It’s all over now, baby blue. Bob Dylan’s song is as powerful now as it was when he wrote it

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review updated July 2018, with a few changed comments, a copy of the song that Dylan cited as his source, and a performance of the song found by Pat Sludden, which really takes into somewhere completely different.

And I wanted to add something to the review anyway, as I was asked to come up with a simple summary of this song.  In the end I took a line from this review that I wrote in 2013.  It still seems about right:

All these people you have messed about with, everyone you have played with, they are all lost too.   You can’t go round doing this sort of thing – at least not here.

That’s how it goes.   Now here’s the full review…

 

This is Bob Dylan’s third farewell ending, in as many albums.  Restless Farewell, It Ain’t Me Babe, and now It’s all over, written early in 1965.

Utterly amazingly it seems that Baby Blue, Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden and It’s Alright Ma, were all recorded on the same day.  Not enough that one side of one album should contain four astonishing, magnificent songs of this magnitude, but that they should all be recorded on one day is just beyond belief.

The song is unusual for Dylan, with the lyrics starting on the dominant (V) chord, and descending both in the melody and the sequence.  But the sequence, like the melody is conventional throughout save that the sub-mediant is heard as a major.  In traditional folk it would be a minor chord.  The accompaniment is faultless and exquisite.  Acoustic guitar, harmonica and bass.

Dylan himself cites Gene Vincent’s Baby Blue as a source of inspiration…

Here’s a video of that record

‘When first I met my baby, she said how do you do, she looked into my eyes and said,my name is Baby Blue.’ It is a statement that has made some commentators feel that Dylan is saying farewell to folk, and moving into rock.  But that doesn’t quite work.  He’s saying (on side one of the original album) hello to rock.

But Dylan here does say farewell in no uncertain terms, for the song starts “You must leave now”, just as in the previous ending song on an album he  said “Go away from my window.”  It seems that when Dylan tells you to go, you are told in no uncertain terms.

But the symbols, similes and metaphors are so rich from the start that this is not just “get out.”   The images exist alongside those of “Like a Rolling Stone”,  but the tone is softer yet the rejection is as strong.  Yet we only have to consider the lyrics for a moment and forget the music, and the similarities are overwhelming.

And just in case she ain’t got the message, he’s not messing.  He is even pulling the carpet away from her.  OK he is not totally vindictive, because he wants her to “Strike another match, go start anew” and get on with the rest of her life but then that is what we would expect with such a gentle lilting song.

You may recall that in “Rolling Stone” we have that aggressive rising chord line while the melody stays in the same place “Once upon a time you looked so fine…”  Here the music and the message is gentler, less vindictive, but still clear.  Time to go babe.

What links most of Dylan’s farewells is the need to move on and stop thinking that what will be will be.  “No it won’t happen,” says Dylan.  It won’t in my life, it won’t in your life, it just won’t.  We all take responsibility for our own lives.   The vagabond knocking at the door is to be despised as much as baby blue needs to move on.  Take control, don’t blame fate.

Thus although he says, “Take what you have gathered from coincidence,” it is not with any thought that there is meaning in coincidence.  It is just, well, coincidence.  Deal with it, move on.  Stuff happens.   Learn to cope.  (You don’t get more harsh than that).

So how come the song has such a gentle conventional accompaniment?  That is the puzzle.

But try this.  The penultimate line of each verse has Dylan straining to the very top of his vocal range.  And in that line that reaches the very limits of his voice he sings, in the four verses:

Look out the saints are comin’ through
This sky, too, is folding under you
The carpet, too, is moving under you
Strike another match, go start anew

The apocalypse, the apocalypse, the earthquake, total darkness – that is what those four lines tell us, as the music challenges the very key that we are in – the very essence of our establishment in a world that makes sense.

And we must remember, as I just noted, that these are the lines which use that highly challenging major chord, which ought (in folk music) to be a minor.

Now let’s look at lines three and four – the two lower lines, easily sung with no stretching of the vocal cords and no challenging musical chords…

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun

The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets

The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor

The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore

These double lines in each verse are totally about the end, the end of hope, the end of your current life, the end.  And Dylan lowers his voice.  He’s telling her where to go, but also there is a recognition that although she has to go, he is not here to hurt her more and more.   “Look,” he says gently, almost kindly, “it is all falling apart.  All these people you have messed about with, everyone you have played with, they are all lost too.   You can’t go round doing this sort of thing – at least not here.  Leave, get yourself sorted.  Find your own life. Time to go babe.”

And in the end that is what this stunning, beautiful, amazing song that we first heard fifty years ago, is all about.  It is about the anger of “get out now” and the softness of “come on love, time to go.”  And because it contains in both music and lyrics both elements of farewell it is a total masterpiece.  Today it still moves me no less than it did when I first heard it, not least because at that time I could only imagine what it was like to go through that scenario.  Now, all these years later, far too often, I know – as I guess many of us do.

And that’s the point: Dylan talks about what many of us sadly experience in this delicate, torturing song.  Sometimes it is almost too unbearable to hear.  Almost, but not quite.

Here is a quite astonishing alternative version, found by Pat Sludden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK2ZYfTG8nM&feature=share

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.

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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.

 

Posted in Bringing it all Back Home | 31 Comments

90 miles an hour down a dead end street

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

It is strange where research can take you.

Let me start from a simple observation: I think Dylan’s recording of this song is awful.  If you are going to take a song very slowly and have a range of instrumentalists involved, then the orchestration (that is the arrangement of the music – in effect who is playing what and when) needs to be really tight and well rehearsed.  You can get away with “jamming” at speed, but if you want to do it slowly you need a lot of practice at playing together.   And quite clearly for this track, there was precious little in the way of rehearsal.

Which is where I could have stopped and maybe not even reviewed this song at all – but, as I listened to the song today a thought struck me.  Odd though it may seem, it is also possible to sing this song fast (which at least fits with the 90mph of the title).  One minute at the piano proved it could be done (although I am not suggesting that my rendition is anything anyone else would want to listen to).

Anyway, I went looking.  Had anyone recorded this song fast?  Was Dylan the first to do it as a dirge?   What follows is a summary of what I found about this song.

“90 miles an hour” was written by Hal Blair and Don Robertson, both highly eminent songwriters closely associated with Elvis Presley.  Hal wrote “I was the one” – the original B side of “Heartbreak Hotel”, which was released as a single after Elvis’ death.  The pair wrote songs for virtually every Elvis movie of the sixties.

Not all have stood the test of time, but “Please help me I’m falling” certainly has, and is still a song worth hearing.  The pair had many other hits, although most are only known these days to country and western fans.  But “I don’t really want to know” sold multi-millions, and Elvis also had a hit with “I’m counting on you”.  Meanwhile Don also played keyboard on recordings by Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, Duane Eddy, and of course Elvis.

So, back to this particular song.  There is a recording by the Keats Family on You Tube which does take the song fast.  Not how I imagined it, and for me it isn’t very good, but it shows it can be done.   There is also an amazing version on You Tube by Tommy Womack which is unaccompanied and has different lyrics.   If you choose to dig that out, beware – he stops part way through, but then starts again.  Here’s the opening verse

I went to Indy in the rain
To a club that wasn’t ever gonna have me again
I had Chianti in the seat
90 miles an hour down a dead-end street

Dylan sings the original lyrics and there’s something in the rhymes which I can’t exactly define, that makes this song fun, although reading the lyrics of the last verse on the page it is anything but:

Warning signs are flashing ev’ry where, but we pay no heed
‘Stead of slowing down the place, we keep a pickin’ up speed
Disaster’s getting closer ev’ry time we meet
Going ninety miles an hour down a dead end street

But the fact is that love throws all logic and sanity out of the door.  It makes us all do crazy things, and if you have ever been really in love you’ll know that.  Love turns the sane into the insane, and once it is inside you there is no escape  until it passes.   That is why love songs can be fast or slow.   Personally I find the first verse demands speed, not mawkishness

I took you home from a party and we kissed in fun
A few stolen kisses and no harm was done
Instead of stopping when we could we went right on
Till suddenly we found that the brakes were gone.

But let me leave you with a verse from Tommy Womack

I turn my foul ups into rhyme
Life takes up a whole lotta my time
I still like bootie on the street I see
But I’m not as horny as I used to be

Different subject, an awful subject, but hell, that’s much more fun.  But Dylan’s the master.  He obviously knows something I don’t.  I just wish he’d find a way to tell me what it is.

Untold Dylan – index to all the songs

Other Web Sites from the same team

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“Can you please crawl out your window?” The meaning of the lyrics and the music

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Updated 2 May 2017 and 12 Feb 2018

My addition on 12 Feb 2018 is simple: I have just heard the versions of “Crawl” on The Cutting Edge, and suddenly the song makes sense.  There is a change in the melody on these takes which gives a wholly different feel to the song, which suddenly makes it less nasty, and more humorous, more lyrical, more as if Bob is singing with a smile, not a scowl.

Can you get such a change of feeling by changing the melody – yes I think so, although I find it impossible to explain without going into all sorts of musical explanations which will mean nothing to you at all unless you are a musician.  The glockenspiel I could do without, and judging by the way the band is larking about playing “Jingle Bells” at the start suggests they think the same.

But there is something more wistful in Bob’s singing here, something that gives this song a totally different formation, style, approach, life, message… in short everything.

Just throw out the glock, although it is less obtrusive in take two on the CD.   Here it is as long as it survives on the internet

There is another one on the net but I can’t get it to set on this site.

And if you want to go further, try this alternative version

Anyway, back to the earlier review…

Dylan has a history of writing about the intellectually, socially and metaphorically lost, and when he does so he can be utterly vicious.    The person to whom “Like a Rolling Stone” is sung is one such example.  “Little Boy Lost” within Visions of Johanna is perhaps another.

Positively 4th Street contains another perfect example.  The pretentious, the inward-looking, the self-centred – they all come in for an attack from Dylan when he’s in this mood. Indeed in coming to “Can you please crawl out your window” after a long absence, or indeed for the first time, it is worth considering Positively 4th Street as an introduction to this song, not least because Positively is quoted as an annex to Window.

This is the land of the night creatures to which Dylan has referred so many times, and to which he was still referring with Soon After Midnight from Tempest.  By then he had lost his disgust at the creatures of the night, and was indeed quite happy to exist alongside them, but each song is just offering a different perspective on the notion of “Come on out the dark is just beginning”.

Some have suggested that the song may be about Edie Sedwgick, an actress and fashion model who starred in a number of Andy Warhol films.  After moving away from the Warhol environment she got to know Bob Dylan, but moved on after Dylan married Sara Lownds.

There’s no evidence this interpretation is true, and as always, Dylan won’t say.  Perhaps the best we can do is to think that the Sedwgick situation was at the back of Dylan’s mind when he wrote the song.

