Untold Dylan

by Jochen Markhorst

The first German officer who is shot by Vassili Zaytsev in Enemy At The Gates (Jean Jacques Annaud, 2001) is standing under an improvised shower in the remains of a house in the ruins of Stalingrad, which is under siege and constantly being bombarded. The officer’s transport has just arrived and is waiting in the combat zone, between the bomb craters and the debris: a black Mercedes 170V Funkwagen. Not a genuine one, by the way, but the Props Department has done its best.

Usually it is a more glamourous Mercedes. The Mercedes-Benz 200 Lang in Inglorious Bastards (Tarantino, 2009), for example, although in the opening scene SS officer Hans Landa arrives at Perrier LaPadite’s cottage in also an (open) Mercedes-Benz 170V. But preferably the top Nazis, from Hitler to Goering and from Himmler to Colonel Stauffenberg (Valkyrie, Bryan Singer, 2008), both privately and on the battlefields, to concentration camps and execution sites, are transported in the Mercedes-Benz 770 K Special -Tourenwagen 7-sitzer. That’s der Große Mercedes, the luxury car in which Hitler took the parades (a dark blue one, in this case), the car he gave Franco as a gift, in which Himmler visited the Konzentrationslager and Goering his Luftwaffekameraden. Emperor Hirohito was given a red one, Pope Pius XI a white one, but the Nazis generally preferred black, sometimes khaki.

And black are, consequently, almost all Mercedes in war films.

It is therefore a loaded, dark image, that the poet Dylan evokes in this one verse line of “Angelina”: There’s a black Mercedes rollin’ through the combat zone.

It does not stand alone, this dark brooding line. Blood dryin’ in my yellow hair as I go from shore to shore, for example. Incidentally, also an image that without much digging summons up associations with World War II and blond Nazis in Argentina, thus pushing fragments such as marching, stars and stripes, explode and tree of smoke also towards the battlefield.

However, in spite of this correlation, no coherent, unambiguous story or mood emerges from the lyrics; “Angelina” remains an enigmatic, threadless song.

It seems that an initial inspiration should be attributed to Harry Belafonte. Dylan writes the song when a Caribbean wind blows around his head, a few weeks after his schooner Water Pearl is launched. Reggae and calypso are in the air, there on those paradisiacal Little Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, and Dylan writes songs such as “Caribbean Wind”, “I And I”, “Heart Of Mine” and “Jokerman”, songs in which the sounds of the Windward and Leeward Islands echo.

It must have taken Dylan back to his first steps in the music business, to his harmonica contribution to “The Midnight Special” on Harry Belafonte’s eponymous 1962 album.

The experience does something with the young Dylan. He will honour the King of Calypso and “The Midnight Special” in the twenty-first century, in Chronicles and in “If You Ever Go To Houston”.

Belafonte’s album also features “Gotta Travel On”, which is already in his repertoire and which he will record later (Self Portrait, 1970) and apparently he also listens to Belafonte’s record before this one, Jump Up Calypso (1961). Its final number is released as a single: “Angelina”, with the chorus

Angelina, Angelina, 
Please bring down your concertina
And play a welcome for me 
'Cause I'll be coming home from sea

There are more echoes of the song in Dylan’s oeuvre, by the way. Harry’s from Curacao up to Tokyo becomes from Tokyo to the British Isles (“Caribbean Wind”) and a Dylanesque couplet like

Yes it's so long since I've been home
Seems like there's no place to roam
Well I've sailed around the Horn
I've been from San Jose up to Baffin Bay
And I've rode out many a storm

 … seems to resound in “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, “Lo And Behold!”, “Santa Fe” and “Heart Of Mine” – through the poetic vein of songwriter Lord Burgess (real name Irving Louis Burgie) flows the same blood as Dylan’s, and Dylan, hopping from Antillean islands to the West Indies, connects automatically. The jump to Belafonte and calypso is not that far, after all.

The strongest trigger is the chorus. Dylan started with the rhyme Angelina / concertina, presumably wrote a row of unrelated rhymes on a scrap paper (subpoena, hyena, Argentina, arena) and thought: we’ ll see what happens. Also a strategy that he shares with Belafonte’s main supplier Lord Burgess, who also jumps through the weirdest hoops to squeeze meaningless rhymes into a song. Like in “Gloria”, the B-side of the single “Angelina”:

Please marry me Gloria, 
Darling can't you see Gloria
With all your faults, 
I want you like a long dose of Epsom salts

 Or, at least as bizarre,

So please marry me Gloria, 
Darling can't you see Gloria
My belly does boil, 
I want you like a bad dose of castor oil.

But then again; Belafonte and Burgie don’t have the slightest ambition to suggest depth, of course – Belafonte is a song and dance man par excellence, certainly in those early years of his career.

The poet Dylan, on the other hand, does have some aspiration to be profound. And Biblical references is one of his strategies to insinuate any literary cachet. The New Testament, and especially the four Evangelists, this time. Matthew in the first verse (“do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” 6:3), Mark in the third (as he walked through the crowd, the same scene Dylan refers to in “Scarlet Town”: I touched the garment), Luke 6:29 in the following (“If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also,” from the Sermon on the Mount) and Peter’s denial from John (No, I have heard nothing about the man that you seek).

And that is by no means everything – “Angelina” is crammed with subtle and less indirect Biblical images and references. The last two verses quote Matthew and seem to refer to Armageddon, the pale horse is also from Revelation, the tree of smoke is an indication of the cloud in which God covers Himself when He speaks to Moses (Exodus, which is also the source for milk and honey) and the angel with four faces Dylan borrows from Ezekiel, from chapter 10, describing the cherubim: “each had four faces.”

All very expressive and most mysterious, but a coherent image still does not rise. In the end, as Dylan says in “Up To Me”, the lyrics do not come together: We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex / it didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects – and the proximity to again the Sermon on the Mount is probably not a coincidence.

Just like “Up To Me”, “Angelina” is rejected. Beautiful recording, beautiful melody and thrilling tension, that’s not the problem. But Dylan’s commentary on yet another dropped masterpiece, on “Caribbean Wind” seems to be applicable to “Angelina” one on one:

“That one I couldn’t quite grasp what it was about after I finished it. Sometimes, you’ll write something to be very inspired, and you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few little pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place.”

(Biograph, 1985)

Neither does the “Tangled Up In Blue”-artifice, the shuffling of personal pronouns and verb times, help. Just like in Tangled, there is a subcutaneous surmise of a triangular relationship, with apart from that unapproachable Angelina and the I-person, another man – but that “he” can just as well be the I-person himself, of course. Dylan himself does not have a clear picture either, or so it seems. The two versions of the third verse do illustrate that lack of clarity. The official, second version (the one on The Bootleg Series 1-3) describes the male antagonist (or the I-person):

His eyes were two slits, making a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint as he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman well endowed
And the head of a hyena

… but in the first version Dylan still sings about Angelina:

Her eyes were two slits, making a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint and well-endowed
Praising the dead as she rode a donkey through the crowd
Or was it a hyena?

Implementing that hyena remains somewhat difficult, but at least in this first version we escape from that alienating wink at Egyptian mythology (although there are actually no gods with the head of a hyena – jackals, yes). The Jesus reference is maintained, but this time refers to another scene: the entry into Jerusalem, where Jesus, seated on a donkey, makes His way through “a great crowd.” It is, incidentally, the chapter after the raising of Lazarus, so perhaps that should not have been praising the dead, but raising the dead.

There are hardly any covers, despite the success of The Bootleg Series 1-3 (1991),  the official release of the song. The only noteworthy version is from an old friend: Ashley Hutchings, the bassist and co-founder of Fairport Convention. At the time, in the late summer of ’67, Hutchings was one of the lucky ones who were allowed to rummage around in the Basement Tapes (and then chose “Million Dollar Bash”) and his dowsing rod still finds gold twenty years later; Hutchings’ “Angelina” is really beautiful. He changes Jerusalem into God’s country and fiddles with personal pronouns too (He’s surrounded by God’s angels becomes She’s surrounded), but the indecisive bard surely will not mind (on the collection The Guv’nor Vol. 1, 1993, which also includes the Fairport Convention outtake “Dear Landlord” and a Steeleye Span recording of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune”).

Dylan himself never plays the song. Not even when he performs in Berlin on April 4, 2019, at the Mercedes Benz Arena. Where a glittering black Mercedes is proudly showing off in front of the entrance.

Ashley Hutchings:

or try this one

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 600+ 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 Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘The harmonicas play
the skeleton keys and the rain’

Towards the end of 2002 Dylan put down the guitar, got in behind the keyboards and changed his sound forever. Dylan and his guitar; they’d been inseparable for forty years, a part of his ever shifting persona. It was a radical move, at least as radical as moving from the acoustic to the electric guitar.

Increasingly in the late 1990s, Dylan’s sound had been dominated by his punky Stratocaster with, I have to say, mixed results. ‘He’s no Eric Clapton’, his detractors crowed, and you can see the truth of that on a You Tube clip of Dylan and Clapton playing ‘Crossroads’ together in 1999; Dylan’s stubborn banging away on one note hardly matches the smooth and fluid Clapton.

For our present purposes, however, one of the consequences of abandoning the guitar was to bring the harmonica within easy reach. At some point in the 1980s Dylan abandoned the neck brace that enabled him to play guitar and harmonica at the same time, which meant that in order to play the little instrument he had to either put down the guitar or sling it awkwardly over his back. There’s a somewhat comical incident on the Johnny Carson show in 1984 when Dylan gets halfway through ‘Jokerman’, puts down his guitar and wanders around the set looking for his harps!

Behind the keyboards, however, he can sit the harmonica just above the keys where he can pick it up and put it down at will. From this possibility he developed the technique of playing the harmonica with his left hand while vamping away on the piano with his right.

You can hear the early fruits of this collaboration between the harmonica and piano in this late 2002 performance of ‘Love Minus Zero No Limit’. He’s feeling his way through this gentle song, and the effects are not spectacular, but it signals a new era in Dylan’s performances. He will play the piano from 2002 to 2006 at which point he switches from piano to organ.

By all accounts, 2003 was an uneven year in terms of performance, but gave rise to some wonderful harmonica work. The band created a raw, rough and ready sound that year.

A Dylan compiler dubbed his collection for 2003 as ‘Piano Blues and Bar Room Ballads’, which captures that sound, as if you’d just walked in off the street into some joint, maybe in the late 1930s, and some old guy is banging away on the piano and blasting the place out with his harp.

This rocking performance of Desolation Row shows Dylan’s piano to advantage, the way he anticipates the beat in order to drive the song along, and knocks us back with a short but powerful harmonica solo in the middle. Blues without restraint.

Starting with long, clear notes, towards the end, by overlapping two or three notes, the master harpist makes it sound as if two or three harmonicas suddenly join in. All this brilliance, and the right hand never misses a beat on the piano. Take a moment too, to appreciate Dylan’s rough but forceful vocal. What a gem. Play it effing loud!

‘Senor’ from the album Street Legal in 1978 has never been a particularly easy song to perform given its slow, potentially dirge-like movement, a weariness that affects other songs on the album too, like ‘Love In Vain’.

‘Senor’ has always reminded me of that famous quote by Henry Thoreau, ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Weary desperation, perhaps, in the case of this song, coupled with a powerful yearning to break free. A desire to cut through the repetitive false and phoney to the real and the true. The problem with the song may be that while the lyrics build to a shattering conclusion from the borderlands of despair

‘let’s overturn these tables
disconnect these cables
this place don’t make sense to me no more’

the music has nowhere to go but into an elegiac fade out, from the last shouted line to a final dying fall. Clip-clopping into the sunset, perhaps.

If we slip back to 1995 for a moment, we can hear Dylan grappling with the issue of how to end the song by using the harmonica to up the ante and cut through some of the drear, but, good as the harp work is, the song still seems to lumber to a somewhat grandiose ending not much more effective than the old fade out:

In 2003 Dylan found a more radical solution, again with the harmonica, which he leaves to one side, no mid-song solo, until after the last lines, not shouted this time but understated, before launching into a virtuoso piece of harp work which turns Thoreau’s dictum from ‘quiet desperation’ to screaming desperation, and the song ends with a cumulative movement of anguish and claustrophobic panic. The master harpist makes that little instrument shriek as if Robert Johnson’s hellhounds had their teeth in him. We could ask for a better recording, to bring the harp forward a bit, but hardly for a better performance!

All through writing this Master Harpist series something of a dialogue with jazz cat friends of mine has been running through my head, and has surfaced from time to time. Dylan can’t play the harmonica was their absolute assurance, and they were wrong, but not only can Dylan play the instrument, he can play it like a jazz cat himself. More like a jazz cat than a blues man. Take this 2003 performance of ‘Floater’, for example.

We’ve entered another joint but this time we’ve time-slipped ten years back to the 1920s, the F Scot Fitzgerald days, summer days and summer nights, with gangsters and tough talk, but also with a pastoral twist, glimpses of an idealised childhood. A touch of Normal Rockwell in the images conjured. Our old guy with his piano have moved in down the road from Al Jolson.

Here we don’t find the harmonica solo in the middle, or at the end, but as a prelude, a way of introducing the song, establishing its mood, which is bright and breezy with a touch of nostalgia.

My argument along the way here is that Dylan uses his harp to amplify emotional valences or potentials in a song. With ‘Floater’ he uses it to capture the sound of an era, his introductory solo reminding me of way some of those old trumpet players like Louis Armstrong used a mute to give that loud instrument more subtle tones. If we heard this solo played note-for-note on a muted trumpet, I doubt that Bob Dylan would be the first name to jump into our heads.

