Untold Dylan

Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me”: never has a 12 bar blues sounded more beautiful

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood, updated 5 August 2018 with additional video links.

https://youtu.be/Wy7UNuw81Ig

Of course you never know with Dylan, but it is hard to put any interpretation on “She Belongs to Me” other than that it is about a child – a daughter most like, but it could be the daughter of a friend.

Never has a 12 bar blues sounded so beautiful, so relaxed, so warm, so kind. Perhaps a listener who is in his 20s smoking dope might not find it so, but anyone who has a daughter instantly sees it, feels it, warms to it.

If the lyrics don’t convey the message then the music and the accompaniment does. The most famous version of course is on Bringing it all Back Home, but there are also examples on the curious Self Portrait album, recorded at the Isle of Wight, and a truly lovely version on “No Direction Home”. This last version is perhaps the earliest attempt by Dylan to have an instrumental break without a lead instrument – something that he worked on over and over again in the concerts and recordings of the late 90s and early 21^st century.

The girl in the song has everything – she never stumbles, she has an Egyptian ring, she’s got everything she needs…

Of course it is a child – the child who can play forever with the simplest toys, who can paint or crayon a picture and make it exactly what she wants it to be. She is the girl you idolise, the girl you bow down to, the girl whose birthday you make into the biggest occasion in the history of the world. The girl to whom you want to say, “I made you, you are everything, this is the world I give you.”

And of course you buy her toys.

What father would not have wanted to give her such a beautiful eloquent testimony as this elegant song, in that most simple and traditional of formats, the 12 bar blues with its repeated opening line.

Quite how it is possible to interpret the song differently, and still make sense of the title is beyond me – although I must admit much of the world is beyond me. The girl has the freedom of the world – which only the young have. And yet she belongs to the adult in her life. Only with a child is the title, the general lyric, and the final line about the trumpet and drum meaningful, without getting into the most convoluted analysis of the trumpet and drum, not to mention the title and half of the lyrics being symbolic for something else.

In a case like this, let’s live with Occam’s Razor – if there is a simple explanation why not take it, and make it so.

If you haven’t heard the version on No Direction Home, give it a try. It is just something to behold. It is available on Spotify

And here is a fascinating live version which I really do love; it seems to give a new insight into the song every time I hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy7UNuw81Ig

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

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

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

Posted in Bringing it all Back Home, No Direction Home, Self Portrait | 32 Comments

Bob Dylan’s “Dignity”. A work of genius, or neat but unfinished idea?

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

And what are we to make of Dignity? Raved over by many Dylan fans, it didn’t turn up on the mainstream albums, but appeared on the Essential album, and twice on the 2008 outtakes album.

https://youtu.be/2Dlh-X1fpoQ

The Essential Bob Dylan version is presumably to be considered the definitive version – although so many recordings of Dylan and band it contains errors by the backing musicians, who clearly have not practiced the piece enough.

It is one of the “long songs”, and it almost works. But not completely. “Have you seen Dignity,” the recurrent theme doesn’t quite make sense in each version. Prince Phillip at the home of the blues could well be a clever reference to the blue blood of the British royal family, except the remainder of the lines (money up front etc) doesn’t quite fit.

But this is not to say it is not a fabulous piece of music that for any other writer will be the crowning glory. It is a song that you instantly recall, and yet it is also a song which the histories tell us was recorded and re-recorded and Dylan was never satisfied.

The reason is, in my opinion, because although it is a brilliant conception, it is flawed by the notion of Dignity itself. Dylan has written many songs in which the same line or part line ends the verse – here it is the endless set of allusions to Dignity as the finishing touch each time around. And yet the concept of dignity just doesn’t fit into the surreal set of pictures the song paints, nor into the way the song happily putters along. You can have that sort of melody, that sort of descending bass for “land of the midnight sun” etc, that sort of I IV chord interchange through the verse, and those sorts of surreal images, all mashed up into one song. But they don’t have anything to do with dignity.

In fact the way to hear this song is at a distance, not taking in the lyrics, not really knowing what Dylan is singing about, not feeling ill at ease about the moralistic point about the worth of humankind that he somehow never succeeds in making.

A re-write of the lyrics would do it – a new theme to fit the tune – but as it is, it is great, but flawed.

Except of course the end, which is perfect.

So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take
To find dignity

Try this incomplete version if you have not heard all the variants

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Essential Bob Dylan | 6 Comments

Bob Dylan’s Mozambique; a simple, bouncy, jolly tune. What’s wrong with that?

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood

According to Wikipedia “Mozambique” was just a game, based on how many words rhymed with Mozambique. If that is the case the answer is three.

More interestingly perhaps, according to Allen Ginsberg writing the sleeve notes, if Dylan can do it, America can do it.

And in this case Dylan just wanted to write a simple straightforward bouncy jolly tune with no deeper message than the fact that life can be good.

As a result we have a minor masterpiece. It might be a throw-away song, but my goodness it works. It is simple in the standard ternary form (A A B A), with a gorgeous tune, never varying from its approach – a gentle celebration of the country and its people, a simple fun recording that above everything else just works.

On the album it is a shock, coming as it does straight after the thrusting edge of Isis, and being followed by the Spanish slowness of One more Cup of Coffee, spoilt as that song is by the opening error by the violinist who forgets there’s an extra bar before the singing starts. But Dylan’s never been one for editing a take due to an error.

Mozambique has no such slips – it is a perfect recording of a simple song – but what gives it a curious link to Isis is that the chord structure (the tonic, the flattened seventh and the subdominant) is exactly the same as Isis. Maybe that’s the trick – from the ice and the rain of Isis to the aqua blue sky. They are both magical lands, the land of Isis and the land of Mozambique, but in such very different ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=vJFvcVAXSfA

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Desire | 1 Comment

Don’t Take Everybody to be your Friend: part of Dylan’s inspiration

Posted on November 18, 2008 by Tony Attwood

The Theme Time radio programmes resulted in at least one album: a double sided affair which includes “Don’t Take Everybody to be your friend” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Sam Price Trio.

Recorded in 1947 when Dylan must have been what, 3 or 4, this song edges all the others for its vibrancy and vitality. It is the sort of thing that Traveling Willburys might have recorded if they had been around some years earlier, and it is worth the price of the recording on its own.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe had a voice that was staggering, swooping up to the notes, hitting them hard, but beautifully, she doesn’t need to warm up – she’s there from the off. She gives you complete comprehension of the lyrics without stressing the words.

Meanwhile behind her the trio plays so stunningly brilliantly it is a track you can play over and over without ever getting bored. You listen to the lyrics, you listen to the piano, you listen to the bass… they are all masters.

The song is a simple 3 chord trick, with the 7ths and a hint of a minor 4th thrown in on the way down – it has been used a billion times. But never with such vigour and fun.

Some will cause you to weep, some will cause you to moan

Some will gain your confidence and cause you to lose your home…

How up to date do you want your music to be? This is such fine you just want to get up to jive, and then want to play it because you missed something. What Bob Dylan has done is highlight an absolute masterpiece of social realism set to be great beat. This is how it can be – not love, not lost love, not a song about dance, just a word of warning in hard times.

Oh yes. More please.

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in The Songs, Theme Time Radio Hour | Leave a comment

Bob Dylan’s “Isis”: the meaning of the music and the song

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Isis. A song so revered that the longest running Dylan magazine is named after the song.

