Untold Dylan

By James Whittaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

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

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

Said in the Bible:

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

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

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

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

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

An allusion to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2005:  Tell Ol’ Bill

2010: Champagne Illinois (Old 97s Desolation Row)

2017:  Visions of Johanna: The Old Crow version 

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

by Larry Fyffe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The father of Romantic Transcendentalism:

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

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

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

Archibald MacLeish flees from it:

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

Though there is something for Dylan and his irony:

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

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood and Larry Fyffe

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

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

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

The sequence as it settles down is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Cole Porter

by Larry Fyffe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

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

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

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

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

In case you are interested the sequence is

F  Bb

G  C

F  G  C

(Repeat ad infinitum )

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

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

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

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

Indeed this little extract could have it all.

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

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

Oh Bob you absolute tormentor.

Please someone give us the lyrics.

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

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

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

(One is tempted to say at this point,

But perhaps not).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operator 
All will tell ya 
And I will 
Before too long 

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

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

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

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

Is it worth it, 
What your doing to me? 

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

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

Is it worth it, 
What your doin’ to me 

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In that Dylan writes:

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

Nor was:

In relation to Damaino’s claim to:

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

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

By Tony Attwood

If you have been following the postings of reviews of the Dylan songs in the 1970s you will know that by mid March 2018 we have pretty well got the whole decade sorted.  You can see the complete list for the whole decade with links to each and every song review by clicking here.     Just scroll down – its a pretty big list.

Anyway, the very last song to be reviewed is a mystery that I can’t solve.  But I am sure that someone else can… so here is my appeal.

The song is listed as “Daddy’s gonna take one more ride” by Heylin, and he mentions a possible source as well as it being performed in the New Haven soundcheck of September 1978.

https://youtu.be/JJ2BfbrH4oM

Now we have been working through this video song by song (as you will either have seen from the reviews that preceded this or from the link to the songs of the 1970s.

We have one song left at the end of the sequence starting at around 16 minutes 22 seconds, and I can’t place this song.   The logical answer would be this is Heylin’s missing “Daddy’s gonna take one more ride.”   But I don’t hear those lyrics, nor do I recognise this as a song from anyone else (although of course my knowledge is only partial so it easily could be something I missed.

I have particularly looked around the work of Shel Siverstein whom Heylin particularly references but without any luck there.

So going further, to see if anyone else had trod this road before me I searched around some more and found that the person who writes the Dylan Haiku website hit exactly the same snag – looks like he really had reached the same dead end.

My next step was to ask Larry to see if he could disentangle the lyrics.   Larry commented that he found some “Mary Shelley / Poe-like possibilities and came up with…

It is an extremely frustrating end to the journey through this era of Dylan’s writing, and if you can identify the song, provide some lyrics or give any other clues that would be wonderful as I think that would pretty much wrap up the build up to Slow Train – although again if you know of any song written in this period we’ve missed and can direct me to a recording, then even better.

If we head towards a solution I’ll re-write this page and of course acknowledge those who contribute – using whatever name you want to acknowledge your contribution.  If no one knows anything this page just stays here – a monument to the song that defeated us.

By Tony Attwood and Larry Fyffe

Actually I have pondered whose name to put first on this review.  Larry did the work I couldn’t even start in making a stab at with the lyrics and should be first in line for that effort.  But I didn’t want anyone thinking that the rather desultory review that follows is anyone’s view but mine (Tony).

This song comes from the New Haven CT soundcheck on 17 September 1978, so my earlier comments in relation to the article “Take it or leave it”, the lost Dylan song from 1978   apply.  Dylan seemed to be toying with two ideas: “the world is stuck, there is nothing to be done, that’s all there is” in this song and “life goes on, so it goes” in “You don’t love me no more” which ultimately then collided and combusted into “there is change and its coming big time” with “Slow Train” which emerged just a short while later.

“This a-way that a-way” really does seem to be at the end of the line of uncertainty.  The music itself is ok, to my mind, but sounds awfully close to a lot of other pieces of the same type – although Heylin calls it a “gorgeous tune” and it seems from his account that Dylan continued to use it in sounds checks right up to the one in which the rather slow “Slow Train” emerged for the first time.

There’s a link to the recording of “This a-way” below so you can decide – although I am sorry the quality is rather poor – but it is in the only recording I could find.

