Untold Dylan

by Larry Fyffe

Nearly every song by Bob Dylan is about God and Jesus, but let’s face it – God’s beyond full comprehension by mere humans, and because of this those of the Jewish faith do not utter or spell His name out in full. It’s well known that Bob Dylan is a Messianic Jew and he avoids the issue, at least some of the time, by spelling God’s name backwards:

(Bob Dylan: I Shall Be Free No.10)

This time ‘blue-eyed’ Bob Dylan himself is arrogant. Dylan envisions the cataclysm-to-come, but presents himself as a sinless ‘white’ man who dares to claim that he  ‘walks’ (that is, controls)the Almighty. He even questions the way ‘black’ God treats humans (including witches) as if they didn’t deserve it; then he commits more blasphemy when he says it’s the girl’s ‘rainbow’ instead of God’s.

In the song below, Dylan’s persona in the song tells listeners that it’s not mankind who’s to blame at all:

The sin of hubris in the above song is committed by human pawns; thinking they’ve got God (He’s got no name) on a chain, they feel that they can sin any time they want to with impunity.

But don’t forget that God’s still in charge, and He only gives the pawns the right to move between good and evil up to a point; if they make a really bad move, they’ll get a severe tug on their choke chain – maybe even get drowned in a sack with a bunch of rocks in it.

In the lyrics above, Bob Dylan is taken in by the nihilist visions of Frederich Nietzsche. Dylan imagines that God is chained up outside of the Universe. In the movie version of this modern corrupt philosophy, known as  Godless Existentialism, Doctor McCoy tells Captain Kirk, ‘He’s dead, Jim – the dog is dead’.

Of course, in some songs, Dylan is just talking about the four-legged creature. Below, he compares people to dogs:

(Bob Dylan: If Dogs Run Free)

The song writer shows here the the influence of Transcendalist Romantic Poets like Walt Whitman. A blade of grass represents the individual who stands up all by him or herself. God’s around all right, but he’s just a pagan spirit in nature; the narrator in the song is complacent – he doesn’t require God’s direction because he can figure things out for himself.

But we all know that it’s dangerous to let dogs off of their leashes, don’t we.

by Tony Attwood

There is actually a copy of this song on the internet (at least at the moment of writing) – which is unusual for the Basement Complete – although it is only a fragment of the song, it gives you an idea if you don’t have the complete album.

https://soundhound.com/?t=100760562816634774

What we have here is a honky tonk 12 bar blues with some unusual extra chords added in – a complete song with lyrics.

The opening could be a thought through intro, but I rather suspect the guys had been playing for a while and only then did someone turn the tape on.

So we get three lines

Try me
Try me, little girl
We could raise a family

and then we go to the start of the first verse.  There are in fact two verses with the second being less distinct, or maybe less thought through, than the first.

Well they treat you like a dummy
Well they treat you like a slave
Nothin’ bout what you said, it’s all
What you gave
Try me
Try me
Try me, little girl
We could raise our family

Well, they treat so low
At the time I’ll ring out of way
Oh, baby tho baby, three’s gotta you gonna way
Oh, well it’s three in the morning
I get no room
Based on ?? she is ??
Try me
Try me
Try me, little girl
We gonna raise a family

Well, they treat so low
At the time I’ll ring out of way
Oh, nika tho nika, three’s gotta you gonna way
Oh, well it’s three in the morning,
I get no room
Based on cell she is sittin’ on room
Try me
Try me
Try me, little girl,
We gonna raise a family

The inimitiable Haiku 61 Revisted has ventured into this fragment and given us

Try me, little girl.
Let’s have ourselves a family.
Be with me, not them.

As the reviewer says, “The lyrics mostly make sense, but here and there they break down into syllabic silliness for the sake of speeding through the song.”

Given time this could have turned into a decent song, away from all the seriousness and insight of many of the album tracks that had come before it, but it was just that a standard bounce along 12 bar blues with an unexpected twist in the chords – which is seemingly there for no particular reason.

There might be some Dylan fans who particularly like this track, but I suspect that the majority of buyers of the complete set of Basement Tapes have listened, and moved on in the hope of more exciting fare later.

Indeed if we look at the compositions that came immediately before this, we can see that Dylan was indeed just trying out this, that and every other form to see what came out.

• I’m Your Teenage Prayer
• One’s Man’s Loss
• Lock your door
• Baby wont you be my baby
• Try me little girl

But this song does mark something of an end of this “let’s start and see what happens” approach because of next two songs on the Complete Basement series seem to be much more thought through.

Indeed it is interesting that having had all the recordings of other people’s songs we suddenly get six Dylan compositions in a row at the end of disc 2: a series that continues onto disk 3.

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+ songs 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 now 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

Though they be mostly farm hands, and not Bob Dylan scholars, our Untold team of intrepid archaeologists have been able to piece together one of the fragmented, hard-to-decipher ‘Dylan scrolls’ that were discovered in a damp cave near the Black Sea.

With the exception of  this team , the readers of ‘Untold Dylan’ are the first to see the results.

Warning in regards to the parchment – everything is broken – so our team of specialists have not necessarily assembled and deciphered the lyrics exactly the way they were originally written:

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

Dylanologists who are followers of conventional Christian beliefs twist the lyrics of certain songs by Bob Dylan to make them ‘fit in’; however, when listened to without the encumbrance of standard religious doctrines, the lyrics tend to reveal a mystical, a ‘gnostic’ search for ‘wisdom’ – a wisdom that is garnered by lucky ones through knowledge of ancient religions and mythologies.

