Untold Dylan

by Tony Attwood

Many of the songs I’ve been looking at, of late, exist just as ideas – short sequences which turn into jam sessions, but are clearly not yet worked out.   And some of these are very good indeed.

This song is different however for it was worked through and almost made it onto Shot of Love album – it was only removed at the last.

And indeed this is a bit of an oddity for it retains the frothiness of some of the incomplete songs recorded around this time but which were not completed, but doesn’t have any of the solidity and bite of other songs that Dylan composed immediately after.

But Dylan was serious about “Magic” – it was recorded three times in two different sessions in April 1981 and we do have a recording of the first of these takes – the one that was considered for the album.  The picture given with the video is irrelevant – it is a full band performance, and well rehearsed.

Heylin notes that the song was not copyrighted until much later, and he suggests that could be because of the problem of transcribing the lyrics – which I guess means no one had the nerve to go up to Bob and ask him what he was singing.  It’s another one where I certainly would not want to guess.

It is also interesting that here we really in the era of the recording and mixing Caribbean Wind, and yet this song is so light and frothy – it hardly seems to come from the same songwriter.  It is as if Bob wants to prove that he can work in all genres at once.

Certainly musically Bob is moving a long way away from the three and four chord pieces which go around and around, as he had been playing with on the proto-tracks recorded as he worked on the album.

The two introductory instrumental bars (the guitar melody and the triple drum beat at the end) are very much standard pop concepts, which make me feel that maybe Bob really was saying, I can do some basic pop as well as the religious stuff and the heavy duty meaningful lyrics, and the blues and…

And yes he can, but whether it is a song worthy of the album, I think not – at least not at this stage.  It certainly doesn’t qualify (for me at least) as anything like a “lost gem”.

I think to make this point more solidly one might also consider that also in these sessions Bob was trying out Dead Man Dead Man which has so much more power and force – contrasting these two songs which must have been written within a few days of each other, one would hardly believe that the same person could have written them.  It’s not that I’m not aware of how many different formats Dylan can write it, it is just the speed at which he can jump from one to another that continues to take me by surprise.

“Dead Man” is musically much, much simpler than “Magic” and yet somehow it seems to say much more.

But “Magic” was most seriously considered for the album and seemingly was only dropped right at the last.

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Untold’s intrepid investigators have uncovered a list of authors whose works these lawyers want the courts to ban and remove, and preferably ordered to be burned. As well, we are filing reports on the ongoing civil case:

1) Geoffrey Chaucer

Dylan lawyers contend that Geoffrey Chaucer, and others named as defendants, knew beforehand, or should have known, what their client was going to write.

To wit, the evidence presented to the court makes it clear that it is their client who writes:

(Bob Dylan: My Wife’s Home Town)

Hood, Einstein, Monk, And Associates assert that nevertheless the aforementioned Chaucer goes right ahead and pens:

(Geoffrey Chaucer: Monk’s Tale)

Likewise the lawyers submit that the works of the following poet should be banned, if not outright destroyed:

2) William Blake

They point out to the judge that it is their client who writes:

(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

The lawyers note that it cannot be mere coincidence that the defendant poet came up with the exact same wording:

(William Blake: The Tiger)

They add that it is common knowledge that Scots are thieves, and, as a civil punishment, the following poet’s work must at the very least be taken from public view:

3) Robert Burns

Submits the law firm – the evidence presented before the court clearly demonstrates that the lyrics below were written by its client:

My heart’s In the Highlands at the break of dawn

(Bob Dylan: Highlands)

And that the poetic lines placed as evidence before the court in no  way vary enough to avoid censure:

My heart’s in the highlands, my heart is not here

(Robert Burns: My Heart’s In The Highlands)

Indeed, there is evidence of a Scottish conspiracy to steal the artistic creations of Bob Dylan, claims Mr. Hood, the head lawyer for the plaintiff, and justice demands that the arrows of civil law strike down the works of the following poet:

4) Sir Walter Scott

The documents submitted to the court, says Mr.Hood, clearly demonstrate that Bob Dylan writes:

(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

The sneaky Scot cannot avoid a civil penalty by changing a couple of words, the lawyer argues:

(Sir Walter Scott: The Fire-King)

5) John Milton

The other two lawyers for the plaintiff chime in and demand that the judge order that all the works of the above-mentioned poet be thrown into a furnace because it is Bob Dylan who writes:

But any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Chnged)

Holding up a copy of ‘Paradise Lost’, Mr, Monk declares that the lines below obviously belong to his client, and a civil remedy is called for:

(John Milton: Paradise Lost)

“It’s a sin!”, Mr. Monk tells the judge.

Untold has just now received an injunction requested by the court-appointed defendants’ lawyer to refrain from reporting on any more of the court proceedings. We consider this an affront to freedom of speech and will appeal.

Mr. Attwood has assured his investigative reporters that he will be happy to cover all court costs pertaining thereto.

Stay tuned.

(Publishers footnote: the penultimate paragraph of this article may contain a serious falsehood and should not be confused with any representation of reality either in this universe or anywhere else.)

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

If you are a regular reader of this site you will know I have been meandering around the outtakes from Shot of Love, which can be found on the internet, and reviewing each one in turn.  Which does mean that on occasion we come across songs that are little more than simple ideas which are tried the once, and then abandoned.

And this is as basic as it can get – two chords repeated three times and then the dominant chord ready to make it happen again and again, and (if it comes down it) again.

There are some other words including “nobody knows” or maybe it is “where it goes nobody knows” but either way the song is not getting anywhere much by the time Bob, the band and the lady singers come to a conclusion and abandon it forever.

However that is not to say it is not promising.  With work it could get somewhere, because it does have a fascinating and compelling rhythm.

And it takes us back to the recent theme of Bob Dylan and water which was explored more fully in “On a Rocking Boat” and Dylan’s love of sailing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZzH6Ae4CI

Indeed if you want to take this whole issue of Dylan and the elements further you might want to look at Larry’s article “Air/wind symbolism in the song lyrics of Bob Dylan”

And just because I am writing on this topic, you might also like to know that in 2015 the British newspaper the Daily Mail ran the headline on an article…

“Pop’s most weather-obsessed star? The answer is blowing in the wind”

They then claimed that “30 per cent of Bob Dylan’s 542 songs contain references to the climate” and that “Scientists from five leading universities collected the weather-related data” while noting that “Just 7 per cent of Rolling Stone magazine’s best songs mention weather”.

