Untold Dylan

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA  by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

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

 1965: Teenager finds a hero –part 3 (continued)

One final musing on my discovery. While Dylan’s switch from acoustic folksongs to a rock band was indeed a shocking development, outside the United States – and excepting a handful of English fans – we saw nothing but a completely unknown folksinger materialise as a pop star out of nowhere on the firmament. To us, Dylan the folk singer had simply not existed, let alone Dylan the ‘protest singer’ (except to precious few). We were suddenly introduced to an astonishing, unprecedented underground sound that would shortly thereafter be dubbed folk rock. And though times do change, they do not do so due to the proclamation thereof on the B-side of a single in a few European countries. As a side note: that acoustic-guitar business of his was, at least to Europeans such as myself, nothing new. We had had minstrels and troubadours aplenty for centuries, including some of the very best, such as Georges Brassens in France.

What Americans need to learn and understand, is that the Dylan whom many of them considered a turncoat when he abandoned the noble folk movement and ‘went electric’, only then became visible to the rest of the world, and as a folk rocker besides, appealing to a whole new set of teenage sensibilities right out of the gate. To tens of millions of ‘foreigners’, this folk rocker had virtually nothing to do with Americana, the very concept of which had not even come into existence yet. Their first notions of ‘what that Dylan guy is all about’ therefore deviated markedly from what his compatriots had trumped up about ‘their’ folk singer by that time.

The fact that many Americans have unfortunately never looked into this principal distinction and that they are therefore unable to imagine that a ‘foreign’ perspective might contribute meaningfully to the understanding of ‘their’ artist, can be attributed to their two-pronged exceptionalist misconception that a) the USA is the centre of the world, and b) that the core of Dylan’s art is ‘typically American’, and deserving of the Nobel Prize for that reason alone. But I maintain that the Americana in Dylan’s oeuvre is of minor importance to the appreciation thereof, a point that I will illustrate using several examples.

Dylan’s international breakthrough meant that his four folk albums also quickly became available outside the United States in the autumn of 1965. Then, too, ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ and ‘Times they are a-changin’’ were – however unjustly – embraced as the key numbers from this earlier work. Journalists who until then were just ‘doing their jobs’ were suddenly jolted awake and, free from their initial superficiality, promptly praised him as the ‘voice of a generation’.

But for Bob Dylan himself this epithet, bestowed upon him by spectral unknowns, came one-and-a-half years too late. In the autumn of 1963, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) had given him the Tom Paine Award, named after one of the founders of the United States, because he had repeatedly spoken out and taken action in favour of those civil liberties and against the lamentable fate of America’s black population (see Chapter 21). Although he accepted the award, how could we foreigners have known that the handover ceremony on 14 December of that year was the direct catalyst for his decision never to align himself with any social movements ever again? In an interview in the autumn of 1964, he had already said:

“I agree with everything that’s happening, but I’m not part of no movement. If I was, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else but be in ‘the movement’. I just can’t have people sit around and make rules for me. I do a lot of things no movement would allow. It’s like politics, I just can’t make it with any organisation. I fell into a trap once – last December – when I agreed to accept the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.”

In short, he had already mentally rejected the notion long before that he would ever raise his voice on behalf of anyone, other than himself – for exactly how and why that came about, the reader is referred to the ‘biographical’ section at the end of this book. It was not because he had abandoned the social engagement that so characterised his earlier work, but because at the core of his engagement lay the notion that nobody should ever be made to surrender their soul to another.

His decision to ‘go electric’ was the logical outcome of his self-liberation, and ‘Subterranean homesick blues’ was his way of celebrating. It was a bull’s-eye. As such, ‘Don’t follow leaders’ can be interpreted as a politically-charged slogan, but one that is left up-in-the-air by the following rhyme: ‘Watch the parking meters’. One could admittedly – though strangely – argue that leaders should not be followed due to some mysterious consequence involving parking meters, but anyone capable of making sense of such an argument, though doubtless a gifted rhetorician, would most likely only open themselves up to ridicule. Clearly Dylan felt the need to include that one line, which in itself showed some engagement, though principally to fend off the idolatry that had risen up around him. He himself had been so idolatrous of his childhood hero, folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), that he had even become Woody’s epigone. After realising as much, he therefore knew what he was talking about and said the following to journalist Nat Hentoff in The New Yorker on 24 October 1964:

“Everybody has to find his own way to be free. There isn’t anybody who can help you in that sense. Nobody was able to help me. Like seeing Woody Guthrie was one of the main reasons I came East. He was an idol to me. A couple of years ago, after I’d gotten to know him, I was going through some very bad changes, and I went to see Woody, like I’d go to somebody to confess to. But I couldn’t confess to him. It was silly. I did go and talk with him – as much as he could talk – and the talking helped. But basically he wasn’t able to help me at all. I finally realised that. So Woody was my last idol.”

I cannot remember how long it took me to acquire Dylan’s first four LPs, but I do know that I did endless odd jobs in the summer of 1965 so that I could buy them as quickly as possible once they became available. I cannot have succeeded until the autumn of that year, however, since the new songs of course took precedence, and although their release was delayed in the Netherlands, it was still a sizeable outlay for a teenage budget: three singles and two LPs. But less than a year after I had first heard it, I can state with certainty that I had obtained ‘All I really want to do’ for my very own. The song that started everything for me opened Another side of Bob Dylan.

continued: Dylan and us: beyond America. 8: What you really want – Untold Dylan

————

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

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

We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks

By Tony Attwood

If you have been extraordinarily patient or perhaps you have a particular interest in creativity as a subject, or maybe you just don’t like the work of Heylin, you might be pleased to note that I have decided at least for the moment, or perhaps permanently, to stop reviewing Heylin’s mega work “The Double Life of Bob Dylan volume 2 – Far Away from Myself”.

The reason is I seem constantly to be drawn back to the same problem over and over, a problem that I perceive in the text, time and time again, which put simply is that Heylin doesn’t understand that being a mega creative person who lives or dies in terms of his work, via the strength and variety of his creativity, makes the individual very different from the most if not all people who don’t live their lives through creative activity.

Heylin does attempt to describe Dylan at work in some of his hyper-creative periods but even with that doesn’t quite seem to get the impact that this has or relate to the experience of creative activity in terms of Dylan or anyone else.   To summarise my previous episode of this series, Dylan was creating what many people would consider one of his greatest albums – indeed some might say one of the greatest albums of all time in the genre of popular music – and was producing recordings that many of us would have been utterly delighted to hear on the album, but was then still continuing to re-record some of the songs, changing lyrics, adjusting the melody and so on.

This is the utter opposite of a person who is asked to cut down a tree or oversee the operation of a machine that makes mobile phones.   In such circumstances there is a right and wrong way to do things.   There is no right or wrong way to write a song.

But beyond that there is something else.  Because your view, my view and Heylin’s view there is no absolutely right view.  There might be general agreement that Bob Dylan is a master at writing songs but even within that there will be disagreements about which version of a particular song is the best.  And indeed, judging by Bob’s decisions as to which songs to put on an album, and which to play in public, his view is not always the same as everyone else’s.

What would be interesting would be to use the enormous amount of information that Heylin has at his disposal to see how those decisions are made – and I felt this, particularly in reading the “Into Dealing with Slaves” chapter.   I felt Heylin was probably more excited by calling a chapter just that, rather than thinking about the music and the lyrics.

But anyway, Heylin and I disagree fundamentally.  His view is that it is possible to understand what Bob is up to a) with very little reference to the music and b) without considering at all the notion of creativity.

For creativity is not just about making something new – we generally don’t consider a child’s scribbles in a book to be “creative” much more than we consider most sandcastles creative, nor singing a Christmas Carol in an unusual accent to be “creative”.

For being creative is far more than being different – it is being different in a way that gives us new understandings, new feelings, new insights etc, in a positive manner.   And the “positive manner” part is important – it doesn’t have to make us feel good but it has to make us interested.

“Blowing the Wind” is, to my mind, a highly creative work, because it used the basic elements of folk music (a simple melody and the four basic chords of much folk music, with a repeated line at the end to emphasise the message) in a way that was different from anything I had heard before.   The message itself in the lyrics is tantalising, suggesting as it does that “the answer” is out there, but is hard to grasp.

That message – that things might be unknown and difficult to understand – was quite different from the message of most popular and folk music of the time, and yet it was put across with a gentle lilting melody which is normally associated with certainty rather than uncertainty.

Yes of course Dylan does suggest in that song that there is an answer out there, but through the phrase “The answer is blowing in the wind” he is telling us it is hard to grasp.  Compare that message with the message given in the lyrics of most popular and folk songs wherein the message is one of clarity.

This however gives the composer a problem – because if the lyrics are going to be about uncertainty, how is the music to reflect that?   The composer might be tempted to answer that by making the music more chaotic, more uncertain, but Dylan does the opposite.

Moving on we might also consider another song of total uncertainty – “Visions of Johanna”.  From the opening line (“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks….” we have that uncertainty message.  But again Dylan does not reflect this in the music, which is built around three chords once again.    Yet the uncertainty of “Blowing in the Wind” where everything seems to be up for grabs and anything is available and out there if you look for it hard enough, is quite different from the uncertainty of “Visions of Johanna” where instead of the world offering all possibilities, the world is now playing tricks on us.

Put another way, with “Blowing in the Wind” everything is out there if we want to reach out and explore it.  With Johanna, nothing is available because we are stranded, and unable to reach out.

This message of uncertainty is obviously not the only issue that Dylan deals with, it is one among many, and part of the fascination with his work is that he does indeed deal with so many different issues.   I think Professor Timothy Hampton who described “Tangled up in Blue” as a set of sonnets gave us an insight into the structure and helps us see the way in which the lyrics keep changing their starting point, from for example “Early one mornin’ the sun was shinin’,” through to “And I was standin’ on the side of the road, Rain fallin’ on my shoes” all in one verse.

Yet again Bob redefined how popular music could work with concepts and ideas far more complex than was the norm in the early days of either the blues or rock ‘n’ roll, both of which are very simple in their structures and lyrics.

Now for me, given an artist who is dealing with such matters in so many varied ways, this whole notion of Bob leaving his wife to go and watch a boxing match while ignoring the issues he deals with in his compositions, just seems bonkers.

There are many artists, in all the areas of art, whose work I have greatly admired through my life, but whose personal lives I might find less than acceptable models for how one should behave.  I choose to let that go, because it is the art, not the artist’s behaviour that interests me.

And maybe that is my problem.  I find the issue of Bob and his neighbours, or Bob suddenly changing his mind, or Bob letting people down, irrelevant.  Just as I don’t go to see him in concert to hear him discuss his private life, that doesn’t concern me when I listen to recordings of his work.

Now of course that does raise another matter.  Supposing we have a genius artist, whose work offers extraordinary new insights into humanity, the human condition, human interactions etc etc, but whose personal behaviour is (to us, to me, to some people…) utterly deplorable.  Supposing their political views are utterly abhorrent to me – do I reject their art, as a result?

For me that is not an abstract question since I have faced it with Salvador Dali, whose work I do admire, and which has influenced my own thinking.  His politics are not something I am drawn to, but that doesn’t affect my view of his work.  I don’t really know about Bob’s politics, but that doesn’t worry me.  Nor am I bothered whether he believes in the messages to be found within some this work or not.

Thus I wasn’t bothered when he started writing what I might call Christian music, even though I am an atheist who believes that religions should be treated like any other institution or society in my country.  But if Bob chooses to write and sing songs about Christian values  that is up to him.  I can still enjoy them as pieces of music.

I know about Bob Dylan and write about him, because of his music, and I can value his songs irrespective of the words, or through the words and music, as I choose to do.  It makes no difference to Bob of course, nor any difference to anyone else.  I see him as an extraordinarily brilliant creative force in 20th and 21st century songwriting.

Heylin goes a different way and seems to think that Bob’s actions in his personal life are valid areas for commentary alongside reviews of his artistic endeavour.   I think that’s codswallop.  I don’t care about the personal life of Salvador Dali, JS Bach, Beethoven, Roy Harper etc, any more than I care about the personal life of William Shakespeare or William Blake.   I appreciate and enjoy their work.   The fact that Shakespeare suddenly packed up, went back to Stratford and stopped writing is a point to be noted with interest, but it doesn’t change my enjoyment of his work.

So Heylin and I are on such different tracks I see no point in continuing with his massive tome.   I am sure many people will have loved it, but I find the list of accolades on the back cover singularly depressing.  If Andrew Motion seriously meant it when he wrote in the Spectator “Clinton Heylin is the eminence grise of Bob Dylan scholars” I can only say Andrew Motion, and I, are not only on different planets, but in different galaxies.

• 1: Far Away From Insight
• 2: “I looked into the bleak woods and said, ‘Something’s gotta change’. 
• 3:  If this is a bunch of noise, then it is noise that I love
• 4: Far away from the music
• 5: How to ignore important details
• 6: Making New Morning
• 7: How Bob Felt at the Time
• 8: Does Bob Dylan have a right to a private life
• 9: Where do you go when the creative spark stops?
• 10: How free is the artist to say what he wants?
• 11: I am not me
• 12: Blood on the Tracks, a lesson of creativity in process
• 13: Conclusion: there is no double life (this article).

Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 7

by Jochen Markhorst

• 1: The Rumpelstilskin tantrum
• 2: It’s all just about got to be too much
• 3: It was just a riff really
• 4: You’ll curse the day you started going down that lost highway
• 5: To live outside the law you must be honest
• 6: Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

VII        She’s a real princess

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe

In Chapter 36 of Tarantula, invitingly titled “Sacred Cracked Voice & the Jingle Jangle Morning”, Dylan presents a whole string of loaded names: Lord Randall, Sir James, Fanny Blair, Matty Groves, Edward, Willie Moore and Barbara Allen… all protagonists from age-old ballads, murder ballads at that. With alienating stage directions, though. So Edward, the fratricidal murderer with the bloody knife, now “cuts hedges for his wages”, has become a professional gardener in Tarantula; Lord Randall doesn’t die a miserable poisoning death but has a nice beer; the vindictive Barbara Allen smuggles Moroccan cinders into Brooklyn, whatever that may be; and only the devilish child Fanny Blair remains somewhat close to her roots. After all, Fanny is originally the 11-year-old “perjuring little whore” whose false testimony puts innocent young Henry Higgins to the gallows. During the trial, she lies glibly, to which the judge Squire Vernon says admiringly, “You’ve told it so well.” With Dylan, she remains fairly in character: “Fanny Blair [is] dragging a judge.”

One way or another we do see reflections of all those legendary figures and blood-soaked songs invading Dylan’s sixty-years oeuvre, some more subtly than others. Like from this chapter an unusual choice of setting: “Matty Groves, who secretly at midnight tries to chop down the church steeple.” And even more remarkably, on the next page: “Houdini & the rest of the ordinary people taking down puckered Jesus posters out there on 61 highway – Midas putting them back up”… there we have it, the glorious Highway 61, a few months before Dylan will name his glorious album after it.

“Princess on the steeple”, the opening salvo of this last verse, is a somewhat quirky paraphrase of the usual “princess in the tower”, but at first you suspect it was chosen for its rhyme with “all the pretty people”. More interesting than that technical solution is the source. Fairy tales have been a growing purveyor of sidekicks, sets, props and one-liners since the last album Bringing It All Back Home. And this Tarantula chapter more or less officially does acknowledge that. In the opening line:

the jugglers who call you by the wrong name & title you wounded kitten 
- it is that easy for they know no fairy tales

… in which the naming of jugglers, who will also reappear in “Like A Rolling Stone”, is of course notable as well, but from which we can mostly infer that not knowing fairy tales apparently is considered a sign of being uncultured.

Dylan is well-educated though, and knows his classics. On the previous album we saw Aladdin drop by (in “Gates Of Eden”) and a wishing well (“Motorpsycho Nitemare”), and here on Highway 61 Revisited they are all over the place. Cinderella, pied pipers, Tom Thumb, lumberjacks, mermaids and dwarfs… and of course the tone is already set with the very first words of the album, the opening line of “Like A Rolling Stone”: once upon a time. Hereafter fairy tales will no longer be so lavishly honoured on Dylan’s albums, but they won’t disappear completely either. Blood On The Tracks is a Cinderella quote, in “Soon After Midnight’ a fairy queen swirls by, from the stage Dylan reveals that Shane MacGowan’s “Fairy Tale of New York” is one of his favourite songs, and “Key West” is the enchanted land, and there are more half references and whole homages.

But of all the fairy tales, Rapunzel still seems to impress him the most. Demonstrably twice, at least; He’s pulling her down and she’s clutching on to his long golden locks Dylan sings in 1978, in “Changing Of The Guards”, about a dame born on midsummer’s eve, near the tower; on that same album Street-Legal, Rapunzel returns again in the finale, in “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)”: She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair; and here in “Like A Rolling Stone” seemingly more explicitly – the princess on the steeple. However some doubt as to whether Dylan actually meant to refer to the fairy tale is justified. After all, it’s not too conclusive. Or Dylan is accidentally rehashing two fairy tales, which is at least as likely.

Character-wise, Rapunzel is not at all like Miss Lonely, of course. Rapunzel is naive and innocent, modest and submissive, living a lonely and unenviable life for eighteen years until her rescue, locked in the tower with no entrance and no stairs, in the service of that false, hypocritical witch Frau Gothel. No, Miss Lonely is much more like Hans Christian Andersen’s Princess On The Pea, the thoroughly spoilt princess who has gone from riches to rags, knocks on the door of a castle and has a sleepless night there because the queen wants to test whether she is rigtig, whether she is a real princess. The pea she places under the twenty mattresses of the guest bed then does, in fact, keep the brat from sleeping – yep, hun er en rigtig prinsesse, she is a real princess.

Paula Cole – Hard To Be Soft:

Dylan might then reject Princess on the Pea because of the somewhat unfortunate homophone pea/pee in English, which indeed does lead the associations to unintended side roads. In this scenario, the alternative princess on the steeple seems mainly motivated by the idea that it expresses something like living in an ivory tower. A blasé gal with a rich daddy who feels elevated above the riff-raff – the step to the metaphor “princess on a steeple” really is not too big or far-fetched. So he deliberately does not write “princess in the tower” precisely to avoid the link with Grimm’s Rapunzel. Which doesn’t quite succeed, in the end – the image is simply too firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness, and is refreshed fairly regularly, too; the princess-in-the-tower motif keeps reappearing in poems, novels and films. Since 1965 alone, since “Like A Rolling Stone”, there have been more than a dozen film adaptations and re-workings, Disney’s animation Tangled (2010) being the biggest commercial success.

Director Todd Hayes avoids that pitfall, the Grimm association. He eschews the fairy tale connection but still borrows this setting from the last verse of “Like A Rolling Stone” for the party scene in the Jude segment of I’m Not There (the part in which Cate Blanchett plays the jacked-up, vile 1965 Dylan so chillingly well). We are at a Warholesque Sixties party in a white, sterile environment among pretty people drinkin‘, thinkin’ that they got it made and the swaggering, neurotic Jude/Dylan has just heard from his manager “Norman” that he is now a millionaire. The airy-fairy princess “Coco Rivington” (Michelle Williams in an Edie Sedgwick-like role) makes a grande, inebriated entrance and is verbally torn to shreds by Jude. Enraged and humiliated, Coco leaves the tower room down the spiral staircase. Pityingly, Jude watches her from above. “I tell you, love and sex are two things that really hang people up. Why that is…I’Il… I’ll never fully understand.”

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 8: Just like some tragic beat Napoleon

———-

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

Meanderings on a very cold morning, by Tony Attwood

Looking at the list of songs Bob played in his last concert to date (that of 14 November 2024) it struck me that all the songs in that gig were songs that Bob had performed a couple of hundred times – or more.   And “or more” is rather an important addition because the concert also included “It Ain’t Me Babe” which he has performed over 1000 times and “Watchtower” which of course has been played over 2000 times.

Then it was with no particular aim in mind that I started flipping through the list of songs Bob has performed live, and found the last song which Bob performed and which one might call an “outlier” was Mr Blue which suddenly turned up between June and September last year (2024).

And at this point I began to start pondering how these songs came to turn up suddenly – for example “Cold Cold Heart” was performed for the one and only time on 21 June 2024.   Is it that someone Bob knows who is going to be in the audience that night asks for it?  Or is the band sitting around and Bob says, “What can we play that is different?”  Or….

I really would like to know, and if you have any thoughts on why a song suddenly has been performed on the tour, maybe just once, maybe a few times, and then vanished again, it would be interesting to know.   Please do add a comment here, or if you want to write a whole article about such songs by all means do – and send me either the idea or a full article to Tony@schools.co.uk

There must be a story behind performances of songs like “Will the Circle be unbroken” that was played three times, for the first time in 1961 and the final time in 2019.  The other performance was with Neil Young.

I mean it could just be a whim on Bob’s part, or it could be a member of the band or a fellow performer or friend suggesting it, or…. well I don’t know.

And thinking along these lines, there is also that vast list of songs Bob has never performed – indeed at a rough estimate I think something like half of the songs that Bob has either written or recorded have never been played by him in public.

Some of these I can understand – “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for example would be hard to re-arrange, and if played pretty much as on the album, would really take the life and soul out of a concert.   But then again John Wesley Harding has never been performed, and Bob chose to give the album that name.

In fact, as I look at the list of songs never performed by Bob there are so many I would love to have heard in concert.  Songs like “No Time to Think” – not just because I like the song but because I think another arrangement could have been really interesting.  But of course with that song, as with so many others, other artists have shown that yes indeed these songs can have a life beyond Bob’s version.

But there are also some that I would like to have heard live just because I love the songs so much – such as Angelina.  And no, I don’t know a lady named Angelina (although I am always open to new friendships), it is just such a wonderful song.  Of course I do recall I devoted a whole article to a cover of this song, but, well, maybe you weren’t reading Untold Dylan at the time, or maybe you have forgotten (it was a long time ago) so I have an excuse to include it again.

I am not quite sure where this meander of mine is going, but the fact that around half of the songs recorded by Bob have never been performed by Bob does give me pause for thought.  Maybe if I were a lot younger and still in a band I might suggest we do an album of Dylan’s lost songs.

But I’m not, so I won’t.  But I can still dream.

By Tony Attwood

Previously in this series…

• Dink’s Song
• Eternal Circle
• Fever
• Let it Be Me
• Precious Memories
• Rocks and Gravel
• Walls of Red Wing
• When the Ship Comes In
• Will the circle be unbroken

“It’s all good” appeared on “Together Through Life” and was performed three times in concert starting on 31 October 2009 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and ending just under three weeks later on 18 November 2009 at the United Palace Theatre in New York.    We have a recording of just one of these – the Chaciago 2009 performance.

And immediately it is possible to see why Bob didn’t take this any further, for the song is based on one chord throughout and the message if extremely clear from the start.   And this really isn’t Bob in terms of music, for more often than not we note the way Bob uses the chord sequence as a key part of the song.  With that removed, there’s just the bounce.

To be more precise, without those changing chords (even if there are just there of them as in a traditional blues format song) what we have is rhythm, melody and lyrics.   In “It’s all good” the rhythm is bouncy but unwavering, once we have heard the first couple of lines we’ve got it.

And unfortunately the melody itself doesn’t vary itself too much either, and the lyrics are OK but not the greatest.

Big politician telling lies
Restaurant kitchen all full of flies
Don't make a bit of difference, don't see why it should
But it's all right, 'cause it's all good
It's all good
It's all good

This is not to say it is not an enjoyable song – it’s bouncy and the lead guitar does some interesting things along the way, but after the opening verse above, we have the mesage.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that message – saying how awful the country is, is indeed a powerful and important message, but it is one that we know.   And so travelling through the song’s eight verses with endless highly generalised examples of how awful the world is, without any change of chord or melody means listening to the song is ok the once, but after, maybe not the best thing to be doing on a cold January morning, with Christmas and the New Year now all gone and done.  Although to be fair, the sky is a most beautiful blue, without a cloud to be seen.

Would I feel any better about the song if this were a warm day in June?  Actually no probably not.  It was, I think, and remains, I am sure, just a filler.  Three performances was enough.

I'm gonna pluck off your beard and blow it in your face
This time tomorrow I'll be rollin' in your place
I wouldn't change a thing even if I could
You know what they say?
They say it's all good
It's all good

by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

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

1965: Teenager finds a hero – part 2    (continued)

But while I understood Berry’s ‘Too much monkey business’ without a problem, I can honestly say that to this very day, I still have no concrete notion of the meaning of Dylan’s text. And it still doesn’t matter: a lifetime later, on every hearing I still experience the same initial sensation, that this song is about me. Tell me, how can that be? In the old days – when second-rate secondary education and literary theory had not yet ruined our enjoyment of reading, and there were still teachers who could explain in simple terms what the ‘shock of recognition’ was – back then, you could have a discussion with a teacher like that about how such a thing were possible: to experience a shock of recognition without being able to explain precisely what one recognised.

With the help of such a teacher, one might then have discovered what it was… or perhaps was not, and have it explained to one that there was such a thing as symbolism, and poetry created via a ‘stream of consciousness’ or écriture automatique, that they were not to be taken literally per se, but could be probed intuitively to see whether anything resonated.

I must confess that I had one such English teacher, Bart Westerweel, praised be his name, who managed to make me receptive to even such unfathomable texts such as ‘my sweet old etcetera’ by e.e. cummings. Encouraged by his efforts, in the autumn of 1968 I would give a presentation on Dylan’s ‘Tombstone Blues’ from 1965, with the confidence that I had explored and understood everything based on my own intuition, and concluding that it was nothing short of a masterpiece. I had just started smoking cannabis, which I believed gave me the ability to better plumb the depths of Dylan’s art. Mr Westerweel received my account favourably, precisely because I had been so ‘nebulous’ in my analysis, whereupon he began – without embarrassing me in the slightest – to explain to the class how much more meaning the song contained than I had professed with my limited understanding of it. I might hope that you, dear reader, also had the good fortune of such fine teachers.

