Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

This is, rather obviously, the song from Dylan to the woman who showed him the way into the Light when he was converted.  At one level it seems very straightforward, and yet with this song I have a very special problem, a problem that arose when I found out that the last time he performed “Precious Angel” was also the first and last time he performed “Caribbean Wind”.

This puzzlement all started because I was interested by the fact that Precious Angel was only performed live 73 times, which puts it at the level of a minor album track.  And yet the conversion to a religion is surely one of the major events in one’s life, the giant leap, not a slight change.  For Dylan at the time it was the most monumental thing that had happened to him, and it is a very fine song.  So why ditch it?  And why ditch it on the day that Caribbean Wind got its one and only dusting down?

What also fascinates me (and this I think particularly comes from looking at Dylan’s songs in Chronological Order, rather than just reviewing them album by album), “Precious Angel” and “Caribbean Wind” were only written one year apart, and they are both about a woman who was close to Dylan, but, we take it in each case, not his lover.  The Precious Angel showed him the path to the true light, and the Caribbean Wind woman showed him something quite, quite different:

Was she a child or a woman, did we go too far?
Were we sniper bait, did we follow a star?
Through a hole in the wall to where the long arm of the law cannot reach
Could I have been used and played as a pawn?
It certainly was possible as the gay night wore on
Where men bathed in perfume and practiced the hoax of free speech

(There are several versions of the Caribbean lyrics – this comes from the Biograph version).

What is so curious is that the Precious Angel who came first “was the one”, but a year on we are drawn into an utterly different world of writing – to me it is one of the most extraordinary paradoxes in Dylan’s whole religious period – and that’s before I even get into contemplating the “hoax of free speech*”.  For there, is Dylan really saying then that we can never be free because God set the whole system up for us to choose to be for Him or against Him?   Seemingly yes with the lines…

Now there’s spiritual warfare and flesh and blood breaking down
You’ve either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground
The enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived
When the truth’s in our hearts and we still don’t believe?

So how could Dylan move in one year from

Shine your light, shine your light on me
You know I just couldn’t make it by myself
I’m a little too blind to see

to

Street band playing “Nearer My God To Thee”
We met in secret where we drank from a spring
She said, “I know what you’re thinking, but there ain’t a thing
We can do about it, so we might as well let it be”

and actually say farewell to both songs in the same concert?  (The whole point of Christianity is that there is everything you can do about your thoughts – you can convert to the religion and make yourself pure in the eyes of the Lord).

Of course artists change and go through different phases of their artistic lives – Dylan has done it many times outside of his conversion to Christianity, but this isn’t just an artistic move – this is a move reflecting his whole life and utter belief.  I honestly don’t know, but I just feel in looking at Precious Angel that I have to try and answer the question of what happened to end the performances of Precious Angel and bring on Caribbean Wind.

The Precious Angel herself is almost a saint, a direct messenger from God (if such a thing is allowed in modern times), seemingly perfect in every regard.

Precious angel, under the sun
How was I to know you’d be the one
To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone
How weak was the foundation I was standing upon?

But now consider the “spiritual warfare and flesh and blood breaking down”

and the subsequent war that is ranging in the Biograph version of Caribbean Wind

I see the screws breakin’ loose, see the devil pounding on tin
I see a house in the country being torn apart from within
I can hear my ancestors calling from the land far beyond

which is slightly disconcerting given that Bob’s ancestors were Jewish not Christian.

So could it be that on 12 November 1980, performing this song for the very last time, and then performing Caribbean Wind for the first and last time, Dylan was involved in some kind of internal battle, with both songs saying farewell to the same woman?  Or saying farewell to the fundamentalist part of his belief system?

Obviously I don’t know, but that abandonment of Caribbean Wind and this sudden farewell to the song that thanked a woman for the most monumental moment in his entire life, is one of the odder aspects in Dylan’s performing life.

Precious Angel is one of those songs that people like to go through and cite the origin and meaning of individual lines and phrases, but I am not at all sure this does us much good in terms of appreciating the music as a work of art.  Sometimes I do agree that picking out the sources of Dylan’s inspirations is helpful, but here, the references about being blind and now being able to see are fairly straightforward.  The lady has shown him the true way, he’s accepted it, and he’s converted.  I am not sure we need to know much more.

I do think however we have to give thanks to Mark Knopfler who seemed to get what was required of him perfectly – not bad for a man who reputedly left the first session saying in a disbelieving voice, “These songs – they’re all about God!”

But I am left absolutely puzzled.   On its own Precious Angel is a song saying thank you to the woman who showed him the way to the one true faith.  But just one year later it seems to me he was saying goodbye to her.  How much more was he saying goodbye to at that point?

*There is some discussion about the “hoax of free speech” line, which some suggest is actually “hope of free speech” and which changes from “practiced the hoax of free speech” to “celebrated free speech” in the published version of the lyrics.

Recent Posts

• Gonna change my Way of Thinking – twice. How Bob Dylan changed his own song
• No Man Righteous: Bob Dylan’s (almost) lost song.
• “Man Gave Names to all the Animals” – behind the Bob Dylan song
• Trouble in Mind: a song Dylan clearly cared for, but never played in concert.

elsewhere…

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

“Apocalypse soon if you don’t watch out”.

That was how Rolling Stone described this blues song – a song which has had two presentations, each with completely different lyrics and such a different backing that although both are clearly 12 bar blues, they become completely different songs.

In 2003 Dylan re-wrote the lyrics and accompaniment of ‘Gonna change my way of thinking’ from 1979 and then recorded this new version with Mavis Staples, for the album “Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan”.

After the re-write Dylan clearly loved the new version as he used it as the opener for numerous shows from 2009 on, and from the reports that are available, did so with a verse and drive that are not to be found on the more sparsely accompanied earlier edition.  Certainly the concert recordings that we have back this notion up.

And although this started out as a solid trumpet blast on behalf of Christianity there is a lot of fun and games here to love whether the listener is Christian or not.  Indeed I suspect that I have a much easier time with the piece as a non-believer, than those who follow the gospels have.  But that’s just a guess.

Take the line, “we‘re living by the golden rule, whoever got the gold rules”. It’s a cheeky interpretation of the New Testament’s golden rule of do unto others as you would be done by.   And what is doubly fascinating is that in the very first Christian song Dylan composed “Do right to me baby” he totally got this Golden Rule backwards singing, “if you do right to me baby, I’ll do right to you.”  He clearly got back to the source text and resolved matters since then.

But it’s not that Dylan would have misunderstood at that point, after all “do unto others” comes from the Sermon of the Mount (Matthew 7: 12) and in terms of Jesus’ saying you don’t get much more pivotal than that: “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets”.

I find this such a key moment because Dylan’s expression in “Do right to me Baby” was pure blues – in the blues the man fundamentally distrusts the perfidious woman and she has to prove herself, and even then he still probably doesn’t trust her much.  But now as we move on through his overtly Christian period Dylan has got it sorted and understood the message properly.  You have to do the right thing first, according to the way you would like to be treated.  It makes singing the blues quite a challenge.

As the song progressed so did the message.  “Every day you got to give yourself a chance,” takes us that bit further – every day is indeed important and to my mind the people who make the most of their lives do carry this vision inside them.  Every day it is important to do the right thing, to be a good, decent person who helps others in need.  Every day is a chance for new experiences, broadening one’s horizons, learning from the world around us.

But for me, and indeed for many who have approached this song before me, there is one line that leaps out and slaps me round the face so hard I just have to keep going back to it:

Well don’t know which one is worse
Doing your own thing or just being cool
You remember only about the brass ring
You forget all about the golden rule

For anyone who has any understanding of the 1960s and 1970s the phrases “do your own thing” and “being cool” ring out as part of that era.  “Don’t follow leaders” was Dylan’s earlier comment on the former, but it came with a notion of action which is independent, not influenced by social norms, laws, governments, conventions, rather than just doing nothing.

“Being cool” on the other hand was a “live and let live” vision as if there really were no rights and wrongs.  A vision that when you consider it, is all very well if it is used for  criticising outdated morality, but pretty useless as a way of dealing with murder, child molestation, wife beating, racism… well you see what I mean.

In this simple analysis “doing your own thing” wins hands down because it allows one to make moral choices, rather than blindly following leaders.  One’s own thing in the end might be to choose to follow a leader, whether that leader is Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan, Gandhi, or Lao Tzu.  Or not.  It is up to you.

Doing your own thing doesn’t necessarily lead to inner emptiness although it can do.  Being cool most certainly gives nothing except being cool.

But there is another battle here – that of personal individuality.  God, it seems, gave man free will so he has to make a choice.  Make the wrong choice and at the time of the Second Coming (or your own death, whichever comes first) you are in trouble.  But for people like me who don’t believe in the Second Coming or the divinity of Jesus Christ, there are many other choices, and following the individuality that one has been granted through the randomness of one’s DNA, synapses, upbringing and experience, is certainly one of the most profound.  It leads to exploration on the widest scale, and through that the chance, on occasion to do some good things.

But I meander, as is my wont.

Dylan is writing about his own redemption – and through this has led many, many before me to wander off into a whole debate about freedom.  For that alone we should be rather grateful.  And he’s not just given us the chance to have the debate, he’s given us the chance to note his change of heart.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

That 1964 warning from My Back Pages hangs like a haze over the Christian songs in which life very much is black and white – you are either for Him or against Him.  And how fascinating is it (well, it is to me) that Dylan started singing My Back Pages on stage in July 1978, wrote the original Gonna Change in 1979 but kept on singing My Back Pages on stage until 2012.   260 renditions.

Gonna Change got 79 plays between 1979 and 2011 – the new version coming in, as I noted above, in 2009.  What a battle that seems.  “Life is black and white – good and evil,” shouts one side of Dylan.  “Oh no it isn’t” shouts Another Side of Bob Dylan.  For me, as you will have noted, Another Side is where it is at.

In the first version of Gonna Change Dylan is completely clear where he is.

But there’s only one authority
And that’s the authority on high

But he also gives us a fascinating extra thought, the thought that being a Christian doesn’t mean you have to sing religious songs and live a calm and quiet life.  Obviously not, for this is Bob Dylan on the never ending tour.   So I do love the lines

I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
She can do the Georgia crawl
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord

Just in case you aren’t too sure, allow me to divert  for a moment and fill in the Georgia Crawl bit.   Although I would consider myself something of an expert on dance (when not engaged in musical things, and not watching football, the evening relaxation is dancing – at least three nights a week, so I know a bit about its history) I had to double check that my memory of what the Crawl is/was is correct.  This is how I see it…

The Crawl was a blues dance with the sort of exaggerated sexual hip movements that many blues dances have – but the Crawl really laid it on thick.  It was highly provocative, and not something most of us would want to try after about the age of 35 for fear of doing something nasty to the back.  The sort of dance which if you took your nine year old for an evening out, and a couple were doing it, you really wouldn’t not where to look or how to answer the questions.