And so to the song itself…

In musical terms this has one of the most unusual chord structures of any of Dylan’s songs, not because the chords are unusual, but because of the way that they are used.  There are more chords invoked than normal, but it is the order of the chords and the resultant cadences are unexpected.   While Positively Fourth Street moves  smoothly between the chords changing chords at the start of each bar, here the mood is utterly jerky.  The singer in Positively knows exactly what he means, and where he is.  He is brimming with self-confidence.  He can slash and burn (metaphorically) with impunity.  In “Window” there is all the viciousness of the attack but none of the certainty.   The singer, the accuser, is more jittery, more nervous.  We can’t imagine the singer of Positively saying “please” even in a sarcastic way.  In “Window” the word is even in the title.

Just as with Visions of Johanna, with the opening, “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet,” so here the opening line sets the scene utterly.  There can be no doubt what sort of world we are in, in either case.   (But let me add, before I start quoting lines from the song that in the quotations from the song that follow, I have diverted from the text given on Dylan’s official site.  Of course I bow to their superior knowledge, but in this case it is just so obvious that what Dylan sings (at least on the UK version of the single)  is not what they have produced and so it seems ludicrous to use their version rather than what one can hear).

He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacks (chords I V)
Preoccupied with his vengeance (II, I)
Cursing the dead that cannot throw him back (I, III, IV, V)
You know that he has no intentions (II, IV)
Of looking your way, unless it’s to say (V)
That he needs you to test his inventions (II, IV)

That fourth line ending (repeated in the sixth line) concluding on the sub-dominant leaves us hanging.  This is not a recognised cadence in classical music structure, nor is it used in pop, rock, blues or jazz.  As far as I know Dylan only uses it here, in this song.  To repeat: we are utterly left hanging.  Yes, he could use the structure II, IV, V in one line – and that would complete the cadence, but by holding the dominant over to the next line, we are in limbo.  In fact we ourselves are hanging half way out of the window.  There really is no other way to express it.

The chorus however is more conventional using I, IV, V throughout.

Hey come crawl out your window
Use your hands and legs it won’t ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

So the message is clear.  From the lyrics the singer is obviously saying, “he’s useless, and you are being stupid by moaning about him.   Pick yourself up, start living, and stop this whining.  You can do what you want.  Come on out and play in the dark.”  A fairly common theme for most western males at some time in their lives I’d suggest.

So just as with Visions of Johanna, with the opening “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet,” here the opening line sets the scene utterly.  There can be no doubt what sort of world we are in, in either case.  And just as the melody and accompaniment of “Visions” gives us that sense of mist and rooftops at night from the first line, so the bounce of “Window”, the two bar musical intro to each verse, the cutting guitar that precedes Dylan’s voice – all of this gives us edge, edge and more edge.  It as if the rhythm of the piece itself plus the sheer force of Dylan’s singing is throwing daggers at the woman and man in the story.

But in the second verse the plot twists further, because there is the element of “he just wants you as a poodle – you are nothing to him”.

He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or pick it up after he throws it

Nothing can be more denigrating to a woman.  And thus the chorus becomes even more hurtful.  It is not “walk away from him” it is much more.  It is “stop seeing the world in this crazy manner.  Wake up for God’s sake”.

The story continues in the same vein – but there is a couplet in the next verse that is extraordinary even by Dylan’s standards.

While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange
Their religion of the little tin women

A religion of the little tin women? (Actually I thought, before seeing the lyrics in print, that Dylan sang “perverted women”, but “little tin women” is much more challenging).   It is as if the men are playing with the women in the same way that  old colonels re-run famous battles with tin soldiers.  This is not a line one hears quoted much when people quote Dylan, but really it should be.  It is a truly remarkable line with layer upon layer of meaning, secondary meaning, tertiary meaning… well you get my point.

And then if that is not enough we get “Come on out the dark is beginning”  Not “the night is just beginning” but “the dark”.  “The night” would imply nothing other than a party. “The dark” is something much more.  Indeed I wonder if Dylan himself might have written “The Dark” – the end of civilisation, the end of the world as we know it, or just The Night, with all the creatures of The Night on show.   If this is about Warhol then Dylan might be saying, “If this is what we now call Art, then this is the end.  Welcome to the Darkness.”

And so we come to the end.  The end that made me burst out laughing the first time I heard it.  A repeat of the opening of Positively, mixed with a part of this song’s title.

You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend if you won’t come out your window

It is a line that confirms the thesis.  You are no friend of mine if you don’t pick yourself up.

According to the reports we have, Dylan recorded this song multiple times and seemingly never quite got it to be what he wanted it to be.   It was played just once live, in 1965, but brought back to Dylan’s audience by being included in Biograph.  But if only he had stuck with those versions we hear at the start of Disc 4 of “The Cutting Edge”.  Suddenly it all makes sense.

What is on the site

1: Over 390 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.

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.

 

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Maybe Someday – the forgotten masterpiece. (Knocked out loaded)

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Updated 20 September 2017 with link to the song at  the end.

If I could be given something impossible, just once, I would ask for the studio tape of Maybe Someday, and the opportunity to remix it.  Maybe it is just me, but this is a stunning masterpiece, spoiled (only slightly) by the mix.  Oh how I would love to deal with the female chorus.  Who did that to the instrumental break?  Being first up against the wall when the revolution comes is too good for them.

So, let’s start at verse two.  Dylan quotes TS Eliot.  And why, you may ask, is this important?  Because Dylan comments on Ezra Pound and TS Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower, in Desolation Row.   And because many Dylan lyric aficionados also know their Eliot.

And because of what Dylan does here in relation to “Journey of the Magi” from which the quote comes.  This poem is the poem of complaint and alienation.  To paraphrase, it is a poem of, “I came all the way across the bleedin’ desert just for this?”   I recall, when I studied Eliot at school, being told that it was a poem is the poem of distress.  Quite true, but that and more.  The distress is not utterly mental; the mind in a mess.  The magi has had enough of the camel too.

And this is where Dylan is in this magnificent rock song.  The past is a mess, the mind is a mess, his relationship is a mess: “I got it wrong, but so did you.  But maybe someday I’ll get it right. Don’t know about you though.”

Now if you are bemused by all this, do two things.  Just consider these lines from Eliot’s wonderful Journey, and then listen to “Maybe Someday”.  There is no instant subject connection and yet there is a real link between the two.  Here are some Eliot lines…

  • Lying down in the melting snow
  • And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
  • Sleeping in snatches with the voices singing in our ears
  • And three trees on the low sky
  • …an alien people clutching their gods / I should be glad of another death

Dylan’s response is a three chord classic rock piece which bounces along and leaves all the complexity to the lyrics.  The chord sequence is…

  • I IV I IV I V I (repeat)
  • V IV
  • Repeat first line

The performance of the first verse is odd to say the least.  If you get to the end of the song and jump back to the start you’ll see just how disconnected this first verse is from everything else.  There is a sense of trying to find out what each musician is supposed to do.  The drummer seems particularly confused (“how about if I bang the drum here, boss?”) – but maybe that is the editing.  Or maybe its just Dylan mucking around.

Eliot’s poem then is the magi going across the desert, complaining like mad and ultimately  being singularly unimpressed by the baby Christ.

OK there is no obvious connection between Dylan and Eliot in this first disjointed verse.  But the singer is berating the ex-lover in the manner of “Like a Rolling Stone” (just as the Magi is having a go at his God).

Maybe someday you’ll find out everybody’s somebody’s fool
Maybe then you’ll realize what it would have taken to keep me cool
Maybe someday when you’re by yourself alone
You’ll know the love that I had for you was never my own

But then the beat picks up, and we are properly off.  There is power and drive here, Dylan at his most perfect rock musician best.  And yes we really are in “Rolling Stone” country…

Maybe someday you’ll have nowhere to turn
You’ll look back and wonder ’bout the bridges you have burned

Dylan is also every deceived man’s friend.  What young man who has lost his lover doesn’t want to cry out…

You’ll look back sometime when the lights grow dim
And you’ll see you look much better with me than you do with him

If you are a heterosexual guy and you haven’t then sorry, you’ve lived on a different planet from me.  Maybe next year…

But then everything explodes, and we are in Eliot’s vision.  The magi are on the move, and in typical Dylan fashion time collapses.  We jump from the birth of Christ,

Through hostile cities and unfriendly towns

To Judas and the crucifixion:

Thirty pieces of silver, no money down

What is so remarkable about Dylan here is the way he links back to the Eliot poem.  The magi can’t be arsed to make the journey to see Christ’s birth.  Dylan knows that full well, and compares it with the fact he can’t be bothered to get to the woman,

Maybe someday you’ll hear a voice from on high
Sayin’, “For whose sake did you live, for whose sake did you die?”
Forgive me, baby, for what I didn’t do
For not breakin’ down no bedroom door to get at you
Always was a sucker for the right cross
Never wanted to go home ’til the last cent was lost
Maybe someday you will look back and see
That I made it so easy for you to follow me

That is one of the most extraordinary Dylan verses of all time.  We’re in Eliot land throughout – but now who is following who?  Is Dylan following Jesus?  Is the lover following the singer?  Are the fans following Dylan?  Are Eliot and Pound still fighting in the captain’s tower?  Probably yes, all round.

But we know the couple in Dylan’s song have broken up, and yet, and yet…

Maybe someday you’ll see that it’s true
There was no greater love than what I had for you

That ending is so utterly powerful.  “I loved you, I loved you, but it all went wrong.  You worshipped me, when there was no need.  I simply loved you.”  Or to translate into Eliot/Dylan speak, “I didn’t have to make this sodding journey across the desert – I was committed to God anyway.  You didn’t need me to do this.”

So what would I do with the remix?  I’d leave that funny first verse, because it is so quirky.  It makes me think the camels weren’t willing to walk.   The second verse is perfect, and the third too.

But then there is calamity.  The instrumental break with half the ladies doing a “Ah ha ha” all the way through. Who ever thought of that should be shot (as I intimated at the start).

And so we are back on track, with Dylan coming in a fraction of a beat early, changing the rhythms by one sixteenth of a beat.  And “what I had for you” is sung perfectly.

The fade out is awful, but what I could do about that would depend on what is on the master.

Bob, I have no idea what you think of your songs.  I don’t know if you have ever sung this in concert.  I have certainly never heard it.  But, oh, I hope you realise what a stunning masterpiece this is.  Thank you for all the fun you have given me over the years with this song.

 

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Silvio: with lyrics by Robert Hunter, a brilliant live version and strange comments.

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review updated July 2018 with the addition of videos.  I did think about trying to adjust the review in the light of the comments made when it was first published but I can’t really see how to do this except to say even more clearly this is a song for which Dylan wrote the music not the lyrics.  But then that is what I said at the start.  As for the story that Dylan stole the lyrics while Hunter was in prison, maybe that’s right, but before I go alleging that I’d like at least to be reporting something that has been written in the mainstream.

What I still don’t know is when the song was written.  If you have any evidence for this I’d love to know.  I’ve just taken a guess in the chronology files, but added that it is just a guess.

Interestingly Heylin doesn’t list this song at all in Still on the Road.  I imagine because he thinks that writing only means writing words and not music.

The review…

Silvio is one of those rarities – a Dylan song in which the lyrics were not written by Dylan.  In this case they were written by Robert Hunter (of Grateful Dead fame).  In fact Robert Hunter has worked with Dylan on a whole series of songs – two from Down in the Groove, one on Tempest and virtually the whole of Together Through Life.

