Untold Dylan

By Larry Fyffe

A number of analysts of the song lyrics of Bob Dylan assert that many of them can be ‘decoded’, and found autobiographical. As far as I am concerned that’s a dubious path to travel down since Dylan songs tend to have universal, rather than personalized, themes. That is not to say there are no songs that at least give the impression that they are ‘confessional’ – this especially when it comes to Dylan’s “conversion” to the Christian fundamentalism, and his later disillusionment with some of its leaders and followers. These songs seldom criticize the teachings of Jesus per se, but instead the rather harsh interpretations imposed upon Christ’s parables by evangelistic leaders.

Bob Dylan at times mocks organized religion in a humourous way. On winding down his ‘Christian phase’, he imitates the style of a fire-and-brimstone evangelist preacher, a role he took on, presumably seriously, for a time; the accompanying upbeat music gives the Horation burlesque away:

Trouble in the city, trouble in the farm
You got your rabbit's foot, you got your good-luck charm
But they can't help you none when it's trouble
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Trouble in the water, trouble in the air
Go all the way to the other side of the world, you'll
find trouble there
(Bob Dylan: Trouble)

https://youtu.be/ikGCZVs2jfM

The song is inspired by a con man who puts on the mask of a fire-tongued preacher in the movie ‘The Music Man’:

Yes, you got lots and lots of trouble
I'm thinkin' of kids in knickerbockers
Shirt-tail young ones, peekin' in the pool
Hall window after school, you got trouble folks
Right here in River City ....
(Trouble, trouble, trouble)
(Robert Preston: Ya Got Trouble ~ Willson)

Christian churches, including evangelistic ones, have a long history of fomenting hatred against non-Christians, especially the Jews – even to this day. Indeed, the Nazis picked up on the depiction thereof to justify the committing of the most heinous crimes against humanity imaginable. That’s not at all funny, and Dylan turns to Juvehalian satire to express his anger:

I need a shot of love, I need a shot of love
Why would I want to take your life?
You've only murdered my father, raped his wife
Tattooed my babies with a poison pen
Mocked my God, humiliated my friends
(Bob Dylan: Shot Of Love)

It’s quite a hyperbolic interpretation of words said to be uttered by Jesus that Dylan hurls back at the literal-inclined fundamentalists:

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father
And the daughter against her mother
And the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law
(Matthew 10:34)

As Christopher Ricks points out, Dylan uses Menippean mockery as well. The singer/songwriter criticizes the personal flaws of individuals such as arrogance, and hubris – those who consider themselves to have the one and only answer to the world’s problems. Though the following lyrics are double-edged as Dylan’s often are, they can be interpreted to mean many of those individuals who claim to be followers of Jesus ironically have a heart of stone. The poet William Blake envisions Christ as an imaginative child who shines the light of natural love in a world darkened by institutionalized hatred:

He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You got a heart of stone
You can laugh at salvation, you've can play Olympic games
You think that that when you rest at last, you'll go back to where you came
But you picked up quite a story, and you've changed since the womb
What happened to the real you, you've been captured but by whom?
(Bob Dylan: The Property Of Jesus)

https://vimeo.com/74542363

Blakean to the core are the following song lyrics:

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow fallen, like every grain of sand
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)

Wrote the preRomantic poet:

To see the world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
(William Blake: Auguries Of Innocence)

Amen!

By Tony Attwood

On our Facebook page I recently linked to a review of the Rolling Thunder movie, a review which had the headline “Scorceses Bob Dylan documentary leaves you clueless.” It included this comment:

“At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I must confess I’ve never understood what Bob Dylan sings. Except for the track Blowing In The Wind.  I am yet to decode what ‘Upon four-legged forest clouds the cowboy angel rides’ and ‘He just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette’ means.”

And immediately two trains of thought came into my mind.  First, art is not always full of clear and overt meanings.  And second, Dylan is himself confusing because his songs are sometimes overtly meaningful – but often not.  Which can lead to the temptation to think that because some are clearly meaningful (“Masters of War” serves well if you want one example) they should all be – if only we can find the key to unlock the meanings.

And to give another area of clarity, “Positively 4th Street” and the other songs of disdain really do hit the listener in the face – what is not to understand about “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” as an opening line?

Likewise, many of the love songs are clear (consider, “To make you feel my love”) as well as the lost-love songs (for example “Girl from the north country”).  And as you would expect most of the religious pieces are also fairly clear such as “When He Returns”.

Indeed, as I have mentioned in passing before, it has always struck me as odd that the one time Dylan gave his audience a lecture (and it really was a lecture) on the meaning of songs, was when he performed religious songs throughout his concerts; the one time he didn’t need to tell us – it was all there for us to hear.

But like all masters of their art, and as the arrival and departure of the religious era shows, Dylan doesn’t always work in the same way.  His art is ever varied – and like so many great artists he likes to play games, and he likes to deal in impressions, as much as he wants to give a clear message.

Take “Times they are a changin’,” recognised by many of one of the seminal works of the era and one of Dylan’s great early pieces.  A true monument of the protest movement.

Except when you come to the lyrics, it isn’t a protest song at all.  It actually says that things are moving on, pretty much of their own accord.  There is no reference to protesting, challenging the political norms, none of the anarchism of “Don’t follow leaders.”  No, it is a song that just says, quite clearly and overtly, things are changing and there is nothing any of us can do about it.

As for the rest of the Times They Are a Changing album, as I have oft pointed out, it is all about things standing still, and nothing changing.  When things are bad people just pick up their belongings and keep on moving on or give up the uneven struggle.

Now if I wanted to draw a conclusion from this, I’d say the key element of Dylan’s work at this point was not to promote social and political form, but rather to paint a series of pictures of American society as he saw it.

But of course Dylan can also be obscure, and “Gates of Eden” is a perfect early example.  Obscurity piles on obscurity as the writer quoted at the start of this piece suggests.  And it is to songs like this that the analysts are drawn – and yes I admit I’ve done my own bit of trying to sort out meanings from some of Dylan’s lines.

But such analyses can lead us down strange paths, which perhaps the composer never intended.   To see an example, it is suggested on the “Song Meanings” site that

“At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams

is reference to Paradise Lost, where Eve tells Adam of the dream about the forbidden fruit, and off we go into a detailed examination of what Genesis is about.

And maybe some of the discussions that can be found in a thousand books and a billion web pages can lead to an understanding of what Dylan was thinking when he wrote those words.  But my question is twofold.  One, does that help us appreciate the song?  And two, does that help us at all, since most of the time we won’t have a clue if we are really right, because Dylan isn’t saying.

Of course in one sense the answer can be “yes it does help” – the more we can get inside the head of the artist (whatever the art form) the deeper our understanding.  But we should also remember that phrases and ideas in Dylan songs can be lifted from the Bible, from a movie, from an obscure Japanese book or anywhere else, not because they represent some almighty truth that the composer wishes to express, but because they sound good when sung, and Bob rather fancied them.

And I would argue there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a phrase in a song, just because it sounds good.  There is no rule that says songs actually have to mean anything at all.

Thus just as a painter of abstract art might choose a particular shade of pink because she or he likes that particular shade of pink, not for any deeper meaning, so a songwriter might use a line “He not busy being born is busy dying” not because it is singularly profound, but because it is in essence pretty meaningless but SOUNDS profound.

Now mentioning pink (not for any reason, it just happened to come into my head) I was reminded of this comment I read on a web site while researching this article about one of my favourite novels. (I got distracted – it is a very common failing for me – but it is also a technique many artists use, picking up often disconnected ideas and thoughts from life around them).

It says, “In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, we find our heroes in a stolen spaceship, on a course to crash into a local star as a special effect for the band Disaster Area. This is of course a reference to Pink Floyd, and their song “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”.

Of course?  I mean “OF COURSE”????

Now it is possible that Douglas Adams in writing “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” was listening to that Pink Floyd track and it gave him the idea.  But I am not sure he ever said that was the case, even if he did, does it matter?   What is funny in the book is that in the far distant future there are two restaurants, one at the start of the universe (“The Big Bang Burger Bar”) and one at the end.  And the title “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” is just inherently funny because of the juxtaposition of the end of all things and going out for a meal.

But I suspect many critics travel down the well-worn paths of connecting the not necessarily connected, not particularly to illuminate our understanding of a work of art, but simply to show off, or because the idea just popped into view at the time of writing, and like the idea in the book or the song, felt like a good idea at the time.  And perhaps they feel moved by their idea because they have not got hold of the idea that maybe a song, like a painting, like a work of modern dance, or like a Beethoven piano concerto, might not be about anything, but simply is.   And through simply being, some people can get a huge amount out of it simply by looking and listening.

To my mind, Dylan is a great artist, worthy of the Nobel prize, because he has taken an art form (popular music) which is often very constricted in terms of what it can say, and how it can be said, and given that art form new dimensions which allow it to say anything – sometimes with meaning, sometimes in abstract terms.  In short he’s moved us from “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine” (a song which we may note only has one other line – “They said you were high class, but that was just a lie”) and given us songs in which overt meanings, obscure meanings, quite possibly no meanings, complex constructions, simple constructions, original lines and copied lines, collide together and get mixed up to give meanings and no meanings.   Songs which may have a meaning in places, but then which quite often don’t.

Just think of Visions of Johanna.  It is a vision; but a vision that is not clear, a vision that can be re-interpreted.  Compare Dylan’s various versions of it with Old Crow Medicine Show.  We might think we have a grip on the meanings behind Dylan’s versions of the song either on the album or live on stage, but now the meaning changes as fast as we try to get hold of it.

https://youtu.be/XMHgBNmQ6EM

And so I would argue that although art can be about meaning and messages, most of the time great art isn’t just about meaning, and indeed quite often great art isn’t about meaning at all.  A novel can carry a moral tale, but it can also be entertainment (as in a detective story).  It can be untrue (as is all fiction) but can also be informative (as with historical fiction that keeps to the historical reality).  It can be about a vision with no start and no end (consider the novels of Thomas Pynchon, after “Lot 49”.  There is no limit to what you can do in a novel in the hands of a master.  Likewise, there is no limit to what a song can do in the hands of a master.

Likewise visual art.  It can be representational – a drawing of something that exists, or it can be a long way away from representing anything.  I have in my home prints of works by Jackson Pollock and Bridget Riley and I spend a fair bit of time at home looking at them.   But their meaning?  I am no closer to that than when I was given the pictures 10 years ago.   Likewise consider the theatre of the absurd or if you prefer Dali and the surrealists.  What does it mean?  Ah, now there’s a question.

And yet in the midst of all this I come across people who keep on insisting that art has to be either autobiographical or political.  Did anyone think Elvis was singing about a past love affair when he sang the three lines of Hound Dog?  Of course not.  And just because Robert Johnson quite possibly did feel like he had a Hell Hound on his trail, does that mean that Tom Petty really did see vampires walkin’ through the valley as he was writing “Free Fallin”?  I doubt it.

Thus I reach the conclusion that just because a person has an interest in religion that does not of itself make every work of art religious.  Just because a person creates a work of art on a religious theme that does not make that person a convert – nor all of her or his work religious.

And I reach this conclusion through two simple steps.  First art can be many things: entertainment, insight, questioning, political awareness, social commentary, commemoration of the past, passing the time of day.  And second, people change.

Of course in our society today people seek to understand Dylan’s meanings because western culture has for years been beguiled by the scientific notion that everything is understandable and therefore (with a bit of mental shuffling) everything has a meaning.  Even life itself has a meaning, at least as soon as we add a god to the mix.

But most of the time Dylan is not like this.  And worse, from the perspective of those who seek to understand him, he is an artist who changes.  Sometimes he is autobiographical, sometimes religious, sometimes political, sometimes metaphorical, sometimes surreal, sometimes funny, sometimes obscure, sometimes simply poetic.

Let me take an example: the song Tell Ol’ Bill.   I choose it not just because I like it, but also because it is one of Dylan’s less well known pieces and so there is a chance you might come to this afresh, and because it is a perfect example of how Dylan can combine meanings with suggestions to give us an overall “essence” but not a straight “this is about x”.

If we go through the lyrics below the song appears to be about an exile writing back to an ex girlfriend in his homeland.  We get the idea, maybe, that the singer is about to undertake one last act but what that act is, we don’t know.  Nor do we know why he needs to do this, nor why he is an exile.

In short we know very little.  Virtually nothing in fact.   And the tiny fragments we do know can be contradictory.    What, for example, within the context of the song, can we make of

So my point is that some art is about actual things, some is about nothing that we can express in language, and some is half way between the two.

To give an example of a work of art that is itself obscure but is explained by the title, we may consider “Guernica” the world famous masterpiece by Pablo Picasso is about something – the casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.  Here the knowledge of what it is about, via the title, gives us an understanding of the painting which I suspect most of us would never grasp, if we did not have the title.

(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

My view is thus that it is interesting to analyse the lyrics in detail, just as we might look at a painting and analyse the use of individual colours or brush strokes, and that such detail can help us understand the artist’s work.  But we must also look at, or in Dylan’s case hear, the overall work.

