Untold Dylan

by Joost Nillissen

The song starts with one of the greatest riddles in the Hebrew Bible. I and I is one of the possible translations of “ehyeh asher ehyeh” (Ex. 3:14). Other translations are: “I am who I am”, “I am I”, “I am who I shall be”.

God speaks to Moses from the burning bush and Moses asks him how he should call him. His people will want to know. And God’s answer is: ehyeh asher ehyeh. The trouble lies in the word ‘asher’ which can mean any number of things depending on the context, but God does not provide a context. A great number of books and essays have been written on this mysterious introduction.

Well, what can I say, this is God talking. He created heaven and earth, man and beast, honouring no one, for there is no one above him, and forgiving no one, for that’s the kind of God he is. It’s a jealous God. An invisible God.  “For there shall no man see me, and live” (Ex. 33:20).

So we can fairly assume that Dylan was in a Biblical mood when he wrote the song.

He sets the stage with a strange woman in his bed, who might have been faithfully wed once to a righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams. The image this evokes is of King David, who traditionally, but not historically, is credited with writing most of the psalms, but there is a problem:

David was hardly a righteous king. He was a warrior who sent Uriah the Hittite into death on the battlefield so he could marry Bathsheba, Uriah’s beautiful wife. The righteous king must be King Solomon who, like his father David, slept with any number of women and wrote songs.

Slowly Dylan lands on earth, but not quite. He recalls the woman in his bed and doesn’t feel like talking. He’s got nothing to say, especially about the past. That’s God again who hasn’t said a word since his thundering speech from the whirlwind (Job 38-41). From then on it’s prophets only, true or false.

Dylan is on solid ground now and recalls the days when he studied the Bible (an untrodden path) and brought out his last three, very Christian, albums (Slow train coming, Saved, Shot of love). He went looking for some deeper meaning and found a stranger to show him the beautiful face of justice. One of the earliest formulations of justice is the next line, the well known ‘eye for eye’. Again it is from the book of Exodus and it is truly a beautiful concept: one should be punished with measure and in relation to the crime committed.

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As Dylan continues his walk, a haunting image of two men waiting for a train, or spring, tells him life goes on no matter what, we’re all waiting for something to happen and he realizes that the world could end right now, right here, and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s not in his hands. And if somehow, sometime he does return, she will still be there sleeping. It’s okay.

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He’s been walking all day and now reaches the darkest part, the narrow lanes. Perhaps he is thinking of the evangelist who warns us: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13), and maybe he remembers Proverbs 4:12 “When you go, your steps shall not be impeded; and when you run, you shall not stumble.”

He realizes that no matter what he sings or says, people will put words in his mouth (exactly what I am doing now), but that’s alright, he’ll only listen to his heart. He doesn’t mind making shoes for everyone, but he chooses to go barefoot, because it is written: … put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. (Ex. 3:5).

Our first review of this song appears here:  I and I: God finds out Dylan thinks He maybe isn’t almighty after all.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

When it was suggested that Dylan had lifted descriptions of three novels from summaries available on the internet when making his Nobel speech there were quite a few people who made a bit of a fuss about this.

But of course Dylan and copyright issues are no strangers to each other.  Indeed Dylan has been accused of lifting melodies and lyrics from other people’s work for years and on this site we have often pointed to similarities between Bob’s work and those of others.

I don’t want to run the argument by giving examples about lifting lyrics, chord sequences or melodies; I’m happy to accept it happens.  Indeed I think that for anyone getting involved in the blues, it is inevitable.  The sequence of chords in what we know as the 12 bar blues is used in hundreds of thousands of songs, and no one calls is plagiarism or copying.

If you don’t believe me get someone with a guitar or keyboard to play this sequence:

E, E, E, E

A, A, E, E

B7, A, E, B7

There it is: the classic 12 bar blues.  Bob uses it lots of times.  So I want to ask the question, does such copying of chord sequences, lyrics or melodies matter?

In fact no sooner have I written that question, than I realise that it sub-divides into two questions: does it matter artistically, and does it matter legally?  And as soon as I start plotting my answers I find I need to go down two different routes: that of plagiarism, and that of copyright.

So already I am onto complicated ground, and that is never a clever place to be when talking about one of the creative arts – because in the creative arts there are no absolute judgements to be made.

Bob has explained himself several times with comments along the lines that if a member of his audience had been as much integrated into the music of his youth as Dylan was “You’d have written them [the songs] too. There’s nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that’s all enough, and that’s all I sang. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense.”

We also know that Bob entered the world of music in the 1960s having studied earlier folk music, which itself was taken from person to person – one composer re-using and modifying the work of someone who had come before him.  Indeed although I am no Woodie Guthrie expert I believe he too did the same.

So in this sense by being a re-user of old songs is just a continuation of a tradition.  “Masters of War” is based on Nottamun Town – there’s no denying it.  Those of us who have bothered to follow and study Dylan’s career as a composer know it and can see it time and again.

Thinking on this I found myself facing a number of questions.  You might have other questions to ask – and if so, if you have the time and inclination, please do write them down, ask them, and then answer them, and I’ll publish your commentary here.   But meanwhile let me try my approach.

Does it matter artistically if one uses earlier works?

It’s a personal judgement.  I recall when studying art, seeing works by various artists who had clearly copied the works of those who had gone before – but had then added something new.  And I remember the comparison with science – each new scientific discovery adds something new to the science of the past.  Occasionally there is someone or something utterly new, but it is rare.  Newton and Einstein in science.  Michelangelo in so many of the arts.

If art is seen in the same way as science, then the judgement is plain – if you are adding something new, then no, it doesn’t matter what you use to build your new masterpiece.

Let’s try an idea.

Supposing I write a piece of which the first line is “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” but which then travels off to a different conclusion and ends

I wish that for just one time I could stand inside your shoes
And just for that one moment you’d have my views
Yes, I wish that for just one time I could stand inside your shoes
I’d know why it is you always sing the blues

I’m trying (in a very trivial way because I haven’t worked on such a piece) to turn the work upside and reverse the proposition – that the singer wants to know what it is like to be the other person, rather than wishing the “other” could see himself through other people’s eyes.

Is that plagiarism?  It’s a trivial notion but it shows the problems we have.  In most arts, taking one artist’s vision and moving it on a step is not plagiarism.  And I think much of the time this is exactly what Dylan has done.  Nottamun Town is about a world not making sense.  Masters of War also has a world not making sense, but this time we know why it doesn’t make sense.  Because the munitions corporations have been allowed to flourish.

But all that is artistic flim flam.  It is still illegal.

This is where the plagiarism comes in, because plagiarism has nothing to do with illegality, but everything to do with being dishonest.  Normally the people who get worked up about it are academics; it is passing someone else’s work off as your own.

So Bob claims “Masters of War” is his, and doesn’t add “Music: traditional”.  There’s nothing illegal about using a very old English folk tune, but if Bob had wanted to exclude any plagiarism claim he’d have made himself clearer.

If I were to write a doctorate on Bob Dylan and wrote up an idea about how Dylan composed, which I had seen in a book on Dylan, and added no acknowledgement that the idea had come from another person’s book then yes, that would be plagiarism.

But it would not be copyright infringement because with just a few exceptions in most countries you can’t copyright ideas.   However there is still an element of dishonesty here – if one let’s people assume that this is one’s own idea when it is anything but.  

The trouble is, having been involved in writing approaching 500 articles on Bob Dylan I can’t actually remember where a lot of the ideas came from.  In fact I recently read a note about a Dylan song in Wikipedia and thought, “that’s worth quoting” and then looked at the source and found it was… me.  I’d forgotten I’d said it.  But at least I didn’t think it was rubbish when I read it again.

Copyright is different

Plagiarism is generally a matter for academics – especially when it comes to marking essays and theses.   Copyright is a matter for the courts.  Each country has its own copyright law, and often it is quite convoluted.   Because I have written a lot I know a fair bit about the copyright laws of the UK, and of the European Union, and have actually been to court to protect my copyright.  All sorts of things can be protected by copyright law – all the way from headlines on a website, and a database of names and addresses.

A five note jingle could be copyright.  So can a catch phrase. So can a radio programme.  But what we have to remember is that copyright has nothing to do with ideas – it covers the actual words used.  If it is ideas you want to protect then maybe you need a patent.  Or you need to return to the issue of plagiarism.

Breach of musical copyright

One of the most famous examples of a song found to be breaking a copyright was, “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison in 1970 which sounded rather like “He’s So Fine,” recorded in 1963 by the Chiffons.  The owners of “He’s so fine” sued citing multiple similarities.

The judge said, “it is perfectly obvious to the listener that in musical terms, the two songs are virtually identical.”  Now I didn’t find that comment by looking up the legal judgement – I copied it from another site that commented on the trial.  Breach of copyright?  I suspect not because it was a report of an actual event.

In its article on plagiarism Wikipedia says, “In 2012, when Bob Dylan was questioned over his alleged plagiarism of others music he responded, “It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back”.    Princeton University professor of American history Sean Wilentz defended Dylan’s appropriation of music stating “crediting bits and pieces of another’s work is scholarly tradition, not an artistic tradition”.  In 1998, B.B. King stated on the issue vis a vis music, “I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.”

But there is another side to this.  I found this story when doing research for this piece.

In the early ’90s, he [Dylan] sued Hootie and the Blowfish because of lyrics used in their hit song ‘Only Wanna Be With You.’

“Rucker admits that it’s doubtful Dylan knew anything about the lawsuit. During an interview with the Dan Patrick Show, he said the singer’s management was aware of their use of lyrics from ‘Idiot Wind’ and had no problem with it. Once the song became a hit, they objected, and Hootie was forced to pay up handsomely.”

The lyrics in question were: “Said I shot a man named Gray / 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.”

There was also a claim made against Dylan’s work, “Dignity” which apparently was lost.  Brief details of that and other cases can be found here.

So let’s come back to the opening question: supposing Bob did use a precis of the famous novels that he says influenced his work through the years, quoting someone else’s work that he found on the internet – what then?

Here are the questions I am left with, and the very personal answers I find.

1:  Was Bob morally wrong to do it?   For me, I don’t really see it as a moral issue – but it would have been polite to have mentioned the sources.   Supposing one of those story summaries had been written by me – I would have been so honoured to have had Bob say, “here’s a summary from some English guy I’ve never heard of called Tony Attwood.”  I wouldn’t want any money – I’d dine off that for the rest of my life.

2: Was Bob breaking the law?   I can’t speak for US law, but if it were a work created in the UK then probably he was breaking the UK Copyright Act 1988.

3: So how much could be he sued for?   I am not a lawyer, but when I have protected my copyrights over the years the question for the court has always been, “what is your loss?”  So there is not some arbitrary punishment, but instead there is the question of how much I could have made from that copyright if the guilty party had actually paid.  It’s fairly easy to work out.  So I claim that, and all the court costs.

