Untold Dylan

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

By Tony Attwood

Updated 8 May with the Andy and David Williams version of the song added with a copy of the lyrics from their recording.  Many thanks to David Thoburn.

The song title “Straight A’s in love” (rather amusingly transmuted into “Straight as in love” by Heylin, which would give it a totally different meaning) was used by Johnny Cash.

Here’s the song recorded by Bob Dylan in February 1985.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7wek5AEn9g

and for comparison the Johnny Cash song from 1956 which is pure 1956 Cash – you only have to hear the first five seconds to know who, what, how and when.

And now thanks to David Thoburn we have another version of the Dylan song to contemplate:

So having got that out of the way, let’s try and place it

• Maybe Someday (Knocked out loaded)
• Seeing the real you at last  (Empire Burlesque)
• I’ll remember you (Empire Burlesque)
• Trust Yourself  (Empire Burlesque)
• Emotionally Yours (Empire Burlesque)
• Straight A’s in Love
• Well well well
• Howlin at your window
• Tragedy of the trade
• Time to end this masquerade
• Waiting to get beat (Empire Burlesque outtake)

This is a difficult period as Dylan wrote the lyrics to a number of songs around then which (as with “Well well well”) were then completed later.  It is also a period when Dylan seemed to be searching around for a new voice or a new direction.  I think quite a few people would not consider the songs before this, to be in the greatest part of his canon of literary works.

Anyway, this is a fairly straightforward rock piece which has never been played in public.  And where Heylin does get it right I think is by suggesting Bob had the title in his mind and then wrote around it.

What makes it all more confusing however is that a number of the lyrics sites, which simply take the lyrics of songs and then surround them by adverts, reveal their true colours by putting up the Cash lyrics and claiming the song is by Dylan.   The official Dylan site doesn’t help us by having nothing at all – although it has a blank page given over to the song.

Here are the real lyrics

You ain’t so good in arithmetic, baby 
You don’t know how to count 
When it comes to spending money 
It’s never the right amount 

But baby, you know, two and two is four 
Baby, that’ll be the day, 
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* 

And if you don’t know who Thomas Edison is, 
Well, baby, that’s OK, 
But in love, crazy love, you get straight A’s 

You could fall right off the honour roll 
You wouldn’t need a shove 
But you graduate with honours 
From the school of love, well …. 

You aren’t doing too well in geography 
Baby, you can never read a map 
And if you hear that teacher starts talking  
It’s a time to take a nap 

You thought that England is in Spain 
Baby, that’s OK 
But in love, crazy love, you get straight A’s

And below is a scan of the lyrics from the record sleeve of the vinyl version of the Williams Brothers album. This seems to be exactly how they sing it (until they start repeating lines for the last half of the song). Definitely minor differences from what Dylan sings.  Provided by David Thoburn

In true rock n roll tradition (but doing something Bob never normally does) we then get repeats of the earlier lyrics with very slight modifications and that’s that.  One or two of the lyrics are not clear so as ever I’ve done my best – and it is noticeable that the line before the teaching taking a nap seems to be slightly different each time – but that’s the best I can do.  If you hear it clearly please correct me.

So the piece is undoubtedly written and recorded as a tribute to the rock n roll of earlier times that Bob so much admires, and taken in that spirit, it really is great fun.   Indeed it’s a shame it has got lost.

I just wonder, now that the bootlegs have pretty much been done, will the record company start putting together the whole of the Dylan catalogue including songs like these, in the order they were written?  I know that one or two people from On High have looked at our list of songs on this site, (because they have been kind enough to get in touch) so it is a possibility.   Let’s hope songs like this are indeed included if it comes to pass.

*I’m going to take it everyone knows about Geronimo (leader of the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apache) and Eddison (the great inventor whose work included the original phonograph, the movie camera, and the long lasting light bulb), but since I had no idea about Johnny Appleseed (I plead ignorance on the grounds of being English) here’s a quick summary.

He was properly named John Chapman and lived from 1774 to 1845 and was a pioneer of conservation, and a missionary for the Swedenborian New Church who became a legend within his life for his generosity of spirit and the importance he placed on apples.

It’s amazing what can be learned from writing reviews.

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

When is a song not a song?

I suppose initially with this blog I thought that to be included herein it ought to be a song that Dylan completed, even if he then chose not to put it on an album, and the record company chose not to put it on a “bootleg” collection.

But then we started working on the incomplete songs that only existed on studio recordings (not least because there were several such that I really, really wanted to write about so I changed the definition), and that blurred the edges of the notion of a “Dylan song”.  And here we get to something that made me think of this again.

