• The utterly brilliant Angelina, plus Maybe Someday, Under you spell
• The album title songs Dylan wrote and ignored: JWH, Nashville Skyline.
• The songs Bob has never performed: Temporary Like Achilles
• No time, time passes and Dirge
• World Gone Wrong, She’s your lover, Foot of Pride

By Tony Attwood

In this little series of articles about songs Bob Dylan put onto an album, but then didn’t play in concert, we have reached the songs from Biograph, although this is a bit of a  misleading place to be because the Biograph songs are songs which seemingly were recorded by Bob but then abandoned and only resurfaced as a way of filling the Biograph album.

However, there are two songs from the list which I would argue most certainly could have been used and developed live on stage.  First we have Abandoned Love.

Maybe Bob has an aversion to singing in harmony, maybe he couldn’t find an arrangement that didn’t involve a viola.    But had he suddenly introduced the piece into a concert I think the audience, recognising an absolute rarity would have gone wild.  Well, at least I would.

It is four and a half minutes long and eight verses without any repeats – which should be no problem for Bob with his prodigious memory for lyrics, and really, although it exists in the most simplest of musical terms, it works at every level.

I can hear the turning of the key
I’ve been deceived by the clown inside of me
I thought that he was righteous but he’s vain
Oh, something’s a-telling me I wear the ball and chain

Maybe Bob doesn’t like the admission of his failures, or the fact that he is trapped – but then surely we long, long ago stopped seeing Bob songs as autobiographical.   But maybe it was that somewhat odd, almost spooky verse…

I’ve given up the game, I’ve got to leave
The pot of gold is only make-believe
The treasure can’t be found by men who search
Whose gods are dead and whose queens are in the church

“Whose gods are dead and whose queens are in the church,” indeed.  If I was running a Bob Dylan quiz one of the questions I would pose would be a quote of that line, and the question, “Which song is this from?”  And then if some clever-dick knows the answer, I’d ask, “and what does it mean?”

But maybe it was the Everly Brothers who did it for Bob – perhaps he just didn’t want to do a song the boys had done – although they didn’t offer up their cover until 1985 – ten years after Bob wrote it.   (By the way, what is the lead instrument in the break at around 3’30”?)

And now moving on to my second “never played in public song, here’s “Up to me”

Dupree came in pimpin' tonight to the Thunderbird cafe
Crystal wanted to talk to him, I had to look the other way
Now, I just can't rest without your love, I need your company
But you ain't a-gonna cross the line
I guess it must be up to me

There's a note left in the bottle, you can give it to Estelle
She's the one you been wond'rin' about, but there's really nothin' much to tell
We both heard voices for a while, now the rest is history
Somebody's got to cry some tears
I guess it must be up to me

So go on, boys, and play your hands, life is a pantomime
The ringleaders from the county seat say you don't have all that much time
And the girl with me behind the shades, she ain't my property
One of us has got to hit the road
I guess it must be up to me

If we never meet again, baby, remember me
How my lone guitar played sweet for you that old-time melody
And the harmonica around my neck, I blew it for you free
No one else could play that tune, you know it was up to me

Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 15

by Jochen Markhorst

XV       “I had no idea what the hell he was singing about”

Our Japanese friends do not have a bad reputation when it comes to Dylan translations. Written publications are usually loving, very literal translations with a wealth of explanatory annotations and alternatives. Jingle-jangle = 金属の音が鳴る様子、ジャラジャラ = The sound of metal clanging, jingling, for example. “The lyrics are about a fantastical experience of moving between reality and hallucination, and the fictional Tambourine Man, a being in between the two,” the translator explains. To which they sometimes afford edits that more often than not add an enriching, deepening dimension:

そして救急車が行った後、残されているのものは
シンデレラが廃墟の街を掃いている音だけ

And after the ambulance has gone, all that is left is
Is the sound of Cinderella sweeping the ruined city.

… “Desolation Row” is called ‘廃墟の街’ in Japanese, haikyo no machi, Ruined City – which, in the language of a people who had to endure Hiroshima and Nagasaki, does indeed add an extra, oppressive dimension.

Mr. Tambourine Man – Bob Dylan (Japanese Cover):

Japanese artists, especially those from the premier league, sometimes dare to take a much freer approach to source texts. And even then, the quality of the lyrics usually doesn’t get any worse. As we have seen with Japanese great Haruomi Hosono, the electronic legend who has been forcing Dylan on his countrymen since the 1960s.

On Heavenly Music (2013), for instance, the album on which he honours his Western favourites. There, he surprises Dylan followers with a brilliant cover and exquisite translation of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. Well, with a retranslation, actually. Hosono sobers Dylan’s slightly-hysterical lyrics, turning them into a naturalistic, tranquil and introspective account. No lions in the Coliseum, but a statue of a lion; no young girls pulling muscles, but a maid eating mussels, not Botticelli’s niece in the hotel room, but a kawaii, cute Greek girl… Dylan’s source lyrics are just a hat rack.

When I Paint My Masterpiece – Haruomi Hosono:

Hosono has not yet dared to touch “Like A Rolling Stone”, though. Neither has his friend Kenji Endo, that other titan in Japanese rock history (“Curry Rice”) – although Kenji recounts in every interview how his passion for music awoke during his college days when he first heard Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”. As again just before his death, in an interview with the New York Times:

When the Japanese singer-songwriter Kenji Endo first heard Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” as a young student in Tokyo in the 1960s, he was perplexed — offended, even. Aren’t pop vocals supposed to be pretty? But by the third listen, Mr. Endo remembered that he was in awe: “This guy is creating something that has never been created before.” He had found his calling.

And what about Mr. Dylan’s lyrics? “I had no idea what the hell he was singing about,” Mr. Endo said in a recent Skype interview.

Mr Endo would have been helped by the translations that the webmaster who calls himself Yoshiaki Masharu publishes on his wonderful site Lyriclist; hundreds of translations of English-language pop and rock songs, about 20 of them Dylan songs. Yoshi is careful not to translate “boldly”, as he calls it, because “misinterpretation or perversion of the facts is not acceptable”, but still does aim for ‘’translations that make sense, that reflect my own interpretation.” And succeeds excellently with “Like A Rolling Stone”:

皆言ってただろ「気を付けなお嬢さん、今に痛い目みるぞ」って
そんなのは奴らがからかってるだけだと思ってただろ

They used to say, ‘Watch out, missy, you’re about to get yourself hurt.’
You thought they were just messing with you

… for example, and

I hear you graduated from a good school, Miss Lonely.
But you know what, you’ve been coaxed.
No one taught you how to live on the streets.
You have to get used to it now.

His translation is preceded by a clarifying introduction for his compatriots. What is meant by a “rolling stone”, that the text largely describes the fall of a woman from an upper-class background, and that “the lyrics seem to contain Bob Dylan’s caustic message to the bourgeoisie, but they also make us think about what it means to rise and fall in life”.

Tone and content are excellently struck. And where a culture clash threatens, the footnotes provide insight. “Mystery Tramp” can be interpreted in a broader sense, including the subsequent “deal”, which some take to refer to “prostitution,” At most, Yoshi makes concessions in terms of rhythm, as evidenced by his footnote to the third-couplet:

“Diplomat interpreted here as ‘a man who is good at socialising’. Chrome horse was interpreted here as ‘chrome-plated vehicle’. It would be more faithful to translate it as ‘motorbike’ (=horse), but ‘car’ fits the flow of the story better, so we have done so.”

Some well-intentioned amateurs can be found on YouTube with loving but unfortunately unappealing attempts to cover the song in Japanese. Hindered, apart from poor talent, by poor knowledge of English, leading to alienating verses like Who knows where we’re going? Even God doesn’t know and It’s a world where you can’t even get out of college (?).

Like A Rolling Stone – Mabo Saito (Japanese): https://youtu.be/58veePEmFcI

So the wait is on for Japanese music talent to pick up Yoshiaki’s lyrics. The perfect translation is there. Although, perfect… phrasing will be a challenge. The Japanese verse lines have significantly more syllables than the source text. “Like a rolling stone”, for example, becomes korogaruishi mitai ni natte (転がる石みたいになって) – twice as many syllables as Dylan needs to say the same thing. A core line like You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely is 12 syllables in the source – a translation without “misinterpretation or perversion of the facts,” as Yoshiaki Masharu demands of himself, becomes Mina ittetadaro `ki o tsukena ojōsan, imani itai me miru zo’tte: 25 syllables, more than double the number.

A sensei like Bob Dylan might be able to handle it – but everyone else is bound to fall. And may have to content himself with the fact that, like Napoleon in rags, he amused the audience with the language he used. On the other hand: Napoleon, as Mashura helpfully explains in the footnote to the last verse, Napoleon is the man who said “Impossible, n’est pas français.”

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone part 16: Beauty in Sound

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971
• Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door

By Tony Attwood

Wherever you look when there is an article about Bob Dylan, it is for the most part about Dylan himself, his private life, his performances, and his lyrics.   Rarely is there much said about the music.   And so today I wondered what would happen if I took a fairly simple (in terms of musical construction and lyrical content) Dylan song, and really focussed on the music.  As the source for my experiment, I took “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is, according to Bob Dylan, and as is repeated endlessly by commentators, based on “No More Auction Block”.  Indeed, if you concentrate, you can hear the melody of “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind” in the instrumental introduction to No More, and again within the song most particularly in the last line of each verse.

Thus once you have that connection in mind to the effect that, “Blowing in the Wind” relates to “No more Auction Block,” it is possible to hear the musical influence of the latter on the former, and this comes across in Odetta’s version.

But I think this whole thing about “Blowin in the Wind” actually being based on “No more auction block” is rather a simplification.  Of course we accept it because Dylan is quoted as saying “‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called ‘No More Auction Block’—that’s a spiritual and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ follows the same feeling.”   But that is a key point – I am not at all sure how many people would trace Blowing in the Wind back to No Moire Auction Block without being told.

In short, Bob may have started with “No More Auction Block” but that is not the same as the two songs being inexorably linked.

The lyrics are of course completely different…

No more auction block for me
No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone

No more driver's lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's lash for me
Many thousands gone

No more whip lash for me
No more, no more
No more pint of salt for me
Many thousands gone

No more auction block for me
No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone

… but then so is the music, and I wonder just how true that link that we are regularly told about actually is.  For really just as there is little more than one musical line in Dylan’s version of the song that relates “No more auction block” to “Blowin in the wind” and there is not much in the lyrics at all to suggest that “Blowin’ in the wind” is related to “No more auction block.”

Now I have to admit that over the years of writing articles for Untold Dylan, I have come to be a little suspicious about things Bob says.  Indeed, Jochen wrote on this site in January 2021 about Dylan’s speech in 2015 in which Dylan said,

“When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women on Deep Ellum put you on the rocks.” Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too / And your gravity’s down and negativity don’t pull you through.”