4: If he’d quoted me, would I have sued?  No, I think not.  Instead I would have given interviews and built a web site that said, “It was me that Bob quoted when he did his Nobel Prize speech.”  I would hopefully have got a few nice meals and a couple of free drinks at after dinner speeches out of that.  And I’d have changed the front page of this web site so that it said, “As quoted by Bob himself in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech,” in very large letters.

5: What about the lyrics we quote when reviewing songs on this site?     Regarding the lyrics, mostly we quote extracts from songs rather than the whole songs, and any full length quotes from songs that are on the site I am going back and removing.  If you spot one that is left, tell me and I’ll change it.  Extracts are normally allowable and since BobDylan.com has all the lyrics on line, that suggests they are recognising reality, that song lyrics are effectively freely exchanged.

6:  What about the links we put up to videos of Dylan performing live?   As far as I can see there is nothing in law prohibiting the filming of a performance.  The management of the theatre might say the sale of the ticket does not allow for this, but that is their rule, not a legal requirement.  Recordings of songs released on CD or LP are different – they are protected.  I try to remove any of these which are on the site.   But if the recording has not been released I don’t think it is a copyright infringement as long as we are not charging anyone to hear or watch.

So there we are: I’m trying to be consistent, although probably failing.  And Bob?  Well, as Hootie and the Blowfish found, Bob’s management will protect his copyright, as they are entitled to do in law.  But I doubt Bob even knew it was happening.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bob Dylan And Samuel Coleridge (Part ll) (or maybe III)

(Part one appears as The Land Of Milk And Honey: Bob Dylan And Samuel Coleridge   while part II (ish) is published under  Bob Dylan And Henry Timrod: The Country Coleridge Rambles)

By Larry Fyffe

In many of his songs, Bob Dylan expresses the theme put forth by the Romantic Transcendentalist poets, ie, that Nature provides comfort and solace to mankind. But he holds on to that creed only by his fingertips. A go-between be necessary for Dylan, a female Muse to show him the way to Nature’s pleasant bower whatever the season:

If not for you
Winter would have no spring
Couldn’t hear the robin sing
I just wouldn’t have a clue
Anyway it wouldn’t ring true
If not for you
(Bob Dylan: If Not For You)

The blissful Transcendentalist view, presented in the verse below, that is preached by Romantic poet Samuel Coleridge, Dylan modifies to an extent:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greeness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree
(Samuel Coleridge: Frost At Midnight)

Joyous as the apples of summer seems every season only if accompanied by a loving and lovely female, sings Dylan:

Winterlude, Winterlude, my little apple
Winterlude by the corn in the field
Winterlude let’s go down to the chapel
Then come back and cook up a meal
We’ll come out when the skating rink glistens
By the sun near the old crossroads sign
(Bob Dylan: Winterlude)

Beware, beware, Nature is transcendental; it’s above and beyond Man; certainly, it’s more than just a mirror that reflects one’s emotional state. So says the Christian poet Samuel Coleridge who is filled with the thought that all of Nature is God’s creation, referencing the authority of the Holy Bible:

For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise
(Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

Bob Dylan, referring to the Bible too, feels spiritually malnourished due to the materialistic greed exhibited in American society, and the depression that it brings:

It’s undeniable what they’d have you to think
It’s indescribable, it can drive you to drink
They said it was the land of milk and honey
(Dylan: Unbelievable)

Coleridge will have none of it:

A melancholy bird? Oh, idle thought
In Nature there is nothing melancholy
(Coleridge: The Nightingale)

Bob Dylan chides the Transcendentalist poet for being too happy, given the
sad state of modern society:

Well, my sense of humanity is going down the drain
Behind everything, there’s some kind of pain
(Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

Another Romantic poet, though inclined to melancholia himself, sides with Coleridge:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
…. thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless
Singest of summer in full-throated ease
(John Keats: Ode To A Nightingale)

Perhaps due to drug-induced dreams, Coleridge turns somewhat away from the Romantic theme of joyful Nature to images more gloomy that suggest emotions dark and demonic:

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock …….
His heart was cleft with pain and rage
His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild
(Coleridge: Christabel)

Coleridge’s difficult-to-interpret narrative Gothic poems appeal more to Dylan, given his attitude toward human nature, ie, that it has, like the moon, a dark side:

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels?
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger and bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye, he just grows it
(Dylan: Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window)

Dylan turns down the overly bright light of the Transcendentalist outlook as Coleridge himself does, ie in the poem ‘The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ one of Nature’s spirited and beautiful creatures is thoughtlessly dispensed with.

Yes, Dylan clings on to Romantic sentiment, but has no intention of wearing an albatross around his neck:

Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see for me if she’s wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin’ winds
(Dylan: Girl From The North Country)

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Joost Nillissen

Now that I am about to enter a new phase of my life, I look for a song to ease the passage into retirement. Rather morbidly I thought Tombstone Blues might be appropriate

I wish I could write you a melody so plain

that could hold you, dear lady, from going insane,

that could ease and cool you and ease the pain

of you useless and pointless knowledge

Then I heard a beautiful rendering of My Back Pages of his 1964 album, aptly titled Another side of Bob Dylan. Dylan was 23 years old at the time, this was his fourth album and he had already written Blowing in the wind, A hard rain is gonna fall, Don’t think twice it’s alright and The times they are a changing. One year later he would write Like a rolling stone.

The hardest or least accessible song on this album is My back pages. Most Dylan songs make sense to me in a poetic way, even though they may be enigmatic and hard to follow, but this one is almost beyond grasp. The refrain is almost a gimmick, a brilliant thought: I was so much older then, I am younger than that now. On the album he released eight months earlier he had the audacity to warn the Masters of War that he would “Stand over their grave to make sure that you’re dead”. He was much older then than the rest of his contemporaries. How young could he have been, writing My Back Pages in 1964? At the age of 23.

There is heat in the first verse when he tells of the crimson flames tied through his ears. Is it the fever of youth? He is setting out for more discoveries of what life is all about, learning on the way, avoiding traps on flaming roads and using his own ideas as a map.

Hot and sweaty, but proud, he meets someone and says: we’ll meet on edges soon. As so often in his songs, Dylan is leaving, changing direction, following another path. But he was so much older then. He’s younger then that now.

In the second verse prejudice leaps forth and causes him to scream: “Rip down all hate”, and a voice in his skull tells a lie: in life everything is black and white. He’d rather dream romantic dreams of musketeers. He was so much older then…

The path forward in so many young men’s lives are often demarcated by faces of pretty girls. But rejections and regret lead you to think useless thoughts and you find yourself memorizing politics of ancient history. He was so much older then…

On the move he listens to self-ordained professors who foolishly claim that liberty is just a quality in school. At first he is impressed and solemnly says the word “Equality” as if a wedding vow. But he was so much older then…

He is still on the road, learning as he goes. It’s a struggle and like a soldier he aims his hand at mongrel dogs who teach. He is not afraid to contradict himself when he starts speaking. On his travels he even follows boats who confuse him because there is mutiny from stern to bow. He was so much older then…

And then at last he makes his stand when abstract threats deceived him into thinking he had something to protect. He finally realizes it all comes down to good and bad, quite clear, no doubt somehow. But then again… he was so much older then, he is younger then that now.

So as I step into third age I can hear the echo of these lines, I recognize the road travelled, the wisdom gained, the useless and pointless knowledge. I am younger then that now, even though I am much older then I once was.

There are a few memorable performances by Dylan of My Back Pages. They’re all different, have all a different urgency. At his 30th-anniversary-concert in 1992 he joins Roger McQuinn, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton and George Harrison on stage to perform this incredible song. Dylan stands back, strumming his guitar, aloof, unsmiling, focused, may be insecure. There are eight guitar players on stage. It is awesome. Each one of them sings one verse and Roger, Tom, Eric and even George are in awe of the lyrics. Only Neil has tremendous, electrifying fun. https://www.theguardian.com/music/video/2014/feb/12/bob-dylan-performs-my-back-pages-30th-anniversary-concert-video

The are plenty of performances easily found on YouTube if you’re interested, but this is one of my favorites. Wait for 5:00 when he picks up his harp and does a heartbreaking duet with the violinist.

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

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Untold’s Exclusive Interview With Bob Dylan

Interview conducted by Larry Fyffe

Location: The ‘Untold Office’ on the roof of the 12-storey Saint James Hotel in New York City

Untold: Thanks for coming up to visit us, Bob….You sound a bit winded……Anyway, we know you’re a busy man …so let’s get right on with the interview….Here’s what our reader survey tells us that they want from you:

You must provide some answers
For what you sell has not been delivered
And as soon as you come up with them
The sooner you can leave

Untold: So the first question to you, Bob is …

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you can call him a man?

Dylan: Well, in my case, it was just one …

Oh, Howard just pointed with his gun
And said, that way down on Highway 61

Untold: Yes, and how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?

Dylan: You’ll have to ask the white dove that one …

If I had wings like Noah’s dove
I’d fly the river to the one I love

Untold: Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?

Dylan: It doesn’t really matter. Cannon balls are not used that much anymore ….

But now we got weapons of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to, then fire them we must

Untold: Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?

Dylan: Beats me …

Beyond here lies nothin’
But the mountains of the past

Untold: Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?

Dylan: If they’re lucky, maybe a hundred …

And I answer them most mysteriously
Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?

Untold: Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?

Dylan: Sometimes you don’t have to pretend …

I’m gazing out the window of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell

Untold: Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?

Dylan: Just once on a cloudless day ….

I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting for the last train

Untold: Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?

Dylan: One good one, I should think …

You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind

Untold: Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows
That too many people have died?

Dylan: In your particular case, just one:

Ten thousand men dressed in oxford blue
Drummin’ in the morning, in the evening they’ll be coming for you

Untold: Oh ……… thanks, Mr. Dylan ….. for clearing things up….Be careful climbing down that ladder on the side of the hotel when you leave …. You have a train to catch!

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Allen Ginsberg

By Larry Fyffe

Poets who influence Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Carlos Williams, and, especially, the pre-Romantic poet William Blake who exalts physical sex as an integral part of the spiritual aspect of love given to humankind by the Creator; thereby the poet challenges the conventional teachings of church and state:

A Sunflower! weary of time
Who countest the steps of the sun
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done
(William Blake: Sunflower)

Called the ‘slave morality’ by Frederich Nietzsche, William Blake, in the poem above, chides those waiting for happiness after death rather than searching for it on God’s green and pleasant Earth (Allen Ginsberg speaks from a homosexual perspective; Dylan Thomas is another poet much influenced by Blake).

When I heard Bob Dylan in New Brunswick, 1997, the singer/songwriter paid a heart-felt tribute to Ginsberg.