Blind Willie McTell mentioned it in his songs and there is a song “Geogia Crawl” by Henry Williams which has the lines

I can shake it east, shake it west,
Way down south I can shake it the best,
Doin’ the Georgia Crawl, oh, the Georgia Crawl

The second alternative version of Dylan’s song, the one not on the original LP is here – if you leave the recording running you get two versions.

For the last verse in the version above Dylan sings the first verse again.

Change my way of thinking, make myself a different set of rules
Put my best foot forward, stop being influenced by fools

However the lyrics given on the official site include this at the end…

I’ll tell you something, things you never had you’ll never miss
I’ll tell you something, things you never had you’ll never miss
A brave man will kill you with a sword, a coward with a kiss

Now that does fascinate me and I really don’t quite know what to make of it.  Maybe there is a religious connotation, but if so I’ve missed it.

Heylin describes the whole expedition across the two versions as a horrible mess – from first writing to final total re-write.  And yes I think he is right in terms of the lyrics.  A lot of the phraseology like the line about the horse and the one about the table are just nicked from older writings, and mostly it doesn’t add up to much for me.  But musically, unlike Heylin, I really do like both versions, and find I can very easily divorce myself from any meaning there is supposed to be in the lyrics so that I just enjoy the overall event.

It’s not great Dylan, in my very personal opinion, but it is good blues.  And I like a good blues number.

elsewhere…

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

Recent Posts

• No Man Righteous: Bob Dylan’s (almost) lost song.
• “Man Gave Names to all the Animals” – behind the Bob Dylan song
• Trouble in Mind: a song Dylan clearly cared for, but never played in concert.
• “Ye shall be changed”; old song, old message, old testament, new religion.

By Tony Attwood

No Man Righteous was included in Heylin’s list of “The gems that Bob Dylan discarded” which in the UK was published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

It was recorded for Slow Train Coming, but the recordings have (for once) been kept out of the public awareness.  While the other two outtakes have become public (Trouble in Mind as a B side of a single, and Ye Shall be Changed in the first set of Bootleg albums (1-3) this one remains obscure.  Only one recording by a fan recording a concert, lets us know what it was all about.  I’ve put the link to it below.

And even that recording was by chance, given that Dylan just performed the song three times in 1979 and 1980.  He did comment to the audience one night that the band was trying it out, and having done so he decided it would be on the album. But then it wasn’t.

So it is interesting that the three out takes, all come from the early stage of the work of recording Slow Train Coming. Dylan was clearly working his way up to the songs that he felt were right for the piece, and with the three outtakes out of the way, he settled down to the real business.

The Book of Romans in the New Testament, lays down the ground rules that salvation comes through following Jesus Christ.   So guys like me, who basically try and live a decent and honourable life (and of course usually fail) can do all the good things possible, but without admitting the the Lord God holds sway over all mankind, and that Jesus Christ was his son, then, come the reckoning as described in the Book of Revelations, we’re done for.  All the business of helping people is for nothing without letting God and Jesus in.

Romans 3:10 tells us, “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one” while Isaiah 4:6, proclaims “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags.”  And that’s where Dylan starts out.

It’s a fairly upbeat, dance (or at last hip swinging) song but underneath it is what seems to me the dark heart of Christianity.  For salvation I have to believe.  It is what is in my head that counts, not the good deeds that I might do of my own volition.   There is going to be no escape from what happens in the second coming unless I think the right thoughts as well as do the right deeds.

For as TS Eliot so clearly put it, “The last temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”   But then Eliot also said, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”   That is the creative artist talking – we can never find out how to get things right, unless we take huge, huge risks.  It is all a bit confusing.

So we come to the essence of this song.  “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”  (Psalm 14:3)

Dylan takes up the position from the start, so there can be no misunderstanding…

When a man he serves the Lord, it makes his life worthwhile
It don’t matter ’bout his position, it don’t matter ’bout his lifestyle
Talk about perfection, I ain’t never seen none
And there ain’t no man righteous, no not one

In short, I don’t stand a chance on my own, only by serving the Lord can I be saved because the Devil will “even work his ways through those whose intentions are good”.  Which I have always understood to mean that the Devil is so strong that no matter how much I try to be a decent sort of guy, he will corrupt me.  Only by declaring myself for God will I be able to fight the fallen angel.

Now of course some of the song contains concepts that I suspect very many Dylan fans will agree with straight off

Look around, ya see so many social hypocrites
Like to make rules for others while they do just the opposite

That’s the sort of thought that we were used to in the earlier songs – pointing out exactly why we shouldn’t follow leaders.

But at the heart of this song is the notion that we will all have to “account for all the deeds that you done” – which seems a sort of justice in itself, if not associated with the fact that we have to repent and follow the Lord.  Repenting and trying to be a better person on one’s own just isn’t enough in this vision because the Devil is always lurking, ready to take advantage.

So in the end it is all so simple for the follower of this creed.

When I’m gone don’t wonder where I be
Just say that I trusted in God and that Christ was in me
Say He defeated the devil, He was God’s chosen Son
And that there ain’t no man righteous, no not one

For the rest of us however, it is so very tough.  You can be as good as anyone, but without submission to the Lord, you, like me, are doomed.

Indeed as Dylan said at the very start…

When a man he serves the Lord, it makes his life worthwhile
It don’t matter ’bout his position, it don’t matter ’bout his lifestyle
Talk about perfection, I ain’t never seen none
And there ain’t no man righteous, no not one

Recent Posts

• “Man Gave Names to all the Animals” – behind the Bob Dylan song
• Trouble in Mind: a song Dylan clearly cared for, but never played in concert.
• “Ye shall be changed”; old song, old message, old testament, new religion.
• Bob Dylan’s “Do right to me baby”: Christianity but not as we know it

And elsewhere

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

So Bob Dylan, newly converted to Christianity, continues probing the Old Testement and this time is back with Genesis.

This is one of those songs that has been a hit in some places and voted one of the worst ever Dylan songs in others.  To me its just a song, a jaunty little piece but not one I’d ever particularly choose to put on to play.

Coming back to it today for the first time in many many years – probably the first time since a month or so after getting the album – I thought, “it’s ok” but had absolutely no desire then to go back and listen to it again.

Maybe for me the problem is enhanced by the fact that although I don’t dislike reggae, I don’t particularly care for it, and in fact the only reggae record I ever bought was “Breakfast in Bed” by Lorna Bennett – which is at the lyrical end of reggae.  (And I was pretty young when I got that).

So there’s not much here to grab me personally, not least because there isn’t much in the song.  We get the chorus six times, and the chorus itself has the line “Man gave names to all the animals” in it twice, and the phrase “in the beginning” three times.   So a Dylan song with the same phrase 18 times in the course of four minutes?  That’s not very Dylan, and by and large I end up feeling it is a bit of a waste of such a supreme talent.

As for the verses – they are ok in a “hear them once and smile” or “sing them to the children” type way (which is actually what I did and they quite liked the song as we did the sounds and signs along the way).

He saw an animal that liked to growl
Big furry paws and he liked to howl
Great big furry back and furry hair
“Ah, think I’ll call it a bear”

And why not?  There’s nothing to say Dylan has to be the presenter of works of artistic merit all the time.   And of course he can write what he wants.  But it just seems a bit weak to put on an album.

As I suggested at the start, different countries saw it in different ways.  The song was a chart hit in France and Belgium, while Rolling Stone made it the fourth worst Dylan song of all time.  The actual Rolling Stone list in case you are interested is

1.  Wiggle Wiggle
2. Gotta Serve Somebody
3. Rainy Day Women
4. Man Gave Names to All the Animals
5. Joey
6. If Dogs Run Free
7. Lay Lady Lay
8. Ugliest Girl in the World (with Robert Hunter)
9. Ballad in Plain D
10. It must be Santa

But the song itself has been covered by a lot of artists and become a children’s book.  And musically it is very simple with an easy tune based over E minor and B, with the A chord in the third line of each verse giving us that sense that we are going to get the revelation right hereafter – and up the fun bit pops in the final line of the verse.

Dylan played the song 155 times on stage over an 11 year period, and Michael Gray praised it as one of the standout tracks on Slow Train Coming.  So in the end it is a matter of taste.

As a children’s song it is good fun and children love to sing along and act out each animal, and why not?

Recent Posts

• Trouble in Mind: a song Dylan clearly cared for, but never played in concert.
• “Ye shall be changed”; old song, old message, old testament, new religion.
• Bob Dylan’s “Do right to me baby”: Christianity but not as we know it
• Slow Train: this Dylan song isn’t at all what it is sometimes taken to be

And elsewhere

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

I know that the original versions of most of the books I write are nothing like the final outcome.   It takes the writing of the book to get a feel for the whole project – and I always find that final feel is utterly different from the feel I had at the very start.

There is no way I would ever consider myself to be on the same planet as Dylan when it comes to creativity, but it is perhaps a little reassuring to hear that he too could sometimes have problems at the start of a new series of recordings just as I do at the start of a new book.

The first session of what was to be Slow Train Coming was held on April 30 1979 and according to reports it didn’t go well.  Much of the day was dedicated to recording “Trouble in Mind,” and eventually it was cut from the album.  Reports suggest there was considerable argument about how the process would work, even if Dylan should be wearing headphones…

According to the producer of the album Jerry Wexler “Bob began playing and singing along with the musicians.   We were in the first stages of building rhythm arrangements; it was too soon for him to sing, but he sang on every take anyway. I finally persuaded him to hold off on the vocals until later, when the arrangements were in shape and the players could place their licks around—not against—Bob.”

The song that gave them all the trouble is available (see the link below) for us to consider.  A blues piece in a minor key using the sequence E minor, G, A minor, C, D, A minor, but it is the lyrics that are most curious not the music.

The beginning and end are personal “I got to know, Lord, when to pull back on the reins” in the first verse and “Lord, keep my blind side covered and see that I don’t bleed,” at the end.  We are also back in the Old Testament again, but this time mixed with The Epistle to the Ephesians.

But the rest is all non-personal stuff, and I think the heart of the matter comes with the line “He’s gonna make you a law unto yourself” – He being the Devil.  And I guess that is what all this comes down to.  Dylan is taking the religious view that one cannot simply be a good person and try to do the right thing, by oneself.  One has to do it with the Lord as Jeremiah reports:

Thus we have the contradiction: two people can both live moral and thoroughly decent lives, helping not hurting, being kind and good, but if one of them does it through the Lord then he/she will go to heaven, and if the other has chosen the wrong god or has no religion, he/she will burn in eternal hell.

So it all builds up to the final verse…

When my life is over, it’ll be like a puff of smoke
How long must I suffer, Lord, how long must I be provoked?
Satan will give you a little taste, then he’ll move in with rapid speed
Lord, keep my blind side covered and see that I don’t bleed

Which is basically a plea for help; a view that I, as a man, can’t do this by myself, I need you beside me.

Which is pretty much where the song starts out as well,

I got to know, Lord, when to pull back on the reins

As such the chorus is the key to the whole piece:

Trouble in mind, Lord, trouble in mind
Lord, take away this trouble in mind

Which seems to me to say, I’m a bit screwed up here, can’t get my mind straight, so I need someone to help me solve the problem – or rather not just someone, but the ultimate Lord.

