Untold Dylan

by Larry Fyffe

In his song lyrics and music, Bob Dylan grapples with the big philosophical question: what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’, – on the more personal level, what is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do in any given situation? Religion is of little help to him – it just ain’t that easy to come up with definitive answers to such questions:

(Dylan: My Back Pages)

Established religion asserts that the answers to these questions are set down in black and white, but the experience of growing up shows such matters not to be so clear; even religious leaders betray their own teachings. As an artist, Dylan presents himself, or his singing persona, as an individual who has to make final decisions on his own though he may suffer sorrowful consequences therefrom.  Below, it’s Bob Dylan turn to tell a pilgrim’s tale:

(Dylan: Up To Me)

He has read the spiritual poems of pre-Romantic William Blake that speak of Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and so are expelled from Eden where it’s all good. That God casts them out into a world where evil co-exists with good be a myth organized religion thrives upon, asserts Blake.

That is, the Church untangles the Tree lying outside the gates of Eden by defining an ‘objective’ morality in simple black and white terms, but it’s actually a self-denying morality that serves the power-seeking interests of black-robed priests:

(Blake: The Human Abstract)

Blake contends that individuals have the mental capacity to gain, through a proper balancing of reason and intuition, what is good for them and what is not. According to Blake, the dogmatic doctrines of established religion prevent them from doing so. The later Romantic Transcendental poets proclaim that contact with the workings of external Nature helps the individual throw off the chains of dogma.

Dylan also reads Frederich Nieitzche who says the achievers of power and wealth define their own behaviour as ‘good’, while that of those who don’t achieve are obviously ‘bad’.  Furthermore, the wretched, out of resentment, define the actions of the rich and powerful as ‘evil’; it’s the ‘slave morality’ of Judeo-Christianity that comes to serve its leaders’ drive for masterly control.

Bob Dylan contends in many of his song lyrics that things continue to go from bad to worse, and though he is self-critical to the extent that anyone can be, it’s the hypocritical behaviour of religious leaders pretending to follow the teachings of Jesus – ie, they should love one another and help the poor- that he shakes his fist at:

(Dylan: Pay In Blood)

Dylan shifts often his point of view, and so it’s hard to tell where he stands – could it be that good and evil doings are both necessary parts of the One Big Plan, and so it really doesn’t matter which side one chooses to be on? Dylan sings songs whose lyrics can be interpreted as a vision of God (good) and the Devil (evil) together in a card-playing club – where sometimes one gets the winning hands, and at other times the other gets them,

(Dylan: Pressing On)

Being an artist, Dylan’s lyrics are often double edged – in those below, man is viewed as no more than a pawn in a chess game between the God and Satan:

(Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody)

Irony is Bob Dylan’s middle name. He writes some song lyrics that present things as they are with fate and luck, not free choice, having a lot to do with how things got to be that way.

The dark imagery drawn from the prose-poetry of Lucien Ducasse, who portrays himself as the revenge-seeking fallen angel, serves Dylan well in some of his song lyrics. Maldoror, the Devil, with black humour, unbinds man from the chains of religion:

(Lucien Ducasse: Songs Of Maldoror – again condensed by me)

Dylan turns Ducasse’s imagery upside down in the following song. Using his own black sense of humour, Dylan presents himself as the sun-god Apollo, son of Zeus, who threatens to condemn dog-like detractors to the cells of Hell:

(Bob Dylan: Pay in Blood)

No intention has Dylan of painting  ‘Madonna And Child’ over and over again.

By Tony Attwood

A year or so ago I wrote a little article about Dylan’s forgotten masterpieces that have been reviewed here.  This morning, I thought I’d do another list without looking up the old list, just to see if it turned out the same.

I know, a pretty naff and silly thing to do, and I can already hear the calls of “get a life” but that’s how it goes here in the East Midlands in the autumn and no one is shouting that a client’s advert needs completing now, if not yesterday, or come to that last week.

This exercise doesn’t really go in for definitions – all I am talking about are songs that Dylan has written which we don’t hear much about, or maybe which some people forget really are Dylan, or which are just extraordinary performances or which in one case could be a beautiful performance if only they’d remix it.

This is what I came up with last time

1: Ballad for a friend

2: Caribbean Wind

3: Too Much of Nothing

4: When He returns; (live version)

5:  To fall in love with you.

6: This Wheel’s on Fire

7:  Tell Ol’ Bill

8:  Abandoned Love (and do listen to both versions)

Just getting that old list out was something else, because I hadn’t played “Abandoned Love” since I wrote the original article, and I’ve just played through both versions (the solo and the one with the violin and percussion as well as guitar).  What a perfect way to spend 10 minutes.

Any way, what of the new list?   I just kept writing songs down and yes I managed to come up with another eight – but I have one restriction – I am trying to find songs that I can offer a link to so that if you don’t know the piece you can listen to it.  I didn’t manage it in every case, but almost.

1: I’m not there: 

There are two versions of this on the site, Dylan’s own version, and the rather different version used in the movie it was written.  This is quite an extraordinary piece of music – even if we can’t hear all the words the rhythms are so unusual that one just has to listen and hear the overall sound.  We get some lyrics, but for once that is not the most important thing: it is the rhythms that drive the sound.

2: I once knew a man

This is the song we have from the Letterman show rehearsals, a song that has been confused with another piece of the same title.

For me this song shows all by itself what Dylan can do with that most common form of musical writing: the 12 bar blues.   And he has quite a band playing with him; the drummer really does justice to the piece.

And seemingly he just played it and left it.  What an extraordinary thing to do.

3: Maybe someday

No not a forgotten song, but I wish I could forget this version and get my hands on the master tape and do a remix.

4: Let me die in my footsteps

A very early song but one that shows extraordinary maturity in handling the topic and the musical accompaniment.  Even if you remember this it is worth going back and listening one more time.

5: Tomorrow is a long time

This is so delicate and so beautiful, it is hard to find words to describe it.

6: Well well well

I can listen to this all day and night – especially the O’Keefe version – and just remember this came out of a time when Bob was apparently having difficulty with his songwriting.

There are songs that I can just carry with me through life, and this most certainly is one of them.

7: Yonder comes sin

It really is truly frustrating – there was a version of Yonder on the internet when I wrote the original review, and now it has gone.  It does appear on a bootleg album if you want to get hold of a copy, and I can tell you this song really is great fun – even though we only have a partial recording (when we have one at all).

8: Up to me

If you ever wanted a second “Tangled up in Blue” here it is – but it is a separate song in its own right.  And it appeared on Biograph, which means it is also on Spotify.   The lyrics are just line after line of brilliance.   No one else has ever written pop and rock lyrics like this – apart of course from Bob.

I can’t say which one is the greatest lost song, but looking at all 16 now I find myself playing the second version of “Abandoned Love”.  Oh yes and the live version of “When He Returns”.  This could be my ultimate Bob album.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Lucien Ducasse: The Maldoror

by Larry Fyffe

The writings of Lucien Ducasse have a strong influence on the Romantic- Symbolist poets, and on the less Romantic-inclined poets of Surrealism. Ducasse borrows from the gloomy images of the Gothic Romantics, but he’s precursor to the Freudian Surrealism of Modern/Post-Modern art. He reacts negatively to the Judeo-Christian light that still shines from the ‘Spirit’ in Romantic poetry and prose:

The many layers of meaning in the narrative prose-poem ‘Songs Of Maldoror’, with its black humour, has Ducasse’s persona Satan questioning the morality of the male God who throws Adam and Eve out of Eden, and then has the audacity to claim that He’s sacrificing his son for the sake of mankind. Says Maldoror, truth be known, Social Authority sacrifices the young in order to satisfy the cruelty that lies within the hearts of men:

O human beings, how young and naked like a worm
In the presence of my diamond sword
(Ducasse: The Songs Of Maldoror)

The singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, with lighter humour, demonstrates Ducasse’s influence on his own lyrics:

Oh, God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’
Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on’
God, said, ‘No’; Abe say, ‘What?’
God say, ‘You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’, you better run’
(Dylan: Highway 61)

The surrealistic Ducasse mocks religious pretenders who claim to care for others:

Oh, what a genuine and noble change of heart
That divine spark within us which so rarely appears
is revealed too late
How the heart longs to console the innocent
one we have harmed
(Ducasse: The Song’s Of Maldoror)

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan takes notice of the hypocrisy that Ducasse points out in ‘Songs Of Maldoro’:

Scarlet Town, in the hot noon hours
There’s palm-leaf shadows and scattered flowers
Beggar’s crouching at the gate
Help comes, but it comes too late
(Dylan: Scarlet Town)

The promise of an afterlife in heaven, says Ducasse, is but a bluff claiming
there’s an escape from hell-on-earth:

It’s unnecessary for you to think of heaven
There’s already enough to consider about earth
Are you tired of living, you who have barely been born?
You may count on encountering up there
The very same evils as down here
(Ducasse: The Songs Of Maldoror)

The Bob Dylan song below carries Ducasse’s message:

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn that he not busy being born
Is busy dying
(Dylan: It’s Alright Ma)

Though elsewhere he counterbalances with Christian gospel songs, Dylan takes on the dark persona of Maldoror with the diamond sword:

Preacher was a-talking, there’s a sermon he gave
He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied
It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in your throat
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coat
(Dylan: Man In The Long Black Coat)

Dark and mysterious be the sea which represents the female force that fiery Maldorer faces:

While you utter from the depth of your breast
As if weighted down by an intense remorse
I would give you all my love if only because you
Make me think with sorrow on my fellows
Who form the most ironic contrast with you
Why then do I return for the thousandth time to
Your welcoming arms which caress my flaming brow
Your touch dispelling it’s feverish heat?
(Ducasse: Songs Of Maldoror)

In song, Bob Dylan asks himself a similar question:

Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saint-like face and your ghost-like soul
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands?
(Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Dylan follows more closely Ducasse’s surrealistic assonance-consonance-alliteration style in the song below:

Now when I’ll teach the lady I was born to love her
But she knew that the kingdom waits high above her
And I run but I race, but it’s not fast or still
But I don’t perceive her, I’m gone
(Dylan: I’m Not There)

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

For me, “Walls of Red Wing” is a plodding protest song about the fact that whether you end up rich and famous or locked up in a prison, or indeed a reform centre for naughty school boys, is as much a matter of chance as anything else.

I think what has made it attractive to some Dylan fans is the fact that a) he sang it autobiographically a few times in his early performances (the official site suggest just three times, but others seem to think he played it more often and b) it could actually be autobiographical.

So was Dylan shut up in a remand centre for 12 to 17 year olds?  Sorting that out is the sort of thing I will willingly leave to Heylin, and his answer is ambiguous.

Certainly Dylan did have a time in his teenage years when he seemed not to be around much, and this is exactly the sort of story that Larry Haugen needed to put in his book “Red Wing, a Year and a Day”.  There’s also an account of what could be Dylan’s time in a school for naughty kids in a document from Sue Rotolo’s collection.

But it is all pretty sketchy, and knowing how able Dylan was to invent a past for himself to fit his rambling lifestyle, and to identify with his heroes of yesteryear, I am personally not convinced (not that my view matters of course).

The song is pretty much based on “Only a hobo” and the Scottish ballad “The road and the miles to Dundee”, but it is the opening lines of Dylan’s song which make it so determindly plodding:

Oh, the age of the inmates
I remember quite freely:
No younger than twelve
No older ’n seventeen
Thrown in like bandits
And cast off like criminals
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

The problem for me is that although Dylan is saying “I remember quite freely” there is no real personal engagement and emotion that comes across in the song.  The beat just goes on and on, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 and so on.  It is hard to put much emotion into something so plodding, which allows for no variation, no blues, no swing, no off-beat, and no exciting melody, any of which can make the folk-blues-rock tradition become alive.

It is of course a reflection of the youths who were held in Red Wing

Too weary to talk
And too tired to sing

and the fact that there is no hope of salvation beyond pure chance.

To his absolute credit Dylan does tackle the hardest of subject matters for any song: abuse…

It’s many a guard
That stands around smilin’
Holdin’ his club
Like he was a king
Hopin’ to get you
Behind a wood pilin’
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

But in the end the pure fatalism, the giving in to whatever life throws at you, doesn’t allow much else to happen in the song.

Oh, some of us’ll end up
In St. Cloud Prison
And some of us’ll wind up
To be lawyers and things
And some of us’ll stand up
To meet you on your crossroads
From inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

Compare the delivery with Only a Hobo and you’ll see that Bob could do much more with this material

But more to the point, if you listen to this version of The Road and the Miles to Dundee below, you’ll hear how it is possible to put more life into the song.  So my guess is  that Bob did want the piece to be as depressing and doom laden as possible it was all part of his experimentation.   However I feel that at this stage of his writing he didn’t have the experience to pull it off.  It was not far away as the list of other songs written at this time shows, so to my mind this was just an experiment in doom that didn’t quite work.

One can say, yes it is meant to be depressing, but writing a depressing song and making us want to listen, is quite a skill, and Bob just didn’t get it right, in my estimation.

