Untold Dylan

Thank heaven! the crisis
The danger is past
And the lingering illness
Is over at last
And the fever called 'living'
Is conquered at last

(Edgar Allan Poe: For Annie)

And when the sabbath was past
Marry Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James 
And Salome had bought sweet spices ....
And entering into the sepulchre
They saw a young man sitting on the right side
And clothed in a long white garment
And they were affrighted

(Mark 16:1,5)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan carries on Poe’s burlesque of the afterlife in a number of song lyrics. Our grave lady of the spades is the consort of poet TS Eliot’s ‘eternal footman’; in the lyrics that follow, she takes good care of the Orpheus-like narrator, and looks after the chambers that house the dead – he’s a poet-musician who is not afraid to look at his mummified Eurydice.

I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid
She knows that I'm not afraid to look at her
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter

I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you, so bad
Honey, I want you

(Bob Dylan: I Want You)

Mistress D is quite the enchantress – she likes to get around:

One night I was dancin' with a lady in black
Wearin' black silk gloves, and a black silk hat
She looked at me strange with black velvet eyes
She looked at me strange, all cunning and wise
I saw the flesh just fall off her bones
The eyes in her skull was burnin' like coals

(Rolling Stones: Dancing With Mr. D)  

Well, I eat when I'm hungry 
Drink when I'm dry
Live my life on the square
Even if the flesh falls off my face
It won't matter as long as you are there

(Bob Dylan: Dreamin’ Of You)

And the ship, a Black Freighter
With a skull on its masthead will be comin' in
Then you gentlemen can say, "Hey, girl, finish the floors
Get upstairs, make the beds, earn your keep here"
You toss me your tips, and look out at the ships
But I'm countin' your heads while I make up the beds
'Cause there's nobody gonna sleep here

(Judy Collins: Pirate Jenny ~ Weill/Brecht)

There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up into sapphire-tinted skies
I'm well dressed, waiting for the last train
Standing on the gallows with my neck in a noose
Any minute not, I'm expecting all hell to break loose

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one

(Nursery rhyme: Lizzie Borden)

The motorcycle black Madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The grey-flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins

(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)

See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched on the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbours they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky's changing colour
And I must leave fast

(Bob Dylan: Farewell Angelina)

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 Tony Attwood

When this article was written, there was on the internet a recording of Dylan performing it, but sadly that has now vanished, and there is no replacement at this moment (2020).

Let me tell you, until another recording turns up, that this is a piece of Beat experimentation undertaken with Allen Ginsberg during a set of recordings made in November 1971.  If you would like to read more about Dylan and Ginsberg, Larry has provided us with an article on this very subject. There is also film of Dylan and Ginsberg at the grave of Kerouac in the movie Renaldo and Clara.

For details of Dylan and Ginsberg working together on these songs you might also be interested in the article on this site, on the song “Vomit Express”.

And to complete the package, another song from these sessions “Jimmy Berman Rag” has also been reviewed here.

I am told that this recording has Bob Dylan on guitar [actually on untuned guitar – and I suspect that was intentional], David Amram French Horn, recorder, piano; Perry Robinson, clarinet; Jon Sholle, guitar; Happy Traum, banjo; Surya, zither; Moruga, drums; and Ginsberg, Dylan, Peter Orlovsky and Anne Waldman on vocal. 

Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
Old Rough Roads
One High Iron
Mainway

Denver is the same
'The guy I was with his uncle was
the govornor of Wyoming'
'Course he paid me back'
Ten Days
Two Weeks
Stock and Joint

'Was an old crook anyway'

The same voice on the same ship
The Supreme Vehicle
S.S. Excalibur
Maynard
Mainline
Mountain
M erudvhaga
Mersion of Missy 

by Jochen Markhorst

Woman with hat – artists can not resist it. Picasso paints dozens of portraits of his successive muses and mistresses with headwear. From his earliest, blue period (Femme au chapeau à plumes, 1901) via the tragic Marie-Thérèse Walter (the one of Le Rêve, 1932) to Dora Maar (mistress from 1936 to 1944) and muse Lee Miller (1937), Nusch Éluard, who inspired half the forefront of the surrealists (Magritte, Miró, Man Ray) and second wife Jacqueline Rocque in ’54, until his last works; the central female figure on Final auvre (1971) also has a nice hat. It is universal among painters, that fascination. Warhol (Woman with hat, 1957) Matisse, Van Dongen, Renoir, Vermeer (Girl with a Red Hat, 1665), and also Rembrandt paints dozens of women’s hats, including a red one on his Saskia.

It’s not much different with the musicians. Randy Newman thinks a lady is most exciting when she leaves her hat on (“You Can Leave Your Hat On”, 1972). Gene Kelly wonders “Where Did You Get That Hat?” (1949). Woody Guthrie has a laugh with it in 1940 with “Wimmen’s Hats”: you can sell a woman any old thing… if you tell her it’s a hat (written one day after he wrote “This Land Is Your Land”, remarkably enough), Prince swoons in admiration for a maid with a raspberry beret (“Raspberry Beret”, 1985) and Carmen Miranda understands that everyone is glad to see her with her wearable fruit salad (“The Lady In The Tutti Frutti Hat”, 1943).

Dylan is not at all indifferent either. The lady in “Black Diamond Bay” causes some furore by wearing a Panama hat as well as a necktie. “Cute hat, by the way,” flirts the Don Juan in “Sweetheart Like You” and a veil has something too, apparently (“Golden Loom”, “Changing Of The Guards”).

But this song is different.

It oozes sarcasm, “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”. Thanks to the humour, the speaker only just avoids the pitfall of adolescent hurt, aggrieved jealousy, but mean and slightly bitter he is all the same. And the prosecutors of the Dylan community agree who the target of that biting ridicule is: Edie Sedgwick, the childish femme fatal from the Warhol entourage.

The witnesses are not the leasts. Patti Smith states, in writing, without a hint of doubt, that Sedgwick is the real heroine, the real protagonist of Blonde On Blonde, singer Nico states that Leopard-Skin is about Edie and that “everyone thought it was about Edie because she sometimes wore leopard” and Andy Warhol points out that Dylan and Sedgwick spent a few days in The Castle, a somewhat pompous country retreat in the hills of Hollywood, just before the recordings, around Christmas ’65.

Some witness experts endorse the witness statements; leading biographers such as Clinton Heylin, David Yaffe and Michael Gray study indirect evidence and draw the same conclusion, quite categorically even.

The jealous blows would then come to the credit of Dylan’s friend Bob Neuwirth, who after Dylan has a indeed convincingly documented relationship with Sedgwick.

The defense is not strong. Unsolicited, Dylan first explains it himself, on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, May 27, 1966, when, after a performance of Leopard-Skin, he responds to the boo:

“What you’re just hearing here now is the sound of the songs…you’re not hearing anything else except the songs, the sound…of the words…and sounds…so, you know, you can take it or leave it. (…) I’m sick of people asking what does it mean. It means NOTHING.”

Detective Jan Wenner does not believe this and explicitly asks about the underlying idea of this song for his Rolling Stone interview, 1969. Defensively the main suspect Bob D. states:

“It’s just about that. I think that’s something I mighta taken out of the newspaper. Mighta seen a picture of one in a department store window. There’s really no more to it than that. I know it can get blown up into some kind of illusion. But in reality it’s no more than that. Just a leopard skin pillbox. That’s all.”

And that is not too credible a reply. Every reader or listener who has moved beyond primary school understands: this text is not about a hat. It is about a fictional or perhaps real lady underneath that hat. There are no witnesses to discharge, other witness experts such as Ian Bell and Howard Sounes leave the options fairly open and only report that ‘people’ think that this song could be about Edie, that ‘people’ suspect that the two have had a short relationship. Robert Shelton does not even mention her. In his No Direction Home, however, he delivers exculpatory evidence by quoting indirectly a discharging statement from intimus Bob Neuwirth: “Bob never wrote a song about any one person. They are about a lot of people, and sometimes not about any people at all.”

Alas, again not very valid, of course. This report is not dated by Shelton, but we can assume that Neuwirth says so sometime in the late 1960s. At least well after Dylan has already written “Song To Woody”, “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown”, “Ballad In Plain D” and more songs that are unmistakably about one real person. And also in later years Dylan sings about recognizable individuals (“George Jackson”, “Sara”, “Lenny Bruce”, to name but a few examples), but Neuwirth’s point is clear: Dylan does not hide an attack on or an ode to someone behind misty, ambiguous metaphors. “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” undoubtedly contains impressions and memories, but above all it is poetic realism, the condensing of fragments of a reality. And well alright, part of that poeticized verity is perhaps Dylan’s disdain for superficial ladies who hide uncertainty behind promiscuous behavior and appearance, and yes, recent experiences with a certain Miss Sedgwick will probably find a romanticized echo.

Clearer sources of inspiration, however, are not a hat or a specific lady, but can be found in Dylan’s record collection. The bullying humour, the lyrics structure: “Automobile Blues” by Lightnin’ Hopkins from 1960: “I see you drivin’ ’round in your brand new automobile.” And perhaps even more heavily the Memphis Minnie classic resonates, the song Dylan announces in his Theme Time Radio Hour with the words one of the great blues songs of all time, one of the great car songs of all time, one of the great driver songs of all time! Sung by one of the great old ladies of all time: “Me And My Chauffeur Blues” (1941), and, still enchanted, closes up with Memphis Minnie, you can drive me anywhere!

In an early version of Leopard-Skin that influence is still almost undiluted:

Well you can ride with me, honey, 
I'll be a chauffeur, 
Just as long as you stay in the car: 
If you get out and start to walk 
You just might topple over, 
In your brand-new leopard-skin pill-box hat.

The song’s final version is a struggle. The first run, still in New York, has a slow, dragging blues stomp and lasts more than six minutes (the final version takes just over four minutes). The last take in New York is already faster and sharper, but Dylan is still missing something, apparently. Perhaps he is annoyed by the unimaginative, drum part – no, no, no, it’s not as good as it was yesterday one can hear him say on The Cutting Edge. Maybe we can just record a few versions and then glue the best parts together, he proposes to producer Bob Johnston, who answers with an enthusiastic “Yeah!”

It will not be done. Dylan takes the song to Nashville, where the magic begins. Not by itself, by the way; in Nashville, too, the maestro has to pull and push for thirteen takes, while not avoiding frivolous experiments. He holds on to corny party items right through the song for a while – a doorbell and a jokingly chanting “Who’s there?”-choir and car horn honking. At the end of the day, he drops that too, fortunately (the horn is in the wrong key, also).

