Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

According to Heylin there is only one version of this song available, but I’ve found two, and I think they are different.  Not very different, but they are performed in different keys (one tone apart).  On the other hand maybe I am just hearing differences that are not there.  Yet on the other other hand that can’t be a digital recording so…

It’s one of those songs that is really enjoyable, but doesn’t quite make it (for me) as a lost gem worthy of inclusion in my 20 lost masterpieces.

So it is the novelty of hearing it for the first time, or the first time in a long old time, that makes it worth playing over and over, and hearing Bob make early disparaging remarks about the media – the verse about the TV station is particularly amusing, but then so is the one about the newspaper.

Being troubled is of course a part of the American folk tale of the 19th and 20th century, a reflection of the real life of the downtrodden working classes who were told that everything was fine because they would have their reward in heaven, so best not get up and fight a revolution.

Bob’s particular concern about the media and its ability to define its own reality however takes that notion of being troubled further, because if the media successfully get the population to look at the world in one way, and see activity x as normal and activity y as totally beyond then norm, then there is indeed total control.

Nothing changes, says Bob in this song, and it was a theme he has often returned to.  It is of course the absolute antithesis of his religious period where the fact that nothing changes doesn’t matter because this is what God has built and all will be solved in the Second Coming,.

But if that view of the future is false, then “nothing changes” in terms of power and greed and corruptible seed really is all that there is.

Which really is a rather depressing thought when it hits home.

Here are the lyrics

And the first of the two recordings with Joan Baez

And here is the second recording which I think is different from the first.

There is also a Joan Baez version that comes from her Rare Live and Classic album.  Every time I come back to her recordings I am still just utterly amazed at her voice.  She puts something quite different into this performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnkZoNo6Uf4

A little while before this song Dylan wrote North Country Blues and after it he wrote When the Ship Comes In.  For the former I wrote the headline “There is no solution” and that was clearly what Bob thought some of the time.  But with “When the Ship” I suggested that never had Dylan been more certain that it would all work out.

It’s curious, he was swinging back and forth from one to the other, song by song.

What else is on the site

1: Over 470 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

After the privately-owned American Columbia Broadcasting System prohibits Bob Dylan from singing Woody Gruthie/Paul Robeson-inspired anti-fascist songs on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’, the young singer-songwriter ‘flees’ across the border to record a number of songs on Saturday, February 1, 1964, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV studios in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

To avoid the out-of-doors, lip-synced method of producing music videos like those in CBC’s ‘Singalong Jubilee’ that feature Anne Murray, the Toronto studio constructs a set resembling a wood-heated lodge, supposedly isolated amidst trees – equipped with electric lights, table and chairs, playing cards, magazines to read, and bunks on which to lie – with pin-ups of gals on the walls.

Seemingly just for his fellow companions-in-exile (most of whom are plaid-shirted like working lumbermen or vacationing fishermen; in this particular video ‘silent movie’ stars be they all), Dylan plays acoustic guitar and sings:

Well, if you’re travellin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the border line
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The North Country)

The song above is a variation on a traditional English ballad (as we shall see, ‘rosemary’ gets around):

Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
(Scarborough Fair)

Sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette and writing in a notebook is Michael Zenon, a Canadian actor who plays a ‘half-breed’ guide – ‘Joe Two Rivers’ – in the CBC series “The Forest Rangers”. However, in reality, Ukraine-born is he. Another actor on the set – supposedly with a missing hand replaced by a hook – is a ‘Long John Silver’/’Captain Ahab’-like character.

Missing the dadaist/surrealist point of the video/movie, dylanologist Heylin Clinton calls the TV setting ‘incongruous’ with ‘workers pretending to pay attention’ (Clinton – Bob Dylan: Life In Stolen Moments).

In the CBC art piece, the young singer-songwriter performs – in the wake of the killing of civil rights advocate US President Kennedy – a serious song protesting racist violence in the US; on a secondary level it’s a veiled critique of Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist / anti-Robeson hearings, and of the CBS with its ‘high office relations’ swinging their silver canes at free speech:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
(Bob Dylan: The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll)

A stock Dylanesque character is the man with the silver cane:

Big Jim was no one’s fool, he owned the town’s
only diamond mind
He made his usual entrance lookin’ so dandy
and so fine
With his body guards and silver cane, and every
hair in place
He took whatever he wanted, and he laid it all
to waste
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

In Toronto, with his faithful companion Tonto, the Lone Forest Ranger, Robert Zimmerman, sticks with his arrows:

But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick
So I’ll make my stand
And remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give damn
(Bob Dylan: Restless Farewell)

Humour, Dylan is not without:

Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto
They are ridin’ down the line
Fixin’ everybody’s troubles
Everybody’s except mine
Somebody musta told them that I was doin’ fine
(Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan Blues)

During the theatrical performance of an anti-nuclear war song, Dylan turns to ironical black-humour:

Down the corner I seen another man
Turnin’ around at the hot dog stand
I said, ‘Howdy friend, I guess there’s just us two’
He screamed, down the road he flew
Scared – he thought I was a Communist
(Bob Dylan: Talkin’ World War III Blues)

Dylan, to this day, attempts to remain hopeful in spite of human nature that, looked as a whole, appears very slow to change:

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they are gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)

Words that can be taken as giving worldly advice or interpreted as strict religious doctrine if one is so inclined.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

15: Abandoned Love 

My review says “do listen to both versions” and both have their fans.  I go for the one with the band (it is the second link on the review) but both count as being at masterpiece status.

16:  You’ve been hiding too long. 

This relates to “Ballad for a friend” so maybe it is just that I am hypnotised by the particular melody that Dylan uses, but this song grips me in the same way.  There is something within it that gets straight into my heart and my soul and actually changes my thought processes.

17: Too Much of Nothing

The version I love is take 2, the version that was used by Peter Paul and Mary.  Dylan’s version appeared on Volume 11 of the Bootleg Series, the “Basement Tapes Sampler” and it is on spotify.   The PPM version that I linked to in my review has gone but there is one here

It is one of those songs that I always feel that there could be a better version somehow, but it has never emerged.

18: When He returns; (live version)

I’ve raved about this so often, that you’ll probably be bored sick by now, but if you have never heard the live version (which is so utterly different from the album version) it really is a treat.   The guys who go around taking down videos are obviously protecting copyright, but we can only be thankful that this one is still up there.   You get two great songs (sorry about the ads) with When He Returns coming in just after five minutes.

19: This Wheel’s on Fire

Again you’ll probably know this, but have you heard this version recently?  If not you might well be surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I37Utt01j7U

20:  Tell Ol’ Bill

And of course Tell Ol Bill.  My absolute favourite Dylan song for reasons I have bored you with so many times you probably don’t ever want me to mention it again.  But if you’ve missed it you can read the review.

I love this version

Hope there was something there you liked.  This article took so long to write (after all, I just had to listen to each song again.  Just to make sure), but for me it was a pleasure.

Tony

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY Larry Fyffe

A Christian theme is readily detected in the song lyrics of ‘Duquesne Whistle” by Bob Dylan:

I can hear a sweet voice steadily calling
Must be the mother of our Lord
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)

Dylanologist Kees de Graaf detects the religious bent which is all well and good: it means, he says, that Dylan is ready to meet God (See: Bob Dylan’s ‘Duquesne Whistle’, a lyric analysis by Kees De Graaf ).

It would appear that Kees does not have ears that let him hear the double-tinged content within the lyrics of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. Being an artist, Dylan does not merely repeat Biblical scripture, but draws upon his own creative talent. He adds a Gnostic-like tension between heavenly light and worldly darkness:

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowing like she never blowed before
Blue light blinking, red light glowing
Blowing like she’s at my chamber door
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle).

In the song above, the ‘blue light’ of toil is ‘blinking’ while the ‘red light’ of pleasure is ‘glowing’. As if to say, “What are you going to do when the devil comes knocking at your door in the guise of a sexy female?”

Priests in long black coats consider the sexual urge to be the work of the devil, writes William Blake, but the preRomantic poet notes that earthly sex and spiritual love are entangled.

The bust of a Gothic Romantic writer with a book of surrealistic poetry under his arm – a book containing poems about lost love – rests above Bob Dylan’s chamber door:

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door ….
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, ‘Lenore?’
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, ‘Lenore’
Merely this an nothing more
(Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven)

Broken-hearted men come and go:

And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In her sepulchre there by the sea
In her tomb by the sounding sea
(Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee)

And broken-hearted women too.

