Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

For this review I’ve been listening to the version of the song on Infidels

and a singularly different version on You Tube recorded at The Warfield 1992.  

I have to say I am not sure what Dylan was about with this live version – far from adding anything to the song it seems to me to distract.    There is also a version by David Albion which I found so horrible I could only listen to about 10 seconds before stopping it, so I am not providing a link.

Thus it is the album version for me.   A rollicking rock blues sung with the sort of echo chamber that I’ve rarely encountered beyond rock records of the late 1950s.  But it works really well – the great demagogue with his megaphone standing before the crowd telling them what’s what.

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore
My flashlight’s from Taiwan
My tablecloth’s from Malaysia
My belt buckle’s from the Amazon
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin’ thirty cents a day

Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way

Well, this silk dress is from Hong Kong
And the pearls are from Japan
Well, the dog collar’s from India
And the flower pot’s from Pakistan
All the furniture, it says “Made in Brazil”
Where a woman, she slaved for sure
Bringin’ home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve
You know, that’s a lot of money to her

The music is a simple rotation of A and G chords through the verse, with that glorious guitar rock lick going on behind.  In the chorus we move across to rotating D to A chords with an E to A to round it off.

I think we’ve heard Dylan talking about the need to help the workers through protectionism before, although at this moment I can’t remember where.  But being English I come from a different tradition – although curiously we had our rampant protectionists too, the political party: the United Kingdom Independence Party, which became  the Brexit Party, which gave us the sort of self-focussed determinism that Bob seemed to like.

For me this is one of those songs where I love the music, even though, largely because of where I live and my upbringing, I can’t sympathise at all with protectionism.  For me, the fault is not that we buy from around the world – I want to do that, and I want the workers who create the shoes, clothes and computers I buy to be well paid and get ever higher standards of living.  Naive of course but that’s what I want.

But there’s an enormous kick at the end of the song.  I still can’t work out if there is additional meaning there, or it is just a few lines to make up the last verse.  I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Where the UK and perhaps the US has gone wrong (and as a UK citizen I do not want to start saying that I know what’s what in any other country) is through going for the global economy, but meanwhile not delivering a good enough education system at home, so that our citizens can take on the jobs not covered by poorer countries.  Like developing anti-gravity devices, providing energy without carbon emissions, giving everyone healthy food and plentiful water…

So I come from a different place from Dylan on this one, but that doesn’t spoil my enjoyment.  For once it is a political protest song that I mostly don’t agree with but so what.  Yes of course I am against greed, but greed and capitalism are one of a kind, for the most part.  For every Victorian philanthropist that we had, we had a dozen mine owners who paid their workforce the lowest possible wage and kept the guard dogs around them should anyone have the temerity to ask for an extra penny.  And with the mine owners and the like backed by the government – just look at Winston Churchill as Home Secretary taking on the miners and using the troops to put down the strikes in 1910.

In one sense, irrespective of his political views, Dylan is therefore being simplistic in the song.   In a free market capitalist economy companies will outsource production to provide cheaper goods and more profit and capitalist governments will support them.  By making their goods cheaper the firms get more sales, and consumers buy the cheaper goods and governments get voted back in.  If it didn’t, it wouldn’t have sustained itself.

Anyone who wants to by pass imported goods can certainly do that, although in the UK that is slightly more complicated, because (at least for now and I hope for a long time to come) the UK is part of the European Union, which means there are no import duties on anything traded within the Union.  So we export and import across Europe without trade barriers – and about half our trade is done this way.

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore
My flashlight’s from Taiwan
My tablecloth’s from Malaysia
My belt buckle’s from the Amazon
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin’ thirty cents a day

But where I fall out with Dylan here is in the area where he suggests that the problem is not just that of big corporations, but with ordinary people in supermarkets and on line who will buy what is best – often cheapest – for them.  We do have “fair trade” products but an awful lot of people go for the lowest price, no matter what.

So for myself the key is in the last line of that first verse.  The question is what do we do about the poverty created by this sort of global market – poverty within a country that we have no control over.  What do we do about this by-product of global capital?

Of course if you want to protect jobs in your own country you should buy products made in your own country – but the person living on less than a living wage says, “how can I?  I don’t have the money”.  So the cycle continues.

And so the simplicity of the verse

Well, you know, lots of people complainin’ that there is no work
I say, “Why you say that for
When nothin’ you got is U.S.–made?”
They don’t make nothin’ here no more

is the core of the song.   In the end therefore I guess my problem comes back over and over with that chorus

Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way

No, I doubt capitalism was ever a good idea.  It was just the idea that made some people in the USA and the UK very rich.

But I do like the way Dylan has a bash at the trade unions.  Trade unions in the UK have developed in a very different way from the unions in the USA, as far as I know, and those that are left are still hanging on in the UK, are still doing a good job for their members protecting against employers who play the dirty tricks like trying to change contracts without agreement on both side, and then trying to avoid redundancy payments.

And so Dylan finally moves on …

Democracy don’t rule the world
You’d better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid

This almost seems like part of another song, not really connected with the main thrust of the argument about global trade.  When I first listened I remember wanting Dylan to go further with this, but somehow he just didn’t want to.

Certainly all the years since would seem to boost this point in these four lines.  If only Bob had left these lines for another song, and then developed it fully what a song that might have been.   Masters of War: Looking back from the wreckage.

Index to all the songs reviewed.

By Tony Attwood

I’ve been listening to two versions of the song – one from Infidels and one on a You Tube video with the Grateful Dead

The two are completely different.  The Dead version sounds like a jam session with everyone doing their thing and Dylan calling out the lyrics without any care that we understand them or not.

The album version has a totally different feel especially at the start.  The riffs of the guitar are very carefully performed and engineered into the overall sound.  As is the change of rhythm in the bridge – which after the first verse is lost – but then comes back again before the first instrumental break before vanishing for good.

In short we get a feeling in the first verse that yes, this is a standard 12 bar blues construction but with real variations and additional styling – but then after that first verse some of these finer points in the music are lost and indeed as time goes by more and more of them vanish.  However this version never moves fully over to the absolutely standard blues of the Dead version.

But what Dylan does do and what is impressive is to vary the melody throughout the song – it certainly adds a lot to the music and makes it, as a blues song, far easier to listen to than the more hard-core 12 bar on the recording with the Dead.

But what on earth are we to make of the lyrics.? We have here an album produced by Mark Knopfler, a reference to Dixie in the second line, and immediately I thought, ah,  “The Sutlans of Swing”, which, you may recall, played “Dixie double four time”, on the Dire Straits first album.  And…

And then I got lost.

The opening lines suggest a traditional Dixie band busking in the street for money from passers by, and then Dylan says, “Could be the Fuhrer, Could be the local priest”.

Now since Dixie is Dixieland music – New Orleans jazz of which perhaps the best known early song is “When the saints go marching in” we have to pause here and think, what on earth have we got?

We have a reference to Dixie, a sophisticated 12 bar blues, a reference to a busking band, and the Fuhrer and the priest, followed by the regular end of each verse: “Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.”

The simple answer is, nothing is what it seems.  The priest appears to be a man of God but one only has to look at the number of abuse lawsuits facing the Catholic Church to recognise one implication of Dylan’s lines.  Of course the majority of priests are men of pure heart being honourable and decent, but clearly not all.  But I am an un-Godly heathen, so I notice stories like that, which doesn’t in any way suggest that this is Dylan’s meaning.

Heylin got to the same conclusion by a different route writing of “Narcissus the false Messiah, shimmering from the same stagnant pool” and quotes Dyylan’s interview in 1984 sayying “You can’t be for peace and be global.  It’s just like that song “Man of Peace”.  None of this matters, if you believe in another world.  [But] if you believe in this world… you’ll go mad ’cause you won’t see the end of it.”

Which takes us to Matthew 10:34: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth.  I came not to send peace but a sword.”

So the end is nigh, and we need to be careful not to be misled from this belief by any great works of humanitarianism.  It doesn’t matter what you do, the beast will howl and the poor will rise up to inherit the earth, not through Bill Gates supporting charities but rather because of decisions taken long ago by God.  It doesn’t matter what we do, the future is preordained.

As Dylan later said (quoted in Heylin again) “People who believe in the coming of the Messiah live their lives right now as if He was here.  That’s my idea of it, anyway.”

And yet Dylan only performed a song which, according to the commentary above, 41 times between 1984 and 2000.  With such an important message (at least for Bob, if not for infidels like me, seems a bit odd.

So we are talking about both the abuse of power deliberately, and the use of power to do good – which to me seem polar opposites and yet here are equally irrelevant.

The second verse with its “gift of the gab” reference suggests that we are in a world of the storyteller.  Which to those of us who don’t believe is what religions are – stories, no different from myths and legends.   Again, nothing is at is.

It is also possible to evolve a meaning to the effect that the peacemaker of the world, the outsider trying to solve a major problem, is Satan. Indeed while I was doing the usual background work trying to get my thoughts in order on this song, I found a You tube video which plays the song, shows some of the lyrics, and then has pictures of President Obama.  Hmmm…..

Then as we move forwards we get to the end of the world with the “howling wolf” verse which says that “Tomorrow all activity will cease”.  The simplistic explanation of this verse is the Book of Revelations and the arrival of Conquest, War, Famine and Death.

And then suddenly the “Mama’s weeping” verse – she knows her son is giving up the everyday world for the Christian religion, and she is scared.  And that I guess is my problem.  I’m with her on that.

Or is that opening line, “Look out your window, baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch” telling us that it is just another dream.   Or, is it a kick back to Dylan’s surreal songs of years before where nothing means anything because in the end only belief does you any good.  And there’s my personal problem.  For me it is far better to try and be a good person while alive, because that’s all there is.  In this song the message seems to be that such a life is irrelevant.  Only belief matters.

“Sometime Satan comes as a man of peace” is a Christian concept in that the Devil disguises himself in order to mislead.  And Bob seems to like that notion and of course I can’t share that.  But, I tell you what, I still love the song. It bounces, the music is exciting but controlled, and there are some great lines to rhyme with the final line of each verse.  And I still like those opening couple of lines.  I’m sure that’s a bit of fun between Dylan and Knopfler.

What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order at the foot of the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tony Attwood

One of the great problems for people who are not creative artists and who they try to interpret and critique artistic works (be they paintings, dance steps, poems or pieces of music) is that they don’t actually have the insight of knowing what it is like to create not just one work of art but another and another.

Ask the songwriter how he/she knows when the song is finished, and much of the time the answer will be a shrug of the shoulders.  It can’t be explained.

And most songwriters will admit that the creation process behind each song is different.  Some just fall from the lips as the piano plays itself, others need nurturing, others evolve over time, some need taking a hammer to, to try and sort them out.

And just as each song is created in a different way, so on completion the songwriter looks back with different feelings.  Sometimes he has set out to write a song about a certain subject and has done it, but sometimes he gets half way through and realises what it was all about – which wasn’t what it was all about at the start. Sometimes no one is clear, and those who claim to know are just making it up.

With the song Sara on Desire we can all be sure that Dylan was writing about his wife in general, since he says her name four times in each chorus, but whether he was writing about her in specifics is another matter. No one ever said songs have to be true, no one ever said every line has to be a truthful description of what actually happened.  No one ever said you can’t spin a tale.

