dylan the storyteller – and that title, still seems right to me.

I also chose as my “Highlight of the year” for 1963 as “When the Ship Comes In”, not just because I have always loved it from the moment I first got the LP through to today, but because of what it is: “Part religious, part protest, this has all the vigour and vitality of change and reform that “Times they are a changing” (written soon after) doesn’t get close to with imagery that is utterly new within this type of music.”

Yet in a sense “When the ship” is very much like “Times” in that both set out the profound belief that change is coming, with the implication that really there isn’t much we have to do – the change is inevitable, either because society is inexorably changing (Times), or because God has a plan for mankind (Ship). The inevitability of change became a central theme for Bob.

If we look at the range of themes Dylan introduced into his compositions this year, unsurprisingly many are very similar to those of the previous year – indeed they are the themes that Bob adopted as his own: lost love, songs of leaving, etc. But there are new themes gaining greater prominence too, particularly including songs recording the failure of justice.

The list of the 30 songs written in this year, in the order they were written, with a very brief note as to the subject matter appears here (just scroll down the page).

Below I am trying to group the songs according to the lyrical content, the aim being to get more of a feel as to what Bob was writing about this year, and then how that compared with other years.

To do this I am going to take the thematic headings that I affixed to Dylan’s work when looking at the previous years of his compositional life and from this draw a conclusion as to whether thematically Bob was moving on, or in fact if he was using the same themes as before.

The Blues (5 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Love / desire (3 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Gambling (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

It’s just how we see the world (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Personal commentary – do the right thing (2 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

The future will be fine (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Lost love / moving on (7 in 1962, 5 in 1963; total 12)

Girl from the North Country (Lost Love)
Bob Dylan’s Dream (Lost love)
Only a Hobo (moving on)
Ramblin Down Thru the World (moving on)
Dusty Old Fairgrounds (keep on moving)

Travelling on / songs of leaving (8 in 1962, 5 in 1963, total 13)

Boots of Spanish Leather (Song of Leaving)
Farewell (a song of leaving)
Going back to Rome (there is something about Italy)
One too many mornings (Song of Leaving)
Restless Farewell (moving on)

The tragedy of modern life (3 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

You’ve been hiding too long. (Our leaders have betrayed the ideals of our country)
Troubled and I Don’t Know Why (everything is wrong)

Death (3 in 1962, 1 in 1963)

Who killed Davey Moore? (Boxing, Inequality)

Gambling (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Humour / satire / talking blues (7 in 1962, 2 in 1963)

All over you (comedy alternative to talking blues)
New Orleans Rag (aka Bob Dylan’s New Orleans Rag) (Humour; life is chance)

Patriotism (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

You’ve been hiding too long. (Our leaders have betrayed the ideals of our country)

Social commentary / civil rights (4 in 1962, 2 in 1963)

Only a pawn in their game (Social commentary, protest)
North Country Blues (Rural protest)

It’s just how we see the world (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Personal commentary – do the right thing (2 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

Nothing changes (3 in 1962, 1 in 1963)

Eternal Circle (Nothing changes)

Protest (war, poverty, society…) (6 in 1962, 10 in 1963, total 16)

Masters of War (War protest)
Walls of Red Wing (Protest: life is a matter of chance)
With God on our Side (Protest)
Talking World War III Blues (Protest, surrealism)
Only a pawn in their game (Social commentary, protest)
North Country Blues (Rural protest)
When the ship comes in (Protest, the world will change)
The Times they are a-Changing (Protest, the world will change)
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Protest, racism)

The future will be fine (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963)

The second coming / religion (1 in 1962, 1 in 1963)

Talkin Devil (talking blues, the Devil is real)

Justice (0 in 1962, 2 in 1963)

Seven Curses (Absolute betrayal of justice)
Percy’s Song (The failure of justice)

Art (0 in 1962, 2 in 1963)

Gypsy Lou (Art, Protest)
Lay Down your Weary Tune (the natural world is superior to anything mankind can make)

Thus after two solid years of writing we can see the main themes emerge from Dylan’s work:

Protest (war, poverty, society…) 16 songs so far

Travelling on / songs of leaving 13 songs so far

Lost love / moving on 12 songs so far

And interestingly two of these themes (the second and third on the list) are closely related. So clearly although it was reasonable for Dylan to be known early on as a protest singer (it was the subject that occupied him more than anything else) we have to note that only 16 songs out of the 66 written in 1962 and 1963, (Dylan’s first two prolific years) were protest songs (just around a quarter). 20% were songs of leaving or travelling on, and 18% were songs of lost love and moving on.

Indeed since it would be perfectly legitimate to consider the second and third category in the short line as one (moving on, leaving, travelling on, lost love) we do have one major area of poetic interest for Dylan which occupies him more than protest songs, making up 38% if his songs.

But it was the protest songs that made the headlines, and understandlably so. Songs of lost love, leaving etc etc, will never make the national headlines. But songs telling swarms of young people that society is about to change is a challenge and a half to the established order.

Finally as a reference marker, here is the list of the 30 songs Dylan wrote this year, in the order in which he wrote them (as far as I can tell).

Masters of War (War protest)
Girl from the North Country (Lost Love)
Boots of Spanish Leather (Song of Leaving)
Bob Dylan’s Dream (Lost love)
Farewell (a song of leaving)
Talkin Devil (talking blues, the Devil is real)
All over you (comedy alternative to talking blues)
Going back to Rome (there is something about Italy)
Only a Hobo (moving on)
Ramblin Down Thru the World (moving on)
Who killed Davey Moore? (Boxing, Inequality)
Dusty Old Fairgrounds (keep on moving)
Walls of Red Wing (Protest: life is a matter of chance)
New Orleans Rag (aka Bob Dylan’s New Orleans Rag) (Humour; life is chance)
You’ve been hiding too long. (Our leaders have betrayed the ideals of our country)
Seven Curses (Absolute betrayal of justice)
With God on our Side (Protest)
Talking World War III Blues (Protest, surrealism)
Only a pawn in their game (Social commentary, protest)
Eternal Circle (Nothing changes)
North Country Blues (Rural protest)
Gypsy Lou (Art, Protest)
Troubled and I Don’t Know Why (everything is wrong)
When the ship comes in (Protest, the world will change)
The Times they are a-Changing (Protest, the world will change)
Percy’s Song (The failure of justice)
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Protest, racism)
Lay Down your Weary Tune (the natural world is superior to anything mankind can make)
One too many mornings (Song of Leaving)
Restless Farewell (moving on)

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bob Dylan’s Silent Weekend. How did those words go again?

Posted on December 7, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

In December 2016, a remarkable story with a suspiciously high urban legend quality bounces around through the media worldwide. In a television program, the Japanese Otou Yumi talks to his wife for the first time after 20 years of remaining obstinately silent. He felt ignored, he explains, because his wife Katayama gave all her attention to their children and out of jealousy he therefore punished her with silence.

In the Hokkaido TV programme both sit on a bench in the park where they once had their first date. At a distance, hidden behind trees, the three now grown-up sobbing children witness how father talks to their mother for the first time in all those years. “Somehow it has been a while since we talked to each other,” the cowered Otou opens the marital conversation, staring at his feet.

Silent treatment it is called, and for the associative, playful language artist Dylan the jump to the similarly sounding silent weekend is not that big. It is a destructive, passive-aggressive form of punishment and generally quite popular with relational quarrels to effectively express disapproval or contempt. It does bother the I-person from “Silent Weekend,” in any case. What he did or did not do is less clear – the song poet does not elaborate and leaves it at this sketchy, difficult to understand draft.

From the official lyrics can be concluded that the narrator, just like Otou Yumi, finds it annoying that his sweetheart has no attention for him, she is swinging with some other guys. Apparently he vented his dissatisfaction, perhaps against previous agreements about letting each other free. Or misplaced jealousy led him to vicious and unreasonable comments. And that is precisely why, just like Mrs. Katayama Yumi, he gets the cold shoulder. According to the official lyrics, as it is published in Lyrics and on the site:

Silent weekend
My baby she took me by surprise
Silent weekend
My baby she took me by surprise
She’s rockin’ and a-reelin’
Head up to ceiling
An’ swinging with some other guys

However, this October day in 1967, Dylan definitely does not sing about other guys in that second verse. What he does sing is not very clear, but it certainly is something completely different. Tony Attwood and Eyolf Østrem respectively hear something like:

Silent weekend
My baby she took me by the heart
Silent weekend
My baby she took me by the heart
She’s thinkin’ about disposin’
But I know I know she’s dozin’
And she’s tearin’ me all apart

… and Østrem:

Silent weekend,
My baby she took me by the heart.
Silent weekend,
My baby she took me by the heart.
She’s awake and bad, she’s boastin’
but I know I know she’s ghostin’
An’ she’s tearin’ me all apart.

