Untold Dylan

Dylan’s “High Water (For Charley Patton)”  is based on three chords but in effect two of the three chords are just used in passing at the end of each verse to the line “High water everywhere”.  As a result virtually all of what we hear is set around one chord, and thus a major emphasis is placed on the lyrics and melody.  Indeed it is remarkable that Dylan does manage to keep the tension and interest running through this song – not least because of the sparse accompaniment that is used.

The song takes the title of Charley Patton’s song, but there is no real relation between the songs apart from their subject matter – and even there it is hard to see if Dylan is really focussed on what Patton was singing about.

Patton’s piece is a blues, but with variable length lines to accommodate an intermittent spoken commentary, while Dylan’s is slower and more regular and is as much a focus on racism as on the floods.  The line “It’s tough out there; high water everywhere” thus seems to have a much broader context.

Fortunately you can readily hear the Patton song readily on You Tube

https://youtu.be/72oQy_M7h4Q

The lyrics of the original are published at the end of this review and I would recommend you might have them with you when listening to the Patton song – not because of any cleverness on my part but because it is not always easy to follow the lyrics in the original.

Dylan’s work is laced with references.  The first is Big Joe Turner, the blues singer with the astounding voice, whose recording of Shake Rattle and Roll was just one of his many hits

The Reformation comment is puzzling – is that really a reference to the religious transformation of Martin Luther etc.  The  “you dance with whom they tell you to or you don’t dance at all” line makes sense in this context, as clearly the Reformation was about who had authority on Earth to interpret God’s word, but it just seems to pop out of nowhere, and I wonder what I have missed here.  There is one possibility – I have seen a lyric set which says “Bertha Mason” rather than “Reformation”.  Bertha Mason is the mad lady from Jayne Ayre.  Sadly this still doesn’t get me any further.

Kansas City’s reference is easier: it is a line from the song of the same name, which Fats Domino, among many others, had hits with.  It opens, “I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come”.

And it gets odder for after that there is the pig without a wig verse.  The only reference I have here is Thomas Hodd (The Wise Little Pig).

Where are you going, you little pig?
“I’m going to the barber’s to buy me a wig.”

A wig, little pig!
A pig in a wig!

Why, whoever before saw a pig in a wig?

What the song does have however (even if we can’t make sense of them) are these extraordinary images created out of everyday speech.  I have mentioned above “you dance with whom they tell you to or you don’t dance at all”.  Now we have “Don’t reach out for me, she said, can’t you see I’m drowning too”.  They are symbolic representations of change – and goodness, to me at least (even if no one else) they have one hell of an impact.

But it is about this point I start to wonder if we are supposed to make sense of this song any more than we make sense of a Jackson Pollock painting.  We have George Lewis – but which George Lewis and why?  The composer?  The clarinettist?  Some other George Lewis that is central to the battle for equality in the southern US, but who I don’t know (I am English, and although I do try to take in US history and social development, I’m never going to know as much as an American citizen, so maybe I have missed something obvious).

And even when I do make some sense of all this, I am guessing.  The Charles Darwin reference looks easy enough – a reference to fundamentalist Christians who take the Bible literally and therefore see Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species, as such an awful book (while most people find it a total revelation).  But why Darwin on Highway 5? I have no idea.  I’ve managed to make sense out of Highway 61, the Blues Highway, in the review of Highway 61 Revisited, but this reference is beyond me.

The cuckoo reference is from an old folk song (which in part may date from the work of John Clare – which I know because I live in Northamptonshire, in England, and John Clare is just about the only famous person in history associated with the county).   Then there’s the Robert Johnson reference I’m getting’ up in the morning, I believe I’ll dust my broom which is thrown in – and Clarksdale Mississippi is at the intersection of Highway 61 (here we are again) and Highway 49 – the location of Johnson selling his soul to the devil.   Since the line is followed by “everything a looking blue” we can be sure we are on the right trail at this point, if nowhere else.

So, some guesswork, and some bits where I am lost.  Here’s the original.  The lines in brackets and italics are spoken in a different voice.

Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I’ll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town

Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed
(You know I can’t stay here,
I’ll go where it’s high, boy)
I would go to the hilly country,
but, they got me barred

Now, look-a here now at Leland
river was risin’ high
Look-a here boys around Leland tell me,
river was raisin’ high
(Boy, it’s risin’ over there, yeah)
I’m gonna move to Greenville
fore I leave, goodbye

Look-a here the water now, Lordy,
Levee broke, rose most everywhere
The water at Greenville and Leland,
Lord, it done rose everywhere
(Boy, you can’t never stay here )
I would go down to Rosedale
but, they tell me there’s water there

Now, the water now, mama,
done took Charley’s town
Well, they tell me the water,
done took Charley’s town
(Boy, I’m goin’ to Vicksburg)
Well, I’m goin’ to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine

I am goin’ up that water,
where lands don’t never flow
Well, I’m goin’ over the hill where,
water, oh don’t ever flow
(Boy, hit Sharkey County and everything was down in Stovall )
But, that whole county was leavin’,
over that Tallahatchie shore  (Boy,
went to Tallahatchie and got it over there)

Lord, the water done rushed all over,
down old Jackson road
Lord, the water done raised,
over the Jackson road
(Boy, it starched my clothes)
I’m goin’ back to the hilly country,
won’t be worried no more

By Tony Attwood

This review updated July 2018, with help from Larry Fyffe, and it now includes links to two live versions by Dylan, plus a version by Howard Markman and Glenn Workman with The Stone Hill All Stars.

I think it is fair to say that for most fans “Summer Days” is just considered “another Dylan R&B song”.  Lively, jolly, very well performed on the album, with some excellent lead guitar work, no stumbles by any musician.  It is a good fun track, where it is probably best not to listen to the words too closely.  Here’s a live verson

The structure and organisation of the song is primarily that of the extended 12 bar blues, but it has much more to it than that, because of the variant verses, and the sheer length of the piece – 15 verses (although the final is a repeat of the first) – makes it quite an extraordinary composition.  Perhaps we don’t always feel it as that because of the speed of performance.

The variant sections occur every fourth verse (ie 4, 8 and 12)  in which Dylan sings over what was initially an instrumental break with the lead guitar doing a descending solo pattern.  It is not something I have ever heard before or since in this type of song.

There is also the curiosity of verse 7 in which there are simply far too many words to fit the structure.  It is a verse that demands special attention because the structure almost breaks down, but Dylan continues singing and somehow it all fits together in the end.  As I try and show below, there is a reason for this.

And what does it all mean?   Well, here goes.

First off, this is from “Love and Theft”, which is an album, according to some critics, which is a homage to America’s deep south.  The Chicago Tribune ( September 11, 2001), said it was an album taking “the myths, mysteries and folklore of the South as a backdrop”.  What I am going to argue here is that in this song in particular Dylan is not in the deep south at all, but in the frozen north of Canada.  It is still Love and Theft, but the location changes.

The singer is marrying a lady from the Manto Sipi Cree Nation – a First Nation community.  (The First Nations are the original inhabitants of Canada who are not Inuit or Métis).

This gives a bit of context for the opening verse – ” Summer days, summer nights are gone, I know a place where there’s still something going on.”  Summer being over in the far north will mean far more than for most of the people of the planet, since it takes us towards eternal night.  “Still something going on” has a significance in this interpretation.

Verse three (“Everybody get ready—lift your glasses and sing”) is presumably the toast at the wedding.  I’m absolutely not an expert on The First Nations, but I am hoping that maybe a toast to the King is something one might find in the wedding services of the Manto Sipi Cree Nation.  (If you are going to jump in here and say that I’ve got all this wrong, fine – I openly admit I am struggling to put a meaning together).

The Flats could be the area of Cleveland, or come to that a lot of places in Canada – and who is the businessman to be stopped.  An oil developer?  This is now just guesswork.  I don’t know about Gods River – I can only hope I’m on the right track.

Certainly it is possible to tie in the issue about The Flats.  Gods River flows into the Hayes River and the result is rapids, lakes, waterfalls, and as it nears Hudson Bay, tidal flats.

There is then a suggestion that the marriage in real trouble from the off, and then the very curious extended verse seven.

She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean,
you can’t? Of course you can.”

That is particularly interesting because the most common expression of the past is that you cannot go back and repeat the past.  Suddenly the lines from Mississippi comes into my head

“Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay; You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way. Only one thing I did wrong was stayed in Mississippi a day too long”.