There is a recognition that the individual can make choices, but because there is the eternal fight between good and evil, man can’t make his own choices on his own.  He’ll get mixed up because Satan is always messing with him, so he needs to choose God.

Here comes Satan, prince of the power of the air
He’s gonna make you a law unto yourself, gonna build a bird’s nest in your hair
He’s gonna deaden your conscience ’til you worship the work of your own hands
You’ll be serving strangers in a strange, forsaken land

It is a very bleak view of mankind, and our ability to be good simply through our own efforts.  We are in the end the playthings of the gods, but with enough decision making left to be able to choose one way or the other.

Much of the song though is fairly ordinary – the “don’t do it just because everyone else is doing it” sort of thing that parents say to their children when they are afraid that the kids are getting in with “the wrong sort”.

Well, your true love has caught you where you don’t belong
You say, “Baby, everybody’s doing it so I guess it can’t be wrong”
The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie
Then you’re all the time defending what you can never justify

From a poetic point of view, from my own personal point of view, the ending really does work (although I am told it was deleted from the single version of the song), and the final line

Lord, keep my blind side covered and see that I don’t bleed

really ought to be much more recognised than it is as a great Dylan line.  But elsewhere, for me, the song is just a blues.  The deep intensity of feeling that Dylan clearly had in writing the piece just doesn’t make it on the long journey between the studio and my head.

And maybe in the end Dylan knew this too.  He’s never played it in concert.

Recent Posts

• “Ye shall be changed”; old song, old message, old testament, new religion.
• Bob Dylan’s “Do right to me baby”: Christianity but not as we know it
• Slow Train: this Dylan song isn’t at all what it is sometimes taken to be
• Black Diamond Bay; a second view

And elsewhere

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

As we travel through Bob’s compositions of 1979 we are now into full blown Bible related songs, this one (on the surface at least) taken directly from 1 Corinthians 15:52…

 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

And Bob said…

Ye shall be changed, ye shall be changed
In a twinkling of an eye, when the last trumpet blows
The dead will arise and burst out of your clothes
And ye shall be changed

It’s one of three songs that Dylan recorded for Slow Train Coming which was then dropped.  It was finally issued on the third volume of The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3.

It’s a song saying that modern life doesn’t offer much except blood sweat and toil, but don’t worry, if you follow the right faith then when the second coming of Christ occurs you will arise with Christ and everything will be fine, because you have followed the correct path.

So you have worked really, really hard but there is an emptiness inside you “that can’t be filled” until you find the one true religion.

OK, that much I get, and I can understand the Christian message, but then

All your loved ones have walked out the door
You’re not even sure ’bout your wife and kids no more,

So this is an appeal to a man who has be let down by everyone – including his own family.  And of course there are people like that, but this clearly is not a clarion call for everyone, but for the individual with nothing to lose.

Which is interesting because among the many famous lines Bob has donated to the world we have

Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

So I guess the best we can say is, different times, different places to go. Although I can’t help thinking that if we changed one letter we have

Go to Him now, He calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

Now we have…

Just surrender to God and He’ll move you right here where you stand, 

It has been said that around this time Dylan took the moment of the second coming quite literally so that suddenly, rather as in a sci-fi movie (sorry I don’t mean to be disrespectful here, I am just expressing it as it seems to me, the non-believer), all the believers are removed from the world into God’s paradise, and everyone else is left looking at each other wondering where all the good guys went, and what the hell is going on.  Well, actually, it is Hell that is going on.

Maybe that is what it means, but I don’t think the song itself actually says that we are supposed to take lines such as

In a twinkling of an eye, when the last trumpet blows
The dead will arise and burst out of your clothes

completely literally.  I think the focus on the song is about the individual deciding to choose salvation him or herself and then reaping subsequent rewards.

The path you’ve endured has been rough
When you’ve decided that you’ve had enough, then…

So instead of going to “him” now he calls you, in Rolling Stone, the person in this song goes to Him now he calls.

But… I still have further issues, for musically I find much more of interest here because the song is based quite closely on “Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine” from Blonde on Blonde in 1966.

Now when I reviewed that song, I said that the chord sequence which starts on a minor chord and moves around the nearby minors before coming back to the major key chord was “A perfectly reasonable chord to use in this key, but very unusual for rock.   And its not something he does in any other song I can think of.”

Well, I didn’t think of “Ye shall be changed”.   But I should have, because both songs are telling someone that they have got it wrong – the only difference is that in 1966 Bob was telling the person to whom he was speaking that

time will tell just who fell
And who’s been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine

But now he knows the right way.  And so

You say you love me
And you’re thinkin’ of me
But you know you could be wrong
You say you told me
That you wanna hold me
But you know you’re not that strong

becomes (using a very similarly structured song)

You harbour resentment
You know there ain’t too much of a thrill
You wish for contentment
But you got an emptiness that can’t be filled

OK, so we have Dylan using an old  theme (go to him now he calls you) but changing it from the secular Rolling Stone, to the religious Ye Shall Be.   And to do this he is reusing an old Dylan chord sequence (Most Likely You Go), and its musical style.

The song does improve (to my ear) greatly when we get to “In a twinkling of an eye” – where we have the rotating chords F, B flat, E flat, A flat, and a different melody, but even here I find, again for me, personally, that the “Dead will arise and burst out of your clothes” line doesn’t work.

But now I have further problems, because not only is Dylan re-using an old idea of his, and an old song of his, he is also incorporating his old religion into his new religion.

What I thought of when I heard this was the Old Testament (ie Jewish) prophet Isaiah.  As in Isaiah 26.19 “Your dead will live, their corpses will rise, and those who dwell in the dust will shout for joy. Your shadow is a shadow of light, but you will bring down the ghosts into the underworld.”

Now of course I am not so dumb as not to know that the Old Testament is part of the Christian religion, it is just that I expected that having changed from Jew to Christian, Dylan might at this point be writing about the Second Coming from a truly New Testament point of view.

In the end, I think Dylan was absolutely right to drop this song from the album and not sing it in public, because it is a mish mash of ideas and music from old songs, and a prophet from his old religion, while trying to express his devotion to his new religion by taking the verse out of Corinthians, and putting all those bits together, it just doesn’t work.

It is of course perfectly valid to say,

You can’t live for today
When all you’re ever thinking of is tomorrow

but believing that, one can just as likely find a better life by Zen contemplation or indeed by going out and having a dance or supporting a football team or listening to your favourite rock star.

In effect I am saying I think Dylan was trying to write about his new faith too early, just by taking lines from the Bible and turning them into songs.  With this one, it didn’t work.  At least not for me.

Recent Posts

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And elsewhere

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

by Tony Attwood

The first anyone ever knew of what some now call Dylan’s first Christian song was on the last night of a 115 date world tour – something which in itself to mere mortals seems incomprehensible – on 16 December 1978.

Except that on closer inspection, and considering the progress of 1978 in its chronological order, it wasn’t really that religious.

For example, the line “if you do right to me baby, I’ll do right to you” is more 1956 rock and roll than 1st century Bible.   For surely the whole point of Christianity’s moral code (at least as I see it, and of course I might be wrong) is that you most certainly do not wait for someone to do the right thing to you, before you do the right thing to them.  You always do the right thing.

And indeed if they then treat you badly, you just turn the other cheek and walk on.

Indeed one doesn’t have to be a Christian to have this sort of moral code.  It is what many of us would simply see as being a decent, honourable, good human being.   You don’t exploit, you don’t take advantage, you do the right thing, the honourable thing, no matter what the other person does to you.

And for me this is the problem with the whole song – it actually, when you get down to it, isn’t very Christian.  The very first line “don’t wanna be judged” is not what it is all about as far as I was taught.  Christianity is about being judged when the final reckoning comes.  That’s why it is called “Judgement Day”.  The Christians who have been true to the faith and the teaching of the Lord pass into heaven and the rest of us… well, best not think about what happens to the rest of us.

OK, so maybe that first line which in full reads “Don’t wanna judge nobody, don’t wanna be judged,” is not meant in terms of the Second Coming but in terms of everyday – but then again surely the Christian every day is judged according to how well he/she fulfils what the New Testament requires people to be.

Basically even I as a non-Christian know that Matthew 7:12 says “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”  I remember learning that as a child in north London.  You do good first, irrespective.

Of course this misuse of the Bible could be seen as artistic licence – after all the chorus does get it right with

Ya got to do unto others
Like you’d have them, like you’d have them, do unto you

Thereafter much of the list of things Dylan doesn’t want hasn’t got too much to do with the specifics of the Bible.  OK he doesn’t want to shoot anyone, which I think most of us would feel is a fairly good idea, he doesn’t want a slave or to be a slave, he doesn’t want to bury anyone or indeed marry a woman already married which would certainly be against UK law anyway, although maybe not in all other places.

By this time I get the feeling Dylan was just finding lines to fit, so I am not so sure that the not wanting to burn anyone actually has any real Book of Revelations and hell-fire connotations.  Revelations is where hell-fire and damnation comes from, and where people like me end up, but Dylan not wanting personally to burn anyone seems like nothing other than (once again) a line that fits.   As for the not cheating, not defeating, that could have been written into any 1960s folk song.

Don’t wanna burn nobody, don’t wanna be burned
Don’t wanna learn from nobody what I gotta unlearn
Don’t wanna cheat nobody, don’t wanna be cheated
Don’t wanna defeat nobody if they already been defeated

After which I find it gets a bit silly.  Some of the points above are rather important – like the notion of treating people as you would wish to be treated yourself; a fundamental in basic human decency.  But where exactly does

Don’t wanna wink at nobody, don’t wanna be winked at
Don’t wanna be used by nobody for a doormat

fit into all this?  Interestingly the next lines are

Don’t wanna confuse nobody, don’t wanna be confused
Don’t wanna amuse nobody, don’t wanna be amused

and this is where I really do think we just having a load of lines put out, some of which are about what Dylan personally wants and doesn’t want, others of which just happen to fit to make the rhyme and rhythm work, without any reference to religious text.

After all, what is so wrong with amusing people – surely we are all better off when we laugh.  What is so bad about being amused?  OK it might be trivial, nothingness, gentle pap on TV, but we all of us need a break from the serious things in life sometimes, don’t we?

Yes it is a good idea not to betray people, but instead to be honest, but really, what sort of world are you in if you “dont wanna miss nobody”.  We might not like the pain of separation, but that is part of life, and really, do we not want to be missed?  I like to think that I am not too selfish and too self-centred a man, but hell, I really would be distressed to think my children and friends wouldn’t miss me when I’m gone.

At least for a while.

By this stage the emotions of the song seem to me to be deteriorating rapidly – don’t want to put your faith in no one… I have a certain faith in my doctor, and in my friends to stand by me when I need them.  And in my daughters.  That is kind of important.

In the end I find myself listening to just a set of jingle jangle ideas that happen to fit into the rhythm and layout of verse one.  Musically the leaving of the chord change until the end of each line, instead of playing it either a beat earlier, or not at all, makes the whole piece much more interesting from a musical perspective, but other than that it is a rocking two chord song (E7 A7) with the extra chord (G) thrown into the chorus.  It’s easy on the ear but not a brilliant piece – not a piece that would have been remembered had anyone other than Dylan written it.

