Untold Dylan

Jochen Markhorst

“Everything Is Broken,” says Sam Shepard in an interview with Village Voice in 1992, “that’s a great song.”

When Shepard dies in 2017, the media commemorate the talented playwright, acclaimed screenwriter and celebrated actor, but in Dylan circles the passing of the writer of the beautiful Rolling Thunder Logbook is mourned: the co-writer of Renaldo & Clara and the co-author of one of the best Dylan songs from the 80s, “Brownsville Girl”.

There are more Dylan-Shepard connections, and the most intriguing is Shepard’s article True Dylan, published in Esquire in July 1987. Set up as an interview, but designed by the author as a one-act play, as he has it reprinted in his collection Fifteen One-Act Plays with a new title (‘Short Life Of Trouble’).

It is perhaps the best interview ever published on Dylan. Not so much in terms of content (what Dylan tells about his love for Hank Williams, polka music in Duluth, Woody Guthrie in the hospital … we all know that, from Chronicles, from previous interviews, from biographies). But Shepard’s piece is irresistible especially because of the portrait that the brilliant playwright paints here.

We are at Dylan’s home, the bard seems completely at ease, is completely himself, he conducts telephone conversations with daughter Maria within earshot, and the playwright has the talent, the eye and the ear to make the reader almost physically present.

About the weeks after the famous motorcycle accident in ’66, for example, we have read and heard enough, but not in these terms:

“Spent a week in the hospital, then they moved me to this doctor’s house in town. In his attic. Had a bed up there in the attic with a window looking’ out. Sarah stayed there with me. I just remember how bad I wanted to see my kids. I started thinking’ about the short life of trouble. How short life is. I’d just lay there listening’ to birds chirping. Kids playing in the neighbour’s yard or rain falling by the window. I realized how much I’d missed. Then I’d hear the fire engine roar, and I could feel the steady thrust of death that had been constantly looking over its should at me. (Pause) Then I’d just go back to sleep.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoqMxGnQY8I

It is likely that Shepard has manipulated the text of the interview. In the piece he even gets permission, in so many words, to invent whatever he wants. The final product is too beautiful, too ’round’, too composed to be a credible, truthful representation of the conversation, but perhaps therefore all the more revealing. The leitmotif of the dialogue is damaged, just as it is the theme of Shepard’s stage work and film scripts, as we also know from one of his Great Masterpieces, the script for Paris, Texas (1984). So there is a certain consistency in Shepard’s choice of “Everything Is Broken” as an example of a great Dylan song.

Dylan himself spends quite a lot of time on the words on “Everything Is Broken” in his autobiography Chronicles and the context suggests that this song indeed expresses a personal mentality of the poet. It is mentioned in the fourth chapter, in Oh Mercy, and Dylan’s remarks to the songs are introduced by a litany.

It is 1987 and everything is broken. His hand is mangled to the bone, the garden is overgrown, Dylan feels tired, wrung out, an empty burned-out wreck, on the bottom, everything was smashed. And so it goes on and on. Page after page the autobiographer gloomily grumbles over this point in his life, in his career that he has now reached and he describes with poetic urgency, in one after another remarkable metaphor (“even spontaneity had become a blind goat”) the depressing darkness that rules before he records the album Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois.

“Everything Is Broken”, says Dylan, “was made up of quick choppy strokes. The semantic meaning is all in the sounds of the words.”

The latter is a mysterious addition, with the suspicion that the poet does not know exactly what the word semantic means. In words such as Broken lines, broken strings / Broken threads, broken springs, a very distinct sense of language is required in order to actually derive the meaning from the sound. Does “threads” really sound like what it means, threads, wires? Or “strings” like cords, strings? We have caught Dylan previously on a linguistic feeling, on a sense of language bordering on synesthesia, so who knows? To him it may sound that way.

At least as remarkable is the deleted verse that the master quotes here:

Broken strands of prairie grass

Broken magnifying glass

I visited the broken orphanage and rode upon the broken bridge

I’m crossin’ the river goin’ to Hoboken

Maybe over there, things ain’t broken

Remarkable, not only because it is so stylistically different from the rest, with those sudden, misty, Dylanesque images, but also because suddenly an optimistic spark flashes: maybe things are not broken on the other side of the river.

About thirty pages later, the song returns once more when Dylan tells about the recording session. Producer Daniel Lanois thinks the song is just a throw-away, Dylan suspects, but he himself is completely satisfied. And then another typical, confusion creating bonus comment follows:

“Critics usually didn’t like a song like this coming out of me because it didn’t seem to be autobiographical. Maybe not, but the stuff I write does come from an autobiographical place. [Lanois] was looking for songs that defined me as a person, but what I do in the studio doesn’t define me as a person.”

With these words Dylan succeeds (once again), to both open and close the door to autobiographical interpretation. My songs do come “from an autobiograpical place”, but do not “define me as a person”, do not characterize me.

So there are some marginal comments to be made. In the previous dozens of pages, Dylan has painted his emotional state of being in the year and a half before “Everything Is Broken” and only one characterization fits: kaputt. Lost in the rain of Juarez. A protagonist from a piece by Sam Shepard. Just like almost all the lyrics on the album express abandonment, dissolution and gloominess. In light of this, of his own testimonies about his mental attitude, it is not such a bold assumption to see “Everything Is Broken” as a characterization of the poet himself.

Dylan gets back on his feet, fortunately. The chapter Oh Mercy ends positively, with admiring words for Lanois and with the notion that they will work together again ten years later, in a rootin’ tootin’ way; nicely and pleasantly.

The pounding, swampy Creedence-like approach of Lanois and Dylan is appreciated by colleagues. Even Ben Sidran, the rock and jazz pianist who has produced a lot of challenging, idiosyncratic Dylan covers, remains reasonably within bounds this time (Dylan Different, 2009).

Bettye LaVette, the veteran who has done great Dylan covers in the past, seems to want to do a Tina Turner parody, but it is nevertheless a beautiful, soulful rendition (Thankful ‘N’ Thoughtful, 2012).

A lot of slide-guitars and greasy basses, of course: Tim O’Brien, R.L. Burnside, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Larry Norman (“the Bob Dylan of Christian music”) are all perfectly comparable in terms of arrangement, tempo, instrumentation and sound – and all equally irresistible. Although … Larry Norman shuffles and jumbles up the words – which gives an original added value to a song called “Everything Is Broken”.

From the same Delta sound category the two most beautiful covers derive, scoring extra points because the artists both come from the immediate vicinity of the master. Billy Burnette played in Dylan’s band and has rock ‘n’ roll history in his genes. His sultry, heavy version is to be found on the fine album Memphis In Manhattan (2006).

Even more intensively, in the studio, Duke Robillard worked with Dylan. The Fabulous Thunderbird enriches hundreds of records with his playing as a session guitarist, helps Dylan and Lanois on Time Out Of Mind and also records piles of solo albums in between. The beautiful double album World Full Of Blues (2007) has a few highlights (the “Bounce For Billy” inspired by Charlie Parker, for example) and “Everything Is Broken” one of them. The guitars, of course, and the harmonica are the strongest points, but Robillard also suprisingly scores in terms of vocals – much less flat than elsewhere, in any case.

It is, as Sam Shepard said, a great song.

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

I started to review “Gone but not forgotten” but stopped because I was having such a problem with the words.   Larry and Aaron worked on the lyrics and came up with this – something it was necessary for “Untold” to do because no one else has tried.  Not even the official Dylan site.

(Dear Official Bob Dylan site, if you use our version would you like to give Larry and Aaron a credit – oh and maybe mention Untold Dylan too?.  But get their names right – its Larry Fyffe and Aaron Gailbraith – Aaron having spotted the song and alerted Untold to it.  Got that?  Good.)

[Alternative versions of unclear lines are in square brackets]

Now the point of running this again, rather than leaving the lyrics as an addendum to my very brief review last time is that to me (and as always it is just to me) the song makes much, much more sense with the lyrics printed out than it does without – simply because to my English ears much of the singing was unintelligible.

And of course it is the lyrics that we are here for – because Dylan wrote them.  But now with lyrics and music we can, I believe, really appreciate this song.

The song is here:  https://bearandbanjo.com/

For the first verse I have also added in brackets the guitar chords as I hear them

Gone but not forgotten [Am Gm Am Gm]
Cryin’ wouldn’t make her stay [Am Gm C]
Oh, she left me early one mornin’ [Am Gm Am Gm]
Just got up and walked away [Am Gm C]

Nineteen bird dogs, and one old measly hound
take all twenty of them to track my baby down, [six and twenty others to track my baby down]
two trains running neither of them going where I have to go [She says, ‘Honey, neither of’em goin’ where I have to go]
one going to Houston, one going to San Antonio [One goin’ to Navy, two of’em goin’ to San Antanio’]

She’s gone but not forgotten
Cryin’ wouldn’t make her stay
Oh, she left me early one mornin’
Just got up and walked away

Ain’t no difference any name of the women I meet
Some live on the first floor, some live right above the street
Some walk in high heels
Some others in their stocking feet

Lookin out my window
While the rain falls three days straight
sometimes I wonder how long my baby’s gonna make me wait

Gone but not forgotten
Cryin’ wouldn’t make her stay
Oh, she left me early one mornin’
Just got up and walked away

I can’t sleep
Till my heart has a beat
Don’t want to talk to nobody, oh no
Ain’t got no appetite to eat

Gone but not forgotten
Cryin’ wouldn’t make her stay
Oh, she left me early one mornin’
Just got up and walked away

Hope you enjoyed that.  As I say, no one else seems to have considered it.  My eternal thanks to Aaron and Larry.