There is a comment on the internet that says that the song is dedicated to Silvio Rodriguez, a Cuban folk singer and songwriter. Silvio admired Bob for a long time and when they met he gave him a song called “la cosa esta en…”  I’ve not been able to verify all of this.

So what made Dylan accept these lyrics?

Maybe it was the opening line (remembering that this song was written for Down in the Groove, and released at a time when Dylan’s musical reputation was going nowhere fast).  Knocked Out Loaded had received very poor reviews, (as did this album) and the general opinion is that the recordings of Knocked Out come from different sessions between 1983 and 1987. This implies Dylan was having his worst ever period of Writers’ Block.

The man who could put Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It’s All Right Ma and It’s all over now baby blue on one side of one album, had utterly lost his way, or so it seemed to many critics.

(In fact even worse was to come – in the eyes of some critics – with the release of Dylan and the Dead, the following year – but that’s another story.)

So in the light of what happened up to the release of this album it is worth noting with interest the opening verse, sung after the “Silvio” chorus.

Stake my future on a hell of a past
Looks like tomorrow is coming on fast
Ain’t complaining ’bout what I got
Seen better times, but who has not?

Within the context that is one hell of an opening.  And yet musically it is upbeat and optimistic, with one of Dylan’s favourite chord sequences of I, Flattened 7th, IV.   This is immediately recognisable as identical to Isis.

So with this upbeat music Dylan is clearly saying, “it doesn’t really matter too much that I can’t write at the moment, I’ve really done so much before, I am allowed a bit of an off spell.”

But even if that is the message, the chord sequence gives the melody enormous free reign.  But even with all this, what on earth do we make of the chorus?

Silvio
Silver and gold
Won’t buy back the beat of a heart grown cold
Silvio
I gotta go
Find out something only dead men know

That last line is horrific – it sounds like a vision of suicide.  And yet surely it can’t be, not with this bouncy jolly music rushing along.  And if the melody and chords were not enough, what about the backing – all those jolly bouncy singers using words and sounds to urge the music along?

Maybe this wonderful live version corrects it; it certainly has changed over the years…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRAUH48GYcE

Incidentally, if you don’t like this song please do jump in this video to five minutes and then listen to the instrumental break – hear the change at 5 minutes 25 seconds and then follow it through.  Have you heard Dylan do this before?  If so please tell me, as I’d love to hear other examples.

Yes Dylan loves/loved this song he played it live 595 times between 1988 and 2004.According to Rolling Stone in 1998 alone, he performed it 99 times.

The best we can make of this combination of upbeat music and frightening last line is that the song suggests that all the money in the world can’t help the writing of better songs.  Songs come from the heart not from the cash they generate.

There is however defiance in the music and in the lyrics.  The production levels are high, with the accompanying singers in perfect timing, as Dylan sings:

If you don’t like it you can leave me alone

The song says, “I’ve still got it all…”

I can snap my fingers and require the rain
From a clear blue sky and turn it off again
I can stroke your body and relieve your pain
And charm the whistle off an evening train

And most emphatically he says, I create what I can, and when I can go no further, I can go no further.  If you don’t like what I am offering these days, then off you go. The door is open, I’m still here bouncing along with these backing singers.

I give what I got until I got no more
I take what I get until I even the score
You know I love you and furthermore
When it’s time to go you got an open door

Writing has been at a cost – these great songs don’t just pop out of my head.  They are not scribbled down so I can then nip down the street to buy a paper and a pack of cigarettes.  I give you pleasure, but it costs me dear.

I can tell you fancy, I can tell you plain
You give something up for everything you gain
Since every pleasure’s got an edge of pain
Pay for your ticket and don’t complain

Only history will tell if I really was a great singer/songwriter, or not, but I believe in myself.

One of these days and it won’t be long
Going down in the valley and sing my song
I will sing it loud and sing it strong
Let the echo decide if I was right or wrong

And so we are left with that terrible frightening last line.  In the music it is a throw away. To Dylan, well, who knows what it meant at the time.  But maybe we should just take it as a blues line, for this is where Dylan came from, and where, as we have now seen, he would end up.

Find out something only dead men know

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Shelter from the storm: Dylan the poet laureate, Dylan the myth maker

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Tony Attwood

This review updated 19 July 2018, with the addition of three videos of the song, plus the missing verse and a short debate on the meaning of mythopoeic and a comparison with Gormenghast.  Plus a list of other articles that to greater or lesser extents take in this song along the way.

by Tony Attwood

Long before Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Heylin, called this “a lyric worthy of any poet laureate”, which shows a rare bit of insight, even if it was wholly fortuitous in its predictive sense.

He continues, “Another long song, the “Shelter” narrative descends from some mythopoeic realm…” which had me reaching for the Complete Oxford dictionary – and yes that word is there, meaning the making of myths.   Rather in the manner of Tolkein, William Blake, Mervyn Peake… which immediately had me wondering where my copies of Gormenghast were.

But really, is the story here enough to be a myth in the sense that the Gormenghast trilogy is a myth?   No of course not.  Not even if we add in the missing 11th verse

Now the bonds are broken but they can be retied
By one more journey to the woods, and the holes where spirits hide
It's a never ending battle for a peace that's always torn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm"

This is Dylan playing with images, showing us that lyrics can paint any picture, even against the simplest of musical textures.  And that is brilliant; of course it is a brilliant song.  But just as Dylan is playing with words, so is Heylin.  It’s not a myth, it’s a story.  There’s no need to pretend it is something more, just to show you know what a long word means.

But what took me at once from mythopoeic to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast; that city where nothing changes and the meanings of the rituals that dominate everyday life have long been forgotten?

I think probably it is the fact that everything in this complexly woven tale is told around three chords; the same three chords in every line in every verse – the same rotation of I V IV I.  Nothing changes save that lines two and three of each verse miss the final tonic.  Nothing moves on, the last line is always the same – exactly as is isolated Gormenghast.  It is a world of nothing moving on.

The instrumentation is also played out in the same terms of never-endingness (if there could be such a word).   Acoustic guitar playing chords, a double bass and a touch of echo on Dylan’s voice.

And that choice of instruments feels quite right: the song is so simple.  He finds her when he is nothing and has nothing or both, she welcomes him in, and he wanders off and loses her, much to his eternal regret.  She is the shelter from the storm of life – in a world of total doom, crying babies, nails and broken teeth.

Here’s a variant form – I’m not sure it is better but it is so engrossing to hear it after a lifetime based on the LP version.  I’m playing this over and over…

To me this represents the conflict of the man perceiving beauty and his desire to possess it (which will ultimately destroy that peaceful beauty).   Hence the simple presentation, the repeats and repeats, and yet the complexity encoded in the lyrics.

Steve Adey actually went further in recording it and took it so slowly that it lasted forever, which fits the end, but to me, not really the start, for at the start he has come in and taken shelter from the storm.  Dylan does get exercised in his singing, occasionally emphasising a line here or there.  That seems to get it exactly.   But if you have eight minutes to spare, here it is…

But overall, if you want an image for this song, just think of a cottage with no other habitation around, and a howling wind blowing outside, with all manner of evil lurking in the dark as the thunder crashes and rain falls.  Then you have it.  But as you find your own image, just remember those opening lines…

’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud

Here’s the world:
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm

And this is her:
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

And this is the singer:

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn

She ends his torture…

She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns

She is a goddess, he is a mortal.  He wants to possess beauty, but knows that he count – and yet he can’t let go of that desire.  In the end that’s it.  He wants to possess, but she will not let him for beauty is to be shared.

Always, always, always.

Many people find this to be the greatest re-working of all by Bob.  I’m not sure if it is the best, but to me it passes the eight minutes with more meaning and insight than I get from Adey.

 

What else is on the site?

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

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members.  (Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm).  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

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

On the other hand if you would like to write for this website, please do drop me a line with details of your idea, or if you prefer, a whole article.  Email Tony@schools.co.uk

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

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Dylan’s “Tangled up in blue”. The meaning of the lyrics and music of the original version

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Tony Attwood

This review (updated 10 August 2017) is of the original album version of “Tangled”.  For the review of the completely revised “Real Live” version please see here

10 August 2017: link to live version video added at end of the review.

18 August 2017: link to New York Sessions recording of the song add at the end.

by Tony Attwood

“You’ve got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there’s very little you can’t imagine not happening”.

So said Dylan of this song, and to add to the mix he has performed and recorded many different versions: this review is from the Blood on the Tracks album, although Dylan has said that others are better.

What seems so attractive to the listener hearing this as a song, rather than a poem set to music, is the integration of Dylan’s singing mixed with occasional declamation, with that trade mark last note of the line in a collapsing glissando.  Never has the effect been more controlled or more effective – because this is what the song is; the story of a collapsing glissando.

The way that Dylan conveys yesterday, today and tomorrow in the music is through the rotating two chords that open each verse and return and return and return.  Time is endlessly rotating.

In musical terms we have the tonic (I) alternating with a chord of the flattened 7th but with the tonic still in place.  We are there (the tonic) but we aren’t (flattened 7th).  Lyrics and music in total unity, while time is out of joint – a superb concept.  When he hit on that rotating alternation he must have known he had what he wanted and needed to make the song flow.

Of course in writing such a song some stability is needed to stop the whole piece unravelling, and here this is done with the last five lines of each verse, in which the percussion suddenly becomes much more dominant, and the chord changes become much more definite: V, VI, I, IV; a sequence which is repeated before the remarkable drawing together of everything with the flattened 7th, IV and I, bringing us back to base – here and now, before we go again into an uncertain future… or is it the past?

The song starts with a setting of the scene in which the singer looks back to the early days of the relationship, but also sets the pattern for the last five lines being more contemporary (sometimes!)

The singer thinks back to the family disapproval, what with the imbalance of the family fortunes, and it is suggested the woman being married, followed by the inevitable split, and the belief they would come back together.

These lines are so simple, and yet the combination of a generality (a “dark sad night”) and the specific promise of meeting again in an unknown, unpredictable future give the song a powerful drive forward.  We keep on keeping on, right from the start.

The break up happens, the singer moves on to casual work, the combination of the detail and the generality of his life carrying him, and the music forwards.  But as always our memories mutate.  We are never sure what actually happened, we just know the bits that our memory pushes forward, and from this we recreate our own story.

But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue

What an astounding, classic Dylan two lines:

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

So simple, so powerful.  The past was close behind… it is always there, inside us, directing us, telling us what we have been and what we are.  There is no real escape from the past.

Now he finds her again – or is it her? – has the prediction come true? – or is it once more the night playing tricks as Johanna, Louise and Little Boy Lost found?  Is this really the same woman, with them each playing a new game?

And later on as the crowd thinned out
I’s just about to do the same
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, “Don’t I know your name?”

And then the musical surprise.  Just listen to the acoustic guitar in the following verse – it is so easy to miss but hits the carefully attuned audience with…

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

That acoustic guitar is almost buried, but you can hear it with those lines. Yes we really are transformed into another place.