Meanwhile, the line ‘Don’t follow leaders’ – the only one that I understood effortlessly, thanks to my political background – immediately presented me with an existential dilemma at the age of thirteen. I was still susceptible to idols, and although I do tend to think that the same applies to all adolescents, I will only speak for myself. I had acquired a new idol just like that, who was fortunately also a soloist, eliminating the need for me to divide my attentions among a group. And a good-looking one too, if the cover was any indication. Hmm. And not unimportantly, this was the same fellow who had sung ‘All I really wanna do is, baby, be friends with you’. Yes please! But are we to be convinced that idolatry and leadership should not be confused with one another? I did confuse them, however subconsciously. And yet here was an idol who urged me in the imperative not to follow leaders. If I did what he said, then I was following his own orders, which he had just explicitly instructed me not to do. What hidden meaning did this contradiction conceal, or was it merely a paradox?

My thirteen-year-old brain was set to pondering. And how was I to interpret the fourfold warning ‘Look out, kid’ because ‘it’s something you did’ (what exactly?), ‘no matter what you did’ (how come?) ‘you’re gonna get hit’ (by whom?) and ‘they keep it all hid’ (who keeps what hid?) The fact that Dylan was (or, more precisely, could have been) referring to himself as ‘kid’, and that the song was an internal monologue in the imperative mood, did not occur to me. Not because I did not know what an internal monologue was, but because the song was about me. He had struck a chord within me, he was my new hero and I was already doing many of the things he had presented to me in the imperative (keep a clean nose, learn to dance, get dressed, try to be a success, please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift, don’t wear sandals, try to avoid scandals, don’t wanna be a bum you better chew gum), so deferring to his leadership was no longer up for discussion. But what does a thirteen-year-old do with a command to do the opposite?

I will skip ahead and reveal here that one year later, in February 1966, I decided to simply forget about this contradiction or paradox, whatever it was. Once the moment has arrived, you will understand why. I say this in hindsight, of course, but I am certain that I can pinpoint the moment when it happened: the moment when I no longer cared whether Dylan’s new works were better or worse than those I already knew. After that time, my attitude to Dylan was no different than to any other artist: once fascinated, my interest is difficult to shake off. I blame my upbringing. Pick an author for yourself whose work you admire. Whenever they release a new book, you will probably read it regardless, without expecting it to be any better or worse than the previous – it is not the quality, but the development of the oeuvre that is important. This attitude is also what prevents us from issuing harsh judgements prematurely, But first, let us look at what led up to February 1966.

We have already witnessed CBS’s inept management of Dylan as an artist. But ‘Subterranean homesick blues’ also appeared as the first song on Dylan’s fifth LP Bringing it all back home in late March, two weeks after the single. When the single entered the Cashbox Top-100 on 3 April at no. 94, it seemed as though CBS’s commercial policy, after around three years, was now finally working in Dylan’s favour. On his ‘home turf’, at least – everywhere else it was still a shambles. In the global release, the B-side of the single was filled with a similarly recent love song ‘She belongs to me’, except in France, Italy, the Netherlands and what was then West Germany, where the eighteen-month-old ‘Times they are a-changin’’ graced the reverse side. For this reason, some have referred to these releases as a ‘double A-side’, but in reality it was simply a public-relations move to show his versatility.

The European branch of CBS, who oddly enough had already released records in France containing ‘recent’ songs in June and November of 1964, may have thought that with the strong left-wing movements in those countries, the public was perhaps more receptive to a positive folksong about changing times than to a love song. Seen in this light, the deliberate use of the hymn that had more or less given him the status of a secular priest in the United States was a smart move. It is also true, however, that for three whole years, nobody had seen fit to point out beyond the United States that Dylan was already a successful folk singer with four albums to his name – LPs that had not even been released in France until ‘Subterranean homesick blues’ became a worldwide hit. In any case, in the United States, they finally decided to strike while the iron was hot.

(to be continued)

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

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

 We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks

Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 6

by Jochen Markhorst

VI         Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal

 As Joan Baez sings “Percy’s Song” behind Dylan’s back, with La Faithfull sitting shyly beside him and the cameraman walking around him, zooming in on Baez, swerving back to Dylan and looking over his shoulder, Dylan seems to be in his own tunnel, concentrating on his writing. We get a flash of the paper in the typewriter roll, but frustratingly, the lighting is too dim and the film too grainy; not a word can be discerned. We can see, however, that it is not a lyric: Dylan types the lines all the way through, we also hear the ping when the carriage gets to the end and then see Dylan pushing the carriage back with the lever. Occasionally he consults handwritten notes lying to the right of the typewriter, his upper body moves slightly back and forth and he seems to be mumbling; as if looking for the rhythm of the sentences.

An educated guess would be that Dylan is writing copy to fill his experimental, long prose poem Tarantula. More precisely, he is writing what will later be the final chapter, AI Aaraaf & the Forcing Committee (pp. 129-137). Sometime in the next few weeks (midsummer 1965), the first pirated version of Tarantula will be printed in San Francisco. Well, a fragment anyway – 50 beige A4 sheets containing the 64 words of Aretha Known In Gallup As Number 69, the “aretha portrait” we later find as an interlude on page 135, shortly before the end of the book.

Harry Belafonte – Day-O:

Clues to this assumption, to the idea that Dylan is writing that final chapter here, are the specific idioms we see used in “Tombstone Blues”, “Desolation Row”, “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “Like A Rolling Stone”, in songs germinating in these same mercurial days in the late spring of 1965. Those same clues, incidentally, suggest that Dylan, here in this hotel room in May ‘65, floating around in his stream-of-consciousness, afterwards divided the fully-typed sheets in two and promoted one half to Chapter 1, Guns, the Falcon’s Mouthhook & Gashcat Unpunished, and the other half to the final chord AI Aaraaf & the Forcing Committee. Apart from the suspiciously compositional intervention of having the work end and begin with “aretha” (it is even the first word of the book), there are remarkably many cross-connections between the first chapter, the last chapter and the songs of Highway 61 Revisited. Similarities transcending the coincidence factor anyway:

– the word “lumberjacks” which Dylan writes, in his 60-plus years of writing, only in two works: four times in Tarantula (three times in the last chapter: “the lumberjacks are coming”) and one time in “Ballad Of A Thin Man” (You have many contacts / Among the lumberjacks);

– in both Thin Man and AI Aaraaf, public order is disrupted by somebody naked;

– the pied piper on page 134 is sent to prison in Tombstone;

– both Gypsy Davy and the pretty things move from Chapter 1 to “Tombstone Blues” as well, as does the striking word reincarnated;

– The Good Samaritan, the ambulance and Nero are all transferred from Chapter 1 to “Desolation Row”, prince hamlet‘s notable supporting role seems to explain Ophelia’s presence over there;

– the housing project, the light rain and the morgue in the first chapter echo in “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”;

– and finally, apart from some less remarkable congruences, the reflections in “Like A Rolling Stone”. The one-liner you can make it if you have nothing (p. 136) seems to seep through to When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose, unusual words like jugglers, bums, rags, steeple, tramp, clowns, in your prime and alibis we encounter elsewhere in Tarantula, a diamond ring is also worn (in Chapter 7, Prelude to the Flatpick) and after “diplomat” in the first chapter, we can also put the checkmarks at “chrome” and “horse” in this last chapter… by now it should be clear that Dylan is reusing the catch from his wildly churning stream of consciousness, from his subconscious, for Highway 61 Revisited. Fitting too with Dylan’s own, somewhat detached comment on this part of the song (“It all just about got to be too much”), which hints at the same embarrassment as the words with which he dismisses his own Tarantula: “Things were running wild at that point.”

 Bizarrely, then, one of the more frenzied images seems to come not so much from his subconscious as rather from his long-term memory. On 6 May 1961, the then 19-year-old Dylan is in Hartford, Connecticut, playing three Woody Guthrie songs at the Indian Neck Folk Festival (“Talking Columbia”, “Hangknot, Slipknot” and “Talking Fish Blues”). It is the festival where he met his sidekick Bob Neuwirth and, judging by the photos, tried to find a place among folkies like Jim Kweskin, Mark Spoelstra and Bob Jones. The most eye-catching photo was taken by Joe Alper and shows a heart-breakingly young and cheerful Dylan, making music in a small circle with Jones, Kweskin and especially with Jack Parmley (mistakenly referred to as ‘Jim Parmaley’ in Eric Von Schmidt’s book Baby Let Me Follow You Down). Perhaps, with some tolerance, we can indeed compare Jack’s appearance and charisma to a “diplomat”, but attention is, of course, mainly drawn to his left shoulder – carrying a Siamese cat¹.

Bob Dylan – Talking Columbia (INFF 1961):

By the way, in Von Schmidt’s book Neuwirth is described – with apparent sympathy – with the words “he had the rare talent to simultaneously participate and observe.” Which is a talent that Neuwirth seems to share with Dylan – as we see Dylan participating, and a small, furry detail from his surroundings shall descend in one of his all-time greatest songs, five years later.

He has the rare talent to simultaneously participate and observe.

———–

¹ Thanks to Scott Warmuth for his help in tracing the source of the photo

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone part 7: She’s a real princess

———–

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

• 1: Far Away From Insight
• 2: “I looked into the bleak woods and said, ‘Something’s gotta change’. 
• 3:  If this is a bunch of noise, then it is noise that I love
• 4: Far away from the music
• 5: How to ignore important details
• 6: Making New Morning
• 7: How Bob Felt at the Time
• 8: Does Bob Dylan have a right to a private life
• 9: Where do you go when the creative spark stops?
• 10: How free is the artist to say what he wants?
• 11: I am not me

This is part 12 of the series “The Double Life”.  And may I say, even if you don’t feel inclined to read my thoughts below, I do hope you might spare a moment to listen to the recordings included.  And if you don’t have time for them, please do try the final audio within the article.  Unless of course you already know it.

By Tony Attwood

“Why Dylan felt the need to write another blues lyrics and apply it to the tune he already had for ‘Call Letter Blues’ is one more for his therapist.”

That comment from Heylin on page 220 of “Far Away From Myself” by Heylin pretty much sums up my argument about the way Heylin sees creativity.

The fact is that many creative people (and here I am not just thinking of Bob Dylan, or songwriters in general, but almost all the people who can be called genuinely creative, in that they create items or works which are considered by many others to be not just unique but also of considerable merit) find their creativity comes in bursts.   When it isn’t happening, it is hard, often impossible, to do something that will trigger another set of creative artistic outpouring.  When it is happening, the creative person accepts it, and gets on with the creativity, until the creative burst once more fades.  If it doesn’t and just stays there, then this is the absolute creative genius at work.  (As opposed to the person just being a run-of-the-mill creative genius.)

And this is part of the mystery of creativity.  Not only is it hard (if not most of the time, impossible) to get a non-creative person to start producing works, items, or come to that simply “things” that can be genuinely described as creative in the normal use of the word, it is also hard for the often creative person to come out of a downturn and start to create once again.

Of course, a  few highly creative people appear to be creative all the time.  In musical terms we might think of JS Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, my regular three examples of men who could create constantly at the highest level.  In writing, Shakespeare obviously comes to mind (although for the last four years of his life, he appears to have written nothing at all, and just simply stopped).  But these are the exceptions.  Mostly the creativity phases itself in and out.

So if we ask why Bob wrote another set of lyrics for “Call Letter Blues” – the answer is because he was on a creative high, and thus the lyrics, and indeed the music, just kept on pouring out.  Bob’s therapist wouldn’t have been able to help because what turns on and off the creative flow in highly creative people is generally considered to be something internal which even the individual experiencing the phenomena can’t really explain.

Of course, the results can be disconcerting.  As one of the assistant engineers in the studio is quoted as saying “We had no idea what he was going to do, so we had to be ready for anything.”

In a later comment about the process it is said, “He was totally and completely immersed in the creation of this album,” which again is a statement about a man who is living through a period of very high creativity.

In such a period, for a person not used to working with highly creative people who succumb to the creative process when it gets into full flow, the reaction of the creative individual can seem strange, as with the notion that Bob was “only interested in first impressions.”    This happens because for the creator, the artist’s work is there, it has emerged in one rush, and he/she understands it in that immediate moment of its formation.  To think that others might need to listen to or look at a new artwork several times in order to appreciate it fully is alien to such a creative artist.  He or she can appreciate it at once, both in its individual parts (for example individual lines of lyrics or melody or both), so why can’t everyone else?

Indeed the depth of Bob’s understanding of his own work is revealed through the comments that those working with Dylan made, and indeed which we have ourselves made on this site in passing; that Bob likes to explore some of his songs in different keys.

Now for most people, including quite a few experienced musicians, the song is still the same whether you play it in the key of E flat, E or F.  Yes the melody is fractionally higher as you move through those different keys, and on some musical instruments, the accompaniment is harder to play in one key than another, but still, for most people it is the same song.  For Dylan seemingly it is not.

Heylin doesn’t really explore this notion and simply seems to put it down as just another odd Dylan quirk, but changing the key really can alter the feel of a piece to someone who is completely “inside” the music.