Here’s the “Road and the miles”

I don’t think this was on the Corries album “Strings and Things” so if you are thinking of getting an album of Corries songs, it is worth checking which song is where.  If you find this enjoyable, leave it running – it’s really worth it just to be reminded of what the Corries could do.

The general agreement is that Dylan wrote Red Wing at the time shown in this list:

• Masters of War
• Girl from the North Country
• Boots of Spanish Leather
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Only a Hobo
• Who killed Davey Moore?
• Walls of Red Wing
• Seven Curses
• With God on our Side
• Talking World War III Blues
• Only a pawn in their game
• Eternal Circle
• North Country Blues

If this is right (and there is some suggestion that the song was actually written earlier) it is strange because there is such a mastery of the medium in the songs around this one, that Red Wing seems very out of place.  Which is probably the main reason to think it was written earlier.

But Bob was forever the experimenter, so it is possible this positioning is right.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And The Heart Of Darkness

by Larry Fyffe

The French Symbolists poets are the offspring of earlier Romantic poets who envision the material world as a manifestation of a mysterious vilalistic force that drives the Universe. As inhabitants of cities, the Symbolist poets react against the flowery diction used by the Romantic dreamers of green organic countrysides:

In short, is a Fower, Rosemary
Lily, dead or alive, worth
The excrement of one sea-bird?
(Arthur Rimbaud: The Poet On the Subject Of Flowers)

The Modernist poets question this modified form of idealistic Romanticism, drawing instead upon images taken from the physical world, objective correlatives that express their feeling of horror and despair living in a world behind which lies nothing:

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
Stiff and white
(TS Eliot: Rhapsody On A Windy Night)

Dancing with one, and then the other, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan juggles these differing points of view:

And take me disappearing through the
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
Far from the twisted reach
Of crazy sorrow
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

The Romantic in Dylan flees from the land of sorrow in the hope of finding some shelter from the dark clouds of TS Eliot’s poetry:

Well, my ship is in the harbour
And the sails are spread
Listen to me, pretty baby
Lay your hand upon my head
Beyond here lies nothin’
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothin’)

Ironically, largely due to Bob Dylan’s artistic endeavours, thoughout the world of songwriting and song, TS Eliot’s existential angst has spread far and wide:

White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year by year
(TS Eliot: The Wasteland)

To Gothic rock bands:

The bodies on the naked, on the low damp ground
In the violet hour, to the violent sound …
This is the floor show, the clapping hands
Animal flow from the animal glands
(Sisters Of Mercy: Floor Show)

The sickly imagery of the Modernist poetry is everwhere:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper
(TS Eliot: The Hollow Men)

In folk music:

Is this the whimper and the ending
The impotence of people raised on fear
The fear that blinds the sense of common oneness?
(Peter, Paul And Mary: Greenwood, written by Peter Yarrow)

In rap:

Citizens’ sinuses ring with sirens whose singing is violence
It goes thanks TS, but the world ends like this
Not a bang, not a whimper, but a sibilant hiss
(Doomtree: No Home Owners)

Images of despair everywhere:

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

In indietronia rock:

April is the cruellest month
I reckon this March could be a contender
There’s only so much sorrow a man can take
(Hot Chip: Play Boy)

Images of death everywhere:

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker
And in short, I was afraid
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock)

In baroque rock:

In the sleeves of a man
Don’t wanna be a boy today
Heard the Eternal Footman
Brought himself a bike to race
(Tori Amos: Pretty Good Year)

The Modernist news is not good. Little time there is, but life under pressure to conform drags on:

In confessional rock:

Is there time, is there time
To follow just one desire
Is there time, is there time
To follow your heart?
(Dashboard Confessional: Shade Of The Poisoned Trees)

In the end, resistance to conformity is futile anyhow:

They will say, “How his hair is turning thin” ……
I have measured out my life in coffee spoons ……
I grow old – I grow old –
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock)

In Canadian folk rock:

Someday I’ll have a disappearing hairline
Someday I’ll wear pajamas in the daytime
Afternoons will be measured out
Measured out, measured with
Coffee spoons and TS Eliot
(Crash Test Dummies: Afternoon And Coffee Spoons)

To be concise, what’s the use?

Do I dare
Disturb the Universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock)

In activist hip hop:

Instead of being pimped and then prostituted
Won’t be the last time
‘Cause it ain’t the first
So do I dare disturb the Universe?
(Public Enemy: Niggativity)

What little time there is, not taken advantage of anyway:

Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not
Speak and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
(TS Eliot: The Wasteland)

In progressive rock:

I stepped back into the shadows
I tried to look, my eyes were blind
I tried to speak, but I could not find
The words to say
(The Strawbs: Blue Angel)

More Modernist images of indecision, and wrong decisions:

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the shadow
(TS Eliot: Hollow Men)

In pop rock:

Between the intention and the expression
Between the emotion and the response
Falls the shadow
Sometimes I fail to follow through
On things I want to do
Other times I find myself doing the very things I hate
(Devo: The Shadow)

More images of inaction on the part of those under control:

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

In song lyrics written by singer Bob Dylan:

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

TS Eliot’s Modernist outlook be heavily influenced by Joseph Conrad’s novella
‘Heart Of Darkness’, a story that peers into the primitive instincts hidden within the human heart.

Bob Dylan’s dance beneath the diamond skies is tempered by the conditions imposed on others by those in power who have hearts of darkness:

And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart’s like an ocean
Mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go
To the valley below
(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

Please Mrs Henry was recorded (and thus probably written) within this sequence of songs

• Please Mrs Henry
• Lo and behold
• Crash on the Levee
• Dress it up, better have it all
• I’m not there
• You ain’t going nowhere
• This Wheel’s on Fire
• I shall be released

What is interesting is that we have some songs that I would consider of lesser importance – almost throw away songs in fact – but they led into a run of four truly remarkable pieces: in fact the sequence from “I’m not there” onwards.

But I am sorry to say that Please Mrs Henry is not in this group (nor indeed is Lo and behold in my estimation) of really wonderful songs.   But it is interesting (for me at least) how close together these songs of different merit (as I perceive them) come out.  I’m not there – one of the great, great “lost” songs written it seems just a short time after Please Mrs Henry.  How bizarre.

And yet when I think back to my days in bands I can remember all sorts of songs being tried out and written as we played.  Fortunately we never left the tape running, or if we did the tapes have thankfully long since vanished.  It is a bit like the thousands of articles half written and abandoned, or transmuted into something utterly different.  I would be so embarrassed if any had access to them.

However Bob has allowed the Basement Tapes recordings including this song to be released.  So we have the utter gems like “I’m not there” and then we have Please Mrs Henry.  If I’d been Bob I’d have said “no”, but then he’s the genius and I’m just the critic.

The only clue that we have as to what is going on here is that Alan Ginsberg reported that Dylan had been reading a lot of Verlaine and Rimbaud so maybe that’s where it all came from.  And that is probably true, for after all Bob did say

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud

so the thoughts have clearly been there lurking in his head, although whether he should have let them out is a different matter.

The first verse tells us pretty much what we need to know and quite a bit we don’t.

Well, I’ve already had two beers
I’m ready for the broom
Please, Missus Henry, won’t you
Take me to my room?
I’m a good ol’ boy
But I’ve been sniffin’ too many eggs
Talkin’ to too many people
Drinkin’ too many kegs
Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please!
Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please!
I’m down on my knees
An’ I ain’t got a dime

Yes we get some unusual images…

I’m a thousand years old
And I’m a generous bomb
I’m T-boned and punctured
But I’m known to be calm

But thereafter I guess it is a personal thing; I really don’t need it.  And I suppose it is a reflection primarily on me that what I ended up playing after a few run throughs of Mrs Henry was not more Mrs Henry (which I would normally do while writing the review) but “I’m not there.”

However some good comes out of most situations: I updated the review of “I’m not there” and repaired the broken links so we now have three versions of that song on line.  As for Mrs Henry, I’ll leave you to your own pleasures.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan mixes medicine in a Romantic cauldron that brings on dreams of the past, and of the future. He mixes in a dose of Post-Modernist cyanide-cynicism to produce dark visions of chaos and confusion.

The recipe includes:

Love songs of Allen Ginsberg
An’ jail songs of Ray Bremser …
Above the bells of William Blake
An’ the beat visions of Johnny Cash
An’ the saintliness of Pete Seeger
(Bob Dylan: liner notes – The Times They Are A-Changin’)

Beat poet Ray Bremser withdraws into the surrealistic recesses of the subconscious mind, behind a wall that provides protection from the dehumanizing effects of the impersonalization and industrialization of modern times:

No, it wasn’t odd that night
When I went out alone into the streets
And out of my home so long out of sorts –
Was I out of my mind, too, with the dread melancholy
Stuck edgewise into my brain and into my guts
Only man guts, not pig-iron but twisted and flanged
and eroded with rust?
(Ray Bremser: City Madness)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan looks in from the outside, at that feeling of alienation wrought by having been cast out of the natural world – no longer in the jungles of Africa, England’s Sherwood Forest, or the Highlands of Scotland, but living in the cities of America:

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drain pipes
And reciting the alphabet
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

The alliterative irony of the Beat poet, with assonance on the dipthongic ‘e’-sounds within the poem below, references piano jazz mixed with blues singing, signifying a spiritual Paradise lost to the cynical circus on Desolation Row:

And I feel like Nellie Lutcher
Want to sing and fornicate in sheer
Suggestion – most, I want to sit
On a stool, that’s all – just sit and sit
And try to dig the drags
Who go by in their stocking feet
(Ray Bremster: Penal Madness)

Similarly thinks the persona of the singer/songwriter:

I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys; couldn’t keep from crying
When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line
I was wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be
I been looking for her clear through Tennessee
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

Cue in Marshall McLuhan, clue in mixed-up confusion, post modern tangled-up pot pottery and pop pun on political protest of E.E. Cummings’ weather report for March:

These blues broke out in a gallery
On 9th Street …9th Avenue …43rd Street
Hell – it’s Hell’s Kitchen again
Funny blues –
Bonnie in Washington
Waiting for march and
Cummings coming
Bringing glad tidings
(Ray Bremser: Blues For Bonnie)

Here’s a verse by Cummings:

So rah-rah rah democracy
Let’s all be thankful as hell
And bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
(E.E. Cummings: Thanksgiving)

Reflecting on a society that has lost its centre, artists focus on word-play, word fragmentation, moustaches in museums, absurd theatre – all the hallmarks of a society gone mad. And now it’s under the blitz of a new enemy, electronic media controlled by Big Brother, telling the worker bees that they are free, free at last.

The masters are willing to pay in blood as long as it is not their own –
flashing features of Romantic dreams and Gothic nightmares all over the place for the masses to see; free they be to choose their own poison:

We found the museum then, ignored the bright armor
Entered the valley of pottery, mosque of the silly carpenter ….
Saw Anubis and terror
Saw motion of witchery there
Saw the bones of the fifthy embalmer
Saw seven league boots on the feet of those birds
More soary than Bela Lugosi
(Ray Bremser: Follow The East River)

Tom Thumb of the fairy tale is quick of mind and steals the magic seven league boots from the Ogre, and puts them to advantage. He does not pay in his own blood, but turns things around, and for that he is not ‘sorry’; he’s ‘soary’, and free.

Dylan and Bremser depict a spectator society where the souls of the ‘walking dead’ by poetry and music get a bit of a chance at salvation:

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

Little Jack Horner and Tom Thumb are fairy tale tricksters who take from others while Bremser be an actual criminal; Bob Dylan’s clever at turning situations to his advantage:

Shake me up that old peach tree
Little Jack Horner’s got nothing on me
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

Even though every Tom Thumb gets the blues sometime:

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English and invites you up into her room
And you’re so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon
(Bob Dylan: Just Like Tomb Thumb’s 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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

Was this really the final set of new compositions from Bob Dylan the songwriter?   If so, after such a lifetime’s outpouring of work, it seems an awesome thought.

But at the time of writing this little piece (2017) it’s been five years since we have had sight or sound of any new songs from Bob – one of the longest gaps in terms of Bob as a creator of new songs.

So for the moment I’m taking this at the end, although like every other Dylan fan I’ll be knocked out if more songs do emerge at some time.  But for now, we deal with what we have.

And what we have is not what we had with most of Dylan’s career.  We’ve got no out takes from the record studio, no occasional bits of additional film music, no new songs tried out in sound checks before the show.  No rejected songs.  I can only assume Bob either gave us all he had, or he and his management tightened up the whole recording process – which is possible since this is one of the albums Bob himself produced.

When I first heard the CD I was knocked out with the opening: Duquesne Whistle, and if I had been writing this little piece then, I’d have made that song my “Highlight of the year.”   It was only after I had written my review here that it was pointed out to me that this was a straight copy of a Jelly Roll Morton song, and then my regard for the song was knocked back – which was a shame because my theory as to the meaning of the song in my article on this site (for once) found a bit of applause from readers of the site.