It’s fair to say that none of the live performances of ‘Drifter’s Escape’ capture the plaintive quality of the 1967 studio recording, yet the song made the transition to stadium rock, and sounds pretty good when pushed along. The 2003 recording is a bit messy, really; it’s getting late for the old guy in the joint with his piano, band and harp. He leaves the harp to last minute, quite literally, but still manages rip through three choruses, kick-arsing the song into the stratosphere. It’s one hell of escape the drifter makes in this performance.

I can’t pass over 2003 without stopping for a listen to this crowd-pleasing, foot-stomping, harmonica-wailing ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. This song as a showcase for Dylan’s harmonica needs a separate article, one I’ll write as a postscript to this Master Harpist series, but it belongs here as well. We’re treated not only to an extended harmonica ending, in which Dylan pulls out all the stops, but a bouncy harmonica intro leading us lightly into the song before Dylan sits at the piano, which begins to duck and dive, driving the song forward into the vocals.

There’s a warm-up harmonica solo before the last verse, and in the finale we hear that harmonica see-sawing back and forward across the rhythm, doing its own celebratory dance. The harmonica celebrates liberation by liberating itself from the strictures of the beat and doing a butterfly frolic.

Once again we find Dylan wowing his audience. Wish I’d been there!

The fruitful collaboration between the piano and the harmonica continued through to 2006. This recording from 2005 of ‘Million Miles’ raises once more the whole question of Dylan’s jazz influences, and the role of the harmonica in bringing that jazzy strain into Dylan’s music.

This music is rooted the jazz sounds of the late 1940s, maybe, early 50s, an echo of the big band era spliced with some modern sounding guitar work. Underpinned by a honky-tonk effect piano (under-recorded), Dylan’s harp solo before the last verse doesn’t hit a lot of different notes but rather plays with the song’s timing in ways I don’t quite understand, staggering the note, holding it, withholding it – it’s all about timing. Another ‘mute trumpet’ solo.

It feels almost haphazard, the lyrics feel improvised, the music delightfully casual – but it’s utterly accomplished.

In 2006 Dylan switched from the piano to the organ, and a new sound emerged which once more ruffled feathers. We’d got used to his percussive, anticipatory piano style, all those wonderful piano blues and bar-room ballads, now we had to deal with a kind of rinky-dink organ grinder style of keyboard work that was not to everybody’s taste. There were moments when the music sounded close to burlesque, and the Dylan bashing press ran tales of people walking out of Dylan concerts in droves and so on.

Also, during the organ grinder period Dylan’s voice appeared to deteriorate to a hoarse croak. Given that later, in 2014, Dylan the crooner was to miraculously emerge, capable of easing his way through old standards like ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, hitting the high notes without difficulty, I am tempted to think that much of the hoarse croak was a deliberate vocal strategy. As someone commented at the time, Dylan has finally got the voice he’s always wanted. He finally began to sound like some old engine that broke its driving wheel.

I’ll leave this post with a taste of things of come in Master Harpist 4. A droll version of an underrated song, ‘Under the Red Sky’. The harmonica does the prelude, several choruses, tuning us into the light, irreverent mood of the song. Sadly, from my point of view, the harmonica doesn’t return in the instrumental break. Dylan rinky-dinks on the organ, pleasant, foot-tapping, but not much more.

However beware! That opening harp solo into might lull us with its casual, bouncy gaiety, its whimsical touches, but there’s a dark tone in Dylan’s vocal delivery that takes us beyond the little throw-away song the harp might have set us up for!

See you next time around!

Kia Ora!

You will, I am sure, also enjoy…

Bob Dylan: Master Harpist part one

Bob Dylan: Master Harpist part two

By Larry Fyffe 

PreRomantic, ‘inward transcendentalist’ poet William Blake, diverges from Emanual Swedenborg’s rational-cum-mystical neoPlatonic religious outlook, and contends that within each and every human mind  lies the Imagination (it creates dreams, art, mythologies, and visions); the poet takes the New Testament Lamb of God as a symbol for the the Imagination – in contrast to the fearful, and materialistc Tiger God of the Old Testament.

Blake addresses a rather Gnostic-like question to the ‘demiurgic’ Tiger about  the Absolute One, the supreme Creator of the Universe:

Did he smile his work to see 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night

(William Blake: The Tyger)

And again in:

And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen? ....
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold 
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear; O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariots of fire!

(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Influenced by the poetry of Blake, the heavy metal band ‘Black Sabbath’ pictures modern man’s Imagination being held down by established social and economic institutions, personified as Satan who rebels against the anti-materialistic teachings of light-inspired Jesus, and sets up dark mills for labourers to work in:

Big black shape with eyes of fire 
Telling people their desire
Satan sitting there, he's smiling
Watch those flames get higher and higher
No, no, no, please God help me!...
Is this the end, my friend
Satan's coming 'round the bend
People running 'cause they're scared

(Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan envisions the black shape of a figurative train comin’ slowly around the bend. Dylan does not provide the reader or listener with a clear vision. Like Blake, he fogs things up – seems like the engineer is Christ, but could it be Satan?:

Man's ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don't apply no more
You can't rely no more to be standin' around waitin'
In the home of the brave, Jefferson turnin' over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
And there's a slow train comin' up around the bend

(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijh42sc6P4E

Dylan brings it all back home to old time rocknroll:

I don't care about economy, I don't care about astronomy
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turned into puppets

(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)

Alluding to the following song lyrics:

You get 'A' in Biology
You get 'A' in Psychology ....
But when you go out with me
Baby, you get 'D', D' in Love

(Cliff Richard: D in Love)

Bob Dylan also pays tribute to Henry Rollins whose punk band ‘Black Flag’ is heavily influenced by the words and music of ‘Black Sabbath’. As pointed out by others, Rollins’ novels are referenced by Dylan in the following song lyrics:

I see people in the park, forgettin' their troubles and woes
They're drinkin' and dancin', wearin' bright coloured clothes
All the young men with the young women lookin' so good
Well, I'd trade places with'em in a minute, if I could
I'm crossin' the street to get away from a mangy dog
Talkin' to myself in a monologue
I think what I need might be a full-length leather coat
Someone just asked me if I'm registered to vote

(Bob Dylan: Highlands)

To wit: 

 I would have traded places with the guy in a second

(Henry Rollins: High Adventures In The Great Outdoors)

And:

 He comes up to me and says, "Are you registered to vote?"
I say, "Hell, no"

(Henry Rollins: Art To Choke Hearts)

You see, Lucifer and the Tiger can be creatively turned around into a symbol of strength that stands up against established authorities and moralities:

 We walked along by the old canal
A little consfused, I remember well
And stopped into a strange hotel
With a neon burning bright
He felt the heat of the night
Hit him like a freight train

(Bob Dylan: Simple Twist Of Fate)

By Tony Attwood

Jochen has forwarded me the text of an interview with Bob Dylan that appeared in 1968 in “Sing Out” in which John Cohen asked a series of questions about Dylan’s attitude towards the Beatles.

At one point dylan said apropos the Beatles, “they work much more with the studio equipment, they take advantage of the new sound inventions of the past year or two. Whereas I don’t know anything about it. I just do the songs, and sing them and that’s all.”  I mention that because it suggests Bob was in a serious mood, willing to take on the questions and give straight answers.

The follow up question then takes us to the element that interests me, for the interviewer says, again of the Beatles, “Do you think they are more British or International?”

Bob replies, “They’re British, I suppose, but you can’t say they’ve carried on with their poetic legacy, whereas the Incredible String Band who wrote this “October Song”…that was quite good.”

(And as an aside, this is not “October Song as recorded by Amy Winehouse, that is a totally different affair.)

The interviewer then asked what both Jochen and I find an incomprehensible question, saying, “As a finished thing — or did it reach you?”   Maybe if you speak 1968 English you can explain that to us, but Bob replied, “As a finished song it’s quite good.”

“Quite good” of course is not a wholehearted recommendation, but on the other hand the album from which the song came, named “Incredible String Band”, was released two years earlier, and although popular did not reach the heights.

The Incredible String Band album won the title of “Folk Album of the Year” in the magazine “Melody Maker” which by this time had dropped its original stance of covering jazz and was now covering the music of what was then called the Underground.

In its article on the album Wikipedia says, “… and in a 1968 Sing Out! magazine interview Bob Dylan praised Williamson’s “October Song” as one of his favorite songs of that period.”

So maybe Bob said a little more than we have found or maybe Wiki just expanded on reality.  “Quite good” for me doesn’t equate to “one of his favourite songs of that period.”   But it was the song Bob picked, so it is worth a look in our “Why does Dylan like” series.

But for me there is a further connection.  Being only a few years younger than Bob Dylan, I was a student in Brighton (on the south coast of the UK) at the time the album came out and I was utterly knocked out by it, and it is this song that I still remember.  Indeed I think there are only three “Incredibles” songs  across all the albums that have stayed with me through my life – this plus “Back in the 1960s”, “The first girl ever I loved”, from their second album.  I think “The first girl” also written by Williamson gives quite an insight into the musician and his music.

Here are the lyrics…

I’ll sing you this October song
Oh, there is no song before it
The words and tune are none of my own
For my joys and sorrows bore it
Beside the sea
The brambly briars in the still of evening
Birds fly out behind the sun
And with them I’ll be leavng

The fallen leaves that jewel the ground
They know the art of dying
And leave with joy their glad gold hearts
In the scarlet shadows lying
When hunger calls my footsteps home
The morning follows after
I swim the seas within my mind
And the pine-trees laugh green laughter

I used to search for happiness
And I used to follow pleasure
But I found a door behind my mind
And that’s the greatest treasure
For rulers like to lay down laws
And rebels like to break them
And the poor priests like to walk in chains
And God likes to forsake them

So why did Bob pick this song?

First, it was unlike anything else being produced at the time – and indeed there are few other songs that compare to it, other than those by Williamson himself.

Second, I think he wanted to point out to the interviewer that British music was not just the Beatles, but there were many other insteresting explorations going on at the time.

And third I suspect he loved the way the the lyrics evolve.  Dylan does not write lines like those opening the second verse, just as he never writes melodies like this, but I think he can admire that sort of writing.

The opening four lines of the second verse are, for me, unparalleled in popular and folk music, and as I’ve said that final quartet of lines takes us onto a new dimension.

I do recall the impact that final verse made on me. This was 1968 and I was not into the drugs scene at all (I was however trying to become either a rock musician or writer), and I loved not just the “door behind my mind” but also the final four lines, because they reflected my own views on authority, both of the state and the church.  And those lines – indeed all the lines in the song, are far more than “quite good”.  I am not sure if anyone can find any antecedents but I can’t.

Many people have recorded it, and indeed still do record it.   Here are just four songs – you can find many more on the internet.  And the variety of approaches show just how much there is within the lyrics and the melody, which as the first example below shows, is very closely related to the English folk tradition of hundreds of years before.

It is a song that has been part of my life since those late teenage years, and I think my life has been a little richer by having it with me through the years.   I do hope you will also go on and try the other versions below.

The Beatles it ain’t, and I think Bob Dylan was clearly saying, “yes that’s one way of going, but really, there are other people who are doing phenomonal ground breaking work.  You should listen.”

When Bob said, “quite good” I like to think he meant, “yes the Beatles sum up and exemplify all that has gone before, but if you want to find somewhere new to travel, try this.”

Maybe I’m taking it all to far, but that’s how I like to read that remark.  After all, a song that stays with you, all the way through your adult life, has to be more than “quite good”.

Dick Gaughan

Lauri Watson takes a different route, changing the chord structure beneath the lyrics…

Tom Gillfellon keeps the struture but gives us an interwoven complex accompaniment, which perhaps on first hearing overpowers the melody and lyrics, but give it several plays and there appears a sound that does indeed deliver October.

The late Maggie Boyle also recorded the song, which can be found here. It is a simple and delicate version that delivers the feeling of the Scottish countryside which I think was very much part of the original.

And finally, back to the composer, Robin Williamson.  He of course wrote other songs.  Here is one I particularly like… “The first girl ever I loved”

My thanks to Jochen for giving me a chance to write about, and perhaps introduce you to, an extraordinary band from the 1960s and a beautiful song that truly does need to be remembered.

And of course for showing me another reason why I love the music of Bob Dylan.  We both enjoyed the Incredible String Band.

An index to the songs in this series can be found here.

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 Jochen Markhorst

JOSEPH
It’s very good. Of course now and then – just now and then – it gets a touch elaborate.

MOZART
What do you mean, Sire?

JOSEPH
Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say?
(he stops in difficulty; to Orsini-Rosenberg)
How shall one say, Director?

ORSINI-ROSENBERG
Too many notes, Your Majesty?

JOSEPH
Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.

(Peter Schaffer, Amadeus)

Emperor Joseph II extensively compliments Mozart with Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K.384; The Abduction From The Seraglio) and also makes one critical comment that leads to a somewhat absurd, comical dialogue with the uncomprehending, hurt Mozart, but the Imperial Highness has a point. Die Entführung is certainly one of Mozart’s grand operas, but indeed, compared to the Big Four (Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosí fan tutte, and Zauberflöte), it is perhaps a bit long-winded and it does – just now and then – suffer from too much ambition.

Almost two hundred years later, on January 21, 1966, Dylan could also use some constructive criticism too. He spends an entire production day grinding a rough diamond, but can’t get hold of the sparkle he suspects therein. Thanks to The Cutting Edge we are able to follow Dylan’s struggle, growing frustration and eventual capitulation, thanks to the same Cutting Edge we are witness to the resigned sigh, after the last rehearsal with the band, which has since been quoted by all fascinated reviewers, journalists and blogging fans: “I can’t hear the song anymore.”

After the release in 2014, the same recording gets some cult status because a powerless Dylan does not finish an expression of frustration: I can’t even. Is Dylan the mint master of this so hated fashionable, adolescent catchphrase from the twenty-first century? The respected literary-cultural magazine The Atlantic, established opinion-makers such as The New York Daily and trendy online news sites such as City Pages and The Daily Dot devote amused editorials to the find.

