Untold Dylan

A Dylan cover a day: You gonna make me lonesome when you go

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

A list of the previous articles in the “Dylan cover a day” series is printed at the end.

by Tony Attwood

If by any chance you have been following this series you might be expecting “You angel you” as the next song that we might cover, but in fact Aaron and I did this previously for the “Beautiful Obscurity” series – and although looking at songs for a second time has never been a problem on Untold Dylan, in this case, Aaron’s legwork was so extensive, he managed to find so much on the song, there’s not much more to put into another article. So I refer you back to the earlier article, “Beautiful Obscurity: You Angel You”

Which brings us to “You gonna make me lonesome when you go. Except that when Jochen did his piece on that song he gave us five covers . I’m going to add just three more of which one, by Isballea Lundgren, is a piece that I find utterly remarkable.

First Ryan Adams, not because I am knocked out by the overall effect, but because he does do something which is often overlooked by cover artist – adding a completely new rhythm.

It does give the basis for a version of the song that keeps the melody, chords and lyrics can remain the same, but offers a different sort of accompaniment. It’s a technique that could be used more by cover artists.

This idea goes even further, and with even greater musical effect in a remarkable cover by Isballea Lundgren, the remarkable Swedish jazz vocalist. She has the voice to carry this through, but she also has an arranger who has achieved absolute wonders with the song. Even though I know the song completely because of Dylan’s versions, and of course the covers that Jochen chose, this gives me something quite new. The short instrumental breaks are worthy of a mention on their own – put together with the whole three and three quarter minutes seem like a perfect dream. I play it over and over.

In fact this is just one of those songs that can performed in a myriad of ways – I won’t copy in the bosa nova version simply because I think its a bit cheesy but it is out there if you want to find it. But I will add this country version just to show how much can be done with the song. Here is it a totally different piece of music with a different set of meanings….

In fact in that version above the way the title line is sung makes it sound as if this was the original version – it sounds so natural!

This could go on and on forever, but as we have already had Jochen’s choice, if you like this song and have a mind to discover different approachees, you’ve got enough versions here to drive your partner, your parents or your neighbours completely mad by playing them all.

But my serious point remains: quite often Bob Dylan has that remarkable ability to create a song that can be re-created to infinity. This is Jimmy LaFave.

Previously in the series

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The Rough and Rowdy Way Tour 18: Watching the River Flow

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Tony Attwood

Commentary by Tony Attwood, audio kindly provided by Mr Tambourine.

Watching the River Flow

“Watching the River Flow” is another laid back half-sung half-recited song in which I get the impression Bob has really worked on the notion of being the outside observer looking at the rest of the world go by. That feeling came across in the original 1971 recording and is still very much at the heart of this performance.

There is a constant four note descending effect that runs through most of the piece, emphasising the continuity of the “flow”, although it stops for the middle 8 (until the last bar). And, indeed, this seems to me to fit in with the overall concept of the the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour – it is Bob looking back on his own work, rather than commenting on his work by writing new arrangements of the songs.

In the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour we do have changes to the arrangements of these classic songs, and indeed sometimes to the vocals, but it is to a much lesser degree than within the Never Ending Tour. The impression I get is of Bob looking at the rest of us looking at him. He’s looking back at his life, but without the desire to re-write the past which was at the heart of the NET.

Now I haven’t asked Mike Johnson (who created the 144 article, “Never Ending Tour” series on this site) for his view (Mike lives on the other side of the world from me, and I’ve only just thought of this) but considered this way, this Rough and Rowdy tour is the mirror image of the Never Ending Tour, in the sense of the musical arrangements, as well as the song selection night by night.

In short the Never Ending Tour was a continuous challenge to all of us to reconsider the past, and from there to rethink our future. The Rough and Rowdy tour is a celebration of the past, and an invitation, it suddenly occurs to me, to sit back and watch the river flow.

“River” was written in 1971 in a year of what seems to have been an artistic struggle for Dylan, and suggests that the essence of life is that life just moves on, rather than life being an opportunity to change the world and leave a mark upon the world. It was a return to the “Blowing in the Wind” vision of accepting reality as we are told it is, rather than “Masters of War” or “Tangled up in blue” each of which in a variety of ways, challenges our view of reality.

Each of these songs seem to suggest that the world happens to us, rather than any of us having an influence on the world. Thus they are songs of the artist observing the world rather than the artist trying to change the world for the better. And it is a thought that resonates with the fact that the shows also include “Most likely you go your way and I’ll go mine” and others with a similar vision.

In short, we are invited to travel our own road, rather than make the world a better place. And perhaps that comes about with age. After all, sitting and watching is something that most of us tend to do as we get older, rather than continue the fight for something better.

Previously in this series

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Once or twice: Lay Down Your Weary Tune. (Warning, some recordings are painful)

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

Once or twice: A recently inaugurated review of songs that Bob has performed just once or twice on stage. Previously we looked at The girl on the Greenbriar Shore, Only a hobo. and Caribbean Wind. So rather obviously, this is number four in the series.

Recorded in 1963 this was released 22 years later, possibly because there is a blip in the recording (although that might not be on the original, sorry you’ll have to check your own own copy of “Biograph”. The copies I have found on line have that blip, and my albums are not in an order that makes retrieving one particular LP an easy task.)

Meanwhile here is the public performance

The generally accepted view is that this was recorded for the “Times they are…” album. and the story circulates that Dylan was wanting to capture the feeling of a Scottish ballad, such as perhaps “The Water is Wide”.

Dylan performed it once on stage in 1963 but then with Dylan having dropped the song from the album the Byrds then took it up.

I love the harmonies that the Byrds create, but this was the period where every recording they made had to have the Byrds “jingle jangle” sound, and for me that is just not right. Indeed “not right at all”. I am left screaming with dismay.

Various music critics attempted to categorise the song in various ways (“a message from the universe” being one of the more outlandish) but there seems to me to be no need to find a message – the song is in the spirit of what Dylan is said to have identified as the source: Scottish ballads.

There is also the notion from Paul Williams that, “we hear Dylan struggling to put into words the melody that haunts him” but again I don’t hear that. I hear music that is clearly constructed, and to which the lyrics fit perfectly.

It is only around 250 words long (including the repeated chorus) but for me these lyrics contain a set of clear, unpretentious images sung to a simple, memorable and above all enjoyable melody. In essence it relates to the way in which one can use music to relieve the tensions of the world, and express one’s thoughts of the world in a way that conversation and prose cannot.

It suggests that the sounds of life are all we need; songs are not required. The wind , the ocean, the rain, the rustling leaves, the flowing river… these are the only sounds we need to understand the world and be at peace with the world.

Of course there is the eternal irony that a song is constructed to express that thought, but such is the way of the arts, we accept the conceit of the lyrics to allow us to enjoy the beauty both of the conception of the song, and its execution through lyrics and melody.

But is this the moment Bob changed from politics to mysticism as has been suggested by so many writers (each possibly copying the idea of the last)? I think the evidence is against it for if we look at the list of Dylan songs in the order that they were written (one of the first big projects we put on this site) we can see the musical and literary context that Bob was working within at the time.

When the ship comes in (Protest)
The Times they are a-Changing (Protest)
Percy’s Song (The failure of justice)
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Protest, racism)
Lay Down your Weary Tune (the natural world is superior to anything mankind can make)
One too many mornings (Song of Leaving)
Restless Farewell (moving on)

Thus as we can see, immediately prior to “Lay Down your Weary Tune” Bob composed three protest songs and one (Percy’s Song) on the failure of justice – which could indeed also be called a protest song.

But “Harrie Carroll” was the last of that sequence, and indeed the last story for a while, for “Lay Down your Weary Tune” was the start of a short sequence of songs with “Moving On” as a theme – for both “One too many mornings” and “Restless Farewell” which concluded his composing for 1963, are on the same theme.

There is also a very rough recording of a version of the song by Jefferson Airplane in which they change some of the rhythms and also make some very strange chord changes. The quality of this is awful, but if you can bear it do have a listen – it is not widely known, and it shows a strange re-thinking of what can be done when one starts from a desire to do something different, rather than a feeling for a song and an inspiration of where else it could go. It has taken me half a dozen listens to come to terms with it, but it was an interesting experience – once I got used to the forced modulations at the end of every other verse.

What is curious however is just how many utterly awful covers there have been of this song along with one or two just about bearable versions. I will leave you to find them if you wish – I have no desire to take responsibility for anyone who actually understands the work rushing out into the street screaming in utter dismay. Even Billy Bragg’s version on the “Chimes of Freedom” tribute album has me running to hide (metaphorically – actually what I did was turn it off).

The Amnesty International 2012 compilation of Bob Dylan covers, Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan includes a version of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” by Billy Bragg. “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” by Storyhill is bearable.

Tom O’Brien’s version from “Red on Blue” is also bearable but only seems to be on Spotify. And maybe this is why the song is not as widely heard as it should be. It seems to be so utterly difficult for anyone else to make a decent version of it. Probably best to flip back to the top of this piece and play Bob’s version, and ponder why he never gave us more.

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The lyrics and the music: Key West – a very, very personal experience.