Anyway, in both variants it seems more likely the narrator was caught with other ladies and subsequently has been put in the fridge. In the bridge he admits that he has done a whole lotta thinkin’ about a whole lotta cheatin’, and the mysterious metaphor in the (later rewritten) line to open up a passenger train seems to refer to Jimmie Rodgers’ mega hit from 1928 “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T For Texas)”:

‘Cause I can get more women
Than a passenger train can haul

“Blue Yodel No. 1” was at the time a rather startling mix of folk, blues and jazz, which soon got the somewhat derogatory stamp “hillbilly”, but with some tolerance can be seen as a precursor to rockabilly, and consequently also to rock ’n’ roll. And that, playing a rockabilly tune, is also the raison d’être of “Silent Weekend” – not so much the poet Dylan’s need to encapsulate a universal relationship problem in poetic words. And like “Dress It Up, Better Have It All” seems to pop up from shreds of Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson and Billy Lee Riley, this rocker too seems, apart from Jimmy Rodgers, to be indebted to the legendary Sun recordings of the 50s. “Lonely Weekends” by Charlie Rich being an obvious candidate:

Well I’m makin’ alright
From Monday morning till Friday night
Oh, those lonely weekends

Since you left me
I’m as lonely as I can be
Oh, those lonely weekends

And not just a source of inspiration in terms of lyrics – “Lonely Weekends” is a beautiful rocker, driven by a rolling piano and a Charlie Rich who is more Elvis-like than ever. Released in 1960 and Rich’s only Top 30 hit in those years (Charlie Rich is on the Sun label until 1963, also earning a living as a session musician for competing colleagues such as Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Billy Lee Riley). Forty-seven years after “Silent Weekend”, Dylan professes his love for “Lonely Weekends” in public, when he plays it in episode 53 of Theme Time Radio Hour (“Days Of The Week”): “And one of my favourite songs about the weekend is from the Silver Fox, Charlie Rich.”

The return of Levon Helm must have been a trigger. Almost two years before, November 29, 1965, the sensitive, gentle Helm said goodbye to the group, battered and bruised by the audience’s hateful booing during the world tour, and perhaps also in dissatisfaction with his supporting role as “the drummer of Bob Dylan’s backing band”. But in the late summer of ’67, Albert Grossman becomes the manager of the then-nameless band and arranges (eventually, a few months later) a record deal with Capitol. Rick Danko already sees the Big Money Ship on the horizon, and thinks that Levon should get the hell back in order to catch his drop of the honey pot. “They want to give us a couple hundred thou, Lee. Better come and get your share!” (in The Last Waltz of The Band, Neil Minturn, 2005).

The band has been in Woodstock since February, has been playing all those wonderful old and new songs for months, from June been recording all those bizarre, traditional, incomparable and everyday songs, and Levon is delighted:

“They played me some of these tapes, and I could barely believe the level of work they’d been putting out. (…). I could tell that hanging out with the boys had helped Bob to find a connection with things we were interested in: blues, rockabilly, R&B. They had rubbed off on him a little.”

(This Wheel’s On Fire, 1996)

Dylan’s “found connection” with blues and rockabilly is arguably a bit older than this summer in Woodstock, but it’s understandable that Levon’s heart skips a beat. Helm is the only real rockabilly veteran here in this basement; he plays drums in the original Hawks with Ronnie Hawkins as early as 1958 and records “Red Hot” with him (on the first album Ronnie Hawkins, 1959).

Levon has just missed the previous exercise, “Dress It Up, Better Have It All,” but Dylan effortlessly shakes a consoling plaster from his sleeve, the rockabilly stomper “Silent Weekend”, which could just as well have been plucked from the repertoire of Ronnie Hawkins.

Levon has wandered around in his almost two-year retreat. Lying on the beach in Mexico until his money runs out, traveling with an old friend from Arkansas from job to idleness to job through Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana, until he signs at the Aquatic Engineering and Construction Company in Houma, in the heart of Bayou Country, and then some months aboard a ship laying oil pipes in the Gulf of Mexico.

On his return after the telephone call from Danko, he is pleasantly surprised to hear how Richard Manuel has picked up the drumsticks and Levon is particularly pleased with his steep learning curve and level:

“Richard was an incredible drummer. He played loosey-goosey, a little behind the beat, and it really swung. (Later, when we were playing shows, Richard would hit the high-hat so hard the cymbal would break.) Knowing Richard, I shouldn’t have been surprised at this, but I was amazed how good he’d become. Without any training, he’d do these hard left-handed moves and piano-wise licks, priceless shit – very unusual.”

… more or less forcing Levon to become more proficient in other instruments – especially his beloved mandolin.

For the time being, however, Richard graciously steps down and returns his place behind the drum kit to his former band leader, marking the actual starting point of The Band. “Silent Weekend” is one of the first recordings with Helm. And despite all the friendly words from Levon, it immediately shows that there is now a real drummer in the house.

When Dylan occasionally is away (three times) to record John Wesley Harding in Nashville, the quintet tinkers further with their unique sound that a little later will be displayed on the masterpieces Music From The Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969). The return of Levon Helm ignites it. And, as Otou Yumi says to his wife on the bench: “There’s no going back now, I guess.”

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Bob Dylan And The Book Of John

Posted on December 6, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Generally speaking, somewhat related to the tenets of Zoroastrianism, gnostics (both Hebrew and Christian) hold that from the distant Spiritual Monad emanates a flawed Demiurge who creates a physical place, not of black and white, of good and evil, but of darkness that’s inhabited by humans. For very few humans be capable of climbing the steps leading to the light of complete ‘gnosis’, and union with the Monad.

According to some Christian gnostics, Jesus be a temporary physical manifestation of the absolute and eternal Monad, and so for that reason He’s incapable of being put to death. Needless to say, the orthodox priests of both Judaism and Christianity are shocked and apalled by such beliefs.

John the Apostle differs from the authors of the Books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the Holy Bible in that his writings contain a mixture of both orthodox and gnostic beliefs. John claims that he’s a personal associate of Jesus, that his beloved friend raises Lazarus from the dead, and that He sends Mary Magdalene as His special envoy from the sepulchre:

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples
That she had spoken to the Lord
And that He had spoken these things to her
(John  20:18)

Following is another narrative about Jesus that is unique to the Book of John:

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him
"Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God
For no man can do these miracles that Thou doest except God be with him"
Jesus answered and said unto him ......
"That which is born of flesh is flesh
And that which is born of the Spirit is spirit"
(John 3,1-6)

Singer/songwriter presents his audience with the story about the legalistic and literalistic Pharisees in one of his double-edged gospel songs – it’s interesting to note that the verse below is omitted from some versions of the song:

Nicodemus came at night so he wouldn't be seen by men
Saying, "Master, tell me why a man must be born again?"
When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear
When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear?
(Bob Dylan: In The Garden)

No definitive answer be given in the song lyrics above. Interpreted it can be that the apostle John, and singer Bob Dylan, are saying that Jesus means that phrases like ‘to be born again’, and ‘to rise from the dead’ are to be taken as hyperbolic figures of speech for a new way of thinking, a less strict way of thinking, rather than that they are to be taken literally as Nicodemus initially mocks that they should be. For all we know, when gnostic-influenced Emanuel Swedenborg speaks of ‘correspondences’, he too is referring to ‘figures of speech’.

Paradoxically, the Gospel of John is a favourite source called upon for support by some
literalist-minded evangelistic Christian leaders for spouting fiery anti-Judaic rants:

Then from that day forth they took counsel together
For to put Him to death
Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews
But went thence unto a country near to the wilderness
Into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples
(John 11: 53,54)

Dylan, with a Jewish background, does not let this biblical verse go by without a wry comment; only according to the Gospel of John does Jesus definitively claim that He is ‘the Son of God’ (John 11: 4):

The multitude want to make Him king
Put a crown upon His head
Why did He slip away to a quiet place instead?
Did they speak out against Him, did they dare
Did they speak out against Him, did they dare?
(Bob Dylan: In The Garden)

Nor is Mary Magdalene just one of the followers of Jesus in Bob Dylan’s song lyrics. According to John’s writings, while in the sepulchre by herself Mary at first mistakes Jesus as the gardener:

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
On a hot summer day, a hot summer lawn
“Excuse me, ma’am, I beg your pardon
Ain’t no one here, the gardener is gone”
(Bob Dylan: Ain’t Talkin’)

As indicated in the song lyrics above, the singer/songwriter doesn’t allow himself to be pinned down solidly by fundamentalists upon the cross of literalism.

https://youtu.be/Hx6fHd99SxA

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The foundations of Bob Dylan’s lyrics: The subject matter in the early years

Posted on December 5, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

As you may have realised (if you have been paying attention to my ramblings), of late I have been trying to evolve an overview of Bob Dylan’s writing between 1959/60 – when we have a sighting of three possible compositions – and 1962 wherein we now know Dylan wrote at least 36 songs.