What is so tantalising in this song is that the story is incomplete.  That is what it is meant to be.  Everyone who has been a student reading all the chic books that are not on the syllabus, moving us into new worlds that have nothing to do with what we are studying…  13th century Italian poems that tell you of some mystic other world…  it is in four lines a total change of atmosphere.  In a sense this really is the Visions of Johanna approach, with a special dash of extra clarity.

At the end everything has changed, everyone has changed, but since we don’t know the start, how can we ever know the end?  Of course we can’t, because there is no end – just an accumulation of memories.  We all start from a different point of view, we are all tangled up in time, we all are muddled, but we can still have our own direction, our own lives, our own story.  Everyone has moved on, everyone is always moving on, everyone has a past but… the past is not fixed – it is entirely a matter of how we interpret it.

But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue

Unusually for Dylan the harmonica solo comes after the final sung verse – normally it is between the penultimate and ultimate verse. Here it is the symbol of being back on the road, trailing the different point of view, the book of poems perhaps in his back pocket, read at night under the stars…

Yet we are not back, because through the song there is an extraordinary build up – just listen to the power of the last sung verse and then the harmonica solo and then jump back to the start.  If it takes you by surprise it is because of the way we have been so drawn into the atmosphere, we have become part of the adventure.  We lived it.

And we know for sure: it’s not the world that matters, it’s the way we see the world that affects everything.

That’s why the song is a masterpiece.  You can’t help but live it.

Tangled up in blue – the Real Live version

Below, live version closer to the original album version.

 

What 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.

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.

Posted in Blood on the Tracks | 51 Comments

Mr Tambourine Man: early thoughts and the wonderful 1964 festival version

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This is the first review of Tambourine Man on this site.  For reasons that I now cannot properly recall I decided to do a second review a few years later, which you can find here.  

This article has been updated a couple of times, the most recent being July 2018 with the addition of a couple of very early live versions of the song.

According to some articles Bob Dylan hated the phrase “the voice of a generation” which applied to him, and given the complexity of his writing one can understand why.  There is no Dylan voice, there are as many Dylan voices as there are Dylan songs.

So I began to wonder if Bob has been the voices of the generation; all those multiple things  that those of us who are maybe not quite as old as Bob but getting on, think we were, and maybe occasionally still are.

Hearing the version of Tambourine Man below it is one voice that we knew at the time, a voice of gentleness, of kindness, of affection.

In a review in, of all places, the Financial Times (the UK’s version of the Wall Street Journal) published in July 2016,  commented that the Tambourine Man’s “most important legacy is that it threw open the possibilities of what pop, and specifically pop lyrics, could be.”   They also quote Dylan himself as commenting that this was “the sound of what I wanted to say”.

They find a link to Rimbaud too, specifically “Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre” and the idea that inspiration can come via a “systematic derangement of the senses”.”

Now of course it is one of the most famous of Dylan songs; we have heard it so many hundreds of time it is hard to remember what it was like to experience it when it suddenly appeared on record.

In a sense listening to “Bringing it all back home” today on a CD re-issue of the album makes the appearance of the song even more shocking and amazing than it was at the time of release, for now Tambourine Man continues immediately on from the end of what was side 1 of the LP.  No lifting the record up and turning it over.  No natural pause.

So we move from the rock blues craziness of side one onto the gentle acoustic rhythm guitar with equally gentle single arpeggio playing electric lead guitar as Dylan weaves his melodies on side two.

Interestingly, perhaps almost amusingly, Dylan’s official site records the lyrics of the chorus as starting…

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

Amusing, because of course there never is an exclamation mark in the singing – Dylan runs the words together, as he gives us that feeling of the mind bouncing along gently with the thoughts of the day, when he knows he should be sleeping.

Here’s the recording from 1964 at  the Newport Folk Festival

The lyrics themselves give a clue, if it were needed, as to where we are…

My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

My head is worn out, I have thought too much, I have fought too many battles, tried to hard to reform the world, I can’t do any more…   The exclamation mark, if it were reflected in the style of singing, would detract from the style and the meaning and take us somewhere completely different.

As for the music, the recording above gives us the song in its pure, original format.  By the time it got to the LP the accompanying lead guitar is added – and that is no bad thing for it is so gentle and dream like in itself… and rarely for a Dylan recording there are no slips, no lost notes, it is as near perfect a rendition as you find on any  Dylan recording.

What we actually have on the LP, and what made it so shocking on first hearing, is that after seven tracks, mostly mocking and humorous, all based on the 12 bar format with its three major chords, we have another song that again has nothing but the three major chords which every novice guitarist learns.

But the contrast is overwhelming.  The laughter and joking has gone, as have the love affairs of Love Minus Zero, and She Belongs to me.  This is the magic of dreamland, or as some commentators would put it, the magic of a drug induced haze.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it

Maybe it is a drug related trip, but I hope that wasn’t the intention, for this is such a gentle ballad, the music is so fine and refined, and drug taking is anything but that in what it does to the mind and the body.  But then, that’s just my view, having lived much of my life with Dylan’s music.

But in a sense Dylan is mocking himself, his own inability to create the perfect rhyme, the perfect song, the perfect reflection of the world beyond normal vision, just as singing protest songs failed to change the world.

And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing

Yes we are all chasing shadows, and Dylan himself fears he was chasing shadows with Blowing in the Wind, and all the protest songs of his early days.   This is in fact the final complete antithesis of Hard Rain.  The world is not about to end, the dream continues.  The recording above reflects that perfectly in my opinion, despite the problems with the recording at times.

The notion that this is about a drug-induced vision is heightened in some commentators’ eyes by the “smoke rings of my mind” verse, and yet anyone who has tried to create artistically will tell you that there are times when the creation never comes out as one wants – the perfect picture, the perfect dance, the perfect song – they are none of them possible.  We always see the world through a haze.  Even Bob.

But the smoke rings verse gives us something else.  The music is as gentle and easy as ever, and yet the language is far from that.  Consider…

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Everyone involved in creativity has been there, as much as they have been dancing beneath the diamond sky with one had waving free.

It is a stunning composition, made all the more remarkable by its contrast with side one of the album.  Has an artist ever created two such contrasting pieces as “115th Dream” and “Tambourine Man” and given them such a proximity?

Of course they are two sides of the album, and two sides of the same coin.  Both based around the same three chords, both played with guitars, both reflecting on the strange places that a dream-like vision can take you.   The lunacy of 115th Dream, the pleading, gentle, extended open hand trying to grasp and describe the world in Tambourine Man.

It was a theme that Dylan would return to in the next album but one with another masterpiece.  One  that began, “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet.”   The Tambourine Man, it seems, lost the fight.  The foggy ruins of time, took one step backwards, and found itself moved into the misty landscape that continues forever.

There’s also a recording from Sheffield in 1966

But that was yet to come.

What 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.

Posted in Bringing it all Back Home | 6 Comments

On the road again: Bob Dylan’s forgotten post-modernist 12 bar. Its origins, its re-invention

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review re-written July 2018 with links to the original “On the road again” and  the Nas and Jack White revival of that, plus videos from other artists who have re-worked Dylan’s song.

Having delivered a straight 12 bar blues on track 5 of Bringing it all back home, with Outlaw Blues, Dylan then delivers (in terms of lyrics if nothing else) a post-modern quirky variation on track 6 with On the road again.

The original “On the road again” was developed by the Memphis Jug Band in 1928 and we have a wonderful quality version of this song.  I would urge you not only to play this but also to stay with it – the approach to music in the 1920s was quite different from now, and if you just give it a few seconds you won’t get the full impact.  Dylan didn’t reinterpret this song, but rather took the craziness of the theme, used the 12 bar format and added the craziness of the 1960s to get something new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCK8V_MfQLY

And here’s the Nas and Jack White reworking of that song

Dylan takes the phrase and transforms it into something utterly, totally, 100% different but still a 12 bar blues.  The harmonica wails, the lead guitar starts its three note arpeggio which is maintained throughout the whole of the song, apart from the odd occasion where the guitarist forgets, and off we go.

Everything is classic blues in terms of the chord sequence (I, I, IV, I, V, IV, I) with the penultimate chord change implied as the band stops and Dylan sings his last line of the song.

There is however a surrealism here which is not seen in your traditional “Woke up this morning” blues.  We get that traditional first line and maybe we expect something akin to the blues (although incidentally Dylan clearly sings “wake” not “woke” as given on BobDylan.com):

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

Yes, well, this ain’t gonna be normal.  Is it?

Your mama, she’s a-hidin’
Inside the icebox
Your daddy walks in wearin’
A Napoleon Bonaparte mask
Then you ask why I don’t live here
Honey, do you have to ask?

And that is the most sensible verse!  After that we have costume changes, a pet monkey, Santa Claus in the fireplace, a dirty hot dog… and eventually Dylan says what we are all thinking:

Honey, I gotta think you’re really weird

It is just crazy… and not something that is tried very often.

First, here’s Bob’s reworking of the title.  It apparently took 13 tries to get it right.  It has never since been performed in public by Bob.

Indeed I suspect this is not a song that most Dylan fans would play over and over, but it is an interesting statement on this album, being about as far away from side 2 of the original LP as it is possible to get.  Dylan is saying, “Look what I can do to the blues” in four of the songs on side one, with just the two ballads (She belongs to me, Love minus zero) standing out as different.

But the question we were left asking is, “well, yes, ok you can write surreal lyrics and fit them into a blues song.  But…?”   Sometimes the mixup of the blues is indeed truly original, as with Subterranean Homesick Blues, and sometimes, as here, the best we can say is, its an experiment, but is also most likely to be a dead-end.

And yet it can be reinterpreted in interesting ways…  This is the one that I enjoy the most – the vocal takes us somewhere completely different…  It comes from 2010.

A second version below, from 2009 seems to me to be trying a little too hard to get something that else out of the song

And one more from 2005.

As for Dylan, most of us wore out side two of the original LP, playing Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It’s Alright ma, and It’s all over now baby blue, and gradually Outlaw Blues was forgotten.

But then to have Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It’s Alright ma, and It’s all over now baby blue, all on one side of one album would be a lifetime’s achievement for most writers.  For Dylan it was just one side of one album.

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Bob Dylan’s “It’s alright, ma (I’m only bleeding)”. The masterpiece of the era

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood

You cannot be a Dylan fan without knowing this song inside out, and all the way round again.  But perhaps what many of us have not done is listened to the version on “Before the Flood” and the original on “Bringing it all back home”.   Yes it is the same song, but… but…

And this is what I suggest that is worthwhile because only in this way can we clean out the mind and visit one more time the incredible tower that Dylan erected with the original recording of this song.

Even the key is slightly different between the two recordings (D minor and D on Before the Flood, E minor and E on the original – or there abouts – the tuning is not quite right on Before the Flood).

But that’s just a passing point – what we have here is a much darker original which owes so much to its blues origins.  The sound of both guitar and voice are much sharper, Dylan singing to an audience for whom this would all be so new on “Bringing it all back home” but singing to an audience ready to cheer with the line about the President, and for whom most of the metaphors are now so well known that they cannot wrap themselves around our brains any more.

The original is now (2013) so incredibly sharp and refreshing.   And hearing the original allows us to hear the words and the elements of restraint in the voice.  Each word is perfectly stated, each note is sung spot on, as not a single moment of the guitar’s accompaniment is flawed.