Mary in the Bible – Mary Magdalene – who, like a bird with a broken wing, enters the tomb of Jesus:

And as she wept, she stooped down
And looked down into the sepulcher ….
She turned back, and saw Jesus standing
And knew not that it was Jesus ….
Jesus saith unto her ‘Mary’
She turned herself, and saith unto Him ….’Master’
(John 11,14,16)

Poet Edgar Allan Poe draws from the creative well of the Bible, and songster Dylan draws from Poe:

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

The singer/songwriter does so again in the somewhat hopeful song below:

Beneath the thunder-blasted trees
The words are ringin’ off your tongue
((Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

A variation on the gloomy Gothic’s “dream too bright to last”:

No more – no more – no more ….
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
(Edgar Allan Poe: To One In Paradise)

In the song following, Dylan draws from the poetry of mentioned William Blake. He who has ears, let him listen:

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn there’s someone there
Other times it’s only me
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)

As in:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

For one, Dylan hears the footsteps of a singer/songwriter of the blues:

When the train rolled up to the station
I looked her in the eye
Well, I was lonesome, I felt so lonesome
And I could not help but cry ….
When the train left the station
With two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues
And the red light was my mind
All my love’s in vain
(Robert Johnson: Love In Vain)

Sure there is a Christian theme within Bob Dylan’s song, but there be also
lots of surrealistic Freudian imagery, of spiritualism and sexualism intertwined:

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowin’ like she never blowed before …..
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowin’ like my woman’s on board
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)

In many folk tunes, wishful spiritualism and physical mortality get mixed in together with a heaping spoonful of skepticism, and a good dose of ambiguity.

I thought I heard that steamboat whistle blowin’
I thought I heard that steamboat whistle blowin’
And she blowed like she never blowed before

I’m afraid my little lover’s on that boat
I’m afraid my little lover’s on that boat
And it will take her to the Lord knows where

I’m gonna have a dollar some ol’ day
I’m gonna have a dollar some ol’ day
And I’ m going to the Lord knows where

I’m gonna where I won’t have to work no more
I’m gonna where I won’t have to work no more
And I’m going to the Lord knows where

I hate see that evening sun go down
I hate see that evening sun go down
For I know I’m on my last go-round

(Shirkey and Harper: Steamboat Man)

Bob Dylan doesn’t saddle up a one-trick pony.

By Tony Attwood

This post edited slightly on 7 Jan 2018 after a further thought suddenly struck me while I was playing the song over and over in my head

This is one of the utterly, absolutely brilliant pieces of Dylan’s early work that was performed in the Town Hall concert and then abandoned.  If you have never heard it, you really should scoot down to the foot of this little review and play the one and only recording there is.  It is a masterpiece.  An absolute masterpiece.

The song is a cross between the lyrics of “With God on our side” and the melody of “Ballad for a Friend”. Indeed the melody was also used in part in “Oxford Town”,  although obviously at a very different speed and to different effect.

That reuse of melodies in totally different ways of course is the sort of thing Dylan can do, but if anyone else had written this it could be one of their crowning glories.  It says its message and its eats right into your heart and soul, and leaves you standing there wondering what on earth to do next.  Or at least, that is what happened to me.

And if you are coming to this song for the first time in the Donald Trump era, I suspect it might actually ring a few more very very shrill bells in your head.  Of course I am not an American citizen, so I have no say in the matter, but from where I live it seems that what Dylan was crying out against back in 1963 still needs protesting against with as much vigour as he created for this song and its extraordinary final line.

It is also a remarkable cross-over song when it comes to form and format. While “With God on our side” is straight folk and “Ballad for a Friend” is straight blues, this is somehow both, and that is quite a remarkable achievement.  All the more remarkable in that it is in 12/8 – the time signature of Times they are a changing.  Put another way its in triple time, and the 1,2,3   1,2,3   1,2,3   pulse rings out through the whole piece, and yet still gives it that feeling of being the blues.

What’s even more interesting is the way the guitar is played, which seems to have chord and note clashes throughout.  I like to think I’m a fairly competent musician whose been around the block a few times, but I listened and listened to the recording of this song trying to work out what Dylan was doing musically.  I could hear it but was struggling to explain it.

In the end (and not for the first time) the wonderful Eyolf Østrem helped me out via his dylanchords.info site.  If you want the musical explanation of what makes this song sounds so spooky and extraordinary here it is.  I am quoting from  https://dylanchords.info/00_misc/hiding_too_long.htm

“Both in the guitar and in the singing, the tone Bb is prominent, which of course clashes with the B in the G major chord of the guitar — which of course is how it’s intended. In the guitar this is accomplished either with the high Bb (as in the second measure of the intro) or the low Bb on the fifth string (I’ve indicated this in the tab by using “bb” for the high and “Bb” for the low Bb), which is frequently hammered-on from the open string, as in the third verse.”

I don’t know how he worked that out; clearly his ears are better than mine.

This is another song that appears on “The 50th Anniversary Collection 1963,”  one of the two albums put out by Sony with the express purpose of extending the copyright on this otherwise unreleased songs.  And so thankfully it has been preserved.

It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to have been at the Town Hall for this session and to have heard this still mostly unknown talent explode onto the scene with songs like this.  Just listen to the crowd’s reaction at the end.

And indeed just look at the first verse…

Come you phoney super patriotic people that say
That hatin’ and fearing is my only way
That this here country has got to be
You’re thinkin’ of yourselves, you ain’t thinkin’ of me.

You can’t actually tell it any straighter than that, but just in case there is any misunderstanding Dylan makes it even clearer

You’re not thinkin’ of any George Washington
You’re not thinkin’ of any Thomas Jefferson
But you say that you are and you lie and mislead
You use their names for aims, for your selfish greed.

So it rolls on, and just in case we think that well, yes, we’ve got the message the final fifth verse just reminds us of where we really were in 1963, and perhaps where we still are

Get out in the open, stop standin’ afar
Let the whole world see what a hypocrite you are
I ain’t jokin’ and it ain’t no gag
You bin hidin’ too long behind the American flag.

An utter absolute masterpiece in my humble opinion.  Here it is.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

That the Bible is selectively quoted by modern-day metaphorical ‘Assyrians’ and ‘Babylonians’ – those who idol worship coffers filled with gold and silver – is a theme found in a number of song lyrics by Bob Dylan.

In the Book of Isaiah, Yahweh (God) warns that the invaders of (northern) Israel will advance on Judea for the wealth that is hoarded by its rulers. God’s not sure how much help He’s going to give the Judeans because they themselves embrace Lucifer who has been cast down to earth.

The prophet Isaiah admonishes Judean leaders in ‘The Song Of The Vineyard’:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil
That put darkness for light and light for darkness
That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter
(Isaiah 5:20)

In a song filled with the eternal recurrence visions of Frderich Nietzsche and William Yeats, Dylan, in the manner of the angry prophet Isaiah, castigates the modern-day evangelistic Vineyard Movement:

Politicians got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He’s been sucking the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes, you been teasing me
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

As well as the Branch Davidians:

Well, I’m leaving in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift
Yes, I’ m leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift
Gonna break in the roof, set fire to the place as a parting gift
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Ìn a vision akin to that of the Gnostics, light turns into darkness on earth – morals reversed:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer
Son of the morning
How are you cut down to the ground
Which didst weaken the nations
For thou hast said in thine heart
I will ascend to heaven
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God
(Isaiah 14:12, 13)

Figuratively speaking, wealth and power be worshipped as worth more than Creation, than Mother Nature Herself:

Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall
Say anything you want to, I heard it all
I was thinkin’ about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed
Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody needs
So many things that we never will undo
I know that you’re sorry, I’m sorry too
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Double-edged as usual are the lyrics of the singer/songwriter:

Somewhere Mama’s weeping for her blue-eyed boy
She’s holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy
And he’s following the same star that them three men followed
from the East
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace
(Bob Dylan: Man Of Peace)

The morning star called Lucifer is a trickster like mythological Venus. He’s the Great Deceiver, who steals the wits of the wise. Jesus turns out to be a false messiah, at least according to orthodox Judaism, in as much that He brings no peace.

Interpreted it might that Dylan depicts his persona as the Devil:

Somebody seen him hangin’ around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the Bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)

Dylanologist Kees de Graaf’s interpretation of the song below gets it crooked.

Dylan’s upset at Christian preachers who are into it for the money:

How I made it back home nobody know
Or how I survived so many blows
I been through through hell what good did it do
My conscience is clear, how about you?
I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse
Show me your moral virtues first
Hear me holler, hear me moan
I’ll pay in blood, but not my own
(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood)

In other words, Bob Dylan is not going to let himself be nailed onto a cross in the vineyard.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Orleans Rag

Between “Bob Dylan’s Dream” and “With God on our side” Dylan wrote a number of songs that ultimately, in most cases, were not used on any of the albums.  Songs such as

• Farewell
• Talkin Devil 
• All over you
• Going back to Rome
• Only a Hobo
• Ramblin Down Thru the World
• Who killed Davey Moore?
• Walls of Red Wing
• Seven Curses

The range of topics was widespread, for in addition to the inevitable songs about leaving and travelling on, there were other topics slightly more unexpected topics explored – including New Orleans Rag (although this too does a rapid departure at the end).