But the end product is contagious, as also the colleagues seem to think.

Distinctive is the sizzling, steamy live version by Wofgang Niedecken, the singer of the Cologne ensemble BAP, unfortunately sung unintelligibly in the Kölsch dialect (“Leopardefellhut”, 1995), with prominent slide guitar. As with most covers the opportunity is seized to let the guitarist excel; it is a real Chicago blues, after all. Irresistible in this category are Charlie Musselwhite, John Mellencamp, with a fantastic wind arrangement too, Tommy Womack, master guitarist Peter Parcek and especially guitarist Walter Trout, who by the way has also one of the most intense versions of “Girl. From The North Country” at his fingertips.

And otherwise the pianist gets a leading role, as with chief Dylan interpreter Jimmy LaFave.

Virtually no one does deviate from the Chicago blues format. Janet Planet, the Brown-Eyed Girl who has been Van Morrison’s muse for years, fills two albums with Dylan covers in more complex jazz arrangements that rarely manage to move (although her “I Shall Be Released” has a very special grandeur). Her Leopard-Skin is one of the few covers that fail.

Style retention is not a must, though. The furious, stirring version by Beck, the opening track of the charity album War Child – Heroes vol. 1 (2009) is a fascinating mix of industrial violence and musical craftsmanship, and belongs in any case in the Top 5 of most successful covers. Reportedly, Beck was chosen by Dylan himself to record this song for War Child. That was a good choice from the old master. And that’s a cute hat, by the way.

Wimmen’s Hats – The Del McCoury Band

Dylan’s goofy take 8:

And finally, Beck…

by Larry Fyffe

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same ....
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in the woods,  and I
I took took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference

(Robert Frost:The Road Not Taken)

The evenin' sun is sinkin' low
The woods are dark, the town is too ....
Tell ol' Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him that I'm not alone
That the time has come to do or die  
All the world I would defy
Let me make it plain as day
I look at you now, and I sigh
How could it be any other way?

(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake

(Robert Frost: Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening)

So many roads, so much at stake
Too many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity

(Bob Dylan: Dignity)

Things are bad out there:

Next to come in was a big black snake
Uh-huh
Next  to come in was a big black snake
Uh-huh
Next to came in was a big black snake
Ate up all of the wedding cake

(Bob Dylan: Froggie Went A-Courtin’~Dylan/traditional)

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

(Percy Shelley: Ozymandias)

There's a wall of pride, high and wide
Can't see over to the other side
It's such a sad thing to see beauty decay
And sadder still to see your heart torn away

(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)

https://youtu.be/XbI7osmrU_o

The Existentialist point of view fails to consider that man is a social animal who depends on others, especially on one’s mother, because, at least in the beginning, individual humans cannot survive on their own:

Each man's death diminishes me
For I am involved with mankind
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee

(John Donne: For Whom The Bell Tolls)

The Ace of Spades is a hard card to play:
I can hear the church bells ringin' in the yard
I wonder who they are ringin' for?
I know I can't win
But my heart just won't give in

(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)

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.

It is not a topic we’ve looked at before but in 1995, Bob Dylan saw his iconic status transcend the stage to the world of video games when an interactive CD-ROM was unveiled by Graphix Zone and Sony Music Entertainment. Based on Dylan’s career, players were introduced to a collection of photos and objects that, when clicked, revealed details about Dylan’s life, inspirations and music.

Boasting some never-before-released songs such as Dylan controversially performing House of the Rising Sun at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the game, known as “Highway 61 Interactive”, remains a unique piece of pop culture history and a compelling pre-internet document of one of rock music’s most influential frontmen.

The combination of rock music and video games was not unique then and certainly isn’t now. Indeed, Harmonix’s Rock Band games, in which players use faux instruments to play riffs alongside popular rock songs including Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue, have proven to be some of the biggest commercial hits of recent years. Elsewhere, we’ve seen that famous bands have slot machines too, with Guns N’ Roses, Megadeth and Jimi Hendrix joining decade specific releases like The Groovy Sixties and The Super Eighties for online casino players to enjoy.

What’s interesting about Highway 61 Interactive is that it presents a precursor to every rock band’s website today. It is, therefore, fittingly pioneering, much like the acclaimed musician’s work. But if you’re looking for something a little more exciting online, why not try the Guitar Hero-inspired flash game called Guitar Flash where you use the keys on your keyboard to play along with popular rock songs.

If you were inspired by playing Bob Dylan on Guitar Hero 5, which was released on all major consoles, you’ll enjoy the ease and simplicity of Guitar Flash which can, as the name suggests, be played from anywhere thanks to an internet connection and a flash-enabled browser.

For Dylan fans who want the opportunity to emulate their hero – well, sort of – you could give Rock Band Sim a try. This is another browser based online game that combines the rock n roll entertainment of Guitar Hero with the immersive nature of roleplay as you try to turn your band into the next big thing. Your job is to go from garage band to selling out arenas, writing songs and managing band politics along the way.

Elsewhere, you might also want to give Brutal Legend a go. It’s inspired by music that is significantly different from most of Dylan, although to a degree reminiscent of the Dylan and the Dead era and brings the power of the guitar to the world of video gaming by arming you with a magical six-string and navigating an environment that’s all about rock n roll. Featuring music from Motorhead, Megadeth, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, Brutal Legend also boasts the voice-work from Tenacious D frontman and actor Jack Black. The online multiplayer version offers hours of fun.

We all know how inspirational music can be. Online you’ll find lots of entertaining games which have taken their cues from great artists like Dylan. From the delights of Guitar Hero to the immersive simulation of Rock Band Sim to the exciting slot machines bearing the name of rock n roll legends.  

By Tony Attwood

The song 26 Storeys High appears at track seven (33:40 – 37:40)

I noted in the review of  Dylan’s Nothing here worth dying for: that Bob was using a simple technique of playing the same chords over and over again and letting the rest of the band and the vocalists join in, even though they had probably never heard the song before this point.

The rotating three chord idea was not new at that point of course.  “All along the watchtower” uses the same technique.  “Drifter’s Escape” goes even further into minimalism as a way of constructing music, and offers just two chords and a never changing vocal line.

And it is interesting in the case of those two songs, the lyrical theme is about being trapped.   “‘Help me in my weakness,’ I heard the drifter say” launches the Escape, while the Watchtower starts with the bleak, “There must be some way out of here.”

And maybe such thoughts were lurking at the back of Bob’s mind as he used the three chord trick again for 26 Storeys High in the “After The Empire” song recorded in 1985.  Unfortunately the one recording of this song that was on line seems to have been taken down – but if you find one could you write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the URL and I will add a link back in.

In this song the three chords are F, E7, Am.   The Watchtower has Am, G, F (with an extra G thrown in as an introduction to the next line).  Not the same, but a similar idea.

And the notion that “there must be some way out of here” is a theme in both – although in “26 storeys” the reference is (I think) to a criminal act having gone wrong and the criminals being holed up on the 26th floor.   But I’m needing someone to disentangle all the words for me to be sure of this [Larry would you care to oblige as you have so often before?] but it may well be not that at all, but perhaps that the notion is that living in the tower block is so awful that suicide is the only way out.

But I might have got both approaches wrong.

Anyway, whatever the lyrics mean, suddenly, and seemingly without any warning at the 1 minute 44 seconds mark we get a middle 8 – a different section – which at least gives us a relief from the depression of the repeated three chords.

The middle 8 comes a second time – as before with a climax – and then suddenly we are back down to the three chord section.   And there are some lines that are quite clear such as “Saturday night on the run” and “every window holds a loaded gun”.

The way the female singers come in, and the fact that the band knows about the middle 8 (with its unexpected semitone rise and fall at the end) suggests that this was not the first run through of the song, but it was possibly the last.  There is no further sighting of the song; Heylin does not even have it listed.

Of course not too many people would attempt a song like this outside of the straight hard core blues genre, but Bob obviously is wanting to try something different as with the use of “Saturday night on the run” over and over at the end.  This has a very interesting effect that suggests that the song could have gone further and become a particularly effective if particularly bleak moment in Bob’s catalogue, but it appears that didn’t happen.

So, two riders don’t appear from the distance, the drifter doesn’t escape, the stand off goes on.

This one take is all we have.

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

The Swedish computer scientist and researcher Olof Björner (1942) is a celebrated and respected man in Dylan circles. He has been following the career of the bard since 1963, and since 1989 (Words Fill My Head) he publishes the results of his monks’ work: exhaustive, detailed and accurate overview lists of every note that Dylan plays in studios, on stage and in rehearsal rooms.

The Dylanologists are happy with him; his site, bjorner.com, is freely accessible, is regularly updated and is an incomparable source for thousands of facts about Dylan songs.

Statistics enthusiasts can indulge themselves at the song index, among other things. There Björner keeps track of how often and where Dylan plays his (and other artist’s) songs, and for the figure fetishists he also keeps score of the songs Dylan has played more than five hundred times on a separate list. In the spring of 2018 there are 32 songs on it and the top is composed of the usual suspects:

1. All Along The Watchtower (2257 times)
2. Like A Rolling Stone (2029)
3. Highway 61 Revisited (1919)
4. Tangled Up In Blue (1700)
5. Blowin’ In The Wind (1542)

So one would be tempted to conclude: these are the five songs that the master is most proud of, the ones he prefers to play himself, that never bore him. However, that conclusion is not entirely accurate, for it is based on fuzzy statistics.

“Like A Rolling Stone”, for example, is ten years older than “Tangled Up In Blue” and therefore has an ‘unfair advantage’. The ranking becomes more accurate by dividing the number of performances by the number of years since the song is part of Dylan’s repertoire; this leads to an reliable average number of performances per year.

In that case the top five suddenly looks radically different:

1. Summer Days (51.8 times a year, since the first performance in 2001)
2. Things Have Changed (51.6)
3. All Along The Watchtower (43.4)
4. High Water (For Charley Patton) (42.1)
5. Love Sick (41.0)

https://youtu.be/TjFnzUgDzbc

Entirely accurate the list would become by dividing the number of performances by the number of concerts that Dylan has given since the debut of the song in question, but let’s not exaggerate. For this ranking it would not matter; the surprise “Summer Days” remains Dylan’s relatively most played song, is statistically his showcase.

Surprising, because “Summer Days” definitely does not belong to the canon. It is never mentioned in lists of Favourite Dylan Songs, has not appeared on single, covers are scarce and it is rarely selected for the compilation albums that keep on being released. Twice only; “Summer Days” is the last song on the American release of The Best Of Bob Dylan, 2005, and it is one of the 87 songs selected for the Japanese release of the 5cd box Dylan Revisited – All Time Best, 2016.