1962 represented an extraordinary explosion of talent, not just because of the number of compositions but also because of the variety of themes to be found in these songs and of course the quality of some of those songs.

I’ve recently been back through the list of compositions from 1959 to 1962 and written, as best I can, a very short description of the lyrical theme of each song, (as well as trying to make sure that all the video links to recordings of the song work. That final task never ends because songs do get removed, and copyright rules are different in each country, but I’ve had a go and with luck you might find one or two of the “This video is not available” notices do, now, once again play some music.

The list of songs with the brief descriptions are in the article Dylan songs of the 60s and now, just dealing with those opening years of Dylan the composer, I want to try and draw a few conclusions about Dylan’s opening stance when it comes to the writing of lyrics. Then, if I manage to make that work, and if anyone is interested, I’ll try and do the same with subsequent eras.

So, as an opener, I’ve tried to list the subject matter of each of the songs during that initial burst of creativity, and I am hoping to go on and explore what happened in the years after this opening period.

Of course I am not suggesting that Bob sat down and thought, “Hmmm time to write another lost love song, I guess”. He wrote the lyrics and music as he felt them, influenced by his daily experiences and the music that he listened to.

And that simplistic observation explains why I feel an analysis like this – crude as it obviously is – has some interest. For the themes Dylan evolved in his songs surely reflect where his mind was at the time.

Of course that doesn’t mean that each time he wrote a song about death he did so because someone he knew had died. Dylan, in these formative years as a composer, was also listening to vast quantities of music, and following themes that he heard. But it does give us a clue as to where he was mentally, and where he wanted to be.

What I would add however is that whenever one comes up with an analysis like this there is always a strong chance that there is already an incredibly famous book that has done this in a more comprehensive and more exciting way, leaving me looking like a total idiot. “But surely you’ve read….” is one of the phrases everyone who plays with ideas and doesn’t spend a lifetime reading what everyone else has said beforehand, is bound to hear sometime.

But then there lies the benefit of the internet. If someone has done all this before me, then I can always delete this page and if ever asked, claim it was a set of notes I wrote “years ago” and which somehow got published by mistake.

As for the detail, I should add that where I find a song that incorporates several different themes, that song is listed in each of those thematic areas. If you are looking for a list of the songs in order of composition, with no duplication along the way, that is to be found on the page concerning Dylan songs of the 60s – as noted above.

I’ve got 16 categories for song themes in these opening years. I’m going to try and use the same categories as I move on to through the subsequent years (unless, as I say, someone has done this all before me). The one category that is slightly different from the rest is the first one – the blues – which can refer to the style of music, and the theme of the lyrics.

The Blues

Love / desire

Lost love / moving on

Travelling on / songs of leaving

Tragedy of modern life

Death

Gambling

Rambling Gambling Willie

Humour / satire / talking blues

Patriotism

On Wisconsin

Social commentary / civil rights

It’s just how we see the world

Blowing in the wind

Personal commentary – do the right thing

Nothing changes

Long Ago Far Away

Protest (war, poverty, society…)

The future will be fine

Paths of Victory.

The second coming

Whatcha Gonna Do?

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dylan’s Day Of The Locusts: the revenge of the grasshopper

Posted on December 4, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

David Crosby regards himself a friend of Dylan’s and that works because he cracked the code:

“I get along with him pretty well now because I’ve managed to keep him from knowing that I’m impressed (at least, until he reads this). The minute you let him know you’re completely impressed with him, he starts to mess with you. He’ll stir your brain like a spoon.”

The ex-Byrd and accredited marijuana bulk user does not really have the reputation of being an astute analyst, but there are more unexpectedly striking observations in Crosby’s first autobiography Stand And Be Counted – A Revealing (2000). He shows wonderfully well how uncomfortable Dylan can be when he feels cornered, like at the honorary doctorate granting and accompanying speech, Princeton 1970, and he has a well-developed sense for remarkabilities.

“One of the best things I’ve ever heard Bob say about himself was in somebody else’s words. He was quoting Henry Miller, who explains Dylan’s whole life in this one sentence: The role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusionment.”

Alright, this particular quote also comes along in a few interviews with Dylan (like in the Playboy interview, 1977), but still, theoretically Crosby may have heard it from Dylan’s mouth. And a nice, thought-provoking quote it is anyway.

The written confession that he secretly admires Dylan did not affect the friendship apparently; in Chronicles, three years after Crosby’s confidence, the Bard writes affectionate, kind words about his hairy friend. He recalls how he took Crosby to the dreaded honorary doctorate award, calling him “colorful and unpredictable”, he can be an obstreperous companion, and he likes him a lot.

That trip to Princeton is a much-discussed, well-documented day in Dylan’s life. First of all by Dylan himself, who dedicates more than six hundred words to the incident in Chronicles. But especially in Dylanology of course. Not only because it is a special event in Dylan’s biography, but also because it is one of those rare events of life that finds a clearly demonstrable, irrefutable reflection in a Dylan song: in “Day Of The Locusts”.

The title is beautiful and has already been taken from some very live place. At least, just about anyway. The insects that, in Dylan’s words, sing such a sweet melody, are not locusts, but cicadas. These are creatures that already have a fairly special life cycle, and this Princeton variant, the magicicada, even more so. The entomologists distinguish between the seven types of so-called broods, clutches. The cicada choir at Dylan’s ceremony is sung by the tenth clutch, Brood X, of the Michigan cicada and this species has the bizarre characteristic that they only come above ground every seventeen years. Then the nymphs are sexually mature, and have a few weeks to reproduce and die.

The second poetic freedom Dylan allows himself, apart from the renaming to locusts, is the “sweet melody” they supposedly sing with a “high whining thrill”. Granted, it is certainly high and vibrant, but already a few dozen cicadas in a tree can reach 100 dB (comparable to a motorcycle) and the monotonous droning is anything but melodic. Washington Post journalist Cameron W. Barr, who lives nearby, writes regularly about the plague and calls it deafening, comparing it to the thundering of an arriving subway train and finds the sound otherworldly – which is not meant admiringly.

It is nevertheless understandable that the poet cannot resist the loaded power of the image of a locust swarm. In addition to the archaic, biblical doom the mere mentioning of locusts evokes (for example, the Egyptian plague in Exodus 10, and especially the prophecy of the fifth angel in Revelation 9), The Day Of The Locust is also the best-known work of Nathanael West, one of Dylan’s literary examples. It is the last novel of West, who dies at an early age, published in 1939, and the theme is tailor-made for Dylan: the gap between appearances and reality.

In The Day Of The Locust, the young painter Tod Hackett goes to Hollywood, makes a living there by painting film sets and discovers the world of disappointment, envy and ugliness behind the beautiful appearance and splendour. West writes in a sometimes grotesque, provocative style, the work is full of symbolism and bizarre metaphors and is initially considered pretty controversial (by now it is in the Modern Library’s List of 100 best English-language books from the twentieth century, ranked 73). Right up Dylan’s street, all in all.

He does show his love for Nathanael West more often, as a matter of fact. For example, in Chapter 4 of Chronicles, when Dylan talks about his despair in the 1980s, about his fear that his talent has come to an end:

The mirror had swung around and I could see the future — an old actor fumbling in garbage cans outside the theatre of past triumphs.

The Bard almost literally picks that from West’s first, rather obscure and not too successful novel The Dream Life Of Balso Snell (1931), in which we can read on page 27:

I’m like an old actor mumbling Macbeth as he fumbles in the garbage can outside the theatre of his past triumphs.

The chorus of Dylan’s song “Day Of The Locusts” is of a deliberate greeting card level, while the introductory couplets have a reporting quality. The reporter Dylan submits meteorological facts, describes the scene, explains the presence of the main character, I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree, and truthfully reports that he and his girl get into the car afterwards and drive off (Sara Dylan is present, indeed).

Poetic he is only in a few asides. The benches are “stained with tears and perspiration”, a poetic reference to the emotions that accompany a graduation ceremony and at the same time a literary nod to the famous blood, toil, tears and sweat speech of fellow Nobel Prize winner Churchill. The poet expresses feelings of discomfort with the stifling image in the second verse: “darkness was everywhere, it smelled like a tomb,” and downright alienating is the image of the man next to me, whose head is about to explode.

