Untold Dylan

by Tony Attwood

The Death of Emmett Till is a song by Bob Dylan that was written around the time of Talkin John Birch and Ramblin Gamblin Willie.  As with those songs Dylan uses an old established musical format, alongside an old lyrical theme to create a new piece.

Musically the song is “House of the Rising Sun” sung at full speed, using that song’s highly distinctive chord sequence.

“House” was one of the songs that back in those days every aspiring folk guitarist would learn because it gives the chance for all sorts of melodic invention above a chord sequence which is so easy for the guitar beginner to play and yet which actually sounds quite complex…

Am, C, D, F

Am, C, E

and so on.  If you don’t play an instrument yourself go out and find a pianist or guitarist and get him to play that sequence.  You’ll recognise it at once.

The song was originally recorded for Broadside and Dylan considered it the most important song he had written thus far.  The Spotify version from the “RTL and BD music album” has a nice commentary after.  It is also on the Bootleg volume 9.  There’s a link to the radio version at the end and to the Whitmark version.

“Emmett Till” retells the story of events in 1955 when a black man was murdered seemingly for whistling at a white woman.  Two white men were arrested for the crime, found not guilty by an all white jury, and then subsequently confessed knowing that they could not be tried again.

It is not a major piece in Dylan’s list of compositions at this time, but it has become noteworthy because of one singular use of language within the song, and the commentary made by Heylin in “Revolution in the Air”, which seems to misunderstand completely what is going on in the song.

Heylin began his review by complaining that Dylan was “hopelessly confused” about the facts of the case, seemingly not recognising that the whole folk music tradition is about taking incidents and then writing them larger to enhance the dramatic effect.  Indeed one only has to ponder what songs would be like if composers were forced only to tell everything exactly as in some sort of court report set to music.

It is patently obvious that folk songs are not newspaper reports, any more than newspaper reports are theatre.  Each has a restrictive form and for those which are entertainment they are set in a way that can be understood and recalled easily. They change details for dramatic effect.

But far worse (at least for me, and of course as always these commentaries are just my opinion), Heylin then suggests that the murderers “only intended to frighten the boy; that he had ample opportunity to escape; and that it was his continuing insolence and repeated claims to have had white girlfriends that finally drove the brothers to silence him for good.  Such motivations were simply disregarded by a Dylan bent on his own verbal execution.

“The couplet

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what

the only line in the song in which the narrator addresses the listener directly – is an open admission that the facts of the case held zero interest for this zealot.”

Now leaving aside the point I have just made – that folk songs are not exact detailed reporting of historical events, but retelling to make a moral point – when I first heard those two lines

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what

I was really knocked out by them.  To me they have a totally different meaning from that which Heylin found, one that says that the reasons the men gave as an excuse for murder were so trivial and so awful, that the mind can’t conceive that anyone could trivialise human life in such a way.

Heylin’s point appears to be that the behaviour of the young black man made the murder excusable, or at least should be grounds for a plea of what in the UK is called “diminished responsibility” for the crime.

But how can there ever possibly be diminished responsibility for the crime of a racist murder?  Dylan is quite right, the killers’ excuses should not be remembered because they are so appallingly trivial.

I think (and of course as in all the commentaries here, this is just my opinion) this review of the song by Heylin actually tells us infinitely more about the author of the review than about Bob Dylan.  What we can learn about Dylan at this time is that he was a young songwriter who was exploring every possible way of writing songs and that real and exciting talent was breaking through.

If we look at the songs written in this year, in the order they were written, this point is well made.  They cover the death of a friend, folk heroes, classic blues, opposition to the far right, social commentary, the notion that it is not the world that affects us but the way we see the world, lost love, leaving and finally one of the greatest songs of the last century expressing the notion that is very difficult to express in song, that everything is falling apart.

• Ballad for a friend
• Poor Boy Blues
• Rambling Gambling Willie
• Standing on the highway
• Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues
• Death of Emmett Till
• The Ballad of Donald White
• Let me die in my footsteps
• Blowing in the wind 
• Corrina Corrina
• Quit your Lowdown Ways
• Down the Highway
• Tomorrow is a long time 
• Hard Rain’s a gonna fall

Of course, as ever, all of this is my opinion, just as it is my personal opinion that the review of this song by Heylin is not just mistaken in its analysis, but quite awful for the way it criticises Dylan for using the medium of folk music as it has always been used – a shorthand to make a point.  And for seemingly to excuse a racist murder on the grounds that “he was asking for it”.

From an artistic point of view, it also shows (again just to me perhaps, but I still want to make the point) that Heylin hasn’t got a clue about the meanings that can be woven into poetic couplets.

Indeed the couplet I have quoted above gets a doubly powerful meaning when we consider it in relationship to the first verse which contains the phrase “I can still remember well” contrasting with “I can’t remember what” in the second verse…

Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door
This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what
They tortured him and did some things too evil to repeat
There were screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds
out on the street

It may look incredibly simple on the screen, but it is hard to pull off in a song (believe me I have spent a lifetime trying) without it sounding simplistic.  Here is doesn’t because of the horror of the reason that the killers had.

It is a song in which Dylan doesn’t allow us any room for sentimentality

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain
The reason that they killed him there, and I’m sure it ain’t no lie
Was just for the fun of killin’ him and to watch him slowly die

What makes the song complete, is that the penultimate verse seems to be addressed across the years to what Heylin and to those who think as he appears to think. (Although to be clear let me add that I am saying “what Heylin appears to think” from what we read in this review, for of course I cannot take this little piece to be representative of his broader opinion, shocking those these views are).

If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust
Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood
it must refuse to flow
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

And maybe I am biased because that is exactly how I feel.  I don’t care one bit if details of the case are misrepresented in the song, the song makes the point so clear and simple.  How did we come to sink this low?

I’m not arguing that this is a great song to stand alongside “Ballad for a Friend” at the start of the year, or “Blowing in the Wind” or “Hard Rain” later in the year, but it shows elements of Dylan’s ability with words and ideas which already take him far beyond the norm of this type of folk song.

It also reminds us that there are still some out there who would excuse a racist murder on the grounds that “they were provoked”.  There is no provocation that excuses such acts.

Here’s the Whitmark version

And the radio version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVKTx9YlKls

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

Bob Dylan And The Allegory

by Larry Fyffe

It is always surprising to me when music critics and even many fans of Bob Dylan’s claim that particular song lyrics indicate a sudden change in his nonconformist philosophical position – his convertion to the Christian religion or a return to his Jewish roots.

Many, very many, of Dylan’s songs, contain double-edged images drawn from the Judeo-Christian Bible. The lyrics of these songs can be interpreted, albeit differently, as allegories.

An allegory is metaphorical (a metaphor being a word or phrase applied to an object or event, not literally applicable thereto – for example, a ‘stone’ comes to represent more than a stone). An allegory is a story, a poem, or song that contains a hidden political or moral message. Jesus, called the Christ, speaks in allegories called ‘parables’ in the Holy Bible.

There’s the biblical allegory of woman as a would-be bride who seeks supremacy over the groom – over the individual; over the every man; even over Jesus.

She can be considered, in a metaphorical sense, the wayward institutions of church and state, as in the lyrics below:

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

The lyrics above can be considered akin to a Blakean allegory: the female Tiger attracted to the idol of the Golden Calf rather than to the spiritual Lamb of God.

