There are English Romantic stories that idealise real or fabled characters from past history, like Robin Hood, who stands up for equity and justice in a society controlled by an aristocracy. Romantic Transcendentalists look back to the rural English countryside for solace from a rising materialistic and capitalistic order.
A troupe of Gothic writers, atop decaying castle walls, react to this Romantic optimism due to the horrors of imperial conquest, and it’s justification by the pseudo-science of Social Darwinism; they peer into mankind’s heart of darkness.
In the United States, American nature poets and writers are confronted with the Anti-Transcendentalist Gothic stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Therein are depicted deranged high-born kinsmen from a supposedly idyllic society that is controlled by a slave-holding aristocracy.
Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan brings the genre onto the stage of American folkrock. Exemplifying the American Gothic Revival is Grant Wood’s ambiguous-meaning painted picture of a Puritan-looking farmer, a self-sufficient individualist, holding a three-pronged pitchfork, standing beside his obedient wife.
Though there be no ruined castles of yore in the United States, there are lots of places housing gamblers, guns, and greed, inhabited by strange-looking and strange-acting characters.
It’s not always easy to discern how serious singer/songwriter Bob Dylan is when presenting the American Dream transformed to Gothic nightmare:
Gonna make a lot of money, gonna go up north I’ll plant and I’ll harvest what the earth brings forth The hammer’s on the table, the pitchfork’s on the shelf
(Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)
In “Summer Days”, Dylan runs through American history from the days of Pocahontas, to the Roaring ‘2O’s, to Elvis Presley, and the terror at Waco, Texas – a storyline that features a declining society falling into depravity.
Playing with cards of irony is a game Bob Dylan is good at. Real-life anti-heroes, Dylan transforms into fantasy heroes. For example, the Southern gunslinger, cattle rustler, and killer John Hardin becomes a Robin Hood of the Old West:
John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor He travelled with a gun in every hand All along the countryside, he opened many a door But he was never known to hurt an honest man
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)
Though not Dylan’s lyrics, in the following song, New York crime boss Joey Gallo is portrayed as a loving family man:
They called Joe ‘Crazy’, the baby they called ‘Kid Blast’ Some say they lived off gambling and runnin’ numbers too It always seemed they got caught between the mob and the men in blue
(Bob Dylan: Joey)
‘Lucky’ Zimmy himself takes on the persona of a gangster who is not only upset with the print media, but with his moll:
Someone’s got it in for me They planting stories in the press Whoever it is, I wish they’d cut it out quick But when they will I can only guess They say I shot a man named Gray And took his wife to Italy She inherited a million bucks And when she died, it came to me I can’t help it if I’m lucky
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)
The Civil War drives Old Dixie down, but the Confederate-supporting Jesse James, the leader of a gang of bank robbers associated with horse thief Belle Starr, is placed by Bob Dylan on the same stage as slave-freeing Abraham Lincoln in a play about the broken American Dream:
From a cheerless room in a curtained gloom I saw a star from heaven fall I turned and looked again but it was gone All I have and all I know Is this dream of you Which keeps me living on
(Bob Dylan: This Dream Of You)
The optimistic poetic ship of Romantic Transcendentalism hits the blood-red reefs of reality:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their
eager faces turning
Here Captain! dear father!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead
(Walt Whitman: O Captain, My Captain)
And the same ship of state smashes against the black rocks of American Gothic humour in Bob Dylan’s folk music:
As in the following lyrics:
The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits To Jezebel the nun, who violently knits A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits At the head of the Chamber of Commerce
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)
And again in these lyrics – in real life history, gang member Ford shoots Jesse for the reward money:
Ain’t gonna hang no picture Ain’t gonna hang no picture frame Well, I might look like Robert Ford But I feel like Jesse James
(Bob Dylan: Outlaw Blues)
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
Revised June 2018 with addition of another alternative version.
There are two versions of this song recorded: the Basement Tapes version (from 1967 and re-issued in 1975), and the Greatest Hits version in 1971.
It was first played in concert in March 1995, and played off and on until October 2005. There is (at the moment of writing this) a video on line of a performance of the song.
And there is also a re-interpretation that has just come to my attention, which I really enjoyed…
Just scroll down through the article to find the link. Certainly is worth a listen.
The opening of the song tells us exactly where it is going
Crash on the levee, mama Water’s gonna overflow Swamp’s gonna rise No boat’s gonna row
Now, you can train on down
In short this is the absolute end, not just a flood but The Flood in the style of the Old Testament. And it is a theme that Dylan is interested in, at least to the extent of writing at least one other song seemingly specifically on the same topic: High Water (For Charley Patton).
What makes the song particularly interesting (apart from being a rollicking good bit of fun) is the chorus:
But oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now? You’re gonna have to find yourself Another best friend, somehow
But although this is Doomsday, the end of the world, the Second Coming, and yet the music goes rocking along – and this of course is the regular Dylan view of the world. Those who have the true faith are ok – the rest of us: tough.
So with that sort of approach to the world, yes, when the end comes you can afford to do some rock n roll because, well, you’re ok, and for those who aren’t – well, that’s their fault. They were warned, they were given the opportunity to change, but they chose not to.
So the absolute certainty is there…
Now, don’t you try an’ move me You’re just gonna lose There’s a crash on the levee And, mama, you’ve been refused
And this of course is my fate, since I refuse to believe, so I’m gonna be refused entry to heaven too. I’m not quite sure what good that does the Superior Being, but He’s got the power and I ain’t, so if that is what He wants (if He exists) then, He gets his way – and He’ll get away with it, because there is nothing else out there to stop Him.