Musically, the first thing to note about Sara is that its a waltz – the pulsing three beats in a bar run all the way through.  It’s not a waltz you’d want to dance, but its still a 3/4 waltz nevertheless.

The second thing we find is that in terms of Dylan’s music it is unique.  It is in a minor key modulating to the relative major in the chorus before returning to the minor in the last line.  Dylan uses minor keys rarely, and this sequence never again, before or after.

The chord structure, for anyone used to playing Dylan, is truly unexpected:

Em Am D Em (repeated) is the verse

G Bm Am D C Em (repeated) is the chorus.

So effectively the verse is in E minor and the chorus is in G major.  And it works perfectly.  Both the use of the triple time, and the use of the minor key are unusual for Dylan.   But together they give a strange backdrop to the lyrics – lyrics which talk of the background environment as well as Sara.

The point about love songs concerning particular people is that the format of a song is fairly rigid, so putting everything that is truthful and deeply felt into a song is very difficult – much easier to take the general idea and then let the imagination fly.

So is it about Sara Dylan?  Yes and no.  Maybe and perhaps.  Up to a point.   But really it doesn’t matter.  It is a beautiful reflective love song.  The fact that we have all heard that she took half the earnings from the songs written during the marriage is really not too important in the context of the song, unless Dylan wants to write a song about that.  Here he doesn’t; he wants to write a song about his love for Sara and what brought them together.

It won’t all be true, it doesn’t have to be true.  After all why would it?  Dylan is the ultimate storyteller.  He gets ideas from the real world and spins them into his tales – a perfectly reasonable and legitimate approach to songwriting. After all we don’t expect Isis to be true, so why should this.    Maybe he did drink white rum in a Portugal bar, but whether he did or not doesn’t actually affect the song.

Thus we can place Sara within this song, a Last Waltz perhaps, after the earlier songs reputed to be about her (Love Minus Zero, and Sad Eyed Lady, with possibly She Belongs to Me – who knows for sure?)

Certainly there are elements within Sara which are in Love Minus Zero. From “My love she speaks like silence” to “Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress” is quite a journey but yes it sounds like the same woman.

What makes the song work as a song is the way that Dylan moves to the major key for the singing of “Sara Sara” each time but lets the chorus slip back to the minor for the end of the chorus to express his doubts, uncertainties and failings…

You must forgive me my unworthiness

It makes you wonder if she ever did.

———–

An index to all the songs reviewed on this site

I’ve not recorded any details of Dylan concerts before – but then I thought why not.  Here’s the first supplied today, 24 October 2014 by Sam Chianello.

Would you like to contribute a review – either of a gig you have just been to, or one remembered from years before?  Please email it to Tony.Attwood@aisa.org

Excitment’s  everywhere in the city of  ‘good hearts and gentle people’,  for Bob Dylan and his Band appeared  for a single Oregon engagement.   There were plenty of smiles downtown Portland.  The Restaurants,  Morton’s Steak House in particular, were abuzz with anticipation.

The Venu was sold out.   Audience members were milling  about  as the will-call window was was in full swing.   Outdoor minstrals (I counted 3 rag- tag groups)  could  be heard singing  the old Dylan classics as one approached Keller Auditorium, and ticket scalpers  galore shouting their price from  a safe distance.

When the doors opened, it was clear all walks of life came to witness the event.  There were old hippie die-hards,  Earth Mothers that resembled 1970’s  Maria Muldaur(s).   And well  dressed / coiffed professionals.    I was amazed how vital everyone looked.   A rejuvination was in the air.

When Dylan took to the stage, the audience stood and roared with applause.   With his  Band at hand,   thier opening  piece was  ‘Things Have Changed’.    He is standing,  doning  a loose fitting over-lenghted tan colored silk  sport coat.   With his hand on the mic stand,   he was ever the  elegant hep-cat.   His voice deep and gravelly, slightly reminesciant  of Louis Armstrong.  His Band,  superb and  sensitive musicians, were faultless.

He performed for about two hours,  with a rousing  encore   that included  ‘All Along The Watchtower’  and of course,  ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.   It was a magical evening,  and  to see him in very good health was also reassuring.  Let’s hope for his return!

Index of Songs

By Tony Attwood

Updated 11 April 2020.

The operator of a loom takes a multitude of threads and weaves them together in a strong but endlessly pliable piece of clothing.

A storyteller presents an idea, and then another and another, and waves them together in something that mimics life, but isn’t life.

The three spinners in Norse mythology sit and weave the lives of all mortals and create their fate – and fate is inexorable.

The loom, in short is a symbol of anything and everything that is woven together. And out of this weave comes … whatever you want or if you are a Viking, whatever is deemed your life to come.  We all it a rich tapestry sometimes, or consider it woven on a golden loom.   It is life.

The violin plays, the band plays a lilting rhythm, for the most part built around two chords, just tripping us up at the end of each verse, as a wave comes in and crashes on the shore, taking us up the chords in the penultimate line (Moonlight on the water)

It is all so calm and rested

Smoky autumn night, stars up in the sky
I see the sailin’ boats across the bay go by
Eucalyptus trees hang above the street
And then I turn my head, for you’re approachin’ me
Moonlight on the water, fisherman’s daughter, floatin’ in to my room
With a golden loom

She’s there, all is beautiful, there’s a sudden storm, and she’s gone, but the golden memory is still there

First we wash our feet near the immortal shrine
And then our shadows meet and then we drink the wine
I see the hungry clouds up above your face
And then the tears roll down, what a bitter taste
And then you drift away on a summer’s day where the wildflowers bloom
With your golden loom

And then have the harmonica and violin break that seems to be the heart of the matter, bringing together the man and woman, and pushes them apart.   He’s alone.  He still sees the sights, but its just passing cars, until she appears again.

I walk across the bridge in the dismal light
Where all the cars are stripped between the gates of night
I see the trembling lion with the lotus flower tail
And then I kiss your lips as I lift your veil
But you’re gone and then all I seem to recall is the smell of perfume
And your golden loom

Until she’s gone again, but the stories that she wove are still here.

The one Dylan recording that we have of this song was made on 30 July 30 1975, with some of the musicians from Rolling Thunder Revue. Much of Desire was recorded in this session – and “Golden Loom.”

The song didn’t make the album, which is sad, as it is a beautiful relaxing piece.  Thank goodness then for the preservation of out takes.

The version isn’t perfect – the musicians speed up slightly during the performing, but we can live with that.  The painted imagery from the song is perfect – note the resonance of the double bass.  You’d never get that with an electric bass.

It is suggested in some quarters that this song somehow slipped away from Dylan in the recording.  Not for me.  I can play it over and over, and relax into the rhythm of the waves breaking on the shore.

What else is on the site?

We have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 3600 active members.  (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm).  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page of this site.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

The index to all 602 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year.

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, or indeed have an idea for a series of articles that the regular writers might want to have a go at, please do drop a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article to Tony@schools.co.uk

And please do note our friends at  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, plus links back to our reviews (which we do appreciate).

By Tony Attwood

https://youtu.be/BEARlCCYRXY

Ask any musician what the difference is between the version of this song that appears on the original LP (Empire Burlesque) and the version on Volume 3 of the Bootleg series, and he or she will immediately say, “the Empire Burlesque version is in a minor key, while the Bootleg version is in a major key.”

To be precise the former is in the key of B minor, the Bootleg version is in A major.

“So what?” you may ask.  Well apart from the fact that it is hard to think of many other songs that Dylan has written in a minor key, this is something even rarer – it is a song that modulates – which is to say it changes key during the process.

The minor keys in Western music are reserved mostly for sad songs.  For all of us the minor chord gives us a feeling of sadness and loss.   Play a minor chord on its own, such as B minor (B, D, F sharp) and it feels sad.  Do what Dylan does in the LP version and rotate between B minor and E minor and it feels doom laden.

This tells us a lot about Dylan’s concept of the song.  But the fact that he recorded a version in a minor key and another version in the major key shows us that he was unsure of the song.  Was it doom laden, was it a rock n roll blast?  In short, he had a song where the meaning is not clear.  This is not “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” or “Come gather round people where ever you roam” where no one could misunderstand what is in the song.  This is a song of images – one falling on top of the other.

Indeed Dylan said in one interview that the song was made up of “Lines overheard here and there,” and that’s really all we need.  It is a song of collected images – and no worse for that.  Very few songwriters have tried this effect, and with Dylan it works.   But it leaves open the question of meaning.  So it leaves open the question of whether it is joyous or uncertain.

Now once we have this awareness of just how different the two versions of the song are, everything becomes clear.  But if you don’t see that the two versions are fundamentally musically different, then you are back to arguing about producers and contemplating the strangeness of Dylan’s decision making.

Heylin falls into this trap.  He sneers at Dylan’s suggestion of lines taken from here and there, but then completely misses the most important fact about the two songs (one in a major key one in a minor)  I think we can safely dismiss and ignore Heylin’s commentary here.  Musically he hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, and as such can only read a half of the song.  It is like watching Hamlet but only ever being able to see and hear half the stage.  One’s conclusions would be odd, to say the least.

What we can also read into the two versions is the fact that since Dylan changed the song so utterly between the two versions, he didn’t have a clear vision of what it was about either – and was very happy to have written an abstract piece of multiple images.  The “lines overheard” tells us what we need to know. This is people passing by, making comment.

In short, if you really want to grab the image behind this song, and its ability to be transformed with two utterly different musical settings, think back to this

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

“Read books, repeat quotations” – he’s giving us a way of writing songs, which he used then, and he used here.

If there is a theme at all in the lines Dylan collected and used it is that Dylan is against judgementalists – which is interesting because if any of Dylan’s sources is judgemental it is the Old Testament.  As I have said so often before, and will undoubtredly say again, when thinking of Dylan’s seemingly religious lyrics, take a peek at Leviticus and see how that book stacks up in that regard.  No writer has ever been more judgemental than the writer of the Book of Laws.

John Bauldie wrote in the notes that are released with the Bootleg series 1-3 version of the song, ‘it’s remarkable to remember that this is a take which was presumably judged as not being good enough for release, merely a workout, and yet Dylan sings wonderfully. The song seems capable of kicking itself into ever-higher gear, and as the band recognizes it, so does Dylan, who gets audibly more and more excited as the song progresses’.

And it is this, “official” and knowledgeable enough to be on the notes with the three volume album, that I am challenging.  Brave and stupid of me yes, but sometimes you have to stick a neck out and hope you haven’t missed something.

So yes, I am questioning the official notes but I do think that because of the ambiguity of the lyrics and the different stance of the two versions, both versions are realistic representations full of artistic merit, of the concept Dylan was exploring.   Here he did two interpretations within a few days – and why not?  “Read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall”.

To say that the lyrics are apocalyptic as many have said, is to take but one vision – and for me not a very convincing one.  It is two different musical approaches, giving two different sets of insights, but for me, no firm meanings at all.

Yes you can just about make the meanings fit the notion that this is about lust and the devil in the form of a woman taking the man away from is righteousness.  But it is (if I may say) one hell of a struggle to get all the lyrics to fit that.  How much easier to go back to Dylan’s own analysis that they are just words he picked up here and there.