But if there was a problem for Dylan in the creation of “Blood on the Tracks” it appears to be that he was so full of his own creative endeavour, he could not appreciate how everyone else might struggle to keep up with him.  Indeed the thought occurs that had Dylan not already had his almighty reputation as a songwriter and performer, others involved in the production of the record might not have put up with his approach, and might even have dismissed some of the songs that we now consider to be absolute gems.

For if we just look at the Dylan songs composed in 1974, for most songwriters this would be seen as the absolute highlights of their careers.  For Bob Dylan this set of songs came pouring forth in a very short space of time.  Lily, Rosemary… Tangle, Big Girl, Shelter, If you see her, Twist of Fate, Idiot Wind, Make me lonesome, Up to me, Buckets of Rain… these are not just excellent songs, they are among the monuments of the genre.   And they all were written one after the other, for an album.

It is also interesting (at least to me if no one else) that apparently when first having recorded the material for the album, Bob was interested specifically in people’s first impressions of each song – which of course was how he was judging each song because each song was coming to him as a virtually completed item, and “all he had to do” was to write the lyrics down.

Quite how each song came to him in such a way is of course part of the mystery of the creative process, but the reports of the sessions involving these songs most certainly do make it seem as if this is what happened.   Bob had the idea, wrote it out, recorded it.  The only reworking he wanted to do was on the recordings themselves – specifically it seems in terms of varying the accompaniment.

And it is here that we see part two of the creative experience.  The songs came to Bob in a great rush, as he wrote them down.  But after the rush there was a slower thought process (very common among highly creative people) as to what to do with the song.  Should it be as recorded in that first burst of excitement and novelty, or should it perhaps be reworked with a simpler accompaniment….

But this is not the same as a producer then listening to the recording and manipulating it, adding a string section, taking out the percussion, and throwing in a female chorus, all after the recording session is complete.   This is the composer constantly playing with his own work.  Not all composers do it, and whether they do does not depend on how much of a genius the composer is, it is a matter of disposition and temperament.

And what is interesting in this regard is that having laid down the tracks at hyper-speed Bob then invited one or two musicians to listen to the tapes and add an element of the accompaniment if each felt he could.

Only after all that did he then re-record the whole album, and according to Heylin, by this stage he needed “some reassurance,” asking people if the recording was good enough, and on occasion working the same song over and over again, despite apparently already having recordings that the others involved felt were really good and worthy of inclusion on the album.

Thus we see, although Heylin doesn’t really seem to grasp it, a creative process across a number of days.  The sudden burst at the start which leads to the creation of the songs, the high energy of getting each one recorded, and then the slow downturn as the creative burst is still there but begins to decline, and the uncertainty in each case as to whether the recording, or even the song, was indeed good enough.

Overall this is a really interesting set of commentaries that we get concerning the making of an album – right the way through to the fact that at the end of the sessions, Dylan is himself able to appreciate which of a range of takes of each song is actually the one that fits best within the album.

However it is also clear that the album was not conceived as an album as such, as final changes were made and at least one song had to go to keep within the absolute time limit that the technology of the day would allow.

And at this final stage, there is a further interesting point: not for the first time it took Dylan longer to decide on the running order than it did to record the song.  And even then it seems Bob was not sure.

Heylin is good at describing the come down after the intensity of the writing, recording and mixing sessions, but reading his account it seems that he feels that these are issues of as much import as the creation of the songs and the recordings.   True, in one very specific sense they are, because the tale of this sublime album, is a tale of the rising up of creativity in the writing of the songs, the sustenance of it through the recording, and then the decline of that extraordinary burst which led to uncertainty and the suggestion that the album needed “corrective surgery.”

It is a perfect tale of the way in which creativity works within the human mind.  Quite how and why, is a totally different question.  But over the recording of this album, Heylin does give us insights into Bob’s extraordinary work when his creativity is at its most potent and fulsome.

What we can take from Heylin’s account is that Bob suffered from the aftermath of an incredible creative high, which led to the creation of the songs and the first set of recordings and then their reworking into the version that we ordinary people got on the album.

The whole experience of making the album changed Bob Dylan.  But then buying and listening to that album over and over again, changed many of the people who experienced the album that way.  We didn’t know we hadn’t got the version of the album that the gang in the studio (except Bob) had loved, but we still had a treasure.   But what Bob had done was created and lived through an experience that for most of us is impossible to imagine.   If that album meant a lot to us, just think what it meant first to those who were involved in creating it, and second to the man who wrote it.

By Tony Attwood

According to the official site, this song, (which turned up on the the Bootleg Series volume 11), was played three times in concert between 1 May 1961 and 14 July 2019 – making this probably the biggest spread across time of any of the occasionally played songs in this series.  Three times in 58 years.

Interestingly, the official site hasn’t even managed to get a set of the lyrics.

But I should warn you that if you go looking for more all sorts of things will turn up, such as a Neil Young / Bob Dylan duo singing “Knocking on Heavern’s Door” which (at least when I looked at on on 27 December 2024), was labelled “Will the Circle”.   Pesky things these labels – but worth mentioning here, because as I looked for recordings I came up with all sorts of things that suggest they were this song, but were not.

Anyway here’s the Basement Tapes version.

The song dates back to a hymn at the start of the 20th century with the almost identical name “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” written by by Ada R. Habershon and with music by Charles H. Gabriel.

The Carter Family 1935 used the updated version which has a very curious musical twist in that the rhythm moves from the expected four beats in a bar but cutting the beats short.  Yet when they play an instrumental verse that doesn’t happen.   Most disconcerting!   The lyrics get right down to basics ….

Undertaker, undertaker, undertaker
Won't you please drive slow
For that lady you are haulin'
Lord, I hate to see her go.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band gave it their traditional bounce and the notion of the cold and cloudy day quickly vanishes and they keep the rhythm the same throughout, which I suspect is much more to modern audience tastes – as is the notion of celebration of a life rather than a mourning of a death as the original song creates.

Bob and Neil Young slow the piece down and give it a feel much closer to their normal sound.

The birthplace website add the comment that “The circle is unbroken because the music is handed down from generation to generation,” which I guess is true in itself although I am not certain that was the original meaning.  But then I am not really qualified to comment on such things.

But I do have to add one other version

This is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Johnny Cash and Ricky Skaggs.  Somehow this seems somewhat more appropriate as a delivery of a departing soul to heaven.

But it is a song that can have an enormous effect on people.  If you want to see how, take a look at the commentary under the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performance.  When I looked there were over 300 comments.  I couldn’t take them all in by any means, but I must say I was extremely moved just from the first few.

Previously in this series…

• The mystery of “Eternal Circle”
• Let it Be Me
• Dink’s Song
• When the Ship Comes In
• Fever
• Walls of Red Wing
• Precious Memories
• Rocks and Gravel

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

• 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 
• 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – part 2

Note: this article was originally published out of sequence, and was then withdrawn, with the correct article being published.  It is now republished in its correct place

1965: Teenager finds a hero – part 1

Knowing a singer’s life doesn’t particularly help your
understanding of a song. [...] It’s what a song makes
you feel about your own life that’s important.
(In: The philosophy of modern song – 2022)

In early March 1965, I leapt with surprise when I received a portable gramophone as a birthday gift – as ‘the’ only child, it fitted within the budget – along with some money to buy my first singles. These were ‘The last time’ (Stones), ‘Bring it on home to me’ (Animals) and ‘For your love’ (Yardbirds).

On 8 March, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ was released in the United States. It was only Dylan’s second 45 in just over eighteen months, after take-two of his single debut in August 1963. Imagine if Parlophone had tried to pull a similar stunt on The Beatles, or Decca on The Rolling Stones!

In April, Dylan’s ‘blues’ would air for the first time on European radio. With a voice like a cheese grater and accompanied by a high-octane combo of two electric guitars, bass guitar, drums and piano, with scorching flares of harmonica between the verses, it was all over in 142 seconds.

In musical terms, it was the logical successor to ‘Mixed-up confusion’ from December 1962. And even on my first hearing, I knew straight away: this song was about me. The Netherlands was already sufficiently overpopulated for me to realise that what this man had made was urban-jungle music which, while originating in the United States, was equally relevant to the rest of the urbanised world, of which I myself was a part. I make no claim that I could have phrased it as such at the dawn of my fourteenth year, but that the song was about me, that much was clear. Nationally I must have been one of the first buyers, and was proud to say so when it entered the Dutch top-40 on 22 May, at number 39.

After all poets who preceded Dylan, many – and most in vain – have wondered what on earth they were to do with this rap avant-la-lettre. Although I could decipher most of the lyrics with my English-Dutch dictionary once they had appeared in print, I, too, had not the foggiest notion of what it all meant. But it didn’t matter, and you are welcome to explain to me how such a thing was possible: I lived in a minuscule country, without even an underground metro system, and yet I could hear and feel that it was about me. Granted, the recurring line ‘look out kid’ meant that I at least felt like I was being spoken to. I played that record to shreds. Around that time, during Dylan’s first English tour, cineast D.A. Pennebaker (1925-2019) shot the original video clip in an alleyway behind the London Savoy Hotel, masterfully documenting Dylan’s Chaplinesque freshness in all its simplicity:

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off

Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
By the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A.

Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try ‘No-Doz’
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around an ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin’ to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail

Look out kid
You’re gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time users
Hang around the theatres
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin’ for a new fool
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift

Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles

Scholars have established that when writing the above, Dylan took inspiration from the novel The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, as well as from the ‘beat poets’ in general and the initiator of the genre in particular, Allen Ginsberg, who was a friend of Dylan. I was oblivious to all of this, and I know for certain that the same applied to everyone else – a limited group of United States intellectuals aside – who approached the song simply as a piece of music.

It has also been established that it was Dylan’s way of electrifying the ‘folksy’ genre of the ‘talking blues’. I was oblivious to all of this, and know for certain… you get the idea. And by presenting himself once more as a rocker after his ‘flopped’ single debut ‘Mixed-up confusion’, Dylan this time broke free of the artistic chains with which his initial admirers wished to keep him bound as a folk singer (you can read that story in chapters 18 to 25, if you like): all true, I’m sure, but… no idea.

To me, the question therefore seems justified as to whether all this Dylanological erudition makes a shred of difference when reading the lyrics. Does this primordial form of rap become any better or worse in light of the fact that it was written over ten years before rap and hip-hop culture emerged in New York? And what do you think the lyrics mean exactly, or is such textual precision irrelevant in these cases? Is our intuition enough? You know, it could very well be that for newer generations, the above-mentioned iconic music video will remain the best introduction to the hero of former generations for centuries to come.

When asked years later, Dylan himself said he had been inspired by Chuck Berry’s ‘Too much monkey business’ (1956) and elements of the nonsensical ‘scat-singing’ from the 1940s and 50s (using the voice as an instrument: doobie doo-wop bapaloobop boo-wop babely-boom, etc.). As regards Berry’s text, compare for yourself:

Runnin' to-and-fro, hard workin' at the mill
Never fail in the mail, yeah, come a rotten bill
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Salesman talkin' to me, tryin' to run me up a creek
Says you can buy it, go on try it, you can pay me next week, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Blonde haired good lookin', tryin' to get me hooked
Want me to marry, get a home, settle down, write a book
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Same thing every day, gettin' up, goin' to school
No need for me to complain, my objection's overruled, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Pay phone, something wrong, dime gone, will mail
Order suit, hoppered up for telling me a tale, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Been to Yokohama, been fightin' in the war
Army bunk, army chow, army clothes, army car, aah
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Workin' in the fillin' station, too many tasks
Wipe the windows, check the tires, check the oil, dollar gas
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Don't want your botheration, get away, leave me

Too much monkey business for me

continued: Teenager finds a hero – part 2

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

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

We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks

By Tony Attwood

Think of Dylan in the early days of his work and surely for most of us our minds will be drawn to “Don’t think twice, it’s all right” and “Blowin’ in the wind”.

It is widely commented that both songs have a certain amount of borrowed material within them.  Using Wikipedia as a source we find the comment that “Blowin'” is based on the 19th century African American spiritual “No more auction blow for me”.  This has appeared in many different forms, including a version by Bob himself.

“Don’t think twice” has an original tune but it is suggested in Wikipedia that the theme may have been taken from a passage in Woody Gutherie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, “in which Guthrie compared his political sensibility to newspapers blowing in the winds of New York City streets and alleys.”

Now these two points can give rise to questions about Dylan’s originality in his work.  Is he in fact often borrowing from the work of others?  And if he is, does it matter?

The question of Bob and creativity is one that we have considered many, many times on this site – but I am back with the subject today because of my continuing attempts to understand the essence of Heylin’s work “The Double Life of Bob Dylan” and his seeming reluctance to deal with the notion of creativity.  Indeed the index alone to volume two of “The Double Life” runs to over 40 pages and contains something like 3,400 entries – but no entry at all for “creativity” or “creative” or any word related to that subject.

