Untold Dylan

by Tony Attwood

In this article the lyrics are taken from those provided in the excellent “Expecting Rain” with a few very minor changes of my own.  

A new song by Dylan – or better said, the release of a song that most of us have heard before – is a big moment, and I suspect this must be one of the absolute highlights of the forthcoming boxed set of Dylan’s religious songs.  If you’ve not heard it yet, it is currently linked to Rolling Stone and many other on line magazines.

As lots of us said upon first hearing it is very similar to Where are you tonight?  written at the end of 1977.  Others have noted the similarity to “You Can’t Always Get what you want” by the Rolling Stones, or Dylan’s “Angelina”.

As for the context, of course I am not quite sure of the exact order these songs were written in, but here is my best guess for 1980.

• Are you ready?
• I will love him
• Cover Down 
• Ain’t gonna go to hell for anybody
• Property of Jesus
• Every grain of sand
• Caribbean Wind
• Groom’s still waiting at the alter
• Yonder comes sin
• Let’s keep it between us
• Making a liar out of me
• City of Gold

Now if you look at that list you’ll see this was a rich vein of form that Bob was in at that time: you’ve got Every Grain of Sand, Caribbean Wind, Groom’s still waiting, Yonder Comes Sin, and I’d also put “Let’s keep it between us” right up there.   So if you were going to find a missing masterpiece then this is most certainly a good place to look.  And if you are looking for something more “religious” than some of those songs, Bob ended the year with “City of Gold” – so he was still religiously inclined, even though he’d moved away from making every song a religious song.  Indeed there are actually elements of “Making a liar” in “City of Gold”, although I’d like to listen to both a dozen more times before taking that idea further.

But I have to say, if I were working for the record company, I’d made a CD available just of these 12 songs from this year, because this is one hell of a collection.  For any other song writer this would be the ultimate highlight of a career to have written this collection.  For Bob it was just another year.

So with this song in mind, the question is, who is Bob addressing his words to?

As we’ve seen so often on this site, trying to analyse a Dylan song line by line is a mug’s game because much of the time the overall vision encapsulated within the words is far more insightful than individual lines.

Therefore if we want to go beyond the individual lines (which with Dylan can so often be misleading) we do have to get some sort of context.  However to do this is so hard because so many of the lines are so good – and it is always possible that there is not meant to be any connection between the lines – maybe they are just each individual impressions.

However if this song was written to one person, that is one hell of a person Bob was addressing.  A young, struggling man or woman, who has learned so much, and who knows so much, and who has so much within him/herself to admire.  The mother of his children?  Or maybe to his young self?  Although other times he is seeming to write about someone no longer with us.  Or is it just no longer with him?

All options are possible, but I also keep coming back to the notion that Bob is addressing his own heritage – all the songs he has written and all the songs he will write.  I know I can’t prove it but I just love the notion that he is doing this.  He is in fact writing to himself about himself, and criticising himself.

Now that would be a huge challenge, but Bob is up to that, not least because this song has some wonderful lines in it, including this one utterly amazing stand out line

The hopes and fears and dreams of the discontented

And that adds to the notion that he is talking to himself, for isn’t that what Bob carried from the days of second album onwards?

So there are the possibilities: he’s talking about himself, he’s talking about the mother of his children…   But I want to try a different route, because this notion really does hit me very strongly, after hearing the song for a couple of days…

Bob is talking to his audience.

In this view Bob starts by telling his audience that they are all educated people who know what’s what.  And in loving his music and putting deep meanings into his lyrics they do have the best of intentions, and he can’t fault them for that, but that is not what really what he has been writing about.   They might not be able to effect change personally, but they really are trying to understand and trying to do the right thing…

I tell people, you just going through changes
And that you’re acquainted both with night and day
That your money’s good and you’re just being courageous
On them burning bridges knowing your feet are made of clay
Well I say you won’t be destroyed by your inventions
That you brought it all under captivity
And that you really do have all the best intentions
But you’re making a liar out of me

Bob was around 39 years old when he wrote this song, and most of his fans would probably at that time have been a bit younger than him.  Here he has the greatest respect for his fans and their desire to make a better life and a better world, but making him into a superstar who can actually tell them what to do and what to believe, well that is not right.  That is not what he is doing at all.  Just remember, “Don’t follow leaders.”

Well I say that you’re just young and self-tormented
But that deep down you understand
The hopes and fears and dreams of the discontented
That threaten now to overtake your promised land
Well I say you’d not sow discord among brothers
Nor drain a man of his integrity
That you remember the cries of orphans and their mothers
But you’re making a liar out of me
But you’re making a liar out of me

This then follows on my earlier commentary that maybe Bob’s message across many of his songs, (if there is an overarching message at all) is that it is all a mess, and that if anyone can sort out the future it is the young, the idealists – we have the third verse in which he changes tack, and seems to turn his ire on religion and religious leaders – the flesh and blood of the Communion (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).

The relgious leaders can be trusted, but if they are seeking to use Dylan as a symbol of the Christian church (which still goes on, as I have commented elsewhere) then they are indeed making a liar out of Bob, because that is not what he is about at all.

Well I say that, that ain’t flesh and blood you’re drinking
In the wounded empire of your fool’s paradise
With a light above your head forever blinking
Turning virgins into merchandise
That you must have been beautiful when you were living
You remind me of some old-time used-to-be
I say you can be trusted with the power you been given
But you’re making a liar out of me

All in all he is full of praise for those who fight for a better world, but just doesn’t want them to do it by quoting Dylan.  To say of someone “That you stand up unafraid to believe in justice” is surely among the highest praise that can be given to a person, but as always Bob asks for the person striving to make this world a better place, that he or she does not quote Dylan along the way.

So many things so hard to say as you stumble
To take refuge in your offices of shame
As the earth beneath my feet begins to rumble
And your young men die for nothin’, not even fame
I say that someday you’ll begin to trust us
And that your conscience has not been slain by conformity
That you stand up unafraid to believe in justice
But you’re making a liar out of me
You’re making a liar out of me

The final verse has the suggestion that Bob was talking to an individual all the way through, and not all his fans as I have been suggesting, and of course that is possible, as indeed it is possible that he is speaking to different people in different places in the song – to his lover, his fans, the media, the mother of his children.

And he is careful to ensure that his criticism in the repeated lines at the end of each verse are not in any way the same as when he expressed disdain in some songs ten or more years before.  He’s saying, you are not misrepresenting all my words, but by taking my writings in a particular way, you are getting me wrong.

Well I can hear the sound of distant thunder
From an open window at the end of every hall
Now that you’re gone I got to wonder
If you ever were here at all
I say you never sacrificed my children
To some false god of infidelity
And that it’s not the Tower of Babel that you’re building
But you’re making a liar out of me
You’re making a liar out of me
Well you’re making a liar out of me

As I say, in the end it comes across to me as another way of saying “Don’t follow leaders,” especially in this case the leader is him.  And he doesn’t want that.  And the world doesn’t need that.  Because there are good people out there who can take things forward.

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

Many of the song lyrics of Bob Dylan reveal the influences of poets TS Eliot, Walt Whitman, and Percy Shelley:

When Bob Dylan read a bit of TS Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’ on the air, he introduced the the poem by saying it ‘commenorated the death of Abraham Lincoln’:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain
(TS Eliot: The Wasteland)

Actually, the poem to which Dylan refers is one by Walt Whitman:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western
sky in the night
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with every returning spring
(Walt Whitman: When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed)

Whitman commemorates Lincoln’s death in another poem too:

But O heart! heart! heart!
O bleeding drops of red
Where on the deck my Captain lies
Fallen cold and dead
(Walt Whitman: O Captain! My Captain!)

In a number of his song lyrics, Dylan makes reference to Walt Whitman’s poetry:

All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she
catches the main words only
Sentences broken, ‘gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry
skirmish, taken to hospital
At present low, but soon will be better ….
While they stand at the home at the door he is dead already
(Walt Whitman: Come Up From The Fields Father)

Below again, a connection to the American Civil War:

A letter came to to mother
Came today
Gunshot wound to the breast
Is what it did say
But he’ll be better soon
He’s in a hospital bed
But he’ll never be better
He’s already dead
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

The Modernist poetry of TS Eliot, Bob Dylan also draws upon:

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton
Still and white
(TS Eliot: Rhapsody On A Windy Night)

Ezra Pound and TS Eliot emphasize, instead of abstract language, the use of sense-evoking images:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
From from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

And the use of images in poetry to create a sense of movement:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock)

Dylan does the same in song lyrics:

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants too
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

The exotic and gothic imagery of Romantic poet Percy Shelley be there in Bob Dylan’s song lyrics as well:

As within a furnace bright
Column, tower, and dome, and spire
Shine the obelisks of fire
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies
(Percy Shelley: Euganean Hill)

As in the following:

There’s a woman on my lap, she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting for a train
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

Bringing it all back home to the lines from ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ quoted above:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing
(Percy Shelley: Ode To The West Wind)

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 Tony Attwood

In once sense “Silent Weekend” is quite remarkable, for it is just about the only rock song that I know which deals with narcissism and emotional abuse.

The “silent treatment” that the song refers to is usually delivered by a wholly self-absorbed individual, and it has the aim of putting the abusive person in control while avoiding any attempt at resolving whatever caused the difficulty.  It is in fact a form of punishment  which generally relates to tiny or even imagined slights, as for example, when one person in the relationship turns up, or comes home, slightly late.

Quite often the trauma that the silent treatment gives is exactly what the narcissistic person wants to get: a sense of control.  The damage that can be suffered by a person in receipt of such behaviour over a period of time can be enormous, sometimes even ending in a total mental breakdown.