So yes, if you really want to, you can transform “If you look out across the fields, see me returning” as Satan’s warning, or indeed the announcement of the Second Coming of Christ as per the Book of Revelations.   The “smoke is in your eyes” could be the farmers burning off the stubble (I just made that up), or the effect of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or a reference to a famous 1933 movie song – a song which like Dylan’s LP version modulates as it wends its way.

So yes, Dylan might be commenting on the fact that Jesus says: “I may return at any moment now” or Dylan might be telling us a story about a returning man, or he might be taking up individual images without a story.  And here’s a thought… if Dylan really is telling a religious tale, why is he so bloody obscure about it?  He wasn’t obscure in Serve Somebody, why be obscure this time?

Of course I make no claim that my interpretation is any more valid than anyone else’s but for what it is worth, I find it fits with the notion that life is chaotic, the world is chaotic.  There is no plan.  It’s all a muddle just do your best.   Sing it in a minor key, sing it in a major.  Sing it with a rock band, sing it in a full on production.  Take it as you want.

Thus “I’ve walked 200 miles” might mean “I’m trying to offer you salvation through Jesus Christ” or it might mean “It’s been a long hard road” in the way the blues (and of course Tom Petty) says it.

What I think tilts it my way is the fact of the continuing quotes from the movies.  Do we need bits of the Maltese Falcon to convince us that Jesus will return?  I think not.  “I don’t care who loves who…maybe you love me and maybe I love you” is a great line of ambiguity.  Why not use it for itself?

There’s one other line I think is worth following here – the oft repeated notion that the original rock version with members of the E Street Band is one that Dylan was “unsatisfied” with.  That comment abounds, but there is no actual evidence that I have seen for that being based on any truth.  I think he was experimenting, exploring, not dissatisfied.   In the end he had to choose one version, so he did.

So for me, if  “From the fireplace where my letters to you are burning” is as likely to be the end of the love affair, as anything else.   But “You’ll love me or I’ll love you, When the night comes falling from the sky” tells us it will sort itself out in the end.  It will just be ok.”

Indeed all the song is saying, “hey babe, its just life”.   There are no easy answers, I’m just this regular guy who never asks the impossible.

As for the most contentious lines, “I saw thousands who could have overcome the darkness” could be the politicians who run our countries as much as anything, and the “lousy buck” could easily refer to our ability to overcome poverty (the money is there, it just isn’t spent in the way.   We could make a difference if we acted, but in the end we’re just regular people.   “In your teardrops I can see my own reflection”.

In the end we just read books, repeat quotations, and when the night comes falling from the sky we draw conclusions on the wall.

Index to all the Bob Dylan songs reviewed on this site.

By Tony Attwood

Does quoting lines from the movies (which is what this song does) mean you are removed from reality?

That is the suggestion Heylin makes in reference to this song.  Obviously you’ll decide for yourself, but for me it is (to use the technical term) a lot of bollocks.  I quote lines from films, from Dylan songs, from Shakespeare, from TS Eliot, from novels…  Why not?  Maybe it is utterly pretentious, but hopefully some of the quotes actually illuminate what I am trying to say.

Quoting as a way of illuminating what one is saying, or simply doing it for fun, is part of being a literate human.  If I say to a friend in a club, “I have measured out my life in dance tracks,” it might just mean I’ve danced all my life.  It might mean time has passed by and I haven’t done a tenth of what I might have done.  Except that I have read Eliot, so I take one of his most famous lines and mess with it.  Just for fun.

The line “Think this rain would cool things off but it don’t” could be completely prosaic and pointless, or a vision of the constant mess we are in.  It all depends on where you are and what you are thinking.  It’s not something to be taken in isolation.  It is all context.

And the big point to remember here is that this is a blues on an album called Empire Burlesque which gives a clue as to the era we are looking back at.  Not a conventional 12 bar blues but a blues nonetheless.  Not a regular blues band either – you’ve got all the extra instruments in there, but it is still a blues rotating around F7, B flat 7 and C7, with a quick E flat 7 thrown in.  I mean, how blues do you want to be?

The blues is like a movie – all the blues is story telling about the central themes of movies – life, death, betrayal, poverty, men and women…

So in many senses the marriage of the blues and 1940s Hollywood movies is perfect – and the irony of the song’s title (Seeing the real you at last) is overwhelming.  In the movies nothing is real.  The blues is always told a real story, but of course it is just a way of expressing the world.  Today it is often a way of excusing failure and things going wrong but originally it was an expression of appalling oppression.

The fact that, unusually for Dylan, the album took nine months to sort out, rather than nine weeks (at most) shouldn’t mislead us.  Indeed it should give a clue.  Hollywood movies, even in the 1940s, were big productions.  This music is a big production number.  It all fits.  The fact that he managed to mix the blues in as well is something to marvel at.

So in essence this is a song about contrasting the real, and the fantasy.  The real of the blues story, the fantasy of Hollywood.  Nothing is real.  Everything is real.  That’s life.

And in passing we might note that the song was record on January 28, 1985, at Cherokee studios in Hollywood.

There is quite a bit of relief and recovery in the song, as with

Well, I have had some rotten nights
Didn’t think that they would pass
I’m just thankful and grateful
To be seeing the real you at last

But it is not to be thought that this is all 1940s Bogart.  Dylan expressing all the trouble he’s seen, and using an image from ancient Greece, is quite something in itself – but it is still Hollywood.

Well, I sailed through the storm
Strapped to the mast
But the time has come
And I’m seeing the real you at last

But throughout this is the real, real blues…

Well, I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble
Trouble always comes to pass
But all I care about now
Is that I’m seeing the real you at last

So is this happiness now, with trouble behind him?  Not a chance!

Well, I’m gonna quit this baby talk now
I guess I should have known
I got troubles, I think maybe you got troubles
I think maybe we’d better leave each other alone

Whatever you gonna do
Please do it fast
I’m still trying to get used to
Seeing the real you at last

A great song, with depths that I fear many have never quite got.  Try this version if you don’t believe me

Index to all the reviews.

By Tony Attwood

One of the amazing things about doing this site is that despite now being on review 127, or something like that, I still have masterpieces to do.  OK a fractionally flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece way beyond the capabilities of almost any other songwriter even on their most brilliant of compositional days.

I’ve said elsewhere that I bought Street Legal when it came out, but I’ve just looked again at the LP and it is clearly marked “Property of CBS, Demonstration only, Not for Sale”, which means I was given it iby the record company n order to write a review of it.  I was working in the theatre at the time as a musician, and adding to my income by writing record reviews.  I have no idea what I wrote (I try and keep copies of the books, but not the articles), but it would have been a rave review.  I loved the album from day one.

I suspect I started by talking about divorces – having had one by then – and that amazing, stunning, extraordinary opening verse.   You want to know how being divorced can affect a man?  Try this for size.

In death, you face life with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls
You’re a soldier of mercy, you’re cold and you curse
“He who cannot be trusted must fall”

If you want to give your ex a battering you can’t get much darker than this.  Indeed that last line “He who cannot be trusted must fall” rings so true for me.  Time and again I have found myself asking in response to an accusation, “How could you actually think I could do such a thing?”  or “How you could ever think that of me?”

In fact sometimes I wanted to be trusted more than I wanted to be loved.

So I disagree with commentators who talk about this song having apocalyptic themes, the Bible and all the rest.  This is about the emotions of rejection.  She loved me, now she hates me and wants to take me for every penny.  That is the start and the end of the song.   All the hurt comes pouring out.

But amazingly it all comes pouring out through just three chords rotating over and over

IV I V I IV I IV V

To put so much into such an epic around just through chords is extraordinary.  I am immediately drawn back to Desolation Row which achieves the same power again on just these same chords although in a different sequence.

And Dylan, we must remember, at the time of writing and recording this masterpiece was fighting issues over who would look after his children, and worrying about the movie Renaldo and Clara.

According to reports Dylan was at his most difficult in the studio, distracted and not ready to work.  And how could he be?  Well, ok, some brilliantly creative people manage it – I recall the descriptions of Woody Allen working during the time when Mia Farrow was making all her allegations.  He could separate life and work.  I can’t in the slightest.  And it seems, at least on this occasion, Dylan couldn’t.  But he didn’t need to.  He put it all in this song.

Dylan returned to Street Legal with the legal settlement done, and quite probably the title of the album all ready as a result, but with no amicable settlement with Sara and this is the moment at which this song is pitched.

Reports show that during this period it took a long time to get the band right, as Dylan wanted a particular sound; the sound that we can particularly hear on this track.

And if all this were not enough two other issues happened around this time.

The first, as reported on Wikipedia’s review of Street Legal is that “a telegram arrived from the Japanese promoter, and in it he had a manifest of the songs he expected Bob to do on this tour. In other words he was a jukebox, he was playing requests. We don’t want you coming here and doing like your new experimental material, or getting up there and jamming.”  One can only imagine how that went down with Bob.

And then Renaldo and Clara was released to very poor reviews.  At which moment we get the tour and Bob Dylan at Budokan – a superb album in its own right.

After the Japan and Australia tour Dylan returned, rented a portable studio and recorded nine songs in four days.

Now I mention all of this, which of course is pertinent to every song on the album, because with the song that is the subject of this review, it all comes out.  Yes it is the big divorce song, but it is also a song about all that has been happening around him.  About pride, and vanity, about possession and obsessive behaviour.  It is THE inner-man song of the moment.

These are of course huge topics and getting them into a fixed format pop song is hard going.

And if all that were not enough there’s one other factor that I find here.

I’m going to relate this to my own personal experience of creating both songs and the books I’ve written.  Not because I am trying to compare the almighty talent of Dylan with my poor efforts, of course not.  But because I’ve done a fair amount of studying of creativity (it is part of the study of psychology) and I’ve taught courses in creativity when I was an academic, and in my own way I try to be creative.

Now one of the things I do is jive – it is still a popular dance activity in England – and at jive dances I find I get transported by the dancing, by the music and by the lights.  All sorts of ideas flash through my mind, all sorts of lines, so I take a note book and when I am sitting out a dance I write them down.  (It is something I always encouraged my students on the creativity module of their degree course to do, and it really can work for some people).

The sort of results I get are similar in style (if not in elegance or content) to what Dylan reveals here.  He is, to my mind, revealing snatches of consciousness related to all that has gone on in the past year – the tour, the difficulties with the band (which changed personnel many times) the divorce.. everything.  It is as if he writing down little phrases and half lines and working them brilliantly into one narrative that flows below those major chords.

So when commentators suggest that here we are going into dark deep issues I think that is only partially right.  We are picking up the sort of snatches of thought that we all have, but which most people never record. Dylan has captured these snatched moments from his darker times and turned them into a song.

And let us not forget the imagery.  That gives us the thought that there is no literal meaning to each line, no need to analyse, we go around in circles, ideas bumping into each other like the lines bump into each other here.   This is “Not Dark Yet” but without the resignation and waiting for death.

There is also the element of being used – everyone wants a bit of Dylan for themselves – which is why I quoted the story from Japan of people telling the master songwriter what he is going to perform.