Even the couple of suddenly unexpected breaths in the original recording are breaths of relief, something we have forgotten if all we have heard for years are the live versions.

Dylan wants every word to count in this original merging of the surreal and the overt protest, the symbolic movement away from the protest movement and the rock of Maggie’s Farm, (the third track of “Bringing it all back home”).   This is the statement we had a feeling that was coming, but we never believed it could be delivered with this much power, this much style, this much vigour, this much totality.

We can protest for ever, the master says, but “There is no sense in trying” because all the words are wasted.  Why?  Well you have to wait until the last line to find out, but of course we now know why.  Because this is how it is.

But, and this is the key, Dylan is very much with the blues in the three section verses of this song – each verse takes its all from the blues, only relieved at first as each fourth section ending with the title, offers a much more melodic, saddened farewell to the protest.  Just listen to Dylan’s voice in those three line sections, in the early verses, and compare

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

with

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

And then again

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

That last line followed by the plaintive single note of the harmonica is utterly plaintive, sad, looking back, regretting, saying, “Hell I wanted to protest, I wanted to make the world better, yes, I did, but there is nothing I can do.  It has all gone too far.  Everything’s just everything, because everything just is,” as Roy Harper once said.

And what better music than the blues for the six line verses, and melody and chord changes that you would rarely find sung anywhere so regretfully.

…at least until

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For then the voice gathers an extra edge.

Now the passing note of the harmonica is missing.  I am just doing what I can in this world, Dylan says.  You go your way I go mine.  (Most likely).

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

And as he says, as we all felt, you don’t know what I am thinking.  The thought police may be here in one sense, telling us what is and what is not acceptable, but in the end you still can’t get inside my head.  Thank God.

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

And so the harmonica has been put away, it was only there for the first verses, it now serves no purpose, there is no need to end each verse with its plaintive sound, because we are beyond plaintiveness.  It is just life.  I was just reflecting and sighing, but now I have to admit, this is how it is, and there is nothing I can do about it.

It is the masterpiece of the era, a song so utterly incredible and brilliant that by and large it can be misunderstood as far less than it is.  The transition from alternative visions through protest to alternative visions through alternative visions.  Johanna, get ready.

Here’s an electric version

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Bob Dylan: The perfect “Like a Rolling Stone” recording. Energy and aggression.

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

We have all heard Like a Rolling Stone so many times on recordings, and of course at the end of the Never Ending Tour gigs, that it is hard to go back and get a new perspective on it.

But one way to hear it afresh (if you are not already familiar with it) is to try some of versions beyond the one we all know from the original “Highway 61” recording.

Unfortunately, while the internet is generally awash with recordings of Dylan shows in which he re-works his songs, his is not so much the case with “Rolling Stone”.

Here’s one, for example: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmxw8w which is a good listen, but it doesn’t really take us that much further.

There is the Judas concert version of course

but again I am not sure what we can draw from that.

This 1978 version goes a little further

Even a duet with Mick Jagger didn’t really take us much deeper…

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yd5jj

And yet the “Before the Flood” concert recording gives us this (unless of course this is the version you endlessly play), because it expresses something different within the song – something that is sometimes missing elsewhere.  Even though he disparaged the concept Dylan sounds utterly pleased to be singing the song with the Band on this album.  It is of course on Spotify

Perhaps in retrospect, listening to this album, and in particular this phenomenally vital version “Rolling Stone” we should have been ready for the next album: Blood on the Tracks.  But I doubt that in all honesty, many of us really were.  I wasn’t for sure.

What this version of Rolling Stone gives us is the absolute link between the words and the music, without it ever becoming a hopelessly indulgent rock track with all the musicians turning their volume up to 11 while ignoring the rest of the band.  Of course we have an engineered version of the song, and can’t tell how it actually sounded in the arena, but given the sheer horrific beauty of this recording, I can live with that.

Of course everyone spoke at the time about the energy of the recordings.  But that is not the real point.  We speak about the energy now because we have heard Dylan concerts that seem to be more about going through the motions than giving us insights into the music, or even a great night out.  But energy is not the heart of it – it is the reinterpretation of this song showing the depth of feeling incorporated into the song, taking the music and the lyrics to new places that we hadn’t understood before.

Rolling Stone has what is in one way the simplest musical arrangement: a very limited melodic line over a classic chordal line of I, II, Ib, IV, V (if you play it in C that is C, Dm, C, F, G).  After a spot of IV V rotation the sequence goes back down the other way.

But on this recording you get the slamming of the door, the shouting out, the scream, and the ultimate show of resentment, jealousy, hatred, delusion, annoyance, and sheet bitterness.   And that is what this recording gives us more than any other – all those emotions in perfect harmonious aggressiveness.

This is the ultimate song of a Fallen Friend.  Some have suggested it contains attacks on Andy Warhol, some that it is about a girlfriend, some even that it is about himself.  Others find more general targets, such as the fans who only liked his folk music, and those who wanted him to espouse left wing causes.

One interesting element is that the words contain possible nickname references such as “mystery tramp” and “diplomat who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat”.  Visions of Johanna did much the same with its “Little Boy Lost, he likes to live dangerously”.

Were these real people, or just symbols?  If they were real, we can’t know who they really were, so the question is pointless.  Like Visions, the song only works if we can translate the images into something that relates to our own experience or understanding, and here the song is perfectly attuned, speaking of the person who once had it all and is now living on the streets.

There is one final person however that I find fascinating, the Napoleon in rags.  Again we cannot know who he is, but we can see the person Dylan refers to, the street merchant who claims to be more than he could ever possibly be.

Forever that falling set of chords IV, Ib, II, I, will be with us, via this monument to rock music.  Truly the greatest of all pop songs, and this was its greatest performance captured on record.

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

    What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

What was it you wanted? Bob Dylan’s song and a version by Willie Nelson

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Tony Attwood

What was it you wanted

Reviewed and analysed by Tony Attwood

A slow introduction, and from line one we go; a song in a minor key packed with minor chords, revealing once more the lost and bemused individual.

If you want a classic moment of Dylan in this period look no further than this dislocated individual, out of touch with the reality of the person to whom he is speaking, a person who is as out of touch with the real world as he is.

If you want a line here it is: “What was it you wanted when you were kissing my cheek?”  The old certainties, he says, are long, long since gone.

In this song two people cannot communicate, there is nothing here the singer can be certain about.  He can’t even be sure that he is now with the same person as he had with him last time.  Think mist, misunderstanding, two people by-passing each other, just missing each other, nothing is clear…and just in case we still haven’t got it, there are echoes of the harmonica at the end of each verse.  Who has ever used echoes on a harmonica before in this way?

Come to that are there any other songs around which have a “B” section (the “middle 8”) which is based totally around the minor fifth.  As that section starts with “Whatever you wanted” we are waiting for a relief from the relentless minor chord, but it just doesn’t come.  In the end the return to the verse structure (on the album in the somewhat unlikely key for blues musicians of C sharp minor) gives some relief.  And the fact that it does tells us just how misty the whole production has got.

The total lack of communication (symbolised in a way by that haunting harmonica echo) is over powering.  “What was it you wanted?   Tell me again so I’ll know” – how many times does the man need to be told?

But no matter how much he fails to listen, to hear, to understand, he keeps asking and asking asking…

What was it you wanted
You can tell me, I’m back
We can start it all over
Get it back on the track
You got my attention
Go ahead, speak…

But of course the speaking never comes

Was there somebody looking
When you give me that kiss
Someone there in the shadows
Someone that I might have missed?

In the end it is a dream, a dream where reality comes in and out.  The sort of dream where you say, when describing the piece, I was chasing this bus, I don’t know why, I was just chasing.

It is not surprising to discover the “Series of Dreams” was written for this album, and then for some reason dropped.  As always we don’t know the reason – but artistically we can see at once.  For “Dreams” although on the same subject, just doesn’t fit.  By making the album overtly about dreams the images and the message would have been lost because although these may be dreams they are oh so much more.

Are you the same person
That was here before?
Is it something important?
Maybe not
What was it you wanted?
Tell me again I forgot

The fog and smoke never clears, nothing gets sorted, everything inside the singer is a muddle, he can make no sense.  This is so much more than a dream, and how pleased I am that we have this album with “Series of Dreams”.  How impossible it would have been to disentangle the message have that songs been there.

And so we reach the end…

Is the scenery changing
Am I getting it wrong
Is the whole thing going backwards
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?

The end line of the last verse is perfect.  Isolation is total.  There is nothing.

Dylan has played this just 22 times on stage, and I can’t find anyone who has put up a recording of any of these.  But there is an interesting version by Willie Nelson on line so here that is…

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

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

What else is on the site

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Posted in Oh Mercy | 19 Comments

Dylan’s “Everything is Broken.” How a short track transmuted into post-modernist chill.

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review updated July 2018 with the addition of live videos and further thoughts on the song itself.  I’ve also added links at the end to various articles from Untold Dylan which explore the theme of the song further.

One of the things you notice with “Oh Mercy” is how short the tracks are for a Dylan album.    Long gone are the days of the 10 minute track, and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands seems a distant memory.

Political World is 3 minutes 47 seconds long.  Ring Them Bells goes for three minutes.  Everything is Broken is 3 minutes 15.  We are into a minimal world, when compared with other Dylan albums.  Only the magical “What was it you wanted?” goes above the five minute mark, and then only just.

The theme of Everything is Broken (originally called Broken Days but then renamed) continues the feeling of Political World.  This world don’t work no more.  But then, Political World made that very clear.  This is seemingly the appendix to the Book of “It don’t work”.

The list of what is broken (that opens the song) is overwhelming , or at least would be if it were not sung to such a lively song.  Whereas on all the personal tracks (ie those which appear to be about an individual, or a unique situation) Dylan sounds like he desperately cares, here he is facing the listener head on saying “this is the world you live in, and this is all you have got – and its your fault for not doing anything about it.”

Ok Bob doesn’t say that last bit, but that is the impression I get.  We are bouncing along in a post-modernist wreck of the world, walking over the ruins of a society that we once had while those who are left scrabble around in the remains looking for anything to help salvage their lives.  Law and order has all gone and we’re jiving as the world ends.

That feeling which is combined with one of, “well what did you expect?” is amplified by the fact that “Everything is Broken” is a twelve bar blues in construction: pure I, IV, V chords with no exception.  Even the middle eight is reduced to ultimate simplicity as the whole song rocks along.  Only the short intro with the nifty guitar solo and unexpected bongos gives a thought that here there might be something else, but then we are there as the list of breakages continues.

But despite this view, Dylan bounces along telling us there “ain’t no use jiving ain’t no use joking everything is broken.”

And this feeling of a need to bounce finally reached its culmination with the live performances (which by the time of this update of the review in July 2018 had reached 275 – making it the 57th most performed of all songs – although it may be 56th or 58th, but it is something around there.  It’s difficult to count them on the screen.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev-Ru1QpTqU

So apart from everything, what is it that is broken?  Well, everything on a social scale.  This is the world gone wrong at the level of social interaction, written with a lively beat.   Everything is broken because everything is broken, because… well, get used to it and jive along, except there ain’t no use in jiving because everything is broken.  It’s a sort of hippy plaintive cry of “Everything is broken man” to an upbeat arrangement.

