Comparing recordings of Dylan performing his own compositions, across the years.
In this series we look back at recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour series of articles (there is an index to that series here). Links to previous articles in this “Extended” series are given at the end.
The selections and comments are by Tony Attwood.
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This Love and Theft song first appeared on the tour 5 October 2001, and made its final bow in 2018 after an astonishing 885 performances, showing us once more just how much Bob loves the old 12 bar blues. And indeed how much he can get out of it.
And here there is something very interesting that happened because Bob and the band took the song to, and perhaps beyond its absolute limits as a rocking 12 bar blues, but then when it couldn’t go any further, suddenly took back and gave it a sort of rock and country twist, as I hope to show…
2001
Somewhere after the two minute marker he starts playing around with the song. He doesn’t mind if we can’t get all the lyrics or not, he’s just enjoying himself, verse after verse. Then from about 3 minutes 45 we get an instrumental 12 bar blues that is just pure fun. And really I can’t help thinking that the whole point of the song on tour was at this point for this improvisation. How can anyone sit still and listen to this? How can Bob remember all the lyrics? How many times did they rehearse each new version?
By the following year we get Manchester and other outstanding performances there is slightly less intensity, which allows Bob to extend through the already extended song, finding almost an extra two minutes to put into the performance. Would someone like to write down all the lyrics and point out the changes from year to year? You could probably get a PhD out of that.
The only conclusion I can reach is that each night’s performance was simply allowed to develop out of the night before – the improvisations in this performance are still improvisations I’m sure, but they could not have just come out of nowhere. Much more likely they are taking the bits the guys liked from one performance and taking them every further.
The only question left was how long would the song ultimately get? There is certainly a very strange moment at 6’34” which seems to come out of nowhere, and is maybe sorted out by the next verse. It sounds rather like a sudden idea, but who knows?
2004
The episode this comes from is called by Mike More jazz, regulars and rarities – and the song is much the same, but with the bassist is having more fun than he can ever dreamed about.
And here the strangeness of where we have got to in this performance really strikes me. For this is a piece that those people who still know, and still can, jive, will absolutely love to dance to. But of course, it is a concert performance. Yes, people are standing and jigging around, but not doing 1950s jive which is really what this song deserves.
Bob does introduce a few changes – odd nuances here and there, but it is still a long, long jam with set lyrics. The extended improvisations are getting wilder too – just listen to what happens around the five-minute mark. I’m not sure we’ve had anything like that before in any Dylan gig. Indeed I’d say, even if you have had enough of this song by now, do listen from 4’10” onwards.
So the question arises, does it ever change? There are hints above, and I am sure some of those lyrics are now quite different. But I think if I took this through each year step by step I’d lose my entire audience, so let’s jump right forward and see where it goes.
2018
And yes be prepared to be surprised (unless you knew where this was all leading). This comes from the article Hell bent for leather
There’s almost a country feel to the piece now, and really the relationship between this and where we were 14 years before is extraordinary. It surely is as if Bob and the band were just taking it on further and further seeing how far it could go, and then having got there, they didn’t want to abandon the piece. So it just became something else. “Hey let’s do it with a country twist,” says Bob, and everyone looks at him wondering what the hell he was talking about. And then it comes together.
So here we have another of those Dylan songs that is so distinctive in so many ways it can be something that everyone wants to cover, but only a handful of artists and/or arrangers has the nerve, guts and talent to explore and ultimately go somewhere Dylan didn’t go.
This song has a highly recognisable instrumental opening, a highly recognisable opening line in terms of melody and lyric, and a highly memorable title line – and that is before we get to that very distinctive middle 8 which, unusually for Bob brings in a chords that have nothing to do with the key … and eventually modulates. It is a song that you can’t mistake for anything else – and that makes it really hard for cover artists to do anything with it that is utterly different from the original. Unless of course either they or their arrangers are super talented.
Take the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, just those opening chords tell you what you are getting. But for them the difference is thrown in by the harmonies and orchestration – not too much, but just enough to remind us throughout that this is a Bob song but not a Bob version.
But that has been done many, many times, so from there on something very different needs to be in place. Liam Bailey does it not just by making this a solo, but by playing totally different chords by way of accompaniment. This is quite a rare technique, not least because it is so hard to pull off – although it is what several cover artists have tried in relation to this piece. The fact is that even if you have no musical background and don’t know one chord from another, you’ll hear that this music is nothing like Dylan’s.
And Mr Bailey does have a magnificent voice.
Katherine Rondeau takes us back to the original but with such a beautiful voice, I find I just have to listen. For when she says “throw my troubles out the door” then (unlike in the Dylan version) I find myself believing her.
This is a technique owned by a precious few – to make us believe that she really does mean it all, rather than is just singing it from the script. Just listen to the middle 8 (“is it really any wonder”) and remember this whole effect is being achieved by a guitar, a violin, and a voice. Nothing more. In the hands of the best, that’s all it needs to make us believe.
Jeff Jensen tries the song with a big band between the rock group, and sings it fortissimo in order to match the instruments behind him. It is an interesting approach, and at least the instrumentation is kept under control – although in the instrumental break I think we get to the limits, although they do draw back and keep the song in touch with itself. The chorus in the “staying here with you” repeated line at the end is a nice effect to round it all off, and it’s a fine effort, but not the very best, in my view. But still worthy of a listen.
Janet Planet tries the modern jazz approach in the accompaniment and she has the perfect voice to carry it off – and indeed to vary the melody line in keeping with the variations in the instrumental parts. In fact, I think if I had come across version first, before hearing Bob’s recording or knowing that it was one of his pieces, I’d never guess it was a Dylan song.
And what helps is the lady’s perfect voice for this kind of singing. Plus the instrumental section on 3 minutes adds to the fun and occasion. Great stuff.
Ann Peebles is, for me at least, always associated with “I can’t stand the rain”, but that’s just me… what she does is what the others have been doing – varying the chordal accompaniment in parts, and then using her magnificent voice to fly over the changing instrumentation. And that really is the thing that holds these versions together – the inventiveness of the arrangers in each case. They don’t make covers – they take the original and fly. And that is exactly how it should be.
And please don’t miss the wonderful instrumental break from 2’20” onwards. In a sense it is so simple but it works so perfectly within the context. Plus Anne Peebles is such a pro she knows exactly when to keep it all where she is… the whole point of the song is that the “staying here with you” is just said and accepted. There’s no big fuss, the feelings have won, it’s a statement of fact. That’s how Bob wrote it, and that’s how it is.
Here’s the rest of this series of reviews of Dylan covers in the “Cover a Day” series. Over 150 of them, so not enough to keep you going all year as the “cover a day” title intended, but still, quite a few.
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
“Don’t open up your mind, boys,
To every conceivable point of view.”
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff
“I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don’t care.”
High water everywhere
The day the music died was, of course, 3 February 1959, the day Buddy Holly crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa. But entirely alive and kicking she had not been for awhile anyway, that fateful day. The first blow was dealt 257 days before, Black Monday 24 March 1958, the day Elvis reports to the barracks at Fort Chaffee to do his military service; the next blow is just 59 days after that, and hits much harder: 22 May 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis arrives at Heathrow Airport for a UK tour. Among the welcoming committee is Paul Tanfield, a reporter from the Daily Mail, and Paul has his eyes open. “And who are you,” he asks the young girl who catches his eye in Jerry Lee’s entourage. “I’m Myra, Jerry’s wife,” replies Myra Gale Lewis naively, proudly and truthfully. Tanfield turns to The Killer and asks the question that will torpedo Jerry Lee’s career: “And how old is Myra?” “Fifteen,” Lewis lies. Myra is thirteen, and he also wisely conceals the fact that Myra is not only his wife, but also his niece. And that he is now a bigamist (they got married five months before Jerry Lee’s divorce from his second wife).
The press jumps on it, and after three dramatic shows, both Jerry Lee Lewis and the rest of the tour are cancelled.
Back home in Memphis, Sun Records’ Sam Phillips may understand that they need to do something about damage control, but the legendary studio boss proves to be bizarrely bad at assessing the seriousness of the situation. Even lying would probably have been a better option than the terribly stupid strategy they decide on: downplaying.
He acts fast, though. Phillips puts his right-hand man, Jerry Lee’s discoverer Jack Clement to work. Within a week, 30 May “The Return Of Jerry Lee” is recorded in his studio and 15 June the single is already on the shelves. Sam makes a few phone calls and on 23 June 1958, i.e. a month after the Heathrow debacle, we read on page 4 of the entertainment industry’s leading newsweekly, The Billboard, an announcement of a “disc for jocks this week”, plus an explanation from the Sun Records boss himself under the heading ‘Return’ Disk Laughs It Off:
“This one has an announcer at Memphis Airport, greeting the chanter on his return from London, with an interview. Lewis’ answers are dubs taken from his past disks. Phillips said: “We think it’s a cute record. It makes light of the whole British episode, which is the way we think the whole thing should be treated anyway.” Phillips added that the disk, now being sampled by various jocks, has met a good early response. At present it’s a one-sider, but if the reception holds up Phillips said, he will issue it commercially with a flip called Jerry Lee’s Boogie.”
Sam Phillips tries to package a scandal uniting paedosexual, incestuous and bigamist unsavouriness as “the British episode”, which, moreover, we should not take too seriously: it should be treated lightly anyway. It fails – obviously – spectacularly. As does the “cute record”, a tantalisingly unfunny pastiche of “interview questions” and snatches of Lewis songs as answers. For example:
Mr. Lewis, I’d like to ask you this question: how do you feel about being back home? Ooh, feels good! [uit “Great Balls Of Fire”]
Well, Jerry, what did you say when the news of your marriage broke over in London? Our news is out
All over town [uit “You Win Again”]
Well, how did you manage to get your marriage license with your wife being so young? I told a little lie [uit “I’m Feeling Sorry”]
Jerry Lee Lewis – The Return of Jerry Lee:
More surprising than the predictable flopping is the artist name under which the single is released: George and Lewis. Chosen because the “interviewer” is voiced by George Patrick Klein. And that, this artist name George and Lewis, seems already a more likely trigger for the name choice “George Lewis” in the opening of “High Water’s” fifth verse than some George Lewes from the nineteenth century or a clarinet-playing George Lewis from New Orleans. At least of Jerry Lee Lewis we know for sure that he is deep under Dylan’s skin – deep enough to be allowed to bounce around in Dylan’s stream of consciousness, anyway.
As early as 1969, Dylan confesses to Jann Wenner that he wrote “To Be Alone With You” for Jerry Lee Lewis; he often mentions him as an admired artist, and in 2006, in the USA Today interview with Edna Gundersen, he even mentions Jerry Lee Lewis as one of the “performers who changed my life”. On this same album “Love And Theft”, we’ve heard Jerry Lee before, by the way; the intro for No 2, “Mississippi”, Dylan copied from The Killer’s awkward ode to JFK, from “Lincoln Limousine” (1966).