The pseudo-Darwinism of William Carlos Williams, picked up by Ginsberg, unfolds into the poetic imagination, as revealed by the following verse:

Now I’ll record my secret vision, impossible
sight of the face of God ….
Lo and behold! I was thoughtless and turned a page
and gazed on the living
Sunflower ….
The great brain unfolding and brooding in the wilderness
Now speaking and with Blake’s voice
Love! thou patient presence and bone of the body ….
Time howled in anguish in my ear
(Allen Ginsberg: Psalm IV)

The Blake/Ginsberg symbols of Tiger and Sunflower, male/female, with eyes of fire, from the wilderness, speak out. And, in Dylan song lyrics, too:

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

And in the next song lyrics, the anguish of Ginsberg is heard once again:

Louise she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like a mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghosts of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

Bob Dylan’s not going to wait until he dies, but he contrasts Louise’s singular physical presence with the prospect of both a physical and a spiritual union with Johanna; hope springs eternal in the Shelleyian mind.

Poet Allan Ginsberg, depicts present day society (Moloch) as one that displaces the spiritual and sexual desires of human existence with a secular materialistic dogma that commands all to kneel before the image of the Golden Calf and beneath that of the Hydrogen Bomb:

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! ….
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone
Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks
Moloch whose poverty is the spectre of genius
Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl)

The same troubled sentiment, but coupled with a somewhat more hopeful double-edged meaning, in the song lyrics that follow:

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

The message sent through the howls of Ginsberg’s black-dog is rather depressing, to say the least:

I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness ….
Who bared their brains to heaven under the El and saw
Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated
Who passed through universities with
radiant coloured eyes
Hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war
(Allan Ginsberg: Howl)

In the song following, there be coals of optimism still burning in the darkness:

I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl who gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall)

Dylan, perhaps with second thoughts, was not above taking a humorous shot at Ginsberg:

Crocagator, see you later, crocagator
After a while, smock-a-while, see you later Allen Ginsberg
See you later, alligator, see you later, crocagator
After awhile, crocodile, in a while Allen Ginsberg
(Bob Dylan: You See Later, Allen Ginsberg)

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

After writing and recording “Love and Theft” Bob Dylan entered another sparse period of song writing, and indeed much of the 21st century can be characterised in terms of a far less active period of composition than earlier in Bob’s life.

But then he was getting a little bit older by now.  And Bob did not give up composing completely at this time, as four movie songs were written in this period: Waitin’ for You composed after Love and Theft in 2001, Cross the Green Mountain in 2002 and then after a pause in 2005 we had Tell Ol’ Bill and Can’t escape from you

The two best known of these are “Cross the Green Mountain” for “Gods and Generals” while “Tell Ol Bill” was written for North Country.

Opinions about these two songs from the middle of the sequence differ considerable; or maybe I should say everyone else rates “Cross the Green Mountain” as a minor masterpiece, while I simply don’t get that song at all but think Tell Ol Bill is one of the greatest songs Dylan ever created.

In terms of the movies for which the songs were created, none of the films was a great success – in fact “Gods and Generals” was a multi-million dollar disaster.

But movie songs, although needing to have a reference point in the film, also need to be magical performances in their own right, to heard alongside the movie, and listened to subsequently as a reminder of the film.

And this is what we get with “Tell Ol Bill.”  It has line after line each of which is utterly memorable and it works for me both as a stand alone song and the song of the movie.

On the other hand I described “Waiting for You” written for “The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood” as “seriously odd” and I stick with that view, coming back to the piece again now.   As For “Can’t escape from you”, this was written for a movie that seemingly was either never made, or at least made but not released.

Maybe it was the realisation that having gained the Oscar for “Things have changed” but then failed to reach such heights again, that convinced Bob that this writing for the movies lark was not as simple as he had first thought.   For after “Can’t escape from you” Bob gave up on the movies and went back to the albums, composing next the music for “Modern Times”.

The film years were an interesting diversion.  There wasn’t another Oscar, but there was “Tell Ol Bill”.   An absolute total masterpiece in my humble opinion   A revised version of the review has now been placed on this site.

Song of the period: of course, “Tell Ol Bill”.  At the very top of Bob’s creative work.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

If you have been following Untold Themes, you will know I have pointed out previously that when the singer Bob Dylan pays tribute to a poet by referencing a poem, the songwriter may take direct quotes from that poem, and/or he may employ what I have coined the literary technique of the ‘Dylanesque Twist’:

Self-explanatory be the following two examples:

(1)The goat-and-daisy dingles
(Dylan Thomas: Under Milkwood)

The cloak and dagger dangles
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

(2)That distant peak which on our vale looks down
And wears the star of evening for a crown
(Henry Timrod: A Vision Of Poesy)

My pretty baby, she’s lookin’ around
She wears a multi-thousand dollar gown
(Bob Dylan: Tweedle-Dum And Tweedle-Dee)

Noted too is that not all Romantic poets are dyed-in-the-wool Wordsworthian Transcendentalists who are able to feel the spirit of a loving and caring Creator that pervades through every tree in the forest and all the stars in the sky, uniting everything and everybody into One.

The aforementioned Henry Timrod is among the unworthy; to him, Eden’s forever sealed. Like John Keats and Samuel Coleridge, with their nightingales protected by a hidden bower, and Robert Frost, with his dividing wall, Timrod, though blessed with the imagination of a poet and armed to the hilt with words, confesses that he cannot unravel the unknowable mystery of how and why the Universe exists; indeed, as time passes, the Civil War poet contends that, like a Swedenborgian Creator, God is falling farther and farther back into the vast emptiness of space.

Apparently, the Deistic God of the Enlightenment is not dead; He’s simply missing.

Meanwhile, man’s more powerful technologies, the dogs of war, that are capable of destroying not only mankind himself, but the Earth as we know it, come closer and closer to being slipped.

Depressing are the lyrics of the white songster walking his black dog; war is utter hell for both sides though to each the cause is thought just. So asserts a Dylan song about the American Civil War:

All along the dim Atlantic line
The ravaged land lies miles behind
The light’s coming forward, and the streets are broad
All must yield to the avenging God
(Bob Dylan: Cross The Green Mountain)

The singer samples the Romantic Southern poet who concludes that, frankly Scarlet, neither Nature, be it ever so joyous and beautiful, nor its Creator, gives a damn which side wins or which side loses; doesn’t care whether or not the southern city is destroyed:

But still along yon dim Atlantic line
The only hostile smoke
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine
From some frail, floating oak …..
God has inscribed her doom
And all untroubled in her faith, she waits
The triumph or the tomb
(Henry Timrod: Charleston)

Nonetheless, Timrod refuses to profane the critical thinking of his alliterative English Romantic predecessor:

We may not thus profane
Nature’s sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! ‘Tis the merry nightingale
(Samuel Coleridge: The Nightingale)

And all should cry ‘Beware, beware!’ Neither does the Creator construct the imaginative and unconscious dreams that Tweedle- Dum, and Tweedle-Dee have about setting up their own separate ‘Kubla Khans’:

Well, a childish dream is a deathless need
And a noble truth is a sacred creed
(Bob Dylan: Tweedle-Dum And Tweedle-Dee)

Sampling once again the poet:

A childish dream is now a deathless need
Which drives him to far hills, and distant wilds
The solemn faith and fervour of his creed
Bold as a martyr’s, simple as a child’s
(Henry Timrod: A Vision Of Poesy)

You’re basically on your own, sings Dylan existentially; he, unlike the female who laughs like the flowers, is scarcely affected by the moon:

The moon gives light, and it shines by night
Well, I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live, and then we forgive
O’er the road, we’re bound to go
More frail than the flower, these precious hours
(Bob Dylan: When The Deal Goes Down)

Sampling once more the Coleridge-influenced male poet, who
feels the power of the sun:

These happy stars, and yonder setting moon
Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked
A round of precious hours
Oh! here in that summer noon I basked
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers
(Henry Timrod: A Rhopsody Of A Southern Winter Night)

As mentioned above, both John Keats and Coleridge influence Henry Timrod:

My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power
To keep the world forever fresh and young
(Henry Timrod: A Vision Of Posey)

Which samples:

More happy love! More happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed
For ever panting, and for ever young
(John Keats: Ode To A Grecian Urn)

And that brings us all back home to the William Blake’s innocence of childhood:

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
(Bob Dylan: Forever Young)

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Tony Attwood

This little article took me much longer than usual to write – for reasons that I think are quite apparent in the article itself.   But because I got so tangled up with the issues I faced I managed to forget to say that matters might be further explained with reference to Bob Dylan And Walt Whitman: Writing In The Captain’s Tower and to The Browning Of The Green Mountain

To take matters further forward we have now published  “Bob Dylan And Henry Timrod: The Country Coleridge Rambles” – which helps clarify things for me.  I hope it does for you.

Tony

Dylan is reported to have undertaken quite a bit of research into the American civil war across the years, and as a result when he came to write the song for the movie “Gods and Generals” he clearly was immersed into the subject, as I guess most US citizens are anyway from their studies of the war at school.

As you might imagine, it isn’t a subject studied in UK schools, unless you happen to get it as a specialist in-depth topic for A Level History (A Level being an academic course mostly taken by 16 to 18 year olds thinking of going to university – most of whom would take three such subjects: I took history, music and English literature.)

My problem is that not only am I English, but that although I took A Level History my specialist topic was not the American Civil War but the French Revolution of 1789 – a subject on which Dylan has been unaccountably quiet.  And that is unfortunate because if he had ventured into the world of Danton, Robespierre and Louis XVI, I’d had been well prepared.

I mention this, not to say that I can’t review this song, but rather to make the fairly obvious point that background knowledge can be important.  Could one understand Times They Are A-Changin’ without knowing about the dramatic change in values and visions among young people in the late 1950s and early 1960s?   I doubt it.

But here, Dylan, and the movie maker Ted Turner, are squarely facing an American audience who know and who are interested in, their own country’s history, and its myths and mystique.

Perhaps for you (if you are American) to understand my floundering at this point, we might imagine you as a guest in my country happening to be around on November 5 and wonder why there are bonfires being lit all over the place – and then on getting a quick explanation, thinking that we are all preparing to blow up Parliament and kick out our elected representatives, plus the bishops and nobles that sit in the Lords.

Or to give another example from my life it is like me going to a Burns Night Supper on 25 January and expecting to understand a single word.

So in a similar way if I try and reach conclusions about the historical basis of the song, I will be lost.

But even so some strands and themes arise.   The song quotes Henry Timrod – a poet of whom I had never heard before I started writing these reviews, but have now mentioned quite a few times.  But even having got used to Timrod popping up in Dylan, here again the quotes don’t mean to much to me.   Bob used lines from the poet in When The Deal Goes Down“, “Rollin and Tumblin” and “Spirit On The Water” and I sort of got where each was going, but here… no, not really.

