Untold Dylan

By Larry Fyffe  

Surreal symbolism is no stranger to singer Bob Dylan:

Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Mules are misused as a metaphor for a stupid person; a male mule, though most often sterile, doesn’t know that, and carries on humping regardless; thusly, the ‘jack’ is employed as a metaphor for a devilish guy who’s always on the ‘make’ with little regard for moral considerations when doing so – gals who feel trapped in a relationship being good targets:

Now if you come home, and your food ain't cooked
And she give you a dirty look
Man that's all
Another mule is kicking at your stall

(Fats Domino: Another Mule ~ Bartholomew)

Bob Dylan uses variations on the theme above in some of the songs that he writes – seems that the jack, the narrator below, though he feels somewhat trapped, accepts domestication in exchange for sex, or so the lyrics can be interpreted:

However, who Rosie be isn’t all that clear:

Well, the devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you want to, I've heard it all
I was thinking about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed

(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

There’s this rather vulgar version of a song in which Rose accommodates the mule because the ‘john’ gets her to where she wants to go:

I'm going down to Rose Marie
She never does me wrong
She puts it to me plain as day
And gives it to me for a song
It's a wicked life, but what the hell ....
Rosie Marie, she likes to go to big places
And just sit there waiting for me to come

(Bob Dylan: Going To Acapulco)

On the other hand, the motherly female figure below is depicted as being quite spiritual – unlike the hedonistic ‘jack of hearts’; perhaps from her, he might learn to be more caring of the needs of others:

Rid yourself of mortal sin
And tell the truth one time
And find truth within
Saw you hanging with that group
Their minds made up of boiled soup

(Helena Springs: Tell The Truth One Time ~ Dylan/Springs)

In the following lyrics, the human female is presented as a Mary Madonna type:

Now you stand with your thief, you're on his parole
With your holy medallion in your fingertips now that fold
And your saintlike face, and your ghostlike soul
Oh, who among them could ever think he could destroy you?

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

Meanwhile, King Solomon of modern times drives around in a gold-plated chariot; the Rose of Sharon he leaves behind with memories of his mulish behaviour:

Time regards a pretty face like time regards a fool
You drive off in in your Cadillac
And leave me with the mule
In order to keep up with you, I must go back to school

(Helena Springs: More Than Flesh And Blood Can Take ~ Dylan/Spings)

In the following song, the narrator knows where it’s at, and considers himself no fool:

Well I'm driving in the flats in a Cadillac car
The girls all say, "You're a worn out star'
My pockets are loaded, and I'm spending every dime
How can you say you love someone else
When you know it's me all the time

(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

In a re-telling by the following postmodernist allegory of the Book of Genesis, Eve prefers the mysterious man dressed up in the dusty black skin of a snake rather than the oh-so-boring, mule-headed Adam, naked though he may be:

Somebody is out there beating a dead horse
She never said nothing, there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat

(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)

https://youtu.be/LfGRvwBn7VU

Moving right along, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is said by some interpreters of the Bible to be Adam’s first ‘wife’.  In disguise, she’s getting revenge for Adam wanting her as a servant rather than accepting her as a sexual equal in that she’s co-created along side the male human by a hermaphroditic God:

So God created Man in his own image
In the image of God created He him
Male and female created He them

(Genesis 1:27)

That female’s name is ‘Night’, ‘Lilith’, or ‘Lily”, while the ‘Eve’ of biblical canon is considered to be the second wife of Adam – she’s made from his rib. Poet John Keats likens the dark gnostic lady (mentioned previously in another article) to the snake-headed ‘Lamia’ of ancient mythology.

Johnny’s been down in Bob Dylan’s basement boiling up the soup.

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, links back to our reviews

By Tony Attwood

I’ll come straight out and say I love this book. But you need to be aware…  Books from Edlis Cafe are different – for they are taken from the Edlis projects on the internet.

So if you want to get a flavour of what this is all about go and visit their Facebook group – it is one of the very few Bob Dylan Facebook pages I would ever recommend other than our own.

And the point here is there is such a rich variety of information and material collected on their Facebook pages that having all that information it in book form is essential, allowing easier reading of the article and much better surveillance of the pictures than you can get on the internet.  In fact the book is worth its cost just for the Robert Shelton interview with Dylan’s “mom and dad”.

Since my copy arrived each time I have been working I have had the book open on my desk, just below the computer screen, turning the picture pages over and over to get what I hope is an ever deeper awareness of the town in which Bob grew up.   Of course I know about it from other volumes – but here I feel I am brought much closer to the world Bob knew as a kid.

Maybe it is because I am English and thus have no background in the American traditions and histories that are included in these pictures and stories that the impact on me is so great, but I am looking at a world that is quite alien to me, and yet it is one which I have glimpsed through occasional lines in Bob’s songs.

But there is also the fact that with this volume I can look at the store that Bob worked in as a youngster, and my mind drifts into thinking about whether other young lads of his sort of age meandered into the shop and bought stuff and were served by Bob, and now looking back think, “yes I did go in there, and there was that guy about my age, and oh my that must have been Bob Dylan.  I wonder if he remembers me…”

OK, its a nerdy thought, but for some of us such memories are powerful and important.  For this is a story of a world coming and going.  A story of youngsters travelling 15 miles to another town to meet up with the DJ who played the music they liked.  Of a time when and a town where racism was overt and legal.  There are contradictions between the memories of his family members and others who knew him and there are pictures, pictures, pictures.

Yes at times it feels muddled, but that is right, because in the real world that is exactly how our memories become.   The photographs tell only part of the reality.

It is over 280 pages of A4 size packed with pictures and text and it is wonderful.  Maybe one day it will come off my desk and go onto the bookshelves with all the other Dylan books, but that will a sad day, because it will mean I have not only studied the book to death but also because by then I will know it off by heart, and have no more to learn and re-learn.  I will no longer be enjoying the true reflection of looking back all these years to one’s childhood.

The book is available on Amazon.  In the UK that means you can get it here, but in the rest of the world just go onto your local Amazon and type in Edlis Cafe Bob Dylan’s Hibbing.

And if you don’t want it, buy it for a Dylan fan who is interested in where he came from.  They will love you even more than they do already.

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, links back to our reviews

by Jochen Markhorst

The most notorious Million Dollar Bash in recent decades is the party that was cancelled: the Fyre Festival in the Bahamas, on the island paradise of Great Exuma. The failure is spectacular. In the run-up to the luxurious, decadent, multi-day “Festival Of The Century”, social media influencers such as Kendall Jenner are paid (and not insignificantly, as the court case reveals: $275,000) to promote the party and that pays off: tickets for thousands of dollars are easily sold. 28 April 2017, the Furious Fiesta is gonna break loose, but a debacle it shall be.

The terrain is not ready, the spacious, expensive accommodations are shabby tents, there is insufficient food and water, the top artists are not contracted and the rushed cancellation, on Day One, leads to an apocalyptic, Lord Of The Flies-like chaos on and around the airport: to make matters worse, the organisation cannot get everyone back home.

The aftermath is just as sensational. Millions of dollars claims, lawsuits, imprisonment… in January 2019 two documentaries about this fiasco, produced separately, are broadcasted (Fyre Fraud and on Netflix Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened), both struggling to turn the multitude of tumult into a manageable reconstruction.

On the preceding evening, when quite a few guests have already arrived, a “spontaneous beach party” is organized, in which hastily mobilised members of a local band have to take care of the music. They are forced to continue playing for hours and are ultimately the only act of the festival. The set list is unknown. But “Million Dollar Bash” would have been the obvious choice. Even with prophetic value, already in the opening lines:

Well, that big dumb blonde
With her wheel in the gorge
And Turtle, that friend of theirs
With his checks all forged 

No shortage of big dumb blondes, there on Great Exuma, the wheel in the gorge serving as an original metaphor for the derailment of the event and Turtle forging checks is organizer McFarland who in October 2018 is sentenced to six years in prison for his Million Dollar Fraud.

Fortunately, the million-dollar party of Dylan and the guys from The Band, in that basement of the Big Pink in West Saugerties, is a lot less pumped up, much more colourful and much more successful anyway. And funnier too.

At least, Dylan and The Band apparently think it’s a novelty song, a cabaret-like song that is based on humour. In his autobiography (Testimony, 2016) Robbie Robertson tells how while he was away for a couple of errands, the others quickly recorded “Yea Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread” and “Million Dollar Bash”.

“We smoked a J and laughed ourselves to pieces at these recordings. Bob said, “Okay, who would be good to do those songs?” We suggested everybody from Brook Benton to Marty Robbins. “No…Little Jimmy Dickens, don’t you think?” I offered.  Garth made some toots and whistles come out of his organ.”

The link with Marty Robbins and with Brook Benton (because of “Boll Weevil” perhaps?) is not entirely traceable, but Little Jimmy Dickens, the small country celebrity who makes a name for himself with humorous songs such as “May The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose” and “Truck Load Of Starvin’ Kangaroos” is indeed a candidate for a novelty song. But still – are these really novelty songs? Both songs have neither head nor tail, lack a pointe, and indeed lack any other kind of smasher, like a dialogue with goofy voices (“What’s The Use Of Getting Sober”) or stuttering (“K-K-K-Katy”) or silly sound effects (“Beep Beep”) – Little Jimmy probably would have kindly declined.

Robertson’s association is probably triggered by the two references in “Million Dollar Bash”, the references to “Yakety Yak” and to “Along Came Jones”, two well-known novelty hits from The Coasters, both written by the grandmasters Leiber and Stoller, by the way.