Now that I am sure is right – but equally I don’t think that is a prime influence.   That is the way the brain works, churning and turning words and indeed if you are musically inclined, musical phrases, over and over, and coming up with something new.  Besides if Bob really knew where his ideas come from, he wouldn’t have had the long spells when he composed nothing.  He would surely just have turned the creative spark on again, knowing as he did, how it worked.

Indeed as Jochen goes on to point out, Dylan went on to say, “These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” before listing seven examples of classics that have given him the format. “If you’d sung “John Henry” as many times as I have, you’d get to “Blowin’ In The Wind” too, Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key To The Highway” automatically leads to “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Sail Away Ladies” to “Boots Of Spanish Leather”.”

And then Jochen adds the explosive comment, “Charming and modest. And, as is often the case with Dylan, not entirely enlightening.”   Well, yes, up to a point, but maybe for once I will slightly disagree.  Not entirely enlightening, true, but a bit enlightening nonetheless.

Indeed as Jochen did point out when Dylan talks about the writing of his songs, he doesn’t cite events, movements, beliefs etc (with the exception of his short period of writing only overtly Christian songs) he cites the musical antecedents.

So now we need to ask, just how accurate a measure is this?  Is there really any link between the MUSIC of “No More Auction Block”, and the MUSIC of “Blowing in the Wind”?

Now I know (because I have just checked) that if you go onto Google’s AI Overview it will tell you that “The melody of Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” comes from the 19-th century African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block For Me” and so I am disagreeing with AI, because quite simply I am saying “No it doesn’t”.

Of course you can hear half a phrase of music in the title line to “Auction Block” as equivalent to “How many roads must a man walk down,”, but then that latter line only contains four notes, and yes it if you play it in the right key they are the same four notes as “How many roads,” although at a different speed, and with a different rhythmic lilt.  But this is true for hundreds of thousands of songs.

This is not to say that Bob or anyone else is lying when making the comment the first line of “Blowing” is taken from the first line of “No More”.   It is not even like saying that this sentence I am writing here, which begins “It is rather like saying” is based on a certain other sentence.  And yes in fact on Google (I have just checked) there are 145 web pages which have the phrase “It is rather like saying” on them.

But the key point is that we only have 12 notes available to us in music, while in the alphabet we have 26 letters.  It might not sound too big a difference, but I can’t find a website that tells me how many combinations of letters there can be if we allow repetition – which of course musically we are allowed to do.

In short in every song there are almost certainly elements of other songs.   The musical opening to “No More Auction Block” is made up of just four notes.  The musical opening of “Blowing in the Wind” is made up of the same four notes in the same order BUT the rhythm, speed and indeed feel of those notes is completely different.  To say one comes from the other is rather like saying that everyone who ever said “I don’t love you” said it with the same meaning.  Those words can be said in anger or in sorrow or in deesperation or with a throwaway carelessness or even to emphasise something even more powerful than love.

In short, there is some link between “Auction Block” and “Blowing in the Wind,” but it is the same sort of link that can be found between characters in two different novels saying “I love you.”  The words are the same but most likely the situation, the feeling, the emotions, the reaction, the volume, the speed – in short everything – is different.

We might also in passing note that “Blowin’ in the Wind” didn’t actually become famous because of Dylan’s version but because of the version of Peter Paul and Mary and I would argue that their version which emphasises tenderness and love, makes this a different song from Dylan’s own album version which to me at least, emphasises despair.

So where does “Blowing in the Wind” come from?  No, for me, not from “No More Auction Block” but somewhere completely different entirely.  I think Bob laid us a false trail.  He might have been listening to “Auction Block” but I think the amount of impact that song had on “Blowin'” is minute.

• The utterly brilliant Angelina, plus Maybe Someday, Under you spell
• The album title songs Dylan wrote and ignored: JWH, Nashville Skyline.
• The songs Bob has never performed: Temporary Like Achilles
• No time, time passes and Dirge

By Tony Attwood

Four songs from “World Gone Wrong” have never been performed by Dylan (according to the official site): Love Henry, Stack a Lee and Broke Down Engine.

The reason is probably because of the simplicity and repetitiveness of the song.  It consists of seven musical identical verses, in which the first two lines are varied and then the last three lines are repeated from verse to verse, as in…

Strange things have happened, like never before.
My baby told me I would have to go.
I can't be good no more, once like I did before.
I can't be good, baby,
Honey, because the world's gone wrong.

But what makes the song so worth hearing is the guitar part, which shows Bob at his finest as an acoustic guitarist.  It’s worth a listen just for that.

However as we know, audiences at Bob concerts are no longer respectfully quiet as they were in the early days, so the song’s chance has long since passed.  Which is a shame because Bob’s guitar accompaniment really is something to hear.

And there is another point here, that is who wrote the song (the increasingly bonkers AI Overview has no doubt telling us “Bob Dylan is the composer of the song “World Gone Wrong”.   And to be fair, There is an implication in some places that Bob wrote this but in fact it dates back to the 1930s.

BB King recorded it too, but there is no doubt the Sheikhs got there first.

Maybe Bob just didn’t feel it could carry off such a repetitive piece on stage, or maybe someone with a bit of copyright knowledge suggested that playing it regularly on stage might just alert someone that some copyright acknowledgement might be due, or indeed some payment.  And it is not as if America was not alert to copyright by the time the song was first recorded.  The first Copyright Act in the US was passed in 1831.

But whatever the reason Bob didn’t go further with the song.  Having recorded it and given the song’s name to the album itself, that was that.

But lest we think all of Bob’s decisions about not performing his own songs are just weird, or petulant or crazy, I want to divert into a song from the Bootleg 1-3 that Bob didn’t play live, and in my view quite rightfully so.

It is She’s Your Lover Now, and it would be good to say that this was an early version of “Like a Rolling Stone” but this was recorded and I think written, after “Like a Rolling Stone.”   It sounds to me very much like an attempt to copy “Rolling Stone” and have another piece with all the merit of “Rolling Stone” – and failing.

Maybe you like that, but I really can’t find anything good in it.

That was on Bootleg 1-3, as was my final unperformed Dylan song for today, which I find an absolute and utter masterpiece “Foot of Pride”.  It turned up on Bootleg Series 1-3, and it’s a good piece there, but I never marked it out for special admiration until I heard this.

And watching it is even more remarkable as Lou appears to me to be reading the lyrics off the monitor.

I don’t know about other covers of this, but then I haven’t really looked, but the main point for this little series is that Bob wrote (in my view) an utter masterpiece, and simply never performed it.  Maybe when he made the recording that turned up on the volume 1-3 Bootleg, he knew there was far more to come from this song.

But fortunately, Lou was out there and performed it, and who cares if he was reading the lyrics on the monitor?  It’s a brilliant way of representing the tedium and repetitiveness of life, and everyone trying to fight their way through, without ever going anywhere, without boring us senseless.

By Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan is of course one of those people who works in multiple fields of the arts. Here, we primarily know him as a composer and writer of lyrics. And I guess those of who have a tendency to focus on his work in songwriting can easily forget just how masterful he is with visual art.

Yet with a quick look at Dylan’s work in the Halcyon Gallery, you cannot but be impressed by both the quality and the beauty of his work. And of course, Bob’s artwork as with his lyrics and music can bring forth a feeling of “if only I could do that….”

This is a thought that has occupied me for much of my working life in the creative arts. Obviously not at anything remotely like Bob’s level, but still doing my best and earning some money along the way.

But I have been left with that constant feeling concerning visual art that if only I had the ability with paint that artists have, I might find I had something to say, visually. And so it has been for all my life, until now. But I’ve just found that there are tools like the ai art generator which are designed to help artists and marketers create stunning visuals with ease. Which is exactly what I need.

For the simple fact is that when you need an image that’s hard to find, such as anything from a watercolour floral background to a vibrant poster there is a way of getting it.

Of course you might well know the answer already, and maybe I’ve been rather slow in finding the solution, but the solution is simple. For now, I can type in a prompt describing the sort of artwork I want, and the Generate image tool does it for me.

The solution is the Adobe Express AI art generator. You just type a prompt describing the artwork you envision and the Generate image tool does it. If you want to see Bob’s work first of course you can – take a look at his art website.

And after that you can type new images into existence with the AI art generator.

Indeed if you do follow this route, and create something Dylan-related which you feel you would like to have reach a wider audience, by all means make send me a digital copy, and I’ll try and fit it into Untold Dylan. With an acknowledgement to you, of course.

By Tony Attwood

One of the great advantages that we have as a result of Mike Johnson’s astonishing work both on the Never Ending Tour and on Dylan the harmonica player (there’s an index to those articles at the end of the final article), is that we have available on this site a huge range of recordings, and it is but a matter of moments to find the earliest, “Tangled Up in Blue” live performance, and then the last.

But then when I decided to put these two recordings together I didn’t really know what I would find.   Indeed I heard from the 1984 recording didn’t really surprise me too much….  Its a good bit of modern rock ‘n’ roll.

But it made me want to remind myself of how all this started, so I want to remind you of the original version – not least because for me, playing multiple versions of this song, I can lose track of where we are….  And it is still a very beautiful recording, and even before noteworthy because since the song was released in 1975, according to the official site, it has sine been played 1685 times in public by Bob and the band.

1975

In 1975 it was being performed as a solo song: Dylan with an acoustic guitar.  He is in a lower key (one tone lower I think on just listening to these, rather than sitting down and playing along) but the speed has significantly changed.

1976

By 1976 we had an electric version, and this is not just a little bit of extra instrumentation – this is a new version with new implications: just listen to what happens at the end of the verse around 2’20”.

Now this is such a huge transformation from the original I am wondering what Bob was doing.  Was this a case of finding a new meaning in the song that demanded a hard rock version, or was this more a case of “OK guys let’s try it as a belter.”

And is there a particular reason for the “One day the axe just fell” verse being slowed right down?   Maybe the line about “The past was close behind” was on his mind.  Or was it just a case of saying “Let’s play it as fast as possible and see what happens,” but feeling a break was needed somewhere?

In short, does the change of tempo signify or symbolise anything?   Is it a piece of utterly inspired artistic insight?   Or really just a case of “let’s see what happens if we do it this way.”

The constant change of tempo and style suggests the lady in question is just flitting from one lifestyle to another, and the singer is trailing behind her.  Does the slow beat really suit, “Then he started into dealing with slaves And something inside of him died.”?  Maybe; I’m not sure.

Indeed does the change of tempo then signify that no matter what she does, he is still tangled?  I’m sorry I don’t have any answers, but just the suspicion that Bob said, “Let’s try this” and so they did.  (He is after all the boss).   And maybe he then decided, actually no, that’s just an effect for effect’s sake, which is the view I’ve got.  But maybe not.