Personally, I can’t see how one could consider Dylan’s work without considering the notion of creativity, and where his ideas and songs come from.  And I would have thought that is an especially interesting point in Heylin’s case because he spends so much time discussing Dylan’s life outside the world of creating and performing songs.  One might assume he would spend a bit of time thinking how Dylan’s life experiences affect his creative works, and how his creative mind works, in the sense of how the songs come to Dylan.  Indeed it would be interesting to know how Dylan’s approach to songwriting might vary from the approaches of other songwriters specifically, and other creative people in general.

Tucked away within this issue is the question of the use by Dylan of other people’s materials in his songs that I noted above.   Does that matter?  Does it reduce the value of Dylan’s work?  Should it be mentioned in the credits?  These again seem to me to be topics of far more interest, than many of those issues that are contained in the book.

But it is still interesting to pause for a moment and ask if Bob’s use of traditional songs in the formation of some of his compositions, should affect our judgement of his work.  Put another way, does it matter if Bob has lifted a melody or a set of lyrics from traditional songs?

Legally the answer is no: traditional songs are not in copyright and so can be used as one wishes.  In the UK the copyright on a song runs through the songwriter’s life and for 70 years after that.  Traditional songs of which the authorship is of course unknown are not covered by copyright.

In the United States works published before 1929 are deemed in the public domain.  But for works published between 1929 and 1977 the length of copyright control is varies and this is all a bit more complex for me, as a non-American and non-lawyer.  For work first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors but my reading is that in terms of Dylan’s work, virtually all if not all of his compositions will remain his copyright for either 120 years from its creation or 95 years from first publication – so really in practice I don’t think Bob has much to worry about.  But my grandchildren, should they wish to, will be able to record at least the earlier songs without paying any royalties.

But for now, if you want to perform or record a Dylan song, legally you have to pay him, although I don’t think his lawyers are likely to come after you just for singing “Don’t think twice” in a folk club.

But this is really just a side-issue compared to the main question of creativity – which is a word that can cause difficulties when people try to define it.  We can mostly agree that it has to do with doing or thinking of something that has not been thought of or done before, and in this regard we might say that the idea of taking “No More Auction Block” and turning it into a modern song is itself a creative act.   But this again raises issue, is taking someone else’s work or idea and using it in a new way, truly creative?  Or should the words like “creative” and “creativity” be reserved for something that is completely new?

And this in itself raises a further problem because we are, all of us, influenced daily by the world around us: how can we ever say we have had an original thought or idea when we can’t possibly recall each thing that we have seen or heard in the past?

Of course, we might argue that deliberately sitting down and listening to someone else’s composition and then manipulating it somewhat to create a new (but related) work, is not an example of either originality or creativity.  But since we have many of us heard thousands of songs, perhaps tens of thousands of songs, if we subconsciously recall a song or part of a song and start using that in a composition, does that mean our new work is not creative in the fullest sense?

It all seems a bit of a tangle, and certainly in the UK where I reside, there have been a number of legal cases in which a composer of a song has accused another composer of writing a new song which is so similar to the earlier work that it constitutes breach of copyright.  If you want one famous example you might think of the case of “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison which was very similar to “He’s So Fine,” written by Ronnie Mack, and which had been a hit for the Chiffons back in 1963.

The case went to court in 1976 and George Harrison was found guilty of “subconscious plagiarism” and had to pay around £1.25m or $1.6m to the publisher of “He’s so Fine”.   Harrison is quoted later as having said that the case was about “bitching between copyright people and their greed and jealousy.”  Perhaps not his best line ever.

Dylan and his publishers have also been sued over copyright infringement in the case of “Dignity” in which James Damiano claimed that Dylan had copied various elements of Damiano’s works and pasted them together to generate “Dignity.”

Now I am not a lawyer and I may have got some of this wrong, so if that is the case please do excuse me and indeed correct me if you have further information, but basically I think in this case the plaintiff lost his case and appeal that “Dignity” contained snippets of Damino’s work.  More than that the court then ordered that by making details of the case known the plaintiff had breached a court order which were deemed confidential by the court and not to be revealed beyond the court.  The plaintiff was found guilty of contempt.

As for me, coming back to “Dignity” after several years of not listening it, I still love the song.

If you are interested in the sort of issues raised here you might also like to take a peek at articles such as…

• Why does Bob Dylan write songs?
• ‘If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important… I don’t have to know what a song means.” Dylan reveals his approach to composition.  
• Does it matter if Bob Dylan copies other people’s words and melodies?
• On the criticism that Bob Dylan’s Nobel lecture was in part lifted from elsewhere
• Why can’t Bob Dylan appreciate which are his best compositions?

And in related arenas, especially if you have some spare time over the forthcoming holiday period we can also offer

• How Bob Dylan writes songs: 1 – The types of song
• How Bob Dylan writes songs: 2 – The origins of Dylan’s approach and style
• How Dylan writes songs: 3: “”I didn’t think I was doing anything different.”
• A classification of Dylan’s songs

by Jochen Markhorst

You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal

Although we are graphically (on the site and in Lyrics) still in the first verse, we have actually already had two quatrains, together one octave, in the tail rhyme aaab-cccb. And with You used to laugh about , we enter the bridge to the chorus.

Well, “bridge” may be a somewhat too austere designation for this part of the landmark – “three-lock flight” perhaps does more justice to this thrilling, goosebump-inducing transition to the chorus. [See Editor’s Note 1 below]. The first stage of the lock is deceptively simple. Twice the IV and the V (the F and the G) of the chorus – every listener feels the climax, the liberating C (the I) coming:

F          G
You used to laugh about
F                 G
Everybody that was hangin' out

… but that liberating climax does not come (yet). Instead, Dylan leads us to the second stage of the lock, to the pre-chorus:

F             C/e**   Dm7   C
Now you don’t talk so loud

F                 C/e**    Dm7        C
Now you don’t seem so proud

(** See Editor’s note 2 below)

… a stage with once again a neat step by step progression: f – e – d – c. Descending steps this time, thus mirroring the ascending steps with which the song begins, without the fifth step though – our foot lingers in the air for a while, searching for the liberating G/b. Which only comes at the end of the third step of our three-lock flight:

Dm                                          F                G
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

Spirit – Like A Rolling Stone: 

… not only musically a compelling, smooth transition to the chorus’s upcoming C-F-G, but Dylan the Song Poet throws a wonderful enter hook to how does it feel lyrically as well: rhymingly, too, the pre-chorus flows into the chorus. Which seems a simple, obvious artifice, but it is not that conventional at all. “Imagine” (Imagine all the people/Living life in peace), Billy Eilish’s “Copycat”, Steve Winwood’s “Valerie”, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Hello, hello, hello, how low)… famous pre-choruses that do what they are designed for: they bridge the distance between verse and chorus musically and often enough content-wise as well, with lyrics announcing the chorus.

And Dylan does so too, quite beautifully in fact, but also makes a lyrical connection by having the closing line of the pre-chorus rhyme with the opening line of the chorus;

About having to be scrounging for your next meal
How does it feel

Not some happy coincidence either; the poet applies the artifice consistently. After this meal/feel again in both other leads to the chorus (steal/feel and conceal/feel).

Content-wise, the songwriter still stays entirely on the track laid by that mythical “long piece of vomit”; for now, it’s still a coherent put-down, a spiteful revenge fantasy about a lady’s decline from riches to rags. And after this first chorus, Dylan keeps on track for a little while longer:

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it

… although we do see the first hint of playfulness here, as the language artist is taking pleasure in the rhyme and rhythm game with used to get / juiced in it / used to it, at the expense of reason if necessary. We are thus approaching the turn Dylan is probably referring to when he analyses years later, “… and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.” At least, the continuation not only has a different tone but undeniably cares less about reason, in favour of rhymes like realize-alibis, the euphoniousness of an exotic identity description like mystery tramp and the poetic beauty of a sentence like As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes:

You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

… with the veiled suggestion that Miss Lonely is offering sexual services in exchange for some necessity of life, so indeed has ended up in the gutter – but the original coherence is starting to fade. After all, it is unlikely that Miss Lonely would ever have said something like “Oh dear, I’d never compromise with the mystery tramp” during her heyday, just as not selling alibis is a bit alienating in this context. Which is no weakening; it opens the floodgates to what Dylan calls a little too self-critically too much: the colourful side characters who soon after the song’s release became something like Dylanesque archetypes (Napoleon in rags, the jugglers and the clowns, the diplomat with the Siamese cat), the snapshots of a wonderfully chaotic scene and the granite one-liners (one of which even is quoted in a Supreme Court ruling: when you got nothing, you got nothing lose, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., 2008).

At the latest from the third verse, it then seems clear that Dylan has abandoned his notes, the long piece of vomit, and dips a first toe into his mercurial stream of consciousness:

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you

The driving force now seems to be the ambition to stay within that aaab – cccb tail rhyme. Reason is slowly starting to fade away. “You get the rhymes first and work back and then see if you can make it make sense in another kind of way,” as Dylan explained in 1991. And alright, some sense can still be made of it, of course. Indeed, with some indulgence, we can even grant Dylan spider-sense here, as he seems to detect a danger before it happens: Marianne Faithfull, again.

Just as the Ophelia -couplet of “Desolation Row” not only offers a portrayal of La Faithfull, but even has a prophetic quality (the bizarre coincidence that on 29 December 1968, “on her twenty-second birthday” Marianne does indeed play Ophelia in Tony Richardson’s staging), here in “Like A Rolling Stone” we see not only a portrayal but also a remarkably accurate prediction of the future:

“I was also getting involved in a long affair with Tony Sanchez, dealer by appointment to the Stones. I can’t believe I did that! I didn’t get enough pocket money from Mick and I didn’t have any money of my own, so how else would I have been able to get my own drugs? That was the level of my thinking. Not a pretty picture. I had charge accounts at every shop, but I never had any cash. I now realize that if you do want drugs, then you have to make your own money and buy them! To live outside the law you must be honest, but I didn’t understand that yet. For years I simply charmed and seduced people to get what I wanted.”
(Faithfull; An Autobiography, 1994)

The Lumineers – Ophelia:

It is quite literal. You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you. It took Faithfull long years before she understood that it ain’t no good. And while we’re building castles in the air: it’s really not that hard to see a mystery tramp in the dubious Tony Sanchez, with whom Marianne compromises.

As the prophecy foretold.

* Editor’s footnote 1: As one who lives close to the seven-lock flight on the Grand Union Canal (built at Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire England, opened in the 1790s), but I thought I would add for clarity that the “3 lock flight” phrase refers to locks on a canal.

** Editor’s footnote 2: It has become common for those writing the chord sequence of the “Now you don’t talk so loud” line to write “C/e” for the chord that occurs on the word “don’t”, although this is somewhat confusing.  The chord played is C major, so “C” is correct, but during this sequence, the bass guitar is playing a classic descending bass line and has reached the note E at this point.  In classical terminology, to be precise the chord is therefore “C (first inversion)” and is written “C(b)”.*   In more recent times writing C/E has come to mean the chord of C with E as the bass note, and of late this seems to have mutated in C/e.

Confusing Editor’s Footnote to the Footnote (which it is not necessary to read) continued:

*As to why it is C(b), in classical notation, just writing C suggests the chord of C in the root position, which means for the chord of C, C is the bass note with E and G above it.  To be exact one would write C(a) but because most chords are in root position, the (a) is omitted in classical notation.   If the middle note of the chord (E in this case) is at the bottom (as it is in this song at this point) one would write C(b) and if the top note of the three note chord is in the base position one would write C(c).   Writing C/e seems to be a recent development, perhaps specifically to help bass guitarists who have not had the benefit (or perhaps confusion) of a theory of music education.

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone part 6: Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

———

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

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot

Translated by Brent Annable

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

6. 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – part 2

You might imagine that, thanks to my early introduction to serious art music and my own modest musical talents, that I had already developed a passable ear by the time pop music penetrated my adolescent brain. And as a strapping young lad, I quickly cultivated a strong aversion to the soppy, whiny love songs that proved to exist even outside the pages of The Great American Songbook, and to an extent beyond the ability of any reasonably sane person to tolerate. For your benefit, I have sampled the sentimental, gender-normative slurry that infected the western hit parades between Dylan’s debut single in 1962 and his American premiere of ‘All I really want to do’ on 26 July 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival. To limit my own revulsion, from the mountains of available material I shall present only one example per year. The titles of these songs often reveal enough: ‘Don’t break the heart that loves you’ (1962) is indicative of the kind of drivel one can expect from semi-talent Conny Francis:

Connie Francis – Don’t Break The Heart That Loves You:

Don't break the heart that loves you
Handle it with care
Don't break the heart that needs you
Darling, please be fair

Why do you flirt, and constantly hurt me?
Why do you treat our love so carelessly?

You know I'm jealous of you
And yet you seem to try
To go out of your way to be unkind

Sweetheart, I'm begging of you
Don't break this heart that loves you
Don't break this heart of mine

Darling, please don't hurt me
Please, don't make me cry
I don't know what I'd do if you'd ever say goodbye
Remember, I love you so much
And love is life's greatest joy
Please don't break my heart like a child breaks a little toy

The year 1963 saw various songs that led to a curious preoccupation with teenage marriage in Christian conservative moralism. B-grade artists Darlene Love, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans extol the practice rather cheerfully (with choreography, at least) in ‘Not too young to get married’. But what are we to make of the monstrous ballad ‘Give us your blessing’, in which dilettante Ray Peterson ascribes the demise of teen couple ‘Jimmy and Sue’ to a bout of weeping in the car, after having been denied the blessing of their family?