And here are the lyrics Larry came up with…

which I think works as well as anything else.

To hear the piece you need to revisit the New Haven soundcheck  and then scoot along to 3 minutes 34 seconds or thereabouts and up comes the song.  If you want to change the words, or complete them, great – please send them in.   I have seen a version of the lyrics on line but I really couldn’t believe that this was what Dylan was singing – hence our new version.

Larry also added the comment that “Many a grade B western movie contains the line, with a finger pointing, ‘they went that a-way’ when  lawman  asks which way are the outlaws headed, and continued…

“As I noted with the first song on the recording, the vocals without printed lyrics are never quite clear. I don’t think Dylan varies as much as I initially thought on hearing that initial song. Better that I had stuck with lyrics, especially seemingly repeated ones, that I was relatively sure of than sticking my neck out on a possible but unclear variation in  wording that I thought I detected. Ears can play tricks on you too!

“And, of course, printed lyrics are often incorrect as well.”

But this is not to knock Dylan.   That he never completed the lyrics and never revised the song shows it was part of the process which all composers go through, writing songs or melodies or lyrics or anything else as a way of preparing for the main fare that was about to come.

The song is worth preserving not just for the sake of completeness but because it is part of such a clear journey that led to an explosion of insight with Slow Train.

Dylan created two more songs – “One more ride” and “Legionnaire’s Disease” before “Slow Train” and after that the show really was on the road once more.

Or maybe I should say, the train was on the tracks (although that would perhaps be a little too obvious).

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 lyrics of Bob Dylan’s gospels, according to Kees de Graaf, ultimately demonstrate that singer/songwriter Bob Dylan personally holds ‘The conviction that there’s only one road to salvation’ (de Graaf: Trouble No More). Bob Dylan, from a Jewish background, gives due respect to many of the teachings of Jesus, but it is folly to assert that, at the same time, he puts down the individualistic and goodly spiritual beliefs of others.

Whatever Dylan’s spiritual beliefs may be (who knows for sure?), the ‘one road’ assertion on the part of de Graaf is sheer conjecture. The oft double-edged meanings in so many of Dylan’s gospel lyrics de Graaf dismisses as nothing more than subterfuge used by the songwriter in order not to alienate fans who are not hard core Christian believers – that is to say, those in the know, the true Christian ones, are not fooled as to what Dylan’s really means.

According to de Graaf it would seem, Bob Dylan does not really intend to leave a message that is open to interpretation as regards to the extent of the unconditional love of Jesus:

(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

The lyrics above, apparently, do not present God as an Existentialist who lets the cards fall where they may. Nevertheless, this is a theme that appears in others work of Dylan as well – there’s a ‘God’, but He’s mysterious and dark, quite unknowable.  Where’s God when you need Him? Why did He forsake the passengers aboard the sinking Titanic? Where’s water-walking Jesus? Which side is He on?

Though there be widespread disagreement about the historical facts of Jesus’ life, Dylan represents Him in the lyrics of a number of gospel songs as a holy man, among holy men, who tries to bridge the Great Divide. However, the degradation by dogmatic church leaders of, say, the Inuit spiritual way of life by fur traders and by Christian missionaries, Dylan does not let go by the board unquestioned:

Referencing:

(Joel 3:7)

That religions pass out milk while they practice cultural genocide, and indeed worse, raises the numbered hairs on the back of Dylan’s head:

There are too many questionable things that are done for the benefit of organizations based on religion. In the name of religion, things are undertaken to accommodate the selfish wants of its leaders and followers – doings that actually oppose Christ’s teachings, that scare Dylan off:

(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood)

Artistically compelled, Dylan is both dark and light in creative energy, filled with irony, antihypocrisy disdain, satire, and humour;  metaphorical, allegorical, and alliterative in style:

(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

Going by his song lyrics, Bob Dylan or his persona is anything but a religious zealot; and an apocalyptic one, in the literal sense, he shows himself not to be.

There’s always a bit of light glowing somewhere.

Greedy capitalists too, but it’s self-serving religious leaders and opportunistic followers that Bob Dylan especially criticizes:

(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

By Tony Attwood

This is another of the songs from the New Haven soundcheck which then never seemed to turn up again but which, in my view, was part of something much more important: the journey Dylan was making from hopelessness to a new hope.

