By Tony Attwood

“What can I do for you?” is a Dylan song that to me always seems to me to derive from the parts of the Bible that emphasise obedience and subservience, on the subject of which Ephesians 6 is particularly clear:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your father and mother”   …

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ….

“And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him.”

And yet, within this I (as a heathen non-believer) have always found a contradiction, as when the text says,

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

It is a differentiation that has always fascinated me.  The acceptance of being what you are born as (slave, free man, member of the aristocracy) and accepting that fate, as well as the entire structure of society as we find it, is not one I have ever been willing to accept.  Indeed for me, coming back to Dylan’s songs of this era, it is a shock to hear him as part of the movement for accepting the social structure rather than struggling to remove it.

But then as I have oft said on this site, the “Times they are a changing” album is most certainly ill-named (other than using the title of the most famous song on the album as a hook to get sales), since the songs are primarily about the fact that nothing is changing at all.  Hollis Brown is stuck in an uncaring, unchanging world, the traveller in “One too many mornings” just keeps on moving on, we’re only a pawn in their game, Hattie Carroll dies…

But then as Dylan said at that time

And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side

That sarcasm explained the essence of the album, but now … the world has changed and true to his earlier comment, Dylan doesn’t ask questions – he asks only one, “What can I do for You?”

Obviously because I am sceptical about the Afterlife (although my mother, father and aunt all believed in it most fervently, and were most decent and honourable people, so I hope beyond hope that they were right and now live on, even though if that’s the case I am condemned to eternal damnation), I find the message of accepting one’s lot, while worshipping the Lord, something I can’t take.

And so I am (and this is just personal, I am not trying to convince you) deeply concerned with

Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied
Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide
And You’ve chosen me to be among the few
What can I do for You?

The notion that the Almighty chooses people (like Bob) to be among the few, rather than the followers making a clear choice to follow (or in my case not) is not how I was taught Christianity.  It was up to me to choose the way of the Lord; He didn’t choose for me, I rejected the notion of organised religion all by myself.

So for a truer rendition of Christianity as I understand it (and of course I can be and usually am very wrong on such matters) Dylan’s line should be “I found the way, now what can I do for You”.

So I am very much turned off by the acceptance of the world as it is, rather than the struggle to make the world (or at least the tiny part of the world I touch) a better place.  A few times in my life I have been in a position where by chance I have been able to make a real difference to a person’s life.  Not for any gain, but because I can and because it seems the right thing to do.  And I have done it.  And that makes me feel quite good.  I did it for those individuals, and because I could, not because of an instruction from the Lord, and not because it was all pre-ordained.

Which puts me very much in the position of  verse two…

Soon as a man is born, you know the sparks begin to fly
He gets wise in his own eyes and he’s made to believe a lie

Or as TS Eliot so clearly and profoundly put it

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason

So we move on to the long wailing harmonica solo that made up the epilogue to the song on stage.   “Dylan’s most glorious moment as a harpist,” wrote Eyolf Østrem, and yes, on that I can agree.

Musically the song is fairly straightforward.  The first part of the verse takes us through C, A minor, F and G, while the second (“Pulled me out of bondage”) uses the same chords in a different order, and throws in a D minor at the end of the second line (“been denied”) to keep us hanging on.

But there was one particularly interesting twist in the song – according to Heylin.  In the early days on stage Dylan sang

Well, I don’t deserve it but I’m sure to make it through

but then later changed it to

Well, I don’t deserve it but I sure did make it through
What can I do for You?

Bob first played the song live on 1 November 1979, and performed it 93 times before letting it slip out of his hands on  23 July 1981, and ultimately moved away from being saved, to not quite so saved.

Elsewhere

• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site

Latest…

• Cat’s in the well: Dylan’s games with nursery rhymes
• Handy Dandy: Bob Dylan playing at contradictions.
• If you have never heard Dylan sing “Dirty Lie”, try it now. Fun, but maybe not original.
• Exploding the myths about Bob Dylan, awards, prizes and speeches.
• Who loves you more? One of Dylan’s not quite lost songs from the Empire Burlesque recordings
• Go ‘way little boy – Bob Dylan meets Maria McKee. The meaning behind the music and the lyrics.
• From Danville Girl to New Danville Girl to Brownsville Girl. Dylan’s epic journey.

By Tony Attwood

For many admirers of his work, Bob Dylan ended the 1980s on a high with a series of compositions written in 1989 and which continue to resonate deeply.   Songs such as

• Disease of Conceit
• What was it you wanted
• Everything is Broken
• Ring them Bells
• Series of Dreams
• Most of the Time
• Where teardrops fall
• Shooting Star
• Man in a Long Black Coat

As so often in Dylan’s career we might say that if that was the peak of another writer’s output, he would be much admired for that alone.  For Dylan it was just another year.

And yet there was clearly lurking within him at the time, a temptation to try other arenas, as with, for example, “TV Talking Song” – a song composed between the two very much more sombre “Where teardrops falls” and “Most of the Time”.

So perhaps we should not be too surprised that when Bob took up his pen again in 1990, he was off again in another direction, as the opening songs of the decade (Handy Dandy, and Cat’s in the Well) show.   This was the start of a new exploration – of taking old phrases and nursery rhymes and turning them into something else.

For me, much of the time it didn’t work – but as I have point out before, if Dylan had been a visual artist he would have had a sketch book for such ideas – and we’d now appreciate them as sketches not the real deal.  But with Dylan every time it doesn’t reach his highest levels he is criticised.   But then as Dylan himself said in October 2016, “Everything worth doing takes time. You have to write a hundred bad songs before you write one good one. And you have to sacrifice a lot of things that you might not be prepared for. Like it or not, you are in this alone and have to follow your own star.”

https://youtu.be/FwW6PtowHQM

Certainly at the start of this new decade Dylan was following his own star, and in “Cat’s in the Well” he clearly found some significance, playing the song just one short of 300 times in concert between February 1992 and October 2010.

It is a song that showed us just how far Dylan had moved on from telling us all that we can be saved from eternal damnation by recognising the Lord, to a much more desperate vision of reality.

For as we hear the lines pile up with

The drinks are ready and the dogs are going to war

and

Goodnight, my love, may the Lord have mercy on us all

we know this is the end, but without any sign of redemption and salvation.  This time, we’ve all had it.  The Masters of War are sitting in the captain’s tower, the Hard Rain is falling, and Hollis Brown has shot his family.

As such there is not much of the nursery rhyme left – and yet those ancient nursery rhymes are themselves so often full of horrors and nightmares – and elements of these horrors are kept.  Indeed the mere fact that they have survived (at least in English culture – I can’t speak for the rest of the world) tells us how deeply they resonate with our psychology.

And now with Dylan the cat is mingled up with the wolf while the world’s being slaughtered, there’s a horse, a bull, the dogs…

There are also Biblical references here, and it is easy to translate each animal into some significant coherent religious message, but I am not at all sure that’s the right translation.  Maybe the “dogs” are the unholy people who have not heard God’s message, as some suggest, but I simply don’t hear that.

https://youtu.be/bboaKIQgw-0

Instead, I get the feeling that this is the other side of Man Gave Names to all the Animals.  It’s not the snake one should be afraid of, it is the whole bloody man-made mess.

So maybe it is a reference back to Revelations 20:8, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.  

Or maybe it is just despair at the utter stupidity of mankind (and, according to other comments from Bob at the time, the whole stupid music industry.)

But let’s consider the cat, and the well. 

The image of the cat in the well goes way back in English literature and so resonates very deeply within many who have a passing knowledge of earlier songs and stories.  In one of the earliest references John Lant, the organist of Winchester Cathedral in 1580, wrote “Jacke boy, ho boy newes, the cat is in the well, let us ring now for her Knell, ding dong ding dong Bell.”    So we are getting on for 500 years of cats in wells.  It’s an image that really seems to strike a chord.

Within 20 years the lyrics were in print as a four part canon (a song for four voices in which all four voices sing the same melody, but each starts a set number of beats after the one before, somewhat like a round).  

The phrase ‘Ding, dong, bell’ was thus clearly established as a recognised catch phrase and by the 17th century, everyone in England would have known it.  It turns up several times in Shakespeare, in particular (given Dylan’s seeming fascination with the play) in “The Tempest” (Act 1 Scene II), “Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! Now I hear them – Ding, dong, bell,” and Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene II, “Let us all ring fancy’s knell; I’ll begin it – Ding, dong, bell.”

By the 18th century we had a name for the boy who threw the cat in the well – the nasty Johnny Green also sometimes called Johnny Fin, and the morality was added with “What a bad boy was that, To kill a pussy cat, Who never did any harm, But played with the mice in his father’s barn.”   So cats can kill mice, but boys can’t kill cats.  That’s how it goes.

Dylan however wants none of this reasoning and rescuing business.  It’s all over for the cat – he’s down the well, and the wolf is looking down wondering how to get down there and eat the creature.  Meanwhile the lady’s sleeping and

The world’s being slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace

In short, we’re screwed.

Musically this is a 12 bar blues in B flat with a middle 8 based on a much more unusual chord sequence of G minor, E flat, B flat, which helps keep the song buzzing along – because those two line middle 8 are so unexpected.

So the nursery rhyme comes to an end, we’ve messed up, and as he told us at the end of the previous year, everything is broken.

Goodnight, my love, may the Lord have mercy on us all.

• Untold Dylan: who we are what we do
  Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

By Tony Attwood

I am always worried when I write a review which is based around the meaning of words and phrases, simply because a word or phrase that I, as a person born and brought up in England, understand as meaning one thing, might mean something quite different to a man brought up in Minnesota.

But I continue to write such reviews, secure in the knowledge that if there is a separate Minnesotan meaning for the word or phrase in question, I will soon be told about it.

