Bob Dylan’s impact on music, culture, and politics is unequivocal. Regarded as one of the preeminent songwriters in history, he has served as a poet, an advocate for social change, and an artist who has embraced the power of creativity for sixty years.
What is most astonishing, however, is the enduring relevance of his music today, largely thanks to the role of digital platforms. With each successive generation, new audiences are uncovering Dylan’s oeuvre through platforms that were unavailable during the nascent stages of his career. In the digital era, Bob Dylan’s musical legacy is not only preserved but also disseminated to a broader audience than ever, mostly due to an extensive and growing digital presence.
Join us in exploring how digital innovation facilitates a new wave of audiences’ connection with the enduring impact of his music.
The Transition from Vinyl to Online Streaming
For two-thirds of his professional career, Bob Dylan’s music was restricted to physical formats—vinyl albums, cassette cassettes, and then CDs. Fans worldwide would purchase albums in physical stores (or subsequently, purchase online), absorb them in full, and meticulously examine the notes to comprehend the narratives behind each track.
This shift in music consumption, from a profoundly intimate yet physically constrained mode to a globally accessible digital format, is a testament to the transformative power of modern digital technology. Dylan’s repertoire, like many others, has not been excluded from this revolution.
Bob Dylan’s Streaming Access
Streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube have played a pivotal role in this transformation, making Dylan’s complete discography accessible with a simple touch of a screen. This democratisation of music consumption has not only exposed his music to a wider audience but also made each listener an integral part of a larger cultural shift, some of whom may never have acquired a vinyl record or CD.
Moreover, the power of digital curation cannot be overlooked. Personalised playlists and recommendation algorithms on numerous prominent streaming sites have made it possible for Dylan’s music to reach individuals who may be unfamiliar with his oeuvre. These platforms provide a thorough introduction by blending his renowned songs with obscure treasures.
Entering the Digital Entertainment Sector
Dylan, as a pivotal singer-songwriter, has been enshrined in contemporary digital media, either through direct tribute or the incorporation of his oeuvre in games and cinema.
The contemporary digital entertainment sector is a highly impactful and important cultural industry. The gaming industry is valued at approximately $180 billion and includes several sectors, ranging from gambling to mobile gaming, such as online casinos like the top 20 best slot games found here. Dylan has already alluded to games and gamers in his songs, making it plausible to envision that if he composed new material, he would incorporate themes related to digital-only verticals and titles such as themed slots. Although that may seem somewhat implausible.
Gaming, Gambling & More
What isn’t implausible, however, is the fact that his tunes have appeared in video games numerous times. Dylan references appear in various games, including massive titles such as Mortal Kombat and Guitar Hero. His music is commonly featured in simulation games, and if you’ve ever jammed on Guitar Hero 5, you’ll have likely noticed “All Along The Watchtower” as one of the featured hits.
The gaming industry is not the sole contributor to the expansion of digital entertainment, as streaming behemoths such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have significantly diminished terrestrial television viewership. Bob Dylan’s life and legacy are central to I’m Not There, No Direction Home, and Rolling Thunder Revue, among others. Although these works were not all originally produced for digital platforms, they are extensively accessible for streaming and repeated viewing. Moreover, their digital format enhances accessibility for Gen Z audiences, expanding his exposure to new viewers through these films and shows.
The Bob Dylan Social Media Takeover & Continued Pertinence
Social media constitutes the third pillar of the Big Tech entertainment sector, with platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram contributing to Dylan’s continued prominence in public awareness. His music frequently appears in viral videos and memes on social media platforms, and significantly, excerpts of his Nobel Prize speech and legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival have garnered substantial viewership.
Additionally, the influence of social media personalities and celebrities must be considered. When contemporary musicians such as The Weekend and Lana Del Rey publicly acknowledge Dylan as an inspiration, their numerous followers are motivated to explore his extensive discography. These acknowledgements connect generations, guaranteeing that Bob Dylan continues to resonate with contemporary music enthusiasts as he did for the past sixty years.
The series looking at volume 1 of Clinton Heylin’s epic review of Bob Dylan concluded here, and at the end of that article, you will find an index to all the articles that were part of that series. This is part two of the review of Volume 2 of Heylin’s opus., “Far Away From Myself”. Part one was Far Away From Insight
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By Tony Attwood
How much of Bob Dylan’s compositions reflect himself? It is a difficult question to answer, just as people have for many years worked on lists of songs from which Dylan has lifted either lyrics, or melodies or chord sequences. If you want to get into building a list of where all the songs come from there’s quite a decent article on BobDylanplagiarisms.
Yet there are several separate issues here: the first being “does Dylan use other people’s songs?” – and the answer for that seems to be clearly yes. But another is does it matter legally? The answer there is yes, up to a point. A third question is, does the fact that some of his lyrics or melodies or chord sequences have been taken from elsewhere, actually matter morally? And on that one, you have to make your own decision.
I suspect Bob would argue that this musical borrowing is how it has always been; he’s just carrying on the tradition. Besides no one can claim the rights to a 12 bar blues. But on the other hand, some people do get a bit agitated about this: if you want to see how, try the article “Jacques Levy’s wife and publishing company seek $7.25m (£5.25m) from recent sale of Dylan’s publishing rights to Universal Music Publishing”. That piece comes from the Guardian, a British newspaper which is considered by many to be usually accurate in its reporting (by which I mean to say, it is not a popular, sensationalist newspaper).
Heylin sees Dylan’s accident as a dividing point in Dylan’s life – volume two of the “Double Life” biography is effectively Dylan post-accident and centres on such thoughts as the “fact” that he was now learning to trust someone completely, and open up on his own feelings. And Heylin also suggests that the new songs that Dylan composed at this time came to him “relatively easily”.
He also quotes occasional lines from songs “finished and fragmentary” and finds all sorts of very odd lines therein – he calls them “fragments” – and then sets about drawing conclusions from some of them. And this is where I have my next Heylin problem.
For I wonder how valid this technique is. My central argument – or perhaps better said my central discontent about volume one of this megawork, is that Heylin plucks elements from Dylan’s life (be it his reaction to an audience, his behaviour in a relationship or some lines that he wrote and then never used in a song) and then nominates some of them as being singularly significant. But it is also possible that they are only significant because Heylin nominates them as significant. There are plenty of other lines from songs, poems and conversations, that could be equally or more significant.
Does the fact that Dylan wrote the line “My woman’s got a mouth like a lighthouse on the sea” actually indicate anything beyond the fact that here is a songwriter doing what most songwriters do; writing down lines and seeing where they go? Do they really indicate what Dylan thinks? Or should we just consider this another line written because the lyrics sprung into his mind from who knows where?
Convention has it that poets (and therefore perhaps songwriters) often do write about themselves and their emotions, but there again that is just a convention introduced by people who write about songs and songwriters. There is no evidence that this is universally or even regularly true. The most likely situation is that sometimes it is true, and sometimes not. It varies across time, and from one songwriter to another.
I have always felt that when Roy Harper wrote “I hate the white man” (available on Spotify although seemingly not elsewhere on the internet), that he meant every word. But then Roy Harper has seemed to me to have a consistent view of religion, human behaviour and the world around him, and this is expressed through his songs. Personally I rather hope that when Bob wrote
Let me go through, open the door
My soul is distressed, my mind is at war
Don't hug me, don't flatter me, don't turn on the charm
I'll take a sword and hack off your arm
he was being poetic for the purpose of the imagery of the song, and not talking literally. And if that is so, then maybe he was mostly being poetic not literal through his whole career. Just as I can tell you that my novels (hardly great works of literature but some people liked them) are truly fictional, not about real people.
Now one can’t say that Bob Dylan has had a consistent view about lots of things, because his music has changed so regularly across time. But more than that, to interpret Dylan songs as having a particular meaning, does involve trying to find consistency and clarity through each song’s lyrics; which is not necessarily there.
Heylin quotes, for example, “Card Shark” which has the lines
For life is a puzzle, those who disagree are few
So if you just promise to love me little girl
I'll promise to love you too.
Now are we really supposed to see this as insightful, let alone profound? Or would we not be better off seeing this as just a set of lines written by a songwriter, finding his way back into songwriting after a break, knowing that he’d maybe like to find a different way of writing but as yet is not quite sure what it is.
The notion of promising love simply because the other person in the relationship has already done so (and not because one feels that deep emotional experience) is hardly worthy of much commentary, and really seems to be a fairly poor follow-on from the statement that many of us might agree with, that life is indeed a puzzle. These lines are hardly “We sit here stranded though we all do our best to deny it” which can, if we wish, give us insights into the extraordinary contradiction between our concept of “self” and of our willingness (or indeed wish) to engage with the social world beyond ourselves.
Thus when one gets to Heylin quoting “My woman’s got a mouth like a lighthouse on the sea,” one really wonders what he is trying to prove. For the point is that just as all visual artists do sketches when preparing for the moment when the big picture starts to be painted, so most poets and songwriters try out all sorts of ideas, word combinations, thoughts and anything else that pops along. The difference here is however that we don’t normally get to see the early versions.
For me, the sketches by great artists in all forms of art are an interesting reminder of how most artists don’t simply create their works of art, but do quite a bit of stumbling around at first. This is true in all areas of creative works – if you want to see it in an area utterly different from songwriting just ponder this picture of an early design of Tower Bridge over the River Thames in London and the
bridge that was actually built. You might well know what it looks like now and you can see it wasn’t quite like that in the first sketch.
So yes there is a historical interest in how things were at first, but this does not mean that the later versions grew exactly from the former.
Heylin in fact does call some of these early songs “Songwriting exercises” and quite possibly that is right, since Dylan had been away from the actual songwriting for some time before the pre-Basement work.
But if one also adds in the notion that I’ve suggested earlier, which is that most people of genius have no idea where their genius comes from or how it can be tamed and used, then really all that was going on was that Dylan was just writing his way back from the hiatus around the time of his accident.
However, Heylin is invariably clear and certain in his views of what happened how, when and why – and that’s probably what has attracted so many readers to his work. But in fact what he is doing is taking Dylan’s occasional comments about his life and work (for example as “I looked into the bleak woods and I said, ‘Something’s gotta change’.”) and then mixing simplistic statements (which we are all of us capable of making about our lives), with other later similarly simplistic outbursts, “I woke up and caught my senses, I realized I was just working for all these leeches”) which he then asserts (not tentatively suggests but utterly asserts) that these feelings link into later lyrics which Heylin then asserts were related to Albert Grossman, whose working relationship Heylin pronounces was now causing Dylan “sleepless nights”.
For me, there are two huge points here. One is, were these lines from a song sketch actually true reflections of how Dylan felt about anything? And if they were, was Dylan then actually writing about a specific person?
The answer can often be “maybe”, but without giving us any evidence into how he knows for sure, Heylin repeatedly insists that he does know. We leap from a line about a Bank Teller (“Bank Teller take to me the back room please”) to the assertion that the Bank Teller was Albert Grossman. How does Heylin know? We are not told. Where is the evidence? None is provided. What does this actually mean? We have to guess. But we are told from this that now Dylan started reading some of his older contracts to see what he had actually signed up to.
Of course this might all be true; but there is no evidence, just assertion. If Dylan did feel that he had signed a “slave contract” (as Heylin calls it) in 1961, then he would not be the first or last. That’s what people in the music business did in those days, and probably still do. If the artist turned out to be a flash-in-the-pan who was quickly forgotten by the public, the contract sat equally forgotten by both parties. If the artist reached the big time, then the agent, manager etc etc, called in his dues. That’s how it went.
Record companies and managers are not creative entities. They speak in terms of product and profit. Songwriters and performers are the ones with the feelings and emotions, and so if they do become popular they can feel they have been exploited. This is how the industry works. The managers and the companies would argue that they spend a lot of time promoting many different artists and only a few of them make money – plus they note that if the artist didn’t like the contract he shouldn’t have signed it in the first place. (As was once said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows).
These contracts also tend to give (or at least they did in the days before the internet) the publishers and agents control over the way the “product” (ie what the artist created) was handled. So when Heylin talks of Columbia having a “patent disregard for Dylan’s artistic integrity” he is being very slippery with reality. Record companies handling popular music of any type are there to make money for their shareholders, not to become highly regarded as the artistic curators of a living genius.
In all the discussion of such matters Heylin portrays himself as a man who could have done a much better job for Dylan than those around him at the time. He suggests that Dylan should have been advised to go on strike until Columbia implemented a previous verbal agreement. But this is all analysis with hindsight. No one knew where Dylan’s writing ability and desire to perform live would take him next. He might have stopped being prolific. Or he might have remained just as prolific but not produced works or performances that his previous audiences still wanted to hear and buy.
You can read about the handling, offers, counter offers and duplicity in Heylin’s account, and I am sure it is all true. You can also read about how some people misjudged how much would Dylan produce in subsequent years, and how popular it would be – and this is the bit I find rather silly.
For the fact was that no one knew how many new songs Dylan would produce, how much touring he would want to do, and whether his songs, recordings or tours would remain popular. Dylan was incredibly popular by 1967, but would he remain so? We know the answer through hindsight, yet somehow Heylin seems to suggest that those who didn’t have the awareness of what Dylan could continue to do, was a failing on the part of the record companies with whom he was dealing.
Thus Heylin is sketchy with his sources, but strong on assertions. Maybe everything he writes is correct – indeed that is possible, although not at all certain. But is it all significant when we come to considering Dylan’s creativity? That’s really a very different matter and one that Heylin doesn’t engage with much at all. As I said in relation to the first volume by Heylin, that’s not a subject Heylin likes to consider much.
You know darlin’ the kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile - something’s got to give
I ain’t no false prophet - I’m nobody’s bride
Can’t remember when I was born and I forgot when I died
“Though I cannot remember my birth and shall forget my death, I live in the midst of wonder,” the diary-like, poetic profession from the Egyptian Book of the Dead that paraphrased became the closing line of Dylan’s “False Prophet” – the fourth (paraphrased) quote from Chapter 8, Triumph Over Darkness, to descend into Dylan’s song. The honourable positions of these quotes (opening line, the opening couplet and the closing line), their expressive power and quantity do by now justify the conclusion that Dylan based his protagonist on the narrator in Triumph Over Darkness.
Which doesn’t really resolve the question of his identity, by the way. Eight pages, 2880 words, in which the narrator – teasingly, it seems – insinuates 42 times that he will now reveal his identity: no fewer than 42 times in those eight pages he makes an “I am” statement. “I am a man walking the path, separating the nettles from the flowers,” for example. “I am an animal”, “I am a baboon driven by instinct”, “I am a jackal devouring the meat of life”, “I am a light, a fire, a purpose, a rager against oblivion”, and so on – and with each “revelation”, with each self-characterisation, the picture becomes more unclear – he contains multitudes, might be the sharpest characterisation then.
In any case, he is an entity that seems to be outside time and space. And beyond that, as with the Prophet, we can only tick off who or what he is not. He is not a god, for instance – the narrator places himself outside the realm of the gods, recounts having seen the birth of Ra, witnesses bickering between gods, and even hints that he himself is outside creation, when he reports on an overheard conversation between the god of life and the god of death, revealing that he existed before the god at duty started creating living beings:
“Come,” said the lord of life to the lord of death one day. “Let us make a truce. I shall bring forth creatures and deliver them unto death, if you deliver the dead unto life.”
Death still resists a bit, until Truth, “the great uniter”, suggests that the god of life creates two of each creature; a visible and an invisible one. Death may keep the visible creature, the flesh, after its death, but the invisible one he returns to Life.
