Untold Dylan

The Never Ending Tour Extended: Things have changed

Posted on October 31, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood, with recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour Series.

In this series we look at the way Bob has transformed certain songs over time in his live performances, in particular looking for the progression in his feelings about, and his understanding of, what the song offers, what the song says, and where it can be taken next.

So far we’ve looked at

Here I’m taking a look at the early versions of Things Have Changed

2000

“Things have changed” was released on 1 May 2000, (2000 was also the year the movie was released) so here we are at the very start of the performances of the song.

And what is interesting is that already in this earliest recording we have from the Never Ending Tour series, Bob is playing with the delivery of the lyrics, emphasising the world-weary nature of those lyrics. He’s also using the trick he has often utilised in the past of emphasising different words almost at random. The world-weariness comes across utterly clearly but there is also a hint of softness in the way Bob sings. The singer is in despair but also accepts that it’s all gone wrong, that’s why he doesn’t care. And that’s the point: he doesn’t care – things have changed. Personally, I love this rendition…

2001

Into its second year, this world-weary approach is emphasised even more, and the melody is reduced a little further with the emphasis on the lyrical delivery being used ever more to emphasise the central message that he really did care in the past.

In essence, we have ever more declamation – the performer knows the song, we know the song, he knows we know and so he is taking this feeling of not caring to its ultimate position.

This works because we all know the song so well, but imagine if this is how it had sounded when we first heard it… I don’t think the rendition would have worked at all. In short, appreciating this version is dependent on our knowing the song well, which of course everyone at the concert would do. Just listen to the lines around “the next sixty seconds could be like an eternity” and what happens thereafter.

Everything is poured into the hopelessness of the singer’s desperation, nothing else matters.

2002

In 2002, once more nothing is really changing in the music – it is the vocal delivery that is changing, and although there is a little bit of a return to the original melody there’s not much. The question is how much further can this go, or perhaps how much longer will Bob be giving us this sort of delivery? We’re in danger of losing the song and collapsing into utter despair.

And I think at this point, having listened to the 2002 rendition above, it is worth going back to the originally released recording here just to remind ourselves of what it sounded like at the start. The melody is sublime, and in my view it needs to be retained – it won the Oscar because of the melody as much as anything. Even if you want to go on to hear how Dylan changed the music thereafter I would ask that you spare a moment or two to listen to the song’s original stance…

So the question arises, has Bob’s ever-greater emphasis on the emotions that are expressed through his vocal delivery, actually helped the song? I am unsure, because for me one of the many great attractions of the original recording is the way the song is delivered with a sense of detachment. He puts the emotion in with lines like “Just for a second there I thought I saw something move” but that emotion is still pure detachment. In these live recordings Bob now changes the song by finding more emotions (particularly desperation and despair, as opposed to his original detachment) into the song. That makes the “I used to care” line now have a sense of much greater detachment, and I think that because of these changes that is by now being lost in the live versions.

So moving on…

2003

Bob has now changed the song again, and regained a semblance of melody, but now has brought in an overwhelming sense of desperation rather than of detachment. I find that a very interesting development.

2005

So now we have moved on two years and the percussion is notably more aggressive, the introduction is slightly longer. Obviously, I have no idea how Bob prepares for these concerts, but I suspect that he doesn’t go back and listen to recordings of what he did last year. But we can do that, and so I’ve just gone back to that initial 2000 version, which now seems worlds away.

And I find this so interesting because I think this gives an insight into the way Bob works – or at the very least the way he worked with this song. He’s not going back to his own recording but rather developing from where he got to in the last outing.

2007

Here we are now seven years on from its composition, and after taking the song on a journey into despair and desperation I feel Bob has now had a chance to review what he’s done, to re-think in fact… and here I feel he is now taking the song in a slightly different direction. The band feel this too, I think, as the short instrumental break is quite unlike what has gone before. A spaciousness appears within the song that wasn’t really there before. There’s thus more emphasis on the singer being alone, looking out onto this strange world – the ultimate outsider.

I also think the guitar instrumental break emphasizes this disconnect even more. Where before the lyrics were enough to express this, now we all know the lyrics too well, so the song has lost its initial power. Hence the extended instrumental break followed by verses in which Dylan is barking out simple comments on the state of the world around him.

In fact, in the latter part of this 2007 recording, the music seems to portray the world going on as it always does while the singer stands beyond the music barking out short commentaries. It reminds me of the sad, lost old-timer on the street corner shouting at the traffic, for now things have not only changed, he’s changed too; he’s totally lost.

Now I am not arguing that Bob goes through thought processes like those I have tried to set out above, but rather that he continues to feel his way through each song, reflecting on it, and finding new ways to use the song, and finding new things to express within it. That is what he always does, and that is what makes the Never Ending Tour such an exciting concept. It is also what makes Mike’s collection of recordings such an utterly amazing resource.

And of course, you don’t have to take my word for any of this. All the recordings are on this site. You can, obviously, do your own comparisons and draw your own conclusions. It’s all here for you to use as you wish.

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Bob Dylan’s Hymns: What is Really Sacred? Part 4: Ring them bells, Sad Eyed, Nobody ‘cept you

Posted on October 30, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Previously in this series

Part 1: Lay down your weary tune
Part 2: What is really sacred?
Part 3: Every Grain, Released and Chimes of Freedom

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Ring Them Bells

“Ring Them Bells” appeared on Dylan’s “Oh Mercy” album in 1989. The song echoes “Chimes of Freedom” from 1964, for example in its fourth verse, “Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,/ Ring them bells for all of us who are left,” reminiscent of “Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an’ forsaked/ Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake,” from “Chimes of Freedom.” These bells toll for the outcasts, but also ring from the natural world, from the sanctuaries “through the valleys and streams,” recalling “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.”.

The song praises the sacred as an anti-hymn, lamenting the desecration of what is holy. The second verse ends, “the sun is going down/ Upon the sacred cow,” a double-edged perhaps ironic image. Cows may be truly sacred, for example in India, but also an expression of that which is falsely considered sacred, as in the biblical golden calf Moses encountered upon descending from Mount Zion. The song ends with the defilement of morality, “they’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong.”

“Ring Them Bells” resonates with “The Bells of Rhymney,” a song with music added by Pete Seeger to the lyrics of the Welsh poet Idris Davies. The song grieves for a Welsh coal mining disaster. “Bells of Rhymney” was covered by the Byrds in their 1965 “Mr. Tambourine Man” debut album, which also covered Dylan’s “Spanish Harlem Incident,” “All I Really Want to Do,” and “Chimes of Freedom,” as well as the title song. In “Ring Them Bells” Dylan calls, in different verses, to ring them bells to St. Peter, for Sweet Martha, and for St. Catherine. This recalls “The Bells of Rhymney” invoking the brown bells of Merthyr, the black bells of Rhondda, the grim bells of Blaina, the bells of Newport, the green bells of Cardiff as well as the sad bells of Rhymney. The sorrow of “Bells of Rhymney” for the dead miners and anger at the mine owners informs Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells” including ringing for “the child that cries, When innocence dies.”

Another antecedent for “Ring Them Bells” might be heard in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells,” which Dylan’s sometimes colleague Phil Ochs adapted for his beautiful song “The Bells” in his 1964 album “All the News That Fits.”

Poe’s Bells start by extoling delight. In the first two verses, “A world of merriment their melody foretells” and “a world of happiness their harmony foretells.” But the tone shifts to “Brazen bells! What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!” This somber mood increases to “a muffled monotone … on the human heart a stone.” In the last verse we hear “the sobbing of the bells” and the poem closes with “the moaning and the groaning of the bells.” Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells” is not nearly so ominous as Poe’s Bells. Yet the song does present the loss of innocence as “the willows weep and the mountains are filled with lost sheep.” In the last verse “the fighting is strong” as “they’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong.” In this hymn Dylan acts as a guardian and protector of the sacred, noting how it is threatened.

In his song “I Contain Multitudes” from “Rough and Rowdy Ways” in 2020, Dylan honors both Poe and Blake, antecedent to “Every Grain of Sand.” He sings, “Gotta tell tale heart like Mr. Poe” and a few verses later, “I sing the songs of experience like William Blake.” Dylan is not shy about honoring the multitudes of his musical and poetic inspirations.

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

Dylan’s hymns often celebrate the sacred in the women he has loved. Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” was written in 1966 and released on “Blonde on Blonde.” It is one of Dylan’s longest songs, surpassed in length only by “Highlands” and “Murder Most Foul.” Its length might account for why Dylan has never performed “Sad-Eyed Lady,” or perhaps it is simply “too personal a tale,” as he sings about the “lonesome-hearted lovers” in “Chimes of Freedom.” (Dylan has performed versions of “Highlands” nine times, and nearly 600 times “Desolation Row” equal in length to the Sad-Eyed Lady, though he also has never performed “Murder Most Foul.”) Sad-Eyed Lady is a hymn-like love song, generally acknowledged as dedicated to Dylan’s first wife, Sara Lownds.

The song is complex, replete with colorful images, many likely symbolic references to events in their relationship. A full exegesis or interpretation of the song is not relevant to this article. But “Sad Eyed Lady” serves to exemplify a hymn dedicated to a loved one. It is one of three Dylan songs containing the word “hymn,” mentioning her matchbook songs and her “gypsy hymns.” Among many images that evoke Sara’s spiritual qualities the song mentions “your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes, And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes.” He appreciates her “silhouette when the sunlight dims” and the moonlight swimming in her eyes. He praises “your gentleness now, which you just can’t help but show,” and “your holy medallion which your fingertips fold, And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul.” This song clearly honors his love for his wife, invoking her sacred qualities.

(Please note in the outtake recording below the song starts at 1’55”)

Nobody ‘Cept You

Another song that mentions the word “hymn” is “Nobody ‘Cept You” from 1973, released on “Bootleg series 1-3” in 1991. While Dylan states that there may not be much that is really sacred in the modern world, this song has the refrain, “there’s nothing to me that’s sacred ’Cept you, yeah you.” The song includes the verse:

There’s a hymn I used to hear
In the churches all the time
Make me feel so good inside
So peaceful, so sublime
And there’s nothing to remind me of that
Old familiar chime
’Cept you, uh huh you

In the following verse the singer recalls his childhood playing in the churchyard cemetery, but so much older now, he mournfully sees his former playground as “where the bones of life are piled.” No one sees him anymore “’Cept you, yeah you.”

This song, heard as a hymn, praises the sacred quality of “You, yeah you,” one of Dylan’s many love songs that invokes the sacredness of a romantic partner, who sees him clearly, even amid his changes. Certainly, one focus of the sacred for Dylan is love, and women. However, when Dylan sings about “you,” it is a good example of why Sean Wilentz calls Dylan “a master of ambiguity.”[3] Especially in his Gospel period, but also perhaps as an undertone in this song, the “you” may imply the Deity, or a sacred spirit, as well as his lover. Sometimes Dylan’s “you” may imply the audience for whom he sings. But in this song, as unambiguously as Dylan can ever be, he serenades a human lover, one who sees his spirit true.

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Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 6: O ye of little faith

Posted on October 29, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 6

by Jochen Markhorst

VI O ye of little faith

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Go tell it on the Mountain, go tell the real story
Tell it in that straight forward puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person’s alone
Goodbye Jimmy Reed – Godspeed
Thump on the bible - proclaim the creed

“I wanted to make something more religious,” Dylan says of Tempest, in the interview with Mikal Gilmore for Rolling Stone, September 2012, but in the end he finds the religious songs he wrote for it too similar.

This does intrigue Gilmore. “What do you mean by religious songs,” he asks, “something like Slow Train Coming?” “No, not at all,” Dylan replies, “more like ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’.” Getting already pretty close to old-time religion indeed, close to hardcore gospel like “How Great Thou Art”, “Rock Of Ages” and “Nearer My God To Thee”… entering the territory of Mahalia Jackson and Luke The Drifter, in other words. Which is apparently still buzzing in the back of Dylan’s mind in 2020, as evidenced by the opening of the second verse of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” – the last lines of the Lord’s Prayer, as they are already written in the New Testament: “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen” (Matth. 6:13). The praise, the doxology to put it liturgically, which the congregation sings after the choir has sung “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.