Jerry Lee Lewis – Lincoln Limousine:
And a few years hereafter, DJ Dylan, as a radio producer on Theme Time Radio Hour, expresses his love for “the piano pounding madman” often and gladly. No fewer than seven times the DJ finds an occasion to play a Lewis song (putting The Killer in the Top 3 most-played-artists), each time introduced and celebrated with words that show not only love and respect, but also knowledge of the man’s biography. “Let’s talk about the man who argued with Sam Phillips about his eternal soul. Of course I’m talking about the Ferriday Flash, Jerry Lee Lewis,” for example, and the very first time the DJ puts a Jerry Lee single on his turntable, 20 September 2006, Episode 21, School:
“That was Jerry Lee Lewis, “High School Confidential”. If you see it in the movie theatre, with Jerry singing the title song, take a look at the bass player. That’s J.W. Brown. His daughter, Myra Gale, married Jerry Lee. That didn’t go over too good, ’cause she was quite young. Jerry was on tour overseas when news of his marriage came out in the press. “High School Confidential” dropped right out of the charts and Jerry’s career was never the same. I wonder if Myra dropped out of school.”
Content-wise, no links to this fifth verse of “High Water”, of course. At most, the combination of Jerry Lee’s problems with justice and his getting cancelled on the one hand, and “High Sheriff”, the hunt for Charles Darwin and “wanted dead or alive” on the other, may have led to the click in Dylan’s creative flow that then causes “George Lewis” to bubble up – but in the end, that’s as thin as trying to want to hear “George Lewes” and then making the click with Darwin.
No, in the end we will find the strongest candidate closest to home, on the waterfront, in the bulging song treasure of Dylan’s inner jukebox, where we will see an unsteady hanging bridge from one “George Lewis” to “High Water”.
Then again: “None of this has to connect,” as Dylan says to a timid Sam Shepard at their first encounter in 1975. “In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t connect.”
To be continued. Next up High Water (For Charley Patton) part 11: “De ballit I like bes’, though, is de one ’bout po’ Laz-us”
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:
‘You may buy the ticket because it has Dylan’s name on it; you will leave having seen one of the greatest bands you will ever see live.’ Tim Sommer
“This is the best band I’ve ever been in, I’ve ever had, man for man. They can whip up anything, they even surprise me.” Dylan 2006, Rolling Stone magazine
Since this series is coming to an end, the next post will be the last, I’d like to pause and acknowledge Dylan’s band, surely one of the greatest bands ever to hit the stage. It is the band that has made Dylan’s achievements in the 21st Century possible. They have been the magic in the mix, the foundation on which Dylan could build the sound he needed for his voice and music. They were the wings he needed to fly. Together they could do anything: 1930’s jump jazz; 1940’s big swing, big band; 1950’s rock ‘n roll, Chicago or New Orleans blues; progressive rock and mood jazz – whatever sound the song, and Dylan’s changing conceptions of his songs, needed.
We find Charlie Sexton on guitar, Tony Garnier on bass, George Receli on drums, Stu Kimball on acoustic guitars and Donnie Herron on pedal steel, lap steel, electric mandolin, banjo, and violin.
Let’s start with the longest-standing member Tony Garnier, who joined Dylan in 1988 and stayed with him to the end. He’s rock solid with the beat, whatever the beat, the band’s anchor and leader. The foundation of the rhythm section, able to play bass guitar, and double bass, either plucked or bowed.
‘Bassist Tony Garnier keeps an eye and an ear on every member of the band, and he feels like the bandleader. He plays over, under, on top of and around Receli, Sexton, Herron, and Dylan, but he especially takes out a thick, greasy laundry marker and underlines Sexton’s quick melodic pops, while at the same time bold-typing every one of Receli’s tom hits.’ I can’t write like Tim Sommer but I agree with him.
It’s Garnier and George Receli, who joined the band in 2002, who make the most powerhouse rhythm section, as you’ll hear. Here’s Tim Sommer on Receli: ‘I have almost no hesitation in saying that George Receli is the best drummer I have seen in at least a decade. He is a robust, adept, and joyfully New Orleans-style player, using the kit as an expressive gateway to centuries of rhythm. He relies almost exclusively on the skins, not the cymbals, simultaneously playing light and atomic. He is always rumbling and rolling, moving steadily like a freight train, hovering mysteriously like a pelican, and working his way around the songs like a late-night detective who listens to a lot of WWOZ and surf music. It’s almost like watching Keith Moon if he had been trained on Rampart Street’.
Again, I can’t match Sommer’s prose, but agree. Receli is not a flashy drummer, and his rhythms are more sophisticated and subtle compared to what came before. ‘I like the drummer I have now, he is one of the best around – Bob Dylan Q&A with Bill Flanagan – bobdylan.com 2017.
Receli and Garnier set it up for Charlie Sexton, lead guitarist who rejoined the band in 2009. At talkinbobdylan.blogspot.com, Dylan is asked this question:
‘Charlie Sexton began playing with you for a few years in 1999, and returned to the fold in 2009. What makes him such a special player? It’s as if you can read each other’s minds.’
And Dylan replies: As far as Charlie goes, he can read anybody’s mind … and he can play guitar to beat the band. There aren’t any of my songs that Charlie doesn’t feel part of and he’s always played great with me… He’s not a show-off guitar player, although he can do that if he wants. He’s very restrained in his playing but can be explosive when he wants to be. It’s a classic style of playing. Very old school. He inhabits a song rather than attacking it. He’s always done that with me.
Here’s what Tim Sommers says: ‘‘Sexton, fleet and inventive, changes styles and cultures literally from bar to bar, tossing off insane, hyper-jazz changes, post-punk/pre-Beatles melodic leads, and ripping blues and raunch-hand lines, all without ever making a grimace or stopping for applause. If you want to see someone make a lot of faces and let you know how versatile they are, go see an expert hack like G. E. Smith or Waddy Wachtel. But if you just want to see one of the best electric guitarists in the land inhale everything sweet, spicy, and elegant about American music and exhale it effortlessly, see Charlie Sexton.’ Right on Tim! No rambling solos; very discrete and tasteful.
In 1992 Dylan expanded his band to include a steel guitar, which enabled him to create sounds a four piece band couldn’t. Multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron took that spot in 2005, and is largely responsible for that orchestral sound that gives the impression of a much bigger band. In the videos you can see Herron sitting behind Dylan, watching Dylan’s every move on the piano like a hawk. A multi-instrumentalist, he plays violin, electric mandolin, viola and banjo, and can turn a rock song into a country song by playing these instruments. Sound textures are his specialty. Here’s a cool story from a Concert review May 3rd 2017 in Dublin.
‘The vibe between Bob and steel guitar player Donnie Herron is obviously very important since the move to the Sinatra songs as Donnie is now a key player in those arrangements, it is also very charming, after one song Donnie applauded Bob and in the dark Bob walked over to him and they shook hands, a truly lovely moment that probably went unnoticed, but it was a moment that displayed the love and respect between the singer and a fabulous band that at times sounded like an orchestra.’
Acoustic guitar player Stu Kimball joined the band in 2004 and stayed until 2018. Kimball is hailed by pre-eminent Dylanologist Peter Stone Brown who says: ‘Stu Kimball is a walking catalogue of great guitar licks… [who] knows when and how to use those licks and use them with taste… I’m going to go out on a limb and say Kimball can take his place as one of the top five guitar players to play on-stage with Bob Dylan — easily.’
Here’s a comment from Kimball’s website: ‘Stu’s soulful guitar playing is exceptional in itself, but his ability to understand another artist’s vision — and then help them bring it to life — truly sets him apart. “I always try to play from the heart, to play with soul and conviction,” he says. “I play for the singer and the song, and to help bring their vision to life…Helping artists give their best performances, regardless of the venue — that’s what I love, and that’s what I feel I was born to do.’
On October 11, 2019, the first show of the North American leg of the tour, Dylan introduced two new members of the touring band: drummer Matt Chamberlain, replacing George Receli, and additional guitarist Bob Britt, who had previously played on Time Out Of Mind. Britt replaced Kimball.
Let’s hear this formidable force in action as we continue with the 2019 Setlist, the final handful of songs. Let’s go to New York (Dec 3rd) to hear this upbeat version of ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ sounding like a cross between a 1950’s rocker and garage-band jazz. The music, it’s all about the music!
Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music coming from
I don't need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I'm your servant both night and day
Thunder on the Mountain
That last sentiment, ‘I’m your servant both night and day’ takes us back to the contention of ‘Serve Somebody’ (1979). Doesn’t matter who you are, you end up serving somebody, and it seems to me that Dylan has been serving us, his audience, all the way through. Dylan revamped the lyrics around 2015, which is what we hear on this recording from New York, and fittingly he introduces his band.
Serve Somebody (A)
That’s giving it the old rock ‘n roll treatment. Here it is from Santa Barbara. I think this performance and recording has the edge on New York.
You might even have a name
Or call you nothing at all…
Serve Somebody (B)
Two songs from Tempest (2012) are usually placed near the end of a concert, both complex dramatic monologues, ‘Long and Wasted Years’ and ‘Soon After Midnight.’ The narrator of ‘Long And Wasted Years’ is simultaneously apologetic, wheedling and aggressive. He seems to flirt with the woman while at the same time repudiating her. The narrator of ‘Soon after Midnight’ is revealed to have diabolical intent.
Here’s that song from Santa Barbara, number 16 in the Setlist. A bit of a country feel to this one. Some nice piano work from Bob.
Soon After Midnight
And ‘Long and Wasted Years’ from Irvine. Perfect vocal from Bob. For my ear, this version is sadder, a little more reflective than in previous years, the character a little more sunk in the self-induced nostalgia of the moment. The song is a series of emotional postures created by all the games he’s playing, because of the games he’s playing. Only in the last line, however, is the depth of his underlying bitterness revealed – ‘So much for tears, so much for those long and wasted years.’
Long and Wasted Years
I don’t know how ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ somehow migrated to the final song of the night. Perhaps Dylan felt his audience didn’t know what it was that was happening, what the new post-2015 Dylan was all about. Or maybe he wanted to leave his audience with one of his famous mid-sixties rock songs, one of the spookiest of the lot. It’s all about alienation, being where you don’t belong – and being decidedly uncool! Or maybe he wanted a chance for a final blast or two of the harmonica and to go out with a flourish. There are lots of maybes with Dylan. What remains is the song. Still as mysterious and powerful as ever, with the Master of Sarcasm at the wheel.
This one’s from Sao Paulo, and must surely count among the great performances of the song. I’ve lost count of ‘best evers’ but this one’s hard to beat.
