Going back over the songs of 1986 and re-reading my reviews has been very frustrating, as the links I provided to the two highlights of the year are now broken. The songs in question are Rock em Dead and To fall in love with you – the latter being the absolute highlight of the year.
The other three songs are ok, but have all the hallmarks of taking other people’s work and playing with. As indeed does Rock em Dead, but the version I found before (more than the extract that is up now) really was a great piece of live Dylan.
So there’s nothing particularly wrong with the other three songs, but they were just not anywhere up to the standard of the first and last song. They are…
So a year of Dylan not really knowing where he was going, I guess, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, producing this wonder “To fall in love with you” which he just abandoned unfinished.
Yet it is a moving piece of work, with a great melody, and such words as can be made out, really sound as if they might lead onto something although what, I don’t know.
Thus it is far, far, far from being a finished song but nevertheless we can get the idea of where Bob was wanting to take us to.
A tear goes down my day is real
But your dying eye upon the shame
Each needs a road for me from you
What paradise? What can I do?
That die for my and the day is dark
I can’t believe for the end of time
What I could find oh time is run
If I fell in love to fall in love
To fall in love with you
Far and away the masterpiece of the year, even if it is unfinished, but the full version of Rock em Dead (if you can find it) is worth keeping too.
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Poet William Blake transforms the ‘element’ of fire into metaphor, into a symbol, for the physical sexual urge, and for the mental drive of the artistic imagination that is derived therefrom:
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night….
What the hammer? What the chain
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its dreadly terror clasp?”
(Blake: The Tyger)
Bob Dylan, too, in his song lyrics, chooses the word ‘fire’ as a metaphoric stand-in for sexual desire, and as a hyperbolic trope for unleased creative energy, energies that heat up and burn out, that can be destructive as well as regenerative:
“This wheel’s on fire Rolling down the road Best notify my next of kin This wheel shall explode”
(Dylan: This Wheel’s On Fire)
The American heavy metal band ‘ManoWar’ employs Blakean/Dylanesque imagery to express the artistic creative energy that is ignited by the open road:
“Wheels of fire burn the night Ride across the sky Wheels of fire burning bright We love to ride…. I’m fire Burning, burning, burning, burning Ready to explode Don’t want nothing left of me to scrape off the road”
(ManoWar: Wheels Of Fire)
A female Muse, or any inspirational figure, can fan the flames:
“You’re the one that reaches me You’re the one that I admire Everytime we met together My soul feels like it’s on fire Nothing matters to me And there’s nothing I desire ‘Cept you, yeah you”
(Bob Dylan: Nobody ‘Cept You)
Reading the poetry of William Blake sparks Dylan’s creative imagination:
“Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear; O clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire”
(William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
The imagination, an innocent psychic energy inherent in the young, is, according to Blake and Dylan, often dampened by authorities who seek to construct an ordered society:
“He’s young and on fire Full of hope and desire In a world that has been raped and defiled If I fall along the way And can’t see another day Lord protect my child”
(Dylan: Lord Protect My Child)
Real fire, in the wrong hands, a dangerous thing:
“Then they bring them to the factory Where the heart attack machine Is strapped across their shoulders And then the kerosene Is brought down from the castles By insurance men who go Check to see that nobody’s escaping To Desolation Row”
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Given that in the months before writing Dreamin of you Dylan wrote Mississippi and in the months after wrote Not Dark Yet there is a good reason to listen to this song. It comes from a period when Bob was at his brilliant best – yet again.
It was recorded in January 1997 during the sessions for Time Out Of Mind but not released on that album. It eventually came out on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs collection, and was released as a single.
In relation to the song, and its attendant video I found this on the internet. I can’t verify its validity, but it is a nice short story…
“A friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to work on a Bob Dylan music video. I said absolutely! However, once we got out to the desert in Palmdale, CA I said where’s Bob? My buddy said “Dylan, isn’t exactly in the video. The video is a concept about an old music bootlegger played by Harry Dean Stanton. Bummer. Harry Dean was a trooper, because it was brutally hot at almost 100 degrees. At the end of the day, Harry got on the guitar and played a Mexican folk ballad. He said “film this and send it to Bob.”
A 7″ vinyl single release of the song was made available with advance orders of the deluxe edition of Tell Tale Signs from the official Dylan website. This release featured an alternative version of “Ring Them Bells” as the B-side.
As for the song it is based around an ever repeating chord sequence of Em7, G, A, B – I’m not sure I have heard that used anywhere else on a Dylan song as an endlessly repeating circle of chords.
Here is the DVD in question
This is Dylan pulling all the strings that he has set up in his mystic, circulating, cloudy, atmospheric repertoire.
Consider the opening
The light in this place is really bad Like being at the bottom of a stream
and then later
Spirals of golden haze, here and there in a blaze Like beams of light in the storm
It is all atmosphere and reflection, but there is a disconnect between sections which perhaps is meant to tell us something, but somehow, I can’t work out what. And as other disconnects crop up in the song I begin to feel that it is all atmosphere, but nothing more.
However there are some extraordinarily telling lines such as
Means so much, the softest touch By the grave of some child, who neither wept or smiled I pondered my faith in the rain
Contrasted with the repeating lines
I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do And it’s driving me insane
and that constant disconnect from the rest of the world
Somewhere dawn is breaking Light is streaking ‘cross the floor Church bells are ringing I wonder who they’re ringing for
But somehow for me the disconnect is still too disconnected. There are too many contradictory images that lead me to think that they are just images, and nothing more. While sons from Visions of Johanna to Tell ol Bill take us right inside the images into a world which seems consistent, (even if we can’t understand it) here there seems to be no consistency. Even the weirdness is weirdly changing.
There is also a curious reuse of a line from Standing in the Doorway with
Well, I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry Live my life on the square Even if the flesh falls off my face It won’t matter, long as you’re there
Standing in the Doorway had…
I’ll eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry And live my life on the square And even if the flesh falls off of my face I know someone will be there to care It always means so much Even the softest touch
Here there is no doorway, only a world of… well, I am not sure what, except that Bob is holding on to the notion that one person is out there for him and sometimes he can see and sometimes not.
Feel further away than I ever did before Feel further than I can take Dreamin’ of you is all I do But it’s driving me insane
At this point we have that same revolving imagery that also took us around and through Tell Ol Bill.
I tried to find one smiling face To drive the shadow from my head I’m stranded in this nameless place Lying restless in a heavy bed
although in Tell ol Bill even the woman has abandoned him and he is utterly alone. Here there is still a hope that she might be out there.
But I guess what most of us take from this song, for its novelty value if nothing else, are the lines….
For years they had me locked in a cage Then they threw me onto the stage Some things just last longer than you thought they would And they never, ever explain
And in the end we are left with the rotating hopelessness…
I’m dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do But it’s driving me insane
So I am left unsure and uncertain about the contradictions in the song. Yes, the singer is uncertain and unsure so that is meant to be, but somehow it seems too contradictory to make sense. In the end, the sound is great, the images in isolation appeal, but overall… it doesn’t really seem to work for me.
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
The influence of so-called ‘highbrow’ poetry on the mainline music industry’s production of popular music, including rock ‘n roll, significantly increases with the emergence of Bob Dylan on the scene. The quality of song lyrics offered to the public improves with the demand for more depth in the heretofore mundane lyrics of much of the industry’s output.
Gothic literature, with its gloomy and dank settings of old castles, dungeons, and tombs, its deviant, oft violent, behaviour of the physically deformed, and mentally deranged, and its atmosphere of destruction, decadence and decay, is sparked back to life by electrified music.
Samuel Coleridge, the English Romantic writer, with his haunted, conversational style of poetry, sticks out his pale hand to greet modern musicians and today’s singer-songwriters:
“Sir Leoline, the baron rich
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch…….
If thoughts, like these, had any share
They only swelled his rage and pain
And did but work confusion there
His heart was cleft with pain and rage
His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild”
(Samuel Coleridge: Christabel)
Bob Dylan grabs hold of the poet’s bony fingers:
“He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fistful of tacks Preoccupied with his vengeance…….