“She’s Your Lover Now” truly is a rough diamond, a song that holds eighteen carats, and it is one of the greatest lost classics in Dylan’s illegal bootlegging circuit for years. But unlike with peers such as “Blind Willie McTell”, “Mama You Been On My Mind”, “Series Of Dreams” or “Farewell Angelina” (the list is long) the admirers also hear: this song is indeed not finished. Or rather: the song is too full – Dylan tries to cram one and a half song into one song.

The three or four completed couplets each work sixteen lines of verse to the refrain line She’s your lover now and change the melody line five times along the way. That is a lot. Irregularly too; after six lines, then after three, after one, after two and after three lines. The chord scheme is very similar to “Like A Rolling Stone”, but is more restless and partly unusual, and then there is the question of the lyrics.

The lyrics are limping. The poet Dylan jerkely steers back and forth between a cynical, bitter statement à la “Positively Fourth Street” on the one hand and a kaleidoscopic fog curtain like “Visions Of Johanna” on the other.

Too many notes, Your Majesty.

The opening lines promise hazy poetry. Dylan introduces Blonde On Blonde archetypes, a roaring pawnbroker and a landlord, places a scorching sneer in the tradition of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” and “Like A Rolling Stone” with the very Dylanesque pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn’t it? but then switches to an edgy, unambiguous monologue in direct speech.

Initially the bard holds back on poetic imagery. She’s got her iron chain is a relatively traceable metaphor, just as the first poetic comparisons in the following verse (felony room and judge) are not too frenzied. Familiarly frantic again it does not get until the end of the third verse when the singer poetically expresses the unpredictable, hysterical character of the female lover: she is dancing on the bar with a fish head and a harpoon, and a fake beard on her brow.

In the unpublished fourth, final verse, the poet prolongs the surrealistic style. Bodybuilding legend Charles Atlas (1892-1972) is not out of place among the other passers-by on “Desolation Row” or the Mona Lisa, drunken politicians, Shakespeares and jugglers on Blonde On Blonde. Synesthetic imagery such as your voice is really warm, but has got no form would also fit on Blonde On Blonde, but not with the rest of this song, and the disdain of you were just there that’s all Dylan will eventually transfer to the closing song from side 1, to “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)”.

After a final recording, the breathtaking solo performance by Dylan on the piano when the rest of the band has already been sent home, the master leaves the song definitively. A first official release can be found on The Bootleg Series 1-3 (1991), a ‘complete’ band version, but many fans are fond of that lonely piano version, which appeared on the bootleg CD The Lonesome Sparrow Sings (1994), well before The Cutting Edge. Part of the popularity lies within the unfinished character, is the result of the tension that the Japanese call wabi-sabi (侘 寂), the beauty that is found in inadequacy, in transience and in authenticity – in perfect imperfection.

Fragments are preserved. The next recording day will be spent almost entirely on the difficult birth of “One Of Us Must Know”, which will turn out to be a polished version of “She’s Your Lover Now”, at least: thematically. The recording process is even more difficult, but ultimately it is fruitful; the last, twenty-fourth take is even the only New York recording that is good enough for Blonde On Blonde.

Despite the hidden life and the unfinished nature of the song, every now and then a brave artist ventures into a cover. In 1977 the American band The Original Marauders produces a sympathetic tribute album with mainly songs from the twilight zone (“Farewell Angelina”, “Tell Me Momma”) which also takes its name from “She’s Your Lover Now”: Now Your Mouth Cries Wolf. However, their cover is, with all due respect, love and sympathy, horrible. The songs that tolerate a country or folk approach (“Mama You Been On My Mind”, “Dear Landlord”) are passable, but as soon as an electric guitar is taken from its case, it goes wrong. The pianist hammers unimaginatively, for incomprehensible reasons the singer starts pinching his voice and the drummer loses his sense of rhythm.

On YouTube there are some more horrific mutilations te be found (Rich Lerner & The Groove, to name just one) and the only – very – satisfactory grade an English professional receives: Howard Devoto.

Howard Andrew Trafford, as he is actually called, founded the illustrious punk rock band The Buzzcocks in ’76 and reached an artistic peak with his next band Magazine. Especially on the debut album Real Life (1978), Devoto impresses with his specialty: working towards a captivating climax in melodic, almost symphonic punk songs.

Just before he more or less withdraws from the music scene, Devoto makes two albums with the multi-instrumentalist Noko under the band name Luxuria. Entertaining enough, but he reaches a final peak in his career with his take on “She’s Your Lover Now”, which is released very modestly as B-side of the single “Redneck”. Recorded in 1987, so Devoto has been able to think more than twenty years longer than Dylan about an arrangement in which he can channel the fanning melodies. He succeeds, oddly enough in an lavish mosaic of three guitar parts, energetic, dramatic piano and dynamic organ; a particularly tight drummer and disciplined bass player keep the boundaries strictly guarded. It is a beautiful, seven-minute reverence to a secret high point from Dylan’s wild mercury period.

by Larry Fyffe 

With black humoured onomatopoeic lyrics, Beat poet Gregory Corso sarcastically chides his generation for being spooked by the A-bomb since it’s just another step in the wonderful technological achievements of man, a leap in the development of weapons of mass destruction designed by humans to kill fellow human beings:

O Bomb, I love you
I want to kiss your clank, eat your boom
You are paean,  acme of scream
A lyric hat of Mister Thunder

(Gregory Corso: Bomb)

Singer/songriter Bob Dylan turns the tables on Corso, and composes lyrics that burlesque the Beat’s poem entitled ‘Bomb’ – apparently, Bob doesn’t think  the poem by Corso is funny:

Go away , you Bomb, get away, go away

Fast, right now, fast, quick, you get me sick

My good gal don't like you none

And the kids on my corner are scared of you

And my friends are gettin' headaches that split and split

And that kind of feelin' is rubbin' off on me

And I don't like it none too good

(Michel Montecrossa: Go Away Bomb ~ Dylan/Montecrossa; the song is available on Spotify)

Dylan imitates the satirical style of a song taken from the musical “The Music Man” that portrays playing pool as though it were a serious sin in need of  a preacher’s condemnation:

Now friends let me tell you what I mean
You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table
Pockets that make the difference
Between a gentleman and and a bum
With a capital 'B'
And that rhymes with with 'P'
And that stands for 'pool' ...
Right here in River City
'Trouble' with a capital 'T'
And that rhymes with 'P'
And that stands for 'pool'

(Robert Preston: Ya Got Trouble ~ M. Willson)

Writes Dylan in somewhat the same manner as Willson:

I hate the letters in your word

'B' that means "bad"

You're so bad that even a dead hog in the sun would get up and run

'O' that stands for " 'orrible" 

You're so 'orrible that the word drops it's first letter and runs

'M' that stands for "morgue'

And all them folks in it are feelin' lucky

And I don't mind folks feelin' lucky, but I hate that that feelin' of envy

And sometimes when I get thinkin' 'bout how lucky they are

I get 'en-vicious', and that's a bad lonesome feelin' too

'B' that means "bad"

But that's the second time 'round so it's twice as bad

(Michel Montecrossa: Go Away Bomb ~ M. Wilson)

The fire and brimstone of an Edward Taylor evangelistic sermon sprews forth from Dylan’s apostrophe to the Bomb and it’s author:

I hate you 'cause you make my life seem like nothin' at all

I hate you 'cause  your name's lost its meanin', and you can fool anybody now

I hate you 'cause you're man-made, and man-owned,  and man-handled

And you might be miss-made and miss-owned, and miss-handled

And even miss-used

And I hate you 'cause you could drop on me by accident, and kill me

And I never liked you anyway, I'm against you to begin with

And I hate you twice as much as Jim Crow hates me

Corso uses understatement in his address to the Bomb and his audience to show that things have simply gotten out of hand:

Budger of history, brake of time, you Bomb

Toy of the universe, grandest of all snatched sky, I can not hate you

Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt, the jawbone of an ass

The bumpy club of one million B.C., the mace, the flail, the axe

Catapult of da Vinci, tomahawk Cochise, flintlock Kidd, dagger Rathbone

And the sad desperate gun of Verlaine, Pushkin, Dillinger, Bogart

And hath not St. Michael a burning sword, St. George a lance, David a sling?

All man hates you; they'd rather die by car crash, lightning, drowning

(Gregory Corso: Bomb)

Dylan employs overstatement to parody Corso’s seeming indifference:

I want that bomb
 want it hangin' out of my pocket, and danglin' on my key-chain
I want it stickin' out of my boot, I want it fallin' out of my sock
I wanna wear it on my wedding finger
And I wanna tie it with bandanas to my head
I want that bomb
I want it settin' in my mouth like a cigar
I want it stickin' from my ears like a carrot
I wanna look in the mirror, and see it in my eyes

(Michel Montecrossa: Go Away Bomb ~ Dylan/Montecrossa)

Dylan makes a point of out-Corsoing Corso: 

I want one in both my hands

I want two in both arms

I want the bomb to be hangin', and hurtin', and shinin', and burnin'

I want it to be glowin', and backbiting, and whistlin', and sidewindin'

I want it showin' all over my living self

I want it breathin' from every porthole

I want it blowin' from every pore

I want it weightin' me down so I can't even walk right

I wanna get up in the mornin', and scare the day right out of its dawn

Then, I want to walk into the White House, and say

"Dig yourselves!"

(Michel Montecrossa: Go Away Bomb ~ Dylan/Montecrossa)

A song lyrics/poem by Bob Dylan that’s under-estimated by many of his critics who know not its background.

By Tony Attwood

“The World’s Gone Wrong” was the opening track, and title of Dylan’s 29th studio album released in 1993.  It was a return to the approach of the first album – consisting of songs written by people other than Bob Dylan.

However according to BobDylan.com this song was “Written by Bob Dylan (arr)”.  That phrase, which they have used elsewhere, is, for me at least, highly misleading if not downright incomprehensible, and I really wish they would not do it.  

The song was written by Walter Vinson, who was born on 2 February 1901 and died on 22 April 1975 – so sadly never got to know just how famous his song would become.  However his estate (ie the inheritors of whatever he left after his passing) would probably have been able to claim income from the recording.  (I don’t know US law in such matters but in the UK they most certainly would have been able to make such a claim and it could not have been contested.)

The song is referred to in many quarters in its original form as “The world is going wrong” but when you listen to the original music, the vocal clearly does sound like “gone wrong”.

Walter Vinson was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks, and he also co-wrote the famous blues song “Sitting on Top of the World“.   This song is not  to be confused with “I’m Sitting on Top of the World”, a popular song written by Ray Henderson, Sam Lewis and Joe Young (recorded by Al Jolson in 1926) which is now more widely known in popular music than the Vinson song that Dylan used.   Vinson, we should notice also wrote “Blood in my Eyes for You” which again on BobDylan.com is noted as “Written by: Bob Dylan (arr)”

The composer’s name is sometimes written as Walter Vincson and he turns up in some places as Walter Vincent and other times as Walter Jacobs   The lyrics of the song however don’t change and Dylan took the song exactly as Vincson had written it.  Here’s the original…

Strange things have happened, like never before.
My baby told me I would have to go.
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

Feel bad this morning, ain’t got no home.
No use in worrying, ’cause the world gone wrong,
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

I told you, baby, right to your head,
If I didn’t leave you I would have to kill you dead.
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

I tried to be loving and treat you kind,
But it seems like you never right, you got no loyal mind.
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

If you have a woman and she don’t treat you kind,
Praise the Good Lord to get her out of your mind.
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

Said, when you been good now, can’t do no more,
Just tell her kindly, “there is the front door.”
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

Pack up my suitcase, give me my hat,
No use to ask me, baby, ’cause I’ll never be back.
I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.
I can’t be good, baby,
Honey, because the world’s gone wrong.

Dylan mentioned the Sheiks in the notes on the LP saying that “rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks.” 

But what Dylan has done here is slowed the song down considerably from the original version, so yes, the claim that he “arranged” it is valid.  It is the claim that the song was “traditional” (ie composed in the dim and distant past, with knowledge of who wrote it lost in the mists of time) that is false. 

The Sheiks broke up as a band in 1933, and after that Vinson travelled, working with a range of musicians in Jackson, New Orleans and Chicago.  He stopped performing in the mid 1940s but returned in the 60s before being taken ill in the early 1970s, dying in 1975 at the age of 74.

In 2009, a concert raised the money needed to place a headstone on Vinson’s grave which was erected in October of that year.   That suggests to me that the musician’s estate did not get royalties from the two tracks on the Dylan album, but of course I don’t have any sound evidence for or against.  I can only hope that the “traditional arranged Dylan” line did not lead to the composer’s estate not getting the money due.

Aside from Dylan’s reworking of the song BB King also recorded it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJdyNHOEx9g

What Dylan does do in this song is play with the chord sequence, alternating in the first line between a chord we would write as Csus4 (ie C major with the fourth note of the scale – F – added to it) and the straight forward C major chord.

There is more such use of unusual chords as with the alternation of the chord of F with what a chord made up of D, F, Ab, C – it all adds to the sense of loss and abandon.

Dylan also modifies the last line of music for each verse, and the link between each verse – he’s clearly worked on the song and thought it through in great detail – this is not just a guy who likes the song, playing it – this is a proper re-arrangement (although that still doesn’t mean he wrote it).

What makes the song so fascinating is the way the first two lines of lyrics (the only lines that change from verse to verse) develop through the song.  It opens with a variant on the classic “My baby left me” approach

Strange things have happened, like never before.
My baby told me I would have to go.

The singer now has the blues

Feel bad this morning, ain’t got no home.
No use in worrying, ’cause the world gone wrong,

But he is not averse to suggesting violence even to one he loves…

I told you, baby, right to your head,
If I didn’t leave you I would have to kill you dead.