New Orleans Rag is about a man who feels depressed and who is then told by a passer-by that he knows a woman who can sort the singer out.  The singer goes to the door of the woman’s house, but the men she sees coming out are in such a state he takes fright and runs away.

It appears to have been performed in a concert in April 1963 and then subsequently with eight takes across three separate recording sessions which Wiki has identified as the Times The Are A Changin’ sessions in August 1963 and a separate session in October that year.  It was also played again in concert in July of 1963.

The live versions used the guitar and one at least of the studio recordings used the piano.  I’ve found a live version and a studio piano version – presumably there are copies of the others around, but seemingly not free to listen to on the internet.

Here is the piano version of the song, which I hope you might agree, is a great piece of fun.

https://secondhandsongs.com/work/162903

Inevitably the lyrics changed as they went along, and the recordings don’t quite match the lyrics on the official Bob Dylan site.

The first verse gives a feeling of where this is going…

I was sittin’ on a stump down in New Orleans
I was feelin’ kinda low down dirty and mean
Along came a fella and he didn’t even ask
He says, “I know of a woman that can fix you up fast”
I didn’t think twice I said like I should
“Let’s go find this lady that can do me some good”
We walked across the river on a sailin’ spree
And we came to a door called one-oh-three

Then we have the story of the men who emerge from behind the door

There comes another man he wiggled and he wobbled
He couldn’t hardly stand he had this frightened look in his eyes
Like he just fought a bear he was ready to die

and then there

Was a long-legged man who couldn’t hardly crawl
He muttered and he uttered in broken French
And he looked like he’d been through a monkey wrench

So the singer tries to get out of there quick, and he does that natural traveller thing of jumping a freight train.

And thus we hit the moral…

So, if you’re travelin’ down Louisiana way
And you feel kinda lonesome and you need a place to stay
Man, you’re better off in your misery
Than to tackle that lady at one-oh-three

What is so interesting is that in the midst of these various songs of leaving and larking around, Dylan then wrote “Who killed Davy Moore” and “Seven Curses.”

There really is no telling how Bob worked and what took him from one theme to another during these periods of energetic writing but jump around he certainly did.

Dylan has rarely written about the world of prostitution, and we can’t really know why he suddenly decided to do a song about it now, but it is interesting to listen to his introduction to the live recording.

In one way however this was a clear forerunner of the Basement era songs about the strangest people one could ever meet.  Yet it is not so much about the lady, but the look of the men who leave her house that fascinates Dylan. And it continued to be that way for several years.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan covers a song that bespeaks the biblical Book of Job:

There was a man in the land of Uz
Whose name was Job
A that man was perfect and upright
And one that feared God
And eschewed evil
(Job 1:1)

The Devil figures that Job is upright just because he has lots of sheep and stuff, and a large family to boot, so he challenges God to put up or shut up:

But put forth thine hand now
And touch all he hath
And he will curse thee to thy face
(Job 1: 11)

Now God is no cowardly lion, and tweaks the Devil’s nose, and says ‘Go ahead, punk, make my day – see to it that Job suffers, and we’ll find out what happens’.

Bob Dylan draws upon the biblical allegory:

How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his money I’d do things my way
Hmm, but little they know
Hmm, it is so hard to find
One man in ten with a satisfied mind
(Bob Dylan: A Satisfied Mine – Hayes; Rhodes)

The Devil puts his best hoof forward – gets his gang of bad guys to steal Job’s sheep; a storm to kill most of his family; and, for good measure, Job gets boils:

Hmm, once I was wading in fortune and fame
Everything I dreamed of to get a start in life’s game
But suddenly it happened
Hmm, I lost every dime
But I’m richer by far with a satisfied mind
(Bob Dylan: A Satisfied Mind)

In real life, Dylan goes through a tough time, and finds comfort by flirting with religious fundamentalists, writing and singing gospel songs, and listening to his friend Frankie:

I’ve lived a life that’s full
I’ve travelled each and every highway
But more, much more than this
I did it my way
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
(Frank Sinatra: My Way – Paul Anka)

Job’s friends tell him that he must have done something wrong. Job wonders if his children have. His wife thinks his faith is over-the-top.

Job comes to the realization that he’s been too self-assured in his belief that he knows the ways of God:

Wherefore, I abhor myself
And repent in dust and ashes
(Job 42:6)

God did it His way, and wins the bet made with the Devil – Job is forgiven and the scarecrow regains his earthly Paradise:

Hmm, when my life is over, and the time has run out
My friends and my loved ones I’ll leave, there ain’t no doubt
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind
(Bob Dylan: A Satisfied Mind)

A precondition to God’s betting be that the Devil is not to kill Job, but only make him suffer:

After this lived Job an hundred and forty years
And saw his sons, and his sons, even four generations
(Job: 42: 16)

In the allegory, death was not to be Job’s end until God made that decision. Job’s spirit for life pulls him through the ordeal, and his life continues on. But much more than this, he realizes that life will go on without him.

Mistaken it is that Bob Dylan is apocalyptic in his vision – though, like Job, he wavers at times, i.e., Job wishes, during his suffering, that he had not been born, but he reconsiders and does not give up hope:

When the storm clouds gather ’round you
And the heavy rains descend
Just remember that death is not the end
And there’s no one there to comfort you
With a helping hand to lend
Just remember that death is not the end
(Bob Dylan: Death Is Not The End)

Bob Dylan has read the poetry of the Romantic Transcendentalists, and live on in his song lyrics they do.

• Bob Dylan and the Bible, an index

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

The 50th Anniversary Collection 1963 was the second Bob Dylan collection of songs that  Sony Music published with the idea of stopping recordings of Bob’s early songs from entering the public domain in Europe – which under EU law happens 50 years after the song is written – if there is no recording in place to extend its copyright control.

To achieve their aim of restricting circulation, the music has to be “published” in the fullest extent and so to do this Sony produced a six LP set (only LPs, not available on CD) of all the songs they wanted to protect and made 100 copies of it.  I’ve no idea who got them or how much the LPs changed hands for – if any were ever released to the public.  If you know more do say.

As far as I know this song was performed just the once on 12 April 1963 at the Town Hall concert in New York, and was just about the closest Bob got to an instrumental until he started writing film music.

The song however was very much part of Dylan’s experimental mood at the time as we can see with the list of songs that Dylan wrote immediately prior to this little piece.

• Boots of Spanish Leather
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Farewell
• Talkin Devil 
• All over you
• Going back to Rome
• Only a Hobo

These are primarily songs about travelling on, travelling because one just has to travel, and being on the outside of society looking in.  This song is the least substantial of the whole list and pretty soon after this Dylan seems to have got the notion out of his system – at least for a while.

Haiku 61 gives us

I’m just a rambler.
Ramble happy, ramble sad.
Ramble good or bad.

which is an excellent summary of the little song, but the writer also suggests Dylan’s work comes from Woody Guthrie’s “Ramblin Round”.   Certainly the concept of the lyrics (such as they are) is very similar, but in musical terms the Guthrie song doesn’t have anything much to do with Dylan’s version.

Here are the lyrics

And here is the performance…

And beyond that I’m not sure there is too much to say.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

You can’t say that singer/songwriter Bob Dylan doesn’t warn his listeners that the train’ll get lost – referencing himself and a cover song by the Beatles, he writes:

Look down your drain pipe
What colour do you see?
It’s got to be yellow
Don’t try to fool me
And don’t it make you wanna twist and shout
When your outsides in (inside out)
And your downsides up (upside down)
Yeah, your upsides right (right side up)
Yeah, don’t it make you wanna twist and shout
When you’re inside out
(Dylan; Lynn: Inside Out)

The chicken Monkeyman is dancing with the brave Godman on a Post-Modern tight-rope that stretches across the Nietzschean abyss. Bacchus – Dionysus is better.

There’s no doubt that in some of his song lyrics, Bob Dylan stands up for the teachings of Jesus, with no sympathy for the devil.

Or is there?

He’s the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You got a heart of stone
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)

Alluding to the Devil himself, Mick Jagger:

There’s been so many girls that I’ve known
I’ve made so many cry, and still I wonder why
Here comes a little girl, l see her walking down the street
She’s all by herself, I try to knock her off her feet
‘Cause you’ll never break, never break, never break, never break
This heart of stone, oh no, no, this heart of stone
(Rolling Stones: Heart Of Stone)

Dylan does not write, ‘I’m the property of Jesus’, but uses the third person instead, and suggests that the Devil gets the best lines, has got something better – a heart of stone. In the above lyrics, Jagger puts on the mask of Frederich Nietzsche’s son of man with a will to power- he’s certainly no son of God.