Even with the two different versions that we have: the original version which turned up on Bootleg 8 and the re-working of the song that was released on Oh Mercy we still seem to have the same breach between the brokenness of the world as described and the bouncy song.

But the live versions have gone on a totally different route…

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

Everything within the house and within city, and within the society is smashed.  Bottles, plates, switches, gates, dishes, idols, heads, beds, words.  And it gets worse and worse for it seems like every time you stop and turn around something else just hits the ground…

And in the live versions it is so total there is no escape.  The instrumental verse which originally has quite a lively jolly harmonica solo, now becomes more aggressive, and lest we think there is a way out we always go straight back to broken hearts, broken ploughs, broken treaties, broken vows.    There really is nothing left.

Society has gone, and all we have now is the world of the individual, and even here we are running into trouble for as individuals we break the vows we make.  In fact we’re pretty useless at running things.  We need something else.  What could it be?  Oh hang on… but it seems Bob didn’t want to go back to religion here, he just wanted to tell us, it is all finished.

But we are still left wondering why the music on the album is so lively when the music of Long Black Coat, Teardrops and Ring Them Bells, is always  so sad, lamenting and in keeping with the lyrics?

The answer must be that we are carrying on in this broken social world pretending that all is ok.  Just as we accept the political world (at one hell of a lick), so we accept the broken world – and of course we do because the political world and the broken world are all the same.  Where Ring Them Bells speaks of individuals acting as individuals, and Long Black Coat speaks of one individual, Political World and Everything is Broken, speak of society.

For further contrast compare What Good am I?, and Most of the Time, (that ultimate song of the broken individual) with “Everything is Broken” which talks about the society at large.

Herein lies the clue to this extraordinary album – it is throughout an album about the broken and crushed individual living in the collapsed dysfunctional society.

Of course I have no idea if Dylan conceived of these songs as a unity, or if something inside his head showed him that he had constructed a set of songs that fitted together.  But the use in so many songs of the three major chords plus the blues chords of the flattened third and flattened seventh spells a unity of thought.

Social songs lively, personal songs much quieter.  The people as individuals perceive their own misery and wish for mercy.  Society as a whole goes on pretending (via its political leaders) that it works.

That in fact is the ultimate trick of the politician; to pretend that they know and can do something, when in fact the whole notion of society is false.  It is all a sham.  Nothing works, but lets make the music jolly and maybe no one will notice, and think the misery is just their own.

And I’d like to finish with one cover version seems to portray the viciousness of the lyrics in a way that takes us back to the days when rock n roll really did think everything was broken, and that by and large we weren’t going to do anything about it

There is also a Tom Petty / Neil Young version from a concert, but I find that so painful I can’t bring myself to put it on.  You can search for it on Google if you want, but you might want to have a bottle of whisky to hand.

On a more cerebral note you might also be interested in the references to the song in these articles, which approach the matter from different angles.

1989: Bob Dylan stalked by the darkness

Bob Dylan and Charles Baudelaire (Part III)

Bob Dylan and Edward Cummings: The Romantic Revival

Long Ago Far Away: When Bob Dylan shouted out against man’s inhumanity

Posted in Oh Mercy, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

“The Man in the Long Black Coat.” Bob Dylan reaches the depths, and then descends some more.

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review updated 28 May 2018 with addition of examples of Dylan’s song and of the folk song that was said to have inspired it, plus additional commentary on the timing and meaning. 

This song in 12/8 triple time (to hear what this means in practice listen to the count in on the live version below – the counting is 1-2-3-4 but there are three beats on each of those four.

And the song is sung on the album version (see the foot of this piece) as if each beat of every bar is an effort to complete.  The start is uncertain, the harmonica plays three tentative fading notes, and off we go, plod, plod, plod.  When the harmonica returns there is a haunting feeling added to the plodding.  There’s less of that in this live version, but more pain in the voice.

Here’s the live version

What sort of world is this, where each beat is like a boot sinking into the mud and the only relief is a feeling of being haunted?  Dylan calls it “something menacing and terrible,” and that does it for me – although that comes through more strongly on the album version than on stage.  Daniel Lanois called it “something to do with the pulling and pushing of the moon.”  I’ll go with that.

The effect of menace, when it does emerge, is achieved by the undermining of the four beats in a bar each divided into three concept.  Each start of the three beat process is of equal importance here; normally in rock the second and fourth beat of the bar have an extra emphasis to give the music its swing.  There is no swing.  We are stuck.  There is no escape.

This is a song of atmosphere; the atmosphere of despair.  The lover has gone, for the man left behind, everything is mud or possibly even glue.  There is no way to follow, there is no way out.  We cannot even lift a foot from the floor to try and find the exit.

The third line makes it all so clear.  A straight descriptive line “Window wide open African trees” which has four heavy laden beats on Win / op / Af / trees.   How on earth can one go forwards in this sort of state?

Everything is useless in this experience, “every man’s conscience is vile and depraved”.  There is not even the chance of a way out through which one can push one’s own life forward.  Nothing is possible, because what will be will be.  There is no decision to be made.  We are trapped.

The masterstroke in the songwriting comes with the “middle eight” where the music varies and at last, at long long last, Dylan takes us out of the plodding, stuck world…

There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die people just float

Oh the horror.  For two lines we think he is offering us a solution.  The music is far more up beat.  The emphasis on every beat has gone.  And yet…

There is no escape at all in this world.  Because you just have to accept what is thrown at you, and get on with it.   There really is no escape ever, at all, in any way, we are here for all eternity.  There is no argument to be had, no debate, no putting forward an alternative point of view.  She’s gone.  Life’s gone, it’s over.

She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat.

Perhaps she is just a lover.  Or if you want to try an alternative interpretation the Man in the Long Dark Cloak could be an African witch doctor, taking the woman away.  The sheer horror of not seeing the woman again for the singer gives us the same sort of plodding hopelessness.  Either way the music fits, the lyrics fit, the atmosphere fits.

Indeed the brilliance of the song is that it meets all interpretations.  The sense of continuing futility is overwhelming which ever way you look at it.   The blues chords used throughout (in C you would play C E-flat B-flat C for the opening line) tell their own tale.  No major or minor key here, it is just the flattened third and flattened seventh.

In fact even when the music gives you a sense of reprieve it is still so hopeless and awful.

But people don’t live or die people just float
She went with the man in the long black coat.

Rarely has Dylan written more poignant, sad, desperate lines.   There’s nothing, simply nothing.  Take away the hope and all is lost.

She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She’s gone with the man in the long black coat.

It has been noted by Heylin that this is based on the traditional song The House Carpenter.  I really don’t see this as a musical origin, although there is something of its feeling in the lyrics.   Here are two versions

Here’s the second

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

Posted in Oh Mercy | 22 Comments

Bob Dylan’s “Political World”: How to get hit by reality (& the 6 missing verses)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Tony Attwood

Review by Tony Attwood

This review updated July 2018, with some commentary on the missing verses, and three videos: the official release vid, the full song with the 6 missing verses from the outtakes of the album session, and a not so exciting live version.

The musical opening of the album recording on Old Mercy is a triumph on its own.  A remarkable opening to the album.   A gentle fade in as each instrument comes in of its own accord – rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, Dylan’s voice, drums.   By the time of the end of the first “verse” the power is extraordinarily strong.  It is, as Wiki says, “With God on our side” updated.

And yet it only ever got 28 outings live on stage.  It is a shame.  Here’s the official video

 

That opening may be thought of as an invention, a device, and yet it is hard to see how else such a song could start.  A song which is nothing but a series of two line “verses” (I put the phrase in inverted commas- can two lines really be  a verse?) and which just goes and goes.

And then there is the music.  One chord, and that’s all.  Every verse starting with the same line, “We live in a political world”.   For once, without the driving energy of the accompaniment it is hard to see how the song could work.

And for goodness sake – the verse is in essence just three notes – although to be fair later Dylan does through in a few variations.  But it is hard to imagine other songs built so successfully out of such a limited set of materials.

Here’s an outtake with all the verses (the released version cut six of them including the verse below).

We live in a political world 

World of wine, women and song

You could make it through without the first two

Boy without the third you wouldn't last long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9im1cHWy1E

But the extraordinary thing is that for once it is not the lyrics that stay with the listener first, second or third time it is sung.  That is not to say the lyrics are not good, but rather that the energy and drive of the song is so great that it is enough.  The words come next.

We live in a political world
Love don’t have any place
We’re living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don’t have a face

That first verse gives us a sense that we are into an electric protest song – the loss of love, crime is everywhere in this anonymous world.   The music drives us on, no time to stop, no time to love.

We live in a political world
Icicles hanging down
Wedding bells ring and angels sing
Clouds cover up the ground

The symbols of the past are still there, but nothing is as it was.  The old values are lost even though they seem to be here still.  We still get married but live in the darkness of the clouds.  If you have something to say, forget it, because if it doesn’t fit, no one will let your expression develop and reach others.

We live in a political world
Wisdom is thrown into jail
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail

By this stage the music is driving at such a pace that it is hard to keep up, everything is lost to the political world

We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank

And how much foresight is there to blame the banks!

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last

We live in a political world
The one we can see and can feel
But there’s no one to check, it’s all a stacked deck
We all know for sure that it’s real

It is particularly interesting that the two verses above run straight into each other before a musical break.   “We all know for sure that it’s real” is the ultimate horror.

Here’s the live version from 1990 – not the one I wanted to find, but it’s an example.

So the horror builds until the final moment in which it is clear that we know nothing – not even the name of whatever God it is that we choose to worship.  And then the fade out after a longer inter-verse type break.  That’s it, everything is broken.  Except that of course that is another song on a later track.

We live in a political world
Everything is hers or his
Climb into the frame and shout God’s name
But you’re never sure what it is

From a man who made his name in part from unusual chord changes and less than perfect productions of his songs on record, this is a complete reversal.  The music on the album is perfectly performed – as it has to be because it counts for so much.  The chord is still just one, there is nothing else, for we have nothing else.

Of course many would not agree.  The All Music review was much more of a put down:

“Political World” launches the album with a tirade against the modern world. Not one of Dylan’s most successful songs, it contains rather banal verses such as the opening “We live in a political world/Love don’t have any place/We live in a time where men commit crime/And crime don’t have a face,” which leaves one to argue, which age does this not apply to? It seems Dylan’s detest of the modern world has led him to irrationality and sweeping general statements. The fast tune to the song is rather infectious, but “Political World” has moments of insight, but on the whole it is a rather trite, cloyed song.”

Heylin for once managed to catch the moment much more accurately to my mind.  “Dylan soon singing it like someone who really did despair of the shape of things to come.”  Unfortunately I can’t find a recording of one of those later concerts, but the outtake from the album gives us an insight.

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.