Heylin actually casts doubt on whether this really is a Dylan original or not just the cover or a country song – noting that he was putting a lot of such songs into soundchecks around this time.   Heylin also notes that the song turned up later in another soundcheck, and indeed he is quite right: there were several other soundcheck songs of this type.

But even if this is a half remembered old “cowboy song” as Heylin has it, it is still part of the transition.  A performer like Dylan does not play (especially in sound checks) songs he profoundly feels apart from.

Dylan’s saying (I think) that this is me, and I see no way out, and if you don’t want me as I am then off you can go, because I can’t see what to do.  If you do want to see me like this, fine let’s carry on.

As a way of dealing with a problematic relationship – indeed as a way of dealing with any relationship, it doesn’t actually give out a very positive message.    But for me it was the preface to all that happened next.

Here’s the recording…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad78KjHdU6M

Interestingly “You don’t love me no more” is dealing with the same sort of romantic troubles, but in a much more upbeat manner, and is being positive about the end of the affair – “Down the road I go”.   Take it or leave it has a form of hopelessness about the whole situation.

I’m not at all comfortable by the lyrics that appear as a commentary on the site that I have given as a source above, and I wonder if all the lyrics were written or remembered at the time of this run through for the New Haven sound check.  Dylan is certainly able to make them up as he goes along.

Now that notion of the half complete or half remembered song might seem odd, but the construction of the song is very standard and any musicians (and Dylan wasn’t just using “any musicians”) could readily play along with the chord structure which is fairly standard for this type of song.  As a guitarist or a keyboard player, once you hear it, you know it.

But this is not me criticising the commentator who wrote the lyrics out – I couldn’t possibly manage that at all – it is just that I can’t believe it starts “Got your head in the gardening.”  My problem is that I just imagine what else it can possibly be.  If you can help, please do.

The instrumental break at the end of the song concludes the run through, and I am sure if Dylan was getting it ready for performance he’d have had a proper ending in place.

But there is more to this, because I think what we also have to remember with all the songs from this soundcheck era is that they led up to up Slow Train which emerged six weeks later.   Dylan may even have been writing out the basics of Slow Train at this time.

There is actually a low grade recording of the first or one of the first rehearsals of Slow Train on the internet.

It is a poor quality recording – but still a million thanks to whoever was there ready to record it.  If you skip forward a minute into the recording you can get a feel of what is going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUMS6TJ8hrA

Seen in the light of the emergence of Slow Train just a few weeks later “Take it or leave it” takes on a new context and meaning.   “Take it or leave it” is seemingly about the fact that it is all falling apart.   “Slow Train” is still about the inevitability of what is going to happen to him but now this is upgraded to the collapse of the whole of the United States of America.

Thus we get to the transformation of Dylan’s thought, from a shrug of the shoulders to his preparation to say something about it all.

I don’t care about ecology
I don’t care about astrology
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets

The downbeat of “Take it or leave it” and the resignation of the style and approach contrasts so utterly with what he was doing within six weeks.

(Incidentally I know my version of those lyrics are different from the official ones, but that is how it sounds to me).

Dylan’s Slow Train is an absolute challenge to all those around, with lines such as

But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency
All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion

and it all arose within that extraordinary six week period.   Quite something.

From “Take it or leave it” to “Actually guys you don’t have much choice”.

by Larry Fyffe

Often overlooked is the influence of the  ironic humour of pre-Beat scat-singer Lord Buckley on the song lyrics of Bob Dylan;

(Lord Buckley: Scrooge)

Dylan takes the above Mark Twain-tinged burlesque on Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol”, and gives it a just-a-minute Dylanesque twist:

(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

Then Dylan picks up on Buckley’s critique of materialism unbound:

(Bob Dylan: Blowin’ In The Wind)

Lord Buckley records a version of Joseph Newman’s (Paul Newman’s uncle) anti-racist poem:

(Lord Buckley: Black Cross)

Dylan performs ‘Black Cross’ under the title  ‘Hezekiah Jones’ on the bootleg  “Ode For Barbara Allen” (1974).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0x5x8lyON8

Below, a Buckley-like humourous snap at religion with a Dylanesque spin:

Bob Dylan : 115th Dream)

Quite serious at other times is Dylan at the hypocrisy of religious leaders and followers concerning the plight of the poor:

(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)

There are a couple of Dylan recordings of Barbara Allen on You Tube:

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 Gurang

One of the more vehement objections to Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in literature is that he is “only” a pop singer.  We’ll examine this line of reasoning to its most logical conclusion.