I’m not quite sure about what happens later in the lyrics
Well, that high tide’s risin’ Mama, don’t you let me down Pack up your suitcase Mama, don’t you make a sound
but then I am not really sure about a lot of this song. Is Bob really going to try and smuggle “mama” out of this situation? I don’t quite know.
It’s jolly, it rocks along, a lot of us (most of us I guess) are going to die, and Bob sits up on his throne (or at least on a high rock) looking down on the rest of us telling us that there is not much we can do about. No, “repent before it is too late,” rather, just a case of “that’s how it is”.
Now at this moment I can write a piece saying that my country is in a total mess and is falling apart, and really at this stage there ain’t much we can do about it, but in doing that I would then say, “and I’m going to suffer just like everyone else.” Bob however has no such difficulty – he seems to be rising above.
Of course there is another way of looking at this. A writer of fiction or a maker of movies, isn’t saying “this is how it is” – rather he/she is offering a entertainment, something to interest the reader or viewer.
And maybe that is how we ought to take all these songs: as works of fiction. It’s just that there’s always that temptation to see it otherwise.
There’s a very different version here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqJJzktUPoE
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
Let me confess, with this article I am really stepping out into a strange world – or perhaps better said I am offering up access to the strange world that I sometimes inhabit. A world of lines and quotes that I carry around with me. Often forgetting them for years and years until one day a situation is there and one of these lines pops into my head.
And of course because I am a Dylan fan, a lot of these lines are Dylan lines. Not all, but a lot.
But not, let me stress, any old Dylan lines. And not just Dylan lines I remember. But lines that seem to carry a special connotation.
Now when I started writing this little piece I thought I’d just make a list of such lines, but at once I found there were too many. So I started to invent some rules. I would exclude certain types of Dylan lines. Therefore I WON’T have
Dylan lines that open a song
Dylan lines that close a song
Multiple lines – each must be just one line from a song
Dylan lines that just sound good but actually can’t be made to mean anything at all.
Thus I started to look in my head for single lines that occur within songs that mean something to me and which seem to have stayed in my brain.
Now maybe this living with lines of songs and poems and indeed literature is something that just inflicts people like me who live their lives in words, reading, studying and writing. I don’t really know, but I hope you can see where I am going.
A little while ago when we had a little discussion about “Mississippi” several readers of this site presented lines came out of that song – one in particular seems to be retained by many people who know Dylan’s work…
Some people will offer you their hands and some won’t
And I do like that, because it does seem to be how it is. When you need help there are always the kind folk who actually see it as part of the essence of being a good person to offer support and help where it is feasible to do so. It’s an everyday observation, but when removed and put as that single line, it makes one aware that it is a fundamental part of life.
I often wonder about those who don’t ever offer help, who seriously believe it is every man for himself. Those people might get more money, but they never feel the warmth of doing someone a really good turn.
But then I thought – this is too easy. We can all pick songs with lines that just pop into our heads. But Dylan has meant much more to me than this over the years – I really ought to push myself a bit further. Besides I’ve seen this “Dylan’s best lines” thing done on other sites, and this is supposedly UNTOLD Dylan where we cover stuff that has not be said before.
So I took the list of Dylan songs in alphabetical order and looked at each one in turn, asking myself, “is there a line here that really means something to me” – remembering of course it couldn’t be the first or last line.
I started with songs beginning with A and only got part way through that list, before I had more than enough to illustrate my point, (and simultaneously bore everyone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm utterly stupid). So, just with songs starting with A…
From “A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall” I immediately had
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
Hard Rain is packed with negative images of all the dreadful things Dylan sees in the world; it is a horrific catalogue. But this image is different, because it speaks of something out there which gives us hope or opportunity which we are not taking.
I don’t know if Dylan meant it this way – he could have meant the riches that the wealthy keep to themselves, but it could simply be a vision that says, “if you open up your eyes it is all there, all you have to do is look and step forward.”
For much of my life I’ve believed in the highway of diamonds, which is a fine way to live one’s life except it means that when I slip from that knowledge, there is an awful long way to fall.
But still I always come back to that Highway of Diamonds. And indeed it is appropriate to start with that highway in this little piece, because that highway of diamonds can also be the catalogue of Dylan songs just waiting for us to inspect and consider. And it doesn’t matter if millions across the world are enjoying his music, if I listen in my house, alone, it is still just him and me and his music directs me onto that highway, and I take new hope for the future.
Moving on…
“Abandoned love” is one of the “lost” songs that I have raved over several times on this site, and here I am choosing two lines. Up first…
My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost
I have learned from and been influenced by so many people in my life as I have tried to understand literature, music, art, dance and theatre, and have at times despaired because I seem to have spent so long fighting my own demons inside my head.
But then on hearing this line for the first time I thought – well, yes, that happens to lots of people who think a lot about life, reality and meanings. All these people whose artistic endeavours I so admire have gone through all this, and that’s where I’ve travelled too.
That doesn’t mean I see myself as some kind of great artist up there with the best, not at all, but rather that in my own way I’ve made my own journey, and most of the time I can now look back and be happy that most of the ghosts have been put to rest most of the time.
From the same song…
Everyone is wearing a disguise
One of my favourite, favourites. So many people present themselves as honest, telling it like it is, having nothing to hide, presenting themselves as strong people, saying that their way is the only way, when of course it isn’t. We are all so complex, the inputs on our lives are so diverse, all we have is a disguise. I can never get to the real me because there is no real me, only the layers and layers that life has put across me.