The album claims the song was written by Dylan and Robert Hunter.  But for me, even if the Jelly Roll Morton song was out of copyright by the time they wrote Duquesne what benefit is there in not acknowledging the origins?  That isn’t to say it has to be done each time a folk song is used, but this is an absolute straight copy of the original that most certainly was copyrighted when it was first recorded.

I still love the song, and it is a great start to the album, but it is (for me – I am not suggesting it should be for anyone else) annoying not to have its antecedents recognised.

But it is a bouncy and lively piece and sets off the album in the right way, and leads on to more good music in the shape of the almost obligatory slow second track. And this song works well too; Soon After Midnight has none of the mawkishness of some other recent slow songs.  It is simple, and the music and the lyrics just work together.  It’s old time stuff, but none the worse for that.

And then out from the speakers explodes Narrow Way – a great blues – no a brilliant blues  with invented lines – like “why is my share not equal to yours” and endless conundrums in the lyrics with a fair smattering of the Bible; this is a faultless blues.  Bob is so clear about what he is doing and saying: it is also a perfect performance.

Even now quite a few years after first hearing the album I still remember listening to these three opening tracks and thinking, wow, this is going to be a great, great album, and Long and Wasted Years made it even more so with a unique use of rhythm and structure – it can’t be compared it to anything else.  I’m still not sure what the focus of the issue of pointlessness is in the song: maybe it is life in general, we never seem to be told, and that adds to the quality.

For because we don’t know, on that song I really wanted to know what everyone else thought, but then hardly anyone commented.  Maybe no one else knew either.

More uncertainty and more great lines followed in Pay in Blood “You’ve got the same eyes as your mother does. If only you could prove who your father was.”  And by this time I was thinking, yes, yes, yes, this is the perfect Dylan album.  Changes of pace, different subjects, and lyrics that one really has to work on to understand where the great man was going.

But then, although I enjoyed Scarlet Town  and Early Roman Kings to me it seemed the fun was over, and with the last three tracks, no, I wasn’t really there with Bob any more.  He’d lost me along the way. Which was a shame because the last song is a very, very, very long song.

In fact in the latter parts of the album I was thinking about the fact that Scarlet Town was a borrowed folk song, and that I know I had heard Tempest somewhere before (although in its case, I had to go a-searching.  I know a bit about English and Scottish folk music, but not 20th century folk compositions from the USA.)

As I have said elsewhere,  I’ve no idea which order the songs were written in so I can’t do the bit that I have enjoyed doing in all the other reviews in this series, of “playing” the album in the order the songs were written, and thus finding new implications.   But I can say it ends with disappointment for me, in part for the same reason as the opening song disappoints – it is just such a copy of other people’s work.

However Duquesne is redeemed for although the melody, chord structure and rhythm are all taken from the original jazz piece, the lyrics are new.  But with the song Tempest we don’t even have that, as it seems Dylan simply took the work of Seth Newton Mize and then added loads of new verses around the original.  I find that a very disappointing approach, and indeed a very disappointing song because unlike most of Dylan’s work, it doesn’t give me something new.  I am sure that is my failing, but that’s how I hear it.  Or rather I don’t hear, for these days it only comes on if I haven’t got to the CD player and turned the album off in time.

It’s still an album I wouldn’t be without, and “Narrow Way” and “Long and Wasted Years” are both superb compositions, as is Duquesne if we leave aside the whole issue of the music being a copy.  But for me, it’s not as great a work overall, as many of the reviewers for the big time magazines and newspapers found it to be – simply because it drifts away near the end.

If it is Dylan’s farewell original album, then it is still many light years ahead of what most other blues – folk – pop – popular – rock composers could ever do.  But by the extraordinary standards set in 1961 and continued ever since, to my mind it tails off a little towards the end.

This concludes the series “Bob Dylan Year by Year and Decade by Decade” although knowing how the rest of this site goes, I’ll be doing some revisions to articles over time.

The aim of the series was to look at Bob’s compositions in the order of their creation – which as I have said, for this collection, I can’t do, as I don’t have the data.  But I still hope there is something here, and in the series, that you find of interest.  As always I am not saying “I’m right” but rather, “Here’s one possible view…”

Bob Dylan year by year – the series

Each of these articles is a summary of what Dylan wrote in that year.

• Dylan in 1961: The first ventures
• Dylan in 1962: The Overview
• Dylan in 1963: the overview – Dylan the storyteller part 1
• Bob Dylan in 1964: the overview. Dylan the storyteller part 2.
• 1965: the overview – the year Dylan invented two totally new forms of music.
• Dylan in 1966 the overview: writing songs while the band patiently waits
• Dylan in 1967: A year of two, or maybe three halves.
• Bob Dylan in 1968: As his country pulls itself apart, Dylan takes a year out.
• Bob Dylan in 1969: everything is lovely
• Bob Dylan in 1970: a stuttering return to song writing.
• Bob Dylan in 1971 – taking more time out but producing two brilliant songs.
• Bob Dylan in 1972. Still not writing much, but what he wrote gave us a hint
• Bob Dylan in 1973: moving into the second round of unadulterated genius
• Bob Dylan in 1974: the genius returns, and how!
• Bob Dylan in 1975: working with Jacques Levy
• Bob Dylan in 1976: a year of pause and reflection
• Bob Dylan in 1977: the preparation work for “Not Dark Yet”
• Bob Dylan in 1978: Helena Springs and our fate is our own fault
• Bob Dylan in 1979: When He Returns
• Dylan in 1980: moving from the Christian songs into beauty and confusion.
• Dylan in 1981: the last gospel songs and the search for a new direction
• Bob Dylan’s songs of 1982/3: how to ignore a masterpiece.
• Bob Dylan in 1984: a brilliant song only once performed.
• 1985: The year of Dylan not drowning in someone else’s wine
• Bob Dylan in 1986: Experiment, experiment, experiment, genius, ignore
• Bob Dylan in 1987/8. Three different but connected triumphs
• 1989: Bob Dylan stalked by the darkness
• Bob Dylan in 1990: the end of the era
• Bob Dylan: the gap years (1991-1995)
• Bob Dylan in 1996: the master songwriter returns after five years out.
• Bob Dylan in 1997: finishing “Time out of mind” before touring again.
• Bob Dylan in 1998/9: the road to the Oscar
• Bob Dylan in 2000/1: an old approach to writing songs, and a new approach too.
• Bob Dylan: the movie years 2001/2005
• 2005/6: an interesting collection of re-worked material
• Bob Dylan’s songs of 2008/9: It’s all good, if you hear what he’s saying.
• 2011/12 – the last hooray?

Bob Dylan – the highlight of the year (in terms of compositions)

1961: Talking Bear Mountain – Dylan took an existing format and used it in a completely new way – not a bad move for a 20 year old.  But “Song to Woody” must get a mention for the assured delivery of the song on the LP.

1962:  Ballad for a friend.  This little known blues song is utter perfection, using rhythm and lyrics to give the blues format a new twist and hold our attention totally throughout.

1963: When the Ship Comes In.  Part religious, part protest, this has all the vigour and vitality of change and reform that “Times they are a changing” (written soon after) doesn’t get close to with imagery that is utterly new within this type of music.

1964: It’s all right ma.   Line after line of indictment of the modern age delivered with such power and passion.  No one ever wrote a song like this before.

1965: Impossible to choose.  “Subterranean” gave beat poetry a place in pop and rock, Love Minus Zero took love songs into the world of the unsayable, “Rolling Stone” created the songs of disdain, “Desolation Row” took political protest to a totally new level and “Johanna” took music into impressionism.

1966: One of us must know.   Not most people’s choice, indeed probably no one’s choice by mine, but this song takes one of the three fundamental themes of pop (lost love – the other two are love and dance) and gives it a totally new twist. A completely new way of saying farewell.

1967: Drifter’s Escape.  It has but one line of music, but takes the impressionism of Johanna into a totally new context at yet another level.  This world is not real.  This world makes no sense.  This world offers hope to the lost: the problem is finding the door.

1968: Dylan can stop.  And stop he did.  After over 100 songs in the past seven years, at a time when it looked as if everything from the arts to politics was changing forever, Dylan just stopped.

1969: Dylan can change.   I can’t pick a song from the list of new compositions because nothing here matches what has gone before, and nothing really grabs me as original, new, or overwhelmingly beautiful.  But it was the experimentation with country music that brought Dylan back to songwriting.  Without that twist, he might never have written again.

1970: Time passes slowly.  An uncertain time in Dylan’s writing, as he tried to shake off what had happened in the previous two years.  I don’t claim this is a great song, but it successfully captured the moment, and showed perfectly where Bob was and how he was feeling.

1971: When I paint my masterpiece and Watching the river flow.  In a year of just three compositions it ought to be easy to pick the best, but I find it easy to pick the worst.   One song really doesn’t do it for me but both When I paint my masterpiece and then Watching the river flow are sublime reflections on the work of a creative artist – and in pop and rock music there are precious few of those.

1974: Tangled up in Blue.  For anyone else it would be the highlight of a total career, carved on the gravestone and mentioned in every article.  Idiot Wind comes a very very close second.

1975: “Abandoned Love”.  The last collaborations with Levy were extraordinary, but everything about this song shouts out “genius” and leaves one wondering why Dylan needed a collaborator.  Both versions that we have are so worth playing again, and again, and again.

1976: A year of a pause.  And why not, for in the last two years he had contributed more to popular music than anyone else had done in a lifetime.

1977: “Where are you tonight?”  An extraordinary poem which opens with the most evocative of lines: “There’s a long-distance train rolling through the rain  Tears on the letter I write”    And if lines such as

He took dead-centre aim but he missed just the same
She was waiting, putting flowers on the shelf
She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair
And discovered her invisible self

don’t make you shiver, well, I don’t know what will.

1978: “I must love you too much”.   It is a tough call between this and “Slow Train Coming”  and Slow Train only loses out because of what happened next.  “I love you” is a right rollicking fun rock piece that overwhelms us with its energy and passion.  If Dylan had put any of this drive into his religious songs he might have converted more people.

1979: “When He Returns” (live version).  Not just the stand out moment of this year, but one of the stand out moments of the decade of Dylan.

1980: “Caribbean Wind” with The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Alter” and “Yonder Comes Sin.”  Three amazing songs which followed on later from “Every Grain of Sand”  What an amazing achievement.

1981: Lenny Bruce is Dead.  Not only an exquisite song but Dylan finally confronting the contradictions of the religion he had been espousing for the past three years.  He wrote two more gospel songs, but then found his heart was no longer in it.

1982/3: Blind Willie McTell.  The song bears no relationship to the music of William Samuel McTier, it came out of nowhere and left no impact on Bob’s subsequent writings.  And yet it is an utter masterpiece in its own right.

1984: I once knew a man  Only performed once, but oh what a song!  The ultimate blues.

1985: Dark Eyes, although run a very close second with the co-written Well Well Well. “I live in another world where life and death are memorized / Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes”.  After that, there really is so little left to say.

1986: To fall in love with you.  With any other artist this would be right up there at the top of the list of masterpieces.  With Bob is was tried, half written, and abandoned.  Thank goodness someone thought to keep the tape.

1987/8: What good am I?   In a very real sense the final three songs of this year make a trilogy of reflections on what is wrong with the world from a personal and social point of view.  This is the second of of the three – the deep personal reflective answer to “Political World” that precedes it, and “Dignity” which follows.

1989:  Man in a Long Black Coat.   The whole year builds up to this point as Bob Dylan shows us that the darkness makes no sense at all.   Once more we all sit here stranded but we’re trying our best to deny it.

1990: Where were you last night?  Bob takes the simple format of classic lost love pop and delivers a song with verve and panache that is a real swing number that can be enjoyed as much on the dance floor as in the concert hall.  Which is why it is such a shame he never gave us a single live version of this masterpiece of the genre.

1991/5: The Gap Years.  The never ending tour seemed to get longer and longer, some of the events seemed to get that little bit more chaotic, and above all, Bob just didn’t write any new songs.

1996: Not Dark Yet and Mississippi.   The latter was not included in the subsequent album, but held back for later, but one recording of that song stands out.  Not Dark Yet remains one of Dylan’s greatest ever works.

1997: Make you feel My Love & Love Sick.  The two ends of the spectrum of love – that emotion that conquers, overwhelms, and won’t let us go.

1998/9: Things have changed.  It was the only song Dylan composed but even if he had written 20 I suspect this would have made it as song of the year.

2000/1: Honest With Me.  Love and Theft is a most apt title for the album, but its total Americanisity means that it is hard for non-Americans to be able to associate with it in full.

2001/2005: Tell Ol Bill.   The utter total masterpiece that emerged from the four movie songs written in the pause between creating albums.

2005/6: Nettie Moore.  At a time when Bob was, by his own admission writing random verses, this evolution of the traditional song takes us back to an earlier Bob, when he thought of men in long black coats and the like.

2008/9: It’s all good.  Bob sums up everything that is wrong with the world in one song based on one chord.  This really does tell it as it is, and by and large it is pretty much all over.