But this line: “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can,” is from The Great Gatsby.  Now Gatsby, in the novel, was indeed a very generous man – especially at his parties which might be relevant in relation to the Genius of Generosity below.  But at least we know why Dylan expanded the structure to put this point in – it is a quote and he wanted to give it in full.

And the mystery continues in verse 8…

Where do you come from? Where do you go?
Sorry that’s nothing you would need to know
Well, my back has been to the wall for so long, it seems like it’s stuck
Why don’t you break my heart one more time just for good luck

So we can take it that the marriage went wrong and the guy is off in his car, which is swish and fast, but running out of petrol.  Goodness knows what’s going on in verse 10, but now he’s really challenging anyone and everyone in verse 11, and the politicians in verse 12.

You got something to say, speak or hold your peace
Well, you got something to say, speak now or hold your peace
If it’s information you want you can go get it from the police

Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He been sucking the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes—you been teasing me

The “Genius of Generosity” is a book by Chip Ingram and a philosophy of a contemporary American church which relates to giving by the members of a church to help that church.

Standing by Gods river, my soul is beginning to shake
Standing by Gods river, my soul is beginning to shake
I’m counting on you love, to give me a break

Gods River (which is the clue that gives us the First Nations link) is a remote, (and I believe it is Gods River, not God’s River) settlement in Northern Manitoba, Canada and the location of the Manto Sipi Cree Nation.

And then back on the song, the singer is off.

Well, I’m leaving in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift
Yes, I’m leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift
Going to break the roof in—set fire to the place as a parting gift

Summer days, summer nights are gone
Summer days, summer nights are gone
I know a place where there’s still something going on

It is difficult to interpret – but perhaps it is best to say it is a wedding and a divorce, with tradition and the church not always playing a good part.   The Gatsby quote is the key for me, because Dylan has gone out of his way to put it in, in full, and because of the apparent contradiction to his earlier comments on the subject.

The All Music site says, “Lyrically, this song is preoccupied with growing old (one of the song’s funniest lines being “The girls all say, ‘You’re a worn-out star'”), but the narrator is clearly wanting to enjoy the process, rather than dwell on it (unlike, say, the Dylan of Time Out of Mind). The song is a testament to Dylan’s genius of phrasing. It is easy to assume that only he could sing lines such as “She says, ‘You can’t repeat the past’/I say, ‘You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can'” and make them both funny and profound. A series of highly charged, tightly constructed verses highlight Dylan’s continued skill as a lyricist, but the success of this song is more to do with the way he sings it, rather than what he is saying.”

This second version by Dylan has good filming though the recording isn’t as clear as it might be

And finally I do like this third recording, not least because of the pianist.  He really knows how to play this type of song.  OK the quality of recording is naff, but hell, it’s fun.  It’s by  Howard Markman and Glenn Workman with The Stone Hill All Stars at The 4th Annual Night of 1000 Dylans.  How about that!

Overall I love this song, and would love to be able to get more explanation out of it.  But there again, maybe I am pushing too far, and there is none to be found ….except for a satire on my part.

You might also enjoy

• F.Scott Fitzgerald and Bob Dylan: The Great Gatsby and Summer Days
• Bob Dylan rides the Northern Lights

What else is on the site?

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

The index to the 500+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains links to reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

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

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.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are characters in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There a book which I was read by my father as I grew up as a child.   I suspect many other children of the era had the same experience.

As Wikipedia says “The names have since become synonymous in western popular culture slang for any two people who look and act in identical ways, generally in a derogatory context.”  The Tweedle brothers never contradict each other, even when one of them, according to the rhyme, “agrees to have a battle”.

So what does Dylan make of this children’s rhyme?   It’s a three chord piece with a pounding bongos rhythm and very restrained lead guitar.  The bass is excellently played and  rarely for a Dylan song no slips are made anywhere.  Even with the extended lines, everything works.

Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They’re throwing knives into the tree
Two big bags of dead man’s bones
Got their noses to the grindstones

Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin’ their fate to the Hands of God
They pass by so silently
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

The implication is that Dylan is referring to two people – the leaders of east and west perhaps, the leaders of the Republicans and Democrats… who knows – although given the rest of the album I’d for for the latter.

The opening track, “‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’, includes many references to parades in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where participants are masked, and “determined to go all the way” of the parade route, in spite of being intoxicated. “It rolls in like a storm, drums galloping over the horizon into ear shot, guitar riffs slicing with terse dexterity while a tale about a pair of vagabonds unfolds,” writes Kot. “It ends in death, and sets the stage for an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperados, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.

The notion of weird and wild characters populating songs of course was the commonplace of Dylans albums of the late 60s.  Although the voice has changed this could almost be a Highway 61 Revisited song.   We don’t get Paul Revere’s horse but we get a lot of other characters.

Well, the rain beating down on my window pane, I got love for you and it’s all in vain, Brains in the pot, they’re beginning to boil, They’re dripping with garlic and olive oil

I write it as one line because that is how it could be, everyday events mixed with the outrageous. Only near the end do we get a differentiation between the two

Tweedle-dee Dee is a lowdown, sorry old man
Tweedle-dee Dum, he’ll stab you where you stand
“I’ve had too much of your company,”
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

As Dylan says at the start of the next track “Your days are numbered so are mine”.  In a world that makes no sense there is no way out.   But even so, “I know that fortune is waiting to be kind, so give me your hand and say you’ll be mine.”

Index of songs

By Tony Attwood

Just how surreal do you want to be?  Just how far can the three major chords that make up the blues be taken?   Consider just one line: “The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse”.

Paul Cable, who wrote the books on Dylan’s unreleased recordings called the lyrics of the song “a typical melee of totally unrelated weirdo characters,” and that seems to be fair enough.

And as Dylan himself said in 1966, “I’ve stopped composing and singing anything that has either a reason to be written or a motive to be sun.  My older songs, to say the least, were about nothing,  The newer ones are about the same nothing – only as seen inside a bigger thing, perhaps called Nowhere.”

Here’s the extraordinary acoustic version with a different melody.  If you don’t know it, do prepare to be surprised.

Which seems to put us pretty much in our place.  And we may note, Bob liked it, playing it 169 in concert in the 41 years after its birth.

So what does analyzing the text give us?  Well, some would argue an insight into Bob’s brain, because these words don’t come out of nowhere, they are at the very least important in his subconscious, unless he really was opening an encyclopedia of American history at random and writing the title of the first entry he found on each page he stumbled upon.

It has been done.

In case you don’t know (and I suspect a UK reader is less likely to know than an American reader) Paul Revere was an American hero of the American War of Independence made famous for his ride to alert the American forces of the arrival of the British forces.  Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” and for a reason that I can’t fathom why the question “What was the name of Paul Revere’s horse?” keeps cropping up on web sites and American quizzes.

Here’s an early electric performance

It is an odd question since no one knows – he borrowed the horse for the ride.  But then I’m British so maybe I don’t quite get some deeper meaning in the reference.

Anyway, it is a romantic story and the poem is one that is popular with children (or at least was so at one time).   And Dylan captures this flavour with the rollicking bouncing nature of the accompaniment, and the opening lines…

The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course
The city fathers they’re trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse
But the town has no need to be nervous

And why has the town no need to be nervous?  Because the warning of the British advance has come through?  Or because the horse can’t be reincarnated?  Who knows.

And an “unplugged” version, which of course isn’t.

The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits

Belle Starr was an outlaw with a very eccentric life style, if I may put it like that. Jezebel was the wife of Ahab, king of north Israel and the name “Jezebel” still retains a certain meaning.

A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce

But even if we have kept track of the allusions thus far, by the end of the first verse we are ready to give up on any sort of relationship with reality.

Mama’s in the factory, she ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley, he’s looking for the fuse
I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues

It is a song of words upon words, delivered to a beat, with references to a mixed up past.  There’s humour, but only just, for it is only one step aside from craziness.  It is surreal, there are no connections, just an occasional play on words; a set of games.  It is profound, it is meaningless.  It is saucy, it is history thrown up in the air to see what sort of order it comes down in.  It is… well, mixed up.

The hysterical bride in the penny arcade
Screaming she moans, “I’ve just been made”
Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade
Says, “My advice is do not let the boys in”

Who are these people?  Occasionally we know.   But sometimes even the explanations are obscure.  The official Dylan site gives us for the next line:

Well, John the Blacksmith after torturing a thief

While elsewhere we have

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, “Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?”

