Untold Dylan

By Larry Fyffe

The United Kingdom Of Judah/Northern Israel takes the lion as its symbol, a strong country that ought not to be messed with – protected  by a wrathful God who punishes His own people for straying from His commandments:

Judah is a lion's whelp
From thy prey, my son, thou art gone up
He stooped down, he couched as a lion
And as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?

(Genesis 49: 9)

Poet William Blake presents a symbolic mythology that advocates a balance between fierceness (the tiger), and gentleness (the lamb). Caught in Hollywood, between the historical towns of Jerusalem and Babylon, between light-filled Heaven and dark-filled Earth, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan utilizes biblical, Blakean, and Shelleyan imagery:

There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage
And a longtime, golden-haired stripper on stage ....
There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped
There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape being raped
As her beauty fades, and I watch her undrape
I won't but then again, maybe I might
Oh, if I could just find her tonight

(Bob Dylan: Where Are You Tonight)

Mystical Gnostic battles are going on – inwardly and outwardly – between the proud lion and the meek lamb:

It was gravity which pulled us down
And destiny which pulled us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage 
But it was no enough to change my heart
Now everything's a little upside down
As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad, what's bad is good
You'll find out when you're on the top
You're on the bottom

(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

In the lyrics below, Judah, the lion, resists the tyranny of modern quick-moving social values whilst the Christian lamb, albeit slowly, yields to them:

Your conscience betrayed you

When some tyrant waylaid you

Where the lion lays down with the lamb

I'd have paid off the traitor

And killed him much later

But that's just the way that I am

(Bob Dylan: No Time To Think)

Dylanesque double-edged New/Old Testament lines entangle – those who are arrogant enough to think they’re the Absolute One will pay the price:

Like the lion tears the flesh off the man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a man
They sang 'Danny Boy' at his funeral, and 'the Lord's Prayer'
Preacher talking 'bout Christ betrayed
It's like the earth opened, and swallowed him up 
He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground
You know what they say about bein' nice to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you'll meet them comin' down 
Well, there ain't no goin' back when the foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

(Bob Dylan: Foot Of Pride)

Dylan really socks it to those who are overly self-righteous in their righteousness. In the lyrics above, the singer, or at least his persona, recognizes that he, himself, is not immune from the hubris of haughtiness:

Let not the foot of pride come against me
And let not the hand of the wicked remove me
There are the workers of iniquity fallen
They are cast down, and shall not be able to rise

(Psalms 36: 11,12)

A sentiment expressed in the following song lyrics as well:

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
One look at you, and I'm out of control
Like the universe has swallowed me whole

(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)

In Romantic poetry, a warning that nothing’s so permanent as change:

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)

As sure as the sky is blue, a lioness is hangin’ around, and she’s asking which side are you on:

There's a woman on my lap, she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up at sapphire-tinted skies 
I'm well dressed , waiting on the last train ....
Ain't no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he's got something to prove

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

https://youtu.be/wts1nD1t5Zc

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

In his days, the Italian baroque composer Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) is considered one of the Big Boys. After early years in Bologna, he experiences successes in Rome and Venice, becomes court composer for Leopold I in Vienna, conquers Berlin and then progresses to the Premier League: the Royal Academy of Music, the Italian opera house in London, engages Bononcini in 1720.

Over there he must, however, tolerate the living legend Georg Friedrich Händel next to him. The competition for public favour works well for the public and for fans of classical music at all, but drives Bononcini to fraud; in 1728 he is caught plagiarizing when he copies and publishes a madrigal by Antonio Lotti under his own name. He leaves London with his tail between his legs and he does not come back really well after that.

Little is left of his fame today. Among insiders and baroque enthusiasts the name Bononcini still rings a bell, but unforgettable he is only indirectly, thanks to John Byrom. The inventor of stenography and poet of rather stiff, religious hymns, also has a talent for pointy, witty epigrams and writes about the controversy Händel / Bononcini:

Some say, compared to Bononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle;
Strange all this difference should be
Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.

As far as we know, this is the first time the combination tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee is used, though tweedle and dum are already known separately. Byrom is probably also familiar with the children’s rhyme “The Frog And The Mouse”, a precursor to “Froggie Went-A Courtin”, which the Oxford Dictionary Of Nursery Rhymes traced back to 1549:

It was the Frogge in the well,
Humble-dum, humble-dum.
And the merrie Mouse in the Mill,
tweedle, tweedle twino.

That, plus the fact that many pieces by Händel and Bononcini indeed, it needs to be said now, have a high tweedle-dee-dum content, is apparently inspiring Byrom to the indestructible find. The duo reaches world fame thanks to Lewis Carroll, who introduces the two little fat men Tweedledum and Tweedledee in chapter IV of the sequel to Alice In Wonderland, in Through The Looking Glass (1871). Illustrator John Tenniel turns them into twins under his own authority and this is how they are portrayed in all subsequent edits: identical twins, small and fat.