2011/12: Narrow Way and Long and Wasted Years.  After a lifetime of writing, to be able to create these songs, but with their own unique approach, yet each so different, is surely monument enough to such a remarkable talent.

by Larry Fyffe

In Greek mythology, the Sun-God, who is the son of Zeus, the God of Thunder, is Paean (Apollo), known for his music. The following free verse of Gregory Corso’s poetry pitches black-humour.

It’s an assonantal and consonantal rendition of the ancient Greek hymn to the gods. Paeaning on it, Corso eroticizes the not-so-sexy climax of a nuclear bomb:

O Bomb, I love you
I want to kiss your clank, eat your boom
You are a paean, an acme of scream
O lyric hat of Mister Thunder
O resound thy tanky knees
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom
Boom ye skies and boom ye suns
Boom, boom ye moons, ye stars, boom
(Gregory Corso: Bomb)

The bombshell, with its devastating effect, is exciting enough to pee on; a later satirical motion picture about atomic warfare is titled, ‘Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’.

The creation of the following lighter black humour in regards to the atom bomb, with allusion to the Book of Genesis, demonstrates Gregory Corso’s poetic influence on the rhymed lyrics of singer Bob Dylan:

Well, I rang the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and gave a yell
‘Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man’
A shotgun fired and away I ran ….
Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave
‘Let’s go play Adam and Eve’
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin’
When she said, ‘Hey man, you crazy or sumpin
You see what happened last time they started’
(Bob Dylan: Talkin’ World War III Blues)

In Dylan’s the lyrics below, in free verse to some extent, the alliterative sounds of Corso’s Post Modernist ‘Bomb’ poem are loudly heard; in particular, with its reference to the moon and stars:

Well, I’m moving after midnight
Down boulevards of broken cars
Don’t know what I do without it
Without the love we call ours
Beyond here lies nothin’
Nothin’ but the moon and stars
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothin’)

From Corso, Dylan takes the vision of an America that fails to regain a spiritual Paradise, to become the Promised Land, but the nation manages to produce Romantic poets who keep that hope alive:

What hope for America, so embodied in thee, O friend, when
The very same alcohol that disembodied your brother redman
of his America disembodied
Thee – a plot to grab their land – we know yet what
Plot to grab the ungrabbable land of one’s spirit
(Gregory Corso: Elegiac Feelings American)

Dylan lightens things up a bit while not ignoring the role played by drugs. The message is similar to that of Corso:

‘I think I’ll call it America’, I said as we hit land
I took a deep breath, I fell, I could not stand
Captain Arab, he started writing up some deeds
He said, ‘Let’s set up a fort, and start buying the place with beads”
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

There is the suggestion that now Arabian money, Captain Arab, is buying up the land:

Dylan’s lyrics are double-edged; more so than Corso’s ecologically focused lyrics that are spoken by a Shelleyan skylark, filled with hope in the future. Not so full of hope, sings Dylan – possible it is for some to achieve the American Dream, to gain a material Paradise in America, but, alas, not a spiritual one:

It’s undeniable what they’d have you think
It’s indescribable, it can drive you to drink
They said it was the land of milk and honey
Now they say it’s the land of money
Who ever thought they could ever make that stick
It’s unbelievable you can get this rich this quick
(Bob Dylan: Unbelievable)

Dylan does not throw his Romantic Blake-light sentiments all away but even were one to take a ride on the latter-day locomotive of Whitmanian techno-optimism, it’s sure to be a love that’s in vain. The owl of Minerva, of wisdom, flies at twilight. Technological innovation that be environment-friendly helps, but it comes too late:

Scarlet Town, in the hot noon hours
There’s palm-leaf shadows and scattered flowers
Beggers crouching at the gate
Help comes, but it comes too late
(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit’ -The Shelleyan Beat poet is more optimistic in outlook than the songwriter, but on the torso of Bob Dylan’s work the name of Corso is written:

The time had come
I cracked my jaws
Broke my legs
Sagged belly-flat on plough
On pitchfork
On scythe
My spirit leaked from my wounds
A whole spirit pools
I rose from the carcass of my torment
I stood on the brink of heaven
And I swear the Great Territory did quake
When I fell, free
(Gregory Corso: Transformation And Escape)

As far as the songwriter is concerned, no paeans shall he sing; the Great Territory of America can look after itself:

Thunder on the mountain heavy as can be ….
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
For the love of God, you ought to take pity on yourself
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

Tempest is the final song written by Bob Dylan and recorded in a mainstream album, to be reviewed on this site.  I didn’t deliberately leave it until last, but it seems a fitting place to finish – although we still have a lot of the Basement Tapes and some very early more obscure recordings to consider.

Bob started to give us long songs early on.  Some were and are obvious masterpieces, like Tambourine Man, Rolling Stone and Desolation Row (wherein of course the “Titanic sails at dawn”).  Some really don’t seem to have passed the test of time (such as Ballad in Plain D) and occasionally there are epics that don’t mean as much to me as they seem to mean to everyone else (Sad Eyed Lady for example)

Rolling Stone and Desolation Row, as long songs, have musical issues that help them along the way.  The chorus of Rolling Stone is so powerful it just invites everyone to shout out “How does it feel?”  The lyrics are so vicious it can still take one by surprise on listening to it again having not heard it for a while.   Tambourine Man has its chorus, and its endlessly inventive lyrics. Desolation Row has its frightening opening – even more frightening when one realises it was true – and then image and metaphor piled upon image and metaphor.

And Tempest… well Tempest, which Dylan has never played in public, takes a song written by Seth Newton Mize (1901-1977) and adds new lyrics in between the originals.

I have a feeling that most Dylan fans have not heard the early versions, most notably that by the Carter Family, perhaps because we are so used to songs from earlier years being openly available on the internet, maybe people assume that as it is not there, it doesn’t exist.

But the original recording can be found on Spotify: and I really do suggest you might listen to it, if you have an interest in Tempest.  The song in question “The Titanic” comes from the album “The Acme Sessions” 1952/6 Disc A.  Better still, find the time to listen to the whole album.

The point here is that Dylan’s song is a direct copy of that Carter Family song – a song that has been recorded by many country artists.  In some versions (such as that by Jimmie Tarlton) it is know as “After the Sinking of the Titanic” – but as I say virtually all recordings of these versions on the internet have also been removed.

The original song was written in the 1920s as far as we can tell, and a lot of people recorded it, although seemingly often without acknowledging Mize as the creator – probably because he simply wasn’t a very well know writer.

Here’s the original song’s lyrics – if you know Dylan’s song you’ll immediately recognise quite a lot of what is going on here.

As the moon rose in glory,
Drifting to the golden west,
She told her sad, sad story:
Sixteen hundred have gone to rest.

The watchman was lying down dreaming,
Yes, dreaming a sad, sad dream;
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Far out on the deep blue sea.

He woke and called the rich man,
Told him to come to life;
Told him to save his baby
And also his darling wife.

The rich man, he must have been drinking.
Knowing that he had done wrong,
He tried to win the record
And let the Titanic go down.

When he spied the Titanic was sinking
They fell down upon their knees
And cried, “Oh, Lord, have mercy!
And what will become of me?”

The band was out there playing,
Yes, playing out on the sea.
When they spied the Titanic was sinking
Played “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

When the sad news reached the landing
That the Titanic had gone down.
Many a poor widow and orphan
Was walking all over the town.

The little children were crying
“Oh, Mama has gone to stay.”
But surely they will invent something
That will weigh the Titanic some day.

Here is a more recent recording of the song which retains much of the original composition’s feel, although it adds a lot of water at the start (skip the first 15 seconds if you like) and adds some new chords, and a new verse at the end which has nothing to do with the original.  If you don’t want to use Spotify (and it is available for free) then stay with this version.  But I do hope you seek out the Carter Family version to hear how close Dylan has come to using this original work.

Views of Dylan’s composition range from calling it one of his best songs ever to calling it one of his worst songs ever.   The Los Angeles Times said that the song “allows the facts to take on a different, deeper resonance than just hearing them dryly recounted. Tempest pays homage to the crop of Titanic-themed folk songs that sprang up in the years after the ship sank in 1912, and finds a way to take the story beyond mere mortal tragedy into the realm of the mythological.”

The New York Daily News said  “The essential Titanic tale speaks eloquently of class, cowardice, bravery, and hubris,” but Dylan’s version of the story, which he sings “without momentum or variation,” drags on and on but “adds nothing” to the familiar story.

The Wall Street Journal said it is “undisciplined and banal,” and suggests it is not clear “whether he’s discussing the ship sinking or the film about it.”

It has also been said that it is hard to listen to it all the way through – and on this point I think I can immediately agree.  Goodness knows how many, many times I have listened to “Desolation Row” and it still sends shivers down my spine as I continue to find new meanings.  And indeed as Dylan finds new interpretations of it – as he did on one tour by putting a bounce into the song to make it almost a dance tune, I go along with him each time.

But it is, as others have said, quite hard to stay focused on Tempest.  So what is the difference that I feel between a long masterpiece like Desolation Row, and an even longer song which is not a masterpiece, in my view?

For me (and of course this is a very personal view) I feel the engagement in “Desolation Row” just as I do with “Rolling Stone”.  “Rolling Stone” is unmistakably personal because of the way Dylan sings “How does it feel”; Desolation Row achieves the effect by suddenly moving from his reflections on the awfulness of American society to the unexpectedly personal “I received your letter yesterday” which still, after all these years, hits me like a bolt in the heart.

The desire that the correspondent “don’t send me no more letters, no, not unless you mail them from Desolation Row” demands that the other writer sees the world as he does, or else shuts up and goes away.

In Titanic there is no requirement, no demand, no urgency, no message.  There is detachment – and of course a lot of art is detached.  But for me there is something wrong with detachment here.  And as reviewers before me have on occasion pointed out, there was a Leo Zimmerman on the Titanic.  He travelled third class and died in the sinking.  Did Bob even know?  Did he care?  I’m not sure.

In fact that thought leads me on to the thought (again which others have expressed before me) that lack of any reference to the historic facts makes it all seem… well, unreal.  I mean, there’s no iceberg in Dylan.  So could we be back to the tempest as a punishment from God for non-belief, or did Bob really want to write a long repeating song about a storm?

As I pondered and tried to get my thoughts in even a vague sort of order I wondered also if Bob wasn’t looking for a tableau on which he could get all his old characters back together one last time: the rich man, the gamblers…  But if so didn’t he already do this with works like Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts?

Indeed thinking of that song, if one wants to tell a rambling story then isn’t that much earlier song the way to do it?  It’s fun, it’s bouncy and it catches you out.  And this is the problem: so much of it means so little to me.  Take …

Brother rose up against brother
In every circumstance
They fought and slaughtered each other
In a deadly dance

It’s there on its own and it just seems to say nothing other than suggest I’ve got it all wrong and this is the tale of Armageddon, not the Titanic.  Which of course is my problem and my failing, I am not blaming Bob.  I’m just saying, “Sorry your lordship, you’ve lost me there.”

Let me try and explain a little further.  Try this:

He moved across the mirrored room, “Set it up for everyone,” he said
Then everyone commenced to do what they were doin’ before he turned their heads
Then he walked up to a stranger and he asked him with a grin
“Could you kindly tell me, friend, what time the show begins?”
Then he moved into the corner, face down like the Jack of Hearts

No, I don’t really get all this.  But it makes me smile, and I feel part of it, even though I have no idea what “it” is.  That doesn’t mean Dylan has to make me smile – goodness me no  – but he has to do something.  I want him to engage with me so I can engage with him, even when I don’t understand.

I am self-evidently struggling here, and may well have already lost 90% of the people who are kind enough to start reading my ramblings, but let me try this.

“Things have changed” has always engaged me from the first moment I heard it.  I must have heard it a thousand times, not just at home, but also because a couple of the dance clubs I go to play it regularly, as it is perfect to dance modern jive to.  And through all these experiences as a listener, and as a dancer, I have come to integrate myself into that piece of music so that it becomes part of me, part of my life, part of my being.  Same with “Love minus zero”.  Same with “Johanna” and so many others.  That is why I love Dylan, and spend so much time writing about his music.  I relate to the music on so many levels.

But here?  I can’t even identify which level I’m supposed to be on.

In a Rolling Stone interview in 2012 there was a part of the conversation which talked about something Bob had said on stage about one of the band on stage wearing a President Obama badge.  Following a question asking what Bob meant by that comment he replied,

I don’t know what I could have meant by that. You say things sometimes, you don’t know what the hell you mean. But you’re sincere when you say it. I would hope that things have changed. That’s all I can say, for whatever it is that I said. I’m not going to deny what I said, but I would have hoped that things would’ve changed.

And I wonder if this isn’t how we should be handling this song.  Maybe there is nothing to read into it.  Bob just heard the Carter Family and thought, “let’s see where this goes.”  In fact in one interview he said pretty much just that.  Indeed in the same Rolling Stone interview he was asked at one point…

“…let’s return to Tempest. Can you talk a little about your songwriting method these days?”