Like old-time religion, the follow-up line go tell it on a mountain is just as much an excursion into Mahalia Jacksonland. After all, “Go Tell It On The Mountain” was already on the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ setlist back in the nineteenth century, and has never disappeared from the canon. From The Weavers to Bobby Darin, Sinatra to Simon & Garfunkel, The Staple Singers to Peter, Paul & Mary, and Dolly Parton, Harry Coninck Jr and James Last… since its first recording in 1941 (Dorothy Maynor) to the present day, the spiritual has been indestructible. Not out of place, then, this verse in Dylan’s song, but the initial expectation that “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” tells a story is gradually beginning to evaporate.

“Something more religious,” as Dylan dreams aloud in 2012, it is, though. For now. So far, every verse (apart from the “chorus line” Goodbye Jimmy Reed – Jimmy Reed indeed) has a religious reference or component: Saint, churches, pray, Proddy, religion – culminating in the opening lines of this second verse, which quote the Lord’s Prayer and one of gospel music’s greatest hits. But, unlike spirituals like “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” or “Go Tell It On The Mountain”, without any coherence; “It doesn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects,” as Dylan sings of the source of the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount (in “Up To Me”, 1974). A mosaic-like character reinforced by the change in tone, in this second verse:

Tell it in that straight forward puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person’s alone

… where that first line has a somewhat cynical undertone. Not so much in the recitation as in the choice of words – especially “puritanical”, a word that generally has rather negative connotations (as “very strict”, “censorious”, “anti-pleasures”) and as such is used by Dylan elsewhere:

“America was still very ‘straight’, ‘post-war’ and sort of into a gray-flannel suit thing, McCarthy, commies, puritanical, very claustrophobic and whatever was happening of any real value was happening away from that.”
(interview with Cameron Crowe, Biograph booklet, 1985)

And where the second line, while again having religious overtones (mystic hours), has again a completely different tone: poetic, gentle. And for the Van Morrison-lovers, indeed has a “Van-the-Man colour” (although Van actually never sang the particular word combination mystic hours).

It’s an unusual word combination, by the way. Californian whiz kid Beck uses it once, in the whimsical “Lemonade” (on the Deluxe Edition of his masterpiece Odelay, 1997), but that’s about it. At least, as far as the song catalogue is concerned. Beyond that, we find it in the canon one single time:

Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in my hands;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you, dearest comrade–not a tear, not a word

… in Walt Whitman’s moving funeral blues “Vigil Strange I Kept On The Field One Night”, a lamento, while waking by the corpse of a fallen comrade in arms. The same Walt Whitman whose I contain multitudes from “Song For Myself” triggered the opening song of Rough And Rowdy Ways – it is at the very least likely that Dylan also picked up this mystic hours from a Whitman anthology. Ultimately hardly important, of course – neither the source nor the poetic tone. Decisive for the associating poetic songwriter seems to be the motif, the religious signifiers, passed from verse to verse like an estaffette baton.* Something we see Dylan do more often. The opening of “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” (Blonde On Blonde, 1966), for example:

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes

With – coincidentally – yet again religious signifiers in every line (missionary – prayers – cross), but in Dylan’s oeuvre other themes provide motifs just as often. Like “weather conditions” in “Jokerman”, or “traveling” (“Lo And Behold!”), “fairy tales”, “card game”… it is in itself not too surprising that a poetic songwriter, freely associating, allows himself to be carried away on the waves of his stream-of-consciousness while staying within the shores of a chosen theme. As evidenced by the final two-liner of this second verse:

Goodbye Jimmy Reed – Godspeed
Thump on the bible - proclaim the creed

…“Godspeed” and “bible” and “proclaim the creed”; the song’s final religious bursts, and closing with a tone miles away from “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” and “Go Tell It On The Mountain”. For “bible thumping” and “proclaiming the creed” have nothing of the conciliatory, harmony-preaching of the Sermon on the Mount or the elated rapture of Mahalia Jackson, but on the contrary everything of the irreconcilable intolerance of the Puritans – of the “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”-singing Karens from Inherit The Wind.

“Has your sense of your faith changed?” Mikal Gilmore asks in that 2012 interview. “Certainly it has,” Dylan cheerfully replies, “o ye of little faith.”

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*Publisher’s footnote: Estafette. Being a native English speaker who works as a writer, I like to think I know quite a bit of the English language, but I got caught out by Jochen’s use of “Estafette”. It is, I now know having looked it up, a perfectly acceptable word in English, meaning: a military courier. I thought I would add this, just in case you were caught out, as I was. Although it is most likely that I am the only ignorant person here.

To be continued. Next up Goodbye Jimmy Reed part 7: You can see the light

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

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NET 2017 Part 3 You went through my pockets while I was sleeping

Posted on October 28, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson

An index to the entire series can be found here.

In 2017 Dylan was still drawing heavily from Tempest (2012), with five songs regularly played. Before turning to those, however, let’s catch up with a few other regulars. ‘Love Sick’ and ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ are, in this year, the only songs from the groundbreaking Time out of Mind (1997).

From 2013 to 2016 Dylan performed a lot of his songs from centre stage, only sometimes accompanied by the harmonica. In 2017 Dylan only played American Standards centre stage, for all the rest he moved to the piano, and abandoned the harmonica. I can’t find a single use of the harmonica in 2017 although I might have missed something. Adding the piano to these songs changed the sound of them. ‘Love Sick’ is a good example. In this recording from New York City (Nov 24^th) Dylan has added a new ‘walking’ piano riff that weaves through the song.

Love Sick (A)

But I prefer the simpler sound from earlier in the year, at Bournemouth (May 4^th.) performed without the piano. It could be that the Bournemouth recording is better than NYC, but whatever the reason, this one is the more compelling performance. It might be that the song suits this starkness.

Love Sick (B)

‘To Make You Feel My Love’ from the same album was played twenty times in 2017, and one of the finest ever performances of the song must be this one from Saskatoon, July 14^th. The vocal is in the foreground and Dylan gives it his all, using part talking part singing technique. There is lot of pathos and sadness in this song, the feeling that his attempt to make her feel his love is a doomed one, although who could resist such a melancholy appeal?

To Make You Feel My Love

The swinging version of ‘Blind Willie McTell,’ triumphantly introduced in 2012, was played only once in 2017, although to my ear the edge has worn off this arrangement somewhat. Dylan must have thought so too, for this sole performance at Dover (June 17^th) was to be the song’s last. The song had been fading from the setlists since 2013, with only a handful of performances since then, and none in 2016. It’s a pity about the absence of the harp break which has given this arrangement such pizzaz; it just doesn’t sound the same without it.

Despite the missing verse, this song has always been a highlight of Dylan’s concerts since 1997. A powerful song evoking American history with its ‘power and greed and corruptible seed,’ the song is generally considered one of Dylan’s greatest, and with good reason. It’s a dark vision of America, and, as such, it’s as much a protest song as ‘With God On Our Side.’

Blind Willie

‘Beyond Here Lies Nothin’’ is the sole survivor from Together Through Life. The sexual innuendo of the last verse, with its appeal to love, gives this celebration of emptiness a certain tenderness. I find it interesting how the line ‘lay your hand upon my head’ suggests a blessing or benediction.

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 nothin'
Nothin' done and nothin' said

This performance is from Esch-sur-Alzette, April 22^nd.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

The powerful and enigmatic ‘Pay In Blood’ featured strongly again in 2017. By the end of the year, however, it had begun to change. I don’t know how to describe what is happening here; perhaps an extra chord has been inserted. Dylan hits some different notes with his voice. Here it is from that first wonderful concert in Stockholm, pretty much unchanged from what we have heard before,

Pay In Blood (A)

and here it is at the end of the year in Washington, with the changes I mentioned.

Pay In Blood (B)

For my ear, the Stockholm performance is still the best, although the Washington version is interesting.

Another song from Tempest, ‘Early Roman Kings,’ has become a favourite of Dylan’s. I’m starting to relate this song to a line from ‘Scarlet Town,’ also of course from Tempest: ‘The evil and the good living side by side.’ Those early Roman kings seem to encompass both evil and good, although I wouldn’t want to mess with them. (Washington)

Early Roman Kings

Deep and mysterious, ‘Scarlet Town’ remains for me my favourite song from Tempest. Here a fairy tale world is mixed with the harsher aspects of the real world. The ‘flat-chested junkie whore’ has to mingle with ‘Sweet William’ and ‘Mistress Mary.’ The prospect of salvation is suggested and denied: ‘I touched the garment but the hem was torn.’

It seems that these Tempest songs contain the world’s contradictions, holding them in one melodic movement.

Here’s how it sounded in Stockholm

Scarlet Town (A)

Later in the year, however, at Buffalo, Dylan ups the tempo a little and changes the vocal line, lifting up his voice for the lines

The music starts and the people sway
Everybody says, are you going my way?

and for other lines also at the same point in the verses. This change alters the mood of the song, not just giving it an uplift, but a touch of high passion not evident in the more subdued versions.

Scarlet Town (B)

‘Long And Wasted Years,’ with its lurching rhythm and self-justifying persona is one of Dylan’s finest dramatic creations. The persona gives himself away at every turn, revealing himself to be a drunken, bitter, cunning, small-minded, grudge-holding character. Only at the end of the song does real grief show through.

We cried on a cold and frosty morn’
We cried because our souls were torn
So much for tears
So much for those long and wasted years.

A devastating conclusion to the song.

Dylan hasn’t changed this song much, except for a few lyrical variations. For example these are the lyrics for the sixth verse that I have grown used to, and which he sings in the ‘best ever’ 2015 performance (See NET 2015 part 3):

My enemy crashed into the dust
Stopped dead in his tracks and he lost his lust
He was run down hard and he broke apart
He died in shame, he had an iron heart

I like the way that plays out, but Dylan seemed to have problems with this verse. In 2015 he also sang:

My enemy crashed into the dust
he lost his lust
a strong wind swept him up
no more should he drink from that golden cup

Back in 2014 he sang:

My enemy crashed into the dust
Woah, he lost his lust
He stopped dead in his tracks and got pinned down
Run down hard and he sank to the ground

In 2017, however, he reverts to the version on his official website, which up to this point I don’t think he had yet sung:

My enemy crashed into the earth
I don’t know what he was worth
But he lost it all, everything and more
What a blithering fool he took me for

In previous posts I have put forward the idea that for Dylan a song has no final form, that it is a moveable feast, an adaptable template which changes over the years, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ being a prime example. But perhaps in some cases, maybe this one, it is the ‘drive for perfection’ (alternative ‘Love Sick’ lyrics from Fragments) that is driving lyrical changes. That ‘restless hungry feeling’ that drives the creator to seek, but never find, that perfection. All lyrics are up for grabs because no lyrics can ever be perfect; there’s always some other, maybe better way of saying it.

I’m not sure this Stockholm performance is quite as ‘perfect’ as the 2015 recording, but it’s getting there.

Long and Wasted Years

Because of its deceptive gentleness and brevity, it’s a bit too easy to overlook ‘Soon After Midnight.’ The song is like a knife that slips between the ribs before you even notice it, a murder ballad dressed as a love song, or maybe it is the killing that is the real love. I don’t know of any lyrical variations for this song. It’s perfection just the way it is.

Here it is in NYC.

Soon After Midnight (A)

And here it is in Washington. I like the bass resonances of this recording. It’s probably the acoustics of the venue, but it gives the song a deeper, darker feel. In turn, Dylan uses those acoustics to use a softer, huskier voice.

Soon After Midnight (B)

We’ll stay in Washington for a final song for this post, and for 2017, the American Standard ‘Melancholy Mood,’ a favourite of Dylan’s regularly performed in 2017. We might say that melancholy rules in most of the songs, and the performances we’ve heard in these three posts. ‘Soon After Midnight’ would be classic example.

Melancholy Mood

As I see it, the theme for 2017 is that of constant innovation, songs changing and evolving.

Next stop, 2018.