But why – what is it in Isis that is so powerful, so overwhelmingly important in terms of the Dylan genre?

Certainly it is a hard song to pin down. Those funny people at Wikipedia have it as being in B flat in ¾ time – actually you only have to sit at a piano to find it is in B, and you only have to be a musician to know it is in 6/8. Try conducting it in ¾ – with half a minute your hand is ready to drop off. But the real clue is hitting you in the ears in every verse. Put it in 6/8 and the piano is hitting 3 equal notes for each half a bar – exactly as 6/8 requires.

So, a strophic song in 6/8 – unusual for Dylan. And the melody wanders – there is a basis but the song doesn’t quite stay where the melody is laid down.

Is it a song about his wife Sara? Well, maybe, perhaps, but it is a strain to make the story work. Again I would refer you to the Wiki article which simply takes a stream of events, without asking the rather relevant question – what the hell is going on in this SEQUENCE.

For sequence is the key issue here. Isis was the Egyptian god of nature. She befriended all those at the edge of society – slaves, workers, the poor. She gave them hope – but not of working harder for salvation. Simply hope.

The Egyptian link is clear because there is the line about coming to the pyramids (albeit covered in ice, with snow and the like circling about – somewhat unusual just down the road from Cairo.) But we get the full Egyptian bit with the breaking into the tomb, the casket being empty and all that.

And where are we now – nowhere but in a B movie about raiding the pyramids and stealing the treasure. All the usual stuff about getting stuck in the sandstorm – except it is an icestorm.

In the end it seems more like the science fiction stores of the 1950s in which Mars with its deserts is recast as the Wild West – the new frontier with bars and bandits and searches for treasures. And in the end I am more comfortable with that – another world. The Empress from the tarot features heavily on the sleeve – maybe that’s it – Isis, the Empress.

Isis is a mystery, and the story makes no real sense – it is just a set of irrational images struggling from one episode to another without that sequence that we so crave. And that’s why it works. It tempts you to think there is a meaningful sequence here, but as you try to grab it, it walks away.

That’s the beauty of the song – each time you grab its simple structure is just gets up and walks away – but at the same time it holds together through the music which is based relentlessly over the same three chords, over and over again. Indeed without that ceaselessly repeating musical base we would have nothing to hold on to at all.

For such an important song in the Dylan canon it is interesting that Dylan only performed it on stage 46 times between 1975 and 1976, again suggesting an association with Sara. They were divorced in June 1977.

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Desire, The Songs | 19 Comments

Changing of the Guards: The meanings behind Bob Dylan’s song

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

The original review was written in 2008, and then updated in 2013. Coming back to it in 2018, I found myself very unhappy with what I had written, and thus decided to start again.

Changing of the Guards: first track on Street Legal, failed to make it as a single (presumably because Dylan fans buy albums), and yet turns up on Greatest Hits 3 and The Essential. Someone who selects these things (Dylan himself?) either thought it was a great song or else thought, “hey, here’s one we haven’t done much to push.”

This song (and several others from 1977) seemed then and seem now to suggest a time when Dylan apparently wanted to write another epic song but didn’t quite see which epic issues he was writing about. On the other hand he was clearly interested in the possibilities that arise from combining different and varied rhyming systems with images of great events that are never quite in focus.

In my original review I suggested that Bob did a cut and paste job with a load of lyrics that had something to do with the medieval period, and said to the audience, “make something of that.” I think I was having a very bad day because in retrospect that is far too harsh, not least because there are some very interesting sets of images within the song, but hearing it again now does suggest that we are looking at a changing landscape with characters and events that not only never become clear but are in the future never going to become clear. Rather like the remnants of a dream recalled in the morning. We know there is something there, and recall some of the detail but can’t quite work out what it is all about.

Which perhaps is how we get to something so very unfitting by the third line: “Where the good shepherd grieves”. OK he was about to go all Christian, but this doesn’t seem to be Christian, except in that it was a celebration of everything that was wrong about Christianity and the power of the priest at this time.

Unless (and this is just a guess from me) it is all about a reading of the tarot cards. The clue to that comes at the very end, (“Between the King and the Queen of Swords”).

Heylin quotes Jacques Levy as noting Dylan’s fascination with all the possibilities of rhyme at this time, and that quite possibly is the heart of the matter – the song is about rhymes and how they can be manipulated in a five line poem. The music is the same for each verse, but what happens in the lyrics changes, changes and changes again just like that half remembered dream.

In such a scenario, at the end the lyrics don’t really matter, what matters is the feel, and “feel” is what we get layered on with the sax and the chorus repeating certain words as we go along, for reasons that will never become clear. Words picked out, just because they are there…

When I did my second attempt at making sense of this song in a review, in 2013, I noted that one couplet did catch my ear….

But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards

For me “Eden is Burning” is full of such potential that I suggested in that review I wanted to think it through, use it in one of my own songs (not to suggest that I am even on the same compositional planet as Dylan, but it just catches me that way) and then think, oh, what a dull way to use it.

But Heylin has a quote from Dylan apparently made just before he recorded the song, which I failed to comment upon in the original review, but which now a few years later seems rather interesting and helpful, in which Bob said, “I don’t know where these songs come from. Sometimes I’m thinking to some other age that I live through. I must have had the experience of all these songs because sometimes I don’t know what I’m writing about until years later it becomes clearer to me.”

It rather fits in with the dream notion – Dylan has had these images from somewhere, and they don’t quite fit together but mix in that notion that at the time he was playing around with rhyming schemes, and we get this piece: a mix of images and rhymes that suggest a set of events might be being played out on a TV screen, but sometimes they fade and quite often we seem to have slipped into another channel.

Heylin’s conclusion, “What had begun as a conversation between two lovers the morning after their tryst at the dawn of battle has changed into a prophetic pronouncement of the End Times,” may or may not be right in its detail, but as the broad representation of what is going on in this song I think it gets to the heart of the matter. There is a magic out there, expressed in a game of rhymes which we glimpse and are even part of sometimes but can never quite fully step into.

Here is the version you will remember.

https://vimeo.com/259868644

and below a live version which suggests to me that Bob himself was still struggling fully to come to terms with the ever swirling mist of images and rhymes he had created.

In terms of the music there is (or was) a review on Wikipedia which suggests that the song ends on the dominant chord (that is the chord based on the fifth note of the scale the song is in.) This is completely wrong – it is performed in A flat, and ends on the chord of A flat. There is nothing odd about the chords used – A flat, F minor, D flat and E flat – exactly as you might expect.

In a very real sense the backing singers and the sax are there to help make sure that the relative normality of the music doesn’t take too much away from the lyrics. But if you need the lyrics to mean something maybe take the medieval period (the poverty, persecution, disease, and belief that both the dead and living share the earth as everyone waits for Revelation to come to pass), and mix it all up amidst the shadows, and peer at it through half closed eyes, and then maybe you get the picture. Or maybe not, but it’s still enjoyable. Not a great Dylan moment, but still nice to hear it once in a while.

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.

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 Essential Bob Dylan, Street Legal, The Songs | 52 Comments

Things have changed: the meanings behind Bob Dylan’s song

Posted on November 16, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Dylan’s commentary on being dislocated from the world, while being within it – here but not here – spreads across a multiplicity of his songs. It wasn’t there at the start – Times they are a-changing dripped with a certainty that runs across so many early songs.