Pervasive Pop

First it is obvious that many of the things we love are part of pop culture:  Blue jeans, café au lait, Game of Thrones, an online Vegas casino, baseball, the Heritage Trail, and so much more. All are part of pop culture and none deserves an award of the scale of a Nobel Prize however we may cherish them. 

Literature More Heartfelt than Mathematics

It is also true that the Nobel Prize in literature is far more subjective than the prize in chemistry or mathematics.  We can read the prize-winning literature; most of us can’t fathom the first page in the corpus of work that a Nobel Prize-winning chemist or mathematician produced over the course of several decades.

Has every Nobel Prize in literature been given to someone who was as eminently deserving of it as Toni Morrison?  Every literature winner has been roundly criticized by people who simply don’t like their creative compositions.  It’s hard to say that you “don’t like” new discoveries in chemistry.

What is Pop Culture?

Let us try to arrive at a definition of pop culture that will satisfy most people given that we can’t possibly hope to satisfy everyone.  Pop culture is fleeting; here today gone tomorrow.  When was the last time you saw someone in bell bottoms or a man with long sideburns?

By this definition, Dylan is not part of pop culture even if he is popular.

Pop culture is the bailiwick of young people, at least in the West.  It may be true that young people have set trends in the past but that was primarily when they were the biggest cohort in the society.  Today Baby Boomers may be ageing but they outnumber millennials.  So, while millennials are texting right and left, their parents and grandparents are curled up listening to Bob Dylan.

By this metric, Dylan is so far removed from pop culture as to make a mockery of the comparison.

Pop culture is characterized by doggerel.  You know what I’m saying?  I was like happy when the Cubs finally won the World Series.  No soup for you. Bazinga.  Let’s compare “Yummy yummy yummy I’ve got love in my tummy” with “the times they are a-changin”.

By any fair definition of doggerel, Dylan has never written a single line of doggerel in his career.  I might have said life but who knows what he wrote when he was seven?

Commonalities between Dylan and Pop

Here are some ways that Dylan and pop culture coincide: they are both commercial; they begin locally and expand to a worldwide reach; recognized by everyone; always evolving.

So here are four areas where Dylan and pop culture coincide but co-incidence does not necessarily mean tautology.  Cheap wine is popular; is Dylan’s writing comparable to a bottle of cheap wine?  A lot of slang terms begin in inner cities; are they as uplifting as “his clothes are dirty but his hands are clean”?  Lady Gaga and Bob Dylan are recognized by billions of people; does the comparison go beyond recognition?  True pop culture evolves because it loses its luster after a short time; Bob Dylan evolves to accommodate an ever-growing luster.

Samples of Dylan’s Work

Can anyone truthfully say at this point that Bob Dylan is part of popular culture?  The argument then must “evolve” to the objective quality of his work.  So, we’ll present some samples of his work to see if it measures up to the stature of a Nobel Prize.

• I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.
• Knock nock knockin’ on heaven’s door.
• Lord knows I’ve paid some dues getting through.
• You say you’re lookin’ for someone
  Who’s never weak but always strong.
  To protect you and defend you
  Whether you are right or wrong.
  Someone to open each and every door,
  But it ain’t me.
  No, no, no it ain’t me Babe.
  It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, Babe
• How many deaths will it take ‘til he knows
  That too many people have died?

• And she takes just like a woman,
  And she aches just like a woman,
  And she wakes just like a woman,
  Yeah, but she breaks just like a little girl.

• Every man’s conscience is vile and depraved.
  You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it’s you who must keep it satisfied.

• You used to laugh about
  Everybody that was hangin’ out.
  Now you don’t talk so loud.
  Now you don’t seem so proud.
  About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
  How does it feel?

• May you grow up to be righteous,
  May you grow up to be true,
  May you always know the truth,
  And see the lights surrounding you.
  May you always be courageous,
  Stand upright and be strong,
  May you stay forever young,
  Forever young, forever young,
  May you stay forever young.

