by Larry Fyffe

The theme of sacrificing one’s body to the God of Love – in stories that have lots of flashing knives and swords – pops up quite a bit in the lyrics of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan:

Romeo, he said to Juliet, ‘You got a poor complexion
It doesn’t give you an appearance of a youthful touch’
Juliet said back to Romeo, ‘Why don’t you just shove off
If it bothers you so much’
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

There be black humour and irony in many of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics; the above lyrics flow back to:

Now, the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right
‘My complexion’, she says, ‘is much too white”
(Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited)

In Shakespeare’s “Romeo And Juliet”, Romeo comes upon Juliet who looks pale enough to be dead, and Romeo thinks that she is; he kills himself out of love for her – shoves off for good. Juliet wakes up, sees dead Romeo, kisses him, and stabs herself to death with his dagger.

Ol’ Bill Shakespeare, the uncontested King Of Plagiarism, bases the play about a family feud on the ancient mythological story of “Paramus And Thisbe”. Two lovers decide to secretly meet under a mulberry tree, but when Paramus discovers Thisbe’s blood-soaked cloak, he mistakenly believes that she has been killed and dragged off by a lioness. ‘It is I who have killed you’, he says, and he stabs himself with his sword. On discovering his about-to-be lifeless body, Thisbe kisses Paramus good-bye. Then she does herself in.

In the song below, Dylan keeps with the theme – ‘the Boss’, a man with no name, saddles up his horse and rides off in search of his wife. The cheeky narrative centres on a chief of a Scottish clan to whose wired-off home the Boss travels ‘through the woods’, ‘Eastward long down the broad highway’ to where ‘glasses clinked’:

She touched his lips and kissed his cheeks
He tried to speak, but his breath was weak
‘You died for me, now I’ll die for you’
She put the blade to her heart, and she ran it through
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

In a novel about darkness and light, Charles Dickens employs the theme of sacrificing oneself to Love – ” there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you” (A Tale Of Two Cities). A hard-drinker, who loves Lucie, takes the place of her aristocratic husband, Charles Darnay, who awaits execution in prison during the ‘Reign Of Terror’. The husband has ‘C.D.’ for initials, like those of the author.

So too, in the following song, Rosemary sacrifices herself for the benefit of Lily and the Jack Of Hearts, the leader of a gang of Jewish outlaws in the Old West. She goes to the gallows for a crime that she didn’t commit:

The next day was hanging day, the sky was
overcast and black
Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife
in the back
And Rosemary on the gallows, she didn’t even blink
(Bob Dyan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Likewise, Mary’s son Jesus, alias ‘the Lamb’, sacrifices Himself on the cross for a crime committed by one of the members of his gang of rebels – known as the Twelve Disciples:

Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it
And smote the High Priest’s servant
And cut off his right ear
(John 18: 10)

In the following song, Dylan takes the sword-swingers place, and as Simon, he says that he really appreciates the sacrifice:

I’ve been saved
By the blood of the Lamb
Saved
By the blood of the Lamb
Saved
Saved
And I’m so glad
Yes, I’m so glad
I’m so glad
I want to thank You, Lord
I just want to thank You, Lord
Thank you, Lord
(Bob Dylan: Saved)

Romeo wants to thank you, Paramus wants to thank you, Darnay wants to thank you, Lucie wants to thank you, Lily wants to thank you, the Jack Of Hearts wants to thank you, Simon Peter wants to thank you, the Boss wants to thank you …. but most of all, Bob Dylan wants to thank you … He wants to thank you very much.

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

41: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall by Jason Mraz .  Suggested by Jim.

In some cultures, the third eye is symbolized by a red dot in the middle of the brow:

Horus returns to his home town – looking rather different as far as Isis is concerned.  He re-marries his young mother, and the Sphinx demands that Horus answer a riddle or ‘there’s going to be trouble in this here town; it ain’t big enough for both of us’. To wit: ‘There are two sisters; one gives birth to the other who in turn gives birth to the first – Who are they?’

Isis is more than happy to provide her husband with the right answer – ‘Day and Night’. The Sphinx crumbles:

She nicknames her son “Horse” – You see, while away Horus makes off with Uncle Seth’s testicles.

Compiled by Tony Attwood from suggestions made both here and on our Facebook group.

Previously we have looked at and hopefully listened to…

Part 1: Laura Marling, Old Crowe, Dixie Chicks, Tom Jones, The Helio Sequence, The O-Jays, Mikael Wiehe and Ebba Forsberg, Coulson Dean McGuiness Flint, George Harrison,  Sinéad Lohan

Part 2: Judy Rodman, Spirit, Eric Clapton, Solomon Burke, The Daily Flash, Jason and the Scorchers, George Harrison, The Tallest Man on Earth, Nice, Charlie Parr

Part 3: Nina Simone, Michael Moravek, Jerry, Phil and Bob, The Nice, Bettina Jonic, Sheila Atim, Walter Trout, Stan Denski, Old Crow Medicine Show,  Ramblin’ Jack Eliot 

This is self evidently the fourth part of our series of the best ever cover versions sent in by readers to our Facebook site.  They are not in any order other than the order in which they were submitted (and not always that!)

Please do keep sending in new ideas, either to the Facebook site or in the comments below.  I will keep adding new articles of ten suggestions at a time until I run out of suggestions, and at the end will record all the articles together in an index so we can go back and find the lists with ease without jumping around the site.

My random comments are not meant to suggest that I don’t like the versions I haven’t commented on – it’s quite overwhelming to run through each list of ten one after the after, and it is for me truly enjoyable to listen to all these different choices.