Releasing it to the world on that last night of the tour, it was then a major part of the next tour, and continued to be played until 18 November 1980, at which time, after 73 renditions, it was gently put really where it needed to be put; to rest.

Here’s a live version…

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And elsewhere….

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

The curious thing about Slow Train is that it is eternally associated with Dylan’s religious period of writing, and yet by and large the song isn’t actually religious at all.  It’s patriotic, inward looking, isolationist, “things ain’t what they seem” “times they are a changing” and anti-Arab, but there is nothing much here that is propagating Christian values.

Indeed Slow Train – the song not the album – makes a lot more sense when you consider the order in which the songs were written and see it as the bridge between the earlier songs in the year and the writing of the new album.

• New Pony
• Baby Stop Crying
• Stop Now (with Helena Springs)
• The Wandering Kind (with Helena Springs)
• More than Flesh and Blood (with Helena Springs)
• I must love you too much (with Helena Springs)
• Stepchild
• Legionnaire’s disease
• Slow Train

The New Pony has the name Lucifer – who gets shot while of the woman in the song Dylan says, “They say you’re usin’ voodoo, your feet walk by themselves”.  Dark and mysterious stuff.

Then we have

Baby, please stop crying
You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind

Two songs linked to bluesmen – the first to Charlie Patton then second to Robert Johnson.

After that comes Stop Now and a series of songs about difficulties in relationships, followed by Legionnaires Disease which if it can be classified has to be a song asking “what’s it all about”.  An appropriate topic for this given that at the time we had no idea what Legionnaires Disease was all about.  The discovery of its cause came later.

Following this line, Slow Train is by and large another “what’s it all about?” song (with extras) – especially when one considers the lines such as

But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency

And there is a real hit on manipulation by… big business? the state? politicians? foreign powers? lack of clarity in one’s thought?   If one didn’t know what came next one might even postulate that the Christian church is one of the issues.  Certainly the eradication of the likes of Jimmy Swaggart which was chronicled later in Disease of Conceit would fit into the list Dylan is singing about here.

And there is something else epitomised by the line

But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets

Puppets of whom is not at once clear, but the notion of being manipulated, being out of control, and the world not being what it seems, is still very much there.

Of course I have some difficulties here because this is also a sort of “state of the union” message and we don’t have that sort of thing in the UK – if anyone delivered a “state of the kingdom” message they would be laughed at, jeered and sneered at.  We don’t do patriotism very easily in the UK, and our boldest attempt at it (voting to leave the European Union in 2016) resulted in those who voted remain seeing those who voted leave as a bunch of nutters and the biggest social split we have seen in decades.

So the patriotism that is part of the song is difficult to analyse for a non-American.  Mine is a small country, used to sharing its fortunes and ills with the rest of Europe, our days of Empire, as with our days of complaining that the price of petrol (gas) is manipulated on foreign exchanges are long since gone.

What I can understand is the image of the “slow train coming up around the bend” as something profoundly American. It’s a sign of power and moving on, an affirmation of “progress” and a liberation of the people who are on the train but really not getting that much out of it.

Thus this isn’t Desolation Row, it is not the country in utter ruins.  These people aren’t selling postcards of the hanging, they are lost, and need to refind themselves.  It is not the world, but the way you see the world, that defines what’s what.

In short, we have become disenfranchised because we choose to see ourselves as disenfranchised.  As a result

it sure does bother me
To see my loved ones turning into puppets.

Thus all the disconnect, all the weirdness that Dylan has been expressing through the year now turns into not personal disconnect but the disconnect of the nation.  He’s still very upset with everything – in fact he is more upset than he ever was before because he doesn’t quite know what is happening to everyone.

The opening of the song expresses this perfectly

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Thus the huge difference here is that he is not just confused – but there is change on the way.  Times, this time, they really are a changing.

If you have read my commentaries on the songs on Times, you may recall that I made the point several times that the only song about changing times was the title song.  All the other songs are about the way the world is now, and with nothing ever changing. The world is what it is, is the message.  A very curious contradiction of the album title song.  (If you are not sure of the validity of my point just listen to Hollis Brown, a song of desperation and no hope of change.  That desperation is what makes up the whole album – apart from the title track).

But now, all these years later this isn’t what it is – or at least this isn’t for ever more, because that slow train is coming and everything is going to be overthrown.

Indeed in this piece, even Dylan’s song characters, instead of being observed as odd balls from a distance, are now telling him, it is all going to change.

I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, “Boy, without a doubt
Have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic”
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

So America has been betrayed; outrun by Arab countries with oil, and outdone by its own people.  Who knows, there might even be a grand conspiracy

Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’
In the home of the brave
Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Indeed, now, instead of bemoaning his own fate, Dylan is lashing out wholesale; it is hard to see who he is not hitting at…

Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency
All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Certainly capitalism is coming under the cosh here

People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it

It is the world gone completely wrong.

In the end the song was placed on the album to end side one of the LP, which means if you are playing the album through you are pretty clear about the religious context by the time you get to it.  But taken alone – as it should be given that it was written before the rest of the album – it is a song of total disaffection.  It is in fact a total, absolute protest song, far, far more powerful than the more famous “Times”.

The desperation of the song demands that it is written in a minor key and that’s what we get – a rotating A minor / D minor throughout.  In fact there is only one major chord in the whole piece, the F major which comes over the words “slow, slow” but then we are quickly back to D minor and A minor.

And with that line, Bob opened the door to a new episode in his writing.

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• The first ever transcription of the lyrics of “More than flesh and blood” by Bob Dylan. (Maybe)

And elsewhere….

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

From:  Ken Smith

Re: Interpretation Black Diamond Bay, Bob Dylan

I think the piece is a reflection on Viet Nam.

Black Diamond Bay => Vietnam (1 too many syllables) => or Black “Vietnam”.

The dark side of the war …. And written the year the war ended.

I was sittin’ home alone one night in L.A.,Watchin’ old Cronkite on the seven o’clock news, It seems there was an earthquake that, Left nothin’ but a Panama hat

And a pair of old Greek shoes, Didn’t seem like much was happenin’, So I turned it off and went to grab another beer. Seems like every time you turn around, There’s another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear

This sealed it for me. Walter Cronkite’s commentary that the war is lost in 1968 was the end of it.  Earthquake (destruction) left the remains of the women from the Veranda (references to the easy life of the French, and use of the French language) and the Greek shoes – the bodies were gone.  “Didn’t seem like much was happenin” (everyone had given up), “went to grab another beer”, (ignore it, it was a mistake, not worth the time anymore).  “Just a hard luck story”, captures the sadness and uselessness of Vietnam, after everything that was sacrificed. I was such a huge cost to the country in lives and resources.

This is one of my more favorite Dylan refrains (one of many/many). I did watch, and remember Cronkite’s commentary.  How serious Cronkite’s statement was to the nation yet Dylan makes it even more powerful, “So I turned it off and went to grab another beer”.   He grabs for the beer, but instead turns around to the TV, and reflects on another “hard luck story, that you’re gonna hear”.  Amazing.

Everything is getting worse on “Black Diamond Bay” at the end of each refrain, as the failed initiative collapses. The last ship sailed: TOO LATE TO GET OUT.   “And I never did plan to go anyway” => this is the epitaph for all those who participated, and not all to apologetic for committing the nation to such a disaster – not responsible for the mess.  “And there’s really nothing any one can say”.

“As the island slowly sank and the loser broke the bank” => ran out of money or political will to continue.  “The dealer said, It’s too late now, You can take your money, but I don’t know how, You’ll spend it in the tomb” => the west is dead, your money’s gone, wasted.

References to soldiers, the Soviets (cold war match – image of the Soviets, the ambassador), and the Greeks (western partners who paid the price).

“the boiler in the basement blew”, the bottom came out from under the whole thing.

“Then the volcano erupted”, boilers blowing up, volcanoes => complete disaster.

“As the fire burns on and the smoke drifts away”, exploding bombs and the smoke from the fire.

I see references to Vietnam everywhere, just a few outlined above.

Thank you   …..  for listening …..

You might also enjoy…. Tony’s 2013 review of the song.

Recent Posts

• Legionnaire’s Disease: the meaning behind the music and the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s song
• “Stop Now” and “The Wandering Kind”. What lies behind two of Dylan’s “lost” songs
• The first ever transcription of the lyrics of “More than flesh and blood” by Bob Dylan. (Maybe)

And elsewhere

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

I am not at all sure that writing a song about Legionnaire’s Disease was Dylan’s best idea, and then mixing it with scattered musical elements of “Like Rolling Stone” didn’t really help much.  I have no idea if the “uncle” of the song was actually Dylan’s uncle, but if so, and indeed if the history of the family fighting wars is anything like true, rather than being a story, it certainly is one hell of a concept to write a song around.  But I suspect this is just fanciful story telling, and that takes a lot of the edge off the song.

And I guess maybe if 1978 were not such a curious year I would skip over this song totally, but we are in 1978 when Dylan was experimenting with writing on the road once again.  He’d done it extensively with Helena Springs, and now he was trying to find his own voice again.

As we look at the chronology of songs we can see

• More than Flesh and Blood (with Helena Springs)
• I must love you too much (with Helena Springs)
• Stepchild
• Legionnaire’s disease
• Slow Train

Now we know what Slow Train became, but the journey just by looking at the songs isn’t clear other than the fact that it is troubled.   Indeed looking at it now, this journey looks like one of the most fascinating parts of Dylan’s travelling through song.

More Than Flesh and Blood gives us the line “I reach for you at midnight just to find you’re never there”.

Then we have “I must have loved  you too much” which I postulate was based on Dylan Thomas’s writing about his desperate love for his soon-to-be wife.

Next it is Stepchild with

I wanna turn my back and run away from you
but oh, I just can’t leave you babe

You will see a certain theme developing here – the theme of emotions out of control and highly problematic relationships.   A life in fact in turmoil.

But then up pop’s Legionnaire’s Disease, another one of the songs that was performed as part of the sound check routine before each gig – but which never evolved beyond that stage.

The awful illness gets its name from the fact that the American veterans’ association “The American Legion” (for those who had served their country with honour) was staying at a hotel in Philadelphia.  182 of them became very ill with an unknown form of pneumonia with 28 eventually dying.  The strain became known as Legionella.

The bacteria is found in water, particularly indoor plumbing and air conditioning systems, and these days all institutions from hotels to swimming pools check for the bacteria and there is now technology that protects the water systems from allowing a build up of the bacteria.