The original review with more information on the origins of  the song appears at

• Gone But Not Forgotten: the initial commentary

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

There has been an ongoing debate among academic scholars, and for some time now, that Bob Dylan, well known for his travels in space and time, is the author of only a few of the lyrics that he sets to music.

Basically, there are two contending schools of thought. The first school steadfastly holds that Christopher Marlowe authors most of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics; the second school is equally sure that William Shakespeare pens most. This article will attempt to settle the matter once and for all.

The first school of academics maintain that Bob Dylan, in his Nobel lecture, deliberately takes attention away from their contender, Marlowe, because Bob does not want it known that he has his songs written by someone else:

“John Donne …. wrote these words: ‘The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nest.’ I don’t know what it means. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good”.

These academics declare that Dylan is simply laying down a trail of smelly red herrings to throw scholarly bloodhounds off the scent – that Dylan knows full well that the geographical names refer to the respective homes of Hero and Leander, the latter swimming the Hellespont, guided by a torch from her tower, in order to seduce the beautiful Hero who has sworn herself to chastity.

These literary analysts make the point that it be Marlowe who pens the following words:

Sea borderers, disjoined by Neptune’s might
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight ….
It lies not in our power to love or hate
For will in us is over-ruled by fate ….
Whoever loved that loved not at first sight
(Christopher Marlowe: Hero And Leander)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMAaBagLuo

The same scholars also state that Marlowe, with Hero in mind, pens the words to the song below:

You’re the queen of my flesh, girl, you’re
my woman, you’re my delight
You’re the lamp of my soul, girl, and
you torch up the night
(Bob Dylan: Precious Angel)

But I say: “Maybe, but maybe not”. Let’s examine the second school of academic thought on the matter at hand. This school notes that, in his Nobel lecture, it is William Shakespeare whom Bob Dylan attempts to draw attention away from: “The words of Shakespeare were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics are meant to be sung, not read on a page.”

Marlowe, I say, is suspect because he may well have been an atheist. Not so Shakespeare. The Bard’s characteristic phraseology often appears in Dylan’s song lyrics; too much so to be merely coincidental:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
(William Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act V, scene 5)

To wit, Shakespeare is the one who actually pens the tell-tale throbbing Edgar Allan Poe-like lyrics that appear below – the ‘walking shadow’ gives the writer away:

Forgetful heart
Like a walking shadow in my brain
All night long
I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain
(Bob Dylan et al: Forgetful Heart)

The academics who contend the Bard ghost writes the lyrics for Dylan’s songs point out that Shakespeare’s not shy about slipping in an ad here and there for his own plays – like ‘Hamlet’, with his girlfriend Orphelia, for instance:

Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window, for her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday, she is already an old maid
To her death is quite romantic, she wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion, her sin is her lifelessness
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KGU6sS8Xg

The ability to time-travel has its benefits, and whereas Bob Dylan is able to convince William Shakespeare to jot down a bunch of song lyrics to set music to, who among us would fault him?

In a number of his Sonnets, Shakespeare employs the word ‘decay’:

Situation just gonna get rougher
Why do we needlessly suffer?
Let’s call it a day
Go on separate ways
Before we decay
(Bob Dylan: We Better Talk This Over)

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

Aaron Gailbraith has been doing a great job recently as Untold’s official bloodhound, searching out unlisted Dylan compositions, and here he has found another one:

Jochen Markhorst

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, the autobiography of Elvis Costello (2015), matches up to Chronicles, the memoirs of Bob Dylan.

The tone is different, of course. Whereas with Dylan the atmosphere is often coloured by sepia tones, Costello paints in glaring neon. In contrast with the dry, casual humour of the American, the Brit sprinkles flashy, pointy one-liners (about the girlfriend of Mink DeVille: “She looked like a bag of old clothes that had been abandoned after The Shangri-Las had left town”).

However, the love for songs is predominant in both writers. Costello is infectious when he conjures up the memory of an obscure B-side from a forgotten Motown artist, shares his emotions over a patch from a George Jones tear-jerker, or catches in words his father’s love for the music of the 1930s – just like, indeed, Dylan. Just like his idol, he happily reveals from which songs he steals a melody line, a riff or the sound. And he also imitates the non-chronological structure of the work.

But that is not why the book is appealing particularly to the Dylan follower. While Costello is a Dylan fan who knows how to communicate that love pleasantly, he talks wittily and candidly about his many encounters with the bard. The first tête-à-tête is already comical:

Bob Dylan walked into the greenroom. I can’t recall what was in his hand. He was wearing dark glasses but I thought he was looking at my shoes, back then they were the red Chelsea boots that I wore instead of carrying a business card.

He said, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

And what was my sparkling reply, worthy of Oscar Wilde?

Why, it was . . .

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”

Fortunately, this punctured the ice with laughter rather than seeming utterly dim-witted.

This is taking place June 3, 1978. Costello is with his Attractions and with the band Rockpile on the road in America and has, to his joy, a night off when Dylan performs in the neighborhood: the third concert of the seven so-called Warm-Up Shows for the world tour in the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles.

Tickets are more or less thrown into his lap: fellow traveler Billy Bremner just happened to meet an old mate, Dylan’s guitarist Steven Soles, who will have VIP tickets waiting for Billy at the box office. Bremner does not like Dylan, so he says to Costello: you go in my place. However, when Elvis reports at the check-in that evening, there are no tickets for a Mr. Bremner. Then the narrator is lucky for the third time today – the cashier recognizes him. She consults with her chief, who then whispers conspiringly: “There are actually no tickets in that name, sir, but we’ve just heard that Barbra Streisand cannot attend, so you may have her tickets.”

And so, Costello continues, I am sitting forty minutes later in the tenth row, when Dylan and his choir lit in a terrific new song. “It sounded like something that Aretha Franklin should have recorded.”

He is talking about “Baby, Stop Crying”, the song that Dylan recorded just two weeks before. Costello is not the only one who is touched. It is the third time that Dylan plays the song and it is, like that other new song from Street Legal (“Señor”), warmly welcomed. The master then seems reasonably pleased with the song. It is among the first songs on the playlist (as number three) and it stays there during the European tour – it even shifts occasionally to the second place (Nuremberg and Paris). And it is a big hit on the old continent. Number thirteen in England, in other countries even higher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBp6n77wTrM

But it is different at home, to Dylan’s apparent disappointment. When returning to the States, “Baby, Stop Crying” is stashed to the end of the set, to the 23rd place (Augusta, 15 September ’78), in the subsequent concerts the song is sometimes canceled and from 29 September on, announced or denounced with some cynical, sour even, comments. “There’s lot of people from Columbia Records here tonight, so we’ll play it so they know we’re doin’ our job.” At the twenty-one gigs in October the song is virtually ignored, at the end of the month it gets a bitter joke: “Anyway this is a song that was out as a single, on Columbia Records. I think it was a few weeks ago, months ago. Sold twenty-five copies. I got them all myself.”

But when it is eventually put to sleep, in November, it gets a final caress. “ It was about for about three weeks, and sold twenty-five copies. We still like it and we’re gonna play it anyway.”

The failure of the single in America has everything to do with the scathing critics of Street Legal – unlike in Europe, Dylan’s new record is downplayed, the quality of the songs ridiculed and Dylan’s own performance razed to the ground: “intolerably smug”, “utterly fake”, “dead air”, “uninterested” … where an authoritative critic like Greil Marcus hears all this is puzzling, but he is not the only one.

“Baby, Stop Crying” is no average Dylan song, that much is true, but only in terms of arrangement. The lyrics start with opening lines from the language-loving poet we know and love, with seven alliterating B’s, and afterwards seems to be a mix of blues clichés. Robert Johnson, obviously (“Stop Breaking Down”), but especially the monument Tampa Red (1904-1981) has been an inspiration.

We owe guitarist Hudson ‘Tampa Red’ Woodbridge the immortal classic “It Hurts Me Too” (Dylan’s cover is a highlight on Self Portrait, 1970), and dozens of songs with a motif that Dylan copies here: the unfaithful woman and her regret.

“Crying Won’t Help You”, “Don’t You Lie To Me” and “Dead Cats On The Line”, for example. Browsing through the oeuvre of Tampa Red delivers more aha moments, by the way.

The mysterious expression the sky is folding, which Dylan uses in “Farewell, Angelina” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, originates from “Got To Leave My Woman” (1938),

Tampa’s I like my coffee sweet from “Sugar Mama Blues” echoes in I like my sugar sweet in Dylan’s “Quinn The Eskimo” and I hate myself for falling in love with you, the opening line to “I Hate Myself” (1936) is almost literally the opening of “Dirge”- there are a lot of smaller and bigger influences.