Crosby thinks he knows Dylan means him, because he was, once again, high as a kite. He discloses the story, unsolicited, during an interview with Paul Zollo in the Aspen Writers Foundation’s series Lyrically Speaking (2008):

dc: He wrote about me one time

pz: Oh yeah? Which song is that?

dc: I think it’s called “The Locusts”

pz: “Day Of The Locust”?

dc: Yeah

pz: Oh, that’s a great song

dc: Yeah… ‘The guy, the man next to me, his head was exploding…’

pz: Yeah! That’s you?

dc: (nods proudly, though somewhat apologetically, to the hilarity of the audience)

Dylan’s recollection in Chronicles, however, rather points to the speaker who hands out the bull, glorifying Dylan, to his horror, as “the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America,” the kind of label that Dylan would love to get rid of.

Truly poetic and Dylanesque are only the last two lines of the last verse: they leave

Straight for the hills, the black hills of Dakota
Sure was glad to get out of there alive.

Here the reporter has abandoned the reporting, that much is clear. The Black Hills of South Dakota are about three thousand kilometres away, one does not simply drive there. And it is quite an illogical destination; Dylan’s house is in Woodstock, two and a half hours’ drive just north of Princeton, the other direction.

The poet has taken over here from the reporter, so those black hills of Dakota have a metaphorical meaning. An obvious association of an American listener is: Mount Rushmore. The four portraits of US Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt are carved from the granite of the Black Hills and the monument is the biggest attraction in the Midwestern States, with over two million visitors a year. South Dakota therefore officially presents itself as “The Mount Rushmore State” (even in the flag). Implying, with pleasant irony, that the honorary doctorate grants him monumental, immortal status.

The song is on New Morning, the album that despite the initial enthusiasm (no. 1 in England, gold in the US, cheering reviews) soon sinks back to the gray platoon of Not-Too-Bad Dylan albums. The album is experiencing some revaluation thanks to The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (2013), but that does not lead to a revival. The songs are rarely played, not even by the master himself, and there are hardly any memorable covers from colleagues. “If Not For You” and especially “The Man In Me” still somewhat hide this indifference, but “Day Of The Locusts” remains ignored. Even David Crosby, who may call himself a kind of spiritual godfather (after all, he persuaded Dylan to go and accept that honorary doctorate) and who has a granite, indestructible reputation as a Dylan interpreter, remains far away from it.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Bob Dylan And Showboat

Posted on December 3, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

As previously noted, Bob Dylan is familiar with the poetry of Hart Crane:

Oh, lean from the window, if the train slows down
As though you touched hands with some ancient clown
A little while gaze absently down
And hum 'Deep River' with them while they go
(Hart Crane: The River)

‘Deep River’ is a Negro spiritual of yore, a version thereof that’s sung in the musical play/movie ‘Showboat’:

Deep River my home is over Jordon
Deep River, Lord
I want to cross into the campground
Oh, don't you want to go
To that gospel feast?
That Promised Land
Where all is peace
(Marian Anderson: Deep River ~ Burleigh/ traditional)

The biblical reference:

And it came to pass, when the priests
That bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord
Were come up out of the midst of Jordan
And the soles of the priests' feet were lifted up unto the dry land
That the waters of Jordan returned unto their place
And flowed over all his banks, as they did before
And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the month
And encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho
(Joshua 4: 18,19)

Never one to resist a burlesque, Bob Dylan depicts himself as Joshua, leader of the Jews:

I'm standin' by God's River, my soul is beginnin' to shake
I'm countin' on you love to give me a break
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

The singer/songwriter even claims to be a time traveller …. well, at least that he goes over roads travelled by creative artists (whether they be musicians, singers, play-writes, poets, novelists, or what have you) who have gone before him:

Over the road, I'm bound to go
Where I stop nobody knows
I am one of them rambling men
Travellin' since I don't know when
Here I come, and then gone again
(Bob Dylan: Over The Road)

He’s only a hobo who carries a bundle over his shoulder in which is stuffed a Nobel statue presented to him for his contributions to Literature.

‘Showboat’ is about the love between Magnolia Hawks, a daughter of a Mississippi riverboat captain, and Gaylord Ravenal, a gambling man – in the days of Jim Crow laws after the American Civil War.

Following is a rendition of a song performed in ‘Showboat’:

Look down, look down
That lonesome road
Before you travel on
Look up, look up
And seek your Maker
'Fore Gabriel blows his horn
(Paul Robeson: The Lonesome Road ~ Shilkret/Austin)

https://youtu.be/qoWS_Y-8jN4

The lovers marry, move to Chicago, but eventually break up due to Gaylord’s gambling habit; Magnolia gets a job singing in a club, and becomes famous. In the end, she re-unites with her lover.

Bob Dylan alludes to 'Showboat', sex roles reversed, in the song below:

Your charms have broken many a heart
And mine is surely one
You got a way of tearin' a world apart
Lover, see what you've done
Just as sure as you're livin'
Just as sure as you're born
Look up, look up, seek your Maker
'Fore Gabriel blows his horn
(Bob Dylan: Sugar Baby)

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

I believe in you: the Sinead O’Connor experience

Posted on December 2, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This is not a website dedicated to putting forward a political or religious view – it is about the exploration of Bob Dylan’s music – including by writers who might have a political view.

And of course for many people Bob Dylan’s compositions can change their lives and allow them or encourage them to see things in a different way. Music can indeed change the world. Others see in Dylan the confirmation of their own political visions.

Now, at the moment I am writing this, I am also slowly plodding through creating a piece about the themes within Dylan’s writing year by year – and I am a long way from looking at 1979. So the series has only just begun, and already there are

And writing this series really does make me ponder also Bob’s religious period – even though I’ve a long way to go in analysing all the songs into topics before I get to those religious albums.

Now the fact is that for many people Dylan was the “voice of the generation” – as in Dylan the protest singer. And yet as I have tried to point out a number of times, Dylan rarely wrote protest songs – in the sense that he didn’t write many songs telling everyone to rise up and overthrow the oppressor, or rise up and stop the war, or indeed to rise up at all.

He wrote songs of observation: “Masters of War” doesn’t suggest we invade the gun producing factories and pull them down, but rather tells us that what the manufacturers do is unforgivable. “Times they are a changing” says just that, times are changing, but it doesn’t suggest that we might make them change faster or indeed rise up and make a better future. Rather it just says, change is happening; you can’t do much about it.

“It’s alright ma”, really does end up by saying “It’s life and life only”. That’s how it goes. Life can be a mess ma, but don’t worry, that’s how it is.

And indeed, as I work through the 48 songs that Dylan wrote before 1963, only a tiny percentage are revealed to be about social change. There are love songs, songs about moving on, the blues, and so on.

But – and this is the thought I have already had although I have hardly started the series of analysing what Bob’s songs are all about – (and this is part of the magic of Dylan) – they can be used by others to create all sorts of meanings.

And I was reminded of this by Jochen’s piece on “I believe in you” ro which I gave the title I Believe In You: momentary conversion for all non-believers (I should explain Jochen does all the hard work in creating the articles, and I just pop along at the end, and throw in a title which may – or may not – be appropriate, or attending grabbing).

But even that tiny task can cause me to go round and round in circles on occasion, and especially so with that review, because quite rightly Jochen included Sinead O’Connor’s performances of the song.

Now just in case you missed Jochen’s article here’s Sinead O’Connor’s studio version of “I believe in you.”

The fact is that “I believe in you” comes from “Slow Train Coming” of which Wiki says, “It was Dylan’s first effort since converting to Christianity, and all of the songs either express his strong personal faith, or stress the importance of Christian teachings and philosophy.”

Now in my review of the song (a review, which for some people doing a search about the song, turns up on page 1 of the results on Google in the UK, which is rather nice for me, and means that the review seems to have been read by a rather large number of people) I make the point that the official version of the lyric doesn’t emphasise that this is a religious piece in that in the text we repeatedly have the word “you” not “You”. That is to say, “you – a person” not “You” as in God or his son.

But the consensus among commentators is that it is a hymn, and I have to admit I’ve often been struck by this dichotomy. I adore the song, but see it as a love song, and as dancer and choreographer, I have choreographed it as a love song. Not least because Sinead O’Connor sings it as a love song.

Indeed how she hears it is important, because on 3 October 1992, Sinead O’Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live and held up a picture of Pope John Paul and ripped it up declaring that paedophile priests and others in the church were the enemy.