This is described in the first half of Triumph Over Darkness, and at that point we might still be tempted to think that the narrator is Anubis, a psychopompos at any rate, a conductor of souls to the Realm of the Dead. He is obsessed with dualities, with light and darkness, good and evil, birth and death, and above all: “I discern the fruit from the poison.” In Egyptian mythology, the deceased is led by Anubis to the Hall of Two Truths, where he weighs the heart. Lighter than the Feather of Truth: eternal life – but if sins have made the heart too heavy, the monster Ammit eats the heart. Fitting to one of the narrator’s many credos in this chapter: “I am a lover of truth. I cut away lies, these rags of mortality.” And fitting with Dylan’s Prophet, with a whole series of his statements. I’m the enemy of treason, for instance, and you got a poisoned brain, and I’m here to bring vengeance – and without too much intellectual acrobatics we can rhyme even more of Dylan’s Prophet’s statements with a Final Judge, with a being who on the threshold of the Hereafter passes the verdict eternal life or damnation.
But alas, further on in the chapter, it turns out that the narrator is not Anubis, but mainly an observer, a passive, omniscient witness reporting on what goes on in earthly life, in the house of death, and on its threshold. And his function seems to be to guard the harmony, “that the world would remain constantly in balance,” as he says. A storyteller with characteristics such as we have seen emerge in Dylan’s oeuvre for decades. The reporter from “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall”, the prophet from “When The Ship Comes In”, the seer from “Gates Of Eden”, the traveller in “Shelter From The Storm”, all the way through to the mysterious, lonely seekers in “Changing Of The Guards”, “Man In The Long Black Coat” and “Red River Shore”: sketchily painted portraits of eccentric characters who give wondrous testimonies, tell of strange, distant lands and have witnessed unimaginable events – and usually seem to possess spiritual, intangible powers. And, like the Prophet, all of them unique entities as well – second to none, as it were.
The Prophet’s elusiveness is not lifted in this last verse either. Indeed, with I’m nobody’s bride, the narrator suddenly insinuates that he is female – or at least genderless, anyway. Nay, it seems as if Dylan fills the last lines to the closing line with more vagueness-enhancing multitudes, scraping a few last references from the bottom of his cultural rucksack. At least: I’m nobody’s bride seems like a not too substantial, sympathetic salute to “Nobody’s Bride” by Ronee Blakley, the never quite broken-through super-talent we have met in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue – the appealing ‘Nobody’s Bride’ is on the album released during the Revue, Please (1975), the album also featuring the song with which she shone night after night during that tour, “Need A New Rising Sun”.
With even more wishful thinking we could understand something’s got to give as a hint to Marilyn Monroe’s last, unfinished film. Unfinished, as Marilyn died during its filming – so it is the movie portraying her while she is standing on the threshold of the House of Death. However, the preceding verse fragment, the rather corny, Sinatra-like when your smile meets my smile, does not fit with this at all – nor with the image of the Prophet that we have by now, for all its vagueness, been able to discern.
And that picture, for all its vagueness, is framed above all by all those antique-literary references, by all those reverences to the music-historical gods and demigods, the bowing to the cultural signposts through all the centuries – in which, atypically enough, we are gradually beginning to recognise the contours of Dylan himself…
To be continued. Next up False Prophet part 15: No, people never see me as a prophet
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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:
Certain types of entertainment, like Bob Dylan’s music, transcend generational boundaries. Dylan’s fan base spans a wide age range, with something for everyone, whether listening to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, watching classic films, bingo gambling online, or playing dominos.
Bob Dylan’s career is replete with legendary moments that have influenced music and culture. Dylan’s career had numerous vital moments, from his early breakthroughs in the 1960s to obtaining the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Early Breakthroughs
Bob Dylan arrived in New York City in the early 1960s, lured to Greenwich Village’s thriving folk music scene.
This decision put him at the center of a cultural movement. His song “Talkin’ New York” is about his early struggles and the energy of the city’s folk community. Dylan’s professional career began in 1961 when he signed with Columbia Records.
Although his debut album, “Bob Dylan”, issued in 1962, did not immediately reach economic success, it showcased his burgeoning creativity and laid the groundwork for his future musical influence.
Dylan’s agreement with Columbia was important, paving the way for his rise to the status of industry legend.
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
On May 27, 1963, Bob Dylan’s album ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ was released. This collection included eleven of his original songs and helped to cement his status as a formidable composer in the folk music arena.
This release marked a watershed moment for Dylan, emphasizing both the profundity of his words and his ability to capture the zeitgeist through his musical contributions.
‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ became a famous civil rights movement anthem after appearing on Bob Dylan’s album ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’. Its powerful words calling for peace and justice resonate with people working for social equality and transformation.
This song has remained a lasting symbol of action and social justice, influencing generations beyond its initial link with the 1960s civil rights movement.
The song ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ known for its intricate and thematically rich lyrics, stands out on the album.
When it initially aired, listeners were captivated by its new structure of raising questions and providing answers, which echoed different sociopolitical concerns relevant to the turbulent 1960s era.
Bob Dylan’s decision to perform with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 was a bold move that defied expectations among his folk audience.
This disputed visit marked a significant shift in Dylan’s career as he explored new musical territories and altered his artistic identity.
Performance Reaction
Dylan’s electrifying performance at Newport provoked a split response from the audience, with booing interspersed with cries of joy among his supporters.
This divergence in opinion among followers and reviewers highlighted the changing tides in the music environment and the tremendous impact of Dylan’s brave, creative moves.
Impact on Rock Music
Dylan’s transition at Newport, when he embraced electronic music, significantly impacted the rock genre.
His subsequent album, ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ blended elements of rock, blues, and folk in a way that significantly advanced the evolution of rock.
Dylan’s pioneering phase laid the groundwork for aspiring rock performers to incorporate folk and rock elements into their music successfully.
Iconic Albums of the 1960s
In the 1960s, Bob Dylan made pioneering records that revolutionized music.
His daring decision to perform with an electric band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival paved the way for merging electric instruments with folk music, resulting in the folk-rock genre.
This change is exemplified by albums like Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, which combine rock, blues, and folk while addressing era-specific social and political themes.
With its electrifying sound and the legendary song “Like a Rolling Stone,” Highway 61 Revisited ushered in a new era of rock music.
This album’s revolutionary style influenced the evolution of rock music. Similarly, Blonde on Blonde, a double album, featured rich soundscapes and pioneering production techniques, leaving an indelible mark on future musicians.
Dylan reverted to his folk origins with John Wesley Harding, emphasizing narrative-driven lyrics and a sparse acoustic sound.
This album had country-folk tones, indicating a change toward a more stripped-down aesthetic while cementing his status as a master storyteller in the folk genre.
Dylan’s work during this period cemented his reputation as a pivotal figure in countercultural movements and a revolutionary force in popular music.
Activism and Influence
Bob Dylan’s music has transcended conventional entertainment, functioning as a powerful catalyst for societal reform. His 1963 album, ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,’ fueled political activity and social transformation in the United States.
His compositions, written in elaborate lyrical frameworks, address various vital themes such as hardship and conflict.
Dylan’s influence extends across numerous musical genres, inspiring many artists with his pioneering ways.
Bob Dylan, best known for his contributions to music, was also a key campaigner for social reform in the 1960s.
His classic song, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ became a signature anthem and one of the protest songs during the Civil Rights struggle. It was prominently featured at events such as the March on Washington.
Dylan’s early friendships with Joan Baez and Mavis Staples were meaningful. These interactions significantly impacted his musical development and political activism.
Dylan’s song ‘Hurricane’ was an explicit response to Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter’s unjust incarceration, highlighting the issues of racial injustice.
Dylan stressed his fight for justice and equality in this song, proving his commitment to social equity causes.
Later Career Highlights
Bob Dylan revitalized his career in the late 1990s with Time Out of Mind, which received critical acclaim and many Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
The album featured a mature blend of blues and folk, reestablishing Dylan as a vital musical figure.
President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recognizing his capacity to develop while remaining relevant.
Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks explores personal struggle, which struck a chord with audiences—his “Born Again Christian” period in the late 1970s marked a change toward themes of faith and redemption on albums such as Slow Train Coming.
Dylan’s capacity to adapt and reinvent himself ensures his continued presence in music.
Nobel Prize in Literature
In 2016, Bob Dylan became the first artist to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his creative statements in American music.
This award generated debate over the relationship between poetry and music, widening the scope of literature.
Like epic poems and classic literature, Dylan’s songs sophisticatedly and meaningfully represent societal and cultural developments.
Dylan could not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony, but the United States Ambassador to Sweden delivered his acceptance speech, and he later collected his medal in a private meeting.
His lyrics, inspired by luminaries such as Homer and Virgil, combine literary skills with songcraft. They alter modern songwriting and create a lasting impression on the music industry. This accolade solidified Dylan’s influence at the crossroads of music and literature.
Personal Life and Relationships
Joan Baez had a tremendous impact on Bob Dylan’s early career, shaping his personal life and musical trajectory. Their friendship, particularly during the 1960s folk revival, influenced their public image and societal improvements.
Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lowndes, which lasted from 1965 to 1977, significantly impacted his life and music.
The couple had four children, and despite the difficulties that led to their divorce, Dylan’s relationship inspired many of his most personal compositions.
His relationship with Baez and his marriage to Lowndes influenced his artistic career, molding his music and reflecting his complicated personal life.
Continued Influence and Touring
Bob Dylan’s impact on modern musicians is considerable. His distinct approach to songwriting and performance sets a high standard in the music industry.
His beautiful, lyrically sophisticated work has transformed modern songwriting and pushed creative boundaries. Dylan’s commitment to music has been evident since the late 1980s, as evidenced by his tireless touring schedule.
The Never Ending Tour, which began on June 7, 1988, has comprised more than 3,000 events with both new and vintage music. This broad set of performances exemplifies Dylan’s unwavering dedication to his profession and followers.
Dylan’s 1960s fusion of folk and rock revolutionized mainstream music, and his use of social commentary inspired contemporary artists to infuse sociological and political concerns into their songs.
A list of all the cover reviews from the original series of articles on covers of Dylan songs, can be found at the end of the final article in that series. Details of the articles from this series (“The Covers We Missed”) are given at the end of this article.
Under the moniker The Nightwatchman Morello began performing as the Nightwatchman in 2005 as an outlet for his political views while he was playing apolitical music with Audioslave. Morello, who is a nephew of Jomo Kenyatta, the first Kenyan president, is a hard-boiled political activist, he has championed causes ranging from immigration reform and ending war to abolishing torture and the death penalty.
He also transposes his world view onto music consistently, for example, he believes that it was a crying shame when Dylan got on board with the zeitgeist and plugged in: “I may be the last person alive who still believes that Dylan sold out at Newport in 1965 when he went electric,” Morello opines. “I think he missed an opportunity to see if there was a ceiling to what music could do to push forward radical politics.” Needless to say, Dylan would disagree…
Before Morello recorded Blind Willie McTell for the Amnesty International project Chimes of Freedom, he had already had an experience with covering Dylan, when Rage Against the Machine released an impressive version of Maggie’s Farm on their cover album Renegade in 2000.
It was probably a matter of principle for Morello to join the Amnesty project in 2012, or, as the Uncut Magazine puts it: Fifty years since he first whined “Song To Woody” into a microphone at the Columbia Recording Studio in New York, Dylan has become to any politically engaged musician what Shakespeare is to actors: something you feel you have to step up to at some point. In the case of both bards, the greatest rewards are frequently reaped by those who can summon the nerve to take liberties…The cuts which stand out (on the Amnesty album) are the ones unafraid of what they’re dealing with like Tom Morello’s contribution who turns “Blind Willie McTell” into a electrified trip-hop nightmare.
Paperhead, a band about which virtually no information is available, has reduced Blind Willie with minimal means to the bare bones. Probably the whole thing is a bit too minimalistic; the longer the song lasts, the more it loses its tension. Apparently it is only available on spotify (2014).
Danish Jens Stage tirelessly covers Dylan songs, even those that no one else tackles (which is, in principle, an excellent idea). Blind Willie is from his Bob Dylan Jam album (2014).
The album La Terre Commune is a collaboration stemming from longtime mutual admiration: Iain Matthews, founding member of Fairport Convention, and Elliott Murphy find common ground on La Terre Commune. If you are aware of the musical careers of Elliot Murphy & Iain Matthews, it would seem the pairing of both these artists is a bit strange. But the two succeed in creating a seamlessly cohesive song cycle, as a critic writes. Allowing each other to stake out his own territory in the recording process, Murphy and Matthews complement each other extremely well, not just vocally, but stylistically.Blind Willie is one of four covers on the album – I not sure whether Matthews and Murphy really do justice to the original.
One of the most interesting songs on Map & No Direction by Beth Bombara (2017) is a brooding, sultry reworking of “Blind Willie McTell,” marked by lush string arrangements. “You have so much time to pass while on the road and we were listening to some Dylan B cuts and this was one of them,” she explains. “It just struck me. It was the lyrics, which still seemed relevant to things I was thinking about going on today. I knew I’ve got to sing this song, but interpret it in my own way.”
With songs as raw as they are haunting, grumpy German blues bard Bad Temper Joe has gained attention in the international blues scene over the last few years. His Blind Wille comes from the album Bad Temper Joe and His Band (2017) where you can find more Dylan covers.
In February 2018, Austrian Oliver Mally and his German partner Peter Schneider performed in a small blues club in Bavaria. And although it was not planned, this acoustic concert was recorded and then released under the title ‘Folk Blues Adventures’. Both Mally and Schneider have long been well-established in the European blues and folk scene. And at least Mally has a great affinity for Dylan: in 2019 he released the tribute album Mally Plays Dylan. Unfortunately, it is no longer available, so we have to make do with the Blind Willie version from the 2018 album.
Like almost half of the Blind Willie cover artist Georga also comes from Scandinavia. He is a member of a Swedish punk act which seems not obvious when you listen to his cover (2018).
Guitarist and bassist Richard James was a founding member of the Welsh psychedelic folk band Gorky’s Zygotic Myncic, who split up in 2006. Since that time he mostly performs as a solo artist. His Blind Willie comes from the 2018 album Covered.
Dylan.pl is a Polish group founded in playing Bob Dylan’s songs in their own unplugged arrangements. The basis for the Polish versions are translations by Dylan’s tireless promoter Filip Łobodziński. The double album Niepotrzebna pogodynka, żeby znać kierunek wiatru (literally translated “You don’t need a weather forecaster to know the wind direction”) contains 29 songs, Łobodziński describes the Blind Willie cover as a “New Orleans meets Tom Waits”.
[An additional note from Tony – Filip Łobodziński has been an important contributor to this site – just type the word Filip into the search box top right and you’ll find his articles]
Speaking of Tom Waits: Dutch band Bad Liver & The Broken Hearts took their name from a Tom Waits song. They play songs that you loved in the nineties but never hear on the radio anymore. (2019)
Between painting and poetry, English enfant terrible Billy Childish has released over 170 albums and many singles. The beginning of The William Loveday Intention Group in 2020 was ‘the intention’ to revisit some songs from the past, which Billy had imagined could be orchestrated. This was also the starting signal of a ‘career in a year’ when he accidentally recorded over 14 LPs during the lockdown including one entitled The New And Improved Bob Dylan, where Childish took also on Blind Willie.
