No Nobel Prize for Music: Dylan goes Gothic and the world ends

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Tony Attwood

Previously:

Over 10 years ago on this site, writing about “My Back Pages” I noted that in 1965 Dylan made a comment to the effect that he used to know what he wanted to write about before starting a song, but since then he has taken a different route.  The implication is that he starts writing and then lets the song itself direct where matters were going.

What I didn’t consider then was how this affected the music, and so in part this series aims to rectify this.   It is music that is the focus here.  And here we turn to My Back Pages.

Dylan performed My Back Pages some 260 times in concert between 1978 and 2012, which itself is interesting as it was written in 1964, when Dylan was 23, and sung in public for the first time when he was 37.

And although we might take it that Dylan didn’t want to perform the piece at first is because it is very much a “closing the door on the past” type of song, rather than a song about now or the future, there is perhaps another reason for the lack of performance at first.   And that could be that musically it is a simple strophic four line song, across six identical verses with no musical variation throughout.

The song itself consists of four lines of two rhyming couplets, the last line (Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”) being the same for each verse.

Musically there really are no surprises.  The song is played in C major, and all the chords used in the song are the chords that can be found in any music theory book as being the chords that are “natural” within the key of C.  Which is to say, chords that can be made out of the notes in the scale of C major: C major itself, plus A minor, Eminor, F major, and G major.

To explain this a step further: if you were to play the scale of C major on the piano, you would only use the white notes.   Play any of those five chords noted above (each of which can be found in this piece), and again you will find yourself only playing the white notes.   They can all be formed out of the notes of the scale of C major.   It thus sounds like a standard folk song, with no blues or rock input.

But what gives the blues and a lot of rock music its special feel is its deviation from the rigours of staying within the key – if playing in C major then adding chords such as B flat major and maybe Eb major into the accompaniment.   These are chords that can’t be formed from the notes of the scale of C major and which thus take the music away from the classic feel of traditional folk.

But as I say, Dylan would have none of that here.  He is simply writing and performing a song in the classic mode.

What’s more, the chord sequence of the opening line “Crimson flames tied through my ears, rolling high and mighty traps” takes us through the complete sequence of these chords (C, Am, Em, F, G, C) while the second line does the same but ends on the G – a standard way of showing us the verse is only half way through.   OK, it is true, we don’t have D minor in that sequence, and that is the one other standard chord that can be formed just from the notes of C major scale, but five out of six chords used is itself quite unusual, and makes it very clear where we are.

Then, in addition, in the final line the sequence C, Am, C, F, G, C is repeated to show us this is the end of the verse.  After that, with no lyrics we get the G major chord again, to show us there is more to come.   It is the classic way of pausing between two verses.

But, in a strange sense, we have a lyrical and musical contradiction here.  The lyrics are telling us that he’s moved away from the folk protest movement, wherein he expressed the idealism of “Times they are a Changing” using a very similar set of chords.  There are no “blues” notes or blues chords – this is straight folk.

In short, Dylan has composed a straight folk song, performed in a straight folk manner, to say he has had enough of that idealism that was expressed in the straight folk approach, (which eschewed the use of any blues notes).  He then recorded the song in June 1964 and did nothing more with it until he performed it in July 1978.   It thus did seem very much a farewell note, and remained as such until he was indeed 14 years older and could perform it with additional meaning.

If you are interested in this, you might wish to have a read of Joost’s article from 2017 on this site to explore the implications of all this a step further.

But for now we can take it that when Bob wrote that chorus line “but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now” he did mean “I’m reborn, I am fefreshed, I am going somewhere else, somewhere that befits a person looking out on the world afresh.

Within that message is the thought that he has been misled by false idealism, but now reality has returned, and the musical form that is classical folk with its standard folk chords with no blues or modulation, is no longer the musical form he needs.  Nor is the notion that the music should be utterly unchanging throughout the piece.

And then….

Well, having got that out of his system, Bob changed, and how!   Indeed I would suggest that unless you have studied the list of Dylan’s songs in the order that they were written you might be a bit surprised.  Because having written “My Back Pages” Bob then wrote…

Gates of Eden.

It was first performed on 24 October 1964 and to date has been performed by Bob 217 times, although he has not touched upon it since 2001.

Now I think that because we generally tend to think of Bob’s music in terms of albums we (or perhaps I really ought to say “I”) can forget some of the incredible dramatic moments in which Bob moved from one form of creativity to another.

And yet there is a link here because part of a sequence of six compositions of Dylan’s in the latter part of 1964 all of which focussed on the same issue: individualism.   These songs have other contexts within them as well, but in each case they have at their heart the expression of the individuality of the performer.

The songs were

Now it is of course true that these songs have within them other issues and messages – “All I really want to do” is also a song of farewell, while “I’ll keep it with mine” is a song about the need not to follow leaders.

“My back pages” differentiated itself from the others through its focus totally on the disillusionment of the singer in lines such as

“Equality,” I spoke the word as if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now

The youthful demands for equality and justice have gone, and the composer sees the world afresh.   And so next he wrote something utterly different…. “Gates of Eden”  Nine verses which is essence tells us that everything is wrecked as “All and all can only fall, With a crashing but meaningless blow…”   There might be another world, a better world, and not a world of this reality where everything has crumbled but if there  is, he’s not quite sure where it is.

And so with such a dramatic change what of the music?

Of course Bob could have continued to write as before, leaving the lyrics to express his new mood and new vision, but that would have made much less of an impact on the audience, and actually little sense musically.

And so, musically, Dylan suddenly did the most dramatic thing with his music: he abandoned the whole concept of major and minor, and moved into the Dorian Mode.

Now even if you are not a musician, I’m guessing you will know about major and minor.   Songs in the major keys tend to sound happier and lighter than songs in the minor keys.   (There’s nothing inherent in the music that makes us think this; it is simply what we have got used to).

Every note in western music, from A up to G sharp, can have two scales based upon it – one major and one minor.  If you want to explore this further there are many articles on line that do it; here’s one you can try for starters.  JS Bach was the giant of music whose name is forever linked with establishing the new direction of music using the major and minor keys as he wrote the “48 preludes and fugues” (often known simply as “the 48” – two pieces in each of the newly established keys.)

Prior to the arrival of the new major and minor keys we had the modes now sound mediaeval to us, and few composers write in them today.  But for his great transition away from his own past, into thoughts on a more global or even cosmic scale, Dylan turned back to the modal approach and wrote “Gates of Eden”.

After three songs about saying farewell, not following leaders, and above all highlighting the benefits of individualism, we not only got a horror story about the modern world, but in order really to make us sit up and notice, it is written outside of the world of major and minor keys.   And it works because Dylan is saying, this neat division between the positive world of major chord, and the negative sad world of minor chords, is itself false.   We are trapped in a world that makes no sense in the traditional way, because there is no longer right and wrong.  This is simply a world gone utterly wrong in every regard.   A world in which there is nothing we can do to put things right.

In fact, this is the world as it was perceived in mediaeval times, when it really was a world that mankind could not change because there was no technology there to achieve change.   So all people could do was pray to the gods or God they believed in.

But now the message that nothing makes sense, nothing works, or perhaps, everything is wrecked, is a message in which we can’t understand anything because “there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.”   And since we most very certainly are all very much outside the Gates of Eden, there is nothing we can do to make sense of any of this.

Thus this is a song about the desperate world that we inhabit – a world of lies, of horrors, of unreality, where friends are strangers, and strangers are friends.

So how does one portray this world, in a musical form that we can understand, and which we can tolerate listening to, but which is written to express the horrors of the era in which we live?

The classic idea would be to write in a minor key because songs in the minor key are invariably felt to be sad.   But Dylan is far too good a musician just to give us the obvious.   So he starts with a major chord, but immediately the vocal goes to a note not in that chord.   The guitar plays G against “Of war and peace”, but the vocal lines sings the notes D and F  and F is not part of the chord.  Immediately we are confused.   And then to rub it in, the guitar moves to D minor, which accommodates the note F, but is not one of the chords that exists in the key of G.

Now I appreciate if you are not a musician this is all getting a bit confusing, but the point is simple: Dylan is not giving us either the notes of the melody nor the chords of the accompaniment that we expect.   But he is not offering chaos – notes and chords at random.  The twist is that the notes sung don’t immediately fit the chord, but then the chord is changed to accommodate this.   Then as if giving in the melody line falls moving along a classic three-chord blues change of F, C, G.  But we are very clearly not listening to a traditional blues song!

It is symbolic, and gives musician and non-musician alike a feeling of edginess, uncertainty and darkness, or at the very least something not being at all right.   A feeling amplified by the appearance of the chord of D major  (not D minor) at the end of the penultimate line.

But less we should think that this signifies everything being OK, we find that it is played against the word “black”.

   G                 Dm
Of war and peace the truth just twists
    F      C       G         C/g  G
Its curfew gull it glides
  G              Dm
Upon four-legged forest clouds
    F      C     G        C/g  G
The cowboy angel rides
         G      Bm'   Am     G
With his candle lit into the sun
           G     Bm'        C          D
Though its glow is waxed in black
G                Bm'       Am       G       C/g
All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

We are of course on this site publishing a whole series on what became side B of “Bringing it all back home” which has multiple versions of Bob performing this song (links to this song, appear at the end of this piece).  Therein there are multiple examples of this song.  I’ll just pick one for the moment.  And as you listen, perhaps you might for a moment just recall that the song written before this was “My back pages”.   And maybe like me, feel it is worth contemplating what such a change from one song to the next, tells us about Bob Dylan at that moment.

And as you listen to this, perhaps you might spend a moment just contemplating once more the sequence of compositions we are considering here….

A History in Performance: Gates of Eden

 

 

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Bo bDylan, The Concert Series: 30 June 1988

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Compiled by Tony Attwood

This is number 20 in this series which selects Dylan concerts from the internet, puts them in chronological order, and gives a link to them.

So as I have said before, there’s nothing original here, except for the fact that I was unable to find another site that had compiled a list of concert recordings, so that if for any reason one suddenly wanted to know what Bob was sounding like in any particular year, or indeed you simply wanted to relive a concert you had been to, or you just like listening to Dylan concerts, you could find something to help you, fairly quickly.

The aim of course is to have at least one recording of a gig from each year that Bob has been touring.  So a list of the concerts to which we’ve already put links is given below.

If there are any concerts you would particularly like to recommend and which are freely available on-line, please do write to me: Tony@schools.co.uk with the details.

Today’s concert is a particularly fine recording dated from 30 June 1988: New York.

  1. Subterranean Homesick Blues
  2. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
  3. You’re a big girl now
  4. Tangled up in Blue
  5. Masters of War
  6. I shall be released
  7. Stuck inside of Mobile
  8. Lakes of Pontchartrain
  9. A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall
  10. Eileen Aroon
  11. Boots of Spanish Leather
  12. Silvio
  13. Gates of Eden
  14. Like a Rolling Stone
  15. Times they are a changing
  16. All along the watchtower
  17. Maggie’s Farm

I do hope you find this collection helpful.  And you never know we might even end up with 60 or so videos from across the years.   My eternal thanks to those people who have made the recordings available, and please do note I am not trying to take away any of the kudos from you for having made the recording available.  I am forever grateful.

Extra note…

Before I found that particular recording, which because of its quality obviously has to be in the collection, I did find couple of concerts from this time available on the internet, and because recordings come and go I thought it might be safest to put these up too.

15 June 1988

9 June 1988

Here is the list of concerts so far….

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry 16: “Repeat anyone else you like, only not yourself!”

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

by Jochen Markhorst

XVI      “Repeat anyone else you like, only not yourself!”

The anarchic nature and Calvin’s lust for disorder and chaos speaks from the slightly insane look of his eyes in the last panel. He is picturing the mayhem, that much is clear. A live performance of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece probably would have disappointed him, though. Closer to his ideal came the premiere of another illustrious classical piece, Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps in Paris, 29 May 1913. During that premiere tumult broke out, there was shouting and throwing and fighting, and the gendarmerie had to restore order in the hall.

In the subsequent mythologisation and oversimplification of the event, Stravinsky’s music is usually identified as the culprit, as the casus belli. It was said to have been so different, ferocious, rhythmically complex with atonal and dissonant passages, that the audience’s sense of art and mental grasp were offended. A fairly ineradicable reading; in variants, it is thus dished out to this day whenever Le Sacre du Printemps is mentioned anywhere.

It is incorrect. Reliable reconstructions and witness accounts have long since shown that not the music but rather the ballet had been the trigger for the riot. The choreography by the greatest dancer of the 20th century, Vaslav Nijinsky, disconcerted the conservative part of the audience. Instead of the usual tutus and swan fluttering and graceful sautés, Nijinsky had the Ballet de Russes perform in peasant clothes, stomping their feet, inelegantly tossing limbs around… the hooting and whistling of the audience were so loud, according to reviews, that they even drowned out the music, forcing Nijinsky to shout the count to his dancers. Whether he also screamed play it fucking loud to the orchestra, history does not tell.

The parallels with the premiere of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” are unmistakable. Dylan introduced the song in that short set at that illustrious Dylan-goes-electric concert at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, when the song was still called “Phantom Engineer”. “People remember it differently,” says Theodore Bickel in a 2011 interview for the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, “but I remember it well,” after he, too, recited that pumped-up version of the Battle of Newport. The version in which the audience reacted with dismay to the new Dylan, insulted and indignant, booing him off stage.

“There were a lot of boos,” as festival boss George Wein confirmed in 2018. “The pro-rock world is trying to say there was more cheering, but no: there were more boos.”

The version hinted at in the film A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024) as well, but which has long since been nuanced: the booing was focused primarily on the lousy sound quality, and secondly on the short duration of the set (three songs), not so much on the songs and the fact that they were played electrically. The sound recording of “Phantom Engineer” does sober up in that respect, too. We hear a last snippet of “normal” cheering after the previous song, “Like A Rolling Stone”, during the following performance we hear nothing special from the audience, and after the song, the last song of the electric set, there is “normal” applause. The hoots and whistles don’t rise until the audience sees Dylan leaving the stage.