The problem with Times though was that that most famous of Dylan songs was itself out of time with the rest of the album which so very clearly said that times were absolutely not changing, and that the horrors of (for example) rural poverty and exploitation, or racism and injustice where stuck within Amercian society and politics.

So how did things change? Well, only because the singer used to care, but now can’t even be bothered to do that.

Indeed this is what Dylan said so clearly when he got his Oscar – he called it a song that “doesn’t pussyfoot around or turn a blind eye to human nature”.

Of course musically, from the development of his surreal imagery which arrived with his use of rock instrumentation in Dylan’s work, we have found change. But in terms of human nature, from the moment that Hollis Brown pulled the trigger and the night which started playing tricks when you are trying to be so quiet, everything was always falling apart. There were happy, jolly interludes of Country Pie and the like, but the feeling I get now having had Bob Dylan in my life, throughout almost all of my life, is that when he has written his best works, Dylan has been telling us how it is. Sometimes caring, sometimes not.

In these songs just how often do we hear him sing “What’s going on?” – either using that phrase or something akin to it. And if ever that line feels like it should be within a song, it is within “Things have changed”.

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind

is enough to make it clear where we are going – or rather to be clear that we have no idea where we are going. And just in case you missed it we find immediately that the singer is talking about a woman “drinking champagne, Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes”.

Assassin’s eyes? What are assassin’s eyes? Of course we don’t know, because she comes from another world – the dislocation is complete, but we are quite sure that one look and that will be it.

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

Of course it will – this is not the real world. In this world people come and go, talking but saying nothing. The past has not yet happened yet. The future was yesterday. I am you, you are him, he is not. TS Eliot kicks his verse into Dylan’s subconscious one more time:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

And of course he should be in Hollywood, be taking dancing lessons, be dressed in drag. He should, because here there is nothing to prove. But the trouble is, everywhere there is nothing to prove – the yellow fog surrounds everything.

The voice is tired, the accompaniment controlled and well rehearsed, the pulse moderate, no attempt at any sort of virtuoso performance, no unexpected chord changes, because it is not the individual musicians that make the point – the point is the situation, the world gone wrong. In such a world you can hold onto the constancy of the music because there is no other constancy.

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street

Of course: where else would you put a woman with assassin eyes as the yellow fog curls all around you, and the cultured classes speak while saying nothing?

And then, just in case we think we have got the hang of this, if we really think maybe something makes sense…

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

‘Mr. Jinx’ was a cool cat in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Pixie and Dixie. Today Mr Jinx is available as a tooth mug, a ringtone download, a ceramic jug, It is perhaps just a passing moment from the cartoon, or it is the reflection on the fact that both in the original and the current examples Mr Jinx was not real. Except the distinction between real and unreal doesn’t exist. I don’t want to be so unreal that I fall into the lake. Maybe the wheelbarrow was a better idea.

And the music continues, using its three chord routine with simple accompaniment. The singer doesn’t get excited. There is a continuum. It is just that the continuum doesn’t make a blind bit of sense.

——–

Postscript added in 2016: if you want to hear a different version of the song try this one

PPS: 2017

There are several versions of Dylan’s acceptance speech, but the one via the link below is really worth watching – and it is followed by a live performance of Things of Changed.

And this is where he thanks the Academy for being “bold enough to gie me this award for this song, which is obviously a song which doesn’t pussyfoot around or turn a blind eye to human nature.”

And for once I am with Heylin when he says, “Ain’t that the truth”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOSD7iOEtq0

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. Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

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

Posted in Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs | 20 Comments

Dark Eyes: the meaning behind the Bob Dylan song

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Tony Attwood

This review was updated in September 2016

By Tony Attwood

There is a picture on the inner sleeve of Empire Burlesque of a dark haired woman, drawn in the same style (although without the broken face) of the woman who appears on the cover of “Oh Mercy”. It is impossible to say if it is the same woman, but there is a haunting similarity.

Who is she? I am sure in some reference book there is a complete insight into this picture – but for me she is associated with the end of Empire Burlesque – the pulsating “Something’s Burning Baby”, followed by the utterly haunting “Dark Eyes”. Quite possibly the two songs are linked – I’ll follow that thought another day.

Dylan however has given us a clue, writing in Chronicles. He says there that the idea of an acoustic song to round off Empire Burlesque had been discussed for some time, but it wasn’t until the day the LP was being completed that he managed to write it.

He writes that he was staying in a hotel in New York, came through the lobby and went up to his room. “As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming towards me in the hallway… She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes… She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world. Poor wretch, doomed to walk this hallway for a thousand years.”

There are real links here to Restless Farewell – for the key point about Dylan’s observation of the call girl and the story he retells from the original Irish folk song in “Farewell” is one of being trapped inside what you are, unable to change, unable to be anything other than what you are.

Returning to “Dark Eyes” after years of singing it myself in different arrangements in folk clubs (and I must admit, for my own enjoyment) it is a jolt to realise how straight is Dylan’s recording.

It’s his song, so he can decide what is done with it – but the options and possibilities with this song are enormous – the speed can vary, the power can grow, it can be strummed instead of plucked… Over the years I seem to have done everything possible to it.

But Dylan in his recording gives us the bare bones. A dead straight simple representation of beauty which goes unrecognised in a world that is far from beautiful. This song gives us image upon image upon image – and the image overall is of man dislocated from his surroundings. There are reminders of much earlier songs – of the songs of racial intolerance now retuned as man’s brutalisation of women, but it is a song for all time.

The earth is strung with lover’s pearls and all I see are dark eyes

It is a song with so many lines like that – perfectly placed in an exquisite simple musical setting.

The darkness of the occasion builds and builds with so many lines such as “I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise…”

Yes the music, like the singer as portrayed in the song, is so gentle, so simple, so calm, so utterly in contrast with the horrors that the song portrays. This is a song with lines about “the dead that rise”, about lost sons, about “nature’s beast”, and yet throughout the guitar and harmonica just walk along, calm, dignified, observing…

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

It is that final line of the song that sticks in the memory – for all the images of the lost, the hints that the song is about the brutalisation of women by young men with money, that final line stays long after the song is over.

But there is a criticism made that some of the lines in the song are just lines which are thrown in as random images without contributing to the whole story.

I don’t buy that notion. For me Dylan can often be seen writing songs that are the equivalent of semi-abstract paintings – the paintings that contain recognisable images (the church tower, the woman’s face, the shop doorway, the face of the cat… ) but they are neither a pastiche nor a recognisable part of the whole – they are the visual equivalents of random flashes of memory, thoughts and insight represented in one work of art.

Dylan does this too, and this song is a profound example. We are not meant to put together a whole story from each of these images – they are the images we retain from each day experiencing different aspects of the world, remembering moments of our lives.

It is sung so gently – and of course my own reinterpretations might well have got it wrong. But I think Dylan knew exactly what he was doing.

Apparently Dylan has only played this song eight times in concert and the first time was a total disaster. Oh Bob, how could you think it the right thing to do to keep this masterpiece so secret – even if you got it wrong the first time, surely we could be offered more than just eight goes.

There is a live version of the song here

Posted in Empire Burlesque, The Songs | 16 Comments

What was it you wanted?

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Tony Attwood

A revised version of this review has now been posted and updated – complete with a link to a Willie Nelson version here.

Apologies for the mix up.