To which Bob replied, “I can write a song in a crowded room. Inspiration can hit you anywhere. It’s magical. It’s really beyond me.”

Which suggests that sometimes, perhaps quite often, it all just comes out, without lots of research, without lots of planning, and without worrying about the facts.  He did indeed also say, “… a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”

So what do we get?   The original opens with

As the moon rose in glory,
Drifting to the golden west,
She told her sad, sad story:
Sixteen hundred have gone to rest.

Dylan opens with

The pale moon rose in its glory
Out on the western town
She told a sad, sad story
Of the great ship that went down

And off we go.  But Dylan takes five verses to get to

The watchman he lay dreaming
As the ballroom dancers twirled
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Into the underworld

whereas in the original the watchman comes in, in the second verse

The watchman was lying down dreaming,
Yes, dreaming a sad, sad dream;
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Far out on the deep blue sea.

In the original song we get in verse three

He woke and called the rich man,
Told him to come to life;
Told him to save his baby
And also his darling wife.

Whereas for Bob it is verse 23 when we get

The rich man, Mr. Astor
Kissed his darling wife
He had no way of knowing
Be the last trip of his life

I won’t go on doing this comparison – you can of course work it out for yourself if you so wish but in essence what we seem to have is Dylan taking the original tune, and the original lyrics and then putting in loads of lyrics of his own in between.  And I find myself asking, “for what purpose?”

And my answer is, “I don’t really know.”

If you play the song lots of times and find it moving or enjoyable or relaxing or whatever, then that’s great.  I just somehow can’t find any of those responses.  I am sure it is my loss, but that’s just how it goes.

The Titanic sailed at dawn, but sadly in this version of the story, no one got round to asking which side any of us was on.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Larry Fyffe

Dogmatic true believers notwithstanding, Bob Dyan keeps to his individualistic
visions of the trials and tribulations of human existence in a very mysterious Universe.

He finds the inspiration to try to be good in the teachings of Jesus Christ:

Jesus said ‘Be ready
For you know not the hour in which I come
He said, “He who is not for me is against me”
Just so you know where He’s coming from”
(Bob Dylan : Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

The biblical allusion is to:

He that is not with me is against me
And he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad
Wherefore I say unto you
All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be
forgiven unto men
But blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be
forgiven unto men
(Matthew 12: 30-31)

That is to say that there are those who say they follow the altruistic-centered teachings of Jesus, but their selfish behaviour proves otherwise, and there are those of questionable behavior who actually follow the ‘spirit’ of his teachings since they do no harm to the harmless:

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)

Thus spake poet Vachel Lindsay:

This is the sin against the Holy Ghost
To speak of bloody power as right divine
And call on God to guard each vile chief’s house
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine
(Vachel Lindsay: The Unpardonable Sin)

But woe to those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit:

How I made it back home, nobody knows
I’ve been through hell, what good did it do?
You bastard: I suppose to respect you?
(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood)

In typical Dylanesque style, there’s enough room for more than one way to interpret these lyrics. The words can been taken to mean the song condemns religious leaders that use religion to advance their own personal agendas, be they political or monetary.

And even that there’s bewilderment, on the part of the the singer, as to why God and Jesus choose to forsake him; organized religion has let him down though he was willing to give it a chance, with its very inspirational gospel songs.

The answer that is blowing in the wind, in the false ‘Holy Spirit’ of Modern Times, howls out, “God doesn’t care”. The ‘blood’ that flows through the heart of the sanguine man, according to the ‘four humours’ theory of earlier times, makes the singer of the song a man of action, determined to follow what he believes is good, and he is not going to spill his own blood, his own spirituality, for the sake of the material objectives of others. He’s won’t allow himself to be nailed to a cross by unworthy leaders with corrupted faith. He’s not going to pay in his own blood. The drifter escapes.

Dylan’s lyrics are indeed double edged; enough that true believers can find what they want to find as long as they do not examine his words in the context of all that he has written; as long as they consider he has suddenly ceased to think like a Romantic individualist with the creative imagination of an artist.

Bob Dylan, as such an artist, is not afraid to express quite a bit of religious skepticism. For instance, that biblical writers ignore the roll of the dice, the role played in life by luck, good or bad:

When the Reaper’s task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loveliest and the best
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

Thus spake poet Edna St. Vincent Malley:

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned
(Edna Malley: Dirge Without Music)

Referencing the Roman God of the Sea, symbolic of the forces of disinterested Nature, in lyrics that express a view not unlike that held by Existentialist writers, Bob Dylan sings:

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody’s shouting, ‘Which side are you on?’
And Ezra Pound and TS Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row )

A true artist thinks in metaphorical terms and takes into consideration different points of view. All things are not either black or white when looked at under the light of “Noah’s great rain bow”:

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

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

The world can look ok, because we see it like this every day, but peel back the curtains and you find something completely different.  Something awful lurks outside, but we see it every day and so pretend its not so bad really.  We know it’s chaos, we pretend it is order.  We know it is awful, we pretend it is all right.

And that’s how I have come to see Dylan’s “Scarlet Town”.  But the images are so convoluted I could be completely wrong.  Maybe that’s the point.

Bob has played this song 272 times at the time of writing (September 2017), so he obviously rates it, and by and large we know quite a bit about its origins.  With a spot of luck, some insight and (as so often with Bob) a bit of (hopefully inspired) guesswork, we can work out many versions of what is going on.  Here’s just one…

The approach of the original song – Barbara Allen – is classic iambic pentameter which is also known as the rising duple giving us a beat of one-two, one-two

What Bob does is take that structure and give us a mix of iambic pentameter and trochaic pentameter, the latter being also known as falling duple: one-two, one-two.

An example of this comes from A.E. Housman’s ‘Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now’ (1896):

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

The difference being Bob gives us falling / rising / falling / falling.

Now if you’ve read my rambling reviews before you’ll know I don’t normally bother with meter, because in a song the music allows you to play with the meter in all sorts of ways that you can’t get away with in a poem (as there is nothing to fill the bits with no words). But I have read a couple of commentaries that suggest Bob took a 19th century poem and based the meter on this, but I don’t think this is at all right.  He’s using classic elements from poetry and combining them as many have done before – it is not just one poem that influenced him.

What Bob does however is turn the original song of Barbara Allen all upside down in the lyrics so we don’t get a fair maid dwelling we get a “flat-chested junky whore.”   “Scarlet Town” has been replaced, if not by Desolation Row, then Juarez at Easter in the rain.

In the original tale Barabara’s lover, William, is lying on his death bed, and sends a message to Barbara to come to him.  But she is slow in getting there, and by the time she arrives he’s dead.  So mortified by her awful behaviour is she, that she ups and dies the next day.  A typical tale from the medieval period onwards.

And of course there is a twist…

And from his grave grew a red red rose
From her grave a green briar

And the two entwine as one so the lovers are together in eternity.  Within its medieval context this is an utterly moving tale of two young lovers reminding the audience that chance, mistakes and bad times on earth do happen, but can be redeemed in the afterlife where happiness prevails for those who believe.

The 21st century version of Scarlet Town created by Bob Dylan however is now a much more ramshackle affair, with only the slightest echoes of the original.

Scarlet Town in the month of May
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
Mistress Mary by the side of the bed
Kissing his face, heaping prayers on his head

So brave, so true, so gentle is he
I’ll weep for him as he’d weep for me
Little Boy Blue come blow your horn
In Scarlet Town where I was born

And the first question is, what on earth is Little Boy Blue doing in there?

“Little Boy Blue” in this incarnation is not from the poem by Eugene Field about the death of a child which appeared in 1888 in the Chicago weekly literary journal, America.  Rather it is from the rhyme in Tommy Thumb’s Little Song Book (published in the mid 18th century although probably much older.  There are suggestions that there is a reference to it in King Lear (III, vi) when Edgar, masquerading as Mad Tom, say “Thy sheepe be in the corne”.   The nursery rhyme runs…

Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow,
The cow’s in the corn;
But where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haystack,
He’s fast asleep.
Will you wake him?
No, not I,
For if I do,
He’s sure to cry.

For me, Bob’s use of the phrase is just a reference back to the simple days of the past.  Is he really talking about the town where he was born (in contrast to his wife’s home town which is hell, apparently)?   I doubt it, but I guess it could be a reference to Gabriel’s horn in here, blown to announce Judgement Day.  This ain’t judgement day however, this is just life, so instead of Gabriel we get little boy blue.

Thus we have lost the simple life of our childhood, nothing is right any more; we have emotions, we can feel sadness and pity, but we haven’t really learned any lessons at all because as soon as we look beyond the dying man and the grieving lover we find…

Beggars crouching at the gate
Help comes but it comes too late

In our brave new world yes, you can ask for help from your lover but really there is no telling if you are going to get that help – he might well be fast asleep like Little Boy Blue, or just tarrying along the way like Barbara Allen.  Even touching Christ’s cloak doesn’t guarantee a cure from your afflictions; not in the modern world it don’t.

On marble slabs and in fields of stone
You make your humble wishes known
I touched the garment but the hem was torn
In Scarlet Town where I was born

So presumably even the miracles don’t work no more (as in Matthew 9:20 where the woman touches Christ’s cloak and is healed).  In fact this is the end – or one of the versions of the end of all time

In Scarlet Town the end is near
The seven wonders of the world are here
The evil and the good living side by side
All human forms seem glorified

So maybe Battle of Armageddon isn’t an actual war – it is just the life that we have now.  We are, in fact, at the end of all times.

And as a result we are still suffering for the sins of our fathers, trying to hard to forget all that has gone before in the name of God, in the name of Progress, and maybe all that we have done just to survive.

In Scarlet Town you fight your father’s foes
Up on the hill a chilly wind blows
You fight ‘em on high and you fight ‘em down in
You fight ‘em with whisky, morphine and gin

So here I am, in the bar, listening to music trying to pass the time, maybe truing to make things right, waiting for the end

Set ‘em up Joe, play Walking The Floor
Play it for my flat chested junky whore
I’m staying up late and I’m making amends
While the smile of heaven descends

I’ve done it all, and I don’t regret anything, in fact I just wish I’d done more, when I had the time.   But there is no “better judgement”.   In fact it is getting pretty uncertain whether there is even any judgement at all.  The only thing to learn is that life goes around and around – the setting might have changed but really, the rest is just how it goes.  Best make the best of it, for this is all we have…

If love is a sin than beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and the white, the yellow and the brown
It’s all right there for ya in Scarlet Town

Indeed this setting – the cards that fate deals out are what affects your life – you can’t fight the fate you are dealt.

This is of course a message totally contrary to the Christianity that Dylan preached for a number of years.   Which is not to say he’s given up on the Christian message, because there is nothing to say he believes this vision, any more than any novelist believes in the story lines he evolves.  It’s just the story he’s telling today.  Maybe

As to the references, they are, I suspect, significant only as illustrations, rather like a poet had employed a cartoonist to sketch a few drawings as part of the story.  They are not, in my view, insightful definitions.   Here’s Set em up Joe from 1988.

“Set ‘Em Up Joe” was a tribute song to Ernest Tubb (ET in the lyrics).  Tubb was the Texas Troubadour, an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, “Walking the Floor Over You” which although not a massive hit as first was later seen as the first honky tonk song that launched the musical genre.  And here it is…

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

You left me and you went away
You said that you’d be back in just a day
That day has come and gone but you’re still away from home
I’m walking the floor over you

Meanwhile back in Scarlet Town à la Bob…

You may of course completely disagree but I see this as an impressionist piece, giving us hints and pictures that fade in and out, rather than a whole story or any sort of complete exposition of a situation.  The references to Set Em Up Joe and Walking the Floor are not so much a specific references to specific songs as hints and impressions of the worlds we travel through within Scarlet Town – the town contains all these different elements all at the same time, just as any town might include a folk club, a bar for heavy drinkers, a dance hall playing 1950s rock n roll, a junky whore and so on.    A set of competing images, just like Visions of Johanna, and a set of varying time perspective just as with Tangled up in Blue.

And into those images we have characters: quite a bunch of characters.  Just as Visions of Johanna has Johanna, Louise and Little Boy Lost now we have Little Boy Blue, Vern Gosdin, Ernest Tubb, and Uncle Tom – taken from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A man who accepts and actually believes in his lower-class status because of his race.

Plus Uncle Bill (a reference I didn’t know, at least I have never heard it in English English) which the urban dictionary tells me is a “creepy family member most likely to molest anyone he can. The funny Uncle nobody trusts. The uncle who volunteers to play Santa.

Which suggests everything is concocted from the personalities we’ve been dealt through out genes and our upbringing.  A world that looks to be one thing from the front but which behind the screens is something else.  Just like in a movie, nothing is quite what it appears to be.

And repeatedly we realise that in this world there really is no escape.  For even if there were to be it would certainly come too late.  Good and bad exist side by side; that’s just how it is.  We can’t do anything about it.  That’s just how it goes.