Incidentally, this fact is not too meaningful; no fewer than 127 different songs have been selected for the eight official Best Of and Greatest Hits compilation albums and overview boxes that have been released since “Summer Days” – it is rather an achievement not to be chosen for one of those cash cows.

Dylan’s passion for “Summer Days” is hard to fathom. It’s a catchy, driving twelve-bar blues, great fun to play for the band and it drives a pleasant, exciting Schwung through the audience, but then again: in that category Dylan’s catalogue has dozens of songs. “It Takes A Lot To Laugh”, “New Pony”, “Lonesome Day Blues” … that list is long. Distinctive, compared to all those other exciting, audience-friendly blues songs, are perhaps the lyrics – after all, something does make Dylan reach for “Summer Days” so significantly more often.

The lyrics to the song, like many songs from “Love And Theft” (2001), have been lovingly stolen from rather incoherent sources. The most curious is and remains the now well-known dip into that obscure Japanese work, Confessions Of A Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Dylan quotes from this work in a few songs on “Love And Theft” (in “Lonesome Day Blues” and in “Floater”, in particular) and here he copies the old businessman and the break in the roof passages.

At least as obscure is the origin of the line I got eight carburetors, boys, I ‘m using ’em all; that paraphrases almost literally It’s got eight carburetors and it uses them all (and is five couplets later also short on gas) from the surf rocker “Hopped-Up Mustang” by Arlen Sanders, a flopped single from 1964 that occasionally can be found on compilation albums. Later on the album, Dylan grants that dusty single a literal name check, in “High Water (For Charley Patton)”:

I got a cravin’ love for blazing speed
Got a hopped up Mustang Ford

And apart from that the ‘more ordinary’ winks to Elvis (“I’m Counting On You”), Woody Guthrie and a single folk song twirl down (Where do you come from? Where do you go? is, of course, the chorus of “Cotton- Eyed Joe”).

But then the seventh verse, that crowded verse with shares lent from The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925). No fewer than twenty-two syllables the bard crams into that third verse (She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Or course you can”) … apparently the poet really wants this quote, the length of which is quite a challenge even for a reknowned Grandmaster of Phrasing like Dylan.

The content of the quote is in line with the stories that employees and session musicians tell about the recordings, illustrating Dylan’s explicit intention with “Love And Theft”: “to repeat the past”, to resuscitate history. Not only does Dylan reuse old melodies and text fragments, he also takes old singles to the studio to make clear to his band which sound he wants to reproduce, which history he wants to repeat. Technician Chris Shaw testifies:

“On “Love And Theft” and Modern Times, Bob would sometimes come in with reference tracks, old songs, saying, “I want the track to be like this.” (…) He’d come in and present these templates and use them as reference points.”

And technician Mark Howard tells how this need already arises in the run-up to Time Out Of Mind (1997):

“He’d tune into this radio station that he could only get between Point Dune and Oxnard. It would just pop up at one point, and it was all these old blues recordings, Little Walter, guys like that. And he’d ask us, “Why do those records sound so great? Why can’t anybody have a record sound like that anymore? Can I have that?” And so, I say, “Yeah, you can get those sound still.” “Well,” he says, “ that’s the sound I’m thinking of for this record.”

Daniel Lanois, the producer of Time Out Of Mind, agrees, confirms the quest for restoration of the past:

“Bob has a fascination with records from the Forties, Fifities and even further back. We listened to some of these old recordings to see what it was about them that made them compelling.”

And studio musicians like Duke Robillard recount this modus operandi too.

In itself, it does not match well, it is not consistent with equally reliable, various testimonies that declare that Dylan “really, really hates to repeat himself” (Chris Shaw in Uncut, October 2008). We have seen this aversion demonstrated for decades on stage; Dylan keeps changing his songs, renewing, reinterpreting, up to the point of unrecognizability, even. A repugnance that only concerns his own work, apparently. Actually since Oh Mercy (1989), but unmistakably, explicitly since “Love And Theft” the old master seems to have made it his mission to repeat the past.

In the seventh verse of “Summer Days” he expresses this adage in so many words, and since then he keeps repeating it all over the world, in his Never Ending Tour – since the premiere of the song, October 5, 2001 in Spokane, Washington , the bard has been hurling his provocative of course you can repeat the past into the audience from some nine hundred stages.

He really, really means it.

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Emily Dickinson

by Larry Fyffe

Although surrounded by a culture steeped in the tenets of the Calvinist religion, poet Emily Dickinson distances herself from organized religion. She particularly detests the dogma of ‘original sin’ that church leaders send nipping at the heels of parishioners.

Dickinson sides with the serpent of Eden who gives Adam’s wife Eve a book of Romantic Transcendentalist poetry that he’s written concerning the trees in Eden – with its focus on the tree growing in the midst of the Garden:

And the serpent said unto the woman

"Ye shall not surely die"
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof
Then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
Knowing good and evil
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food
And that it was pleasant for the eyes
And a tree to be desired to make one wise
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat 
And gave also unto her husband with her
And he did eat

(Genesis 3:4,5,6)

The Holy Bible tells a different story, however;  God banishes Adam and Eve from Paradise for disobeying Him. From that day on, the sight of a snake makes the senuous poetess nervous:

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides ....
But never met this fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And zero at the bone

(Emily Dickinson: A Narrow Fellow In The Grass)

On the other hand, a Modernist poet highly praises Dickinson for her daring to be different:

I saw a young snake glide
Out of the mottled shade ....
It quickened and was gone
I felt my slow blood warm
I longed to be that thing
The purely sensuous form

(Theodore Roethke: Snake) 

Given the culture in which he lives, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan alludes to the biblical serpent without feeling the need to mention it:

He saw an animal as smooth as glass
Slithering his way through the grass
Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake
["Ah, think I'll call it a snake"]

(Bob Dylan: Man Gave Names To All The Animals)

Emily Dickinson’s Romantic Transcendentalist sense of goodness in Nature is tempered by her awareness of the dark Puritan belief that evil lies therein:

There came a wind like a bugle
It quivered through the grass
And a green chill upon the heart
So ominous did pass

(Emily Dickinson: There Came A Wind Like A Bugle)

A sunlit symphony is the pantheistic picture of Nature that’s presented in the lyrics below, but drums and bugles are associated with war:

Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drums of dawn

(Bob Dylan: Lay Down Your Weary Tune)

It’s not all good. Death, the Eternal Footman, he waits for you – he wants you so bad:

One dignity delays for all
One mitered afternoon
None can avoid this purple
None evade this crown
Coach, it insures, and footman 
Chamber, and state, and throng
Bells also in the village
As we ride grand along

(Emily Dickinson: One Dignity Delays For All)

Bob Dylan raises his hat to Emily Dickinson:

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries ....
And the saviours who are fast asleep, they wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to open up the gate for you

(Bob Dylan: I Want You)

The last hiss, the snake gets:

So many roads, so much at stake
Too many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity

(Bob Dylan: Dignity)

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

By Tony Attwood

This article explores an idea – I am not sure if I am going to be able to take this idea forward into a series of articles, and I want to see how this article feels first before I commit, but it is an idea that fascinates me.

My point is that occasionally Dylan throws out lines or sections of verses that seem to be completely at odds with his general view of the world, as we might take it from the rest of his writings.

This example comes from Dignity

https://youtu.be/2Dlh-X1fpoQ

I went down where the vultures feed
I would’ve gone deeper, but there wasn’t any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn’t any difference to me

Dylan composed the song in 1989, and as has been widely reported, left it until 1994 to perform it.  It is said that he was unsure whether the song really was something worth performing, or not.

The notion within the song is straightforward: many art works symbolise evil (for example) as a being or entity – often called The Devil.   Goodness likewise has an personification in the Christian tradition in God, Jesus etc.   So why not personify Dignity?

Why not indeed, and that is what, I guess, Bob was up to – or at least it is the only way I can make sense of these lines.

Searchin’ high, searchin’ low
 Searchin’ everywhere I know
 Askin’ the cops wherever I go
 Have you seen dignity?

And that’s fair enough – until we get to the “vultures” bit.  Bob seems to be saying that the angels of the Almighty and us ordinary folk are all the same.   Where everything is in a mess and people’s dignity has been stripped away from them, then there is nothing left.

I find this most interesting, and those four lines relating to the vultures have long puzzled me.  Of course I have to admit from the start that they might have no meaning – they might well simply be lines that Bob knocked out because they sound good.  To say that might seem to denigrate Dylan’s art – but I don’t think so.  He has, in my view, a rare ability to pull out lines which are memorable and interesting, but which are also meaningless or contradictory.  Or indeed so meaningful they can have 100 different meanings.

But to try and make sense of it, people in desperate situations, he seems to be saying, have had their dignity stripped away from them, and talking with such people doesn’t help them.  When their dignity has gone, they need to get that dignity back before anything else can happen.

Of course I don’t know if that is right – or if Bob meant those four lines to have any meaning at all, but even in such situations, his writing can provide me with thoughts and insights, which I do enjoy pondering.  And I quite like setting them out in little articles, because the process helps me clarify my thought (and after all, you don’t have to keep reading).

Every dictionary has its own definition of the word “dignity”, and here’s a simple one I rather like and which seems to fit with Bob’s approach in the song.

“Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically.”

And so to return to Bob’s four lines…

I went down where the vultures feed
I would’ve gone deeper, but there wasn’t any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn’t any difference to me

Where the vultures feed – where people have no dignity because they have been stripped of any means of having dignity, all the talking in the world won’t help, no matter who does it.

And so I’m reminded of another of my favourite songs, the Drifter whose song opens with “Help me in my weakness”.  In The Drifter’s Escape” the Drifter has no dignity, he even has to be carried out of the courtroom – and yet he does manage to get some dignity back with the ultimate irony – when everyone sees the destruction of the court room by the bolt of lightening, and they all bow down to pray, the drifter gets up and strolls out.  Dignity, of a kind, returned.

Dignity is stripped also from the subject of “Tell Ol Bill”

Tell me straight out if you will
Why must you torture me within?
Why must you come down off of your high hill?
Throw my fate to the clouds and wind

And the tragedy of the subject of that song is that there is no escape – there is no way to regain the dignity that has been stolen…

I look at you now and I sigh
How could it be any other way?

There is indeed a desperate hopelessness here.