It took many of us a while to realise that the soft atheist line of considering the church as an annoying but essentially harmless by-product of outmoded thought patterns, which could be argued against as one argues against a political party, was itself utterly outmoded and that some senior members of religious organisations were using the church not to help and protect the weak but to manipulate and harm the weak, while others in even more senior positions who discovered what was going on, turned their efforts into covering up what was happening – moving the criminals on, rather than handing them over to the civil authorities.

In 2011, abbot of Glenstal Abbey and Benedictine monk Dom Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB, was quoted by novelist and writer Russell Shorto speaking about the Church making “this island [Ireland] into a concentration camp where [the Church] could control everything. … And the control was really all about sex. … It’s not difficult to understand how the whole system became riddled with what we now call a scandal but in fact was a complete culture.”

That seems to me get it about right. Indeed in August 2018, a list was published which revealed that over 1,300 Catholic clergy in Ireland had been accused of sexual abuse, with 82 of them getting convicted.

And so Sinead O’Connor’s declaration in 1992 that there was paedophilia in the Catholic Church was true. So, for me, Sinead O’Connor has credibility – having been exploited herself when she was sent to a Magdalene Laundry – which the state colluded with, through keeping the behaviour of the nuns in the laundroies secret.

So my point (and this has been made with far more evidence and far more eloquently than I could ever do, by many others) is that before the American and Irish church scandals really came to the fore, Ms O’Connor got it dead right. And her adoption of Dylan’s song “I believe in you” with its lower case you, has an enormous poignancy.

And as a result maybe we were not that surprised that in 2018 a grand jury in Pennsylvania found that over 1000 children in six dioceses had been molested by priests with church officials covering the events up.

Or that in February 2019 the third most senior Catholic in the world, George Pell, was found guilty of child sexual assault. Pope Francis, had previously praised Pell for his honesty and response to the child sexual abuse scandal.

As the publication, Irish Central wrote, “Imagine if 300 imams were named as sex abusers of children. The Muslim religion would likely be banned and the imams driven out or jailed.”

But of course it doesn’t work like that. Actor Joe Pesci said after the image of the pope was torn, “She’s lucky it wasn’t my show. ‘Cos if it was my show, I would have given her such a smack.” There was widespread applause from the audience at this threat of violence against a woman who was daring to stand up and expose crimes that had been hidden by a state-wide conspiracy.

So when Sinead O’Connor sings “I believe in you” I hear her believing in human kind – in the ultimate ability of the wider world to root out the abusers and deal with them. I hear a beautiful love song which moves me more deeply than I can explain in mere words. I hear a lovely song which maybe was a song about believing in the power of the church, turned into something much more more. Which in a strange way is part of the essence of Dylan the composer – he creates songs that can become ever more than they were when he wrote them.

And that of course is just my interpretation in the light of the music, the abuse the singer suffered, the lies told in hiding the abuse, and the way others then responded to her act.

Of course Bob may have written the song in praise of the Lord he had just found, although that lack of a capital Y throughout for You does make me wonder – after all, the lead song on the ablum “Slow Train Coming” also is itself not overtly and clearly religious. Remember that song ends…

I don’t care about economy, I don’t care about astronomy
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Love ones turning into puppets… that could so easily mean friends converted to a religious cause that is riddled from the inside out with harm, depravity and hatred. Could it possibly be we’ve been misinterpreting these songs all along?

Of course these are just my rambling thoughts, and from the very start of this blog I’ve never tried to hide my atheism. Likewise I have tried not to let it become central to the reviews I’ve written. Nor, I hope, have I sought to have used this site as a way to propagate my views those by others on this site.

But I really do wonder about those tracks on Slow Train. And indeed why Bob moved way from organised Christian religion again, after such a short space of time.

You might also enjoy I believe in you; momentary conversion for all non-believers

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

As I Went Out One Morning I bumped into WH Auden and borrowed his notebook

Posted on December 1, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) does leave a mark on John Wesley Harding indeed. For “The Wicked Messenger” Dylan borrows the striking rhyme scheme and structure of Auden’s “In Schrafft’s”, and for “As I Went Out One Morning” the bard even copies rhyme scheme, structure and words from “As I Walked Out One Evening”.

It gives some substance to the scornful words that an anonymous critic devotes to Dylan in the article “Public Writer No.1?” in the New York Times of December 12, 1965:

“Granted, he has an interesting imagination, but his ideas and his techniques are dated and banal–we’ve been through all this before in the thirties. Like most pop culture heroes, Dylan will soon be forgotten–he’ll quickly become last year’s vogue writer.”

In the same article, W.H. Auden is asked about his opinion on Dylan, whether he sees in Dylan the new Public Writer No.1. But the old poet, regrettably, has to pass:

“I am afraid I don’t know his work at all. But that doesn’t mean much–one has so frightfully much to read anyway.”

It is not unfriendly; in 1965 the brilliant Anglo-American poet is by no means the only intellectual who really is totally unaware of Dylan or pop culture at all – and he himself stands in the eyes of authoritative literature critics, juries and art tsars miles above the young bard from Duluth. Not that he feels exalted. In her enchanting autobiography, Marianne Faithfull describes cheerfully and with sympathy a meeting with the villainous, provocative Auden:

I remember going to a dinner with Tom Driberg and W. H. Auden. In the middle of the evening Auden turned to me and in a gesture I assume was intended to shock me said, “Tell me, when you travel with drugs, Marianne, do you pack them up your arse?”
“Oh, no, Wystan,” I said. “I stash them in my pussy.”

At that time (1968) Faithfull idolizes Dylan and she drives her life partner Mick Jagger to the limit by endlessly playing her tape with the fourteen Basement songs. So Dylan may have been discussed during that dinner with Auden too, but unfortunately her book does not tell (Faithfull. An Autobiography, 1994, in which she also exuberantly shares her experiences with and observations of Dylan).

Auden’s jabbing reminds of how Dylan and his partner in crime Neuwirth try to provoke table mates and other bystanders in the mid-sixties. But both poets are especially comparable at a level above. In terms of status, Auden is still a few steps higher in the pantheon in 1965, but then Dylan catches up with the Englishman. From the twenty-first century the roles have been definitively reversed and now Auden is invariably compared with Dylan. Not only on a literary level, but in particular the man’s cultural impact matches:

“In 1939, Auden held a position that can only just be suggested by that of Bob Dylan in 1967: indisputably the voice of his generation, he also wrote in a style so cryptic and allusive that the generation puzzled over what exactly it was that they were supposed to be saying. Something about war and doubt and sex and mining machinery . . .”

(“The Double Man”, The New Yorker, 15 September 2002)

Like in New York Review Of Books (“an intellectual British 1930s version of Dylan in the early 1960s”, October 2015) and in the LA Weekly of May 19, 1999, in which additionally a very quotable qualification is added to the comparison:

“He was not just “the voice of a generation,” he was someone whose words lodged themselves in the heads of his contemporaries like shrapnel and remained there for decades afterward.”

Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening” from 1938 consists of four-line couplets in the rhyme scheme abcb, exactly the same as Dylan’s “As I Went Out One Morning”. That is still a fairly classical ballad structure, but remarkably enough Dylan also copies the rather unusual metric pattern: in both works the lines of verse end alternately with a iamb and a trochee.

In terms of content, there is only a superficial similarity. An I-narrator tells about a chance encounter with a stranger, and in both poems there is an amorous tension – here the similarity ends. Auden’s poem is in fact an allegorical narrative, in which the narrator accidentally overhears a conversation, a conversation between Love and Time about the power of love, about the issue of whether Love can resist eternity.

Dylan’s two major themes, Love Fades and Time Passes, as is semi-scientifically established by Watson, the talking computer from IBM in the amusing commercial in October 2015.

But not in his own “As I Went Out Of Morning”. Neither one of the two Great Themes can be distilled from these lyrics, nor any other basic idea. The rather plotless text suggests that Dylan the Poet departed from the same starting point as “Dear Landlord”:

“Dear Landlord was really just the first line. I woke up one morning with the words on my mind. Then I just figured, what else can I put to it?”

(from the Biograph booklet, 1985)

… and this time Dylan wakes up with an echo from W.H. Auden’s poem on his mind. For the continuation, for the what-else-can-put-to-it part, it seems that an everyday, domestic scene seems to urge itself upon the poet: he has brought his daughter to the bus stop and on the way back stops by for a cup of coffee at a friendly neighbour. And is then attacked by the dog, something like that.