A really sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed.

As before where available I am linking to YouTube videos but where none seems to be available I’m adding the Spotify link.  To access this you will need a Spotify account – but obtaining one is free – just fill in the form.

Here we go with 31 to 40.  In putting this list together I got more and more carried away with what has been unleashed here.  Thank you everyone.  You have made this whole project so worthwhile.  Stuff in square brackets is added by me.

Tony.

31: I shall be released by Pearls before swine. Suggested by Hans Kramer

32: Down in the flood by Howard Fishman. [Spotify]. Suggested by Hans Kramer

Bob Dylan And Rainer Rilke(Part IV): Step Ĺightly From The Ledge

by Larry Fyffe

The poetic influence of Rainer Rilke permeates much of the works of Bob Dylan – unlike inanimate objects and organic things, human beings possess language by which they transform ‘things’ from external reality into mental images – the creative artist more so than anyone else. Thus spake Rainer Rilke.

In his Symbolist poetry, he juxtaposes the darker consciousness of the human male and that of the female:

See, we don’t love like flowers ….
O, gently, gently show him with love
a confident daily task
Lead him near to the Garden
Give him what outweighs those nights
(Rainer Rilke: Duino Elegy #3)

Dylan too idealizes some females as special sources of light:

People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

Rilke’s writings are akin to those of Frederich Nietzsche in which is envisioned Man as a solitary creature – half-monkey, half-angel – lost in an absurd meaningless world; tightrope walkers with no escape except everlasting death:

The man is clapping for your leap
And before a pain can become more distinct
Close to your constantly racing heart
A burning grows in the soles of your feet
(Rainer Rilke: Duino Elegy # 5)

Angst-ridden language that Dylan employs in the following song:

Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker
The other is in his pants
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

And once more in the song below:

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I’m not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down
You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone who will close his eyes for you
(Bob Dylan: It Ain’t Me, Babe)

Rainer claims he relies on a mystical method to connect with the hidden, distant transcendental life force that drives the Universe. The essential artist, according to Rilke, concentrates on objects that exist; on ‘things’ in the world of experience that have no essence, and that includes most humans other than, of course, the artist himself, and perhaps a few special females.

In the captain’s tower, Dylan takes a couple of humourous jabs at Rilke:

Some people will offer their hand and some won’t
Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t
I need somethin’ strong to distract me
I gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

A hard Rainer the poet be to knock down; he counterpunches, responds that the Romantic Transcendentalist poets get it backwards with their claim that Nature loves us – it be we who love Nature, personified, because she does not answer back:

Oh, and the night, the night
When the wind full of space
Wears out our faces
When would she not stay
(Rainer Rilke: Elegy #I)

We are equipped to construct a menal image, a conceit, that it is she, whether imagined as a caring woman or as Mother Nature, who needs us:

If not for you
My sky would fall
Rain would gather too
Without your love, I’d be nowhere at all
I’d be lost if not for you
And you know it’s true
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)

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

In his analysis of ‘Disease Of Conceit’, Kees de Graaf asserts that the singer/songwriter Bob Dylan points out that feeling excessively self- important is setting oneself up for a fall.

Eve, contracts ‘the disease of conceit”(vanity and pride); she desires to be just like God, and so she takes the ‘apple’ from Satan. She’s punished – made to suffer – by losing the God-given life-force, the “spirit”, driving her immortal ‘soul’ or body. Now, relative to her blissful life in Eden, she’s metaphorically ‘dead’. Adam catches the ‘disease’ from her, and suffers the same fate; he’s now confined to a physical body that is mortal:

Seems they’ve both caught the disease from God, but He’s apparently immune to its effects:

There’s a whole lot of people dying tonight
From the disease of conceit
There’s a whole lot of crying tonight
From the disease of conceit
Comes right out of nowhere
(Bob Dylan: Disease Of Conceit)

If the song is taken in isolation, de Graaf’s analysis is all well and good. But it’s known that Big Bob is well-read, and that he’s no one’s fool – he owns the town’s only ‘diamond’ mind.

He’s got Frederich Nietzsche down there working for him. Freddy, ready or not, turns the rocks upside down; he says that God is the One who is metaphorically ‘dead’ from the disease; that the human ‘overman’, whether artist, prophet, explorer, or whatever, is not conceited at all if he listens to his heart, and launches his ‘ships’ upon unknown waters:

Noontime, and I’m still pushing myself along the
road, the darkest part
Into the narrow lanes, I can’t stumble or stay put
Someone else is speaking with my mouth, but I’m
listening only to my own heart
I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I go barefoot
(Bob Dylan: I And I)

According to Nietzschez – not Christianity itself, but Jesus himself can be considered an inspirational, yet humble, ‘overman’. Dylan expresses a similar view concerning the constricting power of social norms:

As I went out one morning
To breathe the air around Tom Paine’s
I spied the fairest damsel
That ever did walk in chains
I offered her my hand
She took me by the arm
I knew that very instant
She meant to do me harm
(Bob Dylan: As I Went Out One Morning)

For Dylan, the female serves here as a symbol of ‘Conformity’ rather than a devil-inspired rebel against established authority as Eve strives to be.

Though he claims it’s sometimes good to look back in search of Truth, Dylan himself is a rebellious silver-tongued devil at other times:

Shake the dust off your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation’s not an easy thing, Adam given the the devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run in my vein
Well, I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well, I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

What that ‘higher calling’ may be comes from his own heart; Dylan ain’t a-gonna be anybody’s fool.