Thin Man (A)
Except maybe this one from Muncie does beat it. There’s a different mix in the recording, but more than that, it’s a somewhat harder hitting more ecstatic performance. The Muncie audience is fully riled up.
Thin Man (B)
That’s it for this post, but there’s a song missing – ‘Not Dark Yet.’ To hear four stunning performances of the song from 2019, tune in shortly for the final article in this series which has taken us on such a long journey. Don’t miss the finale!
This series looks at Bob Dylan’s recordings of songs not written by himself. The songs and opening notes are created by Aaron Galbraith (in the USA) and the additional comments are subsequently added by Tony Attwood (in the UK).
Aaron:“Ragged & Dirty” was recorded and improvised by many southern blues artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The first version of the song was recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson as “Broke & Hungry.”
I'm broke and hungry, ragged and dirty too I said I'm broke and hungry, ragged and dirty too Mama, if I clean up, can I go home with you?
I'm motherless, fatherless, sister and brother less too I said I'm motherless, fatherless, sister and brother less too Reason I've tried so hard to make this trip with you
Lomax wrote in his book, “Land Where The Blues Began”, about the time when Willie Brown sang “Ragged & Dirty”, “William Brown began to sing in his sweet, true country voice, poking in delicate guitar passages at every pause, like the guitar was a second voice…”
Tony: This really is the blues as I remember first hearing it in my teenage years. There I was, a white kid from a middle class family that had moved out of north London to the leafy expanses of a Dorset village on the south coast, with a very cheap guitar, learning to play and sing the blues in this style. I think my parents wondered what on earth had happened…
Tony: Everything changes with the addition of a much livelier accompaniment – I think Bob Dylan learned a huge amount from listening to these recordings and appreciating that even with the simplest of songs (as the blues is) just changing the way the guitar is played, can change the whole song.
Aaron: Bob Dylan recorded “Ragged & Dirty” in 1993 for his album, World Gone Wrong. Dylan’s version was mostly influenced by Brown’s version, although the two versions of the song had differences in lyrics. Dylan covered the song with acoustic guitar playing similar to that of Brown.
Tony: So, yes, Bob keeps his voice in line with the desperation of the lyrics but the guitar part takes its lead from the Willie Brown approach. And in fact this idea of a lively accompaniment to the desperation of the blues opens up a thousand possibilities in the way that songs can be changed by alternating what goes on behind the lyrics.
For myself, I think Bob overdoes the monotony and desperation of the lyrics and I wonder how many fans have regularly played this track. For me a few times is enough – although the contrast of lyrics with accompaniment is interesting, once that has been established, I am not sure there is anything more to be appreciated or learned or understood.
So it is one of those tracks I have played a few times, but then just set aside. However I have over time played another version of the song, which I rather like, and since Aaron is on the other side of the ocean and can’t object, I’m going to slip this one in.
Somehow this keeps up my interest far more. Although the bass part is very simple it seems to be a perfect counterpart to the constant repetitiveness of the guitar part, and I must admit I do prefer this style of singing. I’m not sure I’d want to take it on as a double bass player, but for me as a listener, it really does work as a piece of entertainment. Of course, I am not with the lyrics anymore, but sometimes entertainment is just what I need.
And that’s my point here: the feel of the song that this duo get is really something else. It holds my interest, after playing it, it stays in my head, it just feels good. OK that is the opposite of the lyrics, but sometimes that really doesn’t matter. You can find more of their music on Facebook.
(There is also the possibility of course that I like these guys because they are associated with Plymouth, in Devon in the UK, which is not too far from where my family moved to, when we left London, but no, really it is the music… )
The Never Ending Tour Extended: Comparing recordings of Dylan performing his own compositions, across the years.
In this series we look back at recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour series of articles (there is an index to that ongoing series here). Links to previous articles in this “Extended” series are given at the end.
Mr Tambourine Man has been performed by Bob Dylan 903 times according to the official site, starting in May 1964 and concluding on 28 June 2010. 46 years and 903 performances! Our recordings don’t take us back to the very start of the Never Ending Tour but there is a video from the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 (from memory I think Bob first appeared in 1962 at the Festival).
The reaction of the crowd shows how over 30 years after its first performance it is still welcomed by one and all. Here Bob has speeded the song up considerably. I always get the feeling with this performance that the speeding up is not because Bob thinks it should go faster throughout, but to enable him to deliver a very unusual guitar solo at around 2’30”. That solo can only make musical sense at this sort of speed, hence the whole piece has to be taken at that higher speed.
And for me, as the vocals return after that break the shock of the extra speed has gone, and this now feels normal – the speed at which the song should be performed. And indeed the speed also allows the second solo to appear and work – even though the harmonica part is highly repetitive. I particularly like the way the harmonica section over what would be the lyrics “following you” is extended and extended, leading to a very unusual coda.
Now we not only have the speed but also occasional changes to the melody. Sometimes I have the feeling that Bob speeds up songs just to get through them – as if a member of team has said “You must sing Tambourine Man – everyone expects it” – but here I feel we don’t have that, but rather the fact that Bob wants to play Tambourine Man because he is excited by the options.
And it turns out with some careful listening and a bit of background research, this isn’t a solo performance after all. Listen carefully and you hear the percussion slip in, and by the instrumental break the percussion has a major part to play (along with the gentleman who felt the need to shout “yeah” multiple times), and there is a second guitar in there too. (We can of course only present the recordings that have been made, and there is of course no editing going on here – what you get is what we heard).
And I am really glad you have made it to this point, just to hear the contrast between those earlier versions and this. This is only episode 16 of this series comparing Dylan’s performances of his own songs across the years, but this surely must be one of the biggest contrasts in arrangements that we have ever heard.
Which raises the question what could Bob do next?
Looking at the articles that Mike Johnson has provided us with over the years I am stunned to find that in 1995 we have four separate versions of this song chosen by Mike. There is an index to the whole of the Never Ending Tour series on this site, so you can go through the pieces and listen to each one if you wish, as I am trying to make these articles accessible, not impossibly overloaded with too many recordings. So for this episode, the final one is from 1995, Part 5: Acoustic wonderland
The crowd love it, I get the feeling that Bob loves it, and listening now 29 years later, I still love it too. And I say Bob loves it, for if not, why would a man of such independence and determination stay with the song, and change it so many times and with such cre and devotion?
Tombstone Blues struck me as one of those songs I was not going to have much luck with in looking for really interesting and different versions of the song. The fast beat of the original tends to mitigate against anyone doing anything else with the piece – or at least that is how it generally seems to me. But I was as ever, wrong…
Tim O’Brien keeps the speed up, but changes the key instrument to a banjo, and adds a second chord to the verse. Then in comes an accomplished violin, and then the chorus has vocal harmonies – and all that before the thrilling instrumental break between the verses.
It’s great fun, and even the double bass player gets into the swing of doing something very different. By the end I’m thinking this is how it ought to be performed.
Tim O’Brien
The illustration of Dylan hanging from the clock for the second cover is arresting, and Winston Apple’s version gives us a bit of bounce and fun – plus enough variation from the original for it all to seem worthy of a mention.
The original version of the picture (here), as you may well know, is Harold Lloyd from the movie Safety Last
Richie Havens
As Jochen pointed out on this site a couple of years ago in the final episode of his 13 part series on the song, “The best-known cover is probably the one by Richie Havens, on the soundtrack of the Dylan film I’m Not There (2007), and rightly so. (There are links to all the episodes of Jochen’s investigation at the end of the article noted above). But even more moving and exciting is the snippet (one minute and seven seconds) in the film itself.
Watkins Family
So is there anywhere else to go? Well yes, the Watkins Family Hour. (I’m not familiar with the band, hence I can only offer a link to their own site.) But I would say I do hope you have time to listen all the way through. They really do keep the essence of the song but add their re-interpretation of the song which is really worth hearing.
Dicte & Hempler
Again I am a bit stuck for information on the band, but I do like this version as it strips the song down, and carefully rebuilds it with limited resources. An excellent re-imagining in my view on what is really a very simple piece of music. It’s over six minutes long, but held my attention to the end.
https://youtu.be/CcOeTnnwqy8
I’ve really enjoyed finding that collection of versions – hope you found something in there which was enjoyable for you. Just as I hope you listened to that last version right up to the last couple of seconds.
Here’s the rest of this series of reviews of Dylan covers in the “Cover a Day” series. Over 150 of them, so not enough to keep you going all year, but still, quite a few.
There is something very curious about Dylan’s music in “Don’t think twice”, and that is that this is a very sad song – and indeed a very bitter song. He’s leaving, and he is not even saying farewell, for he is getting up in the night and sneaking out. And he’s not doing the courteous “it’s not you it’s just me” line, indeed he’s giving no explanation – because he says to the lady, “you’re the reason”.
So it’s a very sad situation indeed. And yet the song is taken at speed. Indeed it is easy to forget just how fast Dylan takes the song in the original recording, which is why I’ve put the link above.
Now normally we associate sad songs with two things: one is a slow speed and the other is a melody and accompaniment that we can immediately associate with a feeling of mourning. But “Don’t think twice” has none of this. It reflects the singer getting up and charging off down the long and lonesome road. He’s sneaking out – and fast.
The singer does, by verse two get to thinking that staying with her could have been better:
But I wish there was somethin' you would do or say To try and make me change my mind and stay
but this has not happened and now it is far too late, so he’s off. And that music keeps on moving along at a fair old pace. And even in the third verse, he’s not finished lashing out with the blame making it clear beyond any doubt how it was ALL totally her fault.
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
And notice now, by this point, he is not singing to the lady personally; he’s reduced her to the third person, and that music just keeps moving on at its own speed. He’s not shuffling down the road, he is really moving on. You can’t really do faster faster faster in popular music – there is not enough space – so he’s doing the next best thing. It is all quite fast, and the music has an emphasis on moving, all the time.
And so it moves on and on until those absolutely total killers for the final lines
You just kinda wasted my precious time But don't think twice, it's all right
Everything in the lyrics suggests that the music should be mournful and sad, but it is not – and we accept it as this, we go along with it, because our identification is totally with him – with the singer. We are with him walking away.
Now of course it is easy for us, for we have no knowledge of their past as a couple, only his word for it. So we accept it, we go with him, and we too are looking forward to the new adventure. We don’t think of the tedious long walk to wherever he is going, we don’t think it might be raining or cold… No we go with him, and we do that primarily because the music continues to move at speed. We move with him, not because he is moving on, but because the music carries is along. If we think of the details at all, it is to hold our breath and hope he gets out before she wakes up.
Thus, a slower song would not have worked – Dylan’s music at speed reflects the urgency in his words. It’s a perfect combination. And it shows once more that from the very start Dylan had an innate awareness of how music and lyrics should work together.