Dylan, the language-lover who demonstrates his faible for children’s rhymes and age-old folk songs like “Froggie Went A-Courtin” again in the 90s on Under the red sky and Good As I Been To You, cannot resist this sound combination, but this time does not transport it to a cuddly verse.

Not musically; “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” is an onward-rushing rockabilly with frenzied guitars and neurotically drumming percussion, a twenty-first century Highway 61. Part of a conscious, strategically motivated choice, we understand from the Robert Hilburn interview in The Los Angeles Times (16 September 2001):

“I didn’t want to get caught short without up-tempo songs. A lot of my songs are slow ballads. I can gut-wrench a lot out of them. But if you put a lot of them on a record, they’ll fade into one another, and there was some of that in Time Out of Mind. I sort of blueprinted it this time to make sure I didn’t get caught without up-tempo songs.”

And lyrically too, the poet alienates both Tweedles from their natural, nonsensical environment. Absurdities abound, of course, but the undertone is far from childish – the poet achieves the lurid, malignant connotation that he apparently also intends to reach. The day before the release of “Love and Theft” Edna Gundersen quotes the bard in USA Today:

“That evil might not be coming your way as a monstrous brute or the gun-toting devilish ghetto gangster. It’s the bookish-looking guy in wire-rimmed glasses who might not be entirely harmless. (…) I’ve never recorded an album with more autobiographical songs. This is the way I really feel about things. It’s not me dragging around a bottle of absinthe and coming up with Baudelairian poems. It’s me using everything I know to be true.”

Mysterious, poetic words, fully in the style of the writer of Chronicles and the poet of “Love and Theft”. Dylan copies and browses, cites and paraphrases, and then tinkers his “truth”, his “everything I know to be true”. It becomes a poetic wording of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil; in an ebb and flow-like rhythm, Dylan describes relatively everyday, innocent observations, which are suddenly given a macabre charge. Two little boys throwing their pocket knife against a tree trunk, nothing wrong. But they are not boys, they are “two large bags filled with the bones of a dead person” and they “got their noses to the grindstones”. And above all, they live in the land of Nod, the land East of Eden, the land to which the first assassin, Cain, sought refuge. And just as Cain killed his brother Abel, Tweedle Dum in the last verse will also get rid of his brother Tweedle Dee.

Along the way, the poet slaloms past cultural icons such as A Streetcar Named Desire and His Master’s Voice, he seems to be winking at his own contribution to the American canon, at “Blowin ‘In The Wind” (“they know secrets of the breeze”) and past grotesque images (“brains in the pot, they’re beginning to boil”), imitating the carefree cruelty of antique children’s stories.

All this is accompanied by lovingly stolen loot from obscure sources, like Scott Warmuth, the alert detective from Albuquerque, proves for this song as well. The half-forgotten nineteenth-century poet Henry Timrod provides the aforementioned secrets of the breeze and one of the most beautiful lines from the work: a childish dream is a deathless need.

Warmuth finds other quotes in as improbable sources as a New Orleans travel guide by a Bethany E. Bultman. The verse They’re dripping with garlic and olive oil he finds back literally in a restaurant review, elsewhere in the travel guide the remarkable word combinations multi-thousand-dollar gown and parade permit and a police escort.

He discovers other fragments of text in faded, forgotten songs by The New Lost City Ramblers and in a blackface minstrel sketch from 1856, the once famous sketch Box and Cox. In it the arguing main characters snarl at each other: “Your presence is obnoxious to me” and “I’ve had too much of your company” – exactly the same words Tweedle Dum uses in Dylan’s song.

The diligent Warmuth finds a whole slew of connections between songs from the New Lost City Ramblers and songs on “Love and Theft”. They come to him through the template of the music to “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dee”, the song “Uncle John’s Bongos” in the performance of Johnnie And Jack (1961). Like “Uncle John’s Band” by Dylan’s friends of Grateful Dead, that song is a sort of ode to John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, and that fact inspires Warmuth to an entertaining, pleasantly wide-ranging essay on the influence of the Ramblers on “Love And Theft”: Bob Dylan’s Secret Answer Record: The Uncle John Connection (posted December 12, 2015 on his blog swarmuth.blogspot). It earns him the compliments of prominent Dylanologist Andrew Muir.

It is an overflowing little masterpiece, all in all. Dylan the poet starts in Genesis 4, in the land of Nod, chooses as main characters archetypes from English folklore of the sixteenth century, honours a poet from the American Civil War, takes off his hat to an old hero from the Greenwich Village of the 60s, visits the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and winks on the way to two blackface minstrels and to Tennessee Williams.

There are hardly any covers of this packed gem from Dylan’s catalog, like few songs from “Love And Theft” penetrate the set lists of colleagues.

The Roman Francesco de Gregori adds nothing to the music, but what the heck: in Italian Dylan’s songs usually get an extra charm (on De Gregori Canta Bob Dylan – Amore E Furto, 2015).

More lovely too; at De Gregori, the dubious protagonists are bambini, children, they do not come from the Godforsaken Nod, but from the earthly paradise of Shangri-La and when Tweedle Dum pulls his knife in the last verse, it seems to be an act of mercy; sarebbe molto meglio finirla qui – it’s better to just end it now.