It goes on and on, and all the time there is this lively rock blues that just is a rock blues.

We hope as we hear the song that maybe there will be some sense in the end…

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

So maybe that’s it.  Useless and pointless knowledge.  All the things that the kids have to learn at school about Galileo, about Paul Revere’s horse, about folk heroes…  Is it really a critique upon the American education system.

Certainly the name Tombstone Blues is evocative of the very nature of blues itself – it is a name that feels that it should be attached to some 1930s blues song.  If it is, it is not one that I know.

I’d go for “useless and pointless knowledge” being the key to the whole thing.  Why do we learn all this stuff?   You have to answer for yourself.  I found learning about Galileo and his treatment by the Catholic church very interesting.  But each to his own I guess.

You might also enjoy

• Northern claim: Dylan with an idea and we’re left with a struggle.
• Bob Dylan and John Keats
• Jezebel the nun: Bob Dylan’s history as a recurring cycle
• La Mancha is Blowing in the Wind: Bob Dylan and Don Quixote
• Bob Dylan: Which side are you on?
• Is Bob Dylan funny?

What else is on the site?

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

The index to the 500+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

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

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

In one sense all you need to know is that Highway 61 is the Blues Highway.  But it is also rather helpful to know that Abraham was the name of Bob Dylan’s father.

I have three versions of the song in my home – if there are more, I’m sorry I’m not a completist.  There’s the version on the album of the same name, one on No Direction Home and a third on Before the Flood.  The original I find hard to take these days because the police siren is just basically annoying, No Direction Home’s version is how it should be, I feel, while the live version is a perfectly decent but perhaps more energetic version than it ever needed to be.

For me the whole point of the song is to link the historic characters associated with Highway 61 with the characters that populate the whole of the Highway 61 album – which probably explains why Dylan was so keen to name the album Highway 61 Revisited.  It is the key to the rest of the album.

The song itself is a rock blues, full of energy and fun, showing us just where this seemingly simple music – the blues – can take us.  You don’t need more chords or an inventive melody, nor do you need the fancy backing guitar; all of these are available on Desolation Row and will come along in a moment.  You can just have the simplicity of the genre and still come up with new and interesting variation.

As Chronicles tells us, “Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors.”

This is the road that the singer wanders down on “One too many mornings”.  This is the road that goes through Dylan’s home town, and is the road where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil.  And, we must not forget, it was the highway that already had a song written about it, in the 1930s.  Highway 61 Blues:

Lord, that 61 Highway
It’s the longest road I know
Lord, that 61 Highway
It the longest road I know
She run from New York City
Down the Gulf of Mexico

Lord, it’s some folks said them
Greyhound buses don’t run
Lord, it’s some folks said them
Greyhound buses don’t run
Just go to West Memphis, baby
Look down Highway 61

I said, please
Please see somebody for me
I said please
Please see somebody for me
If you see my baby
Tell her she’s all right with me

I’m gonna buy me a pony
Can pace, fox-trot and run
I’m gonna buy me a pony
Can pace, fox-trot and run
Lord, when you see me, pretty mama
I be on Highway 61

I started school one Monday morning
Lord, I throwed my books away
I started school one Monday morning
Lord, I throwed my books away
I wrote a note to my teacher, Lord
I gonna try 61, today

Lord, if I happen to die, baby
‘Fore you think my time have come
Lord, if I happen to baby, Lord
‘Fore you think my time have come
I want you bury my body-yeah
Out on Highway 61

Lord, if your man
Should have you get boogied, baby
Lord, don’t want you to have no fun
If your man should have you get boogied
Baby, don’t want you to have no fun
Just come down to my little cabin
Out on Highway 61.

So Dylan was doing a tribute to the original song, to Robert Johnson, to the blues, to his upbringing and his home town, and doing it all with the strange characters that populated the whole of the album.

True to this definition, the song is a stretched blues format, using the three chords (B flat, E flat and F in the No Direction Home version) that make up every blues song.  Blues can be fast or slow, desperate or surreal.  It’s still the blues.

Knowing what we do about the significance of Highway 61 in Dylan’s life, and in his music, and the name of his father the first verse takes on a significance that is wholly missing if we don’t know any of these things.

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be putting me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me coming you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killing done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

What sounds initially like a knock about rock blues piece, suddenly becomes something quite different.  God tells Dylan’s father or perhaps the father of Judaism, that he has to kill his son at the place where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil.

After that it is anyone’s guess what is going on.  Is Georgia Sam real?  Who is Poor Howard?  I wonder.  That first verse has so much going for it, it would be nice to know if these are just names or, along with  Mack the Finger and Louie the King, references to real people or just images showing that on Highway 61 anything is possible.

I like to think (but it is a mere whimsy) that the “12th night” verse is about the ghosts of all the great blues artists who have passed by Highway 61, but who knows.  And of course it doesn’t matter, because this song, more than any other is a statement of Dylan’s writing.  The taking of the origins of his music and combining it with his own fanciful characters.  Just as a different artist might have written about the same highway in a novel, with his own larger than life people living their own strange existences so Dylan pushes enough people to populate a novel into one song.

It is by linking these characters with the highway, and with our knowledge that this is the place where it all began, Dylan rounds the story off before it has properly started.  This is a summary of Dylan so far and a projection of just where he might go.  It is the start, and the signpost to the future.  It is the connection between Dylan and Robert Johnson.  It is the total map of where he has been and where he thought he might go.   We’re at the crossroads, next stop Desolation Row.

Index to songs and other sections on this site.

By Tony Attwood

“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a strophic classic blues which takes the 12 bar structure and stretches to the limit by using an inventive melodic line.

What Dylan here is gives a nightmare story incorporating other nightmares through quick references.  This, Dylan is saying, is the nightmare of the real meaning of the blues, taken on 30 years from the days of Robert Johnson.  This is “Rats in the Kitchen” for the 1960s hippy.

The form is so stretched that it takes us a second or two to realise it.  We know it is strophic (verse verse verse… continuing for as long as you want), and that adds to the pain.  A chorus would simply reduce the pain level by increasing the familiarity.  A  middle 8 (to give us the standard tertiary form of A A B A) would scream “popular song” and Dylan doesn’t want either of these – he wants pain, pain, pain. This is why one verse piles in straight after the one before.  The pain never stops.

The pain reaches its ultimate perhaps on the No Direction Home version.  To hear it from the opposite perspective listen to Brian Ferry on Dylanesque.  The words lose their meaning, the world describes becomes a comedy circus, not a reality.

So what we have is a total song of despair, interestingly placed ahead of the ultimate song of despair – Desolation Row.  Each of these songs ends with no end to the situation.  OK, Dylan can return to New York to escape, but the pain still lingers.  In Desolation Row, there is not even that escape, because the doorknob has broken, and instead of running away all he can say is “Don’t send me no more letters no, not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.”

In other words in Desolation Row, you have to go back to Dylan which is why it is the last track on Highway 61 Revisited.  In Tom Thumb, Dylan can escape and get back to New York.  In Desolation Row, even the blues highway (Highway 61) is no escape.  In Tom Thumb the Blues Highway shows us everything, but then is there metaphorically to allow us to get out again.

Within “Just like Tom Thumb Blues”, Dylan is in Juarez – which could be one of many places.  It has Saint Annie, who could be any one of many people.  Mostly Juarez is interpreted as the city on the Rio Grande just south of El Paso in Texas.  El Paso and Ciudad Juárez is together a significant conurbation with a population of 2.1 million.

In a sense, the song is an attack on the Mexican border town – and indeed on Mexico – compared with the fun and games of Highway 61 itself, and by implication the recognised life within the Mississippi Delta. Mississippi ok, Mexico border town, too far gone, seems to be the message.  The notion that the album’s title song, and Tom Thumb are in any way connected through similarity seems to me utterly erroneous.  They are either contrasts, or (you could argue) that Highway 61 is simply the setting out of the blues as a structure.  Just as a road “says” here you are, follow this road or not, the choice is yours, Tom Thumb says, “this is the hell you get to if you travel south to the border and go over it”.

And then there are the cross references which are everywhere, including

Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue

Just to clarify that one, this is not just a passing reference to a short story that Dylan knows.  Because “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is so much more than a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.  Published in 1841 is was the first ever (yes, really, the first) detective story.  From this story all detective fiction, and all the exceptional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Poirot and the notion of the detective’s less insightful assistant.