The narrator walks into the neighbour’s yard, where the dog is chained – the fairest damsel in chains. Animal lover as he is, he extends his hand to pet, but the bitch immediately snatches and has grabbed the arm of the careless walker – I offered her my hand, she took me by the arm, she meant to do me harm. “Let go, stupid animal, depart from me this moment, bad dog!” he shouts, startled, but that is not going to happen – I don’t wish to. The dog is holding on and growling. Almost begging, the narrator now thinks he hears, it seems as if the dog is unhappy and asks if she can go with him. Fortunately, here comes the owner, running from across the field. He furiously commands his dog to let go of the nice neighbour, commanding her to yield and finally offers his apologies, as it should be. I’m sorry for what she’s done, as every dog owner apologizes for the misconduct of his pet.

Dylan the Poet doesn’t even have to think about how to upgrade such a trivial story. He chooses archaisms like “fairest damsel” and “depart from me” and “I beg you, sir”, he chooses antique, Biblical sentence structure and he chooses a historical, highly loaded name as Tom Paine for the neighbour.

The setup succeeds brilliantly. The ordinary dog-bites-man triviality suddenly is a mysterious, allegorical parable filled with wonderful, poetic power. The Dylanologists are delighted and lose themselves in far-fetched, wide-ranging argumentations to explain what the text “actually” is about. The appearance of “Tom Paine” in particular opens a door that is gratefully trampled down – invariably with references to the scandalous acceptance speech that Dylan gave in ’63 when accepting the Tom Paine Award from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.

Gary Browning sees criticism of “America’s constitutive myths” and a reckoning with the “legacy of Tom Paine”, without any further explanation (in The Political Art of Bob Dylan, 2004). Bert Cartwright sees “Dylan’s struggle with the Devil” (The Telegraph # 49, summer ’94). And at the basis of all the fiercely digging cryptoanalysts is of course the confused Alan Weberman, who in the July / August issue ’68 of Broadside gets all the space to wriggle, bend and turn over backwards in all the twists he needs to prove that the song is a report of Dylan’s experiences at the 1963 award ceremony:

“Dylan offered them his world view — I offered her my hand. And the leftists wanted to have Dylan as their exclusive possession — She took me by the arm.”

And also the “chronology” – the song being on the album’s first side – is an “clue to the meaning”. In short, it remains puzzling why this Weberman was ever taken seriously by the media.

Incidentally, the dreamlike quality of the song is just as often used to justify failing interpretation – since Lewis Carroll an unsatisfactory, cowardly way out (“Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice).

Then Greil Marcus’ commentary on the song is the most sensible. After an example of a possible but vague interpretation (something related to the unravelling of the American myth) Marcus states that the song offers “possibilities rather than facts, like a statue that is not an expenditure of city funds, but a gateway to a vision.”

The metaphor is a bit crippled, but the underlying thought is worthwhile: Dylan’s texts on John Wesley Harding are not encrypted philosophical tracts, encoded political pamphlets or veiled autobiographical confessions. They are neutral colouring pictures; the lines are drawn and everyone may colour it in as it pleases him. The right colour does not exist. Not “in fact” either.

To a certain extent this also applies to the music. Dylan’s original is breathtaking in its simplicity and naked beauty. Simple melody, stripped-down chord progression and starkly arranged, like all songs on the album.

Hence, a lot of room for the covers.

The South African Tribe After Tribe produces a tight pop song with reggae undertones (on Power, 1985), some restrict themselves to a lonely, solemn piano ballad (Yoni Wolf, 2014), there are derailing, trashy versions, hopping ukulele tunes and dark, gothic readings.

The best covers, however, keep it close to home and choose a country or folk approach.

Mira Billotte’s contribution to the I’m Not There soundtrack, where it is noticeable that drums and bass copy the original almost one-on-one, is quite nice. Just like Dylan, the acoustic Woven Hand limits itself to guitar, bass and percussion, thus proving once again: less is often more.

Yet the unbeatable Thea Gilmore wins again, with a relatively rigged, sometimes power-rocking version on her admirable tribute project John Wesley Harding (2011). The only one who dares to use a harmonica, that’s probably it. And Thea being the fairest damsel, obviously.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Bob Dylan Goes Time Travellin’ Once Again

Posted on November 30, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

It’s contended by most historians that there be no domesticated camels when Abraham is supposed to have lived, a time the following biblical verse refers to:

And the man came into the house
And he ungirded his camels

(Genesis 24:32)

Such a controversy need not exist, however. The inclusion of tame camels at the wrong time in history is easily explained. The biblical narrative is created after its author listens to, and revises, a song by the time-travelling minstrel Bob Dylan who, as previously explained, can actually do what Emanuel Swedenborg claims he could do. That is, Dylan does not look back in time, but he travels back in time:

You walked into the room like a camel, and then you frown
You put your eyes into your pocket, and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you comin' around

(Ballad Of A Thin Man)

Other biblical critics question the authenticity of the story that Moses tells concerning his journey into the Arabian wilderness:

And it came to pass that at even the quails came up
And covered the camp

(Exodus 16:13)

A simpler explanation than the conjecture that there must have been a bunch of migrating birds flying around is that Moses hears the song-and-dance, time-travellin’ man recite the lyrics quoted below; the biblical narrator likes them so much that he decides to include the birds mentioned therein in his own story about the Hebrews flight from Egypt:

Carolina born and bred
Love to hunt the little quail
Got a hundred-acre spread

(Nils De Caster: Catfish ~ Bob Dylan/Jacques Levy)

Then there’s the biblical story rendered below:

And when He thus had spoken
He cried in a loud voice
"Lazarus, come forth"
And he that was dead came forth
Bound hand and foot in grave-clothes

(John 11: 43, 44)

So too, John the Apostle is inspired to come up with the story about bringing someone back alive after listening to the time-drifter sing the following lyrics:

Oh, the High Sheriff told the deputy
"Go out and get me Lazarus
Dead or alive
Dead or alive"

(Bob Dylan: Poor Lazarus)

Problematic be the biblical story that Cain is depicted as a farmer, and Abel as a sheep herder when they were supposed to have lived long before such practices came into existence in human history. That Tubal-cain in his time-line be depicted as a worker of iron is even more problematic:

And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain
An instructer of every artificer in brass and iron

(Genesis 4: 22)

There must be some way outta here, and there is. Though he changes the person’s name a bit, the bibical narrator simply revises the lyrics of a song that the time-twister repeats to him:

Virgil Caine is the name
And I served on the Danville train
'Till Stoneman's cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again

(The Band: The Night They Drove Old Dixieland Down ~ Robbie Robertson)

Hearing ‘Danville’ in the above song lyrics explains why a variation on the name gets used in the Bible for a city that’s supposed to be in the Northern Kingdom of Israel at the time referred to in the following verse:

And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive
He armed his trained servants, born in his own house ....
And pursued them unto Dan

(Genesis 14:14)

As the holy book itself points out, Abraham’s northward pursuit should have ended in a city called ‘Laish’ – although by sheer coincidence the city later becomes known as ‘Dan’:

And they called the name of the city Dan
... the name of the city was Laish at the first

(Judges 18: 29)

Time travellers who go back in time like Bob Dylan does, and who ignore the universal ‘prime directive’ not to interfere in the events of history thaking place at that time, are bound to mess things up somewhere along the line.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Bob Dylan: the songs of moving on 1961/62

Posted on November 29, 2019 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This is part of a series of articles in which we examine the lyrical themes of Bob Dylan’s music. Articles so far in the series include

In this piece I’m looking at a favourite Dylan theme – and indeed a favourite theme within the blues genre – “moving on”. Of the 48 songs that Dylan wrote before the end of 1962, around 10 songs can be counted as being in this category.

In purest form of these songs, the travellers goes on his way mostly for no purpose other than travelling on. He is driven to travel, just as some are driven to change partners, driven to gamble, driven to eat, or (I guess some of my friends would say about me, driven to write, given that I not only run this blog but two others as well!)

And this song theme has a most particular element within it because Dylan is known as the man who has toured and performed more than anyone else in the world of music. The “Never Ending Tour” is certainly well named.

So in this particular theme we find something very close to Dylan’s heart – part of the essence of his own life. But at the same time in the songs as often as not we normally don’t find any reason for the travelling – it is more a case that the singer has to “just keep on keeping on” – defined as the act of doing what you have been doing but doing even it even more.

Thus sometimes we know the reason for moving on, but normally we don’t. The traveller just does it.

The first example of such a song in Dylan’s portfolio of compositions is Song to Woody in which he not only travels on but also remembers those who have trod this road before. So from the very start the song establishes moving on as an honourable tradition.

And this is also a song that establishes Dylan’s position on the subject, in two verses

I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

and…

Here’s to Cisco an’ Sonny an’ Leadbelly too
An’ to all the good people that traveled with you
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

Yes we are up and moving on.

