Untold Dylan

Other people’s songs looks at performances by Bob Dylan both of traditional songs, and those written by others, with explorations of their origins.  The song and subsequent recordings are selected by Aaron Galbraith in the USA and then comments are added by Tony Attwood in the UK.  There is an index to the previous 64 articles in this series, at the end.

Aaron: Ira Hayes, a Pima Native American from Arizona, was one of the six US Marines photographed by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945 in the iconic World War 2 photograph “Raising The Flag On Iwo Jim”. The ballad tells his story.

“The Ballad of Ira Hayes” is a song originally written by Peter La Farge and popularised by Johnny Cash.   So first, here is the Peter LaFarge version.

Tony: Well, that was a surprise – it took me a few minutes to get used to the accompaniment.  In fact, I wondered if there was a problem with the recording at first, but it is just the constant use of the bass strings of the guitar.  Very interesting how light the voice gets at the end.  I want to hear this again to appreciate what the arranger was thinking, but not really because I like what I am hearing – except at the end.

Aaron: Johnny Cash

Tony: It seems a song very much suited to Johnny Cash’s voice, and having heard the earlier recording, I am now used to where this is going.  I also think it is hard for someone like me born and brought up in England, to have a true feeling about the Indigenous Americans and what happened to the native Americans and their tribal nations, and how they were integrated.

The problem I have here though is that it seems a very jaunty piece of music for a tragic story.  That is what the previous version above doesn’t have do; there the music seems to me to be closer to the meaning of the lyrics.  But Cash makes it a much easier listen.

Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album

Tony:  I am never completely sure if Bob is celebrating American folk music, or the meaning behind the song or perhaps both.  If I had to guess I suppose I would say the latter.   But here I also feel Bob is very much centred on the tragedy that is the heart of every element of the story within the song.   It is just that I think there is far too much accompaniment; making the chorus the only part of the song that is sung works perfectly, but beyond that I am distracted by the backing, rather than appreciative of the overall piece.

I wonder if with recordings like this Bob just tells the band to play and sing along as they see fit, and then join in with the chorus (in which everything is much more integrated.)    I’m not sure I want to play it over and over, but it is emotionally, certainly much more moving than the versions above.

Aaron: Subsequent versions include the Norwegian band Bøygard from 2009

Tony:  And to my surprise and indeed delight here is a version I can immediately appreciate and enjoy (remembering of course that for me this is a song about a foreign land with its own history of which I have only partial knowledge).  It is still a tragic tale, but I think here at last the band and singers get a balance that feels right and from a musical point of view, works well.

I know the regular drum beats in the background is a bit obvious but it combines with the gentle accompaniment and sensitive voice exactly.

Aaron, I am so glad you included this at the end, as I was getting a bit desperate not to say lost.  But here at last is a performance in which music and lyrics are at one with each other and which I can appreciate even without having learned the relevant history.   The harmonies in the chorus seem to fit perfectly, and the instrumental break which changes the chord sequence is still at one with the whole song.   What a relief, I thought I was going to end up with a totally negative piece – in total contrast to the last review in which I confessed to being close to tears.  But no, I appreciate the sensitivity, but don’t get overwhelmed by the emotion.

There is an index to other series we are currently running and those recently completed on the home page of Untold Dylan.