For me, Dylan’s masterpieces (Johanna, Tell Ol Bill, Things have Changed, The Drifter’s Escape etc) are the absolute masterpieces because of the overall feeling they offer.  Or one might say, the overall “impression.”

And this is true both in songs where the meaning is clear as much as those where the meaning is obscure.  “Not Dark Yet” for example, has lyrics that make it clear what the song is about.   But beyond that, the simplicity of the opening line, “Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day” itself paints a picture.   Add the music which Dylan has created around that line (technically the point is that he doesn’t start singing on the first beat of each bar) gives us a sense of the world falling apart and everything coming to an end.

In short, what we get is a total package of music and words – and it doesn’t matter whether you are able to appreciate where the bars in the music stop and start, any more than not knowing about paint and brush stroke technique inhibits one’s enjoyment of the visual artist’s work.

I don’t need to know what Old Bill was up to and why he is where he is, or indeed why Bob Dylan wrote the song.   What I get from these lines is a vision of a place, and of a man’s feelings, and in understanding and appreciating that, I am enhanced.  I have learned a little more about life.  And for that I am grateful.

by Jochen Markhorst

Two young, up-and-coming talents of French cinema meet on a film set in 1958, at the start of both breakthroughs. No main roles yet, but fairly visible supporting roles: Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Pierrot, a young gang member and Alain Delon can be admired in the role of Loulou, the young boyfriend of gang leader Olga. Sois Belle Et Tais-Toi, the somewhat corny gangster comedy is called – “Be beautiful and shut up”.

People are not that sensitive to sexism in those years, and the slogan resonates. In 1960 Serge Gainsbourg writes a whole song around the one-liner (on the EP Romantique 60), in English the blunter modification Just shut up and look pretty makes headway and in 1982 legendary painter Karel Appel embarrasses hostess Miss Sonja Barend live on television when he snaps: “Tais-toi et sois belle!”

By that time its impropriety has crossed the accepted standards of decency, but it remains popular. Only now as a provocation, as an ironic commentary, or cynically, as a feminist weapon. The many paraphrases are often witty. The masculine variant Sois beau and tais-toi, for example (of which the Belgian Marka makes another nice song, 1997), or the pun Sois blonde ou teins-toi (“Be blond or paint it”), or the funny knock-out which in May ’68 is attributed to De Gaulle, Sois jeune et tais-toi (“Be young and shut up”).

With all due respect for all his admirable qualities, Dylan does not exactly have the reputation of being a role-breaking, feminist front warrior. Already in the early 60s his main characters distinguish themselves again and again with hurt and misguided male chauvinist lamenting (“Don’t Think Twice”, “I Don’t Believe You”), sometimes even with poison prone to misogyny (“Ballad In Plain D”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Most Likely You Go Your Way” and “Just Like A Woman”, of course) and the hubbub does not subside in the next decade either, thanks to songs like “Idiot Wind” and “Is Your Love In Vain?”.

It is noteworthy how Dylan, when he is confronted with the Archie Bunker content of these lyrics, does not hide behind his standard reaction, behind the – otherwise credible – defense that his songs are not autobiographical, that the I is not I, Bob Dylan, that je est un autre.

For example, in the case of “Is Your Love In Vain?”  On the “chauvinistic” line you can cook and sew, make flowers grow Dylan responds:

“That criticism comes from people who think that women should be karate instructors or airplane pilots. I’m not knocking that – everyone should achieve what she wants to achieve – but when a man’s looking for a woman, he ain’t looking for a woman who’s an airplane pilot. He’s looking for a woman to help him out and support him, to hold up one end while he holds up another.”

(Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Cott, September 1978)

The criticism does not decelerate him. In the 1980s and beyond, Dylan even adds a little extra, and the suspicion seems justified that a child of the 1950s is speaking here, with correspondingly fossilised ideas about traditional roles and women’s rights.

Notorious is the one-liner from “Sweetheart Like You”, You know, a woman like you should be at home / That’s where you belong, and even in the twenty-first century, the now sixty-year-old bard wrecks his chances on cheers from the emancipated corner after the sexist grenade in “Sugar Baby”:

You always got to be prepared but you never know for what
There ain’t no limit to the amount of trouble women bring

That is 2001. And five years later, when retirement age is reached, Dylan really, really doesn’t care anymore, apparently:

I got troubles so hard, I just can’t stand the strain
Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains

(Modern Times, “Rollin’ And Tumblin’”)

The pasha talk of the imperative macho from “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” on 1967’s John Wesley Harding will not receive much applause from feminist dogmatisers either. Close your eyes, bring that bottle over here, shut the shade … the self-assured Don Juan gives seven brief orders, reassuring her in the meantime that she “does not have to be afraid”, because “tonight he is going to be her lover”.

With hindsight, it’s a good thing no ethical border guards were around in the Basement, a few weeks before the recording of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, when Dylan makes a run-up to that song with the men from The Band: “Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby”.

The same protagonist goes one step further, and barks his version of sois belle et tais-toi:

Shut your mouth, close your eyes,
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

Well, it’s 1967. You probably still can get away with it. And anyway, this one outpouring of machismo pales in the presence of the surrounding couplets: it is rather gray and unpleasant, out there. True, the refrain line to which the song owes its title is a romantic, widely used cliché in song culture since the 1920s (“Won’t You Be My Loving Baby” by the Halfway House Orchestra from 1927, for example, and “Won’t You Be My Baby” by Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra from 1930), but Dylan’s setting of this line is far from romantic.

That setting is, on the contrary, apocalyptic. Although not as kaleidoscopic as in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and not as subcutaneous as the references in songs such as “Jokerman” or “Slow Train”, but straightforward, in rough, unambiguous terms. All mankind in misery in the first verse, nothing appealing to discern in verse two, followed by a dead end road and culminating in the fourth verse with a biblical-sounding doom prophecy: east and west the fire will rise.

It is an odd hotchpotch, all in all – that sweet, somewhat frivolous cliché won’t you be my baby, the desolate backdrop and that pompous sexism. Apparently the poet feels so too; from “Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby” only one take is known, which on top of that is brutally interrupted when Garth Hudson starts an organ solo. And afterwards the song is immediately thrown into the waters of oblivion.

Still, a pity. With one more scribble and scratch session, Dylan would have made something more of those lyrics, and the music is pretty fun. A rather basic blues, but still.

Tony Attwood argues convincingly that the music is a duplicate of the classic “Mama Don’t Allow” (or “Mama Don’t”), and there is little to argue against that. It moves Tony to a contagious ode to the song and a spotlight on J.J. Cale’s wonderful live version, which is indeed beautiful. Attwood does ignore the most moving version of the song, though, the one by the “fabulously talented Mr. Dudley Moore” in the seventy-eighth Muppet Show (October 1979, season 4, episode 7). Dudley Moore has brought a robotic music device that removes the need for other musicians. It is truly heartbreaking to see how an unemployed Animal has to endure Moore singing Mama don’t allow no drummer man in here, leaving the drum solo to the R2D2-ish vessel.

By the way, Kermit and Attwood disagree about the origin of the song. Tony traces it back to 1928, to one Riley Puckett, while Kermit dates it 1929 in his announcement and attributes the song to Cow Cow Davenport. Attwood is probably right; Cow Cow Davenport does have a known tendency to claim other people’s songs, and the oldest known recording is indeed from 1928 by Puckett, for Dylan’s record company Columbia, incidentally.

Apart from that: Dylan is of course not the only one who duplicates structure and melody of old classics for a new song. “Mama Don’t Allow” is in turn a copy of the classic “This Train (Is Bound For Glory)”, which was popular in the early 20s and with which Sister Rosetta Tharpe scored a big hit in the 30s (The version that Dylan plays in his Theme Time Radio Hour is her re-recording from 1947).

Dylan himself recorded the song in 1961 (to be found on the so-called Minnesota Hotel Tapes Bootleg, on which it is wrongly attributed to Big Bill Broonzy). Dylan is, obviously, fascinated by the song because it is the name giver and the silver thread of his personal bible, of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound For Glory.

And before that, Willie Dixon already sculpted “My Babe” out of Bound For Glory, a song recorded by both Little Walter and Elvis, among others. The King did not record it until 1969, but Little Walter scored a huge hit with it in 1955. Radio maker Dylan plays Little Walter no less than five times. Not this “My Babe”, though Walter’s version of this particular song is most certainly under his skin, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cKJ42HAd0

Woody Guthrie, “This Train Is Bound For Glory”, Little Walter, “Mama Don’t”, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “My Babe”, Willie Dixon, “Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby”… the chain demonstrates once again the deep truth of Dylan’s words during that wondrous MusiCares speech, February 2015:

“All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way.”

Dylan’s unfinished sketch from the Basement is unknown until the official release (The Basement Tapes Complete, 2014), and that official release, understandably, does not lead to much excitement; covers there are not. Yes, one from Howard Fishman, who has the admirable mission to perform all Basement songs. He turns it into a semi-acoustic, Buckets Of Rain-like fingerpickin’ blues, with a hysterical violin as a troublemaking disturbance – pleasantly disrespectful.

Tony’s original review of “Baby won’t you be my baby?” is here.

by Aaron Galbraith

Ok, cards on the table – I am as big a Paul McCartney fan as I am of Bob Dylan so this should be something of an easy piece to write. Except it isn’t, the two men rarely met (at least publicly) – the picture above is the only one I can find of the pair together. It doesn’t seem that there was much influence on each others writing, certainly not lyrically, maybe musically the occasional Macca track will be a bit “Dylan-y” and vice-versa.

However, they have had quite a bit to say about each other the years and here are some of Dylan’s thoughts on the early Beatles:

“The Beatles came along, and kind of grabbed everyone by the throat. You were for them or against them. You were for them or you joined them, or whatever. Then everybody said, ‘Oh, popular song ain’t so bad,’ and then everyone wanted to get on the radio.”

“They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians. Even if you’re playing your own chords you had to have other people playing with you. That was obvious. And it started me thinking about other people.

“But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. I was not about to put up with other musicians, but in my head the Beatles were it. 

Over the years Bob has had much to say on McCartney:

“They were fantastic singers. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is.”

“I mean I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. But I’m in awe of him. He can do it all and he’s never let up, you know. He’s got the gift for melody, he’s got the rhythm. He can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anybody and he can sing the ballad as good as anybody, you know so… And his melodies are, you know, effortless. That’s what you have to be in awe… I’m in awe of him maybe just because he’s just so damn effortless. I mean I just wish he’d quit, you know. [laughs] Just everything and anything that comes out of his mouth is just framed in a melody, you know …”

The remaining Beatles discussed that early meeting with Dylan in their 1995 Anthology series:

McCartney goes so far to state that Dylan was “our idol”, adding, “I could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan. I felt like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life.”

For his part Dylan would answer the hotel phone by shouting, “This is Beatlemania here!” Otherwise they drank wine and hung out.

McCartney was inspired by the speed at which Dylan recorded “New Morning” in 1970, which was recorded over a five day period:

“Dylan inspired Wild Life, because we heard he had been in the studio and done an album in just a week. So we thought of doing it like that, putting down the spontaneous stuff and not being too careful. So it came out a bit like that. We wrote the tracks in the summer, Linda and I, we wrote them in Scotland in the summer while the lambs were gambolling. We spent two weeks on the Wild Life album all together. At that time, it was just when I had rung Denny Laine up a few days before and he came up to where we were to rehearse for one or two days.”

Dylan has covered a couple of McCartney’s songs over the years.

Here is a wonderful, playful version of “Yesterday” he recorded with George Harrison in 1970. I’m not sure what George is doing with his lead guitar playing, it gets a bit reggae towards the end but I love it!

Bob also included a cover of “The Long And Winding Road” in a show in 1978. Unfortunately, I am unable to find any audio of his version. It is intriguing to say the least!

Then in 2014 for the McCartney tribute album “The Art Of McCartney”, Bob pops up with a fine cover of “Things We Said Today”.

https://youtu.be/B28G1P9l9yw

I would be interested to hear his own thoughts on why he chose this track (or if it was chosen for him). McCartney has described the song as “future nostalgia”, which is a very interesting concept for a 1963 pop song. It moves effortlessly back and forward through time:

“Someday when we’re dreaming, deep in love not a lot to say…”
“then we will remember things we said today”
“You say you will love me, if I have to go”

Dylan keeps much of the original’s optimistic mood intact but his distinctive voice adds much to the piece. The selection of this track shows that Dylan knows his stuff as Beatle’s songs go it’s a bit of a deep-cut.

When McCartney was asked the question “Which Dylan track would he cover” this was his answer:

“That’s a very difficult question to answer, as there are so many great songs. ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ comes to mind because it’s something you could cover.” He continued, “Singing Dylan songs can be difficult because something like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, it’s so Dylan that it would be hard to get the spirit that he puts on it. ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ is another good one, you know. I’d put that on a list as well.”

I have been unable to find any examples of McCartney covering Dylan. The only tracks I can find that they both sang at some point is “My One And Only Love” (Triplicate / Kisses On The Bottom) and “Froggie Went A Courtin” – McCartney recorded this in 1991 as a warm up to his Unplugged show. Dylan recorded his take in 1992 so it is interesting they were both thinking about this track around the same time!