IX I just thought that was the way he spelled his name
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
“Don’t open up your mind, boys,
To every conceivable point of view.”
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff
“I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don’t care.”
High water everywhere
After an exhausting run-up, during which George stood in the long queue for the entrance tickets, then had to wait a long time in the line for the cloakroom to hand over the coats, then another ten minutes at the counter to buy the obligatory tokens of consumption, Lewis and he are finally in the festively decorated ballroom. “I’d fancy a drink,” says Lewis, “do they have punch?” Sighing, George leaves for the bar area – but within a minute he is back, with two glasses. “There’s no punch line!”
An old joke and a bit lame as well. Which, as we all know, rarely stops Dylan. The jokes and puns he occasionally serves from the stage, every now and then in a song and a bit more often as DJ in Theme Time Radio Hour, rarely excel in originality or freshness. And occasionally fall dead too – deliberately, as we know thanks to Larry Charles’ anecdote about his aborted attempt to write a slapstick comedy with Dylan (“what’s so bad about misunderstanding?”). Dylan does like some disruptive absurdism, the confusion that sets in after an incomprehensible metaphor like I can bite like a turkey, an unusual word combination like Anne Frank and Indiana Jones or a joke without a punchline.
It is an effect the poet seems to be aiming for in the first verse line of this fifth stanza. The stanza begins with an opening variation of a classic, corny joke, with an alienating variation on an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman walk into a bar or a Belgian, a Dutchman and a German stand at the gates of heaven. But here they are an Englishman, an Italian and a Jew, and the stooge is not a barman or Peter, but “George Lewis”, with peculiar life advice as an introduction – the advice that you should not be open to every opinion.
It’s a layered, and perhaps somewhat laborious interlude, in this fifth verse of “High Water”. Layered, because Dylan not only messes with the listener’s expectation by incorporating a punchless joke, but also by suggesting depth through the introduction of Charles Darwin and George Lewis. Both names, and especially “George Lewis”, do put Google to work, in any case. And analysing Dylanologists and researching fans then initially have to gulp; the combination George and Lewis gets 328 million hits, the unit “George Lewis” still 1.7 million. Somewhere at the top of the search results, then are – promising – two musical George Lewises; a rather successful jazz clarinetist from New Orleans (1900-1968) and a younger one, a 1952 Chicago-born experimental avant-garde composer and trombonist George Lewis, at least as successful. But alas: apart from living off music, there is no line to Dylan or Dylan’s oeuvre, let alone to Charles Darwin, Highway 5 or being Jewish, Italian or whatnot.
Rather eagerly, therefore, the thesis that Dylan made a spelling mistake and actually means George Lewes is gratefully embraced, a “solution” presumably first offered by Brian Hinton (Bob Dylan Complete Discography, 2006). Lewes, admittedly, indeed is an interesting nineteenth-century man. Philosopher, literary critic and – there’s the bridge – darwinist, but actually better known as the-husband-of; his life partner Mary Ann Evans wrote, under the pen name George Eliot Middlemarch, “the greatest novel in the English language” (according to Martin Amis). Lewes is also mentioned in it, by the way. He is even the first name:
To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes,
in this nineteenth year of our blessed union
It’s tempting to grant this George Lewes a misspelled name-check in “High Water”, true. But alas, that bridge really is far too shaky. After all, we’ve never been able to catch Dylan on such a mistake tending towards dyslexia. At most, the added g in John Wesley Harding comes close, but no: “I just thought that was the way he spelled his name” (Cameron Crowe Interview for Biograph, 1985). Other spelling errors in Lyrics, such as the apparently ineradicable Pharoah (in “When The Ship Comes In”), seem to be attributable not to Dylan, but to editors or transcribers. And besides: the only remarkable thing about the name George Lewes is that last e – if you’re already prone to spelling mistakes, that attention-grabbing e is precisely the letter you would write. Creative the solution is, though. But also perhaps a little too inviting. Inviting to suppose other spelling mistakes and understand, for instance, “George Louis” (the name of King George I, 1660-1727). Or, why not, “Jorge Luis” (Borges, the literary giant of short stories from Argentina); Gregory Lewis the actor; Jörg Liebenfels, the racist ariosopher and forerunner of Hitler; Gregor Lässer, a lawyer in Austria and so on and so forth… no, maybe it’s not so fruitful after all to take the shortcut, or rather: bypass to supposed spelling mistakes in text analysis and then base vistas on what Dylan “actually meant to write”. And maybe we should stick close to home and invite Jerry Lee Lewis in, for instance. Or even closer to home, to Appalachian folk music.
Comparably cumbersome are the attempts to discern a deeper layer beneath the trio Englishman + Italian + Jew. The Christian faction among the Dylan exegetes – naturally – looks for religious connotations and then finds something like Englishman = Protestant, Italian = Catholic and Jew = Jewish. Which would thus give the subsequent life wisdom of George Lewis a somewhat fundamentalist connotation – after all, his message that you shouldn’t be open to everything then implies that there still is something worthy of your devotion, but othersomethings are not. Frighteningly close to, in fact, the fundamentalist creep who was given a stage some thirty years before “High Water”, in “Precious Angel” (Slow Train Coming, 1979); “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.”
Apart from that, it is unlikely that Dylan’s poetic instinct would allow him to combine metaphorical use of “Englishman” and “Italian” with the unequivocal, unambiguous “Jew” – a literary man would then choose “Israeli” or, more likely, George Lewis told the priest, the vicar and the rabbi, something like that anyway. On top of that: if the poet already has the wondrous impulse to integrate universal, religious contemplation into a lyric like “High Water”, Islam would be an inevitable contender. And we had heard something like George Lewis told Harry, Mohammed and Yehudi.
No, all in all, Occam’s razor dictates that we have to accept meaninglessness; we know the poet’s penchant for suggestion and for absurdism, we have heard Dylan’s colleague Larry Charles testify that the writer Dylan has no problem with pointless, alienating inserts, a dose of which we also got two stanzas ago (“I’m no pig without a wig”), and every attempt at contextualization is shipwrecked. At most, locating a source may shed some light. “James Joyce” seems to be a key. The name pops up in the manuscript, in the original third stanza, in which Dylan, in the creation phase, crosses out the second line and writes in big blue letters, partly capitals, a first alternative: “James Joyce just walked in the door like he’d been in a whirlwind”.
Well, not inconceivable. Indeed, there are some more faint echoes from Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses (1922), in this verse of Dylan’s song (“High Sheriff”, for instance, and “Charles Darwin”). In the beginning of the novel, on page 17, protagonist Stephen Dedalus says I am a servant of two masters, an English and an Italian, and a third, and explains on the very same page: “The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.” With which interlocutor Haines is willing to go along, to some extent: “I don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now.” In itself too thin to qualify for the honourable stamp “Dylan source”, but that James Joyce name-check in the manuscript at the very least does justify the idea that Ulysses is floating around in Dylan’s stream of consciousness at this stage of his creative process, so who knows.
On the other hand: Jerry Lee, no, George Lewis firmly states that we shouldn’t open up our mind to every conceivable point of view, so there’s that.
To be continued. Next up High Water (For Charley Patton) part 10: The Return of Jerry Lee
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:
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:
This series looks at Dylan recordings of songs not written by himself. The songs and opening notes are created by Aaron Galbraith and the additional comments are subsequently added by Tony Attwood
Aaron: Mutineer was written by Warren Zevon and was first released in 1995. The album largely consisted of home recordings.
Tony: I first paid attention to Warren Zevon’s work after Jochen mentioned him in his review of “Knockin on Heaven’s Door”. It was just a passing sentence, “Warren Zevon’s subdued adaptation, recorded just before his death, is heartbreaking,” but enough to get me going, leading to the discovery of “Lawyers Guns and Money”, which Dylan later nominated as one of his favourite all time songs. And indeed now one of mine.
Mutineer however is different, it is gentle, and as ever with Warren Zevon the lyrics are repetitive, but oh so powerful when heard with the music…
I was born to rock the boat Some may sink but we will float Grab your coat, let's get out of here You're my witness I'm your mutineer
I’m not trying to pretend that this is great poetry, but rather that it is moving, especially when heard sung in this way.
Aaron: Bob Dylan released it on the 2004 album Enjoy Every Sandwich
Tony:I think Bob performs it with real feeling, a feeling that so many great artists had for Warren Zevon. I’m really pleased this song has come up in the series not because it is beautiful piece, but because I do hope it encourages you to explore a few more Warren Zevon songs, if you don’t know them all.
Aaron:Jenna Mammina & Matt Rollings
Tony: Jenna worked with the Spinners (now there is something to put on your CV!). I do love this and I would recommend Jenna Mammina’s work for anyone who doesn’t know it. In fact I am going to slip in one more of her songs here, although it is not in Aaron’s original selection and takes us a little off topic…
Now back to the script…
Aaron: David Lindley
Tony: Now that was a surprise. David Lindley sadly died last year – he was one of the early figures in the psychedelic movement and played with Crosby and Nash for a while and is reported to have supported Dylan in some concerts, although I don’t have exact details of that.
But now, since we are back on the subject of Warren Zevon, and since Bob Dylan nominated a Warren Zevon song as one of his favourites, I think that is enough of an reason to re-introduce it (and not, I seem to remember, for the first time).
It turned up in our series on Dylan’s favourite songs so that is all the excuse I need to play it again. Oh why do these guys have to leave us so early?
By Tony Attwood, looking back at recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour series of articles. There is an index to that ongoing series here. Links to previous articles in the “Extended” series are given at the end.
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According to the official site, Bob Dylan has performed “Rainy Day Women” 963 times on the Never Ending Tour, making it the 11th most performed song.
And it is a piece that offers a problem to Bob the musical arranger, because at its very heart is that very distinctive drum rhythm. Take that away and it’s not Rainy Day anymore. Keep it in and it is hard to know what to do with the piece.
However, from 1969 to 2019 the song has been a staple of Dylan’s performances. So it is obviously of interest to those of us who like to see what Bob does with his songs to look across the years.
In fact the changes have been subtle but they have been there, and they really do make for interesting if slight contrasts. If you were to play the first of the eight (yes 8) versions below you’d think that Bob’s just doing what most artists in this genre do – he’s playing his song as it is on the record. But changes do occur, although slowly and subtly.
Of course you can flip through to the conclusion of this little piece to hear where it ended up, but I hope you will stay with me, and at least listen to part of each of these recordings, as they represent a slow but deliberate change to a piece of music, that really, in many regards doesn’t want to be changed.