For in classic blues style it is always the woman’s fault never the man’s.

I tried to be loving and treat you kind,
But it seems like you never right, you got no loyal mind.

However it seems he doesn’t actually intend to go through with the threat…

If you have a woman and she don’t treat you kind,
Praise the Good Lord to get her out of your mind.

And he leaves the world of violence towards women behind and allows her to go – not with kindness, but at least he is allowing her to leave

Said, when you been good now, can’t do no more,
Just tell her kindly, “there is the front door.”

And he admits it is over, he just has to get on with it

Pack up my suitcase, give me my hat,
No use to ask me, baby, ’cause I’ll never be back.

As such it is quite a remarkable blues song – in effect the woman is not blamed except for saying she has no loyal mind, and it reflects the composer’s vision – for the same approach appears in his other most famous song, “Sitting on Top of the World”

Was in the spring, one summer day
Just when she left me, she’s gone to stay
But now she’s gone, and I don’t worry
Oh I’m sitting on top of the world

And it is the fact that the song is so famous, and indeed this twist in that the woman is not to be punished for leaving – it is the man who gets up and goes – that probably attracts Dylan.  The blues is in fact turned upside down – just as Dylan did in the lyrics he wrote.  The world has gone wrong because the woman has broken up the relationship, and the man is not threatening the woman – he’s just getting up and moving on. 

You will find other articles from the “Why does Dylan like” series through the series index.

By Jochen Markhorst

When Sonny Bono dies after a skiing accident in 1998, he is still the only member of parliament in the history of the American House of Representatives with a number one hit (“I Got You Babe”) – plus numerous top 20 hits. Bono is co-author of “Needles And Pins”, for example, and, in addition to the many hits with Cher, scores one solo hit (“Laugh At Me”, ’65). And of course he writes the world wide hit that will become the epitaph on his sober gravestone: “And The Beat Goes On”.

In politics his name lives on in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, better known as the Sonny Bono Act or under the mock name Mickey Mouse Protection Act. President Clinton signed the law in October 1998, nine months after Bono’s death, thereby extending copyright protection by twenty years – the work of an artist is now protected for seventy years after his death.

It is somewhat ironic though, Sonny Bono’s zeal for the protection of copyrights. He himself usually has little restraint when citing from other people’s work, not always with reference to the source, and that also applies to his inspiration.

After the success of The Byrds with “Mr. Tambourine Man”, for example, he keeps a close eye on what McGuinn and his colleagues are doing in the studio. While The Byrds are still busy mixing up another Dylan cover, “All I Really Want To Do”, he and his Cher rush down in a headlong haste to record their own version, with only one important quality requirement: the single must precede the one by The Byrds in the store. It does, however, not alter the fact that he is indeed a great, original, musical talent and really deserves a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The committee that has to decide on the bill, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary of the 104th Congress, hears proponents and opponents and reads written statements, including from Bob Dylan. Dylan declares that he is in favour of an extension, because the prospect that his heirs can benefit from his work longer encourages creation.

That sounds rather thin. It is quite unlikely that Dylan will write fewer songs if his heirs can benefit from them for 20 years less, or suddenly feels an extra incentive if that period is extended. Note: the deadline already was fifty years, so if Dylan should die in, say, 2020, “Blowin ‘In The Wind” would have been a golden goose for his great-great-grandchildren until 2070, 108 years after creation, which will now be 2090, so 128 years.

In addition to that rather thin argument, there is a ethical sore point. After all, the self-proclaimed thief of thoughts owes a substantial part of his colossal catalog to the creativity of others. “Blowin’ In The Wind”, for example, itself is a reworking of the old slave song “No More Auction Block”, which Dylan himself reveals with so many words (in a radio interview with journalist Marc Rowland, 1978). But Dylan makes no attempt to trace the heirs of the song’s author, or of any other song from which he “borrows”, for that matter; his engagement with copyright is not too idealistic.

Dylan’s move to a legal superpower in itself also raises some eyebrows. Judges, jurists and lawyers are Dylanesque archetypes in his songs – the legal profession is actually an overrepresented field in his catalog.

Never positive.

The judges are corrupt and abuse their power (“Seven Curses”, “High Water”), they are cruel and sadistic (“Percy’s Song”, “Jokerman”), disdainful (“Joey”) and simply unjust (“George Jackson”, “The Death Of Emmett Till”). The artist Dylan trusts the judiciary far less than the private person and the businessman Dylan does. The latter regularly goes to court if he thinks his interests are threatened and now does not hesitate to go to lawmakers, senators and congressmen to safeguard the commercial stakes of his still unborn great-grandchildren.

Conversely, from the judicial side, admiration and love for the artist Dylan is towering. Dylan is the only songwriter who is even quoted in statements from the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts quotes – not quite literally – “Like A Rolling Stone”: When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose and his colleague Antonin Scalia follows two years later by writing in a judgment: “The-times-they-are-a-changin’ is a feeble excuse for disregard of duty ”

In courts and tribunals of a lower echelon than the Supreme Court, it is not uncommon that lyrics penetrate the idiom of both lawyers and judges, and there Dylan is also by far the most cited artist. The well-known verse line You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows from “Subterrenean Homesick Blues” is used countless times to reject witness statements and experts who just come to state the obvious. A New York court is unimpressed by a lawyer’s plea and replies that his defense amounts to “It ain’t me, babe,” and just as dry-humorous is the judge who is struggling to understand a plaintiff’s 40-page complaint and gives up. His written rejection of the case opens with the words from “Ballad Of A Thin Man”: Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

So songs from the canon, mainly – “Blowin” In The Wind” is perhaps the most cited song – but occasionally a more obscure song comes along. When a father loses a custody case, he complains with a quote from “Hurricane” (All of Ruben’s cards were marked in advance / The trial was a pig circus, he never had a chance), the Indiana Supreme Court resorts to “Long Time Gone” to underline the right of the judicial body in this case: “A family court judge’s task is not easy, but it is terribly important, and at the end of the day those judges remember children’s faces best.”

“Most Likely You Go Your Way” is the twelfth Dylan song in which a judge comes along, and once again he is not a friendly, wise magistrate: he is an unstable, haughty (he “walks on stilts”), resentful boss, who will call or even “fall on you”.

The passage about that judge can be found in the bridge and is the only part of the song that is ambiguous and colourful. The surrounding couplets and the chorus are remarkably unpainted – it’s the Beatles’ idiom of Rubber Soul, the vocabulary and theme of “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You”, the songs in which Paul McCartney says goodbye to his sweetheart Jane Asher. Dylan does the same here, to an unidentifiable lady.

“Probably written after some disappointing relationship,” he records in the booklet to Biograph, “where, you know, I was lucky to have escaped without a broken nose.”

The musical accompaniment is not too complex either. On The Cutting Edge we can follow the evolution: starting out as a pleasantly strolling tune, in which guitarist Robbie Robertson, apparently also inspired by the Beatles-like couplets, sounds like George Harrison. Charlie McCoy opts for a slightly silly polka party accompaniment on the bass, and after the second take the song is already fixed. There we also hear Charlie McCoy’s trumpet, who achieves the impressive tour de force to play bass and trumpet at the same time. Dylan initially rejects the trumpet part because he does not like overdubs. McCoy tackles that problem, as Al Kooper remembers in his superb autobiography Backstage Passes And Backstabbing Bastards:

“There was a little figure after each chorus that he wanted to put in on trumpet, but Dylan was not fond of overdubbing. It was a nice lick, too. Simple, but nice. Now Charlie was already playing bass on the tune. So we started recording and when that section came up, he picked up a trumpet in his right hand and played the part while he kept the bass going with his left hand without missing a lick in either hand. Dylan stopped in the middle of the take and just stared at him in awe.”

Because that stunt distracts him too much, Dylan asks if McCoy can stand behind a curtain while he sings.

Equally remarkable are the lyrics of the middle eight: initially just as straightforward as the rest of the song:

Now, over in the corner there you sit
You know he’s gonna call on you
But he’s badly built
And he walks on stilts
And he might fall on you

Apparently the poet feels the lack of a surrealistic touch. The following takes are interrupted each time before the bridge is reached, and on the sixth, final take suddenly that vindictive judge steps onto the stage.

It is a nice, driving blues rocker with funky accents, but the master doesn’t feel too much love for it after that successful recording. He ignores the song for eight years, until it is fully restored from 1974 onwards. At the first performances, January ’74, it is the bouncer, but soon it becomes both the opening ánd the bouncer of the shows. The beautiful live album Before The Flood also opens with a driven, dynamic performance of “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”. After that Dylan puts the song on ice again, but from 1989 on it returns to the set list almost every year; he has played it more than three hundred times by now.

In between the song reaches some cult status when in 2007 Dylan allows the producer Mark Ronson to make a remix, intended to promote the compilation Dylan. Striking, because Dylan hardly ever allows that (the only other is the remix of “Like A Rolling Stone” by the Italian hip-hop collective Articolo 31, for the soundtrack of the Dylan vehicle Masked And Anonymous, 2003). Ronson restrains himself, mainly fiddling with the wind instruments and drums and creates a very swinging, soulful update from one of the crown jewels of Blonde On Blonde. Ronson’s approach is certainly not uncontroversial in fan circles and among music journalists, but the accompanying video clip can appeal to a broad audience; a beautiful, melancholic, moving walk through half a century of Dylan, perfectly produced.

Most covers are true to the original. Both the trumpet and the martial drums of Kenny Buttrey are often copied one on one, as well as the tempo. Only the early birds (1967) The Yardbirds ignite the turbo and reach the end almost a minute earlier – and that doesn’t do the song any good. Patti LaBelle, on the other hand, opts for a stretched performance, with thumping, winding funk bass, fantastic wind instruments and a cheerful piano part. Halfway she risks overproduction, but she switches back just in time. LaBelle also knows how to smirk, and at the end it even sounds as if Wanda Jackson herself is taking over (on her debut album LaBelle, 1977).

The Dutchman Gerry van der Laan is certainly distinctive in terms of arrangement; he limits himself to an acoustic guitar and dresses the song in a Jim Croce jacket. Nice, although the souce completely evaporates from such an approach.

Closer to the source remains the British progrock collective Hard Meat with a heavy, Teutonic approach plus Kinks-like guitar on their flopped debut album from 1970. Illuminated with psychedelic details, and still light years away from the thin mercury sound, of course, but it has an antiquarian charm.

This also applies, bizarrely, to Thomas Cohen’s contribution to the Mojo project, the Blonde On Blonde Revisited tribute disc (2016); Cohen’s contribution sounds like a recovered outtake from It’s A Beautiful Day or another random West Coast psychedelic rock band from, say,1971.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrhNj98cIGg

No, the little adventurous veteran Robben Ford is still the most enjoyable. Made his name as a guitarist for Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis and George Harrison, among others, but this time the major role is for a corny supermarket organ – only in the last minute he demonstrates a fraction of his skills on the six strings (on Bringing It Back Home, 2013). Let’s hope he paid the copyright.

• Dylan in Depth: the incomplete index

By Tony Attwood

This article comes from the series “Why does Dylan like” – you can find other articles from this series in the index.

“Spanish Is The Loving Tongue” by Billy Simon and Charles Badger Clark appeared on the album “Dylan” released in 1973 and then in a different version as the B side to “Watching The River Flow” when that was released as a single.  There are further versions, as you’ll appreciate if you stay with me through this article.

But first here is the “Dylan” version

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

The song, which has been recorded time and time again by numerous artists, is based on the poem “A Border Affair” written by Charles Badger Clark in 1907.   Clark is often spoken of as a “cowboy poet” due to the fact that he travelled through the American West, and is also described as the Poet Laureate of South Dakota – a title he gained in 1937.

Clark was born in 1883 the son of a Methodist preacher.  He himself started training for the ministry as a young man, but did not complete his training.  Instead he went travelling  but illness afflicted much of his life.   His poems were first published in 1917, and he continued to write poetry for most of his remaining years – he died in 1957.

Before Dylan made “Spanish is the loving tongue” popular to a wider audience Clark was known for “Lead my America” and “A Cowboy’s Prayer”, although many others before Dylan had realised the potential of the song.

The music for “Loving Tongue” was written in 1925 and among those who have recorded it we find  Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, and Marianne Faithfull.   Here’s Judy Collins…

The song was originally called “A Border Affair” and deals with love in a time of racial and class divisions, and it has continued its appeal perhaps because its hero doesn’t look much like a lover, and doesn’t have the job of a lover.   It is not an idealised love poem but a much more down to earth piece of realism.

These are, I think, the original lyrics…

Spanish is the loving tongue,
Soft as music, light as spray:
‘Twas a girl I learned it from,
Living down Sonora way.
I don’t look much like a lover,
Yet I say her love words over,
Often when I’m all alone —
“Mi amor, mi corazón.”

Nights when she knew where I’d ride
She would listen for my spurs,
Fling the big door open wide,
Raise them laughin’ eyes of hers;
And my heart would nigh stop beating
When I heard her tender greeting,
Whispered soft for me alone —
“Mi amor, mi corazón.”

Moonlight in the patio,
Old Senora nodding near,
Me and Juana talking low
So the Madre couldn’t hear;
How those hours would go a-flyin’!
And too soon I’d hear her sighin’
In her little sorry tone —
“Adios, mi corazón!”

But one time I had to fly
For a foolish gamblin’ fight,
And we said a swift goodbye
In that black unlucky night.
When I’d loosed her arms from clingin’
With her words the hoofs kept ringin’
As I galloped north alone —
“Adios, mi corazón!”

Never seen her since that night —
I can’t cross the Line, you know.
She was “Mex” and I was white;
Like as not it’s better so.
Yet I’ve always sort of missed her
Since that last wild night I kissed her;
Left her heart and lost my own —
“Adios, mi corazón!”