The article goes on to say

“Lead author Dr Sally Brown, from the University of Southampton, said: ‘We were all surprised how often weather is communicated in popular music, whether as a simple analogy or a major theme of a song, such as Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind or the Hollies’ Bus Stop, where a couple fall in love under an umbrella.’

“Sun and rain featured in 37 per cent of the references to weather, with wind in third place.

“The researchers found more extreme weather, such as tornadoes and blizzards, barely feature.    The researchers said they found the sun ‘portrayed positive feelings and is more likely to be in a major key, whereas rain could frame either good or bad emotions, so has a higher likelihood than sun of being in a minor or mixed key’.

“And many of the songs with secondary references in the database had little or nothing to do with the weather, such as Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, Daddy Cool by Boney M, and Benny and the Jets by Elton John.

“No one has taken nearly as much inspiration from the weather as Dylan or the Beatles, meaning there is not a number three, four or five in the list.  But other songwriters who refer to climate include Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys.”

So there we are.  I am now off to write a smash hit song about gale force winds blowing across the North Sea, which will perhaps rhyme with “bringing my baby back to me” suggesting that my darling is either a fisherwoman, or working on an oil rig (as opposed to working in a coal mine, going down down down).

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Relentlessly, from the moment the Nobel committee announced that they were awarding a Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, critics have said that he doesn’t deserve the award.  The primary argument is that he’s a song writer not a pure poet and that his poetry doesn’t stand up to scrutiny strictly as poetry.  In other words, it needs the music to work as poetry.

This is a scurrilous argument.  It is the same type of argument that says that baseball played with a designated hitter is not real baseball; that autobiographical fiction is not real fiction; that food from one particular cuisine prepared by a chef who grew up in a different culture is not genuine; that folk music with electric guitars is not real folk music; or that an online casino is not a real casino.

Some Truth but…

There may be some truth to each of these arguments.  The designated hitter in baseball changed strategy dramatically but the old cliché about baseball still remains: ball or strike; fair or foul; safe or out.

Most first novels are very autobiographical.  Are J.D.Salinger’s or Harper Lee’s first novels not good fiction because they were based on the authors’ childhoods?

If a chef can only cook his grandmother’s food, what do we need chefs for?  How dare you use turkey necks in grandma’s chicken soup?

If Bob Dylan proved anything as a musician it is that musical genres form a Venn diagram with a great deal of overlap and that the overlap enhances the music rather than detract from it.

An online casino cannot simulate or recreate the excitement of a land based casino.  Land based casinos can’t offer the many things online casinos, like FairGo Casino can offer such as unlimited free play, no waiting, hundreds of games, bonuses, and cuddly digital mascots.

What is Poetry?

If all poets were to be judged on the standard set by Robert Frost, no poet would merit a Nobel Prize.  George Orwell was the foremost essayist of our time—he was famously called the conservative essayist that liberals liked the most and the liberal essayist that conservatives liked the most.  W Somerset Maugham said that to Herman Melville “all is song”; does that preclude any novel that is less “musical” than Moby Dick?  We seem to have entered a kind of circular argument.

Like a Rolling Stone

Let’s see if this lyric stands alone as valuable poetry.

Dylan is speaking to an anonymous woman, Miss Lonely.  He sneers at her with the words a parent might use on a child in a disciplinary way; here the words drip with contempt.  She is on her own with no way home because she no longer has daddy to cover her extravagances and the shock is mesmerizing.  Suddenly, she realizes that she has no one and is important to no one.  The coup de grace is the reference to a rolling stone.

A rolling stone carries no moss.

Papa was a rolling stone.

Dylan, for all his dislike of Miss Lonely is telling her that she now has the chance, the challenge, and the obligation to herself to be a rolling stone.  A rolling stone is a work in progress.  The image is a reference to the Christian view that only a soul that has been reborn, that changes from being a rolling stone to being one with Jesus, earns absolute forgiveness and everlasting life.  A soul that is one with Jesus no longer is on its own—it is with Jesus and his vast community; no longer has no direction home—is home; no longer is a complete unknown—is completely known to Jesus, his followers, and to the world by its acts; and is no longer a rolling stone.

Jewish or ….?

For better or worse, Bob Dylan has always been a work in progress.  He grew up in a Jewish home in Hibbing, a cold, northern Minnesota mining town.  He seems to have been restless, to feel confined, to see himself as a rolling stone from his youth.

He ran away from home often but never got far.  His first musical love was rock and roll but he abandoned it for folk music because, although he felt that rock and roll was powerful as music, the songs weren’t serious enough for him.

He attended the University of Minnesota for one year and then dropped out at age 19 to pursue folk music in New York City.  In New York, he began using the name Bob Dylan.  He said years later that he wanted a name that suited him more than Zimmerman.

Soon after entering the folk music scene Dylan found it too confining as well.  His songs Like a Rolling Stone and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall both use a more subjective creative line than in traditional folk.  And his break from acoustic to electric guitar sealed his fate as an apostate to the folk music “religion”.

Dylan converted to Christianity but never lost the Jewish roots that led him to his conversion.  Some have said that he has backslid from his conversation but it’s more likely that he came to find Christianity in this life to be too confining.

Dylan as Poet

If Dylan’s life is a work in progress; if his music and lyrics strive to express the highest emotions and truths; if he has never wavered from seeking God wherever God may be found, then his poetry should be judged through those lenses, not through the lens of other poets.

By Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan dips into the poetic well of bisexual aristocrat-turned-rebel Lord Byron. Like Byron, Dylan uses hyperbolic conceits to depict the magnetic sexual attractiveness of muses who bring light into a world of woe.

Dylan gives Suze Rotolo a book of Byron’s poems – oft Cervantes-like, black-humoured and satirical these poems be -, and he inscribes the book to indicate that it is a gift from “Lord Byron Dylan”. Bob and his wife Sara name their son Jesse Byron Dylan.