Thus because the lyrics and subject matter don’t make a direct connection to my knowledge, my background or my heart or my soul, I find the song hard going.  What I could have done with was a line or two of stand out Dylan – the sort of lines that I mentioned in my little piece “One line to carry with you: why Dylan’s lyrics are so important for so many people” or failing that some stand out music.

Yet I find the music with its plodding ascending and descending bass line uninspiring.  Dylan has of course many times made something very profound out of using the step by step bass line – one starts with Like a Rolling Stone and moves on.  But the slow plodding nature of this piece (and I really can find no other word but plodding) reminds me of “Sad Eyed Lady,” and there again I failed to make the connection.

And as that happens again I know I am in deep trouble because few, if any, shared my view about that song.

So the conclusion must be, it is just me.  My Englishness, and my dislike of the bass line at a slow speed.  But I must admit that given the subject matter of the song this slow speed is of course highly appropriate.  Yet if we compare this to the great movie song triumph of “Things have changed” I simply don’t find lines that come into my life and live with me.  There is no “next sixty seconds could be like an eternity”.

But Larry Sloman finds the lyrics impressive, and singles out

A letter to mother came today
Gun shot wound to the breast is what it did say
But he’ll be better soon, he’s in a hospital bed
But he’ll never be better, he’s already dead

And for me… nothing.  And maybe the Timrod problem is that Timrod was not a great poet, and therefore the buzz one gets from his lines must be entirely tied up into the context – and as I am trying to explain, I have no context.

I can of course grasp the power of the closing line “We loved each other more than we ever dared to tell” but somehow the power there is not translated into the music or the overall meaning.  And this is really the point of a strophic song that continues unchanging for 12 verses.  You need to engage, and sorry, but I’m not.

There are lines from Melville in here as well, but still, I am lost.  And so more than anything else I would like someone else – someone well versed in the history and background of this song – to write the review to appear in Untold Dylan that I am struggling with.

For 12 repeating verses and the repeating ascending and descending bass line, and a not particularly memorable melody, and no stand out lines to carry away from hearing the music, I have nothing.  But if I had the history, maybe I’d make something of it all, and that’s what I am hoping you, dear reader, will do.

Interestingly the next song Dylan wrote was “Tell Ol Bill” a song which for me, sits alongside Visions of Johanna as a perfect example of Dylan at his very best.

And realising this I immediately thought of

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All of my doubts and fears have gone at last
I’ve nothing more to tell you now

There’s nothing clever in those lines, no deep rooted meaning or historical context, and yet they shout out to me through a thousand different levels of image and suggestion in the way that I can find no single line of “Cross the Green Mountain” doing.

The fault of course is all mine, I’m in the wrong country listening at the wrong time.

So if you would like to correct my failings at this point, please write a review of this song, send it to Tony@schools.co.uk, ideally as a Word file, and I will happily publish it here as an antidote to my undoubtedly mistaken view that really, there isn’t very much here.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Lawrence Ferlinghetti

By Larry Fyffe

Under the influence of poet William Carlos Williams, Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes sardonic poems in plain language about the American vision of a Promised Land shattered by the material greed of New Babylon, a theme that singer Bob Dylan picks up on:

And I am waiting
For a reconstructed May Flower
To reach America
With its picture story and TV rights
Sold in advance to the natives
(Ferlinghetti: I Am Waiting)

The poem inspires a Dylan song filled with black humour::

I was riding on the May Flower
When I thought I spied some land …
I think I’ ll call it America ….
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)

Another pointed poem by the poet who associates with the ‘Beats’ like Allen Ginsberg:

I have read the Reader’s Digest
From cover to cover
And noted the close identification
Of the United States with the Promised Land
Where every coin is marked
In God We Trust
But the dollar bills do not have it
Being gods unto themselves
(Ferlinghetti: Autobiography)

And a song, momentum and humour added, inspired thereby:

He said he’s going to kill me
If I don’t get out the door
In two seconds flat
‘You unpatriotic
Rotten Commie rat’
Well, he threw a Reader’s Digest
At my head and I did run
I did a somersault
As I seen him get his gun
(Bob Dylan: Motorcycle Nightmare)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti introduces ‘academic’ poems and works of art to the streets by quoting poetic fragments, and referencing paintings in his own work – a rhetorical device Bob Dylan goes on to use, alluding to poems and paintings in his song lyrics:

In Goya’s great scenes we seem to see
The people of the world
Exactly at the moment when
They first attained the title
‘Suffering Humanity’
(Ferlinghetti: In Goya’s Great Scenes)

One famous painting by Francisco Goya is ‘The Third Of May’. Modern poet William Carlos Williams uses the literary technique, referring to painter Peter Breughel, the Elder:

In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,
The dances go round, they go round and
Around, the squeal, and the blare and the
Tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
Tipping their bellies
(William Carlos Williams: The Dance)

And so does singer Bob Dylan as he comments, in his song lyrics, on the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci:

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

Ferlinghetti, in his poems, makes allusions to other poets, especially to those Romantically-inclined:

Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
Keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘Over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
Hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time, my darling
And we are not still young and easy
Don’t shout
(Ferlinghetti: Under Wear)

Poking a bit of fun at Dylan Thomas’ lack of political action while referencing Fern Hill (Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs); Death Shall Have No Dominion (And death shall have no dominion/ Dead men they shall be one); and Do Not Go Gentle (Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight/And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way/Do not go gentle into that good night).

Bob Dylan, wary to some degree of being taken in by organized political activists, relates to Dylan Thomas’ sympathy for the plight of the individual facing demands to conform:

One by one, they followed the sun
One by one, until there were none
Two by two, to their lovers they flew
Two by two, into the foggy dew
Three by three, they danced on the sea
Three by three, they danced on the shore
(Bob Dylan: Two By Two)

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

Song of the Year: Honest with Me 

Returning to composition in 1996 after a five year break, Dylan spread the writing of Time Out of Mind across late 1996 and early 1997, and then once again stopped composing.  Clearly the old approach of writing in hotel rooms had long since gone.

However in 1999, in response to a specific request, he wrote the majestic “Things have changed” but then again rested in terms of writing anything new until 2001 when he produced most of the “Love and Theft” songs.

Of course Bob already had Mississippi available and he could have looked to develop that side of his writing, to make a coherent album, but he didn’t.  Instead he started out with two songs that are musically quite simple – a 12 bar blues Summer Days  and a 12 bar blues variant Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum.

And after that we had … another 12 bar blues: Honest with Me  a song I will come back to later, and then we had Lonesome Day Blues  which is as the name suggests, a 12 bar blues.

So Dylan wrote four 12 bar blues type songs in a row… and then…

And then suddenly Bob changed with the completely different feel of a song, which really has absolutely nothing to do with the blues at all: Bye and bye.   This was followed by a song with exactly the same feel as Bye and Bye: Floater (Too much to ask)

Now of course we don’t get this feel of blues blues blues and then a sudden change on the album, because the album includes Mississippi (which itself had a major impact) and the tracks are (as always) not included on the album in the order written.

But in terms of writing, next came Moonlight and that continues the same theme – it is almost as if Dylan had suddenly discovered the music of the 30s and decided to play some games by taking odd phrases and themes and exploring where they can go.

Po’ Boy goes down the same route and if one had been privy to Bob’s compositions as they appeared one would surely have wondered what next.  After all we had had four 12 bar blues followed by four songs that look back to the music of a totally different tradition.

More of the same?  Back to the 12 bars?

No, because this is Dylan and he never does what we expect.  What we got was  High Water (for Charley Patton); a pure masterpiece of painting a disturbing picture – a song that now, years on, I can still listen to with much interest and enthusiasm.

Cry a While written next takes us back to the blues – with the interesting bit of fun of the changing rhythm and styles within one song.

I don’t know if Bob thought of Sugar Baby as an album ender – but that is what it became and indeed it is perfect for this mixture of blues and other genres and it was the last of the album to be written – although not the last song of the year.

For Waitin’ for You was written after Sugar Baby, but of course was not on the album, it was written for a movie.  My review, (and yes I know it is terribly wrong to quote oneself, but what I said when writing the review still seems to me to be right) said “This is odd.  I mean, really odd.”

There’s no point my saying any more about this song, because I simply don’t get it.  There’s a link in the review so if you don’t know it you can hear it now.

The album is made up of good songs – far better than most pop, rock and blues composers can do but for me there are none here that I really want to come back to over and over.  Three stand out for me, but not as absolutely all time amazing Dylan songs.  And one of those Mississippi was written for the previous album, and is harmed in my view, through the choice of the wrong version.  But with Dylan it was ever thus.

Of course I know the review that says, “this is an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperadoes, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.”  And that suggests the whole album should be incredibly exciting and interesting.  Like what an album by the amazing novelist Thomas Pynchon would sound like – if he made albums.

But… it never comes across to me like that – and as I have oft said before, I am sure this is my failing, not the failing of the music.  And in my defence I might say perhaps that my problem is that I am just too English.  Not so utterly English that I can’t get Thomas Pynchon, but too English to grasp the absolute Americaness of this album.

My review of “Honest with Me” has the subtitle “a missed work of genius” and to a degree that’s what I feel about quite a bit of this album.  I do like this song a lot, and would be delighted to be hear it at a Dylan concert – just as I was to come back to it while writing this article.  But I stick with the title of my little piece – and my view that this is Dylan reflecting too much on his understanding of America, and being an American, for it to have the universal impact that many of his songs can have.

And of course I don’t really have a relationship with the title even, which I now know comes from “Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class”.  Yes, I know now what Blackface Minstrelsy was, and I’ve watched a TV programme on it, but at the time the album came out, no I would have been hard pressed to explain.

There are also all the “theft” bits – the music and lyrics nicked from elsewhere.  Again I got some of it straight off (I tried to explain this particularly in my long winded ramble about Lonesome Road), but by no means all of it.

Heylin makes the point that this album suffered from being recorded in just 12 days immediately after the band had come off the road and certainly Dylan’s voice sounds shot.  But it is not the voice that I don’t like that much, it is just the songs.  As I say, I am sure it is just me being not American enough.

For my song of the year I choose “High Water” because I just enjoy the whole effect.  As for the album itself, it was Mississippi that grabbed me and made me want to play it over and over and over.  But of course that wasn’t written this year.

But now I would like to add, if I may, a little postscript.

When I started writing this site I would, of course, look to see if Wikipedia had a review of the song in question, and if so, what they had to say.   Mostly I would find myself thinking, “ok but I am not sure that gets us very far” and then plod on with my own review.

Except that after a year or so, as I started to get an audience here, two or three times I added a note to a Wiki review saying something like, “An alternative view has been provided by the Untold Dylan site which argues…”

Obviously I only did this where I thought my review was making an alternative and valid point, and that I could add a new additional perspective to the review, but the Great Editorial Gang of Wikipedia didn’t like it.  Not because they disagreed with the points I made, but because I wasn’t famous enough – which to me seemed the wrong criteria to use.   Anyway took out my handful of extra notes and told me to shut up.  I was not considered a suitably qualified person to make a comment.