Likewise, in the song lyrics below – the singer/songwriter is the persona of the groom, the Christ who rejects the advances of the materialistic Claudette in a society of decayed morals; she’s no purified Mary Magdalene, that’s for sure:

Cities on fire, phones out of order
They’re killing nuns and soldiers
There’s fighting on the border
What can I say about Claudette
Ain’t seen her since January
She could be respectably married
Or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires
(The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar)

The following double-edged lyrics can be considered an allegory wherein the male is upside down and on the bottom -in the position of a bride who has discarded her spiritual side, and submitted herself to the decadent materialism of a modern Babylon:

It was gravity which pulled us down
and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just
wasn’t enough to change my heart
Now every thing is a little upside down
as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What is good is bad, what’s bad is good
you’ll find out when you’re reach the top
You’re on the bottom
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Such rather difficult-to-interpret allegories of mankind being both heavenly and earthly, Dylan draws from the Holy Bible; what the future of the Universe holds lies solely (maybe) in the hands of an anthropomorphic God.

If there is a clear answer blowin’ in the wind, God nor Dylan ain’t sayin’, but God alone is the One who certainly knows what’s a-gonna happen to each and everyone of us here on earth.

And to tangle up matters further, He’s presented in Bible as half-god and half-human Himself – God unites with His earth-born Son, Jesus:

Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward
And the spirit of the beast that goeth downward
to the earth?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better
than that a man should rejoice in his own works
For that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see
what shall be after him?
(The Book Of Ecclesiastes 3: 21-22)

The problem is that God’s human side, Jesus, speaks in parables that are not all that clear though theologians attempt to make them so. Dylan’s entangles his own song lyrics to reflect the ambiguity of the Bible. The lyrics of the singer/songwriter reveal that he finds the dogmatic answers given by religious leaders to riddles posed in the Bible are difficult to swallow:

Like singer Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan finds that he would grapple with such matters in his own way, and in the song below and other songs , he says to his listeners, ‘do it your way’:

Well, you’re on your own
You always were
In a land of wolves and thieves
Don’t put your hope in ungodly men
Or be the slave to what somebody’s else believes
(Bob Dylan: Trust Yourself)

Dylan, in his art, consistently promotes this nonconformist philosophy – from the get-go.

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

If you have been reading through the reviews on this site, rather than dipping to read up on the songs you are thinking about (which is of course fair enough – every reader is very welcome) you’ll know that I rate “Ballad for a Friend” as one of the all time overwhelmingly great songs that Dylan has written.  The first absolute masterpiece.

As such this song totally swamps the song that emerged just about the same time: Poor Boy Blues.  Swamps it so much that I completely forgot to do a review of “Poor Boy Blues,” while raving over “Ballad”!

And although the songs seem to have been written within a week or so of each other, they are utterly different.  For whereas “Ballad for a Friend” tells us a story, “Poor Boy” simply sets the scene.

Thus in “Poor Boy”, nothing happens – it is instead a broad brush painting of the situation portrayed in the blues, a situation concerning a good boy and the railroad.  A run through all the standard blues scenarios and scenery one after the other; a set of lines that simply tell of the blues as the blues, with all the standard images that the blues carry; images of moving on and utter, total restlessness.

As such, for all that “Ballad” is a perfectly constructed complete piece, what we have here is just a set of standard images that go nowhere, and as an experiment, for me it doesn’t work.  It is a sketch in a notebook, not a song intended to be listened to and appreciated.  And maybe that’s another reason why I forgot it before.

From the very first verse we know the world has gone wrong

Mm, tell mama
Where’d ya sleep last night?
Cain’t ya hear me cryin’?
Hm, hm, hm

And the problems won’t go away

Hey, tell me baby
What’s the matter here?
Cain’t ya hear me cryin’?
Hm, hm, hm

What would rescue the song at this point however would be a sudden and unexpected move of the music to another pair of chords, maybe a fourth higher, to give us some contrast.  Yes, that might destroy the whole idea of the blues and the world going wrong, wrong and wrong again, but it sure would make the song much more listenable and I would suggest much more interesting.

As it is the song is hard going and I can’t imagine too many people will have played this song more than once or twice, unless they are in the habit of listening to the whole Bootleg 9 album all the way through.

And so we get the idea at the start, and the song plays the idea through, continuing to give us every option that the blues has to offer in the remaining verses

Hey, stop you ol’ train
Let a poor boy ride

Hey, Mister Bartender
I swear I’m not too young

Blow your whistle, policeman
My poor feet are trained to run

Long-distance operator
I hear this phone call is on the house

Ashes and diamonds
The diff’rence I cain’t see

Mister Judge and Jury
Cain’t you see the shape I’m in?

Mississippi River
You a-runnin’ too fast for me

Yes it could have worked, and indeed that is my point here, because it very much did work in Ballad for a Friend.  It was just that at this stage Dylan could indeed write a masterpiece, but as yet he could not write one masterpiece after another.

But the time when he could was really not that far away.

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

A New Dylan Christmas Song Uncovered

by Larry Fyffe

The unwavering detectives at the Untold Dylan offices have managed to lay their sleuth-hound paws on the lyrics of a yet-to-be-released new Christmas song by Bob Dylan.

For the pleasure of our readers only, we publish the song’s lyrics along with its title:

Hard Reindeer Are Gonna Fall

Oh where have you been, Rudolf?, my red-nosed son
Where have you been?, my sad young one
The other reindeer call me nasty names
I’ve been left out of all their reindeer games
I’ve been up early mornin’, lookin’ for a deer yard
And it’s hard, and it’s hard, and it’s hard
And hard reindeer a-gonna fall

Oh what have you seen?, my red-nosed son
What have you seen?, my sad-eyed one
I saw St. Nick’s throne with no body on it
I saw a red sleigh with grey fog all around it
I saw ten thousand children with stockings all empty
And it’s hard, and it’s hard, and it’s hard
And hard reindeer a-gonna fall

Oh what’ll we do now?, my red-nosed son
What’ll we do now?, my sad-eyed one
Well the weatherman, he ain’t so proud
I can lead Santa through the darkest cloud
With my red nose a-blinkin’, and my horns a-blowin’
The soles of those socks won’t be forgotten
I tell ya ol’ foggie, you ain’t hard
It’s not hard, it’s not hard, it ain’t hard

The eight other reindeer shouted
out with glee
And they all played games around the
Christmas tree
Everyone of them’ll go down in history
Rudolf, Dasher, Dancer, Donner, Vixen
Comet, Cupid, Prancer, Blitzen
The tree caught on fire and killed them all
Blazin’ reindeer meat’s a-gonna fall
And its hard, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s very hard

Elsewhere in DYLAN: THE LIGHTER SIDE:  (For more info on this aspect of the site please click here)

• Bob Dylan And Omar Khayyam. Not to mention East Orange.
• Bob Dylan’s Efforts At Tourist Promotion: the Untold secret files
• Is Bob Dylan funny? Should we be funny about Bob Dylan? Does humour have a place in our society?
• Dear Babby: An advice column for the lovelorn

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What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Larry Fyffe

No one twists and turns the still existing themes of past times to make them better suited to modern times, more than does Bob Dylan.