Tony

Posted in Oh Mercy, The Songs | 2 Comments

Blind Willie McTell: the meaning behind Bob Dylan’s song

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Tony Attwood

Blind Willie McTell

This review updated 8 October 2016 including the addition of the link to the Dylan recording of the electric version of this song – see the end of the review, and some further thoughts on the lack of connection between the song and the actual Willie McTell.

I suspect that for most of us, Blind Willie McTell was the name of a blues singer whose music we had never heard or gone looking for, before hearing this song.

I suspect also that for most of us it is unimaginable that such a wonderful piece of music should not appear on a mainstream album from Bob Dylan.

There have been other instances of such oddness on Dylan’s part – the delay in releasing Mississippi, for example, and the issues surrounding Dignity. In the case of the former, the original version was a love song that Dylan didn’t want to reveal – and he had to wait until he had re-written it as a political commentary. In the latter case, the piece is flawed. It is a masterpiece, but it isn’t right (as the multiple attempts to play it in different ways show. In effect it is hard to find the right way to cope with the piece – but more on that when I move on to that song).

But Blind Willie McTell falls into neither category. It is not only a perfect song, with not a word out of place, the classic recording that we have is itself wonderful. The slightly out of time piano works. The guitars work. Why not release it?

Well maybe he was waiting for the perfect electric version – the link to which I have added below.

But we also have Dylan’s own words on the subject – he has several times commented that the song was never finished to his satisfaction, and that at least gives us a clue as to where to go looking. For if we can find what Dylan thought was wrong with the piece we can probably get a greater understanding of the song.

The first insight I can offer is that the song has nothing to do with the music of Blind Willie McTell. My source – “Atlanta Strut” – is a fine collection, and I am told it is representative of Willie McTell’s work. But it raises the question – what is the connection between the songs of McTell’s and Dylan’s song, aside from the fact that we know that Dylan has always admired the work of McTell. He once called McTell the Van Gough of country blues.

Heylin, in one of his more interesting moments suggests that Dylan was either having a problem or playing a game. I’d agree with Heylin (for once) that McTell certainly doesn’t fit the notion of the Van Gough of country blues at any level, but Heylin then goes on to suggest that the person really wanted to sing about was Blind Willie Johnson, but he couldn’t find the rhymes! (“In my time of Dying” is a reworking of a Johnson song).

In fact, on the surface there isn’t a connection between what Dylan is singing about and Blind Willie McTell. Indeed even in the original version of this review which I wrote before I read Heylin’s commentary I noted that Dylan was “not singing at all about McTell – it is just a throw away line in the song, that no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. Where is the connection between the famous line about ‘power and greed and corruptible seed’ and a song like ‘I got religion and I’m so glad’?”

In fact the link there is probably with Johnson’s fundamental form of religious belief – that we have all been corrupted since the Garden of Eden, which isn’t really an issue that Willie McTell dealt with.”

There is not even the fact that McTell suffered in the way that, for example, Skip James suffered and most certainly Blind Willie Johnson suffered. But, on the other hand, Blind Willie McTell did record Dyin’ Crapshooters Blues which uses the melody of St James Hotel, which is central to the storyline (the “hotel” being the St James Infirmary).

Musically, Dylan’s song is a true masterpiece – although in effect a borrowed masterpiece. Back to strophic form, as it has to be for a song about the blues, it never tires through verse after verse, because of the unusual chord structure.

So although there are all the religious references lurking in the background, we are also edged towards the references to Willie McTell being a reference to the whole issue of slavery, and the music of the slaves and their descendents. “There’s a chain gang on the highway”… the humiliation of the people continues generation to generation. But even here it doesn’t quite work – because if humiliation is the theme, then Bilnd Willie McTell isn’t the man to cite.

In the end, we get a clue as to where we are going, appropriately, at the end…

Well, God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

And that is the clue. St James Hotel was nothing to do with Willie McTell – except McTell did record the song St James Infirmary Blues (on which Dylan’s tune is based) under the title “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues”

The melody is a derivative, and the song wasn’t about who he said it was about, and I suspect Dylan might well have been able to deal with one, but wasn’t too happy with both hitting him, which probably explains why he didn’t put it on an album.

Dylan wrote the song in either late 1982 or early 1983, but didn’t play it at a concert until 5 August 1997. At the moment of writing the last time I have it as being played live is 16 July 2015, with the song being played 225 times. It took a while to get there, but he did get there in the end.

https://youtu.be/_cdfKXmS82Y

Elsewhere

Posted in Bootleg Series volume 3, Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs | 17 Comments

“Where were you last night?” by Bob Dylan. The meaning behind the lyrics and the music

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Tony Attwood

Updated July 2016

By Tony Attwood

The songs on the Traveling Wilburys albums are credited to the band as a whole rather than individual artists, but it is clear that this track from Volume 3 is a Dylan composition with some help from Tom Petty.

It is a simple love song, with an unusual chord structure – after the first 8 bars there are a couple of unexpected minor chords which really makes the listener jump back.

There’s also a bit of the sloppiness in the lyrics that were typical of Dylan at this time – rhyming “week” with “tree” really won’t do (although I have seen it written as “creek” – which rhymes but is out of context.)

But what makes this work is the melody – only occasionally one of Dylan’s strong points -combining in a perfect way with the lyrics, and mixing with that irresistible bass line.

What did you do, who did you see?

Were you with someone who reminded you of me?

It is not just a lost love song – there is the twist – “who reminded you of me” is one of the most curious lines from type of song.

The purists tend to dismiss these albums as being quite unnecessary, but there is fun and laughter here, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You weren’t waiting where you said

You sent someone in your place instead.

That’s the twist. What on earth is going on?

The stories behind the albums seem to centre around everyone throwing lines and ideas in, and Bob Dylan popping in occasionally. Heylin also makes the point that Dylan recorded everything before letting the rest of the band get on with it. Maybe all that is so, but this song hardly feels like that at all.

Yes it is a pop song, with no deep or profound meaning but it works perfectly in the genre for which it is made. The confusion within the song fits perfectly with the “where were you” notion, and the bounce and life and indeed sheer vivacity within the piece adds to the notion that the singer is searching here there and everywhere

But it is a pop song with twists. Take the chords for example. The first line runs

D G Gm D A D

Then we get a C minor included, and later in the middle 8 we have a modulation to E major. Unexpected or what?

Maybe like many other great works of art it was just knocked off in a few minutes, but that doesn’t detract from what it is. A really great piece of pop music.

If you have never heard the song, do try it. It is fun.

Index of all the songs on the site
Dylan’s best opening lines: an index
How Dylan writes songs, and other articles.
Dylan’s songs in the order they were written.
Bob Dylan open discussion group on Facebook. Or go onto Facebook and search for “Untold Dylan”

Posted in The Songs, Traveling Wilburys | 5 Comments

Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan as 20th century Keats, and the memories that still linger

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Tony Attwood

by Tony Attwood. Revised April 2018, with links to recordings by Dylan and other artists.

“I try to live within that line between despondency and hope.” Bob Dylan 1997.

Not Dark Yet is one of the triumphs of Dylan’s later work – a pivotal point on the album, the darkest moment (despite the title) which then leads the way towards light.

It is a song that manages to create a dreamlike quality of drifting in and out of sleep, while considering the past, and waiting for the end.

And as such it is in many ways a return to the Taoist concept of “Darkness within Darkness, the way to all understanding” – not least achieved by the way the song stretches itself out, with the unexpected additional beat between bars, and the lack of any instrumental lead during the non-vocal verse.