In the long poem ‘Don Juan’, Byron’s persona is purchased at a slave market by one of the Sultan’s wives, and he is disguised as a woman. The Sultan’s wife, who feels unloved, is addressed by the guardian of the oda as:

Bride of the sun and sister of the moon
(‘Twas thus he spake) and empress of the earth
Whose frown would put the spheres all out of tune
Whose smiles make all the planets dance with mirth
(Lord Byron: Don Juan, Canto V)

In the song lyrics below, Bob Dylan puts on his Don Juan mask; thus spake Zimmerman:

Well the weak get weaker
And the strong stay strong
The train keeps rolling
All night long
She looked at me
With an irresistable glance
With a smile
That could make all the planets dance
(Bob Dylan: Marchin’ To The City)

An influence on Edgar Allan Poe and on Bob Dylan, the poetry of Byron be:

One shade the more, one ray the less
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place
(Lord Bryon: She Walks In Beauty)

Lenore, the raven, companion of the poetic alchemists as they stir together the elements – wind, fire, earth and water – in search of spiritual freedom from the physical body:

The wind howls like a hammer
The night wind blows cold and rainy
My love, she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

Lord Byron’s mock epic has the spirit of Don Juan’s servant Pedro departing his physical body rather quickly:

Pedro, his valet, too, he tried to save
But the same cause, conducive to his loss
Left him so drunk, he jumped into the wave
As o’er the cutters edged he tried to cross
And so he found a wine-and-watery grave
(Lord Bryon: Don Juan, Canto II)

In the kitchen mixing up the recipe for another song, Bob Dylan humourously cooks up a modern day Don Juan persona for himself. He’s a not-so-chivalrous Scottish gypsy with a valet who takes Dale Carnegie courses while being pursued by beautiful women:

Gypsy Davey with a blow torch, he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him, he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

Lord Byron takes ‘Ianthe,’ a young girl, as his muse. In Egyptian mythology, Iphis is a female bought up as a boy who falls in love with the beautiful Ianthe (Lily), and she with ‘him’; Isis, daughter of the mother sky goddess (Isis is the wife of her brother Osiris who is killed by his brother Seth), saves the day by transforming Iphis into a man. A ‘Peri’ is a Zoroastrian fairy-spirit:

Young Peri of the West! – ‘this well for me
My years already doubly number thine
My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee
And safely view thy ripening beauties shine
(Lord Byron: To Ianthe)

Ùnfamiliar with Egyptian mythology, Bob Dylan is not:

Isis, oh Isis, you mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin’ rain
(Bob Dylan: Isis)

Drawing upon mythologies, Dylan (like Byron) questions the worth of Wordsworthian Romantic Transcendentalism in modern industrial society:

Ramona, come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Will pass as your senses will rise
For the flowers of the city
Though breath-taking, get death-like sometimes
And there’s no use in tryin’
To deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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 song is included here because it is, as far as I know, a Dylan composition, and we are trying to cover all the Dylan compositions.  A recording of it exists (see below) and so I’m adding it to the list.

But I really am very unsure if there is any particular merit in this experiment.  For while there are several of these “Shot of Love” outtakes that do seem to me to be on the edge of being very interesting compositions, nothing here seems to be leading in an interesting direction.

What we get is a simple reggae rhythm with a repeating chord sequence, for each verse, and then the same sequence with the Ah Ah Ah.

And then suddenly and without warning at around 3 minutes 20 seconds everything comes to a halt and we have an intermediate bit which doesn’t appear to have too much to do with anything else around – not does it appear (to my ears) to be going anywhere itself.

Then it is back to Ah Ah Ah.

If you stay with the whole recording you’ll hear that Dylan does have a couple of goes to make more sense out of the slowed down interlude, and does keep coming back to it.  And maybe it could have gone somewhere in the end, if the chorus had not been so stuck on “Ah Ah Ah”.

Bob certainly did keep trying – the recording is just on eight minutes long, but whereas I can see where the other songs were going, (or could have gone,) this one seems to be going nowhere.  So for me an experiment that didn’t have any particular merit and was rightly abandoned.  But that’s not to say I’m right.  It is just how I hear it.

However if you play the piece all the way through you do get some idea of what else Bob and the band were playing with at the time, and such background material is always interesting.

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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 Dylan song from April 1981 is another that is listed by Heylin but without any discussion or detail.  I suppose because the lyrics are incomplete it leaves him without much to say, since he so rarely ventures into matters of music per se.

But I think one really needs to with Bob Dylan.  Yes he won the Nobel Prize for literature, but he has always been a musician.   And here it’s all about the rhythm and really it is one hell of a rhythm.

Clearly this is not just a rough run through for the first time, for the female singer/s certaintly know where all this is going, as do the band with the very unexpected chord change at the end of the verses.

Even without accompanying lyrics that go much beyond the title there is just such power and energy that surely must rank this up there, if not above some of those half materialised hotel room songs.

In fact I would rate this as something worthy of a band who might want to create another Dylan co-composition.  The great man has given his permission for this to happen in the past, so why not again?

The main thrust of the song works around the sequence

B  F#

with F# being the tonic.

Indeed F sharp is a very unusual song for Bob to play in, but that is where he is here.   The unusual twist at the end of the verse (which they miss the first time but get right the last two times) is

C#   E   B  F#

It is a very effective change.

The only problem with the song (apart from the fact that Bob hasn’t written the words by the time this recording gets its run through) is that it is hard to see how it would fit into “Shot of Love” as it was finally constituted – but with this, Shot of Love would have been a totally different album – and who knows what other great songs could have been included.

Caribbean Wind perhaps?