Catch you then

Kia Ora

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Untold Dylan also has a Facebook page. You can find us here

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Other people’s songs: Two Soldiers – and an amazing discovery

Posted on October 27, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: I found some interesting details on the song from the SecondHandSongs website where we are told that aka “Blue Eyed Boston Boy” the “Two Soldiers” is “an American Civil War ballad written by an unknown author in the 1860s purportedly inspired by the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, where General Lee’s Confederates trounced General Burnside’s Union troops.”

The song was apparently well-known in its time. Many decades later Alan Lomax recorded two takes (1555B & 1556A) of Monroe Gevedon of Kentucky in 1937 singing this song but the recording went unissued at the time.

Second Hand Songs continues, “In the late 1950s, Willard “Uncle Wilie” Johnson (of the Brady Snifters) obtained a copy of the second take and Mike Seeger learned it and recorded it in 1964 and other performers followed Mike’s rendition.”

The song starts

It was just a blue-eyed Boston boy, 
His voice was low with pain, 
I'll do your bidding, comrade mine, 
If I ride back again. 
But if you ride back, and I am dead, 
You'll do as much for me, 
My mother, you know, must hear the news, 
So write to her tenderly."

The song rather curiously seemed to start in the middle of the story. In the 1970s Jon Pakake (also of the Brady Snifters) obtained the first take that Lomax had recorded and sure enough, here was the entire song. However, by this time, the version Mike Seeger had initially released was too well known, so subsequently very few ever capture the entire song, plus it would make for a very long song. Gevedon’s second take that also starts out with the Boston Boy line was finally released in 1995, but that was not his original recording with the full lyrics.

Tony: That is an extraordinary story, isn’t it, of how a whole chunk of the song could be lost. Mind you although it is hardly an exact parallel, I recall the Byrds issuing a version of Tambourine Man which consisted of the chorus, the second verse, and the chorus, apparently because the record company wanted something that DJs would play on the radio and the full version was too long. But now back to the plot…

Monroe Gevedon

Tony: And for me that’s really hard to listen to. Especially as I am still taken with the fact that people would prefer to release the incomplete version of the song even after they had the full version.

Aaron: Dylan learned it from Jerry Garcia and had been performing it live since 1988.

Tony: And now we have a really moving version of the song. In my folk singing days (several centuries ago) hearing a recording like that would have immediately had me learning the song and then trotting off to one of the clubs to play it. I doubt I would have done any justice to the piece, but performing such songs gave me some sort of (probably spurious) connection with the origins of the music that I loved.

Aaron: Bob’s version comes from World Gone Wrong

Tony: Seeing that picture takes me back to the article Patrick Roefflaer wrote for Untold about the art work. If you’ve not read it, it really is worth a read. In fact that whole series of articles about the art work is worth a read, but this one gives quite an insight into the way Dylan puts things together.

As for the song, this takes plaintive sadness to such a new level of desperation, I find it hard to take. It’s not that I am unhappy in my world in 2023, it’s just that is so powerful, I’d like to have someone with me to listen to it again, so we could share a few words and recover from the rendition. I am dancing tonight (as usual) so that will help me recover – although I’m hoping I can shake off the feelings this recording gives me long before then.

Aaron: Here is a version from 2002 by Mark Erelli

Tony: Wow, that is unexpected. And moving in a different way. I am not listening to the lyrics now but the accompaniment. Which may sound strange because mostly it is just an accordion (I think) with no vibrato, holding single notes or chords with no vibrato on – but the way the melody wraps itself around those single notes and chords is exquisite.

Now I was so knocked out by this recording, and knowing nothing of the artist, I went a looking to check the change on the name of the song, and yes it is right.

If you are moved in the slightest way by this extraordinary recording (and I’m now listening to it for a second time, and it is even more powerful than the first) you should visit https://www.markerelli.com/home-2 and understand more about what is going on in the background of Mark’s life. This recording isn’t typical of Mr Erelli’s work generally, but it is certainly worth an exploration.

So here am again, discovering through this series in which Aaron selects the recordings and I try and write my thoughts on hearing the piece (often for the first time) as the music plays. New versions, unknown to me, often get presented through this strange approach Aaron and I have been utilising for years on this site, but rarely have I been moved by a recording as much as I have today.

Here are the previous editions…

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Dylan cover a day: No 144 – The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar

Posted on October 26, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This is one of my favourite songs, and I’ve always felt there is a lot one could do with it not least because of those opening lines…

Prayed in the ghetto with my face in the cement
Heard the last moan of a boxer, seen the massacre of the innocent
Felt around for the light switch, felt around for her face
Been treated like a farm animal on a wild goose chase

The most obvious thing would be to slow the piece down, and really put an emphasis on those extraordinary words. Then if you wanted to go further you could change the line breaks just to add to the chaos, so you get

Prayed in the ghetto with my face 
in the cement heard the last moan of a boxer seen the massacre 
of the innocent felt around for the light switch, 
felt around for her face Been treated like a farm animal 
on a wild goose chase

OK maybe that’s just me slipping back into a surrealism mode, but there is some fun to be had somewhere. And yet so few have experimented with the song, even though simply emphasising the words will give the performance a huge amount of umph.

And yet many that have have just reiterated what Bob did. Take Stef Kamil Carlens & The Gates of Eden

That sounds at the start like it is going to be good fun with taking it faster, but really the lyrics, line after line, become a gabble, and the contrast with the Rock of Gibraltar line doesn’t really take us much further. The musical interludes show promise, but just don’t seem to get beyond that.

Elkie Brooks however going the other way restores my faith that there is something else to be gained from the song. Everything comes from her wonderful voice: she’s not forcing anything but we just have to go with her, and the al-al-al-alter line works really well.

This how the old 12 bars need to sound these days. The backing chorus helps as well.

It is of course just a strophic song (verse / chorus / verse etc etc) but just listen to that last verse (“Cities on fire, phones out of order”) for an extra bonus. Superb.

Steve Wynn takes 30 seconds to get the band to realise they are there to perform, but they have some fun – it’s worth persevering with.

Moses Wiggins gives the song a good bash but the problem is that there is no variation – it is once more verse after verse with the occasional bit of lead guitar fun in between, but it is not one of those songs that makes us want to focus on Dylan’s lyrics by itself – the band need to work harder to make that happen.

I think it is worth returning to Bob himself at this moment to contrast what he did with the song – which was slow it right down. That gives him a real chance to explore the lyrics, which is essential if we are to keep our interest up.

And that’s about it, which means Elkie Brookes has to get the vote for keeping me interested in the song through the whole six minutes of her performances. In fact her version is a perfect example of how to hold interest across one of the longer Dylan songs. And the interesting thing is that she makes it all seem so obvious that this is the way to perform the song; I’m amazed anyone has tried to do anything else.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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Bob Dylan’s hymns part 3: Every Grain, Released and Chimes of Freedom

Posted on October 25, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Previously in this series

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Every Grain of Sand

In 1981 Dylan wrote “Every Grain of Sand” released on the “Shot of Love” album, considered part of Dylan’s Gospel period. Dylan has performed the song more than 300 times, and in his tours in 2023 has closed his concerts with it. The song further celebrates the sacred value of our phenomenal world. It begins, “In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need/ When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed.” The mood of the song begins with regret, sorrow, and repentance, even if the next verse starts with the singer perhaps ironically having “no inclination to look back on any mistake.” But he sees the need to “break the chain of events” that leads to this present situation, and then sees the sacred present, “In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.”

Each second verse thereafter ends with “every grain of sand.” The singer comes to understand, onward in his journey, “That every hair is numbered, like every grain of sand.” This seeing all elements of the world encompassed in every grain of sand, the macrocosm in the microcosm, echoes the song “Auguries of Innocence,” ca. 1803, by the great 19th century British visionary poet William Blake (1757-1827). Blake begins these Auguries, defined as omens, prophesies, or predictions, with:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour [10]

Blake’s grain of sand embraces and contains the whole infinite universe including all times and heavens. In his “Auguries of Innocence” Blake proceeds to catalogue numbers of animals who are in tortured situations such as “A Robin Red breast in a cage,” “A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate,” “A Horse misus’d upon the Road,” and “The Beggar’s Dog & Widow’s Cat [unfed]” along with many others.

Despite this proliferating suffering, Blake advises:

Man was made for Joy & Woe;
And when this we rightly know
Thro’ the World we safely go.

He adds later, “Some are Born to sweet delight,/ Some are Born to Endless Night.” This Blake lyric elaborates on the wholeness of the world, incorporated in a grain of sand. While containing great sadness and injustice, Blake also embraces the possibility of joy and delight when openly facing this world and all its elements.

Dylan’s grains of sand are similarly all-encompassing. Dylan specifically calls forth the sadness of regret and loss. The song ends:

In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Each grain of sand is likened to a sparrow falling. Dylan celebrates this life with its sandy grains replete with all elements of the world’s landscape, from trembling leaves to every hair to the passing away of birds flying in the sky. Like Blake, Bob Dylan sees redemption, or at least consolation, in facing this wholeness.

Not only does every grain of sand include and embrace a whole world or the universe, but every grain of sand matters. Each bit of creation is sanctified in Dylan’s vision, every hung-up person in the whole wide universe holds ultimate value. Dylan expresses this another way in “Only a Hobo” from 1963, released in the Bootleg Series, vol. 1-3. While out walking the singer spies an old hobo lying dead in a doorway, and sings, “Only a hobo but one more is gone, leaving nobody to sing his sad song, leaving nobody to carry him home.” For Dylan every creature is sacred and worthy of respect and reverence, along with the whole wide universe.

I Shall Be Released

“I Shall be Released” from 1967 might serve as a revealing counterpoint to seeing the wholeness and spiritual value of the everyday world of phenomena. Originally heard on “Music from Big Pink” by The Band, appearing on various Dylan bootlegs thereafter, and performed nearly 500 times by Dylan, the song poignantly calls for release from the sorrows of the world, aiming for “some place so high above this wall.” Yet in this song Dylan sings that, “I remember ev’ry face/ Of ev’ry man who put me here.” The singer does not dismiss or forget the experiences of the mundane human world. The sacred includes his friendships and loves, and all the people and situations that “put me here.”

In this hymn to release, the word “release” has relevant implications for Dylan’s relationship to the sacred. His hymns provide release from the obstructions of a consumerist culture that values material acquisition and the frivolous, from “toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark.” Further, his hymns offer release and relief from the limitations of our narrowed materialist perceptions and values. Consumerism and commodity acquisition objectify the world and block open awareness of its beauty and possibilities of intimacy. Thus “this lonely crowd” is denied the value and meaning of what is truly sacred.

Chimes of Freedom

Dylan’s song “Chimes of Freedom” from “Another Side of Bob Dylan” in 1964 is a kind of hymn, which he performed fifty-six times between 1964 and 2012. In what might be seen as a development of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” the natural phenomena of thunder crashing seems to be the chimes of freedom flashing. The sacred that is praised in this song is the suffering of a whole array of “countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out” people. The lightning is “tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake,” and tolling for “each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail.” The song praises their relief and freedom from suffering, dedicated to “every hung-up person in the whole wide universe,” that they might hear the chimes of freedom flashing.

Much of “Chimes of Freedom” is about freedom from oppressive conditions, rather than positive expressions of what freedom is for. Freedom from, and adamant refusal to accept any oppressive social system, was expressed the following year, 1965, in one of Dylan’s greatest protest songs, “Maggie’s Farm” from “Bringing It All Back Home.” The singer is insistent that he “ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more.” Later “in the 1980s Maggie’s Farm was widely adopted as an anthem by opponents to British Prime Minister Margaret [Maggie] Thatcher.”[2]

Positive qualities of freedom that Dylan finds sacred are included in “Chimes of Freedom.” Such images as, “the warriors whose strength is not to fight… [and] the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin’ rain” celebrate helpful and free spirit. The chimes are “striking for the gentle, striking for the kind, striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind.” These gentle protectors are the sacred praised in this hymn to freedom. In the denouement of the final verse Dylan describes “being starry-eyed and laughing … when we were caught.” The song closes with gazing “upon the chimes of freedom flashing” as a beacon of true value and the sacred, and a comfort for the outcast and marginalized.