The sanitisation of Holmes through television and film versions has removed much of the horror that Holmes dealt with, but Dylan spares us nothing.

But beyond that, with all the other references that people have seen, I’m not too sure.  Rue Morgue Avenue is of course not the name of the original story – there is no “Avenue”, but an avenue of trees represents something pleasant – and there is nothing pleasant here, for it is a town of failure and despair.

There is the suggestion that the title of the song relates to a line in My Bohemian Life (Fantasy) by Arthur Rimbaud.

In the original French “Fantasy” is actually “Fantaisie,” which really isn’t the same thing at all.  The character goes off for a wander into a strange world where the poet imagines “Tom Thumb” making rhymes.

I went off, my fists in my torn pockets;
My coat too was becoming ideal;
I walked under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh! Oh! What brilliant loves I dreamed of!

My only pair of trousers had a big hole.
Tom Thumb in a daze, I sowed rhymes
As I went along. My inn was at the Big Dipper.
—My stars in the sky made a soft rustling sound.

It is not really the same stuff as Dylan’s song.  Dylan is in a Poe like world

I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got

As for “Up on Housing Project Hill” we are with Jack Kerouac, although not his most famous “On the Road” which would fit the overall notion of Highway 61, but is taken from Desolation Angels which itself relates to working on the fire watch on Desolation Peak in Washington state.   But the book is about a move away from Buddhism, which doesn’t really fit with Dylan’s work.  But it does fit with the next track: Desolation Row.

My conclusion, for what it is worth, is that it is not really helpful to try to make too much out of all these references and allusions.   They are interesting in an academic way, but Dylan never seems to use them specifically – rather they are just passing references and starting points.

This is a song of despair, a song in which the blues musical form is extended further than could have been imagined thirty years earlier, and in which the references are themselves extended in their meaning.  Trying to close down the references to mean anything in particular doesn’t work.  The key is in the music, and the original meaning of the blues.

I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough

or as Robert Johnson put it

I got to keep movin', I've got to keep movin'
Blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail
blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail
And the day keeps on worrin' me, there's a hellhound on my trail
Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail..

Full index of songs

By Tony Attwood

It is not my job to summarize the commentaries from elsewhere about how this song has been re-written using lines from classic movies.  Larry Fyffe on this site does it far better than I ever could.  The question that I start from is, is it a good song, and has it benefited from its borrowings from the movies?

And opinion here is divided.  Is there anything at all worth keeping here?  Or is it a great song that has benefited from the re-working.

The first problem is that this is most clearly a Dylan Song of Disdain, and as such it has to compete with some of the greatest pieces from the Dylan catalogue, not least Rolling Stone and 4th Street.  Compare “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” and “Once upon a time you dressed so fine” with…

Well, I had to move fast
And I couldn’t with you around my neck
I said I’d send for you and I did
What did you expect?

It would take a brave critic to suggest those four lines have anything of value to add to the oeuvre of disdain that Dylan created.  OK he’s getting out, just like he did on “One too many mornings” and “One of us must know” but this adds precious little if anything.

The plodding music – a song without any melody – it just doesn’t have anything to get it going.  Triteness is the word that springs to mind…

I’m gonna get my coat
I feel the breath of a storm
There’s something I’ve got to do tonight
You go inside and stay warm

Given that the chorus doesn’t have anything to say

Has anybody seen my love
Has anybody seen my love
Has anybody seen my love
I don’t know
Has anybody seen my love?

we are pretty much left on our own. it is hard to imagine it can get any worse but then we have not yet come to

In a town without pity
Where the water runs deep

Just in case it is not your area of interest, Town Without Pity was a 1961 movie in which American soldiers are accused of rape.

The only line that leaps out to me is “There ain’t nothin’ worth stealin’ in here” but nothing is done with it at all.

We plod on and get to the Memphis in June reference and then things get very strange.

There’s just a hot-blooded singer
Singing “Memphis in June”
While they’re beatin’ the devil out of a guy
Who’s wearing a powder-blue wig
Later he’ll be shot
For resisting arrest

Suddenly we are in a very different place – the freak show of much earlier Dylan epics in which strange characters crawl in and out of the woodwork for no particular reason other than the heightening of the surreal effect.  The trouble is that although the above section is utterly surreal in the manner of 115th dream but without the laughs, the music is still anything but surreal.  It doesn’t matter that none of it makes sense if some of it is interesting, but nothing is.  Not the music not the lyrics.

And then everything is thrown away with
Close up ain’t never that big

There’s the “I can’t be a Christian” final section and its all over.  The only thing left to sort is that utterly curious reference to Memphis in June which is an extraordinarily meandering piece by Hoagy Carmichel.  .

Dylan has his thing about Memphis.   Highway 61 (the blues Highway) runs through Memphis, he had the Memphis blues in the references to the WC Handy festival in Mobile… but this is a different Memphis.  This is Memphis as paradise.

Memphis in June
A shade veranda under Sunday blue sky
Memphis in June
And my cousin Miranda she’s making a blueberry pie

So for me nothing works.  The lines from the movies, the lack of melody, the accompaniment, the backing girls who suddenly are given an “Oh,,….” for no particular reason save that they had some “Oh” on tape… the Memphis stuff which is irrelevant to Dylan’s past and the Blues Highway.

But most of all, Dylan’s songs of disdain work.  This doesn’t for me.  Not one bit.

————————–

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do

Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  It is simply a forum for those interested in the work of the most famous, influential and recognised popular musician and poet of our era, to read about, listen to and express their thoughts on, his lyrics and music.

We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Sadly no one gets paid, but if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics who teach English literature.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a subject line saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with approaching 6000 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

But what is complete is our index to all the 604 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found, on the A to Z page.  I’m proud of that; no one else has found that many songs with that much information.  Elsewhere the songs are indexed by theme and by the date of composition. See for example Bob Dylan year by year.

By Tony Attwood

When I began writing reviews of Dylan’s songs I had no thought that I would reach a situation in which it would be necessary to review a whole group of songs together to make sense of them individually.  But after hours, weeks and indeed months of contemplation that is exactly where I am.

The songs that have brought me to this impasse are on side one of Bringing it all Back Home.  In the first group of songs we find we have four songs that have taken up a permanent residency in the Dylan catalogue.  They are regularly played, remembered and (by many people) loved.

Those four are Maggie’s Farm, Subterranean Homesick Blues, and the two love songs, She Belongs To Me, and Love Minus Zero/No Limit.

Then there are three songs that are far less recalled, and which are only occasionally mentioned in discussion, and less frequently performed: Outlaw Blues, On the Road Again, Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream.  It is those final three that I am finding hard to tackle, and so have lumped together in this one review.

Bringing it all back home is an album with considerable coherence and sense of direction.    Three of the songs on side 1 of the original LP have very similar introductions involving the late arrival of the lead guitar…

• Track 1 – Subterranean Homesick Blues
• Track 3 – Maggie’s Farm
• Track 7 – Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream

So there is a link across the songs.  The whole of side two (the last four songs on the CD version starting with Tambourine Man) have a consistency too – they speak of a world and in a voice utterly different from that on side one.

But even on side one the final three songs are songs of a different nature.  True, the construction of the songs is similar in terms of chord sequence, melodic style and genre, but the nature and intent of the songs appears to me to be utterly different from all that has gone before in the first four tracks.

Outlaw Blues is a perfect rendition of rhythm and blues in the 1960s style.  It is in E major (the favourite key of rhythm and blues guitarists), with the guitar playing a fast four beats a bar starting from the fifth rising to the flattened 7^th and then declining again with each note played twice.  If you are not a musician, don’t worry – you’ll know what I mean as you as you hear the song again.

This is a travelling song, a song perhaps about the outlaw lifestyle, which the original blues singers to some degree had.  The outlaw in specific detail turns up where Dylan knows he “might look like Robert Ford” (who assassinated Jesse James), but he feels “just like a Jesse James,” (that is, he has been hunted down and shot.)  This is presumably a reference to the folk song purists – and I’ve dealt with that a little more in the review of Maggie’s Farm.

Outlaw Blues starts however with the less obvious and less glamorised life of the outlaw:

It ain’t hard to stumble and land in some funny lagoon

While On the road again takes us a step further into the surreal

Well I wake up in the morning there’s frogs inside my socks

The outlaw, we start to realise is not dealing with the wild west, is not the subject of interest to the point of veneration, but is in fact a guy having to deal with the parents of his girlfriend.