But I mentioned in passing at the start that this was not a perfect conception.  And the trouble, for me comes in lines five and six.  They work at the start, as an quick imagine of the life of the travelling rock star

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety

and here they do indeed flow into the next line as he is back to thinking of his ex…

You fight for the throne and you travel alone 

Next verse again, it all seems to scan and fit.

Memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy
Betrayed by a kiss on a cool night of bliss

Third verse and a spot of brilliance, two words not one (quite unexpected) and also a pattern equal to sudden black and white flash backs in a movie

China doll, alcohol, duality, mortality
Mercury rules you and destiny fools you

He’s rushing around and around, and indeed just to prove it there is a musical slip at the words
Like the plague, with a dangerous wink

but everyone recovers and we keep going.

But then we start to find the fifth line of the verse a line that seems to have the words thrown in to fit.  The rigour of the structure has been exhausted and Dylan is looking for words that fit, not words that mean anything in combination, or which utterly surprise us, like China Doll.

Paradise, sacrifice, mortality, reality

It is a shame because the lines following about the magician contain a glorious set of images and metaphor and these are followed by a reiteration of the song’s central theme…

Anger and jealousy’s all that he sells us 

Equality, liberty, humility, simplicity

have a really interesting piano part behind them, but that doesn’t hide the fact that the words here don’t really convey a meaning.  But they have to be there through the structure of the song.

All the rest of the lines really work, like the movement suddenly into Daliesque surrealism…

You glance through the mirror and there’s eyes staring clear
At the back of your head as you drink
And there’s no time to think

Mercury, gravity, nobility, humility 

But now we are knowing that this rhyming line of individual words isn’t working any more.  What does gravity have to do with anything here?

Still the song emerges with more images, the image of the man so much in love that he will give up everything, and now he can’t have it any more.

You’ve murdered your vanity, buried your sanity
For pleasure you must now resist

But the desperation to find the single words for the fifth line gets worse, and indeed I think we are now at the very worst moment.

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism 

Despite this failure of one line imposed on the poet by the structure of the song, everything else remains utterly brilliant.  The tour of Japan has given him some release from the world

The bridge that you travel on goes to the Babylon girl
With the rose in her hair
Starlight in the East and you’re finally released
You’re stranded with nothing to share

He is destroyed by divorce, but he has kept his life together (through the rotation of the chord sequence.  He’s not whole, but he is with us.

Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive –

the man destroyed by divorce has not recovered but he is partially here.  At last he abandons that stifling four word line, he is not whole again, but he is with us.

No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say goodbye
No time to prepare for the victim that’s there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think

Like Desolation Row it is an overwhelming concept put into words and music.  I can only hope that in a small way I have conveyed the gigantic achievement that we have here.  Yes I find it flawed in one detail, but that is a detail.   This is an extraordinary piece of music.

Index to all the songs

By Tony Attwood

This review was amended in 2016, in particular incorporating the fact that Dylan recorded two very different versions of the song, the second of which came out on the Basement Tapes CD that came out in the UK in 2014.  It was a point I missed in the original version of this article – thanks for correspondents who corrected me.

The original Basement Tapes LP is certainly not one of my favourite Dylan albums, but within it, there are gems.  This Wheels on Fire, I’ve already written about. Here’s the other masterpiece: Too much of nothing.

The title tells you we are in no man’s land, for it gives us a quick reminder of the start of King Lear where he speaks to Corelida, “Nothing will come of nothing.”

But that’s only the start.  Dylan is in another country here, coming back from his own darkest days, and he does something musically that he does nowhere else in this writing, within the recording that appears on the original Basement Tapes LP.  He tries to represent the madness behind such the concepts of nothingness and madness, which is also part of his theme here, with a simplistic musical device that absolutely doesn’t work.  It is a device that every young student of composition tries in his or her second week and then realises that this is just too obvious and so quietly puts the manuscript away, or deletes the recording. We’ve all been there and done it – except Dylan kept the tape and it came out on the LP.

What Dylan does through the four lines on what I will call the original version (ie the version on the original Basement Tapes LP)

In the day of confession
We cannot mock a soul
Oh, when there’s too much of nothing
No one has control

is take us up chord by chord as a way to evoke the decline into madness and hysteria.  Where the first four line have a simple melody very effectively based around the chords of G, F and C suddenly Dylan takes up rising up higher and higher like a set of manic screams.   Just listen to those four lines and hear what is happening.  It is just a device as a device, not a piece of real music making.

Those four line go through these chords one after the other

G, G sharp, A, B flat, B, C, C sharp, D

Only the resolution from this horror through the chorus…

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivienne
Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

which leaps up to F, and then runs through a set of chords which (although not all associated with the key of C major),  once more makes  musical sense and return us to the key of C, gives us stability.

In one moment Dylan reveals the problem with writing about mental illness.  The vision from within the tormented individual is so different from the way we witness the individual that it is hard to represent.   It can be done in art form – The Scream by Edvard Munch  does it visually, but at least with a painting you can look away.  Just stirring the pot around musically and having a lot of hysteria doesn’t work – at least it doesn’t work for me.

So what we have is a situation in which we have some superb lyrics, but with music which (at least in the chorus) fails musically.   But it could have worked, as the subsequent recordings showed.  It just needed a totally different approach.

Dylan then made a second take, and it was this one that was picked up by Peter Paul and Mary  (Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers) – for there was no way their sweet harmonies could have made sense of the chromatic version that appears on the LP.   Although known for a musically gentle form of protest song such as “If I had a hammer” and “Where have all the flowers gone” they actually did a huge amount to make Dylan popular in his early days, and from what I understand Dylan was friendly with the ensemble – at least until they played around with the lyrics here.

Now I know It seems strange to say it now but Peter Paul and Mary were instrumental in getting Dylan exposure.   While many older listeners to Dylan might still remember the simple “Puff the magic dragon” the fact is that their recording of Blowing in the Wind in 1963,  and their versions of Times they are a changing, Don’t think twice and When the Ship Comes in were responsible for getting many people to buy Freewheelin

The PPM version (the version that was released on the 2014 CD set, has a much more conventional chordal accompaniment in D:

D, G, Am, G, D for the verse

C, G, D for the chorus

and it all sounds in the verse, very jolly.  It is only when the mood changes in the chorus that we are forced to go back to listen to the lyrics, and think that there is something else here.

But then, for a reason that is not clear, they changed the chorus by changing one of the names from Dylan’s original to Marion.  And this is where we find the real story.

Dylan is reported to have been very angry with hearing that PPM had changed the names – a name change that even continued with the rather uninspiring later Fotheringhay recording with Sandy Denny singing.   It is an important point, but we should not let this put us off the PPM version for the understatement of the PPM version really does work – and once you know the story behind the song it becomes one of the most frightening pieces that Dylan wrote.  It also explains fully what he was trying to do with the chromatic version that came out on the LP.

In Dylan’s original, the characters are Valerie and Vivienne – not surprising since this is the era of writing about Louise and Johanna, and other combinations of women.   These were the wives of TS Eliot, the poet that Dylan was by now used to quoting (most famously by having him in the captain’s tower in Desolation Row) – but it is clear from this reference that he really did understand.  Some writers feel that Dylan refers to Eliot’s The Waste Land with “in the wasteland of your mind” from “When The Night Comes Falling from the Sky.”   Indeed on Theme Time Radio Hour he once read TS Eliot, and often has seemed to glory in quoting from numerous sources in the way that Eliot did with “He do the Police in different voices” which was the original title of The Waste Land, and comes from Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend”…

“I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

But now, to disentangle the song, we need to know a spot more about TS Eliot.

TS Eliot’s first wife Vivienne is seen in different ways by different writers.  She might have been the source of inspiration for Eliot, or a woman who seduced Eliot into a hopeless relationship.

https://youtu.be/S46KvLCBc2Y

Whatever the situation the outcome was an awful tragedy: she suffered severe mental illness over a period of time.  Eliot did not take his wedding vow seriously however, and seeing her condition separated from her, and went to the US to take up a professorship, leaving Vivienne in a mental hospital in Stoke Newington – a part of north London that was certainly not one that would be associated with a genteel middle class caring establishment for the mentally ill, at the time.  I happen to know Stoke Newington well – it is where my grandparents on my father’s side of my family lived and where my dad was brought up.   It is what we would call a solid working-class environment.

Eliot never once visited his wife in the mental hospital, and just left here there.   But upon her death in 1957 he secretly married Valerie Fletcher – his secretary at his publishers, who was 38 years his junior.   In his later years and thereafter it was Valerie who worked to preserve the legacy of Eliot.

So we must take it that Too Much of Nothing is about Eliot and his wives, at least in passing, which surely suggests “Too Much of Nothing” is a brief response to the overwhelming magnificence and complexity of Eliot’s the Waste Land.

Dylan’s language is of course utterly different from The Waste Land.   His form is brief, his message simple.  It is in effect a kick at Eliot, suggesting that there is another part of the Waste Lane that Eliot forgot to mention – the Waste Land of his wife, abandoned and forgotten in a mental institution in North London, while he was lauded and celebrated as he lectured in America.

Eliot’s masterpiece is the poem of nothing, the poem where

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

For this is the world where “you know only a heap of broken images” where Eliot asks “who is that on the other side of you?” and where most famously April is the cruellest month

This is Dylan’s moment of attack upon Eliot’s whole approach:

Too much of nothing
Can make a man abuse a king
He can walk the streets and boast like most
But he wouldn’t know a thing
Now, it’s all been done before
It’s all been written in the book
But when there’s too much of nothing
Nobody should look

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivienne
Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

The song is, for me, a brilliant conception, and it is a sadness not so much that Dylan recorded the chromatic version as an experiment, but that he let it be released on the original Basement LP.

But we did have the PPM version, with that bareness of the chorus.  It doesn’t work totally, and the change of name is extremely annoying because it leads us completely away from the central meaning.  But it showed us where this song might go until ultimately Dylan released his version of this alternative approach.  The PPM version is on You Tube

The straight (ie non-chromatic) version by Dylan is on Spotify as “Too much of nothing take 2”.  If you only know the Peter Paul and Mary version I defy you to listen to this and not have shivers up and down every single part of your nervous system.

Elsewhere

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

By Tony Attwood

If I were to make a CD of Dylan songs based on meaning and feeling, I’d put “Trying to get heaven” followed not by “Til I Fell in love with you” as on Time out of Mind, but followed by “Not Dark Yet”.

And then I’d probably never be able to listen to that sequence, for in such a combination there would be too much emotion for me to deal with.

Just imagine it.   “Trying to get to heaven” ends with this

Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I’ll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don’t pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

And “Not Dark Yet” begins

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

My point simply is that that “Trying to get to heaven” is just one step before “Not Dark Yet.”  In the former he really is trying to walk away from all the sadness and sorrow to something better.   But by Not Dark Yet, he knows he’s not going to make it.  He’s giving up, he’s fading away.  There’s no heaven, no hell.  Nothing.

Now as it happens, and as I’ve confessed before on this site, I don’t believe, but I have been to the funerals of my father, my mother and my best friend, all of whom did most certainly believe at the time of their passing – and if I am wrong and there is a heaven, they certainly made it.   But for me I fear there is only the darkness.