1984

Certainly in the next decade, the song became much more recognisable for those of us who have played the album over and over.  The length is back down to five minutes, a little shorter than the original.

And that rather trivial thought about length then took me back to the origins, and I found that although I played the LP version just about an hour ago as I started to put this article together and listen to the various versions of Tangled that I have, going back to the original at this point really was a bit of a shock.

But it was time to move on to the latter stages of the 1,685 performances which finished in August 2018.  First the penultimate year… which is the last recording we have of the song from Mike’s amazing collection of the Never Ending Tour series.   This comes from the NET article, 2017 part 1. Songs on the rebound.   And even though I read and indeed published the whole series, coming back to this, was still a bit of a shock…

   2017

2018

But Bob did continue with the song and this recording does come from the final year.  The 2017 approach is continued, but Bob has changed his vocal part further.    Howver this was a far as he could go it seems, for in August 2018, “Tangled” was wrapped up for the last time.

But really what a journey.   And if you still have a moment and the inclination, you might try this little experiment, having played this final live version just pop back to the top of the article and play the album version again.   I can say I couldn’t possibly imagine where this song might go when I first heard it.  But to be fair, I doubt that Bob had any inclination that he would still be performing the song live on stage 43 years later.

But if this is not enough for you, please do visit “Tangled up in Harmonicas, Part 2” where you will hear what Mike describes as “the greatest ever version” of this extraordinary and brilliant song.

And who am I to disagree?

Elsewhere in Bob’s Transformations…

• Things have changed – or is he just having a laugh?
• Dylan’s complete transformation of “All I really want to do”
• Once or Twice: The Transformation of “Blood in My Eyes”
• Lay Lady Lay: Three Bob Dylan transformations of his song & a look at the meanings.

To find us on Facebook just type into your search engine “Facebook Untold Dylan

For an index of our latest series, and some of the older ones click here.

by Jochen Markhorst

XIV      What was I to say? Hurry up, asshole?

“Che soddisfazione essere scelti da Bob Dylan, How satisfying it is to be chosen by Bob Dylan,” is the headline above a short news item in La Stampa, 24 July 2003. The article then reports that “Come una pietra scalciata” by Italian hip-hoppers Articolo 31, their reworking of “Like A Rolling Stone” on the 1998 album Nessuno, “è stata scelta dallo stesso musicista di Duluth, has been chosen by the Duluth musician himself” for inclusion on the soundtrack of Dylan’s movie Masked And Anonymous.

Remarkable enough to ask further questions, which is what La Stampa does to frontman J-Ax. Not too deep, but Alessandro “J-Ax” Aleotti’s answer is intriguing. I had just written a lyric about the decline of a spoiled brat, he tells (la storia di una ragazza-cigno che torna ad essere brutto anatroccolo perché vive senza valori, as Alessandro poetically summarises it, “the story of a girl-swan who turns into an ugly duckling because she lives without values”), when our manager came to tell us that we had the chance to cover “Like A Rolling Stone”. The story of that song is practically the same as the lyrics J-Ax had just written, so that opportunity – after a few minor tweaks – was quickly seized.

Articolo 31 – Come una pietra scalciata:

It made little impression at the time, in 1998, apart from the predictable outrage among rabid Italian Dylan fans. But then out of the blue, two days before Christmas 1999, comes a phone call from Dylan’s management: whether they could use Articolo’s cover in a film. “We thought it was for a documentary and immediately gave permission,” he says.

In his autobiography (Imperfetta forma, 2016), the matter comes up again, of course, and here J-Ax tells it a little differently and with more detail. The very first step is particularly noteworthy:

“We got a call from Bob Dylan’s record company. They said all his songs were available to be sampled at will. We chose “Like a rolling stone “, his most famous song, mainly because it was the only (or almost the only) song we knew.”

So the initiative really seems to come from New York. Yet things still almost go wrong: before Articolo 31 can release the cover, they still need the Master’s approval. Which just doesn’t come. The release date is getting closer, and discouraged, the men are already adjusting the tracklist of the upcoming album Nessuno and moving “Come una pietra scalciata” to the bin. “Ma che gli vuoi dire a uno dei più grandi poeti del Novecento? Sbrigati, stronzo? – What was I to say to one of the greatest poets of the 20th century? Hurry up, asshole?” No, you wait and then say thank you for allowing me to wait. Patience is rewarded: one day before the album is due to be pressed, permission arrives from New York.

Why Dylan and/or his management made that sample offer, we don’t know. Articolo 31 was Italy’s best-known hip-hop group at the time – their 1996 album Così com’è was a huge hit, and to this day it is the best-selling hip-hop album in Italy – perhaps the investment firm General Dylan Dynamics Inc. felt they were not selling enough records in Italy and were looking for a key to open up that market.

Indeed, like France, Italy has the reputation of being a difficult market for English-language artists. By comparison, Dylan’s then recent album, the late masterpiece Time Out Of Mind, sells about 60,000 copies in both France and Italy. In the UK, with even slightly less population than both countries, the album sells three times more copies. While Germany has more inhabitants (about 80 million versus about 60 million in France and 60 million in Italy), it sells relatively much more than its neighbours on the other side of the Alps: 150,000 units, 150% more for a 33% bigger market. So manager Jeff Rosen may have made a marketing-driven assessment and then made his phone call to Italy’s most popular hip-hop group.

Strictly speaking, it is not a cover. The band samples a few fragments and leaves the chorus intact; we hear Dylan singing how does it feel, embellished with an Italian female chorus. The lyrics do indeed have the same plot and a similar protagonist, but nothing more: “Eri la più carina, un’eterna Miss Liceo, You were the prettiest, an eternal Miss High School,” J-Ax opens, then paints the arrogant socialite, the cruel and unapproachable Queen Bee who has nothing to offer but exterior and outward appearance, and judges only thereon at that.

As with Dylan’s Miss Lonely, things go wrong. Miss Liceo marries the handsomest douche bag in June, in September she makes her first acquaintance with his fists. Her father goes bankrupt, and then things move rapidly towards the gutter. By the end, there is nothing left of her haughtiness and she shares Miss Lonely’s fate:

Ora che sei una parte del mondo che ignoravi
Sei diventata una di quelle pietre che scalciavi

Now you yourself are part of the world you ignored back then
You yourself have become one of those rolling stones

The real Italian cover is more than 30 years older. In 1966, Gianni Pettenati scored his first hit with The Juniors: “Come una pietra che rotola”, the version that for most Italians is the first introduction to “Like A Rolling Stone”. It is a stripped-down, simplified translation of Dylan’s masterpiece. The revenge fantasy is retained, so is the object, but all colour (Miss Lonely, the Siamese cat, the diplomat, the jugglers and so on) has been erased – what remains are four fairly similar couplets. Such as:

E come guardavi tu
chi viveva un po’ più giù.
D’ora in poi, tu guarderai, tu guarderai dal fondo in sù
Ora stendi la mano, chiedi pietà.

And how you looked down at
Those who lived a little lower.
From now on, you will look, you will look from the bottom up
Now stretch out your hand, beg for mercy.

Gianni Pettenati & The Juniors – Come una pietra che rotola:

Nor can performance and The Juniors’ musical support stand in the shadow of the original. Legendary beat band The Wretched does it better. The men from Vittorio Veneto take the translation used by Pettenati and record, also in 1966, a very nice cover for the B-side of their flopped single “La mia preghiera”. It made no waves at the time, but over the years it has been used in documentaries, appeared on compilation albums and received increasing airplay – thanks to the magical powers of nostalgia, the B-side is now considered a classic. And thanks to that organ, of course. And because how does it feel simply sounds better in Italian:

Come si stà, ma come si stà
a far la pietra che
sta rotolando giù,
come stai facendo tu

The Wretched – Come Una Pietra Che Rotola:

… as everything sounds better in Italian. We are still waiting for one of the true grandmasters though. For Francesco De Gregori or for a posthumous discovery of a Fabrizio De André recording. Unlikely. But one can dream.

———

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone part 15: “I had no idea what the hell he was singing about”

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971

By Mike Johnson

[I read somewhere once that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the second article on the third track, ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ You can find the previous articles in this History in Performance in the link at the end of this article.  But in case you missed the first part of It’s All Right Ma is here…

We’ve already covered tracks one and two in some depth, and links to all those articles are at the end of this piece.  Meanwhile this is second episode of It’s all right ma, and you can read part one of this section here…

It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – A History in Performance, Part 1

———-

‘All in all it can only fall
with a crushing but meaningless blow’

You can find these lines, of course, in ‘Gates of Eden,’ the song that precedes ‘It’s All Right, Ma’ on the album but they could easily have occurred in that song as the sense of impending doom hangs over both songs. However, to my mind, the true precursor to ‘It’s All Right, Ma’ can be found in ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,’ a poem that Dylan, in a rare moment, read aloud to a lucky audience in April 1963.

As with the song, images flash by in a bewildering hurdy-gurdy. No sacred cow is safe from Dylan’s slashing wit, no crime against the spirit escapes his condemnation. Rank materialism comes under a bombardment of images. The poem is about encountering those ‘stuffed graveyards and false gods’ the song confronts.

Cause you look an' you start getting the chills
Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house

And, as with the song, the fight for personal autonomy is forefront:

You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat

Both poem and song celebrate a hard-won resilience and a fierce sense of personal autonomy. They signal resistance, a very live and active bullshit detector, a refusal to be a part of any group-think. It helps us chart our way through the chaos of opinions, those places for lost minds we nowadays call rabbit holes. You may lose yourself, but you have to reappear. That’s the trick of it:

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

You won’t find a more forceful declaration of personal autonomy than that.

In the previous article we noted that tempo is all-important with this song. Dylan often delivers it at breakneck speed and that seems to suit the song. No time for pause or reflection. The song is like a shower of shooting stars and, in the 1974 performances, it comes across as a howl of pain, but still at breakneck speed.

After being performed regularly in 1974, some forty times, it almost disappears in the first year of the Rolling Thunder tour in 1975, when it was performed only once. I suspect that it was pushed aside by all the new songs from Blood On The Tracks and the even newer songs that would shortly appear on Desire.

That single 1975 performance is, however, a beauty, delivered with the quivering intensity that marks Dylan’s performances in that year, arguably one of his best ever performance years. Interestingly, he slows it down, doesn’t howl it out as in 1974, but finds a new balance between restraint and forthrightness. (Providence, Nov 4^th)

1975

The song was only performed four times in 1976, a year marked generally by a harder edged sound than 1975. We have a great soundboard recording from Mobile, April 29^th, (evening performance) the last for that year. Again, the tempo is slower, and we note a melodic variation in the vocal as Dylan seeks new ways to deliver the song.