That’s not to say a female Muse doesn’t come in handy-dandy at times:

She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back ….
She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall
She’s nobody’s child, the law can’t touch her at all
(Bob Dylan: She Belongs To Me)

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

Compiled by Tony Attwood

This continues the list of cover versions sent in by readers to our Facebook site.  They are not in any order other than the order in which they were submitted.

• THE GREATEST RECORDINGS OF DYLAN SONGS by everyone else

  Part 1: Laura Marling, Old Crowe, Dixie Chicks, Tom Jones, The Helio Sequence, The O-Jays, Mikael Wiehe and Ebba Forsberg, Coulson Dean McGuiness Flint, George Harrison,  Sinéad Lohan

  Part 2: Judy Rodman, Spirit, Eric Clapton, Solomon Burke, The Daily Flash, Jason and the Scorchers, George Harrison, The Tallest Man on Earth, Nice, Charlie Parr

  Part 3: Nina Simone, Michael Moravek, Jerry, Phil and Bob, The Nice, Bettina Jonic, Sheila Atim, Walter Trout, Stan Denski, Old Crow Medicine Show,  Ramblin’ Jack Eliot 

  Part 4: Pearls before Swine, Howard Fishman, Sinead O’Connor, Mandolin Orange, Them, Lindsay Taylor, String Swing, Falco, Jimi Hendrix, Youssou N’Dour.

and please do keep sending in new ideas, either to the Facebook site or in the comments below.  I will keep adding new articles of ten at a time until I run out of suggestions, and at the end will record all the articles together in an index so we can always go back and find the lists.

My random comments are not meant to suggest that I don’t like the versions I haven’t commented on – it’s quite overwhelming to run through all ten one after the after, and it is for me truly enjoyable to listen to all these different choices.

11: “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” by Judy Rodman  suggested by Steve Perry.

12: “Like a Rolling Stone” by Spirit from the Spirit of 76 album suggested by Davy Allan.  (I’m going to jump in and say that if I’d been thinking properly I would have included this in my initial list that kicked off this series – Tony).

13:  “Don’t Think Twice” by Eric Clapton, suggested by Rabbi Don Cashman.

14:  “Maggie’s Farm” by Solomon Burke, suggested by Ingemar Almeros Almeros.

15: Queen Jane Approximately by The Daily Flash suggested by Bill Shute.

16: Absolutely Sweet Marie by Jason and the Scorchers, suggested by Dave Miatt.

17: Absolutely Sweet Marie by George Harrison, suggested by Imam Alfa Abdulkareem.

18: Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues by The Tallest Man on Earth, suggested by Curtis Lovejoy.

19: She Belongs To Me by Nice, suggested by Ken Willis (who added the note that many would hate this, but I for one enjoyed being reminded of Keith Emerson).

20: Moonshiner by Charlie Parr, suggested by Edward Thomas.  (This took me by surprise, and I had to think for a moment about where the song came from not least because we’ve never reviewed it – and I thought we’d worked through all of Bootleg 1-3.  I’ll get that sorted.)

What is on the site

1: Over 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 all 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 recently started to produce 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 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 Brushes Up On His Junichi

by Larry Fyffe

In Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus, the God of Thunder, considers the purpose of Earth’s creation is to make it possible for the gods to listen to the music and songs it’s inhabitants exhibit – whether the exhibition be a happy or sorrowful one. In effect, humans are given the Earth for a song.

Entanglement in earthly experience balanced by Appollonian ‘objectivity’ (looking at matters from different angles), makes Orpheus the best song-and-dance man in the business, outside of the gods themselves. His mother’s a Muse, one of the free spirits who are companions to Apollo, the sun god; Muses inspire human beings to forget their troubles by making music and singing songs.

Songwriter and singer Bob Dylan puts on his Orpheus mask and insists that artists be ‘floaters’; extra careful not to over-entangle themselves in relationships lest they lose the capacity to create innovative art. Necessary is enough freedom for artists to explore different avenues of life so they are in possession of varying perspectives on the human condition.

Bob Dylan embellishes, and even fabricates, some of his own personal experiences to fit the bohemian model expected of modern artists – a ‘boxcar hobo’, Dylan never was although he was a ‘rubber bum’, a hitcher-hiker on the highway.

The Metaphysical conceit, a far-fetched comparison, is a useful literary tool
to hammer home the rather abstract idea of ‘freedom’. In the song lyrics below, Dylan as author and artist takes on the persona of a ‘gangster’, a person belonging to an organization that operates outside the law. Dylan portrays gangsters as toughened thieves who are not totally bereft of human feelings – they’re seekers of love like everybody else:

Not always easy to kick someone out
Gotta wait a while, it can be an unpleasant task
Sometimes somebody wants you to give up something
And tears or not, it’s too much to ask
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

Sometimes the artist-gangster, to maintain his reputation and integrity, must make an offer that can’t be refused:

If you ever try to interfere with me or cross my path again
You do so at the peril of your life
I’m not quite as cool and forgiving as I sound
I’ve seen enough heartaches and strife
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

Some analysts of Dylan’s songs point out that the singer/songwriter steals another writer’s lines in the above quotes but they simply do not comprehend why he does that. Well, the lines are from ‘Confessions Of A Gangster’ by Junichi Saga who writes: “Tears or not though, that was too much to ask”, and “I’m not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded”.

