Dylan originally called this plaintive two chord song, “Old Man (John Doe”), a title which refers us back to a 19th century song which may have been by Fred J. Mackley or Walter Phoenix – opinion seems divided.
It had been revived in the 1940s by the Almanac Singers under the title “Death of John Doe” which then was claimed by Millard Lampell, and which like Dylan’s version opens “I’ll sing you a song and its not very long…”
This was the era in which Dylan was on the edge of becoming incredibly prolific (just have a look at what Dylan wrote in the next six years in the Chronology Files) but also an era when he was learning it was ok to lift material from other songs and present it as his own. After all, others had done this for a century before him, why not Bob?
For anyone fully versed in the world of folk both the two chord structure and the lyrics would sound very familiar.
I’ll sing you a song, ain’t very long, ‘Bout an old man who never done wrong. How he died no one can say, They found him dead in the street one day.
The lack of emotion expressed by the crowd or by the police officer, and the lack of dignity accorded the old man in death still shocks today, but is also still part of urban life.
Well, the crowd, they gathered one fine morn, At the man whose clothes ‘n’ shoes were torn. There on the sidewalk he did lay, They stopped ‘n’ stared ‘n’ went their way.
Well, the p’liceman come and he looked around, “Get up, old man, or I’m a-takin’ you down.” He jabbed him once with his bully club And the old man then rolled off the curb.
And that’s it, they take the old man away, leaving us with an awareness of just how urban living and contemporary life has removed our humanity
Well, he jabbed him again, loudly said, “Call the wagon — this man is dead.” The wagon come, they loaded in him Never saw the man again.
The problem is that the music can seem so familiar that the sheer awfulness that a whole life can come down to having no friends, no family, no nothing, and then die in the street is now almost lost. That Dylan however does raise our emotions despite the familiarity of the form, shows just how deep and indeed how unstudied his talent was in these early years.
For Dylan this was the start of a long affinity with the concept of the “old man”, and as time went by the old man gained, in Dylan’s company, almost mystical powers. The Lonesome Hobo lived in the strangest of worlds where he is able to walk away from calamity, while the old man in “Señor, Tales of Yankee Power” clearly holds Dylan’s attention in a most extraordinary way, while referring back, as I suggest in the review to the old man written about in 1967 by Bryan MacLean for “Forever Changes”.
Here the old man dies before we get to know him, but as time went by Dylan decided to take a different vision, seeing the old man as a endless lonesome traveller as per Restless Farewell and One to Many Mornings. This was, in all senses, just the beginning.
The Discussion Group
We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase in, on your Facebook page or go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/254617038225146/ It is also a simple way of staying in touch with the latest reviews on this site.
The Chronology Files
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Way back in my younger days, I taught a university undergraduate course “Art and the Environment”.
The essence of the year long course (which covered all the arts) was that although some art work was carefully planned and structured by the artist, a lot of art is created out of the materials that the artist uses. Thus the visual artist might explore the results gained from a particular brush and paint colour, and have ideas from that, the poet might see a phrase in a newspaper article and find it leads him/her somewhere new, a multi-media artist might be walking on the beach and find shells, seaweed, washed up items, and use them in a work.
As for the musician he/she might hear a few chords, or knock out a few notes, and an idea might come while reading the newspaper, walking in the city centre or playing with one’s children. These are perfectly reasonable approaches to creating new art: it can be planned or it can emerge doing other things, or it can arise from the basic materials of the art you work with.
Within all this was an element of playfulness, of experimentation, of trying things to see what happens, and while all the students on the course had some history of being engaged in the arts as amateurs while studying other courses at the university, most of them took the course because they wanted to go further. They wanted to know what it was like to be a “real artist” (as some of them insisted on saying). But they got stuck, because they somehow imagined that to create a work of art one had to have a grand plan, a desire to create a particular piece, a knowledge about where it is going.
At the start of each year’s course I would ask my group of students “What does a poet do?” and they would look at me as if I were a right turnip, and say, “A poet writes poetry.” And I would say no, “a poet wears funny hats and goes the unusual places”. My point being that “a poet” is not just the writing of poetry, it is getting into a world in which the ideas for the poetry emerge. It is “being a poet” in a much wide sense.
I think Dylan sometimes knows exactly where a song is going and what it is about – although he then often deliberately explores where else it might go (“Dark Eyes” would seem a perfect example), while on other occasions he’s got a clear target in view from which he does not deviate (“Idiot Wind” for example). But other times he really does have ideas by exploring the materials to hand, often with a sense of humour.
That is the case with this snippet of a song, Talkin Hava Nagila, although I must admit I never fully got the joke (not being Jewish perhaps) until I saw the video…
Don’t just play it, watch it, and then without watching listen to Dylan’s harmonica performance – he is (sometimes with a certain desperation) trying to find something, anything he can do with the harmonica – (which you will have seen on the film he had forgotten to pick up), but he does get there at the end. He has the ideas by handling the materials.
(Incidentally if you leave the sequence running you get other versions of the song if you want to explore this further).
The lyrics in English of the original song are…
Let’s rejoice, let’s rejoice, let’s rejoice and be happy
Let’s sing, let’s sing, let’s sing and be happy
Awake, awake, my brothers
Awake my brothers with a happy heart
Awake my brothers awake my brothers with a happy heart
In 1918, the song was one of the first songs designed to unite the early settlement of Jewish people after the British victory in Palestine during the first world war, and the subsequent Balfour declaration of a national Jewish homeland. Some writers suggest it it comes in part from Psalm 118 verse 24
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
But the dance which often accompanies the song is a secular not a religious dance.
So, back to my starting point, I think Bob here was having ideas by handling materials. He would obviously know Hava Negeilah, and decided to turn it into a talking blues.
Here’s a foreign song I learned in Utah
Ha-va-ne-gei-lah
O-de-ley-e-e-oo-
The only interpretation I can put on this (and remember that I am not Jewish, but an atheist) is that he is making fun not just of the Jewish establishment, but of the left-wing folk bands that felt that somehow this was a traditional song that express general working people’s solidarity across the world. Dylan was laughing not so much at the old timers for whom the song had for several generations been part of their coming together and expression of they joy at being as one, but at the appropriation of the song by other people who had nothing to do with Judaism or the creation of Israel.
I think that we should remember that around this time Dylan was not expressing his Jewish heritage in any over way – he was being a regular American guy, a lad who made up stories about his past, a young man who venerated not his Jewish origins but the white working class songs of Woody Guthrie and the black blues of Robert Johnson.
Now there is an interview with Dylan which is quoted on hundreds of web sites – but suspiciously (or rather it makes me suspicious) very few of them actually say where this interview comes from. And that makes me surprised because it is a very long quote.
So I treat this interview with a little scepticism, but the source seems to be “Spin” magazine in an interview with Scott Cohen and of course it could well be genuine. Here’s the relevant quote
“There weren’t too many Jews in Hibbing, Minnesota. Most of them I was related to. The town didn’t have a rabbi, and it was time for me to be bar mitzvahed. Suddenly a rabbi showed up under strange circumstances for only a year. He and his wife got off the bus in the middle of winter. He showed up just in time for me to learn this stuff. He was an old man from Brooklyn who had a white beard and wore a black hat and black clothes. They put him upstairs of the cafe, which was the local hangout. It was a rock ‘n’ roll cafe where I used to hang out, too. I used to go up there every day to learn this stuff, either after school or after dinner. After studying with him an hour or so, I’d come down and boogie. The rabbi taught me what I had to learn, and after he conducted this bar mitzvah, he just disappeared. The people didn’t want him. He didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a rabbi. He was an embarrassment. All the Jews up there shaved their heads and, I think, worked on Saturday. And I never saw him again. It’s like he came and went like a ghost. Later I found out he was Orthodox. Jews separate themselves like that. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, as if God calls them that. Christians, too. Baptists, Assembly of God, Methodists, Calvinists. God has no respect for a person’s title. He don’t care what you call yourself.”
Now we must remember that Dylan has long had a habit of making up stories, and of embellishing stories, and the whole notion of the rabbi appearing and disappearing like this is slightly odd, so I don’t think there is enough evidence to take this as a literal truth. But of course I have no proof either way.
Within a year or two of creating this snippet of a song Dylan was attacking all religions, so it is not unreasonable to see this as a poke at Judaism as well as a poke at the people from white middle class all-American Christian backgrounds who would sing the song with their acoustic guitars and think they were expressing worldwide solidarity.
Not unreasonable, but not absolutely certain.
But someone somewhere decided to resurrect this little recording and put it on the Bootleg 1-3. And they also included “Blind Willie McTell” which opens
Seen the arrow on the doorpost Saying, “This land is condemned All the way from New Orleans To Jerusalem”
It’s an odd collection, all things considered. And what is still so utterly puzzling is that no one thought to put “Ballad for a Friend” on the album, so maybe there is no sense to be made of this at all.
If you find the topic interesting you might also be interested in the article “Singing Dylan in Hebrew”
The Discussion Group
We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase in, on your Facebook page or go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/254617038225146/ It is also a simple way of staying in touch with the latest reviews on this site.
The Chronology Files
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
This is an absolutely straightforward talking blues. If lines such as
Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told The streets in heaven are lined with gold I ask you how things could get much worse If the Russians happen to get up there first Wowee! pretty scary!
are completely familiar to you, then you know the music. What we have here is a different set of lyrics and what seems to be Dylan’s first recorded talking blues.
The regular story that circulates about the origin of this song (and I am certainly not going to contradict it) says that the New York Herald Tribune ran a story about a Father’s Day cruise on the Hudson River to Bear Mountain which went wrong because a lot of counterfeit tickets had been sold, resulting in overcrowding and ultimately the sinking of the boat.
Noel Stookey, who became part of Peter Paul and Mary, and who had become friends with Dylan, showed his new pal the report, and according to Mr Stookey, Dylan turned up the next day with the song all done and dusted.
To give a bit of context, as I understand things (not having been there) Bear Mountain is part of the Hudson Highlands within New York State, and overlooks the Hudson River. On a clear day you can see Manhattan.
The story Dylan tells is not the story told in the newspaper, but is enlarged to create more comic effect – Heylin suggests that Dylan was placing himself as a “folkie Charlie Chaplin” and it was, it seems, the song that got him noticed.
The lyrics are sung by a naive young man being sold a ticket for himself and his wife and children, thinking he was going see some bears and a mountain. He finds there are crowds of people trying to get on the boat…
Took the wife ’n’ kids down to the pier Six thousand people there Everybody had a ticket for the trip “Oh well,” I said, “it’s a pretty big ship Besides, anyway, the more the merrier”
Well, we all got on ’n’ what d’ya think That big old boat started t’ sink More people kept a-pilin’ on That old ship was a-slowly goin’ down Funny way t’ start a picnic
It’s a fairly straightforward musical satire, but for audiences who had not heard this sort of slapstick music before it clearly could have an impact, particularly I suspect, the notion that the happy group of people all going for a family day out, exhibit the traditional behaviour of people who have paid their money to have a good time, have then had a few drinks, and then get a bit miffed as things start to go awry. It is, as Heylin implies, a classic silent movie script.