The music of “Trying to get to heaven” is perfect for the song – a simple melody for the first four lines and then in line five Dylan takes his voice to the highest point of the melody while suddenly introducing a most unusual chord for Dylan.  Its technical name is Am6 – consisting of A, C , E and F sharp.  It’s a perfectly reasonable chord to use, but just unusual – and yet perfectly in place with the feeling of the tune.  It is as if a little extra flavouring is added at that point.

Just taking all the lines that use that chord change and putting them together we get an interesting effect…

• Every day your memory grows dimmer
• You broke a heart that loved you
• I tried to give you everything
• I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
• Some trains don’t pull no gamblers

Five different lines, but each putting out a poignant thought – he’s gambled, he’s hit the high spot (of being with Mary Jane) and he’s done his level best, but now its approaching the end.   A superb use of that Am6 chord and  that rise in the melody.

So finally, he knows it is over, and he’s closing his eyes.  The gambler can’t ride this final train into the eternal night, but he’s trying to make up for the bad moments in his life.

If anyone ever asks me what this whole metaphor thing is that I have in talking about Dylan, this is another song that I turn to.  The metaphors are truly wonderful.  “I’ve been wading through the high muddy water” – you can just feel him trying to make his way through life, trying to be a good guy, but like all of us, getting it so wrong, so often.

Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore

You want to say “it’s all done and dusted” and not say it because that phrase is far too prosaic.  Dylan’s line above says it with such elegance.  Here’s another…

Some trains don’t pull no gamblers

So it goes throughout the song.   Yes of course some of the lines come from old blues numbers, but every word that can be said, every notion that can be thought, all of it has been done before.  What Bob does is package it all up in a way that just gets straight to my emotions.

As for the ending

I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

there are so many explanations you can make up your own mind.

Sugar Town is most commonly remembered as a Nancy Sinatra hit with lyrics which the producer of the record and writer of the song (Lee Hazlewood) called an out-and-out LSD song.    He also said, “I spent a lotta time writing a bad lyric like that! The words are as stupid as I could get them.  I edit a lot, even the dumb songs. The dumb songs are the hardest to write. Sugar Town took me a while. I wanted the dumbest lyric ever written to a song, to a doper song.”

There’s other meanings to the phrase – bands, TV series etc – but the song was a huge hit in the States by a famous artist – I think that is what most people think of.    Dylan saying, “yeah, I’ve written and recorded some poor songs – that’s how it goes – just remember me for the good.”

But of course, and as always, that’s just one interpretation.

Here’s one other thought.  It is, I think, the only place Dylan places the harmonica on the album.  A final farewell?

But if you want to go somewhere different, “Trying to Get to Heaven” is said by some to be a follow-up to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”.   I’ve seen that written in lots of places, but I think that’s too easy, too simplistic.  I don’t think Dylan works like that.

No, for me this song is the final, “maybe its not too late to ask God for salvation, despite all I’ve done.  I admit all my faults… is there a way through to the Kingdom?”

But no, he realises there isn’t.  Two songs later he has realised…

Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

This is not to say that “Til I fell in love with you” is misplaced on the album – not at all.  But I’ll leave that for my next review.

For now, considering “Trying to get to heaven” and then “Not Dark Yet” I am just left saying “Goodnight Bob” and turning away to cry my eyes out.

Index to all the songs reviewed on this site.

There is a quote that Heylin uses and which turns up in lots of other places saying, that the band, at the recording session, made a number of false starts, and Dylan then admonished them saying it was a very easy song.

What no one seems to have picked up on is the fact that it isn’t.  It is downright odd, and if the musicians had not rehearsed it until Dylan’s attempted takes yes it was bound to fall apart.   The morale of the story is, never take Dylan at his word, he could be having you on.

If we were coming to this third side of Blonde on Blonde for the first time we would have noticed that tracks one to four are all marked out by their unusual chord changes.  But here Dylan tricks us again, and instead gives us the chords of the classic 12 bar blues.  It is not the chords that change – it is the whole “12 bar” thing.

The trick to understanding this song is to compare it musically the Muddy Waters “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” on which Five Believers is based.  (You can also use Memphis Minnie’s “Me and My Chauffeur Blues”)    The Muddy Waters song itself doesn’t fit properly into the 12 bar structure, but Dylan goes further for what we get with “Five Believers” is a ten bar 12 bar blues.  There are eight bars of singing and two bars of instrumental at the end.  No wonder the musicians kept falling over it.

1: Early in the mornin’
2: Early in the mornin’
3: I’m callin’ you to
4 I’m callin’ you to
5: Please come home [6 – instrumental]
7: Yes, I guess I could make it without you
8: If I just didn’t feel so all alone

[9/10] instrumental

Who knows what it means.  Quite honestly, it probably means nothing other than the fact that he wants the woman.  You can go much further than that, but it is all guesswork.

The verse that gives the song its title is the oddest of them all.

Fifteen jugglers
Fifteen jugglers
Five believers
Five believers
All dressed like men
Tell yo’ mama not to worry because
They’re just my friends

The notion has been put that this verse tells us that this is a song about uncertainty, and I will go along with that, not least because I am uncertain about it.  My guess is he just liked the sound of the words, but if you want to take it as fifteen music critics trying to work out the meanings and five fans believing that every song has a secret message, then fine.

Certainly, as we have seen with those who interpret every song as having a Christian message, you can make the meanings work any way you want, if you try hard enough.

Here’s the opening of the “schoolgirl”

Good mornin’ little schoolgirl
Can I go home with you
Tell your mama and your daddy
That I’m a little school boy too

Finally as we can see from the lyrics, the Chauffeur song is closer to Dylan’s approach

By Tony Attwood

This is the fourth track on side 3 of Blonde on Blonde, and although the song is very different in nature from what has gone before, we are still in the zone of turning the concept of rock songs upside down.  For here, not only do we a song in ¾ time making it sound like a fast waltz, we also have yet another re-working of the way chords in rock and pop can be used.

In F major, the chords you would expect to hear the most are F, B flat and C, but in fact what we get is F, A minor and G minor.   A minor and G minor are completely normal and acceptable chords for this key – but to use them to the exclusion of the other chords we might accept is once more very unusual.

I can’t say that Dylan actually planned side three of Blonde on Blonde to be a side of chordal experiments, but there is the issue of the names of song.   If you play the five songs that make up the third side of the album you will feel the difference; this is Dylan throughout experimenting in a new area of writing.

The song is completely strophic – which is to say it is verse, verse, verse, verse, verse – with no interludes, and as everyone has noted before, the song is very similar to Norwegian Wood, written primarily by John Lennon for the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album the year before.

There is another issue that Dylan is exploring on this third side of Blonde on Blonde, and that is the exploration of the situation of the singer.  By no means confined to this album alone, but it is particularly strong on this side.  Just as in Achilles we have the investigation into the little boy lost concept also explored in Johanna, here we find it again.

The theme is once more the interactions of three people.   In Johanna it is Johanna, Louise and little boy left, in Achilles, it is the man, the woman and the guard.  Now in 4th time we have the singer, the woman and “you” to whom the song is sung.

The big contrast with Achilles is that there the young man is the outsider desperately wanting in.  Here there is a couple who have an almighty row, and the singer walks out.   There is also a complete contrast in philosophy with the line

Everybody must give something back For something they get

That is the woman’s claim here, while Dylan’s reply at the end is don’t lean on me and I won’t loean on you.  Everyone can be independent and still have a relationship.

Maybe he’s right, maybe not.  Complex things these relationships.  But it doesn’t matter.  Dylan is constantly exploring three sided relationships, always with a certain lack of clarity.  Not always the mist that pervades Johanna, but still a certain uncertainty.

Certainly the opening of Fourth Time is as viscous it can get without someone slamming the door and walking out…

“When she said Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies I cried she was deaf.”

You don’t get nastier than that.

As to Fourth time vs Norwegian Wood, “4th Time Around” has been seen as playful, a homage, satirical, or a warning to John Lennon that whatever Lennon does, Dylan can do it far, far better

Lennon is reported as expressing a range of opinions on the issue of the two songs, in various interviews, and who knows what he really thought in the end.  Some report that the end of “4th Time Around” (“I never asked for your crutch / Now don’t ask for mine.”) really worried Lennon.

But then, creative artists can be temperamental buggers at the best of times.

There is one other interpretation.  Heylin appears to see the song as being about a love affair between two wheelchair users.  But then Heylin is never anything but opinionated and weird.

If we work through the song verse by verse we can see where we are going…

Verse one is sums up with her view

“Don’t forget Everybody must give something back For something they get”

Verse 2 has her saying don’t try to be clever

In Verse 3 he’s thrown out, goes out, and then sees a picture of the girl he is reporting the story to – in a wheelchair.  He asks his ex-lover for an explanation, she screams at him so much that she has a fit and collapses.  He responds by searching through her posessions.

He then puts something in his shoe and goes round to the new woman’s house and says, let’s be equal and not depend on each other.

So, knowing this is a response or a parody to Norwegian Wood do we take this as a serious story, or a writer having a laugh with another songwriters expense?

Maybe one way to resolve this is to go back to Norwegian Wood.  That is a very very simple story.  She invites him round and tries to seduce him.   He turns her down, wakes to find that she has gone, and then we have that enigmatic ending

So I lit a fire, Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?

It is a cleverly enigmatic ending, The first reaction is that he’s saying, “hey life’s good, I crash out in her smart flat, and she leaves me to have the place to myself… she’ll be back in the evening.”

Or… he sets fire to the house and the wood burns.   The latter seems unlikely of course, but just the thought of it as a possibility has always brought a smile to my face.  Double meanings were never really Lennon’s style, at least nothing that went anything beyond “A Spaniard in the Works”.  But it’s still amusing.

For me (and as always I have to say, this is just my interpretation, a mix of what I thought way back in 1966 and what I feel about the song all these years later, is that Dylan saw the Beatles song as a simple piece with a point of interest – what with it being in triple time, instead of the normal 4/4 and a funny end.   So Dylan said, ok, let’s now turn this into a surrealist version.

In this view I think Dylan was also saying, “I produce all the crazy creatures who populate my songs – you just have the “sweet pretty things” that I have already made fun of in Tombstone Blues.”     You write about the middle class sweeties, I write about the grit.

Which if true is also why he has the girl screaming “till her face got so red Then she fell on the floor” – it is all big time drama and the freak show with Dylan.   We are, after all, hardly any distance from Desolation Row.  But for the Beatles, life remains all sweetness.

Also I’d add the parody of “I want to be your lover baby” with that rhyming of “hers” with “yours”.   If I’d been a highly sensitive artist and had written some of the Beatles early music I would not only be very rich, I’d have taken offence,.

So for this reason I don’t think 4th Time has gone anything (or at least anything directly) to do with Dyolan’s real life, with Edie Sedgwick, or anyone else, any more than lines like

Well, the undertaker in his midnight suit
Says to the masked man, “Ain’t you cute!”
Well, the mask man he gets up on the shelf
And he says, “You ain’t so bad yourself”

are about real people.  Dylan sees the world during this period as a freak show, and that’s what he is describing here.

So I don’t have much sympathy for the notion that “4th time around” is about the fourth time Dylan and Edie sleep together.  It could be, of course I don’t know, but on the balance of probabilities I just don’t think so.   Dylan plays with words, just as on this side of the album he is playing with chords.   And besides I think he denied it in one interview.