Narcissistic people who engage in this form of activity generally choose people who have high levels of emotional intelligence, who have conflict resolution skills, and are willing to compromise at all levels to overcome the trauma.  Unfortunately each attempt at resolution just gives the narcissist more power.  The efforts are met with disdain and contempt.  If you have ever heard the phrase, “If you really loved me you would understand,” (without any further explanation or any variation on that), you may well have witnessed this.

The fact is the person with the huge psychological problems is the narcissist, but the person who gets hurt is the decent, open, reasonable other party who wants to solve the problem.

So not a normal topic for a rock song, but Dylan has a good bash.  It’s a 12 bar blues format and a middle 8 with a modulation in the standard pop mode.  So nothing particularly special from the music – but the lyrics really do take us on an unusual journey.  In essence it is, “You were five minutes late so I am going to give you a weekend of hell so I can establish control.”

Given that the lyrics are not completely clear in their meaning, especially towards the end, it is possible Dylan is also talking about psychological projection which occurs when people deny that they possess certain unconscious impulses or qualities and instead attribute them to others – most commonly the person they are with.

In a typical example, one person (in my example the woman) in a relationship might spend many hours a week speaking on the phone to her friends or relations, but when her partner has a single half hour phone call with a friend or relation, she blames him for being unreasonable and forgetting she is here.

The opening verse sets out fairly and squarely where we are

Silent weekend
My baby she gave it to me
Silent weekend
My baby she gave it to me
She’s actin’ tough and hardy
She says it ain’t my party
And she’s leavin’ me in misery

But then come the odd lyrics.  On the official Dylan site we don’t get the lyrics that turn up on the recording – at least not the lyrics on Bootleg Vol 11.   The website gives us

Silent weekend
My baby she took me by surprise
Silent weekend
My baby she took me by surprise
She’s rockin’ and a-reelin’
Head up to ceiling
An’ swinging with some other guys

This really takes us away from the main thread of the song – the psychological issues that it deals with, but the actual verse 2 on the album does seem to keep the sense of the song moving along.  It is something like this

Silent weekend
My baby she took me by the heart
Silent weekend
My baby she took me by the heart
She’s thinkin’ about disposin’
But I know I know she’s dozin’
And she’s tearin’ it all apart

So the singer is stuck, because short of a very solid period of psychological support and help people either with narcissism or who engage in psychological projection (or both) they will just keep on and on doing it.  Indeed they normally genuinely think it is the other person who is causing all the problems, and will spend forever claiming they are the injured party and how he/she has made life so awful.  If they change partners they do it again, and then bemoan the fact that they always meet the wrong sort of guy, whereas of course it is the narcissist who is the cause of all the problems.

Dylan moves on…

Silent weekend
Oh Lord, I wish Monday would come
Silent weekend
Oh Lord, I sure wish Monday would come
She’s uppity, she’s rollin’
She’s in the groove, she’s strolling
Over to the jukebox playin’ deaf and dumb

The Middle 8 with modulation deals with the man’s attempts to resolve the situation

Well, I done a whole lotta thinkin’ ’bout a whole lot of cheatin’
And I, maybe I did some just to please
But I just walloped a lotta pizza after makin’ our peace
Puts ya down on bended knees

But of course bended knees never work, because with people with these psychological problems, the drive to cause the problems is their prime motivation.

Silent weekend
Man alive, I’m burnin’ up on my brain
Silent weekend
Man alive, I’m burnin’ up on my brain
She knows when I’m just teasin’
But it’s not likely in the season
To open up a passenger train

There’s some fun lines in this song such as

She’s uppity, she’s rollin’
She’s in the groove, she’s strolling
Over to the jukebox playin’ deaf and dumb

and later…

I just walloped a lotta pizza after makin’ our peace
Puts ya down on bended knees

I’m not sure I get the passenger train reference though but Bob’s creative spirit was on a high.  I guess the song was never fully worked through or finished though, and if it had been, it could have been a cracker.

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

With Dylan, there’s no pinning him down.

by Tony Attwood

In a rather interesting piece of pop and rock research the American news and culture website Quartz collected data from the AllMusic site on 53,630 artists, of which about 25,600 were listed as having influenced or been influenced by at least one other artist.

You can read how they collected the data and see the full sets of data on their web site with the link above, but for now here is the top of the “100 most influential musicians” list with the number of citations in each case.

1. Beatles 1230
2. Dylan 669
3. Rolling Stones 557
4. Bowie 432
5. Velvet Underground 425
6. Beach Boys 442
7. Kinks 384
8. Neil Young 374
9. Jimi Hendrix 371
10. The Byrds 360

I find that interesting because these individuals and bands have been an influence on me but I know that many of my friends across the years don’t really rate them or even know them all.  For example I was rather taken with finding Brian Eno at number 13.  His is a name not one that everyone (who would know the list above) would immediately recognise, I think.

As Quartz says, the “Names at the top may no surprise—consider it an obligatory homage for any modern-day rock artist to list The Beatles as an influence in press interviews, for example—but the rankings get more interesting when you look a bit further down the list.

“The Velvet Underground is several times more influential than more easily recognizable “top” artists like Nirvana and Bruce Springsteen; Madonna, one of the biggest pop stars of the last few decades, is not high up at all.”

What it suggests is that “influence” is completely different from “popularity”.  In other words artists are influenced by innovators, whilst popularity is based on something completely different.  It is obvious when you think about it – I guess I had simply never thought about it.

Which leads me to ask myself: what is it about Dylan that has given him such an influence?

By this I don’t mean just that he is a great songwriter, I wonder what else there is in Dylan that make musicians see Dylan as such a huge influence on their own work.

Why do so many song writers rank Dylan as the greatest influence on their songwriting?

Of course I don’t have the resources to ask them, but I came up with these possibilities…

1: Because he writes about subjects that were taboo before he came along.

I have mentioned this before in articles but it is so fundamental I think it is worth repeating.  The most obvious example is Dylan’s songs of disdain.  While others have written about lost love, and there are all the traditional blues about the duplicity of women, Dylan picked on individuals and has really gone on the attack.

Ballad in Plain D, Like a Rolling Stone, Please Crawl Out Your Window, Positively 4th Street…. if Dylan takes a dislike to you it is a good idea to get out of the way.  Fast.

But listen also his use of nursery rhymes, his political pieces, his songs about boxing, his tales of the downtrodden farmers.  Dylan has shown that with rock music nothing is out of bounds.

2: Because he keeps up the touring and has an absolute fascination with being on the road.

Dylan’s fascination with endless touring is not only expressed in the Never Ending Tour, but also in terms of his songs of leaving and moving on – a tradition he picked up particularly from Irish folk music, although it is to be found in many other genres.

It is not the case of moving on for a purpose, but rather just moving on because that’s what you do.  The Irish song “The Parting Glass” is worth a listen if you don’t know it.

But it is more than that.  It is his desire to experiment continuously, even if the experiments don’t work.  He’ll never stop trying.

3: Because he covers such a huge range of different approaches to the art of the song – some of which have rarely been considered before.

In February 2016 I had a bash at looking at different approaches to art in all its forms, and then how these approaches relate to song, and then how Dylan has, or has not, faced them.

What I found was that he really does seem to have faced up to many of the challenges of making the song an art form that can approach all the different types of art that exist in Western Society.  In short he has raised the popular song to a much higher art form than it ever was before.  He has revolutionised the popular song but seeing it through each of these types of art…

• Representational art
• Symbolic art
• Abstract Art
• Surreal Art
• Hidden meanings in Art
• Fictional Art
• Religious Art and Propaganda

The complete article is on the site here.

4: Because he endlessly re-works his songs into new versions which I don’t think anyone else has ever done with their own songs, to such an extent before.

Some of these new renditions become almost like new songs, others, well, sometimes I wonder why he kept the new arrangement.  But hearing Desolation Row as a dance song remains one of the highlights of my times watching Dylan perform, and he has done this sort of thing so many, many times his ability to re-invent himself seems endless.  And how much I wish I had been there to hear the piano and organ reworking of “When He Returns”.

He could make an album called “Dylan plays Dylan” of a collection of songs that have been utterly reworked on the Tour, and I guarantee it would at the top of the charts for a year and a half.

5:  Because he has endlessly been working his way through different genres

Bob has shown a couple of generations that nothing is out of bounds.  You’re a folk singer, fine, pick up the electric guitars.   You just been playing electric rock, great, take it right back and play simple three verse songs that tell tales of the past.  Be funny in your songs.  Be ludicrous.  Be incomprehensible.  Try and merge pop art, the beat movement and rock n roll – and do it successfully.  Suddenly veer off into country and western which at least in terms of its lyrics is the opposite of where you’ve been.  Start singing religious songs, rework old classics into new songs, take the hits of the 1920s and 1930s and rework them, sing Christmas songs.

Has anyone ever done all that before?  I don’t think so.

6: Because he has never been afraid to experiment no matter what critics say. He has never stood still.

Part five above would not be possible if Bob Dylan was afraid of the critics.  He’s not – and he never has been.  It is not that since he became rich and famous he decided to do what he liked, but rather he has always done what he liked right from the start when he created an album called Times they are a Changing which contained a collection of songs that were primarily about nothing much changing.

7: Because he refuses to explain

Occasionally Bob does tell us a bit about some of his songs, but when he does you know that the next time he does an interview, he’ll say the opposite.

Most musicians have accepted the media on the media’s terms.  Bob Dylan demands that the media accept him on his terms.   Ask him what a certain song means and maybe if you have his attention for a while he’ll tell you, but you’ll never know if it is what he means.

Except maybe at the Musicares conference that we covered on this site.  If you are interested in Dylan’s most serious summary of how he writes songs that speech is an absolute must read.

8: Because he’s a friend of two Presidents.