Back with “All along the watchtower, it is the joker who has lost his dignity while the thief has found his…

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
 “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke

And maybe that takes me back to the start.  If one feels life is but a joke, then dignity can come and be taken away at random.   There is no plan from on high, there are no rules, there is nothing we can do with certainty, the drifter escapes by chance, just as chance has brought the subject of Tell Ol Bill, so low.

Thus when Bob sings

I went down where the vultures feed
I would’ve gone deeper, but there wasn’t any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn’t any difference to me

it is indeed all just haphazard – a joke, a world without meaning, a world in which things just happen.

This is of course the opposite of most religious views, wherein the purpose is to worship the Lord, and behave according to the rules that the prophets have laid down.

And Bob might well have been qualified to make such a comment in 1989 because he had been Saved ten years earlier, and now reflects that the tongues of angels and the tongues of men all spoke the same stuff – both being capable of removing a person’s dignity.

As an atheist I find the whole process of believing totally, and then falling out of the system of belief, utterly fascinating.  But also I find that yes, I feel a need to have a certain level of dignity about myself as I try and find a way of proceeding through this world without going completely mad.

I am reminded of Douglas Adams comment in “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” where he says, “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

“There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

That works for me.  I guess, to have dignity, we all need something to hold on to.  But I’m with Bob in 1989 on this one.  Angels and men are both capable of stripping away one’s dignity.  Laughing at them both helps me keep myself together.  For Bob, in 1989, I guess it was writing songs that did it.  But I hope he had a few laughs too.

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.

One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) (1966)

by Jochen Markhorst

“I always liked songs with parentheses in the title,” says host Dylan in episode 47 of his radio show Theme Time Radio Hour, at the announcement of Sonny Stitt’s “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread)”. These are no empty words: no less than 68 times in the 104 episodes, the radio maker chooses such a song title. And Dylan’s own catalog also contains more than twenty titles with parentheses, from “Suze (The Cough Song)” to “High Water (For Charley Patton)”. Not until the 21st century, after 2001, the grandmaster finally seems to be bored with it.

But then again: the poet is not reluctant in the autobiography Chronicles (2004). On average, one pair of parentheses per ten pages, whereby he superfluously often places complete sentences in parentheses. “Okay, we were going to forget about “Dignity” for a while. (We never did go back to it.)”, for example.

Dylan does not appear to use a system. Sometimes the explanatory addition only contributes to the impenetrability, like in “Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)” and “I’m Not There (1956)”, and sometimes it clarifies, like “High Water”, but usually a phrase from the chorus or the refrain verse is in parentheses: “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” or “Coming From The Heart (The Road Is Long)”.

And “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)” of course, Dylan’s fifth song with parentheses in the title.

It is one of his favourite songs, the master reveals in the Rolling Stone interview in 1969, and one in which, especially by Dylan standards, an exceptional amount of love has been invested. The twenty (!) attempts, rehearsals, misses and alternatives on discs 11 and 12 of the unsurpassed The Cutting Edge – Collector’s Edition (2015) illustrate this in a fascinating way. It is hardly surprising that the accompaniment changes in the course of such a session, but that the song also fans out so radically on the other fronts (lyrics, melody, tempo) is an eye-opener.

The studio talk, especially in the first two rehearsals, reveals intimate details about the creative process. Apparently Dylan has already had a first pre-rehearsal with Al Kooper. He searches his notes, finds them again, asks for help (presumably from the piano-playing Kooper) “How is the chorus?”, sings along a few words that will disappear later (“I’m glad it’s through, you’re mad it’s through”) and then interrupts: “That’s not right, Al. I don’t get it.”

Kooper answers something unintelligible, Dylan asks “What’s the tempo?” and then starts, quite slowly, with the groundwork of the first verse as we know it: “I didn’t mean to hurt you so bad.”

Hardly arrived at the chorus, Dylan interrupts once more, and again addresses Kooper: “Are you sure we played it at that tempo?”

It should be even slower… The first four lines now take 47 seconds. For comparison: in the final, 24th take, this first verse is played eleven seconds faster, in three-quarters of the original time.

It is compelling and almost blatantly voyeuristic, as close as the listener is to the process of creation.

At the sixth rehearsal, Dylan is still having doubts: “Is that the way it was?’, the song then seems to slide into its final form, the thin wild mercury sound even sparks for a moment, but disappears again at rehearsal no. 9. The maestro hears that too. “I don’t think that’s the right way. You think so? I think we ought to do it quieter.”

Around that time, the playing of pianist Paul Griffin starts to shine – the magical, final piano part is still a long way off, but the contours are starting to get clear. Griffin (1937-2000) can basically go as he pleases and may, at his own discretion, tinker with his keyboard playing that, as the hours pass, culminates in an enchanting mix of shyness, threat, drama and allure. Critic Jonathan Singer puts it better: “Half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart”, and Al Kooper lacks superlatives to honour “probably Paul Griffin’s finest moment.”

At the moment, January 1966, Griffin is already a musician’s musician – the connoisseurs have known him since the late 1950s. He has played on a whole series of (mostly soul) hits, even gifted keyboard player Burt Bacharach gets up from his piano stool to let Griffin play with his Dionne Warwick or a Chuck Jackson (the striking organ part in “Any Day Now” is Griffin), Solomon Burke considers him his own private keyboard player and Dylan already knows him from the idiosyncratic strolling and hopping on “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”.

But Kooper is right: “One Of Us Must Know” inspires him to his very best moments. In the following years, Griffin occasionally comes close to this peak. His contribution to Van Morrison’s masterpiece Astral Weeks (1968), the work he provides for Steely Dan (especially on “Peg”, from the album Aja, 1977) and the supporting part and the distinctive frills on Don McLean’s world hit “American Pie” (1971).

And while Dylan seeks tempo, melody and orchestration, he continues to work on the lyrics. Quite radically, too – nothing of the original chorus is maintained:

Now you’re glad it’s through
And I’m feeling so mad
Now that I let you cry
I didn’t mean to hurt you so bad

… is one of the early variants. Although the couplets change less drastically, but still effortlessly enough to put an end to the fairly broad belief that the text is anecdotal.

The cooled down lover Dylan here dumps Warhols Beauty No. 2, Edie Sedgwick, that is the most popular interpretation. For a biographical, anecdotal interpretation a few facts speak, that much is true. Certainly compared to the surrounding songs on Blonde On Blonde, it is an unusually dry, unadorned monologue, with no inscrutable secondary characters like those shady doctors, preachers or jelly-faced women. Even the rare, potentially ambiguous passages (the scarf that hides the mouth, the blinding snow) may symbolize emotional cold and social discomfort, but are in fact so little weird that they might actually be real remembered images.

The relative transparency of the words allows the assumption that the poet stays close to home, in any case. And indeed, the poet has achieved rock-divine status in recent months, with the subsequent overdose of attention from excited girls and teenage fanatics without sense of perspective. An amalgam of those groupies then becomes the you in this song and gets discarded by the protagonist. Recognizable are the clumsy clichés like “I understand you so well”, the immediate, total surrender at the first meeting with the idol and the awkward embarrassment of His Worship (“I didn’t realize how young you were”), who sober and cruel diminishes: “You just happened to be there, that’s all.”

Anyway: it is a beautiful song and it is rightly being released as a single. After the mega hit “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” did flop. Now “One Of Us Must Know” should make advantage of the momentum and yield Dylan another hit.

That doesn’t work, strangely enough. The single does nothing in the US, grazes the charts in Europe. The artist seems to be bothered by that, just like he is later, with the debacle of “Baby, Stop Crying”: the song disappears from his setlist for years and only after flattering sales pitches by sympathetic fans like the journalist Larry Sloman, it is picked up again – in 1976, ten years later.

Others have fewer reserves, but rarely know how to capture the beauty within. The Boo Radleys produce an original but tiring mix of trash and stillness on the tribute album Outlaw Blues (1992), the singer of Simply Red, Mick Hucknall, keeps it safe and pleasant (Chimes Of Freedom, 2012) and the Dutch rockers and Dylan adepts Jan Barten and Fons Havermans are doing quite well, but no more than that.

The two covers that still stand out somewhat can also be found on tribute albums. One on Blues On Blonde On Blonde from 2003. Clarence Bucaro, an otherwise rather mediocre singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, opts for a roaring twenties arrangement, with clarinet, upright bass and acoustic jazz guitar, thus giving a nice nostalgic and melancholic touch to one of Dylan’s inexorable masterpieces.

The most attractive cover, by far, is on Mojo’s 2016 Blonde On Blonde Revisited tribute, on the occasion of the monument’s fiftieth anniversary, by veteran Chip Taylor.

The seventy-six year old legend starts the song as an American Recording by Johnny Cash; talk-singing over a wavering guitar. A bit later on, the song is sparsely dressed up with a modest, mercury organ, then a discreet bass, light accompaniment on the floor tom and a goosebump-inducing second voice. The old-fashioned mellotron in the background, halfway through, is particularly elegant.

It is a wonderful rendition by an oldtimer who should have gotten his place in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame a long time ago – not only did Chip Taylor write “Angel Of The Morning” and “Son Of A Rotten Gambler”, but most of all: he is the writer of the indestructible classic “Wild Thing”. And from that other monument with parentheses in the title, Janis Joplin’s “Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)”.

Chip Taylor:

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 Tony Attwood

Interview Magazine has a page online called “New Again Bob Dylan” which re-runs an interview they did with Bob in February 1986.

The piece opens with a section called “A dozen influential records” and we’ve been plundering the list for a while in the “Why does Dylan like” series.

The songs I’ve picked to review all make sense – they are ones where we have other references from Bob to his fondness either for the song or the singer or both.  But there is a problem later on because near the end of the list we hit ““Riding On Train 45,” by the Delmore Brothers.

Now that is interesting because “Train 45” is a Woodie Guthrie song, so we might expect Bob to pick up on it.  Here it is, complete with a long instrumental introduction…

Oh, that train I ride on is a hundred coaches long
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles
If that train runs right I’ll be home tomorrow night
‘Cause I’m nine-hundred miles from my home
And I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow

I’m a-walkin’ down that track
I’ve got tears in my eyes
Trying to read the letter from my home
If that train runs right, I’ll see my woman Saturday night
I’m nine-hundred miles from my home
And I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow

So why is this called “Train 45” – that I don’t know.

I even found an album of train songs called “Train 45” – and hundreds of versions of the song played above song – often with variant lyrics.  Here’s a fun version to give you an idea of how it varied

Moving on I found the Delmore Brothers – the band Dylan cites – they certainly were popular musicians.  Wiki calls them pioneer singer-songwriters and musicians who were stars of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s.  Indeed it is reported that their recording “Freight Train Boogie” in 1946 is considered by some to be the first ever rock n roll record.