And thus we come to Handy Dandy.

In Shakespeare “handy dandy” takes on what I believe is the classic meaning, of choices or opposites with each in the end being fairly similar to the other.   Thus for example in King Lear the King himself says to Gloucester, “What! art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”

The notion “which is the justice, which is the thief?” seems very Dylanesque to me, and is, I believe, the starting point in this song for lines such as “He’s got that fortress on the mountain With no doors, no windows, no thieves can break in.”

In British culture handy dandy is also a children’s game in which an object is passed from one player to another and then suddenly the passing stops and one player is required to guess which hand the object is being held in.

So we are in the world of being frivolous and secretive – rather like the characters in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee – whom Dylan also sang about.   This is particularly so since the dictionary definition of Handy Dandy includes exchanging one position for another, in a rapid or continuous manner.  Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee were identical (if contrary) twins.

There is also a sense here of Subterranean Homesick Blues

Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again.

Confusion is everywhere in these songs and is the essence of Handy Dandy – we really can’t be sure what’s going on, when, and how.  Like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee in the original poem agreeing to have a battle, but then not because they get frightened by a crow.

Part of this confusion, light-heartedness and the fact that nothing is as it seems, is given to us as we listen to the piece for the first time by the way the organ is played at the very start.  The style and approach is in a manner that makes one think of “Like a Rolling Stone.”  But what we get is something quite different.  Such misleading confusion is the essence of Handy Dandy at all times.

Originally it seems the song was over half an hour long with the notion that the band would just keep recording and then it would all be edited down.  I’m not sure if that is so (some reports contradict this) but either way, we end up with a piece that goes much more towards the oddity end of the scale.  As with

Handy Dandy, if every bone in his body was broken he would never admit it
He got an all-girl orchestra and when he says
“Strike up the band,” they hit it
Handy Dandy, Handy Dandy

But the Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum element continues to be there…

You say, “What are ya made of?”
He says, “Can you repeat what you said?”
You’ll say, “What are you afraid of?”
He’ll say, “Nothin’! Neither ’live nor dead.”

But the contradiction does come back as we travel along

He’s got that clear crystal fountain
He’s got that soft silky skin
He’s got that fortress on the mountain
With no doors, no windows, no thieves can break in

And in the end we get nowhere – we just go round and round.

Handy Dandy, he got a basket of flowers and a bag full of sorrow
He finishes his drink, he gets up from the table, he says
“Okay, boys, I’ll see you tomorrow”
Handy Dandy, Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy
Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy

Musically the piece is simplicity itself – just three chords going around over and over – there’s no real development, and in the end the conclusion seems to me to be that this was an experiment – and in the end one that doesn’t actually seem to take us anywhere or offer any real insights into the state of the world.

But then as I have said elsewhere, all artists do such experiments and we find them in their note books and on sketchpads.  Dylan’s however are often kept for posterity, and if put on an album, as this song was, take on a position that seems far more important than perhaps Dylan ever thought they ought to be.

Here’s the out-take from the album…

By Tony Attwood

At Verona in 1984 Bob was working on three new songs during the rehearsals and sound checks, undoubtedly trying to find his way into a new arena for his muse.

The whole journey of composition through that year was quite strange, and we can see it heading off in all sorts of different directions.  Not for the first time the direction Dylan chose was one that, perhaps for many of us, was not quite the right direction – but he’s always his own man.

Here’s the list of compositions for the start of 1984

• I once knew a man – a classic blues – don’t know who wrote it
• Who loves you more – an extended blues – unfinished lyrics
• Almost done – delicate, gentle far from finished
• Dirty lie – a rocking blues

So two blues, and one incomplete gentle ballad with a beautiful tune.   And then we got Dirty Lie, referred to in some places as Dirty Lies.

If you have never heard it I suggest you try it now – assuming the link below still works by the time you get there.  It is a song that at first listen surely seems worthy of inclusion on any Dylan album.  But, as we’ll see later, he felt it was not finished.  And I’m going to suggest that there was another reason for abandonment.

The problem with the song was “Stray Cat Strut” by “Stray Cats” released in 1981 in the UK – later in the US, but still two years before Dylan’s venture into the genre.

Dylan’s lyrics are more interesting, but the musical links between “Dirty Lie” and “Stray Cuts” are just too close to allow the song to be released.

Here is Dylan’s version….

And here’s a version of Stray Cat Strut.

Bob’s lyrics run…

Sometime she said  I’m slow
She said it about me but it’s too soon to know
Don’t mind leaving, wondering why
Whosoever told it, told a dirty lie

Well, I’ll tell you one more, to
Take what is you with you when you go
Now I’ll tumble, tumble and die
Whosoever told it, told a dirty lie

[Middle 8…]

Already seen your dirty mate
Sure find it harder to concentrate
I’ll be beloved, times too slow
But make sure you take her with you when you go

I’ll love it and leave it, the sun go down
Pray for the rain for miles around
I’ll never leave it to wonder why
Whosoever told you, told a dirty lie

Oh, they time you and I’m telling you
I’d be watching, baby no matter what you do
And I’ll leave alone, you’re far too slow
Just make sure you take her with you when you go

I want to leave, my feet’s soaking wet
I long to leave but I ain’t found you yet
And I know baby, telling you why
Whosoever told me, told a dirty lie

And that is where the story stopped until 2014 when the band Secret Sisters were working on their second album “Put your needle down”.

Apparently during the recording session their producer T Bone Burnett came in and announced that ‘Bob sent over some songs for you guys to listen to and choose one to finish,’

The Sisters said, “It was the weirdest thing ever to even be considered to finish it in a way that even remotely measures up to what he is known for. So we looked at four or five demos he’d sent, and ‘Dirty Lie’ really spoke to us.”

Now this sounds a little strange for two reasons.  One is because the recording we have of Dylan performing the song sounds quite finished, and the other is that one might have expected that the Sisters would know enough about popular music to know the song was a pastiche on Stray Cat Strut.

I have had it put to me that Stray Cat Strut was itself taken from a standard format (in the same sense that a 12 bar blues is a standard format) and so Bob’s reusing of the format was perfectly acceptable – maybe that’s the case, but I’m not wholly convinced.

Anyway, whatever the ladies did, they claim they finished off the song in about two hours.

Here is a link to their version, and the new lyrics that appeared…

Time’ll tell the seeds I sow
Got into trouble but you just don’t know
You thought you had me
You’re wondering why
Whosoever told you
Told a dirty lie

Now I’m leaving, what can you do?
Who made you think I wanna be with you
I never settle, I never cry
And whosoever told you
Told a dirty lie

Already I’m winning the game
Your heart’s gonna break
And it’s a crying shame
A lesson learned a long time ago
I make sure I take it with me when I go

You’ll be alone when the sun goes down
Toss your name in the list and found
I never loved you baby
My oh my
And whosoever told you
Told a dirty lie

Elsewhere

• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site

Latest…

• Exploding the myths about Bob Dylan, awards, prizes and speeches.
• Who loves you more? One of Dylan’s not quite lost songs from the Empire Burlesque recordings
• Go ‘way little boy – Bob Dylan meets Maria McKee. The meaning behind the music and the lyrics.
• From Danville Girl to New Danville Girl to Brownsville Girl. Dylan’s epic journey.
• Drifting too far from shore: a Dylan song with a rather bad press
• Solid Rock – Dylan as a full on preacher; God meets rock n roll
• Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

By Tony Attwood

There is a narrative that runs along the lines that Bob Dylan doesn’t like to speak about his work or explore the meaning of his songs.  I don’t think that is true.   Bob has given a number of interviews in which he has explored and considered the meanings of what he does.   Furthermore during his period of writing openly Christian songs he would often address his audience at some length about the need for them to repent their sins, and the deep meaning of his message.

But if you doubt my words, consider this.  In 2015 Bob gave us the biggest insights ever with his speech to the Musicares Gala – a speech which is set out and analysed in some detail (with a couple of rather nice pictures too) on this site.

What I think Bob doesn’t do is talk to idiot journalists with dumb questions.   When the journalist is intelligent and knowledgeable about Bob’s work he will engage in a conversation.   But really, most of what he has to say was said in the Musicares Gala speech.  If you haven’t read the article above I would recommend it.  Not because it is by me, but because my source material is Bob Dylan himself.  Or if you really want to explore the whole notion of the writing of songs, you might try the whole series.  Not because I am right, but because I think in these articles I get closer to the issue than I have anywhere else.

• How Bob Dylan writes songs: Part 1 – The types of song
• How Bob Dylan writes songs: Part 2 – The origins of Dylan’s approach and style
• How Bob Dylan writes songs: Part 3 – I didn’t think I was doing anything different.

Which brings me to the Nobel Award, and I think it might be helpful here to set out a couple of the base points.

First, obviously, Bob Dylan didn’t apply for the award.  It was given to him.

Second, he’s not generally been overwhelmed with awards.  The honorary degree commemorated in the Day of the Locusts was clearly not something he enjoyed and he nearly didn’t turn up there.

But he does turn up sometimes.   On June 23, 2004 Dylan accepted another honorary Doctorate, this for “outstanding contribution to musical and literary culture,” from the University of St. Andrews. This was when Neil Corcoran says,  “It seems appropriate, that his second such degree should come from Scotland’s oldest university, since Scottish border ballads and folk songs have been the inspiration for some of his melodies, and his great song ‘Highlands’ is an elaborate riff, or descant, on Robert Burns.”

Moving on, President Obama invited Dylan to play for him at the White House.  This is how the President reported the event:

“Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be.

“He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.’ A beautiful rendition.

“The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves.