Jimmy Carter and Barak Obama.

I know it has been quoted a million times but it is such a wonderful quote I want to do it again.  President Obama on the first time Bob Dylan came to the White House to perform at what in Britain we would call a “Command Performance”.  (Sorry don’t know what the phrase is in the USA).

The President said,

“Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practising before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that.

“He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.’ A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves.

“And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought:  That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesing and grinning with you. You want him to be a little sceptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”

9: Because he’s cautious about explaining or pontificating about his works.

Except during one period when he turned logic upside down by telling us in a lecture during his concerts about the meaning of the religious songs, when the meaning was totally obvious.  How very Dylan.  The time you don’t need an explanation you get one.  The rest of the time he doesn’t even announce the title.

10: Because he is so so incredibly knowledgeable about literature and the musical past.

I must admit I had only a partial knowledge on this score before Larry came along and started writing for this site.  I picked up some references here and there, elements from poems I had read or studied, classical works, but it was not until recently that I realised just how wide spread these references were.

There is a partial index of Larry’s work, in which articles on this site about influences on Dylan are listed by the writers Dylan is referencing or using.

Conclusion

So why do so many musicians rate Dylan so highly?  I suspect for some it is because of just one of those reasons.  For some it might be several.  For others it could be something completely different.

And that’s the point.  As the President said, with Dylan, there is no pinning him down.

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 Tony Attwood

“Minstrel Boy” is an extraordinary Dylan song that really doesn’t sound like a Dylan composition.  Indeed if I were to hear it without any knowledge of the song, I don’t think I’d guess it was Dylan at all.

There has been considerable discussion as to when it was written.  The copyright information suggests 1969 – when it was performed at the Isle of Wight Festival.  But Dylan has suggested it came to him during the Basement Tape period.

We have two versions of it: one from Bootleg 11 and one from Self Portrait and both are really worth a listen if you don’t know the song.  It is just so unexpected.

The suggestion is that Bob was hitting back at everyone who was wanting more and more product, more and more songs, more albums, and all at a time when he wasn’t too sure he really wanted to write much more.  He felt controlled, pushed around, a minstrel boy holding out his hand for scraps, made to play like a servant in medieval times before his masters.

Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it roll?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul?

In this simple understanding of the song, Dylan is “Lucky” having got to the top of the rock, the personality hill, but he really feels bad about everything that he sees, because he’s just had enough.  And his personal propulsion unit has no reverse gear…

Oh, Lucky’s been drivin’ a long, long time
And now he’s stuck on top of the hill
With twelve forward gears, it’s been a long hard climb
And with all of them ladies, though, he’s lonely still

The change of tempo and rhythm between the chorus and verse is particularly impressive, and if not unique in Dylan’s songs, it is certainly unusual.

And if there was ever any doubt as to who he was singing about, he is, as he says at the end, still on the road.

Well, he deep in number and heavy in toil
Mighty Mockingbird, he still has such a heavy load
Beneath his bound’ries, what more can I tell
With all of his trav’lin’, but I’m still on that road

As it turns out, that was just about it for this style of writing, but it was an avenue that Bob could have taken further had he wanted, I am sure.

So often in writing the reviews of less famous Dylan songs I find myself suddenly thinking of another piece written maybe years before or years after, in which I get the feeling Bob has returned to the same thoughts as before.

I’m not too sure how I can justify the claim of a link between “Minstrel Boy” and “Well well well” but it just feels like there is something that crosses time between the two songs…

take care of your body like you care for your soul
don’t dig yourself into a hole
until you’ve paid the price you can’t know what it’s worth
the air water fire and earth

We’re all moving on all the time, but really, we all have basic needs that have to be satisfied, and when those needs are not looked after, no matter who we are, we are in trouble.

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 Tony Attwood

Quite why the wonderful people at Sony Music, Columbia Music and BobDylan.com collectively chose to put the “alternate version” of “Don’t ya tell Henry” on The Bootleg Series 11 is something that I’ve never been that sure about.  We already had the version from the original Basement Tapes LP, and it was going to turn up on the complete Basement Tapes multibox set thing, so did it need another outing?

Well, who am I to say?  And my view that the Bootleg 11 version is a jam, a messing about, a trombonist trying to find where the rest of the gang are, is not particularly relevant.  The song obviously means a lot to the Band, and they are not guys whose view is to be dismissed lightly.

For a long time I had the feeling that this song couldn’t just be about a fishing trip, and I came to suspect that there was some American slang or hidden meanings that I just don’t understand lurking in all this.

And that feeling is further established by this commentary that was published on Something Else Reviews:

“Dylan would scribble something out like Don’t Ya Tell Henry, then everyone would wander downstairs at this house outside of West Saugerties, New York, and put things to tape. Dylan (and, to some degree even then, Robertson) had begun immersing himself in Southern gothic tales, murder ballads, scarifying folk and morality plays, but it was [Levon] Helm — the native of Turkey Scratch, Arkansas — who brought some sense of historical context to such pursuits. These weren’t exotic curios to him; they were like muscle memory. That’s why this version of “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” with Levon out front, is so clearly superior.”

These are the connections that I am not getting, even after being told about them.  But both Nick Deriso who wrote the SomethingElse review and I can agree on some things.  This is, as he says, a “wandering, nonsense-talking sot as he ambles from the river around to the beanery…”

But, he adds, “somewhere beyond that winking fun, there looms something that feels like very bad karma for this too-intrepid adventurer.”

And indeed that’s not really what I get.  And that’s my fault, I’m sure.   The review continues…

“This is some of the deepest funny music that anyone has ever made,” long-time Village Voice critic Robert Christgau says in the film Down in the Flood: Associations and Collaborations. “One of the reasons it’s so satisfying is that there is all of this truth and wisdom, and struggle and pain in it. But the funniness sort of triumphs. It prevails. That makes it feel very good.”

The Something Else review has a lot more to say and the site also has a recording of The Band at Woodstock playing this song – scroll down that page to find the link.

The original version (original in the sense that it came out on the LP in 1976) is seemingly rehearsed, coherent at least in the playing (if not in the meaning of the lyrics) and quite a jolly bouncy piece.  The alternate version is, well, not something I have played between getting the CD and writing this review quite a bit later.

The most obvious explanation is indeed that it is about a fishing trip.  Less obvious is that it is about Apple Corps – the Beatles company.  I’m not sure why or how. Maybe that’s a dumb idea.  Oh and there are arguments as to when the recordings were made: 1967 or 1975.

The lyrics published on BobDylan.com are from the Volume 11 version, not the more coherent original Basement Tapes LP version.  In case you are not fully familiar with the song here it is the opening as published on the Dylan website.

I went down to the river on a Saturday morn
A-lookin’ around just to see who’s born
I found a little chicken down on his knees
I went up and yelled to him, “Please, please, please!”
He said, “Don’t ya tell Henry
Don’t ya tell Henry
Don’t ya tell Henry
Apple’s got your fly”

And if you really are keen to know about the history of this song, there’s a live version of it by the Band on the internet – although the recording is not exactly what we used to call hi-fi.

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

And by the way if you don’t know SomethingElseReviews you really might enjoy a flip through their work.  It’s very good stuff.

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 Tony Attwood

One of the great things about writing reviews of some of the more obscure Dylan songs from the Basement Tapes era is the tracing back of the influences playing on Bob’s mind as he quickly made up the lyrics and evolved the song into where ever he felt it could go.

Such digging around as is needed to find some of these points of origin can hit lots of blank walls, but just occasionally I find myself listening to absolute gems that either I had missed in my earlier years or heard, but having been distracted from by the events of growing up, having a family, loving the children, and trying to make a living, I’d forgotten about.

Take “Baby won’t you be your baby”.  This is based around a traditional American song “Mama don’t allow” slowed right down with some variations in the tune and of course new words.  But underneath it all, “Baby” is “Mama don’t allow”.

As with all songs that have become part of the tradition of folk music, the lyrics vary, but here’s how the old song is normally heard these days…

Mama don’t allow no music playin’ round here, 
Mama don’t allow no music playin’ round here, 
Well, we don’t care what Mama don’t allow 
Gonna play that music anyhow, 
Mama don’t allow no music playin’ round here.

Mama don’t allow no guitar playin’ round here,
Mama don’t allow no guitar playin’ round here,
Well, we don’t care what Mama don’t allow 
Gonna play that guitar anyhow, 
Mama don’t allow no guitar playin’ round here.

Now while I can generally have a bash at pointing to the origins of folk songs in the British and Irish traditions I’m on much shakier ground with American folk music, so forgive me if I am wrong, but the earliest recording I’ve been able to trace is a 1928 recording, by Riley Puckett.  From this it is clear that the song has mutated dramatically over the years, but it is at its heart the same song that travelled having travelled through the century we still know as “Mama don’t allow”.  Here it is

Over the years it was one of those songs that everyone had a go at.  By the early 1960s, before the Basement Tapes, it had changed quite a lot.  Flatt and Scruggs made a 45rpm of it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mXpgGgpkM

But if you have five minutes to spare I would really recommend a wonderful live version of this song by JJ Cale.  It has mutated further, but this is just such a lovely relaxed rendition I wanted to include it…

Anyway, enough raving over JJ, and back to Bob.  What he does is slow the whole song down from its normal frantic pace, takes it to a speed closer to the 1928 version and give it new words, which for some reason are not on the official Bob Dylan site.   But the eternally reliable Eyolf Østrem has done the job for them.  Here they are…

Well, I looked as far as I could see, baby
I looked as far as I could see, baby
Well, I looked as far as I could see,
All mankind in misery,
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

From the start we’re in gloom and doom territory.  It’s all falling apart, there’s nothing we can do about it, but you and I should stick together in this mess.