Ray Peterson – Give Us Your Blessings:

Ray Patterson LYRICS:

Jimmy and Sue
Were both very young
But they were as much in love
As two people could be
And all they wanted was to be together
And share that love
Eternally

They went to their folks and told them
That someday soon they'd be wed
Their folks just laughed
And called them kids

So Jimmy said
"Give us your blessing
Please don't make us run away
Give us your blessing
Say you'll be there on our wedding day"

They wouldn't have laughed at Jimmy
If they could've seen through the door
They'd have seen Sue in the car
While he begged them just once more

"Give us your blessing
Please don't make us run away
Give us your blessing
Say you'll be there on our wedding day"

Well as they drove off
They were crying
And nobody knows for sure
Is that is why they didn't see
The sign that read detour

The next day when they found them
Jimmy and Sue were dead
And as their folks knelt beside them they couldn't help but hear
The last words Jimmy had said

As an exercise, try to deduce from this sad outcome precisely what kind of marital values might have been at play, out there in the remarkable United States.

Lastly, in ‘Beg me’ (1964), semi-talent Chuck Jackson makes it clear to his ex-partner that she should be on her knees from early in the morning until late at night, pleading for him to ‘take’ her back. We can discern, however, that it is not the relationship itself but the begging that concerns him, and is what gives him his kicks:

Baby you walked out on me-ee-ee
Leaving me in misery
Now you want me back aga - -in
But Ive got news for you my friend

I wanna know do you want me (yeah)
Do you love me (yeah?)
Do you need me (yeah)
Real bad (yeah) real bad (yeah)
the -e en Beg me (beg) (Please)
Beg me (beg) (Please)
Beg me (beg) (Please)
In the morning (beg) (Please)
beg me (beg) (Please)
In the evening (beg) (Please)
Beg me (beg) (Please)
Now get down on your knees (beg) (Please)
And let me hear you say please (beg) (Please)
I want you to beg me (beg) (Please)

But here’s an idea: if the ladies of the #MeToo movement wish to know how it all came about, they might take a good look at all the love songs produced by their own Western culture, paying special attention to the voluntary contributions made by their fellow women to the love-and-marriage morality and culture to which they so vehemently object. It would also seem justified to me to cease all objection to actions that are the product of moralities dating from before the #MeToo age, and to grant an annulment to all cases in which no physical injury was sustained since claims of mental anguish are legally indemonstrable and therefore hold, so many years after the fact, no water whatsoever. There are, incidentally, plenty of women who appear to be financially no worse off after all their sexual to-do, and respectable sex work would seem to exist, at least that is what people say – a situation which of course also applies to men, we must not forget.

In 1958, the other (rightfully famous) Chuck made it clear in ‘Sweet little sixteen’ just how vague age limits especially can be, particularly when eroticism is on the cards:

Chuck Berry – Sweet Little Sixteen: https://youtu.be/ZLV4NGpoy_E

They're really rockin' in Boston
In Pittsburgh, P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
And down in New Orleans
All the cats are gonna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her wallet's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
Become so excited
Watch her look at her run, boy

Oh, mommy, mommy
Please, may I go?
It's such a sight to see
Somebody steal the show
Oh, daddy, daddy
I beg of you
Whisper to mommy
It's all right with you

'Cause they'll be rockin' on Bandstand
In Philadelphia, P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
Way down in New Orleans
All the cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

'Cause they'll be rockin' on Bandstand
In Philadelphia, P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
Way down in New Orleans
All the cats wanna dance with, oo!
Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's got the grown-up blues
Tight dresses and lipstick
She sportin' high heeled shoes
Oh, but tomorrow morning
She'll have to change her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again

But they'll be rockin' in Boston
In Pittsburgh, P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
Way out in St. Louis
Way down in New Orleans
All the cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

And Berry was not the only one to have trouble with such uncertainty. Nor should we ignore the fact that many young ladies themselves did, in fact, enjoy letting their hair down, and that all that freedom could be very confusing when they all had to get back in line and go to school the next day. In any case, there are countless love songs sung by males to considerably younger females, and the number that explicitly mention ‘little girl’ are legion. The converse, ‘little boy’, never occurs, unless we count the worldwide hit ‘My boy lollipop’ released by teenager Millie Small in the spring of 1964. But here,

 too, the original version from the 1950s was also written by men, and was titled ‘My girl lollipop’. Some readers will surely call me inappropriate for daring to point out here that, if we are to believe that it is nothing more than sugar candy in a ‘boy lollipop’ that makes Millie Small’s teenage heart go ‘giddy-up’, as she so coquettishly sings, then we might also imagine that the boy in question at least has reasonable hopes of some oral satisfaction of his own once their love progresses physically. Lollipops make good practice, after all.

I cited Chuck Jackson above deliberately, as his ‘Beg me’ scored well in the hit parade just as Bob Dylan gave the world premiere of ‘All I really want to do’ in July 1964 which, compared to the feculence cited above, presents an altogether different notion of how people prefer to spend their time together, as I will outline in due course. I already stated that for me, it would all begin in December of that year with precisely that song – though I had all but forgotten about the visit to my cousin until I discovered Dylan independently in April 1965, over a month after my thirteenth birthday. My discovery was also accompanied by several paradoxes: that Dylan left me in utter confusion, the resolution of which lay in the work itself; that he became my guiding star without guiding me, my new older brother without being a brother, and a new friend without ever knowing it himself. I therefore cannot skip over these beginnings, although there will be some Americana involved. But I promise: this will be only one of three instances, so please forgive my indulgence.

(continued: Teenager finds a hero – part 1 – Untold Dylan)

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

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

We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks

Previously….

• 1: Far Away From Insight
• 2: “I looked into the bleak woods and said, ‘Something’s gotta change’. 
• 3:  If this is a bunch of noise, then it is noise that I love
• 4: Far away from the music
• 5: How to ignore important details
• 6: Making New Morning
• 7: How Bob Felt at the Time
• 8: Does Bob Dylan have a right to a private life
• 9: Where do you go when the creative spark stops?
• 10: How free is the artist to say what he wants?

One of the criticisms that is often made of critics – and quite rightly made of critics –  is that they use whatever they are writing a commentary upon, as an excuse for expressing their own personal views on a topic, rather than really investigating the book or film or music or whatever it is.

I think that is a valid criticism of critics generally – to my mind, they often spend far too much contemplating trivial details and far too little considering the artistic work overall.  And this I think is largely because they generally lack the vocabulary and knowledge to describe the artistic work in question – and so find it impossible to move on to the even more difficult concept of explaining why we might consider this artistic work to be a work of sublime genius, in contrast to that artistic work which ought to be consigned to the dustbin (trashcan).

At the same time we might note a few classical composers whose work was hardly known outside their own circle during their life times, Charles Ives, Schubert, Gustav Mahler, or indeed much of the larger scale work of JS Bach…   the fact is that the importance and value of composers’ work is reconsidered over time, and immediate judgements are often later set aside.

This makes criticism of a composer and/or performer’s work at the time of its composition and/or performance very difficult – it is hard for the commentator to get away from the immediate impact and the immediate issues surrounding the work.

But Heylin ignores this problem and instead his work is full of harsh criticisms of Dylan’s songwriting as made by others, perhaps in part because he is secure in the superlatives labelled upon his own work by reviewers (some of which are printed in the edition of The Double Life itself).

Indeed Heylin describes the writing of a critic such as Nick Kent at one point being “back to his offensive best”.  This is an interesting comment for it relates to an article Kent wrote which begins, “If Dylan really thinks this work is worth of superlatives, then both he and his ever-expectant audience better pack up their tent and forget about any future projects, because I can’t think of anything more tragic than Bob Dylan trying too hard to be Bob Dylan and consequently falling flat on his Jewish-caretaker’s mug every time out.”

It’s a clever twist because it allows the author to slip in his assertion that Dylan is trying too hard to be Dylan as a given, rather than leaving us to consider the quality of the songs as one issue, and the point about Dylan trying to be Dylan as another point of debate.  What I think we need to be doing in the light of that comment, is to ask how we would know if Dylan is trying to be Dylan, what that would mean, and would it be a bad thing?  How can we make a judgement?   We are not told nor are we helped in our understanding by the writer.  Instead, the criticism exists, and is allowed to exist, and all proper consideration of the issue comes to an abrupt halt.

Furthermore this comment implies that the critic who (in many cases) has never created any significant artistic work himself, can make a judgement that is absolute and correct.    Clearly this is not the case – the comment quoted above, like all critics’ comments, is a personal opinion, given without any detailed explanation, and absolutely no evidence to show why it might be true or how we could even know if it were true.

Even the occasional back-up comment such as “We spent more time than it took to record or mix just to sequence the record,” is based on the premise that the sequencing of the music is unimportant.  Also we don’t know if the allegation can be backed up, and no discussion as to why the sequence of tracks on an album might not be important.

Indeed why should one not consider the sequence in which the recordings appear on an album to be an issue of major concern to the artist?  I must admit that although I often do listen to Dylan’s songs individually, or on a playlist of my own creation, I do go back and consider the order of the songs as Dylan presented them.   Indeed, to jump forward, I recently wrote a little piece about the very last song in the very last concert that Dylan has performed thus far, considering – or perhaps better said, inviting readers to consider – the implication of that choice.  (The final song of the final show).  Choices can be important.

So why should Dylan as an artist not consider such matters at length?  Indeed take the vast number of novels and films that don’t tell their story in sequence, but perhaps give us a conclusion, and then take us back to the start so we find out slowly how that conclusion arose.  Or indeed the way films use flashbacks. In short, conclusions are reached without debate or discussion.

Or further consider the detective story which starts with the murder, and then works backwards to find the suspect.  Should we be invited to read the end first rather than the story as the author wrote it?

Quite possibly there is no absolute answer to the question of the order in which songs should appear on any particular album, but the creator of the songs surely has every right to decide what order he wants.  Especially Dylan, a creator who has his own views of his own work.   You only have to look at the list of songs that Dylan has played just once, twice or three times to see that.

My own little series on the songs Bob has performed just once or twice included what I consider absolute gems such as When the Ship Comes In, Caribbean Wind, Restless Farewell, Roll on John,  Lay Down your Weary Tune…  Bob obviously didn’t consider these worth playing again.  He’s the boss, and he certainly knows far more than I do about his music.

The most sensible conclusions to draw from all this are that first, artists often have a different view of the comparative merits of their work from the views of the critics.  Second, the views of critics are often overturned and ignored after a year or two.  Sometimes after a week or two.  And I would say, so they should be.

And this now leads to another point which relates not just to Heylin and his monumental “Double Life” duology.  (At least I presume it is a duology – he could go on and write a third volume course).  The artist’s work is produced and then fixed – be it a song that he records, a play, a painting or whatever.  The critic’s views appear for a moment and then are generally (quite rightly) forgotten as others come along later and reconsider the work.

This seems to me very important.  No one particularly worries what critics said about a particular Dylan work 30 years ago, for we tend to draw our own conclusions, and assuming we own recordings, play the recordings we like, irrespective of what a critic says.

Which then leads to the question: what is the point of the critic?  The fact that Dylan took a long time to write the sleeve notes for an album and kept changiing his mind about which songs were to be included and which order they might come in, is perhaps of passing interest, but really not that much.  It’s the music that counts – a fact which Heylin who seems to know nothing about music – seems absolutely unable to grasp.

Yes, it is interesting to know something about how Planet Waves, as an album, came about. And indeed Dylan’s uncertainty of how it should be presented, which meant that it was only released mid-tour rather than at the start of the tour in 1973, is also of some interest.  But surely what most of us are interested in is the music – which is the one subject upon which Heylin says NOT A WORD.

The fact that Dylan’s choice of which songs to put on any album and which songs to omit is not my choice doesn’t make Dylan’s choice wrong nor does it make my choice of any importance or significance.   Likewise, that the fact that it is not Heylin’s choice doesn’t make Heylin’s choice of importance or significance either, any more than it makes his criticisms of importance.

Nor is there any reason why we should take any note whatsoever of a comment such as “Within a week of the start [or the tour], the more interesting songs began to drop like grouse on the Glorious Twelfth.  The first to bite the dust was the opener in Chicago both nights.”  That was “Hero Blues”.

I think for me, it is the fact that Heylin constantly feels that his opinion is definitive that really does grate.  It is not that I never respect the work of experts, but on the issue of songs and songwriting, Heylin is clearly and utterly, not an expert.   If he is an expert on anything it is on digging up the minutia of Dylan’s life.

But even there he often seems lost.  Take for example, “The audience reaction certainly seemed out of all proportion to the merits of the shows.”

The audience’s reaction of which he writes was one of huge enthusiasm.  And the merit of the shows – how do we evaluate that?  Well, musically I gues.  But on music, as I have noted, Heylin says not a word.  So again, how do we evaluate?  He doesn’t say.   And by not telling us he invites us to assume that there is a measure of the merit of a show, rather as we can, should we wish, measure the exact temperature in our house at this moment.