However, those references do not justify the stamp “novelty”. Like Yea Heavy, the lyrics of “Million Dollar Bash” are an unrelated accumulation of meaningless, nonsense observations, loosely held together by a refrain line and a chorus. The poet Dylan does, however, succeed in suggesting epic; the song seems to be a report of a party that gradually gets out of hand. “Everyone will be there,” the first verse promises, in between the poet points to guests like Turtle and Silly Nelly in a tone as if everyone knows who they are and he mentions, just like in “Clothes Line Saga” banalities (“Jones emptied the trash”, “I looked at my wrist”) which, by mere mentioning it, suggest symbolism or depth – which is not there, of course.

Just like with Yea Heavy, the creative process does still fascinate: where do those half-known sentences, names, images originate?

Partly from the language itself, apparently. The associative mind of the language virtuoso Dylan automatically jumps from alliteration to rhyme to alliteration in such a shuffling, strolling verse: checks – cheese – chunk – cash – bash, for example, just as every sixth line is dictated only by the restriction that a rhyme on bash must be done. Thus leading to emptied the trash or then push and then crash.

Harder to trace are striking content data, like those names. Silly Nelly? “Nelly” is an almost extinct name in the United States; according to the Social Security Administration, the name has not been in the Top 1000 of most popular names since 1900. Literally the name does not seem to inspire either. Few Nellies. The storyteller in Wuthering Heights (1847), housekeeper Nelly, is called silly one time (by main character Cathy; you’re silly, Nelly), but it’s unlikely that Dylan has struggled through that novel, let alone that it would have a lasting influence on his creative vein.

In songs yes, the name does live on in songs. Especially in old songs, by the way. “Nelly Bly” for example, from the Bob Dylan of the nineteenth century, Stephen Foster, the same Nelly who makes a guest appearance in “Frankie And Johnny” (There sat her lover man Johnny / Makin’ love to Nelly Bly). And Dylan can undoubtedly also sing along with Shel Silverstein’s “Hey Nelly Nelly”.

That song he knows via Judy Collins, who sings it on her third album (with the sparkling title Judy Collins # 3). Collins records the album in March 1963 and makes the young Dylan’s ears burn by covering his “Masters Of War” and “Farewell”. The same album opens with “Anathea”, the song that Dylan will transform into the masterful “Seven Curses”, and contains Judy’s versions of “Deportee” and “The Bells Of Rhymney” – songs that will appear on Dylan’s set list too. Judy Collins # 3 and with that “Hey Nelly Nelly”, that much is clear, is under Dylan’s skin.

But Nelly was there earlier, as shown by the Gaslight Tapes, the recordings from Dylan in October ’62 in the Gaslight Café, New York. Dylan plays the age-old “The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird” (also called “The Evening Meeting”, or “The Coo Coo Bird”, or “Going To Georgia”, and some more title variations) which he knows from Clarence Ashley’s rendition. And here the song poet changes, for no apparent reason, the line So I can see Willie / As he goes on by into So I can see Nelly / As she goes on by.

Still – not too popular, Nelly. Neither in Dylan’s oeuvre (one more Nellie, in “Wanted Man”), nor in songs at all. Not comparable with the quantity of Marys (and the variants Marie, Maria, Rosemary and Rose Marie), in any case.

Dylanesque, in conclusion, are the casually infused catachreses, the abusios, the familiar sounding word combinations that are nevertheless completely original, or simply incorrect. The louder they come, the harder they crack is one of those, and I get up in the mornin’ but it’s too early to wake. We know the style figure from the glory years ’65 -’66, as strongholds of poetic explosions like “Farewell Angelina” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, but on a lazy afternoon in the late summer of 1967 the bard shakes them with obvious ease, carelessly improvising, out of his sleeve.

The song is popular. “Million Dollar Bash” is in the Lucky Dip Bag from which the British lucky dogs like Manfred Mann (“Quinn The Eskimo”) and Brian Auger and the Trinity (“This Wheel’s On Fire”) may grab, and Fairport Convention takes off with the party number. Bass player Ashley Hutchings, who by the way will record the most beautiful version of Dylan’s rejected masterpiece “Angelina” in 1988, remembers the first encounter with that selection of Basement Tapes somewhere in a London office, thirty-six years later:

“’Most of the group went in there, sat around, and put these vinyl, white-label copies on,’ recalls bassist Ashley Hutchings. ‘And this strange, kind of mish-mash of styles and drawled lyrics came out of the speakers. It sounded kind of subterranean; there was this strange cloak of weirdness covering them. We loved it all. We would have covered all the songs if we could.”

(The Observer, 20 June 2004)

But they have to choose, and eventually “Million Dollar Bash” becomes one of the highlights of the beautiful album Unhalfbricking. The song is also a keeper on the set list; the 1997 Cropredy version is irresistible.

A little earlier the cover of Stone Country, the first band of country rock pioneer Steve Young, is released, shortly before he writes his immortal “Seven Bridges Road” as a solo artist. In addition to a very nice LP (Stone Country), the forgotten band also releases four singles in 1968, one of which is a “Basement-single”: “This Wheel’s On Fire” (May ’68). The B-side is a very nice, Buffalo Springfield-like version of “Million Dollar Bash” – both songs are in 2007 as bonus tracks on the re-release of that sole album.

An equally charming psychedelic 1960s allure has The Mixed Bag – another B side, on the rightly-forgotten Tim Rice-produced single “Potiphar” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (1969).

Gunga Din, The Beards, Crust Brothers… the song remains popular in the twenty-first century and actually every cover is fun. One of the nicest of this century is on the sympathetic Garth Hudson Presents A Canadian Celebration Of The Band, on the re-release in 2011, the version with Steve Leckie and Thin Buckle. 

My, how such a Canadian Celebration in Garth Hudson’s shed sounds infinitely more festive than a Fyre Festival in the Bahamas.

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, links back to our reviews

By Chris Jolliffe

It was pouring and the forecast was for rain all evening, but Anna and I were committed.   I’d sold her on the idea of going to see Bob Dylan, in spite of her avowed lack of desire to do so (perhaps my grandest understatement ever), arguing that someday she’d be glad to have seen such a musical giant.  So we drove into the wind and the rain to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, home of the Boston Red Sox farm team, to see the show.

(The pic above taken from Wikipedia, is obviously not of the Dylan show in progress).

Pawtucket is a working class town, a low sprawl of light industry and residential neighborhoods.  McCoy Stadium, hearkening back to the 1940s, is an old school Triple A ball yard like God intended it.  Even in the rainy mist it was redolent of hot summer evenings and the sound of hardballs on wooden bats and leather gloves.  As we approached the stadium on foot, $20 lighter after a disturbingly informal wallet-to-wallet gathering of a parking fee in what appeared to be someone’s backyard, the clanging of electric guitars was clearly audible.  Willie Nelson’s unvarnished voice rang out, bouncing off the bleachers.  He was doing a straight up medley of Hank William’s songs.  The rain was lifting and as we walked it took only the slightest suspension of disbelief to imagine that the year was 1947, and that voice, singing Move It On Over, Hank himself; on that day’s sports page Ted Williams working on his consecutive on-base streak.

We threaded the residential blocks toward the music, passing parked tour buses with their high tires and tantalizing opaque windows.  Two days from now Dylan would be picked up by the police in a New Jersey neighbor not unlike this one after neighbors phoned in reports of a shady character lurking in a hooded sweat shirt.  Dylan wasn’t carrying ID and when asked his name, might as well have identified himself as Zimmie for all it mattered to the 24 year old officer who had posed the question.   Dylan led the police back to his tour bus and made, I imagine, a compelling case that he was “somebody”, although I’m not sure how that exonerated him from lurking in a hooded sweatshirt.

By the time we passed through the entrance gates Willie’s set was over.  We stepped into view of the playing field, and even in this modest stadium, I was predictably transported back 45 years to my first professional baseball game at Dodger Stadium.   That first grassy glimpse of the stretching outfield and crisp white foul lines have permanently set the bar for me on wide open inspiration.  We found a couple of seats half way up the bleachers just beyond third base.  The stage was in center field.  Had this been Fenway Park these would have been seats to die for.  As far as seats for a Dylan concert, not so much.  We could have moved down to the field closer to the music, but I was willing to concede recognition of facial features in exchange for a modicum of physical comfort.

John Mellencamp, played a serviceable set; his all American songs could have been written expressly for this archetypal setting.  I enjoyed it but the knowledge that I was incurring low level permanent ear drum damage took a slight toll on my appreciation.   Anna had already given up on finding some musical common ground and at the end of Mellencamp’s set was chafing at the bit for deliverance from her Dad’s music.

Dylan was brought on with his customary tongue in cheek bombastic introduction and launched into his set with one of his lesser-known songs, Cat’s In The Well.  Although Anna may have been one up on that New Jersey cop in her ability to recognize the name Bob Dylan, there was, nonetheless, not a single song he played that night which she recognized, or frankly, could have recognized.  These days even fans sometimes have to wait a verse or two into some of his songs before they can identify them.  It’s a common complaint that he’s messing with his holy classics.  The whole argument, in my view, is nonsense.   Dylan’s fidelity to his own truth of how his songs should be played is, and always has been, his greatest gift to the world.

Floating on a heart rending version of This Wheels On Fire, I took a phone picture of the stage and punched out a text message to my brother, knowing that a few weeks from now he was going to be taking his son,  even younger than Anna, to see Dylan on this baseball stadium tour.

During a break between songs I eavesdropped on a fan directly behind me who was pontificating with gusto, apparently feeling the need to show off his Dylan chops to the guy next to him.