From the “Shadows are falling” line, we find the simple link between the end of the individual’s life, and the end of the day, to be as one.

Shadows of course don’t fall – they creep across the garden, the walls, the beach, the road. And that’s the point. There is nothing literal, because what happens next, when life is ended, is not real, not in any sense that we can understand at least.

But for the moment time and life are united in a situation – it is autumn, the elderly man stares at the sunset, ready to take his leave but knowing that the time has not yet quite come. Wondering why he has to continue with memories, achieving nothing new, just being.

There are no regrets here, no sadness, not really a desire for it all to end – just an acceptance that this is how it is although at the same time somehow not quite sure why this is how it has to be.

I’ve always had the feeling since I first heard the song that it is hard to understand it unless you have known an elderly relative or friend who is living alone, or in a home, finishing their days with less fun and enthusiasm than you would have liked them to have. The song captures every element of that reality of the experience and the song itself become entangled totally in life. All that is left are memories: “I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal.”

I am of course by no means the first to contemplate whether the source of the idea was: Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats, 1819). Larry has already considered Dylan and Keats, and one might remember the New York Times fascinating headline “Keats with a guitar”.

This isn’t the place to rework the argument, but in case you don’t know it here is the first verse (of eight) of Ode to a Nightingale…

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

I could continue across page after page writing about all this song means to me and how it brings back the memories of sitting at my mother’s bedside, just her and me, as she lay dying. I could, but no I can’t. It’s still, so many years later, far too much.

The official video is here

And a live performance

Robyn Hitchcock’s re-interpretation

Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer – this is the performance which still sends additional shivers down my spine, even after knowing this song for so many years.

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 Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs, Time out of mind | 21 Comments

All along the watch tower: Bob Dylan’s eternal masterpiece.

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

According to some the imagery in this song comes from the 21st chapter of the prophet Isaiah when a watchman on the watchtower sees two riders approaching. Here is the text in the King James Version.

⁶For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

⁷And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed:

⁸And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights.

I am not convinced there is a connection here beyond the remembrance of an image. But I could be wrong. I am still thinking about it.

“There must be some way out of here”; a simple but powerful start to this commentary on being controlled by organisations, social mores and responsibility.

And as the song progresses the singer does indeed begin to find his way out of here. With a harmonica style that was to be repeated with the tale of the Man in the Long Black Coat, reality is painted and then moved. The door is opened.

And yet this is done with no changes to the simple three chord basis of the entire song – musically it is just one line over and over and over again, reflecting the painfulness of existence from which the singer tries to emerge. The music is the continuity of the control, the lyrics are the fight against that control.

Many of the lines have slipped into the cannon of comments used by Dylan fans – “life is but a joke”…. “this is not our fate”…. “the wind began to howl”…

And this is quite an achievement in what is for Dylan an astonishingly short song – just 130 words. Dylan can write more than that in one verse, let alone a whole song.

As the song continues it simple journey the connection between the lines in terms of the words breaks down, but the music remains the same – same reality different meaning. No matter where you try to escape to, that reality is always out there beating on your door.

And so in the end, two riders approach, and the wind howls – it is just a scene from a half painted landscape. Meaningless except that each line means something.

There’s too much confusion – everyone has a part of me – I will go somewhere else, and in the space of a few lines Dylan does just that. As he says, there’s no reason to get excited… none of it is real, and that’s why you only need one line, over and over and over again.

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.” Everyone is too tied up in social structure to look beyond. The music just goes around and around and around. And yet that simple three chord structure allows the voice and lead guitar to go where ever it wishes. We are controlled by society, but psychologically we can go anywhere we wish. No one can stop you thinking – after all, life is but a joke.

The Discussion Group

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The Chronology Files

These files put Dylan’s work in the order written. You can link to the files here

An index of all 350+ songs reviewed on this site can be found on the home page.

Posted in Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs | 15 Comments

Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” – from “Go way from my window” to “Yeah yeah yeah”

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

This review revised on 10 February 2018

Listening again (in 2018) the Dylan performing It Ain’t Me Babe in 1965 I’m struck by how clear and powerful the performance, and how carefully thought through are the variations from the original recording and how respectful and folk-club like are the audience. It is a performance that even Heylin was moved by, calling it “spell binding”.

And this after I began my original review written nearly ten years ago, with the lines,

“Coming back to the songs from the early albums after 40 years or more it is interesting to see how beautifully constructed they are. It is as if Dylan spent far more time on these early pieces, crafting and considering each word, melody line and chord change in a way that was lost once electrification came along.”

It Ain’t Me Babe is a perfect example. The message is simple: you can’t rely on me, we can’t have a long-term relationship.

Of course what has happened in the above version is that we have wandered from the original which was the standard strophic approach, with the briefest of harmonica led interludes.

But the twist of the song has always been that it takes a harsher turn than might have been expected when we get to the “heart made of stone” in the third verse. The woman’s demands have become excessive – “to come each time you call”. And there is no mutual exchange – she’s just looking for a “lover for your life and nothing more”.

It’s just three simple verses (although the original manuscript has a fourth – see below), and yet so immensely powerful in its timeless message. But perhaps above all else it is the fact that there is that harsh third verse that makes it clear that the failure to have the relationship is not the singer’s fault, but the woman’s. It’s not that he can’t give love, it is that she can’t. She wants a trophy, not a relationship. The song ends.

But it is what Dylan does by way of detail that is, as always, so captivating. This was of course the era of the Beatles with “She loves you yeah yeah yeah” so Bob gives us “It ain’t me babe, no no no”. I’m not sure the writers of popular music reviews in the mid-60s quite got it.

Anyway, in case you are interested, here is the missing fourth verse that was included in Bob’s original sketch of the song…

Your talking turns me off, babe

It seems you’re trying out of fear

Your terms are time behind, babe

And you’re looking too hard for what’s not here

You say you’re looking for someone

That’s been in your dreams, you say

To terrify your enemies

An scare your foes away

Someone to even up your scores

But it ain’t me babe

Dylan, as we have seen so all the reviews on this site, is particularly attracted to the three verse song; there are of course many strophic songs in his songbook that break the rule, but three verses held a particular attraction in the early days so maybe that fourth verse was just deemed to be a little too much.

As for the origins of the song’s opening line “Go way from my window” was composed by John Jacob Niles (1892 – 1980) who was also a collector of traditional ballads and known as the was “Dean of American Balladeers”. If you have any interest in the history of American song and don’t know Niles, it is worth hearing this – a song that absolutely certainly Dylan knew.

There is a Joan Baez version of the song which irons out some of the eccentricities of the composer’s own version.

The title phrase is familiar in both European and American folksong, but this does not mean, of course, that songs in which it occurs have a common origin. It may well be a composed song based on some folk original and already on the lips of the people and in the process of becoming a folk song again. According to Heylin Dylan used to sing a version of the original song in St Paul.

And in true Dylan style the song has been on several meanders over time. This one below is not one of my favourites but I attach it just to show where it can go.

After that I really do need to go back to the original.

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

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Another Side, Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs | 4 Comments

Blowing in the wind (1962). The meaning of the music and the lyrics.

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Coming back to Blowing in the Wind after 45 years is a strange experience. There was a time when I, and all those like me, not only listened to it every day but also played it every day. Some of us did both at once.

It is also interesting, coming back to it after so long, to hear how close the guitar playing is to the opening track of World gone Wrong in 1993.

On the Freewheelin’ recording the voice is fresh and clear – he wants every word to be heard. And this is important for the song is so tightly constructed, and every line has power and strength.