1976 Evening

By the time we get to the 1978 big band tour, the song has fully reestablished itself in the setlist and is regularly performed. For the first time we find a major revamping of the song as it moves from a solo acoustic performance to a big, big band production, Dylan’s first, and successful attempt to turn it into a rock song. In the following years Dylan would return to the acoustic roots of the song, and not everybody likes the bombastic feel of the 1978 version, but I like it because it swings. You can get up and dance to it. And the lyrics have lost none of their sting. Here it is from the famous Budokan concert at the beginning of the tour in February.

1978 Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo

But that is not necessarily the best performance. For my money, some of the greatest 1978 concerts can be found at the end of year, the American leg of the tour. As a contrast to Budokan, try this one from Charlotte, Dec 10^th.

1978 Charlotte Dec 10 1978

The feel here is looser, more frenetic and ecstatic. The audience too seem to be in a state of high excitement. The whole atmosphere is a lot buzzier than Budokan.

The song was dropped in 1979, which was dedicated to the new crop of gospel songs, and only began to creep back at the end of 1980 with two performances, both in Portland in December. This one’s from Dec 3^rd and sounds like a solo acoustic performance, greeted ecstatically by the audience. Many Dylan fans had had their fill of preacher Bob with his tub-thumping Christian songs and joyfully greeted the reappearance of their old, protest Bob, perhaps not realizing how well the song fitted with the new Christian Dylan, its moral denunciation of the fallen world in which ‘not much is really sacred.’ Indeed, listening to the song in this setting makes us wonder if this upsurge of gospel songs wasn’t a throwback to the years of the apparent moral certainty of the old ‘protest’ Dylan, before the realisation that things are not so black and white, a realisation expressed in ‘My Back Pages’ in 1964. Maybe these Christian songs are another kind of protest song.

Whatever, Dylan too sounds happy to have rediscovered the song after a couple of years break, and it sounds fresh and vibrant. He’s picked up the pace again, the song races along, and Dylan is in wonderful voice. 1980/81 are peak years for Dylan’s vocals. Everybody’s in a state of high excitement. A wonderful performance.

1980 Portland

In 1981, the last year of the gospel concerts we find over twenty performances of the song, scintillating, rapid-fire performances that are hard to beat. There’s something of a hysterical edge to Dylan’s 1981 concerts which makes them outstanding. Although they’re pretty similar, I’ve chosen two recordings from 1981 (sorry, no dates for either of them), if only because it’s one of my favourite years for live Dylan. He’s never sounded better, and maybe will never sound as good again.

If anything, he pushes the song along even faster than in 1980, or indeed any previous performance. The images race by, but Dylan never loses control. He’s right on top of the song. And the guitars (I think there are two acoustic guitars going for it here) set a hectic pace. Wow! is all I can say. What a blast!

1981

And again in 1981

In the next article I’ll be jumping to 1984.

In the meantime, don’t fall for ‘pettiness which plays so rough’ and stay with it.

A: Tambourine Man

• Part 1: A masterpiece is born
• Part 2: 1966 – Darker hues.
• Part 3: Chasing Shadows
• Part 4: 1978-1986. Far From the Twisted Reach
• Part 5: 1986-1993: Evening’s Empire
• Part 6: 1994 – 99: My weariness amazes me
• Part 7: 2000 – 2010: the jingle jangle.

B: Gates of Eden

• Part 1: 1964 Ancestral voices prophesying war
• Part 2: 1974 – 1991 A crashing but meaningless blow
• Part 3: 1991 – 2001. Where Babies Wail: A Spooky Grandeur

C: It’s alright ma

• Part 1: It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – A History in Performance.

• The album title songs Dylan wrote and ignored: JWH, Nashville Skyline.
• The songs Bob has never performed: Temporary Like Achilles
• No time, time passes and Dirge

A consideration of “Maybe Someday”, “Under your spell,” “Farewell Angelina” and that most brilliant of Dylan compositions “Angelina”.

By Tony Attwood

“Maybe Someday” is listed as a Dylan composition, and it is one that has never been covered.  Some may argue that this is because it is, in itself, a weak song, although Bob considered it strong enough to put on the Knocked Out Loaded album.

But there has been at least one cover version although I must admit I don’t like it.  But I liked to keep things complete, and maybe you’ll find more in it than I can.

But a combination of only one cover and many people saying they don’t like the original probably gives us a clear indication of the problem with this song.

However there is yet another problem – the song by Dylan is based on a song by Sleepy John Estes.

And still you may ask (if you are still with me) “where is all this going?”   Well, as you still here, I will tell you.  A couple of months back “Far Out” magazine published an article “‘Angelina’: the darkest lyrics of Bob Dylan?” which opens with the lines, “Blending surrealism with religious imagery and Biblical references, ‘Angelina’ features some of Dylan’s most brooding lyrical ideas, as he seems overawed by a scent of impending doom. The identity of the song’s subject is much debated, with some arguing that Angelina could be a planet or a country, or indeed a woman. What feels clearer, though, is the cloud of darkness that hangs over the writer, an unusual characteristic among Dylan’s wider lyrical reflections.”

And yes of course these lines pepper the song – and maybe that is what puts performers off this magical compositon.   Perhaps the world is not ready for “I see pieces of men marching, trying to take Heaven by force,” although being an atheist myself,I love that line.  (Besides, people who believe have millions of songs, people who don’t believe are a bit starved of music that expresses their point of view, as I see it).

But the reviewer and I concur in the end, for after considering the darkness of the images the reviewer says, “One thing is for sure, though, ‘Angelina’ is a devilishly good song.”   And with that, I can agree.

————————

by Jürg Lehmann

A list of previous articles on other songs in the “Covers we Missed” series is given at the end.  The blue links in the article will also take you to recordings and further information.

• Boots of Spanish Leather (part 1)
• Boots of Spanish Leather (part 2)

If you have ever been a bit interested in Dylan covers, you may have come across Juliana Richer Daily’s memorable performance of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. For Spanish Boots she teamed up with Trevor Willmott in 2013 to perform a duet in perfect harmony. Both Trevor and Juliana are very discreet persons; there is not much to be found about them on the internet. Juliana seems to reside in Nashville, where she works in an architecture firm. She has released an album (Slow Love) in 2014, which is available on bandcamp.

The Lumineers are an American alternative folk band based in Denver, Colorado. The founding members are Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites. Schultz and Fraites began writing and performing together in New Jersey, in 2005. ‘The Lumineers’ struggled to find success in New York according to Schultz, who said, I was living in Brooklyn and working three jobs just to pay the rent, adding, it was really infuriating to move to a city that would help us grow musically, but then never have any time to work on music. So I decided to do something about it.

In 2009, Fraites and Schultz, in their ignorance and naïveté, moved to Denver, Colorado, and joined the open mic scene. ‘The Lumineers’ emerged as one of the most popular folk-rock/Americana, their popularity growing in the 2010s. They are known for their energetic live shows and several international hit singles, including Ho Hey, Stubborn Love and Cleopatra.

Wesley Schultz has been involved with Dylan throughout his entire career. With ‘The Lumineers’ he regularly performs Subterranean Homesick Blues. As a solo project, he covered Boots of Spanish Leather in 2016. Four years later, he returned to the song, this time as a duet with Diana DeMuth. Their cover was released on the album Vignettes (2020) and as a lyrical video.

More fine covers from the 2010s that are definitely worth a listen to are Amos Lee & The Forest Rangers (2015) soundtrack of the drama series Sons of Anarchy; Bill Janovitz (2019), Bluestain (2019), Ciaran Tourish (2019) and Sam Varlov (2019).

The North Carolina-based duo Mandolin Orange – now known as Watchhouse – approach Boots of Spanish Leather from the profound angle of it being a true duet, a kind of call-and-response, between two singers, a man and his woman, both with their own stories to tell, in their own distinct voices.

The young couple, Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, play an understated guitar and fiddle, respectively, slowing the pace and lowering the pitch to bring forth the bittersweet tenor of the song. ‘Mandolin Orange’ has garnered rave reviews for their performance. Yes, they really are communicating, writes Tony Attwood. What’s more, they resist the temptation to bring the strings in too early.  But when it comes in, it is perfect, as is the final harmony. What could have been a simplistic idea of two instruments and two singers, becomes a rendition that makes me learn the song afresh. 

The praise for Mandolin’s excellent rendition is fully justified, but it is also true, that Marlin’s voice can be a potential turn-off for some. In the end it comes down to personal taste again. If you like to get more familiar with Mandolin Orange, you can treat yourself to a copy of their album  Blindfaller from 2016, or Tides of a Teardrop (2019).

Should you not have found your favourite cover yet with the ‘Mandolin Orang’e version, you can try it with Flagstaff couple Kyle and Gretta Miller. Under their band name Tow’rs, they released a single in 2021. Their Boots of Spanish Leather is also a classic duet with restrained vocals and instrumentations, thus emphasising the desperation and wistfulness that Dylan brought to the tale.

By the end of 2024 Montreal’s Half Moon Run put an atmospheric spin on Spanish Boots. Behind the seemingly simple presentation of the song is a rather refined arrangement including a discerning picking pattern. I’m never tire of hearing this song, says band member Conner Molander. It has that sense of wistful longing that characterizes many Half Moon Run songs – listening, our hearts open up, pondering some lost love beyond the horizon.

 In jazz Jewels&Binoculars took on Boots of Spanish Leather on the first of their three outstanding Dylan albums, The Music of Bob Dylan, 2003 (the song starts at around 4.20).

 Janet Planet covered it on her Bob Dylan Songbook in 2010, and as a big band version on Just Like a Woman in 2015.

Castell Collection is another secretive band that leaves no traces on the internet (the singer’s slight accent could hint at Germany, but the publisher is Sony / ATV Music Scandinavia). There’s no need for them to keep it under wraps, their album Yet Another Side from 2016 includes Boots of Spanish Leather  and some other very good Dylan covers, such as Sweetheart Like You.

Mark Murphy (not to be confused with the great American jazz singer of the same name, who died in 2015) included a re-imagined Boots on his debut album in 2016. Fans of smooth, intimate jazz with a Latin touch will get their money’s worth.

They will also like the version of Brooklyn-based saxophonist Noah Preminger. Preminger, born in 1985, has recorded some twenty critically acclaimed albums as a band-leader and is a two time winner of Downbeat Magazine’s ‘Rising Star Best Tenor Saxophonist’. His 2016 album Some Other Time ,which also includes Boots of Spanish Leather, successfully combines the best of improvisation with the romantic gestures that ground these compositions (Downbeat). And the New York Times is certain, that Mr. Preminger designs a different kind of sound for each note, an individual destiny and story.

Boots of Spanish Leather is very popular with YouTubers, many of whom, especially young ones, are attracted to the song and try to make it their own. Some of them do it really well, they would have deserved a large audience.