Broke her heart, lost my own,
“Adios, mi corazón!”

Among many other reasons why the song is so popular, it has the perfect title which is so easy to remember, and yet doesn’t exactly explain itself.  But it sets us up for a song that  is sentimental, but also poignant in a way that few songs achieve – which I think also explains why this is such a highly regarded song.  Clearly Bob is not the only person who adores this song – and part of that must be the possibilties that arise from the melody along with the elegance of the lyrics.

Here is the “B” side version

Here’s a recording of what I think was the only live performance Dylan gave of the song, in May 1976.

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

And here is the version fromthe Bootleg Series 10 – Another Self Portrait

Dylan’s affection for the song is not really much different from that of many other performers – it is a song that has moving lyrics and a poignant melody – one of the songs that just demands to be sung, and which allows multiple approaches to the delivery of the lyurics within the confines of the melody.

It is one of those extraordinary songs that simply works at all levels and gives the performer endless possibilities.

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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 

As previously pointed out, singer/song writer Bob Dylan, who comes from a Jewish background, hits the over-demanding God of the Old Testament with a low burlesque blow:

Well, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be putin' me on"
God said, "No";  Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin', you better run"

(Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited) 

Hal Lindsey, an evangelist Christian, claims in ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ that the Old Testament armies of Magog, a land north of Judea and Samaria, are about to attack the united state of Israel for the last time (espousing the biblical linear cosmology of the ‘end-times’), even as he invests the money that he makes from the book in real estate. According to Lindsay, the unfulfilled prophecy contained in the Bible of a coming apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil is about to unfold; the Second Coming of Christ is at hand –  yet again: 

And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts
Thou, and many people with thee
All of them riding horses
A great company, and a mighty army

(Ezekiel 38:15) 

There are those who claim that Bob Dylan likewise picks up on the worrisome ‘spirit’ of modern times to exploit an opportunity to gain fame and fortune:

I was going down for the last time
But by His mercy I have been spared
Not by works
But by faith in Him who called
For so long I've been hindered 
For so long I've been stressed

(Bob Dylan: Saved)

In the above lyrics, Bob Dylan takes on the persona of a pew-seated Christian who dons the dogmatic cloak of original sin: individuals are not merely imperfect (a view more akin to the Jewish faith) but  downright evil from the get-go, and can be saved from eternal damnation only by God’s grace (as most literal fundamentalists, following the doctrines of John Calvin, believe). Yikes, you can forget about gaining any indulgence from God for doing good deeds.

In earlier lyrics below, Dylan is more skeptical of God’s concern for mankind – he places Florence Reece’s labour song in a religious setting:

Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?"

(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

Of Bob Dylan’s actual views on religion, the reader/listener is never quite sure.

The Bible’s ‘Song Of Solomon’ is interpreted by some Christians as the ruler of then united Israel being a good shepherd for others to follow, analogous to the Christ figure. Solomon sojourns to his pastures in Sumaria where he meets his devoted bride; as well, he’s a hard working king who looks after his people when he’s sits on his throne at home in Jerusalem, the capital of Judea:

Tell me, O whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest
Where thou make thy flock to rest at noon
For why should I be a one that runneth aside by the flocks
of thy companions?"

(Song Of Solomon 1:7)

One thing we know for sure about Dylan is that the sound of words working together matter. The singer/songwriter appears to burlesque the Catholic Church, the so-called bride of Christ, in the WH Auden “O Where Are You Going”-like song lyrics below – the high priests of Mother Mary’s Church, seated in Rome, dress in the flowing gowns, and expect a good display of devotion whether from a poor farmer living off the land, or a wealthy king with a palace full of servants:

Said Mary to Matthew
"I'd like to give my child away"
Said Matthew to Mary
"I got a pleasant farm, and I'll take good care of him
There's a diamond spring, and a big oak tree 
And he can climb on every day
A thousand doors couldn't hold me back from you"
Said Mary to Matthew
"You know this may never be 
I'm not going to give my child away for nothing
but an old oak tree
Just then a man wearing women's clothes began to hop
A thousand doors couldn't hold me back from you"

(Elvis Costello: Matthew Met Mary ~ Dylan/Costello) 

Much more serious is the criticism of America-supported Islamists for their attacks on the Bengali Muslims in the Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan. Poet William Blake’s figurative anaphora that’s based on sound is used by Allen Ginsberg in his beat lyrics about the suffering of fleeing refugees that takes place in the land of the Bengal tiger:

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious American brain

(Allen Ginsberg: September On Jessore Road ~ Ginsberg/Dylan)

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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 Jochen Markhorst; musical examples selected by Tony.

They are Holden Caulfield’s last words in Catcher In The Rye (1951): “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Some testimonies from people who knew Dylan in the early 60s recount that he was to play the role of Holden Caulfield in a film adaptation of that masterpiece. Robert Shelton mentions it in No Direction Home (1986) and in the Saturday Evening Post of July 30, 1966, Jules Siegel cites Playboy editor Arthur Kretchmer, who remembers meeting Dylan at a party:

“There was this crazy, restless little kid sitting on the floor and coming on very strong about how he was going to play Holden Caulfield in a movie of  in the Rye, and I thought, this kid is really terrible; but the people whose party it was said, “Don’t let him put you off. He comes on a little strong, but he’s very sensitive – writes poetry, goes to visit Woody Guthrie in the hospital,” and I figured right, another one. I forgot all about him until a couple of years later he was famous and I wasn’t. You can’t always be right about these things, I suppose.”

Dylan never talks about the book or the alledged filming, neither in interviews nor in his autobiography, except for that one time, when he acts as if he barely knows the Catcher, in the Playboy interview with Ron Rosenbaum in 1977

RR: Did you read Catcher in the Rye as a kid?
BD: I must have, you know. Yeah, I think so.
RR: Did you identify with Holden Caulfield?
BD: Uh, what was his story?
RR: He was a lonely kid in prep school who ran away and decided that everyone else was phony and that he was sensitive.
BD: I must have identified with him.

It is highly unlikely that Dylan, with his improbable memory, can no longer remember one of the most important American works of the twentieth century, but – the otherwise excellent interviewer – Rosenbaum is gullible enough.

A first influence of the book is perhaps indirect: the ballad “Lord Randall”, of which Dylan will borrow a recurring verse line and the structure for “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, is mentioned a few times. But those crushing final sentences, where only the really tough ones can hold back the tears, seem to be an adage for the poet. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. Dylan will never tell anything about himself in his songs. Yes, universal themes such as Love and Loss, Life and Fleeting Time, Mortality and Comfort can ocassionally be traced back to events and circumstances in the private life of the man Dylan, but never one-on-one, as the bard continues to emphasize, ad nauseam. Not if there is an “I” speaking (“Je est un autre,” Dylan then reminds us, with Rimbaud), not if a you is addressed, none of the mentioned he’s or she’s or we’s are real people from Dylan’s environment .

Well alright, one time he sinned, only once, the poet admits in the booklet with Biograph (he refers to the nasty “Ballad In Plain D” from 1964), “It was a mistake to record it and I regret it.”

The second time Dylan breaks the rule is almost forty years later, in “Lonesome Day Blues”. The song is a wonderful amalgam of paraphrases and thus a goldmine for diligent diviners. The title is easily found; “Lonesome Day Blues” was recorded by Blind Willie McTell in February 1932 and Dylan undoubtedly also knows the versions by Jesse James (1936) and Lonnie Johnson (1948).

The opening lines are almost literally the same as “Blues Before Sunrise” by Leroy Carr, whose work often inspires (“Alabama Woman Blues” from 1930 provides text fragments for It Takes A Lot To Laugh, for example).

And Harvard professor Richard F. Thomas cheerfuly recounts how hearing the tenth verse gave him the eureka moment for his contribution to a Dylan conference in Caen, 2005 and for his first seminar on Dylan at Harvard. In that tenth verse, he hears to his great joy the Aeneid of Virgil:

but yours will be the rulership of nations,
remember Roman, these will be your arts:
to teach the ways of peace to those you conquer,
to spare defeated peoples, tame the proud.

The tireless Dylan watcher and successful deconstructor from Albuquerque, Scott Warmuth, had already found borrowed text fragments from Henry Rollins, Mark Twain and a W.C. Fields film.

Still, the brightest and most surprising discovery is the now historic discovery by Chris Johnson. Johnson is, like Dylan, from Minnesota and lives and works as an English teacher in Fukuoka, a metropolis on the southern island of Kyushu. One day he digs up Confessions Of A Yakuza from one Junichi Saga in the discount corner from a local bookstore. He is Dylan fan and knows “Love And Theft” by heart, so page 1 immediately makes him jump up (“My old man would sit there like a feudal lord” is almost identical to a line from “Floater”).

At that time, Confessions is still a rather obscure work; its ranking is close to 47,000 on the Amazon list of best-selling books, but since Johnson’s discovery it shot up tens of thousands of places (top position: # 173, even). For the album “Love And Theft”, Dylan did a good deal of browsing through this Japanese book. Especially for the beautiful song “Floater”, but phrases, word combinations and character descriptions from Saga can also be found in “Po’ Boy”, “Summer Days” and in “Honest With Me”. And for “Lonesome Day Blues”, Dylan borrows from two passages:

“Just because she was in the same house didn’t mean we were living together as man and wife… I don’t know how it looked to other people, but I never even slept with her – not once.” (Confessions Of A Yakuza, p. 208)

“There was nothing sentimental about him – it didn’t bother him at all that some of his pals had been killed.” (Confessions Of A Yakuza, p. 243)

When Vara Magazine’s Jan Vollaard is allowed to ask a question at a press conference in Rome on July 23, 2001, well before all these discoveries, he asks about “Lonesome Day Blues”. Dylan replies: “My lyrics develop in a stream of consciousness. I don’t linger long on every word that comes to my mind.”

Could be. Maybe. It is possible that all those Carr-, Twain-, Rollins-, Saga- and Vergilius-fragments were floating around somewhere in Dylan’s subconsciousness and have twirled down on paper uncontrollably when the poet started to work on a new song. It fits with the image of how studio musicians, independently of each other, over the decades, sketch Dylan’s working method: during the recordings he often sits down in a corner for a moment, fiddles down some couplets with a pencil stub, crosses out, scratches and corrects, and returns to the microphone again. Sometimes it takes hours and hours (“Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”, for example), sometimes a few minutes (as George Harrison remembers the creation of “Handle With Care” and session musician Augie Meyers tells about the recordings of “Love And Theft”). In any case, he is not leafing back and forth in the Aeneid or Huckleberry Finn.

The capriciousness and the unfinished story lines in the lyrics also speak for such a spontaneous modus operandi. And it explains that one indiscreet, remarkable, once-in-forty-year personal outpouring of Dylan the poet: I wish my mother was still alive.

In Lyrics 1961-2012, Dylan has deleted this particular verse line and changed it to I’m telling myself I’m still alive, so apparently he regrets that all too specific, intimate outpouring. But by that time, his indiscretion has spread, of course, already in millions of copies across the world.

Dylan’s mother, Beatty Zimmerman, died the year before and that really has affected him. “Even to talk about my mother just breaks me up,” he says. In such a state of vulnerability, he has admitted this one, rare, confidence to one of his lyrics. Probably more, even. Originally “Lonesome Day Blues” was twice as long, Dylan explains in the interview with Robert Hilburn (September 2001):

“I overwrite. If I know I am going in to record a song, I write more than I need. In the past that’s been a problem because I failed to use discretion at times. I have to guard against that. On this album, “Lonesome Day Blues“ was twice as long at one point.”

… thus saying unequivocally that discretion is judge, jury and executioner when he starts to delete in such a long text, that Holden Caulfield’s adage is his guideline. Human and understandable, but unfortunate on a level above; who knows what comfort the removed words of a poetic genius about the death of his mother could have given.

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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 Tony Attwood

Aaron Galbraith, who has provided us with so many Dylan songs that I’ve missed in the past has found this previously unreviewed Dylan original from 1959… As he says, “I believe the writing of this may even predate When I Got Troubles…”

Aaron has also provided his  take on the lyrics for which I am very grateful…

Well I got a new girl
She says she’s my one
But my new girl she won’t come home
Come on now baby say you’ll be mine always
And I’ll be your one for eternity
Come on little doll little
Take a little, give a little love
Come on little doll little
Take a little, give a little love


Well I got a new girl
She says she’s my one
But my new girl she won’t come home
Come on now baby say you’ll be mine always
And I’ll be your one for eternity

The track was recorded by Ric Kangas, a high school friend of Dylan’s, in 1959. Today Kangas still has (or has auctioned off, depending on which web site you read) a recording with four songs where Dylan is heard either on guitar or vocal.

The song is listed in Heylin’s collection, and it is the fourth Dylan song he lists following, “Song to Brigit” (a song no one has heard but which was mentioned by Dylan when talking to Izzy Young in 1961), “Big Black Train” (possibly co-written with Monte Edwardson, in 1957 or 1958), “Hey Little Richard” and “When I got troubles” also known as “Teen Love Serenade.”

Heylin dismisses the song as Dylan doing an impression of Clarence Frogman Henry, which makes me think Heylin did not listen to the song, which he calls a standard teen wish fulfilment song – but on that he is probably correct.

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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

This article continues from the previous piece

A lot of the whiskey made by European settlers after the Revolution in America is made from corn as it’s a native plant; apple seeds (originally brought over from Europe) are planted on the Western Frontier because apple trees are recognized as legal evidence that a settler has permanent rights to the land.