But the fact is that I know what the temperature in my house is, because I am writing this in mid-winter and I need the heating on so I have set the temperature of the house heating system to remain at a steady 20 degrees centigrade.  The merit of my heating system is that it allows me to choose the temperature to be a comfortable temperature for me in which to write.

But what is the merit of a Bob Dylan show?  How are we going to measure that?   The critics would like us to believe that the merit of a show can be measured. they know how to measure it, and they are not going to tell us how they do it.  So why are their views important?  True, I might measure the merit of a show by whether I felt uplifted or disappointed – but that would be a wholly individual response, just as Heylin’s is.   So then I might ask, why is my judgement less valid than his?

Clearly, we are both people who write about Bob Dylan.  Heylin is famous, I am not, so does that make his judgement better than mine?   I’m not sure that fame is a valid approach to take here.

But what about enjoyment – the audience loved the show, does that not make it a great show?   Or do I judge it on the quality of the sound system?  Or the fact that Dylan did or did not play the songs I wanted to hear?  Or what about how the audience behaved?  Or come to that how the bouncers behaved?

The fact is that Heylin doesn’t define his measuring system but it does seem in part to be linked to which songs Dylan plays.  Heylin clearly has his favourites which he presents as being superior to others, although how he reaches these conclusions are often ill-defined, but he claims if Bob doesn’t play those songs the quality of the show declines.

Or is it that Heylin is influenced by what he feels is a sense of detachment in Dylan’s answers to journalists’ questions?  He certainly appears to be critical of the fact that journalists were instructed (by whom we are not told) that they should not ask questions on specific topics.  (They still did, and Dylan’s answers were as amusing as ever).

So overall there is a problem.  If you are going to critique music, or a show, or a concert, or a play or anything artistic, you need to have a basis of values upon which your critique is built.  Then the listener or viewer or reader will understand your value judgements.

But when the basis of the critiques is simply that you know, and your audience doesn’t, the whole thing becomes a bit of a shambles, because there is no consequent debate to be had.  Heylin knows, I am wrong if I think otherwise, that is all we can conclude if we take his work seriously.

I can tell you (as I have written here many times) that for me the greatest re-write Dylan has done in my opinion was to Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, a song which Heylin describes a being about “violent men ready to explode”.

By Tony Attwood

Three times and out: This series looks at songs that Dylan performed just three times and then left.  Previously we have looked at…

• Let it Be Me
• Dink’s Song
• When the Ship Comes In
• Fever
• Walls of Red Wing
• Precious Memories
• Rocks and Gravel

Eternal Circle appeared The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3 and was performed live on three occasions between 17 May 1963 and 17 May 1964.  The studio version appeared on the 50th anniversary collection album. 

One of the live versions turned up on “It could even be a myth” with a note saying “Royal Festival Hall, London, UK, 17th May 1964…possibly.”  That was according to Discogs.com

The whole “It could even be a myth” album appears on the internet here.

In a discussion on Reddit, it was noted that ‘both “Eternal Circle” and “Restless Farewell” are both based on the melody of the Scottish folksong “The Parting Glass.” Eternal Circle is in C and Restless Farewell a step up in D.

Here’s the Parting Glass

Here’s the studio recording of Eternal Circle…   The lyrics are set out below.

I sang the song slowly
As she stood in the shadows
She stepped to the light
As my silver strings spun
She called with her eyes
To the tune I’s a-playin’
But the song it was long
And I’d only begun

Through a bullet of light
Her face was reflectin’
The fast fading words
That rolled from my tongue
With a long-distance look
Her eyes was on fire
But the song it was long
And there was more to be sung

My eyes danced a circle
Across her clear outline
With her head tilted sideways
She called me again
As the tune drifted out
She breathed hard through the echo
But the song it was long
And it was far to the end

I glanced at my guitar
And played it pretendin’
That of all the eyes out there
I could see none
As her thoughts pounded hard
Like the pierce of an arrow
But the song it was long
And it had to get done

As the tune finally folded
I laid down the guitar
Then looked for the girl
Who’d stayed for so long
But her shadow was missin’
For all of my searchin’
So I picked up my guitar
And began the next song

by Jochen Markhorst

IV         You’ll curse the day you started goin’ down that lost highway

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

“Over with it,” commands Krazy Kat’s bully, the cruel mouse Ignatz, in one of George Herriman’s many masterful miniatures, in this case a 1910 episode. And when Kat has painstakingly pushed the rock over the obstacle, and the rock rolls down the steep slope, Ignatz orders, “Now follow it.” Herriman has tilted the panels 45 degrees; our eye follows the downward thundering boulder and the trail of destruction with the same speed and stress as Kat does.

“Well, I followed it, Ignatz,” reports Kat still panting after completing his task.
“Good,” the mouse says, “did it gather any moss?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ignatz replies paternalistically.
Impressed, Krazy Kat is left behind: “L’il fillossippa. Always seeks the truth, and always he finds it.”

In 1500, Erasmus of Rotterdam publishes the first edition of his Adagia, a collection of 818 classical quotations and proverbs. It becomes hugely popular, especially after cheap and bilingual editions of it are printed from 1521 onwards, and Erasmus continues to work on it until his death; when he dies in 1536, it has grown to a collection of 4151 adagia.

Its popularity also explains the striking similarity of sayings in the various European languages; crocodile tears; throwing oil on the fire; in the land of the blind, one-eyed man is king… hundreds of expressions from Erasmus’ hit have been adopted in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish and all the less prominent European languages.

The collection would make an inspiring birthday present for Dylan.

• “A fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi, in front of us an abyss, behind us wolves,”
• “Tempus omnia revelat, Time reveals all,”
• “Dulce bellum inexpertis, war is pleasant to those who do not know it”

“Every line in it,” as Dylan says of his own “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “is actually the start of a whole song.” And indeed: under 3.4.74 we find “Saxum volutum non obducitur musco; a rolling stone gathers no moss,” the proverb that drives Ignatz to his empirical research, and which, after many detours, leads to one of the greatest rock songs in our music history.

When the first issue of music magazine Rolling Stone appears on 9 November 1967, publisher Jann Wenner explains the connection right in the beginning, in “A Letter From The Editor”:

“The name of it is Rolling Stone, which comes from an old saying: A rolling stone gathers no moss. Muddy Waters used the name for a song he wrote; The Rolling Stones took their name from Muddy’s song, and “Like A Rolling Stone” was the title of Bob Dylan’s first rock and roll record.”

So an old saying it is indeed. Much older even than Erasmus’ 1500 publication, which after all compiles ancient sayings. Five hundred years before Erasmus we already find it at Egbert of Liège (around 1023; Assidue non saxa legunt volventia muscum – constantly rolling stones gather no moss), and presumably Egbert is paraphrasing a saying from Publilius Syrus’ collection of proverbs, the Sententiae. Publilius was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, so wrote this before our era, more than a thousand years before Egbert.

Jann Wenner’s five-step leap (old saying – Muddy Waters – Rolling Stones – Dylan – the magazine) thus suggests a connection between Muddy Waters’ hit and Dylan’s inspiration. Well, possibly. Muddy’s “Rolling Stone” was his first hit for Chess Records (1950), the single that gave him the courage to quit his day job. Actually an adaptation of Robert Petway’s version of the old blues traditional “Catfish Blues” (1941, from which Muddy also literally copies his opening lines Well I wish I was a catfish / Swimmin’ in an oh, deep blue sea ), but the Hoochie Coochie Man then turns it into the account of a womaniser, waiting for his prey’s spouse to leave the house. And sings in the third verse:

Well, my mother told my father
Just before I was born
“I got a boy child's comin', he's gonna be
He's gonna be a rollin' stone
Sure 'nough, he's a rollin' stone”

… with which rolling stone penetrates blues jargon and, by extension, the rock idiom.

Muddy Waters – Rolling Stone (Catfish Blues): https://youtu.be/bnsw4sySaxw

All true – yet it doesn’t seem to be Dylan’s trigger for the namesake and legendary chorus of “Like A Rolling Stone”. For that, we have a much more obvious candidate, one who is much deeper under Dylan’s skin: Hank Williams.

I was just a lad, nearly 22
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you
And now I'm lost, too late to pray
I started goin' down that lost highway

Now boys don't start to ramblin' round
On this road of sin, are you sorrow-bound?
And you’ll get lost till curse the day
You started goin’ down that lost highway

Neuwirth: O no, no, there’s another verse. With “I’m a rolling stone.” –
Dylan: Oh, yeah.

I'm a rollin' stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
Take my advice, you -- you'll curse the day
You started goin' down that lost highway

Dylan & Baez – Lost Highway (Don’t Look Back):

“Oh and what about ehm,” Dylan interrupts himself, only to then immediately after “Lost Highway” switch to that other Hank Williams signature song, to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”. We’re at 32’58”, about a third of Dont Look Back (1967), Pennebaker’s documentary on Dylan’s 1965 UK tour, we find ourselves with Dylan and Joan Baez in the hotel room at the Savoy Hotel, and it’s May: these are the days when Marianne Faithfull sits curled up in a chair in the corner looking pretty, the days when “Like A Rolling Stone” germinates.

A second and even stronger argument that rolling stone enters the creative part of Dylan’s brain not via Muddy Waters but via Hank Williams is its semantic connotation. With Muddy, after all, a rolling stone is something like a free bird, a man who goes his own way, a womaniser, befitting Muddy’s image – a good-looking man, dresses well, attracting the audience in this boastful, manly kind of manner, in the words of Willie Dixon. Close to the original connotation assigned to it by Publilius (“one who is always on the move, without roots here or there, shunning responsibilities and cares”), and far from the meaning rolling stone has with Hank Williams.

Hank’s rolling stone is no enviable fortune-hunter. On the contrary, he is just another guy on the lost highway – alone and lost, some poor sod paying the price for a sinful life, with no hope of redemption. He is, in short, a complete unknown without a home, he is the rolling stone Dylan will lead into the greatest rock song of the 20th century a few weeks after he sings his lament in a London hotel room.

And whom he then leads from the Lost Highway to Desolation Row – but that is another story and shall be told another time.

To be continued. Next up Like A Rolling Stone (1965) part 5: To live outside the law you must be honest – Untold Dylan

—————

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

• Part one of this series can be found here.
• Part two: from the 70s onwards
• Part three: the interpretations

By Jürg Lehmann

 Of course, Blowin’ in the Wind was also embraced by the jazz community. Ray Bryant got off to a promising start in 1963, but most jazz covers in this early stage were dutifully reproducing the tune, such as Duke Ellington (1964) and Stan Getz (1964). King Curtis’s version of the song (1966) treats it as just another pop number – he does at least give it a cheerful swing that opens up some of the melody’s potential.

But the epitome of Dylan’s tunes being used by jazzers keen to tap into the pop market, writes Luke McKernan, is ‘Dylan Jazz’, by the Gene Norman Group, from 1965. This is an entire album of jazz covers performed in workmanlike fashion by a combo that included future country star Glen Campbell on guitar. It’s proficient stuff, great for playing in the background at your mid-60s swinging party, but chiefly notable for how the musicians have no sense of the song’s import, even if they are playing them as instrumentals. Their covers reproduce exactly what they saw on the music sheet, but bear no relation in feeling, or indeed tune, to what Dylan meant.

Shirley Scott, the ‘Queen of the Hammond Organ’ (1968), and Stanley Turrentine (1968) stand out by trying their own interpretation.

But it is only with Jan Johansson, who was somehow ahead of his time, things start to get truly interesting. Although he is little known outside Scandinavia, Johansson was among Sweden’s top jazz pianists of the 1950s and 60s. It was at that time that Johansson came to the attention of Stan Getz, who spent a lot of time in Scandinavia. Getz loved the melodic nature of Johansson’s playing and went on a six week tour with his quintet. Johansson also was an outstanding fusionist of Swedish folk music and jazz and known for his ability to combine complex harmonic structures with melodic clarity. His album Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish) has sold over a quarter of a million copies and has been streamed more than 50 million times on Spotify. In November 1968 Jan Johansson died in a car crash on his way to a concert in a church in Jönköping, Sweden. Blowin’ in the Wind is a live recording made in the period between 1966 and 1968 and released posthumously in 2004 on the album Blues.

Arne Domnérus (1924-2008) was a contemporary of Jan Johansson, and together they recorded 10 albums. Born in Stockholm, Domnérus made his professional debut during the early ’40s, playing alto sax in popular dance bands. By 1942 he led his own group and made his recorded debut in 1945, honing an urbane, sophisticated style that nevertheless possessed an urgency often absent from the cool, remote tone associated with Swedish jazz.

American icons Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were both in attendance for Domnérus 1949 Paris festival gig, a performance which served notice that players of European descent could offer their own interpretations of music largely considered an African-American phenomenon. In his very Swedish, unassuming way, Domnérus said he developed his own style because he couldn’t hope to play like his idols, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges and, of course, Bird. Parker was so impressed that he signed Domnérus for the Scandinavian tour he mounted a year later. At the time, Scandinavia was considered a safe haven for American jazz musicians, with an open-minded audience and better performance opportunities than in the US. Above all, African Americans were safe from racial hostility here.