[1] Geoffrey Keynes, edit. Blake Complete Writings (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 431-434.

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie’s_Farm

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Goodbye Jimmy Reed part 5: None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written

Posted on October 24, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 5

by Jochen Markhorst

V None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddy from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

In the days following Robbie Robertson’s death (9 August 2023), the short excerpt from The Last Waltz pops up more frequently again on social media. It’s the eighth interview segment, and somewhere backstage, seated on a sofa, Rick Danko (violin), Robbie Robertson (guitar) and Richard Manuel (harmonica), are playing a spontaneous impromptu version of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”. The casual ease with which they fill that minute (Roberston doesn’t even take his burning cigarillo out of his mouth) demonstrates the enviable skill with which the men of The Band can hark back to tradition. And the performance matches the emotion that the song always does evoke, whether it is played by The Caravans (1955), Mahalia Jackson (1962), Buck Owens (1970), or one of a hundred other artists (the first recording dates from 1910). At times jubilant (Mahalia), at other times euphoric (Joe Bonnamassa), at other times elated (Dolly Parton), or filled with a Holy Joy (Johnny Cash); the emotion is always somewhere between mirth and ecstasy. There is really only one single exception to this.

Stanley Kramer’s Inherit The Wind from 1960, with Spencer Tracy in a starring role, is a classic that owes its classic status mainly to the court duel between attorney Henry Drummond (Tracy) and prosecutor Brady (Frederic March). Around it, the present-day viewer may stumble over the melodramatic staging of some scenes, but the story has a timeless, eternal value still. It is based on a true event, on the lawsuit against a teacher in Tennessee who was indicted in 1925 for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution – the famous “Monkey Trial”. In 1960, however, the story may just as well be understood as a satirical attack on the repugnant practices of communist hunter McCarthy, and in the 21^st century, sadly, the petty attacks on dissenters are just as topical still.

However, when writing “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” in 2020, Dylan seems to be mainly inspired by the religious component, by the oppressive, narrow-minded fanaticism of the creationists in the village of Hillsboro, the short-sighted reverend and prosecutor Brady. The last line of the first verse quotes the song with which the film opens, and which is later sung again by half the village, welcoming Brady: “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”. The variant of the film opening is a cappella, terrifyingly sung by Leslie Uggams and sets an ominous, suffocating tone. But especially that second time, the massive variant with bells and whistles, sung by half the village, marching along with the smug Brady, gives the old, nineteenth-century gospel song an almost creepy, fascist charge; the camera gives all the attention to the unforgiving, fanatical heads of the front line – all ladies who would be called “Karens” today.

The old gospel song probably came to Dylan’s mind after that opening with saint and churches and Jews, Catholics, Muslims and Proddy – and that, that “Give Me That Old-Time Religion”, in turn, opens the gate to the second verse with the Inherit The Wind-associations: “thine is the kingdom”, the “straight forward puritanical tone” and especially the bible-thumpers, the rabid zealots who in their blind faith destroy much more than they could ever build.

And none of it has anything to do with Jimmy Reed.

Brinkley: “On the album Tempest you perform “Roll on John” as a tribute to John Lennon. Is there another person you’d like to write a ballad for?”

Dylan: “Those kinds of songs for me just come out of the blue, out of thin air. I never plan to write any of them. But in saying that, there are certain public figures that are just in your subconscious for one reason or another. None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written. They just fall down from space. I’m just as bewildered as anybody else as to why I write them.”

The interview with Douglas Brinkley that the New York Times publishes around the release of Rough And Rowdy Ways in June 2020 is a delightful, worth-reading interview with a grand old man who reflects with attractive modesty and a strange mix of wonder plus reliance on his own work. We are already familiar with the drift of his self-analysis; in previous interviews Dylan often confesses that he has no idea where those songs come from. But by now he is almost eighty and chooses his words more soberly than ever – and at the same time with a kind of self-evident acceptance of the magic behind it. He calls his creative phase “trance writing”, he doesn’t plan his songs, songs come “out of the blue, out of thin air”, and:

“The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”

Beautifully phrased, with a pleasant touch of mysticism – although the old bard recognizes elsewhere in the interview that the songs do not entirely come “out of the blue” or “out of thin air”. Regarding the opening song “I Contain Multitudes” he analyses:

“It’s the kind of thing where you pile up stream-of-consciousness verses and then leave it alone and come pull things out. In that particular song, the last few verses came first. So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line. It’s one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state.”

No doubt that’s no different with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” – a title line as a catalyst for an entire song, and the lines to that title line come in a “trance state”. In any case, there are hardly any references to the historical, actual Jimmy Reed in the song. Actually, quite similar to that other ode to a blues legend, to the granite masterpiece “Blind Willie McTell”.

“Blind Willie McTell” was initially rejected by Dylan himself and passed over for the 1983 album Infidels. To the dismay of producer Mark Knopfler, who, just like the rest of the music-loving world, found the song an inexorable masterpiece, the inevitable high-light of the album on which he had worked so passionately. But Dylan deemed it “not finished”, and Dylan’s word is – unfortunately, in this case – law.

Maybe at the time, forty years ago, Dylan thought that the song didn’t say what was on the tin; “Blind Willie McTell” is certainly not about Blind Willie McTell, but is an impressionist masterpiece that evokes the slavery history of the Southern states. And biographically, Blind Willie Johnson would fit more than McTell. Hence perhaps Dylan’s uneasiness with the song; the refrain line Nobody could sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell does not really meet music history. Only after bootleggers illegally distribute the rejected recordings, which are then hailed by fans and music lovers as a masterpiece, and after The Band puts it on the setlist, Dylan surrenders – the song is released on the first Bootleg Series box in 1991. Since 1997, Dylan is fully aboard, playing it live for the first time. To his satisfaction, apparently: since then he has played “Blind Willie McTell” more than two hundred times. A number Dylan seems to reach much faster with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”, by the way. When he resumes his Rough And Rowdy Ways tour in Kansas City, 1 October 2023, he plays the song for the 139^th time.

Jimmy Reed indeed.

To be continued. Next up Goodbye Jimmy Reed part 6: O ye of little faith

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

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: It ain’t me babe: 1994-98

Posted on October 23, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood, with recordings presented by Mike Johnson in the Never Ending Tour Series.

In this series we look at the way Bob has transformed his songs over time, in particular looking for the progression in his feelings about and understanding of what the song offers and where it can be taken.

So far we’ve looked at

Here I am looking at the evolution of It Ain’t me Babe from 1994 to 1998.

1994

This recording in the Never Ending Tour series has an aggressive edge. But it also has a superb Dylanesque acoustic guitar performance. It is fast and it is sad, which allows it to be aggressive in its message to the woman through the speed at which it is delivered, but soft and sad at the same time. The instrumental break adds to this too, there is a powerful driving force here, and although when the vocal returns there is further sadness, I have the feeling he is already packed and half way out of the door – or maybe even sending a postcard from his next stopping point.

I also seem to remember that some writers at the time of the first appearance of this song, took it to mean not so much that he was literally moving on from a past lover, but saying to the media “I am not telling everyone what to do; I’m just a folk singer.” There could still be some of that…

1995

But whatever the message was in 1994, just one year later in 1995 the song has changed dramatically. It is as if Bob had realised that he was onto something with the 1994 version, but wanted to take out some of the aggression in the notion that it “ain’t me babe” and return to the original sadness of the song, which implies the thought of “I’m sorry but it is not me”. So we have the bass added to the song, and the vocals are more spaced out, more reflective, as indeed would be the case after singing the song so many times (the first performance having been in May 1964 – so by the time of this rendition the song was already 31 years old!)

1996

This is where I think the value of this occasional year-by-year comparison comes to the fore – at least it does for me, for in following the invaluable series presented so brilliantly by Mike, I find although I listen with great pleasure to each new recording, and add my comments, I can’t recall what the song was like one or two years before – the last time Mike included it in his collection.

And now we find Bob has slowed the song down. The bass is more to the fore and playing a more tuneful accompaniment and there is a second guitar in there as well, which I didn’t appreciate before.

Now Bob is plaintive and desperate at the same time. He really wants us to know that it isn’t him that we are looking for. He really is just this songwriter. And somehow, brilliantly, he brings that to the fore in the instrumental break, as if he is just still walking on down the road, forever traveling on, just like the old bluesmen whose music so enthused him from the off.

1997

But again we have change, and here the accompaniment is slightly more filled once again, and the delicacy of the feelings are pushed forward until there is a desperation in Bob’s voice. The introduction is the same, but suddenly there is an extra push in the music, allowing the vocals to remain as plaintive as ever.

Now what I find so wonderful is to be able to hear this growth in the development of this approach. The percussion is there, but holding back, just adding a commentary and allowing a more bouncy, “It ain’t me Babe” to be introduced.

Oh to have been there listening to the discussion as the rehearsals took place. Did Bob know where he wanted to take the song, or was it just something that happened as they rehearsed, with ideas coming in as the band worked? Did they know that the percussion would come in on the chorus each time, but then drop out during the verse, or was it Bob’s direction, or just something the percussionist just did?

However it happened it is a wonderful development. But then just over halfway through, with the bass becoming a lead instrument for a few moments there is a feeling of growth and determination, as if the leaving is ever more intentional… and yet again that fade back… he’s walking off alone into the sunset… And then… suddenly, the whole pace of the song cuts back. It is as if he has disappeared over the horizon, and having made his point and left he can now reflect on what he has done. And that leaves a real sadness at the end.

1998

In the final version of this selection, from the off we feel the song has now taken on a new power. Not the power of rock n roll, but the power of the certainty of the singer that he really is moving on. The sadness is there, but it is more at the edge of the decision to break up. It is more that “we’ve taken this as far as we can go”. Yes he is still plaintive, but the band is now taking on a much fuller part in the song; he’s not alone now as he clearly says, but he is certainly not there to provide emotional pick-ups. No no no, it ain’t him babe.

But oh, there is still a plaintiveness in those instrumental breaks.

As you may know from my previous ramblings about other Dylan songs on this site, I tend to write them as I listen, in order (as I see it) to capture my initial response to the music, rather than indulging in some sort of attempt at a deeper analysis which is so often the case with writers about Dylan’s work, and which I personally feel can become more pretentious than insightful. That is indeed probably why I do it, but I think there is another point here. Bob has toured over all these years to bring us these reworkings of the songs as he feels them; as his response to the songs are not only of the composer / performer but also a response to those who comment on his work. And that I think is the point of the half-speed coda in this 1998 version. It is a way of answering his critics who don’t want (and probably can’t understand) all these reworkings.

I do hope you get something out of hearing these different versions of each song across the years. I know that for me, this is adding a lot more to my understanding of what the Tour has been all about.

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NET 2017 Part 2 The Moveable Feast

Posted on October 22, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

An index to the entire series can be found here.

The Setlist which Dylan had developed in 2014, which saw him essentially playing the same concert night after night, was still in place in 2017, although looser, allowing for the reappearance of songs that we thought we’d lost like ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ and ‘Honest With Me.’ (See NET 2017 Part 1)

We have also seen how Dylan’s songs were, in performance, transformed by the influence of Sinatra and the American Standards, and we came to the understanding that for Dylan a song has no final form, that it will go on changing with the years, reflecting different moods and musical modes, making nonsense of the question, how should it be played? This was especially evident with ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ but also other songs like ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ and ‘Summer Days.’

‘Things Have Changed’ was still number 1 on the Setlist, where it had been for some years, essentially unchanged, but in 2017, it too began to evolve. Here it is from that wonderful first concert of the year in Stockholm (April 1^st), heavily driven by bass and drums and an obsessive beat. It hits hard, bringing out the implicit menace in the lyrics:

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

Things Have Changed (A)

And here it is at the end of the year in Washington (Nov 14^th) and it has developed what is almost a bossa nova rhythm. The song has always bustled along but this rhythmic twist lends a touch of whimsicality to those same dark lyrics.