Bob Dylan at Newport – Phantom Engineer: 

 

At this premiere the song still sounds as it was recorded days before, during the first Highway 61 sessions: rushed, up-tempo and spotlighting Mike Bloomfield’s assertive guitar. Then, after the final recording, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”, as the song is now officially renamed, disappears from the setlist – 93 concerts around the world until the motorbike accident in July 1966, but not a single “It Takes A Lot”. No concerts in 1967, only a contribution to a Woody Guthrie Memorial in 1968, only the Isle Of Wight concert in 1969, no gigs in 1970, and only one performance in 1971… and that’s where Dylan plays “It Takes A Lot” for the second time in his career. Twice even: at both the early and late session of The Concert For Bangladesh. With a very special band, at that: George Harrison on guitar, Ringo Starr on tambourine and (inevitable in 1971) Leon Russell on bass.

It Takes a Lot to Laugh Concert for Bangladesh 1971:

The performance is a surprisingly faithful copy of the album version. Equally set in with acoustic guitar, Harrison’s electric guitar just as subservient as Bloomfield at the time, tempo similar (only slightly faster), harmonica solo after the second verse and harmonica solo as the finale, and exactly the same lyrics – presumably Dylan didn’t want to make things too difficult for his one-off backing band.

No concerts in the last two years of the Seven Lean Years 1967-1973 either. Then, when Dylan finally reports back to the front, the drought is over. Well, technically anyway – more than a single trickle in the hard rain it is not. In Dylan’s comeback, the 1974 Tour of America with The Band, a series of forty concerts, “It Takes A Lot” appears one single time on the setlist (Toronto 9 January). We are then converted back to up-tempo, more rock than blues, and it stays that way for a while: at the Rolling Thunder Revue 1975-76, the song is on the setlist eleven times, and “It Takes A Lot” has become a pure rock song – courtesy of Supreme Spider From Mars Mick Ronson, the blonde guitar god who made such a crushing impression on log writer Sam Shepard:

“Ronson, on the other hand, really gets off on this monster crowd. His initial style is broad and theatrical anyway, coming from English “rave-up” and David Bowie. He begins to uncork all the flash he’s been holding back throughout the tour. Giant, spread-eagle leaps into thin air. Triple vertical spins, wrapping the guitar cord around him like a boa constrictor, slashing at the guitar with huge full-arm uppercuts. Platinumblond hair spraying in all directions. Then stalking around the stage, stiff legged, Frankenstein macho strutting, shaking the neck of the guitar with his vicious chord hand as though throttling his weaker brother. All the time, never losing a lick.”
(Sam Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook p. 166, 1977)

It Takes a Lot to Laugh live at Boston Music Hall – Nov 1975:

Audiences are grateful and excited for a Dylan who is more electric than ever – great artists evolve faster than their audiences, after all. Which soulmate Igor realised as well, faced with all the hatred after the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps:

“I cannot, I simply c a n n o t write what they want from me—that is, repeat myself—repeat anyone else you like, only not yourself!—for that is how people write themselves out. But enough about L e  S a c r e . It makes me miserable”
.                                                                      (Stravinsky, letter to Alexandre Benois, 1913)

… Stravinsky crystal-clearly and emotionally articulating Dylan’s conception of art half a century avant la lettre.

 

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 17: Well, I ride on the “A” train, baby

——————-

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door

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Why is this specific cover of this Dylan song so amazingly incredible?

Posted on May 13, 2025 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Preface: Please note in the original posting of this article I became completely confused over who and what the band are.  I’ve now removed references to the band and will allow you, my reader, to find them and not be confused by anything I said before.

—–

In the recent article by Jochen Markhorst (It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry part 15: It blew my little 12-year-old mind) there was featured the track below by Ygdrassil.

This was a recording that I had never heard before – and of course that is more a reflection on my lack of research and knowledge than anything else.   But just in case it is new to you, and in case you missed the article, here it is again…

This track truly knocked me out.  Well, ok not truly in the sense of literally, but I found it one of the most extraordinary covers of Dylan’s work that I have ever heard.    And given that I have written my own series on Dylan’s covers on this site, I think it is fair to say I have done a fair amount of thinking about and listening to (not to mention pontificating on) Dylan covers.

What’s more, I am spending quite a bit of time at the moment thinking about Dylan’s music, as opposed to his lyrics (you may in passing have noted a little series of my own “No Nobel Prize for Music” in which I try to reflect on the way Bob has innovated musically.)  So covers of Dylan’s songs that radically change the music while keeping the lyrics in place are occupying quite a bit of my thinking hours just now.

Of course in this regard I am helped enormously by Jochen’s extraordinary knowledge of the covers of Dylan’s songs, and also obviously by Mike Johnson’s work for this site, for example, recently covering the entire Never Ending Tour, and currently the “History in Performance” series.  Here’s a link to all 144 articles in The Never Ending Tour series; the latest “History in Performance” article with links to those previously published is here.

Now what brings me to mention all this, is quite simply the above track, one of three cover versions in Jochen’s continuing series on “It Takes a lot to Laugh” – a series which I’m fairly sure Jochen will be publishing as a book in the near future, (and there will be links to buying it once it is available).

So, having given the background, here’s the point: Why, having heard so many versions of this song over the years does one particular cover version, which I had never heard before it appeared in that article, so affect me?  It can’t possibly be the lyrics, or the general musical approach because I bought “Highway 61 Revisited” when it was first released in England in 1965.   (I was a school kid then, so yes it makes me ancient, but not impossibly so).  And indeed one of the bands I played with did perform a (vastly inferior) version of the song a few times.

So to explain…

First the opening.   I think most of us don’t really focus on openings much; we know what the song is and we are waiting for the vocals to start.  But this opening makes us focus.  It is gentle and calm.  Almost anyone who can play an acoustic guitar could get this.  Except it is deceptive – I am a guitarist (not brilliant, my instrument has always been the piano, but even so I can still play), and I did have to listen to it several times to get that opening just right.  So I am intrigued.    And yes I am looking at that cover picture, which somehow seems in keeping with the opening.  “Where are we going?” is the question I am asking, which as it happens is quite right for a song that opens, “Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby,Can’t buy a thrill.”

And then in comes the vocal after around 15 seconds.   15 seconds, not long, but enough time to give us that relaxed feel, which can make us feel at one with that picture above.

Perhaps now I must admit that I then got confused over exactly who and what the band was/is.   For it seems there is Ygdrassil  and there is Yggdrasill, two quite separate bands. It has been pointed out to me that in the original posting of this message I got them confused.  So I am now deleting the references to the band, so we can just focus on the music.

And as I said in the original piece in which I confused two different bands, I was and am influenced by that gentle musical opening, not by the lyrics.  The simple guitar for seventeen seconds, and then the two voices in perfect simple harmony.   Except even by the end of the first line (“Can’t buy a thrill”) one of the voices delivers a different,  unexpected harmony.   And that is wonderful because we all know the song so well, and we appreciate the calmness of the tree of life (or just of the music if we don’t know the meaning of Yggdrasill).  But as soon as we are into the second half of the first line the unexpected happens, without disrupting the music at all and we know we are on a journey.

I won’t bore you with the musical explanation of what the upper voice does in line one, but believe me it is unexpected as it includes as its upper note (at “Can’t buy”) a note that is not in the chord the guitar is playing.   And this just doesn’t happen by chance; this is either painstakingly worked out, or a singer of such instinct that we really do need to listen, and then when the performance is done, cheer and applaud.

And those unexpected harmonies continue, but more than this, the lower voice does not follow Dylan’s original melody – and yet the vocal line utterly fits.   Of course, we are helped by the fact that we have all heard the song a million times, so we know what’s what, but this is the point.  They are not starting from the notion that we don’t know the piece: exactly the opposite in fact.   They are performing for us, the people who know Dylan’s work – even if many listeners won’t have the musical background to know exactly what they are doing.  It feels right and sounds right, whatever your musical background.

OK so by the time we get to the third line (“And if I die…”) we are expecting not a radical difference from the original, but gentle variance, and we get that.  Just listen to what happens on the word “hill”.  99% of singers would hold that word on one note, but not here.   That fractional variation tells us that being on the top of the hill, is not all, is not everything, it is not ultimate stability, for anything can happen, which gives extra meaning to “And if I don’t make it….”

Of course, we know that line; we know every line.  But now if we are really paying attention, we have an extra nuance.   There’s only one note change in the harmony on the word “hill” but it is enough to tell us that all is not settled, there is not just uncertainty about “if I die” but also about the hill itself.

“If I don’t make it” is a harsh following line, and that is sung solo, but then “you know my baby will” is a soft gentle conclusion, and for that, we are back to harmonies.

A brief pause of a couple of chords – but even this is planned, for the second chord is extended far beyond anything we might have expected.  At 58 seconds there is that tiny adjustment of chords, and we are held suspended for four beats, before “Don’t the moon look good…”   The guitar is the same but the harmonies change.

And then “Don’t the sun look good” which is sung straight – no flashy extras until that long-held note with “sea” – and that (in my mind if no one else’s) forces in that picture of the sunset across the calm ocean on a beautiful evening.  OK, maybe I am helped by having lived part of my life at the edge of the sea, and could stand on cliffs and see exactly that.  But even if not, hopefully, the message is there for everyone.

Then what is effectively an instrumental verse, with a subtle change before we come to the third verse.  We all know it by heart of course.  We all know that there are just three verses.   We also know that surely with such subtlety so far they are neither just going to repeat what has been done, nor are they going to fly off in some other direction just to be different.

But we also feel there is a problem.   This version of the song projects a warmth and oneness between the singers and the earth on which they stand.   We have only just been asked “Don’t the sun look good…” and had that instrumental pause which keeps up that feeling.

And yet we all know what is coming….it is winter.   And none of what we have just had musically and lyrically fits with winter, nor indeed with frost.    But just listen, if you will, the lines “Now the wintertime is coming, The windows are filled with frost.”    Musically, and harmonically these lines continue as before.  For them the upcoming frost, and the winter, make no difference.   The warmth and gentility of the song is preserved – the singers are not in the slightest affected, and so nor are we.   (As it happens I am writing this on a beautiful sunny day in middle England, with an utterly blue sky, my study giving me an outlook, south, onto my garden at the end of which three giant poplar trees reach up to the sky, the upper branches swaying gently in the wind far above me.  I really am at one with this arrangement of this song, at this moment).

OK there is an extra strength in the music (not much but it is there) with “I went to tell everybody, But I could not get across”, and this is maintained in the next line “Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don’t wanna be your boss” but the overall gentility is maintained by one of the vocal lines taking in that slight meander around the final note.   It is a sign of warmth, of openness, of possibility….   There is beauty and light, but nothing is utterly fixed.  Possibility abounds.

I suspect a lesser band, and/or a lesser arranger, a lesser singer (sorry I don’t know who created the arrangement) would have held the harmony, but either through planning or simply because “it felt right” the word “boss” although starting with strength, loses its force through that meandering harmony.

“Don’t say I never warned you” sung as a solo line has the harshness in the vocalisation that the lyric requires, but even then, “When your train gets lost” manages to take us down gently.   Yes, the singer is saying, if you let this go, you will get lost, and I will be so sorry about that, and sorry not just for myself but also so sorry for you, but life is like this.  This is what happens.

And so we move on to verse three.  And of course. as this song was written 60 years ago we know this intimately, we know what comes next, we know where it ends.   And that is a big challenge for anyone recording an early Dylan song such as this.   We know it too well, we don’t need to hear the end.   But now, oh yes we do, we must continue to the end, we want to know how the last moments are made to work.

The first time we hear, “Don’t say I never warned you” is at 2’47”.  But there is over half a minute of music left, and that warning is there, unforgotten, unmistaken, forever.   You had the opportunity the singers are saying, but now it has gone.  Yes the wintertime indeed, is coming.

I must admit that my intention was to round off this article with a copy of Dylan’s original.  I know, we all know it inside out and upside down, but it sort of seemed like a way to draw it all to a conclusion.   But as I set up the link I played the original, and found to my surprise, that I didn’t want to hear it.   For in the last couple of hours as I have planned and written this piece I have moved far away from Highway 61.  I am now somewhere quite different and have no desire to be taken back.

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It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – A History in Performance, Part 4: 1990 – 1995

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Part 4: 1990-1995: You Think Will Lasst

By Mike Johnson

[I read somewhere that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the fourth article on the fourth and final track, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.’ You can find the previous articles in this History in Performance series here: ]

———-

I have some wonderful sounds lined up for you this time around, Bobcats, but moreover there is a story to tell, a story of how this song rose from the messy performances of the early nineties, like a phoenix from the ashes, to its full glory in 1995.

To understand this story fully, however, we need to grasp that ‘Baby Blue’ is a love song. A particular kind of love song, what I have called love’s last song. Love’s last excruciating song. One more kiss, one more night, one more weekend, after which ‘it’s all over now.’ There is nothing quite like the exquisite sorrow of that farewell moment. Love’s last moment. The moment in which love dies. You know the big lie: I never want to see you again.

‘Baby Blue’ was a love song all along, it just wasn’t so obvious in those early, strident performances of 1965 when it came across as a farewell song, with the tone of an ex-lover delivering the hard, unpleasant truth. You go your way, I’ll go mine, to quote a song that was to come a year later. The tenderness of the song was not evident. Jerry Garcia discovered it in the melody. His guitar accompaniment to Dylan and the Dead’s 1987 performance had a bitter-sweetness to it (See Part 3 of this series), but you had to search for it in later performances. It showed itself in the passionate 1980 performance (See part 2 of this series), which I chalked up as a ‘best ever,’ but is not fully explored by Dylan, or perhaps discovered by him, until the mid-1990s.

One of the heroes of the story of the song’s emergence is the harmonica. At its best, Dylan’s harmonica picks up from where his lyrics leave off, amplifying and elaborating the emotional nexus that drives the song. That nexus pulls together disparate threads of feeling. When writing about the song in my NET series  I commented that while Dylan doesn’t cry on stage, his harmonica does. It does the crying for him. There are tears lurking behind the apparent brashness of the lyrics. There’s heartbreak behind the ‘strike another match, go start anew.’ He is trying to be brave but the harp gives him away every time. The song has provoked some of Dylan’s best harmonica work; it doesn’t spring from nowhere. We’re going to hear Dylan exploring and pushing those sounds until the revelatory 1995 performances.