Francesco de Gregori:

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

By Paul Hobson and Tony Attwood

This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles looking at Bob Dylan’s live performances; performances which offer us quite different versions of the songs when compared with the original recordings.

In this first article we look first at how Pretty Peggy-O moved from a fast country ballad to a slow piece of modern Americana in 1999.   Then we consider Ring Them Bells as it moved to being a big band number in Tokyo in 1997.   And finally, how Bob reclaimed Visions of Johanna in 2002, turning it from being a song that we all know by heart, into a piece that can astound and amaze us once again.

Pretty Peggy O

https://youtu.be/K0wRk7KKDFY

This folk song appeared on the first Dylan album, and has been performed 52 times by Bob, according to the official site which includes that annoying concept that it was written by Bob but with the letters “arr” after the statement – meaning actually he arranged it.

The song originated as The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie, and has mutated many times since, but the essence generally remains the same; a solider meets a young maid, seduces her, is ordered to leave by his regiment, and abandons her.  However in some versions matters are reversed and the girl says no she will not follow the solider, and when he is ordered away it is he who dies of a broken heart.

As with so many songs, Pretty Peggy O was taken from Scotland to America, where it changed further reflecting different political realities.   Meanwhile the soldier’s personality is transformed in version to version – he can be cold hearted and exploitative, or he can be tender-hearted and ultimatedly broken hearted.

The lyrics in this live version are much expanded from the version to be found on BobDylan.com.   But what makes this such a fine performance is that although Dylan has the verse-verse-verse construction of the song which doesn’t vary, and a very simple story to tell, yet it is the band that holds our attention – something that is emphasised by the instrumental break in the third minute.

In fact it is the instrumental breaks in general which drive the feeling and emotion forward as the band clearly feels the emotion.  As a result these emotions which cannot be expressed so easily when this is a simple folk song, are now emphasised by the music.  The detachment has gone: music and singer are now there, feeling the pain.

Ring Them Bells

Here the big band constricts Bob’s ability to expand and shorten lines to some extent, and yet as this recording shows he is still perfectly able to bend and twist melody and rhythm around the orchestra.

Quite clearly there has been a significant level of rehearsal here which is unusual for Bob – we are more used to hearing about him changing the key that a song is played in, in order to surprise his band on the night.   But this is quite different.   The orchestration is not overly complex, but the instrumentalists are not going to change just because Bob suddenly does.  He has to bend his creativity on stage to the overall ensemble.

If this is going to be done to any song, Ring Them Bells is a perfect vehicle because of the moving chords that make up each verse.  Indeed what the orchestra is doing is playing the chords that Bob played on the piano in the original recording.

The introduction of the orchestra changes the feel and the meaning totally.  Previously the atmosphere is of the individual calling out to his religion, in order to reach out to the world.  Now with the orchestral instruments and multiple percussionists at work the piece becomes a shout of triumph; no longer is it a reaching out to announce that the souls will be saved in the future, but a message that the saviour is here.

And all achieved without changing the lyrics!

Visions of Johanna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UwXNHGNPwc

Even though Visions is so famous and has been with us for so long, if one has not listened to it for a while, it can come as a shock to go back and hear the sparceness of  the original LP version.  That solo guitar, the harmonica and then the drums and bass, with the organ making its entrance so tentatively several bars in.   It is space, space, space – we are in a room where the heat pipes cough, looking at the opposite loft with nothing to turn off.  The whole message is that there is nothing here except the remembered images.

Now in this live version we don’t have much extra by way of orchestration, but we do have – as Paul put it – battling guitars.  As a result the space has gone.  The room is not so bleak, it is almost soft and cuddly.

Against this Bob’s voice comes in sudden bursts, like a series of slaps around the face.  The inflections at the end of the line can go up or down – the cadences are challenges not resolutions.

The same is true at the start of the second verse  – Bob pushes out the words like a soft machine gun.  Indeed sometimes it is hard to imagine the lyrics moving any faster.  And we get the impression that these are the New Visions, not the old visions that we heard before.

Because yes, somehow the Visions of Johanna have taken Bob’s place – the song is now more than the composer; it is so successful it has taken on a life of its own.   A life without Bob.  And so Bob is now pulling it back, taking it within his arms, giving it a good shake about, and saying, “well, that’s where we now are.”

Which is how it should be.  We all know the song off by heart; it sure does need something special to jolt us out of our familiarity.

Coming up next in this series: Like a Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street, Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues.

by Larry Fyffe

For the pleasure of the readers of ‘Untold Dylan’, take heed that ‘Tell Ol’ Bill’ is a Dylan song that’s loosely based on Shelley’s poem ‘The Revolt Of Islam’.