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The lyrics and the music. Looking at how Dylan’s music relates to his lyrics and vice versa. By Tony Attwood

Creating a song that lasts nine and a half minutes implies doing one of two things: having a lot of musical variety, or having a song that creates either a story or plays with a set of endlessly rotating images around a theme.

Dylan, as we know, is often no that not much of a coherent storyteller – which is not a criticism, it is just not a format that he chooses to follow. And so with long songs he tends to select a wider than normal range of images. Although of course being Dylan, that’s not quite an explanation to cover all the long songs, but it is a starting point.

And Dylan is something of an expert at unusually long songs. Indeed at nine and a half minutes “Key West” only clocks in at number eight on his personal list of long compositions – although I might have missed something along the way. I’m thinking that…

Murder Most Foul
Highlands
Tempest
Sad Eyed Lady
Desolation Row
Joey
Brownsville Girl
Tin Angel

… are all longer.

But here’s my problem. Looking at the list, what strikes me is that apart from “Desolation Row”, none of these I choose to play when I am just looking for a song to listen to.

And part of the problem, I think, is that in a number of cases Bob has created a really long song without too much thought of melody or rhythm – they are recitations in which the words utterly dominate. The music is pure accompaniment. Not always of course, and Desolation Row stands out in this regard, but in a number of cases the music takes very much a background seat.

Now if we look at the issue of poetry and music without the context of Dylan, there is no reason why this format of half-sung half recited pieces with a minimal musical background should not exist. It is another form, which because we know Dylan as a SONGwriter, we choose to label as a song. And indeed Bob has performed this piece over 200 times on stage amidst the songs. So for him it is a song, not a recitation.

And this is in contrast to Murder Most Foul, Highlands, Tempest. Sad Eyed Lady, by way of example, none of which are shown on the official Dylan has ever being performed live.

So, we may conclude perhaps that Dylan likes the notion of the recitation of lyrics to a simple musical background as an art form, but thinks that probably it is not something the audience that attends his shows wants to know too much about. Or rather he thought that until now.

For this time Bob seems to have taken the notion of a recitation to an accompaniment to an extreme – and has reversed his general policy – this piece has been performed over 200 times on stage.

So let us consider the opening lines…

Wherever I travel, wherever I roam
I'm not that far before I come back home
I do what I think is right, what I think is best
History Street off of Mallory Square
Truman had his White House there
East bound, West bound, way down in Key West
Twelve years old, they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute

And what I personally find so curious is that there is no coherence here. But I stress, I find this “curious” as in the sense of unusual and unexpected, not in any way in the sense of “poor art” — indeed exactly the opposite. Take out the musical background and I don’t think this works too well at all. Add the music and the images come pouring out from the recording straight into my heart and mind.

I have lived most of my life in England, the country where I was born, although I have lived abroad and have travelled the world (United States, Australia where one of my daughters lives, China, Sweden, Algiers where I lived for a year…) but I don’t have any relationship with Key West.

So the question for me is what do I get one from this song about a place of which I know absolutely nothing? And the answer is “atmosphere”. Not of the place itself, but of the situation portrayed via this vast array of images and the gentle lilting background music that so contrast: the gentle background and the endlessly changing overlay of images.

And that is really the key here. The music is unchanging suggesting to me that no matter how much life’s events change and take us in different directions, it is still our individual journey through our life, from which we can pick out incidents and places, and maybe say “that’s the place I like to be.” Our memories may be incomplete and inaccurate but they are what we build our vision of ourselves upon.

So I think of Sydney, Australia, where I have been six or seven times to visit my family, and the Great Wall of China on which I have walked once, and the Twin Towers in New York one of which I ascended just a few weeks before the atrocity of 9/11… these are the memories of totally different occasions and situations. And they are bound together as parts of my life journey, parts of the memories that slowly fade…

And this is how I feel the song. The unchanging background music of one’s life, which is always one’s life no matter how much things change. I can’t remember the names of my different companions on many of these adventures, but they are still part of my history. But do I pick out one place now where I want to be? I guess so: it is my house, where I now sit and write this, a house in a village so ancient it is listed in the Domesday Book.

And it is having made this meandering journey in my head that today I think I appreciate Key West as a song (not a recitation) more than I have ever done before. So now I think about my journey in life (I am six years younger than Bob, and have no fame, but still have had quite a journey) and now I can make sense at last of Key West, and perhaps a bit more sense of my own meandering life.

Not that not making sense of the song worried me in the past, but now I get it, I like the song more. As Bob says in the second line, “That’s my story, but not where it ends.” Snap shots of life, knowing that nothing from the past can be changed. Suddenly realising that yes, that was my life, how on earth did I manage to a) do so much, b) make so many mistakes, c) still have a good time, d) still be doing ok. And what such thoughts need is a ceaseless gentle lilting musical accompaniment. Nothing else. And that’s what we get.

Thus none of this enjoyment and insight would have worked for me if this piece had been a song in the conventional sense, rather than primarily a musical recitation. It is the provision of the music and the half-sung approach that stops me just hearing a song, and starts me thinking of the journey of my life as well as enjoying the song.

That’s quite a breakthrough. I’m glad I’m writing this series. I’m glad I wrote this piece today. Having listened to this song more carefully today than ever before, I am more of a person than I was yesterday. It wouldn’t have worked as a poem. It works as a recitation.

The songs reviewed from the music plus lyrics viewpoint…

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: Early Roman Kings

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The Never Ending Tour Extended: This series primarily uses recordings selected by Mike Johnson in his inestimable masterpiece The Never Ending Tour, and looks at how those performances of individual songs change as time goes by. The selection of songs from the series, and the commentary below, are by Tony Attwood.

Between 2012 and 2021 Early Roman Kings was played 519 times by Bob Dylan on stage.

The song was from the first – and indeed always thereafter – performed in a way that was immediately identifiable with the original, with that unmistakeable three-chord phrase repeated over and over and again, and Bob singing much of the song on one note. All that was added was a jumble of sounds at the start which really (to me, as ever, it’s just my opinion) doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the piece of music. It’s more like a call to the band to be ready to play than anything to do with the song in my view.

This version comes from 2012 The Ivory Revolution Begins. In essence, once we have the first couple of lines, we have the song – it is all on one chord apart from a very brief move to a second chord just before the end of the verse. As such it is totally a song of atmosphere – and that atmosphere is one of menace.

By 2015 however a certain softness has entered the atmosphere., as can be heard from this performance from It doesn’t get any better than this. I must say I hadn’t realised that is how it changed. It came as a pleasant surprise.

So the menace has gone, and now we have a reflection on what is happening. The song is the same, the lyrics are the same, the instruments are the same but the atmosphere is completely different.

In 2018, we still have that collection of sounds as the opening, but that extra softness has been extended so that in the review Hell bent for leather contrary to the implication of that title (which applies to other songs) we have a song that has none of the menace of the 2012 recording above. Bob is getting softer and softer, more and more gentle with a song that started with absolute menace and power. It is still the same song, but the whole concept of of what he is singing about has changed.

2019: the final recording of this song that we have in the final year of the Never Ending Tour: The liberated republic

Now Bob has gone back – some way at least – to his earlier thoughts on the song. There is a little bit more force here , a little bit more of the 2012 edition, what I suppose we might call a bit more “umph”.

This is interesting because we don’t often find Bob going back to earlier thoughts on the song – mostly I get the impression of a journey going on and on until it stops because all options have been explored. By the end the menace is overwhelming – as if to say enough of these early gentle versions, this is what it is really about. And, as it turns out, that’s it.

Other articles in this series…

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The Never Ending Tour extended: I shall be released 1975 to 2008

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The Never Ending Tour Extended: This series primarily uses recordings selected by Mike Johnson in his inestimable masterpiece The Never Ending Tour, and looks at how those performances of individual songs change as time goes by. The selection of songs from the series, and the commentary below, are by Tony Attwood.

In this article we’re looking at I shall be Released which first appeared on the tour on 30 October 1975 and was retired (at least so far) on 7 June 2008 after 491 live performances. I’ve also included the recording of Dylan singing with Norah Jones, which is not strictly a NET recording, but interesting nonetheless.

Our earliest recording from the tour comes from 1988 The 60s revisited

Hearing this again today was a real shock. I guess when publishing Mike’s articles I was just focussed on the music from the tours, not thinking back to the original recordings. But today playing the original, I am absolutely knocked back off the chair.

I have no doubt (for myself and course it is just me) the original is a billion times better. that the live version above. The message is one of hope not of desperation.

So the question arises what would Bob do after that? Well we actually have a recording from 1989 – one year on from the piece at the start of the article. It hasn’t actually got back to the lightness of the album version, but it is not so depressed as the year before. A fire in the sun… Maybe Bob thought he had gone too far the year before. Certainly the bass and lead guitars are given the freedom to have a lot of fun.

Now we jump forward to 1995: Beyond Prague, London Calling. Sorry about the volume change here, obviously I just run the recordings as we have them, without any adjustments. The song starts after about 55 seconds. And just in case one is tempted to say that Bob is edging further back to the original, do go back and have a listen to the album version above. It’s still a long way away from where we have got to in 1995.