“Blonde On Blonde, 1965, Nashville musicians.”

“Blood On The Tracks was recorded on Rosh Hashanah. “

It was a bit annoying, but at least he seemed to have his facts straight.

“Robbie Robertson was his greatest foil.”

“He didn’t sell out at Newport in 1965”.

I felt compelled to sneak glimpse over my shoulder at the person issuing this blitzkrieg of disjointed minutia and realized that there was nobody next to him.  He wasn’t talking to anybody, just talking.  A few minutes later somebody came down the aisle, took him by the elbow and led him away.

Dylan stood fast in the spotlight.   It was dark now and it had started to drizzle.  If you looked up into the stadium lights you could get the idea that it was pouring, but the lights always make the rain look worse than it actually is.  Still, if this had been a baseball game, a rain delay might be in the wings.

We left early, not that I wasn’t enjoying the show, but I had promised Anna I wouldn’t make this into an ordeal for her.  We got lost in the darkened neighborhoods trying to find the car and had to retrace our steps back to the stadium to reorient.  We traced the right field fence, trying to find the same exit we’d come in at 3 hours earlier, and all at once we found ourselves right down by the stage with the rabble on the high volume flats.  Dylan was playing Po’ Boy, a song which for me represents a stroke of his melodic lyricism, a vanishing commodity which I cherish, perhaps more than any of his other qualities.  Even this amped up version of the song had that sweet lilt.  Such moments inexplicably lift my spirits.   Feeling pressured by Anna to get us out of here I tried to redirect my attention to the outfield fence in search of the exit, but my focus was scrambled by the song’s beauty and I missed it again.

Eventually we found the car and drove home, tired and only a bit damp.  I still believe that someday Anna will be glad that she went.

If you have memories of a concert of Dylan’s from the past that has some special meanings for you, and you’d like to share them with Untold Dylan, we’d love to receive them.  Please send the article as a Word file (or a Google Doc file) to Tony@schools.co.uk    By all means add photos as separate files – ideally jpg (adding a note of where they should appear) but please not photos taken from other sites as they might be copyright.  And of course if you have published something to youtube do give that reference too so we can link  to that.

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, links back to our reviews

By Tony Attwood

When we started the search for a copy of “Liverpool Gal” we knew there was a very early recording around somewhere but just couldn’t find it.  So we advertised for any reader on this site who would take on the job of recording the song, from the information we had.

The result was twofold – one part was that one of our readers produced his own version, and the other was that Aaron traced more information on the original recording from an anonymous source.

Dear Anon, thank you so much.   Here it is…

As we have noted Dylan has not copywrited the song – which is unusual – and the only recording from around the time of its conception was made at Tony Glover’s Minneapolis home in 1963.

But the references to snow in London are most certainly real at this time and that gives us the opening clue to the fact that this work was based on a real situation.

Of course, we don’t know who the Liverpool gal was, although many have speculated, but we can see the song’s importance as coming from a time when Dylan was starting to based his music around folk songs from the British Isles.   It was something that was dominant through to “Restless Farewell” as we have noted elsewhere.

Here many commentators cite as the source “The Lake s of Pontcha rt ra in” with the story of the lonely traveller who meets the fair maid who he then leaves but he remembers her forever.  It is the very stuff of this folk tradition which formed the basis later for “Girl From the North Country,” and “One too many mornings.”   The physical songs of moving on, which I have written something about in my reviews of Dylan’s themes year by year, combining with emotional expression.

In this case however Dylan’s writing about the girl in the song is clearer than normal – she is more real, whereas normally it is the moving on that is the fundamental reality of the song and because of this the song becomes more potent.  Where the moving on is the dominant power, the people left behind are just people left behind.  But not this time – he still has to go, but that woman never leaves his mind.

And this is emphasised by the fact that the woman understands.  And that is a poignant force – because those who do not experience the need to keep on moving on find it near impossible to understand how one can leave behind the person one leaves, just to keep on moving on.

But here there is no begging for her him not to leave.  She gets it too.

So who was she?  The most popular thought is that she could have been Pauline Boty, generally regarded as the founder of the British Popart movement.  The current wikipedia entry for her says that her “paintings and collages often demonstrated a joy in self-assured femininity and female sexuality, and expressed overt or implicit criticism of the “man’s world” in which she lived.”     She was born 6 March 1938 and died 1 July 1966.  The Guardian has a good piece about her online.

And here we have another version, provided as a result of our appeal for copies of the song.

And one more

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, links back to our reviews

The RAZ (Robert Allen Zimmerman)

By Larry Fyffe

Now look at all you jugglers, and you clowns
Carrying Siamese cats on your shoulders, jumping up and down
Sucking up all that juice, thinking you got it made
And patting each other on the back
And hipping each other on who’s the greatest cat in town

President Kennedy he’s calling me up
So’s my friend Brigette Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren
Ernest Borgnine
An’ little Bo Beep from up on top of the hill

All them other hills will give you a song to straighten you out
I went back there for ya to get me straight
And all the cats around told me they didn’t know who I was talkin’ about

But I’m gonna put a cat on you
The coolest, whippingest,  wailingness, swingingest cat
That’s ever been down in the well
The strummingest cat that ever stepped on this green and pleasant land

And they called this here cat
The RAZ
He’s a carpenter kitty

Now the RAZ was the kind of cat
That came on so cool, so groovy
When he laid it down
Tambourine Man
It laid around!

Naturally all the rest of the cats said
“Man, look at that cat wail
He’s a-wailing up a shelter from the storm up there”
Hey, I’m telling you, he’s laying it down right
I’m trying to dig up what’s the cat’s tied on the tracks
Pushing him to give more miracle licks

And RAZ says, “Cool babies
Tell you what I’m gonna do
I ain’t takin’ two, four, six, eight of you cats
I’m gonna take all twelve of you studs
And  straighten you all out at the same time
Say, you cats, you cats, look like you’re pretty hip”

He says, “You buddy with me”
So the RAZ and his buddies they get off after midnight
Walk down the boulevards of broken cars
Where they bump into a little red bike with a bent frame
And RAZ say, “I don’t know what I would do
Without this love we call ours”

The RAZ looks at that little red bike with the bent frame
And he say ” What’s a-matter with you?”
And the little red bike say
“My frame is bent, RAZ”
And he looked right down in the window of the little bike’s soul
And he laid his hands on her Golden Loom
And he say, “Bend a little more”
And the RAZ straightened right out
And a little red arrow pierced his heart
Room-Boom!
And  RAZ say, “I’m taking you with me when I go”

And he say to his cat buddies
“Be like Blake, dig infinity!”
And they dug it. And when they dug it, Whap!
There was a flash of thunder
And when they looked there was a great big, swinging, smoked fish in one hand
And in the other a lazy, gone-crazy loaf of honey-tasting sweetbread

Why these poor cats flipped
The RAZ never did nothing simple
Not under the moon and stars
When he laid it down, he laid it!

Everyone’s talking ’bout the RAZ
What a great cat he is
How he’s swinging the glory of love
How he stomps on the money-changers’ charts
And knocking on the corners of heaven’s door
How he put it down to one Cat, dug it
Didn’t dig it
Put it down twice, dug it
Didn’t dig it
Put it down a third, dug it
Boom
Walked away with the answer still blowing in the wind
Now, they’re pulling on the tails of RAZ’s long black coat
Waiting for him to save everybody in his wife’s home town

Commentary by Tony Attwood, recording by Matthew Gordon

Liverpool Gal was recorded by Dylan in July 1962 and a recording was made by Tony Glover – and according to Heylin was written the previous May.  So that places it just before the third album.  Apparently it was however not registered for copywrite purposes.

The song is based around the folk song “When first unto this country” which Dylan performed in 1989 and 1991 on tour.  The message of the song is fairly standard – the outsider coming to the big city and not knowing anyone.

The Tony Glover recording has been kept in private hands for some time, and so we asked for anyone of our readers who was brave enough to take the song Liverpool Gal by Bob Dylan and record it for this site.

Which is quite a thing to ask, and I must admit I doubted if anyone would take up the challenge – and Matthew did so.    I am so grateful to Matthew for doing this – I know we have a huge number of musicians reading this blog – but no one else seems to have wanted to take up the challenge.

Anyway we have our own recording supplied by a reader, and I am going to say, if you have a band or you are a solo artist and you want to provide your own recording of a Dylan song I’ll certainly put that up.  If we get any more what I’ll do is set them up on a page of their own.  Hopefully they will show everyone what can be done by fans.

So, Matthew, absolutely brilliant that you have taken up the challenge that no one else has done.  Thank you so much.  Congrats – on being the one and only Untold Dylan reader willing to take up the challenge.

As it happens, as a result of my previous comments we have now been given a copy of the earlier copy that has circulated, which I will publish in a later article.  But I think Matthew should have the limelight for now.  We supplied the lyrics and the chords, and the basis of the tune, and Matthew was the one person willing to take the task on.

Lyrics to the song

When first I came to London town
A stranger I did come
I'd walk the streets so silently
I did not know no-one
I was thinking thoughts and dreaming dreams
The kind when you roll along
But most of all I was thinking about
the land I'd left back home

I'd stand by the river Themes
with the wind blowing through my hair.
And who should come and stand by me
but a London gal so fair.
Her eyes were blue, her hair was brown
Her face was gentle and kind
For a second, well, I clear forgot
The land I left behind

As we began walking and talkin'
All through the English air
I did not know where we'd end up
'til we came to the top of a stair
As we lay round on a worn-out rug
the room it was so cold
And we talked for hours by the inside fire
'bout the outside world so old.