“And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”

Dylan has also been award a Medal of Freedom, and a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.  Also he won an Academy Award for “Things have Changed” and a Golden Globe Award for the same song.  Interestingly Dylan has since then had the Oscar on stage with him when performing.

Bob gives the President a tap on the shoulder on getting the Medal of Freedom.

So now we come to the Nobel Prize, and let’s be clear about this one.   Bob didn’t apply; he was given it, and once given it can’t be taken away.  Bob can’t reject the prize, because there is no procedure for that.  He can say he doesn’t want it, if he wishes, but he will stay listed as this year’s winner of the Prize for Literature, so long as there is civilisation on the planet.

It’s up to Bob if he wants to go through with the rest of the deal.  For under Nobel rules, the winner must give one lecture on literature – or of course it could be a concert – within six months.  If he does, he gets $900,000 prize money.  He had until June 10 next year to comply.

The lecture or concert does need not be delivered in Stockholm, although normally it is.

So that’s it.  Bob does accept some awards.  Bob can make speeches if he wants.  Bob will respond to invitations if he wants.  Bob is not dismissive of the highest office in the US – just remember his relationship with Jimmy Carter.

Maybe he will give a speech or play a concert, maybe not.  But whatever he does, even if he says “I don’t want the Nobel Prize” he will still be a Nobel Laureate.   Like having a hit record, once you’ve had it, you can’t renounce it.  That’s not up to the songwriter.  It’s up to the people who choose to buy the record.  Same with the Nobels.

Elsewhere…

• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site

Latest…

• Almost Done / Angel of Rain: one of the most fascinating almost lost Dylan songs
• Who loves you more? One of Dylan’s not quite lost songs from the Empire Burlesque recordings
• Go ‘way little boy – Bob Dylan meets Maria McKee. The meaning behind the music and the lyrics.
• From Danville Girl to New Danville Girl to Brownsville Girl. Dylan’s epic journey.
• Drifting too far from shore: a Dylan song with a rather bad press
• Solid Rock – Dylan as a full on preacher; God meets rock n roll

By Tony Attwood

Links to examples changed, April 2017

Almost Done is one of the most tantalising of Dylan half-written songs, first because it has two titles (one of which seems irrelevant) and second because the normally 1000 per cent reliable Dylan Chords website has lyrics which don’t seem to relate to the copy of the song that I have found online.

But never fear – I’ve got it worked out, and of course it was me that was going around in circles, no one else.

Just to add a little to the confusion Heylin reports that before the May 1984 tour gigs, journalists were given a set list for the tour which included “Angel of Rain”.

That song did not make it into the concerts, and indeed nor did it make it into the sound checks and rehearsals.  But the rehearsal and sound check tapes do have a song with the line “Almost Done” in it, and this seems to be what I have been listening to.  There was no Angel of Rain.

Also it appears that there are multiple versions of this song sung at this part of the tour, and the lyrics changed day to day, and between events at the Beverly Theatre, Los Angeles, on 23 May 1984, and in the Arena di Verona, on 27 May 1984.  But it never made the shows and was never recorded in the studio.

Now I am including, in this part of my attempt at a chronological review of Dylan, songs like this, because (particularly at this time) they all seem to me to be part of Dylan trying to find his new muse in 1984, and even snatches like this give us a valuable insight into how Dylan faced the era.  He wanted a new “voice” – a new style, a new approach, and he wasn’t finding it.

So he kept looking and looking, trying things that were half done, just waiting for something to hit him full on with the message, “this is it.”

It is a soft gentle ballad with a delicate slide between the minor chords (C#m, G#m, C#m, F#m, E.)  Indeed it is that chord sequence that tells me that the version Eyolf Østrem transcribed was the same as I have been listening to.

Indeed Eyolf Østrem writes, “It seemed meaningless to try and transcribe the mumbling on the Beverly Theatre version (May 23). Verona was a little less meaningless…”  Here are the opening lines from his Verona transcription.

I stood by
I stood by you
Stood by her
Oh don't be untrue
It's already there
for to see the one
oh now she rode
She's almost done

In the second version Dylan seems to have got a clue as to where this is going with the notion of trust as the centre of the song…

All the night
fortune don't last
Gonna be lucky,
more than in the past
It's already there,
Already new
Oh, trust in me,
I'll trust in you

Heylin suggests that the reason for the song not being completed is that Dylan was thinking about songs for the tour, not something (like Dark Eyes perhaps) for the end of an album – which this song most certainly could be.  And since the tours have always had loud audiences who want to make their own noise, an unknown gentle lilting ballad wasn’t going to fit.

It is a tragedy not to have a song like this, but at least this recording gives us a bit of an idea even though the lyrics here seem to be quite different.  (And this time I am not going to attempt to transcribe them – although if you would like to, please be my guest.)

Try this one first

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M_iIZJln2A

or this

Elsewhere

• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site

Latest…

• Who loves you more? One of Dylan’s not quite lost songs from the Empire Burlesque recordings
• Go ‘way little boy – Bob Dylan meets Maria McKee. The meaning behind the music and the lyrics.
• From Danville Girl to New Danville Girl to Brownsville Girl. Dylan’s epic journey.
• Drifting too far from shore: a Dylan song with a rather bad press
• Solid Rock – Dylan as a full on preacher; God meets rock n roll
• Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
  

By Tony Attwood

If you have been reading any of the other reviews of the 1984 songs of Dylan you will know that I am presenting them as part of an attempt by Dylan to find himself a new muse, a new direction, a new source of inspiration in his post-Christian era – or at least in his post Overtly-Christian era.

He started the year with the wonderful I once knew a man, a song of which we have no real knowledge of its origins (although many have suggested otherwise) and went through the experimental Drifting too far from shore and ultimately into the equally experimental New Danville Girl / Brownsville Girl before finding Something’s Burning Baby which led back into the mainstream of Empire Burlesque.

But what happened in between the wonderful “I once knew a man” and “Something’s Burning” is very interesting, for it was an eccentric and strange journey.

Straight after “I once knew a man” we have (at least in terms of songs that we can find recordings of) “Who Loves You More” – which is the song under investigation here.

https://youtu.be/cypXZYR65d4

It is a blues with an extra minor chord section added in a couple of places in each verse, as a way of extending the verses in order to accommodate the desire for change and extension, and as such there is no experimentation in the music: it is all in the lyrics.

“I once knew a man” tries the same sort of thing, but in a different way.  That song sticks to the 12 bar format (although greatly elongated) and makes its experimental difference through all the additional lyrics in the first section of each verse.   Here the extension is in the structure, to take us away from 12 bars and make each verse longer.

Although the song is described in many accounts as being “a virtually finished take” I am not at all sure of this, because the lyrics (to me, and as it turns out, also to Heylin) appear to be all over the place.   Now it is possible that this is what Dylan was trying to do – after all that is where he ended up with Brownsville Girl, with perspectives and timings changing throughout the song.   Here it is something different however, because Dylan is seemingly just pouring out random lines in relation to his love for the woman.  Indeed it is almost as if he had a collection of phrases written on cards, and he then mixed them all up, pulled them out in random order, and then made a few adjustments to ensure that there were some rhymes – or at least part rhymes.

Listening to the piece now, I am reminded again of the Dylan Thomas line to “I love you so much I’ll never be able to tell you” which I believe was the source for the Dylan song “I must love you too much“.

In my review of that song I quoted from Dylan Thomas’ letters to his wife-to-be and I think here we have Dylan once again turning back to that source.  Here is a brief review of the situation.

In 1936 Dylan Thomas wrote to his new lover, “Tell me everything; when you’ll be out again, where you’ll be at Christmas and that you think of me and love me.  I don’t want you for a day (though I’d sell my toes to see you now my dear, only for a minute, to kiss you once and make a funny face at you): a day is the length of a gnat’s life: I want you for the lifetime of a big, mad animal, like an elephant.

“You’ll never, I’ll never let you, grow wise, and I’ll never, you shall never let me, grow wise and we’ll always be young and unwise together . . . I love you so much, I’ll never be able to tell you; I’m frightened to tell you.”

And later he wrote, “I don’t want to write words, words, words to you; I must see you and hear you; it’s hell writing to you now . . . you are really my flesh and blood Caitlin whom I love more than anyone has loved anyone else. It’s nonsense me living without you, you without me: the world is very unbalanced unless in the very centre of it we stand together all the time in a hairy, golden, more-or-less unintelligible haze of daftness.”

This is still my source code for what is going on with Who Loves You More.  Dylan is experimenting with using words in all shapes and forms as an attempt to describe events in a non-chronological, indeed non-logical way, and I am not at all sure that we have anything approaching a final version of a song here – rather a collection of lines waiting to be refined and put into a new (not necessarily logical) order.

Here are the lyrics…

Oh, happy I, I mean you for me
‘Cause I’m true
But I know in the end
When the clock’s worked through and through

Because I know loving means
Nearly everything that I need
Who loves you more, who loves you true?
Oh, baby I do.

Middle 8 :-

    Don’t you know that I’m beside
    But I need to know if dark and wide
    ‘Cos a door is ajar and it leads to the rock I know
    Baby before you go

Say that I all over you
And you know it, you know it too
So honey me, offer me, I’ve been through and through
Oh yeah, but if you, because

I wish to know, and I didn’t care
You’re the answer to my every prayer
Who loves you more, who loves you true?
Oh baby you know I do.

[Instrumental break – middle 8]

Yes if you do well, up and out the door
I’m said she’s there just like before
Who loves you well, who’ll take you there?
Who’ll watch you through, I will watch you through

And I shall fulfill my soul, if you’re the one
Face the day, and the brightening sun
Who loves you more, who loves you true?
Oh baby I do.