And so I learned – for Wiki it was not the originality or intellectual validity of a point that was made that allowed it to be quoted, but the fame of the person.  I thought that a shame, but dutifully shut up and just carried on building this site.  However today, on preparing this piece, I had a look at the Wiki review of the album, just to get another perspective, and found this comment tucked away therein:

In a critique, “A missed work of genius”, Tony Attwood compares the lyrics of “Honest With Me” with Dylan’s 1965 song “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues“, concluding that the former song is “utter brilliance”^[3]

So now it seems I am acceptable – at least to one Wiki editor.  Nice to know.

Anyway, I do think “Honest with me” along with “High Water” are the stand out songs written this year.  But I still suspect I am just not American enough to understand it all completely.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan And Andre Breton

By Larry Fyffe

In his poetic basement, Andre Breton, French poet, mixes up the medicine of Karl Marx’s exploitative economics with that of the subconscious mind.

Under its influence, Bob Dylan broadens protest against a particular war in Vietnam to songs that express abhorrence at war in general.

The song lyrics of Bob Dylan also give expression to the divide-and-conquer tactics of those who have power in modern society:

I’ve learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
(Bob Dylan: With God On Our Side)

Surrealism, a mode of art concerned with the dreams of the unconscious mind, enters the arena of war; the correlatively objectified, and idealized female figure becomes Andre Breton’s poetic link to a Universe that otherwise appears uncaring; she is symbolized by various aspects of Nature, especially water, juxtaposed against the fiery disposition of man:

My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to be drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
Of water-level eyes
Of eyes at the level of air, and earth
Of eyes at the level of fire
(Andre Breton: Freedom Of Love)

Surrealistic visions, taken up by singer Bob Dylan, and a strange brew it is of external associations and psychological imagery brought forward and updated by Breton from the days of Shakespeare:

Ramona, come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes ….
Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
As to be under the strength of your skin
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I’m in
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

Below, an artist’s imagined dream-vision of the enduring female:

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

Poetic imagery that brings it biblically back home:

I have compared thee, O my love
To a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels
Thy neck with chains of gold
(Solomon’s Song, 1:9-10)

With Surrealistic images of a corrupted Christianity, of Anti-Virgins on fire:

O mystical rose of the mire
O house not of gold but of gain
O house of unquenchable fire
Our Lady of Pain
(Charles Swinburne: Delores)

Grey mists and ghost-like souls, white-capped mountains and sea waves, fog-bound ships – objects correlated by many Surrealistic male poets to the female sex, to signify supposed emotional states:

Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That baby can’t be blessed
Till she sees finally that she’s like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls
(Bob Dylan: Just Like A Woman)

A song thought, rather oddly, by some music critics to be about a homosexual.

Singer Bob Ďylan even makes light of the Surrealistic method, and he uses its literary technique of motion-filled associated images to do so:

The commander-in-chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, ‘Death to all those who would whimper and cry’
And, dropping a barbell, he points to the sky
Saying, ‘The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken’
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

The fiery ‘yellow bile’, associated with the summer sun, be a source of masculine military courage unless it becomes imbalanced due to an excess of female watery phelgm, according to the now discredited proto-psychological theory from Elizabethan times.

What is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

A short while ago I wrote an article in response to the accusation that some of us who like Bob Dylan’s music, were in fact obsessed by Bob Dylan.

I thought it was a rather personal reflection – not something that many would read or find interesting – but still a subject that I felt like exploring.  So I published it, and to my utter surprise, it has become the most read on this site since it was published.  And thus I began to think, where does this take us, in our attempts to understand not just Bob Dylan, but the impact Bob Dylan has had?

We know that in the early days Dylan had many imitators – that is of course always the case with anyone who suddenly appears and causes a sensation.   But because he has changed style so many times both in terms of lyrics and of music, no one else has followed him.  His output of around 500 songs is quite extraordinary – although far short of the 1500 Irving Berlin is thought to have written in total.  And indeed like Dylan, Berlin wrote songs that reach beyond time.  “White Christmas”, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, “There’s no business like show business”….

And indeed the list of truly inspirational and culture defining song writers could go on and on – Jerome Kerr, George Gershwin, Cole Porter…

But I think there are many other things to be said about Bob’s influence on the world since the start of the 1960s.

If we consider other popular cultural artists some have innovated musically;  one would include the Beatles in this, and continue through a whole plethora of different artists – Frank Zappa is an obvious one, Paul Simon.. and then so many others who have made a huge impact but whose fan base is much smaller.  I’d put David Byrne right at the top, and so many others … Bruce Hornsby… I could create a very long and indeed very boring list, not necessarily of favourites, but of major influencers.

However with Dylan there is something else.  The longevity of his career, of course.  The enormous number of people who go to his gigs.  The sheer volume of his creativity.  The multiplicity of styles…  all of that marks him out from the rest – except perhaps Irving Berlin – the only songwriter I can think of whose sheer scale of achievement in songwriting should be set alongside Dylan.

But still there is more, in my view, and that is what I want to try (perhaps, I fear, rather painfully and slowly) and explore.  The impact Bob has had on the lives of individuals, on popular music, and indeed (without becoming too hopelessly pompous) western civilisation.

So I have to start somewhere and let me try this: the way individual songs and indeed individual lines from Bob Dylan, have each come to signify something enormously important in many individual people’s lives.

In what follows I would not dream of citing how other people react to Dylan’s words, but I would say I have noted across the years and decades that other people like me have lines from Dylan that they carry with them.   Lines like

“Someone’s got it in for me…”

It is not that I am paranoid – at least I don’t think I am – but that line has lived with me from the first moment I heard it.  Yes, of course, I was taken by “Idiot Wind” – a masterful composition if ever there was one, but today that line is all I need.  It is as if I can hear that line in my head, and in that self-same instance I hear the whole song.  Indeed part of the utter brilliance of that song is that opening line that encapsulates all that comes after it.

My experience in life has been that if one puts one’s head over the parapet (which in my life has meant writing contentious articles and books or of late writing experimental articles on my Facebook page, of a type I’ve not seen anyone else try) one gets criticism.  Often quite virulent criticism.  Criticism by and large for trying something different.

And yep, occasionally I get to think, “Someone’s got it in for me”.  But the fact Bob experienced it first and put it in a song, makes me think, well, he got it far worse than me so I am sure I can shrug it off.

“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?”

The same again – that line gives me the whole song – and something else in this case.  A visual image of the room.   At the same time I am taken back to when I first heard the song.

Now, of course, many of us relate songs to specifics in our lives – the song that becomes “our song” for a couple as they fall in love, and so on.  But “Ain’t it just like the night” is not that – it manages to be symbolic of my whole life at the time I first hear it.  Living in a really run down room, being poor, desperately wanting to be a writer but having no idea how to make the breakthrough, and slipping in and out of affairs and relationships which I don’t think made any sense at the time, and certainly make a lot less sense now as I try and remember what actually was going on.

In other words “Ain’t it just like the night” and “Someone’s got it in for me” have become shorthand for a whole raft of emotions, and situations that I have experienced.

And the list goes on

“My love she speaks like silence” does not talk to me of a lover I have had the honour of knowing, but my image of a woman I would like to know, or have known.  The perfect companion.  Independent, free thinking, but for some reason (which I have never quite been able to fathom) wanting to spend time with me.

And this one is a particularly interesting phrase, because in my discussions with friends as I have been building up to writing this article, this is the line that kept coming up.  That one line seems to reverberate perhaps more than almost any other in the Dylan lexicon.

And if at this point we pause for a moment and ask, “who else writes lines like this?” I am really not too sure.   There are a few lines from other artists, of course.   Sitting here writing this article suddenly, “I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings” comes to mind, and I have oft quoted the Talking Heads album title “Stop Making Sense” in my writing.

But these are occasionals.  I am not sure that anyone has done so many lines that within themselves incorporate such a fundamental ability to attach themselves to one’s life, as Dylan.

I’ll offer another

“The river whispers in my ear, I’ve hardly a penny to my name”

In my conversations that opening to Tell Ol Bill has surprised people as one that I pick, and yet it encapsulates the whole issue of having had a life, having had all these incredible experiences, and now having nothing, just looking back and trying to make sense of it all.  That’s not my experience; I’ve done OK.  But it allows me to understand that experience in an incredibly intense way.

And here I want to re-iterate a point.  I am not building a list of lines from Dylan that I like, but rather quotations from Dylan that within themselves encapsulate a whole raft of feelings, emotions, experiences, visions… they are lines which have become part of the way in which I can open doors into my past, and consider what I was, what happened to me, what I did, what I felt, and how I dealt with it all – as well as experiencing other emotional situations that I have never experienced.

So yes, often totally introspective – but there is nothing wrong with that as long as it is balanced by an outward looking daily life.  As long as one lives in the future (in terms of planning and hope) and present (by understanding where one is) then reworking the past is no bad thing.

Indeed I recall reading some years ago the psychological theory that posits the notion that none of us has immediate access to all our memories – we are highly selective in the memories that we regularly access.  Happy people, it is argued, are people who have taken their memories and woven them together into view of their past that they are very happy with.

In simple terms a billionaire might be miserable because he recalls a set of deals in which he felt he was cheated.  He doesn’t focus on the pleasure the money has given him, but on the times when he didn’t come out on top.  It is not how successful you have been, but the bits that you choose to focus on.

Thus in this theory it is not the past that creates our happiness or sadness, but the way we blend bits of our past together to make our present view of ourselves and our worlds.

I think there is a lot to be said for this approach (and I am very annoyed with myself by not being able to recall the book in which I read this, nor the author), but the lines

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on

have come to signify part of this approach to my life, and so once again I have a complete short cut to a mode of feelings, a very complex set of ideas, and indeed an incredibly complex song, just by remembering two lines.  I know some of my past was difficult and troubling, but most of the time I did indeed know how to keep on keeping on.

As for Dylan’s lines that are part of my life, there are so many others.   Sometimes it is not just the lyrics, but the way the line is delivered.  If I think of

If you want me to, Yes!

I actually think not of the album version but the way Isis was sung on the Rolling Thunder tour (at least I think it was the Rolling Thunder tour – I am sure I will be quickly corrected if I am wrong) – and it is the shout on “Yes!” – the absolute affirmation of life within that word and that line, that I carry with me.

So the simple lines can mean a lot – even if their meanings at one level are trite

Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t

is self evidently true.  But that’s not the point – the point is also that we are still in charge of our own emotions and reactions.

As a person who writes a couple of blogs that (rather pleasingly for me) get fair sized audiences, I’m used to getting abuse.  Not so much here (but it does happen) but particularly on my football (soccer) blog. Indeed like other bloggers occasionally I get extreme abuse and threats – so strong that I have needed to call the police.  (The law on such matters may differ in different countries but in England if something is an offence if said face to face then it is an offence if said at a distance via the internet.  So as it is an offence to say to a person that you are going to kill that person and do horrific things to his family, face to face, so it is an offence in English law to pour out that bile as a comment on a blog).