Swedenborgian Johnny ‘Appleseed’ Chapman plants apple seeds to establish property claims, but  most apples produced, since they are not grafted, are better suited for making cider than they are for eating; in any event, apple cider is popular with the settlers because it’s never sure whether or not the water is safe to drink:

Under that apple suckling tree, oh yeah
Under that apple suckling tree, oh yeah
Underneath that tree
There's just gonna be you and me
Underneath that apple suckling tree, oh yeah

(Bob Dylan: Apple Suckling Tree)

Hidden away from the taxman, corn whiskey is distilled in the Appalachian hills of America, and immortalized in folk songs, and songs derived therefrom:

Get you a copper kettle, get you a copper coil
Fill it with new-made corn mash, and never more you'll toil
You'll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight
Build you a fire with hickory, hickory, ash, and oak
Don't use no green or rotten wood, they'll get you by the smoke

(Bob Dylan: Copper Kettle ~ AF Beddoe)

Similar to words spoken on a recording by a string band:

Cut some of them hickory poles
Get some green ones now
That won't make no smoke

(Gid Turner And His Skillet Lickers: Corn Lickers Still In Georgia)

A country blues singer/songwriter borrows a couple of lines from a traditional song about whiskey:

If the river was whiskey, babe
And I was a duck
If the river was whiskey, babe
And I was a duck
I'd dive to the bottom, Lord
And I'd never come up

(Furry Lewis: I’ll Turn Your Money Green)

A Canadian country western singer sticks close to the original folk lyrics:

It's beef steak when I'm hungry
Rye whiskey when I'm dry ....
If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck
I'd swim to the bottom, and never come up
But the ocean ain't whiskey, and I ain't no duck
So I'll play Jack O' Diamonds, and trust in my luck

(Wilf Carter: Rye Whiskey)

https://sonichits.com/video/Wilf_Carter/Rye_Whiskey

Lyrics that get around:

I'll eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm dry
And live my life on the square
And even if the flesh falls, flesh falls off of my face
I know someone will be there to care

(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)

The adventures of Johnny Appleseed are romanticized, but time-consuming grafting develops eatable apples which become a quintessential product of America. “As American as apple pie” enters the lexicon.

Bob Dylan’s more broad-minded than Johnny Appleseed:

Raspberry, strawberry, lemon, and lime
What do I care
Blueberry, apple, cherry, or plum
Call me for dinner
Honey, I'll be there

(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

https://youtu.be/pqvChb-fJoY

Not completely with tongue-in-cheek, one might postulate that the singer/songwriter personifies apple cider, and corn whiskey as two of his favourite muses:

Winterlude, Winterlude, my little apple
Winterlude by the corn in the field
Winterlude, let's go down to the chapel
Then come back, and make up a meal

(Bob Dylan: Winterlude)

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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

Emanuel Swedenborg mixes together orthodox Christian dogma with various Gnostic mystical beliefs to come up with a new religion based on Jesus appearing as the physical correspondence of the far-away spiritual Godhead. 

Gnostics focus on the continued acquiring of knowledge. According to Swedenborg, the Holy Bible is  not to be taken literally, but read as a revelation expressed in symbolic terms that reveals Jesus be a man of goodly action. And so will be His followers who kindle the divine spark that lies within themselves. Getting in touch with the Godhead through divine action, rather than through faith alone, is the key to salvation. 

Organized religions, especially Puritanism, be damned, says Swedenborg  – Jesus makes a physical appearance on Earth to show that every human has the potential to merge with the spiritual Godhead; however, authorities of established churches stand in the way.

Many of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics are based on actual events in American history that are later reformulated into romantic legends – like the legend of Robin Hood in British history. John Chapman be an American missionary of the Swedenborg ‘Church’ – he takes divine action by planting apple seeds across the American Frontier, thereby spreading God’s Word of Goodness by planting the seeds of the symbolic tree from the Garden of Eden – the nourishing, regenerative fruit becomes a symbol of good work undertaken on earth as opposed to the discovery of ‘evil’ knowledge as represented in orthodox Judeo-Christian dogma. 

Farmer John Chapman gets elevated in the chronicles of American history to the status of a saint; he becomes “Johnny Appleseed” – a legend known to most, but apparently not to all, Americans:

But in love, crazy love, you get straight A's
In history, you don't do too well
You don't know how to read
You could confuse Geronimo
With Johnny Appleseed

(Bob Dylan: Straight A’s In Love)

https://youtu.be/nHMohSQv6Jk

Geronimo, a native American ‘Indian’, takes revenge on European settlers for murdering his family.

Below, the somewhat Romantic Transcendentalist lyrics of a Swedenborgian hymn that Johnny Appleseed sings in a Walt Disney caroon movie:

Oh, the Lord is good to me
And so I thank the Lord
For givin' me the things I need
The sun, and the rain, and an apple seed
Yes, He's been good to me

(Dennis Day: The Lord Is Good To Me ~ Gannon/Kent)

The aforementioned fruit – often depicted in common speech as an apple – is what mankind ought to have avoided, according to the Holy Bible:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying
"Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat
But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
Thou shalt not eat of it
For in the day that thou eatest thereof
Thou shalt surely die"

(Genesis 2: 16,17)

Bob Dylan, with stinging irony, inverts the theme of Johnny Appleseed’s song:

Cold-blooded killer, stalkin' the town
Cop cars blinking, something bad going down
Buildings are crumblin' in the neighbourhood
They got nothin' to worry about 'cause it's all good
It's all good
Yeah, it's all good

((Bob Dylan: It’s All Good)

 Nevertheless, Johnny Appleseed gets his due. Dylan, like Swedenborg, is  skeptical about established religions as is poet William Blake – suppressed by many religious authorities are human feelings, including biological urges, that are inherent in every individual; the result is that his/her natural state  becomes unbalanced:

And it grew both night and day 
Till it bore an apple bright
And my foe beheld it shine
And he knew that it was mine
And he into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole
In the morning, glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree

(William Blake: A Poison Tree)

The ‘black dog’ of depression begins to howl:

I got my black dog barkin'
Black dog barkin'
Yes, it is now
Yes it is
Outside my yard
Yes, I could tell you what he means
If I just didn't have to try so hard

(Bob Dylan: Obviously Five Believers)

https://youtu.be/Eng6xhp8B54

Pete Seeger, a mentor to Bob Dylan, spreads knowledge and inspiration in a column of ‘Sing Out!’ magazine that’s published for people interested in folksongs. 

At first, folksinger Pete names the column “Johnny Appleseed, Jr.”; then he changes it to “Appleseeds”.

What else is here?

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.

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By Tony Attwood

If you know “Let It Be Me” the chances are you will know it as an Everly Brothers hit and as a song Dylan recorded a couple of times.  Here’s the most famous version.

And if you know Bob singing it, it was performed three times in concert and appeared twice on recordings.  Here’s the out take from Shot of Love.

In fact the song was originally a French piece, published in 1955 as “Je t’appartiens” sung by by Gilbert Bécaud.  If you have never heard this but know Bob’s version or the Everly’s verson, it is worth a listen.

This song was a hit in France.  It was translated into English by the American songwriter Manny Curtis.  It was a minor hit before the Everly’s version in 1960 which became a top ten hit.   Then in 1964 Betty Everett and Jerry Butler released their version which made it to the top 5.

https://youtu.be/LPYBExf5OpA

Here are the lyrics

I bless the day I found you
I want my arms around you
And so I beg you: Let it be me.

Don’t take this heaven from one
If you must cling someone
Now and forever, let it be me.

Each time we meet, love
I find complete love
Without your sweet love,
what would life be?

So never leave me lonely
Tell me that you love me only
And say you’ll always let it be me.

Dylan performed it first on Self Portrait and then again as the b side to the Heart Of Mine single.

B side version

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LQxJQJzixA

And another version live in 81

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9zKsRGncqw

So what made Bob be so drawn to this song?

Certainly the lyrics are beautifully presented and it is a lovely melody that has clearly enchanted many people.  But I think above all it is the attraction of performing a love song to an unknown, unmentioned person, wistfully announcing one’s feelings.   Although the recording does not sound anything like Bob’s own work, if we think of “Love minus zero” and “She belongs to me” – these are Bob Dylan love songs that cannot approach the intensity of feeling engineered into “Let it be me”, and I think he just liked to celebrate a different kind of love song.

It is so incredibly plaintive, needy, wanting, hopeful – not emotions that I normally associate with Bob Dylan in terms of being united into one song.   The nearest we have in terms of this type of music is “Forever Young”.   Otherwise we are listening to “I’ll be your baby tonight” which is not related to the sort of feeling here.

So why does Bob like it?   Because it is a song that does something his song’s don’t do, and I would suggest perhaps something he knows he can’t do.

There is a list of other articles from this series “Why does Dylan like…” on this page.

by Jochen Markhorst

The song has since long been forgotten and covered in dust, when the teenager Ketch Secor first hears “Rock Me Mama (Like A Wagon Wheel)” in the 90s, the half-mumbled, unfinished patch of a non-existent song on Peco’s Blues (1973) , a bootleg collection of session recordings from January and February 1973 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid.

Teenagers, especially the male ones, are known to have a rather flexible prefrontal cortex, therefore they dare to ride down the hill in shopping carts, jump three floors down from the balcony into the hotel swimming pool and they do not mind messing around with a Dylan song. Ketch adds two great verses to the sketch, and merrily and often plays the song. Also he founded a band, the now world-famous Old Crow Medicine Show.

The boys record the song for a self-released EP (Troubles Up And Down The Road, 2001). In 2003 the band scores a record deal and, after copyright has been arranged with Dylan (it will be fifty-fifty), the song is recorded again, this time as the closing number for the acclaimed, untitled debut album from 2004. It is not a hit, it is not even released on single, but it is picked up. Initially by amateurs, on talent shows, by school bands, in karaoke bars and truck stops – the song is easy to play and has a high sing-along quality – but slowly and surely it seeps through to the higher echelons.

In 2013, Darius Rucker scores a number-1 hit with “Wagon Wheel” and the song finally penetrates the Great American Songbook. It yields Rucker a Grammy Award (Best Country Solo Performance, 2013) and membership of the Grand Ole Opry.

It does have a small spicy edge, Rucker’s success. Before his solo career, Darius Carlos Rucker has been the face of Hootie & The Blowfish, the band with which he records five albums and sixteen hit singles, tours around the world and sells tens of millions of records (the debut album from 1994, Cracked Rear Window, achieves sixteen times platinum and is the 14th best-selling album of all time). One of the biggest successes is the world hit “Only Wanna Be With You” (1995) and that song leads to a conflict with Dylan. Rucker has plundered Blood On The Tracks a little too enthusiastically. Starting with a chip from “You’re A Big Girl Now”:

Put on a little Dylan
Sitting on a fence

Followed by a big bite from “Idiot Wind”:

Said I shot a man named Gray
Took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky

And in case we still don’t get it, the last verse opens with:

Yeah I’m tangled up in blue

Dylan’s management, the thief of thoughts who has a rather double-minded attitude with regard to citing someone else’s work without acknowledging the source, mobilises lawyers, threatens with a copyright infringement indictment and eventually Hootie & The Blowfish settles the case, for an unknown, but undoubtedly substantial amount.

Nevertheless, no hard feelings with Rucker, apparently. With “Wagon Wheel” he lines Dylan’s pockets once again.

The lines quoted from the opening verse of “Idiot Wind” are the most enigmatic of one of Dylan’s undisputed monuments. The remaining 574 words can be interpreted biographically without too much reading into it; if one song justifies the disqualification Divorce Record, it is this complex put-down. And therein, in the all too easily traceable private worries of the man Dylan, the puzzle’s solution to that mysterious opening seems to lie.

In the interview with Robert Hilburn (September 2001), Dylan states:

“I overwrite. If I know I am going in to record a song, I write more than I need. In the past that’s been a problem because I failed to use discretion at times. I have to guard against that.”

That concurs with the self-criticism he voiced in 1985, in the interview with Bill Flanagan for his book Written In My Soul:

Flanagan:
Have you ever put something in a song that was too personal? Ever had it come out and then said, “Hmm, gave away too much of myself there”?

Dylan:
I came pretty close with that song “Idiot Wind.” That was a song I wanted to make as a painting. A lot of people thought that song, that album “Blood on the Tracks”, pertained to me. Because it seemed to at the time. It didn’t pertain to me. It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time – yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of a strange way. I’ve read that that album had to do with my divorce. Well, I didn’t get divorced till four years after that. I thought I might have gone a little bit too far with “Idiot Wind.” I might have changed some of it. I didn’t really think I was giving away too much; I thought that it seemed so personal that people would think it was about so-and-so who was close to me. It wasn’t. But you can put all these words together and that’s where it falls. You can’t help where it falls. I didn’t feel that one was too personal, but I felt it seemed too personal. Which might be the same thing, I don’t know. But it never was painful. ‘Cause usually with those kinds of things, if you think you’re too close to something, you’re giving away too much of your feelings, well, your feelings are going to change a month later and you’re going to look back and say, “What did I do that for?”

Flanagan:
But for all the power of “Idiot Wind,” there’s part of it that always cracked me up. You talk about being accused of shooting a man, running off with his wife, she inherits a million bucks, she dies, and the money goes to you. Then you say, “I can’t help it if I’m lucky.” (Laughter.)

Dylan:
Yeah, right. With that particular set-up in the front I thought I could say anything after that. If it did seem personal I probably made it overly so – because I said too much in the front and still made it come out like, “Well, so what?”

Dylan once again asserts that he didn’t think the song was too personal, didn’t think he was giving away too much anywhere. And immediately afterwards, very Dylanesque, implies the opposite: “I mean, I give it all away, but I’m not giving away any secrets.”

With that concluding remark, and with that laboriously meandering answer to Flanagan’s question about indiscretion, Dylan again confirms the often quoted words from his son Jakob, in the New York Times, 10 May 2005: “When I listen to Blood On The Tracks, that’s about my parents.”