The Renaissance humanist poet Francesco Petrarch looks back fondly on the artistic achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans as a ‘Golden Age’ of culture that darkens with the rise of Christianity after the fall of the the Roman Empire:

To make a graceful act of revenge
And punish a thousand wrongs in a single day
Love secretly took up his bow again
Like a man who waits for the time and place to strike

(Francesco Petrarch: To Make A Graceful Act Of Revenge

Like William Blake later on down the line, Petrarch presents himself as the archer and musician Apollo. Petrarch’s up against a religious establishment that’s very powerful, akin to the mythological Jupiter,  and so the poet resorts to stealth – to figurative assassination. A former priest, he anguishes over the unrequited desire for Laura, a beautiful woman.

The imagery in many of the Gothic Romantic poems by Percy Shelley reveals the influence of this Italian poet from the fourteenth century.  The Shelleys be Gnostics bound to a rock, in their spiritual, anti-establishment beliefs – Shelley’s wife Mary pens the novel “Frankenstein, Or Prometheus Unbound”.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan picks up on this Petrarchan dark versus light imagery:

There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinkin' champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking into sapphire-tinted skies
I'll well dressed, waitin' for the last train

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

https://youtu.be/wts1nD1t5Zc

Beware, beware! The last train comin’ slowly up around the bend is carrying feminist assassins seeking revenge against males for derailing their revolution like the tyrannical Sultan smashed rebellions in the Ottoman Empire.

In a number of Dylan’s songs, though seldom noted by the oft Christian-fixated examiners of his lyrics, there are lots of Shelleyan images that reflect the desire for democratic values:

That night we anchored in a woody bay
And sleep no more around us dared to hover
Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away

It shades the couch of some unresting lover

(Percy Shelley: The Revolt Of Islam)

Bob Dylan borrows from Percy Shelley’s image of an unknowable Universal Spirit – below – manifested in terms of a female tiger:

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All my doubts and fears are gone at last
I've nothing more to tell you now .....
Tell ol' Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him I'm not alone
The hour has come to do or die

(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

Cyntha, another name for Apollo’s twin sister, rides her steed to join Laon burning at the stake:

Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung
Upon his neck, and kissed his mooned brow
A piteous sight, that one so fair and young
The clasp of such a fearful death should woo
With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cyntha now ....
'For me that world is grown too void and cold
Since hope pursues immortal destiny
With steps thus slow - therefore shall ye behold
How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die'

(Percy Shelley: The Revolt Of Islam)

Note the alliterative ‘do or die’/”dare to die’, and the ‘Dylanesque rhyme twist’ ~ ‘brow’/’now’. Dylan condenses Shelley’s long poem into a short postmodern can of soup.

Stealing the alchemic diction of William Blake, the ‘infidel’ Shelley writes:

And before that chasm of light
As within a furnace bright
Column, tower, dome, and spire
Shine like obelisks of fire
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies

(Percy Shelley: Euganean Hills)

Prometheus of Greek mythology steals the fire of creativity from the gods, and gives it to humans. Likewise, artists, professionals ones, dare to steal from the greats who have shone before them:

Tiger, Tiger,  burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes
On what wings dare he aspire
What the hand dare seize the fire?

(Wiliam Blake: The Tiger)

Bob Dylan dares.

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 of the songs from the “After the Empire” based on a chord sequence – in essence the two primary chords of the major scale with a passing chord tucked in between.  The sequence is sung over and over again, often to the words “I’m ready for you” (rather than the “Ready for Love” printed on the video link that we have.

https://youtu.be/FdSEay_7Gzg

Discogs.com has the song with a very curious listing which includes

• Written by Mick Ralphs
• Composed by Bill Payne, Bob Dylan, Felix Cavaliere, Mick Falphs
• Songwriter: Paul Rogers.

Make of that lot what you will.  Anyway the song proceeds on its repetitive way, and then stops, and then they take it up again, although without lyrics before moving on.

Incidentally Dylan is noted on the official Bob Dylan site has having performed “I’m ready” 24 times in September and October 1978, but there are no details of the song given.

There is also Halleujah I’m ready which might be the song that the site is thinking of, as it is clearly performed in concert, and is not listed under H on the site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2d29KuKQs8

Generally the time, date and place of this recording is given as Cherokee Studio, Hollywood, 31 October 1985, and there’s no reason to disagree.

It is simply a knock around experiment with less impact or possibility than the others we have covered here from this era such as

• Worth The Waiting For
• Nothing here worth dying for
• 26 Storeys High
• Won’t go back til they call me back again

From my perspective these songs do have the benefit of showing Dylan at work at this point in time, but this was certainly not the way he worked at other periods in his life, and rather reflects a moment when he had run out of ideas.

And yet he hadn’t for within a few weeks Dylan was writing and recording songs like When the night comes falling from the sky and Dark Eyes

Ah well, when the ideas are not there, all you can do is wait until they return.

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

In April 2014, BBC Radio 4 starts with the entertaining theme series “I Was …” and they are actually always fascinating shows. The broadcasts of half an hour focus on a completely unknown main guest with one special merit. “I Was Johnny Cash’s Tailor“, for example, or “I Was Ernest Hemingway’s Secretary” or “I Was John Lennon’s Trauma Surgeon“.