The Covid-19 pandemic has inspired the release of a number of albums with writers and musicians seemingly galvanised by what they are witnessing, and recordings being produced in novel ways. All I Got Left by New York City guitarist and singer Chris Bergson is an example of this. Blind Willie McTell, which closes the album, is slowed to a hauntingly funereal pace that only adds more depth to the foreboding lyrics, writes Rhys Williams. Its words are startlingly apposite given the empty streets of NYC during the lockdown: “Seen the arrow on the doorpost saying, ‘This land is condemned, all the way from New Orleans To Jerusalem.’”
There’s no denying it, American singer-songwriter and guitarist Dylan LeBlanc has a spellbinding, haunting singing voice. His producers place that voice prominently in the foreground, sometimes – as you can read – despite hesitation from the singer himself. In my opinion, LeBlanc’s concerns are unfounded, at least as far as his Blind Willie cover (2021) is concerned.
The latest notable covers come from Belgium (2021) and Norway (2022).
Guy Verlinde is Belgium’s pride and joy when it comes to blues music. Dylan has had a huge influence on Guy Verlinde’s musical path. The singer-songwriter from Gent honors his hero with a nice version of Blind Willie McTell, his favorite Dylan song.
Knockin’ On Dylan’s Door, a tribute band from Norway, plays exclusively music from Dylan’s catalog, everything from the strong protest songs with acoustic guitar and harmonica, to newer songs with a full band. Their Blind Willie is not outstanding, but it is still interesting.
Lu’s Jukebox is a six-volume series of mostly full-band performances by Lucina Williams recorded live at a studio in Nashville. Each volume features a themed set of songs by other artists, Vol. 3 is dedicated to Bob Dylan (Bob’s Back Pages). The six concerts were livestreamed from the studio at the end of 2020 and most of the songs are available on YouTube.
William’s versions follow the melody structures set out by Dylan, but they take on a character all of their own through the arrangements, the excellent band line-up and, above all, Lucinda’s performance. Some people find her voice affected. To enjoy the performance, you do indeed have to be immune to her increasingly mumbled Southern drawl. Letting the words curl off her tongue and blurring syllables around the edges, Lucinda “wraps the songs in slow, murky, slur and swampy arrangements”, a critic noted. If you look at it favourably, you can, like singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who met Williams in Texas in the early seventies, recognise that “her voice was the most original thing of anybody that I knew. She wasn’t trying to be Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell; she was trying to be Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf.”
When Williams first heard Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” in 1965, the year she started playing guitar, she knew: “That was it for me. I had somehow found the combination, the link of heavy, intense, brave lyrics -he’d obviously listened to a lot of blues – great melodies, and a voice that wasn’t perfect.”
She could have been describing her own music. “I’ve always had an awareness of my voice being distinct,” Williams says. “A lot of the time I feel kind of limited vocally. I’m restricted because of my range. Eventually, though, you have to come to terms with your limitations, which, in turn, become your trademark.”
Lucinda William’s Blind Willie McTell with its scratchy staccato guitar notes is not the most memorable song on Bob’s Back Pages (these would rather be the bluesy takes such as It Takes a Lot to Laugh and Meet Me in the Morning), but it deserves a mention in the cover history of Blind Willie.
https://youtu.be/EHQn-__-f9c
The release into a world in lockdown of Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, the first original album in almost a decade, caught everyone by surprise. Its coming was heralded by the single, “Murder Most Foul“. When Pretendersguitarist James Walbourne sent it to Chrissie Hynde, she was immediately hooked. “Listening to that song completely changed everything for me. I was lifted out of this morose mood that I’d been in…That’s when I called James and said, ‘let’s do some Dylan covers’ and that’s what started this whole thing”. “This thing” was released as the album Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan in May 2021.
Christine Hand Jones (The Dylan Review) is in agreement with almost all critics when she claims that “Blind Willie McTell” is the stand-out track of the album: Hynde’s spooky, folk version of ‘Blind Willie McTell’ fulfils the song’s vision with a recording that stays true both to the folk-blues roots of Dylan’s youth and the bluesman to whom the song pays homage. In keeping with the style of the rest of the album, Hynde begins ‘Blind Willie McTell’ with simple piano and acoustic guitar. On the second verse, a low drone fades in beneath it all, elevating the tension, as every crack in Hynde’s voice contributes to the song’s chilling images. In verse three, a high, keening organ demonstrates the ‘tribes a-moanin’ on the slave ships. Ghostly mandolin and percussive bass pulses create the sounds of the song’s ‘chain gang’ and yelling ‘rebels.’ Then the song bursts into a glorious organ and mandolin duet before the denouement in the final verse. As we gaze with Hynde out of ‘the window of the St. James Hotel’ and ponder the corruption of mankind, she returns to simple piano and guitar, only to build the whole thing back up again, ending with the wails of eerie mandolin. Hynde’s rendition of ‘Blind Willie McTell’ is a revelation. She’s not just lingering in the doorway of someone else’s genius; she’s taking her own part in the retelling and interpretation and rewriting these songs in the process.”
In 2009, Georgia based Drive-By Truckers recorded a version of Like a Rolling Stone for their album The Fine Print. And in 2011, they opened a couple of concerts for Dylan in the US. Apart from that, there was nothing to suggest that band members Patterson Hood & Jay Gonzalez would be chosen to take part in Uncut Magazine’s Dylan Revisited project ten years later. To celebrate Dylan’s 80th birthday the June 2021 issue of the UK magazine came with a free CD featuring artists like The Flaming Lips, Low, Richard Thompson, Courtney Marie Andrews, Cowboy Junkies, Weyes Blood.
Some of the contributions are among the best covers of Dylan songs (mentioning just Low with Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door or Weyes Blood’s Sad-Eyed Lady). I don’t think that applies to Hood and Gonzalez. The song starts off interestingly and I’m excited to see where it’s going to take me. The song progresses at a slightly faster pace with Patterson singing and Gonzalez building the sonic structure around him. But the longer the song lasts, the more monotonous Patterson’s singing and the more technical Gonzalez’ accompaniment seem to me. It doesn’t capture me any longer and and don’t get emotionally involved at all. But this is only me. Tony Attwood sees it quite differently: Patterson Hood and Jay Gonzalez don’t disappoint because although they have the same sort of vision as Chrissie Hynde they go elsewhere – and that’s really what I want. The integrity of the song remains but the notion of what we have within the song changes. This is exquisite.
Blind Willie McTell also has a few fine jazz covers:
Marty Ehrlich is one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of his generation, critically acclaimed as a composer and player (saxophones, clarinets, flutes). Ehrlich has released two Dylan covers in his career, Blind Willie McTell in 1999 and I Pity the Poor Immigrant in 2001. The latter is, in my opinion, more interesting. I will therefore go into more detail about Marty Ehrlich in the Poor Immigrant review.
Same procedure concerning Jewels&Binoculars: Amsterdam-based clarinettist Michael Moore, Lindsey Horner (bass) and Michael Vatcher (drums) began their trilogy when Dylan turned 60 in 2003 with the album The Music of Bob Dylan, followed by Floater (2004) and Ships With Tattoed Sails (2007). These albums contain some of the most outstanding Dylan interpretations and I fully agree with critic James Hale, who says: “Bob Dylan should be flattered, as his music here is imaginatively interpreted with gorgeous instrumentation, while treated with obliging respect.” Jewels&Binoculars need more attention, but Blind Willie is not the best example, other covers are more impressive. To be continued…
Jef Lee Johnson’s masterful cover album The Zimmerman Shadow (2009) has 12 songs, each of them is indispensable when it comes to Dylan covers, and that goes for Blind Willie McTell too.
Finally, two instrumental versions: the frist is by Italian Luigi Catuogno (2017), who since more than 20 years has devoted himself almost exclusively to Dylan’s music. He calls his project Dylan Suite. Dylan Suite, he explains, is my musical universe. Not just a tribute to the great American songwriter, but a journey into the styles, rhythms and ways I’ve greeted in my life. Mexican Waltz (To Ramona), Argentine chacarera (Sara), Tarantella (Just Like a Woman) Kletzmer (Man Gave Names To All the Animals) and so many other styles of folk guitar together with the melodic thread of Bob Dylan.
The second is from the juke box musical Girl From the North Country, the artists are Scarecrow Hat (2017).
Dylan on Tour: concert recordings selected by Tony Attwood
In this series, I’m just searching the internet for complete, or near complete, recordings of Dylan concerts – or in this case a rehearsal. In each case I’m not particularly concerned with the video – it is the music, and having a record of what it actually sounded like, rather than what commentators have said it sounded like.
Now this time the quality suffers somewhat, as it is a rehearsal recording, but the fact that it is a rehearsal gives an extra level of interest.
And I really want to emphasise the point that this is not something exclusive to Untold Dylan, so really this series shouldn’t be here (not being “untold” as it were). But I’ve had a few emails saying that this is an interesting extra collection for Untold to have, so it seems to me to be a worthwhile gathering together of a few interesting recordings all in one place.
So, to hear what a Dylan rehearsal sounds like, if you haven’t come across this before…. here we go. The list of songs appears on the video but is also set out below in case that is more helpful…
Just like a woman: 0’00”
Mozambique: 11’03”
One too many mornings: 13′ 20″
Isis: 17′ 35″
Positively 4th Street: 23’00”
Sara: 27’00”
Hurricane: 31′ 30″
Lay Lady Lay: 39′ 00″
You ain’t going nowhere: 45′ 40″
Oh Sister: 48’16”
One more cup of coffee: 52’05”
If you leave the recording running you will get to a very ropey recording of Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall in London in May 1965. But a word of warning – this is rather hard on the ears.
In a discography stretching over 60 years and dozens of albums, ‘Blackjack Davey’ is one of the many highlights of Bob Dylan’s career. The track appeared on Dylan’s 1992 album, Good As I Been To You. ‘Blackjack Davey’ is a traditional folk song without a recognised writer. It’s known by a few other names, including ‘Gypsy Davy’ and ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsy’, and there’s a storied history of recorded versions.
Dylan played guitar and harmonica, and sang – and nobody else played a note. The album revisited Dylan’s solo, acoustic era, and was his first in the more classic folk style since Dylan, which was released 19 years earlier. In fact, even his second record, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, featured additional musicians (although Dylan’s third, The Times They Are a-Changin’ was another solo set), so Good As I Been To You was a real throwback.
Iconic singing
Dylan’s voice sounds unmistakably Dylan-esque here. It couldn’t be anyone else. From the very first line – “Blackjack Davey come a-ridin’ on by” – you know it’s him.
Something about Dylan’s tone suggests you’re listening to a story, and plenty of bloggers and journalists have attempted to unravel and document the story of Mr Blackjack online. This tale is about a woman abandoning her husband and child to join Blackjack Davey on his horse.
The vocal melodies have a lovely, bluesy rise and fall: “Well, I’ll forsake my house and home / And I’ll forsake my baby / I’ll forsake my husband, too / For the love of Blackjack Davey”. You know where the tune is going, but it’s so satisfying. Dylan’s voice is perfect for this song, his nasally tone giving the melodies a touch of extra wistfulness. It’s the kind of tune that stays in your head and something you might sing if you have the voice for it (or hum quietly).
In the great blues tradition, Dylan often repeats a line or a few words, or varies them slightly: “You will never want for money / You will never want for money”; “And we’ll ride off together / We’ll both go off together”, and so on.
Great guitar parts
Dylan’s guitar playing on this song blurs the line between rhythm and lead playing, sometimes imitating the vocal melody (as on the intro), and sometimes filling space between Dylan’s lines with new, quickly picked melodies.
Dylan might not always get a lot of credit as a guitarist, but this song is a great example of his multifaceted playing. The guitar acts as a bass as well as playing higher pitched lead parts. For the studio version, Dylan recorded two guitar tracks that intertwine and rarely strum at their heaviest simultaneously – they seem to be constantly dancing around each other. Dylan was joined by a bassist and another guitarist when performing the song live.
The White Stripes’ version
The White Stripes recorded a cover version which was included as a b-side on the 2003 ‘Seven Nation Army’ single. While their version hasn’t quite infiltrated every single living person’s ears the way ‘Seven Nation Army’ has, it has racked up over a million streams on Spotify alone (probably thanks to being part of the same release as ‘Seven’).
As you might expect, the Stripes version is electrified and features the kind of distorted guitar tone that was all over their early albums like White Blood Cells. The guitar is palm muted before power chords ring out every few bars. There’s less complexity to Jack White’s strumming here, and Meg White’s drumming is a lot straighter than Dylan’s percussive guitar. The drumming does pair well with Jack’s guitar in the little instrumental bridge soon after the 1-minute mark. It’s a fine song. It’s not bad, and of course it’s played well.
But by losing some of the fidgetiness, some of the blues, and making ‘Blackjack’ more of a rock song, the Stripes seem to have lost a lot of what made the more traditional version so good. To put it simply, it’s missing… well, Bob Dylan.
A list of the previous articles in this series is given at the end
XIII You’ve been rickrolled
Hello stranger - Hello and goodbye
You rule the land but so do I
You lusty old mule - you got a poisoned brain
I’m gonna marry you to a ball and chain
The time traveller who goes back to 1990 and there predicts that Morrissey in the twenty-first century will be dismissed as a racist nationalist while Rick Astley will be Glastonbury’s hippest hero, wins the Comedy Award. But he will still be right; when Astley takes his seat behind the drum kit in 2023, professionally counts in AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” and then drums and sings an immaculate rendition, including nonchalantly twirling the drumstick in his right hand – then at that moment in time the somewhat corny crooner of ’80s confection songs is undeniably the coolest fifty-seven-year-old on the planet.
The road to surprising coolness was paved five years earlier by Dave Grohl, the frontman of Foo Fighters, who halfway through a concert addresses his audience: “Let me tell you something. Every once in a while you meet a badass motherfucker who has the balls to come up and do something in front of 30,000 people what he’d never done before. I would like to introduce that badass motherfucker right now. Would you please welcome the most badass motherfucker: RICK ASTLEY!” And while the pleasantly surprised audience is still cheering, Grohl and his men set in a devastating mash-up of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Never Gonna Give You Up”, with Astley initially a bit awkward but gradually growing into his role as frontman.
Both on the first occasion, at an impromptu in Japan, and the second time, at London’s O2 Arena, irony prevails, and that has a lot to do with the song of choice, Astley’s signature song. Beyond Astley’s influence the 1987 schlager “Never Gonna Give You Up” has developed into a cultural phenomenon, as it became an universal, globally popular prank in the twenty-first century: starting in 2007, internet users try to trick each other into clicking on a link that unexpectedly leads to YouTube, to the music video of Rick’s hit – so-called “rickrolling”. The billion-views line has long since been crossed, and in the aftermath Astley’s renewed popularity, twenty years after his global hit, is reaching astronomical heights.
Who handles that much better than Morrissey, by the way. Where the uncompromising Morrissey gets bogged down in petulant indignation over his being misunderstood, Astley excellently understands the art of simultaneously moving with and controlling the waves; he adopts the irony, the tongue-in-cheek, and meanwhile perpetuates the hype with surprises like a home video in which he plays an excellent cover of Foo Fighters’ “Everlong”.
One highlight is the surprise combining the two 1980s icons Morrissey and Astley: in September 2021, Astley presents a full The Smiths tribute concert, the first of a series of performances in which Astley, with The Blossoms as his backing band, delivers very fine, loving performances of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, “How Soon Is Now?”, “This Charming Man”, of some 20 The Smiths classics. Johnny Marr initially reacts a little cranky (“This is both funny and horrible at the same time,” tweets @Johnny_Marr 14 September 2021), but Morrissey appears to have had media training by now (or, more likely, he’s older and wiser): he responds charmingly and gratefully, giving his blessing to Astley – Morrissey realises earlier than Marr that Rick is opening up a whole new generation of The Smiths fans.