It’s not the song Dylan refers to, but it helps give a bit of context…

There is even a web page which lists all the Delmore’s songs, but no song with “45” in the title is listed.  A second page of Delmore recordings on the same site tells the same story – lots of train songs but nothing with “45” in the title.

So going back to the article to check, it is certainly possible that Bob didn’t say or imply “Riding on that Train 45” by the Delmore Brothers but rather was simply saying “Riding on that Train 45” and “Delmore Brothers” as two separate listings.

So if that were the case, let’s consider the two separately.   Here’s a typical Delmore song

and just to balance it up another version of the Train 45 song

After all of which let’s come back to Bob and ask why he likes the song.  Certainly the J E Mainer version is terrific fun – well played, well sung, utterly full of energy, and if nothing else in terms of this roundabout search, it has led me to this recording and for that I am grateful.   If this is the version Bob liked, then I’m with him all the way.   It is just so lively and inventive.

However curiously the Wiki page on Mainer (1898 to 1971) makes no mention of this song although it lists a vast number of recordings that he did make including a significant number of LPs.

And as a final point, I found a video of JE Mainer’s brother playing the song at a live gig.  Watch out for the guy walking straight in front of the camera.

And so to round it all off, another of JE Mainer’s songs.

Why does Dylan like the song even if we can’t find the recording he mentioned.  Well, because as I said above – it is such incredible fun.  If you got this far without playing the Mainer version, then shame on you, you are not paying attention.

Here it is again.  Just for you. Do play it – I suspect this is the version Bob was thinking of.  He just got the performer mixed up.

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

A good number of the writers of the Age of Enlightenment appeal to man’s ability to reason in an effort to reduce the social, political, and economic conflict that they observe in the world around them; the ‘God’ of the religious establishment is tossed outside the workings of the Universe as He no longer seems to want to get involved anyway. 

Romantic writers of the day opt for intuition, rather than reason, as the right path to follow in the quest for knowledge – they look to external nature to gain insight through the senses by experiencing things that are  blissful, and things that are Gothic-like.

Romantic Transcendentalist writers attempt to merge transcendentalism and romanticism together – they claim to sense a spiritual goodness emanating from the distant Creator that permanently pervades the physical world.

Taking their cue from the Gothic Romantics, Symbolist poets go out of their way to derange their senses, and peek into the irrational recesses of the human mind that includes a night-time place wherein lies a land of dark dreams.

The Modernist American poet Theodore Roethke takes an individualistic, Existentialist view; he sweeps the style and content of previous artists into the vortex of a figurative whirlwind in a bid to make poetry anew. Roethke calls on poets who employ concrete ‘objective correlatives’ to express emotion – William Blake, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade
I hear my echo in the echoing wood 
A lord of nature weeping to a tree
I live between the heron and the wren
Beasts of the hill, and serpents of the den

(Theodore Roethke: In A Dark Time)

Down the road between Paradise and Hell also travels Bob Dylan, and, like Roethke, the singer/songwriter pulls himself out of the ditch of darkness and despair at the last moment:

Shadows are fallin', and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep, and time is runnin' away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal ....
I've been down on the bottom of a whirlpool of lies
I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes
Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear
It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there

(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

A college-educated country songwriter/singer rejects both Roethke and Dylan’s existentialist angst-ridden outlook – in fact, turns matters completely upside down with a dose of sincere Christian altruistic concern:

And you start to think
About settling down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell 
And you find yourself ....
When you meet the one
You've been waiting for
And she's everything 
That you want, and more

(Brad Paisley: Find Yourself)

Not filled with selfless light are the following earlier-written song lyrics that are instead filled to the brim with self-serving cynicism:

Oh find me, I'm under your wing
Find me, you are my whirlwind ....
I'll be your lover, and you'll meet me there
Or maybe do whatever you want me to do
Find me, a running bell
Find me, I wish you all well
Baby, you are my everything

(Bob Dylan: Find Me)

https://youtu.be/GUpePcp2jQw

In the poem below, the shortness of an individual’s life is compared to being entangled with existential responsibility when awake – the longness of death is compared to being asleep:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear
I learn by going where I have to go
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

(Theodore Roethke: The Awaking)

Somewhat similarly, the following song lyrics are easily interpreted to mean that, even if an individual thinks him/herself to be sincerely religious, the time to act on, and to strengthen one’s moral values, is in the here and now when alive rather than standing around, and waiting – relying on faith alone – to be judged by God in an afterlife:

God don't make promises that He don't keep
You got some big dreams, baby, but in order to dream you
gotta still be asleep
When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up, and strengthen the things that remain?

(Bob Dylan: When You Gonna Wake Up)

The song ends on a sardonic note: “Believe in His power that’s about all you have to do.”

In the end, Bob Dylan brings in all back to the shelter inside of which Theodore Roethke’s solitary individual resides :

Well, you're on your own, you always were
In the land of wolves and the thieves
Don't put your hope in ungodly man
Or be a slave to what somebody else believes

(Bob Dylan: Trust Yourself)

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.

Stop Now (1978)

by Jochen Markhorst

Dylan is not the only songwriter who admires T.S. Eliot. Recognition and appreciation are widely displayed in the music world. Genesis, Bowie, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Tori Amos, Manic Street Preachers … just a few examples of artists who quote, paraphrase or mention Eliot in their lyrics.

Neil Tennant, from the famous pop duo Pet Shop Boys, publicly declares that the lyrics of their first hit “West End Girls” are inspired by The Waste Land, and with that he refers to the style; the changing narrative perspectives and the collage-like insertion of alienating references (the opening lines are from an old gangster film with James Cagney, “from Lake Geneva to Finland Station” is Lenin’s train journey towards the Russian Revolution).

In the liner notes of the 2001 re-release of their debut album Please (1986), the other half of the duo, keyboard player Chris Lowe, shifts the attention to the music, and especially to the background singer: “Helena Springs has got one of my favourite female backing voices of all time.” Singer Neil Tennant adds: “She’s got a fantastic, magisterial voice.”

Ah. That is where Helena Springs did go. In this hit, she only has a small supporting role (those two hollow, somewhat gothic lines How much do you need and How far have you been), but the men ask her for more songs and even write a song with her. “A New Life”, the B-side to their world hit with Dusty Springfield, “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”

For her solo album New Love, she changes the lyrics and title to “A New Love”, but that is equally unsuccessful. Some attention in the British press, though, where she usually expresses her respect for teacher Dylan. Like in the Melody Maker of October 27, 1984:

“Dylan basically taught me how to write a song. The first song I wrote by myself was Boy, Want You Down On Your Knees. Bob loved it and made me write more. Dylan’s an incredible teacher. You might think he wouldn’t be but he’s so patient, so easy and has an ear that’s unreal. Dylan taught me how to write rock and roll.”

When she was traveling as a background singer with Dylan, 1978 and 1979, she wrote “a lot of stuff” together with Dylan, of which a few songs were recorded. How much is still floating around is unknown. “It just kept flowing, we didn’t stop writing.”

On the Rundown Rehearsal Tapes bootleg there are a few, Eric Clapton records “If I Don’t Be There By Morning” and “Walk Out In The Rain”, The Searchers score a hit with “Coming From The Heart”… by and by, some songs see the light of day.

Fan sites are intrigued, Dylanologists interested. Not like it is the Holy Grail, but still. With some uncertainties, one comes up to twenty-one titles, from half of them the title is the only thing that is known.

One of the twenty-one titles is “Stop Now”. Two recordings of the song end up on that Rundown Rehearsals bootleg. A slow, rather enthusiastic version, supposedly recorded on 8 June ’78, and a faster, tighter and more serious version from a month earlier, 2 May 1978. Incidentally, Michael Krogsgaard, who is generally well informed, and with him Olof Björner, think that both versions were recorded on May 1, during the fifth Street Legal session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va4GxMAH-k4

A remarkable comment on “Stop Now” in The Copyright Files creates some clarity with regard to that – otherwise unimportant – date, but causes confusion on another point:

With this document, signed by Helena Springs, the songwriter transferred and assigned to Special Rider Music “all her right, title and interest,” including the copyright, to the song “by Helena Springs and Bob Dylan….”
The data for the transaction are:
Assignment
By Helena Springs & Bob Dylan.
P1: Helena Springs
P2: Special Rider Music

On “execution date” 2 May, so one day after the likely recording date, Helena signs a legal document in which she transfers “all her right, title and interest”, including copyright, and grants them to Dylan’s music publisher Special Rider Music. At the U.S. Copyright Office, however, the song is still registered in the name of both (document number V1702P386), and this amendment is not mentioned.

But it is conceivable that the song was wrongly attributed to Springs. In every respect, it does indeed seem like a song Dylan would effortlessly dash off; atypical text fragments or melody lines, such as in “Coming From The Heart” and “More Than Flesh In Blood”, “Stop Now” does not have – it really is one of those archetypal Dylan finger exercises, something like “Stepchild”, or “Seven Days” .

Musically anyway. A regular twelve-bar blues in an everyday stop-and-go arrangement, a nice but not surprising bridge, melody lines that follow traditional blues licks … all pleasant and swinging, but ‘composition’ is a big word and a second ‘composer’ on such a workpiece only gets in the way.

The same applies to the lyrics. Similar horny ambiguities as in “New Pony”, a promiscuous protagonist and the idiom of old blues heroes such as Blind Willie McTell and Arthur Crudup. The opening echoes Elvis (“Mean Woman Blues”, I got a woman, mean as she can be versus “Stop Now” I have a woman, fine as she can be), but harmonica virtuoso Sonny Boy Williamson II seems to be the direct source of inspiration. His “Stop Now Baby” (1954) has practically the same chorus.

Dylan turns

You better stop now
You better stop now
Stop now baby
Darling before it’s too late

…into:

You have better
Stop now, stop now,
Stop now, stop now,
Before it’s too late.

Almost identical. No coincidence; Dylan’s love for Sonny Boy Williamson II has been adequately documented, as has Dylan’s tendency to cherrypick from Sonny Boy’s work.

The stop-and-go run-up to the choruses Dylan copies from “Don’t Start Me Talkin”, the classic he also plays with The Plugz in David Lettermans show, 1984. In Chronicles he fabulizes that Sonny Boy once gave him a harmonica lesson (“Boy, you play too fast”), in Theme Time Radio Hour, radio maker Dylan plays no less than eight times a song of his, and later works are littered with references; “Your Funeral And My Trial” in “Cry A While”, for example, and in “Spirit On The Water” the Nobel Prize winner quotes from both “Black Gal Blues” and “Sugar Mama Blues”.