Of course there is an immediate temptation to link On The Road Again to Jack Kerouac, but Dylan won’t let us.  The surreal is gaining ground all the time.

People are bizarre, circus characters, where idiosyncrasy merges with insanity and paranoia in which wearing a mask of Napoleon is just something that is done.  Everyone who has been through that period in one’s teens and maybe 20s of meeting the parents of a boy or girlfriend from a different background will know how odd other people can be, and yet how ordinary (through familiarity) they become.

Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream which is itself a continuance of Motorpsycho Nitemare takes the journey that started with Outlaw Blues and continued through On the Road Again, out to the furthest reaches of crazed imagination.  Now we don’t just have Napoleon we also have Moby Dick.

The outlaw has now moved so far away from mainstream society that nothing makes sense because there are no expectations that can be relied upon.

I commented earlier on the opening of the first two songs in this little group at the end of side 1 and we can now complete the set

It ain’t hard to stumble and land in some funny lagoon

Well I wake up in the morning there’s frogs inside my socks

I was riding on the Mayflower when I thought I spied some land

This is truly a descent into increasing madness or silliness or an ascent into increasing surrealism and fun.  It is subversion of the form (that is of rhythm and blues) growing and growing, step by step.  Love Minus Zero has a strange landscape but it is made real through the love behind the song.  With these last three songs however there is nothing at all to hold onto.  Where previously we had beauty with

People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her

and…

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

now we have not beautiful landscapes and enchanting dreams, but something that is only one step away from insanity and madness.

Subverting the form – undermining the concepts and beliefs on which the form is based, tearing away the basics so that we realise just how pretentious or bizarre the form is, is valuable in itself.  Dylan perhaps is saying to us, this is rhythm and blues, but the lyrics don’t work any more, because they were written for another age.  Now everything is breaking down, nothing is certain, the dream and reality mix.

It is funny, and to some degree the humour lasts, as long as you don’t play the record too often.  But most of all Dylan is saying, across these three songs, “everything is available for re-writing.  Just go where you want.”

Put this way, and indeed considered with the whole of Side 1 of “Bringing it all back home” this is quite probably the greatest post-modernist musical manifesto that has ever been presented.  Nothing is what it seems, the past is available for re-invention, just because it is new doesn’t mean it is good.  Irony rules.

But the funniest thing was
When I was leavin’ the bay
I saw three ships a-sailin’
They were all heading my way
I asked the captain what his name was
And how come he didn’t drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus
I just said, “Good luck”

Full index of songs

by Tony Attwood

There are two ways to interpret a song like this: by trying to find a meaning in the words, or by trying to link the title to something that may be significant about.

Our normal third route (considering the music) is poorly served on this song.  The chord sequence is not one that Dylan uses elsewhere, but is not that interesting in itself.  Only the descending bass of the title line suggests we might be taken back elsewhere, for it is the same bass and same chord sequence as you find with the words, “Sooner or Later One of Us Must Know”.

Sooner or Later is one of Dylan’s songs of disdain, as we note elsewhere, and it is on the same album – which lead to the view that maybe Dylan just liked that sequence at that time, for this hardly seems to be a song of disdain.

So, if we are ever going to make any sense of Stuck inside of Mobile With the Memphis blues again, we are still with our two alternatives: an abstract landscape which like a Jackson Pollock paining can be interesting or marvelled at, but does not tell us a meaning, or there is some connection with Mobile and The Memphis Blues.

The latter is easy, for The Memphis Blues is a song by W C Handy, often thought of as the father of contemporary blues – the man who took the blues and brought it to a much wider audience.  His importance and significance in the world of blues music cannot be over-estimated, for he is fundamental.  And indeed Dylan most certainly knew all the music of such an iconic figure in the history of the blues.

The song was published by Handy in September, 1912 and has been recorded by many artists over the years and as you may expect, Handy wrote the Memphis Blues when he lived in Memphis.   If you don’t know that song, you will find it on “Tribute to WC Handy” (various artists) and many other albums.   The fact that it is the second track after Handy’s masterpiece St Louis Blues, one of the most famous songs of all time, shows how highly it is regarded in musical circles.

Of course life would now be easy if there were to be a connection between Handy and Mobile, which is a town in Alabama.  And yes indeed, there is one: the annual WC Handy Festival is held in Alabama, which at least gives us a connection, although not an explanation.

So that’s it – although there is one footnote.  The trombone slide part that is integral to the opening of Memphis Blues, is very similar indeed to the trombone in Rainy Day Women, which opens the Blonde album.  Which maybe tells us something else.

But to the words.  John Lennon made fun of them, suggesting they were nothing of significance or importance.

Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I’d ask him what the matter was
But I know that he don’t talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape

Compare that with…

Folks I’ve just been down, down to Memphis town,
That’s where the people smile, smile on you all the while.
Hospitality, they were good to me.
I couldn’t spend a dime, and had the grandest time.

Or Handy…

I went out a dancing with a Tennessee dear,
They had a fellow there named Handy with a band you should hear
And while the folks gently swayed, all the band folks played real harmony.
I never will forget the tune that Handy called the Memphis Blues.
Oh yes, them Blues.

And Dylan

Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked

And Handy again

They’ve got a fiddler there that always slickens his hair
And folks he sure do pull some bow.
And when the big bassoon seconds to the trombones croon.
It moans just like a sinner on Revival Day, on Revival Day.

Oh that melody sure appealed to me.
Just like a mountain stream rippling on it seemed.
Then it slowly died, with a gentle sigh
Soft as the breeze that whines high in the summer pines.

Hear me people, hear me people, hear I pray,
I’m going to take a million lesson’s ’til I learn how to play
Because I seem to hear it yet, simply can’t forget
That blue refrain.

Yes we can make our meanings here, just like you can see patterns in abstract art, but I suspect it is a false trail.   WC Handy died in 1958, so he’s not even the grandpa who died and was buried in Dylan’s song.

Maybe the connections with Handy are not right – maybe they were at the back of Dylan’s mind, and he didn’t even realise.   Who knows?   But it is the best I can do.

The Discussion Group

We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase in, on your Facebook page or go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/254617038225146/  It is also a simple way of staying in touch with the latest reviews on this site and day to day news about Dylan.

The Chronology Files

There are reviews of Dylan’s compositions from all parts of his life, up to the most recent writings, but of late I have been trying to put these into chronological order, and fill in the gaps as I work.

• Dylan songs of the 1960s
• Dylan songs of the 1970s
• Dylan songs of the 1980s
• Dylan songs of the 1990s
• Dylan songs of the 21st century

“If Not for You” was released in 1970.  The Dylan version comes from “New Morning”.  Shortly after that George Harrison released a version.  It is a song that Dylan also recorded with George Harrison, and which he has often performed in concert.  It was a number 1 song on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, and got to number 7 in the UK.

There’s an instrumental introduction, and then straight in with verse one

If not for you
Babe, I couldn’t find the door
Couldn’t even see the floor
I’d be sad and blue
If not for you

Now something very odd and (if I may say this about a Dylan song) very geeky turns up.  We get the hang of the song, but then in the slight instrumental pause between verses we start to hear a glockenspiel playing three twee descending notes.  And it keeps playing them over and over again.

For me, and of course this is just my opinion, this is one of the worst instrumentation decisions ever on a Dylan song.  A twee glockenspiel on a Dylan record???

Yes in a sense it is a twee song.  But it is also a lovely, honest, caring love song.  The message is so simple (I could do nothing without you) but said in a totally new way (who else ever said, “Couldn’t even see the floor”?)

What gives the song a further twist of interest is that the first three lines establish the two major chords but then we get two minor chords to go with

I’d be sad and blue
If not for you

It is a real surprise musically, and it works beautifully.  In the second verse we get it with

To shine in through
But it would not be new
For the middle we then get another simple musical trick – we are back to the standard major chords, but then the piece gently modulates.

I’d be lost if not for you
And you know it’s true

It’s a beautiful touch – and the sign of a true master of the simple song.  Strangely we get the middle 8 twice but with a variant in those last two lines:

Oh! what would I do
If not for you

(Thankfully by this point the glockenspiel player seems to have left the room for a few moments – although he’s back for the last verse).