Contrary to what many music critics claim, Dylan chooses his double-edged diction with great care, and thus careful attention must be paid: as in, for example, “the long black cloud is comin’ down”.

In the Bible verse below, Mary Magdalene mistakes the revitalized Jesus for a gardener:

Jesus saith unto her, ‘Women,
why weepest thou; whom seekest thou?’
She supposing him to be the gardener,
saith unto him
Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell
me where thou hast laid him
And I will take him away
(Book Of St. John: 20:15)

In the song below, that old story is revised in the fragmented, disorderly style of Modernist writing:

As I walked out in the mystical garden
On a hot summer day, hot summer lawn
Excuse me, ma’am, I beg your pardon
There’s no one here, the gardener is gone
(Bob Dylan: Ain’t Talkin’)

Leaving the plausible interpretation that the narrator is comparing himself to the now ever-present figure of Jesus, the persona taken on by Dylan is not the gardener of the Old Testament, but, like Jesus, is the one who remains. The weed-destroying gardener is gone.

Poet Paul Verlaine springs to mind and with him the theme that great art endures much longer than the person who creates it – even when the focus of the art is on death and decay:

Opening the narrow rickety gate
I went for a walk in the little garden
All lit up with the gentle morning sun
(Paul Verlaine: After Three Years)

Bob Dylan is quite adept at tweaking classical myths, legends of the Old West, folk lore, biblical narratives, morality tales, and even nursery rhymes – sometimes turning them completely upside down – for the sake of making art that is original. ‘Art for art’s sake’, one might say – turning villains into good guys, and vice versa, for example:

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 was never known
To hurt an honest man
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

The initials ‘JWH’ resemble the written Hebrew ‘YHWH’, the un-utterable reference to ‘God’.

Whether personally a follower of some variety of Christianity and/or Judaism
– or not -, the lyrics of many Dylan songs rework Biblical narratives, ie, at times, interpretable as God being, if not Satanic, at least in league with the Devil. As the persona considers himself to be – at least in the following lyrics:

Shake the dust off your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation’s not an easy thing
Adam given the Devil reign
Because he sinned I got no choice
It run in my vein
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

Dylan reworks nursery rhymes.  For example below is a song that is interpretable as castigating God for turning a blind eye on mankind’s development of nuclear weapons capable of annihilating the human race. First the nursery rhyme:

There was a little boy and a little girl
Lived in an alley
Says the the little boy to the little girl
‘Shall I, oh, shall I?’
Says the little girl to the little boy
‘What shall we do?’
Says the little boy to the little girl
‘I will kiss you’
(Nursery Rhyme: There Was A Little Boy And A Little Girl)

Sings Dylan, as if he too turns a blind eye:

There was a little boy and a little girl
And they lived in an alley under the red sky ….
Let the wind blow low, let the wind blow high
One day the little boy and little girl were both baked in a pie
This is the key to the kingdom and this is the town
This is the blind horse that leads you around
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

The following song lyrics, can be interpreted as saying that the singer takes on the a persona from one of the legends of the Old American West.

The dark vengeful God present in the Old Testament, whose wrath is relied upon by social authorities to justify the killing of fellow humans, gets rebuked by the sheriff. Instead, he turns to the light shining forth from the New Testament wherein the sheriff finds the peace-centred teachings of Jesus Christ:

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door ….
Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door
(Bob Dylan: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door)

The lyrics above can be interpreted that ‘Mama’, as a representative of social norms, is the cause of her boy doing bad things. However, with “that long black cloud is comin’ down”- she’s being gotten rid of.

Bob Dylan is going to do things his way.

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Larry Fyffe

It’s not at all surprising that Bob Dylan relates to Frank Sinatra whose songs often contain the fragmented ruins of the Transcendental school of poetry along with those of the Romantic school.

Applying labels usually reserved for literature, one detects in the song lyrics sung by Frank Sinatra an all-pervading consciousness of light mixed with the dark subconsciousness of the individual:

I’m a fool to want you
I’m a fool to want you
To want a love that can’t be true
A love that’s there for others too
(Frank Sinatra -co-writer: A Fool To Want You)

And in the song below, a pall of darkness drapes the throne of love:

One more time at midnight, near the wall
Take off your makeup and your shawl
Won’t you descend from the throne from
where you sit
Let me feel your love one more time before
I abandon it
(Bob Dylan: Abandoned Love)

Apparently, lessons learned from earthly experience temper the heavenly idealism of youth:

I could have told you
She’d hurt you
She’d love you a while
Then desert you
If only you’d asked
I could have told you so
I could have saved you
Some crying
(Frank Sinatra – co-writer: I Could Have Told You)

Below, an individual’s tears distort the comforting light rays that shine down upon everyone:

Baby please stop crying
You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby, please stop crying
‘Cause it’s tearing up my mind
(Bob Dylan: Baby Stop Crying)

The spirit of vitality that shines through and manifests itself in organic Nature (represented by the Skylark) is addressed in the following song lyrics:

Skylark, have you anything to say to me
Won’t you tell me where my love can be?
Is there a meadow in the mist
Where someone’s waiting to be kissed?
Skylark, have you seen a valley green with spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom-covered lane?
(Frank Sinatra – by Carmichael/Mercer: Skylark)

The above song is inspired by the images of ever-returning springtime in the following poem:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass
Rain-awakened flowers
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh
Thy music doth surpass
(Percy Shelley: To A Skylark)

The Romantic Transcendentalist poet Percy Shelley may be a favorite of Bob Dylan, but the mood of the song below is one of dark alienation:

Has anyone seen my love?
I don’t know
Has anybody seen my love?
You want to talk to me
Go ahead and talk
What ever you got to say to me
Won’t come as any shock
(Bob Dylan: Has Anybody Seen My Love)

Too much darkness is spread by the kneeling bloodhounds of institutionalized religion as far as Frank Sinatra is concerned:

For what is a man, what has he got
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way
(Frank Sinatra – by Paul Anka et al: My Way)

Bobby agrees with Frankie, adding that sundrops of love aid in the healing of injuries received from the blows of darkened minds:

I love you pretty baby
You’re the only love I’ve ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my throne
Beyond here lies nothin’
That we can call our own
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

This fragment appears on “Biograph” and also appears on “Side Tracks” as a one verse piece with a sudden fade out, suggesting that there was more, but for some reason this is all we are offered.

It is listed as having been recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions and uses the structure and approach to the music of “On the road again” from “Bringing it all back home”.

You might recall the second verse of “On the road again” contains the line

The milkman comes in
He’s wearing a derby hat
Then you ask why I don’t live here
Honey, how come you have to ask me that?

In Jet Pilot the focus is on one person rather than a collection of odd balls

Well, she’s got Jet Pilot eyes from her hips on down.
All the bombardiers are trying to force her out of town.
She’s five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench.
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch.
She got all the downtown boys, all at her command
But you’ve got to watch her closely ’cause she ain’t no woman
She’s a man.