Well, I soon lost track of m’ kids ’n’ wife So many people there I never saw in m’ life That old ship sinkin’ down in the water Six thousand people tryin’ t’ kill each other Dogs a-barkin’, cats a-meowin’ Women screamin’, fists a-flyin’, babies cryin’ Cops a-comin’, me a-runnin’ Maybe we just better call off the picnic
The narrator gets punched, loses consciousness and it seems loses his clothes and possessions and survives but vows never to go out on a picnic again.
Now, I don’t care just what you do If you wanta have a picnic, that’s up t’ you But don’t tell me about it, I don’t wanta hear it ’Cause, see, I just lost all m’ picnic spirit Stay in m’ kitchen, have m’ own picnic . . . In the bathroom
The twist however comes in the last verse – the coda. I call it that because one review of the song I read rather sweetly calls the penultimate verse “the codetta”, so I think I am ok calling this verse the coda – the final element in a piece of classical music that works everything through to its ultimate conclusions…
Now, it don’t seem to me quite so funny What some people are gonna do f’r money There’s a bran’ new gimmick every day Just t’ take somebody’s money away I think we oughta take some o’ these people And put ’em on a boat, send ’em up to Bear Mountain . . . For a picnic
That would have got the left wing audience in the folk clubs – let’s round up all the guys in these money making schemes and send them off down the river so they can fight each other.
Today the piece doesn’t seem that revolutionary, but if you can think of a time when the audience might well not have been familiar with the talking blues, and certainly hadn’t come across too many songs that poked fun at the scam merchants, (we are here in the days before the protest song was created) you can see why it would have got Bob’s career going.
What is on this site
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.
The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members. (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm). Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.
On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article. Email Tony@schools.co.uk
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews
I often wonder about the songs Dylan performs just once on stage (as with this one on 9 June 1986) and then leaves. Caribbean Wind, Can you Please Crawl out your Window, Handy Dandy, Lay Down Your Weary Tune… and of course many more. Nothing seems to link them, so I guess in each case Dylan had his own special reason for not returning.
In this case the abandonment of “Got my mind made up” after one appearance as an encore probably had specific reasons to do with the need to get a record made, let people know it was there (maybe his record contract said he had to perform each song at least once in public) and then move on. The general assumption is that he was feeling a bit messed about with by his record company’s demands. If so, this is a great and simultaneously bizarre, riposte.
We don’t have a recording of Dylan’s performance but here is the song by Langhorne Slim & The Law
But first, who wrote it? This is the time of an album (Knocked out loaded) which includes three songs by other writers, three collaborations and two of Dylan’s own compositions. This was one of the collaborations – in this case with Tom Petty.
However it was not a song they worked on together. Petty had worked out a complete song and then Dylan wrote a new set of words.
Now I know this is the time when the words wouldn’t flow for Dylan, but if you can imagine hearing this song for the first time and suddenly listening to
Well, I’m goin’ off to Libya, There’s a guy I gotta see. He’s been living there three years now, In an oil refinery. I’ve got my mind made up. Oh, I ‘ve got my mind made up.
then it is difficult to think of any sort of response other than “What?” and perhaps after a moment, “Wow!” No one, but no one writes that in a rock song do they? Suddenly talking about Libya, and (maybe, maybe not) Muammar Gaddafi, in song? And not a folk song of praise or protest, but rather a rock song???
And the confusion with the guy: of course it is not Gaddafi, so who is it? We have no idea and there is nothing else in the rest of the song to tell us. It is a disconnected snippet of … well, I don’t know what it is a disconnected snippet of.
Even more confusingly (because it is confusing to have the Libya connection suddenly thrust upon us after the opening) we then get
Don’t ever try to change me, I been in this thing too long. There’s nothin’ you can say or do To make me think I’m wrong.
and so we are suddenly going somewhere completely different – he’s complaining that his girl is perhaps not reflecting their relationship in the way it should be talked about. He’s not in his “you can say anything you want” mode at all, rather he’s telling her…
Call your Ma in Tallahassee Tell her her baby’s on the line. Tell her not to worry Everything is gonna be fine.
Well, I gave you all my money All my connections, too. There ain’t nothin’ in this world, girl You can say I didn’t give to you.
It is almost the classic blues complaint – my baby done me wrong… but now Dylan says it’s ok as he once again declares his independence…
Well, if you don’t want to see me, Look the other way. You don’t have to feed me, I ain’t your dog that’s gone astray.
So what are we to make of all of this? It almost seems as if we are getting one verse (the Libya one) which Dylan thought of, and then the inventiveness let him down. Dylan, in the only comment that I can find that he made about the song said it was about real things that happened, and I suppose, yes, Bob lives in a very different world from me – and maybe from most of us, although I’ve not heard of him having a friend working on a Libyan oil field. He did also make the comment that he is opposed to whatever oppresses people’s intelligence, which I am not sure helps much.
Perhaps then there is a link between Libya and the girl not saying the truth about him when talking to her mother. Perhaps – but I think that is pushing it a bit far. More likely, I guess, he just needed a song, liked the basic musical form that he was given, and wrote some words around it which just popped into his head.
Musically it is fairly simple stuff – a repeating rhythm, one chord for the first half of each verse, and flattened seventh for the second half, and then a third chord introduced for the instrumental interlude. The girl chorus do a few “oh’s” and “woe’s” – and I must admit it would have been fun to see their faces they were given their music. Perhaps they even asked for the “wo-wo” at the end themselves, just to make their trip to the studio worthwhile.
It’s fun, it’s bouncy, and actually it is the sort of thing that could get an audience cheering at the encore but really, there isn’t too much Dylan inventiveness here, apart from the Libya thing, and that is over almost before it has begun. It is also hard to make much sense of the song’s positioning on the album – if you play the album through and listen to Brownsville Girl, there is just no connectivity at all.
If one compares this with “Time out of mind” where Dylan starts off by telling us “I’m sick of love” and then amazingly takes us down step by step by step into an ever deeper darkness until we get to “Not Dark Yet” and then against all expectation takes us back up, what one sees is a magnificent progression – a journey which is full of surprises but makes sense.
But here, on this album, there is nothing like that. The songs are seemingly just thrown together. Perhaps in the end, one outing was enough to know that there was nothing more to be gained from the song. And I rather think one outing was all that any of these songs ever got.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
As I have tried to suggest through the reviews of Dylan’s Christian songs, he had a very particular vision of what it meant to be a Christian, and I am not sure that it is a view that most Christian’s share. Quite a few do, but not most.
Of course I am no expert on this, not least because I live in the UK and don’t really have a way of knowing how many people follow each interpretation of the Bible in the US. But I am not sure that the notion that we can see signs that show us that the information set out in the Book of Revelations is now coming to pass, as it were, is mainstream.
But Bob clearly did believe this at this time, and specifically mentioned this song, as with
He said when the fig tree was blooming He would be at the gate He was talkin’ about the state of Israel In 1948. And the time is near An’ I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name
As I understand it there are indeed many Christians who think that Revelations can be translated into a set of events that we can see unfolding, just as there are many Christians who believe that we can take Genesis and track the origins of the earth back to 4004 BC, thus suggesting that either dinosaurs lived at the same time as the people described in the first book of the Bible, or that dinosaurs are a myth.
But there again there are many Christians who don’t believe that the Bible can be used in such a literal way.
Dylan did take the literal approach at this time, and clearly did think the end was drawing close – however looking at the songs it seemed that this view only had a short while to go with Bob, before he changed his mind.
Bob and the band played the song twice in 1980 at the Toronto concerts, where he also introduced two other songs that were not on Saved, “Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody”, and “Cover Down, Break Through”. The recording that we have of “I will love Him” comes from the final encore on 19 April 1980 at Massey Hall, Toronto. The official Bob Dylan site also has him performing it on 23 April, but some writers disagree with this and have the 19 April version as the only performance.
To get the full context of this performance we also have to remember that this was the era of Bob’s seven minute sermon, which if you have not heard it, you might like to try – at least in part. Here it prefaces “I can’t let go”.
While Bob became known in his early years for varied lyrics, story telling and occasional obscurity, in this song Bob uses the gospel approach leaving nothing to doubt.
I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name
The lyrics have not been published as such but several writers with far more ability than me at understanding what Dylan says have managed to come up with what seems like a fair enough transcript of the words.
The opening lyrics do not give us a hint as to where the song is going to go…
He came on East out of Galilee And disappeared like when he taught. He came down to his own His own knew him not. But as for me I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name
(It is interesting – for me at least, because I am always fascinated by these things – that we have here “East out of Galilee” and just a couple of months later created what for me is the much more exciting and interesting
East of the Jordan, west of the Rock of Gibraltar, I see the burning of the page, Curtain risin’ on a new age, See the groom still waitin’ at the altar.
Of course if Bob hadn’t performed “I will love him” in Toronto we wouldn’t have known that the whole east/west thing was on his mind at the time.
But back with “I will love him” it is then that we get the verse about the state of Israel which really does give us an insight into which approach to the Christian message Bob held at this time.
Personally I find the next verse lacks a lot in terms of poetic beauty or insight, and I wonder if it was the awkwardness of this verse (remembering still that some of the lyrics might not be exactly right) that made Dylan move on quickly from this song after Toronto.
When He was down conceived His mother didn’t know what she carried Took an angel of the Lord to tell her what she done carry Carried for all mankind An’ I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name
There’s a plaintive approach to the lyrics in the next verse, but still the final line doesn’t ring true to me, given that it is delivered with such gusto. It all sounds so joyous, and yet we are talking about betraying the son of the Almighty here.
Did anybody say it was gonna be easy Nobody said but you couldn’t complain But God of the world tried to drive me crazy Even Peter denied Him Standin’ right beside Him took Him out and falsely tried Him Eventually crucified Him Who am I to say I wouldn’t do the same?
After this I get lost – it just seems like a collection of images (which of course is fine – but is not what we were getting earlier, so doesn’t seem to fit). In short I think the song was actually far from finished, but Bob performed it (once or twice depending on your source) just because he had it and liked the sound. Maybe after Toronto he did sit down and think, “what am I actually saying here?” and couldn’t quite find the answer. Or indeed he might have felt that the song thus far was unfinished, but couldn’t find a way to improve some of the verses that seemed just a little incomplete.
Anyway, this part of the song really is a bit hard to decipher, but here’s the best approach I can find…
who repaired the roof and tried to tilt against the grain When Herod found out that He was born He had every boy child slain Hey, let’s all pray I will love Him, I will serve Him, I will glorify His name.
You will of course make up your own mind as to what we have here. Here’s the recording
And just to see a bit of context in all this here is the full set list for Toronto. It is, as you can see, entirely made up of the religious songs or the era.