I’m including it, not simply because it is on the internet, it can be placed in time, and it’s Dylan, but also because it is part of Dylan’s working his way through a year in which new lyrics simply would not come to him.

So I’m not trying to say that this is a great piece of Dylan song-writing.  It could have been, but Dylan never took it beyond what appears to be the first jam.  But it was a vital part of the journey which led on to greater things.

Because it is just a studio jam, there’s not too much here, but it does give an idea as to how Dylan was creating songs at the time.  If he had been able to think of more lines to put in to create a complete set of lyrics it would have become a song – but I think the listing of it as an “outtake” is probably pushing the definition of “out take” too far.  It is a jam as it stands, not a completed song that Bob didn’t want to use.

It was recorded on 24 July 1984.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgmE7e32Y00

The list below gives it a context of sorts…

• I once knew a man
• Who loves you more
• Almost done
• I see you around and around
• Dirty lie
• Go way little boy
• Honey Wait for Me
• Drifting too far from shore
• New Danville Girl / Brownsville Girl

Looking at the songs in order for this year, what we can say was for much of this period Dylan certainly was either struggling with, or experimenting with, lyrics.  Which given that it is his lyrics for which many people particularly know him, and for which he got his Nobel prize, shows a difficult state of mind.

“I once knew a man” is a brilliant blues piece but the lyrics are impossible to distinguish.  Or to take another example from the year, the lyrics of “Who loves you more” offer us

Oh, happy I, I mean you for me
‘Cause I’m true
But I know in the end
When the clock’s worked through and through

Because I know loving means
Nearly everything that I need
Who loves you more, who loves you true?
Oh, baby I do.

Or again, to take a greater authority than I on such matters, of “Almost Done” Eyolf Østrem writes, “It seemed meaningless to try and transcribe the mumbling on the Beverly Theatre version (May 23). Verona was a little less meaningless…”

But even with “a little less meaningless” we are still in the land of meander.  Here are the opening lines from theVerona transcription.

I stood by
I stood by you
Stood by her
Oh don't be untrue
It's already there
for to see the one
oh now she rode
She's almost done

So through much of the year lyrics were a problem – but of course problems are there to be resolved, which Dylan accomplished with New Danville Girl and then exceptionally with the re-write of  Tangled Up in Blue.

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 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4   Part 5   Part 6

All recordings suggested contain links to online versions.  Part 6 (the last one added before part 7 – rather obviously) contains recordings by Lou Reed, Joan Baez, Bettye Lavette, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Yul Anderson, Jesse Cook, Bonnie Rait, Joe Cocker, Chicago Mass Choir.

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

Following is a biblical reference to ‘Joanna’, a likely source for Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Joanna”. Given the tendency of the singer/songwriter to transgender his characters, Joanna is a good candidate as a substitute for Jesus (See, for example – David Wier: Visions Of Johanna):

And the twelve were with him
And certain women, which had been heeled
Of evil spirits and infirmities
Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went
seven devils
And Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herold’s stewart
And Susanna, and many others
Which ministered unto him their substance
(Luke 8: 1,2,3)

The lines above suggest that Christ has many lovers. But where does all this put Louise, the entangled lover in Dylan’s song, who’s actually there in the loft, and not merely a vision? Untold the answer be …. that is, until now.

As noted previously, poet William Blake presents a personalized Gnosticist outlook – ventures in his mind back to the time when there be only four basic elements: water, fire, earth, and air. Corresponding emanations from the Monad, in Blake’s works, are Thamas (akin to God the Father), representing Power; Luvah (akin to the Son of God), representating Emotion; Urthona (akin to the Holy Ghost), representing the Imagination; and Urizen (akin to Satan), representing Reason, the ‘Spirit of the Enlightenment’:

I seized the beauteous Luvah
Thou art faded like a flower
And like a lily is thy wife
Vala withered by winds ….
Then thou didst keep with strong Urthona
The living gates of heaven
(William Blake: Luvah)

Blake’s poetry reveals influences from the Gnostic writings of Emanuel Swedenborg; ‘Lovisa’ (‘Lova’, for short) is a Swedified form of ‘Louise’. Blake links Jesus to ‘Luvah’; Bob Dylan, a reader of Blake’s poetry, employs ‘Louise’ in “Visions Of Johanna:

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re
tryin’ to be so quiet
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our
best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

Johanna may not be near, but the connection to Blake is clear:

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Blake speaks of the danger of losing sight of the figurative Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:

Father, father! Where are you going?
O do not walk so fast
Speak, father, speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost
(William Blake: The Little Boy Lost)

In ‘Visions Of Johanna’, it is Louise (wise like Sophia of the Gnostics), and not Satan, who has the last word:

The peddler now speaks to the countess
Who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’ “Name me someone that’s not a parasite
And I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“You can’t can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Existentially speaking – it’s all just a handful of rain:

Just a box of rain
Wind and water
Believe it if you need it
If you don’t just pass it on
Sun and shower, wind and rain
In and out the window
Like a moth to a flame
(Grateful Dead: Box Of Rain/by Lesh and Hunter)

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

“Yes, I’ll admit I’m a fool for you
Because you’re mine, I walk the line”
(Johnny Cash: I Walk The Line)

The phrase “I’m a fool for you” has been used as the title of at least 15 songs that I found in a quick search of Spotify, and turns up as a phrase used within songs (as with the example above) in hundreds more.

I’m not too sure why Bob had a go at using this phrase – but he was clearly interested enough to run through the song twice – the second version continuing from the first.  They appear at the end of disk 1 of “The Basement Tapes Complete” simply labelled Take 1 and Take 2.

As such this is a bit of a change from most of the rest of the songs on disk 1.  The majority are songs Bob did not write, and of those he did write, which we have already reviewed, most are one off run throughs without any lyrics seriously even sketched out before.

Musically the theme is the same as the opening, “Once upon a time you dressed so fine threw the bums a dime” – but then instead of pushing onwards and upwards it tilts back to from where it started.  But the feeling is much more depressed and inward looking, there is none of the arrogance and self-satisfaction that is so central to the denouncing of the woman in Rolling Stone.

So it’s quite clear there is an idea for a song in here, rather than this just being another jam session, as Bob has a middle eight as well as the chorus and the basic feel of the lyrics.

But… I guess I’d say he was right to let it go.

Here are the lyrics.  Version 1 stops after the first two verses.  Version 2 picks up in the middle 8 with “lonely in my days.”  As ever the lyrics aren’t clear so my attempt is mere approximation as the words sound to a pair of English-English ears.

And just so you have someone else’s version of what can be done with the title line, here’s one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHoffzgD3QM

So that ends the review of disk 1 of the complete Basement Tapes.  Out for 22 tracks we have seven noted as written by Bob, one of which I am discounting (Spanish in the loving tongue) as he clearly did not compose it but adapted a folk song.

1. Edge of the Ocean
2. One for the road
3. Roll on Train
4. Under control
5. I’m guilty of loving you
6. I’m a fool for you

On the second disc, which I shall start reviewing shortly we have 26 songs of which 10 appear to be Dylan compositions.  A complete list of the songs which I see as Dylan compositions from the Basement Tapes era can be found on our list of Dylan songs of the 60s  just scroll down to 1967, and as you’ll see, some of the songs from disc 2 and indeed the subsequent disks have already been reviewed.  I’ll finish the rest in the coming weeks.

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: Christ As Casanova

By Larry Fyffe

Through many a dark hour, I’ve been thinking about this – Quite a few analysts thereof consider Bob Dylan’s song lyrics to be about Jesus; so where is the Christ in Jack Kerouac-influenced “Desolation Row”?

Lo and behold, Jesus is right there. He’s Jacques Casanova – J.C., if you will. Apparently, many of the mainstream analysts avoid pointing this out since, in real life, Casanova’s a Gnostic, a follower of a variation that advocates loving the physical world rather than feeling trapped by it. To Jacques Casanova, Desolation Row is anything but a Dystopia.

Casanova’s real-life Gnosticism considers an emanation of light from the far away hermaphroditic Monad to be Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom and Goddess of Understanding; she’s manifests herself in the material realm as Mary Magdalene, the bride of Christ. Out of the same fires of the metaphorical blast furnace Jesus is forged.