As Heylin points out, there is a fair amount of Verlaine and Rimbaud in this song (to be made more explicit in 1974 with “You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go”:

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

I’m not too sure that the songs relate that closely, just because of the overt mention of the two French poets, but we can perhaps make a little more out of what was going on by the fact that the next song recorded was “I wanna be your lover”

Indeed if we look at the whole sequence here we get

• Queen Jane Approximately
• Ballad of a thin man
• Jet Pilot
• I wanna be your lover
• Visions of Johanna

This is an era of writing songs about curious and unusual people – one of Dylan’s recurring themes, and one, now I come to think of it, I should have given more focus to when I started to try and work out categories for Dylan’s compositions.

It is a sort of off-shot of the songs of disdain, such as “Positively Fourth Street”, more fascination than outright dislike, although Thin Man is further inclined to the “disdain” side of things than the others in this immediately collection.

I wanna be your lover which was written next has the lines

Well, jumpin’ Judy can’t go no higher
She had bullets in her eyes, and they fire
Rasputin he’s so dignified
He touched the back of her head an’ he died

I think we can get the idea that Bob is fascinated by these unusual people, the strange crowd that turn up in so many of his songs at this time.  Did he really meet them or did they just pop up in his head?  Of course I don’t know but I suspect some of each, mostly the latter.

And it is interesting that these sessions also gave us the exquisite “It takes a lot of laugh”.  When Bob gets it spot on at this time, it really gives us beautiful songs that stay in the memory forever.

So I guess what we are hearing here are the attempts at songs from an incredibly fertile mind, and thus we can conclude that these scraps are necessary sketches along the road that had just given us “Phantom Engineer” which was morphing into “It takes a lot to laugh”.

Don’t the moon look good, mama
Shinin’ through the trees?
Don’t the brakeman look good, mama
Flagging down the “Double E?”
Don’t the sun look good
Goin’ down over the sea?
Don’t my gal look fine
When she’s comin’ after me?

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

Once again we have two versions recorded, but we seem to have got the same recording on both the original Basement Tapes double LP and the Volume 11 CD where the song is “restored” which apparently means without additional reverb and twiddles that were put into the LP version by an enthusiastic record company engineer upon its release.

The song is presumably making fun of the psychedelic mode of writing that was dominating the era when the song was written, and yes it does that.  But the trouble with nonsense words is that ultimately they remain nonsense unless they have a little something behind them.

Sometimes they can work, but generally only when there is some hint of some reality underneath, as with the classic English medieval folk song “Nottamun Town”.  If you consider that for a moment you’ll perhaps see what I mean…

Met the King and the Queen, and a company more
Come a-walking behind and a-riding before
Come a stark naked drummer a-beating the drum
With his hands on his bosom, come marching along.Sat down on a hard, hot cold frozen stone,
Ten thousand stood ’round me, yet I was alone
Took my hat in my hands for to keep my head warm,
Ten thousand got drowned that never was born.

Well, the comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus
The poor little chauffeur, though, she was back in bed
On the very next day, with a nose full of pus
Yea! Heavy and a bottle of bread

There simply isn’t anything to latch on to here in these lyrics – it is all just abstractly weird.  And that’s the problem; the totally abstract is very hard to take to one’s heart, what we need is some semblance of reality or obvious contradiction to hang on to when listening to a song.

A visual artist can of course do total abstract because one can look at the painting for as long as one likes, but with the song, it has its own time scale and progression, and it is that which seems to demand something that makes some sort of sense or absolute contradiction somewhere for us to hold on to.

Dylan however won’t give us any of that. He gave us plenty to try to hold on to in (for example) Subterranean Homesick Blues, but here, no, there’s nothing.

It’s a one-track town, just brown, and a breeze, too
Pack up the meat, sweet, we’re headin’ out
For Wichita in a pile of fruit
Get the loot, don’t be slow, we’re gonna catch a trout

and then

Now, pull that drummer out from behind that bottle
Bring me my pipe, we’re gonna shake it
Slap that drummer with a pie that smells
Take me down to California, baby

After that, with no variation at all we get the first verse again, for no reason that can be discerned, and there we are.

Interesting music that perhaps with different words it could have taken us on a different journey, but here there seems to be no journey at all.

What else is on the site

1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Larry Fyffe

Though the line of demarcation is a fuzzy one, the images contained within Bob Dylan’s song lyrics, like those in the poems of William Blake, oscillate between those that are Romantic – ie, humans possess an inherently dark nature reflected in their social institutions -, and images that are Transcendental – ie, Nature is infused with a Spirit of light which every individual has the potential of getting in touch with.

In the song below, there’s an image of the all-pervading light that’s glimpsed at times:

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

But not glimpsed all of the time:

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve got the scars that the sun didn’t heel
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

In the following song, the face of the Blakean Universe – one side light and the other dark – serves as an oppressive image with eyes as black as coal:

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and on my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape …..
The way is long and the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With his serpent eyes of obsidian
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango)

It’s an artistic recreation of another story that ends rather badly for a rebel:

And many women were there ….
Which followed Jesus from Galilee
Ministering unto him
Among them was Mary Magdalene
(Book Of Matthew 27: 55-56)

In the following song, the dark imagery of the Romantic poets and the light imagery of the Transcendentalist poets entangle, along with the Mary Magdalene archetype:

Scarlet Town in the month of May
Sweet William Holme on his death bed lay
Mistress Mary by the side of the bed
Kissing his his face, heaping prayers on his head ….
If love is a sin, then beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and white, the yellow and brown
It’s all right there for ya in Scarlet Town
(Bob Dyan: Scarlet Town)

Lieutenant William Holmes, a subordinate of Miles Standish, leads the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims in a war against the Pequot Indians, essentially wiping them out. On one level of meaning in the above version of the song, Dylan shows how history is whitewashed by romantic legends of writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

On the other hand, there are writers more critical of past times. The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’ (1850)is the Massachusetts Bay Colony established by the Pilgrims. The story is about a woman who has a child by a Puritan minister and her punishment for this at the hands of the colonists; she refuses to tell them who the father is.

A theme not unlike that found in the following song:

They wished you’d accepted the blame for the farm
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm
And the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms
How could they ever have persuaded you?
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

The sunlight of from the poetry of the Romantic Transcendentalists, albeit dimmed by the dark clouds of the Modernists, still shines at times in the songs of Bob Dylan:

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and
endures, and is patient
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength
of woman’s devotion
List to the mournful tradition, still sung by
pines of the forest
(Henry Longfellow: Evangeline)

You may also be interested in

• Bob Dylan And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Desire (Part I)
• Bob Dylan And Henry Longfellow: Desire (Part II)

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

Last time I wrote about two versions of the same song appearing on different bootleg albums I got myself into a right old tangle and after readers had kindly put me out of my misery, had to go back and correct my ramblings.

So I approach this with uncertainty.  We have this song issued on the original Basement Tapes double LP and then again on Bootleg Vol 11 where it is called the “Restored Version”.   The lyrics on both appear to me NOT to be the lyrics on the official Bob Dylan site where the Volume 11 of the Bootleg series is listed twice, once as “Alternative Version” and once as “Alternative Take”.

There’s no point my reproducing the lyrics from the official website since they are not on either of the two versions I have got.

The version I have got on the double album and the Volume XI has got the lines that Heylin transcribes as

“Aloysius was sold at seven years old un-huh

Aloysius was sold at seven years old un-huh

If I die, bury me in the ground

I’ll catch you man by the hare and hound

…

or words to that effect.”