Well, I looked east, I looked west, baby
I looked east, I looked west, baby
Well, I looked east, I looked west
There was nothing I could see that I liked the best
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

So that does it for the people who are into Zen Buddhism and Taoism, as much for western civilisation with its emphasis of growth, wealth, and ultimately destroying the environment.

Go down the land, drop your heavy load, baby
Go down the land, drop your load, baby
Go down the land, drop your load,
Just don’t look back, it’s a dead end road
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

There’s no point in accumulating wealth because it’s a mess everywhere and as Bob ultimately got around to telling us in Things have changed, the world will explode.  “Dead end road” and “world will explode” – its been a constant through much of Bob’s writing.

Now east and west the fire will rise, baby
East and west the fire will rise, baby
East and west the fire will rise
Shut your mouth, close your eyes,
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

But Bob fears there might be a bit of credibility lacking in his plea…

Oh, I been off savin’ your time, baby
I ain’t tryin’ to mess, I’ll just save your time, baby
I ain’t tryin’ to mess, just save your time,
But it’s your life, it’s not mine
Baby, won’t you be my baby?

It’s not great music, but it’s ok… and the argument that lyrically we were on a journey that ended up with “All Along the Watchtower” certainly has some merit.

Heylin quotes Dylan talking to Mary Travers (of Peter Paul and Mary who of course benefited so much from Dylan’s writing until they had a falling out over the recording of “Too Much of Nothing”), in which looking back at the Basement Tape songs Dylan said, “it was just songs which we’d come to this basement out in the woods and record… The songs were written in five, ten minutes.”

He also said much later, to Denise Worrell (again quoted in Heylin) “I thought they were what they were – a bunch of guys hanging out down in the basement making up songs.”

So there we have it: a slowed down version of one of the absolute bedrock classics of 20th century American folksongs,  changed from an expression of annoyance about parental restrictions to a foretelling of the end of the world.

Quite a journey.

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

The spoken Romantic ‘Beat Poetry’ of Vachel Lindsay, a social conservative who thinks of America as a decadent Babylon, presents black Africans and American ‘Indians’ as ‘noble savages’ from another world.

He contrasts the ideals that human beings in modern America claim they aspire to with the reality of their actions, a thematic path down which singer/songwriter Bob Dylan wanders:

Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry
The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high
The floor was atremble, the door was ajar
White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar
I rushed to the dooryard. The city was gone
My home was a hut without orchard or lawn
It was mud smear and logs near a whispering stream
Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream
(Vachel Lindsay: The Ghosts Of The Buffaloes)

Likewise below, imagery of a simpler time, with ‘hogs’ replacing Vachel’s ‘logs’:

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

The song presents the theme that the burden of resonsibility for the welfare of others has been more and more shifted from the shoulders of individuals to those of God and Government – farther from the dream of an Eden-on-Earth drift the thoughts of modern man:

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness
(Vachel Lindsay: Why I Voted The Socialist Ticket)

Hypocritical officialdom, rather than powerless individuals, gets lots of the blame in song following:

You fasten the trigger
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count get higher
You hide in your mansion
As the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
(Bob Dylan: Masters Of War)

The theme occurs in the following poem:

This is the sin against the Holy Ghost
This is the sin no purging can atone
To send forth repine in the name of Christ
To set the face, and make the heart of stone
(Vachel Lindsay: The Unpardonable Sin)

That theme echoes in the next song by Bob Dylan, but there is also implied the refusal to accept responsibility for his/her own behaviour on the part of the individual who’s got little power:

Oh, the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh, the country was young
With God on its side
(Bob Dylan: With God On Our Side)

Dogmatically religious, Vachel Lindsay dislikes jazz and blues music even as he uses those music styles to get his ‘good old days’ conservative message across to Jazz Age audiences:

When Jezebel put on her tiaras and looked grand
Her three-piece pajamas and her diamond bosom-band
And stopped the honest prophets as they marched
upon their way
And slaughtered them and hung them in her hearty
wholesale way
She liked her wicked chops
As she pulled out the stops
And she ordered the saxaphones to play
(Vachel Lindsay: The Curse Of The Saxaphone)

Dylan paints a surrealistic picture of Babylonian America under the sway of Jezebel riding upon her golden calf:

The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

Bob Dylan ĺooks at the darker side of America, particularly it’s institution of slavery, through the watery eyes of poet Walt Whitman. Dylan holds on to the possibility of a moral healing in the future though it’s fading fast in the face of modern-day economic and political reality:

Gunshot wound to the breast
Is what it did say
But he’ll be better soon
He’s in a hospital bed
But he’ll never be better
He’s already dead
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

In his blighted Romantic poetry, Walt Whitman writes:

Sentences broken, ‘Gunshot wound to the breast
Cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital
At present low, but soon will be better’ ….
Alas poor boy, he will never be better ….
(Walt Whitman: Come Up From The Fields Father)

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 Tony Attwood

I was writing recently about lines from Bob Dylan which are taken from within his songs (ie not titles or opening lines) and which really have moved me.

And pondering whether I could take this any further forward, I saw a comment on this site about Black Diamond Bay and what a tremendous piece of music it is, and I immediately thought of one line from that song.  It seems a totally innocuous line on the surface, but it still carries a punch and a half for me.   And so then I wondered if it was significant in a broader context.

Now I doubt if anyone else has ever particularly noticed it.  It reads…

There’s really nothin’ anyone can say

The final verse of the song is an absolutely astounding piece of writing – having told us the story of the strange goings on among the locals and tourists in Black Diamond Bay we are then told that despite these extraordinary, literally earth shattering events

Didn’t seem like much was happenin’,
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
Seems like every time you turn around
There’s another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear
And there’s really nothin’ anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway
To Black Diamond Bay

The horror stories from around the world ultimately leave us unmoved, we carry on our own lives.

It’s a valid point, but the man singing the line “There’s really nothin’ anyone can say” is the man who has had more to say about a lot of stuff than most people: Bob Dylan.  But I began to wonder, does Bob believe that things can change?

Clearly in a religious context he does or at least he did for a while, for he wrote so many songs telling us that if one will simply repent and accept the Lord God as, well, the Lord God, then we will be saved.   I am simplifying of course, and don’t want to get distracted by this point, but basically the message has always seemed to me to be, repent and love the Lord and then come judgement day you are ok.  Sinners like me have had it.  That’s all there is.

I have also commented before about the oddity I find in the LP “Times they are a-changing” in that the title song is about the world changing no matter what anyone does while the rest of it is pretty much about the world being as it is, and that’s that.

On the title track we have to “accept it that soon, you’ll be drenched to the bone”.  And so we have to swim along with the tide.  Us writers are warned not to speak too soon, for the change is going on, and we really don’t know where it is going.  And we can’t affect anything.

Our elected representatives are told not to get in the way or try to stop things – it is all happening.  And as for worried parents, all they can do is accept the new way and not do anything either.   In fact there is a lot of not doing anything.

Indeed as the last verse tells us “the order is rapidly fading.”   Change is set in time, and that’s how it is.  As for the rest of the album, it follows the same view: the road is set there ain’t nothing we can do.   Hollis Brown and his family die because rural poverty and deprivation never changes.  As long as people believe they have God on their side, there will be wars.  Those who want to keep moving on will just keep on moving on, the mining communities of North Country Blues will continue to die…

The one song that matches the hope of a new future that is shown on the title track, is “When the Ship Comes In” and yet even here there is nothing for us to do to make the world better.  We just wait for that magic moment for the ship to come in.

Charge forward through the years to “Things have changed” and you get the same notion, except that he has experienced so much that he can say that “Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove.”

Indeed if you want a poetic couplet that conveys the whole message that there is nothing we can do try this one…

The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Followed by the absolute statement of fatalism

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet

And if you still haven’t got it

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie

Or try “Tangled up in Blue”.   It is a song in which things happen, not a song in which anyone does anything to make things better, except maybe you could argue that he does do something – he walks away from her.   He meets her by chance, they drift apart, he gets jobs here and there.  Even at the end he’s still on the road heading for another joint.

Or if you still don’t believe this notion, try the song Dylan has played on stage more than any other: “All along the watchtower” – played over 2250 times.  “There must be some way out of here” – except no one has any idea what it is.  The end of the song says it all

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

It is just that stuff happens.

Of course much of this comes from the blues – the blues is in essence the music of the powerless, the drifting men for whom there is nothing except work, being cheated by fate, drink and sex.  That’s it, that’s all you have, there is nothing you can do about it.  It’s a pretty awful message for the women too.

But let’s jump to more recent times – and as with my song selections above I am staying with songs that Dylan performs on stage a lot.   Take “Summer Days” (just under 850 plays on stage at the last count.)

Well, my back has been to the wall for so long, it seems like it’s stuck
Why don’t you break my heart one more time just for good luck

And as that song bounces towards its end

Yes, I’m leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift
Gonna break the roof in—set fire to the place as a parting gift

My point is that from his earliest days to now, the central theme of Bob’s work is that the world is a pretty screwed up place and there is nothing anyone can do about it.  That is the message to a woman who wants to love him, that is the message to all of us.

And if we consider broader things, well, Bob’s just hanging on in there because it’s all right ma, it’s life and life only.  That’s how it is.  Forget progress, it’s just a mess.

This is not to say Bob is not brilliant at all this.  The couplet at the end of “Love Sick” is a masterpiece of despair.  I’ll add the two lines before, to give the context.

I’m sick of love; I wish I’d never met you
I’m sick of love; I’m trying to forget you

Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to be with you

Of course maybe he’s right, and maybe he’s always been right, that there is nothing any of us can do to make things better.  Maybe that really is just how it goes and how it is.