So nothing changes, we are still fighting the same wars as our parents fought, and for all the signs of progress there is no progress

In Scarlet Town you fight your father’s foes
Up on the hill a chilly wind blows
You fight ‘em on high and you fight ‘em down in
You fight ‘em with whisky, morphine and gin

But still out of all this, the narrator (be it Bob or a fictional character) believes that if he repents and tries to do better, even at this late stage all will be ok.  He only needs to sort out issues where he is now, because you don’t have to travel to put things right.

Set ‘em up Joe, play Walking The Floor
Play it for my flat chested junky whore
I’m staying up late and I’m making amends
While the smile of heaven descends

If love is a sin then beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and the white, the yellow and the brown
It’s all right there for ya in Scarlet Town

Just accept it all.  It is all here, everything is fine.  It’s all good.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

The ancient Greeks for one consider the physical world of nature to be composed of four basic elements: earth, air, water, and fire. From this primitive ‘science’ develops the Elizabethan ‘psychology’ of the four ‘humours’. In an ideal state, fire is balanced by water.

Used in tropes, symbols, and allegories by Elizabethan artists, these elements remain in the poetry to this very day. And very conveniently indeed, ‘fire’ rhymes with ‘desire’; the two words blaze in many a lyricist’s head:

Alcilia’s eyes have set my heart on fire
The pleasing object that pain does feed
Yet still to see those eyes I do desire
(Philoparthen: Alciĺia’s Eyes)

The element of fire represents not only the emotion of love, and the sorrow and joy that comes with it, but the sexual urge that causes the heart to beat faster:

My love is like ice, and I to fire
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire
(Edmund Spenser: My Love Is Like Ice)

In modern times, singers still associate fire with love and sexual desire. It is said that June Carter read from a book of Elizabethan poetry:

Love Is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire
(Johnny Cash: Ring Of Fire)

Bob Dylan most likely recalls the rhyme from the pre-Romantic poet William Blake who uses the ‘element’ to represent creative as well as sexual energy:

Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

The singer/songwriter Dylan describes sexual encounters as though the female were a fiery Muse that sparks his creative drive:

You are as whorish as ever
Baby, you could start a fire
I must be losing my mind
You’re the object of my desire
(Bob Dylan: I Feel A Change Comin’ On)

The ‘Gothic’ band Black Sabbath plays with the religious idea that sex is sinful:

Big black shape with eyes of fire
Telling people their desire
Satan’s sitting there, he’s smiling
Watches the flames get higher and higher
(Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath)

The part-time Romantic poet Robert Frost takes the geological path and plays down the religious and sexual connotations of the word ‘fire’:

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire
(Robert Frost: Fire And Ice)

At least in the following song, for singer Billy Joel, both he and Dylan being readers of William Blake, fire is a metaphor for sexual attraction:

Though you dream in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You’ll give in to you desire
When the stranger comes along
(Billy Joel: The Stranger)

Bob Dylan goes further and uses fire in both a sexual, and spiritual context:

My soul feels like it’s on fire
Nothing matters to me
And there’s nothing I desire
‘Cept you, yeah you
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cept You)

Likewise, the band U2:

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in my finger tips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
(U2: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For)

Below, Dylan employs the trope of fire in the Blakean sense as representing the innocent spirit of youth, oft despoiled by the experiences of adulthood:

He’s young and he’s on fire
Full of hope and desire
In a world that’s been raped and defiled
(Bob Dylan: Lord Protect My Child)

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And James Joyce

by Larry Lyffe

Before James Joyce reacts against the idealized love expressed in Elizabethan poetry and prose , as well as against the prudishness of Victorian writers, he first pays a young man’s tribute to Romantic love poetry, with its themes focused on Nature, with its elements of earth, air, fire, and water.

Joyce makes the old new again by utilizing modern English. He gets to know traditional literature well before he starts writing in the many-layered meaning and ironic tone of the literary period known as Modernism:

Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet
Strings by the river where
The willows meet

Love can bring dark sorrow as well as bright joy is the message:

There’s music along the river
For Love wanders there
Pale flowers on his mantle
Dark leaves on his hair
(James Joyce: Strings In The Earth And Air)

Likewise, Bob Dylan makes sure he knows well the traditional forms and themes of poetry and song before he starts singing:

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum

Alliterative sound abounds, sadness surrounds:

The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love’s breast
The branches bare like a banjo moan
To the winds that listen the best
(Bob Dylan: Lay Down Your Weary Tune)

The Elizabethan Bard expresses the theme of how difficult it is to describe feelings elicited by love in mere words:

The throttle with his note so true
The wren with little quill
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark
The plain-song cuckoo gray
Whose note many a man does mark
And dares not answer, nay
(Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Wording that sounds musical along with a creative imagination that reaches out into the external world for an objective correlative assist the artist in the endeavour:

Hear yourself amid the drowsy even
One who is singing by your gate
His song is softer than the dew
And he has come to visit you
(James Joyce: Hear Yourself Amid The Drowsy Even)

As with Joyce, so with Dylan:

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I put them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady should I wait?
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

William Shakespeare, Joyce and Dylan’s master:

Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night
(Shakespeare: Twelf0th Night)

James Joyce reacts to these idealized depictions of love, often unrequited, by mixing together romantic and very sexually explicit language (not repeated here) at the ending of his Modernist novel:

I was the flower of the mountain …yes, when I put a rose
in my hair ……. and I thought …well … as well him as another
and then I asked him, with my eyes, to ask again … yes …and
then he asked me, would I.. .yes… to say, yes, my mountain
flower…
(James Joyce: Ulysses)

We know Joyce was by Dylan read, and we know for sure that Robert Hunter, the co-author of the following song, that even mentions the Modernist writer by name, be a James Joyce fanatic:

You are as whorish as ever
Baby, you could start a fire
I must be losing my mind
You’re the object of my desire

The lyrics mix together the language of unrequited romantic love with the diction of pent up physical lust:

Everyone got all the flowers
I don’t have one single rose
(Bob Dylan: I Feel A Change Coming On)

The singer Billy Joel, a reader of William Blake’s preRomantic poetry, as be Bob Dylan himself, expresses a similar theme while also using the poet’s famous ‘arrows of desire” and ” chariot of fire” rhyme:

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

Dylan goes one step further and mixes James Joyce’s words from the end of “Ulysses” with the vocabulary of a religious preacher:

You can mislead a man
You can take a hold of his heart with your eyes
But there’s only one authority
And that’s the authority on high
(Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

If you have ever taken a quick glance at the Chronology Files on this site (see for example Dylan in the 60s) what may well strike you are two things.

First Bob Dylan has had periods of huge output, song after song pouring out of him, but with occasional periods where he has stopped writing.   And second that those periods of non-writing have become more frequent, and longer.

Now I have written on this topic before, and outlined those “non-writing” periods in my little piece “Has Bob Dylan now stopped writing songs for good?” but I want to try and add a little more to that commentary by delving further into the world of creativity itself.

And for most people who do delve in such a way, “creativity” is a very troublesome area to examine because few can agree on a definition.   Simply defining “creativity” as “doing something new” is generally thought to be insufficient.  For although novelty is obviously part of creativity, there are aesthetic and moral judgements involved too.  Mankind has been expert at inventing new ways of hurting humans seemingly since the dawn of the species, and yet most of us don’t call each new approach to torture, “creative”.

And likewise a child’s scream when it can’t have an ice cream might be novel, but most parents don’t consider that novelty and proclaim that their child is a creative wonder.  There might be sixteen different ways of getting from one side of a swimming pool to another but again, finding them is mostly considered trivial, rather than creative.

Thus creativity is combined with value judgements and so when people call Bob Dylan, JS Bach, Mozart, Beethoven Leonardo, Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marie Curie, Jackson Pollock, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Ada Lovelace etc etc creative geniuses, they do so from within a set of value judgements rather than anything that can be measured as simply as “novelty” or “originality,” although each of these is part of the overall show.

The creative genius is also generally measured by his/her greatest achievements, not by everything produced, although in the case of Shakespeare (excluding the co-written works), Beethoven and Bach, pretty much everything is considered to be works of creative genius.  But even here, looking at these individuals and their work does not help us tie down a definition of creativity.  An artist like Picasso on the other hand is considered to have reached his highest point of creativity with “Guernica” and slipped back.

Some of these people however, with what seems to be almost an “other worldly” talent, have kept their creative genius going throughout their lives, and I don’t know enough about each field of creative endeavour to draw an absolute conclusion about whether the norm in each field is to keep going producing works of genius, or whether stopping is commonplace.  Shakespeare we know just stopped writing, left London and went home to the Midlands for a spot of family life.  Dickens was still writing masterfully when he died.

So there are few generalisations to gather, and even fewer to be found about where these extraordinary and rare people get their ideas from.  Indeed the notions just seem to be there in their heads.

Now if this is true, if all there is, is ideas in their heads, there is little we can do to understand the process more fully – meaning it is hard to know why the creative genius stops creating.

However I do believe we can go further than this, because in looking through Dylan’s entire output of songs, as I have been trying to do on this website over the last few years, we can see that elements of his creative inspiration have as often as not come from his own interests in the world around him, and the literature that he reads (as well as a few movies along the way).

This is not so much to say that Dylan just writes about people he knows, or takes elements from books he reads, the films he sees and the situations around him, but rather he draws his inspiration from these on occasion.  This is the inspiration upon which the creativity is built.

Thus the invective within “Positively Fourth Street” and “Like a Rolling Stone” might well have been brought to his mind by his reflections on some people he knew but really, really didn’t like, but that doesn’t mean that Dylan was simply composing a piece of music about that person.  Yes he was doing that, but he was also allowing us to generalise out to think of the people we have met who have behaved just as badly or just as stupidly and who we dislike just as much as Dylan disliked the target of his outpourings.

The creativity at this point came from seeing the person he did not like, and wanting to express his view very personally in a song – and make that a song that other people wanted to hear.  And indeed not only hear once but over and over again.  The genius was that he managed to do it.

So in this consideration of Dylan’s creativity, I am heading towards his ability to head into new forms of expression within popular music.  I have written before of the simple statement given to me by my tutor Professor Keith Swanwick at London University in the early days of my working on my research degree on popular music.  He said words to the effect that pop music was virtually always about love, lost love and dance.

Of course one can immediately find exceptions, but his generalisation holds up very well – or at least held up very well back in the 1970s when I was studying.  But even at that moment Dylan had torn down the edifice of the three towers of what pop could be about by adding these songs of disdain.  And I would argue that this move took a fundamental step of creative genius to achieve.  Redrawing the notion of what is possible is rare and to be prized, in my view.

But Dylan did this more than once.  He also wrote songs about the way in which the past was being torn up and people destroyed by the process, putting it first in the form of contemporary folk music based on old folk traditions (one thinks of Hollis Brown as a prime example) but then later putting into pop music itself.  Whereas, when pop music had had a political message, it was one which in essence was an evolution of the thoughts within “Times they are a changing”.  Curiously, maybe perversely, Dylan named the album after the one song that looked forward.  The rest of the album looked mostly to the past.

Thinking of these songs it is clear that Dylan’s creativity was stimulated by a combination of the songs that he had heard from his interest in earlier folk music, and contemporary events.   This was true right from the start with compositions such as Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues in which Dylan took an established form of music and intermingled it with a contemporary event.

So from this very quick look at Dylan’s early compositions we can see the creative urge comes out of three sources: people he came across and contemporary events, and the music that he had experienced in the past.  In short Dylan’s creativity was stimulated by the world around him and the music he loved.

And this has continued through his life, from Ballad for a friend through to the reflections of the world gone mad in It’s all right ma  and the political commentary of Desolation Row   This form of creative writing has continued with Dylan through most of his career right up to a song like It’s all good.  It’s his concerns, expressed in a unique way, reworking the musical forms of the past.

Of course along the way he has found many new formulations to work on – the religious period for example is not one within which I can relate to the lyrics personally, any more than I can personally relate to the B Minor Mass as a religious work, but in both cases I can appreciate the work as music of the highest order.  Take “When He Returns” for example – not the album version but the astonishing live versions Bob produced.  An extraordinarily brilliant and original work.  Creativity at its highest.  Exactly as was “Love Minus Zero” many years before.

However such a form of stimulus for creative thought is more than likely to become less powerful as time passes, simply because as we get older most of us become more reflective and less revolutionary in our thinking.  Fewer new thoughts are allowed to hit the brain and send us in new directions.  Imagine a world in which you had written “Jokerman” and “Tambourine Man” and “Tangled up in Blue”.  Really, where do you go now?

Tangled itself was a radical evolution of the way in which a popular song could be written, transforming the time line, and re-writing the lyrics, but after that… how on earth do you reach those heights again?  Probably not by writing “Mixed up in green” but rather by having to make another leap into another musical and literary form.  And for this one needs another major burst of creative insight.