Which is a wonderful release, because that means I am free to create me as I want to be. I can create the story of my past that I want for myself, and find my own future.
This doesn’t mean I’m looking at the world and making up untrue stories about myself, pretending to be something I am absolutely not. I was not an astronaut, I’ve never been to Chile, I’ve not had 500 love affairs, I didn’t go to prison for a bullion robbery.
But I can pick out the bits of my life that I want to pick out, and weave those bits together into a theme which is as good a description of who I am as any other theme. And doing that makes me feel better. It makes life make sense.
Moving on once more…
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”
To live outside the law you must be honest
OK it is on everyone’s list, but that’s no reason why I can’t have it too. Yes, if you really want to step off the mainstream highway, it is not a bad idea to carry honesty with you. Otherwise you will be found out, and your journey to where ever you want to go is going to be fraught with difficulty.
Next it is “All along the watchtower”
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
Every serious Dylan fan can recite this short song word for word and almost every line could be a life-defining line, but I have kept this one as a special favourite, not least because I suspect not too many others would choose it.
Years and multiple decades ago I read a science fiction story about aliens creating alternative universes as their ultimate entertainment just to see what crazy things evolved on them. I don’t think I actually believe that, but this line fits into that notion.
It also reminds me daily not to take it all too seriously. In the end I am going to die, and either that will be the end of it, or I shall go to whichever afterlife is set out for me, and by my age there’s not to much I can do about that.
So why not greet the world each day with a smile – and if what I experience doesn’t make me smile, then why not find something else that does.
And now to conclude… “Angelina”
There’s a black Mercedes rollin’ through the combat zone
It’s a song I have been critical of, because of what I perceive to be the forced rhymes that Dylan introduces, and that’s a shame because I really like the music and some of the lines as individual lines.
But this line has always made me smile because it is something very personal. Yes, I do drive a black Mercedes, and I regularly drive from my home in the rural East Midlands to London or Birmingham, either to go to the theatre, or see friends, or watch the football team I support, or to go dancing.
The two roads I use (one south to London one west to Birmingham) are often packed solid, but each still has vehicles travelling at 70mph (the national speed limit in the UK on motorways – the long distance roads that connect the cities), and I never thought of them as “combat zones” until one day I was playing “Angelina” in the car and the line leaped out at me, and hasn’t gone away since.
So there we are, seven single lines, and I only got as far as Angelina. Goodness knows how many more there are in my head, but that will do for today.
A silly little exercise I know, but I hope it might have given you some amusement and a few thoughts over the past few minutes.
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
Updated to clarify the issue of the two versions of Santa Fe on the bootleg series.
The first time we knew that there was more to Santa Fe than the version that appeared on the very first Bootleg compendium (1-3) was when the version of “Lyrics” turned up in 2004 with the song included but lyrics that even allowing for the poor sound quality of the Bootleg version, were clearly a total reworking of the song. The song was released again on volume 11: but (to be quite clear) not with the new lyrics. Quite what the point was of putting the original version out there twice while the published lyrics showed a different version, I am not sure, but it quite clearly confused me, if no one else.
Certainly the original was recorded in 1967, and I’d say the new lyrics came from then too, but Heylin thinks that Dylan wouldn’t have pondered building a geodesic dome in 1967. I doubt there is anything in Heylin’s suggestion however for Buckminster Fuller was playing with the shape and using the phrase in the late 1940s and his patent of the geodesic dome is dated 1954. (Larry’s comment below seems to back this up).
So I guess Heylin is suggesting Bob wasn’t up to speed on such matters in the late 1960s, but reading the early lyrics, but I can’t see how he can reach this conclusion. Bob’s knowledge has always struck me as singularly diverse while being patchy in places, so I can’t see how the argument stands. I’d say both sets of lyrics were written at the same time – the summer of 1967.
I can’t prove this of course, so to distract from my lack of knowledge here’s a picture of the Big Pink, simply because I haven’t put up many pictures on this site (not wanting to get engaged in copyright arguments with the big picture agencies).
Those who study such things have the line up as Dylan, acoustic guitar and vocals; Robertson, electric guitar; Hudson, piano; Danko, bass; Manuel, drums.
As time went by so the name of the song moved between Santa Fe, Santa-Fe and Santa Fé. I am not too sure it makes any odds but it seems important to some commentators, so I thought I’d mention it.
The album notes for The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, state that the song is “a typical combination of nonsense and fun, just for the hell of it, really,” and that seems to be the general conclusion of a fair number of reviewers, but others such as in the AllMusic review find it more significant. Still just an enjoyable song with no deep meaning, but a decent and likeable song nonetheless and certainly one that is worth keeping.
So it is either “a slight if charming little ditty,” and “little more than a joke” or a great songwriter showing why he is a great songwriter even when he is just sitting there making up lines as he goes along.
Now I am on the side that thinks there is more to it than a joke, and in this regard I am with Steve Gibbons, who formed the Dylan Project, a touring band of quality musicians that performs Dylan songs and has a very relaxed and good relationship with its audience where ever they play. Santa Fe has been in their repertoire, and I’m pleased about that.
But there is something else, and here my musical memory is letting me down. For much of my life I’ve had the ability to hear a song and then relate it to its predecessors, instantly able to say, “Oh that’s based on ….” but as age has crept up on me I am finding myself in a position of hearing a song and thinking “Hey, that’s based on…” and then the origin of the song vanishes from my mind, and so instead of being able to show off, I’m left looking like an idiot, which is how I feel at such times.