Other lines pinched from Junichi Saga’s gangster book include:

“My old man would sit there like a feudal lord”, and “It’s up to him whether a session comes alive or falls flat”
(Junichi Saga: Confessions Of A Gangster – translated)

Dylan’s persona sings:

My old man, he’s like some feudal lord
Got more lives than a cat
Never seen him quarrel with my mother even once
Things come alive or they fall flat
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

And these lines:

Some kind of trouble that put him on bad terms with the younger men …..
age doesn’t matter ….age by itself just doesn’t carry any weight”
(Junichi Saga: Confessions Of A Gangster)

Sings Dylan’s persona:

The old men ’round here, sometimes they get
On bad terms with the younger men
But old, young, age don’t carry weight.
It doesn’t matter in the end
(Bob Dylan: Floater)

Dylan’s simply giving an authentic voice to his artist/gangster routine
– something akin to Cole Porter in reverse, so to speak:

Just declaim a few lines from Othella
And they’ll think you are a hell of a fella
If your blonde won’t respond when you flatter’er
Tell her what Tony said to Cleopatterer
(Cole Porter: Brush Up Your Shakespeare)

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

THE GREATEST RECORDINGS OF DYLAN SONGS by everyone else

Part 1: Laura Marling, Old Crowe, Dixie Chicks, Tom Jones, The Helio Sequence, The O-Jays, Mikael Wiehe and Ebba Forsberg, Coulson Dean McGuiness Flint, George Harrison,  Sinéad Lohan

Part 2: Judy Rodman, Spirit, Eric Clapton, Solomon Burke, The Daily Flash, Jason and the Scorchers, George Harrison, The Tallest Man on Earth, Nice, Charlie Parr

Part 3: Nina Simone, Michael Moravek, Jerry, Phil and Bob, The Nice, Bettina Jonic, Sheila Atim, Walter Trout, Stan Denski, Old Crow Medicine Show,  Ramblin’ Jack Eliot 

Part 4: Pearls before Swine, Howard Fishman, Sinead O’Connor, Mandolin Orange, Them, Lindsay Taylor, String Swing, Falco, Jimi Hendrix, Youssou N’Dour.

On our Facebook Group [Untold Dylan – you can join it if you want] I asked for suggestions for great recordings of Dylan songs by other artists.

I thought I might get a handful of replies, so I came up with my three favourites, and hoped that I might get seven suggestions to make it up to ten tracks in all.

But in fact I’ve had many more, and of course if you are on the Untold Dylan Facebook group you can see the whole lot.  (If you are not do join us).   But meanwhile what I have done is started to list the songs out below, with a link to the recording in each case.  It’s a bit clearer and when we’ve finished I’ll merge it into one file that can stay on the site as a page, catalogued at the top of the stie.

Because I was ready with my three, I’ve listed these first, and after that I’m simply putting them in the order they appeared on the Facebook page.  If any are missing it is only because I can’t find a link to the song by that artist, on line.

In a few cases I can’t find a YouTube link so I have searched (or very helpfully been given) a Spotify link.  If you are not a user of Spotify you need to sign up, but it is free at the basic level and that allows you to play the song – although of course I am only speaking about Spotify in the UK.  There might be copyright issues in other countries, or possibly a different site.

If this list (and the next lists that will follow in the coming days) gives you half as much fun as it has given me, you will be having a great time.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed and if you want to send in more please do so.

Putting the list up 10 at a time might seem a bit churlish, but it gives me a chance to listen to each one and check the links etc.  And besides, it is much more fun when these recordings are spread out over time so you can listen to them all and appreciate the lot.

Ten great recordings of Dylan songs by other artists.  

Hard Rain from the TV series Peaky Blinders.  By Laura Marling, suggested by Tony

Visions of Johanna recorded live by Old Crow Medicine Show, suggested by Tony [Spotify]

Mississippi recorded live by Dixie Chicks, suggested by Tony

What Good Am I by Tom Jones, suggested by Pat Sludden (Pat I changed the recording from the one you suggested; this one sounds cleaner. Hope that’s ok).

Mr Tambourine Man by The Helio Sequence suggested by Imam Alfa Abdulkareem

Emotionally Yours by The O-Jays suggested by Imam Alfa Abdulkareem

Boots of Spanish Leather on Dylan på svenska suggested by Jesper Fynbo [Spotify] (This link will start the whole album – you have to move down to the track suggested to play it)

Lo and Behold by Coulson, Dean, McGuiness, Flint suggested by Mike Mooney

If not for you by George Harrison suggested by Larry Fyffe

To Ramona by Sinéad Lohan, suggested by Kurt-Åke Hammarstedt [Spotify – select track 9]

Another list of ten in a day or so.  Do keep the suggestions coming.

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

In 1997 Bob Dylan was quoted in Newsweek, regarding his spiritual search, “Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing . . . I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music.” Dylan has always defied any attempt to label him but much of his quest for a spiritual meaning in life comes out in his music.

Dylan has been one of the most influential musicians of the last 60 years. He has explored belief, spiritual commitment  and ancient texts in the songs that he writes. Dylan’s music is complexity and contradictory which skirts the border between reality and mythology, raising  questions about just exactly what Dylan believes. Dylan himself doesn’t seem anxious to answer anyone’s questions. He seems comfortable with his stance as someone who can’t be boxed into a corner and that includes explanations about his belief system.

Background

Bob Dylan was raised in a religious Jewish home in Duluth and Hibbing, Minnesota. His musical talents brought him into the early years of rock-and roll music where he expressed much of his soul through song. One of his folk-heroes was Woody Guthrie who kept his personal life private. Dylan followed suit – from the beginning of his folk music career he went out of his way to make sure that the public would know as little about his true self as possible.

Early Lyrics

Dylan’s lyrics, especially those form his ’60s heyday, often tap into his Jewish traditions. His inaugural “Talkin’ Hava Nageila Blues” featured the famous Jewish folksong “Hava Nageila”. Yet even there, Dylan couldn’t be straight – he introduced it at a Village gig as “a foreign song I learned out of Utah”.