     A                     D           E                A         D  E
Some say it was radiation,  some said: acid on the microphone
    A                             D                E                      A      D  E
And some say it was a combination   of things that turned their hearts to stone
    D                                       E
But whatever it was, it drove them to their knees
E7                     |: A . . .  D . . .  E . . . | . . . .  :|
Oh, that Legionnaire's disease


I wish I had a dollar for everyone that died within that year
Got 'em grabbed by the collar, and plenty a maiden shed a tear
Now beneath my heart, it sure put on a squeeze,
Oh, that Legionnaire's disease
It was Legionnaire's disease

Granddad fought in a revolutionary war, father in the War of 1812
Uncle fought down in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself
But whatever it was, it hit him like a tree
Oh, that Legionnaire's disease
It was Legionnaire's disease
It was Legionnaire's disease
It was Legionnaire's disease

This seems at first wholly unrepresentative of Dylan’s output during the year – a completely odd one off.  And it can be considered as that when we have the fact that Dylan was writing these songs as pieces to be played during the sound check sessions before the gigs.

Or at least that is how it sounds until one realises that the next song was Slow Train

I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, “Boy, without a doubt
Have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic”
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Looked at in this way 1978 was indeed quite a journey.  The Times they are a Changing.  Again.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

Recent Posts

• “Stop Now” and “The Wandering Kind”. What lies behind two of Dylan’s “lost” songs
• The first ever transcription of the lyrics of “More than flesh and blood” by Bob Dylan. (Maybe)
• Unravelling the origins of Dylan’s rarely heard song “I must love you too much”

by Tony Attwood

This article is a 2018 update on an earlier piece; Updated because recordings are now available.  The Rundown Rehearsal Tapes vol 4 is on line and contains two versions of “Stop Now” written by Dylan and Helena Springs.   For the Wandering Kind we have the Paul Butterfield version which I can now link to…

https://youtu.be/qM_Ax0_kRgA

So to begin with Stop Now which is on the rehearsal album above…

Stop Now Version 1: At 38 minutes 40 seconds (approx).  This is a very slow variant 12 bar blues in which the singers have tons of space to fill in around the music.   The centre piece is the rise up through “You had better stop now” but for me, the repetitions of “Stop now” just go on too often, too long.  It just doesn’t seem to work as a piece of music that holds attention, which perhaps is why Bob decided to try

Stop Now Version 2: At 44 minutes 20 seconds (approx) on the album above.

This is a completely different approach.  The same blues chord play from the variant 12 bar approach, and because it is much faster the “you had better” doesn’t feel so strained and the “stop now” repeats actually become something you might want to jig along to if that’s the kind of thing you like to do.

Version two is certainly entertaining and bearable, which I personally don’t find is true in the first.  Also the middle 8 feels like a good bit of fun and the return to the verses works, not least because of the fun of the middle 8 lyrics

You felt on your leavin’ and you’re so desired
I mean you’re yearning and your heat in mind
But I’ll tell what I need your why
Your heart beats so you’re making me cry

You got big licks, big lips,
Big belly, big hips
But you have better
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,

No wonder Bob starts laughing.

Heylin suggests that Stop Now was considered as an alternative track to New Pony on Street Legal.

Here are the full lyrics of Stop Now

I got a woman fine as she can be
She’s gonna get mad when she sees you here with me
You better, you have better
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Before it’s too late.

Now she is fire to the wind and snow
But if she chums you, better go
You have better
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Before it’s too late.

You felt on your leavin’ and you’re so desired
I mean you’re yearning and your heat in mind
But I’ll tell what I need your why
Your heart beats so you’re making me cry

You got big licks, big lips,
Big belly, big hips
But you have better
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Stop now, stop now, stop now, stop now,
Before it’s too late.

As for “The Wandering Kind” Paul Butterfield’s recording of “The Wandering Kind” has turned up on Spotify has got it, so now it is there.

Here are the lyrics of The Wandering Kind; it is a slow blues with a variation of the chord sequence and an excellent wailing harmonica.   It’s a hell of a story encapsulated in a short song: you could make a whole movie out of this.  Mind you, isn’t that the way so often with Dylan.

She’s like sweet water that runs down my face,
I keep her posted in diamonds and lace.
I give her freedom and what else I can find,
But I know she’s restless in her mind
And the wandering kind.

Way down in Texas many years ago,
She travelled with me to ease my heavy load.
Some big shot saw her ’cause she looked so fine,
How was he to know she was restless in her mind
And the wandering kind.

A strange bedfellow wandered in her room
She was more unfaithful than I ever could assume
She took his money and slayed him from behind
‘Cause she knew she was restless in her mind
She’s the wandering kind.

Down at the border with new plans of my own
Don’t need no woman I’ll go it alone
I miss my baby and I can’t keep from crying
‘Cos I know she’s restless in her mind
And the wandering kind.

I should have known better than to get mixed up with her
I guess I’ll never know for sure
For better or worse the situation now is reversed
And I’m broke ’cause she is no longer first in my heart.

I wrote this letter before leaving the hotel
To where she’s staying in that dark adobe cell
I tried to help her but she knows I’m not blind
And because I’m not restless in my mind
I’m the wandering kind.

The Wandering Kind however does lead me to a story that is rarely mentioned, but to me seems to be of some significance as Paul Butterfield recorded the song.

At the last minute Paul Butterfield’s band was booked to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965 as the “crowds in” act on the first night when the gates are opened and again the next afternoon in an “urban blues workshop”.  (Workshop as in, “we have no idea what to call this”.  I remember one of my co-workers in the theatre some years later describing something I was proposing as “a workshoppy type thing”.  He wasn’t being polite.)

Now I have played in bands as part of the last minute booking of the support of the support of the support at events because of the support of the…. didn’t show or maybe didn’t ever exist.  And so I know what it is like to play in a band and be ignored, dismissed and have the audience talk over you.

But on this occasion Alan Lomax, it seems, noticed the band on the first night, and apparently through his efforts Paul Butterfield’s gig got a much bigger audience for the workshop event than anyone expected.

It is suggested in some quarters that because this style of electric blues was not widely known among the folk music audience that came to Newport, the performance was something of a revelation to many and caused quite a stir.  Indeed it was a precursor of what was to follow, but one that is missed by many writers who like to focus just on the “Judas” show as the start of Dylan Electric.

Anyway, Bob Dylan was there, heard the workshop performance and arranged for the band to work with him the next day on four songs, which they then performed.  Al Kooper was also involved and although the performance was apparently not that well received, it was the start of something so much bigger.

As for the man who impressed Dylan on this occasion, Allmusic sums up the influence of Paul Butterfield particularly well…

It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of the doors Butterfield opened: before he came to prominence, white American musicians treated the blues with cautious respect, afraid of coming off as inauthentic. Not only did Butterfield clear the way for white musicians to build upon blues tradition (instead of merely replicating it), but his storming sound was a major catalyst in bringing electric Chicago blues to white audiences who’d previously considered acoustic Delta blues the only really genuine article.

For me that is a fair analysis, and if you have a mind to look into what attracted Bob Dylan on that night, try “The Paul Butterfield Blues Band” from 1965 or “East West” from 1966 if you can find a copy.

Sadly, like so many other great rock musicians, Paul Butterfield’s life ended in tragedy, seemingly suffering from peritonitis and eventually using morphine to counteract the pain, he died from an overdose aged just 44.  I hope Bob remembers him and that gig just occasionally.

Here is the complete track listing from the Bob Dylan rehearsal bootleg vol 4 referred to above in case you want to play the whole thing…

We’d Better Talk This Over
Coming From The Heart
I Threw It All Away
Maggie’s Farm
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Simple Twist Of Fate
To Ramona
If You See Her Say Hello
I Don’t Believe You
Love Minus Zero
Stop Now (1)
Stop Now (2)
Coming From The Heart (2)
Bonus:
Am I Your Stepchild?
Do Right To Me Baby
Coming From The Heart (3)
More Than Flesh And Blood

Think there’s something missing or wrong with this review?

You are of course always welcome to write a comment below, but if you’d like to go further, you could write an alternative review – we’ve already published quite a few of these.  We try to avoid publishing reviews and comments that are rude or just criticisms of what is written elsewhere – but if you have a positive take on this song or any other Dylan song, and would like it considered for publication, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk

What else is on the site

1: 500+ reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

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

More Than Flesh & Blood

(Please note that I have now incorporated all the incredibly helpful suggestions for the lyrics of the song into the version that is published below.  I can’t say it is a perfect rendition but it is certainly better than the first version I worked on alone!)

By Tony Attwood

According to Heylin the song was rehearsed with Dylan’s touring band and then there was a plan to have it as Springs’ debut solo single, but that never happened.

There is a version of Springs singing it on the web – it is in two places, and both seem a bit slow or difficult in uploading so I am giving both links below in case one doesn’t work for you.

And then the lyrics…   Well, no one seems to have put them up on the internet that I can find, so I have just spent a few hours trying to write them out myself.

Now I do this with a lot of uncertainty, because although I have a moderately good ear for music, when it comes to transcribing lyrics, I am not so clever.  My excuse of course is that I am English, which means sometimes I don’t get the phraseology, and sometimes the accent, and besides sometimes songs are not that clear.

But at least I have had that rare opportunity; to be the first person (maybe) ever (perhaps) to transcribe a Dylan song.   As you find errors, please do correct them and I’ll work on putting up what might ultimately be a generally agreed set of lyrics.

Now a lot of it makes no sense – and I am fully aware of that.  But I’ve put in the words I hear even if there is no sense in them.  (And maybe this is why no one has previously put their head on the block for this song – it is just weird at times.)

With profound thanks to Jack Aldworth and Eduardo Ricardo from Edlis Cafe.

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong  I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear


I see you at the party baby trying to converse
The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse
Don't give into the spirit, the spirit is adverse
Beware because your feeble mind will tear
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Don't discard the lily like the garment that you wear
It's more than flesh and blood can bear


Time regards a pretty face like time regards a fool
You drive off in your Cadillac and leave me with the mule
In order to keep up with you I must go back to school
I see that in the wicked way you stare
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Do yourself a favour cos I know you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear

I'm going down to find a church that I can understand
I need new inspiration and you're only just a man.
And with the blackjack table I can't play another hand,
The meat you cook for me is blood red rare 
It's more than flesh and blood can bear 
More than flesh and blood can bear 
Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair 
More than flesh and blood can bear.

Here’s the first link to the song.  Give it time to set up as it seems a bit reluctant to play sometimes.

And the second…

So moving on from the lyrics, which have occupied me for far longer than normal, what have a we got?  A bouncy three chord song with hints of concern about the true religion maybe.   IF my understanding of the opening line is right then she’s saying that he’s trying to get into the church, while she is already there.

But no, I’m pushing this too far… and of course given that we don’t know if Dylan wrote it all, or Springs wrote the lyrics or, maybe the music or whatever, it really is too hard to say what’s what and at this stage, everything is a bit of a guess.

And as you will have seen, at the moment I’m completely bemused by the third line from the end of the final verse, and that might hold a clue.

Except that some of the lines that I really think I have got right just don’t make too much sense even when resolved.

If we look at the chronology we can see that the song came straight after “Love you too much” which again has difficulties with the lyrics, because of the suggestion that the version that we now have has all sorts of extra lyrics not in the original.

But Love you too much and More than flesh and blood have a real similarity of meaning.  There is just too much in this relationship, I can’t take it, it is overpowering me.   And that most curious line

Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair

suggests an absolute need to stop everything and find simplicity and stability, and in effect have no more of the turmoil that Dylan had to endure in the divorce, and the fight over custody of the children after the divorce.