• The world is old,
  The world is grey,
  Lessons of life
  Can’t be learned in a day.
  I watch and I wait
  And I listen while I stand
  To the music that comes
  From a far better land.

What is the Muse?

We can never know what runs through a creative mind at work.  We see or hear the finished product but we cannot fathom how the artist got there.  It could very well be that the artist also doesn’t know how he or she got there. 

Often we hear of an artist or an athlete being “in a zone”.  Surely Khatia Buniatishvili must be in a zone when her fingers fly across the piano keys at jet airplane speed.  The creative genius of Bob Dylan is that he can get into a zone far more often than most other songwriters and far more often than most people during their own life’s work.

Someone who was knee deep in pop culture would have rhymed take, ache, break, and wake into an easily forgotten lyric.  Bob Dylan took the same common words and turned them into an eternal truth.

Turning everyday words into eternal truths is the most powerful ability of Nobel Prize Literature winners and is why Bob Dylan so richly deserves the award.

By Tony Attwood

Updated 11 March with song lyrics added by Larry

OK it is a bit cheeky of me saying it was found because I don’t know if it was lost, but there are only a few references to it around, and we do have a recording of Dylan performing the song.  So it was lost to me because until yesterday I’d never heard it before.

One site I looked at since finding “You don’t love me no more” suggests that Dylan is not necessarily the composer, but the official Dylan site says he is (although it has no copy of the lyrics) and it certainly sounds like one of his songs of the time.

Now I know from previous attempts that anything I might write down as a version of the lyrics is going to be met with derisive laughter, so, as with other unlisted sets of lyrics I throw the door open.  If you would like to contribute a full set, or even one verse, I’d be delighted to print them here.  (It could of course be in the official book of Dylan’s lyrics, but I am currently on the opposite side of the world from all my Dylan materials, so if it is, sorry, you’ll still have to help me out).

In the recording we have (there’s a link below) it is the opening track which is nice and handy.  The  official site says Dylan never played but it was certainly very well rehearsed and absolutely sounds ready to me, so why having gone to all that trouble to rehearse it perfectly, he let it be, I really don’t know.  But I guess that’s Bob.

It is particularly interesting because the song has a properly written ending which exists outside of the sung material – a fulsome coda no less (to use the correct Italian term).  Something rather rare for Bob – and indeed not that common in pop, rock and blues in general)

So here we have it from September 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ2BfbrH4oM

What makes the song work so well is that the chorus “You don’t love me no more” is based on three chords that make up thousands of pop songs (described in music as tonic, flattened 7th and 4th) while the intervening verse sections go into a series of minor chords, which I am not going to try and guess at without a piano to hand – something I inexcusably failed to bring with me to Australia).

What’s also so interesting is that no one seems to have written much about this.  Heylin gives it a mention to the level of calling it “Pretty Enjoyable” but that is it.

It really has got an interesting reggae derived rhythm at the start which returns throughout, and although I can’t really make it out it almost seems like a whistle playing along although it could be some clever work on an organ, or maybe a flute.

There’s no breakdown among the band or singer and from the recording it seems everyone knew exactly what they were up to throughout.

All I can say is “oh Bob, how could you throw away such a piece?”   Thank goodness for the guy with the tape recorder.

If you can supply any further information about the song I’ll then try and incorporate it within the whole review (with full acknowledgements of course) and an attempt at the chords once I get back to England.

Here’s Larry’s version of the lyrics added after my initial plea…

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s highly original artistic style springs in part from his having a peculiar physical affliction – a unique form of reading disability known as ‘Dylaxia’ that causes mixed-up visualizations of proper nouns in particular.

Symptons also include difficulty in discerning words that rhyme with one another – together with being unable to recognize letters and their order. Dylaxia-affected people confuse some letters for others, and imagine letters that are not even there. Aware of his condition, Dylan simplifies things for himself – he names himself ‘Bob’ – not wanting to see himself as a ‘boR’.