Interestingly enough though, Biblical references popped up frequently in his work. In notable tracks from the first decade in which Dylan wrote and performed he presented several Biblical-themed songs – the story of the Binding of Isaac in his Highway 61 Revisited and a section of the Old Testament from Isaiah 21:1-10 in All Along the Watchtower that tells of the fall of Babylon.

Perhaps the most poignant and telling is Dylan’s Forever Young in which he highlights Jewish prayer and on-point Biblical imagery in a adaptation of the blessing that Jewish parents give to their children at the Friday night Sabbath meal. Dylan wrote Forever Young for Jacob, his son, and features a line from the ancient Priestly Blessing: “May God bless and keep you always.” The story includes a reference to the story of Jacob’s dream “May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung,” that references the Patriarch Jacob as well as Dylan’s son Jacob.

All in all, in the period from 1961 through 1978, the singer referenced Bible verses 89 times.

Christianity

In the late ’70s and early ’80s Dylan became interested in Christianity. His music from that era reflects this flirtation – interestingly, this era’s music generally received poor reviews, raising the possibility, as some observers have noted, that Dylan was ambivalent about this new-found belief system.

It’s assumed that the “Christian period” was a result of Dylan’s relationship with a born-again Christian woman. Dylan was upfront about his conversion, saying “there’s only two kinds of people — there’s saved people and there’s lost people. Jesus is the lord. Every knee shall bow to him.” His recording and concerts of that era focused on his new-found faith, including the Slow Train Coming album and concert tour. Some critics, however, have noted that if one really listens to Dylan’s music from his Christian period, what comes through is his yearning more than any real preaching. In short, he is still searching for his “truth.”

In terms of the records that Dylan produced during that era, they weren’t well received. Some felt that the music was akin to an online casino game – exciting for a few minutes but no long-lasting impact. Jann Werner of Rolling Stone Magazine was one of the only critics that was impressed.

Moving Forward

By the mid-’80s Dylan had begun to move away from Christianity as he became closer to the religion of his youth. The Jewish Chabad movement reached out to him and Dylan responded, traveling to Israel with them and conducting a Bar Mitzva ceremony for his son Jacob at the Western Wall. In 1983 he also released a strong statement, through the song Neighborhood Bully about his view of the way that the State of Israel was vilified for actions that other nations undertake with impunity.

Dylan continues to insist that he doesn’t have any time for organized religion but he maintains strong ties to the Hassidic Chabad outreach group. He takes part in their telethons and attends services at their synagogue.

Dylan’s lifelong search for spirituality continues but for now, it seems to be a search that is conducted within the realm of the Jewish world. He has noted that he is influenced by Jewish theologians, including mystics. He was impressed with one rabbi’s hospitality in particular, saying of the rabbi’s home, “It may be dark and snowy outside, but inside that house, it’s so light.”

Many people assume that Dylan’s son-in-law, Peter Himmelman, has influenced his father-in-law. Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated singer-songwriter, and the originator of Big Muse, a highly regarded methodology for developing deeper levels of communication and creative thinking. He is also an Orthodox Jew who imbues his Judaism into every aspect of his work and his life.

Dylan’s spiritual identity is complex. He is, however, still composing songs so it’s likely that his search will continue to be presented to the world through his lyrics.

Bob Dylan And Rainer Rilke (Part III): Rose As Symbol

Earlier parts of this series appear at

• Bob Dylan and Rainer Rilke
• Bob Dylan and Rainer Rilke (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

Roses, to poet Rainer Rilke, are visible reflections, the physical manifestations of the invisible life force that pervades the Universe. The flowers are beauteous, androgynous, self- pollinating, and thorny. Roses are mercury-mouthed plants that send humans a message that here be pricks that are poisonous – to use double-edged metonymy.

Rilke creatively transforms roses into a symbol that signifies a transcendental life force, a ‘God’ as it were, that is objectively disinterested. The Godhead does not concern Himself with how the processes set in motion affect the creatures living on Earth. Frederich Nietzsche says ‘God is dead’; Rainer Rilke, that ‘God is asleep.’ The question for both Rilke and Dylan: ‘When is God going to wake up? – He’s got a lotta ‘plainin’ to do!’

Singer/singwriter Bob Dylan finds he has a tough fight on his hands when he meets Rilke in the alleyway. He’s determined that a hard Rainer is a-gonna fall. Dylan does it his way, and speaks on a number of topics examined in Rilke’s poems.

While exhibiting a particular State as a microcosm of the United States, if not the whole Universe, Dylan humourously substitutes ‘rosebed’ with ‘Rosie’s bed’:

Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall
Say anything you want, I have heard it all
I was thinkin’ ’bout the things that Rosie said
I was thinkin’ I was sleepin’ in Rosie’s bed
(Bob Dylan: Mississipi)

Dylan does not come out of the alley smelling like a rose. He looks like he’s been in a street fight with Muhammad Ali (Casius Clay):

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back
all the way
Only thing I did wrong was stay in Mississippi a day
too long
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Dylan’s persona is mixed up and confused – there are things going on in this god-almighty world that not the songster nor anybody else can comprehend; he needs some of the spirits found in the horn of a hart to revitalize himself. Sexually ambiguous be the following lyrics:

Some people will offer you their hand, some won’t
Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t
I need somethin’ strong to distract my mind
I gonna look at you ’til I go blind
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Dylan often writes wittedly, in the style of the Metaphysical poets of yesteryear. The lines following could be, without too much of a stretch, construed as Dylan snacking on Rilke’s rosy ideas when the singer/songwriter runs out of his own. Coincidently, Rilke has ‘Maria’ as a middle name:

I’m going down to Rose Marie’s
She never does me wrong
She puts it to me plain as day
And gives it to me for a song
(Bob Dylan: Going To Acapulco)

In any event, the song, in keeping with Rilke’s theme of aloneness in modern society, speaks of a relationship that is not overly entangled.