Thinkers like Emanuel Swedenborg, Pyotre Ouspensky, and Carl Jung account for a Universe in which God appears to dance with the Devil by linking up  microcosmic aspects thereof with the microcosmic.

Akin to Frederich Nietzsche and William Yeats, and even in a song that’s written especially for children, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan presents images on the microcosmic level of an individual who copes with a life, a life that, according to some mystics, recurs over and over again for all eternity – a cosmological  view that’s unlike the main form of  Christainity that envisions a life linear, ending in a permanent ‘afterlife’:

(Bob Dylan: Wiggle, Wiggle)

Accordingly, such mystics express, in unique spiritual visions, a love for life,  and a coping with dark situations in which one finds him or herself by kicking up their boot heels rather than settling for a life of utter drudgery in the land of the living dead –  a better life in some external hereafter is a mirage; what’s in one’s head is what matters:

(Bob Dylan: Wiggle, Wiggle)

In short, fear not life – dance with Satan who dresses in satin and silk:

(Bob Dylan: Wiggle, Wiggle)

An Australian Rolling Stone-influenced bar band clean up the lyrics of one of their songs called ‘Everybody Wiggle’, written by John Fields, and put it out on a record suitable for children:

Wiggle to this song

(The Cockroaches: Get Ready To Wiggle)

Through many a dark hour, I’ve been thinking about this due to the recurring rhymes in the two songs; their themes both appear to be a wild Dionysiac search for ‘gnostic’ wisdom with the end rhymes ‘long/wrong/strong’ suggesting a macroscopic connection with The Cockroaches, an archetypal coincidence, for sure:

(Bob Dylan: God Knows)

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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 story surrounding this song is a little complicated but seems verified by the announcement made at the start of the track in the video below.

The song started as a track called “Shirley Temple Don’t Live Here Anymore” and it was either an outtake from “Under the red sky” or was written during the Red Sky sessions for Paula Abdul, the choreographer who went on to have six number one hits in the 1980s and 1990s.

For whatever reason she decided not to record the song, and at some time after that Dylan wrote some new lyrics for the song and it was then left for about 15 or 16 years until Was Not Was put it on an album.

That is the only recording I can find of the song, and here it is…

And here the lyrics

Well they came and they corrupted
And they took what was theirs
Your sorrow and your pity
Leaving ’em upstairs
You might think that it matters
But it ain’t like before
Mr Alice doesn’t live here anymore

Where that old drugstore was
Is now a museum
Everyone’s changed
You can’t hardly see ’em
All the piano players
Have gone off to war
Mr Alice doesn’t live here no no more

Now the chimney is rotten
And the wallpaper’s torn
The garden in the back
Won’t grow no more corn
The windows are boarded
With paper mache
And even the dog
Just ran away

Judy Collins went downstairs
With her brother Phil
Jukebox blasting
Bloody Marys through the wind and the air
His brother and sister
Are waiting by the door
But that old maggot doesn’t live here no no more

I get the hang of this all the way through to the last verse – the world is falling apart and everything has cracked and broken which is a way of seeing the story of “Alice doesn’t live here anymore” as she leaves her home and heads for California.   But the Judy and Phil Collins reference seems … well, what?   Nonsense?  Or a reflection that the world of music has fallen apart just as every other aspect of life has?

Is the Phil Collins reference related to his abandoning his family when he daughter was young.  The Bloody Mary reference might be a note about his infamous drinking life style.  A “Shirley Temple” is a non-alcoholic cocktail, but I doubt that this helps.  I think I’m trying to analyse something that isn’t there.

So quite clearly, I don’t know, and I’m not really intrigued enough by the song to make much more effort to sort this out.

After all it doesn’t really sound like a Bob Dylan piece, but I am putting my review in here in the hope that someone will be able to tell me I have completely got this all wrong and for anyone with half a brain the answer is…

Or maybe someone else has another recording?

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

——————–

• Part One of this series appears here.
• Part Two of this series appears here

By Larry Fyffe

As previously mentioned, surrealistic poet Arthur Rimbaud refers to nursery rhymes of yore, more often than not twisting their themes.  In days of old such rhymes be a coded way to convey political or religious messages in order to avoid being burned at the stake. Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan makes modern use of this literary device, adding traditional songs to the list.

Post Modern irony be a characteristic feature of a number of Bob Dylan’s songs. For example, the fragmented lyrics of ‘Scarlet Town’, based on the old ballad ‘Barbara Allan’, can be interrupted as a narrative about Little Boy Blue who refrains from blowing his trumpet in case it wakes up Jesus who is hiding under a haystack; it’d be all over for Baby Blue if the Christ-to-be, not really that inclined to have His sensual physical body crucified, manages to escape from His predestined fate – for the Christ Child to become the Messiah, there must  be no way for Him to get out of the crucifixion; Mankind won’t get saved (see: Bob Dylan And Arthur Rimbaud – Part II):

(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

As the song referenced in the black-humoured lyrics above indicates, it would be severely messing with destiny if Jesus gets away, and never comes back ever again to tend His sheep, most having gone astray:

(Ernest Tubb: Walking The Floor Over You)

In the manner of Arthur Rimbaud, Bob Dylan plays around with other nursery rhymes in his song lyrics:

One’s about the possibility of an apocalyptic nuclear war:

(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

The source is an old rhyme – the intent of which is to scare the wits out of children:

(Sing A Song Of Six Pence: Nursery Rhyme)

Below is another bit from the Dylan song about The Bomb:

(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

The source be a rhyme about childhood sexual curiosity:

(There Was A Little Boy: Nursery Rhyme)

But there’s more to the lyrics than that when Rimbaud’s poetic symbolism is taken into account. He, like poet William Blake, ridicules the Christian Church for celebrating with Christmas suppers the suppression of  human sexuality (symbolized Rimbaud does by the colour ‘red’ – Freud’s ‘Id’, ‘the other’, as it were). This fosters  psychological problems, according to the French poet.