All through our sweet conversation
She thought my ways were so strange
But I know there was one thing about me
That she would try to change
And the night passed on with the drizzeling rain
There's one thing I found out
[A pair of sweet curls] I know too well,
Her love I know not much about 

And I awoke the next morning
And the rain had turned to snow
I looked out of her window
And I knew that I must go
I did not know how to tell her
I didn't know if I could
But she smiled a smile I'd never seen
To say she understood.

And thinking of her as I stood in the snow
How strange she appeared to be,
On the reason I was leaving,
she seemed no better than me.
I gazed all up at her window
where the snowy snow-flakes blowed
I put my hands in my pockets
And I walked 'long down the road.

So it's now I'm leaving London, boys
Well, the town I'll soon forget,
Likewise its winds and weather
Likewise some people I met
But there's one thing that's for certain
Sure as the sunshine down
I'll never forget that Liverpool Gal
Who lived in London Town.

And here is more from Matthew.  Matthew Gordon | CD Baby Music Store

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, links back to our reviews

By Patrick Roefflaer

• Released:                 August 8, 1964
• Photographer:          Sandy Speiser
• Liner Notes:              Bob Dylan
• Art-director:               John Berg

On the evening of June 9, 1964, Bob Dylan had recorded fourteen original compositions. Eleven of those songs were selected to form his fourth album, called Another Side of Bob Dylan. Even as late as 1978, the singer showed himself unhappy with the title, for which he blamed producer Tom Wilson: “I thought it was just too corny,” he said, “I just felt trouble coming when they titled it that.”

A portrait of the singer was needed for the sleeve. So, sometime in early Summer, Columbia staff photographer Sandy Speiser and Bob Dylan met in the company’s recording studio on the seventh floor of 799 on Seventh Avenue, New York. This was probably after a mixing session for the album, as producer Tom Wilson can be seen in one of the outtakes from the photo session.

Speiser proposed to hit the street and see what happens – much in the same way his colleague Don Hunstein had done for the photograph on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Based on what Dylan is wearing (a dark brown collarless coat over a mock-turtleneck shirt), some ten photographs of the session could be identified as coming from that same date.

As some of these pictures are printed in colour, either Sandy Speiser was carrying two cameras: one with a colour film and another with black-and-white, and was using them alternately, or – more likely – all these photos, including the album cover, were shot in colour.

Bob Egan is a New Yorker who keeps a very interesting website, called PopSpotsNYC, where he publishes the results of his research to find “The exact locations of album cover photos and other visuals of pop history”, mostly in New York City.

Thanks to Bob Egan’s detective work, we can follow the trajectory the three men took that day, almost step by step.

The starting point is the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 52nd Street, just outside the building where the Columbia studio is located. They cross the street and walk down 52nd Street, heading West, staying on the pavement on the left side.

First stop is a newsstand, where Tom Wilson buys a newspaper, as can be seen on two surviving colour pictures.

A bit further, just across the next intersection, an amusement centre is located on the south-west corner of 52^nd Street and Broadway.

They go inside and Bob tries out a rifle-shooting game – at least three photos were taken.

Back outside, they notice a policeman, just around the corner, talking to a woman. Bob walks pass them, looking knowingly over his shoulder to the photographer.

While doing so, they pass the outside of the arcade centre.

A window where masks and joke items are displayed, is recognized as an interesting background.

One mask represents Jackie Kennedy, another the French president Charles De Gaulle. Dylan crouches in front of the window, for two more photos.

With Dylan still crouched on the sidewalk, Speiser then moves to the right of him to take some more pictures.

While doing this, Speiser notices a lamp pole, with a distinctive triangular street sign, as used then all along Broadway.

Dylan poses in front of the pole, smiling while looking to the right. Then he moves to the left, first somewhat contemplative-looking downward, and finally posing with his left foot on the bottom of the pole. And that’s the cover of Another Side of Bob Dylan.

Columbia’s art director John Berg, places the photo, printed in black-and-white, in the centre of a white square, with on the upper left, the album title and on the other side the CBS logo, plus the song titles.

‘Some Other Kind of Songs’, a long text by Dylan occupies the entire back of the cover

Note:

The photo with the masks, “Large Selection of Masks”, is considered in 2003 for the front of Volume 6 of the Bootleg Series: Live 1964 – Concert at Philharmonic Hall. Ultimately, a portrait from another session with Speiser is preferred.

Also in this series

• The Untold Story of the Artwork on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• The Sleeve Art of Bob Dylan’s album: “Bob Dylan”
• The Sleeve Art of Bob Dylan’s Album: Slow Train Coming
• The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – the untold story of the artwork of the album
•  Times they are a changin’: the album artwork
• The art work on Bob Dylan’s albums: The Basement Tapes

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, and links back to our reviews

By Larry Fyffe

A number of songs by Bob Dylan are influenced by Memphis, Tennessee – in one way or another:

I went to my window. My window was propped
I went to my door. My door was locked
I stepped right back. I shook my head ….
I shot through the window. I broke the glass
(Memphis Jug Band: On The Road ~ Jones/Shade)

He’s heading out:

Well I took me a woman late last night
I’s three-fourth drunk, she looked all right
‘Till she started peeling off her onion gook
She took off her wig, said, “How do I look?”
I’s high flying, bare naked, out the window
(Bob Dylan: I Shall Be Free)

Down south to Tennessee:

I was thinking about Ma Rainey, wondering where could Ma Rainey be
I’ve been looking for Ma Rainey, even  been in old Tennessee …
She was born in Georgia, travelled all over this world
And she’s the best blues singer, peoples, I ever heard …
When she made Bo Weavil Blues, I’m living way down the line
Every time I hear that record, I just couldn’t keep from crying
(Memphis Minnie: Ma Rainey)

https://youtu.be/0iyiJCfhDsQ

Dylan’s “other” is trying to make it all the way to Memphis:

I was thinking ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep 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 clear through Tennessee
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

Could get there by riverboat:

Oh, I thought I heard that steamboat whistle a-blow
And she blowed like she never blowed before ….
I’m afraid my little lover’s on that boat
And it will take her to the Lord knows where
(Shirkey and Harper: Steamboat Man)

Could be by train:

Listen to the Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowing like she never blowed before ….
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowing like my woman’s on board
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle ~ Dylan/Hunter)

Could be in a souped-up Ford:

Sometimes into Ashville, sometimes Memphis town
The Revenues chased him, but they couldn’t run him down
Each time they thought they had him, his engine would explode
He’d go by like they were standing still on ‘Thunder Road’
(Robert Mitchum: The Ballad Of Thunder Road ~  Mitchum/Raye)

Or in a blue Mustang:

This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Better notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode
(Bob Dylan: This Wheel’s On Fire ~ Dylan/Danko)

Maybe he’ll get there, and maybe he don’t:

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink your blood like wine …
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With The Memphis blues again
(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)

There’s always the telephone:

Help me, information, get in touch with my Marie
She’s the only one who’d call me from Memphis, Tennessee
Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge
Just a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge
(Chuck Berry: Memphis Tennessee)

Some people will give you a hand, some won’t:

Long-distance operator
Please place this call, you know it’s not just for fun
I gotta get a message to my baby
You know, she’s not just anyone
(The Band ~ Bob Dylan)

Anyway, if Bobby doesn’t make it to the top of the hill, you know Brucey will:

Climb in back, heaven’s waiting down the tracks
Oh, oh, come take my hand
We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh, oh, Thunder Road
Oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it’s late, but we can make it if we run ….
So Mary climb in
It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win
(Bruce Springsteen: Thunder Road)

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, including links to our reviews.

by Jochen Markhorst

There are thousands and thousands of Dylan covers, and a small percentage of them are worth listening to. And a small percentage of this small percentage steps out of the shadow of Dylan’s own version and achieve what a cover should achieve; it enriches the original. Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” is one of the best examples, and there really aren’t that many more examples, despite those thousands and thousands of attempts.

The cover artist has a greater chance of success, as a tour along the covers shows, with songs that never left the sketching phase. For the treasure hunter there are dozens of Dylan songs that the master himself never let mature in the rehearsal room, never performed on stage, never really refined or finished. There is of course a hard core of Dylan fans who stick to the slightly dramatic adage Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan, but the vast majority of the music-loving community is very happy with the beauty that artists like The Byrds, Jack Johnson, Derek Trucks or Sinéad O’Connor find in Dylan’s odds and ends.

The Basement Tapes are a true treasure trove in that category, which has been sufficiently proven. “Quinn The Eskimo” is little more than some droll little ditty until it is elevated by Manfred Mann to the monument that it has since become. “Clothes Line Saga” is a corny, deliberate monotonous joke and has long been forgotten, until The Roches’ sisters polish it up and reveal that the song contains a sparkling jewel. “Crash On The Levee”, “Please Mrs. Henry”, “This Wheel’s On Fire”… all of them raw gems with a deeper beauty that is only uncovered later by the colleagues (and occasionally also by Dylan himself).

The height that The Roches and Manfred Mann are able to achieve is matched by Jim James, who, together with the men of Calexico, takes care of the wallflower “Goin” To Acapulco”. Their contribution to the Dylan film I’m Not There (2007) is one of the undisputed highlights, partly because director Todd Haynes places the song in a sensational, surrealistic context.

The Dylan character, in this excerpt played by Richard Gere, walks observingly into a village during the American Civil War. The atmosphere is chaotic. On the left and right, dozens of civilians, frantically dressed fairground customers and tired soldiers hurry somewhere. A giraffe walks stiffly through the image. The flow of people is concentrated in front of a music chapel, an ostrich strolls along. Then everything comes to a breathless halt when Jim James’s unearthly voice blares across the village: “I’m going down to Rose Marie’s.”