1. Gotta Serve Somebody
2. Convenant Woman
3. When You Gonna Wake Up
4. Ain’t Gonna Go To Hell
5. Cover Down, Break Through
6. Man Gave Names To All The Animals
7. Precious Angel
8. Slow Train
9. Do Right To Me Baby
10. Solid Rock
11. Saving Grace
12. What Can I Do For You?
13. Saved
14. In The Garden
15. Are You Ready?
16. I Will Love Him
It’s the concert Bob Dylan wanted to deliver, but not necessarily the concert everyone in the audience would have liked to have heard.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Throughout 1984 and 1985 Dylan had worked on finding a new “voice” – a new way of writing music, another approach to move on to, as he had moved so many times before. During this period he explored all sorts of routes, tried all sorts of approaches, from the epic tale of Brownsville Girlto love songs such as I’ll remember you and ventures into different arenas such asMaybe Someday and Seeing the real you at last.
He also tried various forms of collaboration, the most successful of which was “Well well well“ and had moments of what for me were sublime insight with “Dark Eyes”.
But Dylan never lost his love for the old time rock n roll and the blues – indeed we’ve seen this with the utterly magical “I once knew a man”. And so it is not too surprising that Dylan on tour with Tom Petty seems to have been a time of guys who really loved rock and roll having great fun together celebrating their musical heritage, as well as playing some of the songs the audience expected.
It is in this tradition that we find “Rock em dead”. As with “I once knew a man” there must be antecedents and they are not too hard to find, although as the review of “I once knew” pointed out, the links that some writers claim to have found really bear little if any relationship to the work Dylan produced.
https://youtu.be/k8w2JFJbESE
No one else seems to have ventured into the lyrics of this song, so Larry has made an attempt, although as he says, these are “possible lyrics”
Rock’em Dead
When I gambled down the road
Craps with limits you're never told
When I gambled down the line
Put'em back, I'm doing fine
Money, money, money, it's hard to get
Monday, money, money, it's fair to fix
Put'em back even in your head
Pat'em on the leg, and rock'em dead
I walked down by Lucy's door
Put her down, they know the score
I kinda know that Lucy well
Put her down to Lubricare
Money, money, money, it's hard to get
Money, money, money, it's fair to fix
Put'em back even in your head
Pat'em on the leg, and rock'em dead
Lots of gambling down the road
Coming back up at the tow
Happy gumbo at the door
Put'em down, and leave me go
Money, money, money, it's hard to get
Money, money, money, it's fair to fix
Put'em back even in your head
Ooga, ooga, baby, rock'em dead
As several writers have pointed out Dylan’s song owes something to “Uranium Rock” by Warren Smith. Dylan keeps the “Money, money honey” line and the basic riff, but ups the tempo until it becomes truly frenetic. (Dylan also performed Smith’s “Red Cadillac and black moustache” at three of the gigs). And as a result the whole feel of the song changes, so it is more a case of taking one line and seeing where it goes, rather than basing one song on an earlier classic.
We should also remember this sort of fun jam session is what many bands whose music is rooted in the popular music of the past do as a break during rehearsals, or as sound checks, or simply as a warm up. All Dylan has done here is taken it a step further and put the event on stage. And why not?
It really is great fun, and should not be put down as in some obscure and unexplained way “messing with the minds of his fans” as Heylin says. Most Dylan fans that I know are far more knowledgeable and far more sophisticated than that.
And indeed I wonder sometimes just how closely Heylin actually listens to Dylan while doing all his analysis of each and every recording of each and every song, for he quite fails to mention the way Dylan re-used “Rock em Dead” in 2001 in the song Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum That version is more organised, more rehearsed and with sorted out lyrics, but it is basically a journey into the darker side of “Rock em Dead”.
And where does all this end? In a sense I guess with songs like “Thunder on the mountain” by which time he has become more sombre, more reflective. He has rocked ’em dead. He’s gone to the dark side with the tweedles, and now he looks back at it all. It is Dylan’s journey through rock n roll with his own take on it, each step of the way.
Below is a link to Dylan’s Rock em Dead. I did find a complete version for a while, but that has now been removed. Here is an extract, it is the only recording I can currently find. If you know of any others, please do provide a link. And of course if you have deciphered the words please do provide a transcript. It would be another first for us as no one else has managed it.
http://www.deezer.com/track/119682972
Here’s Warren Smith’s earlier Uranium Rock, for the sake of comparison.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
The more I have worked on this series of reviews of Dylan’s songs, the more I have reached the conclusion that while Dylan does often write about ideas and issues that concern him, and while he does sometimes write about real live people, he also often writes about fictional characters, without their story having some moral or deeper meaning.
It is curious that while with novelists we don’t generally assume that they are always writing with a message (rather we expect them to be telling a tale for enjoyment) with song writers – or maybe it is just with Dylan – many people expect there always to be a deeper reference. A meaning that we have to tease out.
This song is one that I think simply sets a scene.
Now I appreciate that the All Music review, made the point regarding this song that “there is — as always is the case with Dylan — more going on under the surface. The song can be enjoyed as a simple pop story, but digging deeper results in a rewarding listening experience.”
And that I agree with, but I don’t think that automatically means that the song is expressing Dylan’s view of things.
The All Music review particularly focuses on the second verse.
You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you She wanted a whole man, not just a half She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child You kind of remind me of her when you laugh In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear It’s done with a flick of the wrist What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?
In reference to this work the critic says, “the listener is roped in by the song, trying to figure out who these people are and what kind of game the narrator is playing,” and describes the writing as an “effortless play between the vernacular, musical, and the profound. The song should be ranked among the songwriter’s best, with an amazingly soulful vocal performance (listen to him stretch out the phrasing of “do-ing” during the refrains) and some of his most classic lines, including an inversion of Samuel Johnson’s aphorism — “They say that patriotism is the last refuge/To which a scoundrel clings” — and this variation of a Eugene O’Neill line (from The Emperor Jones):
They say that patriotism is the last refuge To which a scoundrel clings Steal a little and they throw you in jail Steal a lot and they make you king There’s only one step down from here, baby It’s called the land of permanent bliss What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?
The original line from Emperor Jones is
“For de little stealin’ dey gits you in jail soon or late. For de big stealin’ dey makes you Emperor and puts you in de Hall o’ Fame when you croaks.”
In the film that accompanies the song the woman is a cleaning lady who stands and watches the band perform the song – and that is in essence what Dylan has done. Transformed the famous saying into another context.
Now from that point the “dump like this” can be the room that she’s cleaning, or it can be the USA, or perhaps the whole world. Indeed in a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan said that with regards the album it could have been called “Surviving in a Ruthless World,” but was told he’d made a load of albums starting with the letter S so he changed the album to Infidels. And he then added, “I don’t know what it means, or anything.” [The “S” thing I guess is about Slow Train Coming, Shot of Love and Saved.]
Of course it is possible that Dylan was just being playful – as he so often seems to be when asked about meanings in songs – but there is a certain ring of truth to the notion that Infidels wasn’t chosen for any clear or deep meaning.
So we can go on looking for meanings for the “dump like this” and wondering who the boss is, but given that Dylan said he didn’t really have a clear view of what the title of the album meant, I wonder if this is the right approach.
I can’t see why it is not enough to have the song work as a simple observation of how things are – and then if one wants to see the situation as a metaphor for something else, that is fine. But if that is how it is, the metaphors and meanings are the listeners’ metaphors and meanings, not Dylan’s.
So of course you might find references to Virgin Mary, Satan or all sorts of other things in this song. You can find a real significance in the “many mansions” and see it as a reference to John 14:2 “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” but all Dylan is doing is opening a door to possibility. There is no definitive answer.
Thus for me finding some deep meaning that Dylan wanted us all to get is both silly, and not what the composer intended, any more than HG Wells in writing “The War of the Worlds” wanted to warn us about a possible invasion from China and so used Mars as a metaphor. It was just a story. This is just a scene.
Thus the line “Got to play your harp until your lips bleed,” can be seen as having some deep meaning in relation to harps that angels play, or to the fact that Dylan then plays the harmonica, or it could mean “you gotta do what you gotta do” or it could just be another image without specific meaning. After all, not every line in every picture means something.
And as I have said before, what really prompts me in this direction is that when Dylan wants to be clear about meaning he most certainly is clear, as with the very strong religious message from the albums “Slow Train Coming” and “Saved”.
But other times Dylan describes scenes, settings, moods and feelings. I suspect many of us have met people who we perceive as having talent and ability, and yet they are doing mundane jobs. So it could also be a song that just describes the fact that some people never get what they deserve, and some situations seem intractable.
Following this line of thinking, this is not a case of worrying about when a situation might be resolved. It might never be resolved, because it just is how it is. Indeed I quoted the Roy Harper line “everything’s just everything because everything just is” when reviewing “It’s alright Ma” and somehow it comes back to me now. The world is just muddled and a mess, and although some of us can affect our own lives a little, a lot of the time it can seem as if situations are intractable and unresolvable.
Some people can change their lives and in doing so affect the lives of others, but many, many people who could, don’t. And anyway, most can’t. And I think that is what Dylan is observing in lines such as
You know you can make a name for yourself You can hear them tires squeal You could be known as the most beautiful woman Who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal
That’s just how it goes sometimes.
One of the interesting aspects of some commentators attempts to put deep meaning into every Dylan song (instead of treating some of them simply as observations, or as abstracts) is that mostly they tend only to give certain lines this treatment. I haven’t read any commentary that suggests that the opening
Well, the pressure’s down, the boss ain’t here He gone North, he ain’t around They say that vanity got the best of him But he sure left here after sundown
is anything other than just a bit of general scene setting. It wasn’t a particular boss, a particular place in the North. Which means that it is the commentator who decides when the lines are supposed to have deeper significance and meaning. And I guess in the end that is what we argue about.
Musically Dylan weaves a really interesting melody above a slightly unconventional chord structure. If you play the song in C you get the opening chords of
C Am Am G F
And if you play the guitar or keyboards you’ll know that ending a phrase on F when playing in C is not at all common. It leaves us waiting. The line is not resolved (that is to say the is no full stop) as there would be with the line ending on the chord of C. And there is no cliff hanger ready to be resolved, which is how it would feel if it ended on G. Ending on F leads us to feel we are ready to slip back – which is exactly what the words of the opening lines (the pressure’s down, the boss ain’t here) tell us.
Interestingly, and in keeping with the mood, the Middle 8 does something similar, ending on D minor. It is an interesting technique and not one that Dylan uses very often at all.
To wrap this up there are two videos of the song. One with the cleaning lady looking on, and the other which is part of the rehearsal run through, during the course of which the song changes.
Postscript:
Considering this song so many years after I first heard it has been a really interesting day-long project. Not least this is because the day is Christmas Eve (a day on which I am less likely to be disturbed by events – not least because I had a big night out with friends yesterday and have family celebrations for Christmas Day tomorrow, so it is a day I spent on my own). It really has been something of an unusual day, listening in the morning, doing some background reading through the day, and writing it all up in the evening.
A Christmas Eve to remember I think. Thank you for reading.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Why does Bob have this thing against the space exploration programme? Why does he believe that we are all doomed?
While such a belief comes, I guess, out of both the Old and New Testament, when those are removed from the equation, I find it hard to grasp what can lead him to this conclusion.