There is still that desperate wearyness in the singing, but we do have vocal harmonies which means either Bob went back to his original recording or else has a perfect memory for what he did in the studio.

2000: Back to Bedrock II

This next is from 2000 and yes we are now moving back to the original in the instrumental break.

2003: No flash in the pan

Now we have one of Bob’s favourite techniques wherein he has the freedom to play with the music while singers in the band keep the elements of the song in place, just so we know where we are.

And certainly, we have travelled a very long way from 1988.

We do have one other recording of Bob playing and singing “I shall be released” with Norah Jones – and it looks like she wasn’t really sure what they were going do. But she played the part like a real trouper. This appears to be from the Amazon.com 10th Anniversary Concert at Bennaroya Hall in Seattle

Other articles in this series…

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A Dyolan Cover a Day: With God on Our Side

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

A list of the previous articles in the “Dylan cover a day” series is printed at the end.

by Tony Attwood

The twist here of course is that “With God on our side” is itself a cover – in this case of The Patriot Game.

I have to admit the opening of this recording still sends shivers down my spine – and most of the rest of me too. If you have time do listen to it all – not for the lyrics (I do not use this site to convince you of one interpretation of history against another), but rather for the way the music changes. The music is quite extraordinary: mind you so are the lyrics.

The first recording of Bob’s version was not by Bob himself but by Joan Baez

Surprisingly (at least for me today in 2024, but maybe it is just because I have forgotten), Manfred Mann made a version. It is of course Paul Jones singing.

There is a major question, as time has passed and people have come to know the song well: what to do with the accompaniment? Ramblin Jack Elliot changed the lyrics to “God on Her Side” at least and makes it into a waltz, which seems at the same time inappropriate and quite telling… I can’t make up my mind. I have images of generals in full regalia dancing on the graves of the fallen.

My late mother’s brother died in the second world war, so obviously I never knew him, but it makes this all that bit closer. And I am really not sure about how the song builds. “I’m feeling kinda tired” isn’t really right for me – in fact it is not right at all.

Judy Collins brings me back to how I think the song should be performed. This is haunting, even though I have (by the moment of hearing this) heard quite a few versions, which I have chosen not to include here.. The harmonies, with a lesser artist, could be horribly inappropriate but no, it works.

This next version is Kelsey Walen from 2020, and whoever thought of just bringing in the double bass in verse two deserves a medal.

I’m leaving the Heron version until last, for reasons that I think you will immediately appreciate once you start playing it. And if you are tempted to think, “no, not for me” because of what they do to the piece, I would urge you to continue if you possibly can. It is an extraordinary re-thinking of a song that most us know so well.

To re-write such a well known song, itself based on a previous song, and come up with this approach shows a remarkable musical ability. And please don’t stop listening when it appears to be all over. The harmonica finale is as remarkable as the first part.

As ever, of course, I leave it with you, but I can tell you, I am moved as I have rarely been in writing this series.

Previously in the series

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When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971) part 5: A man alone at his desk

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

———–

by Jochen Markhorst

When I Paint My Masterpiece part 1: She’s delicate and seems like a Vermeer
When I Paint My Masterpiece part 2: Oh, the streets of SoHo
When I Paint My Masterpiece part 3. Blake did come up with some bold lines
When I Paint My Masterpiece part 4: I love the sound of words, yeah

When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971) part 5

by Jochen Markhorst

V A man alone at his desk

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you’re seein’ double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece
She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece

It’s 1785 and eight-year-old Carl Friedrich Gauß baffles village school teacher Büttner with his arithmetic skills. Even the “most difficult textbook in the German language”, Höhere Arithmetik, little Carl completes in one afternoon. To master his emotions, the bewildered teacher habitually administers Carl the last spanking of his life, and then arranges a maths tutor to prepare little Gauß for an academic career.

“They worked together for a year. At the beginning Gauss looked forward to the afternoons, which at least interrupted the uniformity of the weeks, although he did not have much interest in mathematics, he would have preferred Latin lessons. Then it got boring. Bartels didn’t think quite as draggingly as the others, but tiring it was with him as well.”

German success author Daniel Kehlmann’s biggest hit is 2005’s Die Vermessung der Welt (“Measuring the World”), a kind of fictional double biography of top German scientists Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt and their very different ways of measuring the world. We see a fascinating submotif in the above excerpt: Bartels didn’t think quite as draggingly as the others, but tiring it was with him as well – the loneliness of the genius.

Belle & Sebastian – Lord Anthony (live at Barrowlands):

As a theme it does come up often enough in biographies of geniuses, fictional or otherwise, both artists and scientists: the frustrating insight that you yourself are the only one who can recognise the depth, truly appreciate the beauty, enjoy the elegance of your work – the loneliness of the genius creator of the genius masterpiece. And via a long-standing diversions, this motif now seems to creep into Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece” as well.

The disappearance of female company from that hotel room in 2002 still seems to be something Dylan initially regrets, in the sparse performances thereafter. In the years up to the seemingly last performance in 2011 the first lines still remain unchanged, the narrator rushing across Rome’s streets and down the Spanish Steps back to his hotel room on that cold dark night, but then:

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I’ll paint all the walls, and paint them all with grease
She promised she’ll be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.

… an unnamed “she” as a replacement for the Greek beauty and Botticelli’s niece, in other words. Not very striking, though; much more striking, of course, is that thing with fat, with “grease” – which will be further elaborated in the probably final version, the version we are graced with on the Shadow Kingdom release in 2021. The corona surprise marks the triumphant return of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. The song opens both the 2021 set and the soundtrack released in 2023 of that online corona concert, and thereafter remains on the setlist in all concerts of The Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour (2021-2024), usually around the fifth spot.

We can follow in quite detail Dylan’s wrestling with that first verse from 2018 through to today’s version from 2021. So, after 2011 Masterpiece is put in the drawer for seven years, but then, when Dylan has rehabilitated the song and dusted it off in the summer of 2018 at the start of the Far East & Down Under Tour, we hear:

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Gonna swap out all my clothes, scrape off all of the grease.
Gonna stay right there, gonna lock the doors on the world for a while
Gonna stay right there until I paint my masterpiece

The perhaps a bit too vulgar “swap out” is soon replaced by “wash out”, scraping off the grease is a keeper. Three weeks later and 8400 km (5200 miles) away, 26 August in Christchurch, New Zealand it is:

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Gonna wash out my clothes, scrape off all the grease.
Gonna lock the doors, gonna turn my back on the world for a while
Gonna stay right there until I paint my masterpiece

Bob Dylan – When I Paint My Masterpiece Christchurch 2018:

… and then Dylan only still fiddles with those last lines. We hear different variants with and without locking the doors and with and without turning my back on the world, which makes no difference to the thrust whatsoever. Main point: ladies are no longer welcome. The elder Dylan definitely decides on a radical change of tone, gone is the oh-la-la couleur. From now on we listen to a solitary, tormented artist deliberately cutting himself off from the world and its carnal temptations.

Ah, Humboldt exclaimed, what is science then? Gauss sucked his pipe. A man alone at his desk. A sheet of paper in front of him, a telescope at best, the clear sky outside the window. If this man doesn’t give up until he understands. That might be science.
(Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann)

Fitting to this new scenario are also the lyrics adjustments in the opening of the second verse, the Coliseum couplet. In 2002, the first time the ladies were discarded, he is still dodging lions and wasting time, and keeps on doing so in the years that follow. Only in 2018, at the resuscitation of “When I Paint My Masterpiece” in the Far East, do we hear:

Well, the hours I’ve spent inside the Coliseum
Dodgin’ lions with a mean and hungry look
Those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see ’em
I could see ‘em comin’, I could read their faces like a book

… which is given a much more transparent metaphorical quality by the plot shift to a lonely, tormented artist; Dylan has decided that the artist is no longer idly loitering, down there in the arena – wasting time is dropped once and for all. The Coliseum is now unmistakably the stage, the publicness in which the artist for so long has been offering panem et circenses, bread and games to the public. The lions are now mean and hungry – evoking the critics, the arrogant reviewers, the howlers, the disgruntled fans, the Judas-and-treason-shouting disappointed ones. Who confront the creative, misunderstood genius with the same depressing truth as the young Gauß experiences;

“Not being able to look away was sadness. Being awake was sadness. Recognising, poor Bartels, was despair.”

… I could hardly stand to see ’em, I could see ‘em comin’, I could read their faces like a book.

To be continued. Next up When I Paint My Masterpiece part 6: Pete, money is coming in

———–

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:

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The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour 17: Every grain of sand

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

————

Commentary by Tony Attwood, audio kindly provided by Mr Tambourine.

The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour 17: Every grain of sand

Every grain of sand begins on the video at 3 hours 17 minutes 18 seconds (approx).

This is a 1981 song with a new melody – although really most of the time Bob is just reciting or declaiming the lyrics rather than singing them. He first performed the piece live in 1981 and the most recent playing of it is shown on the official site as 6 April 2024, making it 382 performances all told by that date.