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s creative genius comes to the fore in his narrative song lyrics. Often unnoticed by analysts is how Dylan chops up and mixes together a number of bits and pieces from different writers in a single plot:

When she comes home she shakes her fist in my face
And cries, ‘False coward, avenge thy wife
By God’s bones, I will have thy knife’
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Monk’s Prologue)

Down in his basement, Bob the Knife stirs up the arty medicine:

His face was hard and caked with sweat
His arms ached and his hands were wet
‘You’re a murderous queen and a bloody wife
If you don’t mind, I’ll have the knife’
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

The singer/songwriter inverts the thrust of an objective, impersonal, and formalist poet:

Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling
(John Ransom: Winter Remembered)

Bob Dylan references both the ironic poems of Modernist John Ransom and those of the Middle English satirist Geoffrey Chaucer:

‘Alas’, she says, ‘That ever I was created
To wed a milksop or a coward ape
That will be browbeaten by everybody
Thou darest not defend thy wife’s right’
(Chaucer: Monk’s Prologue)

There’s evidence of tension between these two artistic points of view for the reader and the listener to detect:

‘Oh please let your heart be cold
This man is dearer to me than gold’
‘Oh, my dear, you must be blind
He’s a gutless ape with a worthless mind’
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

There’s a fight going on in the Captain’s tower:

The rogue in scarlet and gray soon knew his mind
He wished to get his trophy and depart
With gentle apology and touch refined
He pierced him and produced the Captain’s heart
(John Ransom: Captain Carpernter)

Zimmerman means ‘carpenter’, and the singer/songwriter builds a solid defence against mere plagiarism:

‘We’re two of a kind and our blood runs hot
But we’re no way similar in body and thought
All husband’s are good men and all wives know’
She pierced him to the heart and his blood did flow
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

Captain TS Eliot notes there’s always more than one level of interpretation to a poem, but also that a poem can be misunderstood if only examined from an inward, subjective, Dionysian perspective without doing so from an outward, objective, Apollonian one as well.

Dylan keeps his eyes and ears open – draws on the emotional poetry of a Scot (See in this regard the spoof ‘Concerning Dylan’s Conversion To Islam):

He has thrown by his helmet, and his cross-handled sword
Renouncing his knighthood, denying his Lord
He has taken the green caftan, and the turban put on
For the love of the maiden of fair Lebanon
(Walter Scott: The Fire-King)

Analysts do not always ‘get it’ that devilish Dylan often explains how he makes his art in the very song in which he creates it:

Well, he threw down his helmet and his cross-handled sword
He renounced his faith, he denied his Lord
Crawled on his belly, put his ear to the wall
One way or another, he’d put an end to it all
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

Dylan adds a pinch of a popular song into his devil’s brew:

Just sweet sixteen and now you’re gone
They’ve taken you away
I’ll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today
(Dinning: Teen Angel)

It all ends so sad:

She touched his lips and kissed his cheeks
He tried to speak but his breath was weak ….
All three lovers together in a heap
Thrown into the grave, forever to sleep
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Here’s an interesting song – a piece that Heylin acknowledges as being recorded in 1981, and one that he obviously had heard since he has clearly had access to those tapes, but upon which he doesn’t appear to have a word to say.

To be fair, it is hardly a major song, and not one that I would feel inclined to include on the “Dylan’s forgotten gems” page – it is forgotten, but not exactly a gem in my estimation.  However it did turn up on an unofficial bootleg album with the rather fine name “Between Saved And Shot” from Dandelion in 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvpRpk7dos

(In case this source ever goes down there is another source of the same recording at the end of this review – with the picture of Dylan in a little boat)

It is a very simple three chord song and an oft repeated one line chorus “Oh on a rocking boat”.  And beyond that it is hard to find much background or make too much out of the words – I suspect even Larry is going to struggle on this one – but Larry you are very welcome to try!

But we do know (at least I think we know) that Dylan had a boat because he says in Chronicles “My sixty-three foot sailboat had hit a reef in Panama…In the ten years I had her my family and I had sailed the entire Caribbean and spent time on every island from Martinique to Barbados.”

One writer on ybw.com adds the note that “His boat was a very pretty schooner called ‘Water Pearl’ – she had been built on the beach in Bequia in the Grenadines.  I often saw her sailing in the Grenadines in the early 80’s, and later heard that she had been lost – very sad. ”

In all I think that the suggestion that Bob did indeed sail a boat in the Caribbean is actually more interesting than the song.  So looking around a bit further I found this advert for properties in the area…

“Enamoured with the seafaring history of Bequia, the gem in the necklace of the Grenadines, Bob Dylan in the early 1980’s built his boat there, ‘Water Pearl’, using traditional wooden boat building methods….

“Situated 15 minutes from Port Elizabeth, Bequia’s capital, a mere golf cart journey from its own airport, Adams Bay Luxury Beach Club is set to be the Caribbean’s finest residential and vacation enclave.”

Searching further I then found a web site with a lot more about Bob’s time sailing the Caribbean.  Obviously I can’t vouch for what is on the site, but if you have an interest in the origins of “Caribbean Wind” and what Dylan was doing at the time, this is fascinating stuff.

https://williamhenryprince.com/bob-dylan-water-pearl/

The site does have this comment in terms of the end of the Water Pearl as well as some pictures of Bob on other boats including a couple taken off the coast of Oslo of all places (not highly recommended for gentle relaxing sailing!).

Chris Bowman was on his way to the Pacific for a long cruise “financed by Bob Dylan” when disaster struck – near the Panama Canal, at about 4a.m.

Instead of heaving to and waiting for dawn, he tried to enter the harbour, missed the entrance and piled up on the beach.

It seems that he could not organize a salvage tug in time and the Water Pearl slowly broke up over six days.

And if you want to know about Bequia there is an article from a popular English newspaper on the island here.

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2TKSn46WNs

By Larry Fyffe

The poetry of Stephen Crane presents in allegorical form the theme that the purpose of human existence is meaningless and futile. Build as mankind will mighty edifices, up high in the sky, to his ideals and beliefs, cruel reality turns sacred symbols into sanctifications of destruction in the valley below – as surely as life turns into death:

Many workman
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountaintop
Then they went to the valley below
And turned to behold their work
‘It’s grand’, they said
They loved the thing
Of a sudden, it moved
It came upon them swiftly
It crushed them all to blood
(Stephen Crane: Many Workmen)

Frederich Nietzsche, in his writings, asserts that the eventual adoption of the slaves’ Christianity by the masters spread a herd-like mentality that undermines the life-affirming teaching of the individualistic thinker Jesus; canonized Christianity turns hope and aspirations into blood, offering reward and salvation in a supposed ‘afterlife.’