Like all living creatures we have evolved (unless of course you are a creationist in which case we were created as we are and the work of Darwin and the whole notion of the endlessly modified DNA is a fairy story), and we evolve by exploring, experimenting, challenging, trying, doing. If we stop that a large part of our humanity goes.
Now of course that sort of experimentation could well become our downfall as we bring back to earth an alien virus that does us all in, but even so, does that risk mean we should not experiment?
It is the fundamental difference between the era before the 16th century when all knowledge was that which was in the Bible, and thereafter when men like Copernicus and Galileo observed and theorised, without being restricted by the Christians, except when forced to recant as for example was Galileo.
Turning back the clock and stopping scientific exploration seems impossible – and to me unreasonable. I want modern medicine to be available to myself and my family. And actually I am interested in what it is that holds galaxies together and what forces the universe to expand ever faster. Oh and I quite like the fact that my house stays warm in winter, and I can play my Bob Dylan CDs while typing this on my PC.
So in this song I am not with Bob at all.
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please And if things don’t change soon, he will Oh, man has invented his doom First step was touching the moon
OK, it’s Bob’s point of view, and I just don’t get it at all. And why should I? He’s not writing for me after all. He’s got this woman who pops up in the chorus, and … well, I don’t know.
It is of course possible that mankind is
hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill All he believes are his eyes And his eyes, they just tell him lies
but actually that’s not right, because the scientist (if we are still speaking about the scientist) is the last person who just believes his eyes. If I look across a football pitch and see a man at the other end of the pitch looking 2 inches tall, I don’t think he has shrunk – I don’t believe my eyes only, because I accept the scientific explanation that there is a thing called perspective. And I know we have perspective because it gives an evolutionary advantage. We can take in and understand the distance, and see events far away as one unit, and we can deal with the person or animal right up close to us.
So by the time we get to
Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled Oh, man is opposed to fair play He wants it all and he wants it his way
I’ve lost it.
I have read the interpretation that says this is what you get with a Godless world. Man just does his own thing and in the end blows it all up. Maybe, and certainly looking at climate change (in that I do not follow the official line of President Trump that it is all an invention of the wind farm industry and natural causes) it could be true. Yes, some days I fear for the future my grandchildren will have.
But I also know Bob has talked about his disapproval of the space exploration programme.
I do appreciate that
Now he worships at an altar
Of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled
is a reflection of man’s ability to destroy himself, but it is not all a matter of philosophy and prayer. At least not in my book.
Anyway, if you are interested, there is a studio version on line
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v96835863AcNpWqAJ – which looks to me like it is mimed.
The Letterman TV show version is more fun. Here are three songs including Licence
Or if you prefer just Licence on its own.
As for the music, yes it is a very effective and clever use of primarily just three chords (C, Am, G, and later F) with a D minor thrown in, in the middle 8. But somehow the music doesn’t redeem the lyrics, and the lyrics don’t uplift the music.
And what Dylan said, at a concert in January 1986 in Sydney, really didn’t do anything to make me fell better about the piece:
“These people had no business going up there. Like, there’s no enough problem on Earth to solve. So I want to dedicate this song to all those poor people, who were fooled into going up there.”
Fooled Bob? No, they were scientists. And without the scientists you wouldn’t have a microphone. Or a pain killer for a headache. Or a recording studio to work in.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Much has been made of the extract from what would be, in a full performance, a 7 minutes 30 seconds epic. But there seems little certainty as to what was exactly going on here.
Take for example the notion that “Younger Comes Sin” is related to Ma Rainey’s “Yonder Comes the Blues”. I don’t really see that the “blues” in her song is “sin”. To me it seems like sadness and desperation. And certainly aside from the title there is little to relate the two songs.
I worry all day, I worry all night
Every time my man comes home, he wants to fuss and fight
When I pick up the paper to read about the news,
just as I’m satisfied, yonder comes the blues
and so on.
Dylan however goes somewhere quite different.
Eyolf Østrem (for whom I have to thank, for the lyrics) called this “the born-again equivalent of “You might think he loves you for your money, but I know what he really loves you for: It’s your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat” . . .
And as every commentary on this song says, the only recording of the song ends after verse four. The rest of the verses exist only in copyright documents. But again as Eyolf Østrem helpfully points out, the copyrighted version also has different punchlines in each of the verses (“can’t you take it on the chin”, “Pour me another glass of gin”, “Ain’t no room tonight at the inn”, “Sounding like a sweet violin”).
Here’s the opening
You wanna talk to me,
you got many things to say
You want the spirit to be speaking through,
but your lust for comfort gets in the way
I can read it in your eyes, oh, what your
Heart will not reveal
And that old evil burden has been draggin’ you down,
bound to grind you ‘neath the wheel
Yonder comes sin.
(Walkin’ like a man, talkin’ like an angel)
Yonder comes sin.
(Proud like a peacock, swift like an eagle)
Look at your feet, see where they’ve been to
Look at your hands, see what they been into
Can’t you take it on the chin?
Yonder comes sin.
There is no denying this is a terrific piece of music with the unexpected intercedings of the female singers. But there is one delicious kick in the end of the verse with the way that Dylan takes down the vocalisation of “Yonder comes sin”. The temptation for any lesser artist would be to belt that last line out, but the reduction of the level of intensity, as if to say, “it’s always there, there’s no mistake” is a masterpiece. It’s almost too tiresome for words. We try and we try but sin always comes back.
So why did Dylan abandon the song? To answer this we have to look (as we so often have to do) at what he was writing around this time.
As far as I can read the era the songs before Yonder came out in this order
Property of Jesus is a song of religious certainty which as I said in the review “appears to have been worked and re-worked, but then having been recorded was not used on the tours, so maybe Dylan never really felt it was finished. Or maybe he had worked it out of his system.”
And then suddenly Dylan delivbered the mystical, beautiful “Every Grain” Now Dylan has said in a couple of interviews that the songs of these period tended to come out fully rounded and ready to record, and indeed he specifically mentioned “Every grain” in this regard. If so, it was a magical day indeed.
However the imagery of “Every grain” is obscure, and the master’s hand could as much be a Taoist philosophical concept as anything Christian.
Then again, in a matter of a quarter of an hour or so along comes Caribbean Wind which seemingly has no overtly Christian intent, and is one of Dylan’s most puzzling abandonments – at least to me. I love that song, but Dylan felt it wasn’t finished and couldn’t be finished.
Next we get
Prayed in the ghetto with my face in the cement, Heard the last moan of a boxer, seen the massacre of the innocent Felt around for the light switch, became nauseated. She was walking down the hallway while the walls deteriorated.
Certainly the Groom was in the land of bad dreams.
Perhaps to confuse us more than we might otherwise be confused Dylan also said “The purpose of music is to elevate and inspire the spirit. To those who care where Bob Dylan is at, they should listen to Shot of Love. It’s my most perfect song. It defines where I am spiritually, musically, romantically and whatever else. It shows where my sympathies lie. It’s all there in that one song.”
So where does that leave these other songs? Seemingly in a land where we can hear them and enjoy them, and to a certain degree marvel over the inventiveness and dexterity of the writing, and yet know that Dylan didn’t fully rate them. Caribbean Wind got one outing, “the Alter” got five before being abandoned, and Yonder didn’t even get a single complete recording, and Bob refused to allow it onto the original bootleg album. Only “Every Grain” really made it, at least as far as Bob is concerned.
Yet for me these songs (except “Shot of Love”) are masterpieces. Am I saying that I know more than Bob? No of course not, it is just that I can’t find any way into his analysis of his work at this point.
What we clearly do have here is the world gone wrong, and a world where the righteous man can’t do anything about it The Devil is everywhere so you can’t just say “look there he is”. Our world is infested. Temptation is always there…
I stand in jeopardy every hour,
Wonderin’ what reason you have to rejoice
In a real sense the message of such an energised and exciting piece of music is actually rather simple. The Devil “wants to kill you, it wants to own you” and that’s about it.
Jeremiah preached repentance
To those that would turn from hell
But the critics all gave him such bad reviews
Put him down at the bottom of a well
Kept on talking, anyway
As the people were put into chains
Wasn’t nobody there to say “Bon voyage”
Or shatter any bottles of champagne.
Yonder comes sin
What really comes out of this song is that despite its gloom-laden message it really is such amazing fun, so buoyant, so exciting, so powerful, so enjoyable. And for once it is not some unusual chord structure that gives the song its power but rather some very clever and unexpected musical writing.
It just is a great buzz. I wish I could work out why Dylan didn’t like it.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Musically the fun in this song comes with the changing rhythms and line lengths, but for me that is really what it is – a bit of fun playing about with rhythms and line lengths. The melody is fine without being stunning, and certainly is not revolutionary.
In terms of the lyrics however there is much to consider because this song appears to mark the cross over period between Dylan who breached fundamental fire and brimstone, you are either for Him or against Him type Christianity, and a more reflective, “I don’t really know if I can do this ‘obedience to the Lord’ stuff” Dylan.
The song evolved in March/April 1981 for Shot of Love and was then seemingly dropped when the final running list was put together for the LP. If we had had CDs in those days presumably the extra time available would have meant it would have been included in the final version; but then we are all controlled by the technology we use.
So instead it appears that Dylan then played around with the lyrics some more before ultimately handing the song over to Ry Cooder, with whom several members of Dylan’s recording band were then working. Cooder then used it on his album The Slide Area. (Dylan’s version appeared on the Bootleg Series Vols 1-3).
It then seems Ry Cooder re-wrote some of the words himself (he says with Dylan’s approval) in order to round up the song into a story. Which is slightly odd because most of Dylan’s work doesn’t have a story in it at all – indeed rock n roll and the blues as musical forms are generally much more situation based than storyline based. If you want a story, try Roy Orbison’s classics, not the music that so influenced Dylan across the years.
Anyway the whole reporting of the re-writing of the lyrics is muddled, and I am not at all sure if unmuddling it actually tells us too much – we know Dylan has often modified his own work – sometimes once or twice, sometimes repeatedly so it is not unusual. Sometimes it just seems like bits of tinkering, sometimes the results are profound – that’s how it goes.
But what does make the Dylan version/s so interesting are lines like
Searching for the truth the way God designed it The truth is I might drown before I find it
which is a million light years and then some from the assertiveness of the earlier vision of holy reality that Dylan offered. In the original view if you have not fully adopted the way of the Lord by the time you die, you are condemned to eternal torment and I guess in this scenario the Dylan now emerging, and I, might bump into each other as condemned souls in the afterlife.
Thus where once he was certain, and indeed preaching, he is now utterly unsure.
Now, one of the most pertinent criticisms of Dylan’s period as a follower of the Lord is that although Dylan preached from the stage and wrote new songs for fundamentalists to cherish, it does not appear (from such information as is available – and I admit that information is not necessarily accurate) that he changed his life to following the modest and moderate lifestyle that accompanies the church’s vision of what a Christian is and does.
And now he says he wants
Someone who can see me as I am Somebody who just don’t give a damn
That surely is not what a full-on believer says. I might say, “I’m really sorry about my behaviour but that is just how I am, and I don’t really feel like changing any more, can you live with that?” but the true follower of the Lord surely has to say, “I will change to meet the commandments of the Lord and His prophets.”