 

Posted in Oh Mercy, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Tell Ol’ Bill: Dylan digs deep into the song’s origins to create a brilliant film song

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review has been revised multiple times since it was first published.  This update 6 July 2019.   Copies of outtakes from the Tell Ol Bill sessions appear and vanish – if the ones listed are not on line any more, just go a-searching.  There are probably some still out there.

Having written Love and Theft in 2001, Dylan contented himself with just three songs in the next four years: all written for movies.

The first, “Cross the Green Mountain” musically returned to Dylan’s approach of the late 1960s.  The film “Gods and Generals” lost 10 million dollars for Ted Turner’s company.

The final song in the short sequence Can’t escape from you was for a film that was never made.   In between came Tell Ol Bill – a song I rate as one of Dylan’s two greatest works of all time.

The movie that Tell Ol Bill was made for is “North Country” which the New York Times called “an old-fashioned liberal weepie about truth and justice.”   Like Green Mountain it lost money, but it’s losses in terms of film production were modest, and it was fairly highly acclaimed, getting a 63% approval rating as opposed to an 8% approval rating for “Gods and Generals”.

One version of the song by Dylan was released, but since then a series of different recordings undertaken in the studio have emerged in which Dylan tries out a variety of changes to the song – including (quite unusually in musical terms) moving it completely from being in a major key to a minor key – just as we approach the final version, that is provided on the album.

The versions of these earlier recordings have now been removed from the internet but I can say that to my ear there are several that just don’t work at all.  But gradually Dylan moves towards the masterpiece that we have come to know.

In some of these earlier versions the emphasis of the song seems to move from the balance between the character in the story and the environment, to emphasising only the man.  It is as that balance is achieved that the song reaches the level of being an utter masterpiece which is, to my mind “Take 9”

And then having done that Bob changed it totally

Now my point is that although the words are virtually identical, this is a totally different song, and as such as new meanings.   Or to put it another way the meaning does not come just from the lyrics – it comes from the way the music is performed.

And to make the point ever more strongly, trying this

https://youtu.be/vzgCXi69zEQ

So now let’s go back to the origins…

Tell Old Bill appeared in a compendium of American folk songs by Carl Sandburg’s compendium of American folksongs from 1927 which does indeed open with the lines Tell Old Bill when he gets home/Leave them downtown gals alone.

You can hear a version here:

Not at all the same as with Dylan of course – except the opening seven words.  But Dylan did record the Sanburg collected song for Self Portrait, (although it wasn’t included) so it clearly has always been on his mind.

The song is said to be derived from the Georgia Sea Islands – but sadly for me in terms of American folk music once we get beyond the music of the Appalachians (which itself was derived from English, Irish and Scottish traditional music, mixed with the Afro-American early blues), I’m completely out of my depth.  So Georgia Sea Islands music – sorry I really can’t help.

However there is a second source for this song: the Carter Family song “I never loved but one”  which has the chorus

I look around but cannot trace
One welcome word or smiling face
In gazing crowds I am alone
Because I never loved but one

So there we seem to have the two moments that started out the journey to what we now know as the Dylan song Tell ol’ Bill.    If you want to trace this further you will need the CD of the all the out takes of Dylan’s recording of the song noted above.  But do start with the Carter Family original, then listen to the album of outtakes, and notice the moment when the song moves dramatically from a major key piece into a minor key piece, and there you have the total evolution.

Oh and there is one more bit I missed in my very first review of the song: a reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s “To one in paradise” …   (This Dylan guy don’t half do a lot of reading from a whole variety of sources!)

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

Thunder blasted tree indeed.

But leaving aside all the musical and poetic origins the moment one hears Tell Ol’ Bill it seems to relate directly to Things Have Changed.  It is of isolation, one last idea to try.   Yes, there’s a different speed to the piece, but the whole feel of the music is similar.

There’s that misty, removed feeling in the lyrics, and very similar orchestration.   The number of chords used is limited (although Tell Ol’ Bill is in a minor key – to which it was changed around take five – while Things have Changed is in the more conventional major), but more than anything it is the feeling generated.  The feeling  through the arrangement on the Tell Tale Signs album, the feeling through the lyrics…  there is a world out there that is not quite making sense.

So wonderful is this piece at creating an image that this track alone would make Tell Tale Signs worth buying (although of course you also get Mississippi, which is also worth the cost of the whole album on its own).

Songs in minor keys usually have a sad, negative feel, yet this song bounces along.   The singer hardly has a penny to his name, but at the same time the river is whispering.  This is Dylan’s genius – to make a song of strangeness in a minor key bounce along, taking us all the way through to the line, “Anything is worth a try.”  These are reflections back to the notion of the traveller – so often a theme in Dylan, but here the traveller not of the Restless Farewell but of having reached the end of the line.

In the chordal accompaniment to the recording (which is uniquely for Dylan in B flat minor) there is that endlessly rocking G-flat major / F major interchange to introduce each line, which emphasises the opening, and which makes the whole thing rock along (Dylan himself on piano).  Yes, maybe the singer is near death (“the heavens have never seemed so near”) but this is nothing like “Not Dark Yet” – this is a man ok with his coming end.  He is running towards it, because anything is worth a try.

Thus throughout the song we have the contrasts – the rocking rhythm, the dry but well attuned voice, and these images of nameless places.

And it is only as we progress that we see there is a woman involved

You trampled on me as you passed, Left the coldest kiss upon my brow, All my doubts and fears have gone at last, I’ve nothing more to tell you now.

And it is that realisation that takes us forward:

I lay awake at night with troubled dreams

The enemy is at the gate.It is in fact a world gone wrong – a world that Dylan might have witnessed from the car in the video of “Times have changed” – a world where nothing is right, and everything is warped and twisted…

Tell Ol’ Bill when he comes home, Anything is worth a try, Tell him that I’m not alone, That the hour has come to do or die.

A composite piece taken from many different sources and inspirations, but most certainly still, an utter masterpiece.

What 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

Posted in Tell Tales Signs | 26 Comments

Dylan’s “John Brown”: not just the song it is the staggering performance

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood

It is not the song “John Brown” that works so perfectly within its own context – the story of the mother proudly telling everyone her son is fighting in the war and then coming back shot to pieces is an old one – it is the recording of the Unplugged performance that we have.   That is what makes it so memorable.

There is not a note out of place, not a moment that is anything less than perfect, and Dylan gives us his message line by line, fully and ideally backed up by the band: banjo and all.  The musicians look like the Heartbreakers.

There is something about that backing which creates the smoke and flags of the battlefield, and which combines with the drive and vigor of the melody.   The chord sequence is tantalizing – the first verse clearly using only one chord, while the later verses sometimes (but not always) add the descending chord sequence of the guitar around that basic minor.

Eventually, as verse piles upon verse, we get to the final dénouement of the last two verses.  Yes, it is simple stuff, and yes we’ve heard it a million times before in songs from the 19th and 20th century, but never better than this.

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink,
That I was just a puppet in a play.
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke,
And a cannon ball blew my eyes away.”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand.
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand”.

We do have another version by Dylan from 1962

The song was seemingly written just before Don’t Think Twice, and seems to reflect Dylan looking back to the old songs to find issues to express and songs to play.  It first appeared on the Broadside Ballads under the name of “Blind Boy Grunt”.

As I noted above the theme can be traced back to Irish songs such as My Son John.  Here’s a rendition of that…

I’m sure Dylan would have been completely familiar with this song, or one of the other Irish variaants of the song.

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.

 

Posted in MTV Unplugged (Live), The Songs | 6 Comments

Dylan’s “Series of Dreams” complete with the missing verse & a brilliant alternate version.

Posted on January 17, 2009 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood

Note: This article was Updated July 2018 with 3 recordings added including the version with the “extra” verse.  But since then all the versions with the extra verse have been removed from the internet as far as I can see.   Below is one version without that extra verse.

I’m leaving the article as it was written, and hope that one day I might be able to find another copy available on line.

But the version with extra verse is available on Spotify: type in the song title and look for the song from Tell Tale Signs, which has a time length of 6 minutes 26 seconds.

According to Wikipedia Series of Dreams is “One of Dylan’s most ambitious compositions.”   It is difficult to see quite why such a claim should be made, and in typical Wiki fashion there is no attempt at all to justify the claim. 

The song was omitted from “Oh Mercy” and only emerged in an edited version on the Bootleg Series 1-3.  This omission comes at the same time as the omission of Dignity from the same album, and thus Series of Dreams invites us to start with this issue: why cut it?

 

Dylan’s ability to omit from albums songs that are thought by many to be his strongest pieces has caused much comment and bemusement, but if you read the comments of those who were there at the time, (a point on which Wiki is more helpful), and indeed if you simply listen to the songs that are cut it becomes clear that Dylan has two reasons for omitting a song.

Either it is no good, or it is very good, but not quite complete, not quite perfect.   The latter case is the one that can make omissions hard to understand at the time, unless we can see the song through Dylan’s eyes, and hear it through his ears.  How can he omit (for example) Blind Willie McTell?  The answer is that he knows what it might have been if only that final key could have been entered into the lock – that final door opened.   He knows it is a great, but flawed song, and can’t get the flaws out of it.   Without that final twist to resolve the problem the song is more frustrating than any of the more ordinary songs – and so gets cut.

So it is instructive to hear a Series of Dreams from this perspective: it is almost right but not quite.   Indeed, being able to see where the problem is, is easier for us, at a distance.  It is notoriously hard for the artist who is “inside” the piece and living its very existence.

Dylan’s comment, according to Heylin, was “Look, I don’t think the lyrics are finished; I’m not happy with them.  The songs too long.  But I don’t want to cut any of the lyrics.”

But in fact the lyrics were cut, with one verse removed, to wit:

Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the middle and the bottom drop out
And you're walking out of the darkness
And into the shadows of doubt
Wasn't going to any great trouble 
To believe in, "It's whatever it seems"
Nothing too heavy to burst the bubble
Just thinking of a series of dreams.

If there is a problem with the whole song it is the problem with the concept of dream itself.  Dreams are confusing, surreal, mystifying, muddled, even muggy.  As such they are well suited to Dylan who has repeatedly introduced us to surrealism and “unclarity” in his songs.

Indeed the opening verse with its lines “Where nothing comes up to the top” and “Nothing  too very scientific” get this perfectly, and everything in the song is set fair.  It is general – a backdrop to something we have all experienced.

Verse two in the released recording keeps up the promise… “And there’s no exit in any direction, ‘Cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes.”  That odd feeling about dreams, that there was something more, except you can’t quite see it…

And then, suddenly Dylan stops talking about the general, the uncertain, the obscure, the surreal, and takes us into certainty.   Of course that happens in dreams – you do get dreams where an umbrella is opened – perhaps for no reason.  I can just imagine saying, “I had this weird dream last night – I had an umbrella, and I wanted it shut and put away, (I don’t know why, but it was important in the dream) but it kept opening, and every time I shut it, it came open again…”

That is what dreams can be like – but that gives us no insight into dreams in general, it is just a quick morning comment about last night’s dream.  And that is the key difference – “dreams in general” against the oddity, and ultimately the total insignificance of last night’s dream.