That there be heavenly afterlife is not at all made clear in the Jewish religion. At times, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan portrays mainstream religion’s focus on an other world as being similar to spirits seen by a fortune teller. Such other-worldly speculations isolate individuals from each other and from existential social reality – in effect, fencing everyone off in a ‘lonely crowd’:

But I don’t sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyality is not to me
But to the stars above
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go
To the valley below
(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

Crane’s poetry suggests that most Christians are subjected to teachings that have been bent out of shape by society’s pliers to fit the chaotic conditions of social reality; red drops of blood continue to fall:

God lay dead in heaven
Angels sang the hymn of the end
Purple winds went moaning
Their wings dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth ….
But of all sadness this was sad –
A woman’s arm tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast
(Stephen Crane: God Lay Dead)

Against the dark, and apocalyptic images of Stephen Crane’s poetry, Bob Dylan rebels, and takes a sip from the fresh water fountains of the Romantic Transcendentalists. He finds love and solace, his Mary Magdalene, in the valley below – sometimes, if not all of the time:

Beyond the horizon, in the springtime or the fall
Love waits forever, for me and for all
Beyond the horizon, across the divide
Down in the valley, the water runs cold
Beyond the horizon someone prayed for my soul
My wretched heart is pounding
I felt an angel’s kiss
My memories are drowning
In mortal bliss
(Bob Dylan: Beyond The Horizon)

Instead, Stephen Crane’s presents to his readers ironic visions of Sisyphusian futility:

There was set before me a mighty hill
And long days I climbed
Through regions of snow
When I had before me the summit view
It seemed that my labour
Had been to see gardens
Lying at impossible distances
(Stephen Crane: There Was Set Before Me)

Bob Dylan shies not away from the extentionalist angst brought on by there being no objective truths:

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempt to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the gates of Eden
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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 James Whittaker

Bob Dylan is not just a name; Bob Dylan is not just a person.  Bob Dylan is an idea that has changed and transformed many lives all around the world.

Unlike the popular musicians of the time, the simplicity of Dylan’s poetry made his message stand out and reach the hearts of millions bringing him the Nobel for
literature, an Oscar, and a ceaseless ever expanding recognition of his contribution to music through the composition of well over 500 songs (as this site indeed shows).

Dylan indeed has a worldwide appreciation which very, very few popular music artists have ever had.  People use his music as something to study (hence this site gets the appreciation of many literary students who use the indexes on the site that link Dylan’s work to the writers who have influenced him), as a way of comprehending and dealing with an ever more incomprehensible world, as straightforward entertainment, and indeed even as background music.  In fact on my recent travels to New Zealand I met a fan who was listening to a You Tube sequence following one of the “Missing Gems” that were highlighted here recently while contemplating New Zealand on line casino reviews.  When I said I thought that an interesting combination he gave me the link – so I pass it on to you.

And that led us to Dylan’s gambling songs like “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” – a song that has probably been taken to bits more often than any other song covered on this site.  But long before that there was Ramblin Gamblin Willie.

His point was one can read Dylan’s work for hours without being bored – it has such a great charm around it, or you can listen to it intently, or you can have the music on while you read the reviews – the music can be used at every level – or you can use it as an accompaniment to something completely different.

The point made by my friend for a day was that you can debate whether the writings of Dylan can be classified as true literature comparing him to the likes of Ernest Hemingway or Albert Camus.  And he made the point that maybe it was his lyrical easiness and
openhearted approach that led many to consider his work less than serious, notions the Oscar and Nobel Prize both served to set aside.

But that does not undermine the importance of his works which are still relevant today. We can still find the relevance of Dylan’s message where he pleads to the congressmen and
senators to take heed in the song “The Times They are A Changing.” His message of bringing peace still holds paramount importance with Americans continuing war in the Middle East and thousands of innocent citizens dying in the bombings in Syria.

So just as millions were influenced by songs like “Blowing in the Wind” and “Hard Rain” and took up the call for the end of war, there is no doubt that some will have been influenced by “When He Returns” (via the live version so often mentioned in reviews on this site!)

But what makes this all so fascinating is that when we look at the songs in the order they were written, there is clearly no thought-out transformation from one style to another. Dylan has always sung and written in the style that suited him at that moment, with the message that was on his mind.   With Dylan the blues is always there, folk is always there, old time classics are always there, rock n roll is always there; each just comes out in different ways at different times.

I doubt that any of us can quite work out how Dylan was thinking and what led him to compose “Caribbean Wind” and “Groom’s still waiting at the alter”, straight after “Every Grain of Sand”, and just before “Yonder Comes Sin.”  It’s just what he did at the time.  It is what he always does.  He takes us by surprise.

It does not matter if someone considers him a writer or a singer as long as they can get something out of the lyrics and the music.  It doesn’t matter whether you focus totally on Dylan and the music, or whether you are doing something else at the same time.  It is still Dylan.  It is still unique.  There really is no one else like Dylan, and no music of any era that is like the music of Dylan.

by Larry Fyffe

The alliterative poetry of John Crowe Ransom, admired by Archibald MacLeish, has a somewhat Gnostic bent to it, styled in mock epic, parody, and irony:

The skies were jaded while the faded sun
Slack of his office to confute the fogs
Lay sick abed, but I, inured to duty
Sat for my food. Three hours each day we souls
Who might be angels but are fastened down
With bodies, most infuriating freight
Sit fattening these frames and skeletons
With fifthy food which we must cast away
Before they feed again
(John Ransom: Morning)

Said in the Bible:

Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh
And has fenced me with bones and sinews
(Job: 10:11)

We all be vulnerable tin angels. Fools rush inwhere angels fear to tread: “What was it you were looking for that took your life that night?/…I’ll never kiss your lips again/They buried you today” (‘Teen Angel’). Bob Dylan’s ‘Tin Angel’ shows signs that he takes his cue also from a traditional folk song, and from a Ransom poem:

Then saddle for me my milk-white steed
For my big horse is not speedy-o
And I will ride till I seek my bride
She’s away with the raggle taggle gypsy-oò
He rode east and he rode west also
Until he came to a wide open plain
It was there he spied his lady-o ….
‘What care I for my house and my land
What care I for my money-o
I’d rather have a kiss from the yellow gypsy’s lips
I’m away with the raggle taggle gypsy-o’
(Traditional: The Raggle Taggle Gypsy)

Monty Python’s Don Quixote-like movie mock epic of a foolhardy chivairic ‘Black Knight’ is based on Ransom’s ‘Captain Carpenter’. The poem alludes to the Bible – “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary…?”(Mark 6:3). Carpenter encounters not a Mary Magdalene; the hyperbolic strife he endures spoofs the suffering of the unwavering devotion of Job, and Christ Himself:

Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime
Put on his pistols and went riding out ….
It was a pretty lady and all her train
That played with him so sweetly but before
An hour she’d taken a sword with all her main
And twined him of his nose for evermore ….
Their strokes and counters whistled in the wind
I wished he had delivered half his blows
But where she should have made off like a hind
The bitch bit off his arms at the elbows ….
And Captain Carpenter parted with his ears
To a black devil that used him in his wise
O Jesus ere his threescore years and ten years
Another had plucked out his sweet blue eyes
(John Ransom: Captain Carpenter)

An allusion to:

I know there lies a new slain knight
And nobody knows that he lies there ….
His lady’s taken another mate
So we may make our dinner sweet
You sit on his white breast-bone
And I’ll peck out his bonny blue eyes
(Traditional: The Two Corbies)

The Dylanesque rhyme twist matches John Ransom’s ‘ears/years’; ‘wise/eyes’ with ‘ear’/’clear’; ‘surprise’/ skies’/ ‘wise’/’eyes’ in the singer/songwriters’ black-humoured narrative of a love triangle in which it appears that our foolhardy knight meets a bloody fate at the hands of a rival, the chief of the clan:

Well, they rode all night and they rode all day
Eastward along down the broad highway
His spirit was tired and his vision was bent
His men deserted him and onward he went ….
The gun went boom and the shot rang clear
First bullet glazed his ear
Second ball went straight in
And he bent in the middle like a twisted pin
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

Ramson expresses metaphorically the Gnostic theme that the human spirit is limited by the pangs and pains of the physical body:

Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that
would be healing
Because my heart would throb less painful there
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling
(John Ronsom: Winter Remembered)

Dylan observes that over-heated emotion and devotion be dangerous to one’s health:

His face was hardened and caked with sweat
His arms ached and his hands were wet
‘You’re a murderous queen, and a bloody wife
If you don’t mind’ I’ll have the knife’
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

However, for Dylan, all is not lost. Given the right circumstances, the goodly spiritual sparks within the physical body ignite to light up the darkness:

I was eating with the pigs off a fancy tray
I was told that I was lookin’ good and to have a nice day
It all seemed so proper, it all seemed so elite
Eating that absolute garbage while being discreet
But you changed my life
Came along in a time of strife
(Bob Dylan: You Changed My Life)

The material excesses of the economic system known as capitalism do not go unscathed.

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

2005:  Tell Ol’ Bill

2010: Champagne Illinois (Old 97s Desolation Row)

2017:  Visions of Johanna: The Old Crow version 

If you missed it, you might also be interested in Bob Dylan and Archibald MacLeish Part I

by Larry Fyffe

Faced with the rise of Fascism and Monopoly Capitalism, American poet Archibald MacLeish laments losing sight of the Promised Land that Transcendental sunshine poets envision:

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth’s noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night
(MacLeish: You, Andrew Marvell)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan peers into Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness too; however, he lights a match for poets Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth:

Father of night, father of day
Father, who taketh the darkness away
Father who teacheth the bird to fly
Builder of rainbows in the sky
Father of loneliness and pain
Father of love and Father of rain
(Bob Dylan: Father Of Night)

Whether the message above is considered religious or Romantic Transcendentalist, or both, darkness is not a sign of doom and death, but of a cycle in light and rebirth.

In his imagistic and alliterative poetry, MacLeish presents a shadowy vision of the Universe that appears to be amoral and purposeless:

Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women
I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair
And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves
on your shoulders
And a leaf on your hair
(MacLeish: Not Marble Nor The Gilded Monuments)

Such a rather Existentialist view, Bob Dylan takes pains to counteract:

If not for you
Babe, I’d lay awake all night
Wait for the mornin’ light
To shine in through
But it would not be be new
If not for you
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)

That is to say: a caring woman reveals that indeed meaning can be found in the Universe, at least a Promised Land for two.

It is on this point that MacLeish brightens up and has a meeting of minds with Wordsworth, and Bob Dylan:

Her voice when she sings is a voice
At dawn by a freshening sea
Where the wave leaps in the
Wind and rejoices
(MacLeish: Poem In Prose)

The father of Romantic Transcendentalism:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky
So it was when my life began
So it is now that I am a man
(William Wordsworth: My Heart Leaps Up)

Not as apocalyptic as Archibald MacLeish, Bob Dylan is not afraid to join the Existentialist circus of an absurd world:

Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

Archibald MacLeish flees from it:

The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his grand and second toe ….
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off ….
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover ….
There in the sudden blackness, in the dark pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing – nothing at all
(MacLeish: The End Of The World)

Though there is something for Dylan and his irony:

Beyond here lies nothing
Nothing but the moon and stars
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing )

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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 and Larry Fyffe

“Borrowed Time” from April 1981 is a remarkable document, not just a really good, but unfinished, song.  Because what we have here is a complete recording of Dylan moving from a rough idea through to the complete music of a song along with the basic concept of the lyrics, in the space of 7 minutes 51 seconds.

And quite clearly the band playing with him are fully used to this approach because they pick up what is going on very quickly.  This is thus not a one off method of composing but a tried and test approach that Dylan and the band were used to using at the time.

Bob has already started playing by the time the tape gets going, and at the start has nothing much more than the idea (which musically defines the song).  This idea is of a piece which is in F and modulates to C in the second line.  It is not a complex device, and one that has been used in countless songs before, but one that Bob Dylan uses rarely.

The sequence as it settles down is

Simple stuff, but what makes it really work is the melody, such lyrics as we have, and the bouncy accompaniment.  And remember this is just the first run through.  Who knows where it might have gone.

What is clear at the start that the song has not evolved apart from that modulation, and indeed the opening line is not clearly defined in its chord change in the first complete verse.   Plus the notion of repeating “On borrowed time” at the end of the verse doesn’t come in until we are into the second minute of the recording, although it is a very defining addition to the composition.

It really is extraordinary how quickly Bob and the band get this song together so that by the third minute we really do have a piece in which we can have a well-constructed instrumental break, although the repeat of the last line is forgotten (having only just been introduced once).  Dylan brings it back in (three times!) for the next verse, and that leads into an other instrumental break – where again they have clearly agreed to drop the repeat.