So it is with Sante Fe. I am sure the melody and structure is built on an earlier piece, but I just can’t find it in my head and no one else seems to have mentioned it. But it is sooooo familiar! Any help would put me out of my misery.
Anyway, here’s the verse that got changed into the geodesics
Version 1:
She’s in Sante Fe Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Sante Fe. Now she opens up and let’s me home She’s brown but she keeps from roam She’ll open up a happy home She’ll think when will that be warm in Sante Fe.
Version 2:
Santa Fe, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa Fe Since I’m never gonna cease to roam I’m never, ever far from home But I’ll build a geodesic dome and sail away
If looking back through the versions, just remember the lyrics on the official site are from the complete bootleg set, not the version that appears on 1-3. Just to avoid any confusion of the type which in the first version of this review, I added to.
In the end, as the final verse of the final edition shows, it is all nonsense. But for me it is jolly nonsense based around the standard three chords and a catchy little tune. And why not? It doesn’t have to be Desolation Row to be music worth listening to.
Santa Fe, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa Fe My sister looks good at home She’s lickin’ on an ice cream cone She’s packin’ her big white comb What does it weigh?
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Bob Dylan likes to mix up the medicine, to really, really mix up the music medicine.
There’s the Symbolist poem:
In short, is a Flower, Rosemary
Or Lily, dead or alive, worth
The excrement of one sea-bird
(Arthur Rimbaud: On The Suject Of Flowers)
The name Rosemary in Dylan’s song “Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts” is a variation of Rose-Marie, who’s a character in the operetta of the same name, much of which takes place in British Columbia, Canada.
Damon Runyon be a real life American newspaperman and writer, a heavy drinker, gambler, and smoker, who uses the slang of gangsters, especially nicknames, from the Prohibition Era in humourous stories.
Runyon runs off with a girl from Mexico after having reformed somewhat in
order to court his first wife. Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan takes on a Damon-like persona in the following song:
Now whenever I get up And can’t find what I need I just make it down to Rose-Marie’s And get somethin’ quick to eat
(Bob Dylan: Goin’ To Acapulco)
In the above song, Dylan, at the same time, covertly alludes to Big Jim, a real life wealthy businessman, who’s fond of diamonds, and of eating lots of food. It’s Big Jim Brady who hangs around with actress/singer Lillian Russell in New York City. Big Jim is an obvious reference in “Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts”.
A fictional miner in the aforementioned operetta is named Jim; he reforms to court the fictional French Canadian Rose-Marie.
The Big Jim of “Rose Marie” has a partner whose nickname is Hard-Boiled Herman, boyfriend of Lady Jane, owner of a hotel (in Dylan’s “Highlands”, the restaurant waitress is asked about hard-boiled eggs):
Now, when all of the bandits that you turn the other cheek to All lay down their bandannas and complain And you want somebody you don’t have to to speak to Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)
Which brings it all back home to Acapulco:
I know I’ve seen that face before, Big Jim was thinkin’ to himself Maybe down in Mexico or a picture on somebody’s shelf
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
The only person missing from the scene so far is the Jack Of Hearts and that’s because he’s hiding out on St. Pierre, a French island 16 miles off the coast of the Canadian Province of Newfounland. Rum-running makes the island infamous in the days of Prohibition.
In the humourous short story “Lily Of St. Pierre” by Damon Runyon, the rum- running gambler, known as Jack of Hearts is cared for by young girl named Lily when he gets sick. Small-time gangster Louie The Lug runs off with her to Montreal, mistreats her, and she dies. In New York, at Good Time Charlie’s, the Jack Of Hearts shoots Louie; Fingers later informs Jack that Louie dies from the wound. Jack gets to take Louie’s singing position at Charlie’s speakeasy:
The cabaret was quiet except for the drillin’ in the wall The curfew had been lifted and the gamblin’ wheel shut down Anyone with any sense had already left town He was standin’ in the doorway lookin’ like the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
Similar Runyonesque characters, along with ‘Mack The Knife’ from “The Threepenny Opera” are mentioned in the following song:
Well, Mack The Finger said to Louie the King ‘I got forty red, white, and blue shoe strings And and a thousand telephones that don’t ring’
(Bob Dylan: Highway ’61)
In Runyon’s tale, the Jack of Hearts sings a song:
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams
When the nightingale is singing
And the white moon beams
(King and Elliott: There’s A Long, Long Trail A-Winding)
Then there’s:
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune Bird fly high by the light of the moon Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman.
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)
The musical “Guys And Dolls” is based on Damon Runyon’s stories.
So is this song:
Everybody’s goin’ away
Said they’re movin’ to LA
There’s not a soul I know around
Everybody’s leavin’ town
Some caught a freight, some caught a plane
Find the sunshine, leave the rain
They said this town’s a waste of time
I guess they’re right, it’s wastin’ mine
(Danny O’Keefe: Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues)
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
1971 was a very curious year for Bob Dylan in that it contained, as far as I can make out, just four newly written pieces. Two were absolute masterpieces in my view, but the others…
Vomit Express (post modernist blues; cheapest seats on the cheapest flight)
Maybe George Jackson can’t appeal to me because I am too many thousand miles away from the action and my review of that song was criticised because of my lack of knowledge of the background to Jackson’s imprisonment.
But Wallflower is slightly different. It doesn’t appeal to me because it just seems like a country song not saying anything new. According to the official Dylan site it has never been played in public by Dylan, and I must admit, when constructing the Chronology, I completely missed the song from the roster.