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

Things Have Changed (B)

Since the abrupt disappearance of ‘She Belongs to Me’ in 2016, number 2 on the Setlist has mostly been ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,’ a survivor from The Freewheeling Bob Dylan (1963) along with the final song before the encore, ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ This bitter sweet little song might get us thinking that it’s actually not all right and things might have been different – ‘we never did too much talking anyway’ – and firmly places the singer ‘on the dark side of the road.’ We could speculate endlessly on why Dylan retained this song, although it is after all a seminal song, but I’m just glad it’s still there and delivered with such freshness and feeling fifty-four years later. The Stockholm crowd are delighted.

Don’t Think Twice

But during the year ‘Don’t Think Twice’ had to share the number 2 slot with ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe,’ a song of similar sentiment and vintage, another of the old acoustic songs, this one from 1964. This song warns against projecting onto others what we think they should be. Dylan has never suffered that gladly…and he never was a flower child. Here he is in Washington still delivering the bad news to the woman who’s invited to ‘leave at your own chosen speed.’ He puts it to a bouncy beat and builds up the vocal from a quiet start.

It Ain’t Me Babe

While on the subject of Dylan’s early songs, we get a last ever performance of ‘Hard Rain’ which hasn’t been on the Setlist since 2015. There was only one performance in 2017, in Dover, June 17th, certainly not a best ever, and not a high quality recording either, but a necessary one. This song has been astonishing us ever since it was written (another from The Freewheelin Bob Dylan) and here it is to astonish us one last time.

Hard Rain

Although by this stage we could pretty much count the number of songs surviving from Dylan’s huge 1960’s output on one hand, three of those are from Highway 61 Revisited, 1965: ‘Ballad of a Thin Man,’ ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Highway 61 Revisited.’ Interestingly, in 2017, there are no songs from ‘Blonde on Blonde’ (1966) often considered Dylan’s greatest album. At least none I can find. (‘Visions of Johanna’ will make a single appearance in 2018)

‘Highway 61 Revisited’ is placed early in the Setlist, number 3 or 4. After the softer ‘Don’t Think Twice’ or ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe,’ ‘Revisited’ will kick a concert into higher gear, deliver an arse-kicker taking us deep into Dylan’s rock roots as well as contemporary violence and rampant consumerism:

Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
"I got forty red, white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things?"
Louie the King said, "Let me think for a minute, son"

And he said, "Yes, I think it can be easily done
Just take it on down to Highway 61"

You know Highway 61? It takes you on down to Desolation Row, and we’ll get there in a moment. In the meantime let’s enjoy this recording from Stockholm at the beginning of the year.

Highway 61 Revisited (A)

And here it is from Washington at the end of the year. It may be the recording, but it seems to me to have a bit more thump, a bit heavier in the drums and bass.

Highway 61 Revisited (B)

‘Desolation Row’ is the finale for the circus songs on Highway 61 Revisited, and the album’s piece de resistance. A song full of strangeness and grandeur, with a touch of lyrical beauty in the melody line which makes for a great performance piece. I still go back to 2003 for my ‘best ever’ performance (see NET 2003 part 1), but this song has remained consistently strong through the years. From those first insistent riffs, it weaves its spell, and builds as it goes. This is one song that has hardly changed at all over the years. Let’s try this one from New York City (Nov 24^th), second to last concert of the year.

Desolation Row (A)

And here it is from Washington ten days earlier. I’m quite partial to the thumpier acoustics of the Washington concert, with Dylan’s voice especially husky and suggestive.

Desolation Row (B)

‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ was only played three times in 2016, but came back stronger than ever in 2017 and would remain strong until 2019. It would come at the end of the concert, often as a second encore after ‘Blowing In The Wind.’ Here it is at Bournemouth (May 5^th), subdued but sinister. Welcome again to the Dylan circus.

Ballad of a Thin Man

There are not many songs surviving from the 1970’s either, only ‘Tangled up in Blue’ and ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ from Blood on theTracks. Nothing from the other four albums from the decade. ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’ was only played once in 2017, in Dover (June 17^th), but would come back strongly in 2018. I’m glad we didn’t lose it. There is a strong feeling in the song that it is the fickle gods that rule our fates, which are actually seldom simple, especially where love is concerned. It’s not the best recording but the song shines through.

Simple Twist Of Fate

Time now to tune into more American Standards. ‘Stormy Weather,’ and ‘Once Upon A Time,’ written by Broadway writer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams, were the only songs from Triplicate Dylan sang in 2017. ‘Once Upon A Time’ was from the 1962 musical, All American. First recorded by Tony Bennet in 1962. Sinatra recorded it in 1965.

Here’s Dylan doing it in NYC. Welcome the crooner!

Once Upon A Time

As I commented in the last post, Dylan tended to stick to the same set of songs from his American Standards, just as he was doing with his own songs. The arrangements for these songs, however, he hardly changed at all. One of my favourites is the dreamy ‘Full Moon And Empty Arms’ from Shadows In The Night (2015). It is the love sick song par excellence. We’re back in Stockholm for this one; a sumptuous performance.

Full Moon And Empty Arms

I’m going to finish this post with a total rarity. In October 2017 Dylan’s collaborator from the 1980s, Tom Petty, died. It’s worth remembering that Dylan played with Petty and the Heartbreakers from 1985 to 1987. You can hear some of the fruits of that collaboration in the very first NET article, 1987. (The Never-Ending Tour: 1987 – Farewell to all that)

On October 21, at Broomfield, Dylan sang Petty’s ‘Learning to Fly.’

This performance was caught on a cellphone, and the quality of the recording is way below what I would normally use. In this case, however, we should count ourselves lucky to have any record of it at all. The utter professionalism of the band, which plays this as if they had been playing it for years, shines here, and a moving performance shows through the poor recording.

Learning to Fly

While recording devices were getting more sophisticated, it was not getting any easier to obtain good recordings from a Dylan concert. This was not just because of Dylan’s well-known antipathy towards bootleggers, but rising security concerns. Terrorism was, and still is, always a worry. Smuggling recording gear into concerts became much harder.

I take off my hat to these brave, anonymous tapers for their persistence. Without them, there would have been no record of the NET, with the huge cultural loss that would have entailed. I do appreciate the moral murkiness of recording an artist against their wishes, which may be why an ethic exists among collectors to share material and not buy and sell it.

Sometimes larger cultural considerations come into play. Franz Kafka gave strict instructions to his friend and editor, Max Brod, that after his death all his writing, including his two unfinished novels The Trial and The Castle be burned. Brod did not honour his promise to the writer, and our literary culture is all the richer for it. I’m not sure how you sort that one out, I’m just glad we have Kafka’s novels – and these NET recordings.

I’ll be back soon with a final post on 2017.

Until then

Kia Ora

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Other People’s Songs: Come Rain or Come Shine

Posted on October 21, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: “Come Rain or Come Shine” was written for the Broadway musical St. Louis Woman, which opened on March 30, 1946, and closed after 113 performances.

Here is the St. Louis Woman – Original Broadway Cast , 1946

Tony: Certainly a song that I know from my childhood. It is interesting for its lack of melody – so much of each of the opening lines rests on just one note. Everything is down to the rhythm and the lyrics.

Aaron: Several dozen versions followed until we go to this one from 1961 by Judy Garland from her amazing live album Judy At Carnegie Hall.

Tony: Judy Garland’s version adds more to the melody, and compensates for the lack of melody with the frantic percussion at the start, and then the highly energetic orchestration – in fact I can’t imagine how anything more could be added to this arrangement. I find it quite overpowering, and not in a good way. But the song is a major classic of the era, so what do I know? (The song does finish after around three and a half minutes, but there is some chat thereafter if you are a Judy Garland fan).

Aaron: Jumping forward to the year 2000 B.B. King and Eric Clapton recorded it for their collaborative album Riding with the King.

Tony: It’s one hell of a relief to find a slower version, with a little more melody after the frantic version above. Very relaxing.

Aaron: Bob’s version comes from Fallen Angels from 2016

Tony: It’s one of those recordings which, I think, if you didn’t know it was Bob, it might take a moment to guess. More than many of the classics that Bob chose, I think this one really suits his voice. For me (and as ever this is just a personal view) this version doesn’t give any new insights, and I guess the most I can say is “it’s very nice”.

In saying that what I am trying to put across is that if one takes a song such as “Tell Ol’ Bill”, or indeed “Visions of Johanna” (to take a completely different style of music), these are songs that I must have played 1000 times, and I still get something from each one, and many others. But this recording… I’ve heard it today, and don’t feel any need to come back to it again.

As I’ve said before, I am sure this is my loss. But it’s just how I hear it.

Other people’s songs…

The songs are selected by Aaron in the USA and sent to Tony in the UK, whereupon he adds his comments and quite often seems to subvert the whole article, for reasons that by and large rarely become clear.

This has, I think, turned into one of the most in-depth reviews of the songs Bob has played but not composed, and I (Tony) am so grateful to Aaron for coming up with the idea, and then keeping it running.

Here are the previous editions…

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Temporary Like Achilles. Left in the cold, but there’s still something…

Posted on October 20, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

In running this series, which started as a diversion during Covid lockdown in England, when we were more or less refused permission to leave our houses, while (it later emerged) the government was throwing parties in Downing Street, I’ve found a number of songs that leave me wondering, why is no one covering them?

“Temporary Like Achilles” is one such. Dylan has never played it live (as Jochen pointed out, the only Blonde song not even to be rehearsed for a possible run through), and hardly anyone has ever bothered to record it. Yet as my esteemed fellow-writer says, “on an album by any other artist, this song would be the prom queen.”

Temporary Like Achilles – The Don Olsen. I’m finding it difficult to get a handle on “The Don Olsen” – if I have got that name right. There are several Don Olsen’s around and I can’t work out which one made this fabulous recording, why the band is called “The Don Olsen” and what else this guy has done. Please if you know, can you comment here.

But back to the song… what this recovering reveals is just how much can be made out of this song. And what we have learned over the years is that if one musician or group can do it, so can others – if only they’d try.

But there is a second, and that comes from my favourite bunch of Dylan interpreters, Old Crow Medicine Show. Inventive and wonderful as ever, they will go where others fear to… well record I guess.

Even a search on Spotify has not revealed anything else. But at least we have two versions that are really worth listening to. Sorry it’s only two, but still, better than nothing.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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Bob Dylan’s hymns: What is really sacred. Part 2

Posted on October 19, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Part 1: Lay down your weary tune

The word “weary” recalls a line from the great 19th century songwriter Stephen Foster (1826-1864), “All the world is sad and weary everywhere I go” from “The Old Folks at Home” written in 1851. When first hearing this Foster song I imagined it was describing world-weariness after the violence of the American Civil War, but it was instead written of the antebellum South in 1851, and Foster died a little more than a year before the Civil War ended.

In terms of the sheer volume and breadth of the approximately 208 songs he wrote, Stephen Foster may be considered the Bob Dylan of the first half of the 19th century. “The Old Folks at Home” sings of yearning in the context of slavery, yearning for a recollected peace with family and home. The great African-American leader W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963) even suggested in his The Souls of Black Folk (1903) that “The Old Folks at Home” was a song about looking back and longing for the traditions of Africa.[5]

In “The Old Folks at Home” Foster’s rhyming of “bees a hummin’” with “banjo strummin’,” are echoed later in Dylan’s rhyming of strum and hum in the chorus of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” Foster writes:

When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home?

The final verse of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” describes gazing down to the river’s mirror. Watching this river flow, again we hear Dylan echoing Foster’s strum and hum, as the river flows like a winding strum as it “runs like a hymn and like a harp did hum,” an unusual sound for a harp.

Although as a Northerner he opposed slavery, Stephen Foster’s expressions of minstrelsy and his attitudes toward race are now considered questionable.[6] The early folklore scholar and compiler Alan Lomax said, “The Minstrel show dominated the American consciousness for almost a century, and the curious and ironic result was that many blacks came to accept its racist distortions as their own.”[7] Nevertheless, Foster’s songs remain popular, and influential to many musicians. For example, his song “Beautiful Dreamer” has been covered by Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, and Joan Baez. And some of Stephen Foster’s songs clearly resonate with Dylan’s hymns.