The Holy Bible pays tribute to Sophia:

Doth not wisdom cry?
And understanding put forth her voice?
She standeth in the top of high places
By the way in the places of the paths
She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city
At the coming in at the doors
(Proverbs: 8:1,2,3)

Here’s a Gnostic vision by Dylan. That Casanova (a violinist and gambler living down on Desolation Row) rubs shoulders with the downtrodden upsets the high priests of orthodox Judeo-Christianity. Though they pretend to be kind, and to have pity on the poor, they’re actually out to crucify JC. The disfigured Phantom of the Opera knows what’s going on. He sounds the alarm:

They are spoon-feeding Casanova to get him to feel
more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning
him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinning girls, ‘Get outta
here, if you don’t know
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row’

Bob Dylan’s not fooled either; he’s quite happy living there with Lady Sophia:

And the riot squad, they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

Referencing:

For at the window of my house
I looked through my casement
And beheld among the simple ones
I discerned among the youths
A young man void of understanding
(Proverbs 7: 6,7)

Likewise, according to Gnostics, a God without Sophia lacks the benefit of feminine intuition and wisdom. Alone, He’s a vengeful Demiurge:

Be not wroth very sore, O Lord
Neither remember iniquity for ever
Behold, see, we beseech thee,
We are all thy people
The holy cities are a wilderness
Zion is a wilderness
Jerusalem a desolation
(Isaiah 64: 9, 10)

From the consequences of the so-called ‘Utopia’ established by the almighty and powerful, there are people who want to escape. Given no other choice, they’d rather live on Desolation Row. Even then no living in peace is found because their masters try to burn them out:

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)

The Gnostic-influenced poet William Blake (whose footprints are detected on many of the song sheets of Bob Dylan) envisions an idealized world before the construction of ‘dark Satanic mills’ when Christ, united with his bride Sophia, protects the populace from the fearful Tiger-God:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Should you like a darker depiction of alienation from the flames of the life force, there’s always:

Marguerite Gautier: Don’t you know that tonight I am going to betray you?
Jacques Casanova: Why would you do that?
Marguerite Gautier: Because I’ve outlived the tenderness of my heart
(Tennessee Williams: Camino Real)

In stark contrast to the wise, understanding, and faithful Sophia portrayed below:

I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine
Of the juice of my pomegranate
(Song Of Solomon)

You might also be interested in

• Desolation Row – making sense of the masterpiece now we live there
• Desolation Row – it doesn’t get more frightening than this

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

Updated: 4 May 2018

As you will see from the comments below, it has been pointed out that this song by Dylan is in fact a re-write of “I stand accused” by Billy Butler, a song that has been recorded by many different artists including Percy Sledge, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, King Curtis and many more.

In writing this review I completely missed this, my excuse being I am not an aficionado of this type of music and simply didn’t make the link.

Listening to Bob’s version on the Basement Tapes, I don’t think he was any more aware that he was, what shall I say, “evolving” that original song, than he was that one day the world would be listening to these long lost recordings.  He was, as one can hear, playing with ideas and exploring themes.  I suspect that if he had continued with this song then at some time, someone would have come along and said, “hey Bob isn’t that a bit like ‘I stand accused?’ – if anyone has the nerve to do that.   (I mean, how do you go up to the greatest songwriter of the late 20th century and say “Errr, sorry to bother you but you nicked that one”.

Below is my review, written before the link with “I stand accused”, along with a newly added link to that song.  Sorry I can’t link to Bob’s version because the record company are not allowing any posts of the song, and it is not licensed to Spotify.

Original notes

“I’m guilty of loving you” appears on disc one of the Complete Basement Tapes collection.  It is a slowly rocking lament which gently moves between the chords of A and D before rounding off the verse with an F# to E.

We get one and a half verses sung before Bob runs out of lyrics and suddenly the tape stops.  I’m notoriously awful at transcribing Bob’s lyrics but the best I can get is

Now that is not much of a basis for me to say that there is actually a rather good song emerging here.  The music isn’t that original, nor is the sentiment, nor the lyrics, and yet, I am utterly sure that Bob could have turned it into a song that we would then have valued as part of his archive.  Not necessarily a great virtuoso Dylan performance but still something worth keeping.

The reason I say that is because if one were to take the first minute or so of many of Bob’s songs, and listen to the very first recording, one can be left with the same feeling.  There’s something there, but I’m not sure what.

What Dylan seems to do is start with these scraps of ideas, and then suddenly something else snaps into place, the lyrics take an unexpected turn, there is a chord change that you would never imagine from what occurs at the start and we’ve got far more than just a scrap of a tune.

Indeed in these days in the second decade of the 21st century when Bob is seemingly in a permanent non-writing phase of life, I wonder if someone close to him couldn’t have the temerity to say, “you know all that stuff on the complete Basement Tapes that has now been released.  Why don’t you give the fans a surprise and complete one of the incomplete songs.”

And from that I thought, hell, why doesn’t someone else do this?

I mean to say, Bob gave his permission for Champaign Illinois to be released  and that is a re-write of Desolation Row.  And what about Rock Me Mama which became Wagon Wheel.  Or come to that Well Well Well.