Let’s be honest though, McCartney and Dylan are top of the pile in the entire history of music. If Dylan has any peers in music, it can only be McCartney. If McCartney has any peers, it can only be Dylan.

Others in this series:

• Bob Dylan and… David Bowie
• Bob Dylan and John Lennon

by Larry Fyffe

You can read part 1 of this article at Cool Hand Bob

David Weir analyzes many of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics too much methinks through the lens of canonized Christian dogma, but assures us he is not imposing any religious message on the songs.

Kees de Graaf, on the other hand, comes to praise Dylan for his supposed Christian beliefs, but ends up burying Dylan’s figurative language underneath page upon page upon page that expound de Graaf’s own Christian beliefs. In a nutshell, Jesus Christ is the one and only answer to all the world’s problems.

The Bible, of course, is composed of two major books – the Old and the New Testaments with both of them composed of many smaller ‘books.’ Bob Dylan often references these major works in his song lyrics, but we really do not know what his personal spiritual beliefs are.

What we do have in front of us is his music and his song lyrics even though he quite often revises both of these aspects of his art form as well. To me it seems, if not into art for its own sake, Dylan is a seeker of knowledge, and his life experiences be a teacher that gives no definitive or simple answers. He also looks to traditional folk and blues songs, as well as to an assortment of literary and dramatic works; movies, too.

Regardless of what de Graaf thinks, Dylan’s song lyrics tend to present a Gnostic, if not Gothic, view of worldly existence – a dark, overly materialistic place in which everybody’s trapped, but from which the rebellious persona in his songs attempts to escape – in both body and spirit – through the door of empathy, a door that is seldom open:

As I walked out one morning 
To breathe the air around Tom Paine's
I spied the fairest damsel that ever did walk in chains
I offered her my hand
She took me by the arm
I knew that very instant 
She meant to do me harm

(Bob Dylan: As I Went Out One Morning)

Time waits for no one – wish though we might that it would, the human body cannot remain forever young; attention has to be paid:

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

(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Between then and there, the hand revealed is the one dealt to us in the poker game of life – go ask Willie Loman, he knows:

I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

Poor Willie – the American Dream turns into a nightmare (‘Death Of A Salesman’ by Jewish American author Arthur Miller). The myth of the  freedom-loving frontier cowboy (including outlaws with hearts of gold) lives on – perpetuated in Western movies, often produced by Jews who escaped the horrors of persecution by fleeing to America (Wyatt Earp is buried in a Jewish cemetary in California):

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor
He travelled with a gun in every hand
He opened many a door
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man

(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

Meanwhile back at the ranch, many of the song lyrics by Bob Dylan compare modern America to the biblical Babylon of old:

There's a woman on my lap
and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes....
This place ain't doing me any good
I'm in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

The only thing we know for sure about Bob Dylan is that his name isn’t Bob Dylan, and that his persona has no fondness for the hypocritical behaviour of supposedly religious leaders; nor for any of their like-minded followers:

Well, I'm grinding my life out, steady and sure
Nothing more wretched than what I must endure ....
Low cards are what I've got
But I'll play this hand whether I like it or not

(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood)

As did Jewish American actor Paul Newman in the movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’.

Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

The Golden Vanity is one of those folk songs that has multiple names – it is often called “The Sweet Trinity” and also “The Golden Willow Tree”.

https://youtu.be/_j0EA_YH61I

In the variations the ship can be the Sweet Trinity or Golden Vanity or Golden Willow Tree.   Sir Walter Raleigh can be part of the tale too.  Where the song is heard in America the enemy is the British, in British versions the enemy is French or Spanish.

Where the cabin boy gets back to his ship he is betrayed by the captain and so the valiant cabin boy drowns – thus revealing the nature of all those in authority – which usually goes down well with the audience of such folk tales, and indeed is something that normally appeals to Bob Dylan.

In some variations the cabin boy is promised to the sister of the captain, or indeed of Sir Walter Raleigh, but as ever, the promise is not kept.

Here’s Bob Dylan’s live version

https://youtu.be/QjmWL1o8AuQ

Dylan’s love of the traditional songs of America is of course well documented, as his support of the musical work of Woodie Gutherie testifies.  This version uses the offers of gold and the daughter as a reward for the sinking of the ship.   But the whole performance remains surprisingly low key, given the possibilities that the song itself offers.

In a second version by Bob Dylan, the song is played a semitone higher, at a faster speed and with a lot more vigour seems to do the subject matter more justice.

https://youtu.be/f8AO6EbBR_k

What I think particularly attracted Bob Dylan to the song is the variety of people who had also tried the song along with the traditional themes.

The Dylan chords site has the comment that Bob was drunk when he recorded this, given the way he stumbles over the lyrics, but they have done us the service of transcribing the lyrics.

There was a little ship
and it sailed along the sea
and the name of the ship was the golden vanity
and she sailed in the low and lonesome ocean
and she sailed in the lonesome sea.

There was another ship sailing along the sea
and the name of that ship was the Turkish Revelry
and sailing down that low and lonesome ocean
saling in the lonesome sea

There was a cabin boy he said what would you give to me
if I swim alongside of the Turkish Revelr
and sink her in the low and lonesome ocean
if I sink her in the lonesome sea

Well, I will give you gold and I will give you land
and my own lovely daughter she'll be at your command
if you sink her in the low and lonesome ocean
if you sink her in the lonesome sea

He bowed his breath, overboard jumped he
and he swum 'til he came to the Turkish Revelry
sailing in the low and lonesome ocean
sailing in the lonesome sea

He had a little tool, an augur meant to bore
and drilled nine holes in that ship's floor
then he sunk it the low and lonesome ocean
he sunk it in the lonesome sea

And he bowed his breath, back swam he
and he swum 'til he came to the Golden Vanity
sailing in the low and lonesome ocean
sailing in the lonesome sea

O' captain will you be as good as your word
and throw down a line and take me up on board
I'm sinking in that low and lonesome ocean
sinking in that lonesome sea

No, I'll not be as good as my word
I'll not throw down a line or to take you back on board
You'll gonna sink in that low and lonesome ocean
Sink in that lonesome sea

If it wasn't for the love that I have onto your men
I would do onto you like I done onto them
I'd sink you in the low and lonesome ocean
Sink you in that lonesome sea

So he bowed his breath and down went he
He swam til he came to pass down with [...]
and he sunk in that low and lonesome ocean
He sunk in that lonesome sea

To get a feeling of just how many variations there are of this song here is a version by the Carter family.

Pete Seeger really did get to grips with it however, making the lyrics clear and keeping the time

I think we can also understand Bob’s interest in the song in that it is so singable – performing this is just great fun because it offers so many possibilties.  And there is always the feeling that one is singing a song that has been sung across over 300 years.

There is an index to many of the other songs included in the “Why does Dylan like” series.

by Jochen Markhorst

“There was always something about that song, that was so simple, and an audacity to this sort of simplicity to that song. But it was so… so powerful at the same time. For me, at least. I was always ragingly envious of that song.”

So said Nick Cave when asked if there is a song that he wished he had written himself. A fan could have guessed that Cave would pick “I Threw It All Away”. For over twenty years, the story has been going around that he buys a copy of Dylan’s Nashville Skyline in every city he visits, and the source of that story is Cave himself, in an interview with Andy Gill for Q magazine, May ’95:

“I constantly buy the same record over and over again: I’ve bought so many versions of Nashville Skyline – I must be keeping Dylan in… whatever that is he needs keeping in.”

And when the Australian is asked in 1997 to provide the music for the film To Have And To Hold, an Original Soundtrack is recorded with twenty original compositions and one cover: “I Threw It All Away”, sung by the legendary Scott Walker.

The former singer of the gothic punk band The Birthday Party, who releases high-quality solo albums almost every year from the 1980s, is a seasoned Dylan fan. In his recent compilation “The Sick Bag Song”, a collection of thoughts, poems and sketches that he notes on the puke bags during his many flying hours, we also find the poetic representation of the first and only encounter with his hero (Glastonbury, 1998):

Then slowly, extending from his sleeve,
A cold, white, satin hand took mine.
Hey, I like what you do, he said to me.
I like what you do, too, I replied. I nearly died.
Then his hand retracted up his sleeve,
And Bob Dylan turned and took his leave,
Disappearing back into the rain.

In an interview, he confesses to have been completely star truck, although he retells it, here too, in a somewhat romantic way:

“It was raining heavily and I was standing in the doorway of my trailer in the band enclosure, watching the water rise quicker and quicker, so that now it was running into my trailer. There was a crack of thunder, I looked up and saw a man in a hooded windcheater rowing a tiny boat across the enclosure toward me. The water is now up to my knees. The man pulls the boat in and extends a hand that has a long thumbnail. His hand in mine feels smooth and cold, but giving. The man, who is Bob Dylan, says something like, “I like your stuff,” and before I can reply, he turns the boat around and rows back to his trailer.”

Heart-warming little anecdote, although the decor, as we can see in the photo, is slightly less apocalyptic. But Dylan’s approval of Cave’s work is credible. Probably the bard is very charmed by his album Murder Ballads (1996), which contains idiosyncratic versions of “Stagger Lee” and “Henry Lee”, two age-old folk songs that are also on Dylan’s pedestal, as well as a dark, foreboding interpretation of Dylan’s own “Death Is Not The End”. The other seven songs, including the world hit “Where The Wild Roses Grow”, all tell macabre, sinister murders and massacres.

Obviously, the admired “I Threw It All Away” is far from lurid or bloody, but apart from that “audacious simplicity”, the sombre load will have touched Cave. Yet the seismic shock that Nashville Skyline causes when released is not due to these characteristics, but mainly to Dylan’s voice, a crooning, smooth country tenor, to the country content of the music and to the enormous contrast with his previous albums.

In Dylan’s catalog, those three labels are still intact, but the dismay among the fans has gradually evaporated. The crown jewel of the album, “Lay Lady Lay”, continues to score high in favourites lists and hit charts, album finale “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” penetrates the canon thanks to adaptations by top artists such as Johnny Cash, Jeff Beck and Ben E. King.   “I Threw It All Away” does not have the least advocates; apart from Nick Cave also a Mr. Costello and a George Harrison, MBE, for example.

In itself the song is lyrically little uplifting. It is, within the country tradition, a ten-a-penny jeremiad of a pining narrator, who bitterly blames himself for losing the love of his life through his own misconduct. Theme and choice of words are not essentially different from half the repertoire of Dylan’s old heroes Hank Williams or George Jones.

One scrap of Dylan’s poetic brio flashes in the lines Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand / And rivers that ran through ev’ry day, but the contrast with the lyrics of songs like “Visions Of Johanna” and “All Along The Watchtower” is overwhelming – and that contrast, this Flowers In The Dirt effect, unintentionally adds to the appeal. In addition to that audacious simplicity, the mental change catches the eye, obviously; no poisonous reproaches, no kick after she’s down, but a broken, humble first person who searches his own conscience – it definitely is a new Dylan.

The strongest pillar, however, is the music. The chord scheme plays an attractive game with the listener’s expectations, threatening to drive the melody into a ditch a few times. After the conventional accompaniment under the first two lines, Dylan the Musician suddenly takes a turn to a major chord at But I was cruel (where one would expect minor) and then takes a completely unusual detour back to the starting point, as Tony Attwood clearly demonstrates in Bob Dylan, After The Crash

This weird route is almost a guarantee for false slips in the melody, but Dylan does the job seemingly effortlessly.

In the bridge the master plays a comparable trick, in the deceptive Love is all there is. Deceptive, because the middle-eight would have been intolerably sweet in an obvious blues scheme. This musical setting, though, provides the welcome angularity.

Plenty of covers, of course – after all, it is a beautiful Dylan song. Elvis Costello’s version is a highlight of his cover album Kojak Variety (1995). Madeleine Peyroux produces beautiful, jazzy interpretations of Dylan’s work and her “I Threw It All Away” on Standing On The Rooftop is also a direct hit (2011, which incidentally also contains a chilling “Love In Vain”, from Dylan’s hero Robert Johnson ). And usual suspect Jimmy LaFave has both the blues and the country in his genes, and proves that on Trail (1999).

However, the most beautiful covers are injected with soul. One of the finest in that category comes from The Bo-Keys, a reunion-like band from Memphis that has the laudable ambition to restore the legendary Memphis sound for the 21st century. That works contagiously well, as with the cover of “I Threw It All Away” on Heartaches By The Number (2016).

The most irresistible is a lot older. Cher has culpable Dylan fiascos on her conscience, but in 1969 everything is right. The Californian with Armenian roots is indeed one of the most successful artists in pop history – she is the only artist to score a number 1 hit in six (!) consecutive decades – but in the late 1960s her career experienced a first dip. For the restart, she hires the famous producer Jerry Wexler and submits to his regime at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. The same producer and the same studio (and the same co-producer Barry Beckett on the keys) who will help Dylan ten years later with his best-sounding album Slow Train Coming.