Dylan also honours Tampa Red openly, especially in 1978. His “Love Her With A Feeling” and his “She’s Love Crazy” are on the setlist dozens of times, almost every time as an introduction to “Baby, Stop Crying”.

However, a genuine blues the song is not. Dylan calls it a little ballad, but that does not cover it either. Costello is right when he calls it a song for Aretha Franklin. It is certainly soulful, the melody of the verse is compelling, exciting is the chorus and its last line (’cause it’s tearing up my mind) is an intense, sizzling apotheosis.

“I liked Street Legal a whole lot,” Dylan says in 1985, in the interview with Time correspondent Denise Worrell, still not understanding the slating.

The disregard is incomprehensible. Just like most of the songs from that album, the beautiful “Baby, Stop Crying” is forgotten, covered up in dust, has been kicked into the long grass, dumped into the wells of oblivion, shares the fate of the Norwegian Blue, but we can blame it partly on the troubadour himself: he never plays the song and even does not select it for Greatest Hits Vol. 3 (1994)… although it really is one of his very few, real, actual, hits.

Noteworthy covers there are not. And it is too late now. Aretha Franklin has passed away at 76 on Thursday morning, August 16, 2018, at 9:50 a.m. at her home in Detroit, MI, surrounded by family and loved ones. May she rest in peace.

Baby Stop Crying: the meaning of the lyrics and the song

Irrelevant Footnote from Tony: one of the strangest things I have found in adding links to these commentaries turned up in the search for Baby Stop Crying.   If your musical appreciation extends to Beethoven you might care to try it.  My father used to play it, and as a trainee classical pianist (never made the grade) I learned it 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

By Tony Attwood

This is another of the “Lost on the River” tracks by “The New Basement Tapes” band.  Details of the origin of the songs, for which Bob Dylan wrote the words in the 1960s, and the band itself can be found in the first review of a song from this album.

This song features Elvis Costello on lead vocals.  Jim James (of My Morning Jacket), Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons), Rhiannon Giddens (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops) and Taylor Goldsmith (of Dawes) all feature on the album.

To repeat one comment from the earlier review, as it seems aposite here, “None of us felt we were dealing with something sacrosanct,” Costello commented to The Daily Telegraph. “There’s a sense of playfulness in the folio. They range from the completely barmy to wonderful, beautiful, well-constructed lyrics that are right there waiting to be sung. We were walking in, all this time later, to find ideas in a box and turn them into songs.”

Here are the lyrics (the video is below).

Five in the morning, she would fix my lunch
Put it in a paper sack
Where I’m headed, I always appreciate it
But I’d rather stay married to my hack

I move like the breeze, and the birds and the bees
That I’ve never been known to look back
I got fifteen women and all of them swimming
But I’d rather stay married to my hack

I move fifteen miles every minute, I’m all smiles
I shoot by my sister’s shack
She’s got some friend who waves at men, a fine little hen
But I’d rather stay married to my hack

I got twelve-wheel drive and an oversized hive
And air-cooled brakes in the back
Candy McGraft’s always good for a laugh
But I’d rather stay married to my hack

I got a pedal to hit and an engine that won’t quit
And a carburetor that won’t crack
Maureen and Milly, they’re a little silly
But there’s nothing that they do lack

I got loose-eyed ladies who never seen a man
Just waiting around the back
Gimme a bottle or someone to throttle
Cause I’d rather stay married to my hack

Hearing the song was for me (and that’s the point of these reviews – they are the personal viewpoint of the listener) an absolute shock.  A shock at the un-Dylan-ness of the music (there’s hardly any melody, and only one chord change.  For while Dylan could work on a single note where he did he tended to vary the rhythm, or play with the chords.  At the same time it is so agressive in its format.

And yes, there is nothing wrong with challenging the listener – I’d always agree that such an approach can be a good idea – but the result of this approach is that the song lasts under two minutes.

The length of a song is not a measure of its quality of course, but the words just come pouring out at such speed that there is no chance really to take them in and get a sense.  And if Dylan’s music is about melody and chord changes then overall surely his songs are about the words.

But to be fair, after a few listens I really did begin to get into this song, although I kept on thinking, “why did Costello decide to run one verse almost straight into the next; why not give the listener a moment to breathe?”  But maybe in the end I got it.

Yet I was also taken back to “Rainy Day Women” – and I am not quite sure why, but I can’t shake off the feeling.  The songs are from the same era of course, and both are about the city and living in the city – but Rainy Day has that relaxed feel of being comfortable in the environment, but this is anything but comfortable in any sense.  This is all hassle – which is what Costello captures completely.

I wonder what Dylan made of it – if you have come across a Dylan commentary on this song do let us all know.

Which now brings us to the key question: what is the “hack” that Bob is married to?

A hack can be

• A taxi
• A horse ride
• A pile of bricks or a wooden frame on which a pile of bricks is placed to dry them out
• A person who does dull or mundane work – particularly a journalist who just churns out stories at the call of the editor, without thinking about them or working on them.
• A piece of computer code that provides a quick if not elegent solution to a problem.
• A strategy for managing one’s time or work more efficiency
• A gash or wound
• A rough cut or a blow to another person with a stick
• (As a verb) being able to do it, to be able to cope with it.  Often used negatively as in “he can’t hack it.”
• To kick wildly (used in rugby)
• Gain unauthorised access to a computer (not used at the time the lyrics were written)
• A painful dry cough (as in “a hacking cough”).

Although I might have missed some American meanings that I don’t know, I suspect those will be, like the computer usage of  the word, not in place at the time Dylan wrote the song.  Which leaves us pretty much with a journalist working in a way that emphasies speed of delivery above quality of content.

I am not saying that is right – particularly as I am English and thus not privvy to all the details of North American slang – but it is as far as I can get.  Unless of course “hack” at this time simply meant “job”.  Your guess is probably a lot more valid than mine.

Here’s the video.

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

Jochen Markhorst

In October 2013 The Mercury News from San José reports that the building at 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, was granted historical monument status. The Los Altos Historical Commission has unanimously decided that the house with the attached garage from which Steve Jobs built and sold his first Apples is a historical resource and should be protected.

Fourteen months later, in January 2015, director Danny Boyle is granted permission to film on location for his adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs (2011). So the film scenes that tell the embryonic phase of Apple are really set in the original garage. For that, the decor must be transformed back to 1976 and thanks to the current owner, Steve Jobs’ sister Patricia, that works out fine – Patricia was there, in those early years, and worked with co-founder Steve Wozniak and her brother on the assembly of the first hundred Apple 1 computers.

With the help of some photographs and her memory, Patricia reconstructs for the film crew the junk shop the garage was at the time. In addition, she can delight decorators with authentic attributes, like with the poster that hangs against the back wall: a still from the promotional film for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, the iconic precursor of later video clips.

Jobs’ fanatical love for Dylan has been extensively documented and in the 2015 film Dylan is a leitmotif. In small, unobtrusive details, such as that poster against the back wall, and plainly, like in script dialogues and in playing “Shelter From The Storm” over the credits. On the soundtrack, besides Shelter, there is also “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35”, which director Boyle, contrary to expectations, plays in Jobs’ famous announcement of the Macintosh. Unexpectedly, because Jobs (wonderfully played by Michael Fassbender) opens that announcement by quoting “The Times They Are A-Changin”, preceded by a, unfortunately partly cut out, discussion with John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) about the meaning of that song. And there is another song hidden in the movie; from a radio in the background we hear “Meet Me In The Morning”.

The many Dylan references are in line with the book on which this film is based. The biography is scattered with dozens of references, Dylan records and song titles. Real Dylan love, that much is clear, and the anecdote about Jobs’ encounter with his hero is also amusing, but the most revealing piece of information is on the last page of the book, on page 570:

“You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. (…). That’s what I’ve always tried to do—keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.”

It is more than a business motto, it is a life motto for Jobs and it also sheds extra light on that poster choice – the young Jobs daily sees Dylan’s cue card with the words get born. And, according to the script of grandmaster Aaron Sorkin, the key phrase from The Times therefore is the present now will later be past.

“This verse means that you must permanently, deliberately, rid yourself of the past, because otherwise it will also become your present,” says Jobs’ mentor Sculley. “Yes! Exactly! That’s exactly – you’re the only one … God … that’s what I mean!” the enthusiastic computer nerd yells.

It is an aphorism that will remain a guideline for the restless innovator Jobs.