I think someone in the production department of the record company heard the song, remembered the lines

If not for you
Winter would have no spring
Couldn’t hear the robin sing

and said, “Oh its a Christmas song.  Right, when we do Christmas songs we always have a glockenspiel.”  Yes and pictures of Vienna.

Oh for goodness sake.

But despite that it is a simple love song of distinction.

By Tony Attwood

This review updated 3 August 2018 with the addition of videos and further commentary.  In particular the one brilliant revisited version of the song from 1978 – one of the great, great, great moments from the Never Ending Tour.

First, a confession.  When I bought Blonde on Blonde on its release, I ran through the songs and then settled down to play tracks three and four of side one, over and over and over again.  I can still remember my mother asking ironically if this new LP only had two tracks on it.

Over the decades since then Visions of Johanna (track 3) has become recognised as an absolute masterpiece.  But One of Us Must Know (track 4) has more or less vanished although Dylan thought it was a single of merit, as it was the first single to be released from the album – and in those days singles were important.  It reached number 33 in the UK charts – but it failed totally to make much impact in the US.

Also in his commentaries on the time Bob has said that he did see it as a single and that is why he took so long to record it (19 takes across nine hours of recording time).  But as a single it breaks the rule of what singles were supposed to be about (love, lost love and dance).

Of course rules are there to be broken, and break the rule this song did, because this is a song which reduces the woman to less than a full person: “you just happened to be there”.  You can’t get much more dismissive than that.  “I hate you because…” is meek and mild compared with “You just happened to be there” because in the former the woman has a fulsome personality, she is a real live being having an impact, and the recipient doesn’t like it.

In “Sooner or Later” she’s just in the way, like a fox caught in the headlights on a country lane.  She is reduced to nothing.

This is indeed “She’s Your Lover Now” now fully thought through and resolved

You never had to be faithful, I didn’t want you to grieve
Oh, why was it so hard for you, if you didn’t want to be with me, just to leave?
Now you stand here while your finger’s goin’ up my sleeve
An’ you, just what do you do anyway? 
Ain’t there nothin’ you can say?
She’ll be standin’ on the bar soon
With a fish head an’ a harpoon
An’ a fake beard plastered on her brow
You’d better do somethin’ quick, she’s your lover now

But it is not, to my mind, misogyny, as Heylin suggests that phrase is.  It is not a hatred of all women – it is the dismissal of a single person as being of no consequence.  The recording of “She’s your lover now” is here.

However I can see the temptation to see the song this way, for it does come hard on the heels of “4th Street” and “Crawl out your window” both songs of utter disdain.

And yet there is so much to commend One of Us Must Know.  It is, like Visions, a story, a history, a recollection.  This time there are only two characters – the singer and the person to whom he sings. But the atmospheric connection with the characters is as strong as in Visions.

And ultimately a perfect version of the song emerged.  There is but this one recording of it.  Try it, and then again, and again.

I couldn’t see when it started snowing
Your voice was all that I heard

How atmospheric do you want your music to be, for goodness sake!

One of Us Must Know is the ultimate song of farewell, self justification and (to a small degree) apology.   And anyone who has been left by another whom they so deeply loved must feel this song inside out and from heart and soul.

I didn’t mean to treat you so bad
You shouldn’t take it so personal
I didn’t mean to make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that’s all

Here’s the 15th take of the song from the recording session.

Imagine the person you really, utterly love, saying that to you.  And Dylan’s explanation of the misunderstanding – that he didn’t realise that the woman was expecting to be with Dylan forever more – is well, just, unbearable too.  You’ll know it if you have ever felt it.

When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you’d be comin’ back in a little while
I didn’t know that you were sayin’ “goodbye” for good

This is a “Simple Twist of Fate” approach to life – that we are blown by the winds of chance and happen to be wherever we are taken.  Although Dylan does say that he tried to push against those winds.

Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

The couple have not communicated properly, Dylan justifies himself and, as the whole second verse shows, as it builds to that ultimate put down…

I didn’t realize how young you were.

We also have the interesting line …

That you were just kiddin’ me, you weren’t really from the farm

Are we back to Maggie’s Farm?  Who knows, but if you are interested in relation to what that actually stands for.  (See my review of that song for comments)

And I told you, as you clawed out my eyes
That I never really meant to do you any harm

And then the music – there it is that descending chord sequence again in the last two lines of each verse before that long held sub-dominant chord, resolving to the dominant, taking us to the chorus.

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you’re supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

Play this song, and then listen to “Rolling Stone”.  Listen to those opening rocking chords before Dylan sings, then listen to “You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out” – it is the same chordal pattern, the same resolution.   And finally that famous descending bass line “He’s not selling any alibies, as you look into the vacuum of his eyes”.

There is the same feeling in the voice, the same use of the harmonica.    One of us must know is “Rolling Stone” again, but with just the start of an apology for the hurt caused.  Less vicious, but still not accepting any responsibility whatsoever.  The pain is there, but Dylan just shrugs.

Try it – the chorus of One of Us Know, the chorus of Rolling Stone.

So is this why One of Us Must Know is not regarded highly?  Rolling Stone is simply better and (in passing) much nastier than One of Us Must Know.   Maybe that’s it.  But surely there is room in this universe for two masterpieces on the same subject.

If, as a result of this little resume just a handful of readers turn back to One of Us Must Know, then I have done my job.  It is a masterpiece.  But oh, the pain.  But if it is too much, try an instrumental version.

What else is on the site?

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

The index to the 500+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own.  You will find it here.  It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

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

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

How many Dylan songs can you name which have a chorus consisting of the title sung over and over again?  “How does it feel?” comes up twice on “Like a Rolling Stone”, but for the moment I can’t think of others.  Maybe my mind isn’t in gear.

But by and large Dylan doesn’t do bad film songs – in fact when you think of “Tell Ol’ Bill” and “Things have Changed” you think of utterly brilliant songs.

I am not sure “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” is as good as those two complete masterpieces, but it is certainly a very fine song.  It comes from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in 1973 and the song’s opening line tells it all; the verse just sets everything out before us.

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

Verse two amplifies the message…

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

And that’s it.

So what makes it such a memorable song?  To answer this we are back to an issue that seems to crop up in almost every one of these Dylan reviews.  The chord sequence.

The chorus, with the repeated “Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door” line doesn’t have a conventional resolution in terms of its chords.

I’ll try and explain….

• The verse, in chordal terms goes I V II7
• The chorus goes: I V IV

Now in musical terms, neither of those endings (V-II7 and V-IV) are “acceptable” as resolutions to the line of music.  What they do is leave the music hanging, they don’t resolve the music at all.  The listener is left on a cliff, almost toppling over the edge, or maybe just stepping back to safety, but never quite sure which.

That one simple musical trick is what makes this song so memorable and haunting.  Of course the lyrics of the verse, and the repeated chorus lyric are excellent in themselves and capture the mood perfectly, but what makes the song work so well is the hanging edge of each line created by the chord change.  Death is near, but not quite there, we don’t know, we have left waiting…

The simplicity of this song is what makes it so good, in a way that Dylan can rarely achieve with (for example) the predictable nature of the 12 bar blues that forms the basis of so many of his songs.  It is with songs like this where he branches out into the musical hinterland that we see Dylan’s craft at its best.

This review has been updated several times, the last on 13 April 2020, and some of the comments were written before this update was written.

by Tony Attwood

“Why? What’s the point?” was how I opened my first attempt at a review of “You ain’t going nowhere” as I tried to deal with the difficulty of writing a review relating to notion of absurdism in popular music.

What I found particularly hard to analyse at the time in a meaningful way, was the fact that the lyrics changed all the time. How does one review a song in which the piece is suggesting that because nothing much matters or indeed is real, nothing much means anything?  I knew there had to be a way, but I just couldn’t see it.

It was only later when I took on what was itself an utterly absurdist task of trying to summarise the meaning or essence of each Dylan song in one word for the series on how the subject matter of Dylan’s lyrics had changed year by year, that I began to realise just how many songs from this period are like “You ain’t going nowhere”.

The title itself of course is the give away.  The song goes nowhere.  The song means nothing.  If, as Roy Harper said, a little while before the writing of this song “Everything’s just everything because everything just is” then indeed there is nowhere to go.