Such things can be very upsetting, of course, but then if one is a blogger dealing with a topic that can engage passions and emotions, that can happen.  One needs to be able to cope without getting into a set of exchanges that makes things worse.   “Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t” is a nifty way of remembering that.

Now all this is not to say that I spend my life defining reality in Bob Dylan lines, but rather to say that they are occasionally there as ways of dealing with life.  So are many other lines of poetry, words of advice from close friends, and so on.

Let me end with just a couple more.

Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now

is something I have spent my life waiting for an opportunity to say to a lady, but never quite found the moment.  But I’m still hopeful!

A friend suggested to me that in real life we never get to that point until we get to our death bed – but then being an atheist that doesn’t work for me either.  But I can imagine the moment.  Just like I can imagine Lord Montague Street without having the slightest notion of where it is and what it is and why (or if) it is significant.  I don’t want to go – I know it would spoil the image.

And of course, the line I chose for the key phrase of this blog.

I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours

In a sense that is what this little piece is all about.  Helping myself make sense of a personal life which has seen so many twists and turns, while living through one of the great revolutions of mankind (the introduction of the internet), something which I think in the future will be seen as the third revolution after the agrarian revolution of the 18th century, and the industrial revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Dylan doesn’t give me phrases that replace real experience or send me into a dreamworld – he has offered me phrases that give me a shorthand access to emotions, feelings, events, issues, concepts etc that have cropped up in a life lived in what can be a challenging profession – earning a living as a writer, while extolling to anyone who cares to listen, the benefits to both individuals and society at large, of being creative in all one does.

Now it may well be that there are many, many poets, songwriters, novelists, playwrights etc whom others have found offer them the same service in their lives as Dylan has given me.  Of course.  But I haven’t found them, nor have I found people writing about them.  Dylan in this regard is, I think, unique.

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,

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs (which is not complete) and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

Bob Dylan: Tempest
by Larry Fyffe

The Rolling Stones update and pastiche the Threepenny Opera, a mock-opera that equates the amoral behaviour of Mack The Knife with the legalized greed of the captains of industry under the capitalist system:

Waiting for girl and her knees are much too fat
Waiting for a girl who wears scarves instead of hats
Her zipper’s broken down the back
Waiting for a factory girl
(Rolling Stones: Beggar’s Banquet/Factory Girl)

Humour, rather than sympathy, directed at the factory girl in the lyrics above; otherwise, in the not-so-Cinderella-like lyrics below:

No it won’t be a primrose path for me
No, it won’t be diamonds and gold
But maybe it will be
Someone who’ll love me
Someone who’ll love just me
To have and to hold
(Threepenny Opera: What Good Would The Moon Be)

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, takes his cue from poet William Blake, playwright William Shakespeare, and the books of the Bible. He focuses on balancing conflict between inherent virtue-and-vice urges operating within human nature itself, rather than on the struggle imposed by class structure, as the means of achieving a morality that benefits all of humanity.

In ‘The Tempest’, William Shakespeare, as its wizard-like author, achieves a magical ending, as happens in ‘The Threepenny Penny Opera’.

King Alonso, after a ship wreck, mends his differences with Prospero, whom he had helped Antonio to usurp, and likewise Prospero makes amends with his enslaved native Caliban and with his air-water-fire-and-earth sprite Ariel. But the power-hungry Antonio, Prospero’s brother, and the would-be usurper Sebastian, the King’s brother, recognize not the errors of their ways. The over-all happy ending is solemnized by the marriage of the King’s son to Prospero’s daughter.

And then we have Bob Dylan’s song “Tempest” which, like Shakespeare’s play, involves a ship wreck, but with no nearby, albeit troubled, island to give shelter from the storm:

The watchman, he lay dreaming
As the ballroom dancer’s twirled
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Into the underworld
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

Prospero, the thoughtful wizard, and Shakespeare’s persona, has an actual spirit world at his command:

While you here do snoring lie
Open-eyed Conspiracy
His time doth take
If of life you keep a care
Shake off slumber, and beware
Awake! awake!
(Ariel’s Song: The Tempest)

There’s no magic to invoke in order to save the passengers of the Titanic; certainly no spirits:

The veil was torn asunder
‘Tween the hours of twelve and one
No change, no sudden wonder
Could undo what had been done
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

The wizard, were there one, who authors the original story of the iceberg-wrecked ship, no Prospero is he:

Petals fell from the flowers
‘Till all of them were gone
In the long and dreadful hours
The wizard’s curse played on
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

And that there be no intervention on the part of the Lord, Dylan ponders as well in another song on the same album:

I touched the garment, but the hem was torn
In Scarlet Town, where I was born
(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

Likewise, writes another poet, it seems that Christ no longer cares:

And, weak and troubled, envy them
Who touched His seamless garment’s hem
(John Whittier: Chapel Of Hermits)

A sentiment expressed again by another poet:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving
hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been
time out of mind
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely
(Edna St. Vincent Millay: Dirge Without Music)

Not only is Scarlet a town without pity, but God’s without mercy:

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

By Tony Attwood

This is odd.  I mean, really odd.  And it has had 157 outings according the official website – although they still haven’t got around to putting up a copy of the lyrics.  If you don’t know it, here it is

The song opens with “I never dreamed it could be a someone made just for me” which pretty much sets the scene.

After that we go into the world gone wrong

“When did our love go bad?   Whatever happened to the best friend that I had?”

And it ends with a line I certainly can’t disagree with

“Happiness is but a state of mind.”

But elsewhere strange things happen and all in the context of a nice little waltz.

The film “Divine Secrets” for which it was written, by all reports deals with the relationship between a mother and daughter and the lyrics relate to the film, according to those who have seen it.   Here’s a quick summary from Chris Gregory

Mr Gregory writes…

“Well known female playwright Siddalee Walker (Sandra Bullock) engages the wrath of her eccentric and feisty mother Vivienne (Ellen Burstyn) when she appears to confess in a (somewhat doctored) interview to feeling rather unhappy about her childhood. Siddalee is subsequently kidnapped by her mothers’ life long friends in the ‘Ya Ya Sisterhood’… so that mother and daughter can be confronted with each other.

“Eventually, with the Sisterhood’s help, Siddalee comes to understand the ‘dark side’ of her mother’s character, so leading to an eventual  rapprochement between the two. The film is a warm, lightly comedic tribute to the potential strength of female solidarity.”

The last verse gives us the overall feel of this,

Another deal gone down,
Another man done gone.
You put up with it all, and you carry on.
Something holding you back,
But you’ll come through.
I’d bet the world and everything in it on you.
Happiness is but a state of mind.
Anytime you want, you can cross the state line.
You don’t need to be rich
Or well-to-do,
I’ll be around, waitin’ for you.

Of course we can work our way through the song line after line and trace the relationship between mother and daughter but I am not too sure where that gets us, mostly I think I run into trouble because I find the references a little odd.

Let me give some examples…

Well the king of them all is starting to fall/ I lost my gal at the boatman’s ball… 

De Boatman’s Ball is a song written by Daniel Decatur Emmett, the songwriter, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition.  He is most well know as the composer of Dixie (used in Masked And Anonymous) .   That is “Dixie” which I am sure you will know (given that I know it, and I live in England) that runs…

I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray!  Hooray!

In Dixie’s Land I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie.

Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

De boatman tells us

De boatman is athrifty man
Da is none can do as de boatman can ;
I neber see a pretty girl in all my life
But dat she be some boatman’s wife.

So famous is Emmett in songwriting history that a film of his life was produced in 1943, called appropriately “Dixie” starring Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.

But I get the feeling Bob is playing with us.  We get that obscure reference and then he later says, “The night has a thousand hearts and eyes” which surely most of us will quickly trace back to The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, which either relates to the jazz classic by Jerry Brainin and Buddy Bernier or to the Bobby Vee song or to the poet Francis William Bourdillon:

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

 The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

You pays your money and you takes your choice (as we say in England).

Musically we can trace this song back to numerous antecedents.  The phrase “I’ll be around” comes from a 1942 standard written by Alec Wilder which has that very phrase as its title.  Over 50 different artists have recorded it.

Another deal gone down,
Another man done gone.

from Dylan’s song, comes from Robert Johnson written in 1936

I’ve the last fair deal gone down,
It’s the last fair deal gone down,
It’s the last fair deal gone down, good lord,
On this Gulfport Island Road.

And then there is

Hope may vanish, but it never dies.
I’ll see you tomorrow when freedom rings.

Which has a certain amount to do with Shelley’s work “Hellas”

Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, — but it returneth!

This was the poem Shelley wrote to raise money to support the Greek War of Independence – something that I have always remembered from school days.  I mean, who else wrote poetry to support a war?  I also remembered there was a strange dedication within the poem – but that I had to look up.  But all these years later it is still weird

Τo Ηis Εxcellency Prince Alexander Mavrocordato late secretary for foreign affairs to the Hospodar of Wallachia the drama of Hellas is inscribed as an imperfect token of the admiration, sympathy, and friendship of the author. Pisa, November 1, 1821

And Bob decides to quote from this work!  And why?  Well, I don’t know.

And all in all I find this a bit confusing, a bit of a mish-mash, a bit, dare I say it, of a waste of time.  I have the awful suspicion that Bob had thrown everything into his writing this year, and just as with the song that preceded this (“Sugar Babe”) he was somewhat out of ideas, and so used an old classic for the music and lines from elsewhere, so he started collecting other people’s lines and putting them together.

The problem for me is that he now seemed to be writing them at random.

Now I know that in saying this I am destroying the chance of my picking up the phone one day and hearing the words, “Mr Attwood, ah – I have Bob Dylan on the line for you…” but, well, you know, the chances of that were slim anyway.

Of course I could be completely wrong – maybe there is an art in all this. Maybe it all makes a lot of sense and carries deeper meanings, but … well sorry.  Someone else needs to write a review of this song to make that point, because I really just don’t see it.

Please tell me I am wrong.

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

Much of the style of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics is marked by assonance (alike vowel sounds), and consonance (alike consonant sounds) that includes alliteration. ‘Under Milk Wood’, a Romantic surrealistic and satirical play-poem by Dylan Thomas, filled as it is with assonance and consonance, is a poetic well from which Bob Dylan draws:

The meadows still as Sunday
The shut-eye tasselled bulls
The goat-and-daisy dingles
Nap happy and lazy
(Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

Typical of the songwriter, Bob Dylan pays tribute to his Blake and Shelley-influenced mentor by the reformulation of ‘The goat-and-daisy dingles’ into
‘The cloak and dagger dangles’ in the following song:

The cloak and dagger dangles
Madams light the candles
In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

‘Under Milk Wood’ is a springtime narrative, featuring characters that include Blind Captain Cat, Reverend Eli, Rosie the whore, Mae Rose the Virgin, lonely Bessie, and Willy Nilly the postman. Shakespeare’s plays, the books of the Bible, and the conceit-bearing Metaphysical Poets that TS Eliot admires are drawn upon by Thomas in his play-poem.