But of course these are not the only song types Dylan has written, for he has indulged in love and lost love songs – two of the staples of popular music that Professor Swanwick noted (the third was dance, which isn’t to Bob’s taste at all it seems).  But just as the observations of the world gone wrong, the political commentary, and the song written about a friend in the band all do get a little dulled by advancing age, so does the imperative to write more love and lost love songs.  After one’s done it a few times, what more is there to say?

However Bob Dylan also gave us, as well as love, lost love, protest against the way change leaves the poor behind, protest against the madness of government, and the religious songs, something else that was completely new: impressionist songs.

For me, two works of utter genius “Visions of Johanna” and “Tell Ol Bill” fit into this category. (One can argue that “Tangled up in blue” is part of it as well.   Each give us glimpses of another world, without ever fully reconciling where it is and what is going on.   They are masterpieces of being tantalising – the half glimpsed world that we can appreciate but never grasp.  Impressionist paintings in song.

But these works are few and far between – works of sublime inspiration and insight which come to even the genius, seemingly but occasionally.  Besides who else has ever successfully attempted such songs?

Which brings me meanderingly to my point: Love and lost love are less likely to be the source of inspiration to the creative genius as he gets older.  The notion that the world has gone wrong in every sense is there still, but it provides fewer opportunities for expression, and the impressionist works are seemingly much rarer in the Dylan canon, because, I suspect, they are so hard to write.

In short what is he to write at this stage of his life?   The blues pretty much dominated Dylan in 2008/9, whereas Tempest did not seem to have so much of a central theme to me – it was more a collection of individual ideas and reflective stories.  That doesn’t make the songs less meaningful or lesser works but when there are no themes, it is harder to put together a whole collection of songs for an album.  Probably not something one can do once a year.

You can, after all, only write one “Roll on John”, one story of Tempest, and a limited number of Shakespearean musings such as “Soon after midnight”.

And thus I reach an understanding of the creative problem for Bob, as I perceive it.  What is the source of his creative inspiration now?  On the last album of his own compositions, he tries storytelling, but I am not sure it is 100% successful, and besides each story needs a new theme; the storytelling is not like “the blues” or “lost love” or “weird characters” or “tales from America’s past” (as in JWH) because each story needs to start again from scratch, rather than have a template in which it can exist.

I suspect that Bob can’t revisit these past themes because anything newly written would feel to him like a re-hash of the past.  If a new inspiration came to him, or if he could find the door that opened onto Visions of Johnanna or Tell Ol Bill then he could fly once more into new musical creations, without relying on a re-working of songs from past eras, and artificially created chord sequences.

Which is not to say that his later work is not of the highest merit – it certainly is.  But I think through this little meander it is possible to see what Bob was saying when he stated, “Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.”

It was as clear an indication as we have ever had that he has not too much is on the horizon.  He doesn’t want to do more of what he’s done before, and he most certainly doesn’t want to produce anything that is second rate.  It’s just that the themes that interest him have been explored, and anyway, who am I to suggest to almighty Bob that he might be able to find some new arenas within that field of musical impressionism?

Maybe it is now Bob’s time to sit here stranded, at least in terms of another great creative leap forward.  And why not?  He’s given us more than we have any right to deserve out of one lifetime.

But I asked, “What could kick start it?”  “Johanna” and “Tell ol Bill” focused at the outset on locations, and then the people within them.  Maybe that’s the trick Bob.  A person, a place, and not much happening…

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

Bob had written nothing since the collection of songs of 2005/6 when he started up again with Life is Hard in 2008; a slow movie song that had no connection with the rest of the songs that were to follow.

And normally such a song (even if it were a masterpiece like Tell Ol Bill) would be left to be picked up in the Bootleg series, but these were not normal times, and I suspect Bob had a lack of songs to offer up for his next album.  If there was to be a next album.

Indeed in this period of writing, the first two songs were quite separate from the rest because they were written by Dylan alone.  The rest were co-compositions, and I think one can tell the difference straight away.

Indeed for me, (and this as always is a totally personal view) the first two songs we find written over this timespan are much inferior to what follows.  Bob really did need a co-writer, to get going.

The first song of the new year – This Dream of You –  has an accompaniment that sounds as if it is in keeping with the rest of the songs on the album, and it does make use of the accordion, which is such a feature of what happens thereafter, but it is a slow piece without the distinctive blues that was the hallmark of the rest of 2006.  For me it really doesn’t work, and actually shouldn’t be on the album – but I suspect a lack of alternatives meant that this song and “Life is Hard” had to be there to make up the number.

And then, suddenly with the two composers working together, we get an explosion of songwriting in its own particular style.

Indeed if you ever have an inclination so to do, play the songs of this period in the order of composition, and you’ll see how those first two are quite separate, but the rest truly are connected.

Thus we start out the main roll out of music with  Beyond here lies nothing – and suddenly we have a complex instrumentation with the blues – even the first line “Oh I love you pretty baby,” tells us exactly what sort of music we are going to be hearing.

Then My wife’s home town offers us a slow blues “I just want to say that hell’s my wife’s home town”  Just how low down do you want to get?

But it picks up again, with If you ever go to Houston  a swinging blues which plays a little trick at the opening so we are not sure what key we are in to begin – but the message is clear – if you ever go to Houston, keep your hands in your pockets.  (I’ve never been so I can’t say).

Forgetful Heart is the closest to Life is Hard in this part of the collection but it has infinitely more power, and then Jolene – with its classic bouncy blues riff.  Indeed throughout these songs you really do know where you are.  I mean if a song starts, “I got the blues for you baby when I look at the sun,” you just know.

And then something odd happened.  In I feel a change coming on Bob and the guys changed it, we move away from the 12 bars and it almost feels like an attempt to try to reclaim the land of This Dream of You only faster.  It’s almost as if Bob said, “come on we cant have another 12 bar blues here. We must be able to do something else for the last two songs.”

And if that was so he stuck to his word for It’s all good – only has one chord, as if to show old guy can still rock.  This is how Bo Diddley would have sounded if he had been able to write songs like Bob Dylan.

I love this last song – I love lots of the album, but this last song I really, really do love.  Bob has only played it three times, maybe because it absolutely needs that accordion player and his brilliant inter-relation with Bob and the guys.  It deserves more outings.

This really is the world gone wrong but with a beat.

Cold-blooded killer, stalking the town
Cop cars blinking, something bad going down
Buildings are crumbling in the neighborhood
But there’s nothing to worry about, ’cause it’s all good
It’s all good
They say it’s all good

Right on Bob.  You could have ended your song writing career on that note, and we’d have had nothing to complain about.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by others.

By Tony Attwood

This is a Bob Dylan puzzle in the purest form of puzzles.  It’s either something or nothing or both or neither.  No, hang on, that last one isn’t possible.   It’s something or nothing or both something AND nothing.

Because this song is one of those written with Robert Hunter we don’t really know who wrote what parts of the lyrics. But it does make it more likely that the song isn’t really about anything much – just two guys reminiscing about the old times and making use of old rhymes (if you see what I mean), just playing with images that are not necessarily connected.

Musically it is all Dylan, I suspect, and it is one of those pieces he has enjoyed in more recent times where he makes the musical accompaniment complex wheres the melody itself actually sounds very simple.  After all, he’d found all these funny chords, and he liked to use them.

The song opens with

Well I’m looking the world over
Looking far off into the East
And I see my baby coming
She’s walking with the village priest
I feel a change coming on
And the last part of the day is already gone

which is really fairly simple except we wonder why she is with the priest – are they about to be married?   Is he dating a Catholic?  Has he been reading the Father Brown novels of G. K. Chesterton?  Or are they showing the BBC TV series about the character in the US?

The complexity of course might be false – is “priest” there just to rhyme with “East”? Did the guys think of the two repeating chorus lines

I feel a change coming on
And the last part of the day is already gone

And then just throw down whatever they came up with?

The complexity in the music is harder to pick up from the recording, but believe me it is there.  Even if you don’t know about chord sequences I am hoping you might agree that in these reviews you haven’t seen too many that look like this:

A,  F#m
Bm,  E11,  A,  F#m,  Bm,  E11
A,   F#m
Bm,  E11,  A,  F#m,  Bm,  E11
A,  F#m
E7,  A

What makes this all the more curious is that the middle 8 (the section where the music changes from the verse, verse, verse sequence – over to a different passage often called “The Bridge”, or more formally “B”) is so utterly ordinary.

Two things are odd in fact.  First we have three verses, not the normal two, before the “middle 8” passage.  This means first time through we are getting to thinking it is a song that just goes verse – verse – verse.  Then it unexpectedly changes.

And second this “B” passage is absolutely classic standard pop – no complex chords, the sort of thing that you could hear on many popular music songs from the late 1950s onwards.

D
Well now, what’s the use in dreamin’,
A
you got better things to do.
D
Dreams never did work for me anyway,
B7                        E7
even when they did come true

It is so commonplace it feels out of place and almost corny.  And I can’t help wondering why?

Trying to make sense of this I tried two approaches – the lyrics as they stand and the references that may, or may not, be a clue.

Verse 1 as I have mentioned has the unexpected priest, verse 2 however suggests that “my baby” isn’t in the conventional “my baby” relationship with the singer as we might have suspected because

We got so much in common
We strive for the same old ends
And I just can’t wait
Wait for us to become friends
I feel a change coming on
And the fourth part of the day is already gone

Now she was “my baby” in the first verse, and now he’s waiting for her to be his friend.  So is the “change” actually a move from a relationship to a friendship?

Plus the last part of the day has become (and remains in the rest of the song), the “fourth part” of the day.  Could that be the Fourth Age of man as the “All the world’s a stage” speech has it

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.

So he’s done that bit of going out and telling us what’s wrong with the world and trying to put it right, and now just drinks too much?  A nice idea, and a clever one, if that meaning is right.  I fancy that was Mr Hunter.  It doesn’t seem like Bob to me.

Then another change it seems (which fits with the song’s title) for this time the singer is asking the woman to live with him, stay with him forever and all that…

Life is for love
And they say that love is blind
If you want to live easy
Baby pack your clothes with mine

But it seems she’s not up for it, as the middle 8 tells us

Well now what’s the use in dreamin’
You got better things to do
Dreams never did work for me anyway
Even when they did come true

But it doesn’t stop him desiring her

You are as whorish as ever
Baby you could start a fire
I must be losing my mind
You’re the object of my desire

And then – well yes indeed, and then….

I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver
And I’m reading James Joyce
Some people they tell me
I got the blood of the land in my voice

OK up to this point, I get the notion that in each verse the woman changes to something else.  But now?

I think we can all get the final line, and a clever one it is, true enough, with that gravel voice that he has had in recent years, and his battles with the world, his religion and his lovers through his 450+ songs.  And/or that he’s got the same religious/rebellious nature that many Irish people are reflected as having.

But really we have to ask more about Billy Joe Shaver and James Joyce.  Does that mean – hey look I like country music and the complexities of Irish literature, and it’s cool ‘cos I can do both at once.  Or something more than that?

Let’s try Billy Joe.  One of his most famous works is “Ain’t no God in Mexico” which starts

Down the road a ways
I have heard say a new day’s comin’ on
Where the woman folks are friendly
And the law leaves you alone
Well, I’ll believe it when I see it
But I haven’t seen it yet
Don’t mind me just keep on talkin’
I am just looking for my hat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFR6RZYAq_M

Or perhaps Dylan was more inclined to think of another of Billy Joe’s most famous (although I find, less typical) songs “I’m gonna live forever”.   There is a desperate tragedy within this song, in that it was written with his son, who later died of a heroin overdose just around the time both Billy Joe Shaver’s mother and his wife died of cancer.

I’m gonna live forever
I’m gonna cross that river
I’m gonna catch tomorrow now
You’re gonna wanna hold me
Just like I always told you
You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone
Nobody here will ever find me
But I always be around
Just like the songs I leave behind me
I’m gonna live forever now

If you do have a moment spare, do have a listen …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeJ4kp1AwY4

Here’s another bit of oddness.  “I feel a change coming on” was written just a couple of years after the most extraordinary part of Shaver’s extraordinary life.    In March 2007,  at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena Shaver shot Billy Bryant Coker in the face with a handgun.

Witnesses said they heard Shaver say “where do you want it?” and then, having shot the man in the face. “Tell me you are sorry” and “No one tells me to shut up.”

In evidence Coker said the attack was unprovoked although Shaver’s attorney argued in court that Coker had attacked Shaver with a knife and Shaver had shot Coker in self-defence.    Shaver subsequently handed himself in and was released on $50,000 bail. He was acquitted in a Waco court on April 9, 2010 after testifying that he acted in self-defence.

Now we can move on to James Joyce: a fundamental part of the avant-garde – novelist, short story writer, and poet. A central character in 20th century modernist literature.

My guess is that Dylan has read at least part of Ulysses (I’m not sure too many people have read it all), and I think this given Dylan’s interest in Homer’s Odyssey, and Dylan’s occasional use of stream of consciousness style writing – indeed one could argue Dylan is the man who took stream of consciousness into popular music – he’s recognising his debt to Joyce.