Somehow in both these songs there seems to me to be a touch of “can’t we just make this all stop for a moment?”

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

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• Unravelling the origins of Dylan’s rarely heard song “I must love you too much”
• Stepchild: the meaning behind one of Bob Dylan’s lesser known works.
• Bob Dylan’s “Baby Stop Crying”: the meaning of the lyrics and the song
• “Coming from the heart”. Bob Dylan the Helena Springs searching for a way forwards?

By Tony Attwood

“Stepchild” was performed regularly by Dylan on tour for a short spell, but never recorded by him, and then dropped from the repertoire.   Quite amazingly the extraordinary Dylanchords web site has listed three of the performances with each having a slightly different set of lyrics.  You can see the whole set of three here.

Heylin however adds that the lyrics constantly changed throughout the tour – so we perhaps should take the ones we have noted as simply snapshots from an ever changing song.

The song is a slow 12 bar blues – here is the version from the first gig…

You mistreat me, baby, I can’t see no reason why
You know that I’d kill for you, and I’m not afraid to die
You treat me like a stepchild
Oh, Lordy, like a stepchild
I wanna turn my back and run away from you
but oh, I just can’t leave you babe

There are three verses with lines three to six being the chorus – the same in each verse.

I get nervous in your company, my knees get weak
both my eyes get misty and my tongue can’t speak
You treat me like a stepchild
Oh, Lordy, like a stepchild
I wanna turn my back and run away from you
But you know I can’t leave you babe.

Ah, you know that I love you honey, like a nervous wreck
this way its gonna be like you hold me like a … around your neck
You treat me like a stepchild
Oh, Lord, like a stepchild
I wanna turn my back and run away from you
But you know I can’t let you be

The changes in each performance are to my mind minor, it remains a blues.  But it is just another blues.  Interesting, but still, just another blues.

But the theme is odd given that by this time Dylan was a step father having adopted Sara’s daughter Maria.  Maybe that is just a reflection of the turmoil that Dylan found himself in, after the difficult divorce and access arrangements for the children.

There is a variant version of the song with amended lyrics again by Solomon Burke and that is currently on line here.   Just scroll down the page to find the link.  There is also a version by Jerry Lee Lewis, but I don’t think there is a free download of that available.

So why was the song picked up and then just left?  Personally, I find it to be just another 12 bar blues, of which Dylan wrote many, and of which quite a few never even made it to one live performance.  Black Crow Blues for example got onto an album, but has never been heard in public – and yet seems to have a little more to say that this one.

And Street Legal of course had its 12 bar blues by the time this came along – and I think New Pony really has a lot more going for it than this piece.

To me it is one of those songs that all song writers work on – and by and large it is one that is then consigned to the bin.  And yet according to Heylin it was played at all 65 shows in the North American tour at that time, so clearly Dylan had a certain feeling for the song.   And it was the first song in a while written just by Dylan, rather than by Dylan and Springs, so maybe he was just pleased to be back writing on his own.

Now I have something of a disadvantage here because I have not managed to find copies of all the songs written with Helena Springs but from what I have heard of them, Dylan was right not to use them in the albums.   Indeed if we look at Dylan’s writing in chronological order across this year and the last we can see that it was in a bit of a downturn.

1977

• Changing of the Guards
• Is your love in vain?
• Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
• No Time to Think
• True Love Tends to Forget
• We better Talk this Over
• Where are you tonight?  (Journey through the Dark Heat)

1978

• Walk out in the Rain (with Helena Springs)
• Coming from the heart (the road is long). (with Helena Springs)
• New Pony
• Baby Stop Crying
• Stop Now (with Helena Springs)
• The Wandering Kind (with Helena Springs)
• More than Flesh and Blood (with Helena Springs)
• I must love you too much (with Helena Springs)
• Stepchild

1977 was not Dylan’s most prolific year by any means but it had some amazing work within it, but now, in 1978, the drive seems to have gone.

Stepchild was the first song written alone since Baby Stop Crying, and both songs, in common with New Pony, have an absolute paucity of lyrics.  For the man who took pop and rock songs into utterly new dimensions – and indeed for the man who wrote seven songs in 1977 which for any other songwriter would be the height of achievement, I do think this was something of a low point.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

Recent Posts

• Bob Dylan’s “Baby Stop Crying”: the meaning of the lyrics and the song
• “Coming from the heart”. Bob Dylan the Helena Springs searching for a way forwards?
• Walk out in the rain: the start of Bob Dylan’s second collaborative period

By Tony Attwood

Baby Stop Crying has its lyrical (although not its musical) origins in Robert Johnson’s Stop Breaking Down.  Just compare the lyrics

Dylan:

Baby, please stop crying
You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind

Johnson:

Stop breakin’ down, yes stop breakin’ down
The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out, baby
Ooh, it’ll make you lose your mind

The difference is that Robert Johnson delivers the song with a rare bounce and hypnotic drive which isn’t part of Dylan’s work at all.  Dylan, for me, sounds really fed up.

Robert Johnson “Stop Breaking Down”.

Johnson’s piece was recorded by him in 1937 and was itself melodically (although not lyrically) based on the music of Memphis Minnie, Buddy Moss (try “Stop Hanging Around”) and the like.   The Rolling Stones recorded “Stop Breaking Down” in Exile on Main Street.

The problem for me is that knowing Stop Breaking Down, I can’t really do justice to analysing Dylan’s lyrics.  For example consider this set of lyrics…

I can’t walk the streets now, can’t consulate my mind
Some no good woman she starts breakin’ down
Stop breakin’ down, please stop breakin’ down
The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out, baby
Ooh, it’ll make you lose your mind

This takes “lose your mind” into a different level and there is no comparison (for me) with

You been down to the bottom with a bad man, babe
But you’re back where you belong
Go get me my pistol, babe
Honey, I can’t tell right from wrong

Of course I get the point of singing “stop crying” eight times in every chorus, because that is the point with someone who is so distressed by the break up of a love affair that they simply cannot escape the misery and pain.

But like the paintings that make up The Scream by Edvard Munch I don’t need to look at it that much before it just overwhelms me.  The Scream overwhelms me with horror, Stop Crying with depression.  Different views of life, but not something that I want every time I come to play the album.

In fact I can handle the poem behind The Scream better than I can deal with the painting…

“I was walking along the road with two Friends / the Sun was setting – The Sky turned a bloody red / And I felt a whiff of Melancholy – I stood / Still, deathly tired – over the blue-black / Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire / My Friends walked on – I remained behind / – shivering with Anxiety – I felt the great Scream in Nature.”

And maybe if I was in that state (thankfully I’m not this week) or if a friend was, then maybe I’d have more empathy with the song, but somehow without that, I fail to appreciate the chorus. And by the end hearing the phrase “Stop crying” 32 times is just a bit much.

So that is my problem.  I can appreciate The Scream as great art even though I can’t and don’t want to share the horror of dissolution and loneliness.  But I don’t want to head “Stop crying” sung 32 times.   But as always, I am sure the failure to appreciate this moment of Dylan’s work, is entirely my problem, not his as a composer.

It might be ok for me if the verses in between said something to me but

Go down to the river, babe
Honey, I will meet you there
Go down to the river, babe
Honey, I will pay your fare

or

You been hurt so many times
And I know what you’re thinking of
Well, I don’t have to be no doctor, babe
To see that you’re madly in love

really don’t cut anything with me.

The blues of course is a simple song form, but when I listen to the Robert Johnson song I just want to hear it over and over, and this Dylan piece does not do that to me.  Simplicity can work, but, to my mind, it isn’t enough on its own.   Dylan’s melody is ok, and the four chords (A, C sharp minor, D, E) give possibilities but are commonplace in this type of song.

So what was it that made it a hit (it reached 13 in the UK charts, and did well in most of Europe)?  I must say I don’t know, and I’m with the USA on this one, where it didn’t go down at all well and didn’t make the charts.

Maybe people in Britain in 1978 were just plain miserable at the time.   We’d had terrible storms, Margaret Thatcher was making anti-immigrant speeches, they gave Freddie Laker a knighthood, the IRA were letting off bombs, our Embassy in Iran was attacked, and the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose.  Yeah, I guess we all were pretty fed up.

Dylan performed the song from 1 June 1978 through to 14 November 1978 (39 performances) but then on returning to the USA dropped it from the set list.

Here’s the live version from the UK tour.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

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• “Coming from the heart”. Bob Dylan the Helena Springs searching for a way forwards?
• Walk out in the rain: the start of Bob Dylan’s second collaborative period
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• Bob Dylan’s sense of place

By Tony Attwood

This is one of the outtakes that Heylin rates, and he says that a full band version of it was tried out at the time of Street Legal.  Helena Springs says it was the third song that she and Dylan wrote together.

When the Daily Telegraph published Heylin’s list of the “gems” that Dylan abandoned this comes in at number 13 and he says of it…

One of Dylan’s best love songs, co-written with backing singer Helena Springs. It was performed only once, at a concert in October 1978. It would be left to the Searchers to put it in the public domain.

I have to admit I don’t think that much of it.  The melody is (for me) just uninspiring step by step stuff, and the lyrics don’t take me anywhere new.

Of course I’m just a regular guy with an opinion, so my view is worth no more than anyone else’s but I just wish people could explain a little more as to what they find in a song like this.  Take the opening.

We have got to come together
How long can we stay apart?
You may get it maybe never
But it’s coming from the heart.

Your life is full of indecision
You can’t make up your mind.
We must get it in position
And move it on down the line.

‘Cause the road is long, it’s a long hard climb
I been on that road too long of a time
Yes the road is long, and it winds and winds
When I think of the love that I left behind.

To me, those words are not very inspiring, unless one has a would-be lover and one is looking for a song to sing to him/her.  In such circumstances the song becomes less important and it is swished away by the emotion.

But looked at in the fresh light of day… it still doesn’t work for me.  And when the melody just works its way along in a manner I can only call “plodding” I am left looking for something else, anything else in fact, to make me want to play this again.

And maybe there an awareness in Dylan that this really wasn’t where it was at, as they say, since although the song was included in early versions of Lyrics it was then removed.

For what it is worth, my guess is that Dylan was still hypnotised by what happened at the end of the era of writing with Jacques Levy – a period that could bring lines such as

At the corrida we’ll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We’ll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon.

or

Up on the white veranda
She wears a necktie and a Panama hat
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place
She looks nothing like that

It seems simplistic to say it, but maybe Dylan forgot that Levy was a) a consummate lyricist who could take rock music to places it had previously never even imagined existed, b) it took Levy and Dylan several goes at it, before they really got things to work between them – and even then they still managed to write a couple of pieces that were, perhaps, not 100%.

Coming from the heart works, I think, if it means something to the listener, whereas the songs from the Levy period work for anyone willing to be blown away by the wash of the words and the images they create.  If we take

Please don’t talk about tomorrow
I’m really not one to care
This world is filled with too much sorrow
That nobody’s heart should bear.

it really doesn’t have anything like that sort of power that Levy could bring – or indeed Dylan could bring much of the time.