He looks so truthful, is this how he feels Trying to peel the moon and expose it With his business-like anger, and his bloodhounds that kneel If he needs a third eye, he just grows it”
(Bob Dylan: Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window)
So does an Australian Goth band:
“Christabel is waiting, she never seems to cry
Falls into a circle against the Eastern sky
She turns toward another, and then she turns away
Christabel is sleeping, she doesn’t want to play”
(Big Electric Cat: Christabel)
The melancholic spirit of poet John Keats flitters by:
“I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish mist and fever-dew
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too”
(John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci)
Dylan whistles as the dark shadow passes:
“You trampled on me as you passed Left the coldest kiss upon my brow All my doubts and fears have gone at last I’ve nothing more to tell you now”
(Bob Dylan: Tell Ol’ Bill)
A British Gothic Rock band sluffs off Keats’ dark thoughts of doom:
“A dreaded sunny day
So let’s go where you’re happy
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Oh, Keats and Yeats are on your side
A dreaded sunny day”
(The Smiths: Cemetery Gates)
The Modernist poetry of TS Eliot be inhabited by the Gothic spirits of some of his Romantic predecessors:
“A crowd of twisted things
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton
Stiff and white”
(TS Eliot: Rhapsody On A Windy Night)
Like leaves of the Fall driven by the wind, the brighter Romantic side of Bob Dylan flees from the grey gloom of Gothic-engendered thoughts:
“Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind Down the foggy ruins of time Far past the frozen leaves The haunted frightened trees Out to the windy beach Far from the reach of crazy sorrow”
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)
A South African-born folksinger likewise reacts to the doom and gloom of Thomas Eliot’s vision of a society that has lost its way:
“It sang Holly go lightly bright as day
Fresh as the moon and stale as the hay
Cold as the wind and frozen as the frost
You never been seen and you never been lost”
(Johnny Flynn: After Eliot)
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
This article is written about the version of Johanna by Old Crowe that appears on their album “50 years of Blonde on Blonde”. If you want to hear it, it is available free on Spotify at this link,. The link at the foot of the article is to a different rendition of the song by the band.
I’m quite fast at writing articles and adverts, which is what I mostly do for a living. I’m fairly fast at non-fiction books too. But novels… that’s where I slow down. I’ve had three novels published, and have been working on my fourth (“Visions”) for three years.
“Visions” is based on the three characters in “Visions of Johanna” and during the off-on attempts at writing the book I’ve listened to Dylan’s performances, live and on the original LP (I still have the copy I bought as a student), countless times.
I know it inside out, upside down, back to front, and can easily play it to myself in my head. I’ve played an arrangement of it in a band I played in, and because I’m also an occasional (if commercially completely unsuccessful) songwriter, have even written a song in reply to the song (Visions of Louise) as part of my work in trying to understand the inside of the original better in order to make my novel work.
But I have been blocked, blocked, blocked. I know what the novel should do, I know what Johanna, Louise and Little Boy Lost should do, could do, will do, but I can’t make the book work.
At least I couldn’t until today. Because today I heard “Visions of Johanna” by Old Crow Medicine Show. It is from the CD “Fifty years of Blonde on Blonde” and in fact is an interpretation of the whole double album. It is all great stuff, but “Visions” is beyond great. It is so utterly, incredibly brilliant I am almost (but, being a writer, not quite) lost for words.
So, how can I explain?
First, the arrangement is completely different. It is half rock, half blues and half country. So there’s the first conundrum, it is 50% more than a piece of music. If by any remote chance you share my devotion to modern dance, you could dance modern blues to this. With a bit of practice. And a bloody good dance partner.
Second, the band has correctly interpreted the rise and fall of the song, the evolution of the mystery, amidst the mists that surround everything within the song. The build up to the “fish truck as my conscience explodes” is a masterpiece all in itself and would make this version worth hearing even if the rest were rubbish – which it certainly isn’t.
But back to the start. The opening encapsulates everything – the simple guitar strum, and then the violin, and then at “tricks” there is harmony. “We sit here stranded” is sung alone, “but we’re all doing our best” is in harmony. Utterly simple, utterly obvious, but my goodness does it work!
When the “Lights flicker from the opposite loft” you are there looking across the street to the house across the road, shivering in your duffel coat (if you know what one of those was) and you are so aware that there is “nothing, really nothing to turn off” – a beautiful descent of the melody
And when he asks himself “if it’s him or them that’s really insane” it really does raise the panic because while he collapses Louise is so all right, so delicate, and she is so, so sad not for him but for the fact “that Johanna’s not here”.
Yes the “ghost of electricity” really does howl without anything so crass as the obvious howl of feedback or anything like that, they still do give the sense of howling in the bones of her face. And when the visions of Johanna have now taken his place – the total loss of reality, the sense that “I am no more”, is horribly complete.
And this is why he is “little boy lost”. His only defence against the collapsing world is to take himself “so seriously”.
Then its laid back and peaceful, almost sad, reflecting on the Little Boy’s uselessness – but we know, that the Little Boy Lost and the singer are in this together because we can absolutely feel the utter, utter desperation within both of them.
How can I explain? Oh, it’s so hard to get on
It is so desperate and sad, there is no wonder the visions of Johanna, kept him up past the dawn.
So powerful is this interpretation, that even the abstract lines have absolute power. Infinity can’t go up on trial, but here it does.And we get that nod which ultimately Talking Heads picked up by seeing heaven as a place where nothing ever happens, because this utter utter hopelessness and abandonment is what “salvation must be like after a while”.
Then quietly the performance builds up the commentator’s annoyance and frustration of what is going on around, at all these stupid people, with what elsewhere is called their useless and pointless knowledge.
And now in this masterpiece, there’s a half verse instrumental break, but it is played not as a blues but as country music, very laid back, tempting us to believe this might all work out all right in the end because in country music we are all country people and we can all go and have some of the good ol’ country pie.
But no, “The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him”. Pretending mark you. Because he knows, which is how almost but not quite in anger he can then say, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
Yes there is almost anger, but then the put down, as his adored Louise says “You can’t look at much, can you man?”
The sadness is overwhelming as Madonna, she still has not showed and the desolation is now portrayed beyond everything. The empty cage now corrodes and the build up builds up more up as the fiddler now steps to the road and writes everything’s been returned which was owed. Take it back, I want nothing, I can’t cope any more with any of this.
And so it grows, and grows as the whole pointless mundane reality of life continues while Dylan, in one of his most powerful line ever, has his conscience explode. With that gone, there really is nothing absolutely nothing not just to turn off, but nothing left at all
Thus it is, having now played this version 20 plus times, I can see the skeleton keys and the rain and know that these visions of Johanna are now all that remain – and I can feel myself holding back the tears.
“50 years of Blonde on Blonde” by Old Crow Medicine Show.
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
The quest for knowledge that leads to wisdom through the artistic imaginative process puts Bob Dylan in the historical mixing bowl with the likes of Gnostic thinkers and the mystic poet William Blake; though there is no end to that search, no definitive answer, the purely scientific rational examination of the world is not going to get closer to the meaning of existence.
Everyone is bound by the chains of the the cultural milieu of his/her time, but the goal of a true artist is to break loose, to rid oneself of society’s straight jacket by hanging upside down and struggling to get out of its bindings, to go where no man has gone before, and find what is the meaning of Being.
Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the true artist looks back to the works of daringly creative thinkers in earlier times for assistance in that quest. Artists expressing themselves through written language, by music, and other art forms, is a means of communicating over time.
Artist and poet William Blake breaks the congealed mould of dogmatic religion of his day by his imaginative transformation of the contra-religious scientific developments of earlier days: the ‘elements’ of earth, air, fire, and water turn into metaphors that delve into the make-up of each and every individual human being.
So too in the song lyrics of Bob Dylan we find these metaphors employed. For example: The desire to love, and be loved, dampened by what Frederich Nietzsche calls the ‘will to power,’ and what Blake and Dylan represent by water:
“Love that’s pure hopes all things Believes all things, won’t pull no strings Won’t sneak up in your room, tall dark and handsome Capture your heart and hold it for ransom You don’t want a love that’s pure You wanna drown love You want a watered-down love”
(Bob Dylan: Watered-Down Love)
Water also represents, for Dylan, a moderating self-empowerment that doesn’t allow matters to get out-of-control:
“People disagreeing everywhere you look Makes you want to stop and read a book Why only yesterday, I saw somebody on the street That was really shook But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’ though No matter what gets in the way, and which way the wind does blow And as long as it does, I’ll just sit here And watch the river flow”
(Bob Dylan: Watching The River Flow)
Hopefully, involved is a mutually balanced self-empowerment when trouble outside heats up:
“Well, that high-tide’s risin’ Mama, don’t you let me down Pack up your suitcase Mama, don’t make a sound Well, it’s sugar for sugar And it’s salt for salt If you go down in the flood It’s gonna be your fault”
(Bob Dylan: “Crash On The Levee)
The control-hungry, grouping themselves together, Dylan compares to the destructive power of water:
“I heard the sound of thunder, it roared out a warning Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world …..Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard rain, it’s a hard rain, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”
(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain’s A-GonnaFall)
And water as symbol of power beyond Man’s control that punishes him for committing hubris, the prideful thinking that mankind can out-do Nature’s strength:
“Mothers and their daughters Descending down the stairs Jumped into the icy waters Love and pity sent their prayers”
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)
What is on the site
1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Part II: The Three Penny Opera: Bob Dylan And WH Auden
By Larry Fyffe
Says the Bible:
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female, created He them”
(Genesis 1:27)
In other words, what makes God and Man both the same in character, though different from all the other creatures He invents, is the two have a desire for vengeance:
“To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste”
(Deuteronomy 32:35)
The Anti-Romantic Modernist poet WH Auden deals with this issue of vengeance:
“Anna was sitting at table
Drawing cards from the pack
Anna was sitting at the table
Waiting for her husband to come back”
(WH Auden: Victor)
Bob Dylan, much influenced by the poem, deals too with the human urge for revenge, as does the Modernist parody play ‘The Three Penny Opera’:
“Backstage the girls were playin’ five card stud by the stairs Lily had two queens, she was hopin’ for a third to match her pair ….Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack Of Hearts”
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
The sardonic poem continues the symbolism of the playing card motif:
“It wasn’t the Jack Of Diamonds
Nor the Joker she drew first
It wasn’t the King of Queen Of Hearts
But Ace Of Spades reversed”
(Victor)
Dylan’s lyrics likewise:
“Rosemary combed her hair and took a carriage into town She slipped in through the side door lookin’ like a queen without a crown ‘Sorry darlin’, that I’m late’, but he didn’t seem to hear He was starin’ into space over at the Jack Of Hearts”
(Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
Auden’s poem centres on the Ace Of Spades:
“Victor stood in the doorway
He didn’t utter a word
She said, ‘What’s the matter, darling?”
He behaved as if he hadn’t heard”
(Victor)
Dylan’s song lyrics on the Jack Of Hearts:
“The curfew had been lifted and the gamblin’ wheel shut down Anyone with any sense had already left town He was standing in the doorway lookin’ like the Jack Of Hearts”
(Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
Auden’s Modernist Anti-Romantic poem ‘Victor’ is akin to the Three Penny Opera where, in both, family honour is at stake. Womanizer Mack The Knife gets away unscathed in the parody, but Anna, Victor’s wife, in the poem, is knifed by her religious-bound husband simply because he believes her unfaithful.
The Auden poem’s influence on Dylan is obvious, but the lyrics of his song are obscure in the Post Modern mode.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is not at all clear who the legal wife of unfaithful Big Diamond Jim actually is: Lily who “has Big Jim’s ring”, or Rosemary who is “tired of playing the role of Big Jim’s wife”.
Certainly it is not clear as to which character knifes Big Jim in the back, including the Jack Of Hearts.
Do you feel lucky? Pick a card!
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
1985 was a strange year for Bob. He seemed to be struggling to find songs to put on his albums, and wrote some strange pieces with Gerry Goffin, but in the midst of it all he came up with four staggeringly wonderful songs.
Maybe Someday really is a stand out piece, not least because of its combination of energy and unusual rhythm effect from the percussion (something we also get with “Something’s burning baby” written in the previous year) which is simply not doing what you might expect it to be doing. I don’t think the recorded version we have is perfect as there is a bit too much do-wop from the female singers, but it is still a fabulous song.
Then there is the much more obscure co-written Well well well. As I go back to look at some of the reviews I have written I am always afraid that links I have offered to recordings placed on the internet might have broken, but at least for the moment (April 2017) both links to “Well, well, well” are still there.
If you don’t know the song, I would strongly urge you to play both versions – although with the first version by the co-writer, you might care to omit his opening remarks which last a minute or two.
Next on my list of great compositions for the year comes When the night comes falling from the sky – one of Dylan’s epic recordings about the end of time which appeared on Empire Burlesque. It is the song that contains the epic line
I don’t want to drown in someone else’s wine
It’s one of those lines that can keep a person pushing forward and searching forever – and that is exactly what the music gives us. That eternal search for personal answers. And quite a line to write after a year of working with others to try and find a new direction.
And then of course, Dark Eyes Utterly, utterly remarkable.
So four masterful songs all from a period that some describe as one in which Dylan was searching and not finding a new direction. Four songs that for anyone else would be the absolute pinnacle of a writing career.
Maybe Someday
Well well well
When the night comes falling
Dark Eyes
Not such a bad year after all.
Highlight of the year… I’m endlessly torn between “Well well well” and “Dark Eyes”. I guess it is “Dark Eyes” as “Well well well” is a co-composition. But really, both are worth a very serious consideration.
I live in another world where life and death are memorized Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes
Oh my. Every time I hear those lines I just have to stop and look out of the window at the trees blowing in the wind and take time out to recover.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
A major theme in Bob Dylan’s song lyrics is the employment of religion by authority figures to cover up serreptitious behaviour:
“Big time negotiators, false healers, and women haters Masters of the bluff, and masters of the proposition But the enemy I see Wears a cloak of decency All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion”
(Slow Train)
He points out how the words of the Bible have been twisted over time to transform a world under Noah’s great rainbow into one painted solely in the white and black of good and evil:
“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”
(Genesis 1: 26, 27)
The many male writers of the Holy Book, to sanctify masculine dominance, quickly shove this Hermaphrodite God(dess) shrouded in the white mist (see: Robert Graves) and fog into the background, and have female Eve instead carved out of the side of male Adam, and then later the male Jesus mysteriously becomes one and the same with God in some other-worldly existence – a template for how human life ought to be structured on Earth.
That religion is employed to shore up any changing of the guard, Dylan has little doubt:
“Through many a dark hour I’ve been thinking ’bout this That Jesus Christ Was betrayed by a kiss But I can’t think for you You’ll to decide Whether Jesus Iscariot Had God on his side”
(Bob Dylan: With God On Our Sude)
And as a questioner himself of the status quo (Judaism’s High Priests challenged by upstart Christianity), Dylan is not surprised to find the presence of an androgynous spirit still hanging on in spite of the changing of the guard.
“Well, the hobo jumped up He came down naturally After he stole my baby Then he tried to steal me But I’m pledging my time to you Hopin’ you’ll come through too”
(Bob Dylan: Pledging My Time)
Dylan has friends thusly oriented, so it seems in lyrics that are somewhat double-edged:
“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 finds that she’s like all the rest With her fog, her amphetamines, and her perils”
(Bob Dylan: Just Like A Woman)
More song lyrics; this time not too fogged-up:
“Well, the sword-swallower, he comes up to you, and then he kneels He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels And without further notice, he asks you how it feels And he says, ‘Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan’ “
(Bob Dyan: Ballad Of A Thin Man)
From such topics, Dylan does not shy:
“Tweeter was a Boy Scout ‘fore he went to Vietnam And found out the hard way, nobody gives a damn They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey line So they hopped into a stolen car, took Highway 99″
(Bob Dylan: Tweeter And The Monkey Man)
Perhaps suggesting Tweeter suffered a war injury.
Concerning women infused with the spirit of Hermaphrodite, Dylan’s appears somewhat frustrated:
“Rita May, Rita May How’d you ever get that way? When do you ever see the light? Don’t you ever feel a fright? You got me burnin’, and I’m turnin’ But I know I must be learnin’ Rita May”
(Bob Dylan: Rita May)
“When do you ever see the light?”: This is where the mystical Gnosticism of Swedenborg comes into play: a Godhead far from the Universe has spread out light so far that some sparks of its complete nature are able to light up within materialized individuals on Earth who are lucky enough to have this happen; there is no sin, no evil, only ignorance of the Godhead; blocked off mostly, but sometimes assisted, by the different types of fragments floating around.
1: Over 450 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
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.
I guess the people who like to write or talk about contemporary music but have never listened to Nottamun Town…
They laughed and they smiled, not a soul did look gay They talked all the while, not a word they did say I bought me a quart to drive gladness away And to stifle the dust, for it rained the whole day
In short, songs have been not making sense since the Middle Ages. And indeed in 1984 Talking Heads made the point incredibly clearly with their film “Stop Making Sense”.
In fact no one ever said that a song had to make sense, any more than the world had to make sense. Indeed not making sense is an art form in its own right, often (but not always) pointing out that the sense of the world is only there because we impose our view of the way things should be upon the world we experience.
But on the other hand anyone can string together a whole load of nonsense and it remains nonsense. It take some musical and literary ability to turn it into something more than that. And so, long before Talking Heads considered the issue, Bob Dylan toyed with it. Indeed “Lo and Behold” was just one of a number of songs in which he considered the issue.
There are elements of Nottamun in “Lo and Behold” although it is by no means a direct copy of the song. More “Lo and Behold” is a set of words that maybe means something somewhere, sometime, and may mean more in the local dialect, (but gets a bit lost when crossing the Atlantic – which is probably what happens the other way around with Nottamun Town”
I bought my girl A herd of moose One she could call her own Well, she came out the very next day To see where they had flown I’m goin’ down to Tennessee Get me a truck ‘r somethin’ Gonna save my money and rip it up! Lo and behold! Lo and behold! Lookin’ for my lo and behold Get me outa here, my dear man!
Indeed some of the song is completely incomprehensible to my English ears
Now, I come in on a Ferris wheel An’ boys, I sure was slick I come in like a ton of bricks Laid a few tricks on ’em Goin’ back to Pittsburgh Count up to thirty Round that horn and ride that herd Gonna thread up! Lo and behold! Lo and behold! Lookin’ for my lo and behold Get me outa here, my dear man!
Dylan of course was experimenting with both nonsense and humour through much of the 1960s. The very first two songs that we currently have listed on this site (Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues and Talkin Hava Negeilah blues) are humorous pieces – although each is very different from the other and each looks at nonsense in its own way.
But to take nonsense as the sole element within “Lo and Behold” is to miss one important issue.
“Lo and Behold Ye” is a volume of considerable importance by the Irish writer Seumas MacManus (1867 to 1960) whose writings appeared in newspapers in the United States. whose first wife was the daughter of the founder of the original feminist nationalist movement in Ireland.
After she died Seumas moved to the USA and married Catalina Violante Paez, granddaughter of a former Venezuelan president, General José Antonio Páez, which when you consider it is quite something: to have been married to the daughter of the founder of the feminist nationalist movement in Ireland, and the granddaughter of a President of Venezuela.
But leaving aside his wives, the point about Seamus MacManus is that he is seen as the last seanchaí, the storytellers of the ancient Irish oral tradition who wrote down and interpreted traditional stories so that they would not be lost to future generations.
His work involved encouraging readers to tell the stories preserved in his own writings, as well as other stories, and then to pass them on to everyone they met, so that industrialisation would not destroy the Irish nation’s heritage.
As he said, “These tales were made … for telling. They were made and told for the passing of long nights, for the shortening of weary journeys, for entertaining of traveller-guests, for brightening of cabin hearths. Be not content with reading them… And grateful be to the seanchaís who passed these tales to me, for you.”
If we then think of Dylan’s interest in the world of storytelling – for example in using the melody of “Nottamun Town” in “With God on our side”, and writing about forever moving on to another location, in songs as varied as “One too many mornings”, “Restless Farewell” and “Drifters Escape,” we can see the link. Indeed that last song – “Drifters Escape” (written in the same year as Lo and Behold) gives us a link not just to the songs of moving on, but also to the nonsense songs like “Nottamun Town”, for in essence none of the Drifter’s world makes any sense at all.
Dylan in looking for his own “Lo and Behold”, his own message of great importance to pass on to the generations that come after him, is laughing at his own situation, where he is seen already to be a person with a great message to give to the world. It is a bit like Monty Python’s Life of Brian. People were calling him the Messiah, but in essence he was at heart just a naughty boy having fun. He’s still looking for the message that everyone tells him he already has.
The phrase “Lo and behold” has been used in literature in England since the 19th century, but I think it is also worth mentioning that 50 years on it gained a new impetus in 2016 with the release of a most moving film by Werner Herzog, “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World”, which looks at the impact of the internet on our lives. If that sounds a bit like a thousand other documentaries, believe me it isn’t. It is, most particularly in one part, utterly shocking and full of revelations and really worth watching if you are interested in the whole nature of sudden change and dramatic revelations.
The question remains, did Bob ever find his Lo and behold moment? Did he find the messages he needed to pass on as Seumas MacManus did?
That’s not for me to answer, but I think in this song, he is amusing himself by reflecting on the difficulty that anyone has when he/she seeks to find key issues to point at and say, “that is of profound importance to us all.”
Maybe, as Talking Heads said, sometimes the best way forwards is to stop making sense.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
The fuzzy-categorized, overlapping writings in the Judeo-Christian Bible, in Romantic Transcendentalist poetry, in Romantic Gothic poetry, in Symbolist poetry, in Neo-Romantic and AntiRomantic Modern poetry, and in Post-Modern poetry, all have influences to varying degrees on Bob Dylan song lyrics and on his music.
But not so great an influence as the PreRomantic Swedenborg-tinged poetry of the mystic William Blake with his poetic quest to find a suitable balance amongst the Classic entangled elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, that represent man’s Imagination, his Spirit, his Power, and his Desire.
A world-view which evolves from time out of mind, when the female-component of the God Hermaphrodite dominates the Cosmos:
“Then the lips that you have kissed Turn to frost and fire And a white-steaming mist Obsures desire So back to the birth Fade water, air, earth And the First Power moves Over void and dearth”
(Robert Graves: The Kiss)
The symbol of the Female, the all-powerful Mother Goddess, the white mist, that gives birth to the male, feeds him, holds him, has sex with him, serves as a Muse to his poetic and musical ambitions, and, in the end, envolopes him.
The omnipotent presence of the Great White Wonder Goddess shedding her kisses and her tears, Bob Dylan often depicts in his song lyrics:
“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/No Limit)
In the words of a poet that Bob Dylan admires:
“Green sap of Spring in the young world a-stir Will celebrate the Mountain Mother And every song-bird start awhile for her But I am gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of her nakely worn magnificence I forget cruelty and past betrayal Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall”
(Robert Graves: The White Goddess)
Again the lyrics of the singer/songwriter:
“You’re the one that reaches me You’re the one that I admire Every time we meet together My soul feels like it’s on fire Nothing matters to me And there’s nothing I desire ‘Cept you, yeah, you”
(Bob Dylan: Nobody ‘Cept You)
A mysticism found also in the songs and music of a band Dylan associates with:
“You know the rules by now And the fire from the ice Will you come with me? Won’t you come with me?”
(Grateful Dead: Uncle John’s Band)
And in the verses of a Medieval poet:
“The dark thought, the shame, the malice Greet them at the door laughing And invite them in”
(Mawlana Rumi: The Guest House)
A final word from the Dylan on the matter:
“Can’t help looking at you You made love with god-knows-who Never found a gal to match you I can’t escape from you”
(Bob Dylan: Can’t Escape From You)
An Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood, Bob Dylan reaches out for a Unified Field Theory.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
The original title of “Clothes Line Saga” was “Answer to ‘Ode’,” which helps us confirm what is fairly obvious, that just as Bob parodied “Norwegian Wood” in “Fourth Time Around” so he was doing the same here.
But I get the impression that some people feel that Dylan was laughing at “Ode to Billie Joe”, and I am sure that is not the case at all.
This sort of story goes back to Hank Williams (singing as Luke the Drifter) with songs like “Be careful of the stones that you throw”, and the whole issue of the way that people in isolated country communities live. (Dylan said in Chronicles that he virtually wore out his copy of the Luke the Drifter album because he played it so often).
“Be careful” has the chorus
A tongue can accuse and carry bad news The seeds of distrust, it will sow But unless you’ve made no mistakes in your life Be careful of stones that you throw.
That’s one side of country living. Different people see things in different ways. People have prejudices which arise because of their isolation, and then these can suddenly be challenged. The isolation of communities can cause thought patterns to make everyday local life the centre of everything. It’s inevitable.
This is also the heart of Ode to Billie Joe in which the girl and her parents have no real way of coming together. We get that right at the start
And mama hollered out the back door, y’all, remember to wipe your feet And then she said, I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
Dylan goes down the same route in ClothesLine
“Have you heard the news?” he said, with a grin “The Vice-President’s gone mad!” “Where?” “Downtown.” “When?” “Last night” “Hmm, say, that’s too bad!” “Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it,” said the neighbor “It’s just somethin’ we’re gonna have to forget” “Yes, I guess so,” said Ma Then she asked me if the clothes was still wet
It’s that inevitable contradiction between coping with the everyday, just to get along, and the issues going on around one about which one can do nothing.
In this regard the accompaniment – and obviously being a Basement Tape song it was knocked out very quickly without a lot of preparation – works well because it gives a sort of background feeling that just suggests the unchanging rural scene in which the events in Washington are going to have no impact. As in…
“They’ve declared war on North Korea!”
“Really? Still none of our business. Are the clothes dry?”
So, when I read a review of the song which reads, “Sure, there’s that wacky revelation in the middle, but it might as well have been a revelation about the sky being blue for all the attention that’s paid to it,” I not only think, the writer didn’t get the underlying issue, I also think, he hasn’t understood the musical context.
As Bob himself has commented, folk music was a way of ordinary people dealing with the mundane reality of everyday life, and the huge events that go around them – sudden weather changes spoiling the crops, the decline in prices because of cheap labour in far off countries, or in the middle ages, a long running war they know nothing about suddenly overriding their land…
That is what Bobby Gentry updated, and what Bob, tucked away in the basement, was ruminating upon, in my view.
I think we need to remember that these songs were a mix of try-outs, passing-the-time playfulness and serious efforts to create songs that other people could record (and in that regard a lot of them were incredibly successful).
Within such a creative process, all sorts of things can happen – and suddenly in thinking about this process I was reminded of a totally different song, “Music is Love” by David Crosby, (from “If only I could remember my name”) which must have been composed by Crosby just by strumming the guitar and singing that one phrase over and over, and the guys simply joining in.
“Music is Love” is a superb song, and there is nothing wrong with music that is just created out of thoughts and events, without huge amounts of artistry going into it at the start – its final outcome evolves from the starting point, not through any long dedicated artistic process.
That to me is the way we always need to listen to the Basement Tapes – as ways of reflecting on the musical heritage delivered through the multiplicity of forms that have evolved across the centuries – combined with the concerns of every day life and Dylan’s own long term issues and thoughts.
Indeed the opening point of Clothesline Saga really makes this point
After a while we took in the clothes Nobody said very much
There is no introduction, no scene setting, no background. We don’t know where we are, who the people are or anything. The world just is – and with that assessment we know this is how it has been for a long time. Life goes on and nothing changes.
If Bob had started it with a sort of “If was back in 1951, down Oklahoma way…” the story would have been lost, because we would have had a context that would have mislead us. As it is, the situation simply is. We are there. That’s it.
Ode to Billie Joe works in the same way
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
Yes we get the date, and the fact that we are on the Delta, but that is such a vague positioning that it really doesn’t tell us much. Life goes on. That’s how it goes.
That is the essence of this song. It is just a bit of fun, but Dylan’s underlying thoughts and concerns shine through nonetheless. I don’t think in any way he was making fun of “Ode to Billie Joe”, he was sitting with friends, adding his own thoughts.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
In many respects I find 1984 a year in which Dylan was once more casting around for a new vision, a new idea. Part blues, part religion, part love songs, part experiment… that was the sort of year it turned out to be.
But there was one absolute total triumph: the song that started the year I once knew a man. Aside from the fact that this is obviously a variant blues, I have no idea where this came from; it doesn’t appear on the official site, and it is absolutely not a new version of the song of the same name, written by Charles Manson.
We have a video of the single performance of the song, but nothing else. But at least we do have the video, otherwise another masterpiece would have been lost.
However we are clearly in a world of uncertainty for Bob. Who loves you more is a sketchbook idea of a blues, which for me is never resolved (although others claim it is). Likewise Almost done is another sketchbook piece which sadly is not really going anywhere. Two sketches and a blues piece only played once – this starts to tell us the tale of the year.
Then we have the curious case of Dirty lie which seems to me to be like a direct copy from “Stray Cat Strut” (which I’ve linked to on the review so you can hear for yourself).
After that Go way little boy is a great bit of bouncy fun written for Lone Justice, but it is not a great song in itself, and at the risk of making myself a lot of enemies I would argue that Drifting too far from shore is again an experiment that doesn’t work, from a writer struggling for inspiration.
New Danville Girl is of course a most interesting piece because of what Bob did to it over time – something that I have tried to explore in my review. But what fascinates me most of all, coming back to this song again is the line, “Nothing happens on purpose, it’s an accident if it happens at all.” As I noted at the time, “With that simple line all of civilisation, all human progress, the whole Christian message, everything that makes us human rather than just animals, is blown away.” We really are once again just blowing in the wind.
After that all we have is Something’s Burning Baby. This is so dark I can’t really buy into the notion that it is about his religious feelings; it seems to me to be another lost love song, saying as it does, “Whereas we once knew, now we don’t.”
You’ve been avoiding the main streets for a long, long while The truth that I’m seeking is in your missing file What’s your position, baby, what’s going on? Why is the light in your eyes nearly gone?
In a way that sums up Bob in this year. He’s lost. He knows he once had found the way, but now that is long since gone. He can’t go back; he doesn’t want to go back to the religious certainties. The lines that come out tell him this, and he struggles to make sense of the music.
Only once, at the beginning of the writing process for the year, did he find Brilliant Bob at his Best, and that was with a sensational blues piece. How very Bob to have that, and then put it away, unremembered for ever more. Except by those of us who go around looking.
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
God having cast Adam and Eve from Eden, the Deists returned the favour by
casting God out of the Universe.
With God uninvolved, two major wars occurring, ending with the dropping of the atomic bomb, existence is seen by some social thinkers and artists as having no purpose; meaningless with no direction; amoral, with a nobody cares attitude.
Life’s purpose, in the end, is then what you choose to make of it: individual freedom of choice is now completely unencumbered …. unless, of course, you have the misfortune of being under the control of people stronger than you are:
“Princess on a steeple and all the pretty people They’re drinking, thinking that they got it made Exchanging all precious gifts But you’d better take your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him, he calls you, you can’t refuse When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal”
(Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone)
It takes grace under pressure, but a non-altruistic existentialism is a view of the world that singer Bob Dylan resists:
“I’m a-goin” back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their water Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison And the execution’s face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the colour, where none is the number And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it”
(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)
Love and hope can get you through tough times:
“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)
Death being inevitable, it ain’t easy, but happy times are for fond remembering:
“She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind She put down in writing what was in her mind I just don’t see why I should even care It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Heylin, in his commentary on Dylan’s works across the years, is particularly disparaging about the Wilburys and the way Bob’s work was treated therein. His view is that the real talent was Dylan’s, the rest of the gang were fairly bereft of ideas, and so because the resultant rough mixes ended up being dominated by Bob’s work (as they had little to contribute) they then set about removing a lot of Dylan’s contributions after Dylan had left to go on tour.
Heylin is particularly disparaging about the treatment of “Like a Ship” which was available for inclusion on the first Wilbury album but then not used. He argues that it was removed from the first LP because it was “one too many Dylan songs. It can’t have been removed because of any concern about its merit, considering that dregs like ‘Wilbury Twist’ and ‘New Blue Moon’ made the 35 minute album.”
Here is how it sounded at that time
And yes, one can see his point; this preliminary mix is rough at the edges but the quality of the song is certainty there.
We did get the song in the end however on the 2007 Wilburys Deluxe set, but again according to Heylin, it had been mauled about in post-production. You can judge for yourself
My prime concern however is with the treatment of the song song itself and certainly there is something rather remarkable about the images created by such a simple set of lyrics
Like a ship on the sea, her love rose over me Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be.
changed to
Like a weepin’ willow tree, her love grows over me Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be.
And finally
Like a leaf on a tree, her love is shakin’ me Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be
What adds to this is the rolling Em / D / G chord sequence which starts before the vocals and resonates all the way through. A rare approach for Dylan to use, building the song around a chord sequence that is established before the singing, while making his way through the well-trodden road of the 12 bar blues which subsequently fits in around it.
What’s more we have the additional line “Hauntin’ me like a ship on the sea” which adds to the mysticism and the rolling nature of the sea. (Can you imagine how naff it would have been if an idiot producer had added the sound of the sea breaking on the shore? Fortunately there is none of that).
Then suddenly, as it were, the weather changes and he’s on dry land, in a totally different key, (B flat / F / G / D) another musical construction unique to the Dylan cannon.
But for me where it all goes so very wrong is after the Bridge with the instrumental passage
Standin’ on the white cliffs of Dover Lookin’ out into space Another channel to cross over Another dream to chase.
really creates an atmosphere, which the raucous guitar just kicks to death. How can anyone think that the best thing to do after “Another dream to chase” is to play that sort of instrumental break.
It then means that the instrumentation has to be upped for
The night is dark and dreary The wind is howling down Your heart is hanging heavy When your sweet love ain’t around.
and it all seems so inappropriate, and makes it even harder for
Like a leaf on a tree, her love is shakin’ me Like a leaf on a tree, her love is shakin’ me Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be
to make any impact at all. (But really, if you have a moment, just listen to what is happening to the accompaniment around “dark and dreary”. Accompaniments don’t have to reflect the lyrics, but they do have to be in sympathy with them, in my view.)
For me it is a highly atmospheric song which those producing the version we finally got on the CD felt needed stock responses. “Hey lets put in some strong guitar work here” was probably the response as they produced it in Dylan’s absence, not realising that we already had all the atmosphere we needed from the way Bob sings the song and the unique way he created the chord sequence.
What is there about
Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be.
that is so hard to understand? The change in melody for the middle 8 (the bridge) is enough to give us a contrast, we really don’t need any more.
Just consider what lines we actually have in the verses:
Like a ship on the sea, her love rose over me
Like a weepin’ willow tree, her love grows over me
Like a leaf on a tree, her love is shakin’ me
Go ‘way, go ‘way, let me be
That is it. What is there in that which makes anyone think heavy rock guitar material is needed here? What does it add to the notion that “It is all too much, I just can’t take this”.
So this song perfectly makes the point about Bob’s ceaseless travelling…
Another channel to cross over Another dream to chase.
and how it can interfere with what most of us would call normal life.
This isn’t one of Bob’s all time greatest compositions, but it is, or was, a fine piece of work, and it is a shame that seemingly we’ll never hear it from Bob on stage. (Unless one of his entourage spots this little review and sneaks up to Bob and says, “That English guy who does those reviews says you ought to do “Like a ship” on stage, as it should have been performed – not how it was done on the album,” and Dylan nods and gets up and plays it. They rehearse it once and then perform it. Just for me.
Ah, one can but dream.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
The poets of the Transcendental Romantic movement react to the stand-offish examination of the natural world by a science that casts “God” off to the outside of the Universe.
Influenced, like William Blake, by Emanuel Swedenborg’s mysticism, these Romantic poets consider it possible, through intuition, to communicate with Nature by getting in touch with its beauty without the distractions of the hustle and bustle of modern urban living.
What can be felt, they say, is a Oneness, the Unifying Spirit that pervades all the external world of Nature, and the internal mind of Man: this Universe of ours exists to comfort its creations.
Even the Darwinian-tempered Victorian poets find it difficult to resist the powerful eagle-like grasp of the writings of the Romantic Transcendentalist imagination:
“Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk… The firefly wakens; waken thou with me”
(Lord Tennyson: The Princess)
This Romantic ideal in a nutshell:
“Flower in the crannied wall I pluck you out of the crannies I hold you here, root and all, in my hand Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all and all I should know what God and man is”
(Tennyson: Flower In A Crannied Wall)
Such thoughts and feelings linger yet in modern poems and songs:
“I’ve been thinking things all over All the moments full of grace The primrose and the clover Your ever changing face”
(Bob Dylan: Can’t Escape From You)
That women are associated with the phases of the moon; men with the light of the sun – an idea words still whisper in the wind:
“Let them say that I walked In fair nature’s light And that I was loyal To truth and to right”
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)
Harmony in Nature, the music of the spheres, be the hallmark of these poets:
“The ocean wild like an organ played The seaweed wove it strands The crashing waves like cymbals clashed Against the rocks and the sand”
(Bob Dylan: Lay Down Your Weary Tune)
Say they, Nature possesses a restorative spirit to enlighten Man that is far superior to the dogma of established religion:
“Through the mad mystic hammering of the the wild ripping hail The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind”
(Bob Dylan: Chimes Of Freedom)
One has only to listen:
“Can’t you hear the rooster crowin’ Rabbit runnin’ down across the road Underneath the bridge where the water flowed through So happy just to see you smile Underneath the sky of blue”
(Bob Dylan: New Morning)
The natural world, though it changes and time passes, shows one that they should have love and compassion for others:
“If you go when the snowflakes storm When the rivers freeze and the summer ends Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm To keep her from the howlin winds”
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The North Country)
To many of the Transcendentalist Romantic movement, the religious figure known as Jesus, a fellow human being, is for them a poet, and an advocate of Nature’s love and compassion:
“When the whip that keeps you in line doesn’t make him jump Say he’s hard-of-hearing, say that he’s a chump Say he’s out of step with reality as you try to test his nerve Because he doesn’t pay tribute to the king that you serve”
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
This article comes from the series “Bob Dylan: Year by Year”. You can see all the articles in the series by following the link.
by Tony Attwood
Much of the dating of when Dylan wrote songs comes from his touring, in which newly produced songs are recorded in hotel rooms or tried out during the sound checks before a concert. But during 1982 Dylan stopped touring, and as far as I can read the situation, stopped writing.
My best guess is that the first few songs on the list below were written in 1982, but it is hard to tell how many, hence 1982 and 1983 are loaded together in this chronological series.
By 1982/3 Bob had set aside the notion of writing songs about Jesus and his understanding of the Biblical texts, as his prime source for inspiration. And indeed by now he had already had a period of exploring other themes for his writing. This notion of exploration and commentary across a wide range of areas continued through this two year period.
However it is also clear that his explorations of a new direction in the past year or two were still with him, for Jokerman has the feel in part of Caribbean Wind – and indeed Dylan has said it was again written in the Caribbean. Although we might well feel that this is another song about the end of all things, the message is more about the futility of mankind’s ways than it is about the utter certainty of how it will all pan out in the end.
So Biblical input was still there in his songs but it is combined with a style of writing that leads to an uncertainty of meaning. And when one thinks about it, these two notions are poles apart. With a religion such as Christianity, everything is certain. We know what happened in the past with Jesus Christ, and we know what will happen in the future with Armageddon and the Second Coming.
But the Caribbean Wind style of writing removes the certainty of meaning and seems to take us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Which is why I and I (again seemingly written in the Caribbean period) is interesting: it appears at one level to be trying to balance the two – the religious feel and the uncertainty. But then maybe uncertainty won and Dylan travelled in other directions indeed.
Clean Cut Kid (written at this time, but held back in terms of an album release) and Union Sundown take on other directions – the latter returning to Dylan’s earlier concerns about America’s poor, expressed so often across the years.
But then were the pause in songwriting and then the mixed bag of compositions noted thus far, all by way of preparation for the next song: Blind Willie McTell? It is hard to make that case, because McTell sounds like nothing written in the months before or after it emerged. Indeed it most certainly doesn’t have any relationship with the next song Don’t fall apart on me tonight – nor indeed with very much else around this time. It just stands out alone, an absolute monument looking down on everything else that Dylan composed across these two years.
As we know McTell came out in two versions – the acoustic and the electric – and each tells a different tale, although neither really has that much to do with the real blues singer who reached far greater fame through this song than he ever achieved as a composer and singer. We get no sense of McTell as the great 12 string slide guitarist, of the man with so many different names it is hard to keep track of them. What we get is the man whose music was rediscovered many years after his passing (he died in 1959 aged 61).
The arrival of this song with no clear build up beforehand that we can hear in Dylan’s music, and no references back to it after, is one of the great mysteries for anyone who wants to understand Dylan’s method of writing, although maybe it is just possible to see Jokerman as the opposite of Willie McTell – the Jokerman telling us what isn’t true, Willie McTell telling it really as it is. But…
I fear I am stretching the point here for if I am going down this route then Man of Peace like Jokerman is a false prophet song. Blind Willie is the only one who tells it true, the other’s don’t. But I’m not sure if that adds much to our understanding.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that Dylan was once more finding he could write, and write all sorts of things, and that is what he was doing – enjoying the feeling that once more he could sit down and out came a song about… well anything. Sweetheart like you goes one way Someone’s got a hold of my heart goes another, then there is Neighbourhood Bully off doing its own thing again, and then Tell Me is utterly different again.
And then Bob was back with his notion of the “Caribbean Wind” style of writing where every line takes us in a different direction. But then again Foot of Pride clearly caused him some concerns, and like Willie McTell is was left behind, leaving the composer to travel off in yet another direction with a political rock n roll drama in Julius and Ethel.
In short this is a year in which everything is tried out, and perversely when it came to leaving songs behind, it was as often as not, the wrong songs were left behind. But with Bob it seems to have been ever thus. The year ended on what is for me a very poor note Death is not the end – but then again, that is what Dylan does. He tries everything out, and because it is all tried out in the recording studio, we can hear what happened.
Was this the most varied year ever in terms of Bob’s writing? Quite possibly, although I’d like to think about that question a bit more. But what I don’t have to think about is what was the highlight of the year: Blind Willie McTell, of course. I still don’t think it has anything much to do with Blind Willie, but as a song in its own right, it is right up there with the best of them.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
In 2005 Bob Dylan wrote but two songs – both (so it is said) for movies. First came the utterly sublime Tell Ol’ Bill and then came “Can’t escape from you.” I have, I think, spent more time writing and re-writing the review of Tel Ol’ Bill, (a song that I put at the pinnacle of Bob’s compositional achievements) than any other song on this site. Which makes “Can’t escape from you” all the stranger.
The first thing to notice about “Can’t escape” is that the alleged film was not made – and that in itself is odd. Six years after “Things have changed” was composed, four years after Bob had gained the songwriting Oscar, and someone (we know not who) asks Bob to write a piece of music for a film, which at this time doesn’t even have the financing in place.
This is quite a contrast with the time when Bob was commissioned to write a song for Midnight Cowboy, and delivered it so late it couldn’t be used. Now he is writing a song for a movie that doesn’t even have the finances sorted!
No one seems quite sure what the film was, so I have a certain doubt about this – a doubt which is amplified when I listen to the music itself and indeed when I come to study the lyrics – particularly at the end. And in fact, so unlikely do I think it is that there ever was a film, I rather believe that when Bob Dylan mentioned it, he was actually suggesting that he was writing a song that could be the song of a movie – if anyone wanted to make it. No one did, it seems.
Now I must say that my doubts about the quality of this song are not shared by everyone. For example the web site “The 25 Greatest Dylan Songs of The Past 20 Years” not only has this song listed – but lists it above “Things have changed” in its run down of the best 25 songs. Unfortunately they did not get round to telling us why it is considered so good. Here’s the full entry
#16. Can’t Escape From You
Another gem – this one from 2005 – left unreleased until late-2008, when it finally appeared on Tell Tale Signs.
I really, really, don’t share this view. For one thing musically the piece is very simple, using uses arpeggios (notes 1, 3 and 5 of the scale) both in the accompaniment and in the melody. It is the sort of thing that dates back to 1955, but at least there people wrote a separate melody to go around the accompanying arpeggios.
But of course Bob has often shown us that sometimes you don’t so much need a melody, if the lyrics are themselves of great interest, but here I fear this is not the case. This song opens with:
Oh the evening train is rolling All along the homeward way All my hopes are over the horizon All my dreams have gone away
which is pleasant enough but after the second verse we are still waiting for something more than a statement that this is a song about lost love.
The hillside darkly shaded Stars fall from above All the joys of earth have faded The night’s untouched my love
and it continues in way – we are still with the “I’m lonesome, you’ve gone” approach with verse three.
I’ll be here ’til tomorrow Beneath a shroud of grey I pretend I’m free of sorrow My heart is miles away
There really is nothing to lift the song out of this feeling that everything has gone wrong. Of course you can write a song about the world’s gone wrong, or my baby left me, but it needs something to make us want to share the pain, but all we get here, in my opinion, is just random lines of lost love.
Bob even throws in the most famous metaphor in the language, but because we all know it, it has no power or meaning left, and seems oddly out of place this far into the song without any context.
The path is ever winding The stars they never age The morning light is blinding All the world’s a stage
And just in case you would like a reminder of your actual Shakespeare the opening of Act 2 Scene VII of “As you like it” runs
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
Now that is interesting, even when taken in splendid isolation. But here… no, it doesn’t work for me.
The problem is amplified by the fact that even when we do get an unexpected interesting line we have no explanation, and no other lines to hold onto. Consider this verse from late on in the piece
All our days were splendid They were simple, they were plain It never should have ended I should have kissed you in the rain
That last line does make me sit up and wonder. First time I played this through in preparing to write this review I thought, wow, I missed something, and went back to find a context – that turned out not to be there.
But then as we enter the next two verses (the last two verses of the piece) I had my thoughts confirmed that this was not a song to be considered much further. The final verses run….
I’ve been thinking things all over All the moments full of grace The primrose and the clover Your ever changing face
Can’t help looking at you You made love with god-knows-who Never found a gal to match you I can’t escape from you
Now for me, the line “You made love with god-knows-who” is a shock and a half. Not, I would hasten to add, because of any ethical purity but because of artistic integrity. Bob is telling us all the way through the song how wonderful the girl is, as the penultimate verse tells us with the “full of grace” line stresses, but then we find she sleeps around.