Unbound by time, underlying the visions of the blind sea captain, is the search for light in the surrounding darkness of a town called Llareggub (Bugger All spelled backwards to look Welsh).

Dylan Thomas’ ambiguous prose-poem mixes in nursery rhymes a la the style of TS Eliot:

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
(Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

Likewise, so does Bob Dylan:

You burned so bright
Roll on, John
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
In the forests of the night
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

Both poet and singer allude to a prayer from innocent childhood:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

The content of many of Bob Dylan’s songs is also influenced by ‘Under Milk Wood’. The main theme in Thomas’ play being that for each individual there are memories of the past, an awareness of the now and the possibility of a future on part of the living, but after death, there is only darkness:

It is all at once night now
The windy town is a hill of windows
And from the larrupped waves
The light of the lamps in the windows
Call back the day and the dead
That have run away to sea
(Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

A theme that runs through many of Bob Dylan’s songs as well:

Down every street there’s a window
And every window made of glass
We’ll keep on loving pretty baby
For as long as love will last
Beyond here lies nothing
But the mountains of the past
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

Thomas has his vision of the sorrowful country-girl Delores:

Call me Delores like they do in the stories
Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help
Born in a workhouse, smelling of the cowshed
(Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

Bob Dylan, the sad-eyed city-girl to dream about:

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace
And your basement clothes and your hollow face
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Thomas presents us with a non-Transcendentalist Romantic Eden on Earth:

Pigs grunt in a wet wallow-bath ….
They mud-bask and snout in the pig-loving sun
Their tails curl; they rollick and slobber and snore
To deep, smug, after-swell sleep
(Thomas: Milk Wood)

Of such a paradise, Bob Dylan envisions:

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

‘Under Milk Wood’, mentions an island so important in the history of whaling:

I lost my step in Nantucket
(Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

Bob Dylan likewise has some fun with Melville’s novel. Obsessed with revenge, Captain Ahab has only one leg because of the whale in ‘Mobey Dick’:

I yelled to Captain Ahab
I have you understand
Who came running to the deck
Said, ‘Boys, forget the whale
Look over yonder
Cut the engines
Change the sail’
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

Style-wise, it’s all about assonance and consonance.

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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.

Got A Lot Of Gall: The Four Humours (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

That the culture of poetry is filled with the left-over diction of the fuzzy pseudo-science of ‘the four humours’ is demonstrated, on one interpretative level, by the following song lyrics:

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 wrongs that
you’ve done ….
I pay in blood, but not my own
(Bob Dylan: Pay In Blood)

Here, Dylan presents a male persona with a choleric personality, dominated by
a fiery fluid within the body that’s affected by the summer sun, a temperament prone to anger, vengeance and violence, unlike the moon- influenced phlegmatic female.

Protective he is of the forever-young sanguine optimism induced by blood flowing throughout the body, associated with the fresh air of springtime. For sure, he’s not going to spill his own blood for the sake of others, turn the other cheek, as Jesus did.

The passive female temperament overcomes this masculine fire-fluid by the dominance of a cold watery one:

My love, she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true like ice, like fire
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

In ‘The Taming Of The Shrew’, a play by William Shakespeare, a woman with a ‘humour’ imbalance is corrected.

And don’t forget what happened to Jesus Christ for being overly optimistic, for being too sanguine:

I been to Babylon
I must confess
I could still hear the voice
in the wilderness
What looks large from a distance
Close up is never that big
Never could learn to drink that blood
and call it wine
Never could learn to look at your face
and call it mine
(Bob Dylan: Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart)

If Dylan is speaking for himself in song, he’s trying to keep his four ‘humours’
in a balance that works for him.

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

I was brought up in a small flat (apartment) in post-war north London.  We had a baby grand piano (which was apparently hoisted in through the window when we moved in) which took up most of the sitting room, a record player playing at 78rpm, and of course a collection of records that had been purchased by my father (who had played sax and piano in a dance band) before the war.  And maybe some purchased after the war too – but I don’t recall my parents turning up with a new record.  Eventually we even had a TV.

The 1950s was not a time when you could hear much, if any, rock n roll on British radio, so this is the music I heard – that and the keyboard works of JS Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, which my father would also play, perhaps thinking that the dance band stuff was less becoming to a married man with a son and a growing business.  But he was good at both styles, so why not.

And there is a point to this, you’ll be pleased to know, because among those records was a recording of “The Lonesome Road” (the song this song of Dylan’s is based on).  Now, not surprisingly, all those old 78s have long since gone (I don’t have any recollection of them after we moved out of London and resettled in rural England) but despite the years that have past I could still sing and play Lonesome Road if asked.  I must have heard it a fair number of times.

What I can’t do however is find on the internet a copy of the version of Lonesome Road that I listened to in my formative years, and I have today been through lots of them, as I contemplate writing a review of Dylan’s “Sugar Baby” from “Love and Theft”.  For as you probably know (since everyone points this out) the melody and some of the words of “Sugar Baby” are copied from “Lonesome Road”.   This is, along perhaps with “Cry a while” which precedes it on the CD, the “theft” of “Love and Theft”, although to be fair, also the love, since Bob clearly loves this old music.

I don’t know if he has as personal a relationship as I do with “Lonesome Road” but clearly he has a strong (although perhaps different) relationship with the song, so “Lonesome Road” has to be the place for me to start.  The version I knew as a child was more upbeat than these, but this is the best I can do for now.

First, the original  “The Lonesome Road” by Austin/Shilkret, sung by Gene Austin

The original lyrics give us a clue as to Bob’s inspiration

Look down, look down that lonesome road
Before you travel on
Look up, look up and greet your maker
For Gabriel blows his horn

And of course Bob refers back towards the end of his song with

Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born
Look up, look up—seek your Maker—’fore Gabriel blows his horn

Here’s the rest of the lyrics of the original, placed here as much as a tribute from me to my late parents for all the musical education they gave me, as for giving a sense of the lyrics Bob was contemplating…  After one’s parents have been gone for many a year it can be hard sometimes to find ways to pay a tribute that is more than just words… so forgive me this indulgence.

Weary, totin’ such a load
Tredgin’ down that lonesome road
Look down, look down that lonesome road
Before you travel on

Through love, through love, what have I done?
That you should treat me so
You cause me to walk and talk
Like I never done before

Weary, totin’ such a load
Tredgin’ down that lonesome road

Weary, totin’ such a load
Tredgin’ down that lonesome road

Musically Bob plays a little with the accompaniment, and uses (as far as I can tell) guitars with different tunings in the recording.  But in essence the only slightly unusual chord he throws our way (if hearing this in the key of C) is F minor 6.  When I played it as a child I think I was satisfied with F minor!

Of course as others have said long before me, “Love and Theft” is itself a stolen title from a book by Eric Lott about what I think is called Blackface Minstrelsy (we had it in England on TV with the “Black and White Minstrel Show,” but I don’t think we ever had a generic title).

And that is where Bob is making his commentary I feel.  The two songs that particularly take the sound of earlier songs, stand at the end of the album, a fulsome tribute to all the music that has gone before.   And as for the Blackface Minstrelsy we have “The ladies down in Darktown, they’re doing the Darktown strut” reference.

But somehow everything here is sadness, looking back to the Lonesome Road, for as Bob says, “You went years without me; might as well keep going now.”

And that is a problem for me for the trouble I have comes from the fact that this is a melody I have known all my life.  When Bob says “Some of these memories you can learn to live with and some of them you can’t” I have to stop and take a break.  It is oh so true, but I am not to sure I want to be reminded of that.

Yet I suspect for most of us, we have had times of being torn apart and then times of making things a thousand times worse.  Coming out ok at the end seems to be the most we can help for.

Bob sounds just so… I don’t really know….  The All Music review includes the notion that he feels so “disappointed” among other things, and yes I think I’ll go with that.

And that is what makes me so upset about this song – I am not as old as Bob but I’m not that many years behind, and I don’t want to be disappointed.

I can live with…

I got my back to the sun ’cause the light is too intense
I can see what everybody in the world is up against
You can’t turn back—you can’t come back, sometimes we push too far
One day you’ll open up your eyes and you’ll see where we are

but only if accompanied by my feeling that I have at least sometimes done the right thing, even when it wasn’t to my own benefit.

But away from all that, there are some super lines in this song.  I’d nominate

Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff
Plenty of places to hide things here if you wanna hide ’em bad enough

as one of my favourite all time Dylan favourite couplets.

But I’ve never fully made sense of where Bob is with lines such as

Sugar Baby get on down the line
You ain’t got no brains, no how
You went years without me
You might as well keep going now

followed not long after with

There ain’t no limit to the amount of trouble women bring
Love is pleasing, love is teasing, love’s not an evil thing

But maybe that’s the point.  There is no sense in it all, and maybe that’s what we feel a bit more as we get older.  Indeed Bob sums it all up in

Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick
Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick
Any minute of the day the bubble could burst
Try to make things better for someone, sometimes, you just end up making it a thousand times worse

This is not just a remarkable song, it is an insightful song, pulling in thoughts and notions that don’t connect, that can’t co-exist, but within the song absolutely do just that.

And here’s a final thought: listening to “Sugar Baby” as intently as I have been in writing this review, and then, to try and release myself from the impact, listening to Mississippi from the same album, has just given me a totally new insight into Mississippi.  Clever man Bob for holding Mississippi back – with it in “Love and Theft” there is more going on within the album than I had previously realised.

It is going to take me a whole new article to explore the links between “Mississsippi” and Lonesome Road / Sugar Baby, as I have just seen the link for the first time.

So not today, but hopefully sometime soon, I might work it out.  “Your days are numbered, so are mine” is quite a clue.

Sorry if this is a particularly rambling review.  Sometimes there is no way to be disconnected from the song enough to be objective.

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot Of Gall

BY Larry Fyffe

Embedded in the language of poetry are metaphors that have roots going back to the days of William Shakespeare, and beyond.

A naturalistc explanation for human behaviour arises to compete with the religious concepts of good (God) and evil (Devil).

Based on the fundamental elements of air, fire, water, and earth, the physical and psychological characteristics of mankind are presented as interactions among four fluid ‘humours’ (sanguine, choleric, phelgmatic, and melancholic) within the body, the ideal balance thereof affected by factors, internal – such as gender and age -,and external- such as a change in season and social circumstance.

Under ordinary conditions, children are considered aery; men, fiery; women, watery; and elders, down-to-earth; these ‘humours’ respectively connect with Spring, Summer, Fall (Autumn), and Winter.