Domnérus’ Dylan cover is from the album Sketches of Standards with guitarist Rune Gustafsson and dates from 1991. Domnerus was capable of transcending the most unpromising material, enthuses Chris Mosey. One example featured on ‘Sketches of Standards’ is his total transformation of the old Bob Dylan folk revival anthem ‘Blowing in the Wind’ which, with the admirable Rune Gustafsson on guitar, is transformed into something of a mini masterpiece.” 

‘Last Radio Show’ is the last completed film by director Robert Altman. The comedy is inspired by one of the most popular radio shows in the US, ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ hosted by Garrison Keillor. ‘The Last Show’ is a love letter to a radio format that seems to have fallen out of time: the live show in front of a studio audience with sketches, music, commercials and the same main actors.

For 23 years (1993-2016), Richard Dworsky served as pianist and music director for Keillor’s. In 2006 he made his on-screen film debut as pianist/bandleader in the Robert Altman film and he was also the arranger and composer of the film. Dworsky’s Blowin’ in the Wind dates from the time before the Prarie radio show, it is from Back to the Garden (1992), an album with instrumental covers of songs from the 1960’s.

‘Last Radio Show’ is the last completed film by director Robert Altman. The comedy is inspired by one of the most popular radio shows in the US, ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ hosted by Garrison Keillor. ‘The Last Show’ is a love letter to a radio format that seems to have fallen out of time: the live show in front of a studio audience with sketches, music, commercials and the same main actors. For 23 years (1993-2016), Richard Dworsky served as pianist and music director for Keillor’s. In 2006 he made his on-screen film debut as pianist/bandleader in the Robert Altman film and he was also the arranger and composer of the film. Dworsky’s Blowin’ in the Wind dates from the time before the Prarie radio show, it is from Back to the Garden (1992), an album with instrumental covers of songs from the 1960’s.

Peter Saltzman is a pianist who has written music and produced a slew of records over the years, ranging from solo piano to symphonies, pop songs, choral and chamber music, and jazz. In the mid-to-late 90s, Saltzman led the Revolution Ensemble, a group that broke new ground with its adventurous mix of jazz, classical, Latin, and pop genres. He describes it as a highly personal, but accessible approach to playing the piano in a post-jazz style’. Since 2001, he has headed the Peter Saltzman Band as lead singer, pianist, songwriter/arranger. Things Better Left Said, released in 2003, is a vocal album comprising originals and standards, such as Blowin’ in the Wind.

Passionate improviser, composer and arranger, Belgian Pierre Van Dormael was a musician of many talents, and is considered by many a pioneer in various musical forms and experiments. His cover on the album Solos – Duos stands out for Tony Attwood, “because of the space it allows for us to appreciate the simple but highly effective representation of the chords without playing any.” The album was recorded between September 2007 and February 2008 and mastered in September 2008, the same month Pierre van Dormael passed away.

Italian saxophonist Stefano Cantini began his career in the 80’s, he has played with Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler, Michel Petrucciani, Chet Baker and many others. Cantini is described as an artist with a reserved life, appreciated by his fellow countrymen and musicians in the sector without ever having made it commercially. The characteristic of his music is that it transcends the boundaries of genre; clearly of jazz origin, especially for the sense of improvisation and cadences, it offers excursions into the pop, rock and classical fields. This year (2024) has seen the addition of another genre, when Cantini teamed up with Italian disco music and techno king Alexander Robotnick. The EP Robocok is the perfect sound for the dancefloor – and million miles away from the 2010 album Errante with Blowin’ in the Wind.

Details of our other current series are given on the home page.

By Tony Attwood

This isn’t part of the normal run of articles for this site but instead is just a note about a smile that came to my face this morning.

As you might imagine, running this site, I do get quite a few people emailing me, selling all types of goods and services which have no relevance either to myself or to the site.  My email address is out there – because I do want readers to be able to write to me if they have thoughts on the site, and perhaps are interested in writing an article, or want to let me know what they like and don’t like.   We’ve been going for 16 years and I still enjoy it.

Anyway, these adverts come to my in-box, I recognise them pretty quickly (since they are by and large written in a very similar style) and I hit delete.    It’s a bit frustrating when there are lots of them, but it it just part of running a site like this – which overall I do enjoy doing.

But today I really did have a laugh and I thought I’d pass it on, while also saying “Happy Christmas” in advance.

The email’s headline was “Discover High-Quality Gloves, Caps, and Scarves from a Trusted Supplier” and I took it to be just another company that had scooped up a million email addresses and emailed all of them in the hope of picking up one more outlet.

Yet as my finger headed for “delete” I noticed something else.

The subject line of the email read….

A Dylan cover a day 73: that brand new leopard skin pill box hat 

Seemingly the writer had found my article written some two and a half years ago, and some bit of software (or maybe even a person, but I suspect it was software) had taken that to mean that I trade in leopard skin products.  Or hats.  (Which I don’t).

OK, it’s not THAT funny, but on a morning when the clouds cover the sky, it’s not much above freezing outside, and I’ve got to go shopping, as well as fill in some complex forms to make sure I keep getting the money that comes in from books I wrote in the dim and distant past, it gave me a smile.

And I thought I’d share that with you.

And of course, in case you live in a part of the world that celebrates Christmas, and in case I don’t get around to doing it in the coming nine days, I hope you have a happy Christmas, and enjoy Untold Dylan.

Indeed if you feel that you have something to say on Dylan which is not said elsewhere, and would like to write an article for Untold Dylan, please do drop me an email.   It’s Tony@schools.co.uk     I’m in England, but our writers are spread out all across the world, so where you are is not an issue.  As long as it offers a new insight into Bob and his work, I’ll be pleased to have a look.

But no, I’m not in the market for leopard skin pill-box hats.

Tony Attwood

DYLAN & US: BEYOND AMERICA

by Wouter van Oorschot; Translated by Brent Annable

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

What do most people want from you? They want your autograph.  Nobody knows me and I don’t know them. You know. They walk up and think they know me because I have written some song that happens to bother them in a certain way and they can’t get rid of,  you know in their mind. That ain’t got to do with me, they still don’t know me and I still don’t know them. So they woke up you know, as if eh… we’re long lost brothers or sisters or somethin’, what’s that have to do with me, none of that I can prove in any court.

(1986: Christopher Sykes – interview ‘Meet Bob Dylan’, part 3 of 4, 2:12–2:44)

Three pivotal months in my youth were March 1962, when I made my first acquaintance with pop music because we got our first television set; September-October 1963, when three people close to me passed away; and September 1964, when I started secondary school. These three jolts to my adolescent brain lay at the foundation of my embryonic grasp of Dylan’s art, which came about in February 1966. I gave forewarning of my historically-tainted perspective on Dylan’s work, and here I serve up these seismic events honestly and openly, for your delectation.

Until 1987, commercial television was prohibited in the Netherlands as it was regarded as a threat to democracy. Anybody who has witnessed the plebian Donald Trump – who was intent on the gradual destruction of democracy in his country not only during his presidency (2016-2020), but throughout his life – as he was supported by the far-right commercial television station Fox News, cannot deny the Dutch legislator its prophetic judgement. And in spite of the adage by German poet Heinrich Heine: ‘If the world ends, I shall go to the Netherlands – there everything always happens fifty years later’, only thirty years after the introduction of commercial television into the country, its pestilent influence on our political system was already noticeable. Caution is therefore advised, the more so for our friends in the United States now that Bob Dylan is not present to point the way…

When the television arrived in our home in March 1962, I was ten years old. At that time, our diminutive nation had only one channel, which was to be shared between public broadcasters of various ideological persuasions. I was taking piano lessons and already knew who the great composers were, but my introduction to young people’s music took place during the monthly (yes, monthly) television broadcast Top or Flop, a pop-music programme made by the only progressive broadcaster of the day. It believed that even teenagers deserved some representation at least once a month, during which time an ‘expert panel’ passed judgement on recently-released 45s. For a full half hour, if you please!

I experienced my first three deaths in 1963 within the space of four weeks, at the start of my final year of primary school. I was eleven-and-a-half. First the father of one of my classmates died; the fact that such a thing could just come out of the blue left a deep impression on me. Shortly thereafter, our schoolteacher was away from school for a whole week because her husband had died, which had an even deeper impact, since she ‘belonged’ to all of us.

Lastly my brother Guido, who was eight years my senior, committed suicide. There was lots going on with him, but let us leave the primary cause at a serious heartbreak. It was thus that on 7 October 1963 I became not ‘an’ only child, but ‘the’ only child, as our parents had made the wise decision to stop at two. It took some getting used to. An eight-year age gap, however, did mean that Guido and I had not spent an awful lot of time together. I still lived at home, and he had already moved out when he decided to end things. I had schoolfriends, he had a relationship (which had also ended), I listened to the music we had at home, while he bought jazz records and smoked.

Returning briefly to the international context: the murder of president Kennedy in the United States, which took place hardly a month later, was to me little more than a television event. I had never before realised that there was even such a thing as a president, and by the time I did, this one was already gone. My experience of it ended there, although I did notice that my parents were quite shaken by it all. So it did merit some thought. And when little John Kennedy junior saluted his father’s passing coffin, for a moment I was keenly aware that I had also lost my own brother. Not until later did I realise that Death, after my threefold personal encounter with Him, had crowned himself with yet another morbid accolade. Murder most foul it was, yes indeed, just like the movie that had been named after an Agatha Christie novel starring Margaret Rutherford as the original Miss Marple, which appeared shortly after Kennedy’s murder (March 1964) and may have been the inspiration for Dylan, who used the title for the final song on his 2020 album Rough and rowdy ways.

The third event that had a powerful impact on my young life was my entry into secondary school in September 1964. I was twelve-and-a-half, and had made my first modest forays into puberty. It was partly for this reason that my interest in pop music had grown rapidly, and I can say that A hard day’s night had me completely hooked: my mother accompanied me to the cinema to see the Beatles movie.

Shortly beforehand, at the primary-school farewell party, five of us boys had lip-synced some Beatles songs on stage (‘All my loving’ and ‘Twist and shout’, that’s how behind we were) without worrying too much about the words, which – despite the above demonstrations of their adolescent simplicity – we hardly understood anyway. At secondary school, however, I was now taking twelve subjects, including three hours of English per week, which rapidly improved my understanding of the countless pop songs that were flooding into the Netherlands, mostly from England.

I searched for and found pop stations on my transistor radio, and also purchased a weekly pop magazine with some regularity that included two entire pages of lyrics from the most popular songs at the time, but which we as non-English speakers could not dismiss as unimportant for any other reason than that we simply could not understand them. Whenever I heard a song on the radio that I liked, then those two pages were useful to me at least. And if I found the lyrics in question, I would mutter or sing along to them, and if I was able to purchase the single, I stuck the lyrics to the cover to be sure I would not lose them. In this manner, I learned English more effectively than from my textbooks, and thanks to a good auditory memory, I knew a great many songs by heart right up until my death (I consider that ‘knew’ to be a sublime form of anticipation).

But that is nothing compared to the knowledge that goes to our graves with us when we die. It represents an unparallelled loss of capital, so in that sense I do have some sympathy for the tech companies that are eager to document our every thought. Only it is prohibited because those are our thoughts and not theirs, and there you have it: how many times must the adage ‘Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam’* be repeated, do you suppose?

These three elements – pop music, an awareness of death, and English classes – constituted the substrate in which Bob Dylan’s work would germinate and take root in late December 1964. My parents took me to visit family in Amsterdam one day, and because I quickly grew bored in my uncle and aunt’s living room, I slipped away and requested an audience with my cousin, Yonty, in his bedroom. Yonty was seven years my senior, and had a friend to visit, but I was granted entry. The hour that I spent with them was, alas, marred by the single record they played ad nauseum with nothing but nasal bleating and tiresome guitar chords, to which I took an immediate and fervent dislike. I had no idea who it could have been and understood nothing of what was sung, except for one line that consisted entirely of words that I had already picked up in my English classes: ‘All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.’

To me, a child in the throes of development, drawn equally to charming boys and to sweet girls, but above all ‘the’ only child, that line fit me like a glove. Though I was barely conscious of it at the time, there on the eve of my thirteenth birthday he had expressed my innermost romantic feelings: All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. I was unaware of it, but that line carved itself firmly into my subconscious.

You may, of course, decide that these personal outpourings have nothing to do with you, and for as long as you and I are spared each other’s company, dear reader, you are absolutely right. Provided you harbour no delusion that you can read any other books about Bob Dylan that are not coloured by the personal backgrounds and histories of their authors, for they most certainly are, despite best efforts to maintain an air of objectivity. I, at least, am honest about it.

(continued: 1962-1964: Teenager chooses sides – part 2 – Untold Dylan)

*Editor’s translation, just in case you skipped a few classes during the discussion of Cato: “What’s more I consider Carthage needs to be destroyed”, perhaps more simply put, “We need to do this.”  But beware: editor’s translations are not always reliable.)

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

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

 We will publish more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the coming weeks