The idea with the song, (I have read elsewhere), was that Wallflower might be the B side of the George Jackson single, but it wasn’t, and in terms of Dylan it was shelved. That is until it turned up on the opening box set of the Bootleg series (vols 1-3) with a second version turning up on Volume 10 (the “Another Self Portrait”) edition.
Except that in October 1972, the song was recorded by Doug Sahm, with Dylan apparently singing backing vocal. Several copies of this version have been uploaded and then deleted. At the moment of writing this one is still up there. I believe it comes from Sahm’s album Doug Sahm and Band, released in 1973.
Indeed just to show how far out of touch with many other people my feelings about country music is, the song has been recorded by many other artists and so I guess they all liked it. Here’s a list that I found, although I haven’t checked them all out. I shall leave that to a more dedicated researcher than I (and also someone who actually likes the song).
David Bromberg, 1974, for Wanted Dead or Alive
Buddy and Julie Miller, 2001 for Buddy & Julie Miller
Uncle Earl, 2007, for Waterloo, Tennessee
Diana Krall, 2015, for Wallflower
Anna Elizabeth Laube, 2016, for Tree
The whole approach of the song is extremely simple
Wallflower, wallflower Won’t you dance with me? I’m sad and lonely too Wallflower, wallflower Won’t you dance with me? I’m fallin’ in love with you
Just like you I’m wondrin’ what I’m doin’ here Just like you I’m wondrin’ what’s goin’ on
It continues in this approach and then ends
I have seen you standing in the smoky haze And I know that you’re gonna be mine one of these days Mine alone
Wallflower, wallflower Take a chance on me Please let me ride you home
Now just because Dylan wrote “It’s all right Ma” and “Desolation Row” and the rest doesn’t mean that simple songs are no good, and I only like complicated stuff. I can still, after over 50 years, listen to “That’s Alright” by Elvis Presley and get a lot out of the song. It’s just that somehow the simplicity doesn’t seem to have anything else with it to make it worth hearing more than once. But I think it is just my lack of connection with country music – because clearly so many other people feel quite differently about it.
When Diana Krall included the song on her 2015 album she was asked by Billboard why she used the song and said, “I love Dylan and always have. I got stuck on ‘Wallflower,’ listening over and over again.
“We started playing it on gigs more than a year ago. “That’s the one song I played all the piano on, me and [guitarist] Blake Mills sitting in a room, just playing. We didn’t redo anything.”
So there we have it. It needs someone who really does get something out of the song to explain to the rest of us what it is that makes it work for them. As for me, sorry, but no.
What is on the site
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.
The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members. (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm). Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.
On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, links back to our reviews
Likely unknown to many of our readers, a number of songs written by Bob Dylan have a connection to Canadian geography and history.
Here’s a spiritual that goes back to the time of the formal ending of slavery in the British Empire, whereby blacks seek to escape to Canada from slavery in the United States:
No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone
No more driver’s whiplash for me
No more, no more
No more driver’s whiplash for me
Many thousands gone
(No More Auction Block)
The somewhat humourous lyrics by Bob Dylan about the exploitation of wage-labour is inspired by the Canadian song:
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more Well, he hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime He asks you with a grin if you’re havin’ a good time There he fines you every time you slam the door
(Bob Dylan: Maggie’s Farm)
The following folksong of the latter 19th century about lumber camps, based on a true story, comes out of New Brunswick, Canada:
There’s danger on the ocean where the waves
roll mountains high
There’s danger on the battlefield where the
angry bullets fly
There ‘s danger in the lumber woods for death
lurks sullen there
And I have fell a victim into that monstrous snare
(Peter Emberley)
Dylan replaces the danger of tree branches with that of social inequity:
And there’s danger on the ocean where the salt waves split high And there’s danger on the battlefield where the shells of bullets fly And there’s danger in this open world where men strive to be free And for me the greatest danger was in society
(Bob Dylan: The Death Of Donald White)
In the mid-19th century, a ballad about Sir John Franklin’s fatal search for the
North West Passage in the Canadian Arctic is published:
We were homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock, I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream, and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew
(Lady Franklin’s Lament)
Singer Bob Dylan writes a song about the loss of old friends:
While riding on a train going west I fell asleep to take my rest I dreamed a dream that made me sad Concerning myself and the first few friends I had
(Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan’s Dream)
The rebellion in the Red River Colony of Manitoba, Canada, inspires the 19th century fictional ballad, presented below, about a half-French, half-Indian gal who’s about to lose her soldier lover. He helped suppress the rebellion, and plans to leave:
Come and sit by my side if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me ‘adieu’
But remember the Red River Valley
And the girl who has loved you so true
(Red River Valley)
Dylan innovates on the love theme – reverses it:
Well, I sat by her side for a while I tried to make that girl my wife She gave me her best advice And she said, ‘Go home and lead a good life’
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The Red River Shore)
Below is a love song from an early 20th century escapist romantic operetta, the setting being in the Canadian Rockies and northern British Columbia:
Oh Rose-Marie, I love you
I’m always dreaming of you
No matter what I do, I can’t forget you
Sometimes I wish that I never met you
And yet if I should lose you
T’would mean my very life to me
Of all the Queens that ever lived, I’d choose you
To rule me, my Rose-Marie
(Rose-Marie)
The fictional storyline involves a wild-living miner named Jim, who has a partner, ‘Hard-Boiled’ Herman. Jim’s reforms because he loves the French-Canadian stage-singer Rose-Marie – ‘I choose you to rule me’ -, and Rose-Marie loves Jim.