The stage of the chapel is filled with musicians who looted Sgt. Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club Band’s wardrobe. The nostalgia seeps from their stage presentation and from the music they play. An older couple seeks comfort when two men raise an open coffin on the same stage; the corpse of a young woman, still a girl, who seems to be looking with eyes open, quite celestially, over the spectators to the Heavenly Kingdom. Solemn, sad attention binds the so diverse bystanders.

Director Haynes is, that much is clear, not only inspired by Greil Marcus’s weird old America, but apparently also by Dylan’s alienating statements about “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”. Still full of the mercury beauty of that song, Dylan hails it as “religious carnival music”.

A hard-to-follow qualification. Some religious symbolism and devout devotion may be found (but far too little to justify the label religious), and wherein the artist thinks to hear carnival is mysterious. Just as challenging as it is to get a clear picture Dylan’s mysterious classification; religious is a state of soul or spirit, carnival or funfair appeals to sensual, carnal pleasures.

But behold: when Jim James’ rendition, Dylan’s song and Haynes’ images come together, then we are there indeed: religious carnival music.

Most commentators point out the scabrous nature of the protagonist’s visit to Rose Marie, which then has the character of a visit to a prostitute; he “blows his plums”, “scratches his meat”, “gets something quick to eat” and “has some fun”. Not all of them are unambiguous, and some metaphors are rather eccentric, but the overall idea is pretty clear – he ain’t here for a cup of tea.

Dylan’s recital, however, adds a deeper dimension, and Jim James does reinforce it. The rendition is dramatic, rather a Job-like lamentation than the roar of an overexcited john. This is a lonely, unhappy soul seeking salvation. And he does not turn to some cheap harlot, but to Rose Marie, Maria, Our Lady with the Roses, who is always good for him. Probably the same Maria as in “Just Like A Woman” (Queen Mary, she’s my friend, I believe I’ll go see her again).

The poet does seem to steer in that direction, before publishing the lyrics, first in The Songs Of Bob Dylan 1966-1975 and later in Lyrics (1985), as he deletes, adds and scraps quite a lot from the most ambiguous passages. Thus the lines of text with the alcohol and the juicy fruit disappear,

I can blow my plums, and drink my rum,
and go on home and have my fun,  

… and get replaced by

If the wheel don’t drop and the train don’t stop
I’m bound to meet the sun,

…with which the poet makes it a lot harder to discern filth. And a lot clearer that the protagonist is on his way to enlightenment. Likewise, the dubious meat scratching does not survive Dylan’s prudish second look;

I’m just the same as anyone else,
When it comes to scratching for my meat 

… is rewritten into

I’m standing outside the Taj Mahal
I don’t see no one around,

… meaning that the wooer is suddenly no longer on the way to a house of pleasure, but is languishing lonely in front of the world’s most famous monument in memory of a lost love. On the other hand: the ambiguous goin’ to have some fun is maintained. In the chorus, the poet only changes soft gut into fat gut, for unclear reasons – both unusual expressions evoke an unsavoury abdominal girth.

The interventions are neither poetic nor narrative defensible, but the censor does succeed in increasing the ambiguity of the song. Now, on paper, “Goin’ To Acapulco” is already almost this religious carnival music, and Todd Haynes and Jim James provide the final push. Dylan the song composer delivers the beautiful melody and the misty poetry, Jim James the sacred, heartbreaking recital and Todd Haynes that mesmerizing setting, in which a multi-coloured group of birds of paradise and Biedermeiers is united in a grand, churchly devotion for something higher.

Credit also deserves the accompaniment. The men of Calexico equal the original with their modest, slow backing and still surpass the expressiveness with the use of wind instruments from the first chorus.

Even more than the Basement version, this cover inspires the professional confrères. The idiosyncratic Bonnie “Prince’ Billy, the most famous alter ego of Dylan fan Will Oldham, moves the entire song to Bourbon Street by dressing it in an attractive New Orleans jacket and turning the pace even further down, to a funeral march pace. To be found as a B-track on the beautiful EP Lay & Love (2006), which also features a uncommonly intimate, sober cover of “Señor”.

And Chris Robinson, the former frontman of the Black Crowes, who for years now is distinguishing himself with loving and glittering Dylan covers, plays a beautiful, dragging “Goin’ To Acapulco” a dozen times in 2015 and 2016 with his brethren of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. Robinson seems to have the ambition to fill the empty space that the regretted Jerry Garcia has left behind. Not only in appearance – Robinson is gradually developing a large, full, fluffy beard that is starting to turn grey – but also with regard to the melodic and often long, drawn-out versions of well-known and less well-known Dylan songs. Robinson’s “Time Passes Slowly” is unsurpassed, for example. And also his Jerry Garcian tackling of Acapulco is memorable – most of his performances clock over fourteen minutes, and are compelling until the last, usually awkwardly dying away, second. The performance in San Rafael, December 30, 2016, where the Brotherhood fills a complete live set with Dylan and Grateful Dead covers, offers a wonderful rendition.

Goin’ To Acapulco starts at 28’10”

You might also enjoy “The 100 Greatest Cover Versions of Dylan songs” selected by readers of this site.

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, links back to our reviews

By Jochen Markhorst

John Henry’s legendary, fatal and probably fictional race against the steam drill takes place sometime in the early 70s of the nineteenth century, between 1870 and 1872. During the construction of the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia the forerunner of the jackhammer, the steam drill, is used and proud John Henry claims that he and his nine-pound hammer are faster than such a new-fashioned steam-powered rock drilling machine. The race is set up, Henry wins, but exhausts himself to such an extent that he collapses and dies the day after.

Or it takes place five hundred miles to the south and ten years later, in 1882, at the tunnel construction through Curzey Mountain, Alabama. Or in 1887, at Oak Mountain. And Kentucky and Jamaica are mentioned too – like every good legend, this story is also available in many variations.

The veracity does not really matter for the impact of the story. A feature film, a musical, books, poems, a stamp, cartoons, orchestral and chamber music works, video games … since the end of the nineteenth century, the persona of John Henry has become ubiquitous in American culture. The probably best-known adaptation is the now antique folk song, for which Dylan also repeatedly expresses his admiration (in Chronicles, for example) and of which he explicitly acknowledges how influential the song is:

“If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me – John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand. If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written How many roads must a man walk down? too.”

(from the MusiCares speech, 2015)

Without “John Henry” I would not have been able to write “Blowin’ In The Wind” … it is hardly a trivial tune, apparently.

How indelible the influence is, is also evident from – ironically – “Tell Me, Momma”. Ironic, because that is the fierce, biting, hard rocker with which Dylan opens the electric part of the set in ’66, the song with which he snubs the orthodox folkies in the audience, the song that unleashes cursing, shouts and hollers in that part of his fan base.

As a result, and because of the often questionable sound quality, they do not hear the respectful reference to one of the crown jewels of folk music, right at the start, in the opening couplet:

Yes, you got your steam drill,
now you’re lookin’ for some kid
To get it to work for you
like your nine-pound hammer did

… in which the poet also implicitly expresses a farewell to traditional folk music. The person who swung the nine-pound hammer (Henry’s sledgehammer) is no longer there and now we are looking for someone who is able to use the steam drill; the metaphorical content (the transition from acoustic guitar to electric guitar) is not too inscrutable.

Just like steam drill is a key word for that folk monument, nine-pound hammer is the identifier from another folk classic that has been standing on Dylan’s pedestal for sixty years now: “Nine Pound Hammer”. He probably knows the song from The Stanley Brothers, and otherwise from The Greenbriar Boys, also known in the versions “Take This Hammer” and “Roll On, Buddy” … and Dylan sings the “Roll On, John” version thereof in ’62, which he will then rebuild half a century later into his ode to John Lennon on Tempest.

So “Tell Me, Momma” is not the blunt rejection of the folk music that fans and critics often see in it. Although even accessory Robbie Robertson seems to see only the song’s assertive side:

“We started using “Tell Me, Momma” as an opener, which meant not only were we going into hostile territory for our electric part of the show, but we were also starting the set with a funky, unfamiliar, aggressive, and not particularly melodic tune. Maybe it was a touch perverse, but I enjoyed coming out with a signpost song that said, I don’t need you to love me, I’m just going to play my damn music and maybe you’ll dig it.”

(Testimony, 2016)

The funky and aggressive content of the performance is largely due to Robertson’s contribution, who provides a truly great guitar part. The short, biting blows under the couplets are a mean upgrade from Scotty Moore’s part to Elvis’ “My Baby Left Me”, the solos, especially those in Australia, echo the funk of Curtis Mayfield and the soul of James Brown’s guitarist Billy Butler.

But true, the lyrics are pretty unclear. A studio recording does not exist, although Robertson seems to remember one:

Bob had booked Columbia Studios in New York to do some recording in January. (…)
After a couple of run-throughs, Bob was ready to record. We rambled though a song called “She’s Your Lover Now”. Then another new tune, “Tell Me, Momma”, with its salty punch line—“Baby, tell me, what’s wrong with you this time?”

… which should be the third Blonde On Blonde recording session, January 21, 1966 in New York. If that recording indeed exists, it never surfaced. The official lyrics, probably recorded in 1971, when copyright is filed, differ in an almost hilarious way from the lyrics we hear. The opening lines as they are written in Writings & Drawings, Lyrics and on the site are rightly mocked:

Ol’ black Bascom, don’t break no mirrors
Cold black water dog, make no tears

Or, even more insane, the third verse:

Ohh, we bone the editor, can’t get read
But his painted sled, instead it’s a bed

No, we will have to make do it with our own ears and the industrious puzzle work of the brave analysts who publish their findings on the fan forums and blogs.