That is why the “middle 8” (the “bridge” as it is called in some commentaries – the B section in the classic ternary AABA form, which this piece is in) falls apart.  The music is perfection – after the exclusive use of the three major chords we suddenly hit the minor, completely unexpectedly.  But that line (“Dreams where the umbrella is folded”) lets us down, and lyrically the song fails at that point, because suddenly it is talking about trivia.  (“I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours” was a much better line, from 30 years earlier).

Then we are back to the A section, and Dylan is now securely fixed into telling us the details of the dreams. 

In one, numbers were burning
In another, I witnessed a crime
In one, I was running, and in another
All I seemed to be doing was climb

And that’s the problem – the song attempts to be about dreams in general (where it works perfectly) and dreams in particular, (where it is certain to fail, unless you are going to get into Freudian dream analysis where each element means something.) 

To write a song which explains the meaning of dreams would be incredibly difficult – to write a song that we want to listen to which had that as its base would surely be impossible.   Dylan does not go down that route – he just tells us bits about the dreams, but leaves the purpose of this discourse open.  

Hence the opening of the song, with its discussion of dreams, and how one might think about a series of them, works wonderfully, and is interesting at every level.  The music flows, the production is very unusual for Dylan, and the notion of moving away from the normal Dylan guitar sound fits with the subject matter.  But the moment we move on and get into this subject specific content, there is nothing to hold our attention.  Since we most likely have not had dreams about umbrellas or climbing, it has no significance.

To enjoy the song therefore we have to stop listening to the lyrics in the second half, and that of course is not good when the composer is Dylan.   My belief is that he knew that, but because of his proximity to the moment of creation, he couldn’t see the way out.  That’s not to say that I could see how to solve the problem – only that with the benefit of distance (in terms of years and culture) I can at last spot of possible source of the problem.

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.

Posted in Bootleg Series volume 3 | 35 Comments

Neighborhood Bully: how not to write a song in praise of something

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

There is something I really don’t like about Neighbourhood Bully, despite Dylan’s assertions that it is not about Zionism.  Maybe it is not.  Maybe it is just about the state of Israel.  I would always appreciate that one is not the other, but still…

The point is that if you are going to write a song in praise of something it is best either to be romantic, or to evolve a scene of pastel colours, and soft tones.  If you want to be tough, be selective in what you say.  If you get into hard facts it is always going to be difficult if you slip up at any point and say something that is palpably untrue.

In Neighbourhood Bully there’s eleven bouncing rocking strophic verses all fixed on three chords.  It gives you a sense of power and certainty.  You want to say, wow, yeah, let’s go and get them.  Except, except…

Take the opening.   “His enemies say, he’s on their land”.  Yes, when speaking of the state of Israel, most of the world, and United Nations Resolution 242, say that the land Israel took during the six days war should be returned to the countries from which it took the land.  Long term occupation is not acceptable. 

So Dylan’s got it right there.  People do say Israel is on their neighbours’ land.  Equally most people with a semblance of a balanced view of the world acknowledge that the Six Days War was not started by Israel, and that Israel showed extraordinary military ability by knocking out all their neighbours so quickly.

But where does that get us?   Simply to an argument that says that Israel has made matters worse for itself by continuing the occupation, and that had it worked out a settlement within the first year, it would not still be fighting.  Can’t prove it of course, but it is an argument.

What has all this got to do with “Neighborhood Bully”?  Simply that by invoking a line such as “on their land” in the second out of 55 lines of a song, Dylan invites us to get involved in such debate.  The song continues by telling us how badly off Israel is, how everyone is against Israel, and then we have….

Verse six, which opens with the classic, “He got no allies to really speak of,” and we think simply of the United States of America, and are reminded of the fact that 40% of Israel’s budget is spent on defence – an insane level of expenditure which can only be maintained by the financial contribution of the USA.

This is not to attempt in a few lines to have a serious debate about Israel, but to think about the song.  If Dylan really wants to make a statement about Israel, then putting that line in is catastrophic.  For the neutral listener it destroys the song in one simple line – and we still have five and a half verses to go.

Back on the political front, in writing this I am of course aware that the US also gives extraordinary levels of aid to Egypt, following the Camp David Accord, and I’m aware of the corruption and insanity of the many Arab regimes – indeed I have lived part of my life in one of the Arab protagonists against Israel, which at least gives me a little insight.

But I repeat this is not the main thrust of my problem with this song.  It is the point I made at the start.  If you are going to do a political song, you don’t have to be balanced (no such song ever is), and your facts don’t have to be inclusive (ditto).   But you have to avoid lines which are just so incredibly wrong that they bring the whole song down and make those who don’t believe dismiss what you have said.

Think of “Times they are a changing”.  It brings us all together, and joins everyone.   “Neighbourhood Bully” just pushes people further apart.

Footnote: following a range of comments about matters concerning Israel, I have decided to stop publishing comments on matters relating to Israel.  I’ve published a fair number, and have only rejected the ones that are highly abusive towards myself.  But I don’t think any of the points change anyone’s mind or expand the debate any further, and so I think that’s enough.

What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this 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.

Posted in Infidels | 45 Comments

Foot of Pride: Bob Dylan’s rambling masterpiece which tears us limb from limb

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Writing the second version of this review it struck me what a curious mixture of songs Bob wrote in 1983.  Here is the sequence of composing, as far as it can be put together, around the time of Foot of Pride

Neighbourhood Bully is a song about Israel – but not necessarily the Israel we know. It might be it might not.  “Tell Me” is a lost love refrain.  “Foot of Pride is…

One suggestion is that it is based around a funeral as he reflects on the notion that “judgement is mine”, and the fact that an awful lot of people are going to burn come judgement day.

And then he’s off and away criticising the American government for its treatment of Julius and Ethel, who were electrocuted for giving away state secrets on the making of nuclear weapons.

It’s an interesting run of songs, and maybe this is why, no matter how you approach Foot of Pride, there’s something very odd about it.  According to the booklet notes that came with Bootleg 1-3 it is very rarely commented upon, and one can understand why.

You can hear it via Spotify if you don’t have the album, but otherwise try this version from Lou Reed.

This is not to say that it is not all absorbing – which is what Dylan clearly found given that he recorded it around 40 times and still couldn’t find a version that he liked.  His explanation (that the song would not stay in tempo and always speeded up slightly) is certainly born out by the version we have from the Bootleg 1-3 collection, but it is also reported that Dylan recorded the song in a multiplicity of styles, as if he couldn’t decide what to do with it.

Musically the song is a variant 12 bar blues – but greatly extended.  In B major you get the B, B, E, B section that you’d expect, and then a chorus section with the repeated “Well there ain’t no going back” bit.

The 12 bar format was created for the simplest of popular music forms – the blues.  It is the chordal format for “Well I woke up this morning, blues falling down like hail” – that simple yet elegant statement of falling into the abyss – which is what Dylan is portraying here – from this point there ain’t no going back.

The 12 bar blues therefore was never intended for a set of lyrics as complex as this song, nor for the highly variable line lengths and internal rhymes, but that is what Dylan gives it.  He stretches the old blues sequence and then stretches it again, just as he did on “I once knew a man”.

And clearly Dylan believes in this song, because he gets the delivery of the lyrics dead on all the way through, and the band know exactly where to go – except for that slight change in tempo.

Just look at the opening verse

Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a male
They sang “Danny Boy” at his funeral and the Lord’s Prayer
Preacher talking ’bout Christ betrayed
It’s like the earth just opened and swallowed him up
He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground
You know what they say about bein’ nice 
                to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin’ down
Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

and then wonder how it could be that something like this has never ever been performed by Bob in concert.  Just listening to the way in which he sings the chorus lines is so enormously powerful.

But at the same time, there is no clarity here.  What exactly does

Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a male

mean?  It probably means something, or it has gone beyond meaning, but I don’t get it.

Some reviews of this song focus on the religious content – and of course the notion about the people who are self-possessed, self-obsessed, inward looking, defensive… all being those who are going to suffer come the second coming is fair enough, but that first verse really doesn’t quite fit, and the people we are hearing about change from verse to verse without any explanation.

What it reminds me of – and it is a strange thing to think about when hearing a piece of Dylan obscuranti – is the cover of Strange Days, by the Doors.  All these freaks and oddities, there for no reason – except that the days are strange.

It is a really interesting song, not least because of the quality of singing and playing, but above all if you listen to it too much, instead of insight and awareness, the only thing you are left with is madness.  When Dylan says, “I’m going to look at you, til my eyes go blind,” you want to say, “Oh if only I had thought of that.  When he says, “Your time will come, let hot iron blow as he raised the shade,” you are thinking, “I am so glad I never thought of that.”

Coming back to this review, which as I say I wrote early on in the history of this site, and listening to Dylan and Lou Reed’s performance, I keep thinking of the line “Let the dead bury the dead”.  It is a Biblical line of course, but Dylan somehow makes it sound like it is one of his own, which is amazingly clever (and as you will appreciate if you have been reading the reviews on this site – I’ve read an awful lot more of the Bible while writing these reviews, than I had done for many, many years before).

Ultimately the behaviour of mankind as a whole and individual members of mankind, disgust Dylan, as I guess they do most of us.  So powerful and so overwhelming is this recording that beyond that I am not too sure it matters exactly what Bob is saying.

It is a wonderful, strange, confusing moment in Bob’s compositional existence which still had me baffled when I re-wrote this review I chose to finish by quoting another writer’s review in full.  Maybe you’ll find that gets closer to the meaning of it all…  This from Allmusic.com   I hope they don’t mind.

“Originally recorded for the Infidels sessions in 1983, “Foot of Pride” is one of the most explosive and venomous songs Dylan has ever written, with the artist spitting out lyrics and verses cascading with potent imagery. As typical of Dylan’s songs during this period, he mixes the spiritual with the secular, with lines such as “Preacher talking ’bout Christ’s betrayed/It’s like the earth just opened and swallowed him up” are echoed throughout the song. Essentially a moralist song about the various wrongdoings of man, and then the chorus is a warning: “There ain’t no going back/When your foot of pride goes down/Ain’t no going back.” Although the song delivers many eminently quotable lines, it is much too long and rambles in places, and it is perhaps understandable why Dylan chose to leave this off Infidels. The artist himself has never performed the song live in concert, although Lou Reed did a justly famous rendition of it at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert, mastering the half-spoken/half-singing delivery of the verses expertly.”

And then, in 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, I got it.  Or at least I think I did.  It takes the notion of pride, and the way that those against you will use your pride to bring you low.  But there ain’t no going back.

If you create something of merit – no matter how spectacular or how simple – you have done it, and there really is nothing wrong with being proud of that.  But that is no cause to stop.  You can’t undo the past – there ain’t no going back.  You have achieved that.  Now you move on.

Or put another way, “Don’t let them bring you down.”  And that was the way I came to grasp an understanding of this year.  Bob had been brought under the influence of Christianity, but ultimately had found the preaching and teaching and rule making too much for him [this is just my opinion of course].   And now he was simply saying “no”.  This world doesn’t fit the image that he had in his mind during his Christian period.

But that’s been done.  There ain’t no going back.  One might even say, “Don’t let them bring you down.”

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.

Posted in Bootleg Series volume 3, The Songs | 44 Comments