And then we have that interesting final verse which surely expresses Dylan’s doubt about exactly what this whole religious business is about…
Well, if you believe in something long enough You just naturally come to think it’s true There ain’t no wall you can’t cross over, ain’t no fire you can’t walk through Well, believing is all right, just don’t let the wrong people know what it’s all about They might put the evil eye on you, use their hidden powers to try to turn you out
Surely there is an absolute fundamental difference between believing in the literal truth of the Bible (and quoting it in your songs) and admitting that such beliefs take on a journey of their own once inside your head.
What I think Dylan is saying, and I think it is one of his more clear and careful expositions, is quite profound and it comes in those last two lines.
Well, believing is all right, just don’t let the wrong people know what it’s all about They might put the evil eye on you, use their hidden powers to try to turn you out
I don’t suggest Dylan is saying “keep the word of the Lord secret” but rather, if you go out and tell everyone what you believe in (as Dylan most certainly did with no holds barred) then the media and others will turn on you which can be embarrassing if you change your mind, or develop your beliefs over time.
Now if you are a full-on committed Christian you have no choice – you have to spread the word; that is the command. But if you are more inward looking, reflective, with your own personal views of right and wrong, your own sense of justice, you do have a choice. You can speak out occasionally, or you can keep your own counsel, sharing your innermost thoughts perhaps with your close friends, but no more.
In short, I find this a perfect cross-over statement from Dylan – the move from the commitment shown in the previous albums and a more spiritual and reflective Dylan.
And that would be that, if it were not for the Ry Cooder business.
Below is a link to Cooder’s version and underneath that I have printed the lyrics in Dylan’s original in normal text, and the lyrics from Cooder in italics just to show the difference.
Cooder does some funny things from the off. Needing to turn the somewhat enigmatic opening line about the trenches and making it overtly clear that the singer has a cold, to me at least, is just rather boring and dull.
The final verse which Cooder has added is ok, but really not that particularly exciting. The notion that the woman and the singer are going to forge a life experiencing the new and challenging the old is not exactly revolutionary, so I am not sure it needs the image of the desperadoes, the name of the car (just to make it half rhyme) nor the fact that they might be arrested as a result of the new truths they find (so bring your cheque book).
It reminds me of Rik Mayell in the Young Ones preaching about how wild and experimental he is. While Dylan would tell the woman “Things should start to get interestin’ right about now” I would imagine Mayell’s character shouting “Look at me babe I’m wild” (although I don’t have access to the scripts or recordings so I can’t give you chapter and verse).
It just seems to be trying to hard.
Anyway, here’s Dylan’s original set of lyrics, or at least as original as any set of lyrics is in the muddled history of the song, and in italics what Cooder sings.
It’s been raining in the trenches all day long, dripping down to my clothes
My patience is wearing thin, got a fire inside my nose
Searching for the truth the way God designed it
The truth is I might drown before I find it
It’s been raining in my mouth all day dripping down to my clothes My patience it is wearing thin got a fire inside my nose Searching for the truth the way God designed it The truth is I might drown before I find it
Well I need a woman, yes I do
Need a woman, yes I do
Someone who can see me as I am
Somebody who just don’t give a damn
And I want you to be that woman every night
Be that woman
Well, I need a woman yes, I do Need a woman yes, I do Someone who can see me as I am Give the kind of love that don’t have to be condemned And I want you to be that woman treat me right
Be that woman every night
I’ve had my eyes on you baby for about five long years
You probably don’t know me at all, but I have seen your laughter and tears
Now you don’t frighten me, my heart is jumping
And you look like it wouldn’t hurt you none to have a man
who could give ya something
I’ve had my eyes on you, baby for about five long years You probably don’t know me at all I’ve seen your laughter and I’ve seen your tears Now you don’t frighten me I ain’t no defendant And you look like it wouldn’t hurt you none to have a man of understanding
Well I need a woman, oh don’t I
Need a woman, bring it home safe at last
Seen you turn the corner, seen your boot heels spark
Seen you in the daylight, and watched you in the dark
And I want you to be that woman, all right
Be that woman every night
Well, I need a woman Oh, don’t I Need a woman bring it home safe at last I’ve seen you standing on the corner seen you sitting down in the park Been watching you in the sunshine walking with you in the dark And I want you to be that woman treat me right Be that woman every night
Well, if you believe in something long enough
You just naturally come to think it’s true
There ain’t no wall you can’t cross over, ain’t no fire you can’t walk through
Well, believing is all right, just don’t let the wrong people know what it’s all about
They might put the evil eye on you, use their hidden powers to try to turn you out
Well, if you believe in something long enough You just naturally come to think it’s true There ain’t no wall you can’t crossover ain’t no fire you can’t walk through Well, believing is all right just don’t let the wrong people know what it’s all about They might put the evil eye on you use their hidden powers to try to turn you out
Well I need a woman, just to be my queen Need a woman, know what I mean?
Riding out with me at midnight like two Spanish desperadoes Gazing down upon the futile world in her Cadillac Eldorado We will penetrate the storm in search of truth that has not been tested But she better bring along her checkbook just in case we get arrested And I want you to be that woman
Well, I need a woman Yes, I do Need a woman Yes, I do
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Shot of Love has always seemed to me the album that opens the door to a return to secular compositions, after two very solidly Christian LPs. But as I will try and show in this review, it is not so easy to see where Dylan stopped writing utterly committed fundamental Christian songs and moved back to his secular ways. The moments intertwine; there is no strong dividing line.
“In the Summertime” was described by Dylan as a song in which he tried to “conjure up the feeling” of the piano ballads he heard in his childhood in his home town. It is most certainly the most relaxed song we’d had from Dylan in a while.
As the Rolling Stone review of the album upon its release said (and it was a very negative review overall) “In the Summertime” (like Heart of Mine) dealt with the issues of a man loving a woman, rather than Dylan’s devotion to his God. The reviewer says, ‘he goes on and on about a precious “gift you gave” but can’t seem to grasp the details. “I got the heart and you got the blood /We cut through iron and we cut through mud,” he remembers, yet the little things escape him: “I was in your presence for an hour or so/Or was it a day, I truly don’t know.” Those stadiums of the damned can really take it out of you.’
But the reviewer was basically critical, claiming that the song was “merely more pleasant than most”.
The problem is twofold however. First there is the fact that the song is just one stop away from the masterpiece of the album “Every Grain of Sand”. Second when we look at when Summertime was written we find it came in the midst of a tumultuous period of creativity:
and indeed we can see reflections back to “You changed my life” in “Summertime”. Not for the first time I think that seeing the songs in the order they were composed gives us more insight into the meaning than any reference back to the album (much as I want to go off and play “Every grain of sand” one more time.
But let’s come back to Summertime. This song has always puzzled me – it puzzled me when I first bought the album and tried to work out the meaning (in the days long before the internet when you couldn’t go out and buy a book on every aspect of Dylan or look it up on the internet), and it still puzzles me each time I came back to it.
In the Summertime starts like a love song – she is so overwhelming that he doesn’t know how time is passing. All the images of love are there, the sea is soft and shining, and wrapped up in the beguiling rhyme pattern (A A A B, C C C B). But then I remember that Dylan tried this on Angelina which he wrote shortly before Summertime, and it really didn’t work largely because of the difficulty Dylan had in rhyming Angelina with much else.
Here however a slight variation on the Angelina rhyming approach really does pay off. And there is something else going on, for in Angelina Dylan says
“Tell me, tall men, where would you like to be overthrown, In Jerusalem or Argentina?”
I find that a strange, and forced line, but leaving that aside it asks, a very odd question that can’t really be answered. And Dylan does the same in this song when he asks
Did I lose my mind when I tried to get rid Of everything you see?
and once again I want to know what that means. Is he now actually really saying (given that this is the first album after the really remorseless Christian albums, which gives us the occasional break from hard on “me and God we know the Way” stuff), “I lost my mind in all that conversion to Christianity stuff?”
And then in the lines
Did you respect me for what I did Or for what I didn’t do, or for keeping it hid?
there’s a very strong implication that he is not talking about his conversion, because whatever else Dylan’s conversion to fundamental fire and brimstone, you are either for Him or against Him, you are going to burn in hell if you don’t believe, Christianity was, it most certainly was not hidden. Not once. Never. If anything was ever full in your face it was Dylan’s following of the Almighty.
For as I have said many times before, while Dylan wouldn’t once explain what some of his more obscure songs were about, with each and every religious song, the meaning of which was obvious, he was liable to stand on stage and tell us exactly what it was all about.
On the other hand
But you were closer to me than my next of kin When they didn’t want to know or see
sounds very much as if we are talking about his conversion. Or maybe they are talking about Dylan’s movement away from the church he had been attending. Now that would be a twist…
But there again we have
Then came the warnin’ that was before the flood That set everybody free
which sounds pretty much to me like a re-run of Genesis 6.5, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
That is one of many bits of the Bible story that has always bemused me, given that Noah was only the 10th generation of the human race – that is to say, our kind had been around for just 300 or so years, and yet despite having been made good we were now pretty rotten. To me as an atheist that sounds like the plan wasn’t working out too well, but still, I’m sure I’ve got that wrong somewhere.
Certainly the next section sounds very much like the Dylan of the last two albums
Fools they made a mock of sin Our loyalty they tried to win But you were closer to me than my next of kin When they didn’t want to know or see
And then we have the last section which sounds very much like the herald of the second coming, noting that this woman has kept him on the path and he is, as he has been throughout this religious period, utterly convinced that he is saved, because he believes and is committed to God.
But all that sufferin’ was not to be compared With the glory that is to be And I’m still carrying the gift you gave It’s a part of me now, it’s been cherished and saved It’ll be with me unto the grave And then unto eternity
So the majority of the phrases come down on the side of Dylan the Christian, but there are one or two bits that don’t.
However I have long held onto the view that Dylan’s lyrics should not be taken literally at all points. He is, more often than not, an impressionist, and when we see what appear to be literal portraits they may be that or they may just be part of the collage.
In the end the issue is unresolvable, unless Dylan tells us, which he won’t.
Musically there is also a link with Angelina, as both songs are based around three simple major chords. It is as if Angelina (which is, of course, about Angelina and to a degree Christianity) was the dry run for this song. If you have access to both songs I would certainly suggest you might try one after the other.
For some reason my review of Angelina doesn’t have a link to the performance of the song, so here is one
Then if you have a mind to you might care to read my ramblings on this song, before listening either to Dylan’s album version of In the Summertime, or if you fancy a live version, try this one
I know it sounds as if I am being really critical of this song, and I don’t mean to be. I actually prefer the music from Angelina, and some of the lyrics, but the lyrics of In the Summertime do work beautifully.
Let’s forget the meaning and the religious issues, and just see what Dylan can do with words.
I was in your presence for an hour or so Or was it a day? I truly don’t know Where the sun never set, where the trees hung low By that soft and shining sea Did you respect me for what I did Or for what I didn’t do, or for keeping it hid? Did I lose my mind when I tried to get rid Of everything you see?