There’s something approaching a complete summation of this attitude that everything is screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it in “Watching the River Flow”

People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook

In one real sense what I would love “Watching the River Flow” to be about is a Taoist reflection on life and the ability of the mind to sit back and observe and contemplate and be at one with the world, but Bob takes it in another direction (as of course is his utter right – he’s the genius, I’m just the commentator).  And he’s thoroughly fed up.

The other great song from 1971 – “When I paint my masterpiece” has the same spirit of dejection and almost fatalistic hopelessness.

Someday, everything is gonna be diff’rent
When I paint my masterpiece

Working on this website, trying to take in everything Dylan has written, trying (very inadequately I know) to get a grip on his genius and understand what drives him, I endlessly find myself coming back to lines such as

Maybe someday, you will understand
That something for nothing is everybody’s plan

Now if you have been reading here for a while you may have read my ravings over the live performances of “When He Returns” which I rate as one of the greatest renditions of any of his compositions Bob has given us.

The iron hand it ain’t no match for the iron rod
The strongest wall will crumble and fall to a mighty God
For all those who have eyes and all those who have ears
It is only He who can reduce me to tears
Don’t you cry and don’t you die and don’t you burn
For like a thief in the night, He’ll replace wrong with right
When He returns

Bob’s mafia that tours the internet taking down illicit copies of his performances have got rid of most of the live versions of this song, ahead of the release of one of them on the forthcoming boxed set, but of late several more have popped up.  Listen to it quickly before it goes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPbWvj9SEcg

It’s not the same as the piano and organ version I’ve raved about before, but it is still worth listening to, and marvelling.

And here he is back on the piano with the organ accompaniment in the absolute ultimate classic performance : http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3r1sno

So yes, Bob can be positive, can direct, can tell us what (in his opinion) we ought to do to make life better.  He can also, disavow his old edict “Don’t follow leaders” – one of the few notions he has offered outside of his Christian period as a guidance of what we might do – although of course as soon as you follow that notion you are disregarding it.

Now obviously I know there is nothing in the A to Z of how to be a genius that says you have to tell those who marvel at your abilities how to run their lives.  What Dylan writes is up to him.  And I suspect it is this disassociation from messages of hope for change has led him to write the wonderful semi-abstract observations such as “Visions of Johanna” and “Tell Ol Bill” which if I were forced to pick two songs from his complete songbook, I would pick as the ultimate creations.  Semi-abstract observations.

In the end I guess I don’t need Bob to tell me things are going to be all right, when I have music like that.   But I still utterly marvel at what he did achieve in the religious period, when he was incredibly positive.   Here’s one more, before they take it down.  This is the absolute classic.   If only Bob could just occasionally take that positivity and express it in music in relation to a non-religious theme.

But then, who am I to tell the great man what to do?

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 Tony Attwood

When discussing “Times they are a changing” with a journalist from Melody Maker magazine Dylan is reported to have said that the song was “about the person who doesn’t take you seriously but expects you to take him seriously.”

Does Dylan demand that we take him seriously?   Much of the time he doesn’t really seem that bothered, although during the religious period of his writing he most certainly did want his message to be taken very seriously indeed.

This song thus is just about the antithesis of that area of thought, for it is hard to see anything within it that demands even concentration, let alone serious consideration.  By and large it is a good job that Dylan hasn’t demanded that we take this period of his work seriously.

The lines of the first verse tell you all you need to know.

You know, there’s two ol’ maids layin’ in the bed
One picked herself up an’ the other one, she said:
“Get your rocks off!
Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)
Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)
Get your rocks off-a me! (Get ’em off!)”

I can understand why a band sitting around just playing stuff, might decide to leave the tape running – providing of course they have got lots of tape.  And maybe they decide to keep the tape because by then Bob is incredibly famous and so all the sketches can be of use to historians who study such things.

But quite why anyone would bother to put this on an album – even an album of outtakes – is something I don’t get.   It’s not original, it is not interesting musically and it sure ain’t interesting lyrically.

Curiously though the phrase “Get your rocks off” was used again later…

“Rocks off” was also the opening track of the Rolling Stones album “Exile on Main Street”

But back to Dylan, You can of course leave the track playing to see what happens to verse two, but in case you really have had enough after verse one I’ll put the lyrics below.  (Forgive me if I omit the chorus, which is unchanging throughout.)

And to add a little more I’ll try and find other links from the song…

Well, you know, there late one night up on Blueberry Hill
One man turned to the other man and said, with a blood-curdlin’ chill, he said:
“Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)

Blueberry Hill is of course one of the all time classics from the period of the evolution of rock n roll, one of the points where the blues was introduced to public consciousness on a much broader scale than ever before.

It was actually first recorded by Gene Autry in 1940 and was part of the movie “The Singing Hill” (Gene Autry was incredibly famous as “the singing cowboy”) but the version most of us remember comes from Fats Domino in 1956.  Elvis Presley recorded it a year later.

You probably know it, but I thought I would throw it in, as a bit of relief from “Get your rocks off”.

But let us return to the theme of the article…  Verse 3

Well, you know, we was layin’ down around Mink Muscle Creek
One man said to the other man, he began to speak, he said:
“Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)

Now I have no idea if there is a Mink Muscle Creek – and in writing “muscle” I am following what is on the BobDylan web site.  But there was an Australian heavy metal band called Mink Mussel Creek and maybe Bob had heard them.  Who knows.

Well, you know, we was cruisin’ down the highway in a Greyhound bus
All kinds-a children in the side road, they was hollerin’ at us, sayin’:
“Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)

Yes well, even us Brits know about Greyhound busses.

But the best thing is to listen to it (if you must) on the bootleg album and then leave the CD playing, and thus listen to Sante Fe.

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.

Bob Dylan And Bottichelli, DaVinci, Delacroix, Duchamp, Picasso, And Van Gogh

by Larry Fyffe

As well as songs, poems, short stories, novels, and movies, Bob Dylan draws upon paintings in a number of his Freudian Surrealistic song lyrics:

Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wall flower freeze
When the jelly-face women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, ‘Jeeze,
I can’t find my knees’
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of a mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Johanna is Vincent Van Gogh’s sister-in-law who promotes her brother-in-law’s paintings after Van Gogh’s suicide, including those of the now-domesticated 45 million-year-old sunflower from North America -‘Sunflowers’-, and the dignified, somewhat colourful painting of his mother – ‘Portrait Of The Artist’s Mother’. Van Gogh describes cobalt blue as a ‘divine’ colour; Dylan, as the colour of ‘dissension.’

And I said, ‘There’s no locket
No picture of any mother I would pocket
Unless it’s been done by Van Gogh’
(Dylan: Positively Van Gogh)

Bob Dlyan uses Van Gogh-like images of women as restrained wallflowers:

Wallflower, wallflower
Won’t you dance with me?
I’m fallin’ in love with you
(Dylan: Wallflower)

Written with little conscious effort, ‘Visions Of Johanna’ makes reference to Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of ‘Mona Lisa’ with her restrained smile. Da Vinci also paints “Virgin And Child With St. Anne” in which Saint Anne’s daughter Mary wears a garment which, according to some psychanalysts, looks like a mothering bird:

And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape on the stage once had flowed
(Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Bob Dylan more than once refers to the mother image of women with their lasting psychological influence:

Now, if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend the doctor won’t even say what it is I’ve got
(Dylan: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues)

Marcel Duchamp, the Dadaist, parodies conventional bourgeois values, and transgenders Mona Lisa by painting a mustache on Lady Gherardini. The Dadaists juxtaposed incongruous objects with one another like mules and jewels, jellyfish and women.

Sandro Bottichelli paints idealized, graceful images of women including ‘Madonna With Child’ and “The Birth Of Venus” – on the half-shell is the mother goddess of Aeneas:

Got to hurry back to my hotel room
Where I got a date with Bottichelli’s niece
She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece
(Dylan: When I Paint My Masterpiece)

And there’s this song:

The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl on the half-shell would
keep you from harm
(Joan Baez: Diamonds And Rust)

Eugene Delacroix, after visiting Algiers and Tangier, paints exotic scenes in bright colours – works include ‘Women Of Algiers In Their Apartment’, with one of the women gazing out at the viewer, which Pablo Picasso later renders in the changing-point-of-view style of Cubism.

Workin’ for a while on a fishin’ boat
Right outside of Delacroix
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind
(Dylan: Tangled Up In Blue)

Norman Raeber renews Bob Dylan artistic drive by inspiring him to consciously write song lyrics that are like a painting from out of the past that is essentially unbounded by the past, present, and future of time; the Cubist-inspired song lyrics above double-references the American place name and the Romantic artist Delacroix. Below, the surrealistic-style singer covertly alludes to the French painter and his exotic depictions of women:

If you see her, say ‘hello’
She might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring
Is livin’ there I here
(Dylan: If You See Her, Say Hello)

Dylan’s often strives to turn his song lyrics into word-paintings.

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

There are English Romantic stories that idealise real or fabled characters from past history, like Robin Hood, who stands up for equity and justice in a society controlled by an aristocracy. Romantic Transcendentalists look back to the rural English countryside for solace from a rising materialistic and capitalistic order.

A troupe of Gothic writers, atop decaying castle walls, react to this Romantic optimism due to the horrors of imperial conquest, and it’s justification by the pseudo-science of Social Darwinism; they peer into mankind’s heart of darkness.

In the United States, American nature poets and writers are confronted with the Anti-Transcendentalist Gothic stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Therein are depicted deranged high-born kinsmen from a supposedly idyllic society that is controlled by a slave-holding aristocracy.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan brings the genre onto the stage of American folkrock. Exemplifying the American Gothic Revival is Grant Wood’s ambiguous-meaning painted picture of a Puritan-looking farmer, a self-sufficient individualist, holding a three-pronged pitchfork, standing beside his obedient wife.