In a traditional folk song, two lovers strive to come together, but succeed only in the afterlife:

They grew, they grew so awfully high
Till they could grow no higher
It was there they tied a lovers’ knot
The red rose and the briar
(Bob Dylan: Ode To Barbara Allen)

Dylan’s modernistic song is Rilkean – nevertheless hopeful still:

Well, my ship’s been splintered and it’s sinkin’ fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who sailed with me
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

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

Under Control is the third of five Dylan compositions on Disc One of the Complete Basement Tapes box set (noting as before that “Spanish is a loving tongue” which is credited to Dylan on the album is certainly not one of his).

The music is a very abrasive, rough 12 bar blues with the accompaniment made up of (I think) three electric guitars all competing with each other to play rhythm and/or lead.  The aim clearly was to have the rawest sound imaginable, and then add words that matched with it.

But it certainly sounds to me as if Bob didn’t have any lyrics written down and didn’t quite know where the song was going other than the fact that it had the words “Under control” repeated several times at the end of each verse – and that this phrase related to a woman.

One thing to remember in looking at a transcription of mine is that I’m not familiar with many everyday slang American phrases from the 1960s so I could easily have mistaken a phrase simply by not recognising what was said – so all improvements on the set of lyrics below would be much appreciated.

It is perhaps also worth noting in passing that we have the sad fact that a significant number of websites have put up pages that purport to be about each of the Dylan compositions from this album, but then offer nothing but a blank page.  I guess it is excusable for the official Dylan site to do it, but it is still frustrating.  One site has every single track from the box set listed with video links that go nowhere.  It just wastes people’s time.

Anyway, in one sense the roughness of the track makes it a hard listen, as does the poor recording quality, and I am not at all sure that the lyrics are particularly appealing, but then it was never meant to be anything that a rough and ready sketch, just to see if it got anywhere.

And I think this one did, because lurking in the roughness I suspect I hear elements of “From a Buick 6”.  However that is not the only reason to listen, because this working through of very raw blues by Dylan also eventually gave us the fantastic “I once knew a man” which I’ve always rated as one of his great forgotten compositions.

Here’s my transcript.  Try not to laugh too much at the ludicrous mishearings which undoubtedly lurk within…

Under control

Instrumental

Part one of this article appears at:

• Bob Dylan and Rainer Rilke

by Larry Fyffe

In poems of latter-day Romantic Transcendentalist Rainer Rilke, “roses,” a ‘thing’, symbolizes the life force that pervades the Universe; what that vital force is lies beyond the human senses. It sometimes seems more apparent within the female body and the sweet smell of roses. Rilke intuits a transcendental force therefrom.

The mechanical model of the Enlightenment, according to the Romantic Transcendalists, fails to take into account the ‘spark’ that ignites and
maintains organic life.

Rainer Rilke’s poems are themselves like roses; roses that express this mysterious life urge in figurative language through the creation of magical metaphors, metonymy, and sensual imagery.

Rilke’s Freudian surrealistic imagery of the male sexual function breathes some life back into the corpse of Nietzsche’s deity:

And this above all: that the light has to sift
Through these petals. From a thousand skies
They filter slowly that mysterious drop
In whose gleaming fire the tangled bundle
Of stamens stirs itself and stands upright
(Rainer Rilke: The Bowl Of Roses)

Likewise, so does the female reproductive function:

Ah, and around this
Centre, the rose of the watching
Flower and un-flower. Round this
Stamp, this pistil, caught in the pollen
Of its own flowering, fertilized
Again to a shadow-fruit of disinterest
Their never-conscious, seeming-to-smile, disinterest
Gleaming lightly, on surface thinness
(Rainer Rilke: Duino Elegy V)

A contra-Romantic theme is Rilke’s – the godhead’s not dead; he’s merely disinterested in what’s going on, and that sentiment is mirrored down on Earth:

Bob Dylan veers away from such a dark existentialist cosomology; he’s got a pocket full of them and Dyan cracks a simile – some women are like roses that are consciously happy:

People carry roses
Make promises by the hour
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her
(Bob Dylan: Love My Zero)

Whatever the life force is (actually unknowable due to the limitations of the senses), Rilke figuratively depicts it as noncaring. Representing himself as the mythological Mercury sent from distant Zeus, Rilke passes on the message that it does not matter to the the Commander-in-Chief of the Universe whether you are happy or sorrowful

That closer to caring Mother Nature be most women, even when consciously sorrowful, is the message delivered in a number of Bob Dylan’s songs:

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes
And your silver cross and your voice like chimes ….
Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you where the dead angels are that they used to hide
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side
How could they ever have mistaken you …..
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms?
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

The godhead is disinterested, but angels are worse – they bring Gothic horror to the human heart, or so writes Rilke. ‘Tobias’ means ‘the Goodness of God”:

Every angel is terror. And yet
Ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias
When most of the most radiant
Of you stood at the simple threshold
Disguised somewhat for the journey and no
longer awesome?
(Rainer Rilke: Elegy II)

Dylan makes use of Rilke’s Poe-like symbolism, but the angel evokes empathy;
not fear like TS Eliot’s ‘eternal footman’ does:

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

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

Many on the songs on disk 1 of the “Basement Tapes Complete” multi-disc collection are not Bob Dylan compositions.  Indeed only eight of the 22 tracks on the first disk are Dylan compositions and one of those is recorded twice (“I’m a fool for you”).