The busy being born quote from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is one of the cast-iron, indestructible verse fragments from one of Dylan’s greatest masterpieces and one of the four lines that enters into the Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, between Shakespeare, John F. Kennedy and Mark Twain. Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter cites it in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in 1976 to illustrate his progress dreams and future vision, in 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore calls it his favorite quote, in the twenty-first century writers of management books, publishing scientists, journalists and bumper sticker producers use the slogan. He not busy being born is busy dying has penetrated the collective cultural baggage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtNZm9KXm8w

Perhaps the one-liner originates from Blind Willie McTells “You Was Born To Die” (1933), perhaps his own ’stead of learnin’ to live they are learnin’ to die (from “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, 1962) floats around – Dylan himself does not know where this line comes from, nor the genesis of the entire song, for that matter. Already at the time of conception, in 1964, he says that his way of songwriting has changed, but reiterating is the word unconscious, a word he already uses in relation to early songs like “Girl From The North Country” and that he still chooses when he is asked for reflection on Blonde On Blonde. In the 70s he lost that talent, he says in several interviews, and he has to “consciously do what I had been able to do naturally”.

Maybe not that exceptional. The fact that Dylan is able to produce such a masterpiece as “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” so young, at the age of twenty-three, seems unimaginable, but is a characteristic of genius artists. Goethe writes his Werther when he is twenty-four, Picasso is twenty-five when he invents Cubism with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Michelangelo sculpts his David when he is twenty-five, the same age Gershwin has when he composes the Rhapsody In Blue, Hergé starts the Tintin series when he is twenty-two, Rimbaud is barely nineteen (!) when Un Saison En Enfer is published.

Still, on an instinctive level it is astonishing, and the old bard himself, in the twenty-first century, looks back with awe at this very work of his young self:

“It’s hard to live up to that kind of thing. You can’t try to top it – that’s not the point. Lyrically you can’t top it, no. I still can play that song, and I know what it can do. That song was written with a hunger that can break down stone walls. That was the motivation.”

And a month later, November 2004 in a Rolling Stone interview, he also remembers, without being asked “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”:

“All those early songs were almost magically written. Ah… ‘Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, a handmade blade, the child’s balloon…’

Well, try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that, and it’s not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time.”

Magic is suiting indeed. Overwhelming is perhaps a better qualification. The singer rattles down a rhythmic barrage of 667 words over a very basic melody and a harsh chord scheme. The poet limits himself to an extremely tight rhyme scheme: each verse is AAAAAB, the B returns at the end of the next two verses and at the end of the chorus. In between, the rhyme master profusely sprinkles dizzying alliterations, internal rhymes and assonances, one-liners with the power of an aphorism and an abundance of what the Nobel Prize Committee years later would honour as “his pictorial way of thinking”.

An overwhelming thing here is that the poet never falls into the trap of empty doggerel. As far as the content is concerned, it is compelling, monumental, too. Art with a capital A, just like “Chimes Of Freedom” or “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”: an eclectic collage of breathtaking images. But unlike in those works, all those images do not sketch one, many-layered panorama here. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is the mosaic of a human condition. The listener is carried along the Great Themes, past existential fear, loneliness, religion and commerce, morality and hypocrisy, the everyday humdrum and common non-freedom. Wrapped in timeless wordings and majestic metaphors; the song is no less topical, sharp and effective fifty years later.

Strangely enough, Dylan does at first not seem to realize that he once again has managed to craft a song in the hors catégorie. The song is almost instantly there; on The Cutting Edge there is a short, interrupted take (we hear producer Tom Wilson after the first verse, after twenty-five seconds, aborting the recording because Dylan apparently is too close to the microphone). That first run is not set in very lovingly. Tom Wilson announces “Gates Of Eden”, but Dylan protests: “I wanna do this other one first.” The intro is much shorter than in the next, definitive take and sounds like “Blowin ‘In The Wind”. When it is aborted, the singer seems to lose interest: I really do not feel like doing the song and I have to do it, though. It’s such a long song. Wilson laughs. “Suit yourself, I’m with you.”

But Dylan proceeds anyway. Fortunately.

Thin ice, to the colleagues who risk a cover. Such a long song, so little melody on a rather scant chord scheme and the brilliant execution by the master himself – it requires quite some confidence to think that there is room for improvement.

They fail, obviously. Attempts enough, though. The best known is Roger McGuinn’s contribution to Easy Rider (1969).

Identical arrangement, but technically better performed harmonica and guitar playing, coming close to the excitement that the original can unleash – but it then lacks the raw purity of it.

The Swiss-born Sophie Hunger has a beautiful “One Too Many Mornings” on her repertoire and overstretches with “It’s Alright, Ma” on the live album The Rules Of Fire. However, a YouTube version of the same Frau Hunger fares better.

Plus points for the very creative, three-part rendition and powerful recital of the third part, minus points for the somewhat painful fact that Sophie occasionally runs out of breath (and her accent is a little distracting).

A bit unreal is Al ‘Year Of The Cat’ Stewart, live in 1970. His affected, through and through British accent gives an unintended comical but charming twist to the song.

Even more improbable is the slightly sultry, funky swinging version, with violins, horns and all, by Billy Preston from 1973 (Everybody Likes Some Kind Of Music) – a cover with quite a few fans, who often put it down as a guilty pleasure.

Dylan veteran Barb Jungr (Hard Rain, 2014) produces a rather schizophrenic cover; beautifully set to music (splendid organ), annoyingly articulated sung couplets, goosebumping choruses – she can sing, after all.

From an artistic point of view the most interesting interpretation is delivered by the colourful, eccentric New Yorker Franz Nicolay.

The author of the “season’s best travel book” (2016, New York Times on The Humorless Ladies Of Border Control) is infectiously crazy and provides a respectful, tumultuous mix of polka, punk and parody for the successful tribute project Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute To Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home (2010). Above all, Nicolays cover reeks of anarchy – and that should please both Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan.

It’s alright ma: the masterpiece of the era

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

Untold: So tell us, Bob, about the conservation you say you had with William Shakespeare.

Bob: Well, I was in Mobile one time, guitar in hand, when I bumped into this fellow wearing pointed shoes and bells; he was talkin’ to a dark-eyed French girl, and they invited me up to their room.

Untold: Did you know them?

Bob: No, but the place looked familiar to me. I know I musta stayed there before.

Untold: What did you three talk about?

Bob: Well, the guy says right out of the blue, “We better talk this over – tell ol’ Bill what’s been on your mind, Bob.”  So I says back to him, “Well, I got this tune for a new song in my head, but the lyrics are givin’ me lots of trouble.” He says, maybe he can help. I tell him the only line I’ve got so far: “Let’s call it a day, go on our separate way”. The guy leans back in his chair for a moment and then he says:

Let’s call it a day, go on our separate way
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay

So I strum a few chords, and try out the lyrics; he asks, ‘How’d you like the rhyme?’ I say, ‘OK, but maybe some strobe lights would work well here ….let’s try somethin’ a little brighter this time.”

And right off Ol’ Bill comes up with:

Let’s call it a day, go on our separate way
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in your youth before my sight
Where wasteful time debateth with decay

Well, the guys really tryin’ to be helpful, and I don’t wanna hurt his feelings none, so I ask Ol’ Bill to try another verse. He starts snappin’ his fingers, and rap singin’:

Let’s call it a day, and go on our separate way
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time
And fortify yourself in your decay

I strum my guitar, and sing the words back to him – Ol’ Bill says he likes it. Things are gettin’ better; the French gal is sittin’ on my lap….I say, ‘Don’t stop now’, and Ol’ Bill’s justa a-blastin’ and singin’ away:

Let’s call it a day, and go on our separate way
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite
And in mine own lover’s strength seem to decay

Well, the French gal she’s passin’ out more drinks, and rainy day cigarettes; I’m a-strummin’, and Ol’ Bill’s a-hummin – we’re really startin’ to cook:

Let’s call it a day, and go on our separate way
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store
When I have seen such interchange of state
Or state itself confounded to decay

The three of us are laughin’, and Bill comes up with another one:

Let’s call it a day, and go on our separate way
When I perhaps compounded with clay
Do not as much as my poor name rehearse
But let your love even with my life decay

And then another verse that I kinda like:

Let’s call it a day, and go on our separate way
Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey
If time have any wrinkle graven there
If any, be a satire to decay

Untold: Bob you think that it was William Shakespeare you were talking to that day?

Bob: Well, I woke up the next mornin’ with frog toes and owlet wings inside my socks; l remember grabbin’ a written-down verse that all three of us liked, and me and the French gal headin’ out the door for Memphis. Ol’ Bill stayed behind – said somethin’ about havin’ to get back to ‘The Globe’.

And me and the dark-haired lady were singin’ in the rain:

Situation just gonna get rougher
Why do we needlessly suffer?
Let’s call it a day, go our separate way
Before we decay
(Bob Dylan: We Better Talk This Over)

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

With this composition I’m starting to look at the songs on Lost on the River by the band “The New Basement Tapes” which consisted of Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford.

Dylan’s input is a set of lyrics that he wrote in notebooks in 1967, and are thought to pre-date the recordings that we know as “The Basement Tapes”. The album was released in 2014.

The story is that Dylan’s publisher went to T Bone Burnett and asked if he would like to be involved in a project to make something of these notes, and gave the assurance that Bob Dylan was ok with having the lyrics used.