In the Bible, Jesus Christ claims He’s the ‘Son of Man’, and never calls Himself the ‘Son of God’.

The high priests of the established montheistic order contend otherwise:

Then said they all, ‘Art thou then the Son of God?’
And He said unto them, ‘Ye say that I am’
And they said, ‘What need we any further witness?
For we have ourselves have heard of his own mouth’
(Lukes 22: 70, 71)

Most leaders of Christianity side with the dubious interpretation given by the high priests to those words uttered by Jesus.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan offers up a bit of humourous ‘low burlesque’ concerning the matter:

I rapped upon a house with a U.S. flag upon display
I said, ‘Can you please help me out, I got some friends down the way’
The man said, ‘Get out of here, I’ll tear you limb from limb’
I said, ‘You know they refused Jesus, too’; he said, ‘You’re not him
Get outta here before I break your bones
I ain’t your pop’
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

Most of the time, but not all of the time, Dylan is rather cheeky. With his lyrics of double-meaning, in songs that seem at first to be purely religious, Dylan stirs in a fair amount of the Son of Man’s sexuality:

I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
She can do the Georgia crawl
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord
Jesus said, ‘Be ready
For you know not the hour in which I come’
He said, ‘He who is not for me is against me’
Just so you know where He’s coming from
(Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinkin’)

For listeners of Dylan’s music and lyrics who insist that his songs are autobiographical, there’s lots of room for a humourous interpretation.

What the ‘Georgian crawl’ involves is likely in Ovid’s book series entitled ‘The Art of Love’ that’s mentioned in ‘Thunder On The Mountain’ – no doubt the art is demonstrated by Mary Magdalene; and while Allen Ginsberg isn’t the type for Dylan, the Beat poet attempts to place himself against the young singer; Dylan makes it clear to him where he’s coming from.

Easily missed in Dylan’s lyrics is a lot of irony and humour:

I’ve been sitting down, studying the art of love
I think it will fit me like a glove
I want a good woman to do just what I say
Everybody got to wonder what’s the matter
with this cruel world today
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

Another case in point – In the following song, to many listeners it appears that Dylan panders to right-wing conservativism. On careful listening, one can’t be sure if the song expresses thoughts like those of the ‘backwoods girl’ or the actual thoughts of Dylan (or at least his persona). He’s a trickster:

I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but
She sure was realistic
she said, ‘Boy, without a doubt
Have to quit your mess and straighten out” ….
All that foreign oil controlling American soil
Look around it’s just bound to make you embarrassed
Shieks walking around like kings
Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)

There’s a slow train of thought coming around the bend – Dylan is not going to be tied to a cross – be a cross tie:

But it do bother me to see my loved ones
turning into puppets
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up
Around the bend

Don’t forget the Drano – it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a drain to cry.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

Oh how Bob Dylan loves Italy.  From his reworking of “House Carpenter” (a traditional English balled known this side of the pond as “The Daemon Lover”)…

Forsake, forsake your house carpenter
And come away with me
I’ll take you where the green grass grows
On the shores of sunny Italy

all the way on to the blues and in to Down the Highway

Yes, the ocean took my baby
My baby took my heart from me
She packed it all up in a suitcase
Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy

And of course there is that mention in Idiot Wind

They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky

So we have the image of Italy; the sunshine, the place of escape, the art, even if

the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere

But still those ancient footprints tell us a thing or two about the world, as in Tangled Up

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

Indeed as the writer of Haiku 61 put it

You can have New York.
I’ll take the Coliseum
As I’ll be in Rome.

This song was played at The Basement of Gerde’s Folk City in New York on 8 February 1963, and that was it, and yet somehow a recording of the event survived.  However although we had it listed here for a while, it has now vanished into the wilderness, and I can’t find another.

But I can tell you it’s a straightforward 12 bar blues with an unbelievably variable changeable chord sequence, at time, which at a couple of points takes on the exact form of “She Belongs to Me”.  Here are the lyrics…

Well you know I’m lying 
But don’t look at me with scorn.
Well you know I’m lying 
But don’t look at me with scorn.
I’m going back to Rome
That’s where I was born.

Buy me a ?? I can carry
Keep it for my friends.
Buy me a ?? I can carry
Keep it for my friends.
Don’t go to Italy
All around the bend.

You can keep Madison Square Garden
Give me the Coliseum.
You can keep Madison Square Garden
Give me the Coliseum.
So I want to see the gladiators,
Man I can always see ’em.

And that was all we had until in 1971 “When I paint my masterpiece” came along when a little trace of this song returned…

Oh, the hours I’ve spent inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wastin’ time
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see ’em
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb

And I suppose it was a long hard climb from larking about in 1963 to being a full-on world famous superstar up on the stage  (the 20th century Coliseum) facing the critics (I could hardly stand to see em).

Yes it sure was a long hard climb, but as always Bob, thank you for taking the time to do it, and to record what happened.  Every step of the way.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

Within the song lyrics of Bob Dylan is found a mixture of Zarathustrianism, Gnosticism, and Judeo-Christianity – the last, a mixture of the other cosmological visions. Broadly speaking, Zarathustrianism conceives of an external and almighty God of goodness and light, accompanied by an earthly evil and darkness, personified as the ‘devil’, whereas Gnosticism envisions darkness coming about, and being trapped on earth, due to ignorance.

Along comes Frederich Nietzsche who sees all moralizing as an attempt to create order out of chaos by mankind himself – striving to be an ‘overman’ by exercising his will to power through his inborn ability to reason, to feel, to intuit, to dream, and even to lie and deceive – like everybody – with the wannabe ‘overmen’ having the zeal, cunning, and wherewithal to establish a morality that dominates the less resourceful, and turns them into robots and slaves; where priests, as ‘middlemen’, in an effort to please their masters, peddle the idea of happiness for the masses in the hereafter, not in the here-and-now.

A cycle of historical recurrence results as the middlemen themselves seek to overpower their manipulative masters by pandering to worldly discontent among the masses. There develops conflict and struggle over what is considered ‘dark’ and what is ‘light’ -the needy should be pitied and taken care of in the present, say the priests, lest there be trouble. The masters bend their knees to maintain conformity.

In a nutshell, there be no universal truths:

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

Frederich Nietzsche seeks a way out of the nihilism that permeates modern society as a result of the clash between supposed values and actual behaviour. The transcendental God he puts to rest, and attempts through his writings to infuse the Almighty’s shadow into every man until a true ‘overman’ cometh who can straighten out the mess.

Says Nietzsche, to be a master or a slave, it’s an existential choice – best at this time to seize the moment for yourself alone, and embrace Dionysus, the mythological earth-god of joy and chaos – at festivals that celebrate Apollo, the sky-god of truth and order.

Nietzsche, seeking to escape nihilism, shows up dancing in the following song:

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’
madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky, there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

Thus spake the magical alchemist of secular Gnosticism:

Without music, life would be a mistake
(Nietzsche: The Twilight Of The Idols)

The following verse reflects Nietzsche, who, in works of his own, focuses the artistic lens, not on Apollo, the mythological god of reason who seeks out truth and light in the dark, but instead on Dionysus, the ‘god’ of the earth, and of fire and rain; the God of the Vine who fears not to embrace the impermanence of the present because he knows how to transform pirates into dolphins:

And Ezra Pound And TS Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

And how to transform outlaws into good guys:

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor
He travelled with a gun in every hand
All along this countryside
He opened many a door
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

Ironically, the Nazis twist Nietzsche’s individualistic proclivity to serve their perverted conception of a nationalistic super-race. Dylan turns his back on Ezra Pound because the poet actively supports fascism, but on the artistic and Romantic creativity of Nietzsche, he turns it not.

In Dylan’s song lyrics, one hears Nietzsche voice over and over, the author of ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’, wherein the secular Gnostic writes that he’s just a different kind of animal that’s forced to walk on a metaphorical tight-rope,
half-monkey, half-god:

Man is a rope, tied between the beast and the overman
A rope over an abyss
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back
And a dangerous shuddering and stopping
(Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra)

Thusly, man has only one hand waving free:

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

A true artist knows that s/he shouldn’t look back lest s/he stumbles and falls:

She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist
She don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the night-time
And paint the daytime black
(Bob Dylan: She Belongs to Me)

Says Nietzsche, the goal is one of becoming, and to fall in the process is no sin at all, but a worthy sacrifice in the urge to be an overman, if not the overman.
Ask Jesus about it:

Some speak of the future
My love, she speaks softly
She knows that there’s no success like failure
And failure is no success at all
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero )

In Dylan’s song lyrics, Nietzsche and chaos are here, there:

Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
For some unknown reason, she loved the Monkey Man ….
Jan jumped up outta bed
Said, ‘There’s some place I gotta go’
Took the gun out of the drawer
Said, ‘It’s best that you don’t know’
(Bob Dylan: Tweeter and the Monkey Man)

Apparently, Jan hooked up with William Shakespeare – ‘Jan got married at fourteen to a racketeer named Bill’ – though the playwright in real history be quite the younger of the couple when he got hitched.