Fair enough, that’s her choice, and I make no moral judgement. Some people have lots of sexual partners, some don’t, that’s how it goes. But normally if this is a relevant fact to be mentioned earlier in the song, it might get mentioned earlier, not in verse 15. Or if verse 15 really is the place to reveal this fact, then it needs to be dealt with thereafter. Just throwing in the unexpected and leaving us to work it out, doesn’t work for me at all.
Was Bob perhaps trying to paint the story of a lady who he loves and adores from afar, mentioning in passing that she has slept with many different people, because it doesn’t affect his vision of her? Maybe, but for me this most certainly does not work.
What particularly makes this fail is the fact that all 15 verses are based around not only the plodding melody, but also just three chords – the three major chords of A major – heard over and over. Nothing relieves what becomes a plodding repetition.
It really doesn’t work for me, and if we did not have the story about the movie, I’d say, here’s another notebook experiment which Bob was right to throw away. Which leads me to my final point. Maybe the movie story simply isn’t true. Maybe it is a confusion with the other song this year – the magnificent “Tell Ol Bill.” Maybe.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
Eden Is Where You Find It:
Frederich Nietzsche, William Blake,
And Bob Dylan
By Larry Fyffe
William Blake admonishes organized Christianity for its black-and-white portrayal of morality, its defining of human behaviour as either ‘good’ (of God) or ‘evil’ (of the Devil).
Poet Blake envisions Man as a Being possessed of a Devilish desire for individual freedom that rebels against overly-harsh authoritanian rule. With their over-emphasis on Reason, Blake considers that the thinkers of the Age Of Enlightenment, with their ‘deistic’ God, justify a new social order, but that they, while doing so, freeze in place injustices, like the institution of slavery, that take away liberty.
In the words of an anti-Blakean Modernist poet, social change is not necessarily a good thing:
“Tell her that sheds Such treasure in the air Recking naught else but her graces give Life to the moment I would bid them live As roses might, in magic amber laid Red, overwrought with orange and all made One substance and one colour Braving time”
(Ezra Pound: Envoi)
Frederich Nietzsche too criticizes the Christian establishment, but because it, in his view, sticks the label of ‘evil’ upon the energetic morality that allows capable individuals to exercise their ‘will to power’, and rise above others in the social hierarchy; who achieve their desires in the here and now because of their enterprising daring.
The underdogs’ resentment of success expresses itself through a ‘slave morality’, and results in the expansion of the altruistic-centred religion known as Christianity. The religion prepares the road to bring everyone down to an equalitarian level, based on its belief of a Paradise in the afterlife.
The ideas associated with the likes of William Blake lend themselves to supporting the establishment of an altruistic socialist economic system in the actual world; those associated with the likes of Nietzsche to the support of an ongoing capitalist system based on greed.
Then along comes various Fascist forms of capitalism, and various Soviet forms of socialism. That’s more than enough to make a crippled cynic out of the most sure-footed Romantic.
In the aftermath of the debasement of Nietzsche’s ideas by the Nazis (and also by Ezra Pound above), and the corruption of the ideas of Karl Marx by the Soviets, Bob Dylan hangs on to Blake’s imaginative vision of an ideal balance amongst spirit, power, and desire, elements contained within each individual. This even as the songwriter expresses the cynicism of a disenchanted Romantic. At the very least, there is the possibility of a chance meeting with kindred spirits who are able to shed their treasures in the air.
The idea of Nietsche’s ‘slave morality’ not forgotten:
“With a time-rusted compass blade Aladdin and his lamp Sits with Utopian hermit monks Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf And on their promises of Paradise You will not hear a laugh All except inside thd Gates of Eden”
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
This be the sham promise of a Paradise for those exploited; at worst they’ll find it in the hereafter, so say the High Priests of the capitalist elite, who worship the Golden Calf of capital accumulation.
Paradise Lost of childhood Innocence to the adult world of Experience, according to William Blake:
“The kingdoms of experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what is real and what is not”
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
In the words of the pre-Romantic poet himself:
“Blind in fire, with shield and spear Two horned Reasoning, cloven fiction In doubt, which is self-condradiction A dark hermaphrodite we stood – Rational truth, root of evil and good Round me flew the flaming sword Round her snowy whirlwinds roared Freezing her veil, the shell mundane ….One dies! Alas!, the living and the dead One is slain and one is fled”
(William Blake: The Keys Of Ths Gate)
Words like those from an Elizabethan poet:
“My love is like ice, and I to fire How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my So hot desire”
(Edmund Spenser: Ice And Fire)
Bob Dylan brings it all back home:
There are no truths outside the gates of Eden. The black-robed priests have planted briars around the locked gates.
But, sings Bob Dylan, where you find truth is Eden; you’ll know it when you are there; Eve awaits, under the tree of knowledge:
“At dawn my lover comes to me And tells me of her dreams With no attempt to shovel the glimpse In to the ditch of which each one means At times I think there are no words But these to tell what’s true And there are no words outside the Gates of Eden”
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
This article is one of a series that reviews Bob Dylan’s writing in regards to the songs he wrote, and the order he wrote them in, rather than what Bob chose to put on each album. The index to the series can be found here.
1981 is a singularly difficult year to analyse with many songs being mentioned, seemingly recorded, and then quite a few being lost. Obviously to be able to review the songs I need to be able to find a copy and so I may subsequently be able to expand this list, but for the moment I’ve reviewed all the ones I can find.
In 1980 Bob had simultaneously explored where else his interest in religious songs could take him and had also returned to non-religious themes. In 1981 he wrote what appears to be his last gospel songs Jesus is the one and Thief on the Cross while continuing to explore the non-religious themes, and at the end (perhaps) a link between the non-religious world and the religion he had been following these last few years.
Dylan opened the year by writing Shot of Love a song that (he proclaimed) told everyone where he was at the moment, but which (which one comes down to analysing it line by line) is extraordinarily confusing, and doesn’t necessarily tell us much at all.
What we have here is, I believe, Dylan in a mood where he is wanting to explore, to be different, and so he is trying things out – and these “things” are songs that with many other composers might have been put away and never heard again. Bob however is in the mood to see just where each might lead.
And so we hear every experiment, every idea, whether it works or not. The great lengths he goes to, to create rhymes in Angelina and the curious mix up with Heart of Mine (a true song of doubts) in which he put completely the wrong version of the song on the album, are two examples.
Indeed it was only on Biograph that we found out what “Heart of Mine” really could do, as he tried to explain to himself (if not to us) his move away from Christianity as his key guiding force, to issues surrounding love.
So throughout this year we have Bob edging himself away from Christian themes – as he had done a little the year before, but not being quite sure where he is going to go if the dominant theme are dropped. Indeed it is when Dylan’s songwriting progress is seen in this light that the extraordinary changes made to “Caribbean Wind” last year can be seen. Bob really didn’t know where he was going.
By the time we get to Dead Man Dead Man we have a song which fades out with the repeated line, “Ooh I can’t stand it I can’t stand it” and although I think that statement is an over exaggeration of where Bob is, I think I can nevertheless understand where Bob had got to.
Certainly there are strong signs that by this moment Bob was unsure where to go next – I described Don’t ever take yourself away in the review as “Romance in Durango” with the good bits taken out. And that surely is a sign of artistic uncertainty.
But the year did indeed have some very good songs such as Watered down love and Lenny Bruce The latter, a song which Heylin describes as trite and simplistic is one that Dylan clearly had an affection for, and it is one that highlights the contradictions that were entering Bob’s world. Lenny Bruce, the man who loved to make fun of organised religion, the man who when alive found it hard to get work because of the nature of his approach to comedy, and who was revered after his death. And (perhaps) Jesus, who denounced the state organised religion had got to by the time of His life and was crucified for what he said, and was then revered after death.
Certainly “Lenny Bruce” is the highlight of the year for me, although the lowlight of the year for some critics. Bob wasn’t finished with the writing however, for he had two more songs to deliver -as it turns out the last two religious works: Jesus is the one and Thief on the Cross. Neither are now remembered very much, the power of Dylan’s writing had now and moved we were heading into completely new and different territories.
What is on the site
1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.