On Thursday, June 1, 2017, Dylan fans tune into BBC 4, when Daniel “Catfish” Russ can tell his story in the broadcast “I Was Bob Dylan’s One-Off Sparring Partner“.

Dylan’s love for boxing is well known and with some regularity an anecdote pops up demonstrating that love. In 2014, he visits a training session of world champion Manny Pacquiao, who immediately posts a proud photo on Twitter. In interviews and speeches, Dylan sometimes mentions that he visits boxing fights, in the 70s he trains with former professional boxer Bruce ‘The Mouse’ Strauss and director Quentin Tarantino has an amusing story how an old Dylan manages to hit him full and hard in the face at a sparring party. “He got one in there when I wasn’t paying attention. I think it was a right jab. I let my guard down for a minute, and he just thumped it in. It was a good punch.”

The technical details then come from one-off sparring partner Daniel Russ, who in a boxing school in Austin, in the spring of 2008, to his astonishment suddenly faces Bob Dylan. Russ is a former amateur boxer, trained as a rabbi, a moderately successful writer and reasonably talented blues harmonica player, but above all a well-to-do advertising man in Texas. He actually just came in to say hello to the owner, an old friend of his. The 51-year-old Russ is no longer boxing, but when his friend asks if he could please spar with some old guy (“don’t even hit him. I mean not at all… just move around”), he is willing to put on the gloves for this one time. To his astonishment, he faces his great idol Bob Dylan a minute later. “If you paid me by the shot, I wouldn’t hit this guy….EVER.”

Russ is verbally gifted and has more than enough perspective on the sport, so on the radio show he can explain well how Dylan boxes.

“I got to spar him two rounds. And he knew what he was doing, he knew the mechanics of fighting and everything. He threw a couple of jabs, you know, like, instead of just doing pop – pop, when the jab comes, I put this hand up to catch it, and then he’d throw a double, so I put my hand down, the second one went through my guard and hit me in the head.

So, he knew how to do that, because your second one has to go further than your first one. So that’s something he practised. I was crowding him a little bit, I mean, I was getting in his space, forcing him back, and he hit me with a hook in the ribs. That was really good, good shot.

You either stay outside the shots or you stay inside the shots, you don’t wanna be where the shots are perfectly thrown. And when I stepped in on him, he hit me in the body with a hook, I thought that was cool. Bob Dylan hit me with a hook. He knew how to punch. He knew how to throw a jab and step with it, he knew how to defend himself, like his jab started at the shoulder, and went out and came back to the shoulder, he didn’t drop it, he knew how to hold his body, he knew how to move, he knew how to throw a jab right-handed hook, he knew how to mix the shots up.

Boxers put their feet apart, okay, you don’t put them together, because that’s when you get knocked-out, when you can’t move back. So you always keep a nice space between them, and he seemed to be doing that perfectly. Because it’s Bob Dylan, he does everything perfectly. He sings perfectly, he plays perfectly, that’s how he is. He probably doesn’t do anything half-ass. He probably, when he first learned how to throw a jab, he probably threw a thousand times.”

Russ takes the gloves home and still cherishes them. “I remember how I came home and I thought to myself: Two old jews got in the ring in Texas. And I was one of them.”

Relatively little can be found in Dylan’s work of that boxing love. Twice a song revolves around a boxer, but not around boxing (“Who Killed Davey Moore” and “Hurricane”), in his entire catalog there is no more than a handful of hints to the noble art of self-defense (in “Clean -Cut Kid”, in “Gotta Serve Somebody” and in “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”) and he covers “The Boxer” on Self Portrait.

At the time, in 1970, covering that particular song was a bit spicy. Around the song there is a rather thinly founded story, that Paul Simon would have meant it as a sneer to Dylan. In Greenwich Village, Dylan’s boxing love is well known, he has also left his home and his family to go to New York, and with that lie–lie-lie-chorus Simon shouts “lies lies lies” to the bard. Out of spite about his alleged betrayal of the folk movement, or something like that. Simon’s biographer Marc Eliot calls that interpretation utterly nonsensical (in Paul Simon. A Life, 2010), Simon himself has a radically different, credible story with regard to the genesis of the chorus and Dylan’s own answer, that cover on Self Portrait, is of course the most elegant.

But one time, somewhere at the start of his career, Dylan sheds light on his love of fist fighting in an own song: “I Shall Be Free 10”.

The song is an odd duck out, on side 1 of Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964). The famous report by Nat Hentoff, the lucky wilbury who is allowed to attend the entire recording session on behalf of The New Yorker, does show the main merit of the song: it brings air, it is a comic relief. Producer Wilson laughs, the two technicians have fun, Dylan stumbles over the words a few times and eventually needs an extra insert to come to a complete recording. It is followed by “other songs, mostly of lost love or misunderstood”, and after the last recording, “My Back Pages”, the session ends at half past one in the morning. Dylan recorded fourteen songs in five and a half hours, eleven of which will appear on the album.

The decision to record the entire album in one fell swoop is based on commercial motives, as we are led to believe. Usually we don’t do this, says Tom Wilson, but record company Columbia must have the record before the fall sales convention, the fall fair that is scheduled for seven weeks later, late July, in Las Vegas.