So I am thinking that the lyrics on the Bob.Dylan.com site come from what Heylin describes as “barely a run through” and what we have each time is the second take.  So quite why this is a restored version I don’t really know.  I guess that could mean that they have done a spot of engineering on it.

Or not – because there is also a debate as to who was the drummer and how good he is.  To me, and maybe I am getting past it in my old age, the drummer sounds ok, given that the piece is just running through with very little rehearsal.  So I am guessing that both times we have been given take two while the web site offers us the lyrics of take one.

If you can sort this out just write in and tell me, and let me admit before you do, I just don’t know.

What I do know is that the song came originally from the same sources as Baby wont you be my baby  which Bob probably wrote a few weeks earlier, and the sources of which through the last century I traced in the review of that song.  “Baby won’t you” takes the whole thing a lot slower, but “Apple Suckling” takes it back to the speed that we are used to hearing it at.

What I didn’t mention with that song is that the ultimate antecedent is “Froggie went a courting” which Bob himself recorded on “Good as I been to you” and which first appeared in the 16th century in Scotland.

Here is Tex Ritter singing it

Bob’s version of course is on Spotify.

What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Larry Fyffe

He who knows not American history, knows not Bob Dylan. Or, to be more precise, he who knows not the Romantic myths surrounding American history, knows not Bob Dylan.

Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow shoots his myth-bearing arrow into the oak tree of American folklore.

On the way to Jamestown, Virginia, Captain Miles Standish is blown off course and lands at Plymouth Rock. Longfellow immortalizes the Indian-killer in ‘The Courtship Of Miles Standish’.

Taking her cue from Longfellow’s poem, another Romantic immortalizes Pocahontas, the Indian princess associated with the Jamestown settlement:

Knowest thou what thou hast done, thou, dark-haired child?
What great events on thy compassion hung?
What prowess lurks beneath your aspect mild
And in the accents of that foreign tongue? ……
But thou, O forests princess, true of heart
When o’er our fathers waved destruction’s dart
Shalt in their children’s loving hearts be shrined
Pure, lonely star, o’er dark oblivion wave
It is not meet thy name should moulder in the grave
(Lydia Sigourney: Pocahontas)

The singer/songwriter gets Star Trek’s Scotty to beam him back to the early English settlement at Jamestown:

I got a house on a hill, I got hogs out in the mud
I got a house on a hill, I got hogs out lying in the mud
Got a long-haired woman, she got royal Indian blood
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Sir Walter Raleigh brings hogs to Jamestown in 1607.

The ‘Desire’ album pays tribute to poet Henry Longfellow, and his Romantic reworking of the history of the later settlement at Plymouth Rock:

…. Oh sister, when I fall into your spacey arms
Can not ya feel the weight of oblivion
And the songs of redemption on your backside
We surface alongside Miles Standish
And take the Rock
(Liner notes: Desire album)

The singer/songwriter lightens up with humour the transformation of ‘the American Dream’ of a new Eden into the reality of materalistic greed -Captain Standish becomes Captain Arab:

I was riding on the Mayflower
When I thought I spied some land ….
Captain Arab he started writing up some deeds
He said ‘Let’s set up a fort
And start buying this place with beads’
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

In the ‘Desire’ song ‘Isis’, Bob Dylan humourously mixes together mythologies in the manner of Gothic Romantic poetry. Searched for, as expressed through various mythologies, is the Oneness of the Universe before it split apart. For example, in Christian mythology, Jesus is considered an integral part of Father Sky, and the Lord unites with Mary, the Earth Mother; the produce of Earth and Sky be Adam and Eve.

In Egyptian mythology, Isis, a Mary-like symbol of a devoted mother, is the product of the Sky goddess and Earth god. She is the wife to her brother Osirus. Set, the jealous brother of Osirus, locks him in a coffin, a tale akin to the Christian story of Cain stoning his brother Abel to death.

Bob Dylan recklessly satires these mythologies and plays with Longfellow’s poetic juxtaposition of material and spiritual values:

I was thinkin’ about turquoise
I was thinkin’ about gold
I was thinkin’ about diamonds
And the world’s biggest necklace
As we rode through the canyons
Through the devilish cold
I was thinkin’ about Isis
How she thought I was so reckless
(Bob Dylan: Isis)

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, under the influence of the the modernist Surrealistc poets, focuses on human nature rather than on external Nature which is envisioned by Wordsworthian poets to be infused with God’s presence.

As far as the English Romantics go, Dylan relates more to William Blake and John Keats who recognize both the bright and dark side in the hearts of Man.

Nonetheless, Dylan is well aware of the vivid and romantic imagery of earlier America times as depicted in the common-rhymed poems of Henry Longfellow, an American Transcendentalist who detects a youthful spirit pervading the natural beauty of the New Frontier (in contrast to the sordid pursuit of material gain):

The longing for ignoble things
The strife for triumph more than truth
The hardening of the head that brings
Irreverence for the dreams of youth
(Longfellow: The Ladder Of St. Augustine)

In the poems of Longfellow, the stoic outlook of Puritanism gives way to the Romantic vision of a better future even with the passing of a loved one:

The shadow of the linden trees
Lay moving on the grass
Between them and the moving boughs
A shadow, thou, didst pass
(Longfellow: A Glean Of Sunshine)

The poet’s sunshiny optimism differs from the Puritan outlook that is overly concerned with thàt long fellow slithering in the grass:

There came a wind like a bugle
It quivered through the grass
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass
(Emily Dickinson: There Came A Wind Like A Bugle)

Adding the ominous sounds of distant drums in the sunshine of a new day, the singer/songwriter Bob Dylan splits the difference between the two visions in the following song lyrics:

Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drums of dawn
(Bob Dylan: Lay Down Your Weary Tune)

In the following poem, there is the positive imagery of a furnace bright that’s creating something new:

The children coming home from school
Look in the open door
They love to see the flaming forge
And hear the bellows roar
And catch the flaming sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor
(Longfellow: The Village Blacksmith)

In the song lyrics below, the fiery image is painted in a tone closer to William Blake’s original vision – the portrayal of a wrathful God that serves the interests of those in authority by instilling in everyone guilt, and puritanical values:

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way, I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)

The Romantic poet Longfellow cheerfully celebrates the founding of a new Promised Land in America:

The fate of a nation was riding that night
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight
Kindled the land into a flame with its heat
(Longfellow: Paul Revere’s Ride)

The singer/songwriter tempers the optimism of Longfellow, and satirizes the complacency of modern times:

The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course
The city father’s they’re trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse
But the town has no need to be nervous
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

Any prospect of a Paradise regained is put asunder by the cold-hearted rationalism and materialism of a modern Babylon:

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine)

In a narrative poem by Henry Longfellow, the duty-bound Indian-fighter Miles Standish of the new English settlement at Plymouth Rock loses his marriage object to a principled yet more emotion-revealing rival; stand-offish Miles comes to understand why that happens and redeems himself:

Wishing her joy of her wedding and lauding her husband
Then he said with a smile, I should have remembered the adage
‘If you would be well served, you must serve yourself’
(Longfellow: The Courtship Of Miles Standish)

Bob Dylan pays tribute to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his Romantic vision of America:

Romance is taking over …
Can ya not feel the weight of oblivion
And the songs of redemption …
We surface alongside Miles Standish
And take the Rock
(Liner notes: ‘Desire’ album)

Reaping the gold of sunshine, Bob Dylan sings:

I got a house on the hill, I got pigs out lying in the mud
I got a long-haired woman, she got royal Indian blood
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

This really is a fragment of a song – one of the many that would not have emerged had it not been for the decision to release the complete set.  And it is one of those that could most certainly have proven to be a song of some significance if only Bob had had the time or inclination to carry on.