So let’s get started. It doesn’t begin that well, although ‘Baby Blue’ doesn’t suffer as badly as some of the songs during this period. I have written before about the difficult years of 1991 and 1992, about what happened to Dylan’s voice and the messy, ‘garage band’ style of the years leading up to Dylan replacing GE Smith on guitar and bringing in a steel guitar and dobro. You just have to think of the album Under The Red Sky (1991) to get the idea. It was this change, and Dylan’s slowly emerging voice, that laid the foundations for the profound mid-nineties performances.

But first, this 1990 recording is one out of the box. Keeping it acoustic, quivering and heartfelt, the song’s potential is all there even as his voice is getting a bit thin and strained. And the harp is there for an extended break. It too is thin and rasping, but the potential for emotional exploration and elaboration is evident. At this point it is scratching at the emotions, almost as if seeking to draw blood. (Paris, Jan 31st 1990)

1990 (Paris)

By 1991 problems are emerging. The arrangement, turning it from acoustic to full band after the first verse, sounds wooden. The recording is good as far as Dylan’s voice goes (possibly a soundboard recording), but he messes up the lyrics and tends to flatten the song into a monotone. It doesn’t soar and it doesn’t dive deep. To be fair, I think he’s searching out new melodic pathways for the vocal, and in that respect, we have to see the performance as a partial success. The harmonica break that ends the performance does its job, is jagged and dissonant, but fails to excite.

1991 (a)

This is a better performance from 1991 (date unknown), Dylan is trying to stretch his voice and we sense the emergence of a structure in the harp break, starting subdued and building to a climax. In terms of what comes later, this is an interesting performance. He’s reaching for something here.

1991 (b)

In this first recording from 1992, we find Dylan trying out his new lineup, the lineup which would carry the song through to its peak year in 1995. The effect of Bucky Baxter on steel guitar can be heard. He will go on to soften Dylan’s sound still further. It’s all a bit new and raw at this point, but the potential is there. Once more the harp probes the emotions, but the tempo is a little too brisk for a properly reflective harp performance. Dylan’s voice, in the higher registers, is thin and sounds strained. He might have been able to pull off what he’s aiming for here in 1981, when he could confidently hit the higher registers, but now not so much. (May 14th)

1992

It’s a pity I don’t have the date for this next one, but I suspect it’s from later in the year, and Dylan’s approach to the song has markedly changed. It’s unusual for a song’s arrangement to change radically during a tour (although it did happen, spectacularly, in 2002 when Dylan dropped the guitar and took up the keyboards). With that insistent, thumping bass intro, which anchors the song firmly in its tempo, we take a big step towards the 1995 performances. It’s still a lot faster than it will be in following years, but we feel as if the song is finding its feet as a new song, if you like, a love song full of regret and yearning. There’s no harmonica break, which allows Baxter to stretch his legs, developing the orchestral effects made possible by the steel guitar, another feature of future performances

1992

In 1993 we jump on the rising curve and the fun really starts, the story gathers pace. 1993 was the year of the epic, five-minute songs turned into ten-minute marathons. The band had shaken down and was working sweetly, there was a sense of musical adventure, extended solos, jazzy guitar breaks and drawn-out endings. It was also the year in which Dylan began to push his electric guitar playing, often taking the lead. The era of Dylan as Mr Guitar Man had arrived.

‘Baby Blue’ gets swept along in all this. It is uncompromisingly acoustic and there is a lot of fine, intricate, lyrical guitar work here. Dylan’s voice is still not so great. He hasn’t broken through that thin, scratchy sound yet, but that breakthrough is coming. He’s testing his voice, pushing it.

This performance runs to 9.40 mins mainly because of the almost three-minute harp break, an extended foray into the song’s emotional nexus, subtle, nuanced, drawing out every thread of feeling. If you need reminding of what love’s goodbye feels like, this harp break will do it for you. Amazing to think that it can get better than this, but it can. (Marseille, June 29th)

1993

We get another almost three-minute harp solo in this one from Naples, June 26th. These harp solos are exploratory rather than definitive. It’s remarkable how different they are from each other. What is of special interest here is Dylan’s voice. It’s beginning to take on that luminous clarity that will mark his vocals over the coming two years.

1993

1994 was the first of two stellar years as our story moves to its climax. We have the Woodstock recordings and MTV’s Unplugged. If you want to hear how Dylan’s voice developed, compare the Supper Club recordings with Unplugged. Dylan didn’t sing ‘Baby Blue’ for Unplugged, but we have a wonderful performance from Woodstock.

I recommend this version as the sound quality is superior. This is no audience recording, but a remastered FM broadcast. Enjoy.

  1994 (Woodstock)

The key to the success of this is the slowed tempo, and that insistent, thumping beat we first heard in 1992. That tempo and beat provide the framework for the extended musical reflection of the harmonica. Ah! there is the sadness, another strand. The ache of a love about to be lost. The tears are starting to flow. (There is a video of this performance on YouTube but the sound quality is inferior.)

Woodstock was not the only superlative performance in 1994. We’re back with audience recordings, and yet this one from Kiel, Germany (July 25th) gets my vote. Hard to match this kind of perfection (I take my hat off to the bootlegger). Some sweet, anguished guitar sounds and a delicate, floating harp. Dead slow tempo allowing every note its space. After thirty years love’s last song finds its grief. The lyrics become almost a sad commentary on the sort of things people say when one is moving on. And is he singing it to someone else or himself? As love and longing linger, isn’t he the one who needs to ‘strike another match.’

Maybe a song can come back at you like that.

1994 Kiel

Now to 1995 and the climax of our story. This tour-de-force of a song turns into a sublime love poem. The emotional intensity of the song is fully realized in a remarkable series of performances. We now have the bass reinforcing the steady, relentless beat. Dylan builds the vocal carefully to a powerful culmination in the last verse. The harp is let loose to soar. No longer quiet and reflective, as in 1993/4, the harp burns bright and hard. Or cuts deep depending on your metaphor. Tears flow freely. It too builds to a culmination with the final phrase repeated to the edge of excruciation. How can I let go? Goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye

In my NET series I highlighted the remarkable Prague performance. I suggested it was one of Dylan’s finest live performances of all time. We’re lucky to have a video of it now. Not perfect but it gives us the feel. (March 11th)

1995 Prague

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-VKdZGazQ

I now realize, however, that the Prague performance was only one of a series of outstanding performances. Perhaps we can have too much of a good thing, but I’m going to offer two more. This Philadelphia performance comes at the end of the year (December 17th), ten months after Prague. A sort of emotional doubling down is going on here. The tone of the final harp solo moves from grief to celebration, perhaps driven on by a responsive audience. What is remarkable is how different this harp solo is from Prague. In Philly, you don’t break down crying but break free, walk away determinedly with your head held high. A different kind of resolution.

1995 Philadelphia

Finally back to London, March 31st to catch an excellent performance but sans harp. I miss the harp, it’s the cherry on top, but this gentle version highlights the guitars, Dylan delivers a thoughtful vocal. This one is a nice epilogue to our story.

This story ends here. The rising curve has delivered us to these knockout 1995 performances. But it is a story within a larger story. The story of the song does not end here, and I’ll be back soon to pick up the trail.

Until then

Kia Ora

Previously in this series….

Tambourine Man

Gates of Eden

It’s alright ma

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry part 15: It blew my little 12-year-old mind

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

by Jochen Markhorst

XV       It blew my little 12-year-old mind

 No shortage of female candidates. In the 21st century, too, one tribute album after another is being released. Maybe even more so. Joan Osborne’s Songs Of Bob Dylan (2017); Emma Swift’s wonderful album Blonde on the Tracks (2020); Barb Jungr fills Every Grain Of Sand (2001) and Man in the Long Black Coat (2011) with mostly very successful Dylan covers (plus handfuls of Dylan songs on her “regular” albums); Bettye LaVette releases Things Have Changed (2018); Chrissie Hynde helps us get through corona with Standing in the Doorway (2021, with wonderful versions of deep cuts like “In The Summertime” and “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight”); Cat Power Sings Dylan (2023, on which Cat reconstructs the complete 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert); and then there are the dozens of female contributions to compilation albums like the unsurpassed Subterranean Home Sick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home (2010, with highlights “She Belongs to Me” by Ane Brun and Julie Doiron’s “On the Road Again”). That’s 86 Dylan titles in this incomplete listing alone… but none of the ladies dare to attack “It Takes A Lot To Laugh”.

The exception is Lucinda Williams. The veteran is getting a second life in the 21st century and is more prolific than ever; since 2014, the year she turns 61, she has already released four Grammy-winning albums, she tours tirelessly, endures a horrific stroke in 2020, publishes an autobiography, and in the meantime fills seven albums with her hobby project Lu’s Jukebox. Which is a particularly likeable, largely highly attractive series, originally created to get through the corona wasteland.

In that lost year 2020, Lucinda decides on an on-line concert to honour Tom Petty. The world is in lockdown, concert halls remain closed and concertgoers all sit at home at their computers. And watch and listen to Lucinda Williams in the tiny Ray Kennedys Room & Board Studio in Nashville with accomplished die-hard mercenaries as backing band. It is a success, and so is the subsequently released recording Runnin’ Down A Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty. The idea for a series is obvious. And after Volume 2 – Southern Soul: From Memphis To Muscle Shoals, it’s Dylan’s turn: Bob’s Back Pages: A Night Of Bob Dylan Songs (2021), the only tribute album with a cover of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh”.

Dylan is under Lucinda’s skin. Almost literally, if we are to believe her:

“The whole experience, like when I saw Highway 61 studying the cover and reading all the credits and the liner notes. It was like being inside the music.”
(interview with Roger Catlin for The Vinyl District, December 2024)

Lucinda is 12 when one of her father’s students visits his professor at home with Highway 61 Revisited under his arm: “Everyone needs to hear this album right now! This is amazing!” Just the picture on the cover, this lanky young man with tousled hair and a Triumph motorbike T-shirt, makes her fall in love instantly. Then she puts the record on.

“It blew my little 12-year-old mind. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know what some of the words were about. There was something that connected with something in my brain or in my soul. I was hooked after that.”

More than fifty years later, her Bob’s Back Pages is an emotional, tasteful processing of that first mind-blowing experience. Eleven Dylan songs, crisp, sheer mercurial sound, great musicianship and a few goose-bumps inducing interpretations. “Meet Me In The Morning”, “Everything Is Broken”, “Man Of Peace”, “Political World”… exciting, steamy, macabre readings. But the very two songs from H61, from the album that unleashed the first hormonal storms in bobby-soxer Lucinda, disappoint. Well alright, “Queen Jane Approximately” may be unadventurous, but is otherwise not annoying either (and has a great organ part). “It Takes A Lot”, however, doesn’t make the Top 5 Best It Takes A Lot covers – and that’s down to Lucinda, unfortunately. The band is superb. Lugubrious swelling intro, like a train approaching, the bass and drum part of Grand Funk Railroads’ “Some Kind Of Wonderful” (but with the tempo halved, of course), scruffy guitars… but on this song in particular, Lucinda’s usual elocution skills let her down. Über-affected groaning, exaggeratedly crunchy Southern accent, misplaced accentuations (“dommai gal look fine wenn she… comin’ AFTER me”, or “windohs ah filled wid fro-ho-ost” – to cite just two examples)… no, we really shouldn’t say a bad word about the wonderful Mrs Lucinda Williams, but in this case the usual, justified admiration is hard to muster.

(The sound of the album is superior, but the video recording is more entertaining)

In the competition for the last two remaining spots in the Top 5 some outsider from unexpected quarters then shows up: Ygdrassil, two girls from Groningen, the northernmost north from the north country Netherlands, release their fourth album Nice Days Under Darkest Skies in 2002 and score with their crushing, Kate & Ann McGarrigle reminiscent harmony vocals and Nick Drake reminiscent songs. Fourteen beautiful, sober and mostly moody songs, songs that reviewers then usually call “fragile”, and somewhere halfway through Side 2 “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” shines. Dylan’s song is completely swung around, reduced to an intimate folk song. Just a lone guitar in support – but more would indeed be less; the magic of harmonising Annemarieke Coenders and Linde Nijland suffices.

 

More extreme is possible still. Yo La Tengo may by now consider themselves among the elite of Dylan interpreters. Dylan songs have been in their repertoire since Day One, since the 1980s, and are always at least enjoyable, and often enough overwhelming. In 2007, their Dylan status is more or less officially recognised, when they contribute two songs to the I’m Not There soundtrack; a rousing restoration of the ignored cuckoo “I Wanna Be Your Lover” with remarkable love for the sound – the sound of the early Rolling Stones (including Brian Jones licks and Mick Jagger’s snarling stabs), a copy of an Al Kooper organ and Dylanesque honking on a harmonica; smashing, all of it. And even better is the second contribution: a modest, dreamy, sultry version of “Fourth Time Around”. Rather close to the original, but that’s how one of the bands strongholds comes out best: Georgia Hubley’s shrouded, utterly mesmerising vocals.

Which is one of the great strengths of Yo La Tengo’s “It Takes A Lot” as well. BBC’s John Peel loves it and promotes the song in 1999. “Here’s another track from my birthday CD,” he says on BBC Radio One on 30 September, referring to the present he received for his 60th birthday: a CD filled with his favourite songs, covered by his favourite artists. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy opens with Elvis’ “Crying In The Chapel”, we hear wonderful covers of “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Interstellar Overdrive” and, of course, Peel’s all-time favourite “Teenage Kicks”, and then the bouncer is “It Takes A Lot To Laugh”. “One of my favourite songs,” says Peel, “and a gorgeous performance by Yo La Tengo.”