[Instrumental break – middle 8]

Well, you’re perfect to me, ah can’t you see
And I’ll bring you there, for you to be
All being well, holding up and I thought you should know
Oh baby before you go.

Talk to me, say it well
‘Cause you’re the answer to my every prayer
Who loves you more, who loves you true?
Oh baby I do.

[Instrumental break – middle 8]

Stick by me, stick by my bones
Till you get aged, until you get old
Stick by my closer, tell me one I put, I know it’s true
And I’ll take you through, oh yes…

But, swear by me, fortune and bold
Climb in your head deep in your heart and soul
Who loves you more, who loves you true?

Oh Baby I do

On the recording of the song that has survived  it is reported we have Bob Dylan on piano/synth, Ronnie Wood on guitar, John Davis on bass, and Anton Fig on drums

It is a curious construction, in that the middle 8 turns up repeated times but only with lyrics on the first time around.

I can’t see any justification for the claim that this song is finished,  not least because I don’t think it works as a set of thoughts pouring out in all directions at once.

Meanwhile elsewhere the www.ourwalrus.com website suggests that “Who Loves you More” is based directly on the song “Straight As in Love” which itself was based on the Johnny Cash 1956 song of the same name, but I can’t see this at all.  Sorry, but I can’t even see the starting point of that idea, so I don’t take it on board.

I’m left with an extended blues, and a composer’s desire to find a new way of writing the blues.  It is a sketchbook song at this stage.  It could have become more, but even in the form that we have it, it provided information and ideas that led Dylan onwards in his quest to find a new muse.

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  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.

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  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.

   

by Tony Attwood

One of the many, many enjoyable things I find in writing this blog is the places the research takes me, finding links and information I never knew before, while reminding me of pieces of music I once knew and have if not forgotten then certainly not played for a fair number of years.  By and large it has become a journey taking me on strange rummages through the backwaters of pop and rock’s extraordinary heritage and my own past.

Consider for example this set of links which occurred to me while I was contemplating the virtually unknown Dylan song “Go ‘Way Little Boy”.

Bryan MacLean, who played in Love (the band that released the extraordinary “Forever Changes” album – one of my all time favourites) wrote “Old Man”  – one of my all time favourite songs –  which I linked to Dylan’s “Señor, Tales of Yankee Power”.

MacLean’s connection with Bob Dylan was that he joined the same Christian ministry (the Vineyard) that subsequently converted Dylan.  I guess MacLean and Bob must have known each other musically before the event, and certainly knew each other personally once Bob converted to Christianity.

Now Bryan MacLean (who sadly died in 1998) had a half-sister Maria McKee who is known for her work as the lead singer with Lone Justice, another singer and band that I have enjoyed over the years, and whose albums I have.

But what I didn’t know (because the song in question turned up as a B side on a single which I never bought, and wasn’t also on either of the albums) Lone Justice with Maria McKee recorded the Dylan song Go ‘Way Little Boy.   And in case you don’t know it, here it is…

I am not sure how it all came together but it seems that Bob taught Maria McKee the song, and it is suggested Bob played rhythm guitar on the recording.  Heylin suggests the harmonica on the track might also be Bob and the lead guitar was Ron Wood.  If so I don’t know what the rest of the band were up to….  Presumably feeling rather displace and maybe a bit fed up.

So the song was released as the B-side of the single, “Sweet, Sweet Baby (I’m Falling).” For the recording of the song Marvin Etzioni was reported as saying that Dylan “doesn’t tell you what the chords are – no discussion about anything. As soon as you set up and you’re plugged in, you’re pushing record, and you’re on. And that’s what we did. It was great.”

The song isn’t by any means a song of significance in the Dylan collection, nor even in Lone Justice collection – if you want to find them at their best try “I found love” or “Belfry” or “The Gift” from the CD “Shelter”.

But Maria McKee who sings the song certainly should be better known to rock fans than is often the case.  She wrote “A Good Heart” and “Show Me Heaven”, both of which were number 1 hits in the UK and has ventured into other musical forms too.

There is also on the CD Shelter the incredibly haunting “Dixie Storms” – one of those songs that somehow entered my life during a period when I was incredibly low and has cut into my conscious and sub-conscious at such a level that I can’t explain it.  I have dim recollections of just sitting at home alone playing it over and over…  not really the best way to cope with feeling down and alone – but then if you don’t get the downs, it is hard to appreciate the ups.

Anyway, after two albums with Lone Justice, McKee went solo and her solo work is really worth hearing.  A remarkable talent, who brushed past Bob Dylan for one moment and whose half brother seemingly passed him and helped him go in another direction.

As for this song… well, to be fair all round it is hardly one of Bob’s great moments.  But I am here to record all the songs that made it onto the wider stage not just the ones I deem to be significant.

Dylan seems to have got very lost, creatively, building up to this moment.  The year had started with the superb run through of “I once knew a man” the provenance of which is unknown (but just listen to the recording linked into that review – it is Dylan-Blues at its peak), and eventually found its way down to this little number.

Dylan wanted and needed to experiment to find his new muse, and he just had a few false starts (what visual artists would call sketches) to make before he made it onto the new direction.  After “Go Way” Dylan wrote the highly experimental Drifting too far from shore which is seen by most people as pretty awful,  Then we got  New Danville Girl / Brownsville Girl which is certainly interesting and memorable, and some think it a masterpiece, and then Something’s Burning Baby (which made it onto Empire Burlesque) which shows us that the old mainstream creative spirit was certainly back, and that the new direction was taking hold.

So I think we should see Go Way Little Boy, as one of those sketches along the road.  A song with the purpose of helping Dylan move along as he did indeed eventually find his new muse.

In this song the lyrics are simple – and indeed perfect for Maria McKee to sing.  The experienced woman is telling the younger man to go off and find a woman more suitable to his personality and needs.

What we can hear in the song are the unexpected chord changes – it feels as if Dylan had the words (which are to be fair nothing very special) and knew the song needed a surprise, so we get it in the chords, which forces the melody to do unexpected things.

It starts out very clearly in D with lots of D, A, D chords and a B minor, all of which secure exactly where we are.  Then we suddenly find that instead of lines ending on the D chord, they end on G – it makes the whole piece feel as if it is a bit wobbly and uncertain at “back to her” and “secure”.

And then really oddly the last line of the verse takes us through D, C, B minor.  This really does make the whole thing feel as if it is about to topple over (like the relationship that the woman is ending) until suddenly the next verse begins, firmly back in D and bouncing through D A D.

The same sort of idea is tried out in the middle 8 (“Don’t you hear your mama calling”).  We are all nice and secure with the descending bass under B minor and then a solid G A D.  Yep we know exactly where we are musically.  We’re in D, on solid ground.

This is repeated until we get to “While you still have a choice” which instead of ending on A, reading to lead us back to the verse (like the middle 8 should always do) it ends on E minor… the choice is uncomfortable, uncertain, unsecured…

My guess is that Dylan was deliberately experimenting, trying to reflect in the music the brashness of the woman in saying “go away little boy” and the bemusement of the young man who now finds himself out of his depth.  That is what ending the verse on B minor and the middle 8 on E minor are there to suggest.

For me it doesn’t quite work, but then experiments often don’t.  As I say, if Dylan had been a visual artist this little sketch would exist in the basement of some gallery, only brought out once every five years for a “The sketches behind the masterpieces” exhibition.

But I’m glad Lone Justice took it – because it has taken me back to one of the less often played parts of my record collection, and reminded me of the rare talent of Maria McKee.  If you ever read this Maria, thank you for all the music.

Go ‘way little boy
I’m not for you
Go back to her
Where you’ll be more secure
She knows you better than I do
Go ‘way little boy
I’m not for you

Go ‘way little boy
You’re making me sad
I don’t wanna to see you bleed
She’s the one that you need
You’ll never miss what you ain’t never had
Go ‘way little boy
You’re making me sad

Go ‘way little boy
It’s much too late
Walk back out the door
Don’t wanna see you here no more
You’re making it hard for me to concentrate
Go ‘way little boy
It’s much too late

Can’t you hear your mama callin’
Don’t you recognize her voice
I think you’d better heed her warning
While you still have the choice

Go ‘way little boy
You’re much too late
Your future’s lookin’ bright
Don’t throw it away tonight
It’s getting hard for me to look you in the eye
Go ‘way little boy
Can’t you see that you’re makin’ me cry

By Tony Attwood

I’ve commented in the review of Drifting too far from shore that in 1984 Bob Dylan was by his own admission struggling for inspiration, and so was turning to lines from films and song titles already used by others – not always with success.

Indeed this seems to have been an issue through the year – and may well be the origins of the wonderful I once knew a man – no one can work that one out and Dylan isn’t saying.  But if Dylan felt a) it was a great song (as I do) and b) he didn’t write it (although no one can agree exactly who did) then that would explain why he spent the rest of the year searching for his muse.

So in such circumstances we shouldn’t be surprised that this song has a title from Woodie Gutherie, and has Dylan reminiscing about the movies.  Also, Dylan here moves half way between declamation and singing a melody.  He does keep some melodic verses for us, but was clearly exploring the road way which led to the much less satisfying “Drifting”.

So let’s start with the song title and Woodie Gutherie – I’ve included a link to the song below in case you are interested.

The original start in familiar territory

I went down to the railroad yard, Watch the train come by
Knew that train would roll that day but I did not know what time.

The singer just needs to travel, but has no plans – he’s not the sort of guy who keeps a railway timetable in his pocket.

Eventually he finds the train and rides the “old freight train that carries an empty car” to Danville town where he gets “stuck on a Danville girl, Bet your life she was a pearl, she wore that Danville curl.”