Also noteworthy is that Dylan mentions “Idiot Wind” when Flanagan asks if he is ever indiscrete. In the same year 1985, Biograph is released, the collection box with the rich liner notes recorded by Cameron Crowe. In it Dylan states – incidentally in response to “You’re A Big Girl Now”, another one of those allegedly indiscrete songs on Blood On The Tracks – that “Ballad In Plain D” is his only confessional song. And that he still regrets that one.

Autobiographical or not, “Idiot Wind” is a masterly, heartbreaking confessional song. If not from Dylan, then from a desperate archetype Disillusioned Love Partner.

The mastery lies within the vulnerability under the rawness. The narrator is mean, unreasonable and malicious, but does not succeed in becoming unsympathetic; we all hear the pain speaking, not the man himself. A corkscrew is twisted into his heart and just like a woman who curses her husband to hell during labour, this hurt, heartbroken man damns his beloved.

So the first verse is a diversionary maneuver, as Dylan himself explains. We see a witty echo fourteen years later, when Dylan, in line with the punch line I can’t help it if I’m lucky calls himself Lucky Wilbury in The Traveling Wilburys.

A relationship with the following couplets of “Idiot Wind” there is not.

Self-pity colours the second verse, with puberal indignation: even you believe all that nonsense “they” tell me about me. Unbelievable! After all those years! The classic assertive defense, in short, of the husband who is confronted with adultery accusations. And like all adulterous spouses, this protagonist does not opt for a calm, credible denial, but for the unreasonable counterattack, trying to get into the victim role himself: how could you think that of me. My, what a bad person you are.

Only in the third and fourth verse does the poet of “Desolation Row”, “She’s Your Lover Now” and “Sign On The Cross” shine through again, the poet who, in the words of Joan Baez, is so good at keeping things vague. That third verse opens with other words than the original version from New York. Initially Dylan sings I threw the I-Ching yesterday, it said there might be some thunder at the well, a line the bard probably rewrites because it might seem too personal – in ’65 he publicly, in an interview with the Chicago Daily News, stated:

“There is a book called the “I-Ching”, I’m not trying to push it, I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s the only thing that is amazingly true, period, not just for me. Anybody would know it. Anybody that ever walks would know it, it’s a whole system of finding out things, based on all sorts of things. You don’t have to believe in anything to read it, because besides being a great book to believe in, it’s also very fantastic poetry.”

The man Dylan apparently really has something with this Book Of Changes, so on closer inspection the poet prefers to omit a reference to it. Instead, he opts for the equally mystical, but somehow more run-of-the-mill I ran into the fortune teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike. In terms of content, no major difference, of course: both variants describe a supernatural entity warning of a fatal, major event. Also not too far from the person behind the poet, by the way; from his autobiography Chronicles we can conclude that Dylan is not completely insensitive to the transcendent. Concepts such as fate, destiny and spiritual come along dozens of times, even when he documents something as everyday as a break-up (in this case with Suze Rotolo): “Eventually fate flagged it down and it came to a full stop.”

Evoked images and chosen language in the continuation of this occult opening line seem familiar. A lonely soldier on the cross, a chestnut mare, the accumulation of antitheses (peace / war, truth / lies, he won after losin’, woke up / daydreamin) … familiar Dylan territory. The image of the smoke-emitting freight car (smoke pourin’ out of a boxcar door) is such an image that could have surfaced in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” or “Farewell, Angelina”. Impenetrable, but a strong stage piece, a piece scenery for a painting by Dalí or a twentieth-century Hieronymous Bosch – Dylan now and then succeeds in his intention to make the songs on Blood On The Tracks “like a painting”. That probably also explains the textual intervention with this excerpt. Originally watchin’ falling raindrops pour; from a radically different perspective, and visually much less strong than that smoldering wagon.

Bitter revenge, however, colours the last, lurid lines, in which the narrator accuses his beloved of hurtful lies and daydreams about her fate: her corpse in a ditch, flies buzzing around her dead eyes and her blood dripping along the saddle of that chestnut mare. A macabre, cinematic image that the thief of thoughts with a sense of tradition borrows from a nineteenth-century cowboy ballad, from “There’s Blood On The Saddle,” recorded in 1937 by the renowned Alan Lomax for the Library Of Congress.

This structure the poet extends in the fifth and sixth verse. Again a mystical opening (“destiny broke us apart”), a series of contradictions (good / bad, upside down, top / bottom, spring / autumn, I waited on the running boards), another hint to the yin yang of the I-Ching (the good is bad and the bad is good) and highly visual, wild metaphors. “You tamed the lion in my cage” can be placed, but what about “The priest wore black on the seventh day”? One might hear an echo of “Highway 61 Revisited” and as a character he fits effortlessly on Blonde On Blonde, but what bussiness does that priest have here? And why is the storyteller waiting on the running boards, at the cypresses?

The poet achieves at least the same as in the third verse: the setting in which his lying, blinded and shameful beloved is residing, is a filled tableau, perhaps in California, the land without seasons, and otherwise in an expressionistic representation of a Promised Land – it is, after all, both spring and fall in these parts, time is defied.

The real pain, bitterness and despair the poet saves for the last verses. The opening lines of the seventh verse are the most abrasive of the entire song. The narrator here exposes himself to such an extent that the listener gets the uncomfortable feeling of unwittingly reading someone else’s diary: he no longer tolerates her touch, not even indirectly, sneaks past her closed door … this is getting too painful. In that furious live version from ’76 (on Hard Rain), Dylan puts it even more lachrymosely: “I can’t even touch the clothes you wear, very time I come into your door, you leave me standing in the middle of the air.”

In the earlier version, from September, the poet opens this seventh verse less whiny. There he even expresses a shared guilt: We pushed each other a little too far, and he describes the inconvenience of the silent treatment (“In order to get in a word with you, I’d have had to come up with some excuse”).

Three months later, in Minnesota, the poet deletes those resignated lines and reignites the vindictive slander again. Awkward is the hurtful, childish self-pity with which the narrator tries to throw the final jabs, hooks and punches (“You’ll never know the hurt I suffered”) and the ridiculous, misplaced, acted superiority of the punchline it makes me feel so sorry.

Multicoloured and complex enough, those eight verses, but the status and reputation of the song are coined by the false, cutting chorus, in which the disillusioned narrator ad nauseam argues what an imbecile his ex-lover is. Of mythical proportions, is her silliness. When she starts speaking, the IQ drops from the Grand Coulee Dam (in the state of Washington, in the far west) to the Capitol (in Washington, D.C., in the far east), so throughout the country. The backwardness of her words stirs up dust, fluttering curtains, blows through our coats and desecrates the letters we wrote. The chorus is, in short, a put-down that even surpasses “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Positively 4th Street” and “She’s Your Lover Now” in malice. That false personality shift from the last chorus (“We’re idiots, babe”) does not alleviate it.

The intensity of Dylan’s rendering (“black energy and poison,” as band member David Mansfield calls it) during the Rolling Thunder Revue, the 1976 concert tour, makes it difficult to ignore personal, intimate involvement with the words sung. Here is really an artist who exposes the person behind the artist. Tension releasing, presumably, and after 1976 the bard seems to be relieved; “Idiot Wind” disappears from the set list. In the following years, however, the song remains a topic of discussion in interviews, sometimes at the initiative of Dylan himself, as in the above conversation with Flanagan in 1985. Or in 1987, when the director of the “multi-media musical” Dylan: Words & Music, Peter Landecker, says that he has spoken with Dylan:

“We talked about the show, which songs are included and why. Dylan asked if Idiot Wind was in. I said no and asked why he singled out that one. “It’s one of the most theatrical, dramatic ones”, he said.”

And in ’91, in the interview with Paul Zollo for SongTalk, Dylan goes into the work in more detail. It even seduces him into an atypical expression of pride. Regarding the different text versions of “Idiot Wind”, the poet states: “There could be a myriad of versions for the thing. It doesn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop. Where do you end?”

Dylan then pays some attention to people’s reactions to his songs and concludes his answer to Zollo’s question about “Idiot Wind” with a modest, yet satisfied, qualification:

“There’s just something about my lyrics that just have a gallantry to them. And that might be all they have going for them. [Laughs]. However, it’s no small thing.”

That is intriguing. Of all songs, Dylan chooses “Idiot Wind”, one of the most nasty and indiscrete songs in his oeuvre, to articulate a comprehensive qualification of his lyrics: they have a gallantry. That, as we can expect from Dylan, is by no means a unambiguous valuation. “Gallantry” can mean courage, fearlessness, as well as elegance, nobility, courtesy. The rest of the interview, Dylan is pretty clear, informative and serious, so we can assume that he is not throwing one of his good old smokescreens here, but that he means what he says.

In that case we can delete the meaning courtesy; Dylan himself also acknowledges that battery acid is the fuel of this song and would agree it is not really courteous, well-mannered to sing someone’s poor mental capacities for almost eight minutes.

Then remains: courageous, brave, fearless, “gallantry” as the opposite of cowardice. There is something to be said for that. At least: with this specific song. The narrator is not afraid to expose himself, that much is true. Whether, and to what extent, the qualification also applies to Dylan’s catalogue at all is another question. Among the majority of the Dylan followers, the word courageous will not come up to characterize the man’s work. At public praises such as the Oscar ceremony or the Nobel Prize enough adjectives are listed to praise Dylan’s work, but practically nothing that comes close to bravery. In fact, Dylan is pretty much the only one who repeatedly points out the gallantry of his work. Here, in this conversation with Zollo, as he also does in the (not too serious) interview with Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone in 1977, alleging that the driving force behind Blood On The Tracks in general and “Idiot Wind” in particular is willpower. And again, for example, in his reaction to winning an Oscar for “Things Have Changed”:

“I want to thank the members of the Academy who were bold enough to give me this award for this song, which obviously… a song that doesn’t pussyfoot around nor turn a blind eye to human nature.”

Lofty words, but it is highly questionable whether the jury members recognize their choice in Dylan’s words. “Things Have Changed” is a beautiful, Oscar-worthy song, but a song which doesn’t pussyfoot around? The lyrics are full of disguising language (“some things”, “so much”, “things have changed”, “lot of other stuff” and so on) and dark imagery. “I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road” (Dylan writes in the fortieth year after his first record). A feeling comes over him as if he wants to put a worshiped lady in a wheelbarrow (?). The “next sixty seconds could be like an eternity” (the singer sings exactly sixty seconds before the end of the song). And the ultimate enigmatic verse of the last middle-eight, about one Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy who jumped into a lake.

All in all, Dylan clearly has a different definition of gallantry, of boldness or courage, than the average jury member or the average Dylan follower.

All that talk about “Idiot Wind” leads to an unexpected, short revival: 1992, we are in Australia and suddenly “Idiot Wind” is on the setlist again. In Melbourne, April 5, he announces the song with the surprising words “Thank you, that was a recent song,” but presumably Dylan means the song he played before (1990’s “Cat’s In The Well”). In California, a few weeks later, he calls it an old song. He does not comment further on the unexpected choice, or on the song at all.

They are beautiful performances. The singer mainly follows the Blood On The Tracks version, the lyrics are not completely accurate and two couplets are dropped in favour of a harmonica solo. Nothing is left of the fury of sixteen years earlier (obviously), but more love has been given to the musical accompaniment – an ebb and flow arrangement with a spotlight on the steel guitar, giving the song an attractive country atmosphere.

Dylan plays it forty times, that spring and summer of ’92, and then brings the song ‘home’; the performance in Minneapolis, 30 August, is the very last one.

The colleagues stay far away from “Idiot Wind”, although the song is usually somewhere in the top 20 in the various lists of Best Dylan Songs. It is understandable, this restraint; too personal, despite everything the master undertook to make it only seem personal.

Mary Lee’s Corvette of course cannot avoid the song, when (magnificently) performing an integral Blood On The Tracks: Recorded Live At Arlene’s Grocery (2001), but with “Idiot Wind” singer Mary Lee Kortes loses track sometimes. The band makes up for a lot.

Safer, because instrumental, is jazz guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, who passed away too early, on his beautiful tribute album The Zimmerman Shadow (2009), a record with bold, mostly successful interpretations of sometimes exotic, exurbantly fanning out Dylan songs (“As I Went Out One Morning” develops into an exciting , fierce Jimi Hendrix-like 11-minute jazz exercise, for example). Johnson’s “Idiot Wind” remains serene and is supported by a tasteful, funky bass part, over which Johnson plays a partly pointy, partly dreamy guitar part – very attractive.

The only other notable professional cover is from The Coal Porters, the British-American bluegrass band of the respectable Dylanologist Sid Griffin, author of two excellent Dylan books. The first album, How Dark This Earth Will Shine (2004) is very nice, the bluegrass version of the old punk hit “Teenage Kicks” (The Undertones, 1978) is great, but “Idiot Wind” is a less fortunate choice; the veranda atmosphere does not really fit the song.

The amateurs are as enthusiastic as the pros are reluctant. YouTube is teeming with, mostly pathetic, living room recordings, though the diversity is striking. Lots of spectacled, white males in their fifties, of course, but also surprisingly many younger hipsters, blushing, shy teenagers and even some local heroes with homemade translations (Swedish and Hebrew, for example). Artistically not too uplifting, but it does reflect the indestructible appeal of the song over the decades.

The Old Crow Medicine Show has not risked it either. The band received a lot of applause in 2016 with the tribute 50 Years Of Blonde On Blonde, the live registration of a complete rework of that legendary album. The accompanying tour, which leads the men to Europe as well, is just as successful, their “Wagon Wheel” was awarded an official Seal Of Approval from the master himself, as well as the successor “Sweet Amarillo” (at Dylan’s request completed by Ketch Secor and his men), so in 2025, at the fiftieth anniversary of Blood On The Tracks, we can expect the next recommendable cover of “Idiot Wind”.