Kiersten Holine (2012), Brandon Wallace&Sean-Marie Hart (2012), Aubrey Wood (2015), Kelly Oliver (2016)

Kina Grannis (2017), Townsend (2017), Adelaide Spitz&Will Daughtridge (2019), Julianne Barredo (2021), Christina Eltrevoog (2021).

Elsewhere in the “Covers we missed” series…

• Abandoned Love
• Ain’t Talkin (Le feu Au Coeur)
• All along the Watchtower
• All I really want to do.
• All the Tired Horses
• As I Went Out One Morning
• Baby, Stop Crying
• Ballad of a Thin Man
• Ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond the Horizon
•  Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
• Billy and To Fall in Love With You
• Black Crow Blues (and a version you won’t believe)
• Blind Willie McTell – Part One
• Blind Willie McTell part 2
• Blind Willie McTell – Part 3
• Blowing in the Wind Part one
• Blowing in the Wind Part two: from the 70s onwards
• Blowing in the Wind Part three: The interpretations

Just published:

Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden  – Bob Dylan kicks open the door

By Jochen Markhorst

Five years ago, I wanted to write an article on “Desolation Row” for Untold Dylan. After 1,500 words, I had still not got past the title, and began to suspect I would need more than one article.

It ended up being a book (Desolation Row – Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965, published in March 2020). Meaning, I could throw out the ambition of someday writing the definitive Highway 61 Revisited book: such a book would become utterly unwieldy, running as it would to over 800 pages. At least.

So a new plan emerged: do it in parts.

Volume 2 became Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot – Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse (2021), and now, coincidentally given the recent success of the film A Complete Unknown, volume 3 in the “Highway 61 series” is coming out: Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden – Bob Dylan kicks open the door.

“Gates Of Eden” was, of course, on Bringing It All Back Home, but it happened to be the B-side of the single “that kicked open the door to your mind” (Springsteen), the single which I suppose did transform most of us. And I like the idea of honouring that earthquake with a book that has the same tracklist.

Even more coincidental is the conjunction of the publication date with the death of the enchanting, unforgettable Marianne Faithfull – the first chapter (and more) happens to be dedicated to her, to her significance in the creation of “Like A Rolling Stone”. A significance that has strangely always been somewhat underplayed. Strange, because surely Marianne’s presence in and around the genesis and in the song itself is not that very cryptic or hidden….

I will try and squeeze the rest of Highway 61 Revisited into one, concluding Volume 4. A challenge.

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle. The new book is called Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden – Bob Dylan kicks open the door.

You can purchase the books through these links.

English paperback:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DV5GQ7Y2
Kindle:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DV4XKPDQ

Dutch paperback:  https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0DV5K7PN3
Kindle:  https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0DV51X86V

German paperback:https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DVPX1HT2
Kindle https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DVM9DMQ4

Publisher’s footnote: We don’t normally do much in the way of advertising within the articles of Untold Dylan, but for Jochen I will always make an exception.  Without his articles, this site would not be a fraction of what it has become, and our readership would be much, much, smaller.

Jochen wrote to me asking if he could publicise his books as above, and my view immediately was that it was the very least I could do.  I do hope you find the way to buying one of the versions noted above, read it and then give it pride of place on your bookshelf.

One tip, however: when you have bought it and read it, don’t lend it to a friend.  The chances are, you’ll never get it back.

Publisher’s note

Phillip Gardener emailed me with his comments on the film “A Complete Unknown” having read recently, after reading my review, and I thought his comments were worth sharing.   Phillip has kindly given me permission to reprint his email text here.  The picture and video has been added by the publisher…

After having watched A Complete Unknown……

I was a 16-year-old Dylan fan and had queued all night in the pouring rain for a ticket to see him play at ABCRitz in Belfast on Friday 6th May 1966.

I played in a group back then called The Set, our manager informed us three days after I bought my ticket that he had secured us a ‘gig’ on Friday 6th May !!!! Can you imagine my horror, I wouldn’t be able to see the great man!

What our manager omitted to tell us when he announced our ‘gig’ was that it was as the introduction band for The Who (an up-and-coming band at the time!) who were playing at a place called The Top Hat in Lisburn.

The Who, Rodger Daltry, Pete Townsend, Keith Moon and John Entwistle were staying at the International Hotel which was directly behind Belfast City Hall. Dylan was booked into the old Grand Central hotel which was on the site that Castle Court is now on.

After our ‘gig’ we went back to the International with The Who , I won’t go into what we had to drink or smoke as I was under age!

Just after twelve, Bob Dylan and his manager walked in to join us for the rest of what was left of the evening!! He was told that the Who would be at the International and he wanted to meet them.

After having wanted to strangle our group manager for arranging a ‘gig’ on the same night that Dylan was playing …. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met and played with Bob Dylan!

Memories!

Phillip Gardner

PS From the publisher.   I too was a Who fan, and indeed saw them at this time too – I think it was at the University of Sussex, but I might be mistaken as to the venue.  The memories are hazy.    There is a video of the Who from this era here.   

I’m always delighted to receive reminiscences and thoughts on anything Dylan related for publication here.  You can get in touch with me via Tony@schools.co.uk

by Jochen Markhorst

XIII       The songs find their way to me one way or another

“I never use the word “cover”. No one ever thinks that Ella Fitzgerald “covered” Berlin or Porter. She sang their songs. The songs were re-arranged and she sang them. I sing the songs of Bob Dylan and in this case, Leonard Cohen, because the songs came to me and demanded to be sung. That’s always the way it happens. I keep my ears and being open and wait. The songs find their way to me one way or another. My joy in Dylan’s work knows no bounds. He is Shakespearean to me.”
– Barb Jungr, interview with David Falconer for Female First, 2014

In the fictional Best Dylan Cover Competition, the ladies more often than not finish on top. The Roches‘ unsurpassed “Clothes Line Saga”, Emmylou Harris’ magical “Every Grain Of Sand”, Severa Gjurin’s breathtaking “Not Dark Yet”, Sinead O’Connor’s otherworldly “I Believe In You”, the Dixie Chicks with their irresistible “Mississippi” (okay, ex aequo with Rab Noakes), and we could go on and on. “Tangled Up In Blue” by the Indigo Girls, not to forget.

But in the “Like A Rolling Stone” subdivision, no lady even makes it to the Top 5, strangely enough. Brave attempts enough. The first is Cher, in 1966. The Goddess Of Pop is something like Dylan’s ambassador in the pop world, much the way Baez and Odetta are in the folk world. Cher’s successful debut album All I Really Want To Do already features three Dylan songs (apart from the title track, Cher’s first hit, also “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice”) and the success inspires husband Sonny Bono to repeat the same trick. And again and again; within a year, Sonny has his wife chirping two more complete albums (The Sonny Side of Chér and Chér, both released in 1966), With Love, Chér follows in 1967, and the fifth and last record the couple records is Backstage – five records in two and a half years, in other words, and four Sonny & Cher albums in between.

Broadly speaking, each of Cher’s solo records follows the pattern of the debut album: a couple of covers, one or two songs written by Sonny Bono, and always at least one Dylan cover. And all recorded in the same studio (Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood) with the same producer Sonny Bono and largely the same session musicians – there are not too many differences between the five LPs. Cher’s “Like A Rolling Stone” is on the second one, on The Sonny Side of Chér and so it does indeed sound like “I Got You Babe” or “Little Man” or any of those many other Sonny & Cher songs, with or without Sonny: like Phil Spector on a diet. The cover is pretty redundant, Cher’s vocal qualities, which are not too dizzying anyway, really fall short, and the only lasting value are the unleashed drums and their sound – so really only a nostalgic, dated quality.

Cher remains loyal to Dylan for a little while longer. The first record she makes without Sonny, the underrated 1969 gem 3614 Jackson Highway under the direction of Jerry Wexler at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, features no less than three Dylan covers. And again, Cher is quick off the mark; she is the first to cover “I Threw It All Away”, and the shared first to record “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” (at about the same time as Esther Phillips, both in April 1969, i.e. the same month Nashville Skyline is released). It’s true love, as we can distil from her autobiography The Memoir, Part One (2024):

“I was a huge Dylan fan and loved his writing, as did Sonny, although he never thought much of his voice, which was a bit rich coming from him.”

… but nevertheless, after 3614 Jackson Highway, that love is only consumed platonically; Cher has not recorded a single Dylan song since 1969.

The next lady up is Maxine Weldon in 1971, who has the great good fortune to be dealt The Jazz Crusaders as session musicians, making two wonderful soul albums. “Like A Rolling Stone” is on the second, Right On, the record that opens with a surprisingly successful soul interpretation of “It Ain’t Me, Babe”. Equally catchy are her versions of Creedence’s “Lodi” and especially Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright”, but on “Like A Rolling Stone” it chafes: not being able to choose between rock and soul really only works out well if you’re Blood, Sweat & Tears. Magisterial organ, though. And, of course, The Jazz Crusaders always sound great.

And that’s how it is, for more than fifty years hereafter. “Like A Rolling Stone” seems immune to the je-ne-sais-quoi that female artists often manage to inject into a Dylan song. Judy Collins, Sara K. (still a brave, intimate, acoustic, jazzy attempt), Nancy Sinatra… none of the ladies are Top 5 candidates re this particular Dylan song. Not even La Jungr.

Veteran and Dylan expert Barb Jungr can be regarded as the Dylan interpreter of the 21st century and can tick off dozens of highly successful Dylan covers, but every now and then she misses the mark – like unfortunately (or maybe: precisely) with the monument “Like A Rolling Stone”. Her tribute album Every Grain Of Sand (2002) with fifteen mostly wonderful Dylan covers was rightly acclaimed at the time, catapulting her name into the thin heights where Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone dwell. Understandably, it gave her the courage to continue building on her Dylan catalogue, culminating in a second tribute album in 2011 with 13 covers: Man In The Long Black Coat. Fairly consistently, the English lady keeps embellishing the albums in between and after with yet another Dylan cover, as she does on Waterloo Sunset in 2003. Track 2 is a particularly idiosyncratic, dramatic, very European jazz interpretation of Dylan’s twenty-first-century masterpiece “High Water”, carried by a compelling lick on the double bass, expressionistic keys from the piano and soundtrack-like guitar commentary. Comparably quirky is Track 8, her approach to “Like A Rolling Stone”.