But of course this is the world of always getting up and moving on – the world that Dylan has sung about since Restless Farewell (and there is also a link to the earlier songs like Ballad for a friend – the earliest song of Dylan’s reviewed on this site, and an absolute masterpiece – do listen to it if you have missed out on this treasure.  Dylan starts that by sitting at the railroad track).

So Woodie Gutherie moves on

She wore her hat on the back of her head like high tone people all do,
Very next train come down that track, I bid that gal adieu.

I bid that gal adieu, poor boys, I bid that gal adieu,
The very next train come down that track, I bid that gal adieu.

And that’s that.

So there’s the title that Dylan started with.  He wrote the full Dansville song and then re-wrote it as Brownsville Girl.

As Robert Christgau said in an oft quoted comment, the final version as released on the LP was “one of the greatest and most ridiculous of Dylan’s great ridiculous epics. Doesn’t matter who came up with such lines as ‘She said even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt’ and ‘I didn’t know whether to duck or to run, so I ran’ — they’re classic Dylan.”

The first version “New Danville Girl”, was recorded for Empire Burlesque but dropped – perhaps because there just wasn’t room, perhaps because Dylan just wasn’t sure about it.

It was co-written with the highly regarded American playwright Sam Shepard who among other things gained the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Right Stuff.  New York described him as “the greatest American playwright of his generation.”   I’m no expert, but perhaps that was going a little far, but the guy was certainly innovative and important in the history of American theatre.

So what did Shepard bring to this venture?  His plays are bleak, surreal, dark, with meandering characters on the edge of society.  Immediately I think it is possible to see a connection with the vagueness expressed via the half remembered film.  Shepard’s work is also experimental, and certainly this song is nothing if not experimental.

Shepherd started working with Dylan on the 1975 Rolling Thunder review and was screenwriter for Renaldo and Clara.  His diary of the tour (Rolling Thunder Logbook) was published ten years before the two got back together for this song.

This is how he describes Dylan in the diary…

“One thing that gets me about Dylan’s songs is how they conjure up images, whole scenes that are being played out in full colour as you listen. He’s an instant film maker. Probably not the same scenes occur in the same way to everyone listening to the same song, but I’d like to know if anyone sees the same small, rainy, green park and the same bench and the same yellow light and the same pair of people as I do all coming from “A Simple Twist of Fate”. Or the same beach in “Sara” or the same bar in “Hurricane” or the same cabin in “Hollis Brown” or same window in “It Ain’t Me” or the same table and the same ashtray in “Hattie Carroll” or same valley in “One More Cup of Coffee”. How do pictures become words? Or how do words become pictures? And how do they cause you to feel something? That’s a miracle.”

So we get to New Danville Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O9ggxGQ5Ac

There is a disconnect between the singer and his lover from the past, just as there is with the movie which he watched twice.

The movie itself has been identified as The Gunfighter although the confusion is constant as Dylan says of a movie… “you know, it’s not the one that I had in mind.”  Disconnection is everywhere.  Dylan most certainly here is trying to find a new voice, a new format, a new approach to his music.  A sense of being lost – a sense which is touched upon in the original Woody Guthrie song.  And a sense of always moving that was the inspiration found in the Parting Glass and which travelled through “One too many mornings” and all the other songs of restlessly searching for things that are not there via images that shift and dance away before we can get hold of them.

The ultimate expression of what is going on comes in the original version with

I’ve always been an emotional person but this time it was asking too much.
If there’s an original thought out there, Oh, I could use it right now!
Yeah, I feel pretty good, but you know I could feel a whole lot better, oh yes I could,
If you were just here by my side to show me how.

and in the final version with

Now I’ve always been the kind of person that doesn’t like to trespass but sometimes you just find yourself over the line.
Oh if there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now.
You know, I feel pretty good, but that ain’t sayin’ much. I could feel a whole lot better,
If you were just here by my side to show me how.

This is Dylan reflecting on the hardest thing for a creative artist to reflect upon – the loss of ideas.  And this gives us the insight, I believe, into the whole essence of the song.

Thousands of images and ideas spin round in his head.  The old movie, the old song, everything he himself has done before.  But new coherent inspiration can’t break through.  He has become a character in his co-writers plays.  What does he do now?

And the answer is that at this moment he invents a new type of song – a song that expresses that vision of the creative block.  So definitively all the writing about the certainty of the Second Coming has gone.  Now there is no certainty, and, he finds, no creativity.  He is left with half remembered scenes.

It is in the expression of this idea of confusion, mystery and lost inspiration that we see the prime change, and I think the prime improvement in the lyrics between the two editions of the song.  First time around we get

Oh, you got to talk to me now baby, tell me about the man that you used to love,
And tell me about your dreams, just before the time you passed out. Oh, yeah!
Tell me about the time that our engine broke down and it was the worst of times,
Tell me about all the things that I couldn’t do nothin’ about.

In the updated version it becomes

Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.
I don’t have any regrets, they can talk about me plenty when I’m gone.
You always said people don’t do what they believe in, they just do what’s most convenient, then they repent.
And I always said, “Hang on to me, baby, and let’s hope that the roof stays on”

and this gives us the key to the song.   That line “Hang on to me, baby, and let’s hope that the roof stays on” which comes out of the confusion of all that has gone before, and expresses the simple “Stick with me baby stick with me anyhow, things should start to get interesting right about now” idea.

And they will, if only he can find his muse.  He knows he can one day, but it’s not quite there yet and the road is very unclear.

So the disconnect, the disjointedness is always there.  From the first version

We drove that car all night into San Antone
And we slept near the Alamo, fell out under the stars.
Way down in Mexico you went out to see a doctor and you never came back.
I stayed there a while, till the whole place it started feelin’ like mars.

And the second…

Well, we drove that car all night into San Anton’
And we slept near the Alamo, your skin was so tender and soft.
Way down in Mexico you went out to find a doctor and you never came back.
I would have gone on after you but I didn’t feel like letting my head get blown off.

Dylan did this mixture of events connected but disconneected perfectly in 1974 with Tangled up in Blue – even using the car motif (“drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west”) and I think he feels this is the sort of mishmash of time, space and events that he wants to represent again.  But he has already written that masterpiece – that’s the problem.

In the song humans are stripped of their purposefulness, for no matter what we intend, “Nothing happens on purpose, it’s an accident if it happens at all.”  With that simple line all of civilisation, all human progress, the whole Christian message, everything that makes us human rather than just animals, is blown away, as we are blown by the winds.

But this is not the casual use of words; the authors know exactly what they are writing about here – for they are taken back to Dylan’s favourite source (other than Guthrie), in TS Eliot’s “Waste Land”

Which now becomes “But we’re busy talking back and forth to our shadows on an old stone wall.”

Before the final version finally ends “Seems like a long time ago, long before the stars were torn down.”  The handful of dust is all around us.

Disconnect with the world around us is incredibly difficult for even the most experienced writers to write about; it is so much easier for the painter whose journey into abstraction mixed with realism is so much simpler.  Dylan, I believe, felt this disconnect deeply at this time, and these two versions of this song show a serious attempt to write about something that is almost impossible to write about.

Almost but not totally, for in “Tangled up” Dylan did get it right.  Here the whole story is so complicated and reality dissolves so quickly, the technique, for me, doesn’t quite work.  With Tangled I feel the mixtures of time and the phasing in and out of the relationship between the couple, here I end up feeling that the stars have been torn down and I too am desolate and lost.

And I can take that sometimes, but not all the time.  I can always be Tangled up and feel good about it, but the journey from New Danville Girl to Brownsville Girl leaves me straining against the bonds that tangle me, and in the end I crave for the disconnect to go, and for me to be allowed to escape back to the days when the stars were still in their heavens.

Elsewhere

• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
• Bob Dylan wins the Nobel prize for literature

Latest…

• Drifting too far from shore: a Dylan song with a rather bad press
• Solid Rock – Dylan as a full on preacher; God meets rock n roll
•  “I once knew a man” complete with link to the only known performance.
• Updated and expanded the review of Blind Willie McTell and a link to the electric version added.
• Also 8 lesser known Dylan songs that are works of utter genius
• Things have changed – review revised and updated with link to a 2016 live performance.

By Tony Attwood

That Bob Dylan was struggling artistically in the mid-1980s is not a matter of much dispute, although there are some who consider Knocked Out Loaded to be a seriously misunderstood album.

In one sense I am in this camp – although only in one sense.   Dylan was struggling to find a new direction at this time not least because in recent years his direction had been so clear.  Now he was lost.  He was telling the world about salvation and redemption, and every bit of inspiration was there for him.  Now he needed to find a new voice – and that is not as easy as it might sound.

Indeed he had done so much and visited so many musical places, what else could he do?  Where was the next journey to go?  He’d gone from folk to rock.  He’d entered surrealism and impressionism, and then gone to country music.  He’d worked the blues and celebrated the 50s rock n roll.  He’d done a collection of often obscure three verse short stories on John Wesley Harding, and played about with old time favourites like Alberta.

But now what?

https://youtu.be/VuXUeGrPSHE

When that question hits any artist (and there are probably only a handful of artists in any art form that have not faced some serious downtime – Shakespeare for example simply packed it all in and went back to Stratford never to write again) it is so difficult to find a resolution – and indeed either it comes or it (in many, many cases) doesn’t.  So Dylan had another period without inspiration, but he didn’t take the opportunity simply to move away and sit with Zen monks, travel the world with his children, learn to play the saxophone or journey to the antarctic or do anything else that would take him away from it all, that we know about.  He wanted to tour and as a result, he released an album.

And on that album, aside from releasing other people’s songs, he tried experimenting to find a new sound or a new approach.  And we got “Driftin too far from shore”.