In the song of Bob Dylan, these stereotypical characterizations, listeners find still:

Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you baby
I can’t hardly sleep …
I could live forever
With you perfectly
You don’t ever
Have to make a fuss over me

On the psychological level, the song’s about the ‘choleric’ nature of the male compromising with the ‘phlegmatic’ nature of the female; in this particular case, he feels the effects of melancholia wrought by ageing, a loss of virility, having become sensitive to the feelings of others:

I want to be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can’t go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there

The male ego insists, however, that the cold-water of the female is at fault for drowning the fires of summer:

You think I’m over the hill
You think I’m past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin’ good time
(Bob Dylan: Spirit On The Water)

Above is Dylan’s variation on the Elizabethan ‘humour theory’ – related poem by Edmund Spenser: ‘My Love Is Like To Ice, And I To Fire.’

A theme Dylan presents more than once:

You don’t want a love that’s pure
You want to drown love
You want a watered-down love
(Bob Dylan: Watered Down Love

The aery, sanguine ‘humour’ flows throughout the body in the bloodstream; it’s youthful masculine enthusiasm associated with care-free summer days. This Elizabethan proto-psychological theory remains in the metaphoric diction of modern poetry and song lyrics to this very day:

Well, I don’t need no money
I just need a day that’s sunny
My days are gonna come ….
Well, I tell you little lover
That you better run for cover
‘Cause babe, I’ll do it all over you
(Bob Dylan: All Over You)

Again, in the following lyrics, the self-centred urge for immediate, selfish gratification:

Saddle me up on my big white goose
Tie me on’er, turn her loose
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

The aery ‘humour’ circulating in the female body carries with it love and compassion:

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry
And how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died
The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
(Bob Dylan: Blowin’ In The Wind)

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

“Why are you so obsessed with Bob Dylan?” was, I suspect, just a throw away comment when it was made on this site, and not meant to open up a whole debate

But it did get me wondering.  Am I obsessed with Dylan?  Is it harmful?  Should I stop the blog?   Should I change?  Should I get a life?

As a person who can get quite enthusiastic about what he does, I’ve often heard the criticism that my enthusiasms as being obsessive and therefore a bad thing.  I’ve countered with the simple remark that it is better to be enthusiastic about something rather than just removed.  Better to care than the shrug the shoulders and walk by.

And indeed in life in general I find myself much more drawn towards people who are committed than those who stand off, never getting involved.

So, I was interested in the question, and it really did make me think about myself and my work and my life, as well as the nature of the Bob Dylan fanbase, and the way people react to Bob’s music.  

I am sure we all know people for whom a certain Dylan song has always been part of their lives.  Indeed people for whom a single line of Bob’s writing is like a faithful companion, always there, never forgotten.  As one who has had a few ups and downs in life, I can readily empathise with this.  “Ain’t it just like the night…” has that relationship with me.  “The river whispers in my ear…” likewise – both lines about about being alone and how one copes with that.

Thus at once the whole process of answering the questions that arise from a consideration of being “obsessive” about Bob Dylan took me on quite a journey.   And because I am a writer by trade, I thought I’d share that journey with you, just in case you ever get accused of being an obsessive.  

Now, having done a research degree I have learned to start with the definition.  What is an obsession?  So that’s where I begin.

There are quite a few definitions around, but generally they seem to include the notion of the obsessed person is under the influence of a persistent idea or impulse that continually forces its way into their consciousness.

But this for me isn’t quite enough, because obsessiveness is generally associated with there being something wrong.  The obsessive person, as a result of the obsession, suffers from anxiety or some other form of mental illness.  It is not that the idea just forces its way into their thinking – it has an effect on their behaviour and perhaps their ability to lead a “normal” life.

Often there is a persistent preoccupation within the obsessed person and it acts in a thoroughly negative way.  And I think that is an important point because it allows us to distinguish the person who is obsessive, from the person who is, for example, writing a book on the subject, or indeed doing academic research for a doctorate.

Obsessiveness might be indicated by an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind, and for anyone who has been working hard on a PhD or MPhil for a year or two, or has taken on the writing of a particularly problematic book, that could well be the case.  But normally we don’t call this type type of research an obsession, perhaps because when the outside impetus is over (the doctorate is finished, the book goes for publication) the individual returns to a “norrmal” life.

Also if you suggest that someone has an obsession you are suggesting that the person is spending too much time thinking about the issue.  Now I know that my ex-wife thought that as I reached the last month or two of working on each book that I worked on I would spend too much time thinking about it, working on it and talking about it.  But I would argue that wasn’t an obsession – because there was a logical reason for the level of engagement with one particular thing.  I earn money from writing, and the only way I ever finish a book is to focus on it completely at the end, not just to make sure there are no silly typing errors, but also to ensure that the whole thing flows, makes sense, doesn’t repeat itself and doesn’t contradict itself.

Now I have found this thought rather helpful – the obsession is a focus on a topic or person and which is all consuming.  But I will now add the notion that it is also something that has no ultimate benefit: it just is.  My interest in Dylan has resulted in running this blog, which I find enjoyable, and brought me a number of friends, whose company I enjoy.  I’m turning the song reviews into a book. That seems to take it beyond obsession.

So in these various definitions of obsession the notion of persistence seems to exist alongside the notion of single mindedness and lack of ultimate benefit for the individual.  My bedroom is not covered in Dylan pictures; I can and do talk of other things and indeed do other things.  I don’t play Dylan music morning, noon and night.

But even here I don’t argue that collecting Dylan items is itself an obsession, unless other conditions are met, particularly that of the activity dominating one’s life.  

Now in all this I am using myself as an example because I have no other examples to offer: I am not going to do a survey of people’s obsessions because that is not the area of psychology I studied, and I am not suitably qualified.  Although I would be interested to know of other people’s relationship with Dylan and his music.

But for me, Dylan is just a part of my life.  I don’t listen to his music every day, although through writing the reviews I have gone back to songs I’ve not heard in years, as well as discovering some I have never heard before.  I enjoy Dylan’s music, but I play a lot of other music and I have several hobbies, of which this is one.

If one of my daughters phoned and asked me to come over as she had to take one of my grandchildren to hospital, I would be in the car like a shot, and I wouldn’t be playing Dylan songs on the car’s music system on the way over.

As I have intimated elsewhere my business life involves running an advertising agency, and for some years I ran a publishing company.   But I also have hobbies.  Bob Dylan’s music is one such, obviously, but others include  dancing, watching football (soccer), running a football blog which gets between 4 million and 6 million page views a year, watching a particular type of drama on TV with a friend who shares my taste, going to the theatre, songwriting…   And all this before I get to the issue of my three children and eight grandchildren.

These hobbies (and of course being with my friends) occupy my non-working time.   But none of them intrude into my thinking, none of them contain ideas so persistent that they might be associated with anxiety or mental illness.  I think about them, and indeed I write about them (because writing is what I do best) and I have a life beyond them.

Take songwriting: I write maybe two songs a month.  I perfect the songs as best I can, I play them to a few select friends, and then after a while I record them, so that they remain for my daughters, once I have gone, should they ever wish to be reminded of my voice, my guitar playing and my piano playing.   But primarily the process is something that is there for me.  I get pleasure in writing songs.  It helps me deal with issues and express my emotions.

Thus I say, I am not obsessed by Dylan.  Which raisees the question, why would anyone accuse a person they don’t know of having an obsession?

One possible reason is the level of output.  Untold Dylan has a new article almost every day, with just two writers producing most of the output.   That doesn’t seem odd to me; I’ve always been productive.  But maybe anyone who would say this is an obsession is frightened by this productivity.  Frightened that someone else can find something they want to do, and can just do.  My work isn’t great art, but by and large people find it readable.  I would argue, doing what you find you can do, doesn’t make you obsessive.

But I do think some Dylan fans are obsessive, because Dylan seems to me to be all they have in their lives.  They don’t seem to have other hobbies, they don’t have friends, they just have Dylan.

I know people who have the same sort of situation concerning dance.  It’s not that they dance a lot, but rather that they don’t do anything else in their spare time, and don’t seem to have any deep or long term friendships that exist outside of their dancing.  I’m getting to the view that it is good to have several interests or enthusiasms.

And now I think of it, I am starting to wonder if people who accuse others of being obsessive about something (be it Dylan or anything else) have actually never had the joy of finding something that really engages them, so that they want to explore it further.

But I am also left with the question: Is an obsession always bad?  And my answer is no, I don’t think it is always bad,  but often it is.  Consider the doctor who is “obsessed” by finding a cure for a disease.  He/she might devote every waking moment to the issue, and not have a life beyond the question of the cure, but at least there is a purpose and a benefit to others.   And indeed although I would never put myself on the same pedestal as medical doctors my modest amount of work on Untold Dylan has some purpose and some people have occasionally been kind enough to say they either enjoyed a review, or found it helpful.

So overall I think there are people who are obsessed, but just joining a group that discusses Dylan is not a sign of obsession.  Being truly obsessed is neither self-curable nor self-curing.  It’s not like a cold which goes away, for obsession (from what I understand) is very difficult to eradicate from oneself.  

And as I have also begun to think about the way in which “why are you so obsessed with Dylan?” is used, I also think there are people who are at the other extreme from those who are obsessed.  The people who really have no deep interests which allow them to explore a world away from the humdrum everyday reality.  

So I come back to the notion that people without enthusiasms and significant interests, the people who might say, “Why are you so obsessed…”  are the ones who are lacking.  The people who misunderstand an enthusiasm (with all the benefits this brings) for obsession, and often they are the ones who seem to lack enthusiasms and significant interests.  They might be interested in certain things, but they don’t really get inside these issues.  One might dance, but really to get the benefit of dance, one has to practice a lot.  They might enjoy the theatre, but going once a year doesn’t really help bring a detailed understanding of the art form.

In short a real interest in a subject, which gets one inside it so that it can be fully explored, is no bad thing.  Otherwise one risks being nothing but a dilettante – endlessly flitting around the edges, never really grasping the full meaning.

So overall, why am I so obsessed with Bob Dylan?  I don’t think I am.  I enjoy a lot of Dylan’s music, and I enjoy analysing it and writing about it.  Just as I have enjoyed writing this little piece about obsession.  

But tonight I am going to drive across middle England to join some friends at a dance, and we’ll bop around the floor for four hours getting hot, exhausted and to some degree staying fit and occasionally refining the art of dancing to contemporary music.  When August comes around I shall start going to watch my football team again.  Most weekends I drive and visit one of my daughters and her children.  

Next February, all being well, I shall fly to Australia again and visit my youngest daughter.  Last weekend I went with a good friend to look at the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy.  It was great fun but I know that in art I am a dilettante.  I see it as an outsider.  I enjoy it, but I am not part of it.

But am I obsessed by Dylan?  I don’t think so.  But I am very curious about what goes on inside the minds of people who suggest I might be.

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.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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.