Certainly when we come to the next original song, we can say that the second song noted as a Dylan composition on the first disk (Roll on Train) is not the 1958 Elton Anderson song of the same name, but something utterly different.   Bob Dylan may well have recalled the song – he does after all seem to know just about every single blues, rock and country song from 1958 – in order to get the title, but from there on the song goes in a totally different direction.   Just in case you want to hear the Elton Anderson song it is here.

In the blues, the train is one of the key symbols of the life of the wandering man, the man dislocated from society.  Indeed the very early Dylan masterpiece Ballad for a friend has a strong connection with the whole blues tradition of the railroad track and moving on.

And just as the train is the symbol of the blues so the single chord accompaniment in this song is a symbol of the eternal rolling on and rolling on.  As Robert Johnson sang “Gotta keep moving, blues falling down like hail.”

Now normally when I find a haiku from Bob Dylan Haiku61 Revisited I absolutely concur with the writer’s summary, and admire the way he fits it into haiku form.   But this time, with this song, I find myself out of sync with his thoughts.  He writes….

This train is rolling,
This train is out of control.
This train rolls all night.

But in this song I really don’t see the train out of control at all.  Yes it rolls all night, because US trains can do that (harder to do that in my country of course, as it is a lot smaller).  But it rolls on that way to take the hobo away from whatever has gone wrong in one town onto another town where he is not known and he can try again.

So I hear the symbolism of the restless mind, the blues traveller, Robert Johnson moving from town to town, leaving behind everything including his woman, possibly his family, normally his debts…

That’s about as far as I can get with the lyrics, for once again here we certainly have a case of Bob having a musical idea (just one chord to symbolise the ceaseless journey through the night) and then making up words around the music that has evolved.

After this on the album there are ten recordings of other people’s songs before we get to what the album notes claim is another Dylan composition: “Spanish is a loving tongue”.  I am not sure if this is a serious claim by Bob or his record company, or just a slip of the typewriter, but I am as certain as I am of anything in music history that this was written by Charles Badger Clark in the first decade of the 20th century, based on the poem “A Border Affair” written by Charles Badger Clark in 1907 set to music in 1925 by Billy Simon.

Spanish is the lovin’ tongue,
Soft as music, lights as spray.
‘Twas a girl I learnt it from,
Livin’ down Sonora way.
I don’t look much like a lover,
Yet I say her love words over
Often when I’m all alone –
‘Mi amor, mi corazon.’

Which means the next song written by Bob on disk 1 of the “Complete Basement Tapes” collection is “Under Control.”

The Wikipedia notes on the album – and indeed other commentators – suggest that the Complete series is in roughly the order in which the songs were recorded, which is helpful to know.   That’s good work by the record company to preserve that order, but then it is curious how the record company could make such a mistake as to claim such a well known song as “Spanish is the Loving Tongue” as one of Dylan’s own.

The order I am roughly working to is set out in the 1967 section of the chronology.

There will be another song, or maybe another train, along soon.

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

The Transcendental Romantic poets, perceiving a vitalism in the natural organic world, contend that restrictions imposed by the institutions of society block most human individuals from intuitively feeling the regenerative spirit that pervades the universe.

The Metaphysical poets before that employ intellectual wit and word play, particularly conceits, to highlight the descrepancies between human behaviour and the teachings of religious authorities.

PreModernist Rainer Rilke rains on both their parades and plays with the conventional syntax and meanings of words to create word-pictures that contrast life and death. He solidifies the otherwise abstract concept that there is a transcendental life force at work throughout the universe and so it’s also operating within the body of each individual human.

Rilke goes further and reverses Rousseau’s Romantic message that ‘we are born free but everywhere we are in chains’. Rilke contends that as an individual matures this life force drives both the human behaviour that is conventionally considered ‘natural’, and the behaviour that at present is labelled ‘unnatural’. Those capable of getting in touch with this mysterious life force realize that the Godhead is not dead like Nietzsche claims, but that over time He merely loosens His grip on how people should behave:

For this is a crime if anything is a crime
Not to increase the freedom of love
With all the freedom we can summon in ourselves
We have, indeed, when we love, only this one thing –
To loose another because holding on to ourselves
Comes easily to us and does not first have to be learned
(Rainer Rilke: Requiem For A Friend – translated)

The influence of Rainer Rilke’s poetry on Bob Dylan’s song lyrics is clearly discernable:

If love is a sin, then beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and the white, the yellow and the brown
It’s all right there in front of you in Scarlet Town
(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

One of Dylan’s most famous songs is inspired by Rainer Rilke’s angst-ridden poems of lament and joy – you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, but there comes a time to let it go. In Greek and Roman mythology, Hermes (Mercury) is Zeus’ winged messenger, a trickster and a master thief who guides the dead to the underworld; Orpheus is a magical musician; Eurydice, his short-lived wife:

They’re still coming, but they were two
Fearfully light in their passage. If only he might
Turn once more (if looking back
Were not to the ruin of all his work
That he had to accomplish), then he must see them
The quiet pair, mutely following him
(Rainer Rilke: Orpheus, Eurydice, And Hermes)

For Bob Dylan, there’s a time to look back, and a time to look ahead:

How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
You never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did
their tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
(Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone)

Dylan has a little fun with Rilke’s view of cosmological evolution. The singer/songwriter covers and inverses the following 1929 song so that it’s about a same sex couple:

I’m not much to look at
Nothin’ to see
Just glad I’m livin’
And lucky to be
I’ve got a man who’s crazy for me
He’s funny that way
I can’t save a dollar
Ain’t worth a cent
He’d never holler
He’d live in a tent
I’ve got a man who’s crazy for me
He’s funny that way
(Bob Dylan: He’s Funny That Way – Moret/Whiting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ZjgMXSS7Q

By Tony Attwood, with special thanks to Pat 

For the moment the only way you can hear Edge of the Ocean is by buying, borrowing or stealing Volume 11 of the Bootleg series – the Complete Basement Tapes.  Of course lots of scurrilous websites turn up if you type the title of the first track – Edge of the Ocean – into Google (“Listen on Deezer” comes up on my search) but none of them have it available for you to play.