What it took me a while to understand was that in this period Dylan was taking the absurdism further and further, taking us on a journey that no one else had ever attempted before in popular music, a journey into the realms of “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka.  And the point I kept coming back to was that when Gregor Samsa wakes up as a gigantic insect, he is not utterly freaked out by the situation but instead just experiences “slight annoyance.”   That the rest of the world is horrified by him is neither here nor there.  The cleaning lady, who we might expect to have taken a personal affront to there being an insect of this magnitude in a room that she is expected to keep clean (his existence being a reflection on his capability as a cleaner), in fact doesn’t seem to mind, and instead has a natter with Gregor, who by this time is quite happy as to his new lot.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance piece Dylan said, “I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means.” And this is the essence of Dylan’s Kafkaesque songs which first emerged in the Basement Tapes with lines such as

Cloud so swift the rain fallin’ in, Gonna see a movie called Gunga Din

Just from that opening, you know its nonsense.  But then so is Mighty Quinn.  And it is a perfectly reasonable question to say, “Does it have to make it sense?”  Unfortunately in my struggles to understand Dylan and write reviews of all his songs, for a while I stopped at that point and didn’t ask the question strongly enough.  So I did not return enough to Kafka.

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don Couldn’t keep on keepin’ on”  is however a pretty big clue.  As was Roy Harper’s album “Come out fighting Ghengis Smith”, which I feel pretty sure Dylan must have heard, just like he certainly did hear the Incredible String Band as we have noted before.

So in analysing Dylan’s songs and their meanings I have perceived a move from surrealism to with songs such as these below – although it has taken me a while to get there.  Mixed in with these were a whole series of songs about being trapped which I deal with elsewhere.

Looking back it seems to me that Dylan was interested initially in surrealism (Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again) and randomness(Leopard skin pill-box hat) before reaching out to Kafka with the John Wesley Harding collection.

The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest is in essence a Kafkaesque tale, as is Drifter’s Escape in which very clearly the whole of cause and effect breaks down totally.   In All along the watch tower there is no watch tower, and ultimately The Wicked Messenger is wicked because messages are supposed (in our world) to make sense by now don’t.

And then, just to show us all how bizarre the world actually is, Dylan stopped.  His next song was Lay Lady Lay – it was as if Kafka had not happened.   Or indeed the cockroach had transmuted into a beautiful lady.

Thus when with “You ain’t going nowhere” Heylin says it is “one of those songs where Dylan never quite settled on a single set of lyrics,” it is for me a bit like saying that “Drifter’s Escape” fails as a song because the lyrics don’t make sense.   The fact is, not making sense is the point.   (Although musicians seem to forget this sometimes – and after Dylan’s surreal period it was not until 1984 that Talking Heads came back to the theme with the “Stop Making Sense” album).

The unwillingness of writers to see Dylan’s compositions as a journey through a whole series of styles and approaches led Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon to comment that in the 1967 draft, “the first verse sounds like a weather report,” although to be fair, they did actually recognise we were in the surrealist territory by this time.  Personally I think if I had been writing reviews at the time I might have been tempted to the notion that “surrealism meets Hank Williams.”

Part of the surrealist fun continued when having never been released before, the song came out in 1971 on  Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II.  I am sure someone must have spotted the Kafka in this, but if they did, I must have missed that review.

Meanwhile each new version of the song adds to the absurdity further.  In case it is not Kafkaesque enough to have Ghengis Kahn popping up in the lyrics of a pop song, we now have his brother Don arriving as well.

The joke then went a little further when the song also appeared on “The Essential Bob Dylan” as if a single version of a song that changes all the time could ever be essential.  Putting it on “Dylan” as well, seems to have a Kafka influence – the song doesn’t exist in any set form, but an album simply called “Dylan” suggests definitiveness.  The two have no connection – hence they are there.

Then there was the “Pick up your money, pack up your tent” line which Roger McGuinn changed to “Pack up your money, pick up your tent” which makes the everyday line into a somewhat surreal line.  Bob Dylan had fun with this by taking it even further singing “Pack up your money, put up your tent, McGuinn, You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

With an inevitable lack of a sense of humour some critics saw this not as a continuance of  the joke and absurdity, but a serious reprimand as if Dylan was saying “I can play with my lyrics but you can’t.”  I think not.

The enduring popularity of the song shows the taste that there is among many fans of contemporary music for absurdity, for surrealism, for Kafkaesque landscapes and for sheer silliness – something that seems endlessly to be missed by critics who much prefer the serious high road to fun, laughter, surrealism and Kafka.  And sadly rather missed by many songwriters.   For all the fact that I don’t like the music of the Beatles that much, they did silly and surreal rather well when they tried, but after that, other than Dylan, we had to wait for David Byrne before we really got going again.

By Tony Attwood

“I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was recorded in the autumn of 1967 by Bob Dylan and released on the John Wesley Harding album.

Before we get anywhere near the analysis of the song it is worth noting two facts.  First this is one of the most recorded of Dylan songs (I don’t have details of exactly how many covers there have been, or which song is the most covered – maybe someone could tell me).

Cover versions range from Robert Palmer and UB40 to Burl Ives, The Hollis, Linda Ronstadt, Maureen Tucker of Velvet Underground, Bobby Darin and Norah Jones.  Plus many many more.

Second if we put this song in the context not of John Wesley Harding, on which it appeared, but of the 1965 to 1967 era, we have the Bob Dylan who in that period wrote Rainy Day Women, Visions of Johanna, One of us must know, I want you, and Just like a woman.  Go back a little further and there is Desolation Row, and Like a rolling stone.

Amidst all those songs where did this one come from?  Musically there is a relationship with “I want you“, although the lyrics of that song take us on an utterly different journey and I want you is less tuneful.  “I want you” is Dylan’s version of a love song in a strange surreal world.  I’ll be your baby is, by comparison, utterly suburban.  This is as close as Dylan gets to a 2 minutes 30 second popular ballad.

Close your eyes, close the door
You don’t have to worry anymore
I’ll be your baby tonight

Shut the light, shut the shade
You don’t have to be afraid
I’ll be your baby tonight

It is simple, it is sweet, it is a love song.  It is melodic, and for just about the only time I can recall Dylan has the hint of a vibrato in his voice.  Could anyone who heard “Blowing in the Wind” or “Visions of Johanna” imagine the composer of those masterpieces writing…

That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon

In short it is a song for everyman to sing to his lover.   It is a cosy up by the fireplace and watch the shadows of the flames dancing on the walls, kind of song.  It is comfortable, easy, convivial.

So what was Dylan doing when he wrote it?   Most likely simply saying, “hey guys I can write simple love songs too.”  Or, “you do have to be surreal all the time to tell a story.”

Following this thought it is interesting to compare “I’ll be your baby tonight” with, for example, “Visions of Johanna.‘  No comparison, of course.  Except, each paints a picture.  Compare…

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet

with

Close your eyes, close the door, You don’t have to worry any more

Add the music and each paints its own unique picture.  In Visions the world of mist and mystery is all pervading, as the music is edgy, uncertain – listen to the bass and harmonica – something is out there and whatever it is, it ain’t good.  The music stretches, the lines are long, the verses extend…

In “I’ll be your baby” we have the reverse.  Everything is fine.  The harmonica is the most tuneful Dylan ever played – in fact I sometimes wonder if it really was him playing.  Each verse is short, each line is short, the message is short: hi, here I am, everything is fine.  You could show the scene on TV at 7.30pm.

In Visions the radiator coughs, Louise is entwined with her lover, Johanna goes missing, and poor Little Boy Lost “takes himself so seriously”.  The lights flicker…   This is late night reality TV, if it is ever allowed on TV at all.

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, is important in the Dylan genre not because it is a masterful song – it uses a simple chord structure in which the supertonic (II) is turned into a major chord (nothing very unusual there).  But because it is excellent at what it wants to be – a simple love song.  The man puts his arm around the woman and says, “I’m here”.   In Visions, Johanna vanishes and all hell is breaking loose.

The mastery is in the fact that Dylan wrote both within a couple of years of each other.

————

The site is developing its own theoretical approach to the music of Bob Dylan.  You can read about that approach as it evolves here.  There are details of the author, and the context of these reviews here.     The index of all the songs reviewed is here.

By Tony Attwood

By no means Bob Dylan’s only nursery rhyme, but probably the only one to get to number one in the charts when re-recorded.  And it has been recorded a number of times since in rather surprising ways.  I’ll try and give a few examples on the videos here.

Nursery rhymes (and it was Bob who called it a nursery rhyme remember) can be about everything and nothing, they have no need to make sense.  They can just be.  This song just is, because it is.