The real sign of change here comes with the musical interlude after 2’25” in which we move into a 12 bar blues improvisation, just to remind us that although perhaps we don’t think of it as a 12 bar, that’s what Rainy Day is. And as we approach 3’30” we really are starting to move away from the original – it is now a straight 12 bar blues jam. And it goes on, and on…
OK we are still bouncing along and making this a long improvised 12 bar blues – but by now the band are really starting to battle with each other – which is what can happen even to the best musicians when they are asked to play a 12 bar night after night and indeed year after year. To me, it is starting to sound like a bit of a mess.
Dylan is clearly trying to do something a bit different with his voice, but I get the feeling maybe he’s not sure what. The song is now two minutes shorter but it is still a long old jam – although around 3’30” we do actually come back to the origins of the piece and then have a proper and clear ending.
Still that same distinctive percussion opening and a full-blown opening instrumental verse just to make sure we’ve got it. But as Bob starts singing, we realise this is different. He’s got the lyrics the same – but the presentation of the vocals is different, and the band is holding back. And then that first instrumental break – it is actually quieter, more restrained, even, dare I say, more gentle. The slower pace helps this as we move into the 12 bar blues improvisation.
But what is this on five minutes? Bob talking to the audience???!!!! If you would like to listen and produce a transcript of what he is saying, please send it in – I know it’s an introduction to the band, but I can’t catch the details. There’s more instrumental, a return to the origins, and it ends…
I’m getting the feeling by now this is all getting a bit ploddy and repetitive although the cool-down section at around 5’30” is quite jolly and is followed by Bob making a few amendments to the melody – such as it is.
Four years on and there are a few more subtle changes to the melody, but it is still very much “Rainy Day”. He’s holding back the lines a bit, and indeed missing a few out totally. It is as if Bob is saying, “well we have to do this, but really, you’ve all heard it before….”
The length of the piece has come back down again, and the beat is a little faster, but more of the melody has gone. Now at last we have a 21st century Dylan re-working of the song. Not much of a re-working, but still a bit of a re-working, and are those a few changed lines in there too?
And still after all these years that introduction is pretty much the same, but the melody has really gone now, and as far as I can tell, so have some of the lyrics. The key part that we now have is the bounce. But as you are still with me after all this time, do listen particularly to those instrumental breaks, and just how much the accompaniment has been paired back. We’re now relaxed, jolly, happy, ok, old timers back together, thinking of the old days, but more sitting in our rocking chairs than standing out front and shouting.
Particularly have a listen to the instrumental break that starts around 2’11” and goes on for over a minute. It’s relaxed in a way this song never was before. Same with the second break around 3’50” – it’s a sort of “hey come on, let’s have a gentle bop to this.”
Yep – we’ve got stoned, but somehow we managed to come out the other side, still here, still listening, maybe more relaxed, and hopefully a little bit wiser.
Next on the list of Dylan songs (in alphabetical order) which have been covered more than once or twice, we come to “To Ramona”, and somehow I had it in my mind that this hadn’t been covered much – and that perhaps there wasn’t really that much to cover.
But yet another mistake on my part. It has been covered lots, although sadly quite a few of the covers are nothing other than the artist singing the song pretty much as Dylan sang it, and using a very simple accompaniment in the way Dylan did.
And that is pretty inexcusable since Bob has himself played it over 380 times on the Never Ending Tour – and he managed to find a lot to do with the song. This version is from 2015 (NET 2015 part 1). It makes me think we should do a feature on the song in the Tour for the NET Extended series.
But it has been a bit of a struggle to find such variance in the work of other artists. (If only people wanting to cover Dylan would read Mike Johnson’s brilliant series of articles – they would surely get some inspiration and understand: the songs are there to be changed not repeated.)
However this series is committed to covers, and there really are some interesting ones out there aside from all the straight copies, which I am not going to bother with.
Wilko Johnson goes in full burst complete with an accordion doing its accordion thing…
And that’s not really what I was hoping for, because this is not a rock song, so let’s move on.
Leoni Jansen gets the feeling as I think it should be, keeping that singular lilting 6/8 time (which runs 123,123 throughout). And as the accompaniment grows it stays in keeping with the song, and with the chosen approach. I think it’s a marimba that is brought in around 1’23” – and for me although it is repetitive, it is highly effective and totally in keeping.
These United States surprised me because their rhythmic background which is utterly different from anything Dylan imagined. They are back in 4/4 time but with that percussion playing eight beats to the bar behind the vocals.
I love this not just because I find it a great listen, but also because it is so unexpected. Yes, I could imagine one doing this to the song, but I couldn’t imagine it could be made to work (which obviously shows my musical limitations in old age).
The band has given itself a huge problem, in introducing the radically different rhythm from the start, and it is hard to build onto that, but they do it very effectively until suddenly taking us back down at around 2’50” (I’ll forever talk to you).
This is one of those great experiments that against all the odds (as I see them) actually works. As does the sudden stop without the vocalist going over the top for the last line. Unexpected, and superb.
Total contrast is needed and Piers Faccini takes us back to the original but travels in the opposite direction from These United States. There is the occasional extra line of music, but in essence this is a very gentle version of the original, with the concept of that first Dylan version kept in tact. It’s one of those performances that works totally if you are in the mood… but if not, well, it is still beautifully performed – and you can always save it until you are in the mood.
Dylan Revisited had Courtney Marie Andrews sing this song; the harmonies are of course perfect but restrained, the emotion is there but kept under control… it is gorgeous. I would urge that even if you know this version, do listen again and just focus on those lines that have the vocal harmonies in. In a sense they can just pass by as part of the song – but if you can seek them out, they are stunningly done – utterly perfect in every way. Brilliant musicianship all round.
And finally Sinead Lonan. In a sense by this time I was thinking, “is there anything more to add?” but I recalled Jochen picking out this cover – and I can see why. If nothing else just listen to what happens between (and sometimes behind) the vocal lines. It has to be the version to finish with. This is musical reinterpretation at its finest, both from the orchestrator as well as the performers. I am just left thinking, “What a gorgeous song this is.”
Of course I hope one or two people will have read my ramblings and listened to these cover versions, but even if that is not the case, I’ve been brought back to the song, and I’m grateful that has happened. It is a superb song.
Here’s the rest of this series of reviews of Dylan covers in the Cover a Day series. Over 150 of them, so not enough to keep you going all year, but still, quite a few.
“Take pictures or don’t take pictures. We can either play or we can pose. Okay?” Dylan to the audience, Vienna April 16th 2019
After having sampled some of the best 2019 has to offer in part 1, let’s have a closer look at the Setlist for this year. In most respects it’s pretty much the same as the 2018 Setlist, which has its origins back in 2014. There is, however, one significant change. ‘Things Have Changed,’ which has been the opening song since 2014 begins, in 2019, to give way to ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing,’ a somewhat prescient choice given that this will be the NET’s final year.
While always a peppy number, and a good way for Dylan to announce that he had changed and was not the Dylan of old, by 2019 the song seems to have lost some of its charge and has grown a bit tired. Here it is at the end of the year, New York, Dec 3rd. The arrangement is the same as 2018, with the revamped chord structure. He messes the order of the verses up a bit, and repeats some lines, but it’s a strong vocal performance.
Things Have Changed
We’ll cross to Palo Alto, Oct 14th to catch ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing.’ I’m always amazed at how, with this song in particular, the guitars can sound like a big band, 1940’s style. I could swear I hear horns blasting away. Donnie Herron’s violin helps give the song that retro feel. My friend, and patient proofreader, Janscie Sharplin, comes from a Buddhist background and finds an encounter with the Void to permeate this song, which takes its sentiment beyond Nihilism. I concur, but can also detect a sexual innuendo as well:
Well, my ship is in the harbor
And the sails are spread
Listen to me, pretty baby
Lay your hand upon my head
Beyond Here Lies Nothing
‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ consistently follows as number 2 on the Setlist. This is a blast of nostalgia, and an oddly reassuring song for those pining for the Bob of old. The arrangement, jazzy with a twist of bossa nova, will not be so reassuring, however, for those hoping for a reappearance of the 1964 Dylan – it really ain’t him, babe. Nevertheless, it’s a fine performance and excellent recording from Palo Alto.
It Ain’t Me Babe (A)
As with part 1, I like to contrast the Palo Alto performances with those from other concerts, in this case Santa Barbara (Oct 12th) which tend to be rougher and more energetic. I began this practice because I often couldn’t choose between them. What I like about this Santa Barbara recording is the sharpness of the piano, that very jazzy piano.
It Ain’t Me Babe (B)
We skip ‘Highway 61 Rev’ (covered in part 1) to land at ‘A Simple Twist of Fate’ at number 4 on the Setlist, and the first song to feature the harmonica, much to the joy of the audience.
A performance hushed and intimate, given added pathos by the violin. Some of the lyrics have changed a bit – ‘She said put your hand in mine/ ain’t no need to hesitate’ – but the fickle gods still rule our brief meetings. There’s always one that gets away.
The last verse has been reworked to put a new light on the situation:
People tell me it’s a sin
That it’s wrong and its wicked
To delve too far within
I let her get under my skin
Under my skin too late
I had another date
A date that couldn’t wait
Blame it on a simple twist of fate
There’s always a might have been, or could have been – memories to haunt us.
Here’s how it sounded at Palo Alto:
Simple Twist of Fate (A)
We can pick up another excellent performance at Irvine (Oct 11th). This one brings the violin forward. A wonderful audience response.
Simple Twist of Fate (B)
We then skip to number 7 on the Setlist, which was invariably ‘Honest with Me.’ a survivor from Love and Theft. I suspect Dylan still performs the song at this point to offer something a bit faster and with more beat than ‘Simple Twist of Fate.’ It is a hectic, oppressive song. It begins, ‘I’m stranded in the city that never sleeps,’ which makes me wonder what city he’s referring to, a real city or maybe the City of Dis, from Dante’s Inferno, encompassing the sixth through to the ninth circle of hell. It feels a bit that way, with its scattered impressions and desperate jokes. Here, Dylan makes it sound a bit like a 1950’s rocker, with a sharp-edged, feverish guitar riff, fast-rapped lyrics followed by dissonant jazzy chords. An unsettling, edgy song.
Let’s start with Palo Alto again.
Honest With Me (A)
And we’ll go back to Irvine for a follow up:
Honest With Me (B)
There are of course some Setlist variations. The next one up, ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’ was not performed at Irvine, but we can begin at Palo Alto as usual. I’ve always maintained that this is one of Dylan’s major songs with a powerful affective centre. It doesn’t suffer from the kind of scattershot lyrics in some songs from the Love and Theft / Modern Times period, instead focusing on the sense of loss and despair that dogs modern life. We could be back in the realms of Dis, ‘walking through the middle of nowhere,’ and ‘walking that lonesome valley,’ which recalls the ‘vale of tears’ of Christian symbolism, and the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).