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last in this project I am sure, I am overwhelmed with what pictures Dylan can paint.
Dylan performed the song live 26 times over the 19 year period from 1981 to 2002. It clearly meant something to him, although he notably played it faster on stage than on the album.
Anyway, if you want to do something a bit different, and something that maybe not too many people have done (apart perhaps from the 400,000 or so reading this site) play Angelina and then play In the Summertime. It really is rather interesting.
I don’t know what it all means, but as an exploration of how Dylan explores and writes, writes and explores, there probably isn’t a better lesson going.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
I have long known that for me, personally, there is something profoundly odd about the world-view of Clinton Heylin, but it was only when I started doing my background reading on Clean Cut Kid that I fully understood what it was. For within the midst of his working through the ins and outs of the recording sessions of the song (typically without actually noticing how the music changes during the course of these events, with the middle 8 being added long after the rest of the song), Heylin suddenly says, “Clean Cut Kid suggested that if the songs ever dried up he [Dylan] might make a fine sociologist (sociology being, in PJ O’Rourke’s memorable phrase, one of the three disciplines designed to prove nothing is anybody’s fault.)”
Now I mention this not because I want to have an argument about Heylin, but because I think this comment explains a lot about his view of Dylan and his work.
What O’Rourke said was that “Liberals have invented whole college majors— psychology, sociology, women’s studies— to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.”
It is an utterly bizarre viewpoint revealing an absolute ignorance of what sociology actually is about, and how it originated. Auguste Comte, who first used the word, used it as a study of social groups and societies, as it became clear that the study of the behaviour of individuals, away from the study of people in groups, was not enough if one wanted to understand what makes animals (including humans) do what they do. Some behaviour can be explained as an individual responding to the environment, but a lot needs an explanation of how group behaviour evolves and can dominate our behaviour in certain situations. Humans for example are by and large devoted to the notion of family and it is clear that the family group influences each other. It is a social group.
I think the comment is silly, but it reveals something rather important about Heylin, in that he clearly believes that all human action is a matter of individual choice at that moment. And yet although technically, when I go to the supermarket to get some food I have the choice of stealing it or paying for it, in reality I always pay. That is what I do because of social and psychological pressures and experiences.
So Heylin believes that we all of us have the ability to make personal choices at every moment and we are not influenced by social pressure (sociology) or individual experience or personality (psychology). It explains a lot of his views.
In this song, originally recorded during the Infidels recording sessions in 1983, but not completed until two years later and released on Empire Burlesque, Dylan places the blame for a young man’s change of behaviour on the social and political pressures of government, and his subsequent experiences in the Vietnam War.
It is hardly a profound viewpoint, but to deny that the social setting, and one’s own personality have a part to play in how the young man’s vision was changed, is rather like just saying that man-made climate change doesn’t exist, and telling us the 3000 eminent scientists have signed up to say that without giving us the details of who they are, and what they have studied and published.
You could be right in denying climate change caused by man’s activities, but one needs some pretty detailed proof. It could be true to say sociology is just bunk, but just saying it doesn’t make it true. You could say that the sun goes round the earth, because that’s what you see. You could say that when people are 100 yards away from you they really have shrunk to one inch tall, because that’s what you see. But you still need a theory to explain what is going on.
Just denying the theory that most people who consider the subject follow, doesn’t mean the theory is wrong. Saying it, doesn’t make it so.
Dylan accepts the power of sociological factors in the song, but makes the simple both in the music and the lyrics – the kid was a nice regular guy but he was turned into a killer. And it so wrecked his life that he could not adjust back in the US, so eventually he killed himself. That’s it. In one out take of the song (see link below), all we have is verse verse verse which drives us relentlessly forwards to the conclusion. In the final version for the album, the piece is broken up with some middle 8 sections which makes it more attractive musically. That’s fine, but not completely necessary. Either way, relentlessly we get…
They took a clean-cut kid And they made a killer out of him That’s what they did
Between 1985 and 1990 Dylan played it 68 times, and it got an airing with Tom Petty and co at Farm Aid along with “I’ll Remember You,” and “Trust Yourself.”
Dylan didn’t have too much to say about Vietnam in general although there is a moment with the Wilbury’s where the lyric (which maybe is by Dylan or maybe one of the other guys) says
Tweeter was a boy scout before she went to Vietnam
And found out the hard way nobody gives a damn
They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey Line
So they hopped into a stolen car took Highway 99
So, if I am right in thinking that Highway 99 actually means Route 99, then the kid escapes to Canada.
What is also particularly interesting is that by and large Dylan hasn’t written too many anti-war songs about specific wars. He wrote “Masters of War” about the way the military-business alliance makes profit out of the threat of war, and he noted that if God were on our side he would stop the next war (which he didn’t so presumably He wasn’t), but specifically Dylan does do too much saying “Stop this war.” That isn’t really part of Dylan. Nor is he the musical version of Picasso with Guernica. It would be interesting if he were, but he’s not.
But what he does write about is the way individuals are manipulated by social settings and socio-economic situations – Hollis Brown is an obvious early example. Quite why Clinton can’t see that Hollis Brown is a song about the psychology of the man, the social-psychology of the family and the sociology of the United States is somewhat beyond me. But there it is.
Moving on, part of the glory of this song is the way the music is so out of kilter with the message. The message is awful, the music is bouncy and jolly. Not a care in the world. Just like the weapon manufacturers and the politicos who utilise them.
Musically there is also something quite unusual – one notices it first in the percussion, it just doesn’t normally happen like that in Dylan. I am personally not sure that the backing vocalists are actually necessary, but what do I know? It is Dylan who makes the sound, and having the backing singers there certainly adds to the feeling that this can’t possibly be about the horrors of government and its attitude towards sending its young men off to war.
The alternative version (without the middle 8s) is here
In the end Dylan concludes
Well, everybody’s asking why he couldn’t adjust All he ever wanted was somebody to trust
which, Mr Heylin, is a psychological statement not sociological. And it seems a pretty fair one to make at the end of the song.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Dylan described this as “one of them Caribbean songs. One year a bunch of songs just came to me hanging around down in the islands.” He also said on another occasion in a comment to Leonard Cohen he wrote it in 15 minutes.
These are, for me at least, two of Dylan’s most helpful comments, for here they suggest that the song’s lyrics really are a series of phrases and words that came to him – perhaps with some flipping through the Old Testament at the same time (or maybe just remembering a phrase, given the amount of Bible study he had done a few years earlier), and which were crafted together without any deep planning or plotting of the meaning.
But even without said plotting and planning this is one of those songs in which the dichotomy between the life of the individual (whose life is inevitably self-centred) and the world itself (which could be on the brink of political, environmental, or conflagrational disaster) is explored. Although it could also be a song in which God reflects on the futility and sheer utter pointlessness of being omnipotent. And that is rather fascinating for when the omnipotent one asks, “what is the point of all this?” then the sparks really do either start to fly, or begin to die.
One of the key reference points we have here is that the song itself can travel in so many directions, as revealed by the various versions of the song hear on stage and across so many different times, as the lyrics reveal.
I’ve put three links on here to different live versions of the song, and if you have a mind to I would urge you to try all three (unless you already know them) because they each tell a different story even though each uses the same lyrics. Then go back to the album (or listen on Spotify) and hear how Dylan wanted it at the start.
But back to the lyrics – for behind all the different musical versions there are two issues that commentators focus on: what does “I and I” actually mean, and how to handle a song in which the chorus (with its obscure meaning) is repeated five times. Indeed, for me, identifying these issues really help me as I listen to the live versions, not least because the Hammersmith version really seems (to me – it is always just my opinion) to fail to deal with these issues in the way the others do much more successfully.
So let’s start with the dominant issue in many people’s debates on the song, the issue of what “I and I” actually means.
It can mean “me and you” and can also mean “myself and my consciousness”. Or maybe “Me and Mine”, or it could be the public persona and the private persona. There really is no way of telling what Dylan had in mind, which again makes me think it was just a phrase that came to him.
In such a case it could even (and this is just me being fanciful, but having had the thought I do rather like it) be about God being omnipotent, but also saying to humanity, I want you to be my friend. God the all-powerful one vs. God the guy next door who helps you out with a new pair of shoes.
That God is part of the show is indicated with the final line of the chorus which is from Exodus, and refers to the notion that God is so utterly almighty and powerful that no one can see His face and live. The overarching, all-powerful, omnipotent, absolute ruler and controller of all things who demands devotion or else sends you into the endless fires on judgement day. Not my idea of fun but yes, in such a scenario, it seems fair enough that to look at Him is to die.
In many regards we’ve got the same sort of mystique and mysteriousness of Caribbean Wind here, as we move from one world to another line by line. Take for example
Told about Jesus, told about the rain, She told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain By a man who danced on the roof of the embassy.
And that means… well anything you like. The roof of the embassy could be a metaphor for pretty well most things – power, corruption, revolution, the denial of power… or it could just be one of those great phrases that actually has no meaning but is worth keeping because it is so, so intriguing. I can say for sure as an occasional song-writer whose works are just heard by a select few, I would love to have written that line.
Against this, the song is without utter brilliance and complexity of the music; it is a good song that benefits from its simplicity in the music, because of what the lyrics do. So (for me at least) musically it is without the pure certainty of direction that the chorus of Caribbean Wind offers, but the lyrics make up for that to quite a large degree.
Here’s the first of the live versions:
After listening to this and the other live versions (below) it is a shock to come back to the album track, so restrained and (at least in the verses) almost hesitant. It is an interesting game to play to jump from one to another. Well, it has been for me over the last couple of days, as I prepare this little commentary.
And after a couple of days of pondering, to me the whole song seems like a deliberate mix, jumping from one reality to another, and so it deserves lots of outings in different forms.
Been so long since a strange woman has slept in my bed Look how sweet she sleeps, how free must be her dreams In another lifetime she must have owned the world, or been faithfully wed To some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams
Dylan here is exploring the vacuum, the alternative realities, the fact that where we are is pure chance, and as we move on (and not for the first time in writing these reviews of songs from the post-Christian era) I am reminded of Talking Heads song “Heaven” .
Dylan sings
Think I’ll go out and go for a walk Not much happenin’ here, nothin’ ever does Besides, if she wakes up now, she’ll just want me to talk I got nothin’ to say, ’specially about whatever was
Talking Heads proclaimed,
There is a party, everyone is there Everyone will leave at exactly the same time It’s hard to imagine that nothing at all Could be so exciting could be this much fun
This is the world of nothingness, vacancy, hopelessness, so far removed from the world of dominance proclaimed by Exodus despite the Old Testament certainty….
Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice’s beautiful face And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
And we have the great imponderable. There is no connectivity, except that everything is connected, but at the same time all is uncertain
Outside of two men on a train platform there’s nobody in sight They’re waiting for spring to come, smoking down the track The world could come to an end tonight, but that’s all right She should still be there sleepin’ when I get back
There is also the most extraordinarily set of images in the final verse. It is almost as if the character relating the tale is either the god who suddenly finds he is not omnipotent at all or the mortal who realises that he is not under God’s power.