It is said that Burnett selected the band and gave them copies of the lyrics to see what each could come up with.  Thus there are in some cases several settings of the same lyrics.  Some songs were not worked on at all, as none of the members of the ensemble could find a way to set the lyrics.  40 songs were written, and 20 were released on the album.  Johnny Depp also became involved later and played guitar on one track and at a concert.

Subsequently five videos were released:

• “Nothing to It”, with lead vocal by Jim James
• “Married to My Hack”, with lead vocal by Elvis Costello
• “When I Get My Hands on You”, with lead vocal by Marcus Mumford
• “Spanish Mary”, with lead vocal by Rhiannon Giddens
• “Liberty Street”, with lead vocal by Taylor Goldsmith

On “When I get my hands on you” the music is written by Mumford and Goldsmith.

Here are the lyrics

When I set my eyes on you
Gonna keep you out of town at night
When I set my eyes on you
Not gonna be outta my sight

And now you know
Everywhere on earth you go
You’re gonna have me as your man

When I get my hands on you
Gonna make you carry me
When I get my hands on you
Gonna make you marry me

And now you know
Everywhere on earth you go
You’re gonna have me as your man

When I come home to you
Gonna take you down to the riverside
When I come home to you
Hold you in my arms all night

Here is an alternative video, and this is one I particularly like.

I have to admit that it took me several play throughs of the song to really get into it, and I must say it was watching that second video that really gave me more understanding of what was going on.

Of course there is nothing complex in the lyrics – they are as simple as simple can be – which provides huge problem for the composer.   Does one match simplicity with simplicity or try to compensate for the simplicity of the lyrics with complexity in the music?

The result, musically, is I think, very deceptive – it sounds far simpler than it actually is.   And that is what makes it worth hearing.

As for the lyrics… well, I am not sure I can find anything more to say.  Except I can’t imagine what Dylan would have done with them if he had persevered.   Other tracks will be reviewed shortly.

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

Pledging My Time (1966)

In the year 797 Charlemagne secretly sends a Frankish delegation with gifts to Baghdad, to Caliph Harun ar-Rashid, to make peace through the diplomatic way between the Arab and the Frankish Empire. Five years later, the considerably depleted delegation is back in Aachen, with a living monster, the white elephant Abul-Abbas, being the most remarkable gift. The Franks are bewildered.

But Charlemagne is perhaps even more touched by a much smaller and more graceful gift: a clepsydra, an exuberantly decorated water clock that can measure time by means of an ingenious system of tubes, taps and valves. Charles recognizes and appreciates the royal gesture of Harun: what gift is an emperor more worthy than Time itself?

Over eleven centuries later Emperor Bob can sympathize. In 1966 he is approaching the middle of the vortex, the laps are becoming shorter and go faster and faster, and he starts going under. I was in a whirlwind, he sings looking back in 1974, on the same record that tells he can not find happiness until Time Passes Slowly. Fame, money, success … all well and good, but time truly is wealth.

That realization flashes as early as November ’62, when the poet accuses his ex-love that she wasted his precious time (Don’t Think Twice), time is worth saving, he finds a year later, in The Times, in “Restless Farewell” he would like to tie up the time forcefully, with the Tambourine Man he wishes to disappear into the “foggy ruins of the time”, in “I’ll Keep It With Mine” the narrator promises to keep the time saved. In ’65, the lack of, and with it the desire for time increases, an amateur psychologist could deduce from the excessive rise in the use of the word ‘time’ in the songs as of Highway 61 Revisited. On Blonde On Blonde in as many as nine of the fourteen songs.

And explicitly the poet expresses the merits of time especially in “Pledging My Time”.

The old and familiar clichés have become hollow. In recent years, the singer has promised his heart, loyalty, letters, honesty and friendship, but now he puts the ultimate, the irrevocable on the table. He no longer promises it, no: pledging – the enamoured narrator swears an expensive oath, promises highly and holy a part of his most precious capital. This certainly must be true love. In order to avoid it becoming too soggy, the language artist packs the chorus with the pompous love speech in playful, nonsense verses. A stylistic constant in this is the antithesis. Partly these are the classic contradictions we know from the blues canon (early morning and late night, jump up and come down), others are alienating, but characteristic for the brilliance of a Dylan in shape. A splitting headache and he feels fine, the room is empty, but so stuffy that he can barely breathe and someone is lucky, but that is an accident.

It is an edgy, provocative and penetrating Chicago blues, an excellent mood changer after the previous, carnival-like splurge “Rainy Day Women # 13 & 35”, with which Blonde On Blonde opens. The song’s solid form is quickly found, The Cutting Edge learns. Nevertheless, the first take differs considerably from the final, third recording. Lyrically likewise, with three radically different verses, but especially in tempo, and thus in atmosphere.

That first take is jumpy, cheerful, echoing in the distance “Sweet Home Chicago” and the party noise of the Rainy Day Women is being extended. Irresistible, but not what Dylan means, we hear in the studio chatter afterwards: “It’s gotta have a very strong beat, you know,” and he demonstrates what he means on the piano (pa-pám, pa-pám, pa-pám). Either he is didactically gifted, or he has very clever pupils – the transformation is radical, and an instant hit; that next take, with blaring guitars and a pulsating, rushed harmonica, is on the album. Wonderful, but Dylan himself treats the song as a throw-away. It becomes a B-side, for the very successful Rainy Day Women single, and then evaporates. Just like with that other degraded masterpiece, “Queen Jane Approximately”, it takes more than two decades before the song appears on the playlist, and again the persuasiveness of the friends from Grateful Dead is needed to convince the master.

The song does not immediately know how to charm the colleagues, either. The first cover that stands out, appears in 1969. And it is not so much the musical quality of the interpretation that stands out (which is rather mediocre), but the origin: the Japanese band Apryl Fool, the band of the later electronic music legend Haruomi Hosono (from Yellow Magic Orchestra).

The Far East meets Chicago does not work – the rendition has the same displaced, alien atmosphere as Bill Murray in Lost In Translation (2003; Murray moves lost and not understanding through Tokyo, where we also hear Hosono again in the soundtrack). Despite the unimpressive musical approach, Hosono will surely have one up on Dylan. The Japanese is the grandson of Masabumi Hosono, the only Japanese passenger and survivor of the Titanic, the disaster that continues to fascinate Dylan from “Desolation Row” to “Tempest”.

Later covers can never match the original either. Duke Robilliard does it effectively, but somewhat too professional on the tribute Blues On Blonde On Blonde (2003), the horns that Luther Johnson adds are beautiful (on another tribute, Tangled Up In Blues, 1999) and the Texan Jimmy LaFave hardly ever fails – this time with a sober, acoustic reading, accompanied by an infectious Tex-Mex accordion.

The most beautiful version is performed by the eccentric guitar virtuoso Peter Parcek from Connecticut, who in 2011 on the EP Pledging My Time also excels in a heartbreaking “She Belongs To Me” and an intense “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”.

by Larry Fyffe

Those readers and listeners of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics who scoff at the idea that the American singer/songwriter includes autobiographical information in some of these lyrics will surely change their minds when faced with the following evidence showing that Bob did indeed meet and converse with William Shakespeare in an alleyway.

Dylan slips in Shakespeare’s way of speaking when writing certain words down on paper even if he does not sing the old pronunciation out loud when he performs the songs in front of today’s audiences.

We’re talking about written rhymes that do not sound the same when pronounced today as they did way back then – ‘love’/move’:

So either by thy picture or my love
Thyself away are resent still with me
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move
And I am still with them and they with me
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 47)

The Elizabethan tongue-pronounced ‘love’, which is quite similar to that of today, the Bard rhymes with today’s lip-pronounced ‘move’ which certainly doesn’t work in modern English.

As already pointed out, Bob, having conversed with Shakespeare in the alley, uses the the Bard’s rhyme pattern in the song lyrics below – ‘love’/’move’:

She’s everything I need to love, but I can’t be swayed by that
It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be
But she ain’t a-gonna make me move, I guess it must be up to me
(Bob Dylan: Up To Me)

In Shakespearean English there’s another seemingly strange rhyme
– ‘prove’/ ‘love’:

O, change thy thought that I may change my mind
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 10)

Not a ‘sight-rhyme’ but a pure rhyme, for sure:

O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave
To entertain the time with thoughts of love
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 39)

Oscar Wilde claims that the Bard, in many of the sonnets, speaks about a boy actor – Willy Hughes (Hues) – who plays Juliet. The movie ‘Shakespeare In Love’ changes things around a bit.