It is, I think most agree, quite simply an experiment that didn’t work – but as we know, Dylan has never been that able to decide what works and what doesn’t.  He spent forever thinking Blind Willie McTell didn’t work (presumably because the song isn’t actually about Blind Willie), when in fact most of us think it does.  There are many other such examples among his abandoned pieces.

What he couldn’t quite see is that this sort of declamation of lines, some of which are taken from movies, with a curious backing arrangement, just doesn’t come off, unless those lines are truly inspiring of themselves.   Even the title of the song was taken from Hank Williams, and some of the lines came from movies – but without any real connection or grand leap of the light which in other compositions would leave us all gasping.

Nevertheless Dylan did in fact stay with the song playing it on stage 14 times in the year from June 1988 onwards, but then even he gave up.

And certainly when we look at the lyrics on their own they are, basically, just odd.

By Tony Attwood

Solid Rock is a song that hardly needs an explaining – but nevertheless Bob has explained it at some length (see the links below).  Which always strikes me as interesting.  If not downright odd.

What I mean is that we all know that Bob’s religious songs are about the need to follow the ways of the Lord, repent and get ready for the Second Coming.   The lyrics are among the most obvious that Dylan has ever produced.

And yet these are the lyrics that he would explain.  Whereas the songs that have caused quite a lot of debate and require a fair bit of work to disentangle (songs like Too much of Nothing, for example – there are many, many more, right up to his most recent compositions) are never explained.  I call that perverse.

So here we get a bit more of Revelations – this time the bottomless pit of Saved is avoided by hanging onto the Solid Rock of Jesus Christ.  Which is fair enough as a Christian message – I think I learned that in secondary school.   By which I don’t mean to denigrate the message but rather to emphasise my point that if Dylan were to be in the mood for explaining a song, there are plenty of others that I’d love to hear him talk about.

There is some evidence (from the way the song evolved on stage)  that Dylan didn’t quite like the fact that his fan base would enjoy the music as music (rather than hearing the music as a route to salvation).  So the song changed over time to try and make the message more meaningful to disbelievers, but as that happened so the song lost its impact.

But what really makes the song so good is the treatment of the “made before the foundation of the world” line – I can’t think of where else Dylan does this.  It contrasts so perfectly with the utter, boiling energy of the song and yet fits in exactly.  Each word called out independently.  Clever stuff.

Between November 1979 and October 2002 it was played 162 times – making it one of the longer lasting redemption and salvation songs – and musically it deserves that longevity, although to my ears only when it kept the incredible vigour of the early live versions.

Well, I’m hangin’ on to a solid rock
Made before the foundation of the world
And I won’t let go, and I can’t let go, won’t let go
And I can’t let go, won’t let go and I can’t let go no more

To add a little more about that second line, the impact of calling out the individual words is heightened by the unexpected chord changes that surround it.   Not only are we getting the words called out one by by one, but each is proceeded by three chords: D, E, F#m.  I really don’t know the origins for that notion – it seems like a real Dylan original.

And then, following on, just listen to the vigour and energy we get with

For me He was chastised, for me He was hated
For me He was rejected by a world that He created
Nations are angry, cursed are some
People are expecting a false peace to come

There was an interesting commentary in one of the Rolling Stone retrospectives on Dylan which said,

“The release of Bob Dylan’s 1979 born-again LP Slow Train Coming was a major event, and the album hit Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100. Less than a year later he released Saved, which was greeted like the second moon landing. It was a million times less interesting the second time around, and his label was even reluctant about putting it out. But the album has never really gotten a fair hearing. “Solid Rock” is one of the highlights, and it firmly explains Dylan’s dedication to his new beliefs. “I won’t let go, and I can’t let go,” he sings. “And I can’t let go, won’t get go and I can’t let go no more.” A few years later, he let go and re-embraced his Jewish heritage.”

I’d go along with that.

Here’s the fun version with only a limited intro

Or if you prefer it with a sermon first follow this link…

Elsewhere

• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.

Latest…

• Bob Dylan wins the Nobel prize for literature
• Added review of “I once knew a man” complete with link to the only known performance.
• A link to just about the most amazing version of Visions of Johanna by Dylan I have ever heard
• Updated and expanded the review of Blind Willie McTell and a link to the electric version added.
• Also 8 lesser known Dylan songs that are works of utter genius
• Things have changed – review revised and updated with link to a 2016 live performance.
• Added a review of “You took my breath away”; a tribute from the band to Roy Orbison

By Tony Attwood

On 13 October 2016 it was announced that Bob Dylan had won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Sara Danils, permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, added that he was “a great sampler … and for 54 years he has been at it, reinventing himself.”

Dylan has of course previously won 11 Grammy Awards, as well as an Oscar for Things Have Changed.  Salman Rushdie said after the award, “From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition.  Great choice.”

There are six Nobel Prizes awarded each year, they are for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics.

These prizes are international awards administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, and based on the fortune of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and entrepreneur. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each Prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a cash award.

A person or organization awarded the Nobel Prize is called Nobel Laureate. The word “laureate” refers to being signified by the laurel wreath. In ancient Greece, laurel wreaths were awarded to victors as a sign of honour.

Latest 

By Tony Attwood

According to Heylin, this is one of the songs on Volume 3 of the Wilbury’s two albums, that Dylan had very little to do with, despite the claim that he makes that the rest of the gang were “almost bereft of ideas.”  And he seems to accept the notion that Dylan had been more willing to be engaged in this album than the first one.

But the simple fact is that Dylan’s songwriting credit is included throughout – although he has not performed any of the songs from the album in the Never Ending Tour.    But then it is more written for Tom Petty’s voice, and this is what we get.

And because of the songwriting credit that is there I think we should consider this song, and the rest of the album, as part of Dylan’s output.  And indeed this piece does have within it something of particular note, and something that sounds very much like a Dylanesque input, if one considers it (as others have suggested) as a piece written about the member of the band now no longer present: Roy Orbison.

There is no need to take the lines

You took this song of mine,
And changed the middle bit
It used to sound all right
But now the words don’t fit.

as literal.  Rather, if seen as being a reference to Orbison’s appearance in the midst of the lives of all the band members, for Volume 1, it is a fitting commentary on the way in which Orbison’s unique approach to song writing and his utterly magnificent singing voice, could affect them all.

Being together again must have enhanced the impact of fact that Volume 1 had been Orbison’s last creative work, and must have affected all members of the ensemble in making Volume 3.  Indeed it would have been strange not to have had a reference to the great man somewhere in the album.

And this is a singularly appropriate commentary…

It’s getting hard to rhyme
Impossible to play
I’ve tried it many times
You took my breath away.

One day when the sun is shining
There will be that silver lining

As I suggest above, no one specifically thinks of this as a Dylan song, and yet I can hear his influence in there, and I do think Heylin’s negativity towards the whole album should not make us discount it nor disown it as a venture Dylan was engaged in.

Whoever did write the ending lyrics, if he was thinking of the moment at which he heard about Orbison’s passing, he got it completely right.

I don’t know how to feel
This hasn’t been my day
Seems like I’ve lost a wheel
You took my breath away.

Elsewhere

• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.

Recent Posts

• Born in Time: the often re-written Dylan song with the overpowering image
• 8 lesser known Dylan songs that are works of utter genius
• Cover down: Dylan takes religious music somewhere new and prepares to move on
• “Pressing on.” Who told Dylan that gospel had to sound like gospel?

By Tony Attwood

“Born in Time” was written in 1989 and released in September 1990 on Under the Red Sky, but as Heylin points out at great length, and ultimately in mind-blowingly numbing detail, there are at least six recorded versions around, all different, all (apparently) worth hearing.

For what it is worth my view of these various versions of the song is not that Dylan is very specifically trying to make a difference, but rather he is just exploring where this song can go, and then seeing exactly what it can do.   Writers of standard three minute pop songs don’t do this sort of thing, only those who have a lifetime of writing and performance get this far into tinkering with their own work, just to see…

The first point to notice in relation to this song, in my view, is that Dylan’s creative output had overall declined year on year through the 80s.  It’s not an exact drop, but a tendency towards less and less creativity, starting with a high of 21 new songs in 1981 and dropping until by 1986, we have just six songs in a year, and then 1987 being the low point in terms of numbers  (just four songs that we know about from that year) although it was high in quality as the list shows…

• Love rescue me
• Political world
• What good am I
• Dignity 

1988 was the year of the Wilbury’s with just nine songs created, and no clear indication how much involvement Dylan had in the writing, although I’ve listed all nine songs in the 1980s file.

Then in 1989 Dylan was revitalised with 13 compositions, starting with Born in Time before moving on through some absolute classics such as Series of Dreams, Most of the Time, What was it you wanted and Everything is Broken and onwards until we reach Man in a Long Black Coat

Thus this song occupies a pivotal spot at the change over from the Wilburys back into writing specifically for himself.  Given the changeover taking place it is not surprising that Dylan spent so much time (in this song at least) changing things around.

When I started work on this site it was never my intention to become encyclopaedic and review each and every version of each song, but rather my aim was to take the main versions of the main songs, and maybe have a few diversions on the way.  So I am restricting myself here primarily to the Tell Tale Signs version (listed as “Unreleased Oh Mercy!” on the two disk set and the Red Sky version – although there is a link to a third version at the end.

The lyrics of course vary from version to version as Dylan does his usual thing of exploring and experimenting.  But what leaps out particularly in reference to these two main versions that I am looking at is just how different the bridge passages are – only the last four lines of the second bridge remain the same between these versions.