When you think that you've lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
A friend once quoted me these lyrics after he had lost his family to divorce and his job to layoffs. That was the last time I saw him, as he shortly after lost his life in a tragic accident. The lines of course recall the famous, ‘When you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose,’ but to my mind are more resonant – how do you know when you’ve got nothing more to lose?
It’s a profound song and mood piece. Here it is at Palo Alto. If this isn’t a best ever it must come pretty close. Beautifully orchestrated. This is my go-to performance at the moment. The violin suits it perfectly.
Trying to Get to Heaven (A)
We can return to New York (Dec 3rd) for the follow up. Another outstanding recording. Another best ever! This recording foregrounds Dylan’s voice which is full of mischief and innuendo. Dylan at this late best, friends.
Trying to Get to Heaven (B)
Next stop is the ominous ‘Pay in Blood’ at number 10 or 11 on the Setlist. I must admit I can’t get past the overwhelming arrangement of this song in 2016 (NET 2016 part 1), which has stubbornly remained at the top of my best evers. For me, this softer arrangement, despite its edginess, doesn’t have the same vehemence and sheer spleen of the 2016 version. Maybe I’m just stuck at 2016, for these 2019 versions certainly don’t lack punch; the wall of sound approach has given way to a more unsettling, minimal, jazzy feel. The feeling remains that we couldn’t trust this boastful blowhard of a narrator. A crybully. Not somebody you’d want to mess with.
I got something in my pocket that’ll make your eyeballs spin
I got dogs to tear you limb from limb
Instead of starting at Palo Alto, I think we have a better starting spot for this one from Chicago (Oct 30th)
Pay In Blood (A)
But for sheer vocal virtuosity, you can’t do better than this one from New York. A wonderful character creation in all his petty grandiosity, his triumphant chest-beating. It’s performances like this that confirm Dylan to be the great Voice of our time.
Pay In Blood (B)
At this point, at slot eleven on the Setlist, we encounter an anomaly. ‘Lenny Bruce.’ This song, from ‘Shot of Love’ has been only a very occasional visitor to the NET, and before the dozen or so performances in 2019, had not been seen since 2008. I always felt it was one of the weaker songs of that album, but it is Dylan’s loving tribute to the famous comedian and social commentator who, in the song, becomes one of Dylan’s holy outlaws. Bruce’s sharp, acerbic humour must have appealed to Dylan; it was the humour of protest, stripping pretensions bare:
Never robbed any churches nor cut off any babies’ heads
He just took the folks in high places and he shined a light in their beds
In that phrase, ‘folks in high places’ we get a flash of the old, ‘protest’ Dylan, who shined his own light in their beds – remember ‘Eternal Circle.’ Bruce and Dylan both have a nose for moral corruption.
Again, we can’t do better than start at Palo Alto for this sensitive rendition.
Lenny Bruce (A)
That performance is well matched by this one from Irvine.
Lenny Bruce (B)
We’ll finish with ‘Girl from the North Country’ at number 13/14. Dylan and this early song have travelled a hard road together for some sixty years. It is one of the very few survivors from Dylan’s first, acoustic period, and what a stunning arrangement for it we find in 2019. Slow, meditative, lingering, sumptuously backed by a bowed double bass and violin. It is no longer the song of a young man, fresh from the experience but an old man looking back with tenderness and regret. This is one of Dylan’s greatest love songs, untainted by bitterness, and this is a loving treatment indeed, direct from the shadows of the past. First up, Palo Alto.
Girl from the North Country (A)
A performance once more matched in New York. Here, the ending is the final instrumental, sounding like a medieval madrigal. Magic enough! I won’t even complain about the missing harp break.
Girl from the North Country (B)
I’m happy to have brought you this stunning set of recordings, all the more stunning given the difficult recording circumstances. I think you may agree with me, seeing the musical imagination that has gone into these arrangements, that in the years from 2015 to 2019 some of these songs reached a certain performance perfection not found earlier. Dylan exudes confidence and the band….well! the band will be my focus in the next article, coming up soon.
High water risin’, six inches ’bove my head
Coffins droppin’ in the street
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin’ into Vicksburg, don’t know what I’m going to do
“Don’t reach out for me,” she said
“Can’t you see I’m drownin’ too?”
It’s rough out there
High water everywhere
“Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff,” the opening line of the second verse of the closing track of “Love And Theft” (2001), “Sugar Baby”, is then a bit awkwardly quoted, by half-contrite fans who keep trying to satisfy their never-drying Dylan craving with hundreds and hundreds of bootlegs. In the song, the narrator means illegally distilled alcoholic beverages, but fans gladly and knowingly misuse the double meaning of the word bootleg.
However, we know full well that Dylan, like most artists, hates those illegally distributed rejected studio recordings and secretly recorded live performances. It’s like your phone being tapped, Dylan says in the Biograph booklet in 1985. “The bootleg records, those are outrageous.” And at a press conference in Rome, in this same year 2001 that he sings of the bootleggers’ pretty good stuff, he is even a degree fiercer about the “so-called hardcore fans of mine who are obsessed with finding every scrap of paper I’ve ever written on, every single outtake”, culminating in a oddly naive cannonade:
“I mean, you don’t drive a car out of the showroom without paying for it, do you? You don’t leave the supermarket without passing through the check-out with your goods. It’s called stealing. Why the principle should be thought to be any different when it comes to music, I really don’t know.”
… probably because the showroom owner doesn’t care too much if his car is still there after the “theft”, Mr Dylan. Still, the dismay is real. This tirade is unleashed in response to his relief that the rejected “Mississippi” recordings from the Time Out Of Mind sessions were never leaked and bootlegged, so the song is not “contaminated”, as he calls it, and he can still record “Mississippi” for “Love And Theft”.
Incidentally, the dislike seems to flow in only one direction. In the summer of 1986, a year after that official conviction in Biograph, Dylan tells Q magazine interviewer David Hepworth, gleefully:
“I like the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. She passed away about fifteen years ago. I bought a record of hers when I was in Jerusalem in 1972. This guy was selling them on the street corner and they were obviously bootleg records.”
“He laughs,” Hepworth writes after that. Laughing out of discomfort at his own hypocrisy, we may assume – for it does seem likely that Dylan is at that moment thinking back to the anecdote he told his friend Tony Glover in ’71, the anecdote playing out in Manhattan a few months before this bootleg purchase:
“Last night we were walking down Seventh Avenue, and on the corner was this cat hawking bootleg records, just ‘Bootleg records, bootleg records, get ’em here.’ Just hawking ’em right on the street,” Dylan fumed. “I saw one. There was one he had of mine called ‘Zimmerman.’ And I caught it just out of the corner of my eye going by, and uhhh … I was with my wife, and we went back and she said, ‘Gimme that record.’ She grabbed the record from him and said, ‘Punk!’ — and we just took it, man, and split, just walked away with it.”
Hypocritical or not, Dylan’s aversion doesn’t really wear off, over the course of half a century. And he will have put approvingly a mark while reading Henry Rollins’ crushing Now Watch Him Die, the poems and diary-like notes Rollins wrote in 1992, immediately after the brutal murder of his best friend. For all the pain, fear and aggression, Dylan will also have felt a kind of comic relief at Rollins’ account of Florence 16 June, when Henry tackles a street vendor:
“I went out earlier and tried talking to the guy selling the horrible bootleg shirts outside the show. It was a great conversation. I told him he was a fucking thief. He smiled and shrugged. I told him to get the fuck out and he said he couldn’t, he already bought the shirts. I told him he was fucking with our trip. He told me that he was sorry but this was his job. I told him I was going to beat the shit out of him. He begged me not to. I took a big pile of shirts and threw them to people in the street. He ran around trying to get them back and I grabbed him and wouldn’t let him take them away from people.”
We can be pretty sure that this passage has a little checkmark in Dylan’s copy. Leading up to this, the author describes in this same diary entry from this 16th June his desperate, aggressive feelings and his depression, and then chooses words that Dylan will borrow for “High Water”: “I’ll never be able to say anything back to them that isn’t coming from the dark room that is my mind.” The dark room of my mind, Dylan makes thereof, in the second, final version of the opening verse.
We owe the discovery – of course – to New Mexico’s keen Dylan researcher, Scott Warmuth. In the songs on the previous album, Time Out Of Mind, Scott was already able to pinpoint Rollins quotes and paraphrases in eight of the 11 songs, and apparently Dylan still had enough Rollins fragments for “Love And Theft” stashed away in his famous very ornate box.
The irrefutable confirmation of this, of Rollins’ contributions to “Love And Theft”, Warmuth finds in the second half of this fourth verse of “High Water”. Opposing Dylan fans can still attribute that dark room of my mind to coincidence, but the sputtering gets a lot less convincing when Scott points to other Rollins passages:
“You’re weak and in need. You want something to hold so you can have something to blame. Don’t reach out to me. I’m drowning too.”
… which Dylan transfers almost verbatim to the fifth and sixth verses of this verse. Originally from Pissing in the Gene Pool, 1987, but it is gradually beginning to look like Dylan is flicking through the 1997 compilation The Portable Henry Rollins Paperback on the tour bus; all the Rollins quotes and paraphrases can be found there. Including a source for the seventh verse of this verse, It’s rough out there, on page 33:
Everybody is somebody else’s freak
Think about it
Sit at home with the television on
Watch some people burn shit down
Thousands of miles away
“Look at those freaks. Aren’t they something? Must be rough over there.”
Henry Rollins probably won’t be calling it stealing or outrageous, none of this. He is a fan. And presumably, it is not so much his poetry as his music that has been the calling card. In Unwelcomed Songs (2002), a collection of song lyrics 1980-1992, Rollins talks in Chapter 6 about his short-lived side project Wartime (one album, Fast Food For Thought, 1990):
“We recorded on and off through 1988 and eventually it was done. Andrew produced and Theo engineered. The record came out and we did a video for the song Truth. Jesse Dylan, son of the great Bob, directed.”
Rollins is referring to the song “The Whole Truth”, a relatively still laid-back song (by his 80s standards anyway), carried by a concrete, industrial bass riff, with lyrics in which we hear echoes of 1965 Dylan:
Eye to eye and wall to wall
Can you see what's here? Does it fill you with fear?
Can you keep your distance from what you hate?
Unbelievable, unreal, too shocked to feel
Look out! Mind the gap!
Most of the violence then comes from video director Jesse Dylan, who has in the background a couple of tough guys going at a car with sledge hammers and grinding tools, a Black Knight narrowly surviving a hanging and an innocent beekeeper dying a gruesome death. In between, Henry Rollins provides comic relief at the beach by striking seductive poses in the surf à la Madonna in “Cherish”, also in black-and-white. High water everywhere.