Extra complicating, apart from the lack of audio quality, is the clumsy fact that Dylan apparently never really wrote lyrics for the song; he sings different words every night, particularly in the second and third verse.

Most decipherers do agree on the opening lines, though. Not “Ol” black Bascom” and not  “Cold black water dog”, but:

Cold black glass don’t make no mirror
Cold black water don’t make no tears

… where it seems a little more likely that the first word is “Old”;  “Old black glass” is a somewhat familiar concept (unlike “cold black glass”) and the mental leap to mirror is small – sooner or later the silver nitrate and copper sulphate in old mirrors will react with air and moisture particles, will oxidize, causing black stains. It has a metaphorical quality too, although that is mainly suggested; how the image can be integrated into this relational reckoning is not clear. “I no longer recognize myself in our relationship”?

And a relational reckoning, a put-down it surely is, as the understandable part and the chorus make clear:

But I know that you know that I know that you show
Something is tearing up your mind.

Tell me, momma,
Tell me, momma,
Tell me, momma, what is it?
What’s wrong with you this time?

… the sneering, vicious Dylan of “She’s Your Lover Now” and “Positively Fourth Street”, no doubt.

We also recognize the mid-60s Dylan in the ferocious, slightly lugubrious imagery in the second verse: both cemetery hips and graveyard lips have the same, disruptive quality as, for example, the guilty undertaker (“I Want You”), the graveyard woman (“From A Buick 6”) and the genocide fools (“Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”).

A morbid fascination can already be seen in Dylan’s earliest work, but there it is usually “real”; the songs are about actual graves, cemeteries, deaths (“Ballad For A Friend”, “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, “Only A Hobo”).

In this phase of his artistry, the preference for the macabre evolves into a Baudelairian style characteristic; graves and cemeteries are no longer stage scenery, but metaphors. The susceptibility to it is undoubtedly triggered via the Beat Poets, via Ginsberg, Corso and especially Kerouac. Dylan sometimes literally borrows from Kerouac’s Desolation Angels (“her sin is her lifelessness” and the “perfect image of a priest” in “Desolation Row”, for example), and more often paraphrases. To name just one of many examples: the automobile graveyard from Dylan’s long “prose poem” Tarantula is automobile cemeteries at Kerouac.

And the influence extends to that preference for sinister imagery. The suburbs of New York full of commuters Kerouac calls “cemetery cities” (On The Road), the stew full of bones he gets in a Mexican prison cell “graveyard stew” (“Orizaba 210 Blues”, 41st Chorus).

“Tell Me, Momma” is, in short, a lost classic from one of the peak moments in Dylan’s long career, from the thin wild mercury period. And despite some wonderful live recordings, still more obscure than “She’s Your Lover Now” or “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, in the absence of a studio recording, whether completed or not, and a text that may or may not have been completed.

That mysterious status is confirmed by the lack of covers. Unusual, for a Dylan song from this golden phase, but there are virtually no covers. The Original Marauders produce a neat, but due to the toe-curling singing badly messed up version on their sympathetic, but failed, tribute project Now Your Mouth Cries Wolf from 1975.

And usual suspect Robyn Hitchcock on his equally sympathetic, and much more successful tribute Robyn Sings (2002), earns bonus points for his attempt to dig up this gold nugget, but finds only fool’s gold, pyrite. It shines, an early Beatlesque light, but it is not worth much – Hitchcock, too, will not be able to save the song from the darkness.

Alas, poor ol’ black Bascom, you cold black water dog.

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, and links back to our reviews

By Larry Fyffe

You might also enjoy

• Bob Dylan and Oscar Wilde Part I
• Bob Dylan and Oscar Wilde Part II

Seasons change. Spring turns to Summer, Summer to Autumn, Autumn to Winter. Childhood turns to Youth, Youth to Adulthood, Adulthood to Old Age. Realistic images are often taken by artists – who be themselves Romantically inclined – from the external seasons to serve as ‘objective correlatives’ that re-enforce the spiritual mood of the characters portrayed whether happy or sad; or indeed to emphasise the actual physical state of characters present in a particular work of art.

Artists wishing that time would stand still at a certain point in the ageing process turn not to Nature, but to man-made objects of art for corresponding images that remain, at least in relative terms, permanently fixed the same forever – as symbolized, for example, by a picture on an ancient urn:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu
And, happy melodies, unwearied
Forever piping songs for ever new
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm, and still to be enjoyed
For ever panting, and for ever young
(John Keats: Ode On A Grecian Urn)

Wistful thinking on Keats’ part for sure. Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan settles for the hope of keeping a youthful spirit in spite of the inevitable process of physical aging:

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
(Bob Dylan: Forever Young)

Influenced by John Keats, satirist Oscar Wilde writes a story about a picture of a person named Dorian Gray in which the painted portrait of Gray ages; in real life, however, Gray remains forever young. Dorian goes on to lead a bad life; he stabs the artist to death who did the portrait because he blames him for causing the picture of Gray to become more and more hideous over time.

Not to be outdone, Bob Dylan claims, in a song, that he’s accused of shooting a man named Gray to death. Being a practical artist, Dylan then keeps a number of his own songs forever young by revising, to varying degrees, the lyrics of songs that he continues to perform.

An extreme case –  the lyrics of ‘Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking’ at first speak of a possible permanence. Though the gates of Eden are guarded forever by a flaming sword, after the physical death of an individual on earth, a new spiritual life of happiness awaits him or her in Heaven if they’re  lucky – the orthodox religious belief that Frederich Nietzsche calls the ‘morality of slaves’:

There's a kingdom called Heaven
A place where there is no pain of birth
Well the Lord created it, mister
About the time He made the earth

Then in a later version of the song, the lyrics speak of a time a-changing, and of a betrayal, not by a sword, but by a Judas kiss:

Jesus is calling, He's coming back to pick up his jewels
We're living by the golden rule, whoever got the gold rules ....
A brave man will kill you with a sword, a coward with a kiss
(Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

The latter version can easily be interpreted as rather cynical, and double-edged. Quoting  as he does directly from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad From Reading Gaol”, Dylan questions with dark humour the hypocritical direction taken by the gold-seeking Christian churches of modern times as Geoffrey Chaucer does in his time, and Wilde in his day.

Done by their adding on many a supposition, true believers in church dogma (itself added to biblical scripture by various Judeo-Christian theologians over time) find assuredly that there’s  little change in the meanings between the two versions of the song by Dylan ~ see: Kees de Gaaf, for example.

Below, however, is an imaginative word-picture painted by the Wilde Decadent, its mood correlated to realistic objects in external Nature akin to the style of the antiDeistic Transcendentalist Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman than to that of the gloomy Gothic Romantics like Keats:

A delicate odour is borne on the wing in the morning breeze
The odour of leaves, and of grass, and of newly upturned earth
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees
(Oscar Wilde: Magdalen Walks)

‘Magdalen’ being the name of a college that Oscar attended.

Bringing to mind a Transcendalist vision in song lyrics presented by the singer/songwriter, but a viewpoint that comes from the internal Imagination of the human Mind of the beholder rather than from some manifested guiding Absolute Spirit out there somewhere both within and without the physical Universe:

If not for you, the winter would hold no spring
Couldn't hear a robin sing
I wouldn't have a clue
If not for you
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)

So it seems that man-made art can be a thing of beauty that lasts forever while some of it keeps its vitality everlasting by continuing to change.

Now that that’s all straightened out ….

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

By Aaron Galbraith

Are you a talented singer or musician? Are you in a band? Then Untold Dylan needs your help! Welcome to “Bob Idol”!

First up, some context, followed by the details of what we are trying to do here.

As the (un)official Untold Dylan missing and lost songs bloodhound I’ve always got my feelers out searching for unknown and rare tracks. One such track I’ve been searching for, for about a year, is “Liverpool Gal”. Dylan wrote the track in December 1962 and performed it once at the home of David Whitaker in  Minneapolis in July 1963. A tape apparently exists but has so far not surfaced officially or on bootleg. It is rumoured the song is about the artist Pauline Boty whom Dylan met in 1962 whilst in the UK to film Madhouse On Castle Street.

The track was performed once on BBC Radio Merseyside n 1992 by Ormskirk duo Lennon & Hyam, introduced by John Bauldie. It has been this version I have been searching for, even reaching out to Radio Merseyside for assistance, but all to no avail. Searching for the track taught me 3 things:

1. Lennon & Hyam have no internet presence whatsoever
2. A google search including the words Lennon and Liverpool bring up more than a couple of results!
3. The football (soccer) team Southend United currently have in their first team players with the last names of Lennon and Hyam!

This is all very interesting but brought me no closer to my goal!

Then a thought struck me, I have the lyrics, the chords and the melody, would this be enough to present to Tony to review for the site? Well, maybe, but isn’t it always better to have something to listen to in order to fully appreciate the track in question? And then a second thought struck me, I bet we have many talented singers and musicians amongst the readers on Untold Dylan who could put something together for us all to listen to!

So here is the offer: record your version of the track “Liverpool Gal” and post it to YouTube and then send the link to Tony at Tony@schools.co.uk and he and I will review any that we get and post them on Untold Dylan. The lyrics, chords and melody are listed at the end of this article.

Whilst we can’t offer any monetary reward, what you will receive is this:

1. Your version of the track will be included in Tony’s full review of the song
2. You will have contributed to the goal of the site to list to review every Dylan track
3. You will showcase your talents to the world and lastly
4. You will have introduced the world to this extremely rare and unknown Dylan song!