Nietzsche, who claims conformity to be a calamity, is everywhere:

Rosemary started drinkin’ hard and seein’ her reflection in the knife
She was tired of the attention, tired of playin’ the role of Big Jim’s wife
She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide
She was lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died
She was gazin’ to the future, riding on the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts)

Tricksters, the Monkey Man and the Jack of Hearts, run away from the circus …they exit their way.

In the song below, the Nietzschean concept of ‘eternal recurrence’, of a ‘wheel within a wheel”, of ‘spiritual’ progress doubted:

Too much of nothin’
Can make a man a liar
It can cause one man to sleep on nails
It can cause others to eat fire
Everyone’s doin’ somethin’
I heard it in a dream
But when there’s too much of nothin’
It just makes a fella mean
(Bob Dylan: Too Much of Nothing)

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, if I had to do it all over again
Babe, I’d do it all over you
And if I had to wait for ten thousand years
Babe, I’d even do that too
Well, a dog’s got his bone in the alley
A cat, she’s got nine lives
A millionaire’s got a million dollars
King Saud’s got four hundred wives
Well, ev’rybody’s got somethin’
That they’re lookin’ forward to
I’m lookin’ forward to when I can do it all again
And babe, I’ll do it all over you

Well, if I had my way tomorrow or today
Babe, I’d run circles all around
I’d jump up in the wind, do a somersault and spin
I’d even dance a jig on the ground
Well, everybody gets their hour
Everybody gets their time
Little David when he picked up his pebbles
Even Sampson after he went blind
Well, everybody gets the chance
To do what they want to do
When my time arrives you better run for your life
’Cause babe, I’ll do it all over you

And here is the live version.  It is, as Bob says in his intro, “A sort of a mad song”

There is an alternative version by The McCoys although I am not too sure what else that adds, and indeed for me it seems to take something away from Dylan’s version.

But most importantly I think this song shows just how much Dylan wanted to experiment and not get trapped into certain forms of writing.  He had all these songs bubbling up inside him, and just because Freewheelin had certain types of music, that was not going to slow him down.

If we just look at the songs that Dylan had written (roughly in the order they were written) from “Don’t think twice” through to this song we can see what a wide ranging journey he was travelling…

1. Don’t think twice (Song of Leaving)
2. Mixed up confusion (Rock n roller is confused)
3. I’d hate to be you on that dreadful day (Bob gets the ship ready to come in)
4. Paths of Victory. (The future will be fine)
5. Train A Travellin’  (Stand up and protest about what’s going on around you)
6. Walking Down the Line
7. Ye Playboys and Playgirls  (Stand up and change the world)
8. Oxford Town (Racism Protest)
9. I shall be free (comic talking blues)
10. Kingsport Town (lost love, moving on)
11. Hero Blues (the woman who thinks her man should be perfect)
12. Whatcha Gonna Do?  (gentle blues; repent before you die)
13. Masters of War (War protest)
14. Girl from the North Country (Lost Love)Boots of Spanish Leather (Song of Leaving)
15. Bob Dylan’s Dream (Lost love)
16. Farewell (a song of leaving)
17. Talkin Devil (talking blues, the Devil is real)
18. All over you

It is one hell of a range.  “Look,” says Bob, “I can write about anything.”  And yes, he certainly could.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Untold Dylan: The Biblical Index

This is one of a number of indexes offered by Untold Dylan, in this case an index of articles that cite specific Biblical references in relation to Dylan’s compositions.

A list of the various indexes we have prepared is here

In each case the relevant book of the Bible is cited with a link to the relevant article on this site.

Latest additions – to find the exact article please use the search box above top right

Bob Dylan And Charles Baudelaire (Part III)

Luke 11:13

Bob Dylan And Arthur Rimbaud (Part II)

Luke 23:28

Bob Dylan For Dummies

Isaiah  24:12; 25:1,2

Bob Dylan And Lucifer

Luke 6:31
Isaiah 14:12

Bob Dylan And The Angel With Four Faces

Genesis 7:10
Ezekiel 1:10
Revelations 6:12;18:9

Bob Dylan: The Circus Is In Town

I Corinthians 9:25
I Thessalonians 2:19
II Timothy 4:18
James 1:12
I Peter 5:4

Bob Dylan And Lord Buckley (Part II)

Matthew 7:21

Bob Dylan And Edward Taylor (Part II)

Jeremiah 1:16

Bob Dylan And Edward Taylor  (Part III)
II Corinthians 4:6;12:9

Bob Dylan And Johnny Appleseed (Part I)

Genesis 2:16,17

Bob Dylan: Strength In The Things That Remains

Revelation 3:2

Bob Dylan And Metonymy

II Kings 2:11
Mark 14:10
John 19:1,2

Bob Dylan And Mark Twain (Part II)

Genesis 4:1,2,8
John 5: 35,36

Take What You Have From Coincidence (Part II)

Genesis 4:2

Bob Dylan And Mark Twain (Part III)

Genesis 4:25; 6:14,19

Bob Dylan’s Little Cabin In The Rain

Genesis 13:8

Dylanesque RhymeTwist: Hardin And Hardy (Part II)

Acts 16: 25, 26

Bob Dylan And The Symbols Of Aĺchemy: Birds of Pray

Matthew 6:20-23
John 11:41-44

Bob Dylan: Maybe Someday You’ll Understand

Joel 2:31
II Corinthians 4:11

Bob Dylan And A Spoonful Of Fire

II Kings 2:11

Bob Dylan: Songs Of Hope And Fear

Song Of Solomon 1:7
Ezekiel 38:15

Nettie Moore Synesthesia In Bob Dylan’s Song Lyrics (Part II)

Song Of Solomon 5:13

Bob Dylan And Emily Dickinson

Genesis 3:4,5,6

Bob Dylan: His Gotham Ingress Revisited

Mark 16:1,5

Bob Dylan: Symbolism Of The Lion

Genesis 49:9
Psalm 36:11,12

Bob Dylan, William Blake, And The Eagles

Revelations 17:4,7

Cool Hand Bob

Mark 15:34
Luke 1:27
Acts 1:11

Bob Dylan Crosses The Mississippi

Deuteronomy 32:51,52
Luke 9:54

Bob Of Irony

Matthew 10:34

We are aware from correspondence both from academics and students that this site is being used for the purposes of studying Bob Dylan’s work, and of course we find that incredibly gratifying.  Indeed we hope that this list might be of help in that work.

All that we ask in return is that if you do utilise this page, or indeed extract data from any other page from this site, you do cite the author of the page and the website “Untold Dylan” as the source.

By Larry Fyffe

Genesis

• 1:4 Bob Dylan: Gnosticism (Part III)
  1:26, 27 Bob Dylan: Mixed Up Confusion
• 1.27 The Three Penny Opera (Part II)
• 3: 22,24  Bob Dylan And Mark Twain
  22: 2
• 8:7 Bob Dylan: Songs Of Alchemy
• Bob Dylan: Gnosticism (Part I)
• 6: 4,5  Bob Dylan: Giants In The Land Of Milk And Honey
  16: 1,15  Dylan Like Every Sparrow Falling
  16: 15  Bob Dylan’s Conversion To Islam
  17: 20
  22: 2

Exodus

• 3:8 The Land Of Milk And Honey: Coleridge
  19:16 Bob Dylan: Gnosticism (Part II)
• 2: 21,22  Red River Sure: Bob Dylan And The Red River Valley
• 19: 16  Daniel And Dylan: The True Story

Numbers

• 6:24-26 Bob Dylan: Songs Of Alchemy
• 12: 1  Bob Dylan And Rastafarianism-Part II
• 13: 27,33  Bob Dylan: Giants In The Land Of Milk And Honey

Deuteronomy

• 32:35 Three Penny Opera (Part II)