And I have the notion that Dylan knew that, not least because the song that he wrote next, after “Coming from the Heart” contains the lines

I got a new pony, she knows how to fox-trot, lope and pace
Well, I got a new pony, she knows how to fox-trot, lope and pace
She got great big hind legs
And long black shaggy hair above her face

I am not saying that is great literature, but it is fun, challenging, and within the context of a standard 12 bar blues, it is utterly arresting.

In Coming from the Heart, even the images that Dylan loves, such as the river, get stuck in the everyday

Please, please give me indication
Stop and talk to me
Like a river that is flowing
My love will never cease to be.

Dylan never has to be complicated to achieve something interesting, and normally an image takes him in much more interesting directions.  Consider

Daylight sneakin’ through the window
And I’m still in this all-night café
Walkin’ to and fro beneath the moon
Out to where the trucks are rollin’ slow
To sit down on this bank of sand
And watch the river flow

So no, sorry, this doesn’t work for me.

https://vimeo.com/85647258

The reports suggest that when Street Legal was recorded Dylan knew exactly which songs he wanted to use, and this view suggested that although three songs with Helena Springs were also recorded during these sessions (including “Coming from the Heart”), they were thus not outtakes in the sense that they were ever seriously considered for inclusion.

But if you disagree with my entire view of this song and want more, there is more… for the Searchers recorded it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qhbT_4k4fc

There is a spot of interest in the Searchers use of this song, which perhaps backs up my view a little.

The Searchers were a Merseybeat pop band of the 1960s, considered by some to be second only to the Beatles (if you like that sort of music).

Like so many groups, they continued (with changing lineups) to tour in the 1970s to smaller audiences but then in 1979 got a new record contract, after their shows had started to get some critical acclaim, not least as they moved away from the Mersey Sound into new areas (their version of ‘Southern Man’ being particularly noted).

The first of two albums under this new deal (rather boringly called The Searchers) was welcomed by critics but got no air play and so was withdrawn, and then released again as a new version of the same album with a new title.  The original version (The Searchers) is the album that has the version of “Coming from the Heart” on it.  In the revised version (Golden Hits)  ‘Coming From The Heart’ was dropped and several new songs were put in.

The two albums (or three albums if you consider the re-worked version of The Searchers into Golden Hits, to be a different album) sold very well at the gigs, and kept the band going on the circuit but never brought them a return to stardom.

So why did “Coming from the Heart” get the chop?  Maybe because it didn’t fit with the new album title.  Or maybe it was the recording. You might decide if you play the link above.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

Recent Posts

• Walk out in the rain: the start of Bob Dylan’s second collaborative period
• Señor, Tales of Yankee Power; on the road to Love’s “Old Man” and finding Christ.
• Bob Dylan’s sense of place
• Seven Days: the prelude to Señor. The meaning of the music and the lyrics

By Tony Attwood

Uncharted territory here – before tackling the “1978” section of the Chronology on this site I didn’t have any ideas about this song, and there is precious little from other commentators around.

I have two recordings of the song – both are by Eric Clapton and both are linked below.  One is a very rough on stage recording, but it reveals the possibilities the other is a much clearer version from “Backless” which reveals more of a most interesting melody line.

After three plays I can begin to understand what Clapton saw in the song, but the lyrics really are fairly ordinary.  It is the bounce of the song that must have made Dylan consider it for Street Legal – but ultimately it was an outtake.

In terms of chords there are no unexpected changes – it is a simple three chord song – and this fits with Helena Springs reporting of the writing of the songs – they were just playing around – Dylan would strum the guitar and she’d just make up lyrics and then they’d spend a bit of time refining the song.

The reporting is that the couple wrote a couple of songs on the first night in Australia, and that Dylan was encouraged to try out the idea after the work with Jacques Levy.

Heylin reports a story which suggests that Clapton played his finished version of the song and Dylan took it to be a demo version, but I suspect this is an apocryphal story.  It would be hard to mishear the studio version as unfinished.

Here are the opening three verses.

Walk out if it doesn’t feel right
I can tell you’re only lying
If you’ve got something better tonight
Then don’t mess up my mind with your crying

Just walk out in the rain
Walk out with your dreams
Walk out of my life if you don’t feel right
And catch the next train
Oh, darling, walk out in the rain

I have come from so far away
Just to put a ring on your finger
If you’ve said all that you’ve got to say
Then please don’t feel the need to linger

Just walk out in the rain
Walk out with your dreams
Walk out of my life if you don’t feel right
And catch the next train
Oh, darling, walk out in the rain, in the rain

It’s raining outside of the city
My poor feet have walked till they’re sore
If you don’t want my love, it’s a pity
I guess I can’t see you no more

… you get the idea.

Clapton has an interesting take on Dylan, finding some of the less well known songs by and large for his albums…

– Sign Language (No Reason To Cry – 1976)
– Walk Out In The Rain (Backless – 1978)
– If I Don’t Be There By Morning (Backless – 1978)
– Born In Time (Pilgrim – 1998)

Here’s the album version

And here’s the live version

It’s not a great song in my view, but it is nonetheless a memorable, interesting and jaunty tune which seems to fit in with the rest of Street Legal.  I’m glad I’m doing these reviews as I wouldn’t have found the song had I not gone looking, and it is an enjoyable piece.

If like me you didn’t know the piece before, I hope you find the exercise of interest.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

As I have noted elsewhere, after Dylan finished writing “Desire” with Jaques Levy he had a long pause while he battled over the issue of access to his children through the divorce proceedings.

He wrote just one song in 1976, the year after Desire, Seven Days, but then towards the end of 1977 started writing again, with the songs that were to become Street Legal.

The tales that are told of the recording sessions for Street Legal are tales of chaos – Dylan coming and going, not settling, being in a bad mood etc etc, and the album that resulted is one that, according to the reviews I have read, was disliked in the USA.  Curiously it found favour in the UK, and it certainly found favour with me upon its release.

Michael Watts of Melody Maker magazine in the UK said this was Dylan’s “best album since John Wesley Harding” and New Musical Express (the other leading rock magazine of the era in the UK at the time) said, it was Dylan’s “second major album of the 70s.”  Q Magazine has since given the album a 5 star rating on re-release on two occasions.

Indeed for myself the list of songs from 1977 which went into the album are among my favourites as I come to look back on Dylan’s writing career, and create the chronology of the songs in the order they were written.

• Changing of the Guards
• Is your love in vain?
• Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)
• No Time to Think
• True Love Tends to Forget
• We better Talk this Over
• Where are you tonight?  (Journey through the Dark Heat)

I have also mentioned Seven Days – the one song written in the preceding year, which was then re-used in order to create Señor.  But whereas Seven Days quickly faded from the scene, Señor most certainly did not.  It is the song that was continued to be performed over a number of years.  Between 1 June 1978 and April 28 2011 it was performed 265 times on tour.  “Where are you tonight” by way of contrast, got just 33 performances and was lost before the end of 1978.

In 1978 Dylan also told the story of how he was on a train going from Mexico to San Diego and how a strange old man got on the train, and Dylan felt the urge to talk to him.  Apparently the story told in the concerts started off fairly simply and gradually expounded adding the notion that when Dylan finally did want to talk to the man, he had gone.

Given this explanation the context of the song is easier to place

Señor, señor, do you know where we’re heading?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before
Is there any truth in that, señor?

(As I understand it Lincoln County is one of the far south-western parts of New Mexico.)

Señor, señor, do you know where she is hiding?
How long are we gonna be ridin’?
How long must I keep my eyes glued to the door?
Will there be any comfort there, señor?

Then for the middle 8 Dylan goes into a different vision – a look at the woman through a different time scale in a different place – it evens seems suddenly that he is transported onto a ship…

There’s a wicked wind still blowin’ on that upper deck
There’s an iron cross still hangin’ down from around her neck
There’s a marchin’ band still playin’ in that vacant lot
Where she held me in her arms one time and said, “Forget me not”

But then he is back with the old man

Señor, señor, I can see that painted wagon
I can smell the tail of the dragon
Can’t stand the suspense anymore
Can you tell me who to contact here, señor?

And then again in the reflections upon this other strange land – the land of the marching band in a vacant lot, the iron cross…

Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field
A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring
Said, “Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing”

This is a really strange set of contrasts back and forth between the notion of sitting on the train with the old man and reflecting on some sort of semi-revealed vision of a trainload of fools (see below for more on this) bogged down in a magnetic field.   But somehow the singer is suggesting that the old man can deliver him and take him through.

Señor, señor, you know their hearts is as hard as leather
Well, give me a minute, let me get it together
I just gotta pick myself up off the floor
I’m ready when you are, señor

That taking through to another world, seems to involve cutting loose from the past, walking away from all that was previously known, getting going onto the new life.

Señor, señor, let’s disconnect these cables
Overturn these tables
This place don’t make sense to me no more
Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor?

Because the old life (wife and children) was shattered and torn, and the conversion to Christianity close at hand, many have interpreted this as a way of talking about that conversion.  Maybe it was.  Or maybe he still just had the feeling he was ready to move on.

But now, here’s the bit that I think is normally missed in discussions of this song.  In November 1967 Bryan MacLean wrote and performed the song “Old Man” which was recorded by Love on their all time classic album (ok, for me their all time classic – although I’d suggest a lot of others agree) “Forever Changes”.

Here is an extract from it

Dear old man
He’d seen most everything
Gave me a piece of good advice
Said it would do me well
I couldn’t really tell until
I have been loving you

Now it seems
Things are not so strange
I can see more clearly
Suddenly I’ve found my way
I know the old man would laugh
He spoke of love’s sweeter days
And in his eloquent way
I think he was speaking of you
You are so lovely
You didn’t have to say a thing

OK, you are not going to see too much similarity without hearing that song, but there is a link because Bryan MacLean joined the same Christian ministry (the Vineyard) that subsequently converted Bob Dylan.

Dylan, as we well know, is utterly versed in all forms of popular music, and of course would know Love and Forever Changes.  After all it was 40th on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008 as well as being added to the National Recording Registry in May 2012.

Dylan’s old man is not MacLean’s old man, in fact he is the reverse, but the concept is similar, and although of course in situations like this I can never prove anything at all, the similarity struck me long before I knew of the link between the two conversions to Christianity.

And anyway, if by any chance you have never heard Forever Changes, do go and get a copy.  It shouldn’t cost more than $5.00.

Back with the reviews, Christopher Rollason called “Señor” “a wasteland with no easy answers.” He added, “Political and religious readings are both possible, but, at least on first listening, this song propels the listener into a dark and desolate borderland world, where nothing can be taken on trust.”

In short, it is as if the Old Man on this occasion gives all the wrong answers – but the positive answers were just around the corner.  Finding the Old Man was the key, but the journey was far from easy, particularly if one is

lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through

What we have is the reverse of MacLean’s Old Man – in the Forever Changes song, the Old Man delivers a message of love and hope – everything that the summer of love offered in fact.  In Señor what we have is darkness, despair and destruction – everything that Christianity offers to the non-believer.  The trainload of fools is an update of the allegory “Ship of Fools” which dates back to a 1494 satire by Sebastian Brant and a c1495 painting by Hieronymus Bosch.  We may note the sudden mention of the ship in the bridge section.