Against me is the report that Edie had a car crash and was in a wheelchair and had crutches for a while – that I admit points things in the other direction.

My point is that this is a painting of a freak show – no need to take each issue too seriously.  And I think 4th Time relates to “I want to be your lover” – he really is making a bit of a point to the Beatles about the gap between the world they paint, and the world he paints.

As a final thought about Dylan’s song and the Beatles song, compare the openings

I once had a girl, Or should I say she once had me

and

When she said “Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”, I cried she was deaf

And then compare the endings

So I lit a fire, Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?

and

And I, I never took much, I never asked for your crutch, Now don’t ask for mine

Utterly different words, utterly different worlds.

Index to all the songs analysed

By Tony Attwood

This is a blues about the outsider,  played  out at a slow blues pace.  Once again  I think  Dylan would have performed this in G, but on my equipment the album is playing sharp   and it sounds more like A flat – although it plays part way between the two.  I’m starting to wonder if its my record player – although in truth other LPs play in the key I would expect.

And as throughout this third side of Blonde on Blonde what we have here  is an experimentation  with unlikely chord changes.  As I say this is a straight blues song, with the sort of piano part that every blues pianist can play all day and night (just listen to that descending piano melody that comes over and over in this piece… you can hear it in a million blues numbers.

Which is why the introduction of two very non-blues chords in the middle 8 (C minor and F minor) sounds so unlikely and unexpected.  In the blues  you might expect some flattened 7ths but not this.

In terms of the lyrics, this is a classic  blues concept of the outsider, the man who is also (just to emphasise even more that this is classic blues) being messed about by this woman.   But here Dylan takes the blues into a completely new lyrical territory, with the man showing none of the blues bravado.  No this guy is desperate to get back in to see the girl, no matter what.

Also there is no hint of the songs of disdain that Dylan  was developing in other songs.  He is just the poor, sad, sorry outsider.  He’s harmless.  He’s not even got a secret vision, he is just the harmless, sad, outsider, looking in through the window from outside – and not for the first time.

It is a story of teenage angst also seen through the image of the kids sitting around into the early hours,  smoking dope being cool but all the while the guy wanting to get inside the womnans knickers.   But he just can’t read her…

I’m tryin’ to read your portrait, but, I’m helpless, like a rich man’s child

And then worse, he can’t even get into the house… he is the outsider again

How come you send someone out to have me barred?

Then, just as we think that maybe, given that this is a blues, Dylan won’t be continuing his sudden chord change theme that marks out this side of the album we have the chord changes for the middle 8.

Like a poor fool in his prime  takes us to F minor

Yes, I know you can hear me walk is accompanied by C minor before the section ends on B flat major.

Once we are back into the main theme we have a scorpion

Who crawls across your circus floor

The circus floor tells us exactly what the girl is up to – she is loving having all these men around looking for her, wanting her, she’s playing with them, the centre of all attention.

And then along comes Achilles.   Why Achilles?   Well Achilles is still a name that you find, so it could be a real guy, but more likely it a reference  to the fact that Achilles was exactly the sort of character that this wannabe outsider can’t compete with.   He’s the rich man’s child  up against the man who slayed Hector outside the gates of Troy. to win the Trojan  war.  I mean, how does a rich kid compete with someone like this?

Achilles points to the sky , and he wants it all, everything, and that’s what he has.  I would say to every guy, if you’ve never been in such a situation, then lucky you.  I think a lot of us have, and when it happens, it is a bugger.

How come you get someone like him to be your guard?

Come on love, I’m a regular guy, I love you, give me a chance.  He’s just playing with you, he’ll be off soon, he’s just toying with you, I’m the reliable one, I’ll always be here.  Let me in.

But she won’t.

Index to all the songs reviewed

By Tony Attwood

Since writing this review in 2014 I have found a new recording of the song which really does take it in a different direction.  Here it is – the original review continues below…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpNRcw7yn8A

“Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” is the first track of the second disc of Blonde on Blonde, and for this review I’m listening to the original vinyl recording.  If you’ve got a digital re-issue you might hear stuff I can’t hear.

This is the song – perhaps the only song – that was issued twice as a Dylan single, once in 1974 and once in 2007 as part of the promotion of the “Dylan” compilation.

Wiki says that “Prevalent on the recording are trombone, piano, guitar, harmonica, bass guitar, drums and electronic organ.”  I’m blowed if I can hear a trombone playing the vinyl with quality modern amp and speakers.  (“Blowed” – “trombone” – yes, ok, but I still can’t hear it.)

There is an element of blues feeling in this, but that is achieved by the use of the flattened 7th at various points in the verses.  But really there is no blues here.  It’s a bouncy rock song.

And as I noted in the review of Sweet Marie this is a side of the album in which Dylan plays with unexpected chords.  In this case starting on what classical musicians would call the supertonic.

In essence you can build all sorts of chords on any note.  Here Dylan is probably originally playing in G but problems with keeping the speed of an analogue tape dead true means it sounds now like a slightly low A flat.   Now normally you would start such a song on notes built around A flat.  But Dylan starts on B flat minor.  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.

What’s more strange is that after alternating between B flat minor and A flat in the first group of three lines he then goes off to C minor – again a perfectly reasonable cord to use in the key, but unusual for rock, and a chord sequence unique in a Dylan song.

But what is not unique – what is pure Dylan – is the descending bass line for the chorus

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

It starts on on A flat and works down in a classic Dylan way.  Time and again in songs of this era Dylan uses the descending bass to perfection – and often to make it sum up all that has gone before, in the chorus.  It is incidentally the opposite of the verse of “Rolling Stone” – the ultimate song of disdain.

But there is still one more surprise for us in the middle 8 – we’re off to another chord – F minor.  Again a perfectly reasonable chord to use in this key again unexpected.  But as before there is the falling back down – in this time from F minor back to E flat, just as in the verses it is B flat minor to A flat – in each case we are falling the same distance.

I have no doubt that in these songs Dylan was thinking in chord sequences – but that later in his career he stopped doing this, and so we lose the more unusual twists and turns of the music.

However what is not at all unusual – what is in fact rather prosaic – is the bass guitar.  In the world of pop and rock, at least when I played in bands, there was the joke about how those of us on lead guitar, keyboards or percussion could talk about what we were doing – the attempts to try and go a bit further, explore new possibilities, do something different but within the context of the song.   Then the bass guitarist would be asked what he did to liven things up and he’d say “E B E B E B E B” – the classic unimaginative bass line.

And that is what the bass guitarist does here.  He plays one note on each beat of the bar, plod plod plod plod, reflecting the chords exactly.  Maybe Dylan asked for that, but I doubt it.  It could have been so much more.   (Actually having made the joke about the bass line several times I found myself required to play bass guitar while working in a pit band in the theatre, and I must admit by the third night of the show I was plodding along with the E B E B stuff.  It does that to you, so I shouldn’t be pointing the finger at the bass player.

As for the lyrics it is mostly straightforward – he’s fed up with her and her ever changing feelings.  She says she doesn’t deserve him (implying that she is so sorry for behaving so badly and asking for his forgiveness yet again), but he’s increasingly had enough.

It is not the harshest of Dylan farewells by any means, indeed it is stretching a point to call it a song of disdain, but he’s playing about with her by the end and suggesting that for all that she is doing hurting him, she’s the one who is going to be left behind.

That is a real Dylan metaphor – the man walking down the long lonesome road.   Dylan’s solution is the same here as it is all the way through his songwriting life – just move on.

The construction of the verses is unusual – the easiest way to write them is as a set of three line sections:

You say you love me
And you’re thinkin’ of me
But you know you could be wrong

Three lines is most unusual, as is ending two lines running with the same word.

There is one other point of particular interesting in verse one

I just can’t do what I done before

Listening to this line on the original vinyl the plodding of the bass guitar is very clear – and for once it seems dead right.  Plod, plod, plod, I can’t go on doing this, I’m not angry, I;ve just had enough and I’m walking away.

The nearest Dylan gets to being vicious as he does get in the disdain songs comes with

You say you disturb me
And you don’t deserve me
But you know sometimes you lie

No babe, you don’t disturb me, you haven’t got the power.  But he’s getting closer to disdain

Sometimes it gets so hard to care

There ain’t too much worse you can say to your lover.

But then, but then, but then…  That really odd middle 8.  What on earth are we to make of this?

The judge, he holds a grudge
He’s gonna call on you
But he’s badly built
And he walks on stilts
Watch out he don’t fall on you

Is he talking divorce? A dream?  Is “judge” the nickname of the new lover? If not then what?

Now I have argued before that images – especially the images of the curious odd folk that litter Dylan songs from this era – don’t have to represent a reality.  But here we have a song that is clear and straightforward in its meaning, and then suddenly a judge and stilts???

And to make it even more curious we’re then back to the song we’ve known.

You say you’re sorry
For tellin’ stories
That you know I believe are true

Dylan’s not going to tell us, and maybe he doesn’t know, can’t remember or never knew.  If we do come up with anything it is going to be a guess.  It remains one of the most curious out of context sections in any Dylan song.  I even went and looked the song up in Heylin, in the vague hope that he might offer something, but he doesn’t even recognise that the middle 8 is odd, either musically or lyrically – but then he would not, would he?

So we come to the end, a very very quick fade, and that’s that.  Great song, very much of its time.

List of all the reviews of Dylan songs on this site.

Coming back to Blonde and Blonde I picked up my original double album, the one I bought shortly after its release in England, while I was a music student.  Amazingly its in quite good nick – probably because no one else studying music with me at the time liked Dylan, so it only got played by me in my room, alone.  Ah, those Visions of Johanna.

Playing this original copy now suddenly makes me think two things.  First how extraordinarily annoying it is to have to get up and swing the stylus back if you want to play a song over and over (as I do when writing these reviews).  Second, just what an extraordinary virtuoso tour side three of Blonde on Blonde is.

Dylan was exploring throughout this set of five songs what he could do with chord changes and “middle 8″s (the short section inside a song where he pulls away from the verse format and does something different)”.  The songs all have something of this in different degrees…

1. Most Likely You Go Your Way and i’ll go Mine
2. Temporary Like Achilles
3. Absolutely Sweet Marie
4. 4th Time Around
5. Obviously 5 Believers

I’ll work my way through these, but I’m starting with Sweet Marie, because it is one that I particularly remember from those days, probably like everyone else because of the classic line “To live outside the law you must be honest”.

Jonathan Lethem, in an article in Harpers magazine in February 2007, notes that the line is very similar to a line in the 1958 film The Lineup, “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty”.

With Dylan it was ever thus.

The lyrics of Sweet Marie are an upbeat version of the woman’s gone but with infinitely more positive energy than “My Baby Left Me”, and without the aggression and annoyance.  He’s waited for her, she’s betrayed him or left him, or abandoned him half way through some dodgy and illegal scheme, he’s in prison, he can’t get to her, when he does get out she’s left home.

Or something like that.

I’m not sure it really matters, any more than the exact meaning of the lyrics in many “my baby’s gone” type songs is relevant.  It’s all the blues even when played with all sorts of chord experimentation that Dylan never (or at least very rarely) uses before or ever after and with this real upbeat tempo.