A wealthy businessman wants to marry Rose-Marie though he’s involved with a ‘half-breed’ Indian gal; she stabs her jealous boyfriend to protect the businessman, who then claims Jim is the murderer.
Rose-Marie decides to marry the deceitful businessman. As the ceremony is about to take place, the ‘half-breed’ confesses that she is the real murderer. Jim and Rose-Marie are happily reunited.
In the following song, Bob Dylan changes the names as well as the character of the actors involved in the storyline – Rose-Marie and Jim become Rosemary and Big Jim:
Rosemary started drinkin’ hard, and seein’ her reflection in the knife She was tired of the attention, tired of playin’ the role of Big Jim’s wife She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide Was lookin’ to do just one good thing before she died She was gazin’ at the future, riding on the Jack of Hearts
(Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
F. Scott Fitzgerald And Bob Dylan, The Great Gatsby
by Larry Fyffe
Often thought by music critics to be the disconnected ramblings of a Post Modern madman, Dylan’s song lyrics, as in those presented below, take listeners on a magical history tour, interspersed with with bits of the writer’s personal experiences.
Working as a kind of introduction to another song, the lyrics of following song express Bob Dylan’s appreciation for the emotional and spiritual support he gets from an evangelist religious group when he needs it. He pictures himself back in biblical Eden, Paradise Regained, where his artistic impulse is revitalized by the Christian demi-god Jesus down from heaven and a love goddess from out of the sea:
I was in your presence for an hour or so Or was it a day? I truly don’t know Where the sun never set Where the trees hung low By the soft and shiny sea
(Bob Dylan: In The Summer Time)
That Eden doesn’t last long, and in another song, Dylan writes and sings of Paradise Lost. Gone is an empire on which the sun never sets, gone is America the Beautiful, shining from sea to shining sea – that land of the American Dream with its morality-guided ethos of hard work:
Summer days, summer nights are gone Summer days and summer nights are gone I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Dylan first makes historical reference to the arrival of adventurous, hard-working settlers, not afraid of getting their hands dirty – live pigs are included in the cargo – at Jamestown, Virginia where Pocahontas converts to the Christian faith and marries one of the settlers. That brings peace to the colony -she’s a daughter of an Indian chief. All this happens in the days of Queen Elizabeth I when shipwrecks off the American coast inspire Shakespeare to pen ‘The Tempest’:
I got a house on a hill, I got hogs all out in the mud I got a house on a hill, I got hogs out lying in the mud Got a long-haired woman, she got royal Indian blood
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Before you know it … time wrap … and Elvis Presley, ‘the King’, and his hounddog ‘Bob’ are living it up, high on-the-hog:
Everybody get ready – lift your glasses and sing Everybody get ready to lift your glasses and sing Well, I’m standin’ on the table, I’m proposing a toast to ‘The King’
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
It’s not hard to see that the American Dream has been corrupted. Outright greed – con games, criminal organizations, and street violence – becomes a big part of modern reality.The singer/songwriter, too, wears hypocrisy on his sleeve; he’s in a ‘summer daze’. He’s drives Elvis’ favourite make of automobile, a conspicous consumption gas-guzzling status symbol of the reformulated American Dream:
Well, I drivin’ in the flats in a Cadillac car The girls say ‘You’re a worn-out out star’ My pockets are loaded and I’m spending every dime How can you say you love someone else when you know that it’s me all the time
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
It’s the ‘Roaring Twenties’ all over again. Dylan, with black humour, depicts himself rather like the hopeless romantic Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, who endeavours to buy his way into a society that’s structured along class lines. Only Dylan’s character is striving to get his youth back with wealth; blissfully unaware of whether he’s moving forward or backward in time – like a boat in a fog:
Well, the fog’s so thick you can’t spy the land The fog’s so thick that you can’t even spy the land What good are you anyway, if you can’t stand up to some old businessman?
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
It’s a story of sunshine-in-the-sky hopes, and love lost. The flames of Gatsby’s and Dylan’s desire are more secure with their peers; the romantic dream shatters like a wine glass broken:
Wedding bells ringing, the choir is beginning to sing
Yes, wedding bells are ringing and the choir is beginning to sing
What looks good in the day at night is another thing
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Dylan quotes directly from Fitzgerald’s novel:
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holds my hand She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holds my hand She say, ‘You can’t repeat the past’, I say, ‘You can’t?’ ‘What do you mean, You can’t, of course, you can”
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
It all seems so rather lightheartedly depressing:
Where do you come from? Where do you go? Sorry, that’s nothin’ you would need to know Well my back has been to the wall so long it seems like it’s stuck Why don’t you break my heart one more time just for good luck?
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Even the Christian evangelists let him down:
Politician got on his jogging shoes He must be running for office, got no time to lose He’s been suckin’ the blood out of ‘the genius of generosity’ You been rolling your eyes, you been teasing me
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
The doctrine of The Genius Of Generosity is associated with the evangelist church Dylan joins -Time being short, best to invest your resources in the Kingdom of Jesus and prepare for eternity. Frederich Nietzsche calls it ‘the morality of slaves’:
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure pressed
down, and shaken together, and running together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same
measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again
(Luke 6:38)
In the above biblical verse, Jesus speaks an earthly parable that conceals a spiritual message. Evangelist leaders know that most of their followers won’t realize what Christ or they are talking about.