 

The trio from Hoboken tilts the song further than any cover. Gone are the groove and the licks and the rock’n’roll. The background is an industrial drone, the base a minimalist bass and the colour comes from metallic accents on a restrained guitar, that’s it. No percussion or keys. The soundtrack to a psychological horror. And then Georgia Hubley’s vocals: spectral, otherworldly. It’s Susie Salmon (played by then-15-year-old Saoirse Ronan) in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, the girl who, from an afterlife, tries to come to terms with her horrific death and wants to prevent the serial sex killer from making another victim. “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.”

With the rock’n’roll, Yo La Tengo also removes the sex from Dylan’s song. In this arrangement and with these vocals it becomes a totally different song with a totally different connotation. Verse lines like

Now the wintertime is coming
The windows are filled with frost
I went to tell everybody
But I could not get across

… and, for example, the closing line Don’t say I never warned you when your train gets lost now have lurid, otherworldly connotations. “I was here for a moment and then I was gone.”

“Reinterpretation” might be a more appropriate stamp than “cover”, but either way: a place in the Top 5 of Best It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry Covers. So concluding, in no particular order:

  • Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills – Super Session
  • Chris Smither – Time Stands Still
  • Fairport Convention – Festival Cropredy 2002
  • Ygdrassil – Nice Days Under Darkest Skies
  • Yo La Tengo – Sleepless Night

Five beautiful covers, each fanning out into a different direction. Very similar to how Dylan lets the song fan out in all directions in the weeks, years and decades after the song’s premiere in Newport…

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 16: “Repeat anyone else you like, only not yourself!”

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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Bob Dylan, The Concert Series: Lisbon 1999

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Compiled by Tony Attwood

This is (I think) number 19 in this series which selects Dylan concerts from the internet and gives a link to them.   So there’s nothing original here, except for the fact that I was unable to find another site that had compiled a list of concert recordings, so that if for any reason one suddenly wanted to know what Bob was sounding like in any particular year, one could find the answer quickly.

The aim of course is to have at least one recording of a gig from each year that Bob has been touring.  A list of the concerts to which we’ve already put links is given below.

If there are any concerts you would particularly like to recommend and which are freely available on-line, please do write to me: Tony@schools.co.uk with the details.

The recording quality on this particular concert really is good considering the way these recordings have to be made.

Here are the songs performed….  A link to all the other articles in this series is given below.

  1. Roving Gambler
  2. Mr Tambourine Man
  3. Masters of War
  4. Girl from the North Country
  5. Tangled up in Blue
  6. Trying to Get to Heaven
  7. Maggie’s Farm
  8. Lay Lady Lay
  9. Blind Willie McTell
  10. Just like a woman
  11. Can’t wait
  12. Like a Rolling Stone
  13. Love Sick
  14. Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat
  15. Blowing in the Wind
  16. Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan: The Concert Series 

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No Nobel Prize for music: Dylan’s early experiments. “I’ll keep it with mine”

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Previously:

 

By Tony Attwood

The history of music in the 20th century was one of experimentation and innovation, alongside the evolution of new technology.  For the traditional “serious” musical forms of the classical-romantic era, wherein such giants of composition as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven had defined what could and could not be done, their music could now be heard by all who wanted to hear, whenever they wanted to hear it.

At the same time, folk songs and blues – the music of the people which was rarely, if ever, written down –  suddenly found itself transformed through the fact that it could be heard on recordings.  It thus attained  a solidity it had never had before, as well as a much larger audience

It is impossible to overestimate the impact the development of recording techniques had on music, for through this technical innovation, the performances that were recorded started to become the definitive performances, simply because they were recorded, and could be heard over and again.

Dylan, as we know, was one of the very few composers in what became known as the “popular” form of music, who turned against this: he wanted the freedom write, re-write and re-invent his songs, and although the record company insisted of course that he put versions on record, for Dylan they were never the definitive versions, as he endlessly sought to re-write the arrangements, and indeed often the lyrics, melodies and chord sequences for his performances.

At the same time as this technological evolution was happening, so popular music continued to evolve from earlier popular forms such as dance music, and combined with different ethnic forms such as the blues, to develop in a multiplicity of ways.  Then as radio stations took to playing recorded music (initially in the USA, but later elsewhere) the music of both contemporary and historic artists to a much wider audience.

Thus, music became increasingly diversified, although at the same time some cultural groups found the music of other cultural groups unintelligible.  Popular singers were deemed unable to sing while the music of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen was considered incomprehensible.  You can find their work across the internet but here’s an example to save you time…

Meanwhile, popular music likewise diversified, and here a more vigorous cultural battle arose with some music being classified by belligerent groups as the “music of the devil”, some, such as the music of modern jazz, the avant-garde or the music of experimental artists such as Frank Zappa was considered “unintelligible” and in some countries unfit for broadcasting.   Indeed in countries such as the UK, government control over radio broadcasting continued for many years, thus restricting the spread of awareness of new musical forms.

And this was a rather curious issue, because the music aimed at the mass population tended to convey a message that everything was, or could be fine, and as such it supported the status quo.  I’ve quoted “White Christmas” as one of the prime examples of the genre; one of the most popular songs of all time, I expressed the simple view that everything was, or soon would be, fine.   There was nothing to struggle for; our world needed no change.

But of course some musical forms – most particularly the blues and folk music – carried the message that everything was far from fine, and it was these two forms combined with the arrival of radio stations in the USA playing music 24 hours a day that paved the way for the evolution of new forms of music, and which could allow people to hear music of a different style, incorporating different visions of life.

And inevitably, a few composers such as Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan then went further, taking the conventions of the styles of music that they were interested in, and then expanding and combining them using approaches that had rarely been heard before.  We might at this point remember “Constant Sorrow,” and note that here Dylan was deliberately extending the length of some lines, yet achieving this without breaking the construction of the song – the rhyme and the regularity of the chords continuing to make it easy for us to appreciate where we are in the song and how each line fits into the pattern of the music.

However there is a boundary beyond which the manipulation of the form goes so far that the music itself becomes something different – something that inevitably will at first be,  for the average listener, harder to understand and accommodate.  And of course when this happens it brings forth a dichotomy.  The singer/songwriter wishes to break new ground, but also wishes to keep his/her audience, and these two drives can be found to be pulling in different directions.

And just how interested Bob was in such concepts was the theme of the earlier article in this series, which took a look at All I really want to do which is a song about expressing one’s individuality, and not following the contemporary manner of focussing on expressing love, as was found at the time in folk, pop and rock songs.

Although it is of course not the done thing for the author to refer the reader to the author’s own writing, perhaps I might break that rules with reference to my articcle on I’ll keep it with mine because it was on re-reading that piece written almost ten years before, that I decided to take on this series about the music rather than the lyrics.

So quite often we find examples of Bob clearly wanting to experiment both with the music and the lyrics, while sometimes liking a composition of his own enough to try radically different approaches, although on occasion only to conclude that none of these experiments were working well enough to put on an album, or indeed to perform to the wider public.

However, that does not stop such songs becoming part of the official Dylan collection, which means others then have the freedom to work some more on the song, and try making a recording of the song, despite the fact that the composer had given up on it.    And this is what I think happened with “I’ll keep it with mine”.

The problem with this song is that the music and the lyrics simply don’t fit, which leaves the musicians forever trying to work out how best to perform the song.   As Eyolf Østrem writes in relation to the Bootleg series version quite reasonably wrote, “The bass moves in mysterious ways. The piano has the bass line | g-a-c-d | e-d-c-a | g-a-c– | d—| at the beginning of the clip, whereas the bass guitar tries its best to figure out how the song goes, without consistently failing nor succeeding.”

What adds to the problem for me is that in the Biograph version, Bob is playing the out-of- tune piano that he has used elsewhere and which has the honky-tonk effect, while tapping his foot on the beat, and putting in the occasional harmonica break.

But his problem overall is that the lyrics often contain too many syllables to fit with what is available in the music.  The beat, in short, is defeated.   Consider the opening lines,

You will search, babe, at any cost But how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?

Forget the tune if you can, for the moment, and just look at those words.   The first line has a musical pause at “babe” bringing in “at any” after two beats, meaning that the four beats of that bar are used up, and so “cost” – a word that is extended, fills most of the next bar.

At one level, that works fine – “cost” is an important word, and is going to rhyme with “lost” in the next line so we need to keep it in our short-term memory to help us make sense of the pattern of the song.

But the line “but how long babe, can you search for what is not lost” now has too many syllables in it.  “Long” because of its meaning and sound, needs to be stretched out, but it ends up making “what is not lost” a gabble at the end of the line.   Dylan does make it work, but at a stretch, and as a listener we are unsure of how the metrics of the song are working.  In short, we have lost the beat.

Then we get “Everybody will help you” in which “Eve-ry” gets two beats, forcing “body” to be pushed together onto one beat, and  Bob makes this work by extending the number of beats in the bar.  That is fine for Bob, although it might feel uncomfortable for the listener, but even Bob  comes unstuck with the extra syllables with the line “Not for what you are but for what you are not.”

Of course we can still make sense of the song with the lyrics set out as below, but it is immediately clear that the number of beats in the bar varying as they do, is not helping the song to be understood, nor helping it to sound as if it is offering a coherent message.

You will search, babe, at any costBut how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?Everybody will help you some people are very kindBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine

I can't help it if you might think I am oddIf I say I'm loving you not for what you are but for what you're notEverybody will help you discover what you set out to findBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine

The train leaves at half past tenBut it'll be back in the same old spot againThe conductor he's still stuck on the lineAnd if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine

The effect is disconcerting, and for anyone trying to perform the song today, it really does take quite a lot of rehearsal to get it right, even when the pianoist and singer are the same person and no one else is involved (which is to say no one else dependent upon your time-keeping.)

Such variation in the song’s rhythm is interesting and certainly worthy of experiment, and Bob’s solo version works because he knows where he’s going; his hands on the piano and his voice delivering the vocals can work as one.  But if you just listen to the first recording below, you can probably hear that occasionally there’s an extra bounce in the playing of the bass as the musician is trying to keep a grip on where Bob is going.   It is as if the notion of this being a sad, plodding song in 4/4 time is suddenly picking up a bit of bounce.  Which is rather odd.

We can perhaps perceive the problems within the song also just by looking at line two in each verse; we can see that no matter how the lines are performed, they end up with a different number of beats in each line.  Five in the first verse, six in the second and four in the final verse.

But how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost? 

If I say I'm loving you not for what you are but for what you're not

But it'll be back in the same old spot again

Now there is no problem with doing this in poetic forms, but when it comes to a song, we automatically expect an accompaniment which has the same number of beats in each line.   Of course, a composer can decide not to proceed in this way, but if that is what happens then for most of us, brought up on the regularity of songs, it all feels a bit weird, not to say uncomfortable.

Judy Collins however, with a fully rehearsed backing group, did to some degree turn the composition into a regular pop song, extending bars to make the music and lyrics fit, but for me it is not fully successful and I am left with the thought that the essence of the song has somehow been tampered with, to make it more easy to listen to – and I am not at all sure that was Bob’s idea in writing it in this way.

You will search, babe, at any costBut how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?Everybody will help youSome people are very kindBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mineI can't help it if you might think I am oddIf I say I'm not loving you not for what you areBut for what you're notEverybody will help youDiscover what you set out to findBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mine

The train leaves at half past tenBut it'll be back in the same old spot againThe conductorHe's still stuck on the lineAnd if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mine

What I take from this piece is that Bob really was, this early in his career seeking to push not just the lyrics boundaries, but also the musical boundaries.   This song was never intended to be released, I feel, but I am glad it was, because as a record of what Bob was exploring musically  it is invaluable.

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry 14: I ride on a million train baby

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

by Jochen Markhorst

XIV      I ride on a million train baby

The Top 5 Best Covers of any Dylan song is dominated by the ladies. Who are also more often than not at Number 1. Indigo Girls’ “Tangled Up In Blue”, the “I Believe In You” from Sinéad, Dixie Chicks’ “Mississippi”, Severa Gjurin’s “Not Dark Yet”, Emma Swift’s “I Contain Multitudes”, the “Is Your Love In Vain?” by Barb Jungr, and let’s not forget The Roches’ brilliant “Clothes Line Saga” cover… “There’s a density and a gravity to a Dylan song that you can’t find anywhere else,” as Nick Hornby writes (31 Songs, 2003), and for reasons that remain unexplained, female colleagues in particular manage to maintain or even extrapolate those exceptional qualities of a Dylan song (as The Roches do).

But “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” is one of those rare songs where the ladies struggle to make it into the Top 5. The Top 3 seems fairly undisputed: the Super Session cover by Al Kooper and Stephen Stills, the irresistible Chris Smither and Richard Thompson’s Fairport Convention.

Fairport Convention has had a Dylan reputation to uphold since the 1960s – the British folk rockers’ many renditions are usually great. On the first LP (Fairport Convention, 1968), Richard Thompson still only indirectly pays tribute to his hero by incorporating Dylan texts into songs (“Jack O’Diamonds” and “It’s Alright Ma, It’s Only Witchcraft”), but after that, Dylan is unequivocally honoured on every 60s LP (and on stage too). “I’ll Keep It with Mine” (What We Did On Our Holidays, 1968); “Si Tu Dois Partir” (a version unmotivated translated into French of “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”), “Percy’s Song” and “Million Dollar Bash” on Unhalfbricking in 1969 (plus the outtake “Dear Landlord” later appearing on the CD reissue); and the outtake “The Ballad of Easy Rider” on the Deluxe Edition of 1969’s Liege & Lief.

In the decades that follow, Richard Thompson and company remain faithful to Dylan. We hear a compelling “George Jackson”, a funky “Down in the Flood”, “Country Pie” as an explosive country rocker and a homely “Open the Door Richard”, just to name a few. The seventeen Dylan covers on the 2018 compilation A Tree With Roots – Fairport Convention And The Songs Of Bob Dylan offer a fine sampling and a wonderful folk-rock record.