To be continued. Next up High Water (For Charley Patton) part 9: I just thought that was the way he spelled his name
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:
To be alone with you was issued on Nashville Skyline and became a regular on the Never Ending Tour, being performed over 300 times, taking its final bow so far on 3 December 2023.
Yet despite being an easily accessible song, open to interpretations, it has not proven to be one of the most covered of Dylan compositions. Yes there are covers, but not as many as I suspected there might be – nor indeed as many variations in style and form as I thought there would be as I started looking, when considering what to say in this little piece.
Catherine Howe takes the bounce of the song to make that the central feature and adds some lovely vocal harmonies – but then all of that makes the harmonica in the first verse seem a little odd to me.
Indeed by the second verse it begins to feel to me as if everything possible is being thrown at the song. There’s the chorus, some do-do-do and oo-oo-oo effects and the sax prodding away in the background. I rather fancy that the song would do better with a bit less.
Steve Gibbons gives us a more solid rock basis and the band fully understands where they are going and what they are doing. It becomes a nice piece of dance music – nothing very special (for me) and one of those Dylan songs that I end up thinking, well, yes, ok. Maybe; fine; what’s next?
Sue Foley’s version is a real contrast with the rock approach above and she uses her voice to make as much as possible of the song, which I suspect is what is needed in covers of this piece. It bops along but constantly I want to listen just to hear what she does with her voice – the sound becomes almost salacious – although that could just be an inappropriate reaction of an old man sitting alone in his house. (I would add that as soon as I’ve written this and had a coffee I am jumping in the car and driving to London to watch the football, so that should. The line “I need somethin’ strong to distract my mind, I’m gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind” is suddenly in my head and I’ve lost tough with the song I am supposedly writing about.)
Back on planet Earth, Maria Muldaur also uses her voice, but gets a totally different feeling out of the song. This is much more seductive in a restrained manner – and of course the album is called “Love songs of Bob Dylan” – and that’s what she makes it.
It’s an interesting piece, and clearly, by playing it over 300 times Dylan really likes it, but somehow for me, it is still not up there as a major piece. But Sue Foley came in and gave me something to think about, and that’s never a bad thing.
Here’s the rest of this series of reviews of Dylan covers in the Cover a Day series. Over 150 of them, so not enough to keep you going all year, but still, quite a few.
One of the very first articles I wrote for Untold Dylan (some 16 years ago ) was a review of “Dark Eyes”, in which I mentioned the Carrie Myers cover version, bemoaning the fact that I could only point the readers (of which at the time there were very few) to Spotify – there being no recording of that version freely available on the internet.
Now all these years later, finding to my utter surprise that both myself and Untold Dylan are still here, I find that the Carrie Myers and the Proper Way version is freely available, my first thought was simply to update the review. And maybe I will sometime, but it then struck me that this version of “Dark Eyes” would make for a perfect example of what I wanted to say about the song in the “lyrics and music” series. So here we are.
What comes across from listening to this version is the power of the melody. OK the vocalist here makes use of her wonderful range and she does vary the melody somewhat but in essence what we have is the original melody, the lyrics and a banjo.
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside, They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide. I live in another world where life and death are memorized, Where the earth is strung with lovers' pearls and all I see are dark eyes.
Of course the singer is playing with the melody quite a lot and the banjo gives a totally different feel to those lines, but my point is that such an arrangement would not be possible if Dylan had not written such a distinctive, beautiful melody to accompany those lyrics (or maybe the other way around – written such distinctive lyrics to accompany a melody he wrote first).
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If we now go back to Dylan’s original (which is here if you need reminding) his version is also completely bare and sparse, leaving the melody and lyrics to carry us through, with just the simplest guitar accompaniment and a harmonica break.
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There is no attempt to do anything with the melody other than allow it to carry the lyrics. There is no temptation to interpret “another drum” or the dead rising in the music – which I know sounds utterly, utterly crazy, but you’d be amazed what lesser composers and arrangers will try. We simply have the melody and that simple guitar part.
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In fact, when one thinks of it, the lyrics are really tempting with regards to the symbolism and images, and a lesser writer, or a writer less in control of his own work (and thus possibly influenced by an idiot record company producer) might be tempted to take any of these images and reflect them in music…
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A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer, Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere. But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise, Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.
But Dylan doesn’t do that – indeed he creates and melody and accompaniment that simply doesn’t allow this to happen. The world he portrays here is one that moves along step by step, beat by beat. Nothing is allowed to change that beat, not even
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They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes, They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is. But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized, All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.
There is pain here, there is a desire for movement and expression, but none of that is allowed. He FEELS the heat and flame, but because all he sees are dark eyes, he will not and indeed cannot express it. Even the beauty of the song is unrecognised because that is not what he sees.
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And it is only at the end that we understand why, with the “French girl” and “drunken man” line. The world is wrecked, there is no emotion that he can touch or feel, and so the music has to express this and keep it, as indeed it does. In fact “A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes,” then rings out truer and more powerfully than it ever could with a deeper or more complex accompaniment.
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So what Dylan has done is created a really wonderful melody and some enormously powerful images and ideas in the lyrics. But to combine the two in a song with a rock accompaniment would destroy the impact of the notion of dark eyes. So he keeps it simple, and it works to perfectly – but is not suitable for a concert performance.
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Thus I suspect (although obviously I can’t prove, and Bob isn’t taking my calls) that this plaintiveness combined with the sense of being lost in the lyrics, is why he only ever played this wonderful song eight times live. It is just not suited for the concert hall. It requires total silence in the background, not the sort of noise you get at a Dylan show. It requires total attention from the audience, not the chattering that goes on, the whistling etc etc.
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So not for a show – but as a song, that beautiful but plaintive melody, that straightforward rhythm and those simple chord changes do everything needed to put across the extraordinary depth of meaning and feeling that the song contains.
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Carrie Myers gets this. She uses her voice to play with the melody and lyrics while the banjo continues its own way, almost as if she is not there. If the melody were not so elegant, if the chord changes were not so controlled, that reworking would not be possible.
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But more, Carrie Myers and her arrangers know that there must be a return to the simplicity of the melody and banjo after the additional chords are introduced and that’s what we get.
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I can’t imagine Dylan moving into such an arrangement, which is just about the only sort of arrangement that could work – hence the limited exposure of this classic on the tour.
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Thus we have a stunning melody, amazing lyrics, and an incredibly simple accompaniment. And that’s the only way it can work.
By Tony Attwood, looking back at recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour series of articles. There is an index to that ongoing series here. Links to previous articles in the “Extended” series are given at the end.
Don’t think twice, it’s all right appeared of course on Freewheelin’ and became a fixture in the Tour. According to the official site, it was performed a staggering 1086 times between 1962 and 2019. Here I’m taking a look at just a few of the performances in the 1990s.
The feeling is that this is being taken at much greater speed than the original, although that is to a certain degree an illusion caused by the speed of the accompaniment – and then by the way Bob modifies the melody in order to raise the pitch in the second verse.
He has also changed a song that was three and a half minutes long into a very lively seven-minute performance through the instrumental break after each verse. And overall when he gets to the “long and lonesome road”, he’s not shuffling along with the guitar slung over his back, he’s jumped in the open sports car with the guitar sticking out from the back seat, and driving off at 100mph. Except…
Except we have an unexpected harmonica solo at 4 minutes 30 seconds – hard to make out at first but then as we get attuned to it, it grows and grows – before it fades back for a second verse… and if that were not enough, at around 5 minutes 50 seconds, everything drops to half speed. Yes, he still is looking over his shoulder. What a performance!
And then what is ever-more interesting (for me at least) is that he worked on the song, seemingly becoming more certain as the concerts progressed as to how he wanted to play with the masterpiece. I am not sure if the bass was being played in the earlier recording, but now it has a greater presence (maybe it was just not being picked up so by the recordist in earlier show, or maybe I didn’t notice…
What these two recordings from the same year of the tour show is just how much work Bob puts in between each show – yes he can take the band by surprise sometimes, but this re-arrangement from one show to another must have been fully rehearsed. And the result is much more light-hearted – he’s not driving off in a sports car, he’s now walking down the road at speed with a real jaunty step.
I’m not happy with all of it – the raising of the pitch at “precious time” and lines around there don’t seem quite right to me – but if Bob wants to that, well, he’s the boss. And those extended instrumental breaks really are something. Indeed, for me, the whole value of this series of articles is shown through such recordings. Just listen to that ending after the seven minute marker where Bob seems to go off on a jaunt of his own. This time I am not convinced the band had any idea it was coming or where it was going.
Moving on, I’m going to jump forward now to 1995 part 3: the Prague Revolution
There are more changes here – not huge in themselves but enough to emphasise that he is not only moving on, and not only moving on at speed, but now with a certain sense of desperation. I had a feeling of the moving being fun in the performance above, but now that seems to have gone – the sudden rise of the voice for “like you never did before” and the greater desperation of “you wanted my soul” all add to this.
And as I listen to these stupendous recordings once more I am again overwhelmed by the fact that if so many dedicated fans had not made these recordings, we wouldn’t be able to get these insights into the way Bob worked. The coda has changed too, and again I have the feeling that was a thought that happened on stage.
Now the piece is cut a little shorter – and that tiny detail seems to me to represent exactly what is going on here… Bob will play with anything in a song to find else what there is within it. Just listen to the way he sings it this time – yes he is indeed travelling on.
And what I would say is if you have another few moments just compare this version with the first one at the top of the page – we really have travelled.
For me, where we are now is at a much greater level of enjoyment of the travelling on – there were moments before where the travelling was what he did because he was a “travelling man” – he had no choice. But now travelling on is what he wants to do. And that is right, in the sense that he is the star man – he can do what he wants, and he knows we will all travel with him.
So yes, this is the best of this little collection – it lifts me up, and makes me feel even at my advanced age (not quite as old as Bob, but not too far behind) that I can travel on too. Not physically: I’m not on tour, and I rather like the house I’ve ended up in, in the Northamptonshire countryside, but with what I do, what I watch, where I go with my pals, how I tackle what inevitably must be the latter parts of my life.
And that brings me to a concluding comment: these are very personal thoughts about the performances – and that seems to me to be what the Tour is about. Bob is endlessly facing his creations and playing with them in different ways. As a fan, I’m facing Bob’s re-creations. And the more I do it, the more I find I enjoy it.
High water risin’, six inches ’bove my head
Coffins droppin’ in the street
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin’ into Vicksburg, don’t know what I’m going to do
“Don’t reach out for me,” she said
“Can’t you see I’m drownin’ too?”