The fragment however turned up on the Bootleg series Volume 11, and it is certainly tantalising.  Dylan clearly didn’t have the words sorted – it was just an idea.

But what we do have is a realisation of what the song could have been thanks to an album “Bob Dylan Uncovered Volume 2” which includes what to me is a really fine realisation of the song as far as it was written, by Bill Shuren and The Cavalry.  There’s a link to it below – and they really make something of this quick run through.

Bill was actually kind enough not only to take a moment and read this review but actually write back and say thanks.  Now that is a considerate musician and a half.  I appreciate that very much.

I think that this realisation of the song shows just what an extraordinary run of form Dylan was in at this time – his throw aways were much better than most songwriters career highlights.

The lyrics are clearly not finished, and there’s nothing much to be gained from imagining what they would have been – all we can do is note down what they sound like. If you disagree fair enough.

As far as I can see this is a song even Heylin didn’t know about at the time of writing “Revolution in the Air” and I can’t find anything that really helps me put it in the sequence. I’m giving it a place in the chronology of Dylan songs from the 1960s, but it’s just a guess.

Another guess is that Bob came up with “I’m a three time loser, but I’m all right” and then just worked out the rest of it from there – until something else came along and distracted him.

Here’s the lyrics, as far as anyone can get – if you know of a closer rendition please do write in.

Now, when I call her by her name
You know she don’t come
She don’t leave me down easy, child, but I don’t
I caught a man a standing on his way to some
But I don’t have to leave because you know she won’t.

All right, I’m all right
I’m a three time loser
But I’m all right
All right, I’m all right
I’m a three time loser
But I’m all right

Oh, it’s so high, so divisive
It’s all can, I swear to god
You know she’s gonna be the death of me
But she opened my heart
And now she takes in my breath, but I,
You know, she’s sucking out the life and breath of me

All right, I’m all right
I’m a three time loser
But I’m all right
All right, I’m all right
I’m a three time loser
But I’m all right
All right, I’m all right
I’m a three time loser
But I’m all right

The link to the track is at…

http://www.deezer.com/en/track/129007114

Incidentally if you want to hear the whole album of cover versions of Dylan songs it is here.  http://www.deezer.com/en/album/13639958  – it won’t be to everyone’s tastes, and indeed there are some tracks I really don’t care for, but I found parts of the album a very decent listen while I was working on this review.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

Bob Dylan And Edward Cummings: The Romantic Revival

by Larry Fyffe

The poet Edward Cummings, inspired by the preRomantic poetry of William Blake and the subsequent Romantic Transcendental Movement, looks back to the innocence of childhood in search of natural love, a journey that takes the poet away from the structured world of mass conformity that’s been shattered in the wake of the madness of war.

With poetry Postmodernist-in-form, EE Cummings reacts by shattering the rules of conventional language in an effort to uncover and rediscover beneath its structure the essence of the mysterious force -natural love – symbolized  by the word ‘God’. The poet removes the institutionalized dogmatic trappings of religion in his quest for the ultimate spirit that infuses material reality.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, like Edward Cummings, presents a world to his listeners and readers in shattered, fragmented, and broken images:

(Bob Dylan: Everything Is Broken)

Unbound by time, the inherent drive of the individual artist compels him/her to use all creative energy to demonstrate that Ol’ Humpty Dumpy – i.e., a loving society – can indeed, at least in the artistic imagination, be put back together again:

Below, again in tangled syntax, a similar message delivered by the aforementioned Romantic poet, EE Cummings:

Both writers oxymoronically express that time and existence be an unfathomable mystery, tempered by regeneration and love:

(EE Cummings: All Nearness Pauses)

In particular, there is a central anthem associated with running the flag up the pole of the Romantic spiritual reawakening. To wit, the transcendental unification of the One with the Other, is transmitted by God through the playful experiencing of physical sex. As depicted in the following poem:

(EE Cummings: May I Feel Said He)

So it is Cummingsly expressed in the song below:

(Bob Dylan: Dress It Up)

Rap-like poetry, Cummings’ be:

(Childish Gambino: Freaks And Geeks)

Albeit seemingly fragmented, the Absolute Oneness of the Blakean Universe, alliterative Edward Cummings presents in poems suitable for children:

(EE Cummings: Maggie And Milly And Molly And May)

Likewise so expresses the Nobel-winning songwriter:

In the face of the all the broken conventional values of contemporary society, the singer/songwriter invokes the broken syntax of Edward Cummings poetry to convey the impression of an alien and fragmented world:

(Bob Dylan: I’m Not There)

Nevertheless, all is reconciled, according to the hyperbolic poet EE Cummings (and seemingly Bob Dylan too) –  the deepest secret of the Universe is that it be the enigma of Love that’ll prevent the Apocalypse by its keeping the stars apart:

(EE Cummings: Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town)

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Tony Attwood

This is yet another Basement song with no information on the official site – it’s never been played by Dylan, and has no official lyrics.  Indeed the inestimable Eyolf Østrem comments that,  “The lyrics seem to be nonsense and exist only to fill in for what would be the real words, if they ever existed.”

But at least we know about the title, especially with Dylan’s interest in movies throughout the ages.

This comes from the movie, “The Sky’s the Limit” made in 1943.   There’s a link below and I can say that having spent my life dancing I sit here thinking oh if only I had been able to dance 2% of that without a slip…   Although some of the choreography I worked on in my time in the theatre ended up in accidents a bit like this.  (And I wonder did they actually have any insurance for the leap onto the bar stool?).

That song contains these lines

As for Dylan, I suddenly had the silly idea that he’s halfway between “One more cup of coffee” and “On the road again” with this song.   As Heylin put it, it is part of a set of “Snapshots from an ongoing process,” so you never know.

Here’s where Bob got to…

This bottle is dried up too
And I’ll be all cried up soon
I can’t see no God on the moon
It’s a long way to go

In a mawkish sort of 1950s way it is a decent song, although Dylan sounds throughout as if he is singing a couple of tones too high for comfort in the chorus.  But then he is right at the bottom of his range in the verses – which is perhaps why he abandoned the piece.  With his range it was just on unsingable.

But I can’t leave this without going back to the opening Fred Astaire line in the extract above, “I’m just walking a tightrope between somewhere and somewhere else.”  Dylan brings that feeling across too.   Whether he consciously remembered the song, whether he had seen the movie, or whether the title was just there at the back of his mind, it is an interesting thought.

I just like to take it on to imagine that Bob had indeed seen the movie, and remembered the song.  Certainly Frank Sinatra recorded the song half a dozen times, which makes me think Bob did know it.  (One Sinatra version was actually used in Blade Runner – and it turns up in all sorts of other places too. If you are familiar with the phrase “Set em up Joe” that comes from here).

And it turned up in loads of other movies, plus everyone around seems to have recorded it.  It is just one of those songs.