Joshua

• 4:18 F. Scott Fitzgerald And Bob Dylan: The Great Gatsby

Ruth

• 2:2 My Ruth’s In The Highlands: Idealization Of Women

I Kings

• 10: 13  Bob Dylan And Rastafarianism-Part II

II Kings

• 9:32, 33 Bob Dylan: Which Side Are You On
  18:11, 12
  19:20

Job

• 1: 1,11  God To The Devil: “Make My Day” – A Job Allegory
• 42: 6,16

Proverbs

• 4:5-8 The Stranger In Bob Dylan’s ‘I And I’
  2:16-18
  4:6-8 Hebrew Gnosticism In Bob Dylan’s Songs
  9:1-3
  31: 26-28
  10:22 TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Bob Dylan Fighting In The Captain’s Tower
  13:17 The Tale Of The Wicked Messenger
  16:14 The Gospel Of Bob Dylan
• 7: 6,7  Bob Dylan: Christ And Casanova
  8: 1,2,3
• 5: 3   Bob Dylan And The Greatest Story Ever Told

Pslams

• 68: 4   Bob Dylan And Rastafarianism-Part II
• 68: 31  Bob Dylan  And Rastafarianism

Ecclesiastes

• 1:4,5 The Stranger In Bob Dylan’s ‘ And I’
  1:14,15
  3:1,8
  9:11
  3:21,22 Bob Dylan And The Allegory (Part I)
• 11:1 Dylan Diagnosed With Dylaxia

Solomon’s Song

• 1: 4,5  Bob Dylan And Rastafarianism-Part II
• 4: 9,12  Stuck Inside Rome With The Jerusalem Blues Again
• 1:9,10 Bob Dylan And Andre Breton
• 1:10-14 Lily O’Valley, Mary Magdalena, And The Jehovah Of Hearts
• 1:13 Bob Dylan And Songs Of Alchemy

Isaiah

• 14:12 Bob Dylan And The Rebellion Of The Devil
  21:6,9 Bob Dylan As Isaiah: What Is Grass, I Asked
  23:18
  26:4
  40:6-8
• 14: 12   Bob Dylan And Lucifer
• 64: 9,10  Bob Dylan: Christ As Casanova

Jeremiah

• 31:31,33,34 The Persian Drunkard, He Follows Me

Daniel

• 6: 27  Daniel And Dylan: The True Story
• 7 :7

Ezekiel

• 1:1,3 Bob Dylan Disguises Himself As Ezekiel (Part I)
  3:23
  4:5,6
  8:7-9
  13:10,11
• 1:16 Bob Dylan Disguises Himself As Ezekiel (Part II)
  12:5,6
  23:11,12
• 4:1 Bob Dylan Disguises Himself As Ezekiel (Part III)
  5:1

Joel

• 1:4,20 Joel And Bob Dylan Change A Tyre
• 2: 1,2,13
• 3: 6,7   Jezebel The Nun

Matthew

• 10: 30  A Frankly Delivered Gnostic Message
• 12:30,31 Bob Dylan: Is He Bad Or Is He Good
• 27:55,56 Bob Dylan And Henry Longfellow: Conclusion
• 20:15,17 Bob Dylan And Gnosticism (Part III)
• 27: 41, 42, 43, 45, 46  Mark Twain And Bob Dylan

Mark

• 16:9 Bob The Ripper: Is Your Name Mary

Luke

• 1:42, 46 Bob The Ripper: Is Your Name Mary
• 6:38 F. Scott Fitzgerald And Bob Dylan: The Great Gatsby
• 22: 70, 71  Dylan Deconstructed: He’s Inside Out, Upside Down
• 2: 12  Bob Dylan And The Greatest Story Ever Told
• 8: 1,2,3  Bob Dylan Searching For Jesus

John

• 1:1 Bob Dylan Disguises Himself As Ezekiel (Part III)
• 11:2 Bob The Ripper: Is Your Name Mary
• 20:17 Bob Dylan and Gnosticism III
• 20: 11, 14, 16  The Duquesne Whistle Blows
• 18: 10  Bob Dylan: Thank You Very Much
  19: 2,3,10,11  Bob Dylan: The Greatest Story Ever Told

Romans

• 2:13 Deadwood And Deadman: Bob Dylan And Post Modernism

Corinthians I

• 2:9 Bob Dylan And Christian Gnosticism

Revelations

• 3:2 There’s A Slow Train Comin’: Bob Dylan
• 6: 2: Bob Dylan And Angelina
• 19: 11: Bob Dylan And Rastafarianism
• 20:8, 21:10,11 Bob Dylan And Gnosticism (Part II)

Apologies if you found this site off line for a couple of days.  The fault occurred on Xmas Eve, and hence I didn’t have anyone with technical know how to hand to sort it out.

We’ve covered five Bob Dylan talking blues thus far…

1. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.
2. Talkin Hava Negeilah blues
3. Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues (Paranoid Blues)
4. Talkin New York 
5. Talkin’ World War III Blues

and here’s one more – one that is more obscure than the others, largely because it seems to be disowned even by the official Bob Dylan site.

Yet Dylan did write Talkin Devil as Blind Boy Grunt and some other BBG titles are listed by the official site.  Not too sure why this one is missing, but it should be placed somewhere between Bob Dylan’s Dream and Only a Hobo.

As such it was one of the Broadside ballads, and here are the lyrics, before which there is a little spoken intro reflecting on the fact that some people think there is no devil…

Well, sometimes you can’t see him so good,
When he hides his head ‘neath a snow white hood,
And rides to kill with his face well hid,
And then goes home to his wife and kids.
Wonder if his kids know who he is?

Well, he wants you to hate and he wants you to fear,
Wants you to fear something that’s not even there.
He’ll give you your hate, and he’ll give you his lies,
He’ll give you the weapons to run out and die.
And you give him your soul.

And then there is a spoken footnote saying ,”That’s just two verses to it,” which could mean “it’s not much of a song is it” or “well, that’s all I’ve done so far,” or “the concept is so simple you don’t really need much more than that”.

Whatever that final line meant (if anything) is essence we have a fairly simple depiction of the Devil, which non-believers could in part reverse and suggest is the meaning of Christianity,

Yes, the Devil “Wants you to fear something that’s not even there,” because if the Devil is real, then his world of torment and eternal damnation is to be feared.  But if the whole God/Devil thing is just a story, then all of it is there to frighten us.

The sadness of this talking blues is that Bob could do so much better with this God and the Devil subject – one only has to listen to Whatcha Gonna Do?  to realise he can deliver on this as on any topic he wants to have a go at.

The verses from that song are also very simple, but if you want to put across what is ultimately a simple view of good v evil then this piece shows us all how it can be done

Tell me what you’re gonna do
When you can’t play God no more
Tell me what you’re gonna do
When you can’t play God no more
Tell me what you’re gonna do
When you can’t play God no more
O Lord, O Lord
What shall you do?

If you don’t know that piece, do follow the link above and play the song, and then compare with the one version we have of this song.  Maybe like me you’ll feel there’s not much comparison.

But these songs (even this talkin blues) are particularly interesting when we consider Dylan’s Christian period, for therein he often seemed to hang on to the simple vision of Good v Evil, and the need to be saved.  Although the songs in the “religious period” are often more complex, the message is still pretty much the same.

There are other allusions too, of course, such as the KKK reference

“Well, sometimes you can’t see him so good, When he hides his head ‘neath a snow white hood…”

But it doesn’t really add anything to my understanding of the world.

The song of course is on Spotify and it also turns up on Deezer

http://www.deezer.com/us/track/4329000

————–

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan, the singer/songwriter quite often uses the literary technique known as ‘burlesque’.

A song by Dylan, inspired by the biblical Book of Joel, takes the form of ‘high burlesque’ where an elevated artistic style is applied to an inappropriate subject. In this case, Princeton University officialdom at an honary degree-awarding ceremony is compared to an army coming from the north, perhaps the Assyrian invasion of Judea, as depicted in the Book Of Joel.

In the Old Testament Book, the army is compared to plague of insects, including locusts:

Sure was glad to get out of there alive
And the locusts sang, well it gave me a chill
Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody
And the locusts sang with a high whinin’ trill
Yeah the locusts sang, and they were singing for me
(Bob Dylan: Day Of The Locusts)

Yahweh sends an army into Judea from (northern) Israel, a land of idolatry itself, as a punishment to the southern inhabitants of Canaan for their taking up of idolatry:

That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locusts eaten
And that which the locusts hath left hath the cankerworm eaten
And that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten
(Joel 1: 4)

Fortunately, there is a way to get out of this desolate situation alive:

And rend your heart, and not your garments
And turn unto the Lord your God
For He is gracious and merciful
Slow to anger, and of great kindness
(Joel 2:13)

For Yahweh, it’s payback time – through Joel, the Hebrew prophet, the Almighty God says He’s going to put the boots to the citizens of the neighbouring City of Tyrus:

Yea, what have ye to do with me, O Tyre ….
Because ye have taken my silver and my gold
And have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things
(Joel 3: 4,5)

In a serious allegory, Bob Dylan plays a modern-day Judean Joel, a sad-eyed prophet from Desolation Row; accustomed as they be to the City of Harlots across the street, any suitors who attempt to carry off the equally sad-eyed Lady of Judea are going to get a poisonous smack on the lips:

The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss
And you wouldn’t know it would happen like this
But who among them really wants just to kiss you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

On top of that, the kings of Tyrus sell Jewish children, and for that Joel says they’ll pay dearly:

The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem
have ye sold unto the Grecians
That ye might remove them far from their border
Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them
And will return your recompense upon your own head
(Joel 3: 6,7)

The modern Joel expresses anger at the maltreatment endured by others whose spiritual beliefs stress harm none who harm you not. Russian Orthodox St. Herman sets a good example as a kindly priest.