This approach seems to have been: Chet Baker Sings. “My Funny Valentine”, “How Long Has This Been Going On?”, those regions. The upright bass as the driving force, the piano for accents, the vocals in the centre. It works well enough in the bridge and pre-chorus, and chorus is alright, but strangely it does not work in the verses – Barb “cannot keep up,” as it were, seems to have to sprint after the syllables. Strange; usually, Jungr is actually as much a master of phrasing as Dylan is. Anyway, it’s her choice. Although… the choice, if we are to believe her, is more or less forced on Jungr:

I never go into arranging thinking, “What I want this song to do is…” I go into an arrangement thinking, “What could happen with this song if we listen to it differently?” We ask questions. We try things and we ask questions of the song. We sit the song down at the piano and we go [to the song], “How do you feel if we do this? How do you feel if we moved that section about?” And the song is very clear. The song will go, “Yeah, I like that,” or, “What are you thinking? Don’t be an idiot.”
(Don Gibson interviews Jungr for Write On Music, March 2014)

An intelligent professional woman, La Jungr talks about Dylan’s songs and her methods with appealing poetry and philosophical depth. In which she shows herself to be a kindred spirit of Dylan, by the way – Dylan can communicate with the same mystical poetry that he is just a guiding vessel, that songs “come to him”, and that “the song knows what it wants.” As Jungr says: “It’s always about what the song asks for. What does the song want? What questions do the lyrics pose that the arrangements can help answer?” (PopMatters inteview with Alex Ramon, 2014). To what extent Barb has found that answer in the case of “Like A Rolling Stone” is debatable. In any case, the men of the wonderful podcast Is It Rolling Bob? do enthuse and ask Jungr about it, October 2018. “It took my breath away,” confesses host Lucas Hare, and then classifies Jungr’s interpretation as “a sort of psycho-drama. A quiet, understated psycho-drama up to a point.” “I know some people hated it,” says Jungr dryly.

Subjective, of course. And still: Jungr often enough makes the Top 5 of the fictional Best Dylan Cover Competition. The No. 1 position even – with “Is Your Love In Vain?” anyway. With “I Want You” perhaps, and her eerie “Man In The Long Black Coat” also comes very close. Songs that have found their way to Barb, one way or another.

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone part 14: What was I to say? Hurry up, asshole?

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971

Details of a few articles that explore a similar theme are listed at the end

By Tony Attwood

“Things Have Changed” was performed just over 1000 times by Bob and his band between March 2000 and September 2024.  And what is interesting here is that although Bob made some changes to the song itself over that time, he retained the essence of the piece throughout all those performances.

The central theme that, “I used to care but things have changed” is always there, and there is no attempt to turn it into a new concept.  Indeed such a change may not even be possible although Bob has done this before with a number of songs (and I am not resisting the temptation yet again to put in my favourite example of this ability, at the end of this piece).

Now of course I have not gone back and listened to all 1000+ performances of “Things”, and even if I had recordings of them all (which I don’t and I am not sure anyone does) I am certain that after 83 hours of “Things have changed” spread over however many days it would take me to focus on them all, I would be left even more bemused than when I started.

So I’ve chosen a few examples to suggest that perhaps perversely in a song which carries the word “changed” in the title, the number of changes made by Bob over the years is not nearly as great as that which we find in many other songs.  And then, of course, I added my example of what is to me the greatest song change of the entire Never Ending Tour and all that came before and since.

But this issue raises questions, such as “Why has he not changed the song even more?” and leading on from that, is this a deliberate artistic policy on Bob’s part, or is there something inherent in some songs that stops them being changed?

Here is the original “Things have changed” from 2000, which of course you’ll know, but having started this journey, I found I wanted to hear where everything started from….

Today, I’m taken by certain lines, and struck by odd issues; many I am sure being totally irrelevant to everything, but still they strike me.  Such as the rhyme of “champagne” with “train”.  Did anyone ever do that before?   And the oddity of “sapphire tinted skies”?

Here I am indebted to Larry Ffye who wrote the article “Shattering the glass of mirrors” on this site for pointing out therein that the phrase comes from “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  His rhyme incidentally is “skies” and “rise”.  Dylan went with “skies” and “eyes”.  (That’s not important, but I just noticed it).

Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,

Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up into the sapphire tinted skies
I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train

Now, I have to say I find a trip back a quarter of a century to 2000 is quite a shock.   Not because the song is not immediately recognisable, but because the feel of that slight lilt to the music, is so different from the way I think of the song now.

But then even within the same year, Dylan himself could change the melody and hence the entire feel of the song.  And what I find so fascinating in the video below (from a gig I was actually at, so it has a special meaning for me) is the way Dylan himself looks and stands.  He is singing about the fact that at any minute everything is going to break loose, but he is just standing there.

Now let us move on to 2012 – (and you’ll probably have to adjust the volume on your computer as these recordings all come from different sources of course).  And by 2012, as we might expect, the key is different – but then so is everything else.  The accompaniment, the singing, the emphasis on individual words, the instrumental break – just listen to that short passage at the opening, and between the verses.

Plus that strange (or at least to me strange) emphasis on the last word of each line, for no apparent reason.

Yet somehow it works.  To me this sounds like fun, a twisting, tangling re-thinking of the lyrics.  Even the little three chord interlude between the verses is unexpected and fun…

And beyond everything, I’m drawn to the line, “I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can.”  Somehow with this version; this seems to me to be the absolute key to the song.   I am totally drawn to the thought that Dylan is indeed walking away from himself far more at this point than he even contemplated when he wrote and first recorded the song.  Although, maybe I am reading far too much into one performance.

But certainly this crazy character in the song tells us he can

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

And then if you are listening to the recording of this version you cannot but be amazed by the harmonica solo before, “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it” and the use of the instrument thereafter.  Especially the harmonica playing that proceeds, “I’m not that eager to make a mistake”  And then of course, that fabulous coda.

To me that harmonica, especially in that extended coda is portraying that “hurt easy” line.  And indeed at this point in my life, having read so much about Bob, having been lucky enough to see quite a few concerts, I am drawn back to that.   For Bob has indeed experimented so much with his music, and has repeatedly been shot down seemingly for the great crime of being a brilliant artist who experiments, rather than be satisfied with what he has already done.

I move on to 2009, and again I am taken by the fact that these changes made to this song (and I suspect every other song) are not changes for the sake of it.  For as often as he moves a song somewhere else Bob can also take us back to its origins.   This is 2009…

There is a sense of marching along, emphasising the beats, rather than the usual approach of coming in half a beat before the bar, and letting the vocals and the instruments sway against each other.

Just listen to the instrumental that starts at 2’22”.  There is almost a feel of marching along; there is no swing in that lead guitar either; it just knocks out the beats.   And he keeps doing it.  Listen to the vocals around 3’10” with “hot to touch” and the lines that follow.

Yes Bob diverts slightly with the falling in love and wheelbarrow lines.   But around 3’40” he’s back to the marching approach.  And I am thinking, “Bob Dylan” and “marching”   Of all the contrasting concepts there could be those two are surely among the most extreme.

But this is not happening by chance.  Listen to the accompaniment throughout that performance and you’ll find those solid beats are there.  Indeed by 5’15” Bob is still there emphasising the one-word-per-beat approach that gives the feel of the march.

So what is this?   Is it, “Hey guys we’ve never played this song as a march before,” or is there a message within?  A message that says, “No matter what I say or do, people will stick with their same old-fashioned interpretations”?   Or in fact, is he just having a laugh?

For me, no he is not.  Because this is the man who by this stage we know could transform one of his own songs that really didn’t say too much to anyone, into one of the greatest moments of all from the tour.  And yes I keep on saying this about this performance, and you are probably bored out of your mind with me repeating this (assuming of course that you have been reading my ramblings all the way through – and if that is the case, let me know when you are next in my part of the world and I’ll buy you a drink).  But then again, if I don’t point this else, who else will?

Since I first heard this when Mike provided it in July 2023, it has been right up at the top of my selection for the best moment ever of the Never Ending Tour.  Best not only because it was so unexpected, but best because of its lyrical and musical quality.  I’m sorry if you are fed up with me promoting this moment from the Tour, but well, it’s one of the few privileges one gets from being not only the writer but also the publisher.

Elsewhere in Bob’s Transformations…

• Dylan’s complete transformation of “All I really want to do”
• Once or Twice: The Transformation of “Blood in My Eyes”
• Lay Lady Lay: Three Bob Dylan transformations of his song & a look at the meanings.

By Tony Attwood

Previously….

• The album title songs Dylan wrote and ignored: JWH, Nashville Skyline.
• The songs Bob has never performed: Temporary Like Achilles

A rather beautiful song (to my mind if no one else’s) that falls into the “never played” category is “Alberta”, of which there are of course several versions.  I wrote a little something about them here and as I said at the time the two versions are quite different, and both have significant musical merit, number 2 particularly.  But neither have been offered to the adoring crowds.

In fact eight tracks at least from that album have not been played live by Bob – one more than have missed out from New Morning.  Although we did get an alternative version in the bootleg series volume 10.

I think maybe I can see why Bob might not like this enough to take it on tour, and that is the “la la la” sections, which I can’t see the need for.  But now listen to the version that was put on the album

And I still think there is more that could be done to develop this song and make it not only a song that could be played on tour, but one that could become a favourite of the live performance.

Yet just because Bob didn’t rate a song for a live performance that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done.  And as proof of that, I’d take Caroline Doctorow’s version of “Time Passes Slowly” as one of my all-time favourite Dylan covers – it has everything that I could possibly want from a cover version – an understanding of the song itself, some beautiful harmonies, a gentle reverence for the original and an excellent performance.

Moving on there is perhaps more reason to understand why the Pat Garrett songs didn’t get played in concert, and I’m not really moved to examine them any further, so from there I move down the list on the official Dylan site of songs never performed by Dylan and get to “Dirge.”

My review eight years or so ago looked into the song, and didn’t bring in covers; but of more interest is the fact that it is one of only three songs on Planet Waves that was not performed by Dylan.

But there are some artists who have been brave enough to take this on.  These performances are, for me if no one else, highly imaginative and very varied in their approach.  One I really do like is from Erik Truffaz featuring Sophie Hunger – and please if you venture into this song don’t click away after a few seconds.

I wondered at first if Dylan’s decision not to present this was just down to an immediate decision, or maybe because he too felt that the way to go with this song, was to vary the approach within the song.   Dylan doesn’t do that – and besides he often has an audience that bounces along when there is a bounce to bounce to – and with this one they wouldn’t know where they were.

It would of course be a major leap for Dylan to try anything like this, and I am not at all sure that the audience would really appreciate what was going on – so this time, not performing the song is understandable – but still a shame.  I’d love to know what Dylan might have made of this in public.

Street Legal, had two non-performed songs: New Pony and No Time to Think.  The absence of the Pony doesn’t worry me too much but “No Time to Think” not being performed by Bob is a severe loss, I feel.

I have raved over this cover over and over again – it is right up there in my top ten of Dylan covers, and I really do feel Bob have given us much more had he ever chosen to take the song on stage.

• Covers in Depth: Boots of Spanish Leather (part 1)

by Jürg Lehmann

A list of previous articles in the “Covers we Missed” series is given at the end.  The blue links in the article will also take you to recordings and further information.