That seems silly. Dylan is Columbia’s golden boy, can, again according to Tom Wilson, record whenever he wants to, and why he could not record a few songs on this Monday, a few others on Tuesday and the rest on Wednesday, is not clarified with this nonsensical fall sales convention argument.

It does provide insight, though, into how the questionable choice for “I Shall Be Free No. 10” as an album track was realised, at the expense of, for example, the also recorded, infinitely nicer “Mama, You Been On My Mind”, one of Dylan’s most beautiful love songs anyway. Apparently the still overheated decision makers think that “I Shall Be Free No. 10” on the album will create the same relaxing breathing space as during that monumental recording session.

It does not. Certainly, the song is entertaining, has music-historical value and indeed provides a comic relief the first few turns – but that effect does not last, it does not have the indestructible, granite charm of “To Ramona” or “Chimes Of Freedom” … or “Mama, You Been On My Mind”. In fact, the song is like a warm-up act in the theater. Dylan brings a series of unrelated, comic anecdotes, or rather, coathangers for witty one-liners (“I’m going to make your face look just like mine”), one of which even survives the twentieth century: Yippee! I am a poet and I know it.

But then again: it is of course the only Dylan song that gives a glimpse of his boxing fascination – that humourous second verse in which the narrator, shadow-boxing, fantasizes how he knocks The Greatest, triple world champion, Olympic champion and Sportsman Of The Century (Sports Illustrated) Cassius Clay, “clean out of his spleen”.

In that respect, Quentin Tarantino and Daniel “Catfish” Russel got away pretty well.

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

This article continues from “The Ace of Spades”

Call it ‘black baroque’ or call it ‘gothic gnosticism’, the theme that haunts many of the songs by Bob Dylan is the certainity of death, often figuratively associated in his song lyrics with a woman – likewise, in western literary formats as well:

His lady has taken another mate
So we will make our dinner sweet
You will sit on his white neck-bone
And I'll peck out his pretty blue eyes

(The Twa Corbies: traditional ballad)

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too

(John Keats: La Belle Sans Merci)

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All my doubts and fears have gone at last
I've nothing to tell you now

(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

I went down to 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

The narrator notes that death comes soon enough without any need of letting the emotional effects of a lost love move things along in the direction of a supposed better afterlife.

Two roads diverged in the yellow wood
And since I could not travel both ....
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was gassy, and wanted wear
Though as for that passing there
Had worn them really about the same

(Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken)

Frost darkens Romantic Transcendentalist Walt Whitman’s sunny poems “Leaves of Grass’ by treading upon them in the path on which he decides to travel.

The evenin' sun is sinkin' low
The woods are dark, the town is too
Tell ol' Bill when he comes home
That anything is worth a try
Tell him that I'm not alone
That the hour has come to do or die

(Bob Dylan: Tell ol’ Bill)

How much the songwriter’s personal outlook may or may not match that of the narrator in the song lyrics is a moot point.  If not directly, Bob Dylan comes in contact with poet Ezra Pound’s open-to-interpretation style of writing (that is, it’s understated, objective, omissive, and imagistic) through the stories of Ernest Hemingway:

The singer/songwriter, as it’s been pointed out, alludes to Hemingway in the song lyrics below:

Wedding bells are ringing, and the choir is beginning to sing
What looks good in the day, at night is another thing

(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

https://youtu.be/elQthPY-CL8?t=10

"You know, Steve, you're not very hard to figure.Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time."

Sings the songwriter:

Most of the time
I can survive
And I can endure
And I don't even think about her

(Bob Dylan: Most Of The Time)

By Tony Attwood

I should begin by saying that if you are an aficionado of all that is refined in the world of entertainment you might like to sit down before listening to this.

And I must admit that when it was put to me that Bob Dylan liked “Surfin Bird” and more generally the band The Trashmen who recorded it, I had a certain amount of dubious feelings floating around my mind.

But then it starts to make sense.   Both Dylan and The Trashmen are from Minnesota and Dylan did indeed spend a year at the University of Minnesota.  And both Bob and the Trashmen can be said to be artists who like to subvert the form that they are working in.

Anyway, after leaving university Bob headed for New York and the influence of Woody Guthrie.   But, as I was trying to point out in my recent post about “For you baby” and the influence of Ginsberg and the Beat generation on Bob Dylan, although we rightly associate Dylan with Guthrie, there are multiple other influences on his work as well.   And this is one of them.

Plus we do have a clear confirmation of Dylan’s interest in the Trashmen, for according to Tony Andreason, “He came out and watched us play in the ’80s. We were doing a benefit in Minnetonka, and Dylan came and was there all night long. He sent a woman over to talk to us and wanted to know if we were available to go out on tour with him for any length of time, and we said we really weren’t. We weren’t interested, regardless of who it was. It wasn’t going to work.”   Which I think, is a bit of a shame.