With Existentialist humour, Dylan out-rimbauds Rimbard:

(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

The source, of course:

(Little Jack Horner: Nursery Rhyme)

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

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

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

————-

Bob Dylan And  Arthur Rimbaud Part 1 can be found here

————-

By Larry Fyffe

The French surrealist poet Arthur Rimbaud turns fairy tales and nursery rhymes up side down and inside out:

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, follows Rimbaud down the same dark path to the latrines:

Ambiguous the words are for sure – apparently the narrator, and the one to whom he is speaking to in the song, they weep not easily.

The first reference is to the Holy Bible:

(Luke 23:28)

These words are spoken at the time Jesus is going to be put to death; he  shows no remorse to the authorities of the status quo for his rebellious behaviour, and in return asks for no pity; He’s got God on his side as far as He is concerned.

The second reference is to a nursery rhyme:

(Nursery Rhyme)

Mixing in the message from the nursery rhyme – though He’s leaving everyone down on Earth to go astray, it’s best to leave the little shepherd Jesus alone  lest he starts to cry that he doesn’t really want to die.

It’s back to the Bible:

(I Corinthians 15:52)

Suggesting that the little boy eventually  gets to blast his horn, and though help comes too late to save Him from the cross, it comes just in the knick of time to save everybody else. The Universe unfolds as it should

The trumpet player asleep in the manger jumps up and begins to sing and dance that the times, they are a-changing.

Well anyhow, that’s one way to interpret the song ‘Scarlet Town’. Bob Dyan does not the dark as much as Rimbard does, and lights things up a little at the end of the song:

Rimbaud lights no such match:

.

By Tony Attwood

These are three songs from disk 2 of the Complete Basement Tapes set.

Big Dog sounds an interesting song but we only get about 20 seconds of it with some sort of technical glitch in the middle.  But we have a haiku for it

After this we get I’m your teenage prayer, which has already been reviewed.

So I’m going to jump on to One Man’s Loss which is a much more interesting song, for here we have Dylan working with a serious idea.  OK it is just a 12 bar blues, but at least he’s stopped fooling around and I get the feeling that with a big of work this could have turned into something worth considering for an album.

The always excellent Dylan Chords site has given us a good bash at the lyrics other than the first verse which due to the mix makes the vocal pretty hard to decipher.  The song has a very rough feel, and it is quite possible that Bob was nowhere near the mic when he sang the first verse.

But then he steps up

[Let's take a cherry], I can't make it no more
Can't stop, she's breaking all time on the floor
Better come down easy or don't come down at all
You don't try and to please me, somebody's gonna fall
One man's loss always is another man's gain
Yes, one man's joy always is another man's pain
.
Eight o'clock in the morning, [better] step aside
[let me be to your] warning, you better go by
Three times a loser, number 45
better not lose her, best stay alive
One man's loss always is another man's gain
Yes, one man's joy always is another man's pain
.
Wish I'd have found me [...] at the wall
One look at the watch, you better [lord at all]
You can't stop it or wait it [...] at night
Too hard to keep you waiting, calls me aside
One man's loss always is another man's gain
Yes, one man's joy always is another man's pain

It is quite extraordinary to listen to the CD, and hear all the bits of inconsequential playing and singing and hear the band slowly settle themselves down a bit – although not that much because the song that comes immediately before this one is “Be careful of the stones that you throw.”  Which if you don’t know it, is one of those mawkish country and western pieces in which the verses are spoken.

And then we get some real solid blues from Bob.

“One man’s loss” is track 22 on disc two, but only the fourth Dylan composition on the disc – all the others being traditional, blues or older pop songs.

But assuming that the tape is reproduced on the CD in the order it was recorded, Bob clearly was building up to trying to get his compositional act together.   The Dylan compositions thus far were 

• See you later Alan Ginsberg
• Tiny Montgomery
• Big Dog
• I’m your teenage prayer

But “One man’s loss” starts a run of seven originals, and it really brings hope that the messing about, and just playing through old songs.  OK, that promise isn’t always maintained because the next song is another snippet of just a few seconds (“One man’s loss”) but there is a suggestion that at last we are getting somewhere.

And even “One man’s loss” is annoying because it really does sound promising, but we have what we have, and ultimately that missing track might have been really good – or just another half idea.

As this disc of the Basement Tapes Complete suggests there is a lot of incidental music on the set, and its prime purpose is as a historical document that shows us just how Bob got things together.  Indeed it is not until we are onto disc 3 and some 55 songs on from the start that we start to hear the Band go back over songs to explore different ways of approaching them.

We are witnessing the artist in progress.  It may not be to everyone’s taste but it gives us clues as to how the great songwriter worked.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

“Hearts of Fire” was a 1987 movie that was widely panned by critics and which I must admit at once I have not seen.  But I have searched around such reviews as are available and have not found anything that looks like a positive review at all.

But the movie is still of interest because Dylan performs three songs in the movie, and two of them are originals.  The songs involved are Night after Night, The Usual, and Had a Dream about you Baby.  There was an album released of the movie which contains the songs but I don’t have a copy and don’t know anyone who does, and it is seemingly out of print,  so I am working from what is available on line.

I’ve already reviewed “Had a dream” without realising the context of the film, so that song is on the site.  Dylan’s performance of The Usual (written by John Hiatt) is good fun and there is a link to it below, but “Night after night” is more problematic.  If you know of a Dylan recording of the song which is available on line please do write in.

What I did find however were two versions of the song, the first of which (below)  is a perfectly reasonable recording.  There is another version which I think might be from the movie, but it is that so horrible that I am not going to put it up until the end of the review, in order to save you too much pain.  I am, if nothing else, a considerate reviewer.

Here’s the only recording that seems to work

There’s nothing particularly stunning about the song, in my opinion.  Here are the lyrics…

Night after night, you wander the streets of my mind
Night after night, don’t know what you think you will find
No place to go, nowhere to turn
Everything around you seems to burn, burn, burn
And there’s never any mercy in sight, night after night

Night after night
Night after night

Night after night, some new plan to blow up the world
Night after night, another old man kissing some young girl
You look for salvation, you find none
Just another broken heart, another barrel of a gun
Just another stick of dynamite, night after night

Night after night
Night after night

Night after night, you drop dead in your bed
Night after night, another bottle finds a head
Night after night, I think about cutting you loose
But I just can’t do it, what would be the use?
So I just keep a-holding you tight, night after night

Night after night after night after night after night
Night after night after night after night after night

As I have intimated the highlight of the three tracks for me is “The Usual” written by John Hiatt.  Dylan’s performance is something else.

And so, sadly, I return to the other version of “Night after Night”.  I am not sure that this is from the movie (it sounds to me more like someone mucking around in their sitting room) but something Heylin says about the accompaniment makes me think it just might be.

The video says it is a Cover, but it does also mention the movie.  However I had got the impression that Bob performs it in the movie.  A definitive view from anyone who has seen the movie or has the record will solve this.

Ready?

This really is horrible.

Are you sure you want to go on?

Honest?

OK – but you can’t claim from me for any damage to your personal well-being as a result of hearing this.  I have given you fair warning and I recommend you take out private health cover first…

If you have got through this and leave the video running you will get Had a Dream About you Baby.  But you may also require medical assistance.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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 1986 recording, which came at the same time as the wonderful “To fall in love with you” comes from the year which I gave the name “Experiment Experiment Experiment Genius Ignore” for the article on this year.

And indeed when I wrote that little piece I missed “Ride this train” which is as fine a truckin’ beat as you can imagine.  All it needs is the lyrics that give us new insights into the world of the endlessly travellin’ man and it would be there, played at the gigs and everyone bouncing up and down and clapping their hands on the off beats.

Indeed for those of us who like to go “off piste” when it comes to our Dylan listening 1986 is a singularly fascinating year…

• Band of the Hand (It’s hell time man)
• Rock em Dead
• You wanna ramble
• Got my mind made up
• Jammin Me
• Had a dream about you baby
• Ride this train
• To fall in love with you

And indeed I rather think we’ve got two more songs that fit into this period which were also missed as I compiled the chronology files.  If I can find copies on line I’ll do the reviews later.

The song sounds as if it has been going for a while before the tape started, and the one thing that immediately captures the ear is just how Ron Wood, seemingly the bass guitarist in the sessions, really is having a great time driving the train forwards.

As for the lyrics – actually I am not sure there are any that are properly worked out.  Indeed I suspect the whole play through was an attempt to find some.

And the fact is that by the end Bob hadn’t actually got anything that seems to have grabbed his attention enough to keep going.  Which is a shame because it is one hell of a pounding ride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYtdD2Tdl1Y

It is the sort of song that needs the old fashioned type of lines like

Dont you try playing with fire

You know it can’t get much higher

I am sure I heard that in there somewhere.  But if it is not to your taste you can always go back to “To fall in love with you” which was improvised next, and wonder perhaps not for the first time, how Bob could not have finished this.   Or imagine an album with both songs on it, one after the other.

Ah such dreams are what chronicling Bob is made of.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

With a focus on the lyrics of his songs, Bob Dylan presents a narrative through them that is highly consistent.

And it goes – The God of the Old Testament is a real tough-guy when He’s not obeyed:

In the city is left desolation
And the gate is smitten with destruction
(Isaiah 24 :12)

So it seems best to say nice things about God, and follow the orders of His superhuman crew; else bad things a-gonna happen to you – just like the bad stuff that happens to Adam and Eve:

O Lord, thou art my God
I will exalt thee
I will praise thy name ….
For thou hast made the city a heap
(Isaiah 25:1,2)

Dylan takes note of William Blake who refers to these verses of Isaiah when the poet criticizes the established religious order of his time. Blake castigates biblical ‘reformer’ Emanuel Swedenborg for helping God and Jesus escape to the outside of the physical Universe when they are most needed in town – leaving people on their own.

Blake claims that an artist, using imagination to the fullest, can become a God, be like the human Jesus, and create a mythological world of one’s own with tigers and lambs in it.