How will you present the song?   That is up to you. It can be solo and acoustic as Dylan would have in 63, or you can use electric instrumentation of indeed have a whole band playing if you are part of such a group.  Perhaps you could make something that would fit perfectly on Time Out Of Mind, or maybe something entirely different. Be as creative as you want to be!

If (and this is highly unlikely) we start to get so many versions we can’t put them all up, we’ll post a note at the top of this article and on the Facebook group.  But normally such requests as this get very little response so the chances of that are slim.

Please remember to include your name and where you are from so we can credit you fully, also if you have a band, give your band’s name and all the musicians involved. It might be good if you also included a small note about your version, why you decided to do it the way you did etc.

Now, here are the lyrics, chords and melody

The melody is based upon The Lakes Of Pontchartrain.   You might find it helpful to listen to a recording of that song – and helpfully Bob has recorded it

https://youtu.be/v5eBnKwW-fM

And if you want to compare with a more traditional version of the song here’s a link to one.

C   . . /b . .  Am . . F   . .
When first I came to London town

C/g . .  G . . F . G C . .
A stranger I did come

C        /b         Am    F
I’d walk the streets so silently

C/g     G       F   G C
I did not know no-one

Am . .   Em     .  .  F . G    C   . .
I was thinking thoughts and dreaming dreams

C  . .        Em .  F  . . G .
The kind when you roll along

.   C       /b        Am        F
But most of all I was thinking about

C/g      G         Am . . Em . . F . . G .
the land I’d left back home

I’d stand by the river Themes
with the wind blowing through my hair.
And who should come and stand by me
but a London gal so fair.
Her eyes were blue, her hair was brown
Her face was gentle and kind
For a second, well, I clear forgot
The land I left behind

As we began walking and talkin’
All through the English air
I did not know where we’d end up
’til we came to the top of a stair
As we lay round on a worn-out rug
the room it was so cold
And we talked for hours by the inside fire
’bout the outside world so old.

All through our sweet conversation
She thought my ways were so strange
But I know there was one thing about me
That she would try to change
And the night passed on with the drizzling rain
There’s one thing I found out
[A pair of sweet curls] I know too well,
Her love I know not much about *)

And I awoke the next morning
And the rain had turned to snow
I looked out of her window
And I knew that I must go
I did not know how to tell her
I didn’t know if I could
But she smiled a smile I’d never seen
To say she understood.

And thinking of her as I stood in the snow
How strange she appeared to be,
On the reason I was leaving,
she seemed no better than me.
I gazed all up at her window
where the snowy snow-flakes blowed
I put my hands in my pockets
And I walked ‘long down the road.

So it’s now I’m leaving London, boys
Well, the town I’ll soon forget,
Likewise its winds and weather
Likewise some people I met
But there’s one thing that’s for certain
Sure as the sunshine down
I’ll never forget that Liverpool Gal
Who lived in London Town.

Here is a link to the sheet music

http://www.dylanchords.com/00_misc/liverpool_gal.pdf

We both look forward to hearing from you.

Meanwhile you might also enjoy: Dylan’s forgotten songss and lost gems

by Jochen Markhorst

In Scotland and parts of England, the black dog represents good luck.  But elsewhere one of the more persistent myths about the black dog phenomenon concerns the instinctive fear that people are said have for it.

This is proven by animal shelter statistics: in many countries the chance that a black dog is taken by new owners is considerably smaller than with the different-coloured yapping tail-waggers. Research into this is inconclusive and therefore remains popular – for decades now there have been a number of academics every year who freshly start again tally marking in order to produce and defend with those figures usually weightless positions in theses. Especially in the anthrozoological faculties, obviously, but also the sociologists do participate diligently.

In the arts, the black dog is usually used to instill fear. Holmes’ Hound Of The Baskervilles is black (also in all 25 films since 1914), in Ian McEwan’s novel Black Dogs the Gestapo uses them as guard dogs and there they symbolize the evil what Western Civilization is capable of, the devil appears in Goethe’s Faust in the form of a black poodle, and when Breughel paints a black dog it is a bringer of bad luck and misery.

But much more poetic, and perhaps more famous, the Black Dog is known as a metaphor for depression. This interpretation is usually attributed to Churchill, who has indeed made it known by repeatedly referring to his own deep depression with the image of a black dog. “I think thist man might be useful to me,” he writes about a German psychiatrist,  “if my black dog returns.”

However, the comparison is much older. As early as 1882, R.L. Stevenson (the Scottish author of Treasure Island) describes a melancholy figure as a man with “the black dog upon his back”, but Churchill probably got it from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), from whose work Dylan sometimes draws (“Sweetheart Like You”, for example). Dr. Johnson, who, like Churchill, is a mentally unstable, literary genius, describes his “melancholy” as a black dog in various letters, suggesting that it is a common expression in the 18th century. And probably even longer; Horace knows already around 40 BC that a black dog brings bad luck and, somewhat roughly translated, will be your companion if “you hate your own company”.

The black dog in “Obviously 5 Believers” belongs to the depression-bringing breed too. The song is initially called “Black Dog Blues”, before Dylan inserts the verse with the five believers and renames the song dadaesque, in line with titles such as “Absolutely Sweet Marie”, “4th Time Around” or “Temporary Like Achilles”. The original title the minstrel borrows from one of his old heroes, from Blind Blake, whom he will later honour more directly with a cover of his “You Gonna Quit Me Blues” (which will be the title song of Dylan’s album Good As I Been To You) .

Arthur “Blind” Blake (1896-1934) is one of the founding fathers of the blues and is in the same league as, for example, Blind Willie McTell and Charley Patton. And especially because of his phenomenal guitar playing; the integration of the ragtime piano sound is gratefully copied to this day by guitarists such as Mark Knopfler.

Blake’s first hit “Early Morning Blues” echoes through in Dylan’s opening words, and fragments of Blake songs are then heard in every subsequent verse, except in those surrealistic fifteen jugglers / five believers stophes. Although … “Fighting The Jug” comes close. Musically Dylan is less close to Blind Blake. Even though he (presumably) lived in Chicago for several years, Blake is not from the Chicago School, where the music of “Obviously 5 Believers” is clearly rooted. Maybe by accident; Robbie Robertson tells Cameron Crowe in 1985 that the Nashville studio musicians essentially just did their job, and this particular song happens to be an example where they changed the direction:

“I remember the Nashville studio musicians playing a lot of card games. Dylan would finish a song, we would cut the song and then they’d go back to cards. They basically did their routine, and it sounded beautiful. Some songs pushed it somewhere else, like Obviously Five Believers where we had four screaming guitar solos.”

… pushing it into the direction of a sharp, driven and energetic Chicago blues, that is. Simple enough, but less simple than Dylan himself seems to think. His slightly irritated outburst during the recordings is well-known: “Hey, what the f …,” he shouts at the second, prematurely interrupted take, “this is very easy man, this is very easy to do.”

Dylan apparently does not realize that he lets the experienced Nashville cats play a traditional twelve-bar blues, but that his couplets are only ten bars long; eight bars of vocals plus two bars instrumental is quite unusual (“Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” by Muddy Waters has a similar abnormality). Granted, not quantum mechanics, but still something to pay attention to. It’s the last recording session for Blonde On Blonde, it’s already past midnight – the sharpness is no longer there, understandably. Some complaining in the background and Dylan cuts it off: “Okay, let’s try it this time, I don’t want to spend no time with this song, man.”

Not too affectionate. Dylan already illustrates this disposability during the session: in each of the four takes the lyrics change, occasionally completely off the cuff ad-libbing some random words to fill up the line. After the recording, he ignores the song, it is not performed on stage and seems soon forgotten.

Until June ’85, when Dylan is a guest at a radio show that is broadcast nationwide. One of the songs that Bob himself has requested is “Obviously 5 Believers”, and host Bob Coburn is surprised:

Coburn: You wanted us to play “Obviously Five Believers”. Why? Why do you still want us to play that song?
Dylan: I just like it.
Coburn: You just like that song; here it is.
Obviously Five Believers plays.
Coburn: Some pretty nasty blues harmonica there Bob Dylan. “Obviously Five Believers” from Blonde On Blonde.
Dylan: That’s not me though…
Coburn: That’s not you, though? Who is it?
Dylan: That’s Charlie McCoy.

But even in the years that follow, the song does not appear on the concerts’ playlists, and Dylan’s choice at the radio show seems to have been one of his smokescreens again… when the song suddenly pops up on the set list in May 1995. It is no ad hoc folly either: up until April 1997 the master performs it forty times. And he does indeed seem to enjoy it.

Despite this unexpected revival, however, the song remains a curiosity, and the same goes for the colleagues: there are not too many covers – actually only two noteworthy, both adding equally little to the original.

Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs from Los Angeles release their debut album Pigus Drunkus Maximus in 1987, despite the adolescent title an infectious, exciting blues rock exercise. Striking are “Ballad Of A Thin Man” and Merle Haggard’s “Working Man Blues”, but the highlight is a steamy version of “Obviously 5 Believers”.

A bit more attractive, on more fronts, is Toni Price on her second album Hey (1995). The band is filthy and mean, no better or worse than Top Jimmy’s, but hey: the drawling, sensual vocals of the quite irresistible Texan lady really are a plus. An antidepressant, actually.