Playing this today from the vinyl on modern equipment gives us about the best sound we could have got at the time – but oh, it sounds fairly poor compared with what we can get now out of remastered albums.

The song from the album plays in E flat – a very odd key for Dylan to choose – but it is not quite E flat.  I don’t have perfect pitch any more, but even so my piano is absolutely in tune to concert pitch – maybe it is my record player – but I do know a lot of songs before digital came along slipped slightly out of the pitch they were recorded in because of tape machines not running at exactly the right speed.

Dylan uses the chords that we might expect from a song in E flat – he’s got A flat and B flat in there throughout, but the minor chords associated with the key: C minor and G minor.

The song moves along at quite a gait – there is no attempt to make it sound like a railway song but it bounces along and gives that feel, not only with the percussion but the way the harmonica is played.  It is something that is emphasised by the fact that the instrumental introduction is the same as the instrumental coda at the end – both based on a repeated chord that emphasises the train running over the tracks.

Musically the big surprise comes with the middle 8

Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously
But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately

Just listen to the piano running down the bass notes to get to that chord at the start of each of those lines.  Quite something.

Suddenly the chord of B major is hit – a chord that has about as little to do with a song in E flat as any chord could have.  It is an audacious move – and even more audacious for Dylan to use that middle 8 in the second instrumental break with him playing the harmonica.

As others have said before me, there is a feeling of the playful here.  The song could well be a tragedy, and yet it bounces, a bit like Bonnie and Clyde as a movie is all about death but trots along with quite a vigour.

It is a feeling that life bounces along, stuff happens, some of it is rubbish, but never mind, where are you?

From the start we have the railway theme (my apologies if you are in America – I’ve written “railway” rather than “railroad” all my life, and it would seem pretentious to change now.)

Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can’t jump it

Incidentally I do love “frozen traffic” for traffic jam.  Great line.

Then we have the curiosity with the unexpected chord change…

Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously
But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately

It is a bit like going over the points on a railway line in the 1960s – we keep going but there is that unexpected jerk.

Dylan, the greatest songwriter of the second half of the 20th century saying anyone can be like me, but not many people can be like you.   I guess he’s in his “i’m a song and dance man” mode.

Quite where Dylan goes with the riverboat captain I really don’t know so it is silly to guess,  and the same is true with

The Persian drunkard, he follows me

but by then it doesn’t matter.  When Dylan says

Yes, I can take him to your house but I can’t unlock it

he’s talking about the physical house, and the mind at the same time, and that gives us a clue to the real meaning of  Oh, where are you tonight, sweet Marie?

It might be physical it might be mental.

But then we come to the last verse

Now, I been in jail when all my mail showed
That a man can’t give his address out to bad company
And now I stand here lookin’ at your yellow railroad
In the ruins of your balcony
Wond’ring where you are tonight, sweet Marie

Very rarely for Dylan, he commented on the Yellow Railroad line saying, “That’s about as complete as you can be. Every single letter in that line. It’s all true. On a literal and on an escapist level…. Getting back to the yellow railroad, that could be from looking someplace. Being a performer, you travel the world. You’re not just looking out of the same window everyday. You’re not just walking down the same old street. So you must make yourself observe whatever. But most of the time it hits you. You don’t have to observe. It hits you. Like, “yellow railroad” could have been a blinding day when the sun was so bright on a railroad someplace and it stayed on my mind…. These aren’t contrived images. These are images which are just in there and have got to come out.”

So there we have it.  A rollicking song with images.  What more did we want after being haunted by the Visions of Johanna?

I’ll work through the rest of this side of the album in the coming reviews and try to pull it all together.

Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can’t jump it

Right on Bob.

Index to all the review

By Tony Attwood

At one level “The Levee’s Gonna Break” is simple.  It is based on “When the Levee Breaks” by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie.  It is a straight 12 bar blues in B flat without any variations – even the instrumental verses follow the theme.   Dylan has a guitar play a two note signature when he’s not singing (D flat to B flat) which is quite attractive, although must have been the most boring part ever to play.   “Here’s your part mate – just play these two notes 32 times.  OK?”

And we get a bit of Ovid too.  “Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones” probably comes from Ovid’s Tristia, Book 4: “there’s barely enough skin to cover my bones.”

So we know the musical origin, and we know the historical origin – the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. – the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States. 27,000 square miles inundated up to a depth of 30 feet.  It was the cause of a significant migration of Afro Americans for the Mississippi to the industrial north.   The Early Roman Kings of the next album were probably the grandchildren of the victims of the 1927 flood.

The river broke the levees in 145 places, and more than double the water volume of the Niagara Falls came over.   Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas were all affected.  The river ultimately was 60 miles wide for a time.

In terms of the lyrics, as far as I can tell Dylan only uses two lines from  the original

If it keeps on rainin’ levee’s goin’ to break.

and

I worked on the levee mama both night and day

The rest is his, and it is a fairly standard blues theme – the guy loves the woman, and will give her everything but she can’t be trusted and she goes off and leaves him, even though he is promising her a better future.

We can also see that the singer has been released…

I paid my time and now I’m as good as new
They can’t take me back, not unless I want them to

And he is ready to move on: “Riches and salvation can be waiting behind the next bend in the road”.

But that’s not enough for the woman.

I picked you up from the gutter and this is the thanks I get
You say you want me to quit ya, I told you no, not just yet

But he’s not berating her… she is all he wants…

I look in your eyes, I see nobody other than me
I see all that I am and all I hope to be

and

When I’m with you I forget I was ever blue
Without you there’s no meaning in anything I do

So while some people are struggling  (“Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones”) he’s doing fine…

Put on your cat clothes, Mama, put on your evening dress
A few more years of hard work then there’ll be a thousand years of happiness

This is the strange dichotomy of this song – the mixture of the song about failing love in which the woman is seemingly walking away, and the man saying hey, I’ve made it, or at least I’m nearly there.  But then suddenly we get the feeling that he’s a looter – the lowest of the low.

Plenty of cheap stuff out there still around that you take

And we then get the butter and eggs line:

I woke up this morning, butter and eggs in my bed

which being a refined English gentleman of a certain age I had to look up.  The “Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature” by Gordon Williams told me all I needed to know.  You can guess.

Come back, baby, say we never more will part

sings Dylan, so presumably she’s off, and he’s left, and we finish  with the line

Some people still sleepin’, some people are wide awake

It is a curious mish-mash of a set of lyrics, but as a song, when you are not paying too much attention to why the lyrics say, it works fine.   Quite honestly, all I can say is I have tried to trace the lyrics through, but I am really not too sure what bits of it really mean.  Just sit back and enjoy it.  Or alternatively, pick up your guitar and play.

You might also enjoy: 

• The Levee’s Gonna Break / Rain on Love. Reconsidering Dylan’s song.

What else is on the site

• 1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
• 2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.
• 3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.  A second index lists the articles under the poets and poetic themes cited – you can find that here.
• 4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 
• 5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
• 6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

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

By Tony Attwood

The problem with “Modern Times” is that one can spend forever looking at the sources of Dylan’s lyrics and music, and then forget the Dylan’s version which is a really decent version of a classic blues, mixed with lyrics that come from the most unlikely source.

Many have gone before me commenting on the connection between “Thunder on the Mountain”, with the line “I’ve been sitting down studying The Art of Love.”   This relates to The Art of Love by Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 18) known to his pals as Ovid.

And it is Rollin and Tumblin where Ovid really does pop in to say hello. most obviously with the line, “I’ve been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs,” which could well be what he is doing throughout; taking past tunes, lyrics and chord sequences.  It seems a fair enough description.

Dylan appears to have been using the Peter Green translation of Ovid in “The Erotic Poems” (Penguin Classics 1982) which has the lines

She conjures up long-dead souls from their crumbling sepulchres  And has incantations to split the solid earth.

Elsewhere Ovid says, in The Amores,

You must get yourself a houseboy, And a well-trained maid, who can hint What gifts will be welcome.

And indeed in Rollin and Tumblin we find the houseboy and maid popping in to say hello.

Many writers who have delved into this song know far more about the blues than I do, and their general view seems  to be that Gus Cannon’s recording of “Minglewood Blues”, in 1928 is where the whole song started – at least in a recorded version.  His lyrics run..

“Don’t you never let one woman rule your mind
Don’t you never let one woman rule your mind
Said, she keep you worried, troubled all the time

“Don’t you think your girl was li’l and cute like mine
Don’t you wish your girl was li’l and cute like mine
She’s a married woman, but she comes to see me all the time”

What marks out all versions of the song is that unlike most blues that start out on the tonic – that is the chord based around the key that the song is in, this song in all its version starts not there but on the fourth note of the scale.

Dylan performs the song in B flat – which means that instead of having B flat as the first chord of the song, we actually start on E flat, and resolve back to B flat at the end of the line.  It is unusual, but very effective.  It adds to the drive of the song, and one never tires of hearing that drop from IV to I.

One other feature that turns up in some (but not all) of the variant versions of the song is that the number of bars is highly unusual.  Dylan keeps this tradition, extending the 12 bars (which is why the format is invariably called the 12 bar blues) to 13 bars.  That you hardly notice this is a testament to Dylan’s musical ability.

The extra bar is achieved after the first line of each verse by adding one extra run of the instrumental line, so you hear it three times rather than twice.  There’s no reason for this, but it is part of the tradition of the song, and something that the blues singers of the 1920s (who often performed solo) would often do.  Of course they could do it as and when they liked, since they had no accompanying musicians to think about.

By 1929 the Hambone Willie Newbern version opened with

“And I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long
And I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long
And I rose this morning, mama, and I didn’t know right from wrong

“Did you ever wake up and find your dough roller gone
Did you ever wake up and find your dough roller gone
And you wring your hand and you cry the whole day long”

Yep – it is the blues and the woman is to blame for everything.

By 1936 however the song had transmuted considerably and Robert Johnson was singing it as “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,”

Dylan’s version is close to the Muddy Waters approach musically, but after the first two lines the lyrics are his own – or at least Dylan’s own with reference to Ovid and possibly others.  But the essence of the song remains the traditional blues approach to women…,

I got troubles so hard, I can’t stand the strain
I got troubles so hard, I just can’t stand the strain
Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains

You don’t get much more blues than that.   And we get a spot of Ovid with the houseboy and the maid a few verses later…

Well, I get up in the dawn and I go down and lay in the shade
I get up in the dawn and I go down and lay in the shade
I ain’t nobody’s house boy, I ain’t nobody’s well trained maid

But no matter what, it’s all her fault.

Well, the warm weather is comin’ and the buds are on the vine
The warm weather’s comin’, the buds are on the vine
Ain’t nothing so depressing as trying to satisfy this woman of mine

And later still we have the crumbling tombs line, a line which, the more I have heard it over the years, the more I have thought, this is the core of the whole album.

The night’s filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom
The night’s filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom
I’ve been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs

Let’s forgive each other darlin’, let’s go down to the greenwood glen
Let’s forgive each other darlin’, let’s go down to the greenwood glen
Let’s put our heads together, let’s put old matters to an end

Who’d have thought it… Ovid and the blues.