So, in case you haven’t bought, borrowed, begged etc a copy, here’s a quick review of the very first track from the Basement.  So rare it is not even mentioned as existing in the all-encompassing Heylin.  But he probably wouldn’t have thought much of it anyway.

It starts with a mishmash of sounds and then suddenly Bob is there sounding as if he has already sung a verse but is coming to the end of it.

Below is what I think he sings – but I am notoriously awful at this transcription lark so all improvements are welcome – just don’t laugh at me too much

The music gently laps between two chords with additional chords only added for the last two lines.

Clearly Bob was making them up as he went, and hanging them around the melody and chord movement simulating the waves – and it works very well indeed.  This could easily have been a song from several of his song writing periods – it just needed a little more work.  Indeed if one heard it without knowing where it came from the chances are one would place it much later in Dylan’s writing career.

There’s a feeling of sadness as befits the gentle rocking motion and rhythm.  One of the few commentaries I have seen (from the writer of the Haikus – see below) suggested the song is both “charming and disturbing – right here at the beginning of the set we have Dylan’s penchant for apocalyptic warnings creeping into what sounds like a gentle calypso about life on the beach.”  That is a very good summary.

Robert MacMillan who writes or wrote the Haiku 61 Revisted blog came up with

Bob Dylan And Helen Jackson

By Larry Fyffe

Like her friend Emily Dickinson, Helen Jackson be an associate of the American Romantic Transcendentalist movement whose writers sense in Nature the Oneness of all things, including mankind.

With the aid of new technology, Helen Jackson’s novel ‘Romana’ turnes into a movie that features the following song:

Ramona, I hear the missions bells above
Romona, they’re ringing out our song of love
I press you, and caress you, and bless the day
you taught me to care
To always remember the rambling rose you wear in your hair
Romana, when the day is done, you’ll hear me call
Romana, we’ll meet beside the water fall
(Ramona – by Gilbert and Wayne)

Jackson’s portrayal of never-ending love, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan expresses too. He also reacts against such idealism because of the shifting circumstances of existential reality – time does not stand still, and you’re on your own:

I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows baby
I’ll come crying to you
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

Like a number of followers of the Transcendental movement, Helen Jackson takes a political stand in her novel, and condemns the maltreatment of native American ‘Indians’; she considers their culture of sharing more in line with Nature than the greed-driven culture of the European newcomers to America:

“How generous”, warmly exclaimed Ramona
“I think they are better than we are, Filipe”
(Helen Jackson: Ramona)

In the Jackson novel, her native lover and Ramona flee from racist land grabbers. However, while Bob Dylan denounces the exploitation of fellow human beings, he champions individuals who do not conform, and instead strive to reach their full creative potential:

I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better than no one
And no one is better than you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you got to be exactly like them
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

There’s nothing wrong, sings Dylan, with believing in yourself, and working at being the best at what you desire to do. There is purpose in life. Rainer Rilke tells Dylan what that is: “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things”.

Poet Emily Dickinson, living in a patriarchal society, will settle for recognition as an equal:

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted to the tomb
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room
He questioned why I failed
“For beauty”, I replied
“And I for truth – themself are one
We brethren are”, he said
And so, as kinsmen met a night
We talked between the rooms
Until the moss had reached our lips
And covered up our names
(Emily Dickinson: I Died For Beauty)

Dylan sings that it best not to think of the future; instead, keep on the move like a rolling stone:

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love, she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And failure is no success at all
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

The howl coming from a distant tower is that of Bob Dlyan’s captain:

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker
And in short, I was afraid
(TS Eliot: Prufrock)

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 is a tiny fragment of which the person who put it up on YouTube has taken the title literally to give us the fragment over and over, around and around and around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nutAvSExOk4

But it is a lovely melody, a gentle rhythm and the hint at some interesting lyrics of the love song variety.

The same melodic line is sung three times before we get what was presumably going to be the chorus line of of “Around and Around”.

Of course if you do keep playing the fragment over and over it will ultimately get a bit much and those last two words (which sound to me rather like “on and on”) become a reflection of what we are hearing.

I’ve included it not just for completeness – it exists so I put it on our list – but also because it is once more a perfect example of how Dylan can work.  That charming melody demands to have a set of interesting lyrics with it, which worked over time will create if not a great song certainly a very listenable song.  It is just that on this occasion Bob never quite got around to it.

The recording comes from May 1984 and fits into this sequence of composition:

• I once knew a man
• Who loves you more
• Almost done
• I see you round and round
• Dirty lie
• Go way little boy
• Drifting too far from shore

Which certainly means it comes from a most interesting time.

One little bonus – if you do leave the recording running, it is followed by Absolutely Sweet Marie – in a rather different version from that which we got used to on the album – although beware, because the maker of the video also runs this twice.  It must be his thing.

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