For a good recording of Thompson’s interpretation of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” we have to wait until the 21st century: Cropredy 2002. The Friday session on 9 August of the annual, now three-day August festival Fairport’s Cropredy Convention is nostalgic; original members Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol and even short-lived primal member vocalist Iain Matthews (1967-69) join Thompson and play a nostalgic set – i.e. lots of Dylan. “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, “Jack O’Diamonds”, “Million Dollar Bash”… and in between:

“We’re gonna do a song – if you were lucky enough to see us way back then: we did this song quite a lot live. Never recorded it. See if you remember this one,”

… says bassist Ashley Hutchings announcing that Top 3 performance of “It Takes A Lot”. It’s a perfect exercise. As in the original, tempo and groove are set by the guitar, in this case Thompson’s Stratocaster, but Thompson-style: with a whimsical, cool swinging, quirky pattern. Master George Galt’s harmonica flutters hesitantly around it, and then Hutchings lays the concrete foundation. More than thirty years the song has been in the Fairporters’ system, and it pays off. That, and the men’s superior craftsmanship, of course. And that’s without mentioning the lived Dylan love.  A love that Dylan already reciprocates as DJ on his Theme Time Radio Hour three times (playing three Richard & Linda Thompson songs), and in 2013 wholeheartedly when he plays Richard’s pièce de résistance “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” on stage. Which Richard takes in with appropriate pride, some self-mockery and English understatement:

“I didn’t really believe Bob Dylan covered one of my songs… why would he? When it sank in, I thought, ‘Well, that’s fantastic. I’ve covered 75 of his; he’s covered one of mine.’ I think that’s the right ratio.”
.                                                                                       (Ray Padgett’s Pledging My Time, 2023)

It Takes A Lot To Laugh – Fairport Convention:

Little room at the top, all things considered, for the ladies. The usual suspects forego the song anyway: neither the 21st-century prima donna of Dylan covers, Babr Jungr, nor the Dylan torchbearers of the 20th century, Joan Baez and Cher, have “It Takes A Lot” in their repertoire. A prime candidate from the premier league is Dylan disciple Marianne Faithfull, but she chooses the song at an awkward moment in her life and career: 1971, in the years she spent mostly sitting on a wall in Soho under marmalade skies, looking with kaleidoscope eyes at all the clean white sheets stained red. She is quite literally plucked from the wall by Decca producer Mike Leander, who miraculously manages to get full-time junkie Marianne to sing an entire album;

The picture of me on the album cover shows how I actually looked then. Pale, thin and sickly. I looked like death. My voice is so weak on Rich Kid Blues, I can’t bear to listen to it. It’s the voice of somebody incredibly high, probably on the edge of death, making a record. It’s always like that. Johnny Thunders sounds like that. There’s no energy. Anybody who heard that record would have just said, “Well that’s that. We’ll never hear from her again.”
.                                                                                            (Faithfull; An Autobiography, 1994)

“Strange and ghostly,” Marianne calls the recording, and that’s about right. Three Dylan covers: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” on Side A, Side B opens with “Visions of Johanna” and then comes “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”. Her self-criticism makes sense. Decca and Mike Leander hear that too, so the recordings are put on a shelf, Marianne receives a firm handshake and is back on her wall two days later. Only after Broken English revives her career in 1978, reviving Marianne herself as well in the years that follow, being clean and popular, does Decca finally dare to toss the record onto the market (in 1985).

As it turns out, it’s not so bad. “Incredibly high”, “weak voice”, “on the edge of death”… all true, but nevertheless (or rather: precisely because of this) the record has a strange, somewhat perverse appeal. Her detachment works superbly on “Visions of Johanna”, for instance, in which she still manages to lay down nuance, flickers of emotion and chilling resignation from beginning to end – which is also true for “Sad Lisa”. The hollow, lugubrious overtones, by the way, are partly artificially staged by producer Leander. Most of the songs have sparse, stripped-down arrangements; in “Corrine Corrina” and in “Long Black Veil”, the tempo is scaled back even further and the reverb slider is opened a touch more; and song titles like “Beware Of Darkness” and “Crazy Lady Blues” are, of course, not chosen by chance either.

“It Takes a Lot to Laugh” brings a light note, surprisingly. Fairly up-tempo, a cheeky, sharp solo guitarist (Chris Spedding, would be an educated guess), a cheerfully thrumming bass, skilful piano and ditto drums – all of which contrasts pleasantly with Marianne’s flat, disinterested delivery.

However, she does not make the Top 5. If only because she, stoned and all, immediately messes up the opening line: “Well, I ride on a million train baby”.

It Takes a Lot to Laugh – Marianne Faithfull:

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 15: It blew my little 12-year-old mind

 

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Bob Dylan: The Concert Series. 26 March 1995 Brighton

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

 

There are details of our current and many recent series on the home page of this site.

By Tony Attwood

A list of the songs in this concert, followed by a list of previous concert recordings selected for this series, can be found below.

Brighton is a popular seaside resort on the south coast of England, (famous for its stony – as opposed to sandy) beach and its two piers.   It’s a location close to my heart as I studied there as a student for three years, many decades ago.

I’ve found two recordings of this concert on-line, so, knowing how on occasion recordings can become unavailable I’ve put both up.  But as far as I know, they are identical.

The tour started on 11 March with three nights in Prague, and the 26 March gig was the first night of the tour in England.

There were 13 concerts in the UK with just three nights off in that sequence, until the final gig on 10 April.   There was then one concert in Dublin, before the party flew back to the USA and a break for one month, before resuming the tour in San Diego.  There was another break in August, and then the guys took it up once more in the United States, concluding for the year on 17 December in Philadelphia.

A list of the songs performed, and a list of all the 17 other concerts featured in this series so far (covering 1961 to 2025) are given below.  I hope to continue the series in the coming weeks.

The songs

  1. Down in the Flood
  2. I Want You
  3. All Along the Watchtower
  4. Just Like a Woman
  5. Tangled Up in Blue
  6. Simple Twist of Fate
  7. Mr. Tambourine Man
  8. Boots of Spanish Leathe
  9. Mama, You Been on My Mind
  10. Dignity
  11. Man in the Long Black Coat
  12. Maggie’s Farm
  13. Like a Rolling Stone
  14. It Ain’t Me, Babe
  15. I Shall Be Released

Bob Dylan: The Concert Series 

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If only there had been a Nobel Prize for music10: Black Crow to All I really want to do

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Details of the earlier articles in this series are given at the end.

By Tony Attwood

This series is about the music of Bob Dylan, (as opposed to the lyrics of Bob Dylan), and in the previous nine episodes we have travelled as far as “Ballad in Plain D”, in each case trying to see what innovations Dylan introduced in his music, as opposed to into his lyrics.

And already, one of the many things that comes from a consideration of Dylan’s music as opposed to his lyrics is just how varied Dylan’s approach is.  Chord sequences are varied not only (obviously) between songs but also within songs, so are the number of lines in each verse.  Plus there is the very unusual occasional introduction of a modulation…  Thus it is clear that despite the lack of interest from many journalists Dylan, was indeed very keen from the off, in experimenting to see where he could take his music, as well as where he could take his lyrics.

Also by focussing on the music in the order in which the songs were written, we can see that there really are some huge musical leaps from one song to the next, and surely there cannot be a bigger change musically than happens between the composition of “Ballad in Plain D” which I focussed on in the last episode, and what came next: Black Crow Blues

There is a temptation of course to pass over this song given that it is a 12-bar blues, with a very rough and ready piano accompaniment.   And an even greater temptation to do just that when we note that “Black Crow Blues” uses the same melody and virtually the same accompaniment, and indeed seemingly the same out-of-tune piano as “Denise Denise”.

Thus in songwriting terms, we have this sequence of songs which has a sudden crash in terms of both the emotional feel from one song to another.  It is as if Bob is using the music to express an emotion and then move on.

  1. It ain’t me babe – a song expressing sadness
  2. Denise Denise   – taking a break and having a laugh
  3. Mama you’ve been on my mind – sadness and lost love
  4. Ballad in Plain D  The absolute depths of lost love
  5. Black Crow Blues Moving on despite the lost love

Now what is for me, if no one else, so interesting here, is just how different the music is across these songs, and (one may suspect), just how much emotional energy and effort Bob put into each song.  “Desnise” and “Black Crow”, really are knockabout songs which sound as if they were recorded in one take just to get the feeling out of Bob’s system.   As such they are both musically and lyrically repetitious.  For example with Black Crow we have…

Woke in the mornin', wanderin' Weary and worn outI woke in the mornin', wanderin' Weary and worn outWishin' my long-lost lover Would walk to me, talk to meTell me what it's all about

through to the final verse…

Black crows in the meadow Sleeping across a broad highwayBlack crows in the meadow Across a broad highwayThough it's funny, honey I'm out of touch, don't feel muchLike a Scarecrow today

Interestingly Bob used the same format (and seemingly the same out-of-tune piano) for Denise Denise

Despite being on the “Another Side” album, Bob did no more with this song than this rough and ready piano-bash (if I may be permitted to describe it that way).  It very much does sound as if there were just the two takes and that was it – although as I have pointed out before, that doesn’t mean it is not possible to do anything with the song…

My guess is that it was Bob’s musical answer to his own previous composition (“Ballad in Plain D”) and was separated from that song on the original LP as far it could possibly be – Black Crow being the second song on side one, Plain D being the penultimate song on side two.  Black Crow also stands out as the only piano-accompanied song on the album.

Next came “I shall be free number 10.”

The original “I shall be free” had appeared on Freewheelin…

I shall be free number 10 then turned up on Another side.

Neither song has ever been played by Bob in public.

The original talking blues seems to date back to at least 1926 if not earlier, and this is about the best recording there is of a very early version – perhaps it is the original talking blues (I’m not an expert on the form – and sorry about the quality – it’s the best I can find).

I suspect Bob became interested in the talking blues because of Woodie Gutherie’s interest in the genre (indeed it is quite possible that this is definitively stated somewhere, only I can’t find it) and I am sure Bob must have known this one…

But the point is that the talking blues basically gets rid of the melody and focuses entirely on the lyrics above a well-established chord sequence and simple rhythm.   And given the trauma expressed in “Ballad in Plain D” we can perhaps understand why the next two Dylan compositions Black Crow Blues and I shall be free number 10  abandoned attempts at originality in terms of the music.   Coming up with original melodies and accompaniments is a demanding mental process, and unless one is going to write a blues in the Robert Johnson style of everything being hopeless, it is not easy to do without taking an existing form and using it again.

But eventually Bob did get there for he then wrote “To Ramona”  and “All I really want to do,” and with “To Ramona” we are at last back to a song which Dylan was willing to perform on stage.   In fact he performed in 381 times between July 1964 and June 2017.

However this is not a totally original composition, for the melody and chord sequence is very closely related to the Rex Griffin 1937 song “The Last Letter,”

Obvioulsy, this doesn’t mean that Bob deliberately took that song and rewrote it, for it is certainly possible for a song composer to use the essence of a song he/she has heard in creating a new composition, without realising this is happening.   Thus it is possible that Bob “borrowed” from this original, for we know that Bob’s memory for music is utterly prodigious as can be seen in his live performances, and his interest in the popular musical forms of the past (and not just the blues) is well attested.    So he might have borrowed the basics of this song deliberately, or by accident.  We can’t tell.

There are also articles around that suggest that the song is based on a traditional piece of Mexican folk music.  I can’t comment on that but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that “The Last Letter” itself borrows from a traditional Mexican piece in the first place.

As I noted when I first wrote on this topic, both songs are in the 3/4 time signature of a waltz, which is something Bob vary rarely does (“Sara” is the most obvious other example).  Dylan does vary both the melody and the chord sequence somewhat from the original, but not much; what we are getting is G, G6, G7, G, G6, G7, D…

Subsequently, the notion arose that the song was sung for Joan Baez, or maybe for Nico (it depends which book on Dylan you read), arises, and this is possible if one just focuses on the music, but it is an idea that breaks down if one starts to translate the original Spanish lyrics into English.   My view is that if Dylan borrowed anything, it was the music only.

After “To Ramona”, Dylan wrote All I really want to do    And I love the recording below because it seems to signify that all the issues we have been looking at in the last couple of articles, are now over and gone, and that both in his life and in his music Bob really is now moving on…

And this is the point I am trying to make in this series which tries to focus on Bob’s music more than his lyrics.   The music of Bob does indeed reflect his personal life.   He’s had a terrible time with the failure of a relationship, and that is reflected not just in the lyrics of the songs, but also in the music – as revealed here.   No wonder that version got so much applause – exactly as it deserved.   Bob played it over 100 times in concert finally letting the song go in 1978.  It had done its job.

Thus we can hear Bob’s emotional state in his music, and I think that makes the music doubly worth considering if we really do want to understand how Bob’s creativity has evolved through the years.  His songs may or may not at times be autobiographical, but he cannot help but express his emotions of the time in the music he creates.   There is hardly anyone, no matter how great a genius, who can write a happy song, when feeling desperately sad.  Nor vice versa.

If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry part 13:  Just a basic whack thud

Posted on May 4, 2025 by Tony Attwood

It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (1965) part 13

by Jochen Markhorst

XIII       Just a basic whack thud

Chris Smither has many qualities for which we admire him, and one of those many qualities is: his footwork. There are few artists who so hypnotically and purposefully use both feet as a percussive metronome. J.J. Cale comes to mind – though he only used one foot. The Americana-UK interviewer asks about it at the end of an on-point and enjoyable interview for the October 2010 issue. Is it just a random wooden board under your feet or do you bring it specially yourself? Does it have to be a certain size, does it have to be a certain type of wood?

“Interestingly enough, what you really want, or what I want, is a lack of tonality. That’s why I don’t use actual wood. I use particleboard, which is non-resonant, has a very dull uniform sound. Use a nice piece of oak, or maple, it has an inherent tone itself and it will often conflict with the key that you’re playing in. So what I’m really looking for is something which is just a basic whack thud which won’t interfere.”