I can’t emphasise enough what an incredibly valuable audio document this is, giving us such a fulsome insight into just how quickly the process  could work with Bob and a group of musicians who were totally in touch with how his music evolves.   Thus it is by the second instrumental break we have the clear acceptance that the repeated last line does NOT appear in the breaks, only in the sung verses – and all without anyone giving any instructions and nothing written down.

And indeed it is also extraordinary how many words Bob can get out, and indeed which the backing singer/s can pick up.

Plus we must note that Dylan, who likes humorously to mix up the medicine, may be comparing the terror of end-rhymes to that of end-times.  One possibility in the lyrics may be:

What can I tell you, we’re living on borrowed time
When you’re defeated at the end of the road
After the letter failed to explode
When you’ve been defeated at the end of the line
What can I tell you, we’re living on borrowed time

In a very real sense this is harking back to the times and rhymes of:

This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode

What is also interesting is the comment of Heylin who writes, “… ‘Borrowed Time’ and ‘Almost Persuaded’… were presumably meant to be real songs, ‘Borrowed Time’ being an apposite title for a song that lasts ten minutes (sic) before Dylan decides to give up the search.”

And yet this is a perfectly decent, enjoyable, bouncy song going through its first run through with no lyrics sorted out other than the title.   Plus with an ability with lyrics that Dylan has who knows where it might end have gone in defining whose borrowed time and where the borrowed time is taking us.  Everything is in place to carry the song through – all it needed was a good set of words following on from that title.

Of course that was never delivered, but to see how fast the whole process could work up to the point that Dylan needed to add the lyrics is quite an insight and a half.

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

I do hope the original recording is fully archived somewhere, because this is such a valuable historical document with a rare insight into how the master song writer could work – at least at this time in his career.

Bob Dylan And Cole Porter

by Larry Fyffe

That some analysts thereof distance the songwriting of Bob Dylan from that of Cole Porter is questionable thing for them to do. Cole Porter, writer of music and lyrics for theatre musicals, uses clever rhymes in high-brow/low-brow, oft double entendred, lyrics that includes many an internal rhyme:

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies
On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise
(Cole Porter: Don’t Fence Me In)

Porter’s internal-rhymes above include: me/see; loose/ cayuse; my/I.*

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan shows quite a bit of Porter influence in both rhyme and subject matter:

Saddle me up on my big white goose
Tie me on’er, turn her loose
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

Dylan internally rhymes: my/tie; end-rhymes loose/goose; my/pie.

Another characteristic of Porter’s songwriting is multi-word rhyming – ‘lure of you’/’pure of you’:

I love the look of you, the lure of you
The sweet of you, the pure of you
The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you
The east, the west, north, and south of you
(Cole Porter: All Of You)

The above rhyme technic Dylan ultilizes as well – ‘lent you’/’resent you’:

Now when all of the flower ladies want back what
they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)

Both Bob Dylan and Porter Cole allude to other artists in their song lyrics –
ie, Henry Bendel be a clothes designer:

You’re the top, you’re the Louvre Museum
You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet
You’re Mickey Mouse
You’re the Nile, you’re the Tower of Pisa
You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
But if, baby, I’m on the bottom
You’re the top
(Cole Porter: You’re The Top)

Porter links the rhymes: Nile/smile; Pisa/Mona/Lisa. Dylan, though less fussy, finds salvation in rhyming: trial/while/smiles: Mona/Lisa/must-a:

Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like
after a while
But Mona Lisa must-a had the highway blues
You can tell by the way that she smiles
(Bob Dylan: Vision Of Johanna)

While Porter precisely end-rhymes ‘flop’/’top’, Dylan settles for ‘stopped’/’ top’ as a good rhyme in the following lyrics:

As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good us bad, what’s bad is good
You’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

In ‘Johanna’, Dylan mixes ‘by the way’ in with ‘highway’; in ‘Brush Up’, Porter runs ‘all-by-myself night’ into ‘Twelfth Night’.

If your girl is a Washington Heights dream
Treat the kid to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
If she then wants an all-by-myself night
Let her rest every eleventh or ‘Twelfth Night’
(Cole Porter: Brush Up Your Shakespeare)

Like potty-mouthed Porter, Dr. Dylan Freud slips in some sexual innuendos of his own:

Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right
‘My complexion is much too white’
He said, ‘Come here and step into the light’
(Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited)

*Footnote.  Cayuse is not a word I knew, perhaps due to my being brought up in Europe and not North America.  For anyone else taken by surprise at the word it  is an archaic term used in the American West, usually referring to a feral or low-quality horse or pony. – Tony.

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Unfortunately, since this article was written the copies that had been placed on the internet have now been removed so I am unable to provide online examples at the moment.

OK, I know I keep going on about Dylan’s forgotten or lost gems, and no, I don’t think that every little scrap of six notes knocked out at random by Bob is yet another work of genius.  But this guy throws away and forgets half evolved songs that 10,000 talented songwriters would, given the chance, scrabble across the floor to pick up and call them their own.

And so here we have “Almost Persuaded” which was recorded most likely in April 1981

This is a simple but highly effective chord sequence which I can’t recall from any other Dylan song, and it is the chord sequence here that plays over and over again, determining the melody.

In case you are interested the sequence is

F  Bb

G  C

F  G  C

(Repeat ad infinitum )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ofgySgx5E

Just that over and over again.  But as you can hear it leads to a perfectly acceptable melody line which itself demands a plaintive narrative in the lyrics.  As ever I am not going to try and transcribe the lyrics – although I think Bob might be saying at one point “I lost the record”.

Indeed so plaintively perfect is this chord sequence and melody I’d suggest this is a perfect song of the type that someone could come along and finish off, send to Bob and then get his ok for the song to be released as a 50/50 composition.  Anyone want to try?  You could make a fortune (and cut me in for 10% for introducing the idea, while you are at it).

If more proof is needed of how much potential this sequence with the backing rhythm offers just listen to the guitar solo – it just naturally evolves itself around the sequence and you just know that given another run through the lead guitarist could indeed soar to ever greater heights.

Indeed this little extract could have it all.

Here is another copy of the same recording, just in case the first one should disappear.  This one has the benefit of leading onto Caribbean Wind, which I could personally listen to for always and a day.  And if that were not enough, just leave this compilation running for a truly gorgeous live version of “Visions”.  In fact, just give up life and keep listening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp3G-TC9fso

Oh Bob you absolute tormentor.