Long a staple of the Bay Area music scene, Tim Hockenberry was exposed to wider audiences when he recorded and toured with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, known particularly for singing their cover of the Savatage power ballad Believe. At the beginning of his career, Hockenberry also played the trombone, his first album is a straight jazz record. His second album was Mostly Dylan (2005), which he did with producer Tom Corwin and Bonnie Raitt’s band. The album’s subtitle New perspectives on the songs of Bob Dylan is actually appropriate, Hockenberry and Corwin have created some excellent and unique covers including a slowed-down version of Spanish Boots. ‘

Boots Of Spanish Leather’ conjures up images of slow dancing under a starlit sky, with echoing guitars and drawn-out vocal lines, a critic wrote. It’s at times like this where Hockenberry’s in his element, working every drop of emotion out of Dylan’s lyrics and exploring a wide and diverse vocal range. 

Later in his career, Hockenberry, who was a recognised musician at the time, made some surprising decisions. In 2012, he made a splash on the America’s Got Talent television talent show. I never thought about going on there, to be honest, he explained in a 2020 interview. I always felt I was too old for something like that. I was offered a VIP slot to audition for the show.

Hockenberry made it to the semi-finals, that was when he first read the contract that he had signed. The contract states that if you win, they own you for seven years. You are signed to work for them in Las Vegas, six nights a week, for $1000 a week. They own 75% of all of your publishing retroactively for ten years. I talked to my lawyer about it and he told me that I need to get off the show. At this point I certainly had the competitive spirit and wanted to win, but not at that cost.  So for the next song, I chose John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The first line is ‘Imagine there is no heaven’, which right there should kill most of the Midwest vote. Hockenberry was proved right.

While the first decades in the after-life of Spanish Boots were rather scant in terms of quantity of covers, interest increased considerably from around 2005 onwards. Renowned Australian (jazz-) singer Rebecca Barnard took on Dylan’s song on her 2006 album Fortified. Californian singer and actor Tyler Hilton released a haunting duet version with Alexa Dirks on his YouTube channel in 2008.

Dirk Darmstaedter (2010), a singer, songwriter, and producer born in Germany, raised in New Jersey, now living in Hamburg, released Spanish Boots on his tribute album in 2010 (Dirk Sings Dylan). Scottish folk musician and singer-songwriter Ewan McLennen recorded his first album Rags & Robes in 2010, which cemented his reputation on the UK folk circuit, and led to him winning the 2011 BBC Horizon Award. It was the same year that McLennen contributed a cover of Spanish Boots to the album Younger Than That Now. One of the most exciting new voices I’ve heard in years. He sings beautifully, with great sincerity, great empathy, praised Mike Harding on BBC Radio 2.

Born in Puerto Rico, Gabriel Ríos came to Belgium at the age of 17 to study painting in Ghent. Instead of painting and canvas, he chose the path of music. He found his way within the Belgian music scene and with friends he created a series of colourful albums: from the sultry Latin crooner-pop on Ghostboy to the reflective tones of This Marauder’s Midnight. With his sixth album, Playa Negra (2024), Ríos returns further to his roots and now sings exclusively in Spanish. In May 2011, Flemish public broadcaster ‘Radio 1’ invited artists to their studio to celebrate Dylan’s 70^th birthday. Gabriel Ríos performed a superb Boots of Spanish Leather.

Boots of Spanish Leather has been translated into several languages, including Frisian (Reina Rodina, 2010)…

and Swiss German (Polo Hofer, 2011, on Spotify).

Two outstanding non-original language versions come from Mikael Wiehe & Ebba Forsberg on their 2007 album Dylan på svenska, that is the subject of other articles on this website, and the Dutchman Ernst Jansz.

Ernst Jansz is one of the founding members and frontmen of Doe Maar. Doe Maar is a Dutch 1980s ska/reggae band, and is considered one of the most successful bands in Dutch pop history. He is a well-known celebrity in the Netherlands, besides his music, he has also written three semi-autobiographical books based on his Dutch-Indonesian identity.

Jansz recorded a Dylan album in 2010 (Dromen van Johanna) with 12 songs, that he translated into Dutch, including Boots of Spanish Leather.

In 2001, he released the live album Dromen van Johanna. More than ten years later, in 2023, Jansz has once again dealt intensively with Dylan; he toured the country with a theatre lecture Dylan according to Dylan. Jansz says his intention was to lift the mystical veil around the legend by showing images, playing the translated songs and talking about the connection between the songs and their creator. Jansz shows how he implements this using the example of Spanish Boots as follows: The night before her departure Dylan wrote ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’. A wonderful congratulations to his great love. She was gone and he was miserable. Because he missed her so much, he refused to stay in their apartment in New York because everything there reminded him of her. He slept with friends, wandered through Manhattan and wrote one incredible love song after another. After six months a letter arrived from Italy. The gist: ‘Pop, I’m staying here a little longer.’ Nowhere is it said that she hooked up with a nice Italian, but she dedicated her book ‘A Freewheelin’ Time’ to her husband, an Italian.

It’s a touching story, and probably well suited to a theatrical reading. It’s also essentially true, but unfortunately Jansz doesn’t disclose his sources, so we’ll never know for sure if Dylan really wrote the song the night before Suze’s departure.

 This version from The Airborne Toxic Event wins my prize for the biggest surprise that I got in working through some of the many versions of ‘Spanish Boots’. The harmonies between the male and female voices are utterly unexpected as is the changing accompaniment and the glorious instrumental break. The simplicity with which the two voices deliver the last sung verse, followed by the instrumental coda is perfection for my ears. Like Tony Attwood, many critics are impressed by the cover which actually adds something never heard before to the song: The Airborne Toxic Event’s cover is a masterful interpretation of Dylan’s original, capturing the essence of the song’s themes and emotions, the universal human experience of yearning for a loved one who is far away. ‘The Airborne Toxic Event’ is a rock band from Los Angeles, formed in 2006. Named after a section in Don DeLillo‘s novel White Noise, the band is known for its blend of rock music and orchestral arrangements, having performed frequently with the ‘Calder Quartet’, a string quartet based in Los Angeles. The group has also played concerts with the ‘Louisville Orchestra’ and the ‘Colorado Symphony Orchestra’. Boots of Spanish Leather is their contribution to Amnesty’s Chimes of Freedom album from 2012. There is also a music video of the recording session.

Elsewhere in the “Covers we missed” series…

• Abandoned Love
• Ain’t Talkin (Le feu Au Coeur)
• All along the Watchtower
• All I really want to do.
• All the Tired Horses
• As I Went Out One Morning
• Baby, Stop Crying
• Ballad of a Thin Man
• Ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond the Horizon
•  Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
• Billy and To Fall in Love With You
• Black Crow Blues (and a version you won’t believe)
• Blind Willie McTell – Part One
• Blind Willie McTell part 2
• Blind Willie McTell – Part 3
• Blowing in the Wind Part one
• Blowing in the Wind Part two: from the 70s onwards
• Blowing in the Wind Part three: The interpretations

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

A list of the previous articles in this series is given at the end

What you really don’t want – part 2  (continued)

In the final track from Another side…, which forms the complementary bookend to ‘All I really want to do’, Dylan did do something, by rejecting this kind of possessive behaviour outright. Though it is hard to argue against him, listen first and judge for yourself:

Go ’way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I’m not the one you want, babe
I’m not the one you need

You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Never weak but always strong
To protect you an’ defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I’m not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down

You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
Someone who will die for you an’ more
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe

Go melt back into the night, babe
Everything inside is made of stone
There’s nothing in here moving
An’ anyway I’m not alone

You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Who’ll pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
An’ to come each time you call
A lover for your life an’ nothing more
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe

By way of comparison: when Dylan wrote this song, The Beatles were still producing hit after hit, devoid of any substantive claims concerning traditional relationships. All well and good: their service to music was a different one, as was that of the Rolling Stones.

Dylan did make such claims, for although he would always deny being a moralist, he was one nonetheless, as evidenced by numerous songs that lack an I-figure and that therefore resemble sermons, or are replete with single-line admonitions. He would remain so his whole life.

I am certain that there will be experts by now who argue that he cannot possibly have realised at the outset that ‘It ain’t me babe’ was addressing possessiveness in relationships as a universal problem. Granted, at the time the material was perhaps too close to home for him to have been fully aware of it while writing. My counterproposal is that the idea is not so far-fetched after all, since his mind was already open to the idea of anti-possessiveness. The dimension he had already added to the centuries-old love song made it clear that a fine alternative was available: that it is good and proper to end a relationship – as tragic as it may seem – if another’s love comes at the cost of surrendering your soul and becoming a trophy which, of course, is not love at all.

But although he revolutionised the genre, his efforts unfortunately did not result in the prompt eradication of this brand of possessiveness from society. Even disregarding the overly adulated conservative horror Tammy Wynnette, both she, and Dylan’s much-adored contemporary Dusty Springfield (1939-1999), demonstrated as much in 1966, with her universally nauseating world hit ‘You don’t have to say you love me’, whose misogynistic sentiment trumps even ‘Stand by your man’:

When I said I needed you
You said you would always stay
It wasnt' me who changed but you
And now you've gone away

Don't you see
That now youve gone
And Im left here on my own
That I have to follow you
And beg you to come home?

You don't have to say you love me
Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever
I will understand
Believe me, believe me
I cant help but love you
But believe me
Ill never tie you down Left alone with just a memory
Life seems dead and so unreal
All thats left is loneliness
Theres nothing left to feel

You don't have to say you love me
Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever
I will understand
Believe me, believe me

This was two years after ‘It ain’t me, babe’. It is almost as though Springfield listened to Dylan and thought: I need a countermove, but what? Oh, I know: ‘Believe me, I’ll never tie you down’.

Notice the contrast with The Four Tops, who were actually begging to be tied to the ‘apron strings’. But here, too, appearances are deceiving, for although Springfield refuses to tether her man – who does not even need to say he loves her nor stay forever and is, therefore, no ‘lover for your life and nothing more’ – he does, however, need to ‘be close at hand’, like a pack of tissues ready to wipe up her blubbering.

If this is not enough to make you sick, I don’t know what is. The you-figure in her song therefore had every right to flee, though he applied Dylan’s ‘Go away from my window’ to himself. Or who knows: perhaps he clambered out of her window to make as quick a getaway as possible. None of this reflects personally on Dusty Springfield herself, of course – like Presley, she had a formidable voice. But she could simply have refused to sing it. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine had the nerve to include this originally Italian drivel (‘Io che non vivo senza te’ – I who cannot live without you) as number 491 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It no longer featured in the 2021 revised edition, so clearly finding a replacement was not that difficult after all.