Interesting for word alchemist Gnostics is that ‘milk’ contains the consonants ‘mlk’, the initials of Martin Luther King Jr., an advocate of nonviolent resistence to inequitable authority:

Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages
I been to St. Herman’s church, and I’ve said my religious vows
I’ve sucked the milk out of a thousand cows
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

Christian churches for the most part want Judea to take off her Jewish dress, and bury it away. But who among them do they think could bury you?

Images from the Book of Joel, Dylan draws upon for use in a lot of his song lyrics; it’s a small book of the Bible, but a big source of inspiration for the songwriter:

The beasts of the field cry also unto thee
For the river of waters are dried up
And the fire hath devoured the pastures
of the wilderness
(Joel 1:20)

The Zarathustrian symbols of earth, air, water, and fire are good for use in nursery rhymes that baby-sittin’ Joel can sing:

Let the bird sing fly, let the bird fly
One day the man in the moon went home
And the river went dry
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

Singer Billy Joel, like Bob Dylan himself, and poet William Blake, uses the imagery:

You will never quench the fire
You’ll give in to your desire
(Billy Joel: The Stranger)

Images and tropes from the Book of Joel provide food for love songs:

I believe in you when the winter turn to summer
I believe in you when white turn to black
I believe in you even though I be outnumbered
Oh, though the earth may shake me
(Bob Dylan: I Believe In You)

Joelian language abounds:

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble
For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand
A day of darkness and of gloominess
A day of clouds and of thick darkness
As the morning spread upon the mountains
(Joel 2: 1,2)

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

When I first heard Dylan’s song “Farewell” I couldn’t believe that he had seriously presented it as a song of his own composition, and certainly I couldn’t believe that, as many sources suggest, considered putting it on an album under his own name as composer.  It just was so very obviously “The Leaving of Liverpool” a song that anyone with even a half interest in folk music in England, will know.

But then I got to thinking, just because it is so fundamental to the folk song tradition of England, that doesn’t mean either that Bob understood just how well known this song was in England and Ireland, nor should that popularity mean that at that time the good people of America would also have heard it.

After all he took Nottamun Town and made that his own, and in that case only the real enthusiasts of folk music in England would have known the origins of “Masters of War”.

But it is not just the music that links Dylan’s “Farewell” back to “Leaving of Liverpool” it is also the lyrics.  The version everyone who has ever visited folk clubs in my country will know is

Farewell to you, my own true love;

I am going far away.
I am bound for Californ-i-a,
And I know that I’ll return someday.

So fare thee well, my own true love,

And when I return, united we will be.
It’s not the leavin’ of Liverpool that grieves me,
But, my darling, when I think of thee.

Leaving aside all the similarities of the tune, the opening lyrics in Dylan’s song is so similar that it is getting awfully close to copying:

Oh it’s fare-thee-well, my darlin’ true,

I’m a-leavin’ in the first hour of the morn.
I’m bound off for the Bay of Mexico,
Or maybe the coast of Cal-i-forn.

So it’s fare-thee-well, my own true love,

We’ll meet an-other day, an-other time;
It’s not the leavin’ that’s a-grievin’ me,
But my darlin’ who’s bound to stay behind

But of course this is just my opinion, as always, and as such it doesn’t count for too much.   Bob recorded the song as one of the Witmark demo recordings in March 1963 and there are several sources that say he had it marked down as a possible song for “Times they are a changing”.  In the end he gave us Restless Farewell which was also adapted from a folk song.  In this case the origin was “The Parting Glass”, but here the adaptation moves a distance away from the original – easily enough distance to my ears to make the song perfectly legitimate as a Bob Dylan original.  (Incidentally if you have never heard the live version of Restless sung to Bob Dylan, do listen to that.  It is included in the article linked to above.)

Here’s the sort of singing of Leaving of Liverpool that I heard repeatedly, in my youth.

Of course it was not really to my taste since I’m a Londoner, and us Londoners don’t always get on too well with the Liverpudlian musical tradition which to some southern ears always seems to put Liverpool at the centre of the universe (whereas we know that of course that positioning is of course and obviously London’s.)

Back to Bob’s version.  It was also recorded for Broadside, played on a radio session and recorded for Times, but the song was fairly quickly dropped from Dylan’s on stage appearances.  However it has remained popular, and was used in the movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” made by the Coen brothers a few years back.

Of course Dylan did make some changes as the song moves along, but the essence of the piece is very close to its folk origins to my ears.  But clearly not to everyone – or at least not so much that it mattered.   Judy Collins, who knew a thing or two about recording Dylan songs put it on her third album, and Anita and Helen Carter of the Carter Family also recorded it.  And I’d always have to bow to their judgement.   Tim Buckley then working with The Modern Folk Quartet also recorded it, and well, with a list like that I’ll just crawl back and hide in my corner.  Take no notice of anything I say.

Thus I guess overall, if such great luminaries of music thought the song was fine to record as a Dylan song, then really, you have to take note of them, and not me.

In fact looking at the list of people who recorded the piece, it is quite extraordinary what an attraction this song has had.  Lonnie Donegan – not a name that may resonant elsewhere in the world, but who was incredibly important in English popular music via the skiffle era, recorded it, as did Dion DiMucci of Dion and the Belmonts, and perhaps most surprisingly (given that he would 100% know the original) Liam Clancy.  So quite clearly this is just me getting uppity about origins.  Best to take no notice.

Here’s Bob’s version…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-I1y8RpmXw

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan dons the mask of the earlier Judean prophet Isaiah. Dylan does not simply repeat the Book of Isaiah, as some Dylanologists would have it, but through analogies and allegories, he criticizes the political and economic culture of modern-day America.

The original prophet Isaiah has visions dealing with the history of the Hebrews. He sees Judea holding off the Assyrians only to fall to the Babylonians; then he has visions of Judea facing two Persian armies.

God-fearing Zarathustrians the Persians be:

For thus hath the Lord said unto me
Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth ….
And behold, here cometh of a chariot of men
With a couple of horsemen
And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen
And all the graven images of her gods he hath broken
unto the ground
(Isaiah 21: 6, 9)

Isaiah observes that under the Persians, the Judeans are treated better than they were under the heels of the Babylonians; yet, Hebrew ‘princes’ ignore the instructions of their Hebrew God, Yahweha – that both the great and the small of the chosen people are to be treated with equity.

The singer/songwriter envisions modern capitalistic America as a revolution betrayed:

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside in the distant
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Allen Ginsberg, riding his asses, and Bob Dylan, smoking his camels, are approaching, warning the people of America that they have lost sight of a humane and spiritual Paradise. Instead, they pray to Moloch, the idol of wanton materialism:

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven
Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl)

The Isaiah of yore envisions Judeans co-opted by or captives of those who reject Yahweh’s call to assist the righteous who be less fortunate than they:

For thou hast been a strength to the poor
A strength to the needy in his distress
A refuge from the the storm, a shadow from the heat
When the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall
(Isaiah 26:4)

A call heeded in Romanticized America, according to the re-incarnated prophet:

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin’ there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me gracefully and took my crown of thorns
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
(Bob Dylan: Shelter From The Storm)

The other Isaiah envisions the end of the wealthy and boastful seaport of Tyre (in Phoenicia, now Lebanon), a merry-making Paradise of ‘harlots’, of whom their neighboring Hebrews are envious:

And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord
It shall not be treasured nor laid up
For her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the Lord
To eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing
(Isaiah 23:18)

Bob Dylan disguised as Isaiah, sees wanton wealth surrounded everywhere by poverty in the America of today:

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of the along the line
Know what any of it is worth
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Seems America has a ‘spiritual’ lesson to learn from Yahweh’s messenger:

Well, the moral of this story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbour carryin’ somethin’
Help him him with his load
And don’t go mistaking Paradise
For the home across the road
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest)

It ain’t easy being a prophet, the guitar-pickin’ Isaiah humourously sings:

He said he’s going to kill me
If I don’t get out the door in two seconds flat
You unpatriotic rotten doctor Commie rat
(Bob Dylan: Motorcycle Nightmare)

While In the manner of the Gnostics, the Judean prophet offers a riddle:

The voice said, “Cry”. And he said, “What shall I cry?”
“All fresh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is
as the flower of the field
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth because the spirit
of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word
of our God shall stand forever”
(Isaiah 40: 6,7,8)

Responds an American neo-Romantic poet, at times skeptical:

A child said, ‘What is grass?”, fetching it to me with full hands
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is
anymore than he
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord
A scented gift and remembrancer designatedly dropped
Bearing the owner’s name somewhere in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say, “Whose?”
(Walt Whitman: Song Of Myself)

Sings re-incarnated Isaiah to William Shakespeare in these post-Tennysonian times:

Tell ol’ Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him that I’m not alone
That the hour has come to do or die
(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

It is interesting playing the Freewheelin version of “I shall be free” and then the outtake version.  Same key, sometimes the same lyrics, but somehow the Freewheelin version feels so much more accomplished.   I guess Bob was still fresh when he made that recording; by the time he got to the later versions I suppose he was just too familiar with what he was doing.