Please someone give us the lyrics.

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

So why is this song not on the mega mega boxed up and packaged “Trouble no more bootleg” packages?  Why does it not even get a mention on BobDylan.com?

I have no idea.  It appears to have been recorded in March 1981 around the time of Heart of Mine although the YouTube below says 1980.  It has no lyrics published – but it was copyrighted in 1985.

(One is tempted to say at this point,

But perhaps not).

It’s just three chords, and lots of feel (you might call it “soul”).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IJoPZe37YM

I really can’t understand how, with all the effort going in to giving us so much of everything on the boxed set this clearly rehearsed song full of feeling gets left off.  Indeed I’d think it was worth including on a mainstream CD.

The wonderful Expecting Rain site did come up with a transcription, and I re-publish it below in the hopes that they don’t mind.  If they do I’ll take it down and we’ll have a bash ourselves.

What we can say is that the music is finished but not the lyrics, so Bob probably just abandoned it because he had the phrase that defined the entire piece, but not the fill in lyrics to go with it.

I think also in what follows it is not so much a case of us not knowing what the lyrics are but that he doesn’t know either, and it was just a case of having gone this far that he felt it wasn’t worth the effort of going no further.

But that still doesn’t explain why it got left out of the whole collection of the period unless either Bob forgot about the song or he just felt it wasn’t religious enough to merit keeping.

Over to anyone who can take these “lyrics” further and make something more of them.  Maybe we should even run a “Complete the Dylan song” competition – although without prizes (I can’t afford to give prizes).

I hope 
I don’t hear (And the ear) (Adaloear?) 
And the time when 
All they heal (All the here?) 

I will take ya 
For a ride 
All pawater (pervader?) (ah cowater?) (all pervader) 
All the here 

Cuz the bad moon on the rise 
He (Peace?) (Heat?) (Me?) shining in your eyes 

Is it worth it, 
What your doin’ to me? 

Operator 
All will tell ya 
And I will 
Before too long 

(Toll?) (Told?) the razy (racing?) 
Cadillac roadster 
In (and?) the pocket 
Of a’right or wrong 

Patty Girl with your blue bell eyes 
Shining desert so (sone?) 

Is it worth it? 
What your doin’ to me. 

Of a take 
Fifteen (fifty) dollars 
And, ugh, I roll them 
Central park west 
He creator (laughs) 
My own baby 
Then she know it 
Deep in our bed 
But it don’t move up to know 
And that ain’t the way the flower grows 

Is it worth it, 
What your doing to me? 

The conduction (seduction?) of the will 
And a nasty automobile 
All them dollars (all the dollar) 
Couldn’t buy 
All the sorrow (sworrow?) (swolrow?) 
Make you cry 

Some place I fore (for?) know 
I’ve died each ya don’t go 

Is it worth it, 
What your doin’ to me 

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

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

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

Bob Dylan says he borrows the ‘jingle jangle’ fragment in the below lyrics from a Lord Buckley monologue:

I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey, Mr, Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle mornin’, I’ll come followin’ you
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

But it could be that he uncovers it in this prison (crowbar hotel) song, mentioned by Jackie Hayden in his book on Bob Dylan:

A hungry feeling
Came o’er me stealing
And the mice were squealing
In my prison cell
And that old triangle went jingle jangle
All along the banks of the Royal Canal
(The Old Triangle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGTTcf4v0ks

In ‘Let’s Roll, Baby, Roll’, Dylan sings “Well, I was sleepin’ with the devil in the crowbar hotel”, but more applicable to the point that Dylan borrows phrasing from other songs is the following:

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When everything I’m a-saying’
You can say it just as good
(Bob Dylan: One Too Many Mornings)

May well be that the phrase fragment ‘hungry feeling’ is original to Dylan and merely coincidental, or even a subconscious copy, or it might just be a well-known expression. From an artistic and legal point of view, the fragment is what it is and nothing more.

I have already pointed out the influence of William Yeats on Bob Dylan’s work. And Jackie Hayden in his book on the impact of Celtic music and lyrics on Bob Dylan’s singing and songwriting notes this traditional Celtic song about ‘Helen, My Secret Love’ that Dylan covers:

I know a valley fair
Eileen Aroon
I know a cottage there,
Eileen Aroon
Far in the valley shade
I know a tender maid
Flowered of the hazel glade
(Traditional: Eileen Aroon)

by Larry Fyffe

There are those who accuse Bob Dylan of ‘plagiarism’ when they have little awareness of the custom of borrowing floating lyrics and tunes from traditional folk and blues music. Apparently, true musicians and songwriters are supposed to come up with songs and music out of nowhere as if s/he lives in some kind of cultural vacuum.

The legal definition of plagiarism – that there has to be a substantial similarity to  material that is under copyright – is where the ship hits the sand; otherwise artistic creativity would be stifled. A suit over ‘Don’t Think Twice ‘ and the previous ‘Who’s Gonna Buy Your Ribbons’ was settled out of court in that regard.

James Damaino sues over Dylan’s supposed theft of a fragment from:

Even if it were to accept that Dylan were aware of the lyrics above, the court held there be insufficient similarity in the following lyrics:

It’s a long and winding road to establish actual plagiarism under the law, given the use of common phrases and differing contexts.

Noted I have that Dylan references, makes tribute to, poet John Keats but that’s because he reveals it more than once, and in any event, the poetry is in the public domain. Allusions are  part of artistic tradition and it’s innovative in that it brings otherwise often unknown poetry to popular awareness. Giving away the source would spoil the surprise of noticing the source for yourself or at least being informed thereof.

Is Bob Dylan going to sue Bob Dylan for having cheated on himself:

Likewise, Damaino claims the exclusive right to the following lyrics:

In that Dylan writes:

Given legal rebuttals, a feeling of suspicion and distraught on the part of the perceived underdog Damaino that Dylan draws from his work is not considered anywhere close to establishing plagiarism under the rules of civil law in the Damaino vs Dylan case.

Nor was:

In relation to Damaino’s claim to:

In the end, the court ruled that it was all over now.

As Bob Dylan might sing in a revision of ‘Baby Blue’: