Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

1989 for Bob Dylan was the year of visiting dark places both real and imagined.  A year of getting stuck in the mud.  A year of dreams, wherein reality fades in and out until finally it can’t be recalled any more.  A year, ultimately, of the fear of being lost forever.  Of being so far gone there is no way back.

This year, perhaps more than any other, really does need the Chronology – the list of Dylan compositions in the order they were written, not in the order they were released on albums.  For it is only by hearing them in the order of writing that we can see Bob’s movement of this year, as he is drawn along by the tide rather than striding out along his own path.  Only by hearing the whole collection can we understand the individual compositions.

Indeed if ever in some strange fantasy land Bob’s record company came to me and said, “Hey Tony, we’d like you to create an album of Bob’s songs that has some sort of overall meaning beyond being a compilation of your favourites” I’d say, “here’s an album called ‘1989: The dark is just beginning”.  But the tracks have to be in the order in which they were written.”

That running order tht I demand is

Now the series of songs makes sense when heard in that order, and we can see, for example, why “Series of Dreams” didn’t make it onto an album.  It makes sense within the context of my mythical album “1989” but far less sense anywhere else.  For “1989” is an album about dreams and nightmares.  About reaching out to reality, and then being betrayed by it so totally that in the end it isn’t there.

In this sequence of songs more than in any other I can think of, the old certainties are long, long since gone.  We can communicate no longer.  We can try, but no matter how hard we try, our attempts to communicate end up as futile gestures.   Most of the time we can get through, but ultimately we are devoured by the Man in the Long Black Coat, the ultimate embodiment of the dark.

Born in Time which started this year gives us a hint of what was to come as Bob tells us of loss, loss, total loss

You were snow, you were rain
You were stripes, you were plain
Oh babe, truer words
Have not been spoken
or broken.

The theme of people by-passing each other stayed with Dylan through the much of the year for as we move on to songs like “What was it you wanted?” it is there again, but by this time our attempts at communication and at grasping the meaning are overpowered by our feelings of the utter uncertainty of the world around us.

Think mist, misunderstanding, two people by-passing each other, just missing each other in the fog, passing on opposite sides of the road never knowing the other was there; a world in which nothing is clear…and just in case we still haven’t got it, just listen to those echoes of the harmonica.  Talk about skeleton keys in the rain…

“What was it you wanted?” is planted right at the heart of this series of uncertainties, as the fog not only wraps itself around the people, but also about their meanings and their very existence.  Now we can’t even be sure we are still where we thought we were…

Is the scenery changing
Am I getting it wrong
Is the whole thing going backwards
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?

Isolation is total.  There is nothing save disassociation, falling apart, the failure of all communication and understanding, and it sure isn’t what pop and rock songs normally delve into.

Bob certainly was experimenting in this year as What was it you wanted is followed by other explorations such as Everything is Broken and then the Series of Dreams.

Most of the Time takes another twist on this world of dislocation, for here Little Boy Lost is back and admits

I don’t even notice she’s gone
Most of the time

and we know, of course, that is just an absolute and total piece of self-deception, made possible by the ever enclosing all-pervading dark.

That dreadful emptiness is so totally encapsulated within the song it is hard to imagine how Bob could have suddenly popped up with TV Talking Song but he did because this is another way to encapsulate the total meaninglessness of existence.  The trick is that it all appears to make sense but doesn’t, as that final brilliant outpouring of the year with  Man in a Long Black Coat shows us totally.   The dark makes no sense at all.

But people don’t live or die people just float
She went with the man in the long black coat.

Rarely has Dylan written more poignant, sad, desperate lines.   There’s nothing, simply nothing; everything is broken.  Take away the hope and all is lost.  We live in a world of nothingness.  We have no idea what we wanted, why we wanted it, where we were when we wanted it, or where we thought we might be going.

This is, for me, an amazing collection of songs that talk of desperation and loss, and which allow the listener to move inside the songs and appreciate what it is like, but then move outside of the songs again and look at it all as if we were watching a movie, and all without remaining trapped within.

If “Visions of Johanna” is written from the perspective of the outside observer watching Louise, Johanna and Little Boy Lost, this is the year Dylan got inside the head of Little Boy Lost and looked out at the world around him.

He was no longer a little boy for now he has grown up, but he iss still utterly, totally, desperately, lost.

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.

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

Seven Deadly Sins is one of the songs on Travelling Wilburys Vol 3 that has the sound and feel of being a Dylan song.  Indeed the video (below) makes this quite clear in the way that it focuses on Bob from the start to  the finish.

Quite how the song was recorded and re-mixed, and how much time Bob spent with the band, is a little open to dispute, but in the absence of other evidence it is probably safe to go along with Heylin’s notion that all the rest of the band felt the whole thing was a good idea, but they didn’t really have too many songs ready for the occasion.  So Bob did his songs.

The word “cheesy” comes to my mind by which I mean, rather corny.  You only have to listen to the opening line to know that it is a tribute to a slow 1950s doo-wop type of music that might be associated with a B side of a 78rpm by the Platters or the Teenagers.

There’s no harm in a tribute to this type of music, but to my mind there is a lot of doo-wop that is far superior to this.  But then I guess if Bob was contemplating something more original he probably would have kept it for himself.   Starting out with “Seven, Seven, Seven” as a way of building the harmony is rather … ordinary.

I say this because normally that build up of the harmonies by a doo-wap group heralds a song about love, lost love or dance.   I am far from being an expert on doo-wap, so I am struggling for examples, but “At the hop” by Danny and the Juniors comes to mind as a faster song which builds the harmonies in the same way and then tells us

Well, you can rock it you can roll it
You can slop and you can stroll it at the hop
When the record starts spinnin’
You chalypso when you chicken at the hop
Do the dance sensation that is sweepin’ the nation at the hop

Danny and The Juniors – At The Hop (1958) – YouTube  (I love the way they made the guys dress up in suits in order to mime).

Anyway, Bob’s lyrics are probably as meaningful at the start as those of  Artie Singer, John Medora, and David White.

Seven, seven, seven–deadly sins
That’s how the world begins
Watch out when you step in
For seven deadly sins
Seven deadly sins
That’s when the fun begins
(Seven deadly sins)

But then there is the twist – because Bob isn’t going to tell us about the deadly sins from the Bible (envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth and wrath) but rather his own list…

(Sin number one) was when you left me
(Sin number two) you said goodbye
(Sin number three) was when you told me a little white lie

(Sin number four) was when you looked my way
(Sin number five) was when you smiled
(Sin number six) was when you let me stay
Sin number seven was when you touched me and told me why

So the lady gets it both ways – one set for leaving him and one set for coming back again with a PS for giving him an explanation.  And that is it.  It’s all right for a couple of plays, but I wonder has anyone played it over and over (as I most certainly did when I first heard “Where were you last night?”)

The problem is that the song has just one musical idea and one lyrical idea, and neither of them is strong enough to carry the song through into something that we want to hear over and over.  It’s a bit of fun.  Nothing wrong with that, but it is just a bit of fun.

The chord sequence in the chorus is the standard for slow doo-wap – in this case A, F#m, D, E (or to be very precise E6).

The verse also has a standard sequence for this type of music; the piece modulates in almost classical style from A to D and then off we go.

D, E, A, A7

D, B7, E, F#m, E7

The only other comment I can make is that I read one review of the song which suggested it is a waltz.  Maybe I am getting senile but I can’t possibly see how this is a waltz – to me it is in standard four time, plodding along at 1, 2, 3, 4 throughout.

Yes, its ok as a knockaround, but it is a shame that all this stupendous talent could not have spent a little more time and put together something more original, as they did on the first album, and as I have intimated, as Dylan did later on this album with “Where were you last night.”

If this turned up on the Basement Tapes it would be fine, but this was a supergroup and I just think they could have done better.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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

It seems to me there are two explanations here.  Either I don’t quite see the point of Bye and Bye beyond it being a chance to quote some Shakespeare, sing a bit of a Billie Holliday song, and play diminished chords, or there is no point.  I’m not sure which.

But this it Bob, so I am it is just me being a bit stupid.   Anyway, let’s take the points in order.  First off, the Shakespeare comes from As You Like It,

Bob sings

Well, I’m scufflin’ and I’m shufflin’ and I’m walkin’ on briars
I’m not even acquainted with my own desires

and some 400 years before that Shakespeare in As You Like It had Rosalind say

No, some of it is for my child’s father. O, how
full of briers is this working-day world!

and elsewhere in the same scene

I do beseech your grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:
If with myself I hold intelligence
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires,
If that I do not dream or be not frantic,–
As I do trust I am not–then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your highness.

The scene is the one in which the Duke reveals he is jealous of how people look at Rosalind so is going to send her into exile – the sort of crazy thing that seemed to happen in these stories.   But Bob’s song doesn’t really have anything much to do with Shakespeare or those images, so I am not quite sure if there was any point here.

As for the diminished chord this is a particular type of four note chord found in swing, but not normally used in pop, and never used in blues.  And I think rarely if ever used in Dylan – but I’d have to go through every song to say exactly where he might have used it before.

Finally, the original song on which Bob seems to have based the whole idea, here it is

What Dylan does however is remove much of the melody to no really good effect so we do have long sections where the tune seems to vanish totally to give us singing on one note.

Besides this Bob is being fairly dark compared with both the Shakespeare and the Holliday.   One review suggested that it has “the sentiments of a scary stalker”.

That might be a bit harsh as an understanding of lines like

“The future for me is already past / You were my first love, you will be my last.”

but then it could also just be a melancholic reflection on his feelings.

But on the other hand … I hear a love song in the first two verses

Bye and bye, I’m breathin’ a lover’s sigh
I’m sittin’ on my watch so I can be on time
I’m singin’ love’s praises with sugar-coated rhyme
Bye and bye, on you I’m casting my eye

I’m paintin’ the town—swinging my partner around
I know who I can depend on, I know who to trust
I’m watchin’ the roads, I’m studying the dust
I’m paintin’ the town making my last go-round

However  then we get the Shakespearean couplet

Well, I’m scufflin’ and I’m shufflin’ and I’m walkin’ on briars
I’m not even acquainted with my own desires

Then an intermediate section which seems to suggest that he knows he is fooling himself

I’m rollin’ slow—I’m doing all I know
I’m tellin’ myself I found true happiness
That I’ve still got a dream that hasn’t been repossessed
I’m rollin’ slow, goin’ where the wild roses grow

Well the future for me is already a thing of the past
You were my first love and you will be my last

After which it all goes a little crazy…

Papa gone mad, mamma, she’s feeling sad
I’m gonna baptize you in fire so you can sin no more
I’m gonna establish my rule through civil war
Gonna make you see just how loyal and true a man can be

And I have to admit I don’t really get this at all unless this is an attempt to put the whole of As You Like It, into a song.  Quite an amazing idea if it is.   Would someone like to explain this to me because your reviewer has finally found himself beaten.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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.

Bob  Dylan And Arthur Rimbaud

By Larry Fyffe

In the sunlight, able to roam the organic countryside in his youth, Bob Dylan’s naturally drawn to the poetry of the Romantic nature poets, i.e., Robert Burns:

“Well my heart’s in the Highlands, gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow
Well my heart’s in the Highlands
I’m gonna go there when I feel good enough to go”

The world of youthful innocence loses out to the world of adult experience in the concrete city, and the songwriter’s perspective darkens all round:

“Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page
Same old rat race, life in the same old cage”
(Dylan: Highlands)

The melancholic poetry of John Keats, with sight of beechen-green bowers lost, is more attuned to the somber situation:

“The walls of pride are high and wide
Can’t see over to the other side
It’s such a sad thing to see beauty decay
And sadder still to feel your heart torn away”
(Dylan: Cold Iron Bounds)

Bob Dylan turns to the surrealistic, often vulgar, visions of poet Arthur Rimbaud, especially to the Symbolist’s upside-down, right-side up transformation of children’s fairy tales (like “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, and “The Ugly Duckling) that deal with Christian-backed black-and-white morality, a morality that promises paradise for good little boys and girls:

“One fine morning, in the country of a very gentle people
A magnificent man and woman were shouting in the public square
‘My friends, I want her to be queen’
‘I want to be queen’
She was laughing and trembling
He spoke to their friends of revelations, of trials completed
They swooned against each other
In fact, they were regents for the whole morning as crimson hangings were raised against the houses
And for the whole afternoon as they moved toward groves of palm trees”
(Arthur Rimbaud: Royalty)

And likewise, as the poet personifies:

“I kissed the summer dawn
Before the palaces; nothing moved
The water lay dead
Battalions of shadows
Still kept the forest road
I walked, waking warm and vital breath
White stones watched
And wings rose soundlessly”
(Arthur Rimbaud: To The Dawn)

Now the singer/songwriter with a fairy tale of his own:

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

And another, with a less happy ending:

“Cinderella, she seems so easy
‘It takes one to know one’, she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style…..
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row”
(Dylan: Desolation Row)

And from a glass-slipperless Cinderella to the Ugly Duckling-in-reverse:

“Well, I took me a womam late last night
I’s three-fourths drunk, she looked all right
Till she started peelin’ off her onion gook
She took off her wig, said: ‘How do I Iook?’ “
(Dylan: I Shall Be Free)

The singer also puts a Dylanesque twist on children’s rhymes:

“Handy Dandy, sitting with a girl named Nancy, in a garden feeling kind of lazy
He says ‘Ya want a a gun? I’ll give you one’; she says, ‘Boy, you talking crazy’
Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy
Handy Dandy, pour him another brandy”
(Dylan: Handy Dandy)

The nursery rhyme version of  ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’:

“Let the wind blow low, let the wind blow high
One day the little boy and the little girl
were both baked in a pie”
(Bob Dylan: Under the Red Sky)

Footnote:  You might also be interested to read further on Rimbaud in the article “You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go: the line most commentators miss.“

What is on the site

1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order 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

By Tony Attwood

This article was originally just about 1987 but on 13 May 2017 was re-written to take in 1988 as well, and answer the (very justifiable question) about the dating of songs around the time of Political World

In 1986 Bob was experimenting and looking for a new muse, a new way forward, a new style, a new approach.  To my mind, as I said in the review of that year, I don’t think he found what he was looking for.   The first two compositions of 1987, or perhaps it is the only composition of 1986 and the first of 1987 for me, show this unsuccessful searching continuing.   Neither Love rescue me nor Congratulations do anything for me at all.

But before I go further I am going to have to explain my thinking about the dates of writing these songs – and indeed a comment on the dating has alerted me to the fact that I was so wound up with talking about the music when I first wrote this review of the year, I didn’t explain my thinking on the dates.

I don’t think there is much doubt that Love Rescue me was written in 1987 – there is a recording of it from that year.  I suspect Congratulations comes from this time as well, but Dylan makes no mention of when he wrote it – his own commentary focuses on the next album.  Heylin places it in 1987/8 and I go with that.

Political World was not recorded until early 1989, but there is evidence that it was undergoing rewriting at that time, and indeed had already undergone quite a bit of re-writing.  What Good am I was also not recorded until 1989, but Heylin is quite sure (and this is the area where I do accept Heylin, since ploughing through notebooks and tapes is what he does) that

a) Political World was written before “What Good am I” and

b) the lyrics for “What Good am I” (if not the full melody) were written in early 1988 (“Still on the road”, page 406).

There is also a clear understanding in Heylin that “What Good am I” was written before “Dignity” and that “Dignity” (according to Chronicles) was written in January 1988 – but again it was not recorded until 1989.

Generally speaking Dylan songs have only been copyrighted after they have been recorded, and so this explains the dating system.

I am not saying these dates are perfect, and of course much depends on whether you date a song from the first appearance of the lyrics with a proto-melody that later changes, or whether you date it from the emergence of a version that is recorded with the band.  By and large (and where possible) I am working from the former.

So, to return to the issue of the songs over these two years, after “Love Rescue Me” and a lot of time not composing, suddenly, in that most extraordinary way that Bob can do it, he exploded, not once, not twice, but with three utterly different songs which really did express from three different perspectives, all that was on his mind.  They are different from the songs written previously in 1986, different from the songs of 1985, and different from each other.

They are however three, connected, but different, triumphs.

Political world is remarkable because as a song it shouldn’t work at all – virtually no melody, one chord only, but it powers along with the new found message which informs all three of the remaining songs in 1986: this world really has gone wrong.

And to be clear this is not the world gone wrong because people don’t follow Jesus Christ, not the world waiting for the redemption of the Second Coming, but just a world gone very very wrong.

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last

We live in a political world
The one we can see and can feel
But there’s no one to check, it’s all a stacked deck
We all know for sure that it’s real

This is followed by the same message but from an utterly personal perspective: What good am I?   As I said in my review of the song, written a couple of years back, this is a real self-battering.  It is not just the world gone wrong, now it is the man gone wrong too.  The title asks it all, and the answer is very dark indeed.

And then we come to Dignity: what we need to get out of this social and personal mess is the ability to hold onto ourselves, to keep our sense of self-worth, but not let it blow out of all proportion.  For the issue we all face is not the issue of the world around us (although that can be horrible enough) but the way we perceive the world.  If we can have a genuine self-respect based on honourable behaviour we can survive.

In “What Good Am I” Dylan is saying is that in the end the only way out of the Little Boy Lost position he posits, is honesty out of which we get engagement, sympathy, kindness, support, understanding, empathy… these are the qualities of the really human and humane person.    Each verse says it all; take this for example

What good am I if I know and don’t do
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you
If I turn a deaf ear to the thundering sky
What good am I?

What he then does is goes one step further and says, it is dignity (of which honesty is a pre-requisite) which encapsulates all these elements of being a good person.   If you have  engagement, sympathy, kindness, support, understanding, empathy, you can have dignity.

This is an astounding trilogy of songs, of which the full emotional impact and musical genius can only be understood if heard as a trilogy.  And the tragedy is that we don’t hear them as a trilogy, because they have never been released that way.  It is only by seeing the chronology of Dylan’s writing that we can understand.

Dylan, in these three superb songs, written one after the other, is engaging in the ultimate questions of the world: if the world itself is a mess, what should our personal response be.

I adore all three songs, but since I have set myself the bizarre task of choosing one from each year I nominate What Good Am I as my highlight of the year simply because not only is it great music, but it also attacks issues that are not dealt with in such a powerful way in any other song I can think of.

The nearest I can get to a song that touches on this topic with the same success as Dylan manages comes with “No Regrets” written by Tom Rush, and recorded by many many artists including the Walker Brothers.  Not because the songs sound alike (of course they don’t), but because in “No Regrets” the singer is utterly overwhelmed by regrets and desperately wants the woman back even though he says over and over “Don’t want you back”.   The point is, he is asking “what good am I?” as well, and finding that the answer is “not much at all”.

“No regrets” has always been for me an utterly powerful if not overwhelming song, in the same way that “What Good am I?” makes me just sit still and ponder my frailties.  Both remind me how hard I need to work to be even a moderately decent person.

But for Bob “What Good am I?” was part of an amazing journey through a trilogy of songs.  If you have a moment, and have never done it, play these three songs in sequence, and perhaps if you have a moment more, explore for yourself the profound meaning that they bring together, unifying the social and personal worlds, as they do.

Dylan then headed off into the world of the Wilburys, and I have looked at the whole pattern of those songs in the articles relating to the recording experience.  I see the Wilburys as fun, and two of the songs Tweeter and the monkey man and Like a Ship are good compositions, but I don’t see them as being up there with the greats.

Indeed I think the argument could be made that the Wilburys adventure actually diverted Dylan from what could have been a very strong period of writing following  Political world,  What good am I and Dignity.    I rather suspect that if there had been no Wilburys we might have seen a brilliant extension of that slowly emerging trilogy of songs that experienced the world in another way.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order 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

By Larry Fyffe

The feeling of angst and loneliness wrought by a society of spectator-consumers, with its ‘hollow men’, and its culture of tiresome repetition, TS Eliot captures through the images he uses in his poetry:

“In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo”
(Eliot: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock)

In his music and song lyrics, Bob Dylan seeks out a watchtower from which to sound the alarm, to warn his listeners not to accept passively the negative social consequences engendered by an economy of mass produced mediocrity:

“You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you”
(Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone)

Bob Dylan injects into his songs a feeling of vitality and movement that is lacking in TS Eliot’s city of the walking-dead:

“All along the Watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside in the distance, a wild cat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl”
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Allen Ginsberg revitalizes the form and content of poetry, and Dylan does the same with popular music from folk to rock-and-roll, in order to awaken the ‘hollow-eyed’ people to what is happening to them, surrounded and trapped as they are in an alienating militaristic and industrialized environment:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked
Dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix”
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl)

Dylan utilizes the literary technique of the objective correlative to give substance to what the songwriter considers the spirit of vengence and anger prevailing over, and breaking the spirit of love and compassion that survives in modern times; the howling wind, the associated symbol of this  anger:

“The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven at my window with a broken wing”
(Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

Allen Ginsberg acknowledges his indebtedness to the imagist and symbolic poetry of Wiliam Blake in name, and by example:

“Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dymno in the machinery of the night…..
Who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes, hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-like tragedy among
the scholars of war”
(Ginsberg: Howl)

Bob Dylan, the songster, by example:

“They walked along by the old canal
A little confused I remember well
And stopped by a strange hotel
With a neon burning bright
He felt the heat of the night”
(Dylan: Simple Twist Of Fate)

In his poetic lyrics, under the influence of Joseph Conrad, TS Eliot, habituated to the heart of darkness, cannot bear the light, so likewise expressed in the following song lyrics:

“So loud the music grew and grew
With ever greater pain
I stepped back in the shadows
For I could not stand the strain
I tried to look, my eyes were blind
I tried to speak, but could not find
The words to say”
(The Strawbs: Blue Angel)

For Wiliam Blake, Jesus and Lucifer are symbols of rebellion against the established order, rays of light, of hope, in the oppressive darkness. A sentiment expressed by Bob Dylan and other musicians:

“But the silver tongued devil’s got nothin’ to lose
I’ll only live till I die
We take our own chances and pay our own dues
The silver tongued devil and I”
(Kris Kristofferson: The Silver Tongued Devil And I)

Kristofferson studied the poetry of William Blake at university.

Now from a band that Dylan connects with:

“I set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
I just might get some sleep tonight”
(Grateful Dead: Friend Of The Devil)

Not to mention from Mick Jagger:

“Please to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer”
(Rolling Stones: Sympathy For The Devil)

And then there’s Bob Dylan himself:

“Somebody seen him hangin’ around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the Bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat”
(Dylan: Man In The Long Black Coat)

Says the Bible:

“How art thou fallen from the heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”
(Isaiah 14:12)

That the God of the Bible allows Mankind to be deceived into doing the devil’s work, and to follow Jesus, to rebel in the search of higher self-knowledge, is a lesson not lost on Bob Dylan: it’s a consistent theme of his art:

“Shake the dust off your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation’s not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run in my vein…..
Well, I’m pressin’ on
To the higher calling of my Lord”
(Dylan: Pressing On)

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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

by Tony Attwood

Article updated 13 September 2019

This 12 bar blues variation comes from Love and Theft, and was played 159 times on stage between 2001 to 2016.  Clearly Bob enjoyed it, as he always does with these blues variations.

In relation to this song Heylin quotes Dylan saying he would take a song he knew and then “at a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song”.   Heylin continues “In this instance the point when the words began  to change came some time after the first verse, lifted verbatim from Leroy Carr’s Blues before Sunrise”

I did earlier suggest that this was not the case, but Larry has helped me out on this one, as Dylan does use the line “I’m (just) sittin’ here thinking with my mind a million miles away”

But that 1934 classic doesn’t sound anything like Dylan’s song, which is itself more closely related to Muddy Waters “Lonesome Day”, which Heylin also mentions.

But I still have my suspicion about the whole Heylin review because although he does get the reference to the WC Fields movie “The Fatal Glass of Beer” with the line “It ain’t a fit night out for man nor beast” Heylin makes a mistake which I am absolutely certain about.

For anyone who loves the early days of the talkies, and in particular the comedy of WC Fields, this short movie is a classic, and it contains a classic line, “It ain’t a fit night out…”  That line became so famous, people would for years (on both sides of the Atlantic) quote it.  Most people knew it, and knew what happened.

But Heylin quotes the scene as one in which Fields gets water thrown over him – but it was snow – and the snow is a fundamental part of the film.   It’s a detail, but it feels important to me.

The short film has Fields and his co-star say the “man nor beast” phrase around half a dozen times, and each time a handful of snow hits him straight in the face.  By the fourth time Fields doesn’t even get to the final word before the snow hits.  It is incredibly silly, and funny for aficionados of Fields’ movies and shows the sort of deadpan acting he most certainly was a mega mega star in his day.  (The Bank Dick is his most famous film – if you are tempted to try one of his films try this one, and if you like his one liners there are many of them on the internet.  I quite like, “Last week I went to Philadelphia but it was closed.”)

But I am not sure that these sources (apart from Fields, Heylin finds several others such as Virgil’s Aeneid) really matter.  The point is surely in the first verse…

Well, today has been a sad ol’ lonesome day
Yeah, today has been a sad ol’ lonesome day
I’m just sittin’ here thinking
With my mind a million miles away

That tells us where Bob is and what he is doing.  He’s letting his mind wander, here, there and everywhere else.  His thoughts drift and vary about all the things that have happened to him.  He’s left his lover, his family has either died or left, his friend has come and gone, and he tries a bit of homespun philosophy.

Well, the road’s washed out—weather not fit for man or beast
Yeah the road’s washed out—weather not fit for man or beast
Funny, how the things you have the hardest time parting with
Are the things you need the least.

And what if we have got some WC Fields, Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” and Junichi Saga’s “Confessions of a Yakuza” all quoted herein?  OK, one up to Heylin for spotting these – I only recognised the WC Fields, and that because I was introduced to his movies as a child by my father – but surely the point is better made that Dylan is thinking back to the old times, be they personal events or a film or the books.

Isn’t that what the 40 miles verse implies…

I’m forty miles from the mill—I’m droppin’ it into overdrive
I’m forty miles from the mill—I’m droppin’ it into overdrive
Settin’ my dial on the radio
I wish my mother was still alive

And for the man sitting around doing nothing except day remembering the old days it all sounds and feels as if somehow the world has passed us by and we maybe never got fully involved…

Last night the wind was whisperin’, I was trying to make out what it was
Last night the wind was whisperin’ somethin’—I was trying to make out what it was
I tell myself something’s comin’
But it never does

In the end the singer’s contemplation of his past seems to end with a day dream of him becoming the Messiah…

I’m gonna spare the defeated—I’m gonna speak to the crowd
I’m gonna spare the defeated, boys, I’m going to speak to the crowd
I am goin’ to teach peace to the conquered
I’m gonna tame the proud

But somehow amazingly in the midst of all this, he’s still got his lady.  She needs him and he needs her, even if everything else in life has fallen apart.

Well the leaves are rustlin’ in the wood—things are fallin’ off of the shelf
Leaves are rustlin’ in the wood—things are fallin’ off the shelf
You gonna need my help, sweetheart
You can’t make love all by yourself

It is a great fun blues to play with your pals.  That doesn’t make it a great song, but it of its type it is a very good song, and doesn’t deserve the sort of put down with errors that Heylin offers.  If in years to come when Bob is but a memory, they want a blues song to encapsulate Bob’s compositions in the genre, Bob’s everyday compositions that he so loved to play on tour, his one certainly does the trick.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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 Larry Fyffe

In the poems containing William Blake’s personal mythology, Air/Wind represents the breath of life within the individual, the vitalistic spirit, tangled up in an unbalanced state along with three other elements: Water (power), Fire (emotion), and Earth (imagination).

The psyche’s imbalance expands to the social structure at large, and results in cold and distant reason, reinforced by violence, (symbolized by the Tiger), dominating human life to the detriment of intuition, and the emotion of alturistic love (symbolized by the Lamb).

In modern times, on the macro-level, the Industrial Revolution rationalizes the mass production of goods, while objective science takes over the search for knowledge.

The written poems of William Blake transform the precise language of science into the flexible metaphors of art:

“Never seek to tell thy love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly”
(William Blake: Love’s Secret)

For Blake, since the wind blows in all different directions, it’s a metaphor for the never-ending struggle to balance the situation one is in with the desire for individual freedom, a dilemma out of which there is no easy means to escape, no absolute answer thereto, excepting death.

Bob Dylan employs the poetic device in his song lyrics:

“As I went out one morning
To breathe the air around Tom Paine’s
I spied the fairest damsel
That ever did walk in chains”
(Dylan: As I Went Out This Morning)

Dylan hopes for a future change in the weather for the better, but the direction of the  wind indicates that the case may be otherwise:

“Yes, and how many years can people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just dosen’t see
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
(Dylan: Blowin’ In The Wind)

Dylan, echoing Blake: love need not to be expressed by words that flow breath-like through the teeth, but instead by the vitalistic spirit that shines forth so brightly from within:

“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”
(Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

But, though it’s best to celebrate life, Dylan sings that there are external forces that can be harmful over which one has little control:

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

Bob Dylan pulls up images from the poems of William Blake to show that he doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing; the singer sees some signs of hope, however:

“And them Caribbean winds still blow from  Nassau to Mexico
Fanning the flames in the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Brings everything that’s near to me
nearer to the fire”
(Dylan: Caribbean Wind)

Almost always double-edged, Dylan sings that not even his art will save him from physical death, from taking his last breath; it’s a tale told an idiot, signifying nothing:

“Idiot wind
Blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe”
(Dylan: Idiot Wind)

The hour is getting late, but the Romantic idealism about liberty that William Blake expresses in his rebel-devil poetry, cheers on double-horned Bob Dylan in his fight against the reactionary views of TS Eliot in the captain’s tower:

“May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift”
(Dylan: Forever Young)

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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

I have often talked with friends about the fact that none of us knows what goes on in the parts of the world around us which are out of our normal vision.  You might have an idea of what an orchestral rehearsal is like, or what a crime scene investigation is like, from seeing something on TV, but this is undoubtedly sanitised and not what it is really like.  Not least because you don’t see the bits in-between the action.

But everywhere people who share an enthusiasm get together to do whatever it is they enjoy doing, and they don’t bother to tell the rest of the world about it – or if they do, they never tell the true story because in effect you have to be there to appreciate it.

I have taken friends and family to football (“soccer”) matches in stadia large and small and despite having seen it on TV they are bemused, amazed, overwhelmed at the noise, passion, anger, laughter, regulations, language, tribal rituals etc.

I have seen people who have never been to a jive dancing club come in and just stand at the door with their mouths open.  They might have watched “Strictly” (a very popular BBC TV dance programme) but nothing prepares them for what we do.  The way we get up close, know what each other is doing, and then nonchalantly say “thanks” and move on to another partner…

If you have never been out in the open sea in a yacht, if you’ve never been on a big political protest march or rally, if you’ve never worked in the theatre, if you’ve never collected money for a charity… you just can’t imagine what it is really like.

There are many such examples that could be given, but I will stop here because I can now get to my point about this song.  If you have never played in a band that is not specifically rehearsing for a live performance, but instead is just kicking ideas around and having fun, you won’t know what it is like, and may well find it hard to understand why the guys spent so many hours larking about with silly songs like “I’m your teenage prayer”.

Why would Bob write down all these lyrics, and evolve this tune and set of three different chord sequences JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT?

It’s a bit like me going jiving several nights a week.  I’ve no thought of being a professional dancer, I am way too old anyway, but I am there because I meet my friends and because it is fun.  And likewise, in my years playing in unsuccessful semi-pro bands we had evenings where we played around like this, just because we could and because it was fun.   Some of our friends were in the pub, some were playing football (soccer), some were chatting up members of the opposite sex.  One guy spent his time putting together radios from spare parts.  Just because it was fun.

So when I read the comment that, “If the song or these sessions were really just a goof, these guys wouldn’t have kept trying to build a tune instead of enjoying the laugh,” I have to disagree profoundly.

Think of it, perhaps, like an alternative to spending an evening with friends down the pub or in a bar.  People do it for the friendship, for the chatter, to get out of the house, to pass the time, but not because it is going to lead somewhere.  They do it because this is their life.

So it is here.  It is for itself, not because it is going somewhere.

This song is based around three commonplace chord sequences from 1950s doo-wap.  The verse starts out with

C, Am, F, G

an absolute classic progression.

Then the first change

C, C7, F, D7

And then the middle 8 (bridge)

F, D7, C, C7, F, D7, G…

These are classic moves which anyone familiar with 1950s music would know and be able to play without even thinking – no rehearsing necessary.  You hear the first change and then you know, as a musician, exactly where it is going.

There is a real glory to be had by playing along on such occasions, seeing where the music goes, and… larking about, which is what happens here, as Richard Manuel (I believe) throws in his own very dubious sounding extra lines with their highly improper suggestions of an older man approaching a very much younger woman.

That of course is not funny, although it was a lot less not funny (if you see what I mean) when it was recorded.  But the joke (if you find it amusing) is entirely in the way the lines are spoken by the second voice.  What is being suggested by the second voice is unacceptable.  What is suggested by Dylan’s singing is that he’s a wannabe kid at the small town club, up on stage, hoping that the local girls will find him attractive.

As the haiku that was created around it says

I’m your teenage prayer,
Just the kind of boyfriend that
You always wanted.

That’s Dylan’s version. The second voice subverts it all and becomes what we would have called in my youth the sound of “a dirty old man”.  (I’m not sure if the meaning of that phrase translates into American, but its the best I can do).

Normally of course such larking around is never recorded and never kept but this is a fun record of Dylan at this time having fun with his musician pals.

Take a look and when it’s cloudy all the time
All you gotta do is say you’re mine
I come runnin’ anywhere
Take a look at me baby
I’m your teenage prayer

Take a look at me baby
I’m your teenage dream
Take a look at me baby
I’m your teenage dream
(Yes and I’m a dream)

There is nothing here but the guys passing the time of day, but its good that they captured what they did and how they did it.  Like having a chance to watch a great actor in early rehearsals, this is a most valuable artefact.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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 Larry Fyffe

As far as PreRomantic poet William Blake was concerned, the essential elements composing the Universe  (earth, air, water, and fire), poetically speaking, are unbalanced within the human psyche:

“Does the spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night?
Or the ploughman in the darkness plow?”
(Blake: The Earth Answers)

According to Blake, Mother Earth, having given birth to a creature able to imagine, to contemplate its own existence, has been undermined by the rise of the male component of power (water) with its spirit (air)of rationalism, a characteristic associated with Apollo, the Sun God, in Greek mythology.

The female component, accused by the new order, of being the authoress of her own demise due to her unrestrained curiousity, the value of intuition and emotion are down-graded; dogmatic religion and the scientific method established as the accepted means to acquire knowledge.

It is incumbent on the true artist, asserts Blake, is to alert human beings about their ‘fallen’ state:

So too, Bob Dylan:

“There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth”
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Because of her beauty, the Victorian poet Robert Graves, like the Romantic poets before him, idealizes the Goddess Mother Earth, associated with the close-by, ever-changing Greek Moon Goddess Diana:

“All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean –
In search of which we sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom we desired above all things to know
Sister of the mirage and echo”
(Robert Graves: The White Goddess)

As said, Blake envisions Mother Earth as representing the Imagination; Transcendental Romanticism results.

Bob Dylan, on the macro as well as the micro, or the individual Muse level does too, but his desire for renewed artistic expression leads him to escape from the countryside to the city, to Desolation Row, in search of a different perspective, a fiery view that comes from more than a small-town blacksmith shop –  but with some regret:

“Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through every day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away”
(Dylan: I Threw It All Away)

But throw it all away he did, and with the inspiration of a newfound female Muse, his creative spirit takes flight, creating a music-based synaesthesia-filled art form that links together the fragmented  images of the always-awake cityscape that stimulates all the senses, all the time:

“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’rd tryin’to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind”
(Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)

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.

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

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…

• You wanna ramble
• Got my mind made up
• Had a dream about you baby

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

By Larry Fyffe

The 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.

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 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.

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

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

Bob Dylan: Water As A Symbol For Power

By Larry Fyffe

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.

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.

You might also like The Line Forms On The Right: Bobby’s Back In Town. Dylan & the Threepenny Opera

And now…

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.

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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.