In his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, Dylan has a chapter on Stephen Foster’s song “Nelly was a Lady,” a song of deep long-term grief for a loved one now departed. Dylan writes, “Your life is missing … Your happiness is out and out over. . . . Your excitement for life has faded away. . . All life’s colors have darkened, and your bones feel like they’re on the body of a ghost.” He adds, “A lot of sad songs have been written but none sadder than this.”[8] Dylan calls Stephen Foster the counterpart to Edgar Allan Poe, whose terror, moaning, and groaning will appear below.

Dylan covered Foster’s song “Hard Times” on the “Good as I Been to You” album in 1992. Dylan performed the song thirty times in 1993.

Foster wrote in the chorus, “Tis the song, the sigh of the weary/ Hard times, hard times, come again no more.” The weariness and sadness Foster invoked in this song and in “The Old Folks at Home” might be seen as prologues to Dylan’s response in “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” Michael Gray claims that “’Hard Times’ is about the only Stephen Foster song now politically acceptable.” However, Gray further calls Dylan’s cover of the song, “A thrilling achievement. The voice! It breathes his affection for Foster’s craft and his respect for its capacity to evoke, regardless of political correctness, a mythic Old South that still has the power to shiver the imagination and to smoke its way inside the landscape we know from those writers and blues singers who inhabited the real terrain.”[9]

Of course, Bob Dylan has enshrined his strong opposition to racism in numerous songs such as “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “Hurricane,” “George Jackson,” and “Blind Willie McTell,” to name just a few. But Dylan has also long since abandoned any fealty to political correctness. He has discussed how the old songs themselves are his lexicon and his scriptures, and clearly Stephen Foster’s songs have moved him.

[5] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Folks_at_Home

[6] For a discussion of Foster’s legacy and the context of the minstrel show, see Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (London: Continuum, 2000), pp. 718-724.

[7] Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, (London: Methuen, 1993) in Gray, Song and Dance Man III, p.721.

[8] Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 113-115.

[9] Gray, Song and Dance Man III, pp.722-723.

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Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 4: The truth was not known

Posted on October 18, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 4

by Jochen Markhorst

IV The truth was not known

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddy from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed – Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

On the third day, it is Filomena’s turn to tell a story. She chooses an old story, one that took place centuries before this summer day in a villa near Fiesole, on a safe distance from the plague-hit Florence. Sultan Saladino, after recapturing Jerusalem from the Crusaders (1187), sends for the wise Jew Melchisedech. Saladino feels an urge to test Melchisedech’s alleged wisdom and asks him the trick question: “Quale delle tre leggi tu reputi la verace: o la giudaica, o la saracina o la cristiana – which of the three Laws you consider the true one: either the Jewish, the Saracen or the Christian?” The old Jew is truly wise. He sees the trap, recognises the danger of a direct answer, and instead answers with a fairy tale, with the Ring Parable.

Once upon a time, says Melchisedech, there was un uomo grande e ricco, a great and rich man, who lived a happy and long life. When he felt his death approaching, he called his favourite son to him, and handed him a special piece of jewellery, un anello bellissimo e prezioso – a beautiful and precious ring, and proclaimed that he had thereby appointed him his heir and that everyone should now honour and respect him.

So it goes on for many generations afterwards; just before his death, the head of the family calls his favourite son and appoints him his successor by handing over the beautiful and precious ring.

All goes well, until the day the pater familias on duty cannot choose. He has three sons who are all equally dear to him. He can’t bear to disappoint two of his sons, and lifts the issue over his death; secretly, he has a skilled goldsmith make two perfect copies of the ring – so perfect that even the father himself cannot tell the difference. Just before his death, he secretly gives each of the sons a ring. After the father’s death, the sons, who now all three claim the right to the inheritance and the position of patriarch, find out that there are three identical rings. And so, concludes Melchisedech,, “il vero non si sapeva cognoscere, si rimase la quistione, qual fosse il vero erede del padre, in pendente: e ancor pende – the truth was not known, the question of who was the true heir of the father remained pending: and still does.”

With increasing amazement and admiration the sultan recognises the symbolic power, and can only endorse the moral of Melchisedech’s parable, in this third story from the Decamarone, written around 1350 by an Italian poet from the fourteenth century, Giovanni Boccaccio. Who in turn had copied it from one of the many variants of this story (presumably Bosone da Gubbio’s L’avventuroso sicilian).

But the most famous adaptation is the one by the German poet Lessing (1729-1781), who incorporated it into his last work, the “Drama of Tolerance” Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1779). Lessing copies the trick of incorporating the Ring Parable as a frame narrative, told in Jerusalem by a Jew to the Muslim sultan Saladin, and lays the morality on a bit thicker (“Wichtig ist nicht WAS, sondern WIE man glaubt – Important is not WHAT one believes, but HOW one believes”).

But most of all, Lessing builds another layer around this fable. The wise Jew Nathan has adopted the daughter of his deceased Christian friend and raised the girl with respect for her Christian roots. This Christian stepdaughter of a Jewish man, Recha, gets fancy with – of course – a Muslim, who turns out to be her brother after all sorts of implausible entanglements, and at the end of the play, the three religions live as one family under one roof. One roof , under which the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray.

With the third line of this religiously orientated opening couplet, Dylan leads the listener, probably deliberately, to Jerusalem. At least – there are of course other cities in which there are places of worship for Jews, Muslims and Catholics alike, but Jerusalem is, after all, the only place on earth sacred to all three religions. A writer who mentions the three religions in the same breath, especially a writer like Dylan, with his predilection for religious connotations, must have been aware that this association will be triggered. Which, should we still go along with the idea that after the novella-like opening lines, a real story will follow, frames the setting of that story a little more sharply. In Jerusalem, there are – oddly enough – not that many streets named after saints, not even in the Christian Quarter. St Peter Street and St Francis Street, that’s about it. And a theme seems to emerge after this third line as well; the tragedy of religious divisions, tolerance, multitudes, something like that.

But alas, before the listener’s mind’s eye can lose itself in the narrow streets of the Old City, the narrator snatches us away, to the British Isles: I can tell a Proddy from a mile away. The song still seems to thematise the dualistic nature of religion – religion as both a unifying and dividing force – but that one word Proddy obscures the setting, and with it the narrative quality.

“Proddy” is an eminently British affront for Protestants, who, incidentally, have long since accepted it as a nickname. Scottish fans of Protestant football club Glasgow Rangers, for example, sing the hilarious “The Pope Wears Half A Ball” to tease their Catholic rivals from Celtic FC, with varying lyrics, but fixed is the verse:

I remember in the papers it read King Billy was gay
But I wish those lying reporters would report on the present day
They try to make us Proddies out to be a laughing stock
When the Tims they worship a man in a half maw beads 
                                         and a long white frock

Welshman John Cale sings in the furious “Russian Roulette” (on Honi Soit, 1981): “like another cross eyed former Proddy”, and Englishman Andrew Lloyd Webber incorporated the swear word in the 2000 musical The Beautiful Game, in “Clean The Kit” (Don’t “alright” me, you Proddy git!) – although that is not so much English as Northern Irish, as it should be; The Beautiful Game is set in Belfast.

Which brings us back to Van Morrison, to Johnny Rogan’s biography with its chapter “Are You A Proddy?”, and the most plausible source for Dylan’s use of the nickname. A swear word for Protestants, whom the narrator apparently recognises from a mile away. A qualification usually not meant kindly:

I was walking down the street the other day
Ah, who did I meet?
I met a friend of mine and he did say
Man, I can smell your breath a mile away
                       (Paul McCartney, "Smile Away", 1971)

To be continued. Next up Goodbye Jimmy Reed part 5: None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written

—————–

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

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Other people’s songs: The Cuckoo

Posted on October 17, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Details of this series which looks at songs by other composers that Bob has recorded, can be found at the foot of the article.

Aaron: First published in the 1847 edition of “Popular Rhymes of Scotland”. Also known as “Coo Coo”, “A-Walking and A-Talking”, “Pretty Girl Is Like a Little Bird”, “I’m Sad and I’m Lonesome”. As with all traditional songs, both melody and lyrics may vary a lot, the song tells us the cuckoo is “a fine (or pretty) bird”.

The first recording that we still have was made on October 23, 1929, by Clarence Ashley

Tony: What fabulous banjo playing, and a terrific counter to the melody. I thought I was going to be writing about that very strange picture above with the record in the guitar until I realised how good the music was. But that picture: how weird!

But listening to the music, all the time I was thinking, “I know this…” and then suddenly the Jack of Diamonds line came up, and it all clicked into place. And then of course comes along the cuckoo line, and yep, my memories are sorted out.

Aaron: Bob’s version comes from the Live at the Gaslight collection recorded in 1962 but remained unreleased until 2005.

Tony: Thank goodness for people will tape recorders in the old days who had the foresight to record Bob even in his early years! This was the collection that was at first only available through Starbucks. Not sure how they managed that!

Aaron: Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it in 1965 for the album A Song Will Rise

Tony: I know it is rather unfashionable to admit it, but I did enjoy, and indeed still enjoy a lot of the PPM recordings. I know they were sanitized for the non-folkclub-going audience, but their harmonies and gentleness always appealed and still day. A look back to a time when there was hope rather than a world that seems to be falling apart. Indeed as I have commented often, their release of “Too Much of Nothing” in 1968 really knocked me out. OK I was so much older then (etc) but I still do think that recording took the notion of re-working Dylan by other artists a major step forward. In fact, since no one can stop me, I’m going to slip that in at the end. Sorry to interrupt the flow, Aaron.

Aaron: The late 60s saw several rock bands cover the song including Taj Mahal and this one by Big Brother and The Holding Company

Tony: Wow that was a surprise. I’ve never heard that before (which probably says more about the bits of my life when I didn’t pay much attention) and it really is stunning. I’ll have to go back and listen to some more Big Brother.

Aaron: I love this version by Billy Connolly from the B side to his 1975 single D.I.V.O.R.C.E

Tony: Immediately I am drawn to this because he retains that wonderful banjo approach that somehow I always associate with this song from its earliest recordings. Also somewhere in the house is a load of 45 rpms from Polydor in those famous sleeves.

I do hope you have a chance to listen to this version it all the way through. It is a hoot (as we used to say). Billy Connolly has devoted himself to art in recent years – if you enjoyed his performances but have not followed him since his retirement from the stage you might find it interesting to look. Here’s a starting point.

And here’s the recording…

Anyway, that’s the official end of the article. So here’s my extra bit: Bob’s “Too Much of Nothing” by PPM recorded in 1967, taking me back once more to these earlier days when the world stretched out ahead, when I had no idea where I was going, and when I used to play this over and over and over, and drive everyone mad. Who’d ever have thought I’d have the chance to foist it on a wider audience (if you are still reading, that is!)

Other people’s songs…

Here are the previous editions…

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The Iconography of Bob Dylan’s Black Sunglasses

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Tony Attwood

Dean+Barb on Wiki Commons, under CC BY 2.0 License.

You can’t talk about unique visionaries in music without mentioning the eclectic artist Bob Dylan.

His anthems still ring true, transcending generations, as evidenced by his 10-date tour in the UK in November. Dylan has also announced a no-phone rule for the tour, offering pouches to put their devices in until the show’s conclusion. NME’s Mark Beaumont agreed that this move could make the crowd feel more energetic and engaged — potentially setting off a new form of etiquette when watching live acts. This trend wouldn’t come as a surprise, considering how Dylan has long been a trailblazer and trendsetter. And today, we’ll be looking specifically at his sartorial choices.

Dylan has been an icon of songwriting and the stage for decades, with plenty of looks to match his immortalised repertoire. Among his trademark pieces, the go-to forever tied to his image is his pair of black sunglasses. It’s the image most associated with him to this day, and its impact lingers across the board.

What sunglasses does Bob Dylan wear?

Bob Dylan has garnered many nicknames from fans and media throughout his illustrious career. Among these is the title of “Mr. Wayfarer”, dubbed from his love of the Wayfarer frames. Aside from the classic Ray-Ban offering, he has occasionally been known to tout styles like the original Ray-Ban Carribean and other rectangular frames. Modern men’s sunglasses continue to take a page out of his book, with plenty of similar models emulating this design. Nowadays, you can easily find affordable alternatives in the form of Henry, Wren, and Elsie frames from GlassesDirect’s TheCollection line.