Below is an example of a dubious rhyme by Bob Dylan in a song that involves an affair that he claims to have had with a cow-headed Egyptian Goddess:

(Bob Dylan: Isis)

What follows is an example of Dylaxian backward-thinking regarding letter arrangement in  proper nouns. Bob Dylan messes up a song he initially intends to be about ‘God’ returning, and awkwardly turns it into a song about the mistreatment of a ‘doG’ – named ‘Jesus’ of all things:

(Bob Dylan: What Will You Do When Jesus Comes)

Not to dwell on the odd rhyme in the following lyrics, the song’s intended at first to be about Bob Dylan’s wife Sara Lownds (sure he is that Sara is fooling around with a bunch of lusty Kings from Tyre). Due to the effects of Dylaxia, the song gets transformed – the songwriter screws up the spelling of his wife’s last name by the insertion of a couple of letters that aren’t really there (‘Lowlands’ for ‘Lownds’).

In the ensuing confusion, Sara ends up not being herself, but a symbol of Hebrews awaiting the Messiah that the sad-eyed Ezekiel says is not coming to save them any time soon because of their wicked ways:

(Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Jokneam is a city, with a view of the sea in (North) Israel, below Carmel – the mountain where prophet Elijah wins a ‘roast-off’ with the priests of Baal. King Ahab, prompted by Queen Jezebel (from Tyre), becomes angry at Elijah and chases him out of town in the driving rain. Taking Dylaxia into account (‘Jokneam’ seen by Dylan as ‘Jokeman’), the song, intended to be about a Joker, turns into a biblical story about a prophet.

Not unlike allegorical storylines in a number of other songs that do not involve the unintentional misreadings of proper nouns.

In ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’, Rosemary, featured in the story line, is easily recognized by listeners familiar with the Bible, as symbolizing North Israel, the land of the Rose of Sharon, while the Jack of Hearts represents the prophet Ezekiel.

Take what you gather from coincidence – in ‘Narrow Way’ Dylan mentions the War of 1812 in which Mohawks play a big part in driving the Americans out of the North Country, ie., Canada. The Mohawk mother of The Band’s Robbie Robertson is named ‘Rose Marie’. It’s little wonder things get mixed together by Dylan – without Dylaxia having anything to do with it!

In the following lyrics, Dylan imagines a time-warped eternally-recurring Universe with a faraway God. Styled in a Post Modernist fragmented format, prophet Elijah is presented by Dylan as a representative of a Messiah

yet-to-come, while Baal-worshipping Ahab, ruler over the city of Jokneam, is depicted as an early rendition of Satan himself, Mick Jagger. There’s no Jokeman, or Jokerman; only Jokneam:

(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

A biblical allusion to spinning God’s somewhat-slow roulette wheel and taking your chances:

(Ecclesiastes 11:1)

And an allusion to a rebel against the establishment:

In ‘John Wesley Harding’  (note the Dylaxian ‘g’ added to the name), the letters that are used by those of the Jewish faith to signify the Lord God – YHWH -, Dylan sees as only JWH. He gets things a bit mixed up, and writes a song about a Jesus-like outlaw from the Old West:

(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

Other than the occasional problem caused by the physical condition known as Dylaxia, the singer/songwriter says that he’s just fine

In fact it’s a gas. The unintended consequences of suffering from Dylaxia is great art.

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 story that Dylan and Helena Springs on tour just jammed together with her singing and Bob making up the music is all very well, and could well explain the origin of the variant 12 bar blues with a few extra notes, and it could explain a very un-Dylan like melody, but it doesn’t explain what happens in the middle 8 which sees the introduction of chords that are quite different from the normal run of Dylan compositions.

To put it simply the verse give us lots of B, E, B, E chords – which is nice and straightforward.

But then in the middle 8 we get this, and even if you don’t know anything about guitar chords you might recognise this is pretty much un-Dylan

But then, maybe that was the only way he could make something to add to Ms Spring’s musical ideas.   Whatever happened my guess is it wasn’t composed all in one go, or at least if it was, they took quite a long coffee break in the middle to get that accompaniment sorted.

Helena Springs says that the piece was written in Brisbane, and Heylin suggests that Dylan must have thought he had found a collaborator along the lines of Levy.  And there are other versions of the story with Clapton noting particularly he had the only cassette of the Dylan/Springs version.  Going through the various reports I am not sure if anyone 100% remembers how it all came together.