There are lighter – and therefore more underhanded – variations on this possessive theme, such as ‘You are the sunshine of my life’ (1973) by Stevie Wonder. In the 2021 Greatest 500 list, Rolling Stone awarded it position no. 183. Quoting the full song is not even necessary to convey its suffocating qualities, the opening two lines are enough. Incidentally, I have rejected Sony Music’s risible demand that I pay €20 per 10,000 copies to quote those two lines in this narrative essay – they are freely available online.

But surely their import does not bear thinking about: somebody who will hover about you like an insect or orbit you like a planet for your whole life, on pain of combustion in the fire of your so-called love? This is clearly an example of love being taken, not shared.

Previously in this series…

• Amuse bouche
• Who the book is (not) for – part 1
• Who this book is (not) for – part 2
• Anything but idolatry – part 1
• Anything but idolatry – part 2
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 1
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 2
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 3
• Love, Dancing, Sex, Sadness, TR-63 – part 4
• The unchanging (heterosexual) love song – part 1
• The unchanging (heterosexual) love song – part 2
• What was the public to do? – part 1
• What was the public to do – part 2
• 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides part 1
• 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – part 2
• Teenager finds a hero – part 1
• Teenager finds a hero – part 2
• Teenager finds a hero – part 3
• What you really want
• What you really don’t want – part 1

Wouter’s book is only available in Dutch for now:

Dylan en wij zonder Amerika, Wouter van Oorschot | 9789044655179 | Boeken | bol

Next up: What you really don’t want part 3 (final)

by Jochen Markhorst

XII        How Does It Feel?

 The in itself rather generic question How does it feel has by now pretty much been hijacked by Dylan’s song – two, three generations can no longer hear the word combination without unleashing the reflex to be on your own. Just as the question What is love can no longer be asked without someone shouting Baby don’t hurt me, and just as every teacher in the Western world dreads the lesson in which he has to mention Galileo – one of the class jokers wíll shout Galileo Figaro magnifico in a high-pitched voice.

Still, every so often, some daredevil manages to escape the suction of “Like A Rolling Stone”, and the best example is Slade’s 1975 pièce de résistance. The single “How Does It Feel” is only moderately successful, presumably because the song and arrangement are so totally unlike Slade, but it is an exceptional song, with quite prominent proponents at that. The loudest fan is Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, who goes on record in 1999 with:

“People just think when they listen to Slade, they think of Cum On Feel The Noize and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, but: How Does It Feel is easily one of the best songs ever written. Ever. Such a brilliant song. Go on buy it if you’re watching this. It’s on the Greatest Hits. Track 13.”

Strength of the song, Noddy’s unique vocals and lyric content all gloriously resist the Dylan association. But in general, users bow their heads and refer implicitly or explicitly to “Like A Rolling Stone”. Like recently, English indie band London Grammar’s “How Does It Feel”, with the curtsy in the chorus; “How does it feel now you’re alone? / How does it, how does it feel to feel low?” (on Californian Soil, 2021), or 1970s rockers UFO in 1978‘s “Lookin” Out for No. 1” (“How does it feel to be right out on your own? / Just gotta keep looking out for No.1”), which incidentally seems very much inspired by a Lou Reed throwaway, Transformer‘s album filler “Wagon Wheel” (“Won’t you tell me, baby, how do you feel / Hey you gotta live your life as though you’re number one”). Or even more subtly, as with die-hard Dylan fan Graham Nash;

… in the message to Dylan disguised as a naive peacenik anthem “Be Yourself” from his still very charming solo debut Songs For Beginners (1971), the song opening with

How does it feel
When life doesn't seem real
And you're folating about on your own
Your life seems uncertain
So you draw the curtain
Pretending there's nobody home

… and then insinuating slightly less subtly in the third verse that we are talking about Dylan:

We once had a savior
But by our behavior
The one that was worth it is gone
Song birds are talking
And runners are walking
A prodigal son's coming home

With biblical ambiguity, as befits a Dylan tribute. Nash’s unbritish lack of irony and his verging on Disney-like weakness for pathos don’t really stand the test of time, but on the other hand: the album features granite songs like “Better Days” and “I Used To Be A King” – which fortunately far overshadow the embarrassing hippie naivety.

The other side is the slogan-like use of How does it feel. Dylan books, tribute records, bootlegs, articles and reviews… the catchiness of the slogan is eagerly and often used and reused. As for the record on which Nancy Sinatra sings her version of “Like A Rolling Stone”, 1999’s How Does It Feel.

It is a somewhat peculiar cover. Of course, roughly half of the more-than-200 covers struggle with the challenge of adding something to the original – perfection is hard to improve on, after all. So we have many covers that do qualify for the stamp “pastiche” or “parody” or “tribute” rather than “real” covers, than interpretations like Spirit’s of Hendrix’s, covers that manage to hold up the monument, but from a different angle. Nancy with the laughing face is somewhere in between.

How Does It Feel is an album assembled from scraps, just as the album cover appears to be a leftover from Nancy’s photo shoot for the May 1995 issue of Playboy. Twelve songs, six different producers, and a tracklist that ranges from Linsey De Paul’s “Sugar Me” to Hazlewood’s “Happy” to the highlight Brook Benton’s 1962 “Walk On The Wild Side”.

Anyway, the record is named after Nancy’s version of “Like A Rolling Stone”, one of two songs produced by Bones Howe. Which suggests that Howe was the instigator – Minnesotan Bones Howe began his impressive career (Elvis, Sinatra, Mamas & Papas, and especially Tom Waits) with Dylan; his breakthrough was the 1965 hit he produced for The Turtles, Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe”. In 1979, he enticed Jerry Lee Lewis to record the obscure Dylan throwaway “Rita May”, and sometime in between, December 1975, he produced three songs for Nancy (also the as yet unreleased “Uptown” and a song that eventually ended up on How Does It Feel as well, “Fancy Dan”).

Bones’ work is generally beyond dispute. In particular, his work with Tom Waits (the Asylum records) is rightly praised in only superlatives, as is his influence on that umpteenth comeback album by The Killer (Jerry Lee Lewis, 1979). But in December 1975, he is not really in form, or not really inspired (which seems rather inconceivable when you are in a studio with Nancy Sinatra).

In any case, the arrangement is very unfortunate. A far-forward mixed hi-hat doing exactly the same thing as on every KC & The Sunshine Band record of the 70s and rather obtrusively trying to insist that funk would be a good choice for “Like A Rolling Stone”, a horn section wavering between Herb Albert, Blood, Sweat & Tears and a 70s police series, and a hideous background chorus. The only golden edge comes from Nancy – always cool, calm & collected, although that promise of sultriness she usually achieves partly by singing just behind the beat is absent today. Nancy opts for ennui – which, of course, does fit this lyric in a way. However: after two verses, producer Howe allows her to sing the chorus one more time, and then we already enter the fade-out: seven (!) times a bored sounding “Like a rolling stone”, slowly fading away, the timer is at 3’29” and done. Bob’s your uncle.

The arrangement is bad enough, but boldly discarding half the lyrics borders on sacrilege. The recordings are presumably intended for a relaunch of Nancy’s career, after her last, not too successful 1972 record Woman – but someone is wise enough to decide that this is not the way to go, and lets the recordings disappear. It eventually takes until 1995 for Nancy’s next record to be released. That record, One More Time, the one for which she does the full monty in Playboy for promotion, does indeed pave the way for a rather successful relaunch, by the way. Or comeback, actually. Which apparently gave her the courage to put together the leftover record How Does It Feel in 1998. “Bones Howe kept our session tapes of “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Fancy Dan” and “Uptown”, thank heaven,” Nancy then declares. Hmm. One could have an opinion thereon. Maybe it would have been better if Bones had lost those tapes. When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose, after all. On the other hand: “I think Nancy is head and shoulders above most of these girl singers today. She’s so soulful also in a conversational way.” So says Dylan in the 2015 AARP interview, so nearly 50 years after he could review her version of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (1966) and 16 years after he was able to hear her version of “Like A Rolling Stone”.

It’s quite a compliment. From the master himself. Now, how would that feel?

Continued: Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 13: The songs find their way to me one way or another

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971

A friend and I went to see “A Complete Unknown” – the movie – last night at our local cinema and it was indeed a pleasant evening out – at least until the very end.   The film, as you may well know, covers Dylan’s days from sitting at the bedside of Woody Guthrie at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey onto the first concert where he performed accompanied by an electric band, (and was roundly booed).

The audience in the cinema (at least for this film) was decidedly of the older variety – people like me who have been Dylan fans from the moment his music first became available in the UK in 1962/63.  And looking around while overhearing the pre-film chatter, I wasn’t the only person there who was accompanied by a friend who wasn’t a committed Dylan fan, but was interested in seeing the film.

I’ve seen reviews that suggest the film is “disappointingly unambitious” and I suppose that means “unambitious” in the sense that it primarily told the story that we all know of Dylan visiting Gutherie, making his initial albums, riding motorbikes without a helmet and then playing an electric set.  And so for those of us who know all this, yes there is nothing new but it is still entertaining.  But for those who come along with their committed companion, much of it will be new, and I think, enjoyable.   That’s the sort of movie it is.

It is sympathetic, it’s a good story, and the performances by Timothée Chalamet and cast, is extremely well-played.   The criticism is thus, for me, one of those typical film reviewer comments where the writer seems to assume that everyone knows everything and everyone wants to move on to something new.  But no, sometimes I (and I think the rest o the audience) like to revisit the past.  And why not?

Besides, some of us who have been following Dylan from the start, and while not quite as old as he is, are getting on a bit, do like to be reminded of the old days, in an entertaining and sympathetic way.   In short, if you want some new insights into Dylan that have not been aired before, your best bet is probably still to read Untold Dylan.  Not every article will please you, but you should get quite a bit of enjoyment along the way.  But on the other hand if you want a decent evening out… yes this is a good way to get it.

The other point that struck me is that we have had a number of Dylan movies before, portraying Dylan in all sorts of ways, while playing with the enigmatic nature of Dylan and his work from time to time.  So that has been done, and although perhaps another enigma built on enigma movie might find something new to say, surely there is nothing wrong with a film that turns its back on those approaches and instead gives us a reminder (although in double quick time) of the journey from “complete unknown” to the man who had enough confidence to take on the whole folk music world by playing an electric set.

Looking back once again it was an extraordinarily odd and bold thing to do, and I found myself wondering why those organising the concert at which Dylan “went electric” didn’t actually ask him what was going on, as all the paraphernalia of an electric gig (such as amplifiers) was set up on the stage.  But no, seemingly (according to the film) no one noticed the cables and the amps.  And presumably, there wasn’t a sound check either.

And I must admit, I’ve never thought of this before.  Who laid all the power cables?  Why didn’t anyone ask what they were doing?

OK maybe I’m being trivial and silly, and of course, with movies, we are required to suspend disbelief.  What’s more, this film doesn’t set out to be anything but a piece of entertainment and reminiscence for those (and in some cases their carers) who want to reminisce.