No, the lyrics neither give cause to think that the talented, charming Helena has been involved – this really is the work of a seasoned bluesman (m/f).

In the 80s, Helena Springs continues her career in England, but not as a solo artist. As a background singer, she accompanies half the premier division. She can be seen and heard behind Bowie during Live Aid, with Bette Midler during a television special and she tours with Elton John.

Also because her daughter Nina is getting too old by now for a traveling life, Helena slowly withdraws from the music scene towards the end of the 1980s and takes a different path. Thanks to Nina, she notices there are only white Barbie dolls on the market. In 1994 Helena, under her real name Lisandrello, launches the company Hamilton Design Systeme, which sells the coloured Candi Dolls with reasonable success.

Daughter Nina Lisandrello is just as pretty as her mother and broke through as an actress (Beauty And The Beast, Law & Order, NCIS), so Helena still catches, at least indirectly, some reflected shine from the spotlight.

No such luck for “Stop Now”. The song, according to Clinton Heylin at one time nominated for Street Legal, but scrapped in favour of “New Pony”, has completely faded away and is now buried under the dust of the years.

https://youtu.be/VKWPSNar5U0

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 Tony Attwood

This is another song from the After the Empire collection – and in this case it sounds as if some work has been done on the song before the recording starts – Dylan certainly has worked through the lyrics.

https://youtu.be/0vGVdFvsXw4

The song is not listed in Heylin, so has obviously emerged since his volumes came out as has most of the After the Empire collection which means the recordings sometime in 1985.

The title sung in the chorus line is memorable, but I get the feeling that the song is at an interim stage of its evolution, just a song about not going back to the past friend, lover, associate, situation until “they” ask him back – and presumably apologise along the way.

There might be some good lyrics within the song – I’m not going to try and transpose them, because I always get it wrong – but it just sounds to me like a variation on the travelling on, gotta keep moving on type of song.  There is certainly a “railroad track” in there and the thought that “I’ll meet you when you need a friend”, combined with the thought that no matter how often the singer helps the unnamed subject of the song, he or she will end up on his/her knees again, and again.

This concept of repetition is well met by the music itself – there are four chords that are played over and over and over again without any variation.  That matches exactly with what the lyrics seem to be saying: it just goes on and on and on.

So that’s it – there are just some people who can’t cope, and no matter how often you help them, they keep falling down.   And yes, that is true, and maybe a justification for no going back until one is asked.

Although it is interesting that the chorus line is “I won’t go back til they call me back again”.   And as I played the song over and over for the purpose of this review, I began to wonder: “why THEY?”  I mean there if it is the individual who is down and out, why isn’t it “Til you call me back again”?

From what I can make out of the lyrics, the answer is unclear.  Is it that the singer is alienated by all the people in this other community?  Is it that the subject of the song is institutionalised, and it is the guardians who call the singer back?

I’m not sure Bob actually had any thought as to the answer; I suspect he just had the phrase and the music then popped into this head.

But, I can’t help thinking there is something that a genius like Bob could have done with this material – maybe a very different “B” section in there which kicks it in another direction.

As it is, I am just stuck wondering who “they” are.   His family?  His friends?  Musicians he has known?  And those chords going round and round and round without any variation….

Songs about things endlessly repeating are very hard to get right, because where the music in essence repeats itself over and over the song becomes boring – which is probably the situation that the lyrics are describing.

So maybe this is just too hard a task for the songwriter to deal with.  Especially since he is also known to have favoured the phrase, “Don’t look back”.

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

Note: The Untold Dylan Offices received the following by mail in a plain brown envelope. Apparently, it’s a copy of a song re-written by Bob due to protests from vegetable rights groups – 

Man Gave Names To All The Vegetables

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

He saw a vegetable that likes to grow
In big long rows that he has to hoe
Some coloured yellow, some coloured green
"Ah, I think I'll call it a bean"

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

 He saw a vegetable with great big ears
It's very tall but it can not hear
Li'l Boy Blue come blow your horn
"Ah, I think I'll call it a corn"
 
Man gave names to all the vegetables
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the vegetables
In the beginning, long time ago

 He saw a vegetable with lots of eyes
It can't see, but it makes good fries
Sliced up nice by chef Van Gogh
"Ah, I think I'll call it a potato"

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

He saw a vegetable that likes to sprout
Come on baby, we can work it on out
With a little help from Peter Rabbit
"Ah, I think I'll call it a carrot"

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

Next vegetable that he did meet
Had bright red roots, and tastes like feet
Walkin' without boots in a boggy peat
"Ah, I think I'll call it a beet"

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

He saw a vegetable with great big pods
Dancin' in the breeze, and givin' him nods
Saw it appear by a lake down near a tree
"Ah, I think I call it a pea"

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

He saw a vegetable that made him tear
In Scarlet Town where a graveyard's near
There lies the body of Damon Runyon
"I think I'll call it an onion"

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

He saw a vegetable he doesn't like
When nature walkin' on a hike
"What's it's name....I'll give you a guess
I think I'll call it .........."

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

“Let’s finish off with a track from the Basement Tapes,” Mary Travers says at the end of her radio interview with Dylan, “er, your choice.”

“Uh, okay… Oh! Apple Suckling Tree,” says Dylan, suddenly very awake, with an undertone that sounds like anticipation. Perhaps it is relief, relief that the interview is over (although it is a rather relaxed, pleasant interview with an old friend), but to the listener it seems as if the bard is eagerly looking forward to listening to a great song, to an old favourite he has not heard for a while.

The conversation, the first radio interview Dylan does since 1966, takes place in Oakland, April 26, 1975. Shortly after the release of Blood On The Tracks, shortly before The Basement Tapes is released – so both records get attention from Travers.

It is a striking choice and a remarkable enthusiasm. The Basement Tapes will be available in exactly a month and Dylan can choose from twenty-four titles. “Lo And Behold” was played at the start of the radio program and he probably has little knowledge of and even less feeling with the six songs that were recorded without him (“Bessie Smith”, among others), but sixteen songs from which he could have chosen instead of “Apple Suckling Tree” still remain. “Goin’ To Acapulco” for example, or one of the songs that are already known to the general public as a cover (“This Wheel’s On Fire”, or “Too Much Of Nothing”).

But the maestro’s ways are mysterious, as usual. He chooses “Apple Suckling Tree”.

For the first official release, The Basement Tapes from 1975, the second take was rightly chosen. On the release of the other recordings and takes (The Basement Tapes Complete, part 11 in The Bootleg Series, 2014), the very heedless, mustier first take appears to be interesting from a music-historical perspective, but nothing more.

The song itself is actually not too spectacular either, certainly not compared to masterpieces such as “Sign On The Cross”, “Tears Of Rage” or “I Shall Be Released”. The melody is a slightly rattling copy of “Froggie Went A-Courtin”, a well-known Scottish folk song from the sixteenth century, which Dylan will honour more respectfully in 1992, on Good As I Been To You, in a serious, long version. There are hundreds of recordings of the song and Dylan probably heard it from Woody Guthrie, or else from Pete Seeger – or perhaps from easily the best cover, the one by Uncle Pecos, from Tom & Jerry episode 96, “Pecos Pest” (1955). That is the episode in which Jerry receives a telegram from his uncle Pecos from Texas:

Dear Nephew
Me and my guitar on way to big city for television debut — stop
Will spend night with you.
Uncle Pecos

Jerry still has the telegram in his hands when there is a knock-knock-knockin’ on the mouse hole’s door: Uncle Pecos, who immediately starts singing “Froggie Went A-Courtin”. He scrambles the text, he stutters a lot and tries to yodel in between (there’s a yodel in thar somewhar, but it’s a little too high f’r me), but mainly he suffers from cracking strings – which he then every time replaces with a whisker’s hair from poor Tom.

On a side note: Uncle Pecos is spoken and sung by the legendary singing cowboy / actor / songwriter George Clinton ‘Shug’ Fisher, whom Dylan also remembers from the Roy Rogers films, from Gunsmoke and from The Beverly Hillbillies, but especially as a prominent member of the Sons Of The Pioneers, who regularly visit (four times) his Theme Time Radio Hour.

The lyrics Dylan then sings over this age-old melody is partly improvised and partly unintelligible. The official lyrics, as published on the site and in Lyrics, is teeming with debatable transcription attempts and obvious errors – as is often the case with the 60s songs in particular.

It is peculiar, though. Who transcribes those texts? In the first official publication, Writings & Drawings from 1973, no editor, cryptographer or transcriptor is mentioned, but the work is especiall’ dedicated to “the girls upstairs – Cathy, Miriam, Mildred & Naomi who put this heavy volume together”.

Choice of words (“the girls upstairs”) and the casual, not to say disrespectful limitation to the first names, suggests that transcribing the lyrics is a task that is outsourced to the girls of the typing pool, to the secretaries.

In Writings & Drawings, there are twenty-one song lyrics in the “From Blonde On Blonde To John Wesley Harding” chapter, the songs that will later be called Basement Tapes. “Apple Suckling Tree” is not listed, it only appears in The Songs Of Bob Dylan 1966-1975 and, later, in Lyrics and on the site. In those later publications, no hint is given anymore with regard to transcription.

Some text discrepancies are so radical that they must have been done by Dylan himself. The omission of a few couplets in “Call Letter Blues”, for example, and the rewriting of complete verse lines in the initially unreleased Basement song “Goin” To Acapulco”. The textual differences therein are certainly not due to poor transcription or mistakes. The lines

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

… for example, are rewritten into

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

And in “You Angel You” he intervenes in a similar drastic way (among other things, he changes the Dylan-unworthy you’re as fine as anything’s fine into it sure plays on my mind).

The semantical divergences in “Apple Suckling Tree”, however, are not that far-reaching and probably rather due to the girl upstairs on duty. Although … then I hush my Sadie and stand in line is a remarkable one. At any rate, it is now clear that this Cynthia or Miriam or whoever, is listening to the first take, and there Dylan sings quite intelligibly then I push my lady and stand in line.

It seems the type lady is also taking on Self Portrait today and especially “Little Sadie”: the hacks and buggies all standing in line (…) taking little Sadie to her burying ground..

It is not too important. The chorus seems to be somewhat prepared (because the men from The Band sing along) and there probably Ritchie Valens’ “Boney-Maronie” plays in his mind (boy, how happy we can be / makin’ love underneath that apple tree).