Swedenborg, according to Blake, instead stifles the creative imagination – folds it up:

Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb
His writings are the linen clothes folded up
(William Blake: The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan picks up the story:

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

There must be some way out of here, says Dylan. He’s a-gonna unroll the linen clothes, and roll the stone away from the tomb. Not so fast, Frederich Nietzsche interrupts – the heavenly life is reserved just for powerful masters. Ah, but if they’re lucky, innovative people who seek to get away from the status quo, have ‘Desolation Row’ to escape to, sings Dylan:

At midnight all the agents of the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more
than they do
Then they bring them to the factory where the
heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders, and then the kerosene
is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

In the French Quarter of Desolate City, the singer/songwriter befriends a poet who’s sleepin’ in the alleyway – and you’d never know it, but he was famous not that long ago in the musical ‘The Three Penny Opera’, as well as in the movie ‘If I Were A King’.

Dylan finds a kindred spirit in the poet – Francois Villon knows how it feels to be on your own on Desolation Row:

Have pity now, have pity now on me
If you at least would, friend of mine
I’m in the depths, not holly or may
In exile where I have been consigned
By fortune, as God too has designed
(Francois Villon: Epistre)

Inverting the thoughts of Swedenborg and other theologians who build walls that trap human beings in a dark physical world, Villon and Dylan see a light that comes shining from friendship and love; there’s something that does not love a wall; that wants it down:

He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
Everything I think about him now
Lord, I just can’t keep from cryin’
‘Cause he was a friend of mine
He died on the road
He died on the road
He never had enough money
To pay his room and board
He was a friend of mine
(He Was A Friend Of Mine)

From the rogue poetry of Villon, Dylan gains knowledge – no sense asking for directions to a home in heaven when you’re home on earth with Mom and God chasing after you:

If I was a king, I’d walk the straight and narrow
With a hundred stallions following me
And if I were a rogue, I’d leave at midnight in the barrow
With the Lone Ranger after me
Well, I rode six mare; I’d lay the wagon by the spare road
And here I stand with you facin’ me
And O Lord – the cost, my blood and my marrow
With your hand always chasin’ me
Well, I’d give all I had to tell her just one word
And for a kiss, I’d throw it all into the sea
Ah, but here I stand on a lake without a sparrow
None at hand to comfort me
And if I was a rogue, I’d give her all of my luck
And take my chances with that lake and this blue sea
(Bob Dylan: If I Was A King ~ Emmett Sherlock)

Best to dance like Jesus, and sing like a sparrow.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

Jammin Me is not recognised by BobDylan.com as a Dylan song, but he certainly was one of the three co-writers.  It was released on the Heartbreakers album “Let me Up (I’ve had enough)” and as a single.

Mike Campbell in an interview said that he wrote the track, gave it to Tom Petty who then did nothing with it for a while and then had some extra lyrics added by Dylan.  Campbell in fact suggests,  “I guess they were picking words out of a newspaper or off the television” which is certainly one way of working…

“I wasn’t there when Bob wrote the words to it, but I was pretty thrilled to hear that he had contributed to it. We just went in and recreated the demo to it.

Heylin suggests that lines such as “Take back your acid rain, let your TV bleed” and “Take back your Iranian torture and the apple in young Steve’s eye,” sound very much like Dylan contributions.

According to Rolling Stone the song is about a man, “overwhelmed by the volume of disconnected news generated in the disinformation age”.   Indeed the album’s theme is generally agreed to be about people “who are reeling from media assaults and shattered relationships”, but who still want to hold on and make some sense of it all.

As to who wrote what, Tom Petty said that Bob wrote the verse about Eddie Murphy.  He also suggested that Eddie Murphy didn’t appreciate the commentary, although Tom Petty said that there was nothing personal in this – it was just about the total media overload.

The song and the album became a hit and received positive reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone.

The song has a real Tom Petty feel – you only have to hear those chords to know who is going to be performing and how it’s going to go.  Here are the lyrics and there is a link to the song below.

Bob Dylan And Emanuel Swedenborg (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

Many of the song lyrics of Bob Dylan show the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Swedenborg envisions a separate spiritual world at odds with the material world – the microcosmic world of the individual human only corresponds to its intended formulation by God. According to Swedenborg, the Word of God tells us this is so: the secret to knowing the goodly purpose of our being in the Universe is to have someone chosen by Absolute One to uncover the hidden meanings in the Word of God (since human language is inherently unclear).

The rationalism and empiricism of the Deistic Enlightenment banishes the biblical God of Judeo-Christianity from the the workings of the Universe. Intuitive insight tells Swedenborg, a scientist himself, that he’s been divinely selected to bring God back home to the inhabitants on Earth.

Swedenborg decodes the Holy Scriptures to mean, for instance, that the Sun is a manifestation in the material world which corresponds to the mysterious life force of the far away Godhead; its light be His Love. Thusly decoded, the Scriptures tell us that, in the human form of Jesus, God becomes manifest on Earth for a time.

Humans are left by God with the choice to think for themselves through the employment of language in various formats, i.e., deductively, inductively, intuitively, imaginatively, whatever. Sometimes individuals act in mischievous ways, and sure enough, William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe fog things up again. Since neither claims himself to be a ‘prophet’, it’s difficult to fathom whether Blake and Poe are expanding on Swedenborg’s ideas or making fun of them.