Backing up this story there is an article on the University of Minnesota Press blog, “On Bob Dylan’s early folk years and the flourishing Minnesota music scene in the 1960s” in which they report that “Trashmen rhythm guitarist Dal Winslow recalled that… Dylan was asked by Rolling Stone what he did in his spare time. “He said, ‘Well, I go out and watch The Trashmen perform at Minnetonka, Minnesota.’ And I thought, ‘Well, thank you, Bob. I take back everything I said about you’.”

The article also notes that Dylan has played in the Twin Cities (St Paul and Minneapolis) regularly since the late 70s, which adds further credence to the story.

“The Bird’s the Word” was also a hit for The Rivingtons

and was very similar to their previous hit “Papa Oom Mow Mow” (which I have conveniently placed below so that you can check, just in case you are thinking I am making this all up.)

The group subsequently won a series of battle of the bands competitions and signed a record contract, with the song reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

And the reason for me picking up on this song now, is to emphasise the multiplicity of inputs into his musical consciousness that Dylan has.  This is not to say that he would attempt to create music such as this, but rather that he took all these different musical forms and welded them into his own music.  If some of Bob’s lyrics don’t make any sense then nor did all the music that he liked.  But he also had a liking the folk music that so influenced his early recordings as well.

Indeed it is interesting that “Bird is the word” was released just about the same time as “Freewheelin'” and Bob clearly at that time had not lost touch with his roots or his humour.

After all it was only some 18 months earlier that Bob was writing Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues and Talkin Hava Negeilah blues so with a sense of humour like that we should perhaps not be surprised.  Dylan, if anything, absolutely loves to subvert the form.

Many singers and bands covered “Bird is the word” and after it turned up on the TV series “Family Guy” it actually got into the UK singles chart in 2009.  It returned in 2010 and this time made the top ten.

As for the Trashmen, they kept going, although with occasional changes of personnel due to the inevitable ravages of time, including extensive tours between 2007 and 2010.  The album “Bringing Back the Trash” was released in 2014 and the band retired from public life once more the following year.  Here they are just before they called it a day for the last time.

https://youtu.be/y3KKDmB2QTc

A fairly complete list of other articles in this series appears in the Why Does Dylan Like index 

by Jochen Markhorst

Lodi is a small town in San Joaquin County, located somewhere in the middle of California. On the official website, Lodi likes to present herself as a sunny, prosperous town that owes her fame to being a succesful producer of wine grapes, even as Zinfandel Capital of the World, and it proudly points to the 2015 Wine Region Of The Year award.

All very enviable and impressive, but of course Lodi does not owe her fame to that. For that the town would have to thank Creedence Clearwater Revival, for writing the B-side of the world hit “Bad Moon Rising” from 1969: “Lodi”.

But alas, in that catchy song, which soon becomes just as popular as the A-side, John Fogerty certainly doesn’t put the town in a sunny spotlight. With the refrain line Oh Lord, I’m stuck in Lodi again the local tourist office won’t be too gilded. Fogerty doesn’t mean it personally, as he later explains. Though he comes from Berkeley, a hundred kilometers away, he has never actually been to Lodi when he writes the song. However, it has the coolest sounding name, hence Fogerty’s location choice. It is pronounced as lo-dai, and indeed, with the foregoing Lord I’m, the refrain runs like a charm.

Nevertheless, the official authorities prefer to ignore the song. On the clumsy but very extensive site www.lodi.gov more than a hundred historical dates of interest since 1869 are remembered, including immortal highlights such as the production of 3000 wagon loads of watermelon in 1886 (“grown without irrigation!”), the first Lodi Grape Festival in 1934 and the dedication of a new police facility in 2003. But becoming world famous in 1969 through Creedence’s song is not mentioned anywhere. Incidentally, it is a less sensitive matter to the residents and the middle class; at local festivals, fairs and other events there is always a banner somewhere with Fogerty’s famous one-liner and sometimes Oh Lord I’m stuck in Lodi again is even the motto on such an occasion.

After the painful break with his bandmates in 1972 and especially due to the shameful stranglehold contract with manager Saul Zaentz, Fogerty refuses to play his old Creedence hits for a decade and a half. In the end it is Bob Dylan who pushes him back in the right direction, he tells in the interview with Uncut, March 2018. He describes the run-up in more detail in his autobiography Fortunate Son (2015). In February 1987 he talks to Dylan after a spontaneous performance with George Harrison at a Taj Mahal concert in Los Angeles. At the request of the audience, Dylan plays one of his own songs, then it is George Harrison’s turn with “Honey Don’t” and “Twist And Shout”.

“For three minutes I sang “Ooooh” directly across a mic from George Harrison, like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That was an amazing feeling. Bob said, “All right, John, we’ve all done a song. Do Proud Mary.”

“Sorry, Bob,” I told him. “I’m not doing my old songs. I don’t do them anymore.” I was being kind of difficult, and I knew it. And instead of arguing about it, Bob Dylan, in his genius and ever so influential way, said, “If you don’t do Proud Mary, everybody’s gonna think it’s a Tina Turner song.”