According to Alan Lomax, the song is derivative with the music originating in the singing of ex-slaves who went to Canada after Britain abolished slavery in 1833. Dylan also acknowledged the link to ‘No More Auction Block’ – which ultimately appeared on the Bootleg Series Volumes 1 to 3. As for the lyrics there are suggestions that Dylan takes some inspiration from Exekiel 12, lines 1 and 2: “They have eyes to see but see not; ears to hear, but hear not.”

Musically there is no emphasis in any line – rather like Positively 4^th Street, each line is giving the same weighting, whether it is “How many roads must a man walk down before your call him a man”, or “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see.”

As for the meaning – it is simplicity – the world is out there and everything is there to be seen for those who wish to look. Science and humanity linked as one eternity. A simple Taoist statement.

How different from the lines in Idiot Wind:

Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad what’s bad is good you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom.

And yet the eternal contradiction of Taoism are here once more. The answers are out there, blowing in the wind, but (adds Dylan in Idiot Wind) nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Musically the song is a straight 2/4 – two beats in each bar, giving an accent in the first line to How, Roads, Man, Down. It is predominantly on the three main chords you would expect with just the slight use of the VI chord – it makes it all sound like a classic folk song.

Dylan reported that he wrote it very quickly, and was from the off a song that he felt proud of and that he himself was very happy with. And he was also keen to point out early on that it was just a statement of how the world is, and what can be seen. It was not, he said most vigorously, a protest song.

However what it is, is an anti-political song, a song that suggests that by observing and taking note of the real world, we can understand the world. We don’t need political vision, leaders, theories or anything else.

When it comes down to it, wonderful though the song is, as a vision it is incredibly simplistic and naive. It is a beautiful simple song, but not a basis for living one’s life (unless one is living in a rural idyll with plentiful food and drink and nothing much to worry about, like illness or poisonous snakes.) As he later said, “Blowing in the wind was just a feeling I felt because I feel that way.” In short, it is what it is.

For a while Dylan seemed to want to describe that in more detail, but it wasn’t really necessary. It just is a nice song with a simple message.

(Updated May 2013 and September 2015)

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Freewheelin, The Songs | 5 Comments

Positively 4th Street: the meaning and the music with an interesting variant

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Tony Attwood

Updated September 2020 with studio outtake

By Tony Attwood. This review revised September 2014 and April 2018 with two videos added.

Two lines of music – just eight bars long – repeated over and over and over. And yet it is brilliant, a song one never tires of because the record is so perfect in its delivery. (And indeed, although I didn’t realise it when I wrote the original copy of this review, I’m agreeing with Heylin who called it, “one of his greatest ever vocal performances in a studio setting”.

Maybe because it is so viscous in its lyrics that the repetition of the eight bars over and over again without variation just brings home that feeling of unresolved hatred. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend…”

It is the absolute and complete song of disdain.

When has there been another piece with such a strong opening? It is a wall of disgust that pours out from Dylan, attacking the woman (at least we presume it is a woman he is after) while the music continues unchanging, as the emotion is unchanging too. (Although I must admit, coming back to the song some ten years after I wrote the first version of this review, perhaps it is also about everyone who protested about his use of electric guitars).

Even if we have never faced someone with such feelings of hatred, we can all empathize with the notion that “You just want to be on the side that’s winning.” How many people like that do we know?

The musical format – unrelenting strophic – was used by Dylan a lot in his earlier works – verse, verse, verse until he has said all he has to say. It was only later that he moved to ternary form with its “middle 8” section. But nowhere else is it used with such anger, but with such straightness of delivery.

As for the musical chords they just beat it out:

D Em G D

D A G Bm A

No surprises there it just uses the chords we would expect in a song like this. Over and over.

The message is exquisitely simple: there is a morality in friendship and in love affairs. You stand by your friends and have time for your friends and do all you possibly can for your friends. If you don’t you are not a friend. If you have a lover you don’t just wander around creating heartache and heart breaks.

How many people have turned on supposed friends and said these lines to those who did not stand by them? And yet that is what people do, time and again? They want to be on the side that’s winning. We live in the era of “me me me”.

I didn’t quite get all this when I first heard the song as a schoolkid, but boy have I learned this over the years. And twice in this long and active life I have experienced the most extraordinarily dramatic moment of all in which two quite separate people, individuals who don’t know each other, have each, quite separately and sincerely and at very different times, said to me, “You saved my life”. Not in the sense of stopping the on-rushing lorry or pulling the person out of the pond, but in terms of being there when really, really needed – and doing what seemed to me to be right, no matter how long it took and how much effort it took, when all other help seemed to have withered away.

I think I got that sense of morality – that vision that friendship means standing by this person no matter what, and being there when needed no matter what – out of this song which I played on the record player, and then endlessly on the piano and guitar, as I sang along to it.

This song, in part, gave me the little bits of good stuff within me, by showing me just what the bad stuff is like.

There’s no variation in tone, melody, chord structure, volume… It just hits you like a rolling wave from which there is never an escape and never will be an escape – and that is how it should be. Because when you’re in this mood there is no escape. You have to step outside it to start being fully human again.

There are a lot of other people who have performed this song, but few of them (for me at least) have actually managed to do anything which adds to the performance of the song.

But the nearest I have got to in terms of a version that actually does say something new is this by Simply Red.

Maybe the core of the problem is that the piece is so dominated by the ever repeating melody that there is nothing that can be done with it.

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

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Essential Bob Dylan, The Songs | 15 Comments

Visions of Johanna: the meaning of the music, the lyrics and the rewrites

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood.

This article updated most recently 12 May 2021.

This is Dylan’s reply to Eliot. Where TS Eliot wrote about watching the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo, and measuring out a life in coffee spoons, so Dylan gives us Mona Lisa with the highway blues.

“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?” is surely the most atmospheric opening line of any popular song ever written, and it takes us directly into this cold dark world of isolation and dislocation. “We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it” – just as Eliot’s characters are, but the causes and cures are different.

As for the characters – who are they? And indeed come to that where are they now, 40 or more years since the song was written?

Louise, Johanna, and Little Boy Lost, three characters in search of a home, a real world, a way of talking to each other, a way of being.

And in that one simple line, “How can I explain?” Dylan speaks for his entire audience of the late 1960s who found themselves disenfranchised from communication with their parents, their university lecturers, their elders and betters, and even, perhaps worst of all, their contemporaries, to whom they could not explain their feelings. Johanna is not here, but the Visions of Johanna are all that remain. Somehow we knew how it should be, but we couldn’t express it properly, save for shouting at our parents, “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

And perhaps it is that feeling that caused Dylan to take so many attempts to get the song just right for his approved LP version – which is why it is such a shame that in this version it is clear the bass guitarist in particular had no idea about the curious construction of the song, with its additional lines in the last verse adding to the sense of futility and frustration, for instead of building he simply screws it up and plays the wrong notes. I’ve had times in my life when that error makes the recording near impossible to listen to. Which is a shame because it is one of, it not the completely most favourite song of mine ever. Save perhaps for “Tell Ol Bill” which also gives us a world of atmosphere and ideas. “The river whispers in my ear” as opposed to “Ain’t it just like the night…”

But back to those extra lines; they were seemingly added later in the recording process and subtle changes were made as time went by. And we gain this song in which Dylan is writing about people who can’t express themselves, who don’t understand their own emotions and feelings, who are lost, existing in a mist, in a set of visions… Surely one of the hardest concepts to write about.