But there can be deep regret too, as with Dylan’s next song in this genre I was young when I left home where he is concerned about his abandonment of his family.

Standing on the highway then shows us exactly where Bob was getting his inspiration from – Robert Johnson with Cross Road Blues:

Well, I’m standing on the highway
Trying to bum a ride, Trying to bum a ride
Trying to bum a ride
Well, I’m standing on the highway
Trying to bum a ride, Trying to bum a ride
Trying to bum a ride
Nobody seem to know me
Everybody pass me by

and the central nature of moving on because moving on is what he does comes with the fourth verse…

Well, I’m standing on the highway
Watching my life roll by

Rocks and gravel continues the theme, and this song was seriously considered for Freewheelin’. Here the singer is travelling on and looking for “that girl of mine” – one of the most common explanations or excuses for the travelling on.

And then we move on again to Down the Highway, recorded in one take, on the album, and then never played it in concert. Sheer contrariness? Maybe it just needed to be said, maybe it was about his girlfriend and that needed to be said.

No one really seems to have commented on it much either way, despite Howard Sounes’ book being named after it.

Of course in concert a song like this would be an absolute show ender. It is bleak in its unforgiving open chord tuning on the guitar and playing style that harks back to the blues masters of the 1930s. But then the sheer contrariness of Dylan’s nature suggests he might just do it one day. And besides it is based on reality – his woman has gone to Italy. He’s tailing along behind, and for that the sheer emptiness of the song’s feeling is perfect.

So the message is clear – it’s a lost love song and a blues about travelling on, all in one.

We should also notice that many of these songs are based on older blues travelling pieces, and this is certainly the case with Long Time Gone– a re-working of “Maggie Walker Blues” as can be seen from the opening lines…

Bob Dylan sings

My parents raised me tenderly
I was their only son
My mind got mixed with ramblin’
When I was all so young
And I left my home the first time
When I was twelve and one
I’m a long time a-comin’, Maw
An’ I’ll be a long time gone

“Maggie Walker” opens

My parents raised me tenderly,
They had no child but me.
My mind being placed on rambling,
With them I couldn’t agree
Just to leave my aged parents
And them no more to see.

And then, this being Dylan, he keeps the same theme but utterly changes direction with Don’t think twice.

This time we get a bit of an explanation for moving on; this is moving on without it being for the sake of moving on. It is all her fault…

I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

This really is different, and the line “You just kinda wasted my precious time” is as big of a put down as one can imagine.

But then with Walking Down the Line we are back to the more carefree existence – all of life’s troubles can be overcome by just moving on.

By now Bob was a star bringing in vast amounts of money through his songwriting and his appearances but he could still write

My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
And rolls and flows and rolls and flows
Through the holes in the pockets in my clothes

which is in itself quite interesting.

In terms of keeping on keeping on the year ended with Kingsport Town

The singer of this type of song portrays himself as having been around the world and suffered all sorts of hardships and problems, and he (or she but generally he) has washed up here, in this bar, and tells his tale.

Of course this is the antithesis of the troubadours who described the lives of the great nobles and ladies in their castles, but the function is similar. In both cases the singer is saying that he has seen the world and is returned to tell stories of it. It is just that in one case the world is the world of the lords and ladies, and in the other it is the world of the lonesome traveller, betrayed in love.

It is an approach that in England goes back to the Middle Ages, during which time mosst villages were totally isolated from the rest of the country and mostly from each other. “Born here and die here” was exactly what it was like for everyone and nothing changed the endless monotony of life other than the changing seasons, the religious festivals, and the occasional visitor from the Lord of the Manor’s estate office.

Since at that time a small town 20 miles away was as remote as the then unknown China, the tales were fanciful, but the singer gave himself some credence by placing himself within the adventures of which he told. If he had had great fortune, then his ragged clothes and asking for free food and drink in return for the singing would be hard to explain. So the songs of being misled, let down and cheated, came into fashion.

A difference thus has come between the reality of Bob Dylan, a star known across the world after Freewheelin’ and his still hankering after the keeping on keeping on songs.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I Believe In You: momentary conversion for all non-believers

Posted on November 28, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

Between November 1, 1979 and May 21, 1980, 202 days, Dylan undertakes three “Gospel Tours”. 79 Performances, during which, just as in the good old days, he has to endure a lot of booing and swearing. Dylan only plays new, evangelical work, lets the background ladies sing entire songs, in between losing himself, in long, humourless, often dramatic sermons, which is not always equally well-received.

Like on November 26 in Tempe, Arizona:

“There’s only one gospel. The Bible says anybody who preaches anything other than that one gospel, let him be accursed.

[shout from the audience: “Rock-n-roll!”]

Anyway, you know, this fellow stopped by my house one time and wanted to, so called, “turn me on” to a … well I’m not gonna mention his name, he’s a certain guru. I don’t want to mention his name right now, but ah, he, he has a place out there, near LA.

[“Malibu!”]

And ah, he stopped by and he gave me this taped cassette to show me …

[“Rock-n-roll!”]

… You wanna rock-n-roll you can go down and rock-n-roll. You can go see Kiss and you rock-n-roll all your way down to the pit.”

The angry rock fan has just had his share of the second song of the set, “I Believe In You”, and enough is enough, apparently.

Dylan’s assertive outburst is unusual; in general, criticism doesn’t bother him too much. Thus, at all 79 concerts the song remains in second place on the set list, after the traditional opening “Gotta Serve Somebody”.

The evangelical concerts are exceptionally good. Excellent musicians, a passionate Dylan and fantastic songs – but still, some sympathy for the disappointment of many ticket buyers can be felt. This is Bob Dylan!

“What do you believe in?” a reporter asks Dylan in 1966 during a somewhat surreal press conference at Syney airport. “I believe in you,” Dylan replied back then, “I believe in things I can see. Don’t you?”

That Bob Dylan. Right?

So, thirteen years after that creed in Sydney, the master “betrays” not only his fans, but also his old self. In 1979 he converts to Christianity, celebrating it quite radically. With purely evangelical concerts, sermons and a first gospel album, Slow Train Coming.

The discomfort among critics is huge. On the one hand, it has been a long time since Dylan delivered an album sounding this good. Moreover, the songs are beautiful too, but then again: those lyrics. Almost all of the lyrics sing his newly found faith in and awe of the Lord. Unfortunately, the master thereby opts for the subtlety of the sledgehammer, avoids poetic ambiguity and often… well, distressing might be the word covering it.

It is all tolerable thanks to the power of the music and all things around it; vocally Dylan delivers the most passionate and dedicated performances in years, the accompanying musicians are top notch and the production is great. Dylan has hired producer Jerry Wexler and has so much respect, possibly for the first time in his career, that he does as the boss says, after a rough first recording day. So Dylan willingly re-sings a part, and again, and is even prepared to record vocals after the instrumental basic track is recorded.

Well, the 62-year-old Wexler is not your everyday producer, of course – he is the man behind Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield, to name just two giants. He and Dylan have known each other for a while and six years ago they produced Barry Goldberg’s eponymous LP.

A second smart decision from Dylan is to follow Wexler’s advice and invite Mark Knopfler, the new guitar god who is just taking over the world with his Dire Straits. Dylan’s habit of giving a lot of freedom to the studio musicians works out very well this time. Knopfler is not only a very talented guitarist, but he also has a good sense of what a song needs and interferes with tempi, arrangements and even melody.

“I Believe In You” is a highlight. It is one of the tenderest ballads from Dylan’s oeuvre, rich in attractive melodies and performed with fairly rare vulnerabilities. Knopfler’s playing is tasteful, intimate even, and the piano accompaniment by seasoned studio musician (and co-producer) Barry Beckett is outstanding. Even the reviewers who cannot get over the aversion to the evangelical content give in here.

In terms of content, this song lyrics are not half bad either. Because of the songs around it, we know that the “You” must be the Lord, but if we look at it from an ignorant distance, we could fill it in differently, of course. And regard the song as maybe singing a forbidden or controversial love. Unlikely, but hey, if it helps to enjoy the particular beauty of this song, why not. Although even then the howling self-pity of phrases like I walk out on my own – in the pouring rain on top of that, poor chap – is actually not very uplifting.