It’s a Smither signature thing, and happens to fall very well with one of the very best “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” covers at all, Smithers’ 2009 studio recording of the song for one of his very best LPs, Time Stands Still. Chris tilts the song from melancholy to sadness and actually slows the tempo down too far – the shuffle dictating the mood in the original and in almost every cover is gone. But then there is that footwork: the continuous cadence of the wagon over the rails, unobtrusive but unrelenting. The academic dogmatiser might argue that it is more of an adaptation than a cover, and Chris does recognise that:

“The Dylan song has been with me forever. I did play it in public once at a Dylan workshop, but it’s just one that stuck with me from the early days. It just seemed right, you know. And a lot of people are surprised by it and say that’s a different take on it. I didn’t go back to the original; I just did it the way I remembered it, and of course it is different! I didn’t realize how much it had shifted in my mind. It’s kind of sadder the way I do it, but it’s just a testimony to how strong his songs are that you can change ’em that much. And they still hold together. Of course he does that all the time — changes them.”
(interview with Martin Bandyke for Ann Arbor News, 25 October 2009)

But despite the “changes” and the “shift” surely one of the most beautiful covers of the song. Or more likely: thanks to it. With which Chris Smither completes a trilogy, by the way. His “Visions Of Johanna” (Leave the Light On, 2006) and his “Desolation Row” (Train Home, 2003, featuring Bonnie Raitt) are also already in the respective Top 5 of Most Beautiful Covers Ever. You can’t ignore Dylan, Smither explains, although Blonde On Blonde did manage to make him a little unhappy at the time;

“I got to New York the same week that Blonde On Blonde came out and I was meeting all these people and we used to listen to that record, we’d listen to “Visions Of Johanna” and I just… it was depressing. Because you kept thinking to yourself: how am I ever going to do something that approaches that.”
.                                                   (interview with Otis Gibbs for Otis’ YouTube channel, 2024)

Forty years later, he has then developed enough courage and self-confidence to attack even the “unapproachable” “Visions Of Johanna”, and has also found the “how to do”. To producer David “Goody” Goodrich and his powers of persuasion (Smither: “He knows how to manipulate me”) we owe the brilliant finds in terms of instrumentation. Smither himself is more of a man of more-is-less, but Goodrich has mastered the paradoxical art of trickling in more instruments verse after verse – mandolin, accordion, bass, mandocello, second voice, karimba – but nonetheless retaining its heartfelt, minimalist charm. Into the stratosphere his cover then comes thanks to a find Smithers attributes to friend and colleague Steve Tilston:

“I sort of shifted the signature on it. I do it in 6/4, you know, that has a sort of a three-feel to it instead of the 4/4 that Dylan’s in. I still like to play that song. I play it fairly often.”

… an subdued waltz rhythm, in other words. To a significant extent responsible for the irresistible melancholy dripping out of the loudspeaker boxes.

As an aside, it is the only Dylan cover where Smither sticks neatly to the lyrics. Well apart then from a few insignificant shortcuts to stay in the metre. On “It Takes A Lot”, he swaps verses and affords minor variations (“Don’t the brakeman look fine” instead of good, for instance), and on “Desolation Row” he goes completely his own way and shuffles words, word combinations and complete sentences to his heart’s content. Interviewer Otis Gibbs tries to compliment him. How do you remember all those lyrics, he asks;

“I cheat. I don’t do them all actually – I compressed it. You know, I combined some verses and rewrote it. I thought rather cleverly. But the funny thing is that there’s so many words to that song that hardly anybody notices that I was messing around with them.”

Which is true. The mesmerising guitar playing, the hypnotic foot tapping, Bonnie Raitt’s misty second voice and über-sad slide guitar, the unearthly horns, the haunting organ and Smither’s vocals suggesting even more convincingly than Dylan’s that he, in fact, is really on Desolation Row… Smither does weave a dream in which you lose sense of reality. And then indeed you no longer notice that to Cinderella “death is quite romantic”, rather than to Ophelia, who takes Romeo away from her as well, and moreover now gets to play the pennywhistles of Dr Filth and the nurse with him; that Einstein makes his appearance already in the second verse (and not until the fifth); that in the last verse he sighs Right now I don’t feel too good instead of Right now I can’t read too good – just to name a few examples of Smither’s carefree “messing around”.

With Smither’s own songs, as we know, things also worked out well. The least we can say of Smither is that he approaches Dylan’s oeuvre and status. Premier League names like Emmylou Harris, Dr John, Bonnie Raitt and Diana Krall cover his songs on their albums, recognition is worldwide and in 2014, record label Signature Sounds even released an all-star tribute album with contributions from illustrious names like Tim O’Brien, Loudon Wainwright and Josh Ritter: Link of Chain: A Songwriters’ Tribute to Chris Smither.

Very nice, but even nicer would be a Dylan tribute album by Smither, and then please produced by David “Goody” Goodrich. Four songs we already have. Apart from the ones mentioned above, a wonderful, Little Feat-like “Down In The Flood” from 1972 – with input from Bonnie Raitt as well as assistance from Dylan veterans Ben Keith, Maria Muldaur and Happy Traum.

Smither’s only Dylan cover without foot tapping, though.

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 14: I ride on a million train baby

 

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Bob Dylan: The Concert Series No 17: The Isle of Wight 1969

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Tony Attwood

The Concert Series Episode 17.    Commentary by Tony Attwood.

The Isle of Wight 1969

A list of the concert videos included in this series is given below, and I am now at the stage of trying to fill in the gaps, and there is no bigger gap than not having a video of the Isle of Wight gig, not least because I was there.  But of course, the further back we go the harder it is to find any recording – although for this gig we do have a video of four songs from the event.

So from what I remember the event ran over two (or maybe it was three) days.   For people in England the Isle of Wight is a well-known place – an island with a population of around 140,000 off the south coast of England (and thus with a decent climate) with regular ferries from Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth.  It is a county in its own right.

This is episode 17 of the series of videos and recordings of Dylan concerts (and one rehearsal) between 1961 and 2025.   A list of the previous articles, each of which focuses on one concert (except the one featuring the rehearsals) is given below.

So the point is that these recordings for “The Concert Series” are collected from the internet and put into chronological order below to help anyone (including me!) to hear what happened to Bob’s concerts (as opposed to individual songs) across time.

Meanwhile, if you feel you have something to say about Bob and his music, and would like to write for Untold Dylan, please do get in touch.  Email me at Tony@schools.co.uk    Also all articles on this site are open for comments, as long as the comments are about the article.

Tony Attwood

Isle of Wight 1969

The festival was held in August 1969 at Wootton Creek, and reports suggest maybe 150,000 people attended to hear Bob Dylan, The Who, Free, Joe Cocker, the Moody Blues and other bands of the day.  It marked Bob’s full return from retirement.

As I recall from this long ago there was a real spirit of the fact that we were the peaceful people who could attend these events, have fun, relax and even tidy up afterwards.  I can’t recall the name of the lady I went with, but I wish I could.

I’ve put up two videos from the gig and a second short video as well just in case any of these vanish from the public domain at any time.  For one thing I think the gig was important in terms of getting Bob back on stage, and the because I particularly like to record this memory from my youth within the series.   I like the fact that as a student I was out, exploring and taking in the major events of the day.  I don’t have any memorabilia from these events, so this film is rather nice for me.  Holding on to bits of the past seems increasingly important as the years go by.

There are only four songs on the video – and of course if you know of any other openly available videos of this event please do forward them or let me know where they are available.   The songs are….

  • I threw it all away
  • Highway 61 Revisited
  • One too many mornings
  • I Pity the poor immigrant

And just in case the video above vanishes here is a copy of Highway 61 on its own.

Bob Dylan: The Concert Series 

The (very personal) Absolute Highlights series

This series was completely different from and separate from the current concert series, but if you are interested in hearing very specific songs from the past, it might be of interest.

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If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music: Part 9 – Ballad in Plain D

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Details of the previous eight episodes of this series are given at the end.

Now to begin with, you might perhaps be bemused.  This is a series about music, and Bob Dylan’s musical achievement.   And yet here I am taking up a whole article on a song containing 13 by and large unchanging verses as the singer expresses his deep sadness about not being able to hold a relationship together.   It is dead simple, and any half- competent folk singer could bore an audience stupid by the end of verse two – or three at the latest.  If there is something to be found here, surely it is in the lyrics, not the simple melody repeated 13 times.

And yet, and yet…

To start with the lyrics, since they dominate most people’s consciousness of the song, if we look at Dylan’s compositions of 1964 purely from the point of view of the lyrics we might conclude that part way through that year he was obsessed by relationships.  We have It ain’t me babe (a song of farewell performed 1120 times on stage), Denise Denise  (a song about a lady, never performed by Dylan) Mama you’ve been on my mind (another lost love song, performed 201 times on stage) and then this monumental Ballad in Plain D  (never performed even once on stage).

“It ain’t me babe” and “Plain D” both made it onto the “Another Side” album, the others didn’t.  “Plain D” runs to 438 words, lasts eight minutes 18 seconds.  There was a second Dylan version it seems, but the recording online only gets as far as the sister, and then is faded out, and doesn’t seem to add anything notable to our understanding of the song (at least in my opinion).  So I am bypassing that.

But what is interesting about the song musically is that it modulates.  The piece does start and end sounding as if it is in D, (although to achieve the effects Bob has, it is actually played in C with a capo on the second fret – thank you to the inestimable Dylan chords for that awareness).   But maybe Bob’s guitar playing is perhaps a technicality when compared with the main difference between this song and most folk or pop or indeed rock songs – for it modulates.  Which means it changes key.

And before I go on I’d like to try and emphasise these points.   It’s not in Plain D in that it is actually played in C (thank you again as ever to Dylan Chords for making that very plain).  But to make my own point, “modulation”( which is common in much western music), is very rare in folk and most pop music.

Without going into the nuances of Bob’s performance the chords are

A    D           Bm        D     
I    once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze
                        Bm              C          G
With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn
  D           Bm           D    
I courted her proudly, but now she is gone
                       A7   D
Gone as the season she's taken.

 

The modulation (that is the change of key) comes in the second line and is effected by using the chord of B minor (Bm) which is a chord that is found both in songs in the key of D major and songs in G major.    So when we have “lamb” sung against the chord of B minor, that doesn’t feel or sound strange.   But that movement to C major at “gentle” tells us that we have indeed changed keys – since the chord of C major doesn’t naturally occur in the key of D, and thus musicians feel the modulation.  Non-musicians more likely feel that the music at this point is “a bit odd” (as one friend put it to me).

But the oddness doesn’t linger for then we are straight back to D – the key we started in and the verse ends on D, just to emphasise that this is exactly where we are.

Musically the modulation and the return to the tonic at the end help the listener stay focussed – although whether focussed enough to want to play this long recording regularly I don’t know.   I bought the album when it came out, but mostly avoided playing this track.

But I think Dylan was conscious of the issue he had created with such a long track consisting of 13 vocal verses and one instrumental verse (played by the harmonica) – which is one reason for introducing the modulation.  For that key change takes us a little by surprise, and helps us work through and keep focussed on what might otherwise be 13 identical verses.

The melody and approach of the song has been traced back by many writers to the traditional English songs, “The False Bride” and “Once I had a sweetheart” and these of course exist in many forms, depending on which part of England they were originally noted in by those who dedicated their lives to finding and notating the traditional songs of England.  And since then it has been recorded in its original form…

But to return to Dylan, what else has he done musically which is so unusual?   First, he’s run 13 verses in the same basic form.  That really takes us back to the days of 15th Century English folk music.   Second, he changes the chord sequence slightly as he goes, maybe just to keep our interest, maybe to keep up his interest, maybe because he really feels each change does indeed reflect the changing lyrics

Bob has also added an instrumental verse with a very plaintive harmonica and a conclusion, which is very much in the folk tradition, but far less common in contemporary music.

Furthermore, throughout the song the chordal accompaniment changes often moving away from the modulating second line of C,  Am,  Bb,  F, to the chord sequence which drops the Bb.  This happens regularly and so by verse 13 we are half-expecting (even if it is only subconsciously) a variation and we do get it with the complete omission of the Bb chord which has made such an impact on the music in the earlier verses.

This comes as Bob is singing ‘Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me, “How good, how good does it feel to be free”? And I answer them most mysteriously ‘Are birds free from the chains of the skyway”?’

This really is a very extraordinary work.  Highly repetitive, much longer than other songs on the album, having variation but often in quite a subtle way, modulating in most verses, and never performed live, even in a shortened version.

And it leaves us with a question, does it have to be that long?   True, it is not an absolutely strophic piece since the chordal accompaniment does change regularly, if subtly.  And the lyrics do take us to some strange metaphors – at least I think this is a metaphor….

With unseen consciousness, I possessed in my grip
A magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped
Noticing not that I'd already slipped
To the sin of love's false security

Perhaps above all I am left with is the thought that there is a magnificent piece of songwriting here, and if it had been a much shorter piece it might have been performed by Bob.  Likewise, if it had been a piece that could be performed with an ensemble, then in its existing length it might have become a concert piece.   Or if the verses had been eight lines with varied chordal accompaniment and melodic variation, again it could have been a welcomed concert piece.

But of course, the point is that the singer is lost and morose, knowing what he has thrown away, and how much of it was his fault.    And I am left with the thought that if only that had been written after Tambourine Man Bob might well have attempted to play it with the band, and with all the musical variations that would have made it a piece that would have gripped audiences the world over.

Sadly, if that is the case, it came too soon, and I suspect many a Dylan fan has played the one recording of the song rarely over the years.  But if you are still here, maybe you could try this….

If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music

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It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – A History in Performance, Part 3: 1984 – 1989

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Details of the articles covering the other three tracks on side two of “Bringing it all back home” are given at the end of this piece.

Previously in this series on this song….

Part 3: All your reindeer armies.

By Mike Johnson

[I read somewhere that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the third article on the fourth and final track, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ You can find the previous articles in this History in Performance series here: ]

————–

The ability to switch from one language register, or modality, to another is a feature of Dylan’s song writing.  From one line to the next he can switch from intensely lyrical language to common sayings, idioms and cliches. In the third verse of ‘Baby Blue’ he delivers this astonishing line, ‘all your reindeer armies are all going home,’ to be followed, a couple of lines later, with, ‘the carpet too is moving under you,’ an image derived from the common saying ‘to pull the rug or carpet out from under someone’s feet.’ The Cambridge Dictionary defines that as ‘to suddenly take away help or support from someone, or to suddenly do something that causes many problems for them.’ It is an action that destabilises a person.