It is one of the earliest “paintings” of Dylan, a set of lines that give us an atmospheric insight into these people’s worlds, as visual artists had been doing for centuries before. We don’t have to know what the visions are, or who is saying what or thinking what to whom. We just have to accept the totality of the picture.

But if we want to translate the music into something we can write about where better to start than with the end. “The harmonicas play the skeleton keys in the rain.” What an image is this? The wail of the harmonica as the sounds that open any door when you are just standing there desperate to get out of this environment into any other environment.

And then perhaps we can move back to the very start. “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?” And as I have said for years in talking to my students and indeed anyone else who doesn’t get up and wander off because “he’s going to lecture us on Dylan again”, “just how much atmosphere do you want in a song?”

Andy Gill is quoted in the Wiki article on the song as suggesting it is the enigmatic quality of the song that is responsible for its popularity—’forever teetering on the brink of lucidity, yet remaining impervious to strict decipherment”. And that sounds right to me. In 1999, Sir Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, nominated Visions as the greatest song lyric ever written. And I’ll go with that too.

I think there is also the point that here we have one of the earliest songs in which Dylan forgets about any of the normal sequences of events. We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter what is happening, nor at which time it is happening. These things exist beyond any concept of time. It is a notion Bob continued to play with through his writing career, including such masterpieces as Tangled up in Blue, which deals with the issue in such a different way.

For me, what we have in Visions is walking back from the night club in the early hours of the morning, past the debris of the night before, knowing one has to be careful because there are some very nasty people out there, but still fascinated by seeing the city without the hustle and bustle of everyday life. You walk, you look, you wonder who on earth these odd characters are, and what they are doing here, and then remember some of them might be looking at you, wondering exactly the same.

And I remembered when I fist wrote this review, one of the first reviews on this web site which has now grown so large a situation perhaps five years before, walking from the Angel, Islington, in London, my home city, to St Pancras Station at maybe 2.30am, the last train home long since gone, completely entranced by a scene that I don’t normally get anywhere near, with Visions of Johanna floating through my mind. It was a spooky occasion to say the least.

And I think of that now, and my dear friend Kati, who I spent that evening with, who sadly passed away unexpectedly earlier this year, and my sadness remembering that, becomes entangled with my thoughts of the mists surrounding that song. Somehow, now, Dylan is singing to me about the loss of a highly inspirational lady, even though the words are still about Louise and Johanna. It is that sort of a song.

And yet all of these images are hung on three chords and such a simple tune. How does he manage that? After all these years I still don’t know.

But ultimately, it is always the fact that Dylan expresses in words the feelings that the people in the story can’t express in words that makes it so wonderful. As to the two women in the song – now presumably in their sixties – what are they up to? Did they have children? Did they stay in touch? Did they become film stars or just fade away.

And little boy lost, what of him? Where are the Visions of Louise? It is these questions that, I think keeps bringing us back to Visions over and over and over again. And probably will do for a long time yet.

And now try this – the remarkable reworking of the song by Dylan on stage.

Please also see the Old Crow Medicine Show version reviewed – I think you might enjoy that.

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Blonde on Blonde, The Songs | 26 Comments

Bob Dylan’s “Time passes slowly” (1970). The world is not what you think.

Posted on October 30, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Updated April 2018.

In a rare move the Bob Dylan official site has put up a recording from the Bootleg Series Vol 10 – the recording of the song with George Harrison.

Watch “Time Passes Slowly”

There is what seems to me a clearer version on Spotify

This is a deceptively simple song, which seeks to offer an insight into Dylan’s very private world – at least the private world he was contemplating in the rural simplicity of parts of New Morning.

But it is a song which Heylin tells us was changed over and over, and certainly Bootleg versions show an astonishingly different piece of music. I’m concentrating on the New Morning version here, the one that so clearly works as an integrated piece of music with a clear, but (it turns out) very complex picture to paint. But if you are not familiar with the version on Spotify do try it. It is something else.

Musically the simplicity of the world (up here in the mountains) is captured by the piano, single guitar notes and occasional drumming. It is full of a girl who is (of course) good looking, (rhyming of course with “cooking”). That’s what you get in these rural cabins.

One is tempted to think, “how easy do you want this all to be?” Is it really possible to create a world that has no problems, just by removing oneself from society? (And the answer is no, of course not).

But without it being really apparent, we find the melody is changing, the drumming is getting more complex, the chords are changing, and as it all is combining with the insistence that there is no reason to go anywhere we know there is something else here.

It is as if there is a pull on the singer – the world is not quite what it seems. The instrumental break which adds a second guitar moves towards a comparatively frantic moment, but then, we are back to one more verse, and a most unusual ending of a chord repeated quickly over and over.

This is the simple land, where nothing happens, and in one ultimately misleading sense prepares us for the surreal dream-like quality of Went to see the gypsy – a different world but one that can coexist with Time passes slowly. A different world because in “gypsy” we still never know if Bob went to see Elvis, or if he just imagined going to see Elvis or if it actually has nothing to do with going to see Elvis at all. (Up here in the mountains you can do that sort of thing – mix one reality with another and end up unsure what was real and what you imagined. Too much isolation can do that to a guy).

The simple land is deceptive – the mountains don’t change but the thoughts and dreams of those who live here can change. It is as if those thoughts create the world. There is nothing real here at all… except of course there is. This is the simple countryside isn’t it? Streams and log cabins and stuff…

It’s a simple song in the solid world of E flat (or D maybe) but with a twist at the instrumental end of each world. “Ain’t no reason to go anywhere” – true – but it almost seems as if you need to keep shouting it to keep the demons at bay. Dylan is trying over and over to tell himself this is how it is, but when you listen to those two inter-twining guitars, you start to wonder if it really is true, or not. Have the demons been left behind, or are they merely locked behind to log cabin door?

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

And then…

One moves away from New Morning to “Another Self Portrait” where the whole ethos of the New Morning version vanishes, by the strange leap in the voice at the end of each verse until the singer is almost shouting, and you have to ask “why did you do that Bob? What does that signify? What on earth are you telling us here? Do you know?” The meaning of the song seems to dissipate especially at the very end where the final words as “then fades away” and the voice does anything but.

It’s a complex attempt at a complex yet seemingly simple message, but it doesn’t work because what is missing is that extraordinary magical piano part in the New Morning version, and it is this that makes us remember this piece over and over, even if we haven’t played it for years.

Time Passes Slowly would be a “let me drift alone into the nothingness” piece if it were just a poem, but that piano takes us on a wild wandering journey to all sorts of unexpected places. It is based around a chord sequence that I can’t think Dylan uses anywhere else.

If you play it in D and hear the opening three chords of D, C and G, then that gives you a feel of the sort of song you are going to get. There are millions of songs using that sequence; they have a feel, a resonance, and yes you could be drifting away slowly indeed.

But at the end of the first line Dylan throws in E minor. By the third line we have F sharp minor. Perfectly acceptable chords, but unusual in the context. And then we find “lost in a dream” is actually ending on F sharp minor. That chord is the dream machine – it is transporting us off to somewhere else, because songs in D don’t end on F Sharp minor. (In musical terms it is the “mediant” meaning middle of course, and Dylan ends at that point, on the middle.)