In the Red Sky version we have bridge 1 as

Not one more night, not one more kiss
Not this time baby, no more of this
Takes too much skill, takes too much will
It’s revealing
You came, you saw, just like the law
You married young, just like your ma
You tried and tried, you made me slide
You left me reelin’ with this feelin’

And bridge 2 as…

You pressed me once, you pressed me twice
You hang the flame, you’ll pay the price
Oh babe, that fire
Is still smokin’
You were snow, you were rain
You were striped, you were plain
Oh babe, truer words
Have not been spoken or broken

But in the Tell Tale Signs version we have

Just when I knew
you were gone, you came back
Just when I knew
It was for certain
You were high, you were low
You were so easy to know
Oh babe, now is time to raise the curtain
I’m hurtin’.

And then after the instrumental break

Just when I knew
who to thank, you went blank
And just when the whole
fires was smokin’
You were snow, you were rain
You were stripes, you were plain
Oh babe, truer words
Have not been spoken
or broken.

A huge difference.  And what we have here is a truly wonderful song from a man who has been mashed around by this romance but still is there loving her, forgiving her.  All that happens through the various versions is that Dylan reworks just how much forgiveness is delivered in those two bridge sections.

As I mentioned above I have one internet version; I am not sure if this is the one that Heylin thinks is the greatest recording of them all – it certainly has a huge amount to recommend it.

https://youtu.be/b5EpXuN__BY

By Tony Attwood

One of the great things about Dylan the songwriter is his ability to take a subject and explore it from all sorts of directions.  I guess the most obvious early example of this is that he took the notion of lost love (one of the three fundamentals of popular music, the other two being love and dance) and gave us an extreme version in the songs of disdain (Rolling Stone, Fourth Street etc).

So it happened also with his religious music.  I have written in the review of Pressing On of my feeling that Dylan got caught up in the notion that if he wrote a song of Christian celebration it had to sound like gospel music.  But I also feel that having written “Saved” he did decide to see just how far all this rock and roll religious music could go, and the result was Cover Down.  I don’t mean to say this is a totally new form of music – it just adds an extra level to treatment that Christianity got from Dylan.

In both this case as in Saved we have a song where the chords hardly change – in fact in Saved there is only one chord in verse, until with “I’m so glad” before we get the movement.

Cover Down goes further and although it does have a second chord, and a third that is passed through, it is primarily just one chord with quick visits elsewhere.  A real look back to the early days of electric blues.

The song was never released on record, and simply formed part of the April 17 to May 21 1980 tour.  After that it was put away forever.  Even the official site doesn’t have the lyrics, probably because there is an argument over whether Dylan sings “Cover down, pray through” or “Cover down breakthrough”.  Personally I’m not too worried either way.

For me, whichever phrase I have in my head is the one I hear, and since I don’t really understand what either phrase actually means I just call it Cover Down which is what Bob called it when he introduced it for the first time.

But most of all this seems to be a song which came towards the end of the songs that are pure devotion to the Lord.  It is not the very end, but it is getting close, for after this we get, in the chronological sequence of writing

• Ain’t gonna go to hell for anybody
• Property of Jesus
• Every grain of sand
• Caribbean Wind
• Groom’s still waiting at the alter

Well you heard about Pharaoh’s army
Trampling through the mud
You heard about the Hebrew children
Redeemed by blood
Same spirit dwellin’ in ya
That raised Christ from the dead
If it quicken your mortal body
Then let it run to your head

The same message, and yet in a sense I feel this is something akin to an epilogue – I know Dylan hadn’t finished with religious music by that time but there is something so all encompassing about this song that it sounds to me a bit like a closing of the door.  I think it is the line

Genesis to Revelation
Repent and confess

that makes me think he’s saying, “I’ve covered this from the first book of the Bible to the last, I’ve told you everything I know, what else can I say?”

And I get the feeling (and yes I know this is just me) that he is getting tired of taking texts (Hebrews 4:12 as many before me have pointed out) and lifting the lines to enable him to say

The word of God is sharper
than any double sided sword

It is (for me) as if he wants liberating from the notion that Bob now writes religion and that’s that.  His mind is shouting, “Hey Bob, I’ve got some thoughts of my own,” and in these next songs that is what comes bursting out.

For he also writes,

Demands are laid upon you
And burdens you can’t bear
Sins you can’t even remember
Are waiting to meet you there

And maybe that’s it.  Sins you can’t even remember.  So why not let the gift God gave you spring forth once more, unrestricted by sacred texts, free flowing to express what can be expressed irrespective of where it all came from?

And when Bob writes,

You got an image of yourself
You’ve built by yourself alone
But it will come a-tumbling down
Just like the walls made of stone
You will be separated
From everything you seem to be
You think you’ll be liberated, yeah
But the grave won’t set you free

I wonder if at this moment his own past image of the last couple of years is now under threat.  His self-image of the man who takes all different types of American , Scottish and Irish folk and popular music and gives it new dimensions has for some time been replaced by the image of being a servant of God, but now a new image is knocking at the door.  Because at some moment Dylan started to feel that not only will the grave not set you free, but in terms of creativity nor will utter devotion to Christianity.

Of course this is just me, putting my chronological interpretation into this song – and I would like to stress that none of this is to say I don’t enjoy this song.  I really do.  For me, as a piece of music, it really, really works in a full-blown way.  And I can love the lyrics – especially the last verse quoted above, because that verse could be just about one’s vision of oneself, without any reference to any form of organised religion.

We all have a self-image and it can easily crumble, and in the worst case scenarios people can just wish for death to escape their internal problems.  A belief in the messages of Christianity can be a solution to such problems, but many people find that Christianity is not the solution, and indeed many would argue that any recourse to a set of fixed views only makes matters worse.

That is not me saying “therefore Christianity is bad” but rather to point out the fact that just as for many people a clear view that there is an answer and it is this, is the way forwards, for many other people that view itself turns out to be the problem.  Some people have better mental health and better lives by saying, “the world in phenomenally complex and changeable and there are no absolute answers that are right for all time.”

And that’s why I sometimes think that maybe Dylan was singing “Break through” and not “Pray through”.  Break through to a new way of seeing the world.  But as I said at the start, I am never sure.

It is certainly possible to take inspiration from the Bible, and indeed get great insight from the Bible, but not be a Christian.  But to do that one has to break through the dogma.   Of course I could well be fooling myself, or I could now be manipulated by the Devil in thinking such things, and well, if I’m wrong I’m really going to suffer for my false views for all eternity.

Anyway, here we are, not at the end of Dylan’s religious journey, but approaching the end, and this song really does make an interesting insight into how he saw things at that moment.   Breakthrough or pray through – you pays your money and takes your choice.  Either way, it’s still a great song.

Recent Posts

• “Pressing on.” Who told Dylan that gospel had to sound like gospel?
• Don’t Ever Take Yourself Away. Dylan looks back to Durango, but loses the flavour.
• Time to end this Masquerade: Dylan prepares to open the door on a new era
• Dylan’s “In the Garden”. From Hallowe’en to the arrest of Jesus.

Elsewhere

• Index of over Dylan 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.

By Tony Attwood

Putting Pressing On as the opening of side two of Saved shows how important the song was for Dylan at the time, but on the 1979/80 tour it lasted only seven months and 65 plays and then stopped being performed without ever being brought back.

If one plays the original version from Saved and then a concert version one can see what had happened – the song on stage had got totally out of control, and hearing that concert recording one can quickly see why Dylan had had enough.   The song had moved on, but moved on too far.

The problem is that the chorus

Well I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord

is repeated three times each time it pops up.   On the record Dylan has a chance to build up to the verses – there were originally three, but these were cut down to two in an early effort to keep the song more balanced.

On the album recording the song works because it starts at a much lower level.  In the concert version the backing gospel choir have already built up through the concert itself and they had all also got high on it the night before and the night before that.  Thus everyone gets a bit carried away and doesn’t know how to take the music down again, as per the record.  Besides it is pretty hard to do a fade out on stage.

Thus the problem is simple: a song with one line repeated nine times needs very careful management indeed, and very careful management is what we get on the album but not on stage.

What made the situation even harder was the fact that on the tours Pressing On was the show closer and of course that helped a lot because by that time the audience (or at least those in the audience who didn’t mind having a whole concert of new religious songs rather than any secular oldies) felt that they had had the great climax to the show.

I am told (but can’t verify) that when Dylan did drop the song he replaced it with exactly the opposite, suddenly dropping the excitement level and playing as a finale one of the older songs with just him and guitar.  If that is so, it suggests I am on the right track – he knew that the ending of the show and the progression of this particular song, was not right.

But I am still left bemused by the notion of Bob Dylan so lost for words he uses one line nine times, another line three times and then adds just eight other lines.  Quite a thought.

In the first verse we get the singer as Jesus dealing with the perfidious Pharisees, as per the story taken from the Gospel of John.  In the second it is the gospel according to Mark that gives us the text, and the Christian message is there, for those who wish to hear.

And Dylan has heard for as he tells us

Well I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord

Of course even for non-believers like me parts of the message can still be highly attractive as in

Shake the dust off of your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack

It is just that some of us who are not religious think we can do it with what we’ve already got inside us.  We don’t need to have faith in the Lord to achieve these things any more than Dylan needed faith in the Lord to write “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Visions of Johanna”.

So it isn’t what can be achieved that is the issue, rather whether the source of the inspiration is from within us or from worshipping the Almighty.

As I said there was a third verse, this one based on Romans, but that got cut and we were left pressing on and on and on and on (as the choir sings).

Musically the excitement turns up in the verse with its quick chord changes between B flat, Dm, E flat, F, Bflat while Dylan having fun at the piano playing on the black notes.  But then with each short verse we know we will soon be back to pressing on and on.

So is it great music?

The problem is that old one of the inter-relationship between the music itself, the words, and the meaning of the words.  And where the meaning of the words doesn’t accord with one’s own perceptions of the world, it gets to be hard going.