The material world for Blake is not a flawed reflection of some separate and better spiritual place, but a world in and of itself that is an entangled mixture of dark and light forces where individual humans themselves bear the responsibility for balancing devil-like physical urges with angel-like altruistic love that they also harbour.

Blake compares the ‘it’s either back or it’s white’ moralists like Emanuel Swedenborg to Satan, and changes the name of Swedenborg’s ‘Heaven And Hell’ to ‘The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell”:

I saw a serpent rise ….
Vomiting his poison out
On the bread and on the wine
So I turned into a sty
And laid me down with the swine
(William Blake: I Saw A Chapel)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, with a bottle of whiskey called ‘Heaven’s Door’, in his hand, is content to lie down in a similar ‘Hell’ :

Right now, I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Unless you mail them
From Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

The Gothic poet of repulsion and attraction renounces Swedenborg’s isolated spiritual world and copes psychologically as best he can with the physical world in which Swedenborg claims that Man is trapped:

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven
Went envying her and me
Yes – that was the reason (as all men know
In the kingdom by the sea)
That the cold wind came out of the cloud by night
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee ….
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling – my life and my bride
In her sepulchre there by the sea
In her tomb by the sounding sea
(EdgarAllan Poe: Annabel Lee)

And Bob Dylan, with black humour, advises Swedenborg’s angels to stay right where they are:

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost
(Bob Dylan: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues)

Dylan explores the teachings of more conventional Christian offshoots than Swedenborgism in gospel songs that he’s writes. Christian-oriented Dylanologists tend to turn a blind eye to the influence of Blake and Poe’s poetry lurking there in the song lyrics of Dylan – so much the worse for understanding Bob Dylan’s artistic genius.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

To a certain degree this is a reworking of the 1973 composition “You angel you” although to be fair there are only certain elements of that original song which turn up here.

This 1985 song that was intended for Empire Burlesque but left on the cutting room floor (as it were).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPiQv8uMX3s

There are multiple locations on the internet that have this song so if my link above doesn’t work just search on your search engine and it is more than likely that one of the others will still be there and working.

What may not be there however will be a set of lyrics – although there are multiple sites that claim to have them.  What they have however is the name of Bob Dylan are the lyrics of “The Very Thought of You” written by Ray Nobel in 1934.  In case you want to hear that song there are also multiple versions on line.

But since I like Billie Holiday here’s her version of that 1930s classic… (the Dylan commentary continues below).

Anyway, back to Bob Dylan, and it is interesting that the official Bob Dylan site doesn’t have this song listed by Bob Dylan at all.  (Maybe those people from official Bob Land who have kindly taken an interest in what we are doing here might like to correct that.  I suspect they have been as misled by the title as were the guys who put up the lyrics sites using a computer without ever checking the songs.  This is a Dylan original I can assure BobDylan.com.

Below are the lyrics as far as I can work them out.  However you will know if you are a regular reader that I am utterly useless as transcribing Dylan lyrics so I would welcome a complete reworking by anyone who has the time, as long as you promise not to laugh at my feeble rendition here.  When I get something that works I’ll replace my version with of course a full credit to the reader who helps.

And there could be a prize.  BobDylan.com might recognise your talent and hire you for transcriptions.  Or maybe not.

The very thought of you
Oh what it can do
Deep in my mind I'm so intertwined
With the very thought of you
The very thought of you
Oh what it can do
Turn me down I'm ironed out ???
To the very thought of you
Dont you see the the things that last
From the best of wicked charms
See the place when you call my name
Just as soon as I am ????
The very thought of you
Oh what it can do
I can't get ? but I can't escape
From the very thought of you

[instrumental]

Oh don't you see the things that last
from the best of wicked charms
And my ?  are ? when you call my name
Just as soon as I ?
The very thought of you
Oh what it can do
I can take but I can't escape
From the very thought of you

I think this is a perfectly viable song – hardly one a great Dylan composition, but a nice piece of light relief, and an interesting way of reworking a very famous song title from a previous era.

But I’m not too knocked out by the lead guitar’s three chords at the end of each line that run after “The very thought of you” and “Oh what it can do”.   It is ok the first time but it wears a bit thin after a while.

What we have got here is a very pleasant melody and it bounces along.   As for the link with “You Angel You” the live performances I can find on the internet have Bob removing some of the nuances of the album version which really allow us to hear the similarities, but this is quite fun

As for the context of Bob’s writing at the time this is what we have (remembering always that this is one of the most contentious periods of Dylan’s work for dating the songs since some of the songs such as “Well well well” were written at this time and then left for others to complete later.  It is the section where more than any other I differ completely from Heylin in my order of composition).

I find it interesting to do these context lists because they can reveal some interesting points (well, interesting to me).  Such as “Straight A’s in Love” uses an old title for a new song (as the review points out) and here we have Bob doing it again with “The Very Thought of You”.  I am not sure he went further than that, but this fact that two songs using old titles were written one after the other shows it wasn’t Bob forgetting that a classic with this title already existed – he was trying out the idea of using old song titles for new songs.

And why not.  Here’s the list of songs in the order that they were composed (according to my data at least).