It’s rough out there
High water everywhere
Greetings From Mississippi Vicksburg
He may be somewhat forgotten, but lasting footprints in music history Little Brother Montgomery (1906-1985) did leave anyway. In 1930, the blues and boogiewoogie pianist recorded the instrumental, irresistible “Crescent City Blues”, which was pimped up and given lyrics by the legendary Gordon Jenkins in 1953. Jenkins invited his wife Beverly Mahr behind the microphone, and she sings:
I hear the train a-comin, it's rolling 'round the bend
And I ain't been kissed lord since I don't know when
The boys in Crescent City don't seem to know I'm here
That lonesome whistle seems to tell me, Sue, disappear
… and apart from the music, the next three stanzas sound just as over-familiar, with verses like When I was just a baby my mama told me, Sue and I see the rich folks eatin’ in that fancy dining car, not to mention the final couplet:
If I owned that lonesome whistle, if that railroad train was mine
I bet I'd find a man a little farther down the line
Far from Crescent City is where I'd like to stay
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away
Gordon Jenkins/ Beverly Mahr – Crescent City Blues:
Yes, indeed: Gordon Jenkins’ arrangement of “Crescent City Blues” is from front to back the template for one of 20th century’s most majestic monuments, for Johnny Cash’s 1955 “Folsom Prison Blues”. Which Cash won’t honour without a fight, by the way. The lawyers cross swords and, after some sabre-rattling, it isn’t until 14 years later, in 1969, that finally a settlement high enough ($75,000) is reached to buy Jenkins off. Cynically, the song’s founding father, Little Brother Montgomery, is not even mentioned – an injustice he shares with exploited peers like Chuck Berry and Arthur Crudup.
And a second milestone is set by Little Brother Montgomery with “Vicksburg Blues”, the ode to the town on the Mississippi for which history has not always been kind;
I got the Vicksburg Blues and I sing 'em and ache everywhere I go
I got the Vicksburg Blues and I sing 'em and ache where I go
And the reason I sing 'em is my baby didn't want me know more
… writes and sings Eurreal Wilford Montgomery in the 1920s, and the song, or rather Vicksburg, continues to fascinate him. In 1976, when he has been living in Chicago for almost 50 years, he gets a visit from the BBC, and he still plays the “Vicksburg Blues” in the living room, though now with new lyrics:
Now when I went down Mulberry, boys, and I turned up Clay,
Now when I went down Mulberry, hey boys, and I turned up Clay,
I was looking for my baby, but she had moved away.
Some say she moved round on Walnut, well,
and some say she moved out on Vine,
Some say she moved round on Walnut, and some say she moved out on Vine,
Now wherever she wails, partner, she’s resting on my mind.
Little Brother Montgomery – Vicksburg Blues (Chicago 1976):
… showing that despite a distance of 50 years on the calendar and 800 miles on the map, Eurreal still has Vicksburg’s street plan in sharp focus. He is absolutely right: from Mulberry Street you turn the corner, climbing up Clay Street, second right is Walnut Street, walk all the way to the end and via S Madison Street passing the birthplace of Myra Gale Brown who will marry her cousin Jerry Lee Lewis 13 years after her birth in 1944, and then Monroe Street, you eventually reach Drummond Street: first alley on your right now is Little Brother Montgomery’s final destination, Vine Street. A 0.9-mile, twenty-minute walk. And meanwhile you climb higher and higher, farther and farther away from the flooding Mississippi – starting point Mulberry Street is behind the river embankment, behind the levee, and for safety’s sake no longer has a residential use, Vine Street is a shabby little run-down street with a few tattered shacks, but: it is located at the safest, highest point of Vicksburg.
The opening line seems to have triggered something in Dylan, who opened his very first draft of “High Water” with the remarkable opening verse High water risin’ – putting lime in my face. At least, it seems like Dylan heard and I turned up clay, without a capital letter C – and then the switch to lime in my face is not that wild a paraphrase.
But of course we owe the receptivity to “Vicksburg” and the “Vicksburg Blues” first and foremost to Robert Johnson, to the 1937 monument “Traveling Riverside Blues” (I got women’s in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee), which sowed the seeds for Led Zeppelin, Johnny Cash (“I’m Going to Memphis”, with his Bertha living in Vicksburg), Sir Elton (“Dixie Lily” 1974), Mountain’s classic “Mississippi Queen”, Charlie Daniels (“Sweet Louisiana”), Tom Waits (“Don’t Go Into That Barn”, 2004), the evergreen “Catfish John” ( with the chilling line Born a slave in the town of Vicksburg / Traded for a chestnut mare), Rory Gallagher, Hank Snow and the dozens of others who sing of Vicksburg as a setting, crime scene or promised land.
And trendsetter Robert Johnson, like Dylan of course, heard it again from the stepfather of his “High Water”, from Charley Patton himself, in the model for Dylan’s song, in 1929’s “High Water Everywhere”. On the A-side, in “High Water Everywhere, Part 1”:
Now, the water now, mama, done took Charley's town
Well, they tell me the water, done took Charley's town
Boy, I'm goin' to Vicksburg
Well, I'm goin' to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine
Charley Patton – High Water Everywhere Part I:
Patton’s escape route is much less linear and structured than Little Brother Montgomery’s. Charley goes the 60 miles from Sumner to Leland, then to nearby Greenville, then north to Rosedale, 120 miles back south to Vicksburg, then another 50 miles back north again to Sharkey County (during which he no doubt passed by Muddy Waters’ supposed birthplace in Rolling Fork), 100 miles north past Clarksdale and Friars Point to Stovall, and finally the breathtaking madman’s zigzag journey ends full circle; he goes east, probably with wet feet walking on, via John Lee Hooker’s and Sonny Boy Williamson’s Tutwiler until he is back, back in Sumner, Tallahatchie County, Mississippi.
Don’t know what I’m going to do, we can almost hear him moaning.
To be continued. Next up High Water (For Charley Patton) part 8: The Portable Henry Rollins
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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Caroline Doctorow’s version of “Time Passes Slowly” is one of my all-time favourite Dylan covers – it has everything that I could possibly want from a cover version – an understanding of the song itself, some beautiful harmonies, and a gentle reverence for the original and an excellent performance.
If you don’t know about this lady then I would point you toward her website. What else can I say about this version, except that it is sublime?
Of course Judy Collins got there long before, and delivers exactly the version you would expect from here, even if you hadn’t heard it before, which I am sure you have.
Her arranger feels the need to build the accompaniment – which is a technique that can get out of hand, and has been done several trillion times before. But the middle 8 of this song (Ain’t no reason to go) lends itself to her harmonies, and then passes into a beautifully restrained instrumental version. It all works, and was the absolute masterpiece version this song, until Ms Doctorow came along.
A notable alternative version comes from Moses Wiggins – it was on their “Troubadour” album. They face the problem of the sold four beats a bar piano part head on, but the elegance of the vocals means they get away with it. And that’s a hard thing to do – it is one of the most boring piano parts to play (and indeed to listen to) that there is in the Dylan world.
Jochen pointed strongly to Rachel Faro’s version in his review, and yes I can see why, although for my taste the arranger takes us just that little bit too far from the original so that the last line of each verse feels awkward as it resolves all that has gone before. But that’s me getting all highfalutin about musical whatnots. And maybe it is because I have just listened to those earlier versions… Probably is.
But as ever, you don’t pay any money (because Untold never charges) and you takes your choice. (Or am I just referring back to an obscure English expression which is meaningless in the US? Sorry, if so, but I’ve got no one close by to ask).
Here’s the rest of this series of reviews of Dylan covers in the Cover a Day series. Over 150 of them, so not enough to keep you going all year, but still, quite a few.
If you want an example of Bob fully understanding the power of his lyrics and linking this with music that delivers the same force, all one has to do is listen to the first verse of “Idiot Wind”. The opening line of “Someone’s got it in for me…” is surely one of the most enigmatic and yet powerful he’s ever written. On first hearing I took it to be a true reflection of Dylan’s thoughts on the media – and I still wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.
But with that power in the lyrics there needs to be power in the music – not by having a flowing melody, for that wouldn’t work at all, but by starting unusually on a minor chord (A minor in this case), and then moving totally unexpectedly onto a very unusual chord of Bsus4 (that’s the chord of B with the note E added to it)… and so on until finally we get to the chord of E (indicating that we are indeed in the key of E) at the end of the line at the word “press.”
These unexpected and unusual chords then lead us onto a resolution, with the everyday chord of E giving an absolute sense of edge, or things not being right even if they appear to be so.
And then in the third line the melody changes – in fact we get a melody, which we have hardly had before in the opening lines, and the feeling of which key we are in is resolved as the song moves through the chords of C#m, G#m, A and E. All are chords normally associated with the key of E – the issue is we simply didn’t know we were actually in the key of E at the start, what with the piece opening on A minor (which has nothing to do with the key of E!)
My point is that through this totally novel chord sequence, through opening without any clarity as to which key we are in, and with there being hardly any melody at all (it is mostly on two notes, with a couple of others in passing) Bob gives us a feeling of uncertainty, openness and indeed darkness, all at the same time, that reflects the opening lyric of “Someone’s got it in for me”, and the second line which makes it clear he has no idea who is doing this, or indeed why they are doing whatever they are doing.
In short, the chaos of the situation as expressed in the lyrics is reflected in the edge within the lack of a distinct melody and the unexpected and unresolved chords behind the lyrical line.
But what really makes this music memorable is that when all the edge is taken out of the music by giving us a clearer melody, and a conventional chord sequence in line three (C#m, G#m, A, E) we get the totally unexpected and really off-the-wall (for a piece of rock music at least) lyrics of
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.
What in fact we have is a song which in one verse has two utterly contrasting situations, musically and lyrically. And this allows Dylan to write effectively each verse as two parts.
Take the second verse…
I ran into the fortune-teller Who said, "beware of lightning that might strike" I haven't known peace and quiet For so long I can't remember what it's like There's a lone soldier on the cross Smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done In the final end he won the wars After losin' every battle
Is there a connection between the first four lines and the rest of the verse? I am not sure there is lyrically, and there certainly isn’t musically. And the same is true for each verse thereafter.
That disconnect however, resolves itself in the lyrics as the song progresses so that by the time we get to
I can't feel you anymore I can't even touch the books you've read Every time I crawl past your door I been wishin' I was somebody else instead Down the highway, down the tracks Down the road to ecstasy I followed you beneath the stars Hounded by your memory And all your ragin' glory
we do have a sense that all is connected, but the music continues to be of two parts, the first four lines of each verse having those uncertain hanging chords, with the last five lines being more resolved, more melodic…
And thus the contradictions are allowed to exist (just as they so often do in the real world), and in so doing we can get to the final resolution
We're idiots, babe It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves
It is all told not just with a brilliant set of lyrics, but a brilliant musical composition which allows us to move from contradictions to the final recognition that “You’re an idiot, babe” might be true, but in fact the total reality is that “We’re idiots, babe.”