Anyway, one way or another the song was given to Clapton and he recorded it along with “Walk Out in the Rain”

The version we’ve been left with is that from Eric Clapton, as Dylan never recorded it and has never performed it as far as I know…   Here is the Live version

And the studio version

Heylin also suggests that the piece has a relationship with “Friend of the Devil” written by Robert Hunter and Gerry Garcia and recorded by Grateful Dead.   As yes in terms of the lyrics he certainly has a point, but I must admit I didn’t think of this at all when listening to the Clapton recording.  I must be getting old; 1-0 to Heylin on this occasion.

Anyway you can, of course, decide what comes from where and how.

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

Here first are Dylan’s or Dylan and Springs lyrics

Blue sky upon the horizon,
Private eye on my trail,
And if I don’t be there by morning
She’ll know that I must’ve spent the night in jail.

I’ve been runnin’ from Memphis to L.A.,
Had an appointment set sometime for today
And if I don’t be there by morning
She’ll know that I must have gone the other way.

Finding my way home to you, girl, lonely and blue, mistreated too,
Sometimes I think about you, girl, is it true that you think of me too?

I got a woman living in L.A.,
I got a woman waiting for my pay,
And if I don’t be there by morning
Pack my clothes, get down on your knees and pray.

I left my woman with a twenty-dollar bill,
Left her waiting, hope she’s waiting for me still.
But if I don’t be there by morning
I guess that I never will.

Finding my way home to you, girl, lonely and blue, mistreated too,
Sometimes I think about you, girl, is it true that you think of me too?

I left my woman with a twenty-dollar bill,
Left her waiting, hope she’s waiting for me still.
Well, if I don’t be there by morning
I guess that I never will.

And the lyrics from the Dead…

I lit out from Reno, I was trailed by twenty hounds
Didn’t get to sleep last night till the morning came around

Set out runnin but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me twenty bills
I spent the night in Utah in a cave up in the hills

Set out runnin but I take my time, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

I ran down to the levee but the devil caught me there
He took my twenty dollar bill and vanished in the air

Set out runnin but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Got two reasons why I cry away each lonely night:
The first one’s named sweet Anne Marie, and she’s my heart’s delight
The second one is prison, babe, the sheriff’s on my trail
And if he catches up with me, I’ll spend my life in jail

Got a wife in Chino, babe, and one in Cherokee
The first one says she’s got my child, but it don’t look like me

Set out runnin but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Anyway, a couple of nice songs, and even if the Dylan/Springs composition doesn’t rate with me as a masterpiece, being able to put together a song of that quality just by sitting together and singing and strumming… that sure is something.   It’s only when comparing the song with the fact that Dylan had recently written, “Where are you tonight?” makes me feel it is not right up there with the best of them.

But that’s probably just me wanting works of genius all the time.

By Larry Fyffe

Jezebel of Tyre marries Ahab, the ruler of (North) Israel, Solomon’s former kingdom of Canaan having been split in two – into Israel and Judea. Jezebel is determined to have her people worship nature and agriculture (symbolized by Baal) to the dismay of the followers of Yahweh:

According to the Bible, she and her allies treat the followers of the Hebrew God rather badly:

(Joel 3:6)

The prophet Joel warns the inhabitants of the North Country that the true God will punish them if they don’t mend their wicked ways:

(Joel 3:7)

The New Testament Book of Revelation is filled with allegories and symbols in reference to ‘end times’ and the Second Coming. Old Testament-oriented Bob Dylan’s song lyrics lend themselves to an interpretation of history as a recurring cycle of bright and dark times; various groups tick off the clock in a game of ‘king of the hill’.

There’s the poor being downtrodden by the rich:

(Bob Dylan: Thunder Mountain)

As far as religion goes, whether a follower of cow-headed Isis, or of Jezebel’s Baal, or of the cross-bearing Christian Fathers of St. Herman, the culture of the ‘stranger’ is considered something to be destroyed – ie, the indigenous beliefs of the Inuit.

The Book of Joel again used by Dylan as a template:

(Bob Dylan: Thunder Mountain)

(Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues)

Assuming an autobiographical aspect, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan (watched from above by the jealous eye of the Thunder God Zeus) is not beyond taking a humorous look at himself and some aspects of the Jewish religion:

(Bob Dylan: Thunder Mountain)

He loves that country pie.

When it comes right down to it, perhaps Jezebel, the lover of the agricultural northern coastal plains of Israel, be the victim of bad press:

(Bob Dylan: Thunder Mountain)

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