Of course I can appreciate the verses and the music evolved around them, but I could do with less of the gospel choir, probably because of what it symbolises and its sheer repetitiveness.   But that’s just me.

Thus I am rather relieved that Dylan has never chosen to bring it back since 1 March 1980.  Unless of course he fancied just singing the verses to a honky-tonk piano.

And why not?  Who was it who decreed that gospel had to sound like, well, gospel?

elsewhere…

• Index of over 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.

Recent Posts

• Don’t Ever Take Yourself Away. Dylan looks back to Durango, but loses the flavour.
• Time to end this Masquerade: Dylan prepares to open the door on a new era
• Dylan’s “In the Garden”. From Hallowe’en to the arrest of Jesus.
• Watered down love. A review of Dylan’s song, and what Pope John Paul II had to say about Bob’s writing.

By Tony Attwood

In 1975 Dylan wrote Romance in Durango, a truly remarkable song, and in my opinion the highpoint of his work with Jacques Levy.  It was one of a series of innovative songs relating fictional events in exotic locations – something that popular music has rarely been used to do and certainly not something composers often get right when they do try.

So what made Dylan return to “Romance” six years later and reuse the essence of the music but without the exoticism in the music, or the intrigue and innovation in the story line, is completely beyond me.

But this is what he did, for “Don’t ever take yourself away” is little more than a reworking of “Romance” with all the good bits left out.

If on listening to the two songs you don’t hear this then do focus for a moment on the music behind “Soon you will be dancing the fandango” and compare and contrast with “to a place where I can’t find you. ”

Or compare “Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun” with “Don’t ever take yourself away”.  Musically the approach is the same.  Yes the tempo and accents are changed, but I can tell you that if they had been written by different people then the composer of Romance would soon be instructing lawyers to take action again the composer of “Don’t Ever”.

The fact that this happens in musical life from time to time arises however not from the fact that composers are thieves but rather because composers hear vast amounts of music both live and in their heads, and it is easy to think (especially when writing music and lyrics) that one has just come up with something completely new, only to find that what one has just “composed” is remarkably similar to a song that one has heard some years before.

Such court cases as do emerge however are fraught with difficulty – after all a lot of music sounds like a lot of other music, and when you are writing a song that is based around a handful of chords and a common cadence at the end of each section it is hard to make a difference.  But I think hear that even the most obdurate judge would be forced to agree, “Don’t ever” is just a rip off of “Romance”.

To take one stand out point, both songs end with a plagal cadence.  A cadence is a combination of two chords at the end of a musical phrase – a plagal cadence involves a chord based on the fourth note of the key and the first.   So if you are writing in C, the cadence is F major / C major.

Dylan uses this fairly rarely in his writing but in both these songs he uses it, with exactly the same melody above it.  Indeed the simple three chord sequence in both songs is almost identical throughout.

Dylan wrote “Don’t ever take” and recorded it in the Shot of Love sessions in 1981, and there it rested, unused and unreleased until it emerged on the genuine bootleg series in 1996.  Then it was used in the Hawaii Five-O TV series in 2011 for which apparently it was newly mixed and mastered.   It doesn’t seem to have found its way onto the lyrics set of the official Dylan site however.

In the song Dylan does throw in one musical trick by inserting an extra an extra line in the second half of the chorus, and then using this extra line in the verses (which have the same musical setting as the verse).  However the twist is that the extra line is squeezed into the same musical space as used for the first half of each verse.

Thus in the chorus

Don’t ever take yourself away
Don’t ever take yourself to
A place where i can’t find you.

While the second half (using the same musical structure) is

Don’t ever take yourself away
I will never leave you
Will never deceive you
I’ll be right there walkin’ behind you.

This additional line three, rhyming with line two (leave you, deceive you) crops up all the way through the song, and it can be an interesting musical technique.  But to work really well it needs to be polished to perfection, and here, in my view, much of the shine is removed with the use of false rhymes as in

There’s no need for blame
And no reason to be ashamed

and the use of rather uninteresting filler lines as in

You’ve been hurt
You’ve been left in the dirt

One can of course express one’s love to a person using the most ordinary of words, because that is a private expression of love and devotion from one to another.  But if that expression is to be made public then I think it really does need to go a little further than that.

So for me

Dearest, if it’s your heart that I won
There’s no need for blame
And no reason to be ashamed
Of that place where we stand in the sun

is a serious disappointment of itself.  It becomes far worse than that, because I can’t hear the song without immediately thinking…

No Ilores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango

which quite simply, instantly transports me to another world.

It’s the sort of thing that takes me back to the line that I have put on the home page of this site: “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.”    When the horse is taking us to Durango and I am told

Sold my guitar to the baker’s son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide
But I can get another one
And I’ll play for Magdalena as we ride.

and this is the dream I want to be in.  I want to be there to find out what happens, to experience the ride, to see if he makes it.

I suppose with

Don’t ever take yourself away
I will never leave you
Will never deceive you
I’ll be right there walkin’ behind you.

I’ve just been in that dream far too many times before.

What else is on the 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 596 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, links back to our reviews

By Tony Attwood

The collaboration with Gerry Goffin in 1995 which resulted in two songs (at least one of which uses a track recorded in 1985 – see below), is, to my mind incredibly important in tracking the history of Bob Dylan’s writing.

1990 produced the last of the Traveling Wilbury recordings, in a series of sessions that included “Where were you last night” – an absolutely terrific song which I feel certain was primarily a Dylan composition.

And then Dylan stopped writing.  Although of course I might have got this wrong, as far as I can tell Dylan wrote nothing between the Wilbury collaborations and the four pieces I have down as being produced in 1995:

• Well, well, well
• Howlin at your window
• Tragedy of the trade
• Time to end this Masquerade

the last two of which were written with Gerry Goffin.

That must be the longest period in Dylan’s writing career with no original compositions, and if that were all there was to say, it would be a rather bleak story.

But by 1996 he was composing

• Dirt Road Blues (based around the work of Charlie Patton)
• Can’t Wait
• Mississippi
• Highlands

Now if that wasn’t a kick start of a lapsed song writing career, what was it?      A great collaborative album, four years of nothing, four little experiments looking back to old times, a reworking of an old blues and then kerpow….  An extraordinary re-birth.

So to Masquerade, and to Gerry Goffin.  Where to start?  Come to that where to end?

Gerry Goffin certainly deserves, and probably has, a web site akin to this which works through all his songs and contemplates what he was up to, where he was going and above all his magnificent, incredible contribution to popular music.

I grew up with a lot of these songs – here is just a tiny, tiny, tiny fragment of his genius from the early days…

• Will you love me tomorrow?
• Take good care of my baby
• Some kind of wonderful
• Half way to paradise
• When my little girl is smiling
• Chains
• It might as well rain until September

And I have cut out from that tiny fragment of his life the songs of his I don’t particularly care for like from that era, like “Locomotion” and “Hey Girl” – and guess what, because I am not writing a web site of Goffin reviews, for once I don’t have to explain why I don’t like them!

Gerry Goffin wrote, of course, with Carole King – she wrote the music he wrote the lyrics.  And it was a perfect combination – well at least for a while (they were married in 1959 and divorced in 1969).  Hell, they even wrote “Going Back” which I know caused a split in the Byrds, but still remains one of my all time favourites as a youngster.

Anyway, later in life, several more divorces down the road, Gerry Goffin issued a couple of albums of his own of which the second was Back Room Blood, which apparently he said was inspired by his anger at conservative gains in the congressional elections of 1994.

The album was mostly co-written with Barry Goldberg, but included two songs co-written with Bob, the other being “Tragedy of the Trade”.

But some of the music dates back to 1985 according to Heylin and who are we to argue?  He might not know his 3/4 from his 4/4 time, but on this sort of thing he usually gets it right.    However Masquerade was copyrighted in 1995 – so assuming Heylin is right, we can see the level of inability of Dylan at this moment to come up with anything new, just a year before he could write Mississippi.

I don’t particularly recommend anyone listening to this particular song, because I think the rendition on the album murders what is actually an interesting piece of writing complete with multiple meanings.  But for completeness, and if you really want it, here it is

I am not sure exactly where the dividing line is between the two men in terms of the writing of lyrics and music in this piece but take the line

I’m at a loss to entertain you, see the cells are paralyzed inside my brain
I bid adieu, to all of you
I think it’s time to end this masquerade.

And I wonder if that were not necessarily Goffin talking to the American people about its politics, but rather Dylan talking to his fans at this moment in his life.

Maybe the final verse is a reflection of where both of these great songwriters who had worked through such different traditions, had each got to…

I forgot to milk the cow, but I don’t wanna do it now
Like to sleep for a hundred years, till’ this old world just disappears

It really does sound like two old timers giving up, and reading these strange lines it is hard to reconcile it all with the younger Goffin, of whom Carole King said, upon hearing of this passing, “His words expressed what so many people were feeling but didn’t know how to say… Gerry was a good man and a dynamic force, whose words and creative influence will resonate for generations to come.”  Indeed, indeed.

In many regards Masquerade would hardly be worth a mention, and if there were no more Dylan creations afterwards then it would be a barely mention postscript.   But the fact that it was the preliminary awakening which led to Mississippi is one of the most extraordinary compositional re-births in the history of music.

Recent Posts

• Dylan’s “In the Garden”. From Hallowe’en to the arrest of Jesus.
• Watered down love. A review of Dylan’s song, and what Pope John Paul II had to say about Bob’s writing.
• The New Covenant: Covenant Woman. One of Dylan’s more confusing songs.
• You changed my life: why Dylan’s song was left behind

elsewhere…

• Index of over 300 songs reviewed on the site
• Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
• How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
• Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.