Chers 3614 Jackson Highway is also a minor masterpiece, but unfortunately commercially a flop. Eleven excellent covers, sparkling, soulfully arranged and an outstandingly singing Cher. Wexler is a big Dylan fan and so is Cher, so it’s no surprise that three of the eleven songs are from the Great White Wonder. Surprising still is that all three songs have been picked from the recent Nashville Skyline (also “Lay Lady Lay” and “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”) and even more astounding is the compelling impulse that the already so melancholic original gets from Beckett’s piano and from the Muscle Shoals Horns, the wind section.

At best a Dusty Springfield had surpassed it, presumably.

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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.

Bob Dylan Crosses The Mississippi

by Larry Fyffe

Let’s look at the following song lyrics as an allegory – characters and events represent qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, and politics:

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, no where to escape
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

A Gnostic-like theme is presented in which most humans are disgruntled because they are exploited in a society controlled by rulers who are bent on material gain even as the black card of death gets dealt to everyone.

A tribute is paid to another singer/songwriter who’s consoled by loving companionship:

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the end out for the ties that bind
Because you're mine, I walk the line
(Johnny Cash: I Walk The Line)

Below, the Blakean theme  of the rural life of childhood put asunder by the alienation of city life:

City's just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away
I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Tribute paid to a traditional song with a similar theme:

I am a man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all my day
I bid farewell to old Kentucky
The place I was born and raised
(Man Of Constant Sorrow~traditional)

It’s come to this – a materialistic society, the main product of which is alienation from the natural world; nihilism, it’s gift, and to escape therefrom is most people’s wish:

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

The fire-breathing ruler of the Old Testament’s back; that of the New, ignored:

Wilt Thou that we command fire
To come down from heaven
And consume them, even as Elias did?
(Luke 9:54)

It’s dark out there – pornographic magazines, books, and movies sold as a means of escape:

Well the Devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you want to, I have heard it all
I was thinkin' about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Deviant sexual dreams, if not action, the result – Valadimir Nabokov’s novel ‘Lolita’ comes to mind:

The only lover I'm ever gonna need's your soft, sweet, little girl's tongue
And Rosie, you're the one
(Bruce Springsteen: Rosalita)

The narrator imagines himself as Joshua, crosses the Jordon (in this case the Mississippi) River to the Promised Land – however, he becomes corrupted:

Well I got here following the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Tributes made to:

I been in town just one night to long
(Bruce Springsteen: Last Night In Tulsa)

As well as:

I've stayed in Sheridan too long already
(Robert Mitchum: Man With The Gun)

Making fun of himself for having to come up with an ending for the Ulysses-like journey, the author continues on with the story:

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin' to be kind
So give me your hand, and say you will be mine
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

A way out is not to portray himself as the rebel against the establisment that he did in his youth:

I spied the fairest damsel
That ever did walk in chains
I offered her my hand
She took me by the arm
I knew that very instant
She meant to do me harm
(Bob Dylan: As I Went Our One Morning)

The spectre of the Ace of Spades just won’t go away; the lyrics of the song ‘Mississippi” reference the story of Moses:

Well the emptiness is endless, as cold as the clay
You can always come back
But you can't come back all the way
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

As told in the Holy Bible, Moses makes it not all the way back to the Promised Land:

Because ye trespassed against me
Among the children of Israel .....
Because ye sanctified me not
In the midst of the children of Israel ....
Yet thou shalt see the land before thee
But thou shalt not go thither unto the land
Which I give the children of Israel
(Deuteronomy 32:51,52)

Tribute  is also paid to the song below:

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay
(Marty Robbins: Streets of Laredo ~ Maynard)

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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 Paul Hobson and Tony Attwood

In this series we look at live performances by Bob Dylan which have re-imagined songs from his back catalogue.

As ever the recordings have been selected by Paul and the commentary supplied by Tony.  We have Shelter from the Storm, Forever Young and Simple Twist of Fate.  Details of all the previous articles in the series are at the end.

 Shelter from the Storm  

For Bob Dylan his past catalogue is a thing to be played with, to be explored, to be messed about with, even to be turned upside down, just to see where each song can go.

When we think of Shelter from the Storm, the lyrics themselves allow an endless set of opportunities, because in saying “come in”, and also most importantly because the “she” of the song could be anything – she can be gentle, she can be on the edge of devouring her visitor, she can be saintly, she can be old, she can be young, she can be… well anything.

And as for the man who comes in and gets that shelter, he himself can be excited, tired, cautious… we really don’t know, because the song is so ambiguous throughout.

And it is this that has made me want to include two versions of the revisiting of the storm.  One selected by Paul and (just because I can) one by Tony.   Here’s Paul’s selection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ83T4MoiXo

And Tony’s from (of course) Rolling Thunder

After hearing these two it is almost an impossible shock to come back to the original and remember how gentle it was…

We don’t normally include the originals in this series, just focussing on the re-imagined versions, but on listening to the two recordings above and then putting on the original it really was such a jump backwards in time.  As listeners we really do have the choice as to how we imagine the people in the song.  That is the sheer genius of what is in essence an incredibly simple piece of music.

Now we move on to Forever Young.

By its very nature it is a gentle song, but that gentleness can be expressed as the prime emotion of the song or it can become the essence of the voice – as here.   And notice the way Bob holds onto the final “Forever” in the chorus.

The accompaniment itself in this version also holds back with the emphasis on acoustic rather than electronic sounds to give an extra feeling of the very essence of the music rather than any musical trickery that electronics might offer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8phER8RkAI

Finally in this edition we have Simple Twist Of Fate from the late 1990s.

This is something of a strange arrangement.  Bob’s vocals are very laid back, as is the instrumentation… except for the drums which seems strangely out of place.  And yet… upon reflection the solid regularity of the percussion, pounding the rhythm without variation, and indeed without cymbals, does portray the relentlessness of life as it move along, taking its own route irrespective of anything we might wish it to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7TWH-sK7w

A very effective re-imagining of the song.  But then from Bob we would expect nothing else.

The series so far

You can find the first article in the series here where we looked at Pretty Peggy O, Ring them Bells and the total reworking of Visions.

The second article took in Like a Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street and Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues.

Part 3 took in Tears of Rage, Masters of War and Man of Constant Sorrow.

Then we had  Re-imagined 4: If not for you, the Watchtower and Make you feel my love

by Aaron Galbraith

There is an excellent podcast called “Bowie vs Dylan” (www.bowievsdylan.com) where two brothers finally answer one of philosophy’s greatest questions: who’s better, David Bowie or Bob Dylan?

Each episode covers one year of releases, concerts and reissues – a winner is decided for the act who had the best year. Great episodes include “Ep 25: 1987 – Never Let Me Down vs. Hearts of Fire” which asks an interesting question, which would you rather listen to, the worst of Dylan or the worst of Bowie? As a big fan of both, it’s a hard question to answer but for 1987 they decided Dylan had the better year (for me, I’d rather listen to “Never Let Me Down” over “Hearts of Fire”).

Check the website for future episodes and for the tally so far (currently its Bowie 12 – Dylan 10).

It is easy to see that Bowie was a Dylan fan early on in his career, his second album “Space Oddity” contains a number of Dylanesque moments in tracks such as “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed”, “Letter To Hermione” and “Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud”.

Bowie’s fourth album (and possibly his best) “Hunky Dory” came in 1971 and contained the track “Song For Bob Dylan”.

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

Dylan wrote in “Chronicles”:

“I found myself stuck in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect. If you looked in the press, though, you saw me being portrayed as anything but that. It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat—someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn’t the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer…Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me. I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.”

In an interview in Melody Maker in 1976 Bowie said, “It was at that period that I said, ‘Okay, Dylan, if you don’t want to do it, I will.’ I saw that leadership void”. Bowie’s song begins by directly referencing “Song To Woody” and so sets himself up to be Dylan’s heir presumptive:

Ah, here she comes 
Here she comes, here she comes again 
The same old painted lady 
From the brow of the superbrain… 

Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
Some words had truthful vengeance
That could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more

The pair met a few times throughout the 70s and 80s, although it is alleged that Dylan was rude to Bowie and is known to have said that he hated, “Young Americans”.

But this hasn’t stopped Dylan stealing Bowie’s musicians over the years – Mick Ronson played for both (Ziggy and Rolling Thunder) as did Charlie Sexton (Glass Spider Tour and Never Ending Tour). I’ve also heard a rumour that Dylan wanted Bowie to produce the “Infidels” album before Mark Knoffler was brought on board.

In 1976 Bowie gave an interview to Playboy where he discussed an earlier meeting with Dylan:

PLAYBOY: You’re not noted for cordial relationships with other artists. Yet there was the rumor that you flew to Europe to spend a sabbatical with Bob Dylan. What about it?

BOWIE: That’s a beaut. I haven’t even left this bloody country in years. I saw Dylan in New York seven, eight months ago. We don’t have a lot to talk about. We’re not great friends. Actually, I think he hates me.

PLAYBOY: Under what circumstances did you meet?

BOWIE: Very bad ones. We went back to somebody’s house after some gig at a club. We had all gone to see someone. I can’t remember who, and Dylan was there. I was in a very, sort of…verbose frame of mind. And I just talked at him for hours and hours and hours, and whether I amused him or scared him or repulsed him, I really don’t know. I didn’t wait for any answers. I just went on and on about everything. And then I said goodnight. He never phoned me.

PLAYBOY: Did he impress you?

BOWIE: Not really. I’d just like to know what the young chap thought of me. I was quite convinced that what I had to say was important, which I seem to feel all the time. It’s been quite awhile since someone really impressed me.

I can’t find any examples of Dylan covering Bowie or even of them both covering the same song (although Bob doing “Life On Mars” would be magical!). Over the years Bowie has proven himself to be pretty good at picking covers (if you ignore “God Only Knows”!!) making songs such as “Sorrow” and “Wild Is The Wind” his own. Even in the later part of his career he was pulling out such well picked numbers such as “Try Some Buy Some” (Harrison), “I’ve Been Waiting For You” (Young), “Waterloo Sunset” (Kinks) and “I Know Its Gonna Happen Someday” (Morrissey).

He has also covered Dylan on a number of occasions.

First up is a 1989 standalone single by his band Tin Machine – “Maggie’s Farm”

This was follow in 1994 with a version of “Like A Rolling Stone” appearing on Mick Ronson’s 1994 posthumous “Heaven and Hull” album

Two further Dylan covers have since surfaced, both remain officially unreleased.

First up is “Make You Feel My Love”, I have no information on when this is from or why it was recorded but it is thrilling!

Lastly we have “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”. This was recorded as a potential bonus track for a live album to be called “Live And Well”. Virgin eventually balked at the idea of a live album as the previous studio album “Earthling” hadn’t sold particularly well and the supporting tour had mainly played clubs and small theatres. There is talk of the “Live and Well” album finally being released this year (as part of the ongoing series of Bowie album box sets). This would be welcome news for this Bowie and Dylan fan!

I have to be honest here, and admit that my whole reason for writing this article was to present these last two tracks to a wider audience. I love them both as much as I love both artists.

For me, it would be the Champions League Final, high scoring draw, with extra time and penalties…and I will not be drawn on who the winner is!

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• Bob Dylan and… John Lennon

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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 his Modernistic Symbolist French novels and short stories that are presented in a rather imagistic surrealistic-like format, devoid of a tight plot (often in diction double-edged and satirical), Marcel Proust searches in vain for meaning, or purpose linked to human existence, except in the creation of art; he considers emotional aspects of life, like love and jealousy, to be fleeting – here today, and gone tomorrow, only to re-appear yet again.

Proust takes an Existentialist position in which the solitary individual is imprisoned within the secret self. Bound by language, the self is entangled in sensual experience, and internal feelings – good and bad – all mixed up with memories from the past, and hopes for the future – with little time left over to appreciate the magical things in life felt in childhood, like the smell of the sea:

To find any happiness, writes he:

It's better not to know, to think as little as possible,
not to feel one's jealousy with the slightest concrete detail

(Marcel Proust: In Search Of Lost Time)

Within a number of Bob Dylan’s, often double-entendred, song lyrics there’s a viewpoint present, albeit sometimes shifted, akin to that of the Romantic-inclined Proust:

She's got everything she needs
She don't look back
She can take the dark out of the night-time
And paint the daytime black ...
You will start out sanding
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you'll wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees

(Bob Dylan: She Belongs To Me)

There be the following formidable song in which thoughts expressed therein are rather similar to those of the nonpracticing Jewish/Catholic writer:

Anger and jealousy is all that he sells us .....
No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say good-bye
No time to prepare for the victim that's there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think

(Bob Dylan: No Time To Think)

Indeed, the following song could be entitled “In Search Of Lost Time”:

It's been such a long, long time
Since we loved each other, and our hearts were true
One time, for one brief day, I was the man for you
Last night I heard you talkin' in your sleep
Saying things you shouldn't say, oh baby
You just might have to go to jail someday
Is there any place we can go?
Is there anybody we can see? Maybe
It's the same for you as it is for me

(Bob Dyan: Long And Wasted Years)

A title that’s referenced in the song lyrics below:

You break your promises all over the place
You promised to love me, but what do I see?
Just you comin' in, and spillin' juice all over me
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found  again

(Bob Dylan: Odds And Ends)

Characteristic of the singer/songwriter, thoughts expressed by Proust he modifies,  sometimes completely inverts:

... I caught a glimpse of the sea through the leafy boughs of trees ...
I was no longer near enough to the sea which seemed to me
not a living thing, but fixed; I no longer felt any power beneath it's colours.

(Marcel Proust: In Search Of Lost Time)

Transformed to:

... I caught a glimpse of the sea through the leafy boughs of the pines.
I wasn't near it, but could feel the power beneath it's colours.

(Bob Dylan: Chronicles I)

One of the basic elements and symbols of times past – earth, water, fire, and wind – revisited.

By Tony Attwood

Scott Cohen wrote a piece in Interview Magazine in February 1986 which basically seemed to consist of Dylan giving very short answers to a series of questions, including details of songs he particularly liked.

Included in the list was “Bony Moronie” which is referred to as “some great minor masterpiece.”  I am not sure if that was Dylan’s actual comment, but I’m taking it that this was a song he particularly liked.

Bony Moronie was the third single by Larry Williams, released in 1957.

The song was a hit for Williams, and he had other hits in the next couple of years with  “Short Fat Fannie”, “Slow Down”, “Dizzy, Miss Lizzy”, “Bad Boy” and “She Said Yeah”. 

Wikipedia tells us that Larry Williams’ life “mixed tremendous success with violence and drug addiction,” and that he was a longtime friend of Little Richard – and indeed when Little Richard left rock n roll to become a preacher, it is Williams who was designated by the record company to take over as its lead performer.

This he did as “Short Fat Fannie” and “Bony Moronie” each sold over one million copies.  And indeed some of his songs were covered later by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon as a solo artist.

Williams success however faded quickly, and in 1960 he was given a three year jail term for drug dealing.  However he did return with Little Richard in the mid 1960s both as a performer, as a manager and musical director, giving Little Richard considerable success once again.

However he seemingly never quit the drugs scene, and Wiki reports that in 1977 Williams threatened to kill Little Richard over a drug debt.  Williams died aged 44 on 7 January 1980.  It was reported as suicide.

However thereafter Martin Allbritton claimed to be Larry Williams, and toured billing himself as Larry Williams.   There was also a 1970s revival of Larry Williams work thanks to a glam rock band, Hush who performed Bony Moroney.

Unfortunately the Hush recording of Bony Moroney is not available in the UK for me to display it here but here is Tom Jones singing it

So why does Bob Dylan like this song?

It is classic 1950s rock n roll, and we know that Bob has always had a fascination with this music from his young days.

And unlike so many fast songs of the era, this song does actually lyrics that run all the way through (compare, for example, “Hound Dog”).   Also there are no compromises in terms of the pure 1950s rock music: the sax solo after the first two verses is the real thing – exactly capturing rock n roll before the electric guitar came to dominate everything.  Yes there is a guitar in the second instrumental break which fades the song out, but its engagement is minor.  This is the real rock n roll as it really did sound in the late 1950s.

Here’s another Larry Williams hit

Actually if you watch that video you can understand why as we got older, those of us who loved to jive moved over to modern jive.  It is danced at a somewhat slower speed.   Mind you it is still fast enough to be great fun.

There is a list of some of the other songs in this series in our index.

by Patrick Roefflaer

• Released: August 20, 1979
• Artwork: Catherine Kanner
• Back cover photographer: Nick Saxton
• Photographer inner sleeve: Morgan Renard
• Art Director: Wm. Stetz (William Stetz)
• Visual coordinator: Tony Lane

“Rejected drafts”

The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 is in its entirety devoted to the period that Dylan was born again as a Christian. He shared that new belief with the world through the studio albums Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love. To promote that new box set, a page in the form of a stained glass window appeared on bobdylan.com in November 2017. A click on the images grants acces to ‘never-bfore-seen memorabilia from the period.’

In the right part of the stained glass window there are two images of unused artwork for the cover of Slow Train Coming. The fifth image from the top is a watercolour of a prophet, with a staff / flower in his right hand. At the bottom right it is stated that the concept was designed by William Stetz and drawn by “Canner” [sic]. The other design (the eighth from the top) is solely attributed to William Stetz and represents a similar prophet who follows a train track from right to left. His discipels follow him, neatly in line.

Looking for more info on these drawings, I contacted William Stetz. It appears that he has never seen either of the “unused artworks”. “… although I later made similar illustrations myself, as proposals for Dylan’s album “Saved”, none of the drawings on this webpage belong to me and, as far as I know, neither to Catherine Kanner.”

In a next mail he emphasizes once again: “Typography IS mine, but I don’t think the figurative illustrations have any connection with the work of Catherine or myself. ”

Catherine Kanner responds equally astonished: “I can absolutely assure you that I have made only one piece of art for the cover of Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. No sketches were submitted. There is only the finished pen drawing that has been used for the cover.”

She says she will take steps to see her name removed from those “rejected drafts”.

The illustration above is one of the rejected pictures.

Publishers’ interjection:  Subsequent to our publishing this article Catherine Kanner sent a comment (which is published in full below in the comments section) saying the following.  We’re grateful to Catherine for taking the time to put the record straight.

“This is Catherine Kanner, the artist of Dylan’s album cover for Slow Train Coming. The artwork you are showing on this screen page – Sleeve art – with the train coming straight on is not my work and should NOT be attributed to me. The small image of the album cover on the tracks appears to be unaltered and is my work. There are many art pieces floating around online that are attributed to me, but are fakes. Several people have contacted me for confirmation in hope that they had an original, only to be disappointed. Here is a link to an interview for Rock Pop Gallery where I tell the story of how the art was made: https://rockpopgallery.typepad.com/rockpop_gallery_news/2008/04/cover-story—b.html”

Art-director: Wm. Stetz

William Stetz (called Bill) is a graphic designer and photographer from Chicago. As a 25-year-old he moved to Los Angeles where he started designing posters for plays and films. He also makes some cover designs for local bands. Although there are no known names among them, one must have caught the attention of Bob Dylan – or someone from his entourage.

Bill Stetz tells his story in an email from 14 May 2019.

“1.  I was drawn into a design project for Bob Dylan through Jude Elliott, the
girlfriend of my friend David Stafford. Jude was working as an assistant to Bob
Dylan who had opened a studio in Santa Monica – Venice, CA on Main Street
south of the corner of Pico Blvd.

This was a warehouse-type building on Main Street where Jude worked and Bob
used as a base/studio. Jude knew I was a designer and photographer (I had
been working for a motion picture title designer up to that time) and asked if I
would be interested to pitch an idea to Bob for his new album artwork, his first
Christian-themed album. CBS was the publisher for Dylan at the time and
although I dealt with CBS eventually, Dylan personally initiated the creative
process through me, up to the production phase of the work which was overseen
through CBS.

2.  I met Jude at the Main Street space and we went upstairs. It was mid-morning
when I located the studio a couple of blocks from the beach. She led me to the
second floor of the loft, a large room that took up a lot of the second floor, and
then to a smaller unfinished room that faced the street. My first meeting with
Dylan was in that smaller room of the warehouse. Bob entered and appeared
more slight in stature than I had imagined. I was 5’11” and he was much shorter
and slim. Jude introduced us and then left. In a business-like manner I extended
my hand to shake his and immediately sensed that he wasn’t used to shaking
hands with people, but took my hand and we exchanged a timid grasp.

3. Dylan stood with his back to the warehouse window in the bare room, so he
was somewhat in silhouette to me or side-lit as he turned profile to the window.
He was soft spoken and didn’t say too much, but he wanted me to have a listen
to the music of his new album (Slow Train Coming) for me to get a flavor of the
work. He produced a cassette tape (which he wouldn’t allow me to take) of some
of the music on his album. I remember him using a small portable cassette player
to play “Gotta Serve Somebody” and we stood quietly while the music played.
Then he left the room while I listened to more of the music. Dylan never
expressed or described any visuals to me. He was all about the music. He gave
me full reign to come up with something in the way of art and I never felt that I
was in competition with the record company or another artist that might be
coming through the door. I felt some pressure about inventing a design that
would be appropriate for a musical artist that I respected and admired for so
many years. At the same time Dylan’s so completely unpretentious demeanor
allowed me to concentrate on my ideas all to myself. I left that meeting that day
and began my work.

Usually, as is the case, my first ideas come on the strongest. Working from my
original first thoughts often takes precedence to working and re-working an idea.

Slow Train Coming. It conjures the obvious of a train, a progression of forward
movement, forward ideas, people, moving forces. A train is a train — and all that
other stuff, too. But this train is a movement of spirit, conviction and forces of
man and god. This album was Dylan’s vision of religion, Christianity and so
building upon that idea I introduced the cross through the axe and made this
“slow train,” the movement of mankind down a track that was being laid, all
honed by a cross-wielding laborer that would pound a spike to the rails.

Not having the expertise to translate my idea into the illustration myself, I hired an
illustrator, Catherine Kanner, that I had met through another work project to do
the drawing.”

Here we let Catherine have her say. She told her story in March 2008 to Cover Story:

“My first job out of college was one working at a film titles company in Los Angeles (around 1980), after which I moved on to a permanent freelance illustration and design career which included regular work with the Los Angeles Times “Opinion” section. There, my editorial pen and ink illustrations appeared weekly. One morning, I received a phone call from out of the blue from one of my former co-workers at the film titles company (sorry, I don’t recall his name– [that would be Bill Stetz]). who had also moved on and who had seen my editorial work in the Times. “Drop everything,” he said. “I’m coming over with an incredible job!” As it turns out, he was now working as a freelance designer and had a good connection at Columbia Records. He rushed over and let me know that this was a potential cover for a Bob Dylan album, […] and that it had to be done and turned in that night!

The concept was very concrete as he expressed it to me. As he explained it, this album was to be Dylan’s exploration of Christian ideas through his words and music. I recall being amazed to hear this.

The graphic style was meant to have an engraved look – which pen and ink (my specialty) certainly mimics. Dylan’s concepts for the illustration were clear [sic] – he requested locomotive train coming down tracks that were being laid by a crew, and there was to be a man in the foreground holding a pick-axe.  The axe was meant to be a symbol of the Cross. In my original sketch, I rendered the axe as it would naturally be, but I recall my friend insisting that I extend the top of the axe so that it more resembled a cross. I thought that was too obvious and argued for a more subtle approach, but in the end the axe was extended.

I did, in fact, finish the rendering that afternoon and after my friend took the piece, I never saw it again. I never met with anyone face to face at the record company, nor did I meet with Dylan.”

Bill Stetz confirms that he has stayed besides Catherine Kanner to give her instructions, while she was working: “I related all my ideas to Catherine and while I stood over her shoulder we worked out the image together. She did no work on the art outside of my presence and we made revisions to the art at her apartment studio.”

“The drawing was a patchwork of separate drawings that were reworked, cut from paper and fit together like a puzzle to create a forming the final work. I still own the original pieces of that work. From the composite, I had a film positive made of the line drawing and overlaid it on brown construction paper in the dimensions of the album cover for presentation. This gave it an old printing effect of having been produced on paper which had discolored or was of less than high quality paper stock. And, it looked like an album.”

“[Stetz] delivered the illustration to Columbia Records,’ Catherine continues. “And I believe it was about a week later that I heard back from him that Dylan had seen it – and he liked it! He wanted to use it as it was, however the record company wanted to give it another go, and I heard they used their own team and presented Dylan with new pieces in a style quite similar to mine (!!)”

In one of the emails Catherine sent me, she suggests that the “rejected drafts” on Dylan’s site are these proposals from the CBS staff, made in the style of Catherine and Bill’s work: “I cannot confirm this, but this could be an explanation. Again, I did not make any drafts, only the final approved and used artwork.”

Stetz adds: “I never heard directly from Bob Dylan what he thought of the work, but it must have made an impression as I did hear from the CBS art director for contractual arrangements to purchase the work. Jude seemed to think that Dylan liked the work a lot, so that pleased me.”

That art director is Tony Lane, former chef layout at Rolling Stone, but recently head of CBS. “When asked by Tony Lane if I wanted a credit as Art Director”, Bill Stetz writes, “I naively asked for the credit “cover design and concept” which is exactly what I did and what Columbia printed.”

“I had no input to Columbia about the photos or the liner. I presented only the cover artwork and typography as a completed layout overlay over a paper background. What I handed in “looked” exactly like the album cover that was published. Later I saw the finished album with back cover photo and liner art/copy when the album went public. I could have designed the whole thing and was not offered to do that.

I sensed some tension in my meeting with Art Director Tony Lane that I was allowed to do the cover art, through the insistence of Bob Dylan, as an outsider to the Columbia organization. That was my sense but I have no information to qualify those feelings.”

In an interview, reprinted in Howard Sounes “Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan”, Tony Lane confirmed that there was lengthy consultation within the staff of the record company about how clearly the message should be presented.

“There were great worries that they were going to lose their Bob Dylan core audience.” He added that Bob spoke about himslef in the third person, while discussing the artwork. Perhaps because he was referring to Stetz’s ideas?

“I am happy that the artwork was produced”, Bill Stetz concludes. “I am very proud that the idea took flight. I revere Bob Dylan as one of the greatest artists of our time and having played some role is his work makes me very happy.

Catherine Kanner was inducted in the Album Cover Hall of Fame in 2013 for her illustration on Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming.

“Since that time, there have been a number of Dylan scholars who have analyzed my illustration,” Kanner tells, “reading all sorts of mystical meanings and messages in the layout and concept. I have had a dialogue with one of these scholars (in Italy) explaining that my composition was simply designed to “tell the story”, and so it was not suffered over, or filled with deeper meaning.”

The back cover photo

The cross is also prominent on the back, in a photo of a man with a sailboat. The photo is the work of Nick Saxton (who later directed video for Michael Jackson). Saxton, like Tony Lane, was “closely involved in a secret Bible study.”

For the book Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan (2002), Scott M. Marshall interviewed the photographer Nick Saxton. Saxton told him that the depicted boat was on or near the Amazon and that the mysterious figure is not Dylan, but Gary Wright. Saxton had made that photo for the cover of his LP Headin’ Home (1979), which shows another photo of Gary on a boat. Somehow Dylan had seen that unused photo and insisted on using it for the Slow Train Coming cover.

The inner sleeve photo

The portrait of Dylan dressed in a leather vest and microphone in hand was made by Morgan Renard, the official photographer during the European and American part of Tour ’78.

A nice anecdote: Rolling Stone had an interview with Bob Dylan and wanted to put it on the cover of edition 278 – Dylan’s tenth cover! But when the photographer presented himself at Dylan’s dressing room before his performance at Madison Square Garden, Dylan refused to pose for him. He retired to the restrooms with Morgan Renard and got photographed there. Hence the urinal on the left of the frame.

And yet another anecdote, by Catherine Kanner: Years later, my parents were sitting on the deck of their house in Malibu, and a man was walking up the beach alone. My father recognized him as Bob Dylan. My mother (who is a character) waved him down. He actually came up to their house and she announced herself as “the mom of the artist who illustrated Slow Train Coming”. She had a copy of the art on the wall, and he came in to see. She said he was “modest and interesting”.

This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles covering the art work on Dylan’s albums.

by Jochen Markhorst

In November 2015, Andrew Lloyd Webber is considering adding yet another cat in a next revised version of Cats, one of the most successful musicals of all time. The musical is based on T.S. Eliot’s playful Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats, a collection of poems about a dozen cats and their lives. Originally, Eliot wrote the verses in letters to his godchildren and, as it turns out, sometimes also to friends. The compilation of those poems, in 1939, becomes a success.

The consideration of Andrew Lloyd Webber is due to the discovery of an as yet unknown poem about an as yet unknown cat, in a recovered letter from 1964, a letter of thanks from T.S. to his friend Anthony Laude for a dinner at his home. In it he also expresses his admiration for Anthony’s cat, the “particularly fastidious eater” Cumberley, a “dignified and beautiful cat”, whom he then honours with a nice ode on “Cumberleylaude”, a “gourmet cat” who enjoys life’s little joys:

The gourmet cat was of course Cumberleylaude,
Who did very little to earn his dinner and board,
Indeed, he was always out and about,
Patronising the haunts where he would find,
People are generous and nice and kind,
Serving good food to this culinary lout!

With care he chooses his place to dine,
And dresses accordingly, if he has time,
Tasting all that Neville Road offers,
With never a thought for anyone’s coffers!
The best is only fit for the best he opines,
When he wants salmon, or duck, or expensive French wines.

Witty, elegant, and clearly just a scribble; Eliot would undoubtedly have repaired the crippled meter for Old Possum’s Book and probably also added a few stronger rhymes. Remarkable, however, is the antique-looking but fresh rhyme scheme, a rhyme scheme that one will not find anywhere in the world literature: aab-ccb dd-ee-ff.

Not anywhere? Well, one single time, almost perfectly: in “No Time To Think”, Dylan’s verbose masterpiece on Street Legal.

In printed form, in Lyrics and on the site, the text is presented in eighteen four-line verses and thus it is not immediately noticeable:

In death, you face life with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls
You’re a soldier of mercy, you’re cold and you curse
“He who cannot be trusted must fall”

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think

… but it is after rearranging the words like Dylan sings them:

In death, you face life
with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls

You’re a soldier of mercy,
you’re cold and you curse “He
who cannot be trusted must fall”

Loneliness,
tenderness,
high society,
notoriety

You fight for the throne
and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think

The first quatrain, with those two internal rhymes, is therefore actually two terzetto’s. Exactly how Thomas Stearn Eliot in anapestic tetrameters “actually” writes tercets in his cat poem Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town.

In the whole of St. James’s the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we’re all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!

… which, just like the officially four-line couplets of “No Time To Think”, sounds like:

In the whole of St. James’s
the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we’re all of us proud to
be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!

Same rhyme scheme, identical meter, equivalent inventive enjambements … if Dylan did not use Old Possum as a template, we see at least illustrated: great minds think alike.

Dylan the Poet does go one step further, though. Eliot’s cat poems remain playful and entertaining, not only content-wise, but also with regard to form, the form of children’s songs and folk songs. Dylan, on the other hand, is not only much heavier in content, but after two tercets he takes a turn to an octave, to two quatrains, thus constructing “reverse sonnets”.

And this applies to every pair of couplets: the lyrics actually consist of nine inverted sonnets – first the sestet, then the octave. The layout hides how tightly the word artist and rhyme champion Dylan adheres to that medieval-looking poetry pattern, only the recital reveals the brilliant rhyme finds. Especially those syntax-breaking enjambements of mercy / curse He in the first verse, or like in the last verse, where the reader unsuspectingly reads:

Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive

… while the listener gently rocks along with:

Stripped of all virtue
as you crawl through the dirt You
can give but you cannot receive

Just like, again, T.S. Eliot lavishly infuses his Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats with those brilliant rhymes through enjambment:

He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing
That he’s only hunting for mice.
He can play any trick with a cork
Or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;
If you look for a knife or a fork
And you think it is merely misplaced

(Mr. Mistoffelees)

… or:

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That’s such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.

(Gus: The Theatre Cat)

… with which both Dylan and Eliot demonstrate being soulmates of the grandmaster Cole Porter, who constructs even more extreme hyphenations to rhyme weirdly naturally:  

When ev’ry night the set that’s smart is in-
Truding in nudist parties in
Studios.
Anything goes.

And

When Rockefeller still can hoard en-
Ough money to let Max Gordon
Produce his shows,
Anything goes.

Wonderful, sparkling and skilled finds. But here too: Dylan’s “No Time To Think” is more ambitious. Reversing the classic Petrarcan sonnet is already an original trick, strangely enough. Although dozens of sonnet variants have been conceived since Petrarch, the reversal of octave and sestet actually never occurs. Rilke sometimes comes close and Dante also does something similar twice (but then writes two sestets, followed by an octave). Both times, incidentally, in the collection La Vita Nuova, the anthology that is a candidate for that famous “book of poems” that is “written in the soul” of the narrator in “Tangled Up In Blue”.

And it doesn’t stop there; the industrious Dylan strings together no fewer than nine sonnets, and in fact produces a complete series of sonnets for one song – quite a unique feat in song art.

Although the work idiomatically is at least as ambitious, it is less revolutionary on that particular front. Bible references, echoes of ancient mythology, unusual word combinations (so-called catachresis) and replicated fragments from old songs … T.S. Eliot’s technique, and one of Dylan’s style characteristics since the mid-60s.

Old song fragments seem to come from Cole Porter too, as the German Dylanologist and folklorist Jürgen Kloss notices in his remarkable article Rhyming With Bob (2007). A bit remodeled, but the spirit of “Let’s Not Talk About Love” (1941) leaves traces, to say the least:

No honey, I suspect you all
Of being intellectual
And so, instead of gushin’ on
Let’s have a big discussion on
Timidity, stupidity, solidity, frigidity
Avidity, turbidity, Manhattan and viscidity
Fatality, morality, legality, finality
Neutrality, reality, or Southern hospitality
Promposity, verbosity
Im losing my velocity
But let’s not talk about love

The other two verses are perked up with similar word processions (And write a drunken poem on / Astrology, mythology / Geology, philology / Pathology, psychology / Electro-physiology / Spermology, phrenology).

The impact is of course radically different. In Cole Porter’s song (first performance Danny Kaye, in the musical Let’s Face It!), the lyrics are aiming at laughter, and it succeeds in this area – this barrage of -idity’s, -ality’s and -osity’s does have a comic effect. Dylan can, obviously, not be accused thereof, of humour.

In essence, that is the criticism from many disappointed fans, Dylanologists and critics; Street Legal is “dead air”, Dylan sounds like a bad parody of Dylan, the poet overstretches, he produces empty poetry. And especially “No Time To Think” gets a bashing. One of the stupidest songs of his career, aimless abstractions, long-winded, melodically weak, just one long litany – it’s only a small selection from a garbage bag filled with hate mail and insults.

The criticism can be felt, but also demonstrates superficiality. The lyrics are elaborate, ambitious, intellectually challenging and anything but aimless. Lack of coherence, that could still be a justified reproach – but then again, that is not mentioned anywhere.

Form prevails, that much a somewhat more distant analysis seems to confirm.

In terms of content, it seems that Dylan had a kind of “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” 2.0 in mind: a slalom along eternal, universal vices, along temptations that threaten human salvation, doom prophecy wrapped in poetic images and literary beauty. By the poet who once promised “t sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes. tho I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening.”

This time he casts his artist’s gaze on the Wide World and records materialism, just like in “It’s Alright Ma”, but now with a beautiful, antique metaphor (Mercury rules you) and desperate violence (stripped of all virtue). He heralds destruction (the moon shinin’ bloody and pink is Joel’s weather forecast for Judgment Day: “The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord,” Joel 2: 31), and he denounces human failures such as hypocrisy, selfishness and infidelity.

Here, and in that the disappointed do have a point, the poet sometimes opts for perhaps too cryptic wording and too misty symbolism. That fifteenth and sixteenth verse, for example (or rather: the eighth sonnet), with that bloody moon of Joel, seems to condemn human susceptibility to outer appearances and superficial pleasures. We are on our way to the Babylon girl, to the Whore of Babylon, to moral decay, and we cannot resist taking a final look at  “Camille”. Camille? La Dame aux Camélias, La Traviata? Or Camille from Kerouacs On The Road? She is, after all, a woman who is repeatedly abandoned (by Dean), and who is sometimes given a final look. The canon does not offer many other Camille’s – this is a dead end.

The Biblical references in this verse (Babylon, starlight in the East, the blood moon) force the associations with the verse You turn around for one real last glimpse towards Lot’s wife, who takes a final look at Sodom, on moral decline, and therefore turns into a salt pillar (Genesis 19:26). But that is one real last glimpse on Sodom. Or does the poet here mean a glance cast by “Camille”? In that case this poet is the only one who knows the name of Lot’s housewife; the Bible reveals neither her name nor the ones of their daughters.

Enigmatic. But: what beautiful, flowing, singing verses –

You turn around for one real last glimpse of Camille
’Neath the moon shinin’ bloody and pink
And there’s no time to think

Still, this enigmatic quality is also the major pain for the disappointed. It is too much. Whereas with a masterpiece such as “It’s Alright Ma” impermeability contributes to the beauty (The handmade blade, the child’s balloon / Eclipses both the sun and moon), it stimulates resistance here – perhaps the critics perceive the chosen images as too academic, too artificial, not poetic enough:

Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow / Will offer their heads for a prayer.

Well. Nobility and humility, the poet helpfully explains in the following verse. But that really does not help that much. “Warlords of sorrow”? It does not evoke an image, no. The reversal – the sorrow of warlords – would, but alas: that does not flow as nicely. And that probably demonstrates a decisive artistic argument, illustrates the poet’s art conception:

“It’s the sound and the words. Words don’t interfere with it. They… they… punctuate it. You know, they give it purpose.”

That’s what Dylan says in the Playboy interview with Ron Rosenbaum in November 1977 – around the same time he writes “No Time To Think”. “Words don’t interfere,” more important is how they sound. And well, yes, in that respect the poet succeeds. Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow sounds wonderful and runs like a charm, indeed; a waltz, the dactyl, all those internally rhyming, assonancing o’s, the pleasant rhyme of sorrow – tomorrow … beautiful, but on a semantic level the words really stand in the way; their meaning does not contribute anything.

The words that “don’t interfere” seem, after all, not so much to have come up after a real sense of emotion or a genuine moral outrage, but rather have been picked from various sources which apparently float in the air, these days. Songs by Cole Porter, reading T.S. Eliot, and yet again pinches of Proust, by the look of it.