Even though he no longer keeps his shades on all the time, his penchant for a sleek pair of tinted black lenses continues. The music legend even wore a stylish pair of square aviators when he received a Medal of Freedom from former US President Obama in 2012. This harkens back to the gold-trimmed aviators he also donned in his 1974 Madison Square Garden performance, with a live performance only recently released with a 27-disc set documenting the whole tour. Often touted as the tour that saved his career and solidified his place in the folk-rock pantheon, it’s no wonder the pictures of him performing in his sunglasses have become galvanised in the minds of music lovers.

Why Bob Dylan wears his iconic sunglasses

Although wearing sunglasses has long been a style choice made by Hollywood legends and rockstars, many people remain curious about why and when Bob Dylan started wearing his go-to sunglasses. Pictures and videos from the time suggest he started wearing them regularly in the late ‘60s, with phases of prolonged wear over the decades in between times going eyewear-free.

Fans often speculate on the intention or purpose behind them, with many theories going from simple fashion preferences to notions of hiding his eyes from bright fluorescent lights due to shyness or other proclivities. Dylan himself has given a few reasons over the years, with earlier interviews suggesting he wore prescription lenses as he needed to see while performing. Later, he would tell Ron Rosenbaum that wearing them had become a habit that made him feel more comfortable when going out.

In the age of social media and digital cameras, he has also requested fans and concert attendees to avoid flash photography. In his television appearances, he has also been known to wear sunglasses before reading. From both his words and actions, it seems clear that his sunglasses help shield his eyes from the bright lights that famous musicians are so often subjected to. Either way, his style and influence remain undeniable.

The influence and impact of Bob Dylan’s sunglasses

The iconography of Bob Dylan’s sunglasses has become so cemented in the public consciousness that music lovers and fans already know you’re making a reference if you just put on the right pair of shades.

Even in collaboration with other iconic artists, the artwork, more often than not, depicts him in his instantly recognisable look. In 1987, he worked on music with Grateful Dead and even went on a short tour with them. For this, legendary poster artist Rick Griffin created the ‘Dylan & The Dead’ oil painting that would grace the stage. Featuring various pieces representing the musicians, the huge artwork included a slow steam train, a skull with a harmonica and a wreath of roses, and Dylan’s black sunglasses with a lightning rod reflected on one of the lenses.

Deeper into his career, the unmatched lyricist also heavily featured his Wayfarers in album art. On Infidels, his cover is a close-up of his bearded face with the sunglasses everyone knows. At the time of release, this album became known as a resurgence for him in both commercial and critical reception.

Along with the likes of Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn, and Steve McQueen, Dylan belongs to an unforgettable cast of personalities who are often credited with influencing what kind of sunglasses people wear. Just as the Oliver Goldsmith Manhattan sunglasses became enduring symbols for Hepburn and the Ray-Ban Aviators saw a resurgence in Tom Cruise, the Wayfarers continue to be the timeless epitome of cool, thanks to Bob Dylan.

Their impact on the culture has been so ingrained that countless references and media dedicated to him have included the sunglasses as a core part of their design. In the 2004 experimental film I’m Not There, six actors played different facets of Bob Dylan – with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett famously portraying the singer-songwriter as Jude Quinn. In an interview with The Guardian, she shared how 1966 Dylan is considered “the most iconic silhouette of his musical career”, with her aesthetic of the quintessential sunglasses and dishevelled hair netting her a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination.

In 2024, critical darling Timothée Chalamet dons the signature tinted shades from Ray-Ban as he films a new Bob Dylan biopic. A Complete Unknown sees Chalamet pairing the Caribbean frame with the brown suede jacket most synonymous with ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ era. Even rising stars who aren’t playing Dylan have taken on his look as a direct influence, with Dominic Sessa strolling the Golden Globes red carpet in Dylan-esque form via tousled locks, tinted Saint Laurent sunglasses, and a black suit with a wide-peaked lapel.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone arguing against Bob Dylan’s legacy in the world of songwriting and music, but it’s also worth celebrating his influence on fashion. Over six decades since his debut album, there’s no doubt that every seminal piece of his aesthetic can be felt across the music scene and beyond.

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The Never Ending Tour: 2017 part 1. Songs on the rebound

Posted on October 15, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

An index to the full series appears here.

By the time the 2017 NET kicked off on April 1^st it was clear that the seventy-six year old Dylan was still on a roll, particularly when it came to performing American Standards. His third and final collection of these songs was released as a triple album on March 31^st – Triplicate, a massive thirty song collection.

Under the influence of the Voice (Sinatra), Dylan hit a new high in 2015 when the first album of these songs appeared, Shadows In The Night, and kept up that standard for the following years; 2015 was not an isolated peak year, but a new plateau. He’d made a breakthrough, particularly with his vocals, and the years that followed 2015 consolidated that breakthrough.

It wasn’t just these new songs, however, that Dylan was integrating into his Setlist, but his own older songs with new arrangements, many of which were transformed by the influence of the American Standards, not just by Dylan’s vocals, but the conception of the songs themselves.

It was in 2017 that another chapter was written in the extraordinary evolution of perhaps the greatest of all NET songs, ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ The last major change in this song was in 2014 when Dylan presented a cut-back version with completely new lyrics for the final two verses. It was then he began starting the song centre stage and moving to the piano after the harp break. That pattern served him well for three years. In 2017 he starts on the piano, drops out the harp, but more significantly, alters the tempo of the song, swinging it like a Sinatra take of an American Standard, keeping the 2014 lyrics. If ‘Tangled’ is a new American Standard anyway, Dylan began to change it so that it sounded more like an old American Standard.

Here’s how it sounded on the first night of the tour, Stockholm April 1^st, pretty much the same as previous years except, and I might be imagining this, a certain lilt or swing, natural to the song’s melodic line but beginning to assert itself.

Tangled Up in Blue (A)

By the time we get to the end of the year, Nov 14^th (Washington) the song has transformed itself into this:

Tangled Up in Blue (B)

Dylan sounds a little tentative at the beginning but soon warms to his task, finally delivering a compelling new song, half talk, half swing. I was reluctant at first, but pretty soon it got to me, the insouciant swing and the almost tongue-in-cheek vocal delivery (he is poking fun at the whole experience, I’m sure of it). I had to grin and my feet were soon waving about seeking some old-time dance floor (the kind where they put sawdust on the floor). A remarkable transformation.

Something perhaps more remarkable happened at that first, Stockholm concert however. Dylan performed a song he’d dropped from his setlists in 2005 – ‘Standing in the Doorway’ from Time Out Of Mind. Twelve years after being dropped it returns for a one-off performance at Stockholm. Why? The answer appears to be that this concert was attended by the committee that had granted Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature the year before, that Dylan knew they were in the audience so sang what he might have thought was one of his more literary songs. I don’t know, it all seems a bit strange to me. ‘Standing in the Doorway’ is a fine melancholy mood piece, wonderfully in keeping with the American Standards Dylan favours, but it is no more ‘literary’ than many of his songs. He could have done ‘Hard Rain’ if he’d wanted to evoke the young poet who transformed American music.

Anyway, it’s a gorgeous, subdued performance. This would have to go into your top twenty best Dylan live performances. A ‘best ever’ lying in wait for you; there’s a magic in it that’s hard to define; I think it’s that rich, breathy voice.

Standing in the Doorway

‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ is another song that apparently was petering out, disappearing in 2012, except for a one-off performance in 2014, until 2017 during which it’s played twenty-eight times. This song underwent a renaissance that would carry it through to 2019, still going strong when the Never Ending Tour ended. It appears that Dylan rediscovered the song and was able to re-invent it with his new American Standards voice. It has a last verse beautifully in harmony with the, late-night mood of those American Standards, and with ‘Standing in the Doorway.’

Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I’ll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
When you think that you’ve lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

With this song, he does something similar to what he did to ‘Tangled,’ giving it a loping, swinging beat. The song and dance man at work: a hint of the vaudeville. Delivered with wry humour. It’s not the old song at all, it doesn’t have the kind of intensity you find in early performances, but it’s got something else. A beguiling, Devil-may-care attitude. More evidence, if we need it, of the transformative effect the American Standards had on Dylan’s own work. (24^th Nov, NYC)

Trying to Get to Heaven

These were not the only songs to get a serious makeover in 2017. It was a highly innovative year. Take for example ‘Summer Days’ which began as a hard-hitting, jazz piece, with a full-band sound, got stripped down to more of a thrumming-rock, bass-driven piece, now to re-appear as a country and western dance song. Grab your pardners and circle to the left! How is it that Dylan’s lyrics can sound just right in all these different styles? I think the answer to that lies in the open-ended nature of the lyrics themselves, and Dylan’s vocal mastery. After all, lyrics like ‘I got a house on the hill, I got hogs lying out in the mud,’ are a perfect fit for this countrified version.

Once again I find myself beguiled into enjoying it. (NYC)

Summer Days

‘Honest with Me’ is another song that underwent a renaissance in 2017, having disappeared after a mere two performances in 2013. It was no flash in a pan either, staying strong through to the end of 2019. In this case, the song’s been turned into a 1950’s rocker with a Hank Marvin of the Shadows style guitar intro. It’s been reverted to that era. The hard-edged lyrics sit a little oddly in this arrangement. Maybe the lyrics are a bit more desperate than the old rock ‘n roll era it now evokes. No, I don’t think Cliff Richard could have sung it. Little Richard maybe – listen to that piano. Arguably this performance is more musically varied, and stays more interesting, than the original. (NYC) The way Dylan’s voice cuts across the key grabs our attention. The arrangement has grown more complex, and that’s all to the good for this highly repetitive song.

Honest with Me

We have a similar story with ‘Thunder on the Mountain,’ last played in 2014 but it’s back in 2017 with a stripped down, rock ‘n roll, punky feeling to it. Quite frenetic with that sharp drum beat and the way Dylan rattles through the lyrics. Hank Marvin never played like this. This is not the first time Dylan has stripped his songs back to their rock ‘n roll roots. He did the same from 2008 to 2010, proving just how durable his songs are, how tough they are surviving all kinds of treatments. You can thrash the hell out of them and they’re still good. (NYC)

Thunder on the Mountain

I have a problem with ‘High Water,’ another song which has undergone intense development ever since it appeared on the setlists. The official Dylan website tells us that Dylan did not perform the song in 2017, yet here it is, number 7 in the Stockholm setlist. I can’t find it performed anywhere else in 2017, however (although I could have missed it), and make a tentative suggestion that it was played only once in that year. In 2016, we got a blistering rock version of the song, one that’s still sitting in my best ever slot at the moment (See NET, 2016 part 1). Here, in 2017, we find the banjo restored, giving it that country feel again, but the hard-driving rhythm remains, and Dylan is in top vocal form. It’s clean and crisp (the bootleggers Crystal Cat strike again) and pleasingly minimal.

High Water

I’ll finish this post with a couple of American Standards, but again, Dylan did not pack out his setlist with these songs, or the new songs from Triplicate. At some concerts, Denver for example (June 17^th), he didn’t play any; at Stockholm however, he played four of them. I might have missed something here, but I can only find two song from Triplicate performed in 2017 – ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Stormy Weather.’ The latter was written by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Ted Koehler in 1933, sung by Sinatra in 1959, and is one of the most famous American Standards ‘uncovered’ by Dylan.

The recordings of this song are not marvelous, but this one from Bournemouth (May 4^th) is passable. Dylan handles the vocals with ease.

Stormy Weather

It’s mostly all old favourites, like ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms’ or ‘All Or Nothing At All.’ Here’s ‘All Or Nothing At All’ number eighteen of a twenty-one song set at Stockholm.

All Or Nothing At All

As evidenced here in this post, Dylan’s ability to transform his own songs needs to be acknowledged as a major feature of his art and intrinsic to it. There is no final form, no definitive version; a song can be glimpsed through a number of musical lenses. The songs change and adapt themselves to a Dylan growing older along with them. With each new lens we see the song in a different light. New possibilities present themselves; familiar lyrics in unfamiliar guises.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back soon with more from that innovative year, 2017.