But the couplets are improvised, and Dylan is not really in great shape today. For the filling in Dylan relies on the spur of the moment, as is also apparent from the widespread differences between the first and the second version. Some parts are not much more than sounds, others are vague.

The forty-nine of you burn in hell, for example, must be an echo of the story about the Danaids, the fifty daughters of King Danaos who are forced to marry their fifty cousins. One princess, Hypermnestra, likes her groom, but her forty-nine sisters are less satisfied and kill their grooms. For that they are punished: to this day they are busy filling up a bottomless barrel (the Danaid barrel) in Hell. There are actually no other associations with a forty-nine of you in hell, and apart from that, there is no relationship with the rest of the text, just as no couplet makes any contribution to a coherent storyline or recognizable poetic impression.

Ten-a-penny melodies, unfinished lyrics, failed improvisation … it remains puzzling why Dylan wants to hear this particular song, in the radio studio with Mary Travers.

We know from producers Fraboni and Robbie Robertson that Dylan hardly interferes with the creation of The Basement Tapes. In his autobiography Testimony (2016), Robbie Robertson does not devote very many words to the album. Presenting the project (as usual) as his own idea, he confirms that some recordings have been slightly polished with overdubs (a bass part by Rick Danko here, Richard Manuel’s tambourine there) and he suggests that Dylan had no further involvement, apart from granting permission:

“I suggested going back to the original tapes to see if there were some tracks we could release properly. We didn’t want to put out music that was sonically unacceptable, but with the technology of the time, I thought maybe Rob Fraboni and I could reduce some of the hiss and improve the sound quality. Bob agreed to see what we could do.”

And Fraboni confirms that Dylan rarely showed up, in the Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, while working on The Basement Tapes. That disinterest is in line with the many testimonies we know from Dylan about the recordings in the Big Pink.

In this interview with Travers too, he is dismissive again (“Yeah, well these songs basically aren’t a tape, they were written like in five, ten minutes, you know”), and in the interview with Kurt Loder, for Rolling Stone in 1984, he is even more outspoken:

“I never really liked The Basement Tapes. I mean, they were just songs we had done for the publishing company, as I remember. They were used only for other artists to record those songs. I wouldn’t have put’em out. But, you know, Columbia wanted to put’em out, so what can you do?”

… just as derogatory as a year later, in November ’85 in Time:

“I didn’t pay much attention to the Basement Tapes. I thought they were what they were – a bunch of guys hanging out down in the basement making up songs. (…) I don’t listen to the bootlegged stuff. I really don’t have any feeling about it one way or another.”

It opens a door to a more likely explanation as to why Dylan sounds so cheerful when he chooses this “Apple Suckling Tree”, this minor trifle at Mary Travers, and listening back does support that. It is not anticipation. It is relief after all, though not relief that the interview is over. It’s relief that he remembers a song title from that unappreciated album at all – the master is really, intrinsically, deeply uninterested in that collection of scraps, nonsense and finger exercises.

Tom & Jerry “Pecos Pest” (part I):

https://youtu.be/0k2hCVVVq0M

You might also enjoy “Apple Sucking Tree: Bob Dylan revisits Froggie, not for the first time” 

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 Tony Attwood

Everyone knows that Woody Guthrie had a big influence on Bob Dylan.  But why?  What was it in Guthrie that Dylan liked so much?

The most obvious answer to me is that I suspect Bob Dylan, from his youth, saw himself as the outsider, the kid who liked music that others didn’t know about, the kid who was interested in things that meant nothing much either to his parents, his teachers or indeed his fellows in the classroom.  The musical rebel who loved Little Richard.  If his house was anything like mine in my youth the words “What is that noise?” might well have rung out on occasion.

I suspect therefore that as he started writing songs and playing guitar, he felt he had something, but quite possibly those around him, not too used to the type of music he was experimenting with, really didn’t think much of what he was doing.  Did he get told to “stop messing with the guitar, study hard, get a proper job”?   I don’t know but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did – and if that is the case then we can understand the link to Woody Guthrie more readily.

For Guthrie famously said, “I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that….songs that run you down or songs that poke fun of you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.”

Woodie Guthrie was himself considered an outsider – an Oklahoman (Okie) living in California but he coped with his, from my understanding, by singing about the life he and his compatriots left behind.

From there he moved on to singing about corruption, about outlaws, the rights of migrant workers, and other regular causes of those promoting the well-being of those without, in a land where some people are very much “with”.

So the outsider is central to the Woody Guthrie theme, and “I Ain’t Got No Home” is a central part of that collection of songs – think of “Hard Travelin’” as well – a song referred to by Bob in his song for Woodie.

We also know from the biographies that Guthrie was unconventional in his thinking, a rebel, and an observer of all going on around him.

The big difference between Guthrie and Dylan, as far as I know it (and I am not an authority on Guthrie) is that he had a life of set-backs and hardships, and I sometimes wonder if Dylan didn’t think that really he ought to have had more hardships himself in order to be able to write more authentic songs.   He didn’t of course – the songs about the collapse of a way of life on Times they are a-changing, that total non-protest LP, suggest a complete understanding of what it is like to suffer as a member of a minority.

During the dustbowl period Woody Guthrie travelled – the hard travelling of riding on the freight trains, walking and begging lifts, that has become part of the story of the travelling blues man, the gamblers and the rest of just kept on moving on.

In New York in his later life Woody Guthrie teamed up with the blues men and folk singer of the era we now remember, creating the environment that Bob Dylan could fit into when he hit town, years later, and it was the Woody Guthrie songs that helped legitimise the music of the left wing folk singers.

“I ain’t got no home in this world anymore” was written in 1938 and appeared on the “Dust Bowl Ballads” album he released in 1940 – originally as a set of 78rpm discs.  It was the most successful collection or album that Guthrie ever made, although the record company refused to re-release it in the 1960s, uncomfortable with the left wing messages within many of the tracks.

So in many ways it would be curious, given what we know about Bob Dylan and his early songs, if he didn’t like this song in particular, symbolising as it does the most successful part of Guthrie’s carrier.

What the song does it give a dignity and humanity to the wandering hobo – establishing the credentials as human beings who are travelling not because they are feckless but because of the circumstances they find themselves in.   They have no home, not because they’ve wasted away their income on drink or other unworthy pastimes but because that is the hand that fate, or maybe God, has dealt them.

by Aaron Galbraith

I’m sure everyone here will at least be somewhat aware of the excellent work of Bob’s son Jakob both as a solo artist and as the front man with The Wallflowers (I’m been a fan since the first album and was lucky enough to catch them live when they opened for Lindsay Buckingham & Christine McVie last year).

Even Bob’s grandson Pablo Dylan has been getting some press these days following the release of his debut EP in February this year, “The Finest Somersault”.

Bob’s daughter with Carolyn Dennis, Desi Dennis-Dylan, has released some fine performances on YouTube, where she shows just how much she takes after mother in the vocal department! Here is her cover of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy:

Dylan will never match that other Bob (Marley) for sheer number of musical offspring/siblings/wives/descendants I would like to talk about another 2 relatives of Bob who have been quietly making albums for several years now – Bob’s nephews Seth & Luke Zimmerman. They are the sons of Bob’s brother David.

Seth Zimmerman made his recording debut with his band Tangletown on their first and only album “Ordinary Freaks”, released in 1999.

The album was produced by Seth along with brothers Bobby Z (Prince’s drummer) and David Z. The album itself doesn’t sound much like Dylan & The Revolution instead the influences are pretty obviously acts such as The Band, The Replacements and more specifically cousin Jakob’s Wallflowers.

Tracks such as “See Right Through” and “Madeline Knows” would have fit on those first 2 Wallflowers album quite nicely.

We drove so fast I could hardly see
The white lines in hiding sight
And the wind
She'll take it on the chin again
when I say
She slip me back to yesterday

• See Right Through (S. Zimmerman)

Perhaps the most Dylan-esque moment on the album comes with “Harlequin’s Device” a song about no talent bands who make it big.

She was Daddy's curse
He was puttin' up with the worst
And along came the joker and the queen
Even through those years
She was crying out all those tears

• Harlequin’s Device (S. Zimmerman)

It’s an album that begs to be listened to again. Whilst it’s not quite as good as The Wallflowers in their prime it’s still full of gritty guitars, scratchy vocals and endless hooks to keep you listening right to the end and maybe even to press play once more when you get there.

Following the end of Tangletown things went quiet for Seth for a while (in terms of physical releases anyway, I’m sure he was gigging around the city). Then in 2007 he teamed up with some other established Minneapolis musicians and formed The 757s – named for the noise of the Boeing 757 on takeoff.

Seth shares lead vocal and songwriting duties with Paul Pirner and Jimmy Peterson. They have described themselves as:

“Hazardous—Not recommended for straight laced. Comedic stance. Bad disposition. Powerful. Able to withstand malt force. Sleek. Timeless and Stupid. The 757s.”

They quickly made three albums:

• “Tell The Pilgrims It’s A Potluck” (2007)
• “Freeway Surrender” (2009)
• “Last Laugh” (2010)

The first album is probably the best and is available in full on Spotify. It’s a bit Strokes-y, a touch Combat Rock-era Clash with a wannabe Keith Moon drummer.

Here is the video for the track “Amateur” from “Freeway Surrender”:

Then in 2013 they released a single called “Trick Of The Light” with a new album to follow but nothing seems to have been released – unless I missed it…any information if anything else ever appeared from the band would be appreciated!

Again, Seth seems to have dropped off the radar for the last few years, but hopefully we will hear more from him again in the future.

Luke Zimmerman started his musical career in the short-lived outfit The Crow River Band. They released one album, the eponymous “The Crow River Band” album in 2003. Luke writes all the songs, sings lead vocals and plays guitar. It’s a fantastic album and I really wish I could link you to some of the tracks here but nothing seems to be available on Spotify or YouTube (beware: there is another band with the same name on YouTube).

Luke sounds a little like a young Lou Reed and a lot like Ben Kweller. The music bears some resemblance to those acoustic Velvet Underground tracks they sprinkled across their four great albums. Stand out tracks on the album include “I’m A Success”, “I’ve Forgotten You” and “Shades Of Grey” which has more than a passing musical resemblance to “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”.

For me the absolute best track is “The Bluffs” with its hypnotic vocals and arrangement and the killer Dylan-esque line:

She said she’d always respect me
But that’s all right
I haven’t call her on it yet

• The Bluffs (L. Zimmerman)

Whilst the first half of the album is all acoustic and rather lovely, musically things pick up on in the second half, with the rocking “On The Way To See The Priest” and “Shifty Stranger”.