Dylan takes it somewhere different, and leaves us with a feeling of what might have been.  It wasn’t, but we can’t begrudge him that.  He has, after all, given us a lot of other things to enjoy.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

by Tony Attwood

“Going to Acapulco” is one of those songs in which the official lyrics don’t match the lyrics that we hear.  It is most annoying when that happens – but here it is the result of re-writes and re-writes across the years.

The song came to fame in the 2007 movie I‘m Not There – that’s the one with six actors portraying different aspects of Bob Dylan’s personality – was not a great success at the box office.  But the soundtrack is something that did resonate with quite a few fans with over 30 Dylan compositions being covered by those in the film.

And for many people, I think, Jim James rendition of “Going to Acapulco,” backed by Calexico is one of the highlights – perhaps the highlight.  It is certainly worth seeing, with its visual reference back to the “whiteface” Bob wore in the 1975/76 Rolling Thunder tour.

If you love this clip as much as I do, you’re going to have a lovely three minutes.  The sound (at least on my system) doesn’t come out very well, but I thought you might like to see this little extract from the movie too, in case you haven’t seen it.

Here it is in the film…

Well, sometime you know when the well breaks down
I just go pump on it some
Rose Marie, she likes to go to big places
And just set there waitin’ for me to come

Goin’ to Acapulco–goin’ on the run
Goin’ down to see fat gut–goin’ to have some fun
Yeah–goin’ to have some fun

This song is a perfect example of how Dylan makes brilliant music out of such simple chordal basis.

This is the chord sequence with the unexpected changes in bold…

G D
I’m going down to Rose Marie’s
C G
She never does me wrong.
G D
She puts it to me plain as day
C G
And gives it to me for a song.
G G7
It’s a wicked life but what the hell
C Am
Everybody’s got to eat
G D
And I’m just the same as anyone else
C Am
When it comes to scratching for my meals
G C
Goin’ to Acapulco
G F
Goin’ on the run.
G C
Goin’ down to see soft gut
G Am
Goin’ to have some fun.

It is the sudden insertion of the A minor (Am) and the F chords that I have put in bold that really keep the listener alert to what is happening.

There is a fair degree of uncertainty about the date of composition of the song, not least because despite its elegance and originality it didn’t appear in the earlier copyright lists of songs from the Basement Tapes era.  I’m putting it in the list of 1960s songs around the Don’t ya tell Henry time, but I could be quite wrong.

It does seem like the re-writing of two verses came in 1975 when the song was being considered for release – but was then put away again although there was a further bit of re-writing in 1985 to give slight changes such as

If the wheel don’t drop and the train don’t stop
I’m bound to meet the sun

I have no idea what that means, but I think it really sounds good.

There is a review on the internet that says that the song is about a prostitute.  And maybe it is, but I am not too sure that working through such meanings on a song like this really gets us too far.  Dylan has made it quite clear in interviews that he never really expected a lot of these songs to ever see the light of day or the sound emanating from the record player, and so he was able to write anything he wanted without considering its implications or indeed without much thought of t he quality.

If you are not particularly familiar with Dylan’s version from Bootleg Vol 11 and turn to it after listening to the movie version above it is quite a surprise how different it is.

Personally I really don’t think the accompaniment is at all right on the Bootleg version, but these guys were knocking the songs out very quickly so that is completely understandable, but listening now from the luxury of sitting in my study in rural Northamptonshire looking out at the trees and the mist, I really could kill that organist for having no concept of what the song was all about.

That is not to say I know what it is about, but I am sure as hell that this is not a place for lots of twiddly bits (to use the technical musical term).

But as I say the guys were knocking these songs out one after another, and thankfully it was resurrected for the movie.  Having come back to it again I’d place it on the list of “lost” masterpieces – but that would be me thinking of the movie version rather than Dylan’s own rendition.

There are worse ways of getting there
And I ain’t complainin’ none
If the clouds don’t drop and the train don’t stop
I’m bound to meet the sun

Indeed.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Larry Fyffe

Though an orthodox Christian awaiting the future return of the Messiah, Romantic poet Samuel Coleridge finds temporary relief from worldly pain – a saviour and messianic fervour in opium:

Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise
(Samuel Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan finds a much-needed repose in organized Christianity:

There’s a kingdom called Heaven
A place where there is no pain or birth
Well the Lord created it mister
About the same time he created Earth
(Bob Dylan: I’m Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

Nevertheless, high water rises. While organization and its leaders require conformity, many artists appreciate the prophet Jesus because He is a rebel –
‘it is written, but I say unto you’:

I say that someday you’ll begin to trust us
And that your conscience not been slain by conformity
That you stand up unafraid to believe in in justice
But you’re making a liar out of me
(Bob Dylan: Making A Liar Out Of Me)

Once again, Romantic brightness slips beneath the waves of Gothic darkness:

In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And he filled his cup with tears
When the Reaper’s task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loviest and the best
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

In the above lyrics, the singer/songwriter calls upon the Prince of Gothic:

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst
and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest
(Edgar Allan Poe: The City In The Sea)

In paying his tribute to the Anti-Transcendentalist poet, Bob Dylan retains the end-rhyme ‘rest/best’.

Dylan makes reference to the another dark poem of his:

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o’er!
No more – no more – no more –
(Such language holds the solumn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!
(Edgar Allan Poe: To One In Paradise)

Hope for a Promised Land on Earth fades:

Beneath the thunder-blasted trees
The words are ringin’ off your tongue
The ground is hard in times like these
Stars are cold, the night is young
(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)

End-rhyme are: ‘trees/these’ instead of ‘tree/sea’.

That man is doomed to wait for a peaceful life after death be of little solace – ‘a slave morality’ – to those to whom is promised a Paradise here on Earth:

I love you pretty baby
You’re the only love I’ve ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my throne
Beyond here lies nothin’
Nothin’ we can call our own
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

The love of a beautiful Muse and the love of Art is the individual artist’s true Messiah – the imagination’s saviour in a world gone wrong.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

“Dress It Up, Better Have It All” (seemingly known originally just as “Better have it all”) is one of those songs that vanished for many a long year, yet were known about by having been on a list of Basement Tape songs recorded, but not available even as an unofficial bootleg.  

And then finally it turned up officially on volume 11 of the Bootleg series.  So at last we had a recording.  But there still was a problem.  No one quite knows what it is all about.

Musically the song is easy to describe: “a rockabilly 12 bar bouncy blues” seems to cover it, but it is the lyrics that are pretty hard to disentangle.   One or two brave souls on the internet have had a go, but it remains without words on Bob Dylan’s official site, although the site does have a blank page for the song just in case: no lyrics, no performance detail (there seemingly were none).  Just a blank.

Ah well, down to us then.

The song has a double bass playing rather than a bass guitar and there’s the pianist having some fun, and Bob really sounds as if he knows the lyrics, but he just isn’t going to make them clear.

And clearly some people have really got into the song – for certainly it is lively and fun.  There’s a review on Amazon of the track that says, “One of the nicer previously un-bootlegged Basement Tapes”.   But, I wonder what the writer meant by “nicer”.  It’s fun, it’s jolly and it’s incomprehensible.  But “nicer”?

It has been suggested that the song is about a woman who maybe isn’t quite doing what our Bob wants her to do.   But what do you do with a set of lyrics when the opening line is transcribed as 

“Oh, mos’ feet and it hang, can’t you see?” I groan.