Though there be no ruined castles of yore in the United States, there are lots of places housing gamblers, guns, and greed, inhabited by strange-looking and strange-acting characters.

It’s not always easy to discern how serious singer/songwriter Bob Dylan is when presenting the American Dream transformed to Gothic nightmare:

Gonna make a lot of money, gonna go up north
I’ll plant and I’ll harvest what the earth brings forth
The hammer’s on the table, the pitchfork’s on the shelf
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

In “Summer Days”, Dylan runs through American history from the days of Pocahontas, to the Roaring ‘2O’s, to Elvis Presley, and the terror at Waco, Texas – a storyline that features a declining society falling into depravity.

Playing with cards of irony is a game Bob Dylan is good at. Real-life anti-heroes, Dylan transforms into fantasy heroes. For example, the Southern gunslinger, cattle rustler, and killer John Hardin becomes a Robin Hood of the Old West:

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

Though not Dylan’s lyrics, in the following song, New York crime boss Joey Gallo is portrayed as a loving family man:

They called Joe ‘Crazy’, the baby they called
‘Kid Blast’
Some say they lived off gambling and runnin’
numbers too
It always seemed they got caught between the mob
and the men in blue
(Bob Dylan: Joey)

‘Lucky’ Zimmy himself takes on the persona of a gangster who is not only upset with the print media, but with his moll:

Someone’s got it in for me
They planting stories in the press
Whoever it is, I wish they’d cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died, it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

The Civil War drives Old Dixie down, but the Confederate-supporting Jesse James, the leader of a gang of bank robbers associated with horse thief Belle Starr, is placed by Bob Dylan on the same stage as slave-freeing Abraham Lincoln in a play about the broken American Dream:

From a cheerless room in a curtained gloom
I saw a star from heaven fall
I turned and looked again but it was gone
All I have and all I know
Is this dream of you
Which keeps me living on
(Bob Dylan: This Dream Of You)

The optimistic poetic ship of Romantic Transcendentalism hits the blood-red reefs of reality:

For you they call, the swaying mass, their
eager faces turning
Here Captain! dear father!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead
(Walt Whitman: O Captain, My Captain)

And the same ship of state smashes against the black rocks of American Gothic humour in Bob Dylan’s folk music:

As in the following lyrics:

The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun, who violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

And again in these lyrics – in real life history, gang member Ford shoots Jesse for the reward money:

Ain’t gonna hang no picture
Ain’t gonna hang no picture frame
Well, I might look like Robert Ford
But I feel like Jesse James
(Bob Dylan: Outlaw Blues)

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 Tony Attwood

Revised June 2018 with addition of another alternative version.

There are two versions of this song recorded: the Basement Tapes version (from 1967 and re-issued in 1975), and the Greatest Hits version in 1971.

It was first played in concert in March 1995, and played off and on until October 2005.   There is (at the moment of writing this) a video on line of a performance of the song.

And there is also a re-interpretation that has just come to my attention, which I really enjoyed…

Tedeschi Trucks Band Shares Video Of Rare Bob Dylan Cover

Just scroll down through the article to find the link.  Certainly is worth a listen.

The opening of the song tells us exactly where it is going

Crash on the levee, mama
Water’s gonna overflow
Swamp’s gonna rise
No boat’s gonna row
Now, you can train on down

In short this is the absolute end, not just a flood but The Flood in the style of the Old Testament.  And it is a theme that Dylan is interested in, at least to the extent of writing at least one other song seemingly specifically on the same topic: High Water (For Charley Patton).

What makes the song particularly interesting (apart from being a rollicking good bit of fun) is the chorus:

But oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
You’re gonna have to find yourself
Another best friend, somehow

But although this is Doomsday, the end of the world, the Second Coming, and yet the music goes rocking along – and this of course is the regular Dylan view of the world.   Those who have the true faith are ok – the rest of us: tough.

So with that sort of approach to the world, yes, when the end comes you can afford to do some rock n roll because, well, you’re ok, and for those who aren’t – well, that’s their fault.  They were warned, they were given the opportunity to change, but they chose not to.

So the absolute certainty is there…

Now, don’t you try an’ move me
You’re just gonna lose
There’s a crash on the levee
And, mama, you’ve been refused

And this of course is my fate, since I refuse to believe, so I’m gonna be refused entry to heaven too.  I’m not quite sure what good that does the Superior Being, but He’s got the power and I ain’t, so if that is what He wants (if He exists) then, He gets his way – and He’ll get away with it, because there is nothing else out there to stop Him.

I’m not quite sure about what happens later in the lyrics

Well, that high tide’s risin’
Mama, don’t you let me down
Pack up your suitcase
Mama, don’t you make a sound

There’s a very different version here

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

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 Tony Attwood

Let me confess, with this article I am really stepping out into a strange world – or perhaps better said I am offering up access to the strange world that I sometimes inhabit.  A world of lines and quotes that I carry around with me.  Often forgetting them for years and years until one day a situation is there and one of these lines pops into my head.

And of course because I am a Dylan fan, a lot of these lines are Dylan lines.  Not all, but a lot.

But not, let me stress, any old Dylan lines.  And not just Dylan lines I remember.  But lines that seem to carry a special connotation.

Now when I started writing this little piece I thought I’d just make a list of such lines, but at once I found there were too many.  So I started to invent some rules.  I would exclude certain types of Dylan lines.  Therefore I WON’T have

• Dylan lines that open a song
• Dylan lines that close a song
• Multiple lines – each must be just one line from a song
• Dylan lines that just sound good but actually can’t be made to mean anything at all.

Thus I started to look in my head for single lines that occur within songs that mean something to me and which seem to have stayed in my brain.

Now maybe this living with lines of songs and poems and indeed literature is something that just inflicts people like me who live their lives in words, reading, studying and writing.  I don’t really know, but I hope you can see where I am going.

A little while ago when we had a little discussion about “Mississippi” several readers of this site presented lines came out of that song – one in particular seems to be retained by many people who know Dylan’s work…

By Tony Attwood

Updated to clarify the issue of the two versions of Santa Fe on the bootleg series.

The first time we knew that there was more to Santa Fe than the version that appeared on the very first Bootleg compendium (1-3) was when the version of “Lyrics” turned up in 2004 with the song included but lyrics that even allowing for the poor sound quality of the Bootleg version, were clearly a total reworking of the song.  The song was released again on volume 11: but (to be quite clear) not with the new lyrics. Quite what the point was of putting the original version out there twice while the published lyrics showed a different version, I am not sure, but it quite clearly confused me, if no one else.

Certainly the original was recorded in 1967, and I’d say the new lyrics came from then too, but Heylin thinks that Dylan wouldn’t have pondered building a geodesic dome in 1967.  I doubt there is anything in Heylin’s suggestion however for  Buckminster Fuller was playing with the shape and using the phrase in the late 1940s and his patent of the geodesic dome is dated 1954.   (Larry’s comment below seems to back this up).

So I guess Heylin is suggesting Bob wasn’t up to speed on such matters in the late 1960s, but reading the early lyrics, but I can’t see how he can reach this conclusion.  Bob’s knowledge has always struck me as singularly diverse while being patchy in places, so I can’t see how the argument stands.  I’d say both sets of lyrics were written at the same time – the summer of 1967.

I can’t prove this of course, so to distract from my lack of knowledge here’s a picture of the Big Pink, simply because I haven’t put up many pictures on this site (not wanting to get engaged in copyright arguments with the big picture agencies).

Those who study such things have the line up as Dylan, acoustic guitar and vocals; Robertson, electric guitar; Hudson, piano; Danko, bass; Manuel, drums.

As time went by so the name of the song moved between Santa Fe, Santa-Fe and Santa Fé.  I am not too sure it makes any odds but it seems important to some commentators, so I thought I’d mention it.

The album notes for The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, state that the song is “a typical combination of nonsense and fun, just for the hell of it, really,” and that seems to be the general conclusion of a fair number of reviewers, but others such as in the AllMusic review find it more significant.  Still just an enjoyable song with no deep meaning, but a decent and likeable song nonetheless and certainly one that is worth keeping.

So it is either “a slight if charming little ditty,” and “little more than a joke” or a great songwriter showing why he is a great songwriter even when he is just sitting there making up lines as he goes along.

Now I am on the side that thinks there is more to it than a joke, and in this regard I am with Steve Gibbons, who formed the Dylan Project, a touring band of quality musicians that performs Dylan songs and has a very relaxed and good relationship with its audience where ever they play.  Santa Fe has been in their repertoire, and I’m pleased about that.

But there is something else, and here my musical memory is letting me down.  For much of my life I’ve had the ability to hear a song and then relate it to its predecessors, instantly able to say, “Oh that’s based on ….” but as age has crept up on me I am finding myself in a position of hearing a song and thinking “Hey, that’s based on…” and then the origin of the song vanishes from my mind, and so instead of being able to show off, I’m left looking like an idiot, which is how I feel at such times.

So it is with Sante Fe.  I am sure the melody and structure is built on an earlier piece, but I just can’t find it in my head and no one else seems to have mentioned it.  But it is sooooo familiar!  Any help would put me out of my misery.

Anyway, here’s the verse that got changed into the geodesics

Version 1:

She’s in Sante Fe
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Sante Fe.
Now she opens up and let’s me home
She’s brown but she keeps from roam
She’ll open up a happy home
She’ll think when will that be warm in Sante Fe.

Version 2:

Santa Fe, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa Fe
Since I’m never gonna cease to roam
I’m never, ever far from home
But I’ll build a geodesic dome and sail away

If looking back through the versions, just remember the lyrics on the official site are from the complete bootleg set, not the version that appears on 1-3.  Just to avoid any confusion of the type which in the first version of this review, I added to.