Several lyrics do show the influence of his uncle Bob:

Ain’t I cute
You can listen to my flute
For eternity

• Shifty Stranger (L. Zimmerman)

Harriett says to me
I got a dozen broken knees
And a nose that won’t sneeze
Stop your inquisition please

• Harriett Iscariot (L. Zimmerman)

I really enjoy this album and can’t recommend it enough. It can still be picked up cheaply from Amazon or Ebay.

After the band split, Luke made the move to solo artist status and released his debut solo album “Twilight Waltz” in 2005. The whole album is available on YouTube this time but I will pick out some of my favourites to share with you here.

The album has been described as “an honest, heady mix of alt-country that combine the familiar sounds of Lou Reed’s art-rock, John Lennon’s pop, and Neil Young’s rustic folk-rock”. I can’t argue with that – again, it continues were the Crow River Band left off and is universally excellent throughout.

“I like that you turn it on and it has a consistent and coherent mood to it,” Zimmerman says. “The name sums it up. It’s from a book by [Frederick] Nietze, about how the whole trick to life is to maintain cheerfulness though there’s trouble all around you.”

Here is perhaps the most intriguing track on the album for a Dylan fan:

If you’re going home again
Go see my only friend
He’s the one who’ll be wrapped up tight
In his electric hospital bed
Tell him that I’m caught in a world that’s bought and sold
If you’re going home again
Please pay him what I owe

But I just can’t sit back ideally
And watch while someone’s living on the corn field of my youth
Tell her I’ll just be hiding in Duluth

• Duluth (L. Zimmerman)

I’m not done knowing you
I’m not done knowing you
You’ve got your life now

• Not Done Knowing You (L. Zimmerman)

Second album “Shoebox” was released in 2012. Luke describes it:

“Shoebox was an experiment in form and execution. I wanted to write a record that was basically one continuous story, told not through narration — like a musical — but through a series of songs. I chose to write about the destruction of a relationship; it was a love story. I recorded it all myself with help from friends who came out to record with me but I recorded it, produced it, mixed it. It took a few years to get it done, so by the end, I was burned out on love songs and sitting alone in a room staring at a computer”.

Like the preceding two albums this one is again very strong. One thing he has in common with his uncle is his strength as a lyricist as well as his melodies which stick with you way after the track has finished. “Shoebox” begs to be listened to over and over. Each time different tracks and snatches of lyrics jump out at you.

“I’m more of a writer than anything else, so I try to make the lyrics interesting, something to listen to, which I suppose is more of a folk sensibility. I try not to repeat a standard 1-4-5 blues progression and stick to major and minor chords so that’s where the jazz influence comes in”.

All my words were written for you
All my tears were dripping for you
All there was, was you and only you

• You (L. Zimmerman)

The way you smile says you’re gonna leave

• You’re The One I Love (L. Zimmerman)

The album seemingly didn’t receive a wider release. You won’t find it on Amazon or any other major retailers site. I picked the CD up from Luke’s own Bandcamp page (It was only $7 and is still readily available from there – and my copy came with a nice little signed note from Luke…which was nice)

Prior to the release of third album, the excellently titled “Heyday For The Naysayers” in 2014, one interviewer asked him the obvious question:

Do you ever get any comparisons to Bob Dylan? How do you feel about that?

“Sure I do. I think everyone who writes lyrics at this point probably gets compared to him by people who are interested in lyrics and know who he is. I get it more, surely. I think it’s an easy story to sell by people who are writing about music. I’ve had people come up to me at shows and tell me how they think we compare. I’d rather people listen to the songs and try to get something out of them as standalone things, but I realize that’s probably not that realistic. I’d hope that the songs are good enough to hold their own, but he’s generally regarded as one of the best songwriters out there and I think any critic who is comparing anyone to him is putting the musician in a hard spot.

It happened to Springsteen, and Conor Oberst, etc. (not that I’m comparing myself to them, now, too) and it’s like comparing a new painter to Picasso or Michaelangelo, someone established as an example of the medium. If you start out looking at a canvas knowing that everything you do will be compared to Van Gogh it’s hard to even pick up a brush. People will compare, that’s their prerogative. I think it’s sometimes in lieu of doing real criticism on the songs — which I’m not sure songs really need to be criticized in that way anyway. Music is personal. I hope people like the songs (or don’t like the songs) based on the songs themselves and not on who it may sound like or what backstory there is.”

Again, you will find the whole album available on YouTube and it really is worth checking out. I like it a lot and it is difficult for me to pick out my favourite tracks to share with you. I’ve gone with “Ship Sinking Down” and “Little Girl” – I hope you like them as much as I do!

Luke states: “I think the recording of “Everything Is Happening” turned out well. There’s a good build to it and I love Jake’s solo in it. “I Will Believe You” and “The Road to Damascus” have good beats.”Time Passing By” has sort of an unrelenting feel to it that I like. “Smile!” I think is a good recap of the record and has good performances, and “Ship Sinking Down” has some interesting lyrics.”

Meanwhile the idols
All strode through the turnstiles
The beautiful people with expandable keyholes
They’re wildly embracing while looking for somebody else

• Ship Sinking Down (L. Zimmerman)

The world around you has gone insane

And I can’t stop the rain

• Little Girl (L. Zimmerman)

Luke said of “Little Girl:

“I wrote the song a long time ago; I didn’t have kids. I wanted to try to get at the idea of things changing and the inability to stop change and the fear of change. When all around is storming and you’re looking for an umbrella — and there’s a helplessness. I always liked this 4-track recording my band did of the song, but it didn’t make it onto our record, so this new record came along, and I thought it was a good ideological fit and changed a few of the lyrics. I think it works.”

I had a lot of fun exploring this side street of Bob’s family (I hope you did too!) as it gave me a chance to go back and listen to these fine albums again and again over the last few weeks. There is not much information available online about the brothers’ work so it’s been a challenge to piece this small article together. My hope is that this in some way readdresses the balance and opens their music up to a wider audience.

I also hope that we will hear more in future from these 2 fine artists.

Smile, everybody smile!

By Tony Attwood

You’ll have heard about Bob stopping the show because of the flash lights going off at a recent concert.   The one where he said a few words which the media immediately called a “rant” before they showed us what a rant really is like, as they criticised Bob’s presentation of his songs at his concerts.

Anyway Bob turned away, slipped on an amp and then returned to face the audience.  Here’s the video

After that, as Pat reminded me, Dylan added Dignity to the set for a few gigs, including in the song of course this ending…

Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed
Dignity never been photographed
I went into the red, went into the black
Into the valley of dry bone dreams

So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take
To find dignity

Here’s a version that I really like – you might care to play it while reading on (if you want to read on that is)…

https://youtu.be/2Dlh-X1fpoQ

Anyway, this all feeds into the whole question of why Bob chooses not to speak to the audience very much these days.

And I say “these days” because I’m reminded of the long speech he used to give during the Christen period.  At that time no one seemed to listen – there was often more noise coming from the audience than from Bob.

Now when I put this point to a friend as I was thinking further on the topic, he replied simply that there was noise from the floor showing that the fans didn’t want to listen to his preaching.  Which is an interesting answer because it seems to suggest that those going to the concert should in some way be in charge of what happens – or at least be able to make a judgement.

And as one who makes judgements on Dylan all the time on this site, I don’t fancy that.  Judgements on blogs, fine.  But at the gigs?  No.

Take that further and perhaps a couple of days before a show we should vote for the songs we want Dylan to perform.  And yes of course I would love to hear Dylan do a live performance of “Tell Ol Bill” – but I still wouldn’t get it because most people would be voting for the regular favourites.

So that didn’t take us much further – as a second point occurred to me then: most musicians do speak on stage but they have very little to say.  Do we really want to hear Bob say, “Hello Nottingham how you doing?”   Probably not.

Or do we want him to be saying, “This is a song that I wrote in 1968; haven’t played it much since, but thought I’d give it one more run…”   Not really.

And so it goes on.  Few pop and rock musicians have anything to say of interest.  For Bob to say something of interest he would probably need ten minutes – ten minutes against members of the audience shouting out their favourite Dylan titles.  Is there any point?

In fact that led me on to the thought that a large number of people even talk through the songs, or shout or make whistles or noises.  I don’t know why they do it, but listen to any of the concert recordings and you will probably hear exactly that.

But there is more, because Dylan has on occasion presented us with some of his insights in lectures, and I am not too sure that the insights take us much further forward.  Perhaps the most informative speech is still the Musicare lecture which I have covered in some detail.  Really if you want to know what Bob thinks about his own writing read that – I don’t think he has gone much further since then.

In fact if you then go on to the Nobel lecture, we don’t really seem to go any further at all – if anything we go backwards.

And to be fair Bob has never presented himself as a speaker – even Theme Time Radio Hour had limited amounts of Dylan talk.  He has given some interviews but they are often contradictory and lacking in illumination.

But why should he be a speaker?  He doesn’t present himself as a speaker, he doesn’t offer to go on talk shows or lecture tours.  I think quite possibly he really doesn’t like talking in public, and that surely should be understandable to anyone.

During my time as a writer I have on occasion been asked to speak before a sizeable audience – that is my version of an audience, of maybe 500 at most, not Dylan’s 10,000 in an auditorium.  And I have had to talk for 50 minutes without notes, not least because on one occasion as I prepared myself to get up on the podium I was told that the key speaker of the event had said he wanted to talk on my subject, so could I talk on something else.

And OK I can do that, just as I can play in folk clubs and with small time rock bands.  But put me on stage in a play and I freeze –  I cannot do it at all.  So if Bob hates speaking in public, why should we demand that he has to do it?  The man is a genius songwriter and great performer; shouldn’t he have the right to stay quiet?

Besides the audience at Dylan shows know his work and most have seen him many times before.   Most, I suspect, know every line of every song.  So what do they expect Bob to say?   OK he might say, “You think this song is about my ex-lover but its actually about my friend’s dog.”   Maybe – but would you believe it?

So Bob doesn’t explain, and doesn’t give histories and in that regard he is probably unique – and I suspect he quite likes that.  And besides, really, what would you think if at the end of every gig he always said, “Thank you very much for coming?”   Is that what we want from Bob?

There was a time when every gig ended with “There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief…” and I used to wonder – is he trying to tell us something, or does he just like the song?  I never resolved that, and in a way I’m rather glad.  Either answer would be disappointing.

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.