• Maybe Someday (Knocked out loaded)
• Seeing the real you at last  (Empire Burlesque)
• I’ll remember you (Empire Burlesque)
• Trust Yourself  (Empire Burlesque)
• Straight A’s in Love
• The Very Thought of You
• Emotionally Yours (Empire Burlesque)
• Well well well
• Howlin at your window
• Tragedy of the trade
• Time to end this masquerade
• Waiting to get beat (Empire Burlesque outtake)
• When the night comes falling from the sky (Empire Burlesque)
• Never gonna be the same again  (Empire Burlesque)
• Dark Eyes (Empire Burlesque)
• Shake (Farm Aid)
• Under your spell (Knocked out loaded)

There are of course no guarantees of prizes in music, either for the composers who have completed Bob Dylan songs when he can’t find a good tune, nor for any one of us trying to get the transcription right.   You can find loans for bad credit no guarantor but not a guarantee that Bob’s publishers will acknowledge you.  We can but hope.

By Larry Fyffe

The Romantic Transcendentalist poets (in particular, mystics Samuel Coleridge and John Keats) are influenced to varying degrees by the Christian Gnostic Emanuel Swedenborg. The Transcendental Romantics claim that the guiding voice of the Absolute One can be heard whispering in the wind, and that the warmth of His heart can be felt pumping throughout the physical Universe. The Almighty Creator be present first to spread comfort and love to the creatures that will live there.

Swedenborg is a stranger to them, however, in that he holds that nearly all earth-bound inhabitants are incapable of knowing anything about the nature of the Absolute One. According to Swedenborgian mysticism, the darkness of individual self-interest comes to obscure much of the light that reaches the material world . The weight of matter is out of balance: for example, women and their angelic spirits are not able to correspond.

Fortunately, Jesus is the emanation, the morning light, and manifests on earth as the messenger from the Unknowable God; Jesus, One with God, restores the balance as it once was on earth. Swedenborg’s Gnostic picture is not painted all black. Jesus departs the physical world having given its inhabitants inspiration to choose goodness over hell-on-earth. And He ain’t coming back a second time.

Gothic poet Edgar Allan Poe frowns on those Transcendentalists whom he considers to be over-the-rainbow clowns – who hide their faces in masks in order to shield themselves from the horror of darkness and death that exists in the material world:

Out -out are the lights – out all
And, over each quivering form
The curtain, a funeral pall
Comes down with the rush of a storm
While the angels, all pallid and wan
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man’
And it’s hero, the Conqueror Worm
(Edgar Allan Poe: The Conqueror Worm)

Within many of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics lurk the dark shadows of Poe’s poetry. In some, Dylan mocks the Romantic Transcendentalists’ optimistic assurance of a better world in the offing:

The widow’s cry, the orphan’s plea
Everywhere you look, more misery
Come along with me, babe, I wish you would
You know what I’m sayin’, it’s all good
All good
I said, it’s all good
All good
(Bob Dylan: It’s All Good – with Hunter)

Taking into consideration that they criticize Swedenborg for underestimating the power of the creative imagination, William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe are influenced quite a bit by Swedenborg’s writings. So too is Bob Dylan, and he gets to mix the dark view of humanity portrayed by canonized Judeo-Christianity with modern surrealistic images taken from those who write about the subconsciousness mind, i.e., Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Bob Dylan employs Swedenborg-influenced Carl Jung’s archetypal symbols like Eve ruining the harmony that once existed in the Universe. The image of a caring woman returning to an Edenic home where Adam lives safe from hell-on-earth is typical of Dylan:

Now there’s spiritual warfare, and flesh
and blood breaking down
You either got faith or you got unbelief
and their ain’t no neutral ground
The enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived
When the truth’s in our hearts, and we still don’t believe
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
You know that I can’t make it by myself
I’m a little too blind to see
(Bob Dylan: Precious Angel)

In the song below, Dylan’s persona sounds like a Puritan preacher spitting brimstone and hellfire at a wayward woman:

You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder you still know how to breathe
After reachin’ yesterday, I said there might be
some fodder at the well
Peace and quite’s been avoidin’ me for so long
It seems like a livin’ hell
There’s a lone soldier on the hill
Watchin’ the fallin’ rain drops pour
You’d never know it to look at him
But at the final shot, he won the war
After losin’ every battle
I woke up on the hillside
Daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Bringing it all back home to the oft-Gothic Romantic:

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side
(John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci)

Like the Swedenborg messenger John Chapman (‘Appleseed’) who seeds the country with the goodly light of unselfish and peaceful behaviour, the singer/songwriter shines some humourous light on the ideal woman who understands what a man realy needs:

But in love, crazy love, you get straight A’s
In history, you don’t do too well
You don’t know how to read
You could confuse Geronimo
With Johnny Appleseed
(Bob Dylan: Straight A’s In Love)

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

To those of us of a certain age in England Bill Haley was our introduction to rock n roll, simply because it was sanitised enough to be broadcastable on the BBC (there were no commercial radio channels at the time in the UK).  It was only as we discovered European radio stations that actually played hard core rock and blues that we found there was so much more.  The Bill Haley sound today would be called rockabilly I think.

But as a child I liked Bill Haley and actually had a 78rpm vinyl of “See you later Alligator”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch1UQ47rWKU

But, in case you don’t know, Bill Haley and his Comets continued to tour for years, and I did get to see them later.  Sadly Bill Haley died in 1981 aged just 55.

The song was written by Robert Charles Guidry and first recorded by him under the name Bobby Charles and released on Chess as “Later, Alligator”.

The melody was based to a certain degree on  Guitar Slim’s “Later for You, Baby” which was recorded in 1954.

The song was also recorded by Roy Hall, who had written and recorded “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (which of course you’ll know as well as this song) just ten weeks before.  How it all goes around.