Until then

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Bob Dylan’s Hymns: What is Really Sacred? Lay down your weary tune

Posted on October 14, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Introduction: What is Truly Sacred?

One of Bob Dylan’s seminal songs is “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” from “Bringing It All Back Home” in 1965. Dylan critiques the shallowness of contemporary consumerist culture that makes “everything from toy guns that spark, to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark.” Dylan then proclaims, “It’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.” [ii] In a world where not much is truly sacred, how does Dylan see what is indeed sacred, what he most values or finds meaningful?

Bob Dylan has written and sung many songs that might be described as hymns, devotional songs praising the sacred. Hymns have been defined as “simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in their ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing.” [iii] I do not intend a comprehensive discussion of all of Dylan’s hymns, a major project, but simply to offer a selection with which to suggest significant aspects of Dylan’s spiritual perspectives. I will consider hymns reflecting the broad range of Dylan’s career and his varied responses to the sacred.

Dylan is one of the modern world’s great creative spiritual poets. While considering Dylan’s lyrics as poetry, I deeply appreciate that he is a performance artist, and his words and spiritual insights come alive most vividly in his sung performances. He knows his songs well before he starts singing, as he declares at the end of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

Dylan famously has had periods of espousing fundamental Christianity and of involvement with orthodox Judaism. But Dylan’s spiritual perspectives go beyond organized religions or official theologies. His lyrics can be heard and appreciated apart from references to texts from traditional religious institutions, as enumerated in the various studies of Dylan’s citations and analogies from the Bible and from Roman religion, for example.[iv]

We can see Dylan’s hymns as sharing the perspective of describing the sacred in four major realms. The sacred resides in the natural, phenomenal world rather than by seeking an escape from the mundane. Dylan celebrates the morning breeze like a bugle blowing, and every leaf that trembles and every grain of sand. Secondly, the sacred appears in misfits and outcasts, in every hung-up person in the whole wide universe. Then in helpful, healing engagement with all those who have been marginalized, who live outside the law and thus must be honest.

Further, Dylan often sees the sacred shining in his relationships with women, seen in “the beauty that I remember in my true love’s eyes” in “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” or the moonlight swimming in the eyes of the “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Finally, the sacred resides on the road, in the process of our journey. Dylan celebrates this sacred value in the pilgrimage of his ongoing never-ending tour, as well as in numbers of his lyrics.

The songs to be discussed here exemplify these aspects of the sacred. They are presented in rough thematic order, though certainly some of his hymns express a combination of these sacred elements. We might also hear these spiritual themes in some of Dylan’s songs not necessarily definable as hymns.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune

One of my favorite Dylan songs, a very early one, is “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” Dylan performed it only once, in October 1963, and it was released only on “Biograph” in 1985. “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” celebrates the musical sounds of the natural landscape, as opposed to Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence” released in 1964, the year after Dylan performed his “Weary Tune.” In this song the sounds of nature create a hymn to the sacredness of the world itself and herald a refuge from its stress and suffering.

The song’s chorus tells of the weariness of life and its struggles, and calls for finding rest and peace in its midst. The chorus goes:

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum

After his chorus, Dylan continues strumming and singing sweetly, melodiously, about the music of nature. He sings of being struck by the sounds before sunrise, “The morning breeze like a bugle blew, Against the drums of dawn,” with bugles and drumbeats blowing in the wind. In the next verse the ocean plays like an organ, with the crashing waves like cymbals clashing. The ocean’s impact, after another chorus, leaves the singer “unwound beneath the sun and skies unbound by laws” as “the cryin’ rain like a trumpet sang.”

This is not Dylan railing against a hard rain. The rain itself is weary and crying. After another chorus, Dylan suggests one context for this weariness, as the last leaves of autumn “fell from the trees and clung to a new love’s breast.” The bare branches play like a banjo to the wind again, this wind listening best to the cries of the world. The banjo “moaned,” evoking the new lover rather than the kind of banjo Pete Seeger popularized. The song here may suggest weariness with precipitous endings of shifting romantic intimacies.

In the last verse before the final chorus, the singer gazes down to the river’s mirror, watching the river flow. In this song the varied elements of the natural landscape become musical instruments, producing a hymn to help lay down worldly burdens, perhaps calling forth the chimes of freedom ringing. Nature and its music provide their own solace and refuge within the weariness of the world’s woes. The celebration of the musicality of nature, and the communion of all its elements and instruments, implies a semi-mystical union of the world with its appreciators, and perhaps especially with musicians. Notably, the instruments attributed to each natural element are imaginative and not akin to the actual nature sounds, such as the breeze like a bugle, dawn as a drum, and trumpet-like rain, along with the moaning banjo.

The series continues…

Notes:

[i] This is an expanded version of a talk presented at the World of Bob Dylan International Symposium, June, 2023, at the University of Tulsa’s Institute for Bob Dylan Studies.

[ii] All lyrics of Bob Dylan songs are from: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/, unless otherwise specified.

[iii] McElrath Eskew, Sing with Understanding, An Introduction to Christian Hymnology. (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980).

[iv] For Dylan’s connections to Roman religion, see Richard F. Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017).

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: Blind Willie McTell 1997 to 2006

Posted on October 13, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

So far we’ve looked at

Now we come to Blind Willie McTell. This was performed between 1997 and 2017, during which time Bob and the band played it 226 times. But as we can hear in the following four recordings made between 1997 and 2006 there was a clear progression in the way Bob and the band explored the song; a searching to see what exactly was there and what it could be made to reveal.

1997

This version from the opening year of the performances of Blind Willie is the Blind Willie we’ll all know. There is the odd percussion pause, and the famous guitar riffs after the title words. There’s only a very soft background guitar solo in the instrumental break before the softer “God is in His heaven” and the devastating awareness that power and greed is all we have, leading to the desperate sadness of the memory of the St James Hotel. Then the slow down at the end – which musically I am not sure about, but as ever Bob is the boss.

By 2000 the song is performed quite a bit more slowly…

This gives a chance for Bob to put a little more expression into each word, and make more out of the fact that “nobody can sing the blues”. That famous five-note interlude which recurs after the first and second line is still there, but softer, as Bob turns the whole song into much more of a lament rather than an attack on power and greed.

By now we really are getting some further improvision in the instrumental verses, which then contrast totally with the much more sparse verse. When he has that whisky in his hand, we know from the music how absolutely alone he is.

The instrumental verses then really are a baroque mix of different instruments all interweaving their own improvisations at the same time before we are told “God is in His heaven”, against the quietest of accompaniments. And so there is even more reflection on that oh, so sad hotel.

2004

2002 still had the song being performed, but the variations from 2000 are modest, but by 2004, the tendency to let rip is pulled right back.

Here the feeling is that Bob knows that we all know the lyrics, but he wants to spell them out to us one more time. So there are new variations in the melody line – they are not enormous but they are there. And that five-note step-by-step accompaniment line is much more restrained. The guitar solo is allowed to shine through too – but then at once we are back to the sparseness. It is as if Blind Willie is there is, but now so very much alone. And the way Bob tells us that no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie, insists that we believe.

As for God being in His heaven, there is now such a despair about this fact that all hope seems to be abandoned. The guitar solo weaves its journey in a completely new way, and in desperate sadness, the masterpiece ends.

And that is as far as it can be taken down. And so by 2006 we’re being taken up again, and here’s a surprise – there’s a bit of a bounce in the old favourite. That, I must say, took me aback, as I had forgotten that happened, but there again, after the 2004 version, where else could Bob go?

But now just listen to those guitar solo verses – they bounce along and there is fun in the steps – I can’t think of another instrumental break like that which comes before “God is in his heaven.” What are we being told? That God is playing with us? That Blind Willie really is having fun? Yes, I think so.

Plus the awareness we’ve all been here before, but now the scenery is new. The playfulness of the guitar solos continues – just listen to the last solo which covers two verses and takes us up to the end – there is such a lightness in the song as we have never had before.

Indeed I think that these examples of Blind Willie on stage show us just how much thought Bob and the band put into the reworkings of the songs. There is no suggestion of “hey lets do it this way” and “let’s try something different”. No, there is none of that. Blind Willie has been taken through a step-by-step progression. Between 1997 and 2006 there was clear exploration of what the song can reveal, where it can be taken and where it can take us.

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A Dylan Cover a Day 142: Tears of Rage

Posted on October 12, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Tears of Rage has lyrics by Bob Dylan and music by Richard Manuel of The Band (who tragically passed away in 1986). It was first recorded in 1967 and appeared the following year on the Band’s first album with Richard Manuel singing the lead. This version is very different from the original Dylan version. Here’s the 1967 edition:

Coming back to it after many years I’m struck by how much of this original version I have forgotten. It really is a truly remarkable song – made all the more so because the music does things that we wouldn’t expect from Bob.

What makes the song so unusual is that the music (not being written by Bob) modulates, changing from G major temporarily to B, and then quickly back again. Really, that’s not Bob at all.

Here’s the Band’s version

Richard Manuel performed the song himself. My personal view of this version is that there is more added to the song through the arrangement than is needed. The song is beautiful and painful in equal measure, andis a brilliant composition, and so doesn’t need extra emotion or variation – there is already enough within the initial recordings. But it was Richard Manuel’s co-composition, so of course he could do as he wishes. From the outside I just don’t think it helps… there is now too much within the song. Sometimes less is better.

Howard Fishman

I’ve chosen this as the next version as it is the perfect contrast with Richard Manuel’s production of the piece. Fishman, who I think is primarily known as a writer, has approached the song in a much more delicate way, emphasising the sadness which I think is appropriate for a song with the repeated line “And life is brief”. Also, please, please, please stay with this version long enough to get to the instrumental break played with a magical viola part. And not just that, consider the way the vocals return thereafter. This, for me, is what this song is all about.

Francesco Garolfi also finds the wonderful and painful inherent beauty in this song – if you don’t know his work there is a good introduction in English here. I love the harmonies, and the refusal to get carried away by the emotion, for the song simply doesn’t need that for us to feel everything that is expressed therein. Garolfi keeps it simple: he understands what is within.

Gene Clark

Having been with the Byrds Gene Clark of course knows what the song is all about and others have particularly rated this version. I’m less sure; I feel it goes a little too fast for my feelings in terms of what is in the lyrics – especially in the chorus. But those who know more than I do, do rate this version, and the White Light album, particularly highly.

And that’s it. I leave you to choose, but can only hope you find some of the depth in one or two of the versions presented here. If not, there are quite a few others available. And perhaps if you have time, play the Francesco Garolfi version again. It truly is worth it.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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The Never Ending Tour Extended: Things have changed

Bob Dylan’s Hymns: What is Really Sacred? Part 4: Ring them bells, Sad Eyed, Nobody ‘cept you

Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 6: O ye of little faith

NET 2017 Part 3 You went through my pockets while I was sleeping

Other people’s songs: Two Soldiers – and an amazing discovery

Dylan cover a day: No 144 – The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar

Bob Dylan’s hymns part 3: Every Grain, Released and Chimes of Freedom

Goodbye Jimmy Reed part 5: None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written

The Never Ending Tour Extended: It ain’t me babe: 1994-98

NET 2017 Part 2 The Moveable Feast

Other People’s Songs: Come Rain or Come Shine

A Dylan Cover a Day: Temporary Like Achilles. Left in the cold, but there’s still something…

Bob Dylan’s hymns: What is really sacred. Part 2

Goodbye Jimmy Reed (2020) part 4: The truth was not known

Other people’s songs: The Cuckoo

The Iconography of Bob Dylan’s Black Sunglasses

What sunglasses does Bob Dylan wear?

Why Bob Dylan wears his iconic sunglasses

The influence and impact of Bob Dylan’s sunglasses

The Never Ending Tour: 2017 part 1. Songs on the rebound

Bob Dylan’s Hymns: What is Really Sacred? Lay down your weary tune

The Never Ending Tour Extended: Blind Willie McTell 1997 to 2006

A Dylan Cover a Day 142: Tears of Rage

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