All it needs is someone with the combination of nerve and songwriting skill, and the willingness to accept that one might never get a reply at all…

In the meanwhile, we have this little part of a song, that really could become something more…

Now moving back to “I Stand Accused” by Jerry Butler here are the lyrics

I stand accused.
Of lovin’ you,
Too much.

And i hope,
I hope it’s not a crime.
‘Cause if it is,
I’m guilty,
Of lovin’ you, you, you.

Oh yeah, mmm hmm.

I – I hope to God that I,
Never have,
To Testify.
‘Cause if I do,
Everyone is gonna, they’re gonna cry,
They’re gonna say,
(Guilty)

And here is the link to I Stand Accused…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Lbb-1E7HY

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

Beneath the window of many Bob Dylan’s song lyrics lies a biblical story – more often than not concerning Jesus Christ:

Well, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
Yes, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
Well, you must tell me, baby
How your head feels under somethin’ like that
Under your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
(Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)

Using anachronisms, the singer/songwriter presents an image of the mocking of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea – the pill-box hat, a Gnostic code-word for the ‘crown of thorns’ twisted upon Christ’s head:

And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns
And put it on his head
And they put him in a purple robe
And said, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’
(John 19: 2,3)

“Well, you must tell me, baby” is a reference, by Dylan-disguised-as-Pontius, to:

And this shall be a sign unto you
Ye shall find the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes
Lying in a manger
(Lukes 2:12).

Pilate, through Dylan, makes more fun of ‘baby Jesus’ by picturing Him lying on a mattress in a manger, drinking a bottle of wine while wearing the new crown of thorns:

Well, you look so pretty in it
Honey, can I jump on it sometime?
Yes, I just wanna see
If it’s that expensive kind
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
(Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)

According to the original Bible story, referenced by Dylan in the lyrics of another song – “Any day now, any day now/I shall be released”, – Jesus weighs his answer to Pontius rather carefully:

Then saith Pilate unto him
“Speakest thou not unto me?
Knowest thou not that I have the power
to crucify thee
And the power to release thee?”
Jesus answered: “Thou couldest have
no power at all against me
Except it were given thee from above”
(John 19: 10,11)

Thenceforth, goes the story, Pontius has a change of heart, it’s not hard anymore; instead, the ‘sun’ rises. Pilate’s reconsidered reply, Dylan renders in the style of Freudian surrealism:

Well, if you wanna see the sunrise
Honey, I know where
We’ll go out and see it sometime
We’ll both sit there and stare
Me with my belt wrapped around my head
And you just sittin’ there
In your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
(Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)

“Honey” be an allusion by Dylan (the perfect image of a Prefect with belt no longer buckled around his waist) to the following biblical passage:

For the lips of a strange woman drop as
an honeycomb
And her mouth is smoother than oil
(Proverbs 5:3)

Dylan’s somewhat revised version of the biblical story continues – Mary Magdalene drops by her boyfriend’s place known as ‘The Sepulchre’, and, thinks at first that Pontius, whom she does not know, and who is wearing a crown of thorns, is Christ’s gardener (apparently, she’s aware that Jesus calls His gardener “the tree doctor”). Mary knows something is up, and she asks him where Jesus is:

Well, I asked the doctor if I could see you
“It’s bad for your health ” he said
Yes, I disobeyed his orders, I came to see you
But I found him there instead
You know, I don’t mind you cheatin’ on me
But I sure wish he’d take that off his head
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
(Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)

In the biblical version of the story, Mary Magdalene is positive that something’s amiss. She doesn’t recognize that it’s Jesus Himself standing there in the sepulchre to whom she is speaking. It’s a good guess, however, that she’s knows that the ‘gardener’ (Jesus) is dressed in drag – there are linen clothes and a napkin lying on the floor:

Jesus saith unto her,
“Woman, why weepest thou?
Whom seekest thou?
She, supposing him to be the gardener
Saith unto him
“Sir, if thou have borne him hence
Tell me where thou hast laid him
And I will take him away
(John 20:15)

In Dylan’s version, Mary’s has a little more information on what’s going on – she’s been spying on her boyfiend:

Well, I see you got a new boyfriend
You know that I never seen him before
Well, I saw him makin’ love to you
You forgot to close the garage door
You might think he loves you for your money
But I know what he really loves you for
It’s your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
(Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat)

To make a long opera short, Mary Magdalene’s really upset, and, after the fat lady sings, she runs off the stage holding hands with Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter.

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