And I’ve come back to this particularly because there are a couple of versions you might not know.  There’s a Dylan live version, and this version by Manfred Mann – not the single that was so popular (in England at least) but a six minute album version that is not nearly so well known.

But across the years I have kept coming back to the notion that this song does mean something, because it has a repeating line

When Quinn the Eskimo gets here

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
All the pigeons gonna run to him

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna wanna doze

You don’t have to take it seriously of course, but if you want to it might depict the move from the excitement of the new messenger with his new approach, to the fact that then everyone follows because people just follow through to the fact that really the excitement was only about the new message because it was new, not because the message was important.

The version on the Essential Bob Dylan, which I guess is the one most of us have (even if we have a few others) is very much a rough and ready knock about.  It is (to me if no one else) highly amusing to hear that lugubrious style which constantly sounds as if the guys are dragging the song back.  It just demands to be sung and played faster, and yet they hold onto that slow plod plod plod beat.

This is a standard three chord song – any musician worth the name could instantly play it on his instrument.  You can just hear the chord changes as they bump along.  No suprises there.

Why did they record it? For a laugh?  Because nothing else was going?  Because the record company guys said, “Just record everything Bob.”  Who knows.

From the start we think we are with Noah, the end of the world, the great disaster… until they are all rescued not by the Almighty but by the Eskimo.  Incidentally there’s a lovely occasional piano part – the pianist sounds like the one guy who is having fun.

Ev’rybody’s building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others are jotting down notes
Ev’rybody’s in despair
Ev’ry girl and boy…

Why has the song reached such fame and had such success?  Probably because it is so silly, and because of (at least in Dylan’s version) or despite the slowness, by the second verse it is so extraordinarily odd.

A cat’s meow and a cow’s moo, I can recite ’em all
Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey
And I’ll tell you who to call

Dylan is, to my mind, having a laugh at his own expense.  Just listen to the way he uses his voice on the “everybody jump for joy” line.  It is just about the least joyful delivery he has ever given us.

Nobody can get any sleep
There’s someone on ev’ryone’s toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna wanna doze

So who is Quinn?  Who knows?  Who cares?  No, this is a bunch of guys mucking about in the studio.  Just listen to that final held note at the end of Dylan’s version – it is a complete lark at the expense of a million pretentious pop songs trying to be infinitely more than they are.

This is fun, (just listen to the recording above – it just is fun) because it is sung too slowly, because it mucks around, because it uses nonsense lines and yet has a pretentious ending, because it is Bob Dylan.  It is as if he is saying, “OK guys you are going to analyse my songs, now I am going to make you look so stupid.”

And basically he does.  And he succeeded because despite everything it is still a bloody good song.  Only Dylan could have done that.  No one else.

What else is on the site?

Untold Dylan contains a review of every Dylan musical composition of which we can find a copy (around 500) and over 300 other articles on Dylan, his work and the impact of his work.

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

The alphabetical index to the 552 song reviews can be found here.  If you know of anything we have missed please do write in.  The index of the songs in chronological order can be found here.

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

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 many reasons why “One too many mornings” stands out is that its original release placed it straight after that questioning, probing, aggressive song, “With God on Our Side.”

Two songs could hardly more different.  “One too many mornings” is restrained, under-stated, delicate.   All that can be left unsaid is left unsaid.  “With God on Our Side” is the exact opposite.

What is particularly interesting is the link between “One too many” and “Times they are a changing”.  While the rhythm of each is very different, the chord sequence at the start of each song is identical but the meaning and feel is so utterly different.  Dylan is saying, “I can call on the senators to act and say farewell to my love to become a drifting hobo, using exactly the same construction. It’s all part of life.”  And why not?

We are told, by those who discover these things, that Dylan wrote this around the time he was leaving Suze Rotolo, and Dylan revived in on stage when he was breaking up with his wife, at which time he added the lines

You've no right to be here
And I've no right to stay
Until we're both one too many mornings
And a thousand miles away.

“One too many” is an absolute, overpowering, overwhelming  song of lost love.  There’s no blame – the singer and the woman he loved are both right.  There are regrets, although the singer suggests maybe there are not – but you just know he’s wrong.  Those regrets are there big time, but he’s determined to walk away down the old lonesome road. Those regrets are as powerful as the play-acting in “No Regrets” by the Walker Brothers.  “No tears to cry…” Like hell there aren’t.

You get the feeling that if only the couple could actually speak to each other again they could throw their arms around each other, and hold on tight, and give the relationship a real chance to celebrate all they have been, and then thrive, moving powerfully into the future.  But no, the imagery of walking away, guitar slung on back, is too powerful. It is almost as if the singer wants to have the hurt of break-up so he can sing the blues once more.  Some people just want to be hurt.  “I just gotta keep on keeping on”

So it goes.  Some people just can’t make an equal balance relationship work, so even though it tears them up, they have to find a reason to walk away.

And here’s a thought.  If only the girl to whom Dylan sings the song could have picked up a guitar and sung a reply.  Now there would be something to keep close to you, through the trials of romance.  (Actually coming back to this review five years after I first wrote it, I am moved to try and write that; these days I just write for fun, and I think it would be fun to try.)

Subsequent re-writings of the song for performance take it to different meanings and different dimensions, and really they need a separate article.  This article stays with the original, recorded on October 24, 1963, but as I am updating it in July 2018 I’ll add a few videos of versions that also seem to me, personally, to be of particular note).

This one has turned me inside out from the very first moment I heard it.  I can still play it over and over until my house mate screams for it to stop.  There is nothing else like this.

The song is only two minutes 40 seconds long and yet in those two minutes 40 seconds we get everything.  Every line is an image that could be the opening of a movie.

Down the street the dogs are barkin’

Do you really want more?  Isn’t that enough of an image to paint not just one canvas but a whole stream of pictures?   But if you do want more then…

And the day is a-gettin’ dark
 As the night comes in a-fallin’
 The dogs’ll lose their bark
 An’ the silent night will shatter
 From the sounds inside my mind

That line of the silent night shattering… nothing changes in the music.  We are still progressing through that very folk-song chord sequence I, III, V.  So how does the music reflect the shattering of the silent night?

It doesn’t and that’s the point; the contrast is between the situation inside the man’s head and the situation on the street.  There is no connection, even though the couple are contriving to separate when they don’t have to.

And so we notice just how much Dylan likes the image of couples separating by agreement.  Remember…

Split it up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best

The difference is that “Tangled up in blue” has a completely variant view of the future

She turned around to look at me
As I was walking away
I heard her say over my shoulder
"We'll meet again someday on the avenue"

Of course by the time of “One too many” Dylan had hardly started on what was to become one of his key modes of writing for a while: the time-confused lyric.   “Tangled” uses that device par excellence so one is never quite sure when anyone is.   It is the same notion – splitting up – but written with a different technique and offering different outcomes.

Dylan in “One too many” is a man with real, total and complete feelings – feelings that have moved on by the time of “Tangled”, and yet the feeling of aloneness is still there…

Consider this for a leap across the decades:

But all the while I was alone 
The past was close behind

and…

As I turn my head back to the room
 Where my love and I have laid

The look back to the past… it never stops, it always is there to catch you out, even if the two lovers never meet again, they are utterly entangled forever.

The parallels between these two songs are overwhelming.

And I was standing on the side of the road
Rain falling on my shoes

is from “Tangled” but could equally be from “One too many.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2FNOGRvL0

Dylan however in “One too many mornings” is regretful in a way that never occurs in “Tangled up in Blue”.  By the later song he is much more wordly wise – in the earlier version he’s not at all sure about where, why, what, who… which pretty much covers everything.

It’s a restless hungry feeling
 That don’t mean no one no good
 When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
 You can say it just as good.
 You’re right from your side
 I’m right from mine
 We’re both just one too many mornings
 An’ a thousand miles behind

Even after all these years it is still an absolute utter masterpiece.  And you never know if they did get back together again.  It is the start of the movie and the last departing screen shot as the credits roll.  Maybe one day Bob and/or his record company will produce an album called “Leaving” with these two songs opening the proceedings.  Maybe I’ll do it myself for it is surely too good not to have.

You might also be interested in “Hero Blues”: the song Dylan thought should replaced “One too many” on “Times they are a changing”.   And in case you want to move on a bit further there is Walking down the line another song of moving on.

Here’s the original

——————–

Untold Dylan: who we are what we do