Dean in Kerouac’s On The Road always carries À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu throughout America as well, and from Dylan we know for sure that he has been browsing the book back and forth for more than half a century. We have seen Dylan’s fascination with lost time since the 1960s (“Don’t Think Twice”, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, “Odds And Ends”), where not only an increasing “sense of Proust” can be registered, but also more and more Proust jargon and idiom is penetrating. Quite clear in late work such as “Summer Days” and “Floater”, irrefutable in Chronicles (in which Dylan hijacks entire sentences from Proust’s masterpiece).

Here, in this seventies song, the resonances are more vague still. The expression no time to think can be found twice in the Temps Perdu, for example, and all thirty-two nouns from those word processions in every second verse (memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy, etc.) are also present in Proust’s masterpiece – including rather unusual terms such as epitome and materialism. Only a China doll is not mentioned (though abundantly clothing, porcelain, umbrellas, puzzles, painting and what-not from China). Well, the doll is maybe brought in by Chekhov then.

The only artists who risk a cover are brother and sister Gruska from The Belle Brigade, for the Amnesty International tribute project Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan (2012) and that is actually a very nice version. The singing of Barbara and Ethan comes close to the magical shine of the Everly Brothers, the guitars have a Ry Cooder-like vibe, and the dry drums and the warm electric piano create a beautiful, autumnal colour – no, there is nothing wrong with the sound and the words, with The Belle Brigade.

However, the cover does not lead to a revaluation. “No Time To Think”, like most songs from the underappreciated masterpiece Street Legal, continues to shine lonely and alone in a rarely visited, forgotten corner in the cellar.

Maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber could be persuaded to turn it into a musical.

——————–

• There is an index of the songs reviewed in this series in: Dylan in Depth

And you may also enjoy a browse through

• Poets and Themes in Bob Dylan’s work
• Bob Dylan Master Harpist

By Larry Fyffe

Romantic writers, like Blake, react against the views expressed by those in the deistic Age of the Enlightenment (reason and science be the best path to follow in search for a better world) because the ridding of the old aristocrats leads to the triumph of a “new aristocracy” with their dark “Satanic mills”.

Realist writers, under the influence of Marx, focus on the plight of the working class under the capitalist system. Naturalist writers, under the influence of Darwin, on heredity and environment. Surrealists, under the influence of Freud, look to the role played by the subconscious.

Ayn Rand shrugs, and with her Objectivism that’s influenced by Nietzsche’s no-afterlife anti-altruism, reconciles Romanticism and Realism in her vision of ‘laissez-faire’ capitalism as an ideal model for production of goods; even an object of sexual ‘love’ is produced by the self-interest of a strong individualist. Alas, the ideal is despoiled by the ‘statism’ of liberals, feminists, fascists, and socialists.

The movie ‘Cool Hand Luke (based on a novel by Donn Pearce) with its final shot of two roads in an image of a cross, takes Rand, and her predecessors, to task – where does all this put God and Jesus?

Luke gambles, and gets his name by bluffing when the other players throw in their hands while playing a game of five card stud:

"Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand."
(Lukas Jackson: Cool Hand Luke)

His prisoner number is 37 in a chain gang overseen by the sadistic ‘Captain’, an allusion to:

For with God nothing shall be impossible
(Luke 1:37)

The Captain makes Luke suffer dearly for his masochistic he-man refusal to follow the commandants of established authority; given the odds of winning, rebellious Luke ignores the fact that he’s going to lose, sooner or later.

Looking upward, he complains:

"You ain't dealt me no cards in a long time. It's beginning to look like you got things fixed so I can't never win out."
(Lukas Jackson: Cool Hand Luke)

The film smacks of a deistical, if not an outright Existentialist, allegory – Luke as Jesus Christ:

And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying ....
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
(Mark 15:34)

In the lyrics below, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan puts on the mask of actor Paul Newman who plays the role of the unrelenting anti-establishment, anti-hero Luke:

The same way I'll leave here
Will be the same way that I came
I gotta a restless fever
Burnin' in my brain
(Bob Dylan: If You Ever Go To Houston)

https://youtu.be/vRjtAVYO9LU

An allusion to the description of Luke’s heroic but rebellious stint in the army:

"Then came out the same way you went in."
(The Captain: Cool Hand Luke)

Which, in turn, looks back to the Holy Bible:

This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven
Shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven
(Acts 1:11)

Luke’s memory is kept alive after the Captain kills him; the toughest member of the chain gang, played by actor George Kennedy, describes Luke’s spirit of resistence in terms rather sexual in nature:

"Oh, Luke, you wild beautiful thing!
You crazy handful of nothing!"
(Dragline: Cool Hand Luke)

On observing a sexy female temptress who teases the chain gang, Kennedy utters the following words:

"Hey Lord, whatever I done, don't strike me blind for another
couple of minutes."
(Dragline: Cool Hand Luke)

Bob Dylan throws Ayn Rand’s Objectivism out the window, and gambles on the Romantic Jack of Hearts:

Some people will offer you their hand, and some won't
Last night I knew you, tonight I don't
I need something strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna look at you 'til my eyes go blind
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

At the same time, the singer/songwriter, unlike beautiful loser Luke, is Realistic enough to know he’ll eventually lose out to the Ace of Spades:

I've been walking down forty miles of bad road
If the Bible's right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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.

Performances selected by Paul Hobson, commentaries by Tony Attwood

You can find the first article in the series here where we looked at Pretty Peggy O, Ring them Bells and the total reworking of Visions.

The second article took in Like a Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street and Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues.

The third article contained recordings of Tears of Rage, Masters of War, Man of Constant Sorrow

So now moving on we have…

• If not for you
• All Along the Watchtower (“so good it actually makes you forget Hendrix while listening”)
• To make you feel my love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ0p7-MjI-E

“If not for you” comes of course from New Morning – although prior to the version that appeared on the album Dylan had recorded it with George Harrison – a recording that turned up on the first Bootleg collection with another version appearing on Volume 10 of the series.  The song was also issued in Europe as a single and of course appeared on the Harrison album “All things must pass”.   Olivia Newton-John had a hit with the song.

Dylan performed “If Not for You” with George Harrison during rehearsals for the Concert for Bangladesh in New York in 1971, but did not perform the song at the concert itself.   However he has played it 89 times in concert – the last performance being in 2004.

In this live version Dylan has removed the skippy, jaunty feel that is established from the introduction on the album version.  On that version there is even a three note glockenspiel part to add to the simple “I love you” feel – with a further tinkling in the middle 8.  A very odd bit of orchestration for a Dylan song.

Dylan’s singing develops a feeling of emotion by the second middle 8 – we can hear the emotion in his voice that is expressed in the lyrics from there on.  But in the live version the musical accompaniment has not such tinkling with it, and instead Dylan expresses the need for the subject of the song in the way he sings.  His voice is much more at the centre – and of course there is no fade out – something which on the LP version just made me think it was a simple pop song nothing more.

It is (for me at least, even if for no one else) really interesting to play the album version and the live version next to each other.  The melody has changed, the intensity is much, much greater, and when he sounds laid back it is not because he is disinterested but because the emotion is so overwhelming.

Really – if you have a moment, do play the album track and then the live version one after the other.  It really is a change and quite an illustration of what Dylan does.  He’s not just looking for another way to play a song, but is completely re-imagining what is going on within the lyrics.

Moving on to our second choice this time…

“All Along the Watchtower” is of course the song that was itself transformed by a cover version.  Indeed it can be a shock to go back and hear the Dylan original on the album, if you have not heard it in a while. 

Indeed it is easy to forget that this version was issued as a single – and maybe we forget that because it failed to make the charts.

Maybe it is that, as well as the success of the Hendrix re-working on the piece that made Dylan stick with it so much.

Here he really has reinvented the song, and it is nice on this version from the late 1990s to see the guys have a bit of fun together on stage as they seek to out-Hendrix Hendrix.

https://youtu.be/W2RFKxAiH84

On the original album “Watchtower” fits perfectly with the rest of the songs that mostly work in the same format.  Now on tour however it has become something else – as it continued to do in the 2268 times the official site tells us it has been played.

The only other song to get into the 2000s in terms of performance is Like a Rolling Stone with 2063.  The much adored “Tangled up in Blue” is still only on 1685 (at the time of writing this in June 2019).

 And just in case you have forgotten what the Hendrix version sounded like, here it is.

Moving on to the third choice for this collection we have “Make You Feel My Love”.  Dylan has played this from November 1997 on to the present day – 289 performances at the time of writing this review.

It was his review of this song that made me convinced that Heylin was a soulless geek who couldn’t tell a burst of real emotion if it came up and hit him round the face and punched him in the nose.  He says, “Live performances in the winter of 2000 failed to reveal any hidden depths…” and in this and other reviews seems to me to be totally unable to appreciate that the album beings with a fade in (how rare is that) for “Love Sick” and then drags us slowly from desperation to hope.  It was a journey – and a painful one at that – which he seems in his reviews completely unable to grasp.

This live version tells us a lot about what Dylan felt about the song himself – just listen to the way he plays gently with the melody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1CwAhcMxiE

This really adds to the emotion of the song by keeping it under control – quite something hard to achieve.  It’s a lovely version.

There will be more in this series in a short while.

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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.

Aaron Galbraith

The two icons met for the first time in a smoke filled room in New York in 1964. Whilst it seems that Lennon was initially taken with Dylan, (it was he who passed around copies of “Freewheelin’” to the other Beatles), Lennon’s influence on Dylan’s writing around this time appears to be minimal.

Shortly after this meeting John would begin writing such songs such as “I’m A Loser”, “Nowhere Man” and “Norwegian Wood”. Bear in mind that John had already written “There’s A Place” in 1963 so this might have been the way things were heading in his writing anyway, but it’s easy to see Bob’s influence in lines such as:

"I sat on a rug biding my time
Drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said
'It's time for bed'"

Dylan’s response to this song appears with “Fourth Time Around” both in the title, melody and lyric, particularly this couplet:

“I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine."

It seems Lennon never fully got over that line or the song itself, alternatively interpreting it either as a parody of or as a tribute to Norwegian Wood throughout his entire life.

Nevertheless, after “Blonde On Blonde” was released, the pair met up for the infamous limo ride shown in the clip above, which was intended for the “Eat The Document” film. They are both clearly stoned, anxious and nervous of each other, the conversation is bizarre and free ranging, covering topics such as baseball, Johnny Cash, World War II and The Silkie (who covered both Dylan and The Beatles). I’m not sure much more can be gathered from the meeting, except Lennon gets the best line, “Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead or curly hair? Take Zimdawn! Come, come, boy, it’s only a film. Pull yourself together”.

Lennon continues to reference Dylan directly in lyrics throughout the next few years:

“I feel so suicidal, 
Just Like Dylan’s Mr Jones”

• Yer Blues (1968)

“Ev'rybody's talking about
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary
Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper”

• Give Peace A Chance (1969)

“I don't believe in Zimmerman”

• God (1970)

When the Beatles were recording the “Let It Be” album it’s well known that they warmed up with covers of old blues and rock and roll tunes, however they also pulled out several Dylan tunes to get the juices flowing for the day, usually these were led by Harrison, including run-throughs of “I Shall Be Released”, “Blowing In The Wind” and “Positively 4th Street”.

During the sessions Lennon led them through this short version of “Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqK7KXt-fU

In 1979 Dylan put out “Gotta Serve Somebody”. It would seem Lennon took offense at some of the lyrical content in the track and penned his own response with “Serve Yourself”.

“I must say I was surprised when old Bobby boy did go that way. I was very surprised. But I was also surprised when he went to that Jewish group. That surprised me, too, because all I ever hear whenever I hear about him is – and people can quote me and make me feel silly, too – but all I ever think of is ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.’ It’s the same man, but it isn’t the same man, and I don’t want to say anything about a man who is searching or has found it. It is unfortunate when people say, ‘This is the only way.’ That’s the only thing I’ve got against anybody, if they are saying, ‘This is the only answer.’ I don’t want to hear about that. There isn’t one answer to anything”.

In private he was even more scathing:

“Gotta Serve Somebody… guess he [Dylan] wants to be a waiter now.”

“Serve Yourself” was never released in his lifetime, but subsequently 2 versions have been issued, one on acoustic version and the other with piano.

Here is the best version in my opinion:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oXd25Jqi7G0

Bob wasn’t against the odd Beatle’s cover himself over the years and warmed up for shows with several selections including these 2 Lennon tracks:

Come together from 1985

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cg6NbBcKXY

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cg6NbBcKXY

“He got tomatoes
He got Rolling Thunder
He got arthritis”

Then in 1990 Bob added Nowhere Man to the show. Pretty good version here, although the sound quality isn’t great.

This leads us rather nicely to Bob’s “Roll On John” from the “Tempest” album. I was going to write a long piece here on my views on this track, but then I reread Tony’s review of the song and I found I had copied most of his thoughts, sometimes to the letter, so instead and I will take a quote from the review and also add a link to the full article (here).

“Roll On John isn’t a sad song about a friend that died. And it’s not a sonic fist-bump from one icon to another. It’s Dylan acknowledging that Lennon has become legend—another mythic character to populate his songs”.

by Tony Attwood

The End of Innocence written by Bruce Hornsby and Don Henley was performed nine times by Bob Dylan during the autumn 2002 tour.    The song was released by the composers as a single as well as appearing on Henley’s third album which took the name of the song for its title.  Hornsby played piano on the track.

Hornsby spent two years with the Grateful Dead, and this year (2019) released his 21st album.  He is still particularly remembered for his work with Bruce Hornsby and The Range, and his song “The Way It Is”.  Although it is the social commentary in this and other songs that many have noted, Hornsby’s work is very notable for the way he uses rhythm and this has attracted many musicians to appreciate his work.

Don Henley (and I know you know all this, but I’m setting it all out, just in case) was a founder of the Eagles and wrote “Hotel California.”   He’s been with the Eagles all the way through, including the re-founding of the group after they split up.  Don Henley also shares a strong concern for environmental matters with Bruce Hornsby.

https://youtu.be/ucgB8i9JvdY

I’m setting out the lyrics straight away, before going onto the rest of the commentary, as I personally found them hard to follow from Bob’s rendition and he has changed the lyrics very slightly in places.  Here’s what I think Bob sings…

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn’t have a care in the world
Mommy and daddy standing by
When happily ever after fails
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
Lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly
I know a place where we can go
Untouched by man
Watch the clouds rolling by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up offer up your best defense
This is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O’ beautiful for spacious skies
Now those skies are threatening
They’re beating plowshares into swords
For that tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we’ve been blinded by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie
I know a place where we can go
To wash away this sin
Watch the clouds roll by
The tall grass wave in the wind
Lay your head back on the ground
Let your long hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
This is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Or how we’ve come so far so fast
But somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
Darling give me just one kiss
And let me take just one last look
Before we say good bye
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

As others have pointed out, the “Tired old man that we elected king” is Ronald Reagan. And indeed there are a lot of political comments in the song, plus a Biblical reference (“Beating ploughshares into swords”) which relates to Isaiah 2:4 “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Here the lyrics reverse the Bible text, and I have also read that Hornsby shares with Dylan the concern about the decline in family farms which Dylan charted from Hollis Brown onwards.  And indeed this concern was a strong enough concern to lead to Bob’s Live Aid comment about helping American farmers, and thence on to Farm Aid.

Here’s Bruce Hornsby’s version of the song – this video has a commentary in the middle which I know interrupts the music but I think it is an interesting commentary and a moving video of a beautiful song.  And of course you can find the album and the song in full on the internet.

So there are a lot of elements that would draw Bob to this song – and if we step back from the detail of the song for a moment and consider it as a entity, and as I just noted, it is a stunningly beautiful and moving piece of songwriting.

For me it is one of those pieces that I find hard to analyse meaningfully, because it is the totalality of the piece that makes it beautiful, combined with the phrase that makes up the title.

I totally love the piece, and I’m glad Bob found it moving as well.  The only regret I have is in the way Bob reimagined the piece, making it harder to hear the lyrics and cutting out some of the refinements of the melody.   But on the positive side I am sure that because he chose to sing it many people not familar with the song before would have picked up on it for the first time.

Why does Dylan like –

Here are some of the other songs covered in this series

This series contains reviews of the songs of other writers that Dylan admits he loves… along (where possible) with examples of Dylan performing the songs, in contrast with the originals.

I’ve kept “October Song” on its own at the top of the list, because it is for me perhaps the most fascinating and interesting of all the songs included in this series.

Why does Bob Dylan like “October Song” by the Incredible String Band

• Why does Dylan like “I aint got no home”?
•  “Uncloudy Day”? A bolt straight from the heavens.
•  “The World’s Gone Wrong” – it’s the blues turned upside down.
•  “Spanish is the Loving Tongue”
• Bob Dylan and the untamed sense of control – Roscoe Holcomb
•  “Let it be me”?
• Bill Monroe
•  “Black white and brown”?
• “Mystery Train” by Junior Parker (and Elvis Presley)
• “Me and My chauffeur blues” – the foundations of Obviously 5 Believers
•  “Lucille” by Little Richard, and some Zappa too
•  Johnny Cash’s Train Of Love..,
•  Barbara Allen
•  “Friend of the Devil”
•  “Not Fade Away”
• “Lonely Avenue” by Ray Charles?
•  “Lonesome Town”
•  “So Cold in China”?
• Why and how did “Cottonfields” change Bob Dylan’s life?

by Jochen Markhorst

“Here’s a mighty, mighty man, a mammoth talent…He’s the father of 14 daughters and 7 sons…He has 64 grandchildren, and 8 great-grand children. No wonder he’s singing this song!”

Thus deejay Dylan announces “Cry To Me” by Solomon Burke, in episode 39 of his Theme Time Radio Hour. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day 2007, he opens his radio show with another song from Burke (“Home In Your Heart”, in episode 41, Heart) and this time the radio presenter also delivers an anecdote about the soul king he so deeply admires:

“Solomon is one of the most colourful musicians in soul music. One of my favorite stories is how he once stopped his tour bus in front of a funeral parlor, because no one in his band believed he used to be a mortician. He took all his musicians in this aisle, where the funeral parlor owner was preparing a corpse. His band couldn’t believe it as Solomon took over. He embalmed the body, applied make-up and slipped a suit on the dead man, before climbing back on the bus, heading after the next gig.”

The story touches Dylan in several ways. He is a self-proclaimed Solomon Burke fan, he can of course identify with a band leader who is traveling by bus with his band, and this band leader is also a funeral director – an archetype who comes by a few times in Dylan’s songs (“I Want You”, “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, “Shelter From The Storm”). Dylan demonstrates his admiration musically, too. In March ’87 he records a fairly unknown and beautiful Solomon song from 1979: “Sidewalks, Fences & Walls”.

The four recordings thereof surface years later, in the same February month of ’07 when the deejay Dylan pays all that attention to the singing caretaker. A Dylan fan and friend of the late producer David Briggs (producer of Neil Young, in particular) apparently has been able to obtain the recordings and is now trying to sell it via eBay for $ 12,500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvxFWPtOf48

When that does not work out, he offers $ 50 copies, which is not that smart; the first buyer puts the recordings on the net, shares them among others on expectingrain.com, so the entire Dylan loving community has the song in no time. In March 2008 a copy ends up with the writer of the song, the eccentric soul legend Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams and he posts an enthusiastic, proud reaction:

Hello Everybody,

I just found out about this last night….one of the greatest honors of my music career, Bob Dylan singing my song, “Sidewalks Fences and Walls”. David Chance turned me on to it. My educated guess is that Dylan’s keyboard man was Williams “Smitty” Smith, a guy I grew up with and taught to play the piano. Dylan is actually singing from the version I produced on Soloman Burke; using Soloman’s riffs, runs and inflections. I’ve never heard him this soulful nor have I ever heard him take on an r’n’b song this intricate. To be able to add Dylan to my list of who recorded my songs is part of my dreams coming true. Too bad it hasn’t been released commercially.

Love and Happiness to all,

Swamp Dogg

Burke’s respect for Dylan is similar to Swamp Dogg’s awe, just like the perplexity with which Solomon accepts a gift from Dylan in 2002: the throwaway “Stepchild” from 1978, intended for Burke’s come-back album Don’t Give Up On Me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy7wAKCwz4M

The song, originally called “Am I Your Stepchild?”, is a surprising choice, not to say: a missed opportunity. Dylan does have soulfuller leftovers in the drawer. “Making A Liar Out Of Me”, for example. Moreover, Solomon Burke is a pastor, and no small fry in that area either: his own church, The House of God for All People, has some forty thousand followers spread over two hundred churches in the US, Canada and Jamaica. That fact could have led Dylan to give up one of his many religious remnants. “Thief On The Cross”, “Stand By Faith” … the list of leftovers with a lot of Solomon Burke potency is long, but the master opts for the rather run-of-the-mill twelve-bar blues Stepchild.

Just as unfathomable is Dylan’s relationship with the song. “Am I Your Stepchild?” appears on the set list in the last months of 1978 and is played remarkably often: fifty-four times. Much more often than comparable blues songs such as “New Pony” (five times) or “Meet Me In The Morning” (once), which are considered good enough for a studio recording and an official release.

The performances are driven, Dylan sings passionately, guitarist Billy Cross is given room to shine with a dirty solo and from the first performance (Augusta, September 15) it is a solid, very pleasantly steaming blues. Three months later, for example in the Charlotte version, the tempo is slightly slower and the guitar solo replaced by smashing harmonica solos. He usually announces the song with “This is a new song I recently wrote” or similar words, and one time the bard says, “This is a new song I wrote about six months ago about a horrible love affair.”

The song does not have fully crystallized lyrics; Dylan sings different words every night – sometimes only four, five words differ from the previous evening, then again complete lines of verse are rewritten. On the last evening of that tour in 1978, it is played too and after that it gets discharged into obscurity. Dylan’s evangelical phase has begun and there is no room anymore for his secular songs. Then, after that Christian phase, Stepchild is definitively waived.

But when he dusts off the song for Solomon Burke in 2002, Dylan first polishes it up again. He radically rewrites all lines (except the chorus) and that is quite remarkable too. The text changes are not spectacular in terms of content. It remains the lamento of a hurt lover who feels wronged by a mean missus and again the chosen words are more or less within the traditional blues idiom. In any case, the lyrics are so insignificant that Solomon feels free to add another verse to it, to improvise in between and to name-check Dylan twice.

It causes a modest revival of “Stepchild”. The come-back from Solomon Burke is very well received, Don’t Give Up On Me receives worldwide acclaim and a Grammy Award (Best Contemporary Blues Album), sells excellently and scores highly in the end-of-year lists of both renowned music magazines and serious newspapers. And every article mentions that even Bob Dylan has contributed. Other big names are top musicians like Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, Nick Lowe and Tom Waits, and the name of Dylan producer Daniel Lanois stands out in the list of studio musicians.

Lanois plays the guitar on “Stepchild” and that leads to a little coda. Twelve years after Don’t Give Up On Me, in 2014, Lanois participates in Rock & Roll Time by the then 79-year-old legend Jerry Lee Lewis and points to the existence of “Stepchild”. Lewis recorded a Dylan song once before, a song writer who was unknown to him. That was “Rita May”, back in 1979, and Jerry Lee approvingly declared: “That boy is good, I´ll do anything by him.”

Thirty-five years later, The Killer returns to this unknown talent. His cover, for which he goes back to a more or less original, early text variant (the Oakland variant, November 13, 1978, comes close), is by far the most exciting version of “Stepchild”, wonderfully easygoing and swampy. In addition to Daniel Lanois, the phenomenon Doyle Bramhall II and co-producer, drummer and Dylan veteran Jim Keltner play along – but the exceptionally spry elderly Killer cannot be outplayed.

Jerry Lee Lewis

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

His poems abounding in objective correlatives, the preRomantic William Blake, depicts social authorities dampening the fiery spirit of childhood – innocence lost; the light of motherly love, overshadowed by the sternness of a cold-and-distant father; the teachings of Jesus left behind by the patriarchs of religion who palm off social problems by invoking  the dogma of ‘original sin’.

Blake presents a personal mythology, a vision in which he imagines a re-balance in the established order that drives away the dark clouds created by the Satanic mills of industrialized socirty:

The night was dark, no father was there
he child was wet with dew
The mire was deep, and the child did weep
And away the vapour flew

(William Blake: Little Boy Lost)

In the song lyrics below, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan mocks the image of the tough guy who rebels too much against ‘feminine’ emotionalism:

Now, little boy lost, he takes himslf so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerousl
And when bringing up her name
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me

(Visions  Of Johanna)

In the sparcely-worded, symbol-filled (translated) poem below, the sad narrator (a woman, not a a child) expresses the alienation that exists between the sexes in modern society, as well as the alienation experienced by workers that’s wrought by a nihilistic, capitalist society in which people are mere robots: 

He poured the coffee
In the cup ....
He got up
He put 
His hat on his head
He put on his raincoat 
Because it was raining
And he left
Without saying a word to me
Without looking at me
And I buried 
My hands in my face
And I cried

(Jacques Prevert: Breakfast)

Bob Dylan personifies today’s sociey as a sexually seductive woman who’s designed to accumulate material goods:

 And your pleasure knows no limit
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark 
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below

(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

Harking back to the Holy Bible:

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour
And decked with gold,and precious stones, and pearls
Having a golden cup in her han
Full of abominations, and filthiness of her fornication ....
I will tell you the mystery of the woman
nd of the beast that carrieth her ....

(Revelations 17:4,7)

Dylan paints a Gnostic picture of present-day America as modern Babylon – the American Dream turns into a hedonistic nightmare. A popular band named the Eagles, with a sound bubbly as a meadowlark’s, carries that biblical theme:

Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'We are all just  prisoners here of our own device'
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast

( Hotel California ~ Henley/Frey/Felder)

Below, song lyrics inspired by poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and the Holy Bible:

But I know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by man
We'll sit and watch the clouds go by
And the tall grass wave in the wind ....
This is the end of the innocence
O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating ploughshares into swords

(Bob Dylan: The End Of The Innocence ~ Henley/Hornsby)

https://youtu.be/In9xgdv-PHA

What else is on the site

You’ll find an index to 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 the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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.