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

by Larry Fyffe

In life and in art, Decadent writer Oscar Wilde rebels against the established norms imposed by Victorian society. He’s celebrated for a time, but in the end suffers the consequences for doing so though he’s pardoned after he dies:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let it be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
(Oscar Wilde: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan picks up on the analogy – somewhat a gloomy if wistful look at human existence, gnostic-like . The darkness of life is compared to a prison with only a glimmer of light coming in through the barred window – whether literal or figurative, death be quick or it be slow, but awaits all:

I'll tell you something
Things you never had you'll never miss
A brave man will kill you with a sword
A coward with a kiss
(Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

https://youtu.be/8AztLb5mCdk

God’s wrath be usurped by robed priests of the Establishment in the movie ‘The Trials Of Oscar Wilde’, starring Peter Finch. The film ends with Wilde’s words from his mighty pen spoken over the final scene:

The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword

A theme expressed in the following song lyrics:

There's a lone soldier on the cross
Smoke pouring out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end, he won the war
After losing every battle ....
You hurt the ones I love best, and cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzing around your eyes
Blood on your saddle
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Satire flows freely from the Gothic pen of the poet Wilde:

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats
None knew as well as I
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die
(Oscar Wilde: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol)

Burlesque double-dances as well from the lyrics of the singer/songwriter:

They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

In the final end, decadent Oscar Wilde is figuratively saved from physical death by his exquisite art for art’s sake:

Behind every exquisite thing that has existed, there was something tragic
(Oscar Wilde: The Picture Of Dorian Gray)

And surely Bob Dylan by his song lyrics and music:

Behind every beautiful thing, there has been some kind of pain
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

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

Greetings,

And a very happy Christmas indeed from and to everyone involved in Untold Dylan.

On behalf of everyone involved in the grand adventure that Untold Dylan has become I would like to thank you for reading some of our work, and for supporting what we do.

Untold Dylan is a website and a Facebook site built and developed by people from across Europe, Australasia and North America.  It is for everyone a work of love; the advertisements we have and the occasional sponsored post on the site, simply help pay the bills for keeping the site online, and keeping it safe.

So on this Christmas Day I want to do something that I do not do nearly enough, which is to thank publically the writers who have so willingly made the site what it is by contributing series of articles on new and different topics.

I’ve never most of these guys, but I am rather thinking that I might just start a world tour to go and say a very particular thank you to each in turn and take each one in turn out for a meal.  A sort of Rolling Untold Dylan Dinner.   (I could then write it up and it would be the Rolling Untold Dylan Dinner Review).

So thank you to

• Larry Fyffe in Canada
• Jochen Markhorst in the Netherlands
• Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet) in New Zealand
• Aaron Galbraith in Virginia, USA
• Filip Łobodziński in Poland
• Joost Nillissen in the Netherlands

and of course to everyone else who has contributed thoughts, ideas, and individual articles.   Without your input the site would be far less fun and far less valuable than it is.

Our very first article was a review of “Mississippi” published on 20 October 2008.  Since then we have published over 1400 articles including (and this is where we like to think we’ve done something original) at least one review of every single song Bob Dylan has written or co-written.  And we’ve even made an attempt to put them into the chronological order of writing.

In addition we have looked at numerous themes, ranging from Dylan’s harmonica playing to the best cover versions of his songs, from the poets and songwriters who have influenced Dylan through to the art work on Dylan’s albums, from translating Dylan into Polish through to the musicians Dylan himself professes to like and admire.

And here may I also add that there is no limit to the ideas and series that can be covered.  We have series of articles on specific topics because in each case the writer has come along and suggested we do the series.  And so off we go.  If you have an idea for an article or a series of articles that we have not tackled, or which could be taken further, then please do write to me (my email address is at the end) and let’s discuss it.

And finally, but absolutely not least, a special thank you to Pat Sludden who encouraged me to start this venture, who very gently and kindly urged me to pick it up again when during a very dark time I stopped writing completely, and who is so active and helpful on our Facebook page.

I owe all you guys a huge debt, and if I actually do make it to Canada, the Netherlands, USA, Poland and/or New Zealand, the drinks are on me.

To join our Facebook group just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” on your Facebook page or follow this link 

To suggest an article that you’d like to write, email tony@schools.co.uk

Happy Christmas, and above everything else, thank you for reading.

Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

My interest in expanding the Dylan Year by Year series is to try and chart the lyrical themes that Dylan explored across time, noting (if possible) how certain themes and ideas took hold of him, and then were later left behind as he moved on.  In short, to answer the question, “What did Bob Dylan write about each year?”

To explain a little further, everyone knows about the religious period, but years outside that two and a half year spell of writing Christian songs have, to my mind, mostly been examined either in terms of Dylan’s personal life, or his touring, or song by song.  I’m trying to look for the ebb and flow of themes that interested Bob.

In my earlier piece Bob Dylan in 1965: the year Dylan invented two totally new forms of music I tried to outline the changes Dylan was making both to his own songwriting, and the whole notion of songwriting for the mass audience.  A list of the other articles in this series is given at the end of this piece.

In this year Dylan composed 29 new songs that have survived.  It was a return to the sort of productivity we had witnessed in 1962 (36 songs), and 1963 (30 songs).  But more than this, this year contained the creation of some of the masterpieces that have ever since been associated with his name.  Farewell Angelina, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Love Minus Zero, It’s all over now baby blue, Like a Rolling Stone, Desolation Row, Visions of Johanna….  I would suggest any one of these songs could have been the summit of a lifetime’s work for most popular songwriters – for Dylan, they just came pouring out in one year.

But what was the theme?  What was Dylan’s subject matter?  Those are the questions I have been toying around with thus far and as before we find Dylan operating in a whole range of areas through his lyrics and musical styles.

For each year thus far I have given each song the briefest of classifications, to try and help me see what Dylan’s key subject matter was.

Before the start of this year the key issues that Dylan was concerned within his writing were

• 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

In this year here’s how I would categorise these songs…  And of course this is just my choice, struggling as I am not to create so many categories that the process becomes meaningless.

Surrealism / Dada  (a new category started this year: 11 in all)

1. Visions of Johanna
2. I wanna be your lover
3. Jet Pilot
4. Ballad of a thin man
5. Queen Jane Approximately
6. Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues
7. Highway 61 Revisited
8. Tombstone Blues
9. Sitting on a barbed wire fence
10. Outlaw Blues
11. Subterranean Homesick Blues

The Blues (5 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 1 in 1964, 1 in 1965).Total: 7)

1. Highway 61 Revisited (The world makes no sense, except maybe the blues; Dada)

Love / desire (3 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 2 in 1964, 6 in 1965).  Total: 11)

1. Long distance operator (Panic because he can’t get through on the phone)
2. I wanna be your lover (It’s a surreal world that makes no sense; Dada)
3. From a Buick 6 (I got this woman who does everything)
4. She Belongs to Me (Love)
5. Love Minus Zero (Love)
6. Love is just a four letter word (Is love real?)

Lost love / moving on (7 in 1962, 5 in 1963; 4 in 1964, 7 in 1965.Total: 19)

1. Medicine Sunday (Moving on – although the song is only a fragment so it is hard to say)
2. On the Road Again (Moving on, the artist vs society; Dada)
3. Maggie’s Farm (Moving on, the artist vs society; Dada)
4. It takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry (I’m so tired of all this moving on)
5. Sitting on a barbed wire fence (Moving on, nothing makes sense; Dada)
6. California (Blues, moving on)
7. Outlaw Blues (Moving on, The artist vs society; Dada)

Travelling on / songs of leaving / songs of farewell (8 in 1962, 5 in 1963, 4 in 1964, 2 in 1965  Total: 15)

1. It’s all over now baby blue (Song of Farewell)
2. Farewell Angelina (Song of leaving)

Humour / satire / talking blues (7 in 1962, 2 in 1963, 3 in 1964. 1 in 1965. Total: 13)

1. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (Beat poetry as rock music; new talking blues, humour; Dada)

Protest (war, poverty, society…) (6 in 1962, 10 in 1963, 3 in 1964, 1 in 1965.  Total 20)

1. Desolation Row (Political protest; It’s not the world, it’s how you see the world)

The songs of disdain (0 in 1962/4, 4 in 1965.  Total 4)

1. Can you please crawl out your window? (Song of Disdain)
2. Positively Fourth Street (Song of Disdain)
3. Like a Rolling Stone (Song of Disdain)
4. Why do you have to be so frantic (Lunatic Princess). (Song of disdain)

At the top of the piece, I noted the key subject areas that are occupied Dylan’s mind in his earlier years of songwriting.  Here’s how that running total looked at the end of this year

• Protest (war, poverty, society…): 20 songs so far
• Lost love / moving on 19 songs: so far
• Travelling on / songs of leaving: 15 songs so far
• Humour / satire / talking blues: 13 songs so far
• Surrealism / dada: 11 songs, all composed in this year.

Here is a list of the other categories I have created for previous years, but for which in my estimation, Dylan did not compose a song in 1965

• 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)
• 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)
• 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.)
• 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.)
• Individualism (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 5 in 1964.  Total: 6)
• 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)
• The future will be fine (1 in 1962, 0 in 1963, 1 in 1964.  Total 2.)
• 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)

Other articles in this series

• The songs of the 1960s in chronological order
• Dylan in 1961: The Overview
• Bob Dylan’s early songs of love and lost love (1961/2)
• Bob Dylan: the protest singer. Well, not really (1961/2)
• Bob Dylan and the Blues: leaving town in all directions at once (1961/2)
• Bob Dylan: the songs of moving on 1961/62
• Dylan in 1963: Dylan the storyteller
• The subject matter of Dylan’s songs of 1963
• What was Dylan writing about? The 20 songs of 1964.
• Dylan in 1964: the year of multiple masterpieces