One of the more prominent fans is Sinéad O’Connor, the Irish enfant terrible with the angelic voice and the confused personality, who knows both the controversy and the pitfalls of openly professed Christianity. In 2011, the Huffington Post publishes Sinéad’s congratulatory love letter to Bob Dylan. The letter is a partly squirmingly embarrassing, partly moving testimony of an unstable teenage girl (the Irish lady is then 45), but at least it is genuine. Stumbling, she makes it clear how Slow Train Coming has changed her life and has given her direction, she thanks him “for making Christian music sexy”, calls Dylan “Rabbi” and concludes her confetti canon with a fairly comprehensive retrospective of “the incident”:

“I had to do what I did in Madison Square Garden. Even if it meant being treated like a mental case for years after,”

… underlining the statement with the best possible words:

Even if they showed me to the door. And said don’t come back no more cuz I didn’t be like they’d like me to. Even if I walked out on my own. A thousand miles from home, I didn’t feel alone. Cuz I believe in you.

I believe in you, even through the tears and the laughter. I believe in you even though we be apart. I believe in you even on the morning after. Though the earth may shake me, though my friends forsake me, this feeling’s still here in my heart.

Don’t let me stray too far. Keep me where you are. So I will always be renewed. And Lord, what you’ve given me today is worth more than I could pay. And no matter what they say, I believe in you…

But, I digress, Bob. I only meant to tell you you’re gorgeous. So have seventy kisses for yourself on Tuesday.

… with (exactly) half the words of “I Believe In You”.

Appropriate, because “the incident” to which Sinéad refers, involves a thwarted performance of that song. Originally she would sing it at the 30th Anniversary Tribute Concert at Madison Square Garden, 1992. Shortly before, however, she tore a photo of the pope on TV, resulting in, among other things, insurmountable shouting, hissing and whistling. On the spot, Sinéad switches to a short, furious performance of “War”, subsequently in tears seeking comfort in Kris Kristofferson’s arms behind the scenes. However, her interpretation still is released on a Christmas album (A Very Special Christmas, Volume 2, 1992) and later as B-side of the single “Fire On Babylon”.

It is a brilliant execution. Even more intense than the original, more moving too, and enriched with Irish melancholy – thanks to the almost classical arrangement, especially. O’Connor’s slightly hysterical tendency towards the Mystical and her ability to reach rarefied, ethereal heights now yield a perfect pairing; precisely with this song, both qualities are huge plus points. Her live version in the Royal Albert Hall (1999) is hardly inferior, but unfortunately misses the clarinet solo from the studio version, the utterly utmost beautiful cover of “I Believe In You”. Even through the tears and laughter.

Here’s the live Royal Albert Hall 1999 performance…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318ZDSy3zn4

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Man Gave Names To All The Birds

Posted on November 27, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

The Untold Corporation has decided to release some more of its vast collection of Bob Dylan archived material to the public. Below are the lyrics of a song by Bob Dylan that he sang at a special meeting of the National Audubon Society held to honour member and poet John Geenleaf Whittier. The American singer/songwriter later revises the words to the song, and changes the title to “Man Gave Names To All The Animals”:

Man Gave Names To All The Birds

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

He saw a bird that liked to hoot
Had very sharp claws, and liked pursuit
Great round eyes that were always on the prowl
"Ah, think I'll call it an owl"

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

He saw a bird peckin' at some roadkill
Chewin' up the carrion until she was filled
'Twas a squashed porcupine if you wanna know
"Ah, think I'll call it a crow"

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

He saw a bird carryin' a baby to you
Looked like there was nothin' that he wouldn't do
His legs  were long, and his neck wasn't short
"Ah, think I'll call it a stork"

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

He saw birds covering Moses' camp
There was dew on the ground, and it was damp
Brown and white with a short little tails
"Ah, think I'll call it a quail"

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

Next bird that he did meet
Had a very long tail, and long claws on its feet
Eating berries and bananas that tasted so sweet
"Ah, think I'll call it a parakeet"

Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the birds
In the beginning, long time ago

He saw a bird with feathers smooth as glass
Waddling his way through the grass
Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake
"Ah, think I'll call it a drake"

---------

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Bob Dylan’s early songs of love and lost love

Posted on November 26, 2019 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

This is part of a series about Dylan’s early compositions based around the type of music he was exploring in his early years. If you missed the other parts you might like to revisit

The first stand out love or lost-love song that Bob Dylan recorded was not one of his own compositions but was an arrangement of the classic Corrina Corrina which dates back to 1928.

https://youtu.be/WbHs1EgFN5c

It had been re-worked many times before Bob recorded it for Freewheelin. To my mind the outtake is better than the version we got on the LP.

https://youtu.be/eZokHtbfnig

But it is interesting that in this particular genre Dylan was not yet ready to write and record his own love or lost-love song.

And indeed when he did venture into the genre shortly after he was once again using a phrase from a song in the 1920s Honey just allow me one more chance

https://youtu.be/1BYhFKFRt7E

So two songs, both with origins in the 1920s and both about lost love, rather that protestations of love.

And so the theme continued with Rocks and Gravel – a song which combines the blues and lost love.

And then the world changed because Bob wrote Quit your Lowdown Ways. Quite probably he just saw it as another 12 bar blues although if you can dig out your copy of Bootleg 1-3 you’ll hear Bob having a great time singing the blues for all its worth.

But then Peter Paul and Mary recorded the song, and Bob had his first lost love hit:

And so Bob and the song about love (or lost love) came together, and now he was off. Baby I’m in the mood for you (a song of absolute desire) came next and once again he was using inspiration from earlier days: in this case Jesse Fuller. The outtakes from Freewheelin are no longer on the internet but we do have other versions…

https://youtu.be/ysK2oltJNUA

So as we can see, in the space of a few months Dylan had got himself not only going into a new type of song, but also was finding all sorts of ways of expressing it.

Down the Highway then comes along – one that is said to be about his own situation with his girlfriend – although with many of the traditional blues themes of travelling, gambling and so on.

But that is a mere introduction to the moment when Bob Dylan showed us all that of course he can do love songs… or at least lost love songs

This recording leads on to the live version, which I care less for but that’s just my opinion. My point is that the preliminaries were now over and done. Bob Dylan could write beautiful lost love songs.

There’s beauty in the silver, singin’ river
There’s beauty in the sunrise in the sky
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love’s eyes
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin’
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin’
Only if she was lyin’ by me
Then I’d lie in my bed once again

There is a stunning beauty in both the music and the lyrics of that song which in this genre takes Dylan’s work to a new high, in my opinion.

It was not until six or seven compositions later (we can never be sure of the exact order in which these works were written) that Dylan touched on lost love again in one of the most famous of his songs, “Don’t think twice”, but this time it was the singer who was moving on.

And what we have with “Don’t Think Twice” is not just lost love, but lost love combined with another favourite Dylan theme of moving on, and a certain amount of nastiness as well in that now oh so famous ending…

I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

And with those lines, if we are trying to see a set of connections within Bob Dylan’s work (which is what I am trying to do by working through the themes within Dylan’s early writing) it is lost love, moving from the “give me one more chance” approach of “Honey just allow me…” early in the year through to this real rejection of “you just kinda wasted my precious time.”

It’s hard to get much nastier than that. It’s MY precious time that was wasted. It is all about the singer.

And although “Long Time Gone” which was written a little earlier is not a lost love song, it does have the same self-centred anger within it as Don’t Think Twice…

I once loved a fair young maid
An’ I ain’t too big to tell
If she broke my heart a single time
She broke it ten or twelve
I walked and talked all by myself
I did not tell no one
I’m a long time a-comin’, babe
An’ I’ll be a long time gone

and later…

So you can have your beauty
It’s skin deep and it only lies
And you can have your youth
It’ll rot before your eyes
Just give to me my gravestone
With it clearly carved upon:
“I’s a long time a-comin’
An’ I’ll be a long time gone”

As 1962 rolled on so Bob Dylan continued to roll on with the lost love theme, with Kingsport Town giving us

The winter wind is a blowing strong
My hands have got no gloves
I wish to my soul I could see
The girl I'm a-thinking of.

But he wasn’t always that kind. Hero Blues tells us

Yes, the gal I got
 I swear she’s the screaming end
 She wants me to be a hero
 So she can tell all her friends

And this turned out to be a prelude to “The Ballad of the Gliding Swan” although to be fair there is a little doubt as to whether it was Bob who wrote the lyrics. But given the way the songs were going in the latter part of 1962 I’d say yes…

Tenderly William kissed his wife
Then he opened her head with a butcher knife

And so 1962, the first great year of Dylan the composer, ended, with the love songs hardly getting much of a look in, and lost love dominating.

To me, the next time Dylan wrote a love song was with Spanish Harlem Incident in 1964, up to then, and indeed beyond then, it was lost love all the way.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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Bob Dylan: the songs of moving on 1961/62

I Believe In You: momentary conversion for all non-believers

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Bob Dylan’s early songs of love and lost love

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