Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

It is said that the second Wilbury’s volume was originally mostly a Bob Dylan creation and that after he had slipped away for his touring duties those left in charge of the editing set about removing quite a bit of his work.

But Bob is loud and clear on this song, expressing his concerns about the decline of the environment.  I am not sure Bob had expressed this concern much before – and certainly in his last album (Under the Red Sky) there was not much sense of it.  Although I guess it might be possible to consider the title song as having a concern with the environment – with a stretch of the imagination.

But I get the impression that at the time Bob was looking around for new themes – for a new subject area to lend his muse to, and I think this is a better explanation of this exploration of ecological and environmental issues.

The song itself is very enjoyable for me – not something I would play over and over but still a good piece of work that I am more than happy to come back to for the writing of this review.   However it had one odd stand out event within it.  The song is in E, but the bridge section, “Be careful where you’re walking” suddenly jumps to G without any warning at all.

This sudden movement from one key to another gives a real sense of a jerk.  It is deployed in pop occasionally, but when Bob has changed key in the past he has normally sought to do it by utilising a chord sequence that gets him from one key to the next via a chord that appears in both keys.  The problem here is that there is no chord that appears in both the keys of G and E.  So one would have to travel from E major to A major to D major to G major – and then you are there – quite a bit of a journey.  But instead we just go bang, from E major to G major

When you’re inside out   (E major)

Be careful where you’re walking  (G major)

The band could have written the movement of chords as an instrumental change, but that would have destroyed the movement of the piece as a whole.  So why persist with the notion of changing keys?

I suspect to get the bridge section into a key that George Harrison could sing.   Normally if this were not an ensemble song there’d be no need for another singer to pop in at this point, but this is supposed to be the Wilbury’s not Dylan and Friends, so something had to be done to give the rest of the gang a chance.

Bob sets out the message clearly from the off….

Look out your window
That grass ain’t green
It’s kinda yellow
See what I mean?
Look up your chimney
The sky ain’t blue
It’s kinda yellow
You know it’s true
It’s so hard to figure what it’s all about

When your outsides in (inside out)
And your downsides up (upside down)
Yeah, your upsides right (rightside up)
Yeah, don’t it make you wanna twist & shout
When you’re inside out

So the message is clear.  We’re all pouring muck into the environment whenever we can

Look down your drain pipe
What color do you see?
It’s got to be yellow
Don’t try to fool me
And don’t it make you wanna twist and shout

But why “twist and shout”?  Shout seems a pretty good response, but “Twist and Shout”?  One might guess that Bob was poking fun at the Beatles recording of “Twist and Shout”.  I’m personally not sure it is ever worth poking fun at that recording since it is such a poor piece of music, but maybe there was a joke in the band at the time.

The message continues through the bridge passage Harrison sings and it becomes not just a warning, but a suggestion that there is something more sinister and underhand going on as well.

Be careful where you’re walking
You might step in something rough
Be careful where you’re talking
And saying all that stuff
Take care when you are breathing
Something’s funny in the air
And somethings I’m not saying
Bout what’s happening out there
It’s inside out

And indeed things do get darker, because now we are told that rather than the future looking bleak, it might not be a future at all.   A few years earlier in a Dylan song this would have been because of Armageddon, the great war that precedes the Second Coming, but now it seems to precede just, well, the end.

Look into the future
With your mystic crystal ball
See if it ain’t yellow
See if it’s there at all
Ain’t no shadow of doubt
Don’t it make you wanna twist and shout

Here’s the video…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPAwrtm-JK8

It’s a good song – not earth shattering, but very listenable, and suggests that “Under the Red Sky” involved an experiment in trying to find a new form.  With the Wilburys Bob was showing us he could still deliver some very good songs without having to find that new form or direction.  But he knew that new form was out there.

What is on the site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Line Forms From the  Right:
Bobby’s Back In Town

By Larry Fyffe

A number of Bob Dylan’s story-telling  songs are wonderful reworkings of the Kurt Weill  and Bertolt Brecht’s  1928 burlesque musical, with its sexual puns abounding, called ‘The Threepenny Opera’ (Die Dreigroschenoper).

In that play, the daughter of a corrupt ‘businessman’, who makes his money off beggars (Filch being on of them). marries a womanizing gang leader by the name of Macheath, a satirical reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. She, with the aid of a corrupt police chief, warns the gang leader of her father’s intention to  have him arrested.

Jenny Diver, a prostitute, a former lover of ‘Mack The Knife’, provides information that he still visits the brothel. The police chief’s daughter, also involved with Macheath, argues with the gangster’s wife, and ‘Macky’ takes the opportunity to escape.

Summarized in the song, ‘Mack The Knife:

“Now, Jenny Diver, ho, ho,
Yeah, Sukey Tawdry
O oh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town”
(Mack The Knife)

The prostitute, in the musical play, sings “Pirate Jenny”:

“You people can watch while I’m scrubbing these floors…
No, you couldn’t ever guess to who you’re talkin’
Then one night, there’s a scream in the night
And you’ll wonder who could that have been
And you see me grinin’ while I’m scrubbing”

Bob Dylan, master thief that he is, burlesquing the burlesquer, turns Brecht’s prostitute into Cinderella:

“And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up On Desolation Row”

And beggar Filch into a jock-strapped Victorian Freudian:

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

As well, there’s Lily, Big Jim’s wife; Rosemary, his girlfriend, and the charming robber, The Jack Of Hearts:

“Rosemary started drinkin’ hard and seein’ her reflection in the knife
She was tired of the attention, of playing the role of Big Jim’s wife
She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide
Was lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died”
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

And then there’s The Monkey Man,  who sells drugs; Tweeter, his deadly ‘girl’ friend; and Jan, the gun-carrying sister of the undercover cop; she too, of course, loves the Monkey Man:

“The undercover cop was found face down in the field
The Monkey Man was on the river bridge using Tweeter as a shield
Jan said to the Monkey Man, ‘I’m not fooled by Tweeter’s curls
I knew him before he ever became a Jersey girl’.”
(Bob Dylan: Tweeter And The Monkey Man)

Bob Dylan, retells the stories of the down-trodden characters taken from ‘The Threepenny Opera’, but he re-arranges their faces, and gives them all a new name.

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.

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

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

by Tony Attwood

Dylan had spent the whole of 1979 writing primarily Christian songs and continued this theme into 1980.  

All of the early songs of the year were clearly Christian in message and Property of Jesus was perhaps the most overt, but then in that contrary and intriguing way that Dylan has, he suddenly produced Every grain of sand which could easily be interpreted not a religious song at all, but a song of despair about religion.

The problem with the song is we never know who the Master is: is it the Christian God or the Taoist master such as the mystical Lao Tsu, to give one other example.

What makes this so interesting is that this is a song of convoluted and obscure imagery and messages straight after “Property of Jesus” (which in terms of the year’s history) is as clear as it gets.

The second verse of “Every grain” contains some of Dylan’s most elegant poetry within one of his most elegant of melodies…

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay
I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

As I said in my review of the song, William Blake (who was clearly a major influence here) wrote “We are led to believe a lie” and I think this beautiful reflective song has this notion at its heart.  Just consider the lines.

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

My task in reviewing the song was just that, to review the song, and not specifically think what else Dylan was doing in that year.  Thus in response to the lyrics of this exquisite piece of music I wrote “To me these are not Christian questions, but questions from a man who is interested in a much deeper philosophy that asks questions relating to the very nature of man without having the God-given certainty of the answers….. Dylan is gazing into the doorway, not just of temptation, but of his own future.”

As I say, I wrote that little comment without at the time having a clear list of the order in which Dylan wrote songs this year,but I think it is incredibly interesting to note that Every Grain was then followed by the majestically confused and confusing Caribbean Wind – the review of which I have just reworked.  The lines of this song have been changed so many times that nothing makes sense any more.  Maybe that was the point.

But the confusion theme does help us understand that Bob himself at this time was confused, and he keeps the confusion going with Groom’s still waiting at the alter.  Indeed lines such as

Prayed in the ghetto with my face in the cement,
Heard the last moan of a boxer, seen the massacre of the innocent
Felt around for the light switch, became nauseated.
She was walking down the hallway while the walls deteriorated.

could just has easily been written into one of the many re-writes of Caribbean Wind as destined for the Groom.

And we get more of it with the next song Yonder comes sin  (also one that was seemingly abandoned).  It is extraordinary that Bob could devise these extraordinary pieces of music one after the other, and then abandon them all.   The Year of Abandoned Masterpieces indeed – and he keeps going with at least a couple of versions of Let’s keep it between us.

But Bob is never anything if not contrary, so he ended the year with … a piece of gospel.  City of Gold.  Make of that sudden change what you will.

I don’t know what to make of it, nor do I know what to make my song of the year from this amazing collection.  Caribbean Wind is the automatic reaction, but if there was an LP that had that track, followed by the Groom, Yonder Comes Sin and Every Grain I’d just let it go through auto-repeat until the neighbours called the police to tell me to stop.

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.

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

Bob Dylan And Walt Whitman: Writing In The Captain’s Tower

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan draws water from the poetic well of the American Romantic writer Walt Whitman, a transcendentalist inspired by the regenerative powers of Nature.

“With music strong I come with my cornets and my drums
I play not marches for accepted victors
only, I play marches for conquered and slain persons”
(Walt Whitman: Song Of Myself)

Bob Dylan’s in the parade, ringing the bells:

“Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
And each unharmful, gentle soul, misplaced inside a jail
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Starry-eyed and laughing ….”
(Bob Dylan: Chimes Of Freedom)

An African-American poet from Harlem aids the songwriter hauling on the bell ropes like all tough sailors do when they’re away at sea:

“I, too, sing for America
I am the darker brother
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes
But I laugh
And eat well
And grow strong
Tomorrow
I’ll be at the table
When company comes”
(Langston Hughes: I, Too)

Sometimes the struggle is rather bloody, but it’s worth the trouble:

“Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring
But O heart! heart! heart!
0 the bleeding drops of red
Where on the deck my Captain lies
Fallen cold and dead”
(Walt Whitman: O Captain! My Captain!)

For Dylan, often the struggle is not capable of being understood in terms of the Nature Guide  Book issued by Walt Whitman and his crew on board  the Romantic ship known as ‘The Transcendentalist’.”

“The bells of evening have rung
There’s blasphemy on every tongue
Let’em say that I walked in fair nature’s light
And that I was loyal to truth and to right”

However, something’s amiss:

“Close the eyes of our captain, peace may he know
His long night is done, the great leader is laid low
He was ready to fall, he was quick to defend
Killed outright he was by his own men”
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

Bob Dylan, the song writer, does not merely ‘cover’ old poems; he lifts them out of their graves, and breathes new life into them.

He agrees with Walt Whitman on one thing, however – the captain, he dead:

“Sentences  broken, ‘gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital. At present low, but will be soon better’ ……..
While they stand at home at the door,
he is dead already
The only son is dead”
(Walt Whitman: Come Up From The Field Father)

In the case of Dylan’s brave soldier, on which side of the Civil War he fought is of little consequence:

“A letter to mother came today
Gunshot wound to the breast is what it say
But he’ll be better soon, he’s in a hosipital bed
But he’ll never be better – he’s already dead”
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

And the Titanic’s sailing on the morning tide.

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.

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

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

By Tony Attwood

This is one of the Wilbury Volume 3 songs that is very obviously a Dylan piece from beginning to end, a sort of reversal of “She to Belongs to Me.”   But I must admit that both these titles have always made me feel somewhat awkward in terms of their possessiveness.  However maybe I was just brought up differently from Dylan when it comes to the question of “owning” a woman.  It’s just not something I would want to say or sing about.

A woman – just like any man – might be making bad choices, and of course the duty of friends is to offer support and help, and indeed to offer an alternative future, but in the end we all make our own worlds.  Or at least that is how it seems to me.   Traditional rock ‘n’ roll has it otherwise though.  That’s always been its problem.

But perhaps my problem with the song is that it is just too trite, and too obvious.  Except of course where we do get the occasional amusing line such as, “You say let’s go to the rodeo to see some cowboy fall.”

The trouble with such fun and games as that though, is that we then get hit by,

The guy your with is a ruthless pimp
Everybody knows
Every cent he takes from you
Goes straight up his nose.

It doesn’t quite fit with the rodeo comment.  In fact the song is more like a set of disconnected snapshots, rather than a coherent story, and somehow comes across to me as a song written very much in a hurry.

The other link we find here

You’re saying that you’re all washed up
Got nothing else to give.
Seems like you would’ve figured out
How long you have to live

is a sort of mirror image of Positively 4th Street

You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it

except that in “Belonged to me” the singer wants her, although he is berating her behaviour.  In “4th Street” he’s showing total disdain, and the disdain is so much more powerful, the song so much more focused than in this later effort.

My unhappiness about “If you belonged to me” thus comes from the feeling (and it is nothing more than that, just a feeling) that Dylan was coming up with some good lines and then rushing in with the rest of the lyrics to complete the song, adding lyrics whether they particularly fit or not.  For example with

Waltzing round the room tonight
In someone else’s clothes.
You’re always coming out of things
Smelling like a rose.

the last two line neither follow from the first two, nor have the power of the image of the first two.  “Smelling like a rose” has all the sign of being quickly thrown in to make the rhyme.  Which is a shame, because within the context of pop and rock, I can’t think of anything else that has the image of waltzing in someone else’s clothes.  It deserved a better second couplet than it got, in my view.

In the end

Waltzing round the room tonight
In someone else’s clothes.

and

You say let’s go to the rodeo
And see some cowboy fall.

are the stand out couplets, and the rest of the song seems rather ordinary – a reflection I am sure of the short amount of time Bob had to write the song while a) no one else in the Wilburys seemed to have very many ideas at all and b) he was also producing “Under the Red Sky”, and c) getting ready to go on tour.

Here’s a link to the song, in case you don’t have the album.

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.

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

A reason for Bob Dylan’s winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, not recognized by most ‘pure poets’, is his masterful transforming of the literary technique, known as the ‘dramatic monologue’, popularized by the Victorian poet Robert Browning, to song lyrics (with accompanying music): a narrative sung by a persona that indirectly reveals the character of the persons involved therein.

“In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force –
Gold of course
O heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood thar burns”
(Robert Browning: Love Among The Ruins)

Transformed to song:

“Altars are burning with flames far and wide
The foe has crossed over from the other side
They tip their caps from the top of the hill
You can feel them come, more brave blood to spill
……..
Stars fell over Alabama, I saw each star
You’re walking in dreams, whoever you are
Chilled are the skies, keen as the frost
The ground’s froze hard, and the morning is lost”
(Bob Dylan: ‘Cross The Green Mountain)

Floating behind the theatre of war in Browning’s poem is the spectre of poet William Blake.

And also behind Dylan’s song; including it’s title:

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen”
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Blake’s poems, flavoured by Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystic visions, depict
earth-bound humans as half-demon, half-god, composed of basic elements: air (spirit), water (power), and fire (emotion). When out of balance  these elements result in historical eras of icy reason, and inflamed emotion.

A view presented in earlier Elizabethan poetry regarding the personal level:

“My love is like ice, and I to fire
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dussolved through my
So hot desire”
(Edmund Spenser: Ice And Fire)

Still used as trope in songs of these modern times:

“Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire”
(Johnny Cash: Ring Of Fire)

“You know all the rules by now
And the fire from the ice”
(Grateful Dead: Uncle John’s Band)

“You will never quench the fire
You’ll give into your desire”
(Billy Joel: The Stranger)

“It burned like fire
This burning desire”
(U2: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For)

“I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought
would never end”
(James Taylor: Fire And Rain)

What is on the site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

Ever since I first heard this song I have had this strange image of Bob coming into the recording studio and talking to the band.

“I’ve got a new song,” he says.

“OK,” say the guys, “have you got a chord sequence for us to follow?”

“There’s only one chord,” says Bob.

“Right,” they say, looking nervous.  “How long is the piece?”

“Nine minutes,” says Bob.

“What’s it about Bob?”

“Three people.”

“And what happens to them?”

“They all die.”

Tempest is an album about people dying – in a bad way.  Strangulation, being garrotted, drowning… that sort of thing.  This time we get adultery, murder and suicide while the double bass slips around over and over again.   Did the bass player actually have to play that same riff 100 times?  Maybe, but actually I hope for his/her own sanity Bob just asked for one verse and then replayed the bass part over and over.  And over.

As for the story, we know it is all going to go wrong from the opening.  “It was late last night when the boss came home” – somehow sounds to me like a 1950s American detective film in black and white, although as I was reminded a bit later when I went a looking, it is the opening line of  ‘Gypsy Davy’ by Woody Guthrie.  And the story comes from Black Jack Davy which Bob recorded for “Good as I have been to you”.   And that’s what we have here.  Bob going back over old ground.  That doesn’t make it any the worse for that, but I am not sure that it is old ground that I personally need covering again.

And if I might divert for a moment, if you are interested in the heritage of this song, and if you’ve not heard it before, do take in the White Stripes version of Black Jack Davy.

But back to Bob.   All of these songs cast their eyes back to The Gypsie Laddie, with the same notion of the wandering men who will tempt the young woman who has all the riches and security a fine nobleman can give her.  This causes the Lord to chase after the woman.

Dylan’s fascination with the wanderers, takes us back yet again to the Parting Glass, and it is a theme seemingly as old as English, Scottish and Irish folk songs.   Songs such as “The Raggle Taggle Gypsies”.  But in these songs of the woman giving it all up to go off with the stranger, there are also two other sub-plots.  One is the perfidious nature of women; the songs were written and sung by men for the most part, and women come off badly in the telling.  The other is the semi-magical quality of the traveller who doesn’t need the security most of us live within, and who can wander on, knowing they will always find money somewhere, and always be able to tempt the most beautiful woman away.

So with the opening “It was late last night when the boss came home”, with the eternally unchanging chord, and the unchanging double bass we get the picture, and we’re off into 9 minutes of black and white gloom.  And just in case we haven’t got it, we reference “Old Henry Lee” another name from the annals of history.

And so we move on with the three people in the story talking to each other, although sometimes it takes a moment to work out who is talking to whom.  And meanwhile there are so many references back to folk songs that it is sometimes hard to remember whether these are genuine folk songs being referenced or contemporary versions of what people think folk songs ought to sound like or just lines that sound as if they ought to come from folk songs.   “Well, they rode all night, and they rode all day…” I have heard it so often while listening to the song I can’t really remember where it started from.  (Black Jack Davy again, in this case, but it took me a while to get there).

So the roots of the song keep coming back to us, whether we can actually remember the exact origin of each line, or not, as with

“Well, saddle for me my coal black stud
He’s speedier than the gray
I rode all day and I’ll ride all night
And I’ll overtake my lady
I’ll bring back my lady”

from Black Jack Davy.   Bob gives us

Well, they rode all night, and they rode all day
Eastward, long down the broad highway
His spirit was tired and his vision was bent
His men deserted him and onward he went

It is curious perhaps to throw in the notion that within all this Bob is having fun – after all it this is a song about three deaths, and there is doom and gloom at every turn.  But as others have pointed out before me, there is a mix of contemporary images and references to times past throughout, and the ultimate implication is that Bob is messing with the genre, not the specific story.   Perhaps he hopes that in 100 years people will look back to this piece as giving a re-birth to the narrative song format… but I doubt it.

I doubt it because the format was designed as a story telling format to occupy and entertain people without the mass media.  People who were often illiterate, and for whom the only stories were the ones told or sung; mostly sung because singing a song makes it easier to remember.

But throughout, back in this song, we ourselves get as confused as the characters in the tale.   Just think of  “‘Husband?’ What husband? What the hell do you mean?”  And we are left thinking as we try to take this latest twist in, “Yes, what exactly is going on?”

The confusion that runs through the whole song could be a reminder of the way the original folk songs of this type evolved – making sense was not necessarily part of the agenda (an extreme case being Nottamun Town which Dylan used as a basis of “Masters of War”).   Which still leaves the question, is this a set of deliberate confusions reflecting the film noir origins of the piece, or was Bob just putting down the lines he thought of as he wrote the piece full on, not going back to check for any sort of consistency.

Or again it might be Bob doing what he has always done, giving us snippets and insights, and then as fast as we have got them, taking them away again.   Maybe this is the reason that the official Bob Dylan site fails even now (2017) to give us the lyrics of a song that has been out and about for several years.

My own guess, for what it is worth, is that Bob had no interest in delivering a story that makes sense.  That is not the point at all.  What we have is a never ending story.  Yes in one sense they all die, but that’s not quite right, so we can go back and sing the song again – if you really, really want to.

I think what we have here is not a story that needs to be taken apart but a story that is dark and mysterious that like the unchanging bass line just goes round and around and around.

But I find myself wondering – do many people play this song a lot.  I am sure some do.  However I found that after a couple of hearings it makes me sort of glaze over.  If I put the album on I listen, but find I’ve got to the end of the song without actually listening to it.

Some Dylan songs do remove part of the essence of music on occasion; It’s alright Ma is virtually all on one note except for the suddenly contrasting end of each verse (“So don’t fear / if you hear / a foreign sound…”).  It is that end of each verse, and the incredible power and drive of the main body of each verse that makes the song one we can listen to over and over.  But “Tin Angel”… we can listen, but I am not sure it has much impact.

What is on the site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dylan On Dylan:
The Songs Of Bob Dylan And The Poems Of Dylan Thomas

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan works Christian teachings into his artistic endeavours as does William Blake: that is, its teachings before they are corrupted by social and political authorities.

Dylan’s adventures with a Christian fundamentalist organization does not dissuade him from doing so, though the hypocrisy of its adherents leads him to hammer nails of protestations into his song lyrics.

Dylan is not confused; it be they. Throughout his works, even in his children-oriented ones, the songwriter is very consistent in philosophical outlook. He criticizes not only others, but himself: one should not stay where one does not belong, when your journey down the road of life enables you to see that one shouldn’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. But this road from innocence to experience is a bumpy one. The sign blinks: “Fasten your seat belt”.

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

With a metaphoric catechism that he carries on his shoulder, Bob Dylan chases away the literalistic dogma that’s nipping at his bootheels:

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

The hem, torn or not, of Neo-Romantic poetry, the songwriter and singer finds more appealing than the religious garment that’s been ripped to pieces by the dogma of church leaders.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Wild men who caught the sun in flight”
(Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)

And similar NeoRomantic singer/songwriters:

“If you dance with me tonight
We’ll catch the dying of the light and we’ll catch the sun”
(High Flying Birds: The Dying Of The Light)

Led by the high-flying poetic birds – William Blake and Walt Whitman , Dylan Thomas is a bird that needs to spread its poetic wings:

“Let me escape
Be free, (wind for my tree and water for my flower)
Live self for self
And drown the gods in me
Or crush their viper heads beneath my foot
No space, no space, you say
But you’ll not keep me in
Although your cage is strong”
(Dylan Thomas: Let Me Escape)

So sings Bob Dylan from his bower of beechen green and shadows numberless:

“Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low…….
Let the bird sing, let the bird fly”
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

Said it has been that from the Welsh poet, Dylan takes his name.

Who are those among you that doubt  that this is true?

“Children of darkness got no wings
This we know, we got no wings
Stay in a circle chalked upon the floor
Waiting all vainly this we know”
(Dylan Thomas: Children Of Darkness  Got No Wings)

What is on the site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

As we have seen Bob Dylan had one of his occasional pauses in 1976 (his first since the prolonged drought of 1971/2) but in 1977 and 1978 he had returned with a new vigour and vitality.  Then as one of the last songs of 1978 he wrote what may be seen as the first of his Christian songs Slow Train.   Now in 1979 he entered the full-blown period of Christian songs with a vengeance.

18 songs survive from this year, and many of them must still qualify as exceptional pieces of music – songs which in many ways took us into a new form of Christian song writing (which I am not sure the Christian church – at least in my country) has ever really valued as it should have done.

From early in the year we have the incredibly plaintive I believe in You and looking at this again I’ve found an interesting concert recording of this which is not mentioned in the original but is most certainly worth a listen

Precious Angel certainly stands out as a remarkable song but if you have read my ramblings through these songs you will know already where I am going to go for the absolute, amazing standout moment of the year: it is the live version of  When He Returns

Coming to write this resume of the year I was horrified to find that the link to the live recording I raved about in the review was no longer working.  So I’ve put up two more links to the concerts in that review, and one to an acoustic version.

As I said in the subject line for that review it is “The one Dylan performance that could convert a sinner such as me”.   Just checking on Google I see that headline comes up third on page one of a search for that song, after the official site and A-Z lyrics – at least where I live (it will vary in other places of course).  But it suggests at least some people found the headline worthy of a click!  I hope the readers enjoy the article too.

What really strikes me in listening again to the songs from this year in the order they were written is that Dylan really did get some incredibly good work out of this period.  Blessed is the Name is a great piece of music no matter how you analyse it, and Solid Rock is written in a completely different way from any other Dylan song I know, and it also is most certainly still worth exploring the live recordings we have.

But still, in working through the year again, nothing to my mind surpasses the live version of “I believe in You”.  And I write that as one who does not believe.

The question we faced at the end of this year was would Dylan keep the productivity up? He had paused in 1968 and taken a while to return to full-blown genius in his writing, and as I mention above he had done the same again in 1971/2.  But now here he was with 18 songs in one year and still going strong.  It may not have been the subject matter I would have asked for, but the musical quality was sublime.

1. Gotta Serve Somebody
2. I believe in You
3. Ye Shall be Changed
4. Trouble in mind
5. Man gave names to all the animals
6. No Man Righteous
7. Gonna change my Way of Thinking
8. Precious Angel
9. When you gonna wake up
10. When He Returns
11. Saving Grace
12. Blessed is the Name
13. Covenant Woman
14. In the Garden
15. Pressing On
16. Saved
17. Solid Rock
18. What can I do for you?

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

The Bobby Horror Picture Show

By Larry Fyffe

Though sometimes romantic, changing times can be scary. Dylan reproduces the latter feeling through pictures Gothic, word-movies of gloom and doom where lightning flash highlights crooked trees, delapidated buildings, rusty gates, decaying gardens, howling wolves, tolling church bells, and medieval hill-top castles. A horror film where decadent individuals, often grotesque and sexually deviant, roam the aisles after midnight while on the screen, mad aristocrats and crazed scientists experiment on the dead.

Bob Dylan whistles as he walks down the row of grave-yard seats:

“Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow”

The sounds of a ghost pierces his ears:

“Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs
Where beauty cannot keep her
lustrous eyes”
(John Keats)

And a high-born ghost howls from the ruins of the balcony:

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

Bobby’s date is injured by falling plaster, and he gently lifts Annabel, Frankie Lee’s beautiful sister, from her sepulcher by the seat:

“The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing”

A dust-covered ghost screams, this time down by the neon exit sign:

“Leave my loneliness unbroken – quit the bust above my door
Take thy beak from out my heart, and
take thy form from off my door
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’ ”
(Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven)

Outside in the streets, scenes of terror :

“At midnight all the agents and the super-human crew
Come out and round up everyone
that knows more than they do
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 is escaping to
Desolation Row”

Dylan and his date manage to escape the crumbling building by running across the road to the movie-house  called  ‘Paradise’,  but it’s on  fire:

“In the city’s melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin’ rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned, and forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing”

‘Nighmare’, the main feature showing:

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

And it’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall.

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

by Tony Attwood

This is one of the songs on volume 3 (which is to say the second album) by the Travelling Wilbury’s (as far as I can work out, probably the first to be recorded) that clearly has a fair amount of Dylan in it, but how much is always a matter for debate.

Quite clearly the section Bob sings is his

You see your second cousin
Wasted in a fight
You say he had it coming
You couldn’t do it right
You’re in a western movie, playing the part
The devil’s been busy in your back yard

and it sounds like a flashback to Brownsville Girl, but it is very disconnected from the rest of the song.  It is almost as if he just listened to the tune and wrote his bit, without any reference to the rest.

That is not to knock the opening, which is pure Tom Petty, and I just wonder if Bob would ever be knowingly associated with a song that uses a golf course as its setting.  Does he play golf?  If he does I must have missed it, but whoever wrote this (I guess it is Tom) knows the slang of golf in the way Dylan knows the blues.

Verse two is more Bob, than verse one, with the outer space reference and the theme of being anti-space travel that Dylan delved into at this time.

Steaming down the highway
With your trucks of toxic waste
Where you gonna hide it
In the outer space?

The middle 8 seems a bit of a nothing land to me, it is just there because the guys said, “hey we need a middle 8” – which is something Bob has never done as far as I can recall.  When he puts in a middle 8 he puts it in for a purpose, not just for the sake of it.

But then at last we are onto the real Bob bit.

You see your second cousin
Wasted in a fight
You say he had it coming
You couldn’t do it right
You’re in a western movie, playing the part
The devil’s been busy in your back yard

What makes me think Bob didn’t write the rest of the song is the fact that this obviously Dylan verse is so divorced from the rest of the show.  Forget the golf courses, this is about… well something else, although I am not sure what.

The next break tells us nothing we didn’t know

Sometimes they say you’re wicked
But you know that can’t be bad
Sometimes you’re better off not knowing
It’ll only make you sad

And then it must be George or Jeff Lynne.  No one else in the band is going to write about Piccadilly and know its particular significance are they?  Nor are they going to lay on the silly mock upper-crust accent for “dash” and “cash”, which as a Londoner born and bred I find rather offensive.   The Kinks did it with “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” and did it well, but Sir Ray Davies lived just a few miles from me, so he’s entitled to.

But quite what the reference to sticky willy means I don’t really know.   Sticky willy is a plant that geese eat (commonly known as goose grass).  And….?  I don’t know.  If you know, please tell.
.
They’re coming down Picadilly
Dripping at the dash
Wasting sticky Willy
Covering him with their cash
They just might not have noticed, they’ve been beating him so hard
And the devil’s been busy in your back yard

It’s all a bit of a mixture.  Pleasant enough but it’s not going to set the world alight, nor even your house on fire.  But nice to know that Bob can take something this vague and send it off in a totally different direction.  Who cares what the strap line means, this will do.

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

By Larry Fyffe

Throughout the poetry of William Blake, good and bad spirits flitter; the pre-Romantic poet envisions that, in the past, there was a time when the material human body was not out of balance; not overly-governed by Reason to the detriment of Intuition and Imagination:

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountan green
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pastures seen”
(Blake: Jerusalem)

In his poetry, Samuel Coleridge rejects the tenets of organized religion to a much lesser extent than Blake does; the Romantic poet Coleridge envisions in external Nature a sense of Oneness; an Absolute Spirit showing human reason, intuition and imagination to be united.

“And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incence-bearing tree
And here were forests ancient as the hills
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery”
(Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

Bob Dylan, with his Judaic background takes issue with Coleridge’s conclusion that the Promised Land is here now. No, the metaphoric Messiah is yet to come.

Coleridge’s flaw: unlike fellow Romantic transcendentalist poet William Wordsworth, Samuel mixes his poetic vision with a hard drug, pain-relieving opium:

“And all should cry, Beware, Beware
His flashing eyes, his flashing hair
Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise”
(Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

Coleridge and Dylan are both aware of the same biblical verse:

“And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians
And to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large
Unto a land flowing with milk and honey”
(Exodus 3:8)

America is not the Promised Land, according to Bob Dylan; its people tricked, drugged, and enslaved by the Great Deceiver into believing ‘The American Dream’ – that all of men can be saved by worshipping at the feet of the Golden Calf.

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

Adding  a typical Dylanesque sardonic twist at the end; Dylan can ‘t help it, if he’s lucky!

The myth of the American Dream sticks.   However, for the great majority of Americans it’s not believable.

So Bob Dylan sides politically with Ginsberg-heralded ‘no-more-auction block’ Abolitionist poet Wiliam Blake, and not with the sedated Samuel  Coleridge.

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

By Tony Attwood

Doing some basic research in preparation to write this review, I stumbled on a Wikipedia link which says, “There is consensus that the majority of songs do not meet Wikipedia’s notability guidelines. Songs should only have an individual article when there is enough material to warrant a detailed article.”

2 x 2 does not meet such guidelines apparently.

I am not sure if that enables me to say that they are wrong (given all the reviews on this site) or for them to point to this site and say, “well, there you are, a perfect example of why we should not write reviews about individual songs.”

And certainly not many people have had much to say about “2 x 2”.  Perhaps it is because the notion of the animals coming in two by two is so much part of the telling of Christian tales to children, that we are resistant to the notion of it becoming a suitable song for us to admit that we like.

It is also a song that Heylin records as having its lyrics changed as Bob worked on the recordings.   Apparently the song originally ended with a clear commitment to the religious connotations of “two by two”

One by one, they step in the ark
Two by two they live in the dark
Three by three what will be will be
You can tell it some more

One by one Thy will be done
Two by two I’m telling it true
Three by three, why can’t you see
Four by four you’ve seen it before.

In the actual record version it ends

One by one, they follow the sun
Two by two, to another rendezvous

with more lines added although hard to make out as the song fades out.

Now these two versions are completely different from each other and indeed give the whole song a different meaning.  Having the song end with “Thy will be done” says absolutely clearly that the “two by two” is most certainly a reference to Noah and the tales of the Old Testament.

But now with that gone, and the revised ending, we have a journey that goes round and round, we just keep on keeping on, I gotta keep moving… we are in the world of the traveller journeying down the never ending road, the world of the “Restless Farewell” and the “Parting Glass”  An utterly different proposition.

But I love this song, not least because I think it is totally fascinating that Dylan could shift a song from the totally religious of One by one, they step in the ark into the utterly secular One by one, they follow the sun in this way.

For “they follow the sun” is not just secular,  but it also represents within those four words an entire philosophy of life, a philosophy that says we can keep moving, we don’t have to be part of the fixed community of a religious group, a member of the family or community or society.  We can find and create our own destiny – the antithesis of the fundamental Christian philosophy he preached for a couple of years.

This notion of individuality, following one’s dreams etc is much more in keeping with the very interesting off beat musical introduction that the song has, and the fact that the song overall is pure atmosphere and images, rather than concrete religious certainty.  These are images for us to play with, as the shadows move in and out of the music.

As such the “one by one” counting theme throughout is really of little consequence, for it becomes little more than a musical device for us to hold onto as we watch the images as they move along.  That is not to decry it, for all music needs devices to keep the audience happy, but it is to say that the notion is not one of expressing Christianity.  At least that is how it seems at first.

So we know at once that this is not religious doctrine that is preached within the song as we look at the opening verse.

One by one, they followed the sun
One by one, until there were none
Two by two, to their lovers they flew
Two by two, into the foggy dew
Three by three, they danced on the sea
Four by four, they danced on the shore
Five by five, they tried to survive
Six by six, they were playing with tricks

How else can we explain “they danced on the sea” and “they were playing with tricks”.  Certainly tricks have no part in the Christian message I know.  This is pure symbolism. This is mythology fair and square as the “middle 8” section reveals…

How many paths did they try and fail?
How many of their brothers and sisters lingered in jail?
How much poison did they inhale?
How many black cats crossed their trail?

Black cats is surely the biggest hint of all.   And yet following this message we get a kick sideways as Dylan says…

Seven by seven, they headed for heaven
Eight by eight, they got to the gate
Nine by nine, they drank the wine
Ten by ten, they drank it again

Clearly heaven and indeed the gates of heaven, through which the righteous process, are a Christian image.  But in Christianity the wine of communion is only sipped not drunk and drunk again.

The again we have

How many tomorrows have they given away?
How many compared to yesterday?
How many more without any reward?
How many more can they afford?

Now that seems to me to be a possible question of those who turn away from the one true path and here the procession of numbers breaks as we get “two by two” where we are expecting “one by one”

Two by two, they stepped into the ark
Two by two, they step in the dark
Three by three, they’re turning the key
Four by four, they turn it some more

One by one, they follow the sun
Two by two, to another rendezvous

So what we have are people travelling in many directions looking for possible answers, always moving on.   Did they find it, or are the people who search forever and never find a set answer the ones who are truly lost?  Or are they, through their constant searching, the only people who find true salvation, but pushing their enquiry ever onwards, rather than accepting the simple answers of following a Lord who demands worship, and an Armageddon war, which leads to the destruction and eternal torment of non-believers?

That certainly seems to be a possible explanation, and indeed the writer of the always fascinating Bob Dylan haiku series  who comes up with

Various people
Seem to have a good time, but
They’re actually not.

The site also says by way of commentary…

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what this song is about. “2×2” is from “Under the Red Sky” in 1990, and it seems like everyone distanced themselves from that album as quickly as they could. I like much of it, and I don’t mind listening to this song with my mind turned off. But when I try to climb into it, I find that I can’t. All I can see is that this Noah’s Ark procession of people seem to start off OK, and wind up in less fortunate circumstances than those in which they started.

1. They follow the sun until there are none.
2. They fly to their lovers in the dew.
3. They dance on the sea.
4. The dance on the shore.
5. They try to survive.
6. They play with tricks.
7. They go to heaven.
8. They get to the gate.
9. They drink the wine.
10. They drink it again.
2. They step in the ark
3. They turn the key.
4. They turn it more.
2. They follow the sun to another rendezvous

It is as good a commentary as any: for the song is confusing and my best guess is that at this time Dylan was profoundly confused.  But I would add, it is rather good to have Bob being confused over Christianity (if that was the case here) rather than endlessly telling us that it is the only way to salvation.

There is also, by the way, a suggestion that Elton John played on this song.  Dylan gave the song four outings in the summer of 1992 in which Dylan sang the “one by one until there were none” over and over until he moved into the next song.

It seems a decent tribute to a very engaging and entertaining song.

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

By Larry Fyffe

Ain’t it just like the knight to play tricks on you when you’re trying to be so quiet.

In some of his song lyrics, Bob Dylan is none other than the reincarnation of Don Quixote riding atop his tired old horse.

And like Miguel Cervantes’ noble knight-errant, he’s gentlemanly humorous about being overwhelmed by the decadent state of affairs that’s inherited from the past. He takes refuge in his own mind:

“And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow
You’re seeing that he’s chasing”
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

“It’s just windmills you see that’s he’s chasing”, Bob Dylan could just as well have written.

Since life’s too short for one idealistic visionary man to solve all the problems of these modern times, art’s the only shield, and a deranged detachment of the senses the only shelter from the raging storm outside.

Hope of progress is nothing but a romantic delusion:

“‘I think I’ll call it America’
I said as we hit land
I took a deep breath
I fell, I could not stand
Captain Ahab started writing up some deeds
He said, ‘Let’s set up a fort
And start buying this place with beads’
Just then a cop comes down the street
Crazy as a loon
He throws us all in jail
For carrying harpoons”
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

 The contrived symbols of social status, and the unmanly weapons of modern warfare are, for this valorous knight, the trademarks of fake crusaders out for selfish gain:

“Gypsy Davey with a blow torch, he burns their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle”
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)

Women, those helpless damsels in distress, our brave knight sees as heavenly creatures from another world:

“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
People carry roses
And make promises by the hour
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her”
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

But all is not what it seems …if you have some beads:

“Well, the last I heard of Ahab
He was stuck on a whale
That was married to the deputy
Sheriff of the jail”
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

Of course, for all this romantic foolishness, Dylan Quixote, suffers mightily:

“Just remember wakin’ up on a little shore
Head busted, stomach cracked
Feet splintered, I was bald, naked
Quite lucky to be alive though”
(Bob Dylan: Talkin’  Bear Mountain Picnic Blues)

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

Bob Dylan Has His Blake,
And Keats It Too

By Larry Fyffe

At a bar, Bob Dylan is sitting with Greg Lake (laughin’):

“Let’s do a song together.”

Lake: “I’ll do it, if the Guinness is free.

“No, not a Yeats’ poem; a Keith’s perhaps?”

“Funny thing you should say that……
The other evening, I did have a night in Gale Storm.”

“I must love you too much!”

“Well, my Mama, said the girl’s puttin’ you down
She’s gonna ruin my life
I must have loved you too much
Must of loved you too much”

The Dylan/Lake song lyrics stir a sweetish twist into the poem ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ by the melancholic John Keats:

“‘My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains…..
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot
But being too happy in thine happiness”

William Blake, the preRomantic poet,  is not at all jealous of children
being too happy with their lot:

“No, no, let us play for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep”
(William Blake: Nurse’s Song)

Dylan end-rhymes ‘fly’with ‘dry’, not with the above internal rhyme ‘sky’, when he reworks the poem into a song:

“Let the bird sing, let the bird fly
One day the man in the moon went home and the river went dry
Let the bird sing, let the bird fly
The man in the moon went home and the river went dry”
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)

Likewise, in the following song, Dylan celebrates the innocence of youth  sheltered somewhat from the detestable storms of adulthood:

“He’s young and on fire
Full of hope and desire
In a world that’s been raped
Raped and defiled”
(Lord Protect My Child)

The end-rhyme ‘fire’ and ‘desire’ are by Dylan varied in the lines above, changing the a-b-a-b  scheme that’s contained in Blake’s original:

“Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear; O let the clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire”
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Dylan changes ‘unfold’ to ‘unfolds’ from the above verse, and slightly off-rhymes the pluralized word with ‘old’, in the following verse:

“As his youth now unfolds
He is centuries old
Just to see him at play makes me smile
No matter what happens to me”
(Bob Dylan: Lord Protect My Child.)

Blake’s end-rhyme ‘fire’ and ‘desire’ again Dylan utilizes in:

“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”
(Bob Dylan: Nobody ‘Cept You)

Dylan playfully draws on the face of William Blake’s art: to get the trope, the concrete image, or the symbol he wants that imaginatively expresses the meek and the wild side of mankind’s existence here on Earth:

“Did He smile His work to see
Did he who made the Lamb make thee
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night”
(William Blake: The Tiger)

Dylan admires the murdered singer-songwriter John Lennon’s vitality when he was alive:

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

And expresses his own tiger/lamb innateness, his ‘animal’ versus ‘human’ side:

“A little confused, I remember well
And stopped into a strange hotel
With a neon sign burning bright
He felt the heat of the night”
(Bob Dylan: Simple Twist Of Fate)

Plus the spiritual and mystical feelings and visions that humans are capable of
experiencing:

“To see the world in a grain of sand
And Heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour”
(William Blake: To See The World In A Grain Of Sand)

Dylan follows Blake; rhymes ‘bright’ and ‘night’; ‘sand’ and ‘hand’:

“Don’t have the inclination to look back
on any mistake
Like Cain, I  now behold this chain of
events that I must break
In the fury of the moment, I can see the
master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand”
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)

Like Blake, Dylan considers organized religion a chain binding an individual’s freedom. Except for death, social norms are impossible to escape completely, even if you join a group like ‘Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything’:

“I saw a serpent…..
Vomiting his poison out
On the bread and on the wine
So I turned into a sty
And laid me down among the swine”
(William Blake: I Saw A Chapel)

It is characteristic of the Dylanesque writing technique to retain at least one of the end-words or end-rhymes used by the poet to which the songwriter alludes: end-rhyme ‘swine’ and ‘vine’ rather than ‘swine” and ‘wine’:

“Kill the beast and feed the swine
Scale the wall and smoke that vine
Feed the horse and saddle up the drum
It’s unbelievable, the day would finally come”
(Bob Dylan: Unbelievable)

The ‘drum’ being metonymy for ‘war’.

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

The Tale Of The Wicked Messenger And The Faithful Servant

By Larry Fyffe

The Nobel Prize in Literature’s not handed over to Bob Dyan because he gives unequivocal answers.

In the song ‘John Wesley Harding’, Dylan disguises himself as a Methodist outlaw of the Old West, and messes with the train tracks of biblical history.

In  the song ‘The Wicked Messenger’, Dylan, dresses himself up as the Old Testament prophet Samuel. This time, the songwriter keeps the slow train of biblical history that’s coming up around the bend on the mainline. Aboard is the Ark of the Ten Commandments that is supposed to be under the guard of the sons of Eli, high priest to the Israelites.

Bob, the time-traveller, is yet transfixed in perplexed wonderment:

“Though many a dark hour
I’ve been thinking about this
That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side”
(Bob Dylan: With God On Our Side)

A conundrum indeed since were it not for the ‘wicked messenger’ Judas, there’d be no dead man to take down from the cross, no God-ordained martyr to atone for the sins of mankind.

Steel-drivin’, rail-fixin’, “John Henry” Dylan travels back in time to the days when B.C.calendars hung on the walls. He’s not looking for Elvis in a big hotel, but for Eli, and ventures into the past where no Post-Modernist songwriter has gone before. Specifically, to the historical time recorded in the pages of the First Book of Samuel.

“There was a wicked messenger from Eli he did come
With a mind that multiplied the smallest matter
When questioned who had sent for him,
he answered with his thumb
For his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter”

Samuel’s mother Hannah apprenticed her son to Eli, she being thankful to the high priest for blessing her desire to produce a child. Young Samuel hears a voice while half-asleep in the back-room, and he assumes that it’s the all-knowing Eli calling him to arise for further religious instruction.

“He stayed behind the assembly hall,
it was there he made his bed
Oftentimes, he could be seen returning
Until one day he just appeared
with a note in his hand which read
‘The soles of my feet, I swear, they’re burning”

Eli informs Samuel that it’s God’s voice that the apprentice is hearing, and that he must carefully record what God says. Samuel is afraid to tell his religious instructor what God said to him: that He is going to punish Eli, his two sons, and all of his kin because the priest did not admonish his sons for disobeying God’s Commandments. Eli demands that Samuel tell him what he knows. Upon hearing the message, the devout priest makes no attempt to repent, but simply accepts the fate that God has bestowed upon him.

“Oh, the leaves begin to fallin’
and the seas begin to part
And the people that confronted him were many
And he was told but these few words
which opened up his heart
‘If you cannot bring good news, then
don’t bring any.”
(Bob Dylan: The Wicked Messenger)

A Philistine attack defeats the Israelites; the Ark which Eli’s two offspring are assigned to safeguard captured. The sons are killed, and Eli dies on hearing all the bad news.

Had Samuel not been a “wicked messenger”, he’d not have been God’s “faithful ambassador”; the young man is rewarded, and appointed high priest in place of the dead Eli. All because the Lord is so pleased that the Universe is unfolding as He planned it.

Good news that is indeed.

“A wicked messenger falleth into mischief; but a faithful ambassador is health.”
(Old Testament: Proverbs, 13:17)

What else is on this site

1: Over 360 reviews of Dylan songs. 

2: The Dylan Chronologies.  

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  .

4:   The Discussion Group    Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.

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

By Tony Attwood

Bob co-wrote “Heartland” starting with the melody and maybe the first line (see below) in 1990, and recorded it with Willie Nelson in 1993, but didn’t use it in concerts until 2004 when it played it seven times, before finally putting it away.

The original (very incomplete) version was recorded the same day as “Under the Red Sky”, but without any (or any save the first line) the lyrics – the rest of the guys came in and played the piece with the tape running, and eventually it went to Willie Nelson.

There is an obvious link here since it is often said that Dylan inspired Willie Nelson’s annual Farm Aid benefit concerts with an off-the-cuff comment at Live Aid in 1985 that maybe some of the money raised at Live Aid should be given to help the impoverished farmers in the United States.

But despite two independent sources giving the story that Dylan simply had the melody and accompaniment Heylin objects to this on three grounds.  First is the notion that rhyme scheme is very un-Nelson.  Second there is the thought that a number of other Dylan songs of the era that reflected his concern for rural communities and for ecology.  And the third is the fact that booklet that accompanies the “Across the Borderline” album specifies for this song “Music & Lyrics by Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson”.

So maybe Dylan was singing the first line rather than just humming it, when it was recorded, or maybe Dylan even added some more.  Certainly this sort of commentary about the rural poor was there in all those blues songs he knew in the 1960s, and it was equally certainly there in Hollis Brown – and how!

Heylin might well be right, but not for the first time, I think Heylin’s desire to track where every paper clip fell on the floor during a night in the studio (as it were), is his worst enemy, because in spite or, or maybe due to, all this extraordinary detail he fails to listen to the music.

This is a remarkably simple but very effective, plaintive country melody in the first verse, and for me it is a total shame when the accompaniment comes in because at that point the message is (for me) lost.  Worse the instrumental verse just does it no favours most particularly with its unexpected modulation.  What was a powerful message thus becomes somewhat lost; but that is probably just because I don’t listen to much country music.

And its a shame because the first verse really does hit home…

There’s a home place under fire tonight in the heartland
And the bankers are taking my home and my land from me
There’s a big achin’ hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be

That may not read as great poetry, and you might find it rather sickly, but do listen to it (on the Across the Borderline album).   Indeed when listening do also take in track 10: “What was it you wanted?” the only other Dylan song on the album.

Back with “Heartland” the lyrics continue throughout the song in the same manner, but with the band playing, and so for me the rest of the piece doesn’t work.  But I am certainly not an aficionado of country and western, so really I am not the right person to comment.

Here’s the second verse

There’s a home place under fire tonight in the heartland
There’s a well where the water’s so bitter nobody can drink
Ain’t no way to get high and my mouth is so dry that I can’t speak
Don’t they know that I’m dyin’ why’s nobody cryin’ for me

The final verse continues in the same manner

There’s a home place under fire tonight in a heartland
And bankers are taking the homes and the land away
There’s a young boy closin’ his eyes tonight in a heartland
Who will wake up a man with some land and a loan he can’t pay.

Very true Bob; very worth saying.  But then, that’s capitalism for you.

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 7000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.  Not every index is complete but I do my best.   Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

After the extraordinary outpouring of compositions by Dylan in 1977 in terms of the Street Legal songs, Dylan went in a different direction.  The songs that he added in 1978 to the Street Legal collection (New Pony and Baby Stop Crying) are not, in my opinion, anything like the standard of the previous year’s songs.

But for most of the time in this year Dylan worked with Helena Springs to produce a collection of ok songs, but by and large nothing really special although there is one rather good piece towards the end of the year, in my opinion.

The undoubted highlight for me is I must love you too much after which Dylan composed the decidedly odd (at least in terms of subject matter) Stepchild and Legionnaire’s disease before utterly changing direction with Slow Train which took us into a completely new Dylan World.

Slow Train is not a religious song as such, although it heralded a new Dylan era, but rather as I noted in the review it is a song which tells us we have become disenfranchised because we choose to see ourselves as disenfranchised.  If Dylan had continued with that theme who knows what amazing, radical, and indeed revolutionary songs he would have written in the following year.

But he didn’t – he went instead down the exact opposite direction.  Instead of saying that the world we see around us is the world we choose to make, he said that we were here because of the design of the Supreme Being.  We had to worship the Lord in order to avoid eternal damnation, rather than find a way to change how we look at the world.

Dylan thus chose the much simpler religious route and this song became associated with that religious approach.  It need not have been however, and without the future Slow Train it would have stood alone as a bold statement of man’s ability to screw up his own mind and his own future.

But this is all a completely different world view from “I love you too much” and potentially a much more complex world view.  But to be complete, to my mind, it needed to be followed through.  Which is why “I love you too much” remains my choice for the Dylan song of the year, although as a stand alone song I have to give Slow Train Coming second billing.   If the next album had not been 100% religious we might have seen Slow Train in a new light, but as it was, its message was immediately undermined.

Elsewhere

Articles on Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Year by Year, Decade by Decade

An index to every song reviewed on this site is on the home page – just scroll down.

The Discussion Group

We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase in, on your Facebook page or go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/254617038225146/  It is also a simple way of staying in touch with the latest reviews on this site and day to day news about Dylan.

by Larry Fyffe

Whether the Canadian-created crusader Superman, the Canadian-acted spaceman Captain Kirk, or the Spanish Cervantes horse-riding Don Quixote, Bob Dylan disguises himself as various members of The League Of Justice, and attempts to fix everybody’s problems ‘cept mine.

He beams down into the days of the Old West in America, where Alias James Kirk, he finds himself caught amidst religious strife, and, you guessed it,  once again violates “The Prime Directive”, thereby changing the preordained course of all human history.

Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on a hot afternoon, and the town’s got reason to be nervous.

In the local saloon, ‘Injun’ William Blake, sits at a table with black-hatted John Calvin, “the Puritan Cowboy”, who’s sitting beside a man in a long dusty coat. They’re playing high-stakes poker  with “Saint Auggie”, the town-sheriff, who’s also its stilt-walkin’ court-judge, coffin-sellin’ undertaker, and fire-breathing High Priest.

Not to mention, he’s the reincarnation of Paul Revere’s tired ‘river-horse’, an animal that God thought he’d call a Hippopotamus.

On the wall of the smoke-filled saloon hangs a poster that reads:

Wanted Dead Or Alive:

The ‘No-Doer Gang’, led  by the notorious religious outlaw John Calvin who claims salvation isn’t for everyone, but predestined for just a few; so it’s no use trying to save yourself with good works; faith, and faith alone, is all you’ve got.
Signed: Sheriff Augustine.

Captain Kirk, of course,  realizes that the Sheriff of Deadwood is loaded down with gold given to him by some Italian priest from the thirteenth century , and that the lawman is under direct orders to search out, stack the deck against, and then to lock up the ‘Predestination Gang’ in the fiery cells of Hell for all of Eternity:

“I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive as you of me
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery
With a blanket underneath his arm
And a coat of solid gold
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold”
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine)

The religious tension arises from the Holy Bible’s Romans 2:13.

“For not the hearers of the law are just before the Lord, but the doers of the law shall be justified”.

Thinking quickly, the captain of the “Enterprise”  dresses himself up as John Wesley Harding; knocks on the door of Auggie’s Office, and claims he’s an outlaw from Methodist County.

Tells Sheriff Augustine: “We don’t got no predestination, we don’t need no stinkin’ predestination”. Both gunmen agree that Cowboy Cal’s doctrine is bad for business, and that the outlaw gang has to be dealt with:

“Calvin, Blake, and Wilson
Gamble in the dark
None of them would ever live to tell of the disembark”
(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

‘Cole’ Wilson later reappears in the Post-Modern western movie ‘Deadman’; Johnny Depp stars as accountant William Blake.

In Deadwood, puritanical Cal catches the corrupt ‘saintly’ churchman cheating at cards, and, takes Augustine out onto Mainstreet, and drills him full of holes.

John Wesley, himself a religious outlaw, but a ‘doer’, swears he’ll hunt down the black-hearted, card-playing Cal, and bring the ‘dishonest, sheep-herding cowpoke’ back to Deadwod to face justice.

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

With a gun in every hand, Wesley discovers Calvin’s still in Deadwood.

“Where?”

“Down by the corral.”

“Well, tell him: ‘It’s not OK’ “.

Just then lightning thunders; it’a dark and stormy night, and a shot rings out.

Cal, ‘the dirty little coward’ hits the dirt, aces and eights go flying everywhere, and members of the audience near the back-door of movie house shout: “John Wayne is the bravest of them all.”

A little confused, Spaceman Wesley-Dylan flips open his communicator:

“This is your captain speaking!….Scotty, beam me up.”

Elsewhere

Articles on Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Year by Year, Decade by Decade

An index to every song reviewed on this site is on the home page – just scroll down.

The Discussion Group

We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase in, on your Facebook page or go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/254617038225146/  It is also a simple way of staying in touch with the latest reviews on this site and day to day news about Dylan.