(Note: my proofreader, Janscie Sharplin sent me this comment ‘Iinterestingly, when I checked the repeated ‘all’ in the reindeer armies line, almost all the lyric sites had ‘ your empty handed armies’ instead, which wasn’t nearly as good cos it repeated the previous verse. But the ‘official’ Dylan site had the reindeer. Wonder what happened there, a mistake in some performances?)

I can’t help thinking that it is the song itself that is pulling the rug out from under a certain someone’s feet, even that line itself. In other words, the song is not merely describing that vertiginous feeling, but inducing it. Sometimes we have to ask, not what is a song saying, but what is it doing.

The last verse is a mix of common and extraordinary language:

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

The intensely lyrical lines two, three and four are bracketed by two everyday images. Stepping stones and striking another match evoke common and familiar sayings, while those middle lines are mysterious and strange. It’s the juxtaposition of these elements that helps give the song its force. The requirement to move on, to leave the past behind, is both mundane and singular.

I finished the last article, (Part 2) with a couple of stunning performances from 1980. We now jump to 1984, to Rotterdam, April 6th. This marks the first attempt since 1978 to give the song a full band backing, a step away from acoustic versions. He puts a bit of a bounce into it also. I’m not sure about it. It’s a fine, jeering vocal performance, but it’s a bit too dumpty-dum for me, perhaps a bit too up-tempo. There is a messiness here. The emotional intensity seems to have been compromised as Dylan rushes through the verses, but others may not agree.

The extended harp break is of interest with Dylan using the instrument, as he so often does, to push the emotion of the song to new levels. The harmonica will become increasingly important as Dylan guides the song into the 1990s.

1984

Better all around, is the following recording from the same year (date unknown). Not only is it a clearer and better recording but, by slowing the hectic pace, Dylan is able to deliver a more considered and moving version. It swings without falling into the dumpty-dum. Finally, a successful rock version of this acoustic song. All it lacks is the harp break.

1984

Dylan dropped the song for 1985 and 1986, his Tom Petty years, but it resurfaced again in 1987 when Dylan performed it with The Grateful Dead and with Petty’s band, The Heartbreakers.

For his Grateful Dead performance, Dylan slows the song down once more, drops the harp break in favour of Jerry Garcia’s lyrical guitar playing – Garcia finds the sweetness in the melody – and uses an exaggerated version of his famous ‘undulating’ tones, half-singing (with vibrato) half calling. Asalways, it’s good to see Dylan performing, a fair quality video. Not too bad at al

1987 (with Grateful Dead)

For my ear, however, that is eclipsed by this performance with The Heartbreakers. Maybe it’s that piano accompaniment by the ever-inventive Benmont Tench, whose contribution makes these 1987 performances memorable, or the drastically slowed down tempo, or Dylan’s compassionate vocal, or maybe all these elements combined that give rise to this arresting Helsinki performance.

1987 Helsinki (with Heartbreakers)

That wasn’t the only great performance with the Heartbreakers. A few days before the Helsinki concert we find this one from Nuremberg. It’s the same arrangement as in Helsinki but Dylan sings in a higher register, delivering an outstanding vocal performance. Both these 1987 performances show how well the song responds to the slower tempo, a lesson Dylan will apply later in the 1990s. But he didn’t play the harmonica.

1987 Nuremberg

1988 was the first year of the Never Ending Tour, a year in which Dylan’s vocal style changed again to a strangely forced, supercharged, almost breathless sound, chopping up lines into brief phrases or single words, breathing after every word or three. It sometimes sounds as if he is deconstructing rather than singing the songs. It’s astonishing how different his voice is, thicker and angrier, from 1987. There were thirteen performances of the song in 1988, compared to ten in 1987. He’s not losing sight of the song, but nor is he featuring it regularly.

It stays as a rock song, pretty much working the arrangement he’d hit upon in 1984, abandoning the slow, soulful approach of 1987 (Birmingham, Sept 8th). Still no harmonica.

1988

Dylan rarely, if ever, played the harmonica in 1988, but in 1989 the instrument came back strongly, often played at its squeakiest, the very top notes, hard and biting. ‘Baby Blue’ came back with a vengeance too, clocking up twenty-nine performances.

In 1989 we have a return to form, if you want to see it that way. ‘Baby Blue’ is stripped back to its acoustic roots, is closer to the original tempo, and the somewhat unruly audience likes that.

It’s a fine vocal, while the subdued, mournful and bluesy harp break is outstanding.

1989 (Upper Darby Oct 15th)

There were other brilliant performances in 1989. It’s worth checking out this one from Cleveland.

1989 (Cleveland, Nov 2nd)

What’s outstanding is how different the harp break is from the Upper Darby performance, which was intense and reflective. At Cleveland, the harp is scratchy and anguished, the emotion jagged. It rips through your brain. It occurs to me that this discordance is very punky – it could hardly be more abrasive.

This punkiness could be the key to understanding what came next in the three years 1990 – 1992, the era of the Untouchables (how the band came to be known), an era in which, perhaps, Dylan discovered that he could not destroy his songs no matter what he did to them. Bob and his thrash band. We’ll return soon to see how ‘Baby Blue’ fared in the hands of the Untouchables.

In the meantime, make sure the carpet doesn’t start moving on you.

Kia Ora

Previously in this series….

Tambourine Man

Gates of Eden

It’s alright ma

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry12: You don’t whistle in church

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

by Jochen Markhorst

XII        You don’t whistle in church

On Dutch radio, the 2020 single receives airplay to this day, “Gypsy Woman (She Is Homeless)” the cover of Crystal Waters’ ultimate dance hit from the summer of 1991, performed by Mell & Vintage Future from Volendam. It is a version that fits into a long-running, successful trend that has persisted for more than 20 years now: stripping down, dragging out and depressing up-tempo songs. Debatable, but the most likely main culprit for setting the trend seems to be Michael Andrews. Commissioned to provide the soundtrack for the cult film Donnie Darko (2001), Andrews delivers a brilliant score with 16 instrumental tracks. Plus a cover, which he has his mate Gary Jules sing: “Mad World” – a chilling, minimalist interpretation of the rhythmic, highly danceable 1983 Tears For Fears hit. After the late release of the soundtrack (2004), it became a deserved global hit. Which, apart from for financial reasons, is also particularly artistically pleasing to both spiritual fathers Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal:

“It was actually quite amazing to hear when it first came along. We both think it’s truer to the lyrics than our version, in the sense that the recording is very dark. I think we became popular because of the sort of juxtaposition of quite serious and intense lyrics with actually a kind of pop sound. So our versions of songs tended to be a bit more upbeat whereas that is really the emotion of the lyric.”
(Curt Smith in Top 2000 a gogo, 2023)

Gary Jules – Mad World

It inspires. Ane Brun, the girl from the north country Norway whom Dylan fans have come to appreciate through her stunning covers of “Girl From The North Country”, “Make You Feel My Love” and especially “She Belongs To Me” scores in 2008 with a hushed version of Alphaville’s old synth hit “Big In Japan”, Dave Lichens astounds with a nigh on gregorian arrangement for piano and choir of Blind Melon’s indie classic “No Rain”, Sleeping at Last lays a chillingly bleak veil over the very happiest song of the 1980s, The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”… and so, in the 21st century, since Gary Jules, the charts of the 1980s and 1990s have been plundered by solemn weeping willows, who remarkably often stare ponderously over misty expanses of water in the accompanying music videos.

Sleeping at Last – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles):

The covers are often enough beautiful, and often enough expose unexpected beauty by credibly tipping the whole song (such as “Mad World” and T.V Carpio’s “I Want To Hold Your Hand”), but at least as often fail to meet the quality requirement implicitly articulated by Curt Smith: “That is really the emotion of the lyric.” “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” is a truly marvellous song, but the cover’s sort of juxtaposition, as Smith calls it, is disturbingly bizarre. Cary Brothers transforms Level 42’s “Something About You” into an ethereal, magical and, above all, sad gem. Thus seemingly to mock the grateful joy that oozes from the lyrics, now suggesting – unintentionally, we may assume – sarcasm.

The trend approximates what Al Kooper initiates that Thursday afternoon, 29 July. Since 15 June, they have played the song a dozen times in the studio, four days ago they rehearsed and performed it in Newport, this morning three more times… “Phantom Engineer” is under the skin of mainstays Bloomfield, Kooper and Dylan by now. Solid enough at least to vary, to improvise a cover of the song, as it were. But: still within the framework, within “the emotion of the lyric”. Until now, “Phantom Engineer” was a hi-speed bullet train racing from St. Louis to Chicago without stops. The afternoon version is still a train, but now more of a slow train coming, departing from the Mississippi Delta, shaking and jolting and tumbling to New Orleans via Clarksdale, Vicksburg and Jackson – the band is replacing one train ride for another.

This loyalty to the “emotion of the lyric” is maintained in the first well-known cover of the song, the one from Super Session (1968). “I pulled out the fast arrangement,” says Al Kooper – the mail train picks up steam again, racing away from country, back to the urban blues again. Elevating the song to the canon en passant, thanks to the record’s impressive sales figures.

The floodgates then really open after Super Session. Blue Cheer, Martha Vélez, Marianne Faithfull, Leon Russell… all fine covers, all pretty much keeping the stomp of the original while adding their own touches. The first real deviation is recorded in 1970 by The Lyman Family, the cult-like hippie group around Mel Lyman. The cover is a slow, folky, acoustic reinterpretation from which the melancholy drips, and is thus a first, early exercise of the reconstruction form that is becoming so popular in the 21st century. Not exactly fitting, but still piquant: Mel Lyman is the guy who at the time in Newport calmed the excited tempers after Dylan’s electric earthquake with a 20-minute wordless harmonica rendition of “Rock Of Ages”. Excruciatingly drawn-out and equally one-dimensional, but folk purists could appreciate it still, if only as an antidote after Dylan’s betrayal:

“And from a lone mike on stage, the thin plaintive cry of a harp sobbed “Rock of Ages!” Rock of ages, cleft for me… it sang, over and over, the same simple chorus, the same refrain, and the audience fell in step. It was a plea, a hymn, a dirge, a lullaby. Twenty times, thirty, more, and always the same beseeching, stroking, praying, pleading; then slower, softer, and, as the supplication trailed away, the park was empty and people were on their way home.”

… says Robert J. Lurtsema in The Broadside of 18 August 1965. Irwin Silber, the publisher of Sing Out! and Dylan’s most disappointed, embittered fan puts it a bit less poetic, but still with a superlative: “The most optimistic note of the evening.” And in the August ‘65 issue of his magazine, so right after Newport, he gladly gives all space to opposing forces. To Theodore Bickel’s highly quotable sneer, for example: “You don’t whistle in church — you don’t play rock and roll at a folk festival.”

What Irwin thought five years later about Mel Lyman recording the festival catastrophe “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry” for his LP Avatar, history does not record. Lyman sucks all the rock ‘n’roll out of the song – which Irwin probably appreciated very much.

 

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 12: You don’t whistle in church

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Bob Dylan – Complete Concert – The Beacon Theatre NYC, 21 November 2o21

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Commentary by Tony Attwood.

This is episode 16 of the series of videos and recordings of Dylan concerts (and one rehearsal) between 1961 and 2025.   A list of the previous articles, each of which focuses on one concert (except the one featuring the rehearsals) is given below.

A complete guide to what I like to think is our definitive series covering the Never Ending Tour is here    This series totals  144 articles and includes around 1000 audio recordings.  A guide to the very persona “Absolute highlight” series taken from the Never Ending Tour series, is given below.

The recordings in this current series (“The Concert Series”) are collected from the internet and put into chronological order below to help anyone (including me!) to hear what happened to Bob’s concerts (as opposed to individual songs) across time.

Meanwhile, if you feel you have something to say about Bob and his music, and would like to write for Untold Dylan, please do get in touch.  Email me at Tony@schools.co.uk    Also all articles on this site are open for comments, as long as the comments are about the article.

Tony Attwood

The Concert Series

The (very personal) Absolute Highlights series

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If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music 8: from Denise to Mama

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

An index to our current and recent series can be found on the home page.

By Tony Attwood

If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music

In 1964 Bob Dylan’s lyrical themes in his opening seven compositions had been varied ranging from reflections on internal pain with Guess I’m doing fine to love with Spanish Harlem Incident to rejection and farewell in It ain’t me babe – with a touch of humour along with way via Motorpsycho Nightmare,    And in the midst of this he also created one of his almighty masterpieces in Mr Tambourine Man, a song which almost defies classification in terms of its lyrics.  My argument in this series is that this variety of lyrical themes encouraged Bob to explore a variety of musical themes and musical possibilities while staying within the general ambit of popular music.

But Dylan was from the start of his career in writing music, very experimental, and in the last episode of this series I touched on  “It ain’t me babe” and noted how Dylan was bending the musical form that he used to its very limits.

And perhaps it was as a reaction to this, the next song Dylan composed was a 12 bar blues, which sticks exactly to the 12 bar format of a melody line sung once against the tonic chord (often written in music as I), once against the subdominant (written IV) resolving back to the tonic, and then a final answering line which runs from the dominant chord (V) back to the tonic.  In the key of C major that takes us through the chords of C, F and G.  It is exactly how we expect a 12 bar blues to sound in terms of the chords.   What makes it different in this song is the “chugging” sound of the harmonica.

Thus the piano part that Bob plays is an absolutely standard boogie-wooogie style where the left hand plays the three notes of the chord rising and falling in succession, and right hand is pumping away with the chords.   But in addition to this Bob is singing – and when he isn’t, he is pumping out the rhythm on a harmonica.  It’s not a song most of us remember from the Dylan catalogue, but it’s fun to hear once in a while.