Noontime, and I’m still pushin’ myself along the road, the darkest part Into the narrow lanes, I can’t stumble or stay put Someone else is speakin’ with my mouth, but I’m listening only to my heart I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot
That final line is not, for me, a line that has an explicit meaning – it is an image, like shaded colours in an abstract painting. It is there for us to take as a feeling, not to say that it means x or y. A bit like dancing on the roof of the embassy.
Time for the second live version…
Of course as others have said it could be about two Bob Dylan’s – the public and private man, the evangelical man or the agnostic, the optimist the pessimist. Two characters at different times, two people living in the same body. Hence the multiple versions of the song.
Here’s the third version…
Musically the song is a simple minor key blues rift build around Am, C, G; D Am. The chorus has the same musical basis, just leaving out the C chord. It is one of the many amazing things about Dylan’s music how it can get so much out of a chord sequence he has used so often before.
Dylan certainly felt a complete empathy with the song, between 1984 and 1999 he played it 204 times live on stage. Thus he clearly got a lot out of the composition – which again reinforces my view that it is an abstract not a set of meanings. Each time he recreated it, the music set the lyrics into a new mode with a new meaning.
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Under your spell, written for Knocked out Loaded, and indeed containing the phrase “Knocked out and loaded” is most certainly a very strange song and indeed is one which Dylan has never played in public.
It was co-written with Carole Bayer Sager, herself no mean songwriter, and based around a track that Dylan supposedly recorded without any lyrics in November 1985, which is why I include it as the final composition of that strange year. (Strange for Dylan that is, not strange generally).
But as I say there were no lyrics at this time, and so they must have been added later, either by Ms Sager herself or by the two of them, perhaps with Ms Sager writing some and then Dylan writing some. (More on this in a moment).
Certainly by this time we had had a number of songs that Dylan had created and then passed on with a seemingly imperious flourish as if to say, “see if you can do something with this!” That is in effect the central story of 1985.
But what hauls us back from this analysis are lines like
Well the desert is hot, the mountain is cursed Pray that I don’t die of thirst Baby, two feet from the well
which surely is pure Dylan at his most obscure.
And then there is the construction. In the classic pop song you get a verse of maybe three, four, six or eight lines, followed by a second verse, followed by a middle 8 (which is a short section using different chords and a different melody), followed by another verse.
In short, it goes
Verse, verse, middle 8, verse. Or A A B A as musicians are wont to put it.
There are also a few breaks of varying lengths thrown in from time to time. And the last word of the third line of each verse rhymes with all the other last lines. It is a most unusual structure.
Now of course there is nothing wrong with being unusual, but people like me often want to know why, and for the life of me I can’t really tell, although I am about to make a guess.
As for the meaning… he’s out of it either physically or mentally or both, he knows she needs help but he’s in a mess… but then, well I don’t really know what happens after that.
So it is an impressionist song about worlds falling apart, about people trying to make good from a mess. But really what are we to make of
I’ll see you later when I’m not so out of my head Maybe next time I’ll let the dead bury the dead Baby, what more can I tell?
I have no idea.
And all of this is before we get to the music. The melody sounds very Dylan, but the chord sequence is most unusual for our man. And yet the story he tells is that he was there at the writing of the music, which was a chord sequence out of which a melody emerged.
OK maybe so, but if I could find a way of resolving the issue I would happily put a bet on the fact that Dylan didn’t write this chord sequence by himself.
The verse runs
A E+ F#m Dsus4 D Dm A
Even if that is all gobbledegook to you, you might well recognise that we haven’t had E+ before as a chord, and there haven’t been too many Dsus4 chords around either. (In case you are interested the chord of E contains the notes E, G# and B. The chord of E+ (usually said as “E augmented”) contains E, G# and technically B#, but B# is the same note as C so we could say E, G# and C).
Thus where I have got to is that it sounds to me as if Dylan wrote at least some of the lyrics and Carole Bayer Sager wrote the music, except that Dylan suggests he wrote the music.
Maybe we should try one other option: that Ms Sager wrote some of the lyrics, and Dylan, having a bit of fun, put in bits around it. Dylan wrote the chord sequence, and one of the band added the augmentation to the E.
So we could imagine that the good lady wrote a song that went
I will be back, I will survive You’ll never get rid of me as long as you’re alive Baby, can’t you tell
Well it’s four in the morning by the sound of the birds I’m starin’ at your picture, I’m hearin’ your words Baby, they ring in my head like a bell
Everywhere you go it’s enough to break hearts Someone always gets hurt, a fire always starts You were too hot to handle, you were breaking every vow I trusted you baby, you can trust me now
Turn back baby, wipe your eye Don’t think I’m leaving here without a kiss goodbye Baby, is there anything left to tell?
That’s a nice classic A A B A structure and it sort of makes sense. And Dylan then had a bit of a lark by adding those extra verses at the start and the end.
OK, maybe not, but really, you’re guess is as good as mine.
But what of Carol Bayer Sager? She co-wrote with Toni Wine (herself a songwriter of note) “A groovy kind of love” which everyone of a certain age in Britain will know and which I am reliably informed was also a hit the the US. Actually it was also later a hit again for Phil Collins, but I digress.
She wrote lots of hits, wrote lots of soundtracks including that to “Arthur”, had a platinum album and eventually married Burt Bacharach with whom she wrote “That’s what friends are for” for which they won a Grammy, and later (after a divorce I am sure) married Robert Daly (who was chairman of Warner Brothers).
There is much much more to her career, including being on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in the Songwriters Hall of Fame – but this composition with Dylan remains a profound oddity which I am struggling to resolve. Certainly the co-writing with Dylan doesn’t even get a mention on the Wiki article about Ms Sager so presumably her fans who created the page didn’t rate it. (And yes, I knew some of the stuff about her before I got to Wiki, but I was just checking the facts – honest).
There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.
Towards the end of 1985 Dylan was doing a fair number of jam sessions with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, trying out different ideas and looking for what he could do next. One of the resultant songs “Shake” did obviously please him as he played it at Farm Aid, and on three more occasions, but didn’t record it.
The song is a straight forward 12 bar blues with the first line of the lyrics repeated and then a single answering line. There must be a billion such songs ranging from the highly original to the ultimately derivative.
Heylin leads us to believe that this song is a copy of “Treat her right” by Roy Head, but in reality it is as much a copy of that as of so many other songs that it hardly seems reasonable to pick out just one as the source. (The link to the Roy Head song has now gone, but I suspect there are others around).
Dylan had played “Treat her right” at a rehearsal the year before, which is probably what gave Heylin the idea, but that private performance doesn’t really mean “Shake” is a reworking of it.
The point about these work outs were that they not only gave Dylan something new to play – the type of music that he had always enjoyed playing – but it allowed him to see what might emerge, without any worries if nothing did. Empire Burlesque was done, he didn’t have to be concerned about a new album for a while, and besides the Heartbreakers were around and they and Tom Petty were usually full of inspiration.
The lyrics are the classic 1950s R&B format of sexual innuendo going as far as the US censor would allow on a radio play, but no further…
Shake it baby like you know you canShake like you know you canProve to me you're my woman just like I'm your man
Or something along those lines. Either way you get the idea.
It’s not a great song by any means but it was what Dylan wanted to do at the time.
Untold Dylan: who we are what we do
Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.
We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with approaching 6000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture. Not every index is complete but I do my best.
But what is complete is our index to all the 604 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page. I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information. Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.
The review of Never Be the Same Again in Heylin’s “Still on the Road” has gained a certain notoriety in one or two quarters (although I suspect 99.999% of fans just ignore Heylin and get on with enjoying Dylan).
Heylin describes this as “his worst excuse for a love song this side of Nashville,” and “a sorry apology for a song”.
As always though Heylin comes up with a bit of trivia – the fact that “I don’t mind leaving, I’d just like to be my idea” comes from the movie “Shane”. Not that this makes any difference but yes, it is quite nice to know.
Dylan dropped the song from the tour very quickly and then returned to it nine years later and then after 25 more plays gave up on it. And indeed I would never suggest it is one of Dylan’s better songs that deserves many more outings – but it certainly isn’t worthy of the dismissal that Heylin gives it.
However in my personal view there is a serious problem – and that is the middle 8, which has the line that Heylin quotes. The problem is the line and its very forced rhyme just doesn’t work well, and this detracts from the song itself.
But extract those four lines and what you have is an interestingly tangential take on the traditional love song.
Just consider the last verse
You taught me how to love you, baby You taught me, oh, so well Now, I can’t go back to what was, baby I can’t unring the bell You took my reality And cast it to the wind And I ain’t never gonna be the same again
and consider also what other pop song composers can do that and make it work. Not many I think. The phrase “unring the bell” comes from American legal cases – I have never heard it in Britain – and relates fairly obviously to the impossibility of unsaying what has just been said. As when the judge says that evidence that has been heard is inadmissible and should not influence the jurors when making a ruling.
What is also worth contemplating is the perfect use of the F6 chord at the start of the second half (“You touched me…” in the first verse, “you took my reality” here). Very unusual and very effective.
And we are left trying to decipher what Dylan actually meant in such a song with the “scream” reference in the first verse.
If you want to give the song another try, here’s a version that I would recommend. It is over six minutes long, but really I think it is worth the wait.
Just try and ignore that middle 8 if you can. And while you are at it, ignore Heylin’s comments too. The trouble is, once you’ve seen what he says, it is hard to unring him too.
But let me try and throw in something else. Here is Dylan’s output at this time – three Empire Burlesque songs in a row.
Even if you agree with Heylin about how awful this song is, just remember what came either side of it, and consider it just an in-between sketch. Just a bridge between the night coming falling and the utterly wonderful “Dark Eyes”. If “Never gonna be” is the price to pay for “Dark Eyes” I would pay it a thousand times over.
Untold Dylan: who we are what we do
Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.
We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with approaching 6000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture. Not every index is complete but I do my best.
But what is complete is our index to all the 604 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page. I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information. Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.
Update: 23 August 2017. The previously noted live version is no longer available so a new link has been added.
Tony
This music is relaxed; it has nothing to prove. It is music of accumulated knowledge, it knows every move, anticipates every step before you take it. Producing himself for the second time running, Dylan has captured the sound of tradition as an ever-present, a sound he’s been working on since his first album, in 1962.
So said Rolling Stone on reviewing Modern Times, and by and large that seems about right. Not right in reference to everything in the album, but in terms of Spirit on the Water, which it fairly reasonably calls a “dance-hall ballad” that works, and the review continues
Dylan invokes God’s creation of the heavens and Earth to describe his sweetheart’s face. There’s divine reckoning here, too, though: “I wanna be with you in paradise, and it seems so unfair/I can’t go back to paradise no more/I killed a man back there.”
It’s a nice twist for a song that lasts nearly eight minutes – I love you but I can’t be with you in eternity because I killed a guy in the past. A particularly nice twist for a man who was a committed fundamentalist Christian a while back. And indeed I can’t think of any other song that uses that twist. Yes there are millions of songs that take us down the “I love you but can’t be with you” route, but not in terms of the afterlife; not for this reason.