Thus the old man ultimately gave peace to Brian MacLean but initially horror to Dylan, who then found his own peace a little later. But I suspect in both cases he takes us back (as I have mentioned quite a few times in these reviews) to the Wandering Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming.  He’s been a part of English literature since the 14th century, and certainly plays a significant part in Chaucer.  There’s no reason why he has to be Jewish or meandering around the English countryside as early literature of my country has it.

He is, in short, the warning, as when seen in the Canterbury Tales and in Señor, but ultimately transforms into the delivery into the light.

‘Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor?’

Either Armageddon or the Old Man of Love’s song, seems to be the answer.

The Allmusic review of “Señor” suggests the song “could have been one of Dylan’s finest songs of the 1970s. As it stands, however, it is an ambitious song which doesn’t quite come off.”

I think that is harsh.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

Having written about Dylan as a protest singer, I returned to a much earlier theme of this site – and one that caused me no end of problems.  Trying to classify Dylan’s songs by subject matter.

I have made two attempts at such a classification in the past and abandoned both.  But having written about protest I wondered if I might have more success by choosing a theme, and looking for songs that fitted into it, rather than looking at songs and assigning them to a theme.  So here’s part two: Dylan and Places.

Take as a starting point, North Country Blues from 1963.  This song is in a sense a political song about cheap labour disrupting traditional industry, and how company owners can make decisions that wreck people’s lives.  A protest song, therefore. But it is the effect that hits us

The summer is gone
The ground’s turning cold
The stores one by one they’re a-foldin’
My children will go
As soon they grow
Well there ain’t nothing here now to hold them.

It is a place that is full of decay, decline and dissolution.

Now consider One too many mornings.

This is an absolute, overpowering, overwhelming  song of lost love.  There’s no blame – the singer and the woman he loved are both right.  There are regrets, although the singer suggests maybe there are not – but you just know he’s wrong.

So we can call it a song of lost love (one of the three main themes of pop, rock and blues through the ages) but it is more than that.

The first two verses of this three verse song are totally about place.  And that can be said without even emphasising the opening lines that give the listener an absolute sense of where you are and what the world is like.

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark

And in verse two a second emphasis on place

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

This is real talent.  The ability to give the audience an absolute sense of where you are, and what the place means.

That was 1963 as well, but let’s jump forwards.  A song that starts “There must be some way out of here.”  That line itself tells us the place is confused, mixed, unclear, and that is certainly the picture that emerges.

Here’s the opening to All along the watch tower

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

and then in the last verse..

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

This is a really weird place indeed.  In fact it has been suggested to me (and I am always very grateful indeed for all the suggestions made, apart from the ones that tell me where I ought to go – which I tend not to publish) that Dylan himself is both the joker and the thief.  It is a theme I want to return to, but who else could handle this strange place we find ourselves in?

Time passes slowly  on the other hand describes a simple land, where nothing happens.  But the simple land is deceptive – the mountains don’t change but the thoughts and dreams of those who live here can change.  It is as if those thoughts create the world.  There is nothing real here at all… except of course there is.  This is the simple countryside isn’t it?  Streams and log cabins and stuff…

“Ain’t no reason to go anywhere,” however is a deceptive line it almost seems as if you need to keep shouting it to keep the demons at bay.   Dylan is trying over and over to tell himself this is how it is, he knows where he is, this is an ok place, but when you listen to those two inter-twining guitars, you start to wonder if it really is true, or not.  Have the demons been left behind, or are they merely locked behind to log cabin door?

You can win and defeat the demons if only you can be like the Zen monk on the hillside looking down, with the perfectly clear vision – for then time passes slowly and fades away.  But in doing that what you have done is removed yourself from the world.

Time passes slowly up here in the daylight
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right
Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day
Time passes slowly and fades away

It is a bit like the lines from Sign on the Window

Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me “Pa”
That must be what it’s all about
That must be what it’s all about.

I’ve never been to Utah, but I get the idea.

In my pursuit of Dylan’s sense of place I am now going to jump forwards to one of my great favourite Dylan songs Tell Ol’ Bill

I haven’t got round to re-writing my review of this song, following my discovery (although I suspect everyone else knew it all the time) that the title of the song is taken from an old slave song – which gives a totally different meaning to the piece, but with or without that knowledge we know this is a man finding his place in the world that is far from right…

I could happily quote the whole song as an example of Dylan’s sense of place in songs but just take the opening three stanzas.

The river whispers in my ear
I’ve hardly a penny to my name
The heavens have never seemed so near
All of my body glows with flame

The tempest struggles in the air
And to myself alone I sing
It could sink me then and there
I can hear the echoes ring

I tried to find one smiling face
To drive the shadow from my head
I’m stranded in this nameless place
Lying restless in a heavy bed

And one section from a little later on

I walk by tranquil lakes and streams
As each new season’s dawn awaits
I lay awake at night with troubled dreams
The enemy is at the gate

Beneath the thunder blasted trees
The words are ringin’ off your tongue
The ground is hard in times like these
Stars are cold, the night is young

The rocks are bleak, the trees are bare
Iron clouds go floating by
Snowflakes fallin’ in my hair
Beneath the gray and stormy sky

I can’t think of many other songs that take us so deeply into the sense of place that the singer inhabits in this song.  It is one of the most extraordinarily powerful pieces of writing in popular music of all times.

One of the most, because I can’t really say which is the most.  But right up there has to be

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

I think that those of us who adore Visions of Johanna so much, from Poets Laureate to Heylin with his analysis of line changes and recording sessions to regular everyday commentators like me, all find ourselves drawn into this place.  I know this room, I know the view across the street, I know the sounds.

What is so extraordinary about the sense of place here is that it is so instant – one minute you are in your own real world, the next, there you are in that place.  Looking, watching, feeling.

Of course the place doesn’t have to be somewhere we recognise, or somewhere that makes any sense.  The Watchtower is neither.  Nor is Desolation Row

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlour is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

This is a multiplicity of places – the images fall across each other so rapidly that we can’t quite pin anything down except that we know from line one that this is the horror show of all times.   If there are mists circling around the Watchtower, they have all cleared here and now we see the nightmare and find it is right inside our heads.

I want to end what is little more than an introduction to the notion of Dylan’s stories of places with one of the most evocative “place” songs of all, Dark Eyes

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They’re drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes

Just how much of another world do we want to enter?  How far beyond the “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks” can we travel?   How deep and dark can we get.   Dylan in fact suggests he can go as dark and deep as you want, into an underworld we hardly suspected existed.

This is not a good place at all, but it is part of Dylan’s stories of places.

Oh, the French girl, she’s in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel
Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.

I’ve never explored this notion before of Dylan’s sense of place, and I am still coming to terms with it, but I hope you find something here that gives a further insight into Dylan’s writing.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

By Tony Attwood

If you are a regular reader you’ll know I am not listing and reviewing every Dylan song – just the songs on the original albums and the outtake albums, plus a handful of others where other artists have recorded the songs.  In short the songs where we have full versions rather than notes and excerpts.

Seven Days is unusual – it is the only song from 1976 that we have, making it song number 168 in the list that starts with Ballad for a Friend in 1962.

We have the Dylan live recording, and a significant array of versions from other artists – although I don’t want to start giving listings of them on YouTube.  They are easy to find, and I am not too sure any of them add anything to the Dylan version.  I get the impression that some “superstars” find it a good excuse for a long jam session.

What interests me however is something different: what happened to the song.

It was first played in a concert on 18 April 1976 and got five outings and was then dropped from the repertoire.  Then on 19 April 1996 it suddenly reappeared, was performed 13 times, and then dropped again.

Now that information is available in various books and web sites, but that is not all there is to the story.  Because in late 1977 Dylan wrote “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”, the third of the songs written in the Street Legal sequence, and in this song a part of “Seven Days” reappears.

If you listen to the lines

seven more days she’ll be comin’
I’ll be waiting at the station

and compare with

do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?

you may perhaps note a similarity in the melody and the chord sequence.  (I’ve put the two songs in the same key below for this comparison although the two recordings are in different keys).

The sequence in the original song (Seven Days) is F, C, E, Am.  The melody is also very similar.

“Seven Days” is recorded as a lively bouncy piece, sung with a lot of vigour and energy, and it is also a very simple piece – the singer has been waiting to see again a woman whom he has not seen since childhood, and she’ll be here in seven days.  All of this is set out in three straight verses.

Seven days, seven more days she’ll be comin’
I’ll be waiting at the station for her to arrive
Seven more days, all I gotta do is survive

She been gone ever since I been a child
Ever since I seen her smile, I ain’t forgotten her eyes
She had a face that could outshine the sun in the skies

I been good, I been good while I been waitin’
Maybe guilty of hesitatin’, I just been holdin’ on
Seven more days, all that’ll be gone

And then to contrast with the long held “Days” at the start of the verse we get the rush of lyrics in the bridge…

There’s kissing in the valley
Thieving in the alley
Fighting every inch of the way
Trying to be tender
With somebody I remember
In a night that’s always brighter’n the day

The music is different and the lyrics take on a very different turn, before we come back to the original theme

Seven days, seven more days that are connected
Just like I expected, she’ll be comin’ on forth
My beautiful comrade from the north

(There is also a variant version of this verse: Seven days she’ll be going, I can hear the whistle blowing.)

I find it a strange notion – the long, long wait for a childhood friend, interrupted by the kissing and thieving passage – then back to the childhood friend now described as the beautiful comrade from the north.  I don’t think I can offer any insight into that, it just seems disconnected to me.

Heylin sees a link between this song and “Darling be home soon” by John Sebastian of the Loving Spoonful, the song and used in the film “You’re a Big Boy Now”.  The All Music review called it “…one of the most heartfelt songs about being away from a loved one, written from the point of view of a musician on the road writing a letter.”  I would certainly agree – it is a song that has been with me all my life – I still have the original 45rpm disc and still play it occasionally even though I’ve long since known it off by heart.

The link Heylin finds is with the fact that “Darling be home soon” suggests the singer has been waiting for his love since she was as child, and Dylan speaks of her having been gone since he was a child.

But it seems to me a bit of a tenuous link, because the feel of the two songs is so utterly different, and I’ve always taken it that Sebastian is suggesting that he has been waiting all his life for this moment, which is rather different from Dylan’s notion.

There are loads of versions of “Darling be home soon” (truly one of the great romantic rock songs of all time) on the internet.  If you are interested you might care to try this one by the composer, from Woodstock.

My point is that Sebastian’s concept is that

And I see that the time spent confused
Was the time that I spent without you

which is not at all related to Dylan’s vision in Seven Days.

But maybe Heylin meant something else.

Anyway, it is interesting though that Señor was the one song from Street Legal that really survived for Dylan in the next era of his songwriting and was played 265 times between June 1978 and April 2011.  So a little element of Seven Days did live on.  And it gave me an excuse to mention one of my favourite non-Dylan songs of all time.

• Index of all the songs 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 open discussion group on Facebook.    Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”