As for the character of the “Denise” in the song, she is something of an enigma.   She is smiling inside out, he is already lost, she calls out his name by mistake, he looks at her and sees himself….  It is a song of dislocation.

But also it sounds like a light-hearted interlude, an “interlude” not least because it was composed between “It ain’t me babe” and “Mama you been on my mind” – two much more profound reflections on relationships.  Indeed it could have been improvised just for the recording.

However the next song, “Mama,” although unreleased at the time of composition, appeared on the Bootleg 1-3 triple CD and it is worth going back to this studio recording, rather than listening to the live performance that is available on the internet, as the studio recording which turned up on “1-3”  gives a real insight into the way Bob was further exploring what he could do, musically, at this time.

In my view, Bob was clearly experimenting with the way the music in his compositions could be extended in order to match the angst expressed in the lyrics.  And this, I feel, is seen by the chords that he is using.   As before I am quoting Dylan chords for the chord sequence…

   C                                  E
Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat
    Am           D7/f#
An' cov'rin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
   C              /b      Am G              C/g
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
    G              G6 G7 C         G
But mama, you been on my mind.

And there is more because the third line in verse two is musically different from the third line in verse one…. (again chords are taken from the authoritative Dylan chords site)

   C              /b      Am G              C/g
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
    G              G6 G7 C         G
But mama, you been on my mind.

This variation continues as can be seen in verse three, and as a result of these constant although minor changes, musically the song feels like it is on the edge from the very start (reflecting the “crossroads” that the singer is “standing at”) by opening clearly in C major for we tend to expect the first chord of a song to be representative of the key that the song is performed in, and more often than not it is the tonic – thus C major being the opening chord of a song in C.

(Although we might note that Bob had already broken this rule with “Tambourine Man” which starts on the subdominant – chord IV of the key one is playing in.)

So to summarise in this song Bob starts with the key chord of C, but then immediately Bob moves to the chord of E major, a chord which has nothing to do with a song written in C major.  (By which I mean one of the notes of the chord of E major is not available in the scale of C major – this being the note G sharp.)   This then is totally unexpected the first time we hear it, and gets us metaphorically on the edge of our seats.   It is the musical equivalent of a movie which opens with a couple clearly in a relationship and one says, “I love you” and the other turns and walks away.   It is not what we expect.

And as if that were not enough, he changes things again in subsequent verses.  Not with major changes to the music, but enough to give those who don’t immediately relate the accompaniment to a set of chord changes, a feeling of unease, and of nothing being stable.

Of course, the actual chord sequence is not unique to Dylan; that is not the point, for although the sequence is very unusual and thus unexpected, the constant minor variations on the accompaniment add to the feeling of unease.  We can say that very few songs open with a sequence of chords running C, E, A minor.  It is not a Dylan invention, but it is rare.  But also very few songs have these sorts of minor variations in the music of each verse.

And then again I would suggest it is very unusual (if not actually is novel) to move in the way that Dylan does onto D7 while then holding the song there.   For through this sequence, we can reach the end of the second line and musically still be totally unsure of what key we are in.  This reflects the fact that we are unsure of the mental state of the singer and the person about whom he is singing.  The chord sequence perfectly reflects the lyrics which are about uncertainty.

Now given the many millions of pop and rock songs that had been written by this time, finding a chord sequence with which to open a song, which had not only not been used before as an opening, but which actually works musically, is indeed something of an achievement.   And maybe somewhere there is a song that opens in this way.  But I am pretty sure that even if there is, there is not a song that then has these chordal variations through the start of each subsequent verse.

But we are left with uncertainty after just two lines of music, and so to resolve this Dylan then uses the chords of C, Am, and G all of which are clearly in the key of C major which is the key he started in, but so readily departed from.   So yes by the end of the verse, we have a clear feel of where we are – but still that sense of uncertainty.   Such changes are rare, and even then where a songwriter wants to use the technique of jumping into an unrelated key in this way, it is done later in the verse not at the start.

Musically this is therefore very unusual, but if we look at the lyrics we can understand why Dylan has gone down this route.

Perhaps it’s the color of the sun cut flat
An’ cov’rin’ the crossroads I’m standing at

The introduction of the “sun cut flat” and the “crossroads” confuse, but also work as a symbol for the singer’s uncertainty.  Thus the emotion of the song, and the unexpectedness of the chords (even if what is actually happening in the chords is not something a non-musician is likely to understand) work together.  But the verse does get resolved back to the everyday return to what we expect through the final two lines.  Effectively these take us back to the key we thought we were in.

Or maybe it’s the weather or something like that
But mama, you been on my mind

The pattern is now set for an edginess in the opening lines and a resolution in the final two lines as seen again in verse two.

I don’t mean trouble, please don’t put me down or get upset
I am not pleadin’ or sayin’, “I can’t forget”
I do not walk the floor bowed down an’ bent, but yet
Mama, you been on my mind

The lyrics of the song are very different from the norm of pop songs at the time where love and lost love were the themes.   Indeed within the context of the times some of the lines are bordering on being shocking as with “It don’t even matter to me where you’re wakin’ up tomorrow.”

And in an era where expressions of love or moaning about lost love, are the prime issues within popular music these lyrics such as,  ‘I am not askin’ you to say words like “yes” or “no”,’ are completely out of the norm.    As is the expression of confusion in “I’m just breathin’ to myself, pretendin’ not that I don’t know”   Here again the change in the music brought out by the unexpected change of the chords, through the utilisation of a chord that is not part of the key each verse starts and ends in, is very powerful and relates the music to the lyrics.

Then just to make sure we have got the message, the final verse opens with

When you wake up in the mornin’, baby, look inside your mirror
You know I won’t be next to you, you know I won’t be near

This is most certainly not how pop lyrics work, and that key change at the start of each verse makes the point all the way through.   It does not matter if the listener knows that Dylan is suddenly using a chord that is not in the key he is performing in, it still feels like a disjointed jump and thus will nonetheless feel odd to most people – which is exactly the point, because the message of the singer, is not the message found in most popular songs.

I can’t say for sure no one has ever done something like this before, but certainly, I have not found it.   To my mind, this composition represented a musical revolution, both in terms of the lyrics.

Of course, Dylan then did re-write the song to make it possible for him to perform it with Joan Baez

G              D            Em
Maybe it's the color of the sun cut flat
    Am
An' cov'rin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
   G              D          Em             C
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
    G                 D     G
But mama, you're just on my mind.

… and so the meaning is diluted.  But what lasts in the memory is Dylan’s version in the studio.  And decades later it can still send shivers down the spine.

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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry part 11: “Dylan opted for the slower version”

Posted on April 26, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

by Jochen Markhorst

XI         “Dylan opted for the slower version”

The many similar stories of studio musicians over the decades, the specific memories of the H61 sessions of Frank Owens, Al Kooper, Harvey Brooks and Michael Bloomfield, and our own ears: it seems clear now that we owe the sudden, extraordinary, mercurial beauty descending on “Phantom Engineer” after lunch to the banal fact that Kooper and Bloomfield deliberately slowed down a bit to introduce both newcomers to the song.

Al Kooper especially then: although Kooper is listed as the organist, the afternoon session is the first and only “Phantom Engineer” session without an organ. And the first and only session with acoustic guitar. An acoustic guitar with a guiding role even: the opening is for that guitar, which thus sets tempo and groove for the whole song. It seems obvious that that is Al Kooper; not only because we no longer hear the organ, but also because the guitar is played suspiciously “clean” with that undylanesque frivolous tinkle on the high strings, and because the guitar is actually Kooper’s weapon of choice. After all, Kooper only sneaked behind the organ at the time because he saw his hopes of joining a Dylan session dashed when Dylan came in with Mike Bloomfield;

“The guy just shuffled over into the corner, wiped it off with a rag, plugged in, and commenced to play some of the most incredible guitar I’d ever heard. And he was just warming up! That’s all the Seven Lick Kid had to hear; I was in over my head. I embarrassedly unplugged, packed up, went into the control room, and sat there pretending to be a reporter from Sing Out! magazine.”
(Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards – Al Kooper, 1998)

But that was six weeks before today, that was at that legendary “Like A Rolling Stone” session. Meanwhile, Kooper has penetrated the inner circle, we survived the Battle of Newport together, and Dylan insists on having him at the H61 sessions – by now he does dare to pick up a guitar again despite Bloomfield being around. In addition, we hear Dylan playing his most concentrated and lyrical harmonica solos of all the sessions; apparently he has his hands free.

So a different scenario from that which Tony Glover would have us believe, with that anecdote about Dylan toiling at the piano while the others are gone for lunch. Unlikely anyway as Glover explicitly mentions Dylan sitting at the piano – if Dylan were to be the architect of the mood swing, the tempo slowdown and the quicksilver of the post-lunch performances, he surely would have designed his conversions on the guitar and then demonstrated them to the returning colleagues on the guitar as well – after all, the acoustic guitar is now the conductor. It is more plausible that Glover watched Dylan merely trying to incorporate and try out his radical textual changes – and indeed, the piano suffices for that.

In this more obvious scenario, Kooper then sets the pace, in all likelihood out of collegial concern: to give Harvey Brooks and Frank Owens some time to get to know the song and give them room to find a fill-in – Dylan never says anything, after all. A producer-like role to which Kooper seems naturally inclined. A few months later, in Nashville during the recording for Blonde On Blonde, that role is assigned to him more explicitly and semi-officially – Kooper and Dylan practising the songs, the two of them by themselves in the hotel room, Dylan then reporting to the studio only after Kooper has set the song up for Charlie McCoy and the rest of the Nashville Cats. But today, then, it seems to be a first, spontaneous action on his own initiative.

It Takes a Lot to Laugh – penultimate take: 

After Harvey Brooks‘ name, however, despite Brooks’ own recollection, we still should put a question mark. It really still seems to be the same bassist as the bassist on the “Phantom Engineer” and “Tombstone Blues” takes of the morning session, i.e. still Russ Savakus; up to and including the last, final take, we hear the grinding of the strings against the frets. It is not until the following song, “Positively 4th Street”, that we hear a completely different sound and a completely different approach to the bass. Suddenly, we no longer hear a single grind, in any of the three complete takes, nor in any of the four breakdowns. Instead, we now hear a warm, cool swinging and remarkably unobtrusive, servient bass. This is definitely a different bass player – so “Positively 4th Street” must be marking the switch from Savakus to Brooks.

Positively 4th Street – 1st complete take:

 

Guitarist Michael Bloomfield, meanwhile, seems to be taking Al Kooper’s cue. Gone are the sharp licks and energetic exclamations. Instead, after lunch, Bloomfield plays a truly servile, country-like, melody-following part. Modest fills, no solo and even a hint of an occasional Bakersfield twang… in all three complete takes of that decisive afternoon session, Bloomfield gracefully leaves plenty of room for Dylan’s harmonica and Owens’ piano.

Just as gracefully Kooper conceals years later, when he writes his autobiography Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, that he is the architect of the change of direction that turned out so sublimely:

“When I’d played on Highway 61 Revisited, we’d cut some songs two or three times with different arrangements each time. One such song was Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry.” We originally recorded it as a fast tune, but Dylan opted for the slower version cut a few days later as the keeper for his album. I pulled out the fast arrangement and taught it to everyone and we had song number two.”

So: “Dylan opted for the slower version,” as Kooper reminisces about his first struggles with repertoire for the legendary LP Super Session, the record he makes in 1968 with Bloomfield and Stephen Stills. And with Harvey Brooks, by the way, who contributes the atmospheric, jazzy closing track “Harvey’s Tune”. That same Side 2 then opens with Kooper’s reinterpretation of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”. It’s a still radiant, goosebump-inducing cover that effortlessly succeeds in defending its place in the Top 5 Best “It Takes A Lot” Covers. Thanks to Stephen Stills‘ guitar and Harvey Brooks’ superb, electrifying bass playing. Playing what needs to be played. Once again demonstrating that a Dylan song stands or falls with the artistry of the hired workers.

Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills – It Takes A Lot To Laugh:

 

To be continued. Next up It Takes A Lot Part 12: You don’t whistle in church

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Bob Dylan: The Concert Series No 15. Largo, Maryland; 15 January 1974

Posted on April 25, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

Series selected by Tony Attwood

This is episode 15 of the series of videos and recordings of Dylan concerts (and one rehearsal) between 1961 and 2025.   A list of the previous articles is given below.

A complete guide to our series covering the Never Ending Tour is here    This series totals  144 articles and includes around 1000 audio recordings.

The recordings in this current series (“The Concert Series”) are collected from the internet and put into chronological order below to help anyone (including me!) to hear what happened to Bob’s concerts (as opposed to individual songs) across time.

Meanwhile, if you feel you have something to say about Bob and his music, and would like to write for Untold Dylan, please do get in touch.  Email me at Tony@schools.co.uk

Tony Attwood

The Concert: Capital Centre, Largo, Maryland, USA.  15 January 1974

The band….

  • Bob Dylan (vocal, guitar, harmonica)
  • Robbie Robertson (guitar)
  • Garth Hudson (organ & piano)
  • Richard Manual (keyboards)
  • Rick Danko (bass)
  • Levon Helm (drums)

The songs….

  1. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
  2. Lay Lady Lay
  3. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
  4. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
  5. It Ain’t Me, Babe
  6. Ballad Of A Thin Man
  7. Stage Fright (Robbie Robertson)
  8. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Robbie Robertson)
  9. King Harvest (Has Surely Come) (Robbie Robertson)
  10. This Wheel’s On Fire (Rick Danko – Bob Dylan)
  11. I Shall Be Released
  12. Up On Cripple Creek (Robbie Robertson)
  13. All Along The Watchtower
  14. Ballad Of Hollis Brown
  15. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
  16. The Times They Are A-Changin’
  17. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
  18. Wedding Song
  19. Just Like A Woman
  20. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
  21. Rag Mama Rag (Robbie Robertson)
  22. Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever (Don Hunter – Stevie Wonder)
  23. The Shape I’m In (Robbie Robertson)
  24. The Weight (Robbie Robertson)

The Concert Series

The (very personal) Absolute Highlights series

 

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