Dylan thus quotes Genesis in terms of the opening of the song. In the Bible itself the second verse in the King James version reads
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Dylan reduces this to
Spirit on the water Darkness on the face of the deep
Now one or two commentators have taken this as the starting point for proclaiming that Bob never lost his Christian faith but has been discussing it, or weaving it into his songs, in different ways all the time.
That isn’t an explanation I go with, and one reason is that for that line to work one also has to explain why he is also taking lines from elsewhere. For example Sonny Boy Williamson’s Black Gal Blues runs
Lord knows I’m wild about you black, gal You ought to be a fool about me
While Dylan goes with
I’m wild about you, gal You ought to be a fool about me
In Sugar Mama Blues, Sonny Boy goes with
They are bragging about your sugar, sugar mama Been Braggin all over town
while Dylan sings
They brag about your sugar Brag about it all over town
Because of this I don’t see Dylan’s lines such as
I’ve been trampling through mud Praying to the powers above
as being lines we should take literally. They are lines that are part of the overall picture he is painting.
Likewise the man Dylan killed “back there” might be linking him to Cain who was driven out for killing his brother, but I don’t see it that way. Maybe if Dylan hadn’t added in lines from Sonny Boy Williamson then there might be a case, but I not for me. For me this is an impression of a man’s life told through the dream like relaxed qualities of the music.
It is more like the thoughts that we get when drifting off to sleep, thoughts that come from anywhere and everywhere and which don’t connect.
Besides which we don’t just have the Bible and Sonny Boy – there is a touch of Ovid too.
Ovid (whom Dylan has also quoted in Working Man’s Blues No 2, Ain’t Talkin, and The Levee’s Gonna Break and now gets used here as “Can’t believe these things would ever fade from your mind” (Black Sea Letters, Book 2, Section 4, Line 24), becomes
I got no choice Can’t believe these things would ever fade from your mind
So in short I see no reason to take the religious reference and treat it in any other way from the other quotes. Dylan collects turns of phrase he likes, that’s all.
What we most certainly do know is that Dylan loves this song. He started playing it in October 2006 and at the time I write this review (November 2016 – ten years and one month later) he has played it in concert 524 times. And you don’t do that if you don’t like it.
So what makes Dylan like it so?
It is dance like, and there are not too many such songs in the Dylan composition files. And it is different from anything that most other popular composers have done.
Plus there is that lovely opening played on the chords of A E A E D A D E A…. You don’t have to be a musician to hear it and remember it. So simple, played throughout, and it binds everything together.
Then the chord changes after it which are so unexpected (the F#m7 and Bm7) which don’t sound out of place, but are just … well, interesting.
In short it all works, without any sense of artifice, music and lyrics stroll along together in such a delightful way that even after seven minutes of it, we are not getting bored. He even throws in a modulation in the middle 8, and you don’t get too many of them in Dylan either.
Indeed in an interview with Robert Hilburn in 2004 Dylan said pretty much explained how it all worked…
“What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it’s a proven fact that it’ll help them relax. I don’t meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song. I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” for instance, in my head constantly—while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I’m talking back, but I’m not. I’m listening to a song in my head. At a certain point, some words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”
I’m suggesting the same happens with movies and with literature, and for Dylan in songs. Certainly for me there is nothing more amiss in it than a painter using an image from elsewhere.
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here. A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
During this middle spell he wrote four songs that were then handed over to others to complete: Well well well, Howlin at your window, Tragedy of the trade, Time to end this masquerade. They are all interesting, but as I have suggested in my reviews one of them (Well well well) turned itself into a magnificent song which can be played in all sorts of ways. I really do listening to one particular version – it is completely superb.
After this we come to another bunch of songs, the first two of which are for the moment causing me a problem, as I don’t have a copy of the bootleg album on which they apparently appear. The three songs are “Straight A’s in love”, “The very thought of you” and “Waiting to get beat”.
“Straight A’s in love” is a re-write of a Johnny Cash song, and “The very thought of you” takes the title of one of the most famous songs of the 1930s and then adds new lyrics and music.
“Waiting to Get Beat” however I have been able to listen to, both in the short Dylan original and a subsequent version which is widely available.
One point I can’t clarify is that these three songs re-use either the music of each other, or the music Dylan used for earlier songs. The suggestions made to this effect are fairly unclear so I am not at all sure what the writers were implying, but I am sure that “Waiting to get beat” is musically a copy of a song by David Byrne. I haven’t found it yet, but I am sure that it comes from his post-Talking Heads period.
Anyway, its a ska song, neatly performed by Dylan and it could (to my ear at least) easily have fitted into the mixed ethos of Empire Burlesque. The essence of the song is that the mob are out to get the singer’s girlfriend, because she’s been messing with the wrong sort.
Here’s the lyrics since they are not on the official Dylan site….
Waiting to get beat On a dark and lonely street Pay time ’round, pay back down Waiting to get beat
Waiting to get beat Waiting like a piece of meat The mumble is on, the thrill is gone Waiting to get beat
You’re playin’ around with daddy, baby When you should have quit Nobody messes up one of these boys And get away with it
Waiting to get beat Can’t sleep, can’t eat Getting rude, getting bold Getting ready to be rolled Waiting to get beat
Setting a match to the house that you live in And falling for the first clown you see One day there’ll be a knock on the door And you know who it’ll be
Waiting to get beat Playing with a heart that will cheat Getting pretty, getting ripped Getting dressed to get whipped Waiting to get beat
Musically, as I say, it is a ska beat (which in the Tea Leaf Green version takes to extremes – Dylan’s version is much more restrained) with a simple three chord accompaniment underneath.
While doing the normal bit of background on this song I came across a very apposite Haiku based on the song…
Bob warns his girlfriend
That she’s hanging out with some
Quite rough customers
That’s more or less it. I like it, but it might not be to everyone’s taste.
Untold Dylan: who we are what we do
Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan. It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.
We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers. Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics who teach English literature. If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.
We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with approaching 6000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture. Not every index is complete but I do my best.
But what is complete is our index to all the 604 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page. I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information. Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.
As I have pointed out in other articles about this period in his writing history, Dylan had spent his time experimenting, before settling on a style and approach that would result in the songs that made up Empire Burlesque. But after composing “Emotionally Yours” he took a break, writing a couple of basic tracks that would be picked up later by other songwriters. (Well well well and Howlin at your window)
After that he turned to working with Gerry Goffin on two songs: Tragedy of the Trade and Time to end this masquerade
Tragedy of the Trade is credited to Dylan, Goffin, and Barry Goldberg. and it appears on “Back Room Blood”. Although Bob Dylan is listed as the co-producer for Masquerade he is not listed in that regard on this track.
But this was not a total change of approach for Dylan from “Well, well well” and “Howlin”, because just as in both those cases, what Dylan wrote (and this we have from an interview Goffin gave to Billboard magazine) was the title and fragments of the first verse (“A young girl dies in the gutter face down…”.
According to Goffin he (Goffin) wrote the rest of the lyrics and the music was written by Barry Goldberg who had reputedly worked with Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, and Howlin’ Wolf.
Dylan knew Goldberg because Goldberg had played keyboards in the band on the electric performance at Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and subsequently worked with Mike Bloomfield.
The problem with Goffin’s albums however is that (depending on your point of view) he either couldn’t sing, or had a unique singing voice that many of us can’t actually appreciate. I must admit that for me it doesn’t make easy listening.
What we are most certainly not getting here is “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, “The Loco-Motion”, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, “Up On the Roof” etc etc. Goffin without King makes for a very different type of song.
The first verse, the one for which Dylan is said to have written some of the lyrics, runs like this…
A young girl dies in the gutter face down Taxi driver pulls up to the curb, dies without a sound Copin’ a squad car ridin’ round is nowhere to be found Each one has seen his last But we must let it pass Too much money to be made The tragedy of the trade
The lines
Taxi driver pulls up to the curb, dies without a sound Copin’ a squad car ridin’ round is nowhere to be found
seem to me to be somewhat reminiscent of Hurricane:
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin’ around
Indeed I can look at the lyrics of Tragedy and hear them played out to the music of Hurricane. I know it is totally fanciful, but I wonder if that is what had happened to Dylan. He started writing the song and then realised he was using the same melody as he had used before.
Once that happens it can be hard to shut the idea out, and can mean that lyrics have to be abandoned as it becomes impossible to shake the original song out of one’s head. Hence the need for collaboration.
But I also wonder if Dylan really only created the first verse of the song. For the piece ends
It’s not a game, but that’s the way it’s played The scales of justice have really never been weighed The tragedy of the trade.
You can see that at either end of the list are the songs he used for Empire Burlesque, with one Knocked Out Loaded song at the start of the year.
But what was going on in the middle of the year? Well in part it turns out Dylan was sketching out a couple of songs he couldn’t finish off (“Well, well, well” and “Howlin at your window” and then writing a couple of songs with Gerry Goffin, before turning his attention back to Empire Burlseque.
Until I started my journey through Dylan’s 1985 I have to say I utterly no idea what I would find in the middle of the year. And I am fairly certain if it hadn’t been for the blog I wouldn’t have a) realised that Dylan co-write “Well well well” (which I’ve owned on CD for years without realising it was a Dylan song) nor that he followed that up in 1985 with the outline of another little gem, “Howlin at your window” and a real bit of fun in Waiting to get Beat.
For both “Well well well” and “Howlin” Bob used the same trick – he dug out the old recordings of songs that had been laid down but never developed in 1985 at the Church studio in London, and then much later, and out of the blue, he approached a singer/songwriter whose work he liked and said, “here’s a song would you like to finish it off for me?” In both cases Dylan had written only the music when he handed it over.
Heylin suggests that Dylan gave this song to Jude Johnstone in 1993 while Dylan was in Austin Texas filming a TV special for Willie Nelson’s sixtieth birthday. There’s no confirmation that this is how it happened but it is as good a guess as any.
Jude Johnstone wrote the Grammy Award-winning song “Unchained” for Johnny Cash, as well as “Cry Wolf” for Stevie Nicks. She also worked with T Bone Burnett and Leonard Cohen, singing on their albums, and with the E Street Band.
Ms Johnstone chose not to include her co-creation with Dylan on her subsequent albums, and I can’t find any explanation as to why this happened, but fortunately for those of us interested in such matters Tim Hockenberry has recorded it for his album “Back In Your Arms” so now we know what it sounds like – and it most certainly is worth a listen or two. You can find the song here
Talking about her work with such luminaries of the rock business Ms Johnstone said in one interview that she met Clarence Clemons, the E Street Band’s sax player on an airplane when she was 18 years old, and he was taken by her songs even though these early pieces “were not quite as well-written. But there was something going on that he heard, and he just plucked me out of Bar Harbor, Maine and I never went back.”
Her songs have since also been recorded by Bette Midler, Johnny Cash, Jennifer Warnes, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, and Trisha Yearwood, who recorded “The Woman Before Me.”
So another Dylan oddity. I hope you enjoy it, and if you are following the sequence, enjoying the trip of discovery through 1985.