But not all. There must be some way out of here, says the Joker to the Thief:
Standing by God’s River, my soul is beginnin’ to shake Standing by God’s River, my soul is beginnin’ to shake I’m countin’ on you love, to give me a break
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Dylan has a vision of himself as Joshua, leader of the Jews, standing on the bank of the River Jordon, waiting for God to break the river’s flow so he can cross into the Promised Land of Canaan:
And it came to past, when the priests….we’re come up
out of the midst of Jordon, and the soles of the priests’ feet
were lifted unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordon
returned unto their place, and flowed over all of his
banks as they did before
(Joshua 4:18)
The magical history tour ends in a fiery vision of Waco, Texas, and the
machine gun-carrying false messiah, David Koresh who, not that unlike Dylan’s one-time evangelist leaders, advocates the giving away of worldly goods by his followers. As far as Dylan is concerned, any semblance of human decency vanishes up in smoke there at Waco. That includes the extreme actions undertaken by police:
Well, I’m leaving in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift Yes, I’m leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds l Gonna break the roof in, set fire to the place as a parting gift
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Peering into the Heart of Darkness, Dylan finds everything is broken.
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
In my experience a lot of people who earn their living out of words have the ability to create streams of narrative at the drop of a hat. Many actors can improvise dialogue that their character might have said (but didn’t), songwriters and poets can pour out line after line in the style of… well, anyone you choose to name, and novelists can do the same with any situation – looking out at a scene they can just create a world of people and events around it.
And of course it is an ability not restricted to those who work with words – many others can generate such lines of speech / poetry / lyrics too, on request.
This doesn’t in any way mean that the result is of value in the greater realm of things, but they can do it, their brains just work that way. And doing it can be helpful, as the actor prepares for his part, as the songwriter or poet explores ideas and expressions and so on.
None of which is to say that the resultant lines of dialogue are of value – it is just that for some people they are dead easy to create, and can help with later work.
And this I think is exactly what Bob Dylan was doing at this time. That does not mean that I believe many of the songs around this time are just outpourings of words, far from it as the list below shows, but rather that is what Bob did with Barbed Wire Fence.
The period that this song comes from is shown here with the songs written (as far as we know) in this order
and I go as far as Just like Tom Thumb because Barbed Wire Fence and Tom Thumb are linked through their lyrics, comparing
I don’t have the strength To get up and take another shot And my best friend, my doctor Won’t even say what it is I’ve got
with
Well, my temperature rises and my feet don’t walk so fast Yes, my temperature rises and my feet don’t walk so fast Well, this Arabian doctor came in, gave me a shot But wouldn’t tell me if what I had would last
And of course as a song the Fence it is comparable to Outlaw Blues in its style and approach
Ain’t it hard to stumble And land in some funny lagoon? Ain’t it hard to stumble And land in some muddy lagoon? Especially when it’s nine below zero And three o’clock in the afternoon.
The problem with this scatological approach to lyrics however is that while it is fairly easy for the person who lives through his/her words to generate the words, it is less easy to convert them into a piece of music that will have more than a passing interest.
Many of us can be impressed by the experienced actor who can create 20 lines of Shakespeare which sound as if they should come from a play, but haven’t and which upon analysis far from meaning anything, are gibberish. But that doesn’t make these lines to be anything other than a bit of fun.
And Dylan must have felt this way – Tom Thumb has been played over 200 times in concert whereas Outlaw got just one solitary outing in 2007 – in Nashville. I know not why it suddenly turned up, but it did.
To me what is most interesting is that this song, which really is just a sketch and an experiment sits among such amazing gems as in the list above shows… sitting there until the moment emerged when it would become (a few months later) a much more rounded.
And indeed somehow transporting the situation to Mexico and ending with the decision to return to New York is much more in keeping with the randomness of the words.
I suppose part of my problem is that I can see too many allusions in the Barbed Wire Fence lines such as “See my hound dog bite a rabbit” which takes me instantly to “Hound Dog”, although of course there “you ain’t never caught a rabbit” is the thrust of the accusation. But such links seem wrong – the songs are too different, the situations too different. For me, somehow, it doesn’t seem to work.
It is, as I have said of certain other songs, a sketch, an idea, which went on to form the basis of something much more substantial.
What else is on the site
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.
The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members. (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm). Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.
On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews
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:
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
too noble too neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear
no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
(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:
Now we heard the sermon on the mount, and I knew
it was too complex
It didn’t amount to anything more than what the
broken glass reflects
When you bite off more than you can chew, you
pay the penalty
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, I guess it must be
up to me
(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:
The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through Nature to find the Tree
But their search was all in vain
There grows one in the human brain
(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:
You bastard, I’m supposed to respect you
I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse
Show me your moral virtue first
Hear me holler, hear me moan
I pay in blood, but not my own
(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,
Shake the dust off of your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation’s not an easy thing, Adam given
the Devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run
in my vein
Well, I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well, I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord
(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:
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you ‘re gonna have to serve somebody
Well it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
(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:
Then dogs, driven wild, break their chains and escape
They run all over the country, a prey to madness
And start barking in turns like a hungry child yelling for food
Their prolonged howls fill Nature with dread
And woe to the belated traveller
These graveyard fiends will set upon him, will tear him to pieces
And eat him, their mouths dripping with blood
(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:
Well I’m grinding my life out, steady and sure
Nothing more wretched than what I must endure
I’m drenched in the light that shines from the sun
I could stone you to death for the wrong that you done
Sooner or later you’ll make a mistake
I’ll put you in a chain that you never will break
Legs and arms and body and bone
I pay in blood, but not my own
(Bob Dylan: Pay in Blood)
No intention has Dylan of painting ‘Madonna And Child’ over and over again.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Some people will offer you their hands and some won’t
And I do like that, because it does seem to be how it is. When you need help there are always the kind folk who actually see it as part of the essence of being a good person to offer support and help where it is feasible to do so. It’s an everyday observation, but when removed and put as that single line, it makes one aware that it is a fundamental part of life.