Now I must admit in coming to this review, I hadn’t listened to this song for many more years than I recall, until I came to write this review.  I’m not going to go on playing it over and over (I don’t think it is a song that you can do that with in the way that I can with, for example “Where are you tonight?”), but coming back to it after all this time it really does seem fresh and fun.

The song derives from “We shall be free” and fortunately we have a recording of that song by Lead Belly with Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston.

Here’s a sample from the lyrics

Going back further there is also quite a bit of something from Lead Belly’s “Take a whiff on me” lurking somewhere within the whole concept (and just to reassure you, I am not trying to suggest too many listens to “vintage songs about cocaine and heroin” as the label suggests.

But back to Bob.  Apparently this song was recorded five times, and the one on the album was the second of these five, with the outtake version with the link above being the last.  At least that’s how it seems to me.

As for the lyrics printed on the official site – they don’t quite match what we hear – apparently Dylan re-wrote them later.

Obviously you can read the lyrics published on the official Dylan site and see the differences throughout from the LP version but here’s one that interested me

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

The last line is quite different from what we hear.  But having seen it I got a wondering about the character mentioned – and not for the first time was I puzzled by a lyric of Bob’s, what with me being English and not American.   Here’s what Wiki says in relation to Ernest Borgnine’s work before Freewheelin’.

“An appearance as the villain on TV’s Captain Video led to Borgnine’s casting in the motion picture The Whistle at Eaton Falls  (1951) for Columbia Pictures.  That year, Borgnine moved to Los Angeles, California, where he eventually received his big break in Columbia’s From Here to Eternity (1953), playing the sadistic Sergeant “Fatso” Judson, who beats a stockade prisoner in his charge, Angelo Maggio (played by Frank Sinatra). Borgnine built a reputation as a dependable character actor and played villains in early films, including movies such as Johnny Guitar, Vera Cruz, and Bad Day at Black Rock.

“In 1955, the actor starred as a warmhearted butcher in Marty, the film version of the television play of the same name. He gained an Academy Award for Best Actor over Frank Sinatra, James Dean (who had died by the time of the ceremony), and former Best Actor winners Spencer Tracy and James Cagney.”

Why Ernest Borgnine?  I still don’t know.  If you know, please do write in.

The album lines about “I got a woman five feet short, she yells and hollers and screams and snorts” is replaced in the given text as

Well, I got a woman sleeps on a cot
She yells and hollers and squeals a lot
Licks my face and tickles my ear
Bends me over and buys me beer

Very popular in the talking blues before Freewheelin was the notion of the six feet tall woman – she’s “six feet tall, sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall.”  It turned up in skiffle songs as well – Lonnie Donegan made it popular in Britain in the 1950s.

So what we have is Dylan playing around with a whole tradition of silly talking blues, as a way of finishing off the album and (I suspect) showing the world that he is not just leading the youth of the nation in terms of new ways of thinking, but part of the long running tradition of folk and blues music that progressed throughout the century.

Hours can be taken up going through alternative versions.  I am not sure it leads anywhere, but it is all rather amusing.  Here’s the alternative take that’s widely available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_-VxMXEcYI

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

In the liner notes of his ‘Saved’ record, Bob Dylan quotes the biblical prophet Jeremiah:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord
That I will make a new convenant
With the House of Israel and the House of Judah
(Jeremiah 31:31)

As is the case of other Dylan albums, ‘Saved’ is not as straightforward as the song lyrics may first appear – language being inherently figurative and elastic.

Eden it turns out is not a physical place, but is where you find it – in your heart. The Book of Jeremiah, written in a Gnostic-like style – an alchemy pot full of analogical and allegorical stories, is revived and revised by Dylan. It’s remade, figuratively speaking, into a movie with the assistance of a Christian production company.

The singer/ songwriter adamantly disagrees with art critic William Shakespeare who declares:

To gild refined gold
To paint the lily …
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess
(King John, Act IV, sc. 2)

In the Old Testament, the prophet Jeremiah tells the Hebrews that the Persians (Iranians) will defeat the idol-worshipping Babylonians (Iraqis) after the latter take over (north) Israel and Judea, a punishment bestowed by Yahweh for their having fallen away from the Almighty Lord’s instructions.

The Hebrews find themselves under the less stressful rule of the more compatible Persian Zarathustrians who believe in one Wise God with individuals having the responsibility to choose, hopefully wisely, how to cope with his or her short-lived earthly existence lest they suffer in hell (See: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts, Parts I, II, and III – links are provided at the end of this article).

Jeremiah sticks to the message that Yahweh is one jealous God who spreads punishment all around if a multi-god, idol-worshipping, culture comes about. However, as His method of instilling fear does not appear to be working out that well, Jeremiah says God’s a bit sorry about all of that mean stuff, and He is now going to emphasize the other means whereby His chosen people can mend their wicked ways:

After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts
And write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother,
Saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me
From the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more
(Jeremiah 31: 33, 34)

In short, Jeremiah says, from now on, no-one gets punished for the misbehavior of others as all the Hebrews were. Not an outwardly fear-instilled conformity that pays ‘lip service’ to Yahweh, but a heart-felt individualistic commitment to follow His Word is what’s important. From the God within, not from the external God, is where flame of fear is to burn.

In the Chrisrian sequel, Jesus becomes a leader of that commitment for those who spread the Word beyond the Hebrew community – emphasis is not solely placed on the punishment of sin but also on the removal of the stone of ignorance that blocks an individual’s awareness of the Amighty God who cares.

In his day, Jeremiah becomes distraught at the failure of this New Covenant when the dark-side of human nature once again triumphs over the Word of God. The prophet is mocked by the small and punished by the big. Against his will, Jeremiah is convinced to leave the Promised Land with other ‘troublemakers’ who flee for their own safety – never to return. Nevertheless, he takes the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ with him in his heart.

Bob Dylan, his Jewish family having fled to the United States for safety, pictures himself like a Jeremiah, like an Ovid, in exile:

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

Dylan remembers their sin no more, but, because the darkness of human nature is trapped within the physical body of mankind – a cosmological view expressed by Gnostics – America is no more an Eden than the original Promised Land across the pond:

Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind
Say, ‘Prove me that He is Lord, show me a sign’
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within
When what’s lost has been found
What’s to come has already been?
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

The ‘New Jerusalem’ one finds not in a particular place, but in the heart. Thus spake Jeremiah, and he’s standing still. So too is poet William Blake still standing:

Nobody to rescue me
Nobody would dare
I was going down for the last time
But by His mercy I’ve been spared
Not by works
But by faith in Him who called
For so long I’ve been hindered
For so long I’ve been stalled
(Bob Dylan: Saved)

Without mentioning Jesus by name, Dylan connects the New Convenant of the Hebrews with that of Christians. Not the ostentatious show of the old order, but the heart-felt actions of the new order, guided “by faith in Him who called”, is what really counts.

The contribution of the religious ideas of Zarathustra (his followers worship in the temple of fire, in the light of the Wise God, who seeks a balance among the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water) are not forgotten – i.e., Humans are made mostly of water, and who disrespects his or her physical body finds that the fires of hell take over:

In his love I am secure
He bought me with a price
Freed me from the pit
Full of emptiness and wrath
And the fire that burns in it
(Bob Dylan: Saved)

The Persian drunkard, he follows me.

• Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts: revealing the source of this and other Dylan songs. Part 1.  by Larry Fyffe
• Bob Dylan And Damon Runyon: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts And Other Songs (Part II) by Larry Fyffe
• Source Of Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts (Part III) by Larry Fyffe

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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