And into the peerage Astley is then elevated in 2020 by a Nobel laureate, when Dylan incorporates a subtle rickroll into “False Prophet”. At least: the opening lines of the ninth verse really do seem to wink at the opening lines of that cultural phenomenon, at
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
“Stranger”, “rules”, “so do I”, and an exact copy of the iambic tetrameter with “You rule the land but so do I”… in any case, it does look very much like Dylan is trying to rickroll us in this stanza, which seems to be packed with one song reference after another.
Possibly also because this ninth verse is a bit out of tune – it almost looks like a filler couplet, a cobbled-together collection of fragments of lyrics that were still at the bottom of Dylan’s very ornate box, the box in which Dylan, according to Larry Charles, keeps dozens of loose ideas. Whereas the other eight stanzas at least still have some kind of inner coherence, here each line of verse seems completely disconnected from the other three. The antagonist is still addressed with “stranger” in line 1, but turns out not to be a stranger at all in line 2, as he is the “ruler of the land”. In line 3, the Prophet knows the ruling stranger well enough to declassify him as a “lusty old mule”, and in the final line his social status is so low that the Prophet can throw him in jail. Well, take away his freedom anyway: “I’m gonna marry you to a ball and chain.”
All in all, it is not too likely that the Prophet has the same interlocutor for four lines. But rather that Dylan bridges the bars to the final couplet with some scraps where he en passant drops subtle references to his record cabinet. “Hello stranger” by itself is too generic to count as a reference, of course. We are familiar with the word combination from dozens of songs (“Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home”, Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Mattie Mae Blues”, “Strangers In The Night”, Marianne Faithfull’s “Hello Stranger”, to name but a few), but surely the consensus among Dylanologists leans towards it being a friendly nod to “Hello Stranger” by The Carter Family from 1937. After all, there is a picture of The Carter Family on the cover of Rough And Rowdy Ways, and Dylan himself did record the song, back when (during the World Gone Wrong sessions in Dylan’s garage, 1993).
Even thinner are the lines to “Hello, Goodbye” and to Big Mama Thornton’s 1968 “Ball And Chain”, the indestructible song catapulted into the stratosphere by Janis Joplin. With some tolerance we could still fit “Hello, Goodbye” into the song’s sub-theme, duality, but that already becomes more difficult with ball and chain. That over-used word combination is itself schizophrenic; after all, it can be understood both literally, as an actual metal ball on a chain like prisoners had to drag along, and as a metaphor for “being chained” – to a terrible wife, or to an addiction, or to an image, or whatever. In Dylan’s oeuvre alone, both variants can be found: literally in “House Of The Rising Sun”, metaphorically in “Abandoned Love”. Ditto in Dylan’s record collection; literally, for instance, in Charley Patton’s “Hammer Blues” (They’ve got me shackled, I’m wearin’ my ball and chain) and in Bo Diddley’s “Cops And Robbers”, metaphorically in the Big Mama Thornton song and in Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’ll Be Hard To Handle”. And in dozens more songs.
In “False Prophet”, in this ninth stanza, a metaphorical meaning seems obvious. I’m gonna marry you to a ball and chain, after all. Or, expressed slightly more romantically: She’s never gonna give you up.
To be continued. Next up False Prophet part 14: I discern the fruit from the poison
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
The series looking at volume 1 of Clinton Heylin’s epic review of Bob Dylan concluded here, and at the end of that article you will find an index to all the articles that were part of that series.
by Tony Attwood
It is quite extraordinary that having spent the entire first volume of his two volume epic on Dylan, that Clinton Heylin opens volume two “Far Away from Myself” with a review of how drugs can change a person. He brings into the discussion Syd Barrett, a truly wonderful composer and performer who I had the honour to watch perform several times, and who indeed was then lost to all of us.
Dylan’s movement onward however causes Heylin to get a bit tangled up not in “blue” but in issues such as the aftermath of his infamous motorcycle accident, and his movement on from the use of drugs. He also finds a need to link writer’s block (something that everyone who works in the arts can get I think, be they very minor commentators or those capable of producing major works of genius).
Heylin speaks of the “fog descending” indeed not just once but twice, and I think he does hit the spot at the moment that he says Dylan was “creatively shot” (page 4). But, and this really does follow on from my complaint about the first volume of Heylin’s magnum opus, he doesn’t venture into any sort of discussion about what creativity is and how it relates to the work of Dylan.
Part of Heylin’s problem is, I think, his desire to take a Dylan line (For example, “I’m trying to get as far away from myself as I can”) and feel that this line has to have a deeper meaning than what it appears to mean when we first come across it. And maybe it does; but maybe not. The writer in any genre who knows he/she can produce a book or poem or article or filmscript to order, but wants this latest piece to be truly different, knows exactly what this feels like. Except that when faced with Dylan’s statement Heylin can’t reist noting that Dylan “now interweaved a mosaic of intercultural references with imaginary lives, convincing would-be Dylan scholars to become Sherloocks, as they followed the trail of clues without ever asking themselves, Is this man still doing pretty good stuff”.
OK so that is a review of reviewers and what they write, and yes sometimes that can be a rather helpful point to make – except when the person writing the review of reviewers is himself the arch-reviewer, the man who claims to be (or if he doesn’t claim to be, allows his publisher to claim him to be) the ultimate reviewer, interrogator, interpreter of ultimately authority on Dylan.
Which means we are now going around in circles. “Would-be Dylan scholars” I suppose does not include Heylin, because in Heylin’s own eyes, he is the ultimate Dylan scholar par excellence. Or if not, is he just the ultimate critique of all Dylan scholars, the man who takes in all that is written on Dylan, digests it, and then tells us what we should ignore and what we should believe? Looking back I think, probably yes.
For me, and of course this is simply my interpretation of Heylin’s interpretation of Dylan, Dylan’s life, his words and (in my case but virtually never, ever, Heylin’s) his music, suggests that Dylan had perhaps created “the persona of an amnesiac from the bits he remembered when he had been a genuine amnesiac.” And quite honestly I find that neither illuminating nor entertaining.
In fact, the opening of this second volume all seems to be about suggesting that Dylan quite often knew he was stringing the world along, except (according to Heylin) he wasn’t when he proclaimed he was “sick of love”. And how does Heylin know that he wasn’t telling fibs at this point? Well, he forgets to tell us.
All of this, served up by way of introduction to the second part of his magnum opus, lays out the details clearly: Bob Dylan doesn’t, and hasn’t ever, really known what he himself, and by extension, his writing, is about, nor what his “message” (if there is one) actually means.
Of course, in the aftermath of the motorbike accident different people were spinning different tales about the crash and its impact Maybe the accident was trivial but Bob used it to get some time and space. But … so what? The fact is we know that Bob survived (if there was anything to survive) and went on to produce some more music in the decades thereafter, that many of us like quite a lot, and which many consider truly ground-breaking.
What is particularly fascinating in what is for me, if not for other readers, an incredibly disjointed opening to volume two, is the final quote from the introductorory page and a bit of part three in which Dylan is quoted as saying to Anthony Scaduto, in early 1971, “People shouldn’t look to me for answers. I don’t know what’s going down on the campuses, what’s in their heads. I have no contact with them, and I’m sorry they think I can give them answers. Because I can’t.”
It’s a fair enough statement from Bob, and it really doesn’t need any further explanaition; it is how he sees himself and the world.
The chapter itself is titled, “There must be some way out of here” – the opening of course of the song Dylan has performed on stage far more than any other (2281 times as of mid-October 2024, the last performance being the day before I write this). And we are told that it was Richard Farina’s death in a motorcycle accident that made him (Bob) think of the line – or something like it. But even here Heylin disagrees – and then takes us into more and more detail of how despite being told to give up the drugs, Bob was still smoking dope.
So let’s stop at this point and ask simply why this smoking dope issue is relevant (leaving aside the issue of whether it is true or not).
Is the point that smoking dope shows what sort of man Bob Dylan was, is, or became as a result of his fame etc etc, or is the point that Bob Dylan is one of the most remarkable composers and performers of pop/rock music the world has ever known, who on occasion smokes dope, just as I (most certailnly not a composer of any note) had a rather enjoyable couple of glasses of Merlot during the course of the evening (an evening within which, I hasten to add, I most certainly was not driving).
My argument is that ok, it might be of interest to some people to know about Dylan’s alleged drug taking – and fine they can go and read this. But Heylin’s massive two volume pièce de resistance is, at least at the start of volume two, a diatribe about Bob Dylan and drugs. Page after page after page of it in fact.
The period covered by the opening of this book is June 1966 to May 1967. I don’t immediately have to hand details of which songs were written in which month, but I can say with some certainty that during the entire period from the start of 1966 to the end of 1967 Dylan wrote 43 songs which were recorded one way or another, and kept. That makes this one of the most incredibly prolific periods of songwriting in Bob’s life.
Except that… if you were to see a list of these songs (which you can do here if you wish – just scroll down the page a while) and you will notice something strange happens. For although we start out with a set of songs you will undoubtedly know (Sad Eyed Lady, for example, One of us must know, etc etc), by the latter part of 1966 and through 1967 Dylan was writing and/or performing songs that only the most knowledgeable of Dylan students will be able to recall instantly.
What is also rather fascinating is the fact that the last five of the songs in the second of those two years are all about the concept of “moving on”. It is as if Bob had gone through his escape period and now was ready to take on the world afresh. Which of course he did.
Heylin does go into enormous detail as to what Dylan got up to and how his life changed around this time, and eventually gets around to considering the lyrics he wrote in what we have come to know as the post-accident period, but he doesn’t seem to be able to get to grips with it at all. Certainly there’s hardly a mention of the music, and actually not too much about the words either.
But above all I guess I just come at the whole thing from a different point of view. Heylin wants to tell us about Bob’s mental state and it is good to know that Bob was just enjoying himself (page 30) but really there should be something here here that is more than “A bunch of Basement Noise” at this point in Bob’s life.
In my view Bob was clearly rebuilding himself through music, and the existence of recordings of the music that was performed at that time is a remarkable document – especially when we consider what came next.
In the article on this site in which we list all the songs from the Basement Tapes I made an attempt to note in just a few words for each track, considering what each song was about. Which leads to the simplest of observations that songs about “moving on” appear rarely at first, but dominate at the end of the period tells us something.
Just that one simple thought seems to me to be more interesting than a debate about whether Robbie Robinson was exaggerating when he said that Bob would play songs the band had never heard. Indeed Heylin’s phraseology here is particularly interesting, for he writes, “Though it is hard to believe that the Hawks would not already know ‘You Win Again’….”
And maybe that’s it. The story continues to be what Heylin believes without any real reference back to reality. “A Bunch of Basement Noise” it might be to him (to use the title of his chapter on the period) but not to all of us. And surely, even if you don’t particularly like the music, as a guide to how Dylan was clearing his mind and getting ready to produce an album as different from his previous work as anyone could possibly imagine, the Basement Tapes are surely a valuable reference work. Although actually it is far more than that, if only Heylin could hear it.
And anyone can fill his life up with things he can see but he just cannot touch.
(‘Dear Landlord’ – 1968)
The Beatles made their debut in the same year as Dylan, 1962, and in the process unintentionally unleashed a global wave of mass-hysteria known as ‘Beatlemania’. The vast majority of Beatles fans were teenage girls who lost their minds at the very sight of them. It was the epitome of idolatry, of course, to an extent hitherto unseen, probably because the Christian god in the 1960s was due for a strategic retreat, and the ‘folks at home’ still needed some kind of faith to profess. And the Beatles had sex appeal, it cannot be denied. But more about them later.
Bob Dylan has never had to deal with any form of comparable hysteria as far as I am aware, though ‘Dylanmania’ certainly existed, and emerged equally as rapidly after his own debut. Despite his own good looks, however, there was hardly a tinge of eroticism, while Beatlemania barely rose above it. So there was plenty to separate the two camps of idolisers. The biggest difference took shape gradually, as after eight years, The Beatles called it a day and the members went their separate ways. Dylan did not have the option to split himself up, so the infatuation surrounding him never dissipated. And how differently it took shape!
Scattered throughout the groups mentioned above, but also beyond, are many thousands, if not tens of thousands of people across the globe (but most, I fear, still in the westernised world) who currently find themselves in various stages of Dylanmania. We must be strict with our definitions, so let us say that ‘mania’ commences beyond the point where a person wishes to own one copy of the complete works that were issued deliberately by the artist over the years. In Dylan’s case, one set excluding the Bootleg Series would come to around thirty albums or ‘editions’, to use the literary term, of original work. But let us be charitable, and allow for the fact that mere mortals would willingly forgive having one set to put on display, and another for study purposes or for in the garden shed. But this scenario is a different matter entirely from the most complete collections in the world, of which I have heard there are three in existence, including at least one in the Netherlands. These can no longer be described as mere ‘collections’ – more like cultural heritage sites. We can only hope that no oligarch or sheik ever has the chance to make off with them at an estate auction.
But it gets worse. Couples have divorced because one of the members refused to choose between their spouse and their Dylan collection. A less dire example, but one no less extreme, was the case of the couple who purchased the apartment next door when the opportunity presented, because when faced with the familiar ultimatum of ‘Either he goes, or I go!’ the husband saw a means to compromise and appease his other half.
There are also thousands of people worldwide who send one another recordings of every possible Dylan concert they can lay their hands on. Since all the performances within a single tour are virtually the same, in practical terms a single recording from the tour would suffice in order to make comparisons with other tours. However, let us be charitable once again, and permit comparisons of the scarce minor differences that occur within a single tour. But no: these are people who feel compelled to add every single concert ever given by Dylan to their collection. ‘Just because’, they have fallen prey to the childish desire to possess everything, to have heard everything at least once. Let us hope that they indeed limit themselves to just one hearing, for you never know whether one rendition of a song may be better than another, or whether the master might unexpectedly have sung a few divergent lyrics. These will of course require in-depth study, which is then conducted in dedicated journals and on website forums. But how does one determine exactly which of the over two thousand live performances of ‘All along the watchtower’ is the superior one? It is a fool’s errand.
But the sorriest bunch is the army of people known as ‘Bobcats’ or ‘Dylanheads’, who welcome every word from Dylan as a soothing balm that nurtures and deepens their spirituality. There are those among them who have reorganised their entire lives in order to be as close to the object of their admiration as possible, and where that is not possible, at least to attend each of his concerts, and where that is not an option, at least to obtain an audio recording of it. This in itself is no mean feat: the famous funk singer James Brown (1933–2006) may have claimed that he was ‘the hardest-working man in show business’ – which, at least in terms of his most famous exhortation ‘Stay on the scene like a sex machine!’, was certainly true – his record pales somewhat in comparison to the ninety or so concerts given by Dylan every year between June 1988 and December 2019.
Indeed: for Dylan, 1988 marked the beginning of a string of performances that was only interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and which continued as though nothing had happened once the restrictions were lifted. The website www.expectingrain.com has meticulously documented the 3201 concerts given between June 1988 and December 2023, along with exactly which songs were presented on each occasion. Dylan is also directly addressed by the attendees with comments such as: ‘‘Night 1 in Boston is in the books and what a show it was. Bob again has stolen my words and my face. […] Bob – thanks for a great show. Walking out on the street after the show, we struck up with two young girls who were spellbound by the show and at a loss for words. Hope is restored… he’s still got it. Thanks Bob for a great show. See you tomorrow, and again after that…’
To summarise, Dylan-fever is a neurosis that would not seem entirely out of place even if included in the World Mental Health Survey conducted by the renowned Harvard University. The concerts themselves have been dubbed the ‘never-ending tour’ by audacious admirers. I will return to Dylan’s curious workaholism later. But when illness or death are the only forces that can successfully prevent these Bobcats and Dylanheads from attending even one or two of the 3201 concerts held between 1988 and 2019, insanity itself cannot be very far away.
And to imagine their regret at the eight hundred or so concerts held prior to 1988 that they never had the chance to attend! But so it goes: once a Dylanhead or Bobcat, always a Dylanhead or Bobcat. These are people who never fully understood the phase coined by Dylan in the spring of 1965 on his first 45, ‘Subterranean homesick blues’: ‘Don’t follow leaders’, by which he of course also meant himself. By then he was fully aware that he had become the subject of idolatry: of adoration, blind reverence, worship, nothing less. Dylan rejected these attentions and had more than one reason for doing so, which I will present in due course. But to no avail. As I see it, the adulation gradually led to a dormant neurosis that frustrated his artistry for some time, and that was partly responsible for his religious leanings from 1979–1981.
A list of all the cover reviews from the original series of articles on covers of Dylan songs, can be found at the end of the final article in that series. Details of the articles from this series (“The Covers We Missed”) are given at the end of this article.
Back in the early 90s, soul singer Barrence Whitfield and singer-songwriter Tom Russell were among the first to jump on the Blind Willie bandwagon on their Hillbilly Voodoo album (1993). Barrence and Tom were an unlikely team: Whitfield holds the spotlight, as Jeff Burger says, Russell joins in the fun, but his main role seemed to be as producer. Boston-based soul screamer Whitfield was known for his high-energy shows and was seeking to expand his reputation. “Tom Russell brought the voice out of me to do the other styles of music,” Whitfield explained at the time. “Let’s face it: how long can you scream your guts out before you say, I’ve got to slow down?” In my opinion, the slowing down didn’t quite work out, their hard-driving version still contains a lot of screaming.
In the early noughties, a growing number of artists took on Blind Willie – with more or less interesting results.
American blues singer Beth Scalet (2001) covered Blind Willie on her album with the somewhat quirky title Beth Loves Bob –Scalet is an able singer, but the arrangement lacks tension and depth.
British rock vocalist Roger Chapman is now 82, and if you listen to his latest albums, it seems that he no longer sings the songs into the ground. “Chappo’s” voice sounds nicely weathered now, with less of the exaggerated tremolo that divided opinion back in the days when he recorded Blind Willie – in 2002 for the album Live – Opera House, Newcastle and in 2011 for Maybe the Last Time. Chapman has an excellent band, but his roaring, always somewhat hoarse-sounding organ didn’t do Blind Willie any good.
Dublin singer George Murphy‘s voice is very different from Chapman’s: loud too, but otherwise pressed and strained. A nice first half; unfortunately, the song doesn’t hold out.
The Respatexans were a Norwegian country rock band; they disbanded a few years ago. Their Blind Willie is on the album Shine On (2005).
According to those who should know it was Garth Hudson who created the sound of The Band. Keyboard Magazine called him the “most brilliant organist in the rock world”.
After the death of Rick Danko in 1999 The Band definitely disbanded. Hudson released his first solo album The Sea to the North in 2001. In the fall of 2002 Garth Hudson and his wife Maud were asked to perform a concert as part of the inaugural weekend at the Wolf Performance Hall in Garth’s hometown of London, Ontario, Canada.
The album “Live at the Wolf”, released in 2005, captures the fun, warmth and magic of that night. It was Garth’s and Maud’s first duo live concert, the album also celebrates their 25th wedding anniversary. “We did rehearse, but it was spontaneous. It came up in a hurry because we had a short time to prepare, Garth recalls. We wanted to do something like this for years. Every time I play a song it’s different. It seems similar, you can hear the same sound, but I never played a song the same way with The Band as I did with Maud.”
Live at the Wolf is a fine display of Garth Hudson’s masterful piano playing and Maud is stepping fully out of the shadows. Their “Blind Willie McTell” has a hauntingly unique pace and feel with Maud both insistently whispering and dramatically singing. “Personally I just listen in awe to what Garth Hudson does, writes Tony Attwood, and this one just knocked me out. If one is going to have a re-working of the song as far away from McTell’s music as Bob’s version then yes, this is it. It is stunning because it is beautifully performed and because it takes me into the song in ways I have not been taken before. It is beyond Indigo Girls performing “Tangled up in Blue” and beyond even Old Crowe doing “Visions of Johanna”. With Robbie Robertson’s death in 2023, Garth Hudson is the last surviving member of The Band. If you would like to delve into his world: Let Me Tell You About Garth Hudson, the recently released video documentary by Kody Kava (18’) is a nice hommage to the last man standing.
Swedish Mikael Wiehe & Ebba Forsberg have both had a long history with Dylan covers. Their Blind Willie comes from the album Dylan på svenska (2007) which contains some wonderful songs, including an outstanding Farewell, Angelina.Blind Willie can’t keep up with that and you might wonder, why multi-instrumentalist Mikael Wiehe takes on the vocal parts when he has an excellent singer like Ebba Forsberg at his side.
The Wanee Festival was an annual event held 2005 – 2018 and hosted by the Allman Brothers Band until 2014. Allman and Dylan: this immediately evokes Gregg Allman’s powerful reading of “Going Going Gone” on his final album, 2017’s Southern Blood, as he was dying of liver cancer. When he sings “I’m closing the book on pages and texts/And I don’t really care what happens next,” it’s almost too real to take. At the Wanee Festival 2010 The Allman Brothers (featuring Derek Trucks on guitar) took on Blind Willie.
When Totta Näslund died in 2005 (also from liver cancer), Sweden lost not only a great musician but also a remarkable personality, who enchanted audiences with his intense stage presence. You can guess that when you listen to his albums, most of which are live recordings. Four of them are partly or fully focused on Dylan: Turnén (2004), Dylan (with Mikael Wiehe), an album which was posthumously released (2006), Totta’s Basement Tapes – Down in the Flood: Songs by Bob Dylan (2010) and En Dubbel Dylan (with Mikael Wiehe), a compilation released in 2015, where you find Totta’s Blind Willie (unfortunately, only available on Spotify).
„Bob Dylan was the great revelation of my life“, says Francis Cabrel and he has made it one of his missions to tirelessly promote Dylan in France. “Vise le Ciel” (Aim for the Sky) from 2012 is a studio album, which is composed solely of covers of Bob Dylan songs, Blind Willie McTell being the last track on the album.
Clas Yngström had a momentous event early in his career: a Hendrix interpreter he played with his band Sky High in Amsterdam in 1980, where they literally stole the show, prompting the Experience’s drummer Mitch Mitchell to leap on stage to jam and play drums behind Yngström. Since then, Yngström has toured for almost 50 years and has become one of Scandinavia’s most acclaimed blues guitarists. This spring the Swedish blues icon announced that he is retiring. I don’t want to become a zombie, says Yngström. As for Dylan, he leaves behind the tribute album Mr. Bob’s Blue Devils (2012) with some great covers (Meet me in the Morning, Beyond Here Lies Nothing). However, Yngström and Blind Willie don’t go together very well. The band plays excellently as always, but the spirit of the song remains somehow distant to them.
“I was born in the south of Sweden, it seems like a long, long time ago. Above all, I was born with an old soul. While all my friends were listening to heavy metal, I was drawn to Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, and that was quite strange where I grew up. I started playing guitar and piano as a self-taught musician by listening to songs on records and looking up the chords myself. Richard Lindgren is known as one of Sweden’s best and most productive songwriters. Since the mid-90s, he has released fifteen albums, the last of which, ‘Grand Jubilee’ (2024), received rave reviews in the international press. Richard has also toured extensively for many years. I have spent almost all my life on the road, playing alone or with a band and other times supporting artists like Ryan Adams, Dr John, John Hiatt and Mary Gauthier,.
“Richard Lindgren’s songs touch my heart deeply, he is a kindred spirit to me, writes Mary Gauthier in the liner notes to Grand Jubilee: The sorrow, the longing, the anger, the humor, the always reaching for something more. He has given us an honest gift, the best gift any artist can give. He has given us himself.” Blind Willie McTell is from the 3 CD compilation album Memento, released in 2011. Lindgren plays like someone exploring unknown territory, approaching the song cautiously, carefully, at his side the piano as companion. It is well arranged, well sung, with decent instrumentation. You don’t have to worry about an unmotivated climax, both because of the way the vocalist approaches the lyrics, and the use of the saxophone behind. It would have been easy to overuse it and yet it is restrained and so much more poignant.
[I read somewhere once that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the seventh and last article about the first track, ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’]
In the previous article we saw how Dylan’s performance of this 1964 masterpiece hit two peaks, one in 1995 and 1999. These renditions had the feel of a full restoration of the epic dimensions of the song as compared to the rushed versions of the early 1990s. If you haven’t taken in those performances, I urge you to do so in order to better understand the shift that took place in the conception of the song between 1999 and 2000.
In 2000 Dylan unveiled a stunning new arrangement of the song that would carry it through the next three years. For my ear, this new arrangement reached its peak in 2001, but let’s start in 2000 with this Sheffield performance (Sept 22nd) and we’ll try to figure out what happened here.
2000, Sheffield
What’s most notable is the altered tempo of the song, the way Dylan elongates the first word in each line and piles on the lines without a break creating a headlong movement of considerable intensity. Yes, this arrangement has grown out of the 1999 versions, but takes a further step away from the traditional chord structure of the song, a further step away from the swing, lilt and bounce of the original.
Dylan tears into the vocals no longer underpinned by the surging tempo and rhythm of the previous arrangements, and the way he drops his voice at the end of the lines places his performance as somewhere between singing and intoning or even talking. Before leaving the Sheffield performance we have to note the subdued and whimsical harp break at the end. It’s contemplative, sad and lyrical, a far cry from the swooping harp of 1966 but no less affecting. It’s a great video too. We see Dylan kneel, place his guitar on the floor and rise, all the time keeping the harp solo going.
There’s no harp break in this Baltimore performance (Nov 8th), but the opening chords are more clearly heard. I need someone who knows music better than me to identify what is happening here, but the effect leans towards the baroque classical tradition, or maybe the English madrigal tradition. Whatever it is, it’s a long way from the traditional opening sounds of the song with a dense, complex chord structure. If the 1964/6 performances treat the song as the celebration of ecstatic experience, even the dark side of it, and the 1994/5 performances bring out the lonely, more spooky nature of the song, this latest more agonised rendition brings out the yearning and desperation inherent in the lyrics, which are evocative enough, and open-ended enough, to be able to carry these varying emotional valences. It can be ecstatic, forlorn or desperate depending on how it’s performed.
The harp has been replaced by some intensive acoustic guitar picking by Dylan, packing out the emotional intensity of the chord structure. Admirers of Dylan’s acoustic picking style will love the mid instrumental break for the same reason.
I’ll start with what I think is the best of the year’s crop, this recording from Madison Square Gardens, 11th November. In that NET article I described that performance as extraordinary in its intensity. ‘By not allowing any pause at the end of each line, but ripping into the next one straight off, Dylan creates a momentum and vehemence unmatched by any previous performance.’ That’s true!
This performance has become my favourite, my go-to performance when I want to hear the song. The appreciative audience helps. Both the vocal and the harp are unmatched, in my opinion. Hear the crowd roar when he pulls out the harp at the end of the song. Here the style and conception of the song we found in 2000 is brought to perfection. It feels as if the desire for transcendence, which lies at the heart of the song, is tearing at the poet’s heart and being torn out of his lungs. Agonized yearning indeed.
2001 Madison Square Gardens
We find a performance to equal that, sans harp, on 21st August, in Telluride. To commit the sin of quoting myself once more, for that NET article I wrote, ‘The arrangement is the same, but the singing is much darker. The way Dylan bends his voice down at the end of each line (downsinging) is more pronounced, and the optimistic bounce of the original 1960’s song is gone. The journey sounds more like a descent into hell than a plea to go tripping.’
Telluride
Dylan was able to keep this version alive through into 2002, although to my ear 2001 was the peak year for it. Of course 2002 was the year Dylan shifted to keyboards, but this recording is from London, May 11th, before the shift, and is a beautiful recording. Dylan’s voice is very much to the fore and the passion is still evident. There are however, some worrying signs. He loses track of the lyrics in the first verse, skips lines in the last verse, and we find the beginning to a tendency to upsing, which is to jump an octave at the end of the line. Over the next few years this would become a vocal mannerism which would draw attention to itself because of how often he did it. Also he has dropped that effective dragging of the first word of each line, that tearing passion, and tends to rush the lines despite the slow tempo.
2002 London
Despite the shift to the piano, the 2003 performances follow the same arrangement although the tempo has been stepped up a little, which doesn’t help the song as it edges the performance towards the rigid rhythms I called the ‘dumpty-dum’ in my NET series. I get the feeling that Dylan is marking time with the song at this point, and I begin to ask myself, is Dylan beginning to lose the magic of the song? (Niagara Falls, August 22nd.)
2003, Niagara Falls
2004 doesn’t advance us very much, as it’s more of the same, but in 2005 we get the first major change in the arrangement since 2000. The song is now forty years old and Dylan is once more reaching for a new way to present it. This time the tempo has been dropped to dead slow with a hushed, half-talking vocal delivery. This Seattle recording (March 7th) is of professional quality and despite a couple of lines being dropped from the last verse, is a spooky, spine-tingling performance.
Perhaps the central question here is, how do you turn a song of youthful disaffection and rebellion into one which can be convincingly delivered by a man in his sixties, and that question has been brilliantly answered in this performance. It becomes a midnight meditation on desire and transcendence. Not a defiant declaration but a soft surrender.
2005 Seattle
Although Dylan shifted from piano to organ in 2006, the arrangement remains the same as in 2005, with a similar effect. This one’s from Sun City (8th April). Again, we have an excellent recording with a quiet, heart-wrenching harp break at the end. However, the rigidity of the beat and the loss of syncopation is once more pushing the performance towards that dumpty-dum beat, and Dylan’s voice tends to slip into that emphasis.
Sun City mp3
At this point we notice a sharp drop off in Dylan’s interest in the song. It was not performed at all in 2007, and in 2008 it was only performed four times, while in 2009 it was only performed three times. This concert staple is fast slipping out of sight. We have this video from Amsterdam, 2009, April 11th which is worth a watch, but by this stage the loss of fluidity is, to my mind, fatal to the flow and excitement of the song. The dumpty-dum has taken over, and despite Dylan’s efforts to put a bit of rough into the vocals there’s no thrill here. The stilted organ playing doesn’t help, and even the harp break at the end falls prey to that rigidity. The magic swirling ship has lost its swirl. We get the feeling that Dylan is flogging a dead horse.
2009 Amsterdam 11 April
Given that decline, it doesn’t come as such a great surprise that 2010 is the last time, to date, that Dylan performed the song. Again, it was only performed three times that year, and the performance was no improvement on 2009, worse if anything. Dylan just can’t breathe life back into the song; he couldn’t bring it back home. This is the last ever performance from Carcassonne, June 28th. I have to say that it’s a dismal end to one of Dylan’s greatest songs. It’s sad to see the performance history of this song end in such a way, doing a puppet march into oblivion. I’m afraid I can’t listen to it all the way through. I find myself going back to the marvellous performances of 1995 to remind myself just how great this song can be, a compelling ode to escapism and dream, one of the great songs of the 20th Century.
2010 Carcassonne June 28th
That completes my account of ‘Mr T Man’ in performance, and what an amazing journey it has been, despite the dismal ending. I hope you’ll join me soon when I move onto the next song on Side B of Bringing It All Back Home: ‘Gates of Eden.’ There’s another story in the making.
This article concludes the series of reviews of this book. Links to the earlier articles in this series can be found at the end of this piece.
By Tony Attwood
I’m at the end of my rambling review of what I feel is a rambling book: I didn’t think the series was going to be this long – maybe three of four episodes at most, but as I got into it I found myself more and more astounded not just by what Heylin says, but by the issues he utterly ignores, without seemingly even once to realise that he is ignoring the issues.
At the head of the list of obvious issues is the impact that being a creative genius has on a person, and the work he creates. “Creative genius”, means one can come up with new ideas and new things that appear to be starting from or taking us to a new point. But there is more to it than that, for creative geniuses do not usually seem to be able to turn their genius on and off upon demand. Sometimes it is there, sometimes not. Sometimes they are prolific, sometimes confused, sometimes angry.
Think of how many songwriters have written a few glorious pieces, but then written others that somehow are ok, but not earth-shattering. I mean Pete Townshend is recorded as writing around 140 songs, but how many can I immediately recall? And I was a fan of the Who and of some of his subsequent work. People of my age (ie old) remember “Pinball Wizard” and maybe “Who are You”, and “I can see for Miles”, but does everyone recall Pete writing, “All Lovers are Deranged”…. In case you don’t know that here it is… I don’t think Pete recorded it, but I’m sure he wrote it.
All lovers are deranged: but I’d also add so are creative geniuses. The point of the song above is that deep, intense love, changes us. Anyone who has suddenly fallen in love knows how utterly all-consuming it can be, how it takes over life.
So now transfer that and multiply by several hundred thousand, and you’ve got your creative genius. Genius creative people mostly can’t turn their genius on and off – it (their genius) turns itself on and off for reasons that are rarely understood. OK not Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, but most… including even Shakespeare who having written Henry VIII stopped it all, went home to Stratford and wrote nothing more.
And from all this and many other examples, we might learn that by and large it seems, when the creative ability goes, the genius doesn’t know how to bring it back.
If you want examples from Bob, think of 1971, 1972 and 1976 (in case you don’t hold the chronology in mind there are details in our series on Bob in the 70s). An average of three songs year. And this compared with 36 songs in 1966 alone. What made Bob operate at just 8% of a capacity that he had just a few years before?
Now compare and contrast the creative genius songwriter with your plumber. The plumber doesn’t lose his plumbing skills in the bad times. He might make mistakes because of something awful happening in his life, but he doesn’t lose the ability to plumb.
So my point is that creative people are different, and to understand them we need to understand that difference. Indeed this is why I created the Year by Year file – I wanted to be able to understand the ebb and flow of Bob’s creative genius across time. And when I started reading the “Double Life of Bob Dylan”, I thought I might get some insights or even some revelations.
Thus “What enabled Bob suddenly to write the masterpiece that was and is Visions of Johanna?” is an interesting question which perhaps can be answered via details of what Bob was up to at the time, what else he had written and so on. But then again what enabled Bob suddenly to take a very ordinary song like “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee” and turn it into what I consider to be an utter musical masterpiece? I don’t know. This is 2014
And OK maybe for you that is part of the Tour that should be consigned to the bin rather than raved over, but I have tried to make the case for this re-written version of the song to be of very serious interest. But if you want to explore this further just consider what the song sounded like on year earlier.. This is from 2013.
However Heylin gives us nothing much about the creation of the music. Yes we are told that Bob was surprised at how he was booed in England when he did his half acoustic, half electric shows in the 1960s, and his comment in 2012 which Heylin cites, is helpful in understanding Bob’s reaction: “Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah and for what? For playing an electric guitar.” (page 425, quoting Bob in 2012).
Heylin is interested in proving how misled and misleading the critics were on the first electric tour, noting with the benefit of hindsight for example, how the English music press didn’t even send their own correspondents to the tour but simply lifted negative comments from the local press (none of whom had either a music or popular culture correspondent). And OK that’s an interesting reminder, but surely most of us by now know just what short-cuts the media will always take when they can. When you are told you have 400 words to write your article, complex situations get transferred into something simplistic. The music was no longer the theme – everyone wrote about the audience.
But that’s how the newspaper industry, and these days the on-line industry, works. Fortunately, I run Untold Dylan, and although my co-writers might occasionally drop me a note saying, “Tony, do you think you might have a look at your article on xxxx and maybe….” generally everyone’s work is published in full and without any change because that’s the idea. We value opinions. There’s no space limit.
Heylin does give us some conversations Dylan had, verbatim, which is good, but then immediately puts his own meaning into them. So Bob did talk at length to an Irish woman – I suspect a reporter, but it is not clear – and Heylin reduces her to IG (standing for “Irish girl”). Dylan is playing out his usual sort of banter with reporters, reducing complexities to simplicities, and coming up with answers to questions that could equally be lines from as yet unwritten song (“What you don’t know is that love is cold” is a perfect example).
And from this Heylin concludes that Dylan was “feeling desperately homesick”. And my point is that maybe yes, maybe no, maybe he was just overwhelmingly bemused by the reception his sessions with the band got, and anyway, so what?
Thus for me, by the time we get to the discussion about what Bob knows about Wales, I’m wondering what the point of it all is. The reminder that these journalists were interviewing Dylan without knowing his work is worthwhile, but the theme is not developed and Heylin goes on and on quoting them. Yet Heylin constantly seems surprised a) by the journalists’ ignorance (honestly, it was ever thus) and b) the fact that Dylan was getting very fed up by having to do interviews with people who, through not knowing anything about him, asked dumb questions. [An equivalent I gave recently when trying to explain this still seems to me to work. Question: “Tony what do you write about?” Answer: “Bob Dylan’s music”. Question: “Oh is he still with us?”
However now we are looking back, and if ever there is a way of looking back in print rather than music, it is via Heylin’s two volume work. And what we find is that Dylan is not particularly interested in the literary world – which I think we can take from the songs. Dylan was forging a new path for rock music, and got pretty fed up being interviewed by people who knew nothing of his music, nor the music which influenced him.
Yet Bob was and is, phenomenally knowledgeable about songs, and has an incredible memory for lyrics… and with those two facets to his life, he explored music in the 1960s (and has continued to do so). I suspect that to Bob, an intellectual debate about the meaning of his songs, is as irrelevant as a debate about the relationship between “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Lord Randall”.
"Oh where ha'e ye been, Lord Randall my son?O where ha'e ye been, my handsome young man?"
What is wonderful is the fact that Dylan knew the song and nurtured it to take its place in 20th century music, while so many have in fact lost touch with the musical heritage of their country.
But this means nothing to the media, for on the tour of the UK, the media did what they often did – they created the story the editors wanted, not a report of what actually happened. Thus there are nonsense tales of fans “storming out” because they “paid to see a folk singer” (while in fact everyone knew how the shows were shaped, from day one).
So what was happening on the tour? Bob was following his genius, as most artists of genius do. The audience, the publisher, the art gallery owner, the journalist can all give their opinions, but the genius creates what is created. Such art is rarely if ever created to order, and ultimately it is up to us, the people who look and listen, to decide what we think of what is presented.
Looking back over this period I am left with the image (which Heylin does indeed pick up on) of Dylan singing “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” for that was never more true
Dylan got used to the nonsense, and in contemplating his next venue (Paris) and the reception he might get there, said of the journalists, “Stupid questions deserve stupid answers.” It is good that Heylin quotes that, but a bit sad that he feels obliged to go into detail of how Bob was treated at each concert before reaching Dylan’s conclusion on page 445. Do we need the details of the nonsense at each show? What do we learn from that?
However over time Bob got the hang of the British media. He bought a glove puppet and took it into press conferences, answering reasonable questions seriously, but for ludicrous questions putting the puppet to his ear and then giving a silly answer to a silly question.
We do get a bit of a feel for the tour from the book, but as always we get Heylin’s view that it is he who really knows what is going on, not Bob, not the band, not the fans, not the journalists. We need (Heylin tells us) the Heylin understanding – whereas in fact what happened on the tour was mindboggling obvious. The media found a story (Dylan was playing electric and the fans didn’t like it), and then replicated it on every stage of the tour. Heylin says on page 448 Dylan “was misreading the situation.” But if that was the case, so was Clinton Heylin, who in writing the book seems not to have the slightest bit of understanding of how the English media worked at that time.
Dylan’s complaint at one concert was that he couldn’t hear the band properly (which can happen and can be very frustrating). Heylin suggests that Dylan was now “burning himself up” while the local press suggested he was taking drugs. And the music, and Dylan’s ability to perform when he can’t hear the band properly, well, no, we don’t talk about the music, because well, all Heylin wants to talk about is the audience. Lyrics, music… what lyrics, what music?
Instead Heylin mentions in quite a bit of depth ddetails of how the rooms in the hotels used had to be checked after the band left to remove all evidence of pills. OK maybe that is of interest. But really, not to mention the music, the songs, the arrangements…. not even once?????
And that pretty much sums up volume one. A man recognised as one of the great geniuses of the era, a man who later went on to get the Nobel Prize, a man who took rock music in an utterly new direction, a man who wrote some of the greatest popular songs ever composed, a man who entertained millions in his concerts, and whose career outlasted everyone else in the post-war popular music business, is portrayed at the end of the book ranting about where the speakers were placed. You can conclude that was Dylan off the rails, or you might perhaps conclude with me that Heylin did not have the slightest idea why the placement of the speakers was so important. Not even after over 400 pages.
Yes maybe the drug taking was part of this life. Maybe the audience booing some of the electric performances was encouraged by the media. But surely there is more to this tour than audience reaction. Surely there is more to understand than can be learned by studying a couple of letters that Dylan wrote and never sent (page 457).
It really is as if the tittle-tattle and tiny details are everything, while 100 plus compositions are just incidental. It is as if “Ballad for a Friend”, “Blowing in the Wind”, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, “Dont think Twice”, “Masters of War”, “Boots of Spanish Leather”, “God on our side”, “When the Ship Comes In”, “One too many mornings,” “Mr Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden” and “It’s all right ma” have never been written. Yes, they are mentioned, but only in passing. The big news is the booing, the drug taking and Bob getting annoyed. If you want to read about such things, this is the book for you. But if you are interested in Dylan’s lyrics, and/or his music, no, it’s best to take your pals to a bar and buy the first round.
Once or twice: A review of some of the songs that Bob has performed just once or twice on stage, selecting those of which we have a genuine recording (and “genuine” is important here since I have found a few sites that seem to suggest they are a recording of a live version, but I have my doubts.) Text and video selection by Tony Attwood.
In my last piece in this series I said that I thought the series was coming to an end, both because of a lack of songs which fit into the description of being performed just once or twice by Dylan and of which we had recordings, and because for the rest I often found myself less able to make a few moderately coherent comments.
As ever of course I am open to anyone else adding to the series (just email me at Tony@schools.co.uk – and should you not get a quick reply email me again!) but in the absence of these, that seems to be it.
So I thought I might round it all off with a bit of cheating. And that is with “When the ship comes in” which from my teenage years has always been a favourite of mine, and which I did actually perform (undoubtedly terribly) in folk clubs myself in those distant days before it was pointed out that maybe writing rather than singing was my forte.
Anyway according to the official site this song was performed three times between 26 October 1963 and 13 July 1985. That last date would put the song in the era of the Never Ending Tour, but we didn’t have it featured there, so I went looking to see what I could find.
The first performance I have is at Carnegie Hall, New York, in October 1963, and comes from the “No Direction” movie – which fits with the official site’s dating, which is always a good start.
This is a similar delivery in the second recording in which the music starts around 2’20”.
The third recording is from the March on Washington on 28 August 1963 with Joan Baez providing the second vocal. You can also find this on Facebook with a video
Then we have the Live Aid version from 13 July 1985. For some reason I can’t get a picture link from this one, but you should be able to reach it here.
And that’s about it I think. No sign of it being sung by Bob since then. But my much missed pal Aaron Galbraith, did an article on the song to which I added a few thoughts – and I am so glad we have this site on which we can still find Aaron’s selections. Aaron always came up with really extraordinary versions of songs, and so with his contribution to this site very much in mind, here’s one that he found. It’s not in any way part of the “Once or Twice” but it brings back fond memories…
So with another remembrance of times and people lost, that I think must be it for “Once or Twice”. Time to come up with another new way of looking at Dylan songs. When I think of it, I’ll let you know – unless you have an idea and you want to share it.
A list of all the cover reviews from the original series of articles on covers of Dylan songs, can be found at the end of the final article in that series. Details of the articles from this series (“The Covers We Missed”) are given at the end of this article.
By Jurg Lehmann
Covers Blind Willie McTell – part one
Like Mississippi and Make You Feel My Love, Blind Willie McTell is one of the songs for which the cover was released before the original. Dylan recorded the song in 1983, during the sessions for the album Infidels; however, it was ultimately left off the album and did not receive an official release until 1991.
The psychedelic punks from the Dream Syndicate were the first to release Blind Willie McTell in 1988. Bandleader Steve Wynn recalls:
“In 1984 the Dream Syndicate was on a TV show in Germany. After the show, I ended up hanging out with the show’s host and we listened to records at his pad until dawn…He also played an unreleased Dylan outtake from “Infidels” called “Blind Willie McTell.” It blew my mind and a few years later we covered the song…for the UK mag “Bucketful of Brains”.
All good except that since the song had never been officially released, we needed permission from Bob’s publishing company. We sent our version and not long after got the go-ahead.
Flash forward 30 years: I’m at the Beacon Theatre for a Bob Dylan show and ended up backstage after the gig. I meet Bob’s manager Jeff Rosen and said, “You know, my band was the first to record “Blind Willie McTell” and he responded, “Yes, I know. Your request came to me when I was running the publishing company. I played it for Bob and told him ‘See, Bob? You should have released this song!’”
Few bands have bid farewell with more fanfare than The Band when they said goodbye in 1976 with the all-star concert preserved in LP and movie form as “The Last Waltz”. De facto leader Robbie Robertson retired for a time but The Band soon played on and hit the road in 1983. They eventually returned to the studio in 1993. “Jericho” proves that The Band can function just fine without Robertson, critics wrote, although the album lacks the mythic resonance of their greatest work. Their version of Blind Willie McTell makes the weighty composition approachable with Rick Danko and Levon Helm trading off on the verses almost playfully.
Rick Danko was an essential part of The Band. Apart from his bass work, he shared vocal duties with Levon Helm and Richard Manuel. After the band broke up, Danko was involved in the reunion projects and he also played on the album Jericho. His solo career, however, never really took off.
The album Double Live was released in 2018 while the two live performances were recorded in 1989 and 1997, two years before Danko passed away. Both records are bootlegs; they suffer from sloppy packaging and there are errors in the track listing. Worse is the audio quality, especially on the first disc, but this is made up for by an intimate and warm performance with plenty of chat to add atmosphere.
Most critics agree that this is not Richard Danko at his very best. The presence of Aaron Hurwitz on keyboards, notes Dai Jeffries, helps keep Rick on the straight and narrow for most of the time although you can hear him straining at the leash…But: for all its faults there are some magic moments – like ‘Blind Willie McTell’.
That fits in with Tony Attwood’s appraisal: Now this I really do like because it is a proper re-think of what’s there. Of course Rick would have a feel for what Bob was up to, and that clearly gives him a total insight…Just listen to the instrumental break. How did they get that sound? In fact you really don’t have to go too far away from the original to add a new element to the song to add something that offers a new insight and of course, entertainment. Music can be about a clear message, but the best music is about emotion – expressing something that cannot be said in words alone. This is what I find here. This is both entertainment and expression, insight and elegance, meaning and feeling. This is beautiful.
In the early 1990s singer Barb Jungr met producer and musician Kuljit Bhamra. Barb was, at the time, working with pianist Russell Churney. Together they formed a trio and released a CD, Durga Rising, an amalgam of all of their respective influences and interests.
Durga Rising was recorded in 1996 but not properly released at the time and only available via mail order. For some years, the recording was considered a cult CD and ahead of its time. Russell Churney died in 2007, but both Kuljit and Barb felt keen to play the material again, anew, and they approached jazz pianist Simon Wallace, who was thrilled to be involved with the re-emergence of an expanded Durga Rising.
Now that Jungr enjoys an undisputed reputation as a Dylan interpreter, this version of Blind Willie McTell is noteworthy as her first recording of a Dylan song. At nearly nine minutes, it is the album’s longest and most memorable track, raves John Eyles in his BBC review.
A slow burner, it begins in stately fashion, with Jungr caressing each syllable of every phrase to convey the nuances of their meaning. Steadily rising in intensity throughout, the song builds to a dramatic climax with piano and cello solos leading into a blues-wailing harmonica solo before a final impassioned reading of the song’s chorus. Phew!
I’m a Jungr fan myself, many of their numerous Dylan covers are outstanding, but what the critic praises here is exactly my problem: the dramatic climax is way over the top. Blind Willie is not Hollis Brown, there’s no drama enfolding that would leave seven dead people behind. In contrast the song seems, as Peter Tabakis poetically describes it, performed in an open field at midnight. With its spare piano backbone by Dylan himself, accented with Knopfler’s haunting guitar the tableau is as cinematic as Dylan gets. An arrow swings on a doorpost. An owl hoots. Feathered maidens strut. Martyrs fall…At the very top is the unnamed Maker, who watches over us all. We all, apparently, covet ‘what’s His.’
Barb Jungr has recorded another Blind Willie in 2006, a kind of a Take Five version in a 5/4 beat. That sounds like a risky experiment – probably it is -, but in my opinion, it works. Barb Jungr’s version on her album “Walking in the Sun” is one of the most interesting and innovative Blind Willie covers.
Former Bluesbreaker’s and Rolling Stones’ guitarist Mick Taylor has quite a history with Blind Willie McTell: In 1983 Dylan also recorded a full band version (unrelated to the Springtime in New York version) for which he teamed up with Mark Knopfler, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare – and Mick Taylor, who played the slide guitar. This version was electric, powerful. Dylan does cough or laugh mid-vocal, which is part of why this take was not made official.
Blind Willie was part of Taylor’s live repertoire for many years, in 1998 he recorded the song for his album A Stone’s Throw. Together with Finnish Wentus Blues Band Taylor, who never really broke through in his post-Stones career, released another live cover version for the album Family Meeting in 2017. He hasn’t changed his interpretation much over time, at about 2 minutes there is always a break before the song restarts as a rock number with Taylor showcasing all his virtuosity as a guitarist (unfortunately not as a singer, he is lacking a bit). After more than 8 minutes we have heard a lot from Taylor, but we haven’t heard much of the song. But it is Mick Taylor – and it is history.
Part two of this series on the covers of Bline Willie McTell will be published shortly.
Put out your hand - there’s nothin’ to hold
Open your mouth - I’ll stuff it with gold
Oh you poor Devil - look up if you will
The City of God is there on the hill
“I fought with my twin,that enemy within,” Dylan sings in 1978 (in the underrated masterpiece “Where Are You Tonight?” on Street-Legal), and that is neither the first nor the last time Dylan shows his fascination with duality, with ambivalence, with yin and yang. By the mid-70s, that fascination slips into the somewhat painful, silly, quasi-mystical claptrap that threatens to make inroads as a kind of compensation for our loss of religion and meaning. To which even an intelligent man like Dylan seems momentarily receptive;
“My being a Gemini explains a lot, I think,” Bob Dylan is saying. “It forces me to extremes. I’m never really balanced in the middle. I go from one side to the other without staying in either place very long. I’m happy, sad, up, down, in, out, up in the sky and down in the depths of the earth. I can’t tell you how Bob Dylan has lived his life. And it’s far from over.”
(TV Guide Magazine, September 1976)
A sign of the times; the nonsensical dabbling with constellations and horoscopes conquered more and more space in magazines, newspapers, television programmes and radio shows in the 1970s, only to be slowly pushed back to the margins. It takes until 2007 before Sheldon Cooper finally and definitively catapults belief in horoscopes and the like into the Realm of Dumb Blondes:
Penny: Okay – I’m a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know.
Sheldon: Yes – it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun’s apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.
Penny: Participate-in-the-what?
(Big Bang Theory, ep. 1)
By this time, Dylan has also distanced himself somewhat from the hippie-like swagger, classifying something like bipolarity not as a “symptom of being a Gemini” but rather as an inspiring mental condition. Which actually takes us back to the 1960s, by the way – after all, “manic depression is searching my soul” as Jimi confesses.
It is not academically based or undeniably provable, but it seems to be taking an awfully long time for the word bipolar to penetrate the art of song. The word has been around since 1953, thanks to German psychiatrist Karl Kleist’s laudable and ultimately successful intervention to avoid the stigmatising denomination manic depression. But in songwriting, we remain – due no doubt to Jimi – long wedded to that designation.
It eventually takes almost until the 21st century before the less fraught term bipolar appears in songs; The Handsome Family is one of the trailblazers, in the 1998 semi-autobiographical “My Ghost” (Here in the bipolar ward / If you shower you get a gold star), and after that, in the 21st century, the spell is well and truly broken. Indeed: especially our rapping friends on the frayed edges of society and the music industry adopt bipolar as a kind of badge of honour, as a synonym for “I’m dangerous”, but established names like Imagine Dragons, Eminem (Come up with aliases, bipolar opposites, “Groundhog Day”, 2013), Kanye West (who seems to have some right to speak), Flo Rida and the indestructible Ice Cube (The Incredible Hulk is bipolar, “Good Cop Bad Cop”, 2017) are drawn to the word’s euphony and its leaden connotations.
2020’s Dylan does not venture a clinical diagnosis, avoids medical terms, but the mental condition apparently continues to fascinate him. At least, the Prophet’s symptom and behavioural descriptions are gradually allowing for an educated layman’s diagnosis: all too stable our protagonist is not. In the previous seven stanzas we have already heard the Prophet slip from not unsympathetic lone wolf who opens his heart and allows himself to be guided by Miss Pearl and Mary Lou, to a domineering poacher who still doesn’t feel too big for a peaceful stroll in the garden, to an assertive force who announces that he will bring down vengeance. But now, in this eighth verse, the “going from one side to the other without staying in either place very long,” as Dylan self-analyses, accelerates.
The opening Put out your hand suggests a kind, helping friend. A suggestion immediately negated by the frustrating sequel There’s nothin’ to hold – apparently, the Prophet leaves the outstretched hand hanging in the air. To immediately thereafter intimidate the thus-frustrated antagonist with the bizarre threat Open your mouth – I’ll stuff it with gold. A threat that transports the classicists, the googling Dylanologists and the literate fans to ancient times, to the – presumably apocryphal – execution method the Parthians had devised for the hated, extremely rich Roman proconsul Crassus: they allegedly poured molten gold down his throat out of mockery. A gruesome torture death, which incidentally is also attributed to Emperor Valerianus (who would thus have been executed by a Persian king around 260) and to Manius Aquillius, who lost a battle against Mithridates VI of Pontus in 88 BC, was caught while fleeing and then tortured severely in the Dionysus theatre in Pergamon: Manius was tied behind a horse and dragged around while meanwhile gold coins were melted down. As a torture finale the molten gold then was poured down his throat.
That last detail, the detail that the gold came from melted-down coins, is then the closest thing to the threat that Dylan’s Prophet makes here. No more than that, anyway; a “stuffing the mouth with gold” is a quite different, less gruesome image than “pouring molten gold down the throat”. Which in itself is of little importance, of course – whether and how accurately the Prophet copies from ancient historiography is not too relevant. What is relevant are the remarkable tone and moodiness evoked by the weirder, archaic death threat. However, the Prophet’s antagonist is not given time to process this.
It is only a few seconds, and in those few seconds the Prophet switches from quasi-helpful (Put out your hand) through cynicism to aggression and back again to empathy: “Oh you poor Devil” is a rather affectionate insult. The ensuing imperative look up, the eighth imperative in the Prophet’s dramatic monologue, is softened – for the first time – with a harmony-seeking politeness phrase (if you will), and the finale is even an optimistic, happiness-promising exhortation: the Prophet does not send the man whose mouth he was just about to stuff to Hell, but he shows him the way to the City Of God, to Augustine’s Civitas Dei.
The victim of the Prophet’s fickleness, though, is likely to gradually attach less and less importance to the Prophet’s words after all the insults and kindnesses and threats and encouragement. And most likely shrugs his shoulders: a manic depression is a frustrating mess indeed.
To be continued. Next up False Prophet part 13: You’ve been rickrolled
—————-
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:
Dylan on Tour: concert recordings selected by Tony Attwood
In this series, I’m just searching the internet for complete, or near complete, recordings of Dylan concerts. In each case I’m not particularly concerned with the video – it is the music, and having the whole concert, or at least a lot of it, and having a decent quality of the audio, that is the heart of the idea. As well of course as having an index to the selected concerts in one place, making them easier to find.
At the moment I’m particularly interested in some of the earlier concerts, not least because of my reading of Heylin’s book “The Double Life of Bob Dylan” which I’m commenting on in the series, of the same name. The latest edition of that is The Double Life of Bob Dylan part 19: All around the world and I’m getting close to the end of that series.
This one as the video below states is Carnegie Chapter Hall, 4 November 1961
Depending on the settings you have, there might be adverts, but you can play around with settings and maybe get rid of them.- and it may continue to another concert, although the quality of that recording (if you get it) is not of the best, so I am only listing the songs from the first concert
The songs are
Little Girl (Starts around 1’50”)
Hold On
Italian Hall
Trouble Taking Place
White Horse Bar
Fixing to Die
Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre
Old Man
Liberty Ship
Hezekiah Jones
Freight Train Blues
Hey Woody
New York Town
Of course my gratitude to those people who recorded and who have maintained these recordings and made them available on the internet.
There are details of the other series we are running at the moment, along with some that have recently finished, on the home page .
Also if you look on the right-hand column and scroll down you will come to the heading “Indexes and reference pages” which gives a greater insight into our many past series. We have in fact published over 3500 articles in something like 16 years. Who’d have thought that was possible when we started?
Links to the earlier articles in this series can be found at the end of this piece.
By Tony Attwood
Judging by what Heylin says, and what we know from our own experiences of watching Dylan perform live, Dylan did not want to “over-rehearse,” as he saw it. He sought a more basic, perhaps one could say “a more raw” sound. And because the audience and journalists were not used to this, and because music journalists are mostly people who are themselves not very good musicians (if musicians at all), and beyond that, because Bob chose not to explain himself on tour, the tour got a lot of criticism.
And indeed Heylin makes it clear throughout that Dylan wanted the recordings he put on LPs to be as representative of the music in the concerts as possible. So no long rehearsals, no over-dubbing, but instead six takes at most and then simply choose the best.
Now this was obviously a very different approach from what the music industry, entranced by the growing capabilities of the technology it was able to conjure up, was doing. The general view at the time was, if the technology is there, let’s use it.
But it wasn’t just the re-creation of music through technology that annoyed Bob; he also hated it if something he said in a recorded interview was twisted and turned into something else.
Heylin gets this to a degree but then (page 375) forgets all that as he starts trying to work out who “Louise” and “Little Boy Lost” actually are in “Visions”, launching into ludicrous sidelines such as, “This certainly could be Brian Jones” without once contemplating the fact that Dylan could be writing a work of fiction. Indeed, why do any of the songs have to be about real events, real people, or anything else?
Do these people like Heylin pick up a novel and then start saying, “Oh that is Mr Smithson who lived next door to Dylan in 1989”? No of course not.
But although it would be an easy thing to do, I can’t pump all the blame on Heylin at this point. I’ve mentioned far too many times my own ventures into amateur songwriting with performances in folk clubs, and I know how often people will say of a song, “who is that about?” or “is that supposed to be me?” The answer is no one and no. Quite why people accept that novelists and short story writers can write about non-existent people, but think songwriters can’t have an original idea, is beyond me, but my occasional chats with other songwriters, and my own painful experiences show that this is the case.
Dylan however has this problem in greater depth, saying of a Playboy interview that was tapped, “… then they just took it right off the tape and any time they felt like changing it, or thought I should say something else, they’d just put it in.” In response, Heylin decries Dylan for being “surprisingly unguarded”. And yes anyone who gets within 100 miles of a journalist learns this, but still the point is that a) journalists should not behave like this, and b) the first few times it happens to one, it can be rather unnerving.
Add this to Heylin’s own weird desire to take characters from Dylan’s songs and find who they are based on (“Little boy lost … certainly could be Brian Jones…”) and we have a rather spooky view of Dylan’s creative process. Indeed, why not take Dylan’s own explanation, and the commentary of many other songwriters, and indeed writers of fiction – the characters we have are the characters we make up.
Yes, some novels can be about real people – my own historical novel, “Making the Arsenal” includes a real-life character (now long deceased but very famous at the time the novel is set in) and I’ve evolved my central character’s personality from contemporary reports. But most of the characters are invented: it’s a novel. So why can’t Dylan write songs with invented characters in them? Why do they have to be about anyone in particular? Louise is only a real person because journalists want her to be one.
But now Heylin of course goes further, because that is what he does, suggesting that instead of Dylan being frustrated about the commentaries he gets about his song lyrics “he was revelling in it” (page 376). Really? How does he know?
The reaction of the audiences to Dylan, with the booing and so forth, upset The Hawks, and it is strange that reporters have just reported this without thinking about the implications.
Audiences however have power – they can cheer, they can boo, they can walk out, they can refuse to attend. And certainly, as the tour went on everyone must have known they were going to get a rock band in the second half. So they came ready to boo. This is not unique.
Exploring this notion, I found myself thinking of the London football (soccer) club that has a ground near to where I was brought up as a child, and which was supported by my father, and my grandfather, my mother, my aunt… and then myself throughout my life. Indeed although my ancestors have sadly passed on, but I still go and watch the team in every home game.
And it is a fact that if Arsenal (my club) are not always playing as well as some in the crowd expect and demand, the players can be booed (not by me I hasten to add), and although it is rare these days, in the past I have seen fights break out between those who think we should be supporting the team no matter what, and those who feel they have the right to express their anger at the players’ poor performance as they perceive it.
It’s the same with Dylan. Some could appreciate what he was doing with his experiments, some couldn’t. There was, shall we say, a certain level of disharmony within the audience. But Heyln suggests with absolutely no evidence, that Dylan was revelling in the negative reaction, and just kept carrying on with his new rock songs.
The media of course love a story that falls in their laps and which they have to do no research on whatsoever, and so the story made the headlines.
But we know from a discussion between Ginsberg and Dylan, Dylan believed in the songs. However, with the media, it is always the same. When a story is there without them having to do any research, they take it.
Certainly from conversations that Heylin reports, Dylan was bemused by the level of antagonism he was getting in the early days of his move over to performing with the rock band. However, as the schedule that Heylin reports shows, he didn’t have time to contemplate what was going on, let alone change the sequence of songs, or indeed consider what the band was doing. And of course, for those who did listen to the lyrics there were always endless fantasy tales about who each song was actually about.
Part of the problem with Heylin, and indeed for Heylin, is that he cannot grasp the utterly simple notion that a songwriter, like a novelist, like a poet, like a playwright, does not have to experience the emotions and activities that are portrayed in their work, in order to write about it. To put it simply, I didn’t have to travel in a spaceship to write my two science fiction novels. So why does Heylin seem to think that lines that Dylan writes directly relate to his life? (And to be clear, I am not saying that my work is remotely the equivalent of Dylan’s but rather, that rather, is how many writers write fiction.).
But no, Heylin can’t make the jump. For him “One of Us Must Know” must be about an actual relationship. Because? Well, because it must be. This view really does represent a total lack of understanding of creativity, songwriting, and artistic process. And indeed music.
The fact is that when a commentator is negative about Dylan, Heylin gives the critic space and quotes him word for word. When Dylan records “Visions of Johanna” in one complete take, Heylin doesn’t even notice the error made by the bass guitar – which is interesting because Bob must have heard it, but chose that version to be released. It says a lot about his desire to get a complete “live” performance. Heylin does note that Visions had a couple of false starts, but nothing more, confirming, if we needed confirmation, that he’s not got a musical ear.
In short with his double album, Bob found a new way of making the recordings. “Visions” was recorded in just three takes apparently. No overdubbing – because Dylan never did that – just a straight recording.
Reading Heylin, it seems to me that he simply doesn’t understand what it is like to be in a recording studio, for a group of musicians who are normally on stage doing their own thing, and covering up when things go wrong, secure in the knowledge that the audience probably won’t notice.
But it is also true that Heylin’s vision and understanding of the world, and the cultures around the world, is incredibly limited. He calls Australia, “an English-speaking enclave still stuck in the 50s” – and that seems to satisfy him. But he does get the concept of the concerts in that Dylan “changed personalities from one half of the concert to the next He came out a different guy…”
Now if we combine that observation, with the fact that the writers of the newspaper commentaries knew nothing about music or performance, we can see the problem emerging; a problem that was going to continue for years to come. Self-appointed critics without musical knowledge seeking to control the agenda and telling us what to think.
Dylan on the other hand knew where he was going, and although “even in cosmopolitan Sydney the booing and catcalling was vicious…” there was hope, because even Heylin admits “it [the booing] was organised.”
But it could be thought from this that Dylan was just doing his own thing without any care for anything else. Yet that doesn’t seem or feel right. Meeting with others at the house of a local notable academic Dylan is reported as being keen to find out what everyone thought.
Yet according to Heylin (page 408) Dylan was facing an “uncomprehending Antipodean media”.
Overall, reading about Dylan in Australia gives one the feeling of a staggeringly creative man who has no one to guide him, but a lot of people trying to exploit him and more than anything a complete lack of understanding as to what he is doing as an artist. He was in fact, creating his new approaches to music live in front of audiences, whereas later he would do it in the recording studio. But he is constantly surrounded by the media who clearly have no understanding of music or lyrics, and no understanding of the forms of creativity that Dylan is using.
And above all, there is no one out there who can help him along. The journalists are asking pathetically stupid questions (take a look at the interview on page 415/6 if you want an example).
So what we have is (in my view) a creative genius who does not know how he creates what he does (it sort of just happens) being asked inane questions by journalists who seemingly have hardly heard any of his music, and certainly have not heard the music upon which Dylan is developing his own genre. And the trouble is that when Dylan does meet some journalists who seem to have an idea about what is going on (see Scandinavia, page 417) he’s not very good at handling them.
In fact, it is only in Europe that he manages to get a conversation with journalists who actually seem to have enough musical knowledge, poetic knowledge, and knowledge of contemporary society, to understand what is going on.
Dylan mocks the journalists because they clearly have not done their homework – and (although Heylin doesn’t say this) it is rather like some guys who managed to pass GCSE Art (an exam that can be taken aged 16 in schools in England and Wales) then demanding to know, “What are you going to protest about on this trip?” To which Dylan quite reasonably replies, “You name it and I’ll protest about it.”
The series continues…
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I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current and recently concluded series, appearing on this website. Details of the earlier episodes in this series are at the end of this episode
“The Lyrics and the Music” is a series by Tony Attwood which tries to find out what happens when one reviews a Dylan song not primarily as a set of lyrics, but as a piece of music which includes lyrics. An updated list of previous articles in the series is given at the end. Details of recent articles and current series can be found on the home page.
“Things have changed” has a set of lyrics that a lot of the time, don’t connect. They are descriptive of a seemingly unending series of scenes which are nothing but a set of statements. In one line he is “waiting on the last train” and in the next “Standing on the gallows”. OK we can make a leap and believe that the “last train” is in fact his execution, except within a moment he is contemplating dancing lessons and going to dress in drag. And as time moves on through the song we get to, “The human mind can only stand so much, You can’t win with a losing hand,” and perhaps are tempted to think that’s it. Our brains just can’t take any more.
Indeed sometimes we get hints of the “worried mind” and just what is happening within it, for from the opening lines we have “I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can” and the notion that “You can’t win with a losing hand”.
And then maybe “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it, You can hurt someone and not even know it” is the key to it all, but in the end we are always drawn back to that repeated set of lines…
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
So maybe that is the heart of it all.
But then, let’s imagine that the lyrics came first. How on earth would you compose the music for such a scenario? Virtually any answer is possible, and what Bob does is give us the opposite of the catastrophe that seems to be the essence of the “worried man with a worried mind.” We get an easy and relaxed litling melody and accompaniment. It’s calm, it’s gentle, while all around the world is falling apart.
For in Bob’s performance, there is nothing “worried” at all – everything in the music is restrained and relaxed. There’s a smile – ok maybe a somewhat sardonic smile – but there is a smile within the performance.
If you were kind enough to read my review of some of the performances of this song during the Never Ending Tour you’ll know that Bob’s way of singing the song did indeed change over the years (I chose examples from 2000 to 2007) but the essence of the music did not change. It was simply the way he moved from singing a melody to calling out the lines.
Personally, I thought that was a shame, because for me the melody is at the core of this song, and the more cutting guitar solo that we got by the time of the last outings of the song on the tour (it was performed 1001 times).
But things did change later – I just didn’t get that far in my review. For by the last outing on the Never Ending Tour in 2019 the song had a totally different edge to it, and much of it had changed to emphasise the changes that were going on in, around and about the singer. Musically this is almost a new song – perhaps a blood relative of the original, but still different…
And so we have moved a long way away from the original conception of the song. But I have the feeling (and of course it is no more than a feeling – I can hardly phone up Bob and ask him!) that Bob was simply looking for ways to make the song different, rather than reflecting on the original meaning of the song. And that of course is his prerogative, after all he is the composer. But when I hear the way he performs…
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
… I feel the meaning of the song has been removed in order to give us a new performance. And yes it is fun, and the changes to the melody and the chords are interesting, and if I’d been there I would have cheered and cheered, although I think part of me would have been cheering my memory of the original. For I still feel the need to go back to a version – the original in fact – in which the music and the lyrics were as one.
For in the original, I feel he is not contemplating falling in love with the first woman because he is so wrecked (which is the feeling I get from that live performance above) but rather because it is the world that is so wrecked. It is not that nothing makes sense to him, but rather actually nothing makes sense to anyone. After all, if you are stuck in a bomb shelter and the air raid sirens are wailing, it’s better to be friends with those around you, than to start an argument.
And I feel much more comfortable with that, because I don’t want to believe it is me that has gone weird, but rather that it is the world that has gone weird, and I am doing all right in this crazy world.
That, in fact, is the feeling I have from the album version of the song – and indeed from the video Dylan made in relation to it. Things have changed, the world has gone completely insane, but the gallows and the noose are not real. I can swing through this new world if I can just stay relaxed and keep my eyes on the road.
And so for me this evolution of the song from the album recording in 2000 to the live 2019 version is one that has taken a musical wrong turn. OK who am I to suggest Bob got it wrong – clearly I am not qualified to say that. But all my emotions drive me back to the original. I feel the lyrics and the music in that version within me. Yes in my 20s, and 30s… and through much of my life I used to care, and from that I felt I could make a difference. But as I got to my 70s (not as old as Bob, but not so many years behind) I still care, but now I know my time has gone, there’s no way now I can make a change. Except maybe just possibly suggest to a few people that Heylin’s latest double volume book is totally wrong. Maybe there.
So maybe I still care enough to want that. In fact I’ve got it now. I used to care and think I could make a difference. Now I still care, but the feeling I can do much about anything beyond my immediate friends and family has gone. That’s the difference.
My thesis is also based on the fact that it is easier to get to the bottom of Dylan’s work by declaring all references to the people, history and culture of the United States of America to be temporarily irrelevant. The question, ‘What is Dylan all about?’ is approached here by meditating on the global significance of his work, rather than its exclusive meaning to US Americans. In other words: Dylan & Us: Beyond America. But to demonstrate that I am not insufferably dogmatic, I will prove this self-imposed rule by means of three exceptions, to be noted where they occur.
Temporarily declaring Americana irrelevant in this context is no triviality, as it immediately discounts over half of Dylan’s body of work, including a large number of the pivotal poems for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize (as well as some less-prominent works, of course). To some US-Americans (I believe I have made my point now, so wherever ‘Americans’ appears from here on, you know to whom I am referring) this may seem like an unconscionable act, crude and disrespectful.
There is a justification, however: firstly, it is a simple fact that the world does not revolve around the United States; and secondly, it is only those artists who have managed to liberate themselves from their countries of origin who are acknowledged worldwide as being among the true greats, whose work is more likely to be appreciated after their deaths rather than sink away into oblivion. This is why Chekhov (1860-1904) was and continues to be read and re-read.
Whether Dylan’s work will survive him, which parts will do so and for how long, is yet to be seen; but in his case, too, the core and principal import are not to be found in utterances regarding his country of origin. This does not mean, of course, that the Americana in question is of lesser import to those tens of millions living in countries and cultures contrasting starkly with the United States, than to Americans themselves. However, Americana does lay a shroud over the global significance of Dylan’s art, which we must therefore extricate from the United States if we are to reveal its essence. Those who do not balk at this prospect are undoubtedly of a sympathetic nature.
The rest of the world should not rejoice too soon, however, as Dylan’s own expertise and interest in non-American peoples and cultures – to the extent that they are evident in his work – is also irrelevant to this book. But because the ‘non-Americana’ in his work does not in any way obscure the worldwide significance thereof, it is permitted to remain.
And so we must cast our net less widely, and officially make do with 266 America-free texts from a total of 394. These can be found in the fourth, extended ‘Nobel Prize’ edition of Lyrics1961–2012 which – as the title indicates – includes texts written up until the year 2012, and was published in 2016 by Simon & Schuster.
But before leaving the subject of this edition, it must absolutely be noted in passing that its incompleteness and poor-quality text presentation make it a disgrace to this otherwise venerable publishing house – a criticism that could also be levelled, incidentally, at the previous three editions from 1973, 1985 and 2001, which only adds to the scandalous nature of the oversight. Any edition of collected works implies a presentable text layout, and accountability as to which texts, or parts thereof, have been omitted and why. None of this is provided in any of the four editions: it is a dog’s breakfast, an insult to the buyer, and out of necessity I will present several glaring examples in this book.
The situation is further compounded by the fact that, according to the underappreciated website of English Dylan researcher Tony Attwood, Untold Dylan, the oeuvre consists of at least 550 or so completed poems and lyrics, and over a hundred additional texts that, while incomplete, nonetheless contain pertinent material. We do not need the entire body of work for our purposes, however: around 25 Americana-free lyrics provide all that we need to expose the core of Dylan’s writing in detail.
The third, relatively small group of writers are the pedants: the Dylanologists of the world. A Dylanologist is a true expert, not uncommonly highly educated but often an autodidact, who has developed into an expositor and interpreter of ‘The Word of Our Bob’. These individuals have a greater knowledge of how Dylan’s work came to be – and more importantly, what it means – than Dylan himself, who more than once has demonstrated having forgotten all about ‘the early years’, and seems rather uninterested in any case.
The Dylanologist makes use of every scrap of paper that Dylan has ever left lying about and that has been eagerly collected by others. I cast aspersions here neither at the Dylanologists nor the collectors of these snippets, but rather at those who publicly distribute them. They ought to have had the decency to return them to Dylan instead, enabling him to exercise his right of ownership, which includes the option to keep what one considers to be unpolished work to oneself.
Instead, these thieves made – and make – off with their ill-gotten gains, defending themselves with pious faces and lofty arguments. We must not take this circumstance lightly. Dylan has been ‘dispossessed’ of a great deal of such material, including hundreds of audio recordings of full or partial songs that he never wished to release. He ultimately saw no other option than to release everything regardless, under the collective title of the Bootleg Series, as a means of claiming and protecting his copyright after the fact. And rightly so. In late 2023, the series already totalled seventeen volumes and hundreds of CDs, and had only been catalogued up to 1994.
As mentioned previously: aside from the distributors themselves, I blame nobody now that the fragments have already been released. But this is akin to the rationale that we no longer need concern ourselves with the accuracy of the Warren report on the assassination of American President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, since Kennedy is already dead now anyway (for those wondering why I chose this specific analogy: your patience will be rewarded). Furthermore, I would be lying if I claimed to have discounted the Bootleg Series as a matter of principle. The fact that these works have now been officially released applies to me too, after all, so if I find material among them that I believe is worth discussing, it appears here because it is now permissible to do so. In my defence, I can also say that I never purchased the illegal bootlegs in question.
You may well ask: ‘You didn’t write the book for all those evangelists, patriots and pedants, why should you even give two hoots about them?’ While it is true that people seldom read books that were not intended for them – even before they are spoken ill of – matters are different where Bob Dylan is concerned. One can write about him for the interested layperson, as I have done here, but my book will undoubtedly also be read by experts, who are not necessarily my intended audience. And they will eviscerate me for the most minuscule error (which they will undoubtedly discover), or else because they understand Dylan better than I do.
Exactly what purpose that would serve is a mystery since my book conceals nothing even remotely scandalous. Perhaps for fear of having overlooked a new insight in the work of the man who, much to their frustration, they themselves do not always fully understand? This is indeed a very challenging category of reader to account for. And nobody enjoys having their errors pointed out to them, not even by experts. But if they do not tear me to pieces, my prediction is that they will come to the happy conclusion that they have not missed anything, and declare my narrative and analysis irrelevant to their own research, first and foremost because my understanding of his work is tainted by my personal background and history.
They can do as they please. I will simply reveal some facts about myself along the way that have helped shape my appreciation of Dylan’s work, so that you can decide for yourselves just how ‘tainted’ my understanding of it is. For let’s be honest: one does not need these know-it-alls either to appreciate my account, or to understand or appreciate Dylan’s work. So hence with the Greil Marcuses and Clinton Heylins of this world, the supreme Dylanologists and their epigones, whose ‘omniscience’ regarding Dylan and their endless exegeses of his work serve only to stifle and dishearten our understanding of it. To quote our subject himself from his famous song, ‘Times, they are a-changin’’: ‘The line it is drawn.’ We are simply doing so here, by mutual agreement.
Bob Dylan’s impact on music, culture, and politics is unequivocal. Regarded as one of the preeminent songwriters in history, he has served as a poet, an advocate for social change, and an artist who has embraced the power of creativity for sixty years.