If you want to experience Joyce for the first time it might be a good idea to avoid Ulysses as a starter.   “A portrait of the artist as a young man” might be better.  And after that maybe “Portrait of the artist as a young dog” by Dylan Thomas… well these things always go around and around.  (The Times Literary Supplement – said of Dylan Thomas’ version, “”the atmosphere of schoolboy smut and practical jokes and poetry is evoked with lingering accuracy but with nothing more.”

But back to our song.  Here’s a live version.

Everybody got all the money
Everybody got all the beautiful clothes
Everybody got all the flowers
I don’t have one single rose
I feel a change coming on
And the fourth part of the day is already gone

And so there we are.  In short, I’m not sure.  But no real change there.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by others.

Please note, part one of this article is published as

• Bob Dylan and Geoffrey Chaucer: Thunder on the Mountain

by Larry Fyffe

Long before Frederich Nietzsche said that ‘God is dead’, and that Christianity killed Him by its ordaining Man to suffer in the here-and-now while waiting for happiness in the afterlife, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer complains that Pity – the feeling of sorrow for the misfortunes of others – is dead.

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan keeps Chaucer alive by paying tribute to The Canterbury Tales:

One the deadman’s shield to bear
Another with his spear high in the air
His Turkish bow the third one proud to hold
With quiver and with trim of burnished gold
(Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale)

Dylan carries the dead poet’s shield:

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Carryin’ a deadman’s shield
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel
(Dylan: Ain’t Talkin’)

Chaucer mourned the departure of Pity:

I am so hungry that I cannot sleep
I wish God had buried me deep
Then hunger would not creep into my gut
There’s nothing but bread I would rather cut
(Chaucer: The Monk’s Tale)

Bob Dylan hopes that Pity will return:

I’m listenin’ to the steel rails hum
Got both my eyes shut
Just sitting here trying to keep the hunger from
Creeping into my gut
(Dylan: Workingman’s Blues)

Geoffrey Chaucer believed Pity’s gone forever:

I’m pretty sure she’ll make me kill someone
Then I will be on the run
For I am a dangerous man
When I have a knife in my hand
(Chaucer: The Monk’s Tale)

Dylan likewise doubts that Eden and Pity can be restored after what Eve has done:

One of these days I’ll end up on the run
I’m pretty sure she’ll make me kill someone
I’m going inside, roll the shutter’s down
I just wanna say, ‘Hell’s my wife’s home town’
(Dylan: My Wife’s Home Town)

Adam has been drained of his vitality. But take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for your tears.

His socks were the same
No one called her anything but ‘Madam’
None hardy enough along the way
Who dared flirt with her, or play
(Chaucer: The Reeves Tale)

The times they are a-changing. Mercury, the God of Commerce, replaces Venus, the Goddess of Love:

It’s the first new day of a grand and glorious Autumn
The Queen of Love is comin’ across the grass
None dare call her anything but ‘Madam’
No one flirts with her or even makes a pass
(Dylan: Ain’t Talkin’ – alternate)

The Corrupt as usual regulate the Corrupt:

‘I’ve been’, the Friar said, ‘so insulted today
Down in your village. There’s no one of poorest pay
Who would put up with my treatment in your town
But nothing shocks me more than that old clown’
(Chaucer: The Summoners Tale)

And a new economic order is shaped by the Law:

Down by the river, Judge Simpson walkin’ around
Down by the river, Judge Simpson walkin’ around
Nothing shocks me more than that that old clown
(Dylan: Shake Shake Mama)

Time is taken over by Wealth, and by those who have it:

A fourth part of the day’s already gone
Now for the love of God, and of St. John
Let’s lose as little time now as we may
My lords, it’s time that wastes both night and day
(Chaucer: Sergeant-At-Law’s Tale)

Hope slips away for those who don’t:

Everybody got all the flowers
I don’t have one single rose
I feel a change comin’ on
And the fourth part of the day’s already gone
(Dylan: I Feel A Change Comin’ On)

So bury the rag deep in your face; now’s the time for your Pity:

I pity the poor immigrant ….
Who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me
(Dylan: I Pity The Poor Immigrant)

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by others.

Bob Dylan And Geoffrey Chaucer: Thunder On The Mountain

By Larry Fyffe

Though it has roots in blues music, Bob Dylan’s song ‘Thunder On The Mountain” tells the story of the singer/songwriter’s pilgrimage through life. The mythological God of Thunder is looking down, and Dylan knows he has to serve someone, and that is Zeus’ sun-son Apollo. To the mythological God of Music, with the aid of female Muses from Mount Ida, Dylan is a servant both night and day:

Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that’s where the music coming from
I don’t need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I’m your servant both night and day’
((Bob Dyan: Thunder On The Mountain)

As Scott Warmuth has pointed out in regard to this particular song , Dylan takes inspiration from the words of Geoffrey Chaucer’s narrative poem, The Canterbury Tales, which speaks, in one of its tales, about a messenger:

‘My lady, the Queen, has borne a child
The whole kingdom will rejoice
See here is a sealed letter containing the news
Which I bear to my King, as fast as possible
If you wish to send anything to the King
I’m your servant both day a night’
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Sergeant-At-Law Tale)

As far as the pilgrim Dylan is concerned, God has commanded that his King be Art, and as a Knight he has sworn an oath of allegiance to stand by his calling:

Thunder on the mountain, rolling on the ground
Gonna get up in the morning, walk the hard road down
Some sweet day, I’ll stand beside my King
I wouldn’t betray your love or any other thing
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

That ‘s not always easy as Chaucer notes. Venus on the half-shell, the sexy daughter of Zeus, can be a threat to blood-sworn oaths:

Sworn full deep, as thou to me, that never
Though we die under torture, either of us
Should hinder the other in love, or in any other course
Dear brother, till death shall part us two
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale)

Because of Bob Dylan’s Romantic ideals, the singer/songwriter finds organized religion to be another threat to his true calling. Of structured religion Dylan, as expressed through his persona, is skeptical, although, in real life, he’s given it a try:

Everybody’s going and I want to go too
Don’t wanna take a chance with some one new
I did all I could and I did it right there and then
I’ve already confessed – no need to confess again
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

The hypocrisy of organized religion, with leaders just in it for money, Chaucer condemns:

‘But show me your complete confession’
‘No’, said the sick man, ‘By St. Simon
I have been shivered today by my curate
I have told him of my condition
There is no further need to speak of it’
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Summoners Tale)

A modern-day matured chivalrous Knight, singer Bob Dylan, again through his persona, though it be a tough haul, prefers not to rely on the mercy of others:

Gonna make a lot of money, gonna go up north
I’ll plant and I’ll harvest what the earth brings forth
The hammers on the table, the pitchforks on the shelf
For the love of God, you ought to take pity on yourself
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)

In The Canterbury Tales, the young son of the Knight envisions women as speaking to him like a goddess with a heart filled with pity for those in physical or mental discomfort:

For the love of God, show yourself some mercy
Or what may advantage you?
For never ere now saw I in this world
Beast or bird that fared himself so piteously
To sooth, ye slay me with your sorrow
I have such pity for you
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Squire’s Tale)

The listener can hear that Dylan is inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in his antiwar songs:

I saw a new-born baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
(Bob Dylan: Hard Rain Gonna Fall)

Dylan’s somewhat modernized images of the horrors of war are similar to those of Chaucer:

There saw I first the dark imaginings of felony ….
The stables burning in black smoke
The treachery of the murder in the bed
Open war with wounds all bleeding
Strife with bloody blade and sharp threat ….
Men slain in the thousands
The tyrant with his prey reft by force
The town destroyed
Yet again I saw the burned speedy ships
The hunter strangled by the wild bears
The sow devouring her child even in the cradle
(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale)

In Dylan’s lyrics, we find grand Mother Earth with her Chaucer-like pity and mercy towards men. Dylan juxtaposes her offspring with the Whore of Babylon, a biblical symbol that blames the woes of the world on the female sex, including Eve’s curiosity in the Garden of Eden:

Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saint-like face and your ghost-like soul
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Part two of this article is published as

• Bob Dylan And Geoffrey Chaucer: The Death Of Pity

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by others.

By Joost Nillissen

• The first part of Modern Times revisited: Bob Dylan and Shmuel Hanagid can be found here

Dylan and Shmuel Hanagid (993-1056) had the same Jewish upbringing, they shared the same minority, celebrated the same holidays, were taught by the same rabbi’s the same religion, the same norms and values. You could say they shared the same code.

Dylan did not lift any lines from Hanagid like he did from Ovid, but there are similarities and chains of thought that cannot be overlooked. This does not mean that Dylan has read anything by Shmuel Hanagid, although he definitely might have, as the Spanish Hebrew poet is part of the Jewish curriculum, especially when you are into poetry.

As a Jew it wasn’t easy for Hanagid (The Prince, Leader) to govern over Muslims, Christian and Jews alike. His enemies conspired against him. Dylan may not be a Talmudic scholar, but he’s obviously a leader who studies and reads a lot and uses his knowledge to write his songs. Like Hanagid did. When I read Hanagid poems I can’t help thinking: Dylan could have written that.

Modern Times starts with a Thunder on the mountain and the singer can’t help but noticing it’s a cruel world today. He’s worried, but still upbeat about it. His soul expands and he want’s to go out into the world and see what others need. He considers raising an army of some tough sons of bitches, but in the end he retires in the North to live off the land.

In darkness on the face of the deep he starts to write four chapters to a long lament. In a sweet voice and lovely melody he sings about the Spirit on the water and tries to woo back the one he loves so dearly. But he fails. He promises to be back by fall and to be with her When the deal goes down.

As he travels through the darkness of the pathways of life, full of disappointment and pain, he assures the Almighty or the equally elusive Muse that he will keep up his end of the bargain. No answer is forthcoming. He may have to wait till he reaches the end of the rainbow. In the long hours of twilight ‘neath the stardust above he tells himself that Beyond the horizon it is easy to love, but he is really lost now, pinning his hope on something so unattainable.

He goes out for a walk in the garden. He Ain’t talkin’. His heart is burning, he is still yearning, but there is no mercy once you’ve lost. He will slaughter his enemies where they lie, lest they jump on his misfortune.

Hanagid puts it like this: (the translations are either by Peter Cole [PC] from his books Selected poems of Shmuel Hanagid and The Dream of the Poem or by Hillel Halkin [HH] from his book Great things to write a poem about).

With all that bellowing overhead,

will I, scion of musicians in the Temple, not be heard?

(From: The thunderstorm – HH)

Soul opens inside you on beauty

then tells you to seek in the world

and ignore its flaws

Heart says: you’ll live forever-

and death as it speaks

grasps you with claws

(From: Soul opens inside you – PC)

and if they could lift their heads and emerge

they’d take our lives and pleasure.

(From: I quartered the troops for the night – PC)

When the lord is with you, sit at home

You can hunt your beasts and birds from here

The wretched will labor but never be full

Then vomit their meals and choke on their words.

(From: When the lord is with you – PC)

My spirit on which, after God, I lean,

and care for with all my labor-

after these fifty long years together,

why would you turn and run

(My spirit – PC)

Earth to man is a prison forever

These tidbits then for fools:

run where you will.

Heaven surrounds you

Get out if you can

(Earth to man – PC)

A different nest and rest from flight,

each day, each night

no evening lays me down to sleep

so I wander weary, I could weep

where mocking morning found me

…

Wrapped in the wild waste’s cloak

the naked stars over my head…

(From: The Wanderer’s Lament – HH)

I apprehended him, dragged him in chains to prison…

I saw to it he died a villain’s death

on the eve of the Rejoicing of the Law.

(From: The Battle of EL Fuente – HH)

In Workingman’s Blues # 2 Dylan sings about a man who after a long day at work sits and watches the evening haze. He is longing for his woman, knowing they will break his horns and slash him with steel.

Hanagid:

Gazing through the night and its stars

or the grass and its bugs

I know in my heart these swarms

are the craft of surpassing wisdom

a whither cloud, a girl, in her garden, tending her shrubs

and the dew coming down is her sister shaking water

from her hair unto the path

as we settle in our lives

like beasts in their ample stalls.

though we’ll lie in the end like a plate hammered into dust and shards.

(From: Gazing through the night – PC)

Nettie Moore is about a man with a pile of sins to pay for. Life is struggle and strife.

Hanagid:

Your loved ones depress you with debt and transgression

And your friends remind you of all your flaws

so think of the sins you hold within you

as each one destroys your worthiest cause

I blame my sins, for which God took

and exiled you from me; and as a flock

of locusts strike a crop and wanders on

and leaves it devastated, you were gone

(From: The vanished lover – HH)

The levee is gonna break or in Hanagid’s words:

Suffer the world you’re trapped in

and your soul which is trapped in your flesh,

through fertile thinking, barren cunning,

and intrigue’s impotent mesh

(Suffer the world – PC)

I am greatly indebted to Peter Cole and Hillel Halkin who made the Golden Age of Hebrew Poetry accessible to me. I have read and read again their books and learned a lot. Look them up.

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.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by others.