There was no way out now. I thought, Bob Dylan just told me I’d better play my song or it’s gonna turn into a Tina Turner song. It was something only a musician could do—get out from under all the crap and find a way. So I played “Proud Mary.” And enjoyed it. Immensely.”

“Dylan’s words were very provocative and he certainly put the bee in my bonnet, you could say,” Fogerty admits in that same Uncut interview. A few months later, he plays at a benefit concert for Vietnam veterans and, for the first time in all those years, he plays “Fortunate Son”, “Who’ll Stop The Rain” and all those other CCR classics.

It is not the first or only time that Fogerty recognizes Dylan’s influence. In that autobiography he admires the songwriter Dylan in no uncertain terms and when a sweet-talking radio maker calls him the voice of a generation (SiriusXM, October 16), he shrinks back: no, no, that’s Dylan. In an interview with American Songwriter, May 2013, he can’t even come up with the right superlatives to do justice to the bard’s influence:

“Bob Dylan, you will never be able to overstate his importance, his cultural impact at that time. No matter how much exaggeration and hyperbole you use about Bob Dylan, you still haven’t said it enough: If any one guy was responsible for ending the war in Vietnam, then it’s Bob Dylan. Because millions upon millions of young people hearing his music, dissecting his words, becoming children of his poetry and having a cultural point of view, it’s all kind of in Bob’s image, in his shadow.”

And the most tangible that influence is of course in his songs, like in “Lodi”, in which Fogerty varies on Dylan’s “Stuck Inside Of Mobile”.

In 1978, Dylan returns the compliment by reusing another line from “Lodi” for the obscure “Legionnaire’s Disease”. With a somewhat macabre twist, though. Where Fogerty sings If I only had a dollar for ev’ry song I’ve sung, Dylan sings I wish I had a dollar for everyone that died.

That is not the only strange thing about the song. The place in the man’s catalog alone is quite unique; Dylan never recorded the song or performed it on stage, but in 1981 the copyrights are protected, the lyrics are incorporated in The Lyrics and on the site. Comparable at most to the fate of “Love Is Just A Four Letter Word”.

In addition, the subject is alien. Legionnaires’ disease (Dylan misspells it Legionnaire’s), or legionellosis, a severe form of pneumonia, is detected in 1976 after an outbreak of the disease when 221 veterans, who are staying in the same hotel in Philadelphia for a reunion of the American Legion, get infected with the bacterium that we have named since the legionella pneumophila bacterium.

It is actually quite unusual, such an acute and above all fleeting approach by a Dylan song. Other topical songs, such as “George Jackson” or “Who Killed Davey Moore” have a historical incident as a source of inspiration too, but on top of that have a timeless, the anecdote transcending value. Here at “Legionnaire’s Disease” we see an attempt to do so, in that strange last verse, but it doesn’t really get off the ground. The concept of the veterans’ disease is simply too specific to disconnect from the content, too explicit to gain a metaphorical quality.

There is some Dylanesque word play and art. Not much, but at least more than in most Slow Train Coming songs, which he will write after this song. Got ’em hot by the collar is a catachesis, a non-existent expression, and seems to be composed of hot under the collar  and to get by the collar. Plenty of old maid shed a tear has an archaic, nineteenth-century colour, just as put on a squeeze is rather a gangster idiom from 1930s films, and semantically does not fit here anyway.

The bard himself is not too proud of it, apparently. He uses the song only for the sound check, just as he seems to dash off more songs that remain unpublished in those days, and then soon rejects the song.

But guitarist Billy Cross, from the backing band, is fond of “Legionnaire’s Disease”. Two years later, when Billy’s Dylan experience is already a thing from the past, he strikes a record deal with his Danish friends from the Delta Cross Band. Cross still has an old tape from a Detroit sound check, and that is enough to convince his band members: for the album Up Front (1981) they produce the first official recording of this Dylan song.

The recording also makes it more clear why the master left the song behind – that bit between the verses is very much like “Like A Rolling Stone”. Reparable – Dylan would undoubtedly have rewritten it or thrown it out for a possible recording – but hey, he has plenty of new songs this month in 1978. And Dylan really, really hates to repeat himself, studio engineer Chris Shaw explains in 2008:

“He just hates it. A lot of times on “Love & Theft”, he’d do a version of a song and he’d say, “Aww, I’ve done that already. We gotta figure out some other way of doing it.” That’s really what it’s all about with him.”

With or without that Rolling Stone snippet it is a great song, but it does not survive. That admirable resuscitation by Billy Cross is also the song’s only notable version. There are still some poor versions by tribute bands, but colleagues from the higher echelons ignore “Legionnaire’s Disease”, just like Dylan himself does.

John Fogerty would be the ideal candidate, obviously. During his concerts in 2018, he always plays four or five covers between solo work and CCR classics. “Jambalaya” of Hank Williams, The Who’s “My Generation”, “My Toot Toot” of Rockin ‘Sidney, “When The Saints Go Marching In”, The Beatles, Gary U.S. Bonds, Sly & The Family Stone… an obscure gem from Dylan’s Secret Catalog certainly would fit in harmoniously.

Delta Cross Band:

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.

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.