I often wonder about those who don’t ever offer help, who seriously believe it is every man for himself. Those people might get more money, but they never feel the warmth of doing someone a really good turn.
But then I thought – this is too easy. We can all pick songs with lines that just pop into our heads. But Dylan has meant much more to me than this over the years – I really ought to push myself a bit further. Besides I’ve seen this “Dylan’s best lines” thing done on other sites, and this is supposedly UNTOLD Dylan where we cover stuff that has not be said before.
So I took the list of Dylan songs in alphabetical order and looked at each one in turn, asking myself, “is there a line here that really means something to me” – remembering of course it couldn’t be the first or last line.
I started with songs beginning with A and only got part way through that list, before I had more than enough to illustrate my point, (and simultaneously bore everyone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm utterly stupid). So, just with songs starting with A…
From “A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall” I immediately had
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
Hard Rain is packed with negative images of all the dreadful things Dylan sees in the world; it is a horrific catalogue. But this image is different, because it speaks of something out there which gives us hope or opportunity which we are not taking.
I don’t know if Dylan meant it this way – he could have meant the riches that the wealthy keep to themselves, but it could simply be a vision that says, “if you open up your eyes it is all there, all you have to do is look and step forward.”
For much of my life I’ve believed in the highway of diamonds, which is a fine way to live one’s life except it means that when I slip from that knowledge, there is an awful long way to fall.
But still I always come back to that Highway of Diamonds. And indeed it is appropriate to start with that highway in this little piece, because that highway of diamonds can also be the catalogue of Dylan songs just waiting for us to inspect and consider. And it doesn’t matter if millions across the world are enjoying his music, if I listen in my house, alone, it is still just him and me and his music directs me onto that highway, and I take new hope for the future.
Moving on…
“Abandoned love” is one of the “lost” songs that I have raved over several times on this site, and here I am choosing two lines. Up first…
My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost
I have learned from and been influenced by so many people in my life as I have tried to understand literature, music, art, dance and theatre, and have at times despaired because I seem to have spent so long fighting my own demons inside my head.
But then on hearing this line for the first time I thought – well, yes, that happens to lots of people who think a lot about life, reality and meanings. All these people whose artistic endeavours I so admire have gone through all this, and that’s where I’ve travelled too.
That doesn’t mean I see myself as some kind of great artist up there with the best, not at all, but rather that in my own way I’ve made my own journey, and most of the time I can now look back and be happy that most of the ghosts have been put to rest most of the time.
From the same song…
Everyone is wearing a disguise
One of my favourite, favourites. So many people present themselves as honest, telling it like it is, having nothing to hide, presenting themselves as strong people, saying that their way is the only way, when of course it isn’t. We are all so complex, the inputs on our lives are so diverse, all we have is a disguise. I can never get to the real me because there is no real me, only the layers and layers that life has put across me.
Which is a wonderful release, because that means I am free to create me as I want to be. I can create the story of my past that I want for myself, and find my own future.
This doesn’t mean I’m looking at the world and making up untrue stories about myself, pretending to be something I am absolutely not. I was not an astronaut, I’ve never been to Chile, I’ve not had 500 love affairs, I didn’t go to prison for a bullion robbery.
But I can pick out the bits of my life that I want to pick out, and weave those bits together into a theme which is as good a description of who I am as any other theme. And doing that makes me feel better. It makes life make sense.
Moving on once more…
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”
To live outside the law you must be honest
OK it is on everyone’s list, but that’s no reason why I can’t have it too. Yes, if you really want to step off the mainstream highway, it is not a bad idea to carry honesty with you. Otherwise you will be found out, and your journey to where ever you want to go is going to be fraught with difficulty.
Next it is “All along the watchtower”
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
Every serious Dylan fan can recite this short song word for word and almost every line could be a life-defining line, but I have kept this one as a special favourite, not least because I suspect not too many others would choose it.
Years and multiple decades ago I read a science fiction story about aliens creating alternative universes as their ultimate entertainment just to see what crazy things evolved on them. I don’t think I actually believe that, but this line fits into that notion.
It also reminds me daily not to take it all too seriously. In the end I am going to die, and either that will be the end of it, or I shall go to whichever afterlife is set out for me, and by my age there’s not to much I can do about that.
So why not greet the world each day with a smile – and if what I experience doesn’t make me smile, then why not find something else that does.
And now to conclude… “Angelina”
There’s a black Mercedes rollin’ through the combat zone
It’s a song I have been critical of, because of what I perceive to be the forced rhymes that Dylan introduces, and that’s a shame because I really like the music and some of the lines as individual lines.
But this line has always made me smile because it is something very personal. Yes, I do drive a black Mercedes, and I regularly drive from my home in the rural East Midlands to London or Birmingham, either to go to the theatre, or see friends, or watch the football team I support, or to go dancing.
The two roads I use (one south to London one west to Birmingham) are often packed solid, but each still has vehicles travelling at 70mph (the national speed limit in the UK on motorways – the long distance roads that connect the cities), and I never thought of them as “combat zones” until one day I was playing “Angelina” in the car and the line leaped out at me, and hasn’t gone away since.
So there we are, seven single lines, and I only got as far as Angelina. Goodness knows how many more there are in my head, but that will do for today.
A silly little exercise I know, but I hope it might have given you some amusement and a few thoughts over the past few minutes.
What is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.