Then, amazingly, the second verse starts off like the first (musically) but the third and fourth lines are variations. Another thing that is rare in folk orientated music. And we know for sure this ain’t a simple song at all.

And we have that feeling that this song is not about simplicity at all – it is highly complex and different, and odd, and unusual and….e

The final verse does it again, changing the chord structure that the piano plays to hold it all together. And we get our clear indication. Time passes slowly up here in the mountains, but watch out, because it is not quite as simple and calm and rustic as you might think. This is a world you never expected.

It is like the city dweller coming to the log cabin in the woods and sitting outside thinking, oh how magnificent all this simplicity is, and then being bitten by a snake, finding that there are ants crawling over his bedclothes, that he has to go and get water from the stream, and he’s got no way to start a fire.

It is the perfect example of the world that is not what you think. And this is why the versions from the bootleg series don’t work, because they lose that contrast between perceived rural simplicity and the actual complexity of the world. Time still passes, but you are no more in control of the environment in this rural environment than you are anywhere else.

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

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in New Morning, The Songs | 1 Comment

Mississippi: the meaning of Dylan’s music and lyrics and two live versions

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Updated August 2018 with the addition of Alternate Version 3 which has suddenly popped up. But now the video has gone again. Sorry.

Rolling Stone called “Mississippi” “A drifter’s love song that seems to sum up Dylan’s entire career,” and before I came back to what was the first song I reviewed in this series, thinking I ought to re-write it, I was thinking of the Drifter’s Escape, and how our societies have evolved over time.

Just to re-iterate what I guess we all know, Mississippi was due out on Time out of Mind but ultimately came out on Love and Theft because Dylan was unhappy with the way it was sounding on Time out of Mind. But for this review though I’ve been particularly listening to the opening track of “Tell tale signs” – although that’s not affected my choice of live versions.

The chorus line of Mississippi, comes from, of all places, a prison song from Parchman, and that’s the clue to where we are with this song. Indeed knowing this transforms our feeling about the song. And when we recall that Dylan once said that the song had to do with “Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights” then we get a real insight as to where he was. The prisoners would sing “Only thing I did wrong was stayed in Mississippi a day too long”. Dylan is now saying, that is what America did wrong.

And if we are not yet convinced “all boxed in nowhere to escape” is the most obvious clue. This is the story of the world gone wrong.

Plus we have Rosie, a name that was often used as a generalised name of the ideal woman, just as in France there is Marianne, the symbol of the Republic. Dylan is singing of the idealised world versus the real world. (Interestingly Dylan did once clarify this in an interview, when speaking of mortality, and said that the song dealt with mortality in general – meaning that Rosie is the symbol of love, not an actual woman).

In short this is a review of what has gone wrong with America, and what could have gone right, and for this expression the ssimple two guitar production is utterly perfect.

But at the same time this is a love song: the love of the world, the regret at what went wrong. “So many things we never will undo,” – yes that is just how life is.

Indeed what makes this a love song at the same time as a commentary on the state of the nation is the sympathy with which the words are sung to this, the original melody. “So many things we never will undo” is sympathetic, while “Last night I knew you tonight I don’t” has a melody and chord sequence in the Tell Tale Signs version that simply vanishes in other versions. The world moves own. The singer is majestic, the singer is a hero, the singer is sad and regretful. The singer is the Drifter. But he is still the one man – the singer.

This is quite possibly one of Dylan’s greatest political songs, and it achieves this while sounding like a love song. “Got no future got no past” is now far more than just a throw away line, because the song is no longer about the singer, but about the society that has gone wrong as symbolised by woman and/or the left behind.

Some lines like “Stick with me baby” becomes much more meaningful in terms of the relationship but can still be about the state of the nation, if the nation can be addressed as “baby”. When Dylan sings, “Don’t even have anything for myself any more,” he is seemingly both making a statement about his economic or political or surrealistic or modernist self, and is also talking about a life lost. About the simple need to get away.

For me it is the lack of a full accompaniment that makes this work – it is the man singing to the woman or perhaps women that he has lost, and the old Drifter in Drifter’s Escape sitting by himself singing to the nation that could construct the sort of legal system that would have imprisoned him had it not been for the hand of fate. “Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme” becomes a powerful line, not a throwaway (as on the Time out of mind version) because the singer can never encapsulate speaking about the state of the country nor about the woman he has loved.

If you still need convincing just listen to the delivery of “I have heard it all” with its extra quaver on “heard”.

“Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t” can be an aggressive line as in the delivery on the album version, but now it is sad, because the singer knows the country is totally messed up. We ought to be kind and gentle with each other but that simply is not how it is any more. So for the moment the singer is now gentle, sorry, thankful for the good times, sad about what went wrong – and that of course utterly fits with the accompaniment.

It’s all over (no future no past) but he’s still here and there is still hope. “I know that fortune is waiting to be kind, so give me your hand and say you’ll be mine” despite everything. A simple life is offered at the end.

Yes, the best ever Dylan love song, and one of the greatest ever Dylan political commentaries, and one of his greatest personal commentaries and the one thing still remaining in my mind is why this beautiful, rough but loving version took so long to be released. But that’s how it goes.

Dylan is not a man who can tell us what to do, he is not a man who wants to tell us what to do. He is just a painter of words and music making observations. “Got nothin’ for you, I had nothin’ before,” he says, and indeed like the Drifter he’s moving out, “Don’t even have anything for myself anymore.” He’s even removed from economic activity which is of course the very heart of what the USA is: “Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around.”

And despite all his ability there is nothing he can say or do to sort all this out. He can’t even describe the world, (“All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime, Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme”) so like the prisoners of old all he can do is reiterate the lines, “Only one thing I did wrong, Stayed in Mississippi a day too long”.

But still, remember one thing. It isn’t all over. It is never all over.

“Things should start to get interesting right about now…”

And if you really want to hear a different interpretation just try this next one. And if I may make a suggestion, please don’t give up after a few seconds. Give it time. I’ve heard it 100 times and it still gives me goose pimples in the chorus. And then when the harmonies click in… well we really have gone onto another planet.

Or at least I have.

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

What else is on the site

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

The index to all the 594 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page.

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

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

Posted in Tell Tales Signs, The Songs | 30 Comments

Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me”: never has a 12 bar blues sounded more beautiful

Bob Dylan’s “Dignity”. A work of genius, or neat but unfinished idea?

Bob Dylan’s Mozambique; a simple, bouncy, jolly tune. What’s wrong with that?

Don’t Take Everybody to be your Friend: part of Dylan’s inspiration

Bob Dylan’s “Isis”: the meaning of the music and the song

Changing of the Guards: The meanings behind Bob Dylan’s song

Things have changed: the meanings behind Bob Dylan’s song

Dark Eyes: the meaning behind the Bob Dylan song

elsewhere…

What was it you wanted?

Blind Willie McTell: the meaning behind Bob Dylan’s song

“Where were you last night?” by Bob Dylan. The meaning behind the lyrics and the music

Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan as 20th century Keats, and the memories that still linger

All along the watch tower: Bob Dylan’s eternal masterpiece.

Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” – from “Go way from my window” to “Yeah yeah yeah”

Blowing in the wind (1962). The meaning of the music and the lyrics.

Positively 4th Street: the meaning and the music with an interesting variant

Visions of Johanna: the meaning of the music, the lyrics and the rewrites

Bob Dylan’s “Time passes slowly” (1970). The world is not what you think.

Mississippi: the meaning of Dylan’s music and lyrics and two live versions

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