By Aaron Galbraith with a footnote from Tony

They eventually released the YouTube video for the Dylan/Savoretti track Touchy Situation,

Here are my take on the lyrics (with help from my wife on a few places i couldn’t work out!)

I'd like to find out what places she's been
What's behind her locked door
Oh better yet, know if I'm out or I'm in
If the elevator still runs to the top floor
Perhaps she would say
She was a student of hope
And I'm dangling from the end
Of a disintegrating rope
But I don't wish to spark off
Her outraged imagination
I don't wish to get into any double edged conversation

It's a touchy situation
Woah-oh-oh, yes
It's a touchy situation
Oh-oh-oh yeah

Someday I'll find out
What I'm now afraid to ask
And I'll discover what lies there
Beneath the door mats
Perhaps she would say
That I'm just deathly afraid
To see her make the same mistake that I made

And it might lead to
Some sweet revelation
She knows I hate
Meaningless conversation

It's a touchy situation
Woah-oh-oh, yes
It's a touchy situation
Oh-oh-oh yeah

I said, "Are you doing well baby?"
She says, "Go ask your father"
I said, "Give me yes, no, or maybe"
She says, "Why should I bother?"
I said...
She says...
I said, "oh..."

I'll ask you tomorrow
I'll ask you tomorrow

If I could only break the code of her fears
I could expose the secrets to the river of her tears
Rattle her senses
Until she's pouring forthtears
Before she'd exercise
Those powers of manipulation

It's a touchy situation
It's a touchy situation
It's a touchy situation
Woah-oh-oh
It's a touchy situation
Woah-oh-oh

It's a touchy situation
It's a touchy situation
It's a touchy situation

Footnote from Tony:

I must say I was a little unsure about this song at first, feeling that we were hearing something (in terms of lyrics) that Dylan would have changed and manipulated (as we know happens from the notebooks we have seen and the early versions of songs that have survived) and that had he stayed with it he would have knocked it around.

But then that “middle 8” comes along

I said, “Are you doing well baby?”
She says, “Go ask your father”
I said, “Give me yes, no, or maybe”
She says, “Why should I bother?”
I said…
She says…
I said, “oh…”

and I am suddenly totally in love with the piece.  Yes I am still sure the master songwriter in Dylan would have manipulated some of it, and I am not sure that as a songwriter he would have got that fantastic power out of the music at this point – but he would have got something amazing for those lines, of that I am certain.

The line “go ask your father” – implying (to me, and of course as always this is just my view) that the lady in the song is saying, “you are doing to me what your father has done to your mother” or even “what your father has done to you”, is fantastic.  It comes out of the blue – or at least I was not ready for it, and the musical line and the orchestration are, for me, just right at that point.

“Why should I bother?” is the absolute final put down, goodbye line in a love affair – the opposite end of farewells from “It’s all over now baby blue.”  It is far far stronger than “It ain’t me babe”; we are in the Positively 4th Street world at this point, or Ballad in Plain D, but now from the woman’s point of view.

What a find.

What else is here?

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.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  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 Mike Johnson (kiwipoet)

Please note that the original posting of this article contained the wrong copy of “Masters of War”.   This was entirely the mistake of the publisher (Tony Attwood).  Mike sent the correct recording – I got them confused.   My sincere apologies to Mike and all readers.

—–

Bob Dylan’s harmonica playing is as distinctive and controversial as everything else he does, and has come in for more than its fair share of savaging. In my first post on the subject, I argued that, on the songs it is used, Dylan’s harmonica is not merely decorative but integral to the music, and can extend the emotional range and impact of the song. Indeed, it can shape our response to the song, and our understanding of it.

My approach has been roughly chronological, from the very early songs, in which Dylan developed what I have called a ‘peppering’ technique in which many apparently random notes are played very fast, to a slower, more focused style with a sustained emotional intensity. I’d got to 1995 and the magnificently spooky Prague concert version of ‘Man in the Long Black Coat.’ My plan was to zoom on quickly into the 21^st Century, when a new harmonica sound emerges and some of Dylan’s best harp playing can be heard.

In practice, however, I find it difficult to move on from that watershed year, 1995, without touching on three more outstanding performances. Commenting on my first article, a reader mentioned a gut-wrenching performance of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ from 1984. That reminded me of the Prague performance from 1995, and just how exquisite and emotionally sensitive Dylan’s harp work has been on this song over the years. I think we’re dealing with two merging forms of harmonica playing here, the first belonging to the quiet, more acoustic Dylan, and coming to the fore in love songs, the second a ‘blues harp’ sound more fitted to stadium rock. 1995 was a very acoustic year in which the more intimate Dylan comes across strongly. The vocal here is tender, almost bruised, and the harmonica ending brings out the emotional fragility inherent in the lyrics. This one is for Robert. Enjoy!

‘It’s all over Now, Baby Blue’ is another song from the same era as ‘It Ain’t me, Babe’ that has often featured the harmonica, although none, I would suggest, as emotionally far reaching as this one from the Prague concert (see link below).

Listening to these two performances leads us to a reflection on the nature of Dylan’s lyrics, and how they relate to the music and the vocalization. In an article I did on mishearing Dylan, a correspondent suggested an analogy with Shakespeare’s First Folio, the first collected version of his plays, in regard to the official lyrics on the Bob Dylan website. The analogy is apt.

The First Folio written editions were mostly actors’ scripts, never intended to be set in concrete, but adaptable stepping stones towards the actual performance. Dylan’s lyrics are similar in that they may contain possibilities of meaning, and potential emotional valences, but one of these potentials has to crystallize into a performance in real time, not the abstract space of the printed page. In other words, the lyric is something like a template, quite open-ended, which has to take on the emotional colour and overall significance from the manner in which it is performed.

For example, if ‘It’s all over Now’ is performed in a strident, declarative, in-your-face manner it might almost be classed as one of Dylan’s put-down songs: get yourself together and piss off! But sung the way he does at Prague, the song, all through the vocal, skirts the edges of heartbreak, and when the harmonica takes over, the mood is pushed into outright heartbreak. There’s been a lot of tedious speculation as to whether this song is for Joan Baez (do we really care?), or was written as a farewell to the protest movement (ho-hum), but what these speculations might obscure is that ‘It’s all over Now’ is a break-up song, which implies heart-break, finality, the end of love. It is love’s last song.

Suddenly the lyrics don’t sound so tough any more, and we wonder if he’s exhorting himself to get a new life as much as the ‘you’ he’s addressing. Listen to how Dylan lifts his voice in the last verse, how the harmonica takes over from where the voice leaves off, lays bare the real heartbreak and gives unrestrained voice to grief. Dylan can’t cry onstage, but his harmonica can, and boy it sure does, and how painful it is at the end as he repeats the same notes over and over, like one of those protracted goodbyes everybody hates but sometimes you just can’t escape. Just one more goodbye…one more… all the way to emotional exhaustion:

[Unfortunately we once more have to deal, not just with a rather annoying crowd at the beginning, but sound distortions as with ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’. More unfortunately, while the distortion doesn’t hit Dylan’s voice so much, it grievously affects the harmonica, giving it a blurred edge. Again, you have to listen through the distractions to what must be one of Dylan’s finest ever performances. If anyone in Sony Music is reading this*, and wondering what do for further official Dylan bootlegs, a digitally remastered Prague concert and some other material from that year would go down a treat!]

Just about everything I’ve said about ‘It’s all over Now’ can be said of ‘It ain’t me, Babe’. Behind the brash disavowals lies the spectre of grief. The lyrics may lay claim to ‘No, no no,’ but the harmonica solo tells a more nuanced story. And yet those tender nuances are inherent in lyrics steeped in tenderness:

‘Go lightly from the ledge, Babe
Everything inside is made of stone’

You need lyrics of this genius to sustain, and underpin this whimsical, tender harmonica performance, as if the instrument itself is learning to ‘go lightly’, to skip across those almost unstated griefs:

As we leave 1995, we have to pause for this compelling ‘Masters of War’. My old jazz cat friends would talk about, phrasing, and timing, and syncopation. Yes, it’s all here. Dylan can let rip with this song, and turn it into a howling rocker, but this performance it’s all restraint, a sense of holding back that emotion, which just breaks through the voice here and here, until we get to the harp, where we get a sharper, more trenchant comment. And if you should happen to be jazz cat, listen to the way the guitar and harmonica surge back and forward in a syncopated manner, while Dylan’s vocal and harmonica phrasing drive the song forward. Hard to find better Dylan performance than this:

Dylan’s harp work is often at it’s best in his acoustic moods, but right from the beginning of his electric sound he liked to work the harmonica in for a few bluesy blasts between verses. ‘Pledging my Time’ on Blonde on Blonde is a good example. That urban bluesy sound enables Dylan to adapt the instrument to stadium rock. This 1996 performance of ‘Drifters Escape’ has a sense of business-as-usual, another day at the office on the NET about it as the song settles into a chuggy beat, until the harmonica kicks in between verses and kicks the song along. By the time we get to the harmonica solo at the end, Dylan has warmed up and the performance has moved from chugging to rockin’. For brilliance of harp playing, listen how he takes off towards the end into a little jazzy riff that cuts across the rhythm of the song.

Slipping forward to the year 2000, we find two outstanding harmonica performances, again in the acoustic mode. ‘Girl from the North Country’ is one of the purest of Dylan’s love songs; I mean untouched by bitterness, or back-biting, or some like sting in the tail. But it can be given a very nostalgic spin, or driven to a lumbering, maudlin weariness as in Dylan and Johnny Cash’s duet version. In the following performance, the mood is upbeat, and while the vocal is sensitive and restrained, the bouncy harmonica solo at the end lifts the song into a celebration. It’s a perky, jazzy, cheeky performance, and the audience loves it.

There has always been a Celtic feel to ‘Gates of Eden’, and never more so than in this warmly received 2000 performance. As with Rank Strangers (see Master Harpist 1), at first I didn’t quite understand what I was hearing. A low wailing sound away in the Celtic mists, maybe like a the lonely sound of a bagpipe playing a single moaning note over an ancient battlefield:

‘Of war and peace
The truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides’

Then it falls into place. It’s the harmonica! and what a haunting edge it gives the song. More fey sounds, friends! At first I thought it might be under recorded, but on reflection the balance is just right; the harmonica is supposed to be heard behind the sound, to creep up on us from a distance, a musical lament on the human condition.

It is said that Dylan ignores his audience. Not true. In this performance he’s playing the audience as much as the song. There is much of that magic that can spring up between audience and performer here.

That’s it for now. In my third installment of Bob Dylan: Master Harpist, I’ll be look at how Dylan’s harmonica play evolved when he switched from the guitar to the keyboard.

Kia Ora!

*Quite amazingly and unbelievably yes, we know that sometimes they are – Tony

by Larry Fyffe

Ben Carruthers And The Deep perform a jacked-up version of a John Lee Hooker traditional blues tune, but with the following fragmented lyrics:

Jack O' Diamonds
On the move
Jack O'Diamonds
One-eyed knave
On the move
Hit the street
Bumps his head
On the prowl
He's down
You'll only lose
Shouldn't stay
Jack O'Diamonds
Is a hard card to play

(Ben Carruthers And The Deep: Jack O’ Diamonds ~ Carruthers/Bob Dylan)

There are those among us who wonder why Bob Dylan is given vocal credits for the song above. Well, it’s very clear that lines are taken directly from the following Dylan poem which alludes to the traditional Appalachian folk song ‘Jack Of Diamonds’:

Jack O' Diamonds
Jack O'Diamonds
One-eyed knave
On the move
Hits the streets
Sneaks, leaps
Between the pillars of chips
Springs on them like Samson
Thumps, thumps
Strikes
Is on the prowl
You'll only lose
Shouldn't stay
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a hard card to play

(Bob Dylan: Jack O’ Diamonds)

The song performed by Carruthers And The Deep continues:

Jack O' Diamonds
Whew
Jack O' Diamonds
This one-armed prince
Wears a single glove
For sure
He's not that lovin'
Jack O' Diamonds
Break my hand
Leave me here to stand
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a hard card to play

(Jack O’ Diamonds: Carruthers/Dylan)

Dylan’s poem goes:

Jack O' Diamonds
Wrecked my hand
Left me here t' stand ....
Jack O' Diamonds
One-armed prince
Wears but a single glove
As he shoves
Never loves ....
A high card
Jack O' Diamonds
But ain't high enough
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a hard card to play

(Bob Dylan: Jack O’ Diamonds)

The song lyrics closely match those of the poem (printed on the cover of ‘Another Side Of Bob Dylan’ album):

Jack O' Diamonds
Is a hard card
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a high card
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a high card
But it ain't high enough
Jack O' Diamonds
Can open for riches
Jack O' Diamonds
But then it switches
Colour by picture
But it's only the Ten
Jack O' Diamonds

(Jack Of Diamonds: Carruthers/Dylan)

The use of many phrases from Dylan’s long poem can hardly be called ‘sampling’:

Jack O' Diamonds
Can open for riches
Jack O' Diamonds
But then it switches
A colourful picture, but
Beats only the Ten
Jack O' Diamonds
Is a hard card to play

(Bob Dylan: Jack O’ Diamonds)

Dylan revisits the line “Left me here t’ stand” in his ‘Tambourine Man’ – “Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping”.

Dylan mixes up the medicine, and samples a Late Victorian poem that’s a speech given by a personna (he’s won, not a card game, but a duel – ‘I stand here now’); the poem reveals the speaker’s regret at what he has done:

Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of man!
Death has done all death can
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace? ....
I stand here now, he lies in his place!
Cover the face!

(Robert Browning: After)

Regret is expressed from a third-person point of view in the following song lyrics:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger ....
But you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face .....
William Zanzinger with a six month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face

(Bob Dylan: The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll)

Note the the Dylanesque “rhyme twist” ~ ‘disgrace’/’face’.

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