Aside from the chance to mention those recordings, I really wondered if I should be reviewing Dylan’s “See you Later Allen Ginsberg” as a Dylan song since it takes the essence of “See you later alligator” and changes the last word to the name of the leader of the beat generation (as Wiki calls him).   All that is added is a bit of reverb and other tape effects.  The guys, in short, are larking around.

But it was an excuse to play some Bill Haley, and be sad about his life (he had severe problems with alcohol and later a brain tumour), and remember a bit of my childhood with 78rpm records.

The tune is the same as the original, and the lyrics on Dylan’s version are

See you later alligator
(Alligator alligator)
After a while crocodile
(Crocodile, crocodile)
See you later alligator
(Crocodile) alligator
After a while crocodile

Crocogator crocogator
Alli-crile alli-crile
Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg after a while
Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg after a while
Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg

There is however a Bob Dylan Haiku for the song which gives the recording a certain credibility.

Bob and the Band
Say adios to Ginsberg
Over and over.

Eyolf Østrem has even done a chord chart for the song.  Maybe these guys are my sort of age and remember the old timers and do it for Bill Haley’s sake.

As for Allen Ginsberg, I somehow have a feeling he deserves better than this.  But perhaps my little review here might actually encourage someone to read Howl – you can read it here.

The poem’s fame was added to by a 1957 obscenity trial on the grounds that it described homosexual sex.    In his ruling on the case Judge Clayton W. Horn stated that “Howl” was not obscene, adding, “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?”  It was a significant step forward for writers in America to be able to write about the subjects that they wished to write about, as the “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” gave writers in the UK in 1960.

I’ve argued elsewhere on this site that one of the problems Dylan faced in working to take music into a new dimension of expression was that the beat poets had found a way to do this with words, but the form of popular music was stuck with rock n roll’s use of three chords and a beat while singing about love, lost love and dance, and folk music was using the forms generated that evolved from the 19th century to sing about the topics found in protest folk that Dylan was associated with in his early days.

My view, for what it is worth, and it is just my view, is that the breakthrough for music came with Subterranean Homesick Blues which really did kick the possibilities forwards, in 1965.

As for these two recordings, I’d say they don’t actually add anything, and really, claiming Dylan as the composer is pushing it a bit.

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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

The lyrics of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, as previously shown, deal with American history – its capitalist economics, puritanical religion, ardent militarism, and materialistic culture.

The Puritans, with the deterministic doctrines – the ‘predestination’ belief that all mankind is decrepit because Adam and Eve sinned, and the belief that all-seeing God has already chosen the ‘elect’ that will be saved – have a strong impact on the myths of the ‘America Dream’.

Edward Taylor, in the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, be a Puritan poet, a true believer in divine creationism.

In the following poem, he asks questions purely rhetorical:

Upon what base was fixed the lath, wherein
He turned this globe, and riggalled it so trim?
Who blew the bellows of his furnace vast?
Or held the mould wherein the world was cast?
(Edward Taylor: The Preface)

A later preRomantic British poet by the name of William Blake (like Taylor, influenced by the Metaphysical poets), is a bit more more skeptical, and an anti-predestinationist to boot:

What the hammer? What the chain
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare it’s deadly terrors clasp?
(William Blake: The Tiger)

Taylor rhymes ‘vast/cast’; Blake, ‘grasp/clasp’.

Bob Dylan rejects not the hard work ethos of John Calvinist’s Purutanism, but considers ‘Lady Luck’ to be an idol worth worshipping:

They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

The lyrics of Dylan songs indicate that he does not believe that God gives a ‘sign’ that He has certain chosen people that He favours – not by saving them from death at critical moments in history, anyway:

When the Reaper’s task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loviest and the best
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

Neither William Blake nor John Calvin gets a nod from God:

Calvin, Blake, and Wilson
Gambled in the dark
Not one of them would ever live to
Tell the tale on the disembark
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

In a figurative Christian conceit, Edward Taylor petitions that the faults he has are not sufficient signs that his name is missing from the list of the special elect. The poet hopes that he’s still nonetheless favoured by the Christ (‘the rose’); and by His Father:

Shall not thy rose my garden fresh perfume?
Shall not thy beauty my dull heart assail?
Shall not thy golden gleams run through the gloom?
Shall my black velvet mask thy fair face veil?
Pass over my faults shine forth, bright sun; arise
Enthrone thy rosy self within my eyes
(Edward Taylor: Reflection)

Whether or not directy familiar with Taylor’s poem, the singer/songwriter sticks with the sexual suggestiveness of the images found in ‘Solomon’s Song’:

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

From Puritanism comes the concept of the ‘American Dream’; it’s a dream waiting there for everyone to be fulfilled, and gain material wealth for themselves – a sign from the Calvinist God to special individuals that they have God on their side:

Lord, feed mine eyes then with thy doings rare
And fat my heart with these ripe fruits thou barest
Adorn my life well with thine works; make fair
My person with apparel thou preparest
My boughs shall loaded be with fruits that spring
Up from thy works while to thy praise I sing
(Edward Taylor: Should I With Silver Tools)

Not quite so fast, saith Dylan – the sign of real richness comes, not from external wealth, but from igniting the Spirit that lies within oneself, and letting it shine forth:

Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind
Say, ‘Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign’
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within
When what’s lost has been found
What’s to come has already been
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

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+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.

We also now 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