In the end, as the final verse of the final edition shows, it is all nonsense.  But for me it is jolly nonsense based around the standard three chords and a catchy little tune.  And why not?  It doesn’t have to be Desolation Row to be music worth listening to.

Santa Fe, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa Fe
My sister looks good at home
She’s lickin’ on an ice cream cone
She’s packin’ her big white comb
What does it weigh?

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

Bob Dylan likes to mix up the medicine, to really, really mix up the music medicine.

There’s the Symbolist poem:

In short, is a Flower, Rosemary
Or Lily, dead or alive, worth
The excrement of one sea-bird
(Arthur Rimbaud: On The Suject Of Flowers)

The name Rosemary in Dylan’s song “Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts” is a variation of Rose-Marie, who’s a character in the operetta of the same name, much of which takes place in British Columbia, Canada.

Damon Runyon be a real life American newspaperman and writer, a heavy drinker, gambler, and smoker, who uses the slang of gangsters, especially nicknames, from the Prohibition Era in humourous stories.

Runyon runs off with a girl from Mexico after having reformed somewhat in
order to court his first wife. Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan takes on a Damon-like persona in the following song:

Now whenever I get up
And can’t find what I need
I just make it down to Rose-Marie’s
And get somethin’ quick to eat
(Bob Dylan: Goin’ To Acapulco)

In the above song, Dylan, at the same time, covertly alludes to Big Jim, a real life wealthy businessman, who’s fond of diamonds, and of eating lots of food. It’s Big Jim Brady who hangs around with actress/singer Lillian Russell in New York City. Big Jim is an obvious reference in “Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts”.

A fictional miner in the aforementioned operetta is named Jim; he reforms to court the fictional French Canadian Rose-Marie.

The Big Jim of “Rose Marie” has a partner whose nickname is Hard-Boiled Herman, boyfriend of Lady Jane, owner of a hotel (in Dylan’s “Highlands”, the restaurant waitress is asked about hard-boiled eggs):

Now, when all of the bandits that you turn the
other cheek to
All lay down their bandannas and complain
And you want somebody you don’t have to
to speak to
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)

Which brings it all back home to Acapulco:

I know I’ve seen that face before, Big Jim was
thinkin’ to himself
Maybe down in Mexico or a picture on
somebody’s shelf
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

The only person missing from the scene so far is the Jack Of Hearts and that’s because he’s hiding out on St. Pierre, a French island 16 miles off the coast of the Canadian Province of Newfounland. Rum-running makes the island infamous in the days of Prohibition.

In the humourous short story “Lily Of St. Pierre” by Damon Runyon, the rum- running gambler, known as Jack of Hearts is cared for by young girl named Lily when he gets sick. Small-time gangster Louie The Lug runs off with her to Montreal, mistreats her, and she dies. In New York, at Good Time Charlie’s, the Jack Of Hearts shoots Louie; Fingers later informs Jack that Louie dies from the wound. Jack gets to take Louie’s singing position at Charlie’s speakeasy:

The cabaret was quiet except for the drillin’
in the wall
The curfew had been lifted and the gamblin’
wheel shut down
Anyone with any sense had already left town
He was standin’ in the doorway lookin’ like
the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Similar Runyonesque characters, along with ‘Mack The Knife’ from “The Threepenny Opera” are mentioned in the following song:

Well, Mack The Finger said to Louie the King
‘I got forty red, white, and blue shoe strings
And and a thousand telephones that don’t ring’
(Bob Dylan: Highway ’61)

In Runyon’s tale, the Jack of Hearts sings a song:

There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams
When the nightingale is singing
And the white moon beams
(King and Elliott: There’s A Long, Long Trail A-Winding)

Then there’s:

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman.
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

The musical “Guys And Dolls” is based on Damon Runyon’s stories.

So is this song:

Everybody’s goin’ away
Said they’re movin’ to LA
There’s not a soul I know around
Everybody’s leavin’ town
Some caught a freight, some caught a plane
Find the sunshine, leave the rain
They said this town’s a waste of time
I guess they’re right, it’s wastin’ mine
(Danny O’Keefe: Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues)

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 Tony Attwood

1971 was a very curious year for Bob Dylan in that it contained, as far as I can make out, just four newly written pieces.  Two were absolute masterpieces in my view, but the others…

1. Vomit Express (post modernist blues; cheapest seats on the cheapest flight)
2. When I paint my masterpiece (art, Rome)
3. Watching the river flow (The artist as observer)
4. George Jackson (protest)
5. Wallflower
6.  For you baby

Maybe George Jackson can’t appeal to me because I am too many thousand miles away from the action and my review of that song was criticised because of my lack of knowledge of the background to Jackson’s imprisonment.

But Wallflower is slightly different.  It doesn’t appeal to me because it just seems like a country song not saying anything new.  According to the official Dylan site it has never been played in public by Dylan, and I must admit, when constructing the Chronology, I completely missed the song from the roster.

The idea with the song, (I have read elsewhere), was that Wallflower might be the B side of the George Jackson single, but it wasn’t, and in terms of Dylan it was shelved.  That is until it turned up on the opening box set of the Bootleg series (vols 1-3) with a second version turning up on Volume 10 (the “Another Self Portrait”) edition.

Except that in October 1972, the song was recorded by Doug Sahm, with Dylan apparently singing backing vocal.  Several copies of this version have been uploaded and then deleted.  At the moment of writing this one is still up there.  I believe it comes from  Sahm’s album Doug Sahm and Band, released in 1973.

Indeed just to show how far out of touch with many other people my feelings about country music is, the song has been recorded by many other artists and so I guess they all liked it.  Here’s a list that I found, although I haven’t checked them all out.  I shall leave that to a more dedicated researcher than I (and also someone who actually likes the song).

• David Bromberg, 1974, for Wanted Dead or Alive
• Buddy and Julie Miller, 2001 for Buddy & Julie Miller
• Uncle Earl, 2007, for Waterloo, Tennessee
• Diana Krall, 2015, for Wallflower
• Anna Elizabeth Laube, 2016, for Tree

The whole approach of the song is extremely simple

Wallflower, wallflower
Won’t you dance with me?
I’m sad and lonely too
Wallflower, wallflower
Won’t you dance with me?
I’m fallin’ in love with you

Just like you I’m wondrin’ what I’m doin’ here
Just like you I’m wondrin’ what’s goin’ on

It continues in this approach and then ends

I have seen you standing in the smoky haze
And I know that you’re gonna be mine one of these days
Mine alone

Wallflower, wallflower
Take a chance on me
Please let me ride you home

Now just because Dylan wrote “It’s all right Ma” and “Desolation Row” and the rest doesn’t mean that simple songs are no good, and I only like complicated stuff.  I can still, after over 50 years, listen to “That’s Alright” by Elvis Presley and get a lot out of the song.  It’s just that somehow the simplicity doesn’t seem to have anything else with it to make it worth hearing more than once.  But I think it is just my lack of connection with country music – because clearly so many other people feel quite differently about it.

When Diana Krall included the song on her 2015 album she was asked by Billboard why she used the song and said, “I love Dylan and always have. I got stuck on ‘Wallflower,’ listening over and over again.

“We started playing it on gigs more than a year ago.  “That’s the one song I played all the piano on, me and [guitarist] Blake Mills sitting in a room, just playing. We didn’t redo anything.”

So there we have it.  It needs someone who really does get something out of the song to explain to the rest of us what it is that makes it work for them.  As for me, sorry, but no.

What is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members.  (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm).  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article.  Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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, links back to our reviews

by Larry Fyffe

Likely unknown to many of our readers, a number of songs written by Bob Dylan have a connection to Canadian geography and history.

Here’s a spiritual that goes back to the time of the formal ending of slavery in the British Empire, whereby blacks seek to escape to Canada from slavery in the United States:

No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone
No more driver’s whiplash for me
No more, no more
No more driver’s whiplash for me
Many thousands gone
(No More Auction Block)

The somewhat humourous lyrics by Bob Dylan about the exploitation of wage-labour is inspired by the Canadian song:

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin if you’re havin’ a good time
There he fines you every time you slam the door
(Bob Dylan: Maggie’s Farm)

The following folksong of the latter 19th century about lumber camps, based on a true story, comes out of New Brunswick, Canada:

There’s danger on the ocean where the waves
roll mountains high
There’s danger on the battlefield where the
angry bullets fly
There ‘s danger in the lumber woods for death
lurks sullen there
And I have fell a victim into that monstrous snare
(Peter Emberley)

Dylan replaces the danger of tree branches with that of social inequity:

And there’s danger on the ocean where the salt
waves split high
And there’s danger on the battlefield where the
shells of bullets fly
And there’s danger in this open world where men
strive to be free
And for me the greatest danger was in society
(Bob Dylan: The Death Of Donald White)

In the mid-19th century, a ballad about Sir John Franklin’s fatal search for the
North West Passage in the Canadian Arctic is published:

We were homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock, I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream, and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew
(Lady Franklin’s Lament)

Singer Bob Dylan writes a song about the loss of old friends:

While riding on a train going west
I fell asleep to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had
(Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan’s Dream)

The rebellion in the Red River Colony of Manitoba, Canada, inspires the 19th century fictional ballad, presented below, about a half-French, half-Indian gal who’s about to lose her soldier lover. He helped suppress the rebellion, and plans to leave:

Come and sit by my side if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me ‘adieu’
But remember the Red River Valley
And the girl who has loved you so true
(Red River Valley)

Dylan innovates on the love theme – reverses it:

Well, I sat by her side for a while
I tried to make that girl my wife
She gave me her best advice
And she said, ‘Go home and lead a good life’
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The Red River Shore)

Below is a love song from an early 20th century escapist romantic operetta, the setting being in the Canadian Rockies and northern British Columbia:

Oh Rose-Marie, I love you
I’m always dreaming of you
No matter what I do, I can’t forget you
Sometimes I wish that I never met you
And yet if I should lose you
T’would mean my very life to me
Of all the Queens that ever lived, I’d choose you
To rule me, my Rose-Marie
(Rose-Marie)

The fictional storyline involves a wild-living miner named Jim, who has a partner, ‘Hard-Boiled’ Herman. Jim’s reforms because he loves the French-Canadian stage-singer Rose-Marie – ‘I choose you to rule me’ -, and Rose-Marie loves Jim.