But there is an important point here.  By making reference to Ovid’s work in the first song on the album

I’ve been sittin’ down studyin’ the art of love
I think it’ll fit me like a glove
I want some real good woman to do just what I say
Everybody got to wonder what’s the matter with this cruel world today

he sets the scene with this very overt reference.  And just in case we think it is just a passing phrase or no significance, “I’ve been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs”  shows us that this has been done very clearly and precisely.

This is not to say that there is a deep literary reasoning going on here – Dylan might well have read Ovid and picked out these lines and then woven his version of this old blues tune around them – we really can’t say.

But no matter how often I hear this song, that line from Ovid, “I’ve been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs” constantly comes back to me as the key to the thinking behind  the whole album.  Dylan is saying, I’m looking at the past, looking at old song, old rhymes, from Ovid to the blues to Bing Crosby, and seeing where their relevance is to us in these Modern Times.

I can’t prove that this simple theory is true, but it works for me.

Index of all the songs reviewed

By Tony Attwood

“Someday Baby” is a song with controversies within it.  The album “Modern Times” says that all the songs were written by Dylan, but this, along with a number of other songs on the album are very closely based on other writers’ work.  Yet this song won a Grammy.

Dylan has of course being re-using other songs all his life.  While much of his work is utterly original, occasionally, as with this album he borrows – as he did with (to take one early example) Masters of War which comes from an arrangement of Nottamun Town.

The source this time is “Worried Life Blues” which was probably first recorded and maybe even written by Sleepy John Estes, and later by Lightnin Hopkins and Muddy Waters, and known in some recordings as Trouble No More.  The Allman Brothers also did a version later, and some sources (almost certainly mistakenly) suggest the Dylan copied their version. 

So in effect we have an album of amended songs, including not just this one but also “Rollin’ and Tumblin”, “When the Deal Goes Down”, “Working Man’s Blues No 2”, “Beyond the Horizon” “Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Nettie Moore”.  One could well say this is the theme of the album – Dylan’s modern re-interpretation of older songs.

The music is a variant 12 bar blues in B flat using the standard three chords in pretty much the standard way.  The instrumental verses make the 12 bar structure clearer.

What’s particularly interesting is that this is a fairly nasty commentary by the singer on the woman – a typical blues song in which the self-centred evil woman is utterly to blame while the hard working man has done none wrong at all.

And yet the music has a lilting sing-song quality.  There’s none of the jerky harshness that the blues can deliver, (as with Hoochie Coochie Man, that I mentioned in the review of Early Roman Kings).  This is smooth in the music but the words are harsh and self-pitying…

Well you take my money and you turn me out
You fill me up with nothin’ but self doubt

and in the next verse

When I was young, driving was my crave
You drive me so hard, almost to the grave

And as with so many blues song, the woman has a witch-like quality which forces the man to stay with her even when he knows that he really should leave

So many good things in life that I overlooked
I don’t know what to do now, you got me so hooked

He knows he has to fight back, and he claims he will and we get the bravado verses in which he promises himself he is going to take his revenge

Well, I don’t want to brag, but I’m gonna ring your neck
When all else fails I’ll make it a matter of self-respect

and

I try to be friendly, I try to be kind
Now I’m gonna drive you from your home, just like I was driven from mine

But all the time he knows he is caught in the age old trap.

Living this way ain’t a natural thing to do
Why was I born to love you?

Even here it is not the singer’s fault – it is fate, it was in the stars, he was born to love the woman, it’s nothing to do with him.

This is in many ways the essence of the blues.  It wasn’t my fault, it was fate, it was the drink, it was the woman, the cards were fixed…   And all the time there is that gentle voice, the controlled music, pulsating away in the background, unremitting, moving on all the time.

It’s an interesting contrast, and through it a reminder of what a lopsided vision of the world the blues always has been.  From the moment Robert Johnson sang that there was a hell hound on his trail, and that wasn’t his fault at all, it has been like this.

I think Bob is just picking songs that he likes, and playing with them.  The copyright owners might well have had words to say about the lack of acknowledgement – although maybe that was all cleared up before recording began – but this approach is the tradition of the music (folk and blues) that Bob Dylan has his roots in.

Just one final thought.  Consider this

I’m so hard pressed, my mind tied up in knots
I keep recycling the same old thoughts

Was Bob having one of those times when he wasn’t coming up with much in the way of wholly original songs, so he goes back to reworking old numbers.  Maybe that’s quite a crucial couplet.

You never know.

Index to all the songs reviewed on this site.

The music and meaning of Bob Dylan’s Early Roman Kings

By Tony Attwood

We’ve got three issues in the lyrics of “Early Roman Kings”.  There were Kings in the earliest days of Rome, and there was a gang in the late 1960s early 70s in New York called the Roman Kings.  Neither of them were ever called “Early”, but the Kings of Rome did preceed the Republic and the Empire so could possibly be considered to be Early Roman.  And for those analyists of Dylan who see religious issues in his songs, we have two books of the Bible – Romans, and Kings.

I think I’ve written enough about my view on the theories that bend Dylan’s writing to religious themes all the time – these views just seem too far fetched to me – so I’ll leave them and focus on the other two options – first the New York gang, and second the origins of the city of Rome, and beyond that the Republic and the Empire.  But if you want more on Dylan and religion in his later works try here.

Between 1968 and 1973 there was a huge resurgence of gang warfare in the South Bronx.  These gangs didn’t have the same musical and clothing identity as their forebears in the 1950s, for by this time the Bronx was in a desperate state, and these gangs played for survival and dominance, not culture as expressed through clothes, music and style.  Indeed it can be argued that the names of the gangs echoed this new reality:   Ghetto Brothers, South Skulls, and of course the Roman Kings.

These gangs ruled this part of the city, and the police had  lost any vestige of control in the area.  The Roman Kings however should not be seen as dominant – they were just one of a number of Italian gangs particularly focussed in North Bronx and they, like the other gangs existed beyond the law taking on the shop owners, the junkies, and the other gangs.

But – and this is the key part in this era of history, if not in Dylan’s song – they were seen by some sociologists at the time and since as a positive factor in the history of New York.  Although they perpetrated violence, they also brought a certain order to a part of the city that had been left to collapse by the authorities .  In 1972, in a piece that shocked many, the Pete Hammill in the New York Post wrote, “The best single thing that happened on the streets of New York in the last ten years, is the reemergence of the teenage gangs … these young people are standing up for life and if their courage lasts, they will help this city to survive.”

In 1971 several of the gangs came together and agreed a truce which included the Nomads, the Roman Kings, the Black Spades and others.   The New York Post covered the event, and once again wrote positively of the gangs.  Indeed there are also stories in the press of the police meeting with the gang leaders and trying to work with them, rather than treat them as criminals.

The truce didn’t hold completely, but it did lead the way for a re-establishment of law in the area – although over a long period of time.   And as the gangs faded away and the police re-entered the no go areas, a new youth movement was formed which incorporated the gang culture (without violence as the central characteristic) and hip hop.

But the names of the older gangs of New York lived on – even if the gangs themselves were completely reformed in style and identity, and indeed the book Hip Hop Culture names 39 separate gangs – including of course the Roman Kings.

Thus…

All the early Roman kings
In their sharkskin suits
Bow ties and buttons
High top boots

suggest a hip style of clothing, and I found a commentary on Expecting Rain which says  “I remember going to 149th Street and Delancey and getting stitch shirts, alpacas, patch leather jackets, Playboys, and matador pants. I remember the dudes with lizards and alligators who everyone knew afforded them because they dealt some good mota. ”

So I think what Dylan is doing here is pressing together two parts of the Roman Kings existence – the time when they were a gang involved in all out gang warfare, and a time post-truce when they were advocates of style and hip hop.

But is there anything about early Rome in this song?

The Kingdom of Rome was founded by Rumulus (supposedly) in 753BC and existed until 509BC when it was overthrown and replaced by the Republic – the Republic which gave us Cicero and was ultimately overthrown by the dictator Julius Ceaser in 49BC when he crossed the Rubicon.

During the period of the kingdom, the King was the chief magistrate and according to legend there were seven kings, all absolute monarchs controlling the Senate (which ultimately rose up and threw them out).  But the twist was the Kings of Rome were actually elected by the people.  None of your divine right stuff here.

Dylan’s second verse,

All the early roman kings
In the early early morn
Coming down the mountain
Distributing the corn

sounds like a reference to early Rome, in that the central issue for the city from the very start was the provision of food for the people.  If the people started to go hungry there would be a revolution.  Indeed the phrase “bread and circuses” relates of course to the provision of food and entertainment for the masses.  Without these, it was said, the people would rise up.

The trouble is the third verse

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers
They buy and they sell
They destroyed your city
They’ll destroy you as well

could quite possibly relate to either explanation for the song, and I think it was when I first heard this verse I reached the conclusion that the song is at least in part about the Republic of Rome.  But it is also about word games and funny rhymes.  However the Republic of Rome was both a centre of cultural and artistic growth, and of intrigue, and indeed it was a magnificent civilisation destroyed by intrigue and a lust for power.

As for the music, this is much easier to report that the lyrics – it is a classic blues that has been used many, many times before.  Think of Bo Diddley singing “I’m a Man” or Muddy Waters singing “Mannish Boy”, or again Willie Dixon singing “Hoochie Coochie Man” in 1954.

And I guess that because of the music I want this song to be about the time before the Republic, simply because telling the history of Rome through the blues is such an amazingly odd idea.  I just love the notion.

The fourth verse takes us back to some of the harsher boasting blues songs, to which the music alludes.

If you see me comin’ 
And you’re standing there
Wave your handkerchief
In the air

This is a reference back to 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford in which he sings

If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t a-get you
Then the left one will

And the reference to “I ain’t dead yet” is a reference to a documentary by Richard Pryor, not that this helps us much.

But all my explorations of where this leads falls down at the end.  Who, we must ask, is supposedly talking with…

One day
You will ask for me
There’ll be no one else
That you’ll wanna see
Bring down my fiddle
Tune up my strings
I’m gonna break it wide open
Like the early roman kings

And then we have something very curious

I was up on black mountain
The day Detroit fell
They killed ’em all off
And they sent ’em to hell

This I guess relates to the  Siege of Detroit, (known in the UK sometimes, but probably not in the US, as the Surrender of Detroit) in 1812.  The British, with Native American assistance, were greatly outnumbered by American forces but deceived the Americans into thinking that the British force was much larger, and so forced them to surrender.

Dylan does like occasional references to the wars between Britain and America – as with Narrow Way in which he mentions the burning of the White House during the War of Independence.  But quite where he is going with these references I am not at all sure.

But then Dylan adds (and here I get the feeling he is deliberately messing me about and telling me to stop trying to be so clever)..

Ding dong daddy
You’re coming up short
Gonna put you on trial
In a Sicilian court
I’ve had my fun
I’ve had my flings
Gonna shake em all down
Like the early Roman kings

In simplistic terms we are back in Italy, but now with the Mafia – who certainly weren’t around in the days of the Kingdom of Rome.  Maybe he’s talking about a Mafia connection in New York.

Or maybe he’s just larking about.  Maybe the key to the whole song is in those lines

I’ve had my fun
I’ve had my flings

I guess you have Bob.

Index to all the songs reviewed