On the other hand maybe Bob was trying to make up a song out of random phrases just to see what it came out like.  Except the trouble with that notion is that we can’t actually be sure what we are hearing is the lyrics he is singing.

Such as

Well, hot dog, goody me. Settle on a trail

Indeed perhaps the whole idea is for us to have to work out our own lyrics.  In that case if it had been released as a mainstream track Bob would have insisted that the lyrics were never published so he could see what ideas people came up with in articles, and then if any were any good, he’d use them in another song.  Or indeed in this song.  That would be quite a turn around.  He could stand on stage and say, “here’s a song some of you wrote”.

The Something Else Reviews however does come up with an idea

“Aw, let’s shake it up!” Dylan cackles, as if peering into a future in which fans long inoculated to the enveloping joys of this period could find themselves agape once more.

Well, maybe.

But there is one other point.  Although one can quite reasonably argue that the whole of the Basement Tapes period was an incredibly rich vein of writing for Dylan, this mini-period which contained “Better have it all” was, we should know, particularly rich.

The order in which the songs were written is of course open to debate, but as far as can be worked out what we got around this time was

• Crash on the Levee
• Dress it up, better have it all
• I’m not there
• You ain’t going nowhere
• This Wheel’s on Fire
• I shall be released
• Too Much of Nothing
• Tears of rage
• Quinn the Eskimo – The Mighty Quinn

Now that’s a pretty nifty list containing a number of songs most of us would, I think, recognise as being of an extremely high quality.

Maybe “Better have it all” was just a prelude to this outpouring of quality songs, and it was just sung with whatever words Dylan had in his head (hence the lack of a lyrics sheet), and even if that is all it was, it is still worth hearing as the song that preceded “I’m not there” (another song that maybe didn’t have the lyrics written), and then “This Wheel’s on Fire”, “I shall be released”, “Too much of nothing,” and “Tears of rage.”

And let’s not forget that “Too much” reached number 35 in the US charts, “This Wheel” got to number 5 in the UK singles chart, “Quinn” made number 1 in the UK, and well over 60 well known artists have recorded “I shall be released”.

Not bad for a series of songs written one after the one.  Who knows what might have happened to “Dress it up” if Dylan had finished it with a complete set of lyrics.

Here are the lyrics from Metro Lyrics, who are clearly braver than me when it comes to transcription.  The source is Band – Dress It Up, Better Have It All Lyrics | MetroLyrics

They also do a list of Dylan lyrics in the order of popularity of searching for them.

“Oh, mos’ feet and it hang, can’t you see?” I groan.
She says, ‘Oh, wha’ ‘ts arright.” I said, “Jesus, don’t take it at all.”
She’s a past-cold beauty, but she can’t light a cannonball.

Now, down by the river she’s a-hop on her knees,
and I holler to my baby, yelling, “Please, please, please!”
Oh, then I hit her and doubt my chase at all.
Now, no hoax. Let’s go! But it’s that pure soul, and it’s off the ball.

Now, honey, I’m makin’ a hot to road.
Now I’m happy to leaving, but it’s a heavy load.
I said, “Ah, my babe. She don’t meet me no half at all.”
Dress it up. Best to pick up, bub: better have it all.

[Oh, let’s shake it up.]

Well, hot dog, goody me. Settle on a trail
Down apart my knees I can’t find my kerry. Find a nail!
She old top these… oh, better hold mine up.
Please, let’s go, ‘n’ I hope it don’t interrupt.

[Oh, do it again, now. One time for Bozo and his dog.
Hot skimmin’, jumpaway. yay, yay, yay, yay.]

I hope that helped make it more understandable.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Larry Fyffe

The poems of William Blake and Percy Shelley influence William Yeats, a Modernist latter-day Romantic poet.

Within the electric song lyrics of Bob Dylan, howl the ghosts of William Yeats’ Symbolist poetics:

All perform their tragic play
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear
That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia
(William Yeats: Lapis Luzuli)

Here comes her ghost again:

Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

Ophelia, where have you gone?

Through hollow lands, and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands
And walk among long dappled grass
(William Yeats: Song Of The Wandering Aengus)

The memory of a departed love who waves her hand from the tall grass:

You’re gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the one I love
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go
(Bob Dylan: You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go)

This William Yeats’ message of hopeful endurance echoes in the song lyrics of other artists as well:

Those veins must soon be dry
Live in a heavenly mansion
Not in some foul sty
(William Yeats: Crazy Jane)

Below, the rhyme ‘sky/dry’ replaces ‘sty/dry’:

Janie, don’t lose heart
‘Til every river, baby, it runs dry
Until the sun is torn from the sky
(Bruce Springsteen: Don’t Lose Heart)

The theme: human life is a tragic cycle that repeats itself:

All men have aimed at, found and lost
Black out; Heaven blazing in my head
Tragedy wrought to the uttermost
(William Yeats: Lapis Lazuli)

A theme of many a Dylan lyric:

I cross the Green Mountain
I sit by the stream
Heaven blazing in my head
I dreamed a monstrous dream
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

In the end, like the nursery rhyme says, we all fall down:

O mind your feet, O mind your feet
Keep dancing like a wave
And under every dancer
A dead man in his grave
(William Yeats: A Drunken Man’s Praise Of Sobriety)

Dylan’s songs express a message similar to the one above – that is, of making the best of a bad circumstance whereby stands the Eternal Footman holding your coat, and he snickers:

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the
circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep
beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

Likewise, the Blakean message of youthful innocence lost is let loose by Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
(William Yeats: The Second Coming)

A somber message that echoes in the lyrics of the songwriter:

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think I could handle it
Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s just a memory
Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be
(Bob Dylan: Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight)

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

The first thing to say is that this is not a review of “All I have to do is dream” which was written by Boudleaux Bryant  and recorded by the Everly Brothers.  But just because it is out there here is a recording of Bob singing that song.

But now to move on to the song Bob did write: “All you have to do is dream” which turns up on Bootleg 11 and which vimeo has on line (at least at the moment).  Strange thing with that song is if I try and copy the link and put it here it comes up with the “not available” sign, but if I click on the link in Google, it plays.

Failing that you can also try Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/en/track/92722860

Musically it is a bouncy rhythm playing around the simple sequence of G, Am, Bm, Am and back to G with a C, Am variation later on.

As for what it is all about, Robert MacMillan, the writer of Haiku 61 Revisited gives a pretty good summary:

In many regards the writer is perfectly correct – the lyrics sound AND feel better than they appear.  Take a look at the opening..,

If the farmer has no silo
And his fuel cost runs up high
Well, that’s just how much I would love you
If you’d just only let me try.

It’s clear however what he is talking about throughout…

Yes, but look what an earful I get and it’s all awful too
Every time I try to go get me a little tickle.

And it doesn’t take him too long to get down to basics.

So poor little girl, come blow this horn
Hard as any whole night seems
It’s very easily done actually
All you have to do is dream.

If it is what turns you on, all well and good. I have to say it doesn’t do much for me.

A complete list of Dylan’s songs of the 1960s including all the Basement Tape songs, with links to the songs reviewed thus far, can be found on Dylan Songs of the 60s.

What else is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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