That Bob Dylan lifts rhymes from his conversations with the Elizabethan sonneteer is evidenced by Shakespeare’s pairing ‘one’ with modern-sounding ‘alone’:

Let me confess that we two must be twain
Although our undivided loves are one
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help by me to be borne alone
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 36)

Getting right down to it, ‘Untold’ has learned that time-traveller Dylan mentions in his forthcoming autobiography that they both had a good laugh when he told Shakespeare that the old pronunciation of ‘one’ in the sonnet above inspired:

How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
(Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone)

Dylan also reveals that he consciously tangles up the ‘one’/’alone’ rhyme in the song below – ‘ones’/’lonesome’:

But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go
(Bob Dylan: You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go)

He goes on to comment that certain rhymes stay forever young – ‘above’/’love’:

Askance and strangely; but, by all above
These blenches gave my heart another youth
And worse essays proved thee my best of love
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 110)

So whether or not Dylan is imitating Shakespeare’s manner of speaking in the following lines, there is really no way to tell:

Well, I struggled through barbed wire
Felt the hail fall from above
Well, you know I even outran the hound dogs
Honey, you know I’ve earned your love
(Bob Dylan: Meet Me In The Morning)

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

The song “Worth The Waiting For” by Bob Dylan and Dave Stewart- appears on Stewart’s album The Blackbird Diaries… this is Dave Stewart, Bob’s long time friend who is perhaps most well known for being part of the Eurthymics.   

Here is the song … there are two slightly different versions available so I’ve put both up just in case you really do like the song.

Here’s the original

The album containing “Worth the Waiting For” was released in June 2011, but the song was written long before that, as I will try and explain.

There is no mention of the “Worth The Waiting For” song in Heylin, but Stewart has provided us with an explanation.  The lyrics are not Bob’s at all as you can, I am sure, immediately ascertain from the transcript below.

Didn’t you know that it was me
Who loved you all the time?
Would you feel betrayed
If I still had you on my mind?

Didn’t you know that all the time
I could have been your greatest friend?
Did you know that jealousy
Would eat you up again?

So many lies that you tried to justify
So many so you could just step out in the night
I don’t care anymore, baby, I’ll just be right here
If you wanna go again, well, that’s alright my dear

Time is slowly ticking away
But I know you’ll come back and be with me one day

‘Cause I miss you but you’re worth the waiting for
I miss you but you’re worth the waiting for
I miss you but you’re worth the waiting for
I miss you, yes, I do

All the friends around us thought
That we were the king and queen
We didn’t go out looking for it, baby
We were the scene

To me this song and its co-writing places it around the time of songs like Well well well, Howlin at your window, Tragedy of the trade, Time to end this masquerade

In relation to those songs I have written elsewhere on this site that “my take on this is that all these songs were originally written (or at least Dylan’s input into the songs was completed) in 1985 while Dylan was writing songs for Empire Burlesque.”    So I am placing it in the interim period of that year – the pause between the two sets of Burlesque songs.  The full details of the 1985 songs appears on the 1980s page  and my review of 1985 (obviously written before I came across this song) appears here.

This dating is backed up by the fact that the two guys have been friends for many a long year with Dave Stewart producing tracks for Bob Dylan.   Of this friendship Dave Stewart is reported as saying, “We were always doing stuff but not really trying to play together or be a band. We recorded lots of stuff, sometimes in my church, sometimes in my kitchen, and put it down on cassettes.”   If you want to follow this further there is an interview with Dave Stewart on line here.

To back this dating up (at least to within a year) we have an interview in American song writer where Dave Stewart is asked about the song, and replies…

“In 1984 I was in a studio in L.A., recording and producing something, when the lady at reception rang through to the studio and said, “I have Bob Dylan on the phone for you.” I thought it was my friend joking, putting on a voice, because I’d never met him before, and I’d been a massive fan of his for years.

“So when I actually heard him come on the phone I was about to say, “Stop laughing about,” but then he spoke and I was like, nobody could copy that voice, this really is Bob.

“So I knew immediately it was him and he asked if I wanted to meet up, which we did, and virtually the next day or the day after we made a couple of videos. Then he came to London and we were experimenting and shooting stuff with cameras like friends you know, just doing experiments, not necessarily for anything. Although one of those videos came up in a song called “Blood in My Eyes” the black and white 8 millimeter one. It’s on YouTube, you can see it.”

“I had Dylan in a top hat and I shot it myself.And then we would jam with different friends. I had a studio in a church in North London, and we’d just choose different people, and have crazy sort of jam sessions. At one point there’d be like Joni Mitchell on drums, someone else on piano; everybody would swap around.

“We did a lot of jam sessions in that church and we culled some of them, but I never with the intention of making a record. It was more just like how you do when you pop by to see a friend and have a jam session.

“But sometimes we’d go back to my house and in the kitchen, we’d play it back on my cheap ghetto blaster. There’d be like twenty songs from every jam session, but there’d be no singing on them. And Bob would do this incredible thing – a genius in full effect — he would sing along and add melodies and bits of lyrics on top of all of them, just one after the other.

“I had another cassette player that I could record what was turning out the ghetto blaster but also record the kitchen. So in my archives of recordings, I’ve got one that’s called “kitchen recordings,” and one of those songs, or beginnings, of songs was this thing I always liked.

“When I was playing for the guys in Blackbird Studios with all those great players, about halfway through those sessions it sprung to mind. I listened to it on headphones and I thought this would sound killer played by these guys in a kind of country soul way. I listened to it and understood of it what I could, because they’re very bad recordings, and finished the song, kept some of the words that I could understand, and then wrote it into a song really about me and Annie.

“And then I sent it to Bob, in a quick sketch form, and he really liked it, and so I cut it with the band. And that’s the story behind that song.”

The magazine interviewer then asks, “So some of those lyrics were ones that he sang at that time?”  The reply is

“Yeah, some of those lyrics were him off the top of his head just improvising in the kitchen and we were drinking. I remember exactly — he had a huge Mexican hat on that I had on my wall, and we were drinking little shots of tequila in the kitchen. The lady who drives me was there making food while we were doing it, so you can hear that going on as well in the background.”

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

Jochen Markhorst

There are many reasons why we regret the premature death of Otis Redding, and “True Love Tends To Forget” is one of them. It’s not difficult to dream away in a fantasy how Otis would have handled this beautiful soul ballad. After all, Dylan already chooses a soul arrangement on Street Legal, with a Steve Cropper-like guitar in the opening, Stax horns, Booker T.’s organ and a ladies’ choir.

That is no coincidence; his admiration for Otis is well known. In his radio program Theme Time Radio Hour he likes to play Otis’ heartbreaking classics (including “Cigarettes And Coffee” and “I’ve Got Dreams To Remember”) and already in April 1966 Dylan is said to have offered him “Just Like A Woman”. The master may well have thought of Otis while writing these lyrics. According to some sources Otis dismissed “Just Like A Woman” because the lyrics were too wordy – too many syllables to be able to squeeze in those typical, yearning and grinding Otis outbursts.

Robbie Robertson, not always a reliable eyewitness, tells how he and Dylan are talking about cover versions of Dylan’s songs, back in ’66 in the studio, when Dylan asks who could sing “Just Like A Woman”.

“Otis Redding, of course,” Robbie answers, and the managers then get in touch. Years later Robertson happens to meet Otis’ manager Phil Walden and he can ask why that cover never was released. Otis has indeed recorded the song, Walden says, but was never capable of singing that bridge – “In the bridge, the words are about amphetamines and pearls, and he couldn’t get those words to come out of his mouth in a truthful way. So, we had to put it aside.” Which Robertson can respect: “If you can’t sing something with a complete honesty, then you shouldn’t be singing that thing. And he was just being honest about it.”

Dylan himself remembers the details somewhat differently, incidentally. In the interview with Wenner (Playboy, 1969) he states that Otis asked him for a song, at a meeting at the Whiskey A Gog Go, in 1966. “Well I didn’t necessarily think it was a good song for him to do, but he asked me if I had any material. It just so happened that I had the dubs from my new album.“

True Love does not suffer from textual excess, at any rate. Around it there are alphabetical processions to be found, like “Where Are You Tonight?” And “No Time To Think”, but this song is relatively straightforward, does not shy away from the clichés and is economical in terms of Dylanesque outliers. “Weekend in hell” is probably inspired by Rimbaud’s Une Saison En Enfer, a few far-fetched rhyme findings (roulette-forget, any oxygen–among the men), but otherwise there is hardly an indication that this is a Dylan original.

Well, that “from Mexico to Tibet” is still a thing. Dylan likes to resort to topographic metaphors to express “very far” or “here, there and everywhere”, and starts to carry on a bit too far in that respect. Initially, almost twenty years ago, he thinks from Washington Heights to Brooklyn is far enough (an hour’s walk, in “Hard Times In New York City”), in “Down The Highway” he already needs just under 3000 miles, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Statue of Liberty, and its well-known simplification (from the west unto the east) is used in “I Shall Be Released”.

In the 1970s, the search for more original variants starts. From the heavens to the ground in “Never Say Goodbye”, from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol in “Idiot Wind” and now from Mexico to Tibet – almost 9000 miles.

In “Slow Train Coming” the poet downgrades a bit (from Amsterdam to Paris), but in the different versions of “Carribean Wind” he strikes again; first the wind blows from Mexico to Curaçao, changes to from Tokyo to the British Isles and when the song is stranded, it is from Nassau to Mexico, still over 1200 miles. In “Union Sundown” Dylan then reaches the superlative level: from Broadway to the Milky Way, although a less poetically minded listener will argue that this is actually “from here to here” – our earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy, after all.