The style and approach – and indeed most of the arrangement – is similar to that which was used at the end of the Never Ending Tour. Here for example is the recording from 2013.

Clearly, in terms of live performances, I have seriously diverged from Bob in terms of what works for I really didn’t like the ceaseless repetition of musical phrases, and indeed individual notes in the Tour version, and Bob has kept almost every element of this arrangement.

Of course this is my failing, for in a real sense, this arrangement is a reflection of the lines from the song

There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

But does that need to have individual notes played over and over again, or indeed that same three-note descending pattern, likewise played repeatedly in order to express those lyrics in music?

Of course, Bob is the master, and I’m just a writer – worse I’m a songwriter whose songs never made much money – so I clearly have no right to criticise. Which means I have to acknowledge that the failure to get any delight from the repeated notes and phrases, or indeed any insight, is entirely mine.

Yes of course there are moments here when the music and the lyrics are as one. I think particularly of the lines that suggest there is no escape, which is something that I feel the music puts across totally…

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way, I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

So perhaps what I am feeling is that these are thoughts that I have had in the past but have left far behind and simply don’t want to be reminded of. Thoughts that I have had in my life, and which I have found to uncomfortable to live with. Thoughts such as

In the bitter dance of loneliness, fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

Sometimes of course with Dylan it is possible to ignore the music and just feel the lyrics – and indeed vice versa. But here with that endless three note descending line and then the section where the same note is played over and over again, I find I can’t escape from those lines. Not because I am lonely – fortunately for me that period of my life has long since gone. It is just that the ceaseless repetition of three notes becomes irritating.

And I guess this is the point. I love Dylan’s music and his lyrics, and I don’t think I have ever, since first hearing the Freewheelin’ album as a teenager, become irritated with an arrangement… until now.

Of course, it is just me, and I would love it if someone else were to write a review of this performance of this song on the tour, so I could learn from their appreciation of the song. But for now, no this is not for me. I have however taken comfort in the original album version… and if you have time, do listen to the harmonica solo, just in case you have forgotten it from all those years ago.

Previously in this series

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Once or twice: songs that Bob has performed, but only rarely… “Caribbean Wind”

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

Once or twice: A recently inaugurated review of songs that Bob has performed just once or twice on stage. Previously we looked at The girl on the Greenbriar Shore and Only a hobo.

Today it is Caribbean Wind which was (officially) only performed on 12 November 1980 in San Fransisco. I have quoted before Dylan’s comment on the piece to Cameron Crowe, “I couldn’t quite grasp what [‘Caribbean Wind’] was about, after I finished it. Sometimes you write something to be very inspired, and you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few little pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place. Frustration sets in.”

And of course we have the video from that gig

I have to admit I don’t really get Bob’s explanation, as it suggests two things that I don’t go with. The first is that all his other songs that are played more than once are all clearly about something. Of course he is the composer; I’m merely a fan. But no, this song is no more obscure than “All along the watchtower” which last time I looked had been played over 2,200 times.

And the point can also be made that this song is as much about the overall sound – the music and the lyrics. It is just so energetic and exciting, and indeed so full of possibilities. My own view for what it is worth is that this live recording didn’t fully reach the heights that the song could be taken to – and in that regard it is not alone. In many other songs Bob persevered with the work transforming it as it went. Giving up after one performance is really not his style.

The version recorded in the Shot of Love sessions is less frantic, and to my mind a better version because of that.

And as I listen to that recording again today, I am, as so many times before, utterly bemused. I am not concerned with what the lyrics actually mean, and indeed as Bob said once “Sometimes a song is about exactly what it sounds like it’s about.”

No the lyrics are not everything, but this is not to say this is a perfect song – if I were to be working on this and be asked my opinion (which of course I was not, and never would be) I would have said it is perfect apart from the musical interlude between the verses. Everything else is great – even the way the organ is only to be heard through part of the recording. And I am sure it hasn’t been mixed out, because if that were the case the ending would have been edited too.

Plus we have the fact that the lyrics are intriguing, the musicians know exactly where they are and what they are doing (which is not always the case!) and the contrast musically between the verse and the chorus is superb and sustains the song through its six plus minutes of performance.

So I think what we have here is a case of Bob knowing that there was more work to do, but just not having the energy or inclination or the time to do it, and then justifying that feeling.

But that is not all there is to say here. Because that listing on the official site of just one performance is wrong. And we know that as we also have evidence of the version performed live on 12 November 1980 – so before the studio recording was made. I can’t make this open automatically but if you click on this link you should get it. https://youtu.be/CmgvKgScXLU

Now this of course raises the horrible realisation (well, ok we knew a long time ago, but here’s the evidence) that the official Bob Dylan site makes mistakes. Goodness me! And of course you might be saying, well, since you have included this in the recently started “Once or twice” series, you are wrong too.” Except no, that 1981 version is a studio recording.

Bob did say that ““We left it off the album (as it was) quite different to anything I wrote….The way the story line changes from 3rd person to 1st person and that person becomes you, then these people are there and they’re not there. And then the time goes way back and then it’s brought up to the present. I thought it was really effective”.

So there we have it, two contradictory views from Bob, but we can include this song in the “only once or twice” category, because although there may have been other performances I’ve only got evidence of two.

And besides I love the song.

She was the rose of Sharon from paradise lost
From the city of seven hills near the place of the cross
I was playing a show in Miami in the theater of divine comedy
Told about Jesus, told about the rain
She told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain
By the man who had been dyin', who disappeared so mysteriously

Was she a child or a woman, did we go too far?
Were we sniper bait, did we follow a star?
Through a hole in the wall 
        to where the long arm of the law cannot not reach
Could I been used and played as a pawn?
It certainly was possible as the gay night wore on
Where men bathed in perfume and practiced the hoax of free speech

And them Caribbean winds still blow from Nassau to Mexico
Fanning the flames in the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire

Sea breeze blowin', there's a hellhound loose
Redeemed men, who have escaped from the noose
Preaching faith and salvation, waiting for the night to arrive
He was well connected, but her heart was a snare
And she had left him to die in there
He was goin' down slow, just barely staying alive

The cry of the peacock, flies buzz my head
Ceiling fan broken, there's a heat in my bed
Street band playing "Nearer My God to Thee"
We met at the station where the mission bells ring
She said, "I know what you're thinking, but there ain't a thing
You can do about it, so let us just agree to agree"

And them Caribbean winds still blow from Nassau to Mexico
Fanning the flames in the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire

Atlantic City by the cold grey sea
Hear a voice crying, "Daddy, " I always think it's for me
But it's only the silence in the buttermilk hills that call
Every new messenger brings evil report
'Bout armies on the march and time that is short
And famines and earthquakes and train wrecks 
               and the tearin' down of the wall

Did you ever have a dream, that you couldn't explain?
Ever meet your accusers, face to face in the rain?
She had chrome brown eyes that I won't forget as long as she's gone
I see the screws breakin' loose, see the devil pounding on tin
I see a house in the country being torn apart from within
I can hear my ancestors calling from the land far beyond

And them Caribbean winds still blow from Nassau to Mexico
Fanning the flames in the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire

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Just like a woman: the lyrics and the music

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The lyrics and the music. Looking at how Dylan’s music relates to his lyrics and vice versa.

“Just like a woman” has clearly been one of Dylan’s favourite songs being performed 871 times on stage to date – although not since 2010.

On the original recording (below) it has quite a remarkable introduction of a harmonica part that could be described as “wailing” or even indeed painful, and then the opening line “Nobody feels any pain”. It is a total contradiction of music and lyrics and it sets the scene perfectly for what is to come.

For if ever there was a painful opening to a song that is it. If ever there was a lyrical opening which contradicts the world we know the notion that “nobody feels any pain” that is it. It is the perfect balance of music and lyrics.

But then the rest of the opening verse leaves us unsure

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Everybody knows that baby's got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls

It is a contradiction between the new clothes and ribbons and bows falling from her hair. And that is a problem because musically, contradictions are very hard to portray while keeping the audience interested. Do it literally and the music sounds like a mess. Ignore it, and the music sounds out of touch with the lyrics.

However, what keeps us intrigued here is that opening percussion part, which is completely unexpected for Dylan.

What we also get is the descending musical line of “Lately I see her ribbons and her bows”, and with a lesser writer that could appear to be very obvious – falling ribbons and descending musical line, but the pace of the music and the intrigue within the lyrics thus far hold the two together. Even if we don’t overtly feel the falling of the ribbons, within us we appreciate that the music is descending and so is the subject of the song.

Then we come to the chorus in which the line “Just like a woman” is repeated three times each time at a lower register of notes than the opening words “she takes”, “she makes love”. It is implied musically, that now we are hearing about the real woman…

She takes just like a woman
Yes, she does, she makes love just like a woman
Yes, she does, and she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

That contrast between the music at the point of “just like a woman” and the singing of the opening words, really does enhance our immediate understanding of the contradiction within the woman. She is two people – the woman and the little girl.

Now anything further in terms of musical change between “She takes” and “just like a woman” would go too far. It would overplay the part and start to make the piece seem too critical of the little girl / woman and not a unified piece of music. But because the change between the two parts is managed, we accept the contrast.

Of course we know the song so well now it is hard to remember the impact of first hearing those lines, but it really is very powerful – but also limited – in order to make it work so that musically it reflects the lyrics.to create a unified meaning.

There is also the short musical interlude between the verses of the solo acoustic guitar picking out individual notes, followed by the organ with its descending pattern. These again focus on the contrast: the delicate young woman symbolised by the acoustic guitar, and her attempt to be an adult with the descending organ.

I am not suggesting, of course, that in hearing this for the first time we fully appreciate consciously that this is the picture that is painted – but rather by creating the music in this way Dylan (and any of the instrumentalists who helped create the piece as we hear it on the original recording) make the music enhance the meaning and indeed the sadness of the song.

The “middle 8” section

It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse is this pain in here
I can't stay in here

contains within it more force in the lyrics – the rain, dying of thirst, the curse, the pain… and it would be tempting to make the music much more forceful here, (or worse add the sound of thunder!!) but Dylan resists the temptation. Instead, the difference is symbolised by a sudden and completely unexpected key change.

The song is in C, but here at the start of the middle 8, we jump into E – a totally unrelated key. But then with “So I came in here” we are back in C. Then with the long-time curse, we are suddenly back with E. Using these two unrelated chords at this point stresses the contrast within the girl / woman. It doesn’t matter that most listeners won’t know the technicality of how this is achieved, but everyone will feel the difference and the contrast.

These are all subtle movements of the music, but together they take what could have simply been a delicate and rather nice song about the contrasting emotions that relationships and events can arouse, into a song with which we can feel the emotions ourselves through the balance of the music and the lyrics.

It is once more, an extraordinary piece of work that to me can only be fully appreciated through considering both lyrics and music. To ignore the music and think only of the lyrics misses half of the point and ignores much of Dylan’s genius.

—-

And the songs reviewed from the music plus lyrics viewpoint…

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: I don’t believe you (she acts like we never have met)

Posted on April 27, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The Never Ending Tour Extended: This series uses recordings selected by Mike Johnson in his inestimable masterpiece The Never Ending Tour, and looks at how those performances of individual songs change as time goes by. The selection of songs from the series, and the commentary below, are by Tony Attwood.

I Don’t Believe You (She acts like we never have met) appeared on “Another Side of Bob Dylan) and was performed by Bob 349 times between 1964 and 2013. Which as noted in the commentary below means that the song was approaching 50 years of age by the time Bob finally put it to rest. An extraordinary achievement.

And not for the first time do I find myself reflecting on how much poorer my life would be, and how much shallower my understanding of Bob Dylan’s work would be, if we didn’t have a) these recordings and b) Mike’s extraordinary work in putting them together for the Never Ending Tour series.

In the case of “I don’t believe you” (and I’ll use the first half of the song’s title here just for simplicity) my thought is that from the start Bob was trying to find ways to do something different with the song from the way it appeared on the album, but perhaps not always as successfully as we might wish. However by the time of the final performances in 2013 a real fondness for the old piece was really there, and it does sound to me as if he knows he is saying goodbye to a friend who had been there for much of his life.

But let’s go back to the earlier times… And as I say, although the song was written in 1964, for the purposes of the NET we pick it up when it was already 30 years old.

1994 Absolutely Vintage Dylan, Encore

This version sounds to me like one of those moments on the tour when Bob wanted to do something different with the song but couldn’t quite find. The vocals start out plaintive and gentle but then there is the curious singing of a note at the end of the last two lines of the first verse which doesn’t fit the chord.

Indeed I get the feeling that this version is all about the sound, not the lyrics, for lots of the words are not clear, but there is a huge amount of interweaving of different musical lines as the performance progressed. And although the song is so sad it is now played with a jolly beat which contrasts with the clash of the last note Dylan sings in many lines. But there is a lovely expressive guitar instrumental break half way through. And around the 6 minutes 15 seconds mark we do get a moment of peaceful reflection before all the instruments get entwined and then slow down.

1995: The Prague Revelation – down in the flood

But now within a year we have a slower more plaintive version with a much sader voice, and with hints of those slightly strange melodic changes which don’t fit with the chords. Does this express the disharmony which is the heart of the commentary of the song? It is now a seven minute song, but is it? In the instrumental break the organ is also occasionally playing chords that don’t exactly fit. Plaintive it is, but also a display of disharmony, at least until we approach the final minute of the performance

2002: Manchester and other outstanding performances

So this is seven years on and now although it is a little hard to hear on this recording we open with a harmonica, and then Bob declaiming the lyrics rather than singing them. I quite like this – at least more than his work of singing notes that are outside the melody itself. This is Bob the story teller. And it is consistent throughout the song. It is prolonged as heart break and breakups often are, but also has a relaxed gentle instrumental section. All told it sounds as if the singer has come to terms with her change of attitude.

2009: Contending forces: through the tears and the laughter

Now we have more emphasis on the percussion, and just when I thought it could not get sadder we have an even sadder voice. To me this is almost as if he is now blaming her more than before. And musically I get the feeling that he is deliberately trying to find something new to do with the song without losing the style that he has adopted through out.

Butfor me that is when it doesn’t work so well. Dylan re-writes are at their best when they flow naturally as an alternative version of the song. This sounds to me like a deliberate attempt to find a new musical angle.

But then… there is the prolonged harmonica solo, which redeems everything and by the end I find I’ve forgiven Dylan for all his meanderings.

Also I find it interesting that seven years after the previous recording there are still similarities. What was at first an unappealing version becomes one that I rather like.

2010: Fires on the Moon

And now suddenly we have a version that is much stronger in its approach – it was also a moment when Dylan gets out the harmonica for the first time in the evening. The beat is now a central point of the performance. And suddenly the whole song has got a lot shorter.

2013 Shedding old Favourites: A Roman Farewell.

“A Roman Farewell” as with all the titles of each section in this article, are the titles Mike gave to his complete article. But this does also apply to this song. We are just about at the end of the live performances of this piece 49 years on from the first outing. And yes it still stands up to the test of time.

Other articles in this series…

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Where are you tonight?

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

A list of the previous articles in the “Dylan cover a day” series is printed at the end.

by Tony Attwood

There have been a couple of articles on “Where are you tonight” over the years on this site and each time we note the singular lack of cover versions of what, I would suggest, is a very coverable song.

Quite why no one wants to take it on, when some other Dylan songs have got cover after cover after cover I have no idea. But there it is.

There is a passable home recording available through this link by Dave Tilton and it deserves a mention because where so many others have failed to deliver he has produced a recording.

There is full band version which is certainly a good representation of the song, and worth hearing, although it doesn’t take us any further in our understanding of the piece. This is Winn Dillon.

Otherwise we mostly have recordings made by solo singers doing their own version. This is Dewey Paul

Katie Robbins is to my mind the best of the few covers that we have, just because she has a voice that to me seems to particularly suited to the song. I find her movements irrelevant, but that’s probably just me.

So where does that leave us? For myself I just feel there must be much more one can do covering this song. But then maybe everyone thinking of covers does the same as me and takes the songs to be covered in alphabetical order, so gets bored, or dies, before they to to W.

But it is also possible that the problem is the music. Basically there are six couplets which musically are identical, rotating across two chords. Then you get the chorus which is a relief. But then there are six couplets, and a chorus again. Then there are not six but eight couplets, and then the final chorus.

In case I am not being clear, here are the first two couplets

There's a long distance train rolling through the rain
Tears on the letter I write
There's a woman I long to touch and I missin' her so much
But she's drifting like a satellite

Now Dylan can get away with this because we hang on every word, but a cover artist needs more than this to hold the audience, and there is the problem. Because the nature of the music is such that it is quite hard to do anything with those couplets. But short of doing a total rewrite of the accompaniment and thus changing the nature of the song I am not sure what anyone else can do. In effect Dylan has made the song virtually cover-proof.

It works on the album because it is part of the album. In the live version the female chorus helps, and Dylan himself varies his way of singing the lines, adding new emphases and well, it’s Bob, and it’s live, so we’ll accept it.

And here’s a thought: after 33 performances even Bob gave up on the song.

Dylan live

Previously in the series

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When I Paint My Masterpiece (part 4: I love the sound of words, yeah

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

———–

by Jochen Markhorst

When I Paint My Masterpiece part 1: She’s delicate and seems like a Vermeer
When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971) part 2: Oh, the streets of SoHo
When I Paint My Masterpiece part 3. Blake did come up with some bold lines

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you’re seein’ double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece
She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece

A pregnant woman gets into a car accident and falls into a deep coma. Asleep for nearly six months, she wakes up and sees that she is no longer pregnant.

“No need to worry,” the nurse says, “you had twins! A beautiful boy and a beautiful girl. The babies are fine. Your brother came in and took care of everything. He even named them.”

“Oh no, not my brother,” the woman shrieks, “he’s an idiot! What did he name them?”

“The girl is named Denise,” the nurse answers.

“Oh. Well, that’s not so bad. And the boy?”

“Denephew.”

An old, but still witty joke, built on a similar play on words as the sound similarity that led to the introduction of Botticelli’s niece. At least, that’s what Tony Attwood suspects in his June 2015 article (“When I Paint My Masterpiece: the meaning of the lyrics and the music”, Untold Dylan): “I think turning Botticelli’s Venus into Botticelli’s niece is a nice piece of fun for Dylan, which gives him a handy rhyme.”

Which does seem plausible, yes. Dylan is a song poet who is guided primarily by sound, as he himself states time and again – referring not only to the sound quality or “colour” of the accompanying music, but also to the euphony of the words. “The semantic meaning is all in the sounds of the words,” he says in his autobiography Chronicles about his own song “Everything Is Broken”. His recollection of how he came to his stage name also illustrates how much he is driven by sound:

“Robert Dylan. Robert Allyn. I couldn’t decide — the letter D came on stronger. But Robert Dylan didn’t look or sound as good as Robert Allyn. People had always called me either Robert or Bobby, but Bobby Dylan sounded too skittish to me and besides, there already was a Bobby Darin, a Bobby Vee, a Bobby Rydell, a Bobby Neely and a lot of other Bobbys. Bob Dylan looked and sounded better than Bob Allyn.”

Just as names at all seem to have a strong effect on the synaesthetic side of his sense of language. “By the sound of his name you’d think he looked like Von Hindenburg, but he doesn’t” (Chronicles, on Clausewitz); “Originally, Volare was sung by an Italian singer named Domenico Modugno—just the sound of his name creates its own song.” Or about Donny Young changing his name to Johnny Paycheck: “That name was sounding too sunshiny for a man who was waking up in alleyways with tattered clothes after a three-day drunk” (The Philosophy of Modern Song, 2022). And it applies to place names just as much, as he confirms to Christopher Sykes of the BBC in 1986 for the programme Omnibus. Including an explicit declaration of love:

CS: You like the names of places, don’t you? Like “Baton Rouge”.
BD: “Belfast”! [laughs] “Whitney Houston” [laughs]. Sounds like the name of a town, don’t it? I love the sound of words, yeah.

But apparently the love for the sound of “Botticelli’s niece” quickly cooled. Already before Greatest Hits Vol. II is released (17 November 1971), featuring the Dylan/Russell version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, Dylan has donated the song to The Band. The Band’s – brilliant – version is the first to be released, on Cahoots, which hits shops 15 September. The first thing we notice, when putting Greatest Hits on the turntable two months after, is the replacement of Botticelli’s niece. Instead, Levon Helm sings:

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece
And she promised she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece

Since the 2013 release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), we know that Dylan very quickly replaced the Italian beauty with the pretty little girl from Greece. The last track of Disc 2 is a demo version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, a solo version of Dylan at the piano, recorded on 19 March 1971 – the fourth and last day of the Blue Rock sessions with Leon Russell. And on it, indeed, he already sings: “a date with a pretty little girl from Greece”.

Bob Dylan – When I Paint My Masterpiece (Demo):

However, the little Greek lady is not exactly a keeper either. The song is a favourite at the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Dylan usually opens the show with a somewhat ferocious version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, in duet with Bob Neuwirth, with the men making a stew of the lyrics anyway, and after a week they’ve grown bored of the young attractive Hellenian.

The sixth show, 4 November 1975 Providence, Rhode Island marks the triumphant return of Sandro’s relative, Botticelli’s niece. Not the definitive return, though. The line keeps on irritating Dylan, one would almost suspect. After the Rolling Thunder Revue, it takes eleven years before the song is back on the setlist in 1987, and behold: out with the old, in with the other old – there’s the Greek maiden again. For as long as it lasts, that is.

The song is dropped again after three performances in 1987. In between, in June 1987 Dylan practices the song with Grateful Dead (and then again sings pretty little girl from Greece), but the song does not make it to the setlist of the joint tour 4-26 July. Which seems to be down to Dylan; the guys from the Grateful Dead love the song. Jerry Garcia has been playing the song since the 1970s with his various side projects. And the band has “When I Paint My Masterpiece” on the setlist around those rehearsal days with Dylan during their own concerts (13 June in Ventura, 21 June in Berkeley and 30 June in Vaughan). Staying there for years; until 1995, the men play the song 146 times. Always with Botticelli’s niece, by the way, who seems closer to their hearts indeed.

With Dylan, Masterpiece does not return until the early summer of 1991. Reluctantly, it almost seems. The performances are less scintillating (especially compared to the sparkling Rolling Thunder renditions), and Dylan seems unable to make up his mind about the girl’s identity: the date with-line is rehashed and frayed, and is first again a girl from Greece, without pretty (to add insult to injury: precisely when he finally plays the song in Rome, 6 June), but in the late summer, in South America, he reveals to both Argentinian (Buenos Aires, 9 August) and Brazilian fans (Sao Paolo, 16 August) that she is Botticelli’s niece after all.

After that, the song leads a dormant existence for years. Occasionally Dylan surprises his audience with a performance of it, as with a particularly attractive, largely acoustic performance in Brussels in 2002, from which both ladies suddenly have disappeared;

Gotta hurry on back
I’ll be just for a little while
And I’m going go in 
While I’m here at least
One day I’m gonna get it together
I’m gonna paint my masterpiece

[The exact words are not easy to understand, but it is in any case a radical change]

Bob Dylan – When I Paint My Masterpiece , Brussels 2002:

It’s a first run-in, but for now it doesn’t really take off. This is the only time in 2002 he plays the song, after a single outing in 2001 (24 June, Trondheim) and a single one in 2000 (5 April, Kansas). Until 2011 (22 June, Milan), “When I Paint My Masterpiece” will sound through a concert hall only 10 times, then fading away again for years.

But then it’s 27 July 2018 and we’re in Seoul, the start of the 2018 Far East & Down Under Tour …

To be continued. Next up When I Paint My Masterpiece part 5: A man alone at his desk

———–

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:

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Goodbye Jimmy Reed: The Rough and Rowdie Ways Tour, 16.

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

————

Commentary by Tony Attwood, audio kindly provided by Mr Tambourine.

Goodbye Jimmy Reed starts at around 1hr, 23 min, 22 sec

There’s quite a fiddly introduction before we hit the 12 bar blues format complete with 12 bar accompaniment, but that unexpected ending and the last line with the extra guitar accompaniment which we find in the recording is still there.

As the performance goes on the 12 bar format gets more solid, but Bob does allow an extra few bars between the verses which certainly fits nicely with that extra bar at the end of the verse.

And then around 1:26:30 we get the variation, followed by one of the strangest and odd sounding instrumental breaks I think I have ever heard. Quite what the repeated chord from the guitar is for, I don’t know, but obviously Bob thought it ok, so it is just me not quite getting it. Then we get an instrumental end.

It’s another crowd pleaser obviously, and so I’m once more the odd one out. But it is nice to hear Bob introduce the band and to have a little chat with the audience too

So what is to be made of the performance? It is pretty much the track we know, but with the instrumental break which for me sounds a bit of a mess. And I somehow feel I’ve now lost touch with the lyrics.

By which I mean having a 12 bar blues which starts “I live on a street named after a saint” really is quite a dramatic turnaround in the old format, although I subsequently still find myself distracted by the two different meanings of “Proddie” – although everyone seems to agree Bob used it to mean “Protestant” which is the common (if offensive) meaning.

But leaving that aside there are some great, great lines in this song such as

You won't amount too much, the people all said
'Cause I didn't play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took off my shoes, throw 'em in the crowd

And it gives a chance to play “Out in Virginia” from which the short musical theme behind the song originally comes from. You can hear it via the link below.

https://youtu.be/PgYfcHBlUVs

Previously in this series

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Once or twice: Songs that Bob has rarely performed. Only a hobo

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

Once or twice is a review of songs that Bob has performed just once or twice on stage. The first article was The girl on the Greenbriar Shore – complete with a video. This consideration of “Only a hob” is the second article.

———

By Tony Attwood

Here again we have a recording which those providing it state was the one and only live recording on April 12 1963, and I have included it from two sources, in case either don’t work in your location, or in case one of them vanishes. Those are the last two versions set below.

There is also a fairly fulsome article (even though I say it myself) about the history of the song including recordings, on this site so I won’t repeat all that turned up there.

Here is the first of the two versions from the studio. And it is easy to tell each version apart by the guitar rhythm, and in this case the banjo. Plus backing harmonies too.

I imagine (and you can probably correct me) this second version (below) was from the same recording session as the version above not least because both versions are in the same key and performed at the same speed. Bob from the start was a great experimenter with changing the tempo and key of songs – something that has continued on the Never Ending Tour and thereafter, through to today. You can find some examples in the “Never Ending Tour Extended” series which is highlighted on the home page (or at least it is at the time of writing).

So now we come onto what I think is the one and only live version, recorded 12 April 1963, according to the official site. Two different online sources as noted above, in case one of them vanishes or is not available in your area.

It is interesting to note that although of course we consider this a very early Dylan recording, by the time this track was laid down Bob has already performed, “Song to Woody”, “See that my grave is kept clean”, “Fixin to Die”, “Blowing in the Wind”, “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” “Don’t Think Twice”, “Masters of war”, and “Bob Dylan’s Dream” among of course many others.

So my point is that although this was a very early recording in Dylan’s overall career this was not an inexperienced performer getting used to a studio. He was already mixing performances of the classic folk songs with his own new compositions.

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The lyrics and the music: Jokerman – a song of innovations then forgotten

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

———–

“The Lyrics and the Music” is a series by Tony Attwood which sets out 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. There is an index to previous articles in this series, at the end.

The thing that immediately strikes me about the music of recording of Jokerman used on the album, is the bass. Not just that the bass is one note rapidly repeated over and over (although admittedly with the very occasional secondary note at the end of each bar which we hardly notice), but that the musical phrases are six bars long.

Now normally in popular music, the phrases are four bars long but here this is not the case

Standing on the waters casting your bread (Bars 1 and 2)
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing (Bars 3 and 4 with two bars of musical interlude after “glowing”)
Distant ships sailing into the mist (Bars 7 and 8)
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing (bars 9 and 10 and another two bars interlude at the end)
Freedom just around the corner for you (bars 11 to 14)
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do? (bars 15 to 18)

The chorus is then the conventional eight bars, and overall none of this sounds odd or strangely extended, because of two other factors that distract us musically. One is the constant use of the bass primarily on one note through the verse, and the pauses between the lines (bars 5 and 6, and then again after bars 9 and 10).

But we are also distracted by two very un-Dylan musical elements. First the “oh….. oh oh oh oh….” before the word Jokerman (Dylan normally uses words, not sounds). And second by the way the line “Birds fly high” is sung in the second chorus with his voice jumping up and down a fifth rather than remaining on the same note throughout that phrase. It is all very un-Dylan.

But that is not all. For there is a very solid drum beat throughout most of the song (although not all of it) on the third beat of every other bar. (That is very un-rock, where the accented beat is on the second and fourth beat of every bar). Then in chorus the beat is on the third beat of every line. It is all incredibly un-Dylan.

And indeed that is not all because just before the opening line of the chorus (“Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune”) there is a syncopated rhythm in which beats 1 3 and 4 are suddenly emphasised before Dylan sings that opening chorus line).

Of course my memory might be playing me false but I can’t think of any other Dylan song that has any of these effects within it.

Now it may well be argued that such effects are worthy of this piece because the title is “Jokerman” and Bob is indeed having fun here playing with the accompaniment in ways he never does anywhere else.

But that “he never does anywhere else” phrase is interesting, because this is not just one musical idea that Bob introduces for the one and only time, but in effect there are four issues here that I can’t immediately place in any other song. (And I would add that if they do appear in any other songs then such appearances are rare, and I doubt that there are four very unusual musical techniques in any other Dylan song. One maybe, perhaps even two, although I can’t quite think of an example. But four… no).

These four innovations therefore are…

Repetitive bass note over such a prolonged period
Six bar phrases
Complete change of rhythm leading up to the chorus
The eight-note “oh oh oh” lyrics before the word “Jokerman”

Which raises the question, why put all those innovations into one song? I mean, musically they are very interesting, and worthy of further exploration, but they all seemed to come along here, get used once, and that was that.

One possible explanation is that there was someone helping Bob with ideas at this point – someone from the band maybe. Another is that Bob had the lyrics to Jokerman but couldn’t find the music, and so as his own joke, took ideas from other people’s musical work, just for this occasion.

Of course there is nothing amiss in any of this – having a six bar phrase or singing “oh oh oh” over a range of notes is hardly original in popular music (although the six bar phrase is rare). Except each one was unusual, and I am suggesting quite possibly unique, for Bob.

Now Bob is certainly not going to tell us what is going on, but I remain fascinated by the appearance of four innovations all at once, which are then set aside (at least as far as I can recall while writing this piece) never to be used again.

And here’s a thought. At least two of these innovations are not essential to the song’s essence…. although as it turns out picking up the wrong harmonica doesn’t actually help. For in this live version, they vanish.

Series intro: most analyses of Dylan’s songs mistake the essence of what the songs are

And the songs reviewed from the music plus lyrics viewpoint…

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: Duquesne Whistle 2013-2018

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

From 2013 to 2018 Duquense Whistle got 350 outings from Bob, and from the start, it didn’t really sound like the version on the record. And I found that very strange, both because I really liked the original and didn’t see why it needed developing, and because I have gradually got used to the notion of songs evolving over time, rather than evolving between the making of the record and the very start of their performances on the tour.

What I find very curious is that the first time I heard the concert versions from 2013 I had the impression that Bob had speeded the song up, but in fact that is not so. He’s changed the melody and the accompaniment, and it feels faster, but no the tempo is virtually identical. (Of course it also shows that the old music memory is not as secure as I thought, but I’ll pass over that…)

However what I can say for sure is that the whole song is treated as fun, and that really does come across.

2013: The art of the Dramatic Monologue

The following year we had more mixed-up introduction with everyone doing his own thing, and then this time it really is that bit faster – and the melody has changed in parts too, But to my mind not always for the better. It feels to me that this slight increase in the tempo has been at the expense of some of the elegance of the song. And that is strange because the increase in speed is really not that great, and one would hardly notice it if not specifically listening out for it.

Yet it also feels to me as if Bob has to some degree lost touch with the meaning and feel of the song as a whole and is instead just having fun playing the piece as fast as it can go.

There are some benefits though – as for example there are some really interesting new moments in the instrumental breaks. Yet at the same time the whole meaning of lyrics, along with the fun of the original melody seem to me to have gone. So while for many of the songs we’ve traced through their developmental stages I’m fascinated by each change, somewhere here I find I’m losing interest – although there are some fun moments in the final instrumental break which rounds off the song.

2014: 2014 part 1: The Setlist, the first half.

But just when it seemed Bob had lost touch with one of his masterpieces there is a significant and indeed successful attempt to reign things in, as the 2015 version which becomes quite a bit less frantic. Now these changes are once more fairly modest, and of course made as the tour goes on, but to me they are interesting since they show an attention to detail which we may perhaps sometimes feel is lost in the night after night of playing the same song over and over.

They are also changes which, when we go to a concert as a one-off event, can’t fully be appreciated. And indeed if it were not for Mike’s work in gathering all these recordings together, I most certainly would never have been aware of exactly what Bob was doing. Of course, I appreciate the major re-wrtes he sometimes does, but these tiny changes to the performance of songs as the tour moves along I had never appreciated before. And I am not sure any commentator has – because it is only by listening to the recordings one after the other away from the excitement of actually being there, that they become clear.

Moving on, in the 2015 version below there is for me an additional clarity in the song which I welcome

2015: Bring on the setlist

The changes however had not stopped. They might be subtle but slowly these changes were actually doing something rather unlikely – they were taking us back to the original album version. Not completely, but inch by inch we were getting there.

2016: Embodying American Music

The last recording (below) that we have of the song from the Never Ending Tour has cleaned up the start and made some more subtle changes to that guitar based introduction, and then Bob comes in – in a completely different way. Bob is now reflective, almost looking back at the history of his own song as much as performing to the audience.

I find this final version quite remarkable: over these six years and 350 performances Bob has nudged this fun, bouncy song along through changes – sometimes small sometimes greater and ended up with what sounds to me like quite a different song from the one we started with.

Indeed after playing the 2018 version below as I write this article, I once more played the album version just to get a final feel of the way the song had moved. And not for the first time I wondered how these changes came about. Is it the band rehearsing with Bob, is it Bob saying what they should do, or does it just happen?

When the differences are modest I feel it could easily be either Bob or a member of the band just slipping something extra in and then everyone likes it, it seems to work, so it stays. But here the changes are more subtle, with elements introduced, removed, re-introduced, developed…

Thus we don’t have the huge re-arrangements that we can find when a song is left on the sidelines for years and then suddenly brought back, but these modifications are still very interesting, illuminating, and yes for me, highly enjoyable.

2018: Hell bent for leather

So having got to the final recording from Mike’s Never Ending Tour series yes, I did once more play the original recorded version, which just to save you scrolling to the top, I’ll present once again, because… well I like the song and I find it illuminating.

Other articles in this series…

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A Dylan cover a day: When the deal goes down

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

A list of the previous articles in the “Dylan cover a day” series is printed at the end.

———–

By Tony Attwood

As I have confessed in my review of this piece some seven years ago, this is not one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, perhaps in part because it seems to be based on “Where the Blue of the Night” which I didn’t particularly like either. I’ve put a copy of that song sung by Bing Crosby below – in common with the convention of the era there is a musical prelude before the part of the song those of us who remember it will primarily recall, which comes in at 38 seconds. I have a feeling this was one of my mum’s favourites and my dad played this on the piano.

In case you can’t immediately recall Bob’s song after hearing that original above, here it is

So as I have said, Bob’s version never appealed to me much because I always found the 1-2-3 beat over and over again rather plodding and a bit too repetitive for me – but as ever that is just me. There’s something about slow 6/8 time I just don’t like.

But we can move on to the covers…. starting with Tom Jones whose arranger keeps that 1-2-3 essence – but if like me you really don’t care for that too much, please stay with me because I did find some covers which musically go to other (and in my view) rather more interesting places… But first Mr Jones (for which I am tempted to say “nothing is happening here” but perhaps I better not).

Now Ava Wynne, whose music I had never come across before, but I have found her website which is charming and helpful in its simplicity and clarity. If only everyone could have such a view of the world and music! For that website and this music are as one. I’m hoping the website is still active as I am about to drop the lady a little note to tell her how much I enjoyed this. (I know some of my friends and correspondents to this site find such an action odd, but why shouldn’t one say thank you for a beautiful recording that really lifts one out of the ordinary on an overcast day with occasional rain?) (Actually, perhaps I should write a song on that. “Overcast day with occasional rain”. I’ve got friends round this afternoon, and there’s a dance tonight, but maybe tomorrow).

This really is a beautiful version of the song, and it ought to have a much wider audience than it ever has had (at least as far as I know). I’d not heard this before I started the research (to give it a grand name) for this little article, but I am so glad I have. Quite often the cover versions I find in this series get played once – but this has already been played half a dozen times, and I fear my visitors this afternoon are going to get it as well.

So although I did fear at first that I might have to listen to that three-beats pattern that Bob put in his recording over and over in all covers, to my relief that has not been the case, as obviously some musicians and arrangers felt the same. Which is to say that without the 123 123 beat emphasising the 6/8 time signature throughout, this is actually a rather beautiful and endearing song.

Moving on, I found Big Brass Bed.who have recorded a beautifully simple and elegant version which shines through because of those combined factors of elegant simplicity. The 6/8 rhythm is still there but it is restrained and behind the vocals which are of course the most important element in the song. The accompaniment is needed as an accompaniment, and that’s what this recording gives us. It knows its place.

The relaxed style without the ceaseless emphasis on the 6/8 time signature is retained by Jordan Officer, although we do get some rather curious sudden guitar bursts at the start, and indeed occasionally thereafter. It just shows how differently each of us can hear the song.

I wonder who decided to put all that guitar work in, and more to the point why. What does it have to do with the musical and vocal conception of the song? Indeed I am not sure I have heard what to me sounds like a more inappropriate accompaniment. But that is probably just me – the voice is so perfect for this song, it doesn’t need that guitar part.

Now finally for Nattens Afskedskys (which literally translated from the Danish is “The goodbye kiss of the night” or so I am told.). This is by Steffan Brandt, and although the six beats in a bar are still there it almost comes over as a two beats in the bar song, which I much prefer. I’m not always convinced by the instrumentation, but I love the female vocals that come in for the second verse.

This version really begins to make me think that if we could have cover version with a very simple accompaniment without all the guitar effects that really could work. This is very good, and once again the female vocals are used to terrific effect but Big Brass Bed still wins. hands down. But Steffan Brandt gets a most honourable mention. But of course, it’s all just my opinion.

Previously in the series

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When I Paint My Masterpiece part 3. Blake did come up with some bold lines

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Tony Attwood

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

———–

by Jochen Markhorst

When I Paint My Masterpiece part 1: She’s delicate and seems like a Vermeer
When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971) part 2: Oh, the streets of SoHo

III Blake did come up with some bold lines

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you’re seein’ double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece
She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece

In Alfredson’s superb 2011 film adaptation of Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it also comes along again, hollowly and hauntingly. Smiley (Gary Oldman’s Oscar-winning role) asks his assistant Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), “Peter, did you get the keys to Control’s flat?”, cut, and immediately afterwards we see both men walking down the street, towards the apartment building where the recently deceased Control, Smiley’s chief, lived. In the next shot, the camera is in the stairwell behind the front door, low behind the stairs that take both men from the ground floor to the flat. It is dark, the men do not speak, and mixed way back on the soundtrack we hear then, unearthly and somehow ominously:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?

… the opening lines of Willam Blake’s 1804 poem, which became popular as “Jerusalem” after Hubert Parry’s 1916 setting to music. Very, very popular in fact; we hear it featured in dozens of films and TV series (in productions as diverse as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Chariots of Fire of course, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to name but a few), it is sung by the audience every year as the finale of Last Night of the Proms, as well as at sporting events and whatnot. By now, it can be considered as a sort of alternative English national anthem (as an alternative to the British “God Save The Queen”).

The appeal of the tune is not too surprising: a simple, accessible tune, unison at that, so that it can easily be sung by masses. Which, however, only partly explains its continued success – the je-ne-sais-quoi, the extra magic comes from the lyrics. Not so much from chauvinistic, but safe slam dunks like England’s pleasant pastures, England’s mountains green and England’s green and pleasant land, or melodramatic imperatives like Bring me my chariot of fire! or heroic vows like I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword, sleep in my hand, in short, not so much because of intrinsic qualities, but mainly thanks to the stylistic mastery of the mystic poet.

Opening with And is a perfect example of such a masterstroke. The “And-opening” already has its own poetic power that ensures you are immediately drawn into the poem, suggesting timelessness and creating a mysterious tension in all its insubstantial monosyllabicity. Nevertheless, the trick is not used too often, oddly. “And I Love You So” by Perry Como (written by Don McLean, by the way), David Bowie’s “The Bewlay Brothers”(And so the story goes), Led Zeppelin’s “What Is And What Should Never Be”, Pete Townshend’s forgotten gem “And I Moved” from 1980, Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing”, and above all The Left Banke’s immortal 1966 evergreen “Walk Away Renee”(And when I see the sign that points one way / The lot we used to pass by every day), and there are probably a few more – but really not that many. Fortunately, perhaps – that might be one reason why the magical power hasn’t worn off yet.

And the other pillar is Blake’s vocabulary, Blake’s choice of words, from which Dylan has drawn more than once in his career. Sometimes explicitly, like songs of experience in “I Contain Multitudes” or Tyger tyger burning bright in “Roll On, John”, and very often casually, like the clouds of blood in “Cold Irons Bound”, speaks like silence from “Love Minus Zero”, golden loom, or the little boy lost from “Visions Of Johanna”… traces of Blake can be found in every decade of Dylan’s 60 years. “My latest thing of just reading was back into reading the William Blake poems again,” he says 1992 in a telephone interview with Time Off, and a year later he even compares Blake’s work to his best songs:

“Love Henry is a remarkable tale with an enigmatic final section in which a murderess tries to lure a parrot to her knee. It opens up a door for another song, Dylan says. That’s what my best songs do. In the last couple of lines, it might just open a door for another song. William Blake could have written that.”
(interview with Gary Hill, 13 October 1993)

Around the time of Masterpiece , besides being identifiable in the songs, the admiration is just as explicitly expressed: “Blake did come up with some bold lines,” as he says in the interview with John Cohen, 1968.

Here we sense Blake in the second line of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, in ancient footprints. Blake generally avoids more common but boring synonyms like age-old, relic, antique or archaic, but is instead fond of the ingrained euphoniousness of the single word ancient. In Complete Poems alone it can be found 42 times, in the “prophetic book” Jerusalem 21 times, and thus he most likely did ignite Dylan. Most clearly, of course, in “Every Grain Of Sand”(I hear the ancient footsteps), but “Mr. Tambourine Man’s” the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming and, for instance, the world’s ancient light from “When The Deal Goes Down” have an unmistakable Blake fragrance as well, just from that single word ancient.

However, at most it explains Dylan’s receptivity to this particular word. The immediate trigger for something like “the traces of a distant past” is, of course, “Rome”, in which the protagonist continues to wander for two whole stanzas after these opening lines. An unknown narrator on a cold, dark night, walking on empty streets in Rome, descending the Spanish Steps on his way to a waiting lady in a hotel room… it actually does sound like the opening of a John Le Carré novel too, come to think of it.

To be continued. Next up When I Paint My Masterpiece part 4: I love the sound of words, yeah

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:

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A Dylan cover a day: You gonna make me lonesome when you go

The Rough and Rowdy Way Tour 18: Watching the River Flow

Once or twice: Lay Down Your Weary Tune. (Warning, some recordings are painful)

The lyrics and the music: Key West – a very, very personal experience.

The Never Ending Tour Extended: Early Roman Kings

The Never Ending Tour extended: I shall be released 1975 to 2008

A Dyolan Cover a Day: With God on Our Side

When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971) part 5: A man alone at his desk

The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour 17: Every grain of sand

Once or twice: songs that Bob has performed, but only rarely… “Caribbean Wind”

Just like a woman: the lyrics and the music

The Never Ending Tour Extended: I don’t believe you (she acts like we never have met)

A Dylan Cover a Day: Where are you tonight?

When I Paint My Masterpiece (part 4: I love the sound of words, yeah

Goodbye Jimmy Reed: The Rough and Rowdie Ways Tour, 16.

Once or twice: Songs that Bob has rarely performed. Only a hobo

The lyrics and the music: Jokerman – a song of innovations then forgotten

The Never Ending Tour Extended: Duquesne Whistle 2013-2018

A Dylan cover a day: When the deal goes down

When I Paint My Masterpiece part 3. Blake did come up with some bold lines

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