A wealthy businessman wants to marry Rose-Marie though he’s involved with a ‘half-breed’ Indian gal; she stabs her jealous boyfriend to protect the businessman, who then claims Jim is the murderer.

Rose-Marie decides to marry the deceitful businessman. As the ceremony is about to take place, the ‘half-breed’ confesses that she is the real murderer. Jim and Rose-Marie are happily reunited.

In the following song, Bob Dylan changes the names as well as the character of the actors involved in the storyline – Rose-Marie and Jim become Rosemary and Big Jim:

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

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald And Bob Dylan, The Great Gatsby

by Larry Fyffe

Often thought by music critics to be the disconnected ramblings of a Post Modern madman, Dylan’s song lyrics, as in those presented below, take listeners on a magical history tour, interspersed with with bits of the writer’s personal experiences.

Working as a kind of introduction to another song, the lyrics of following song express Bob Dylan’s appreciation for the emotional and spiritual support he gets from an evangelist religious group when he needs it. He pictures himself back in biblical Eden, Paradise Regained, where his artistic impulse is revitalized by the Christian demi-god Jesus down from heaven and a love goddess from out of the sea:

I was in your presence for an hour or so
Or was it a day?
I truly don’t know
Where the sun never set
Where the trees hung low
By the soft and shiny sea
(Bob Dylan: In The Summer Time)

That Eden doesn’t last long, and in another song, Dylan writes and sings of Paradise Lost. Gone is an empire on which the sun never sets, gone is America the Beautiful, shining from sea to shining sea – that land of the American Dream with its morality-guided ethos of hard work:

Summer days, summer nights are gone
Summer days and summer nights are gone
I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Dylan first makes historical reference to the arrival of adventurous, hard-working settlers, not afraid of getting their hands dirty – live pigs are included in the cargo – at Jamestown, Virginia where Pocahontas converts to the Christian faith and marries one of the settlers. That brings peace to the colony -she’s a daughter of an Indian chief. All this happens in the days of Queen Elizabeth I when shipwrecks off the American coast inspire Shakespeare to pen ‘The Tempest’:

I got a house on a hill, I got hogs all 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)

Before you know it … time wrap … and Elvis Presley, ‘the King’, and his hounddog ‘Bob’ are living it up, high on-the-hog:

Everybody get ready – lift your glasses and sing
Everybody get ready to lift your glasses and sing
Well, I’m standin’ on the table, I’m proposing a toast
to ‘The King’
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

It’s not hard to see that the American Dream has been corrupted. Outright greed – con games, criminal organizations, and street violence – becomes a big part of modern reality.The singer/songwriter, too, wears hypocrisy on his sleeve; he’s in a ‘summer daze’. He’s drives Elvis’ favourite make of automobile, a conspicous consumption gas-guzzling status symbol of the reformulated American Dream:

Well, I drivin’ in the flats in a Cadillac car
The girls say ‘You’re a worn-out out star’
My pockets are loaded and I’m spending
every dime
How can you say you love someone else
when you know that it’s me all the time
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

It’s the ‘Roaring Twenties’ all over again. Dylan, with black humour, depicts himself rather like the hopeless romantic Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, who endeavours to buy his way into a society that’s structured along class lines. Only Dylan’s character is striving to get his youth back with wealth; blissfully unaware of whether he’s moving forward or backward in time – like a boat in a fog:

Well, the fog’s so thick you can’t spy the land
The fog’s so thick that you can’t even spy the land
What good are you anyway, if you can’t stand up to some
old businessman?
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

It’s a story of sunshine-in-the-sky hopes, and love lost. The flames of Gatsby’s and Dylan’s desire are more secure with their peers; the romantic dream shatters like a wine glass broken:

Wedding bells ringing, the choir is beginning to sing
Yes, wedding bells are ringing and the choir is beginning to sing
What looks good in the day at night is another thing
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Dylan quotes directly from Fitzgerald’s novel:

She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holds my hand
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holds my hand
She say, ‘You can’t repeat the past’, I say, ‘You can’t?’
‘What do you mean, You can’t, of course, you can”
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

It all seems so rather lightheartedly depressing:

Where do you come from? Where do you go?
Sorry, that’s nothin’ you would need to know
Well my back has been to the wall so long it seems
like it’s stuck
Why don’t you break my heart one more time just
for good luck?
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Even the Christian evangelists let him down:

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

The doctrine of The Genius Of Generosity is associated with the evangelist church Dylan joins -Time being short, best to invest your resources in the Kingdom of Jesus and prepare for eternity. Frederich Nietzsche calls it ‘the morality of slaves’:

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure pressed
down, and shaken together, and running together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same
measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again
(Luke 6:38)

In the above biblical verse, Jesus speaks an earthly parable that conceals a spiritual message. Evangelist leaders know that most of their followers won’t realize what Christ or they are talking about.

But not all. There must be some way out of here, says the Joker to the Thief:

Standing by God’s River, my soul is beginnin’ to shake
Standing by God’s River, my soul is beginnin’ to shake
I’m countin’ on you love, to give me a break
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

Dylan has a vision of himself as Joshua, leader of the Jews, standing on the bank of the River Jordon, waiting for God to break the river’s flow so he can cross into the Promised Land of Canaan:

And it came to past, when the priests….we’re come up
out of the midst of Jordon, and the soles of the priests’ feet
were lifted unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordon
returned unto their place, and flowed over all of his
banks as they did before
(Joshua 4:18)

The magical history tour ends in a fiery vision of Waco, Texas, and the
machine gun-carrying false messiah, David Koresh who, not that unlike Dylan’s one-time evangelist leaders, advocates the giving away of worldly goods by his followers. As far as Dylan is concerned, any semblance of human decency vanishes up in smoke there at Waco. That includes the extreme actions undertaken by police:

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

Peering into the Heart of Darkness, Dylan finds everything is broken.

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 Tony Attwood

In my experience a lot of people who earn their living out of words have the ability to create streams of narrative at the drop of a hat.  Many actors can improvise dialogue that their character might have said (but didn’t), songwriters and poets can pour out line after line in the style of… well, anyone you choose to name, and novelists can do the same with any situation – looking out at a scene they can just create a world of people and events around it.

And of course it is an ability not restricted to those who work with words – many others can generate such lines of speech / poetry / lyrics too, on request.

This doesn’t in any way mean that the result is of value in the greater realm of things, but they can do it, their brains just work that way.  And doing it can be helpful, as the actor prepares for his part, as the songwriter or poet explores ideas and expressions and so on.

None of which is to say that the resultant lines of dialogue are of value – it is just that for some people they are dead easy to create, and can help with later work.

And this I think is exactly what Bob Dylan was doing at this time.  That does not mean that I believe many of the songs around this time are just outpourings of words, far from it as the list below shows, but rather that is what Bob did with Barbed Wire Fence.

The period that this song comes from is shown here with the songs written (as far as we know) in this order

• It takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry
• Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence
• Like a Rolling Stone
• Tombstone Blues
• Desolation Row
• Can you please crawl out your window?
• Positively Fourth Street
• Highway 61 Revisited
• Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues

and I go as far as Just like Tom Thumb because Barbed Wire Fence and Tom Thumb are linked through their lyrics, comparing

I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got

with

Well, my temperature rises and my feet don’t walk so fast
Yes, my temperature rises and my feet don’t walk so fast
Well, this Arabian doctor came in, gave me a shot
But wouldn’t tell me if what I had would last

And of course as a song the Fence it is comparable to Outlaw Blues in its style and approach

Ain’t it hard to stumble
And land in some funny lagoon?
Ain’t it hard to stumble
And land in some muddy lagoon?
Especially when it’s nine below zero
And three o’clock in the afternoon.

The problem with this scatological approach to lyrics however is that while it is fairly easy for the person who lives through his/her words to generate the words, it is less easy to convert them into a piece of music that will have more than a passing interest.

Many of us can be impressed by the experienced actor who can create 20 lines of Shakespeare which sound as if they should come from a play, but haven’t and which upon analysis far from meaning anything, are gibberish.  But that doesn’t make these lines to be anything other than a bit of fun.

And Dylan must have felt this way – Tom Thumb has been played over 200 times in concert whereas Outlaw got just one solitary outing in 2007 – in Nashville.  I know not why it suddenly turned up, but it did.

To me what is most interesting is that this song, which really is just a sketch and an experiment sits among such amazing gems as in the list above shows… sitting there until the moment emerged when it would become (a few months later) a much more rounded.

And indeed somehow transporting the situation to Mexico and ending with the decision to return to New York is much more in keeping with the randomness of the words.

I suppose part of my problem is that I can see too many allusions in the Barbed Wire Fence lines such as “See my hound dog bite a rabbit” which takes me instantly to “Hound Dog”, although of course there “you ain’t never caught a rabbit” is the thrust of the accusation.   But such links seem wrong – the songs are too different, the situations too different.  For me, somehow, it doesn’t seem to work.

It is, as I have said of certain other songs, a sketch, an idea, which went on to form the basis of something much more substantial.

What else is on the site

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members.  (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm).  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article.  Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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