This tenacious preference for the topographic metaphor is not very defensible. In more than half of the cases, like here, it is rather forced and adds nothing. From New Orleans to Jerusalem in “Blind Willie McTell” provides an extra layer, but that added value is exceptional. The bard seems to realize that too. After 1983, he no longer uses this figure of speech, except in “Roll On John” (2012). And there it is also serving and thematically fitting: Lennon’s light shines from the Liverpool docks to the red light Hamburg streets.

The beauty of the bridge, of the middle eight, stands out on three fronts; it is a poetic highlight, vocally line three offers a rhythmic find (“Saw you drift into infinity and come back again”) which Dylan quite rightly appreciates, as evidenced by the flashing passion with which he sings in the live performances, and musically it flows so nice, that Dylan plays it once more. Mind you, this comes from a master who used to have little appreciation for something as banal as a bridge. Not until “Ballad Of A Thin Man” we see a first step, a real, conventional middle eight debuts in “Memphis Blues Again”.

Meanwhile, “True Love Tends To Forget”, just like almost every Street Legal song, is in a verge corner of Dylan’s catalogue. It is not a lonely place, back there, but unjust, or at least incomprehensible, it is. Songs like “Down The Highway” and “North Country Blues” are also there, and with that you can be at peace – much more than a temporary charm they do not have.

Songs like “Baby Stop Crying”, “We Better Talk This Over” and this “True Love Tends To Forget”, however, possess a timeless power, but somehow do not seem to convince the top floor. For a while, recognition for “True Love Tends To Forget” is imminent, as it is being nominated for Greatest Hits Vol. 3. The – staggering juvenile – liner notes have already been written (the mere mentioning of Tibet inspires Oxford’s poetry professor Sir Christopher Ricks to the saltless wordplay “Dylai Lama”), but eventually it is bypassed, along with the equally soulful “Tight Connection To Your Heart”, in favour of “Series Of Dreams” and “Changing Of The Guards”. Dylan does not play the song live after 1978 and noteworthy covers are not recorded either; this jewel truly is a lost gem.

And also….

True love tends to forget: Dylan laughs at himself from Mexico to Tibet

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 presents in his song lyrics bits and pieces of  autobiographical material. The stories about his adventures as a time traveller are  particularly interesting – his journey back to the Elizabethan era, for instance:

(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)

Though of course nobody living today actually sees him there, the previous ‘Untold’ article entitled ‘The Mystery of W.H. Solved’ supports Dylan’s claim that he also encounters Willy Hughes, William Shakespeare’s boyfriend. Dylan runs into Willy for the last time in ‘Scarlet Town’, where on another time trip, Bob – for compassionate reasons – changes Hughes’ last name to ‘Holme’.

Apparently, some readers are skeptical that Dylan ever met the Bard or his ‘sweet’ buddy for that matter. However, it’s clear that the American singer/songwriter would have had to be fluent in Elizabethan English that the two Wills speak:

(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 154)

While referring to the early ‘psychology’ based on the elements of water, fire, earth, and air, the author of the above sonnet rhymes the word ‘prove’ with the word ‘love’ though in modern English ‘prove’ is pronounced the same as  today’s ‘move’.

However, in Shakespeare’s day, the words ‘move’ and ‘prove’ rhyme with ‘love’:

(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 25)

And again:

(Hamlet, Act II, sc. 2)

It’s obvious that, due to his travels into times past, Bob Dylan, in some of his writings (not vocalized when sung) lapses into communicating in the language that Elizabethans use:

(Bob Dylan: Up To Me)

That is, the singer/songwriter silently rhymes in his mind  the words ‘remove’, ‘love’, and ‘ move’. Modern scholars examining Dylan’s song lyrics, like Christopher Ricks in ‘Dylan’s Visions Of Sin’, miss the autobiographical influence of time travel thereon, and declare that pairing words like ‘move’ and ‘love’ be merely the creation of ‘sight’ rhyme.

Oscar Wilde speculates that Shakespeare, like Dylan, provides Willie Hughes with an alias, calling the boy ‘Hues’ in “The Sonnets”.  Not all of Dylan’s songs reflect on the writer’s life, but it is important to keep an open mind  for that aspect in his lyrics lest their true meaning be swept aside by a broom too broad.

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

Update: We found a recording – don’t know how long it will stay on line…

It’s on a radio show and if you jump to 18 mins in the song starts….

Now back to the original commentary….

Britta Lee Shain, is reported as the girlfriend of Dylan’s assistant Gary Shafner, who had an affair with Bob Dylan in the 1987 European tour in autumn of that year.

Shain wrote a book, “Seeing The Real You At Last”, in which she says she was on the tour although there is no mention of any relationship with Dylan, and Heylin mentions the song in one of his books although doesn’t include it in “Still on the Road” which supposedly covers all of Dylan’s songs of the period.

That suggests Heylin thinks that Dylan either wrote none of it or just the music (for some odd reason he refused to list songs for which Dylan just wrote the music in his two volume “Songs of Bob Dylan”). 

But when the song was copyrighted on 27 April 2011 it was listed with a note that it was written in 1987 with Bob Dylan and Britta Lee Shain as authors of the lyrics, and also as the co-claimants of the copyright.

The song then appeared on the second album by Shain, “What The Heart Wants”, released in 2016.  One wonders why, if it was written with Dylan, which is quite a good selling point it was not recorded and released earlier.  As you can tell I am a trifle sceptical. 

There is an extract of the song on the Britta Lee Shain website.   Even if you don’t go any further the music is clear – it is a straight 12 bar blues although there is a middle 8 after two verses as the lyrics indicate

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue by Jochen Markhorst

She is a terrifying femme fatale, Annie Laurie Starr in the classic film noir Gun Crazy (also released as Deadly Is The Female, 1950). When she meets the male protagonist Bart Tare, she earns a living as a sharpshooter in a traveling circus. Bart’s past we have already seen: orphan boy with an unhealthy fascination for shooting equipment, partly raised in a juvenile detention centre. By now he is a darling, though a somewhat awkward adult, just dismissed from the army as a shooting instructor. Gun crazy he is still, he can shoot like no other and he happily responds to the challenge to the public to beat Annie. On the stage there is immediately a spark. Annie falls for him once and for all when Bart defeats her a bit later. Six matches are put in a crown on Bart’s head, of which Annie manages to ignite only five. Then it’s Bart’s turn. Yonder stands your orphan with his gun. Annie puts the crown with the matches on her head, Bart is five meters away and aims. Strike another match … Bart shoots six times and, of course, all matches burn. Playing with fire, indeed: it is the beginning of a scorching love, in which Bart is dragged along on the wrong track by Annie.

It ends bloody, obviously, with a dying Bart over Annie’s dead body.

With enough good will there are more images from “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” to be found in the film, but in doing so, the power of the song would be wronged; the song is certainly not an encrypted rhyme about one impression, or one event from the poet’s life. Dylan explores the terrain on which he will reach his zenith on the next two albums – clear and supple but impenetrable poetry. That self-contradicting, Rimbaud-like quality achieves the poet with a stylistic error that Jacques Derrida, the grandmaster of the deconstruction, upgrades to a style figure: the catachresis. The catachresis (literally: “wrong-use”, also abusio) connects words that are not actually connected, but are emotionally close to one another – by sound similarity for example, or by near-by association. Crying like fire in the sun seems to be a everyday metaphor, but is actually an unfamiliar combination of words. Just as deceptively familiar, a word combination like seasick sailors and expressions like the saints are coming through or gather from coincidence only seem familiar expressions.

Centuries earlier, in 1727, the admired Alexander Pope already played with catachresis in a way that could inspire Dylan: Mow the beard / Shave the grass uses the same reversal as the post office has been stolen / the mailbox is locked (from “Memphis Blues Again”) or your sheets like metal and your belt like lace (“Sad-Eyed Lady”). Dylan reads the unusual, but familiar-sounding word combinations at Rimbaud, these months. In his masterpiece Le Bateau ivre for example, where ‘distances are showering’ in a ‘green night’ under ’ember skies’.

The influence of those reading experiences, Dylan’s writing talent and his associative spirit then lead to this phase in his creation. A few half-memories of Gun Crazy, a biblical patch (Luke 9:60 “Let the dead bury their dead”), wordplay, symbol-charged metaphors, and private impressions – it works out great. Dylan’s poetry is enriched with a surreal dimension and that elevates the lyricist even higher up into the pantheon.

The clear vagueness is also irresistible in terms of content. The interpretations bounce in all directions. The most popular question is of course: who is Baby Blue? A large fraction of the experts argue for – of course – a lady, seeing the song as yet another farewell song in the vocalist’s oeuvre. Joan Baez, again. That option Dylan himself waves aside: “I have never seen Joan Baez as Baby Blue” (in the long interview with Craig McGregor, New Musical Express 1978). All too seriously we do not have to take that, because the real Baby Blue is, according to Dylan in the same interview, a character right off the haywagon, from right upstairs at the barbers shop, y’know, off the street … I have not run into her in a long time.

At least as often, the viewers see a goodbye to fellow folk artist Paul Clayton, or else David Blue. And Dylan himself is a popular candidate – saying goodbye to his folk persona. A serious minority seeks the answer not so much in a person as in an idea or in a population. Dylan bids farewell to his folk fans, for example. Al Kooper thinks so, and he is a man with a right to speak. He remembers how Dylan, after that mythical, electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 at Peter Yarrow’s (from Peter, Paul and Mary) insistence, returns with his guitar to the yelling audience. Yelling, according to Kooper, because Dylan’s performance lasted only fifteen minutes, not because he had dared to play electric. And what does Dylan play when he returns? He “sang It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue to these people; banishing the acoustic-folk movement with one song right at the crossroads of its origin.”

Despite all ingenuity, erudition or experience expertise: it is more likely that the poet here, over an enchanting melody, tries to express melancholy in general, the partir, c’est mourir un peu of Edmond Haraucourt.

Many are seduced by that enchanting melody. In an (imaginary) Top 40 of most-covered Dylan songs, Baby Blue is undoubtedly among the first ten. Musically, the song is apparently at least as versatile as the lyrics; there are lovely charming, brutally aggressive, sultry jazzy, troubled psychedelic and tight rock ‘n’ roll variants of the song. Among the better known is the hit version by Van Morrison’s Them from 1966, a dreamy version, of which the raw edge in itself inspires many later covers (in that category the Chocolate Watch Band, 1968, is a winner).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62CFEEkwyIo

The rendition of Them scores remarkably high among the high priests of Dylanology; Greil Marcus loses himself again in one of his ecstatic jubilee cantatas when he writes about it (in When That Rough God Goes Riding, 2010) and Clinton Heylin even states that it “rivals the original” (in Can You Feel The Silence, 2003) .

The Byrds, on the other hand, can not really put their finger on this one; between ’65 and ’69 they try it three times, but none of the recordings pass the self-critical test of Roger McGuinn. He is right, as we can hear years later, when the recordings are released. The inevitable Manfred Mann (with his Earthband, 1972) and old hand Link Wray (on Bullshot, 1979) are memorable…

But as usual the ladies have the je ne sais quoi, That Certain Something.

In the women’s competition Bonnie Raitt delivers at least the best intro (Steal This Movie soundtrack, 2000) and Joni Mitchell colours her version mysteriously and compellingly (Night Ride Home sessions, 1991).

However, both veterans are beaten by an outsider: the actress Jill Hennessy is supported by a great band and a knowledgeable producer, and she sings remarkably well; supercooled, intense and with appropriate restraint. On the soundtrack of the NBC hit series in which she plays the leading role, Crossing Jordan (2003).

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

In folksongs, up-and-coming technology is often depicted as a threat to the traditional family living off the land. The alienation wrought by the separation of a husband from his wife by that technology conjures up a number of songs that transform the steam locomotive into a surrogate snake-like female lover:

Oh, roll on, John, and make your time
For I’m broke down and I can’t make mine
I asked that girl to be my wife
Right down she set and begin to cry ….
I wish to the Lord the horn would blow
‘Cause I’m so tired of that old railroad
(Palmer Crisp: Roll On, John – traditional – see also here)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan stokes the analogy with the hot coals of Freudian surrealism:

Well, I ride a mailtrain, baby, can’t buy a thrill
Well, I’ve been up all night, baby, leaning on the windowsill
Well, if I die on top of the hill
And if I don’t make it, you know my baby will
(Bob Dylan: It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry)

The mechanical ‘iron horse’ overtakes the four-legged one as a euphemism for the female human body, but the organic metaphor remains in the race:

I got a coal-black mare
But, Lord, how that horse can run
Yes, she win every race
Man, you don’t see how it’s done …..
Say, she fox-trot and pace
And I ride that horse today
(Big Daddy Crudup: Black Pony Blues)

Bob Dylan jumps in the songwriter’s saddle, and grabs the reins of the tamed trope:

I got a new pony, she knows how to fox-trot, lope, and pace
Well, I got a new pony, she knows how to fox-trot, lope, and pace
She got big hind legs
And big long shaggy hair above her face
(Bob Dylan: New Pony)

The gasoline-driven automobile roars onto the scene making way for a new sexist analogy:

I got a brand new car
And I like to drive real hard
I got a brand new car
And I’m feeling good so far
(Rolling Stones: Brand New Car)

Personified as a used car, she can even talk:

We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoning it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin’ away
I heard her say over my shoulder
‘We’ll meet again someday on the avenue’
(Bob Dylan: Tangled Up In Blue)

Man-powered boats, sometimes assisted by the wind, be an early means of travel, and they too become ‘shes’, inside and outside of song lyrics:

I got a rockin’ boat
She got a rock on the stern
Five feet seven, don’t know how it’ll work
Oh, oh, on a rockin’ boat
Can’t you even learn by the way she drive?
(Bob Dylan: On A Rocking Boat)

Often in song lyrics, the human male, at least when he’s up for it, is depicted as the one in control of the situation:

I am the little red rooster, babe
To lazy to crow today
I am the little red rooster, babe
To lazy to crow today
I keep everything in the barnyard upset in every way
(Rolling Stones: Little Red Rooster)

The female, on the other hand, is more likely to get compared to a machine that’s ready to be ridden:

Little red wagon, little red bike
I ain’t no monkey, but I know what I like
I like the way you love me strong and slow
I’m takin’ you with me, honey baby, when I go
(Bob Dylan: Buckets Of Rain)

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

When Bob Dylan entered the recording studio for the first time, it was 1961 the whole technological revolution was still ahead. The Columbia Studio A was a good facility by the standards of the time but there were hardly any multi-tracking, special effects and so on.

Yet in spite of this, those first recordings don’t seem outdated by any means.

Nor do his next forays into the recording studio, Freewheelin’, Times and Another Side. They’re as plain as can be, just a young guy, his harmonica and acoustic guitar (and an occasional piano) – and yet fresh as early Spring.   The songs are captured live, and that is exactly how they sound.

No tricks, just kicks.

And the same goes for almost every studio recording Dylan has done throughout his career. The “go-electric” phase, the Basement Tapes, the Biblical JWH, the 1969-1971 country and soul, the mid-seventies masterpieces, the evangelical period… 

It seems throughout like there’s nothing that could be improved, corrected, modified, at least to my ears. While so much of the contemporaneous music sounds, if not obsolete, then certainly belonging to its time. Dylan’s recordings sound timeless. Even Street-Legal with its rich textures and orchestrations.

Perhaps the only period when Dylan sounds firmly anchored to the recording epoch are his post-Shot of Love albums up till Down in the Groove and then the Under the Red Sky collection. We might like them or like them less, return to them less frequently or quite the opposite, but one thing is for me certain: they couldn’t have been recorded in the sixties, seventies or late nineties. They are as eighties-y as possible.

Why?

I think there is one clear explanation. It was the only period when Dylan wanted to sound modern – or his producers wanted him to, and he, reluctantly or not, consented.

We all know perfectly well that Dylan, more often than not, opts for live recordings. Even if there’s some multitracking and editing we don’t hear them as clear as for example in the Beatles’ recordings or on some even more sophisticated, “produced” albums.

Does Dylan double-track his voice? No. Does he like delay and reverb? No. Does he lay several guitar tracks, does he multiply instruments? No. Does he use outside natural sounds? No. Does he like special FX? No.

No studio gimmickry. No bull. No flashiness. No calculated wow-effect.

His latest recordings sound impeccable, as pure as his earliest albums. And still – no gimmickry. Just a live sound.

Of course, technology has a lot to do with it. One can’t obtain the same soundscape as on the Fallen Angels album in just their home studio because Capitol Studios are one of the most state-of-the-art huge recording studios where you can breathe and release a nice album of just your breathing.

But, again, no overdubbing, no multitracking, no special devices and tricks.

Perhaps this is why Bob Dylan sounds so out of time, ahead of time and beyond time. Because he means to convey an essence to us, instead of dancing before us, making advances, impressing us with the superficial and brown-nosing.

Perhaps this is why he is so sophisticated and pure at the same time.

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

Now we all know that Bob Dylan and his mega corporation or copyright lawyers are pretty strong about claiming and protecting Bob’s rights.  So when we find a song that is mentioned as a Dylan composition in commentaries but is NOT listed on BobDylan.com then I begin to wonder.

Also the song is not listed in Heylin’s two volume review, and he has some pretty weird stuff listed there as Dylan songs, including many for which recordings are not available.  Heylin is not perfect by any means, and he refuses to recognise a song in which Dylan wrote the music but not the lyrics as a Dylan composition (!) so that might be the issue.  Or maybe he just missed it.

Anyway the song we are considering here was recorded by the McCrary Sisters for the Our Journey album

So there it is.  Dylan, it is said, wrote the “bridge” (the middle section that is not the same as the verse and which is called the “Middle 8” sometimes).  I can’t verify any of this, and we only have one source.  So I am including it, at least until some other evidence arises to suggest this tale isn’t true.

Footnote: the song is referred to as both “Got to give him my all” and “Give him my all”.  I’m going with the latter for the indexes on this site, again until someone comes up with a reason why not.

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