Other people’s songs…

1. Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
2. Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
3. Other people’s songs: They killed him
4. Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
5. Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
6. Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
7. Other people’s songs: Love Henry
8. Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
9. Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
10. Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
11. Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
12. Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
13. Other people’s songs: You go to my head
14. Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
15. Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
16. Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
17. Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
18. Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
19. Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown
20. Other people’s songs: Ninety miles an hour down a dead end street
21. Other people’s songs: Step it up and Go
22. Other people’s songs: Canadee-I-O
23. Other people’s songs: Arthur McBride
24. Other people’s songs: Little Sadie
25. Other people’s songs: Blue Moon, and North London Forever
26. Other people’s songs: Hard times come again no more
27. Other people’s songs: You’re no good
28. Other people’s songs: Lone Pilgrim (and more Crooked Still)
29. Other people’s songs: Blood in my eyes
30. Other people’s songs: I forgot more than you’ll ever know
31.  Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
32. Other people’s songs: Highway 51
33. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
34. Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
35. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
36. Other people’s songs: Highway 51 Blues
37. Other people’s songs: Freight Train Blues
38. Other People’s Songs: The Little Drummer Boy
39. Other People’s Songs: Must be Santa
40. Other People’s songs: The Christmas Song
41. Other People’s songs: Corina Corina
42. Other People’s Songs: Mr Bojangles
43. Other People’s Songs: It hurts me too
44. Other people’s songs: Take a message to Mary
45. Other people’s songs: House of the Rising Sun
46. Other people’s songs: “Days of 49”
47. Other people’s songs: In my time of dying
48. Other people’s songs: Pretty Peggy O
49. Other people’s songs: Baby Let me Follow You Down
50. Other people’s songs: Gospel Plow
51. Other People’s Songs: Melancholy Mood
52. Other people’s songs: The Boxer and Big Yellow Taxi
53. Other people’s songs: Early morning rain
54. Other people’s Songs: Gotta Travel On
55. Other people’s songs: “Can’t help falling in love”
56. Other people’s songs: Lily of the West
57. Other people’s songs: Alberta
58. Other people’s songs: Little Maggie
59. Other people’s songs: Sitting on top of the world
60. Dylan’s take on “Let it be me”
61. Other people’s songs: From “Take me as I am” all the way to “Baker Street”
62. Other people’s songs: A fool such as I
63. Other people’s songs: Sarah Jane and the rhythmic changes
64. Other people’s songs: Spanish is the loving tongue. Author drawn to tears

Previously: The Mythologies that Inspire Bob Dylan: The Rastas and The Stabber Of Polyphemus

By Larry Fyffe

The Stabber Of Polyphemus

In vain do some analysts of his song lyrics downplay the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan.

For Dylan, mythological Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclopes, man-eater, son of earth-shaker Neptune (like the biblical Whore Of Babylon, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster – even Mattel’s plastic blonde Barbie doll) represents America.

Apparently, Polyphemus has a number of Jungian friends:

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels
When he tries to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger, and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye, he just grows it
(Bob Dylan: Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window)

According to the English Gothic Romantic poet beneath, dark dragons and demons inhabit what initially seems a sunny Eden:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
A savage place! as holly and enchanted
As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover
(Samuel Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

So beware, beware, one needs to be of symbolic Satan ~ no server intends he to be though all Hell breaks loose beneath:

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Part IV)

In the song lyrics beneath, the demon-narrator takes on the role of a cold-hearted lover:

The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and raining
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

But the poetic lyrics below assert that it’s better to be like Trojan Aeneas ~ to show compassion, and avoid hubris:

Roman, remember by your strength to rule
Earth people's - for your arts to be these
To pacify, to impose the rule of law
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud
(Virgil: The Aeneid, Book VI ~ translated)

Expressed in the following song lyrics:

I'm going to spare the defeated
I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to spare the defeated
'Cause I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to teach peace to the conquered
I'm going to tame the proud
(Bob Dylan: Lonesome Day Blues)

Virtues learned from the blowing wind when down in the now-modernized Underworld of Ancient Greece:

Key West, under the sun, under the radar, under the gun
You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right
Feel the sun on your skin, and the healing virtues of the wind
(Bob Dylan: Key West)

The Rococo Angel Glides

Having riden across the dusty desert sands with the likes of religious rebels William Blake and John Milton, the Jewish cowboy Bob Dylan takes not long to release the reins of Christian fundamentalism, and gallop off on his pale horse into the crimson sunset.

Guns no longer a-blazing, but both uplifting and sorrowful tunes croon concerning the limited ability to change the world for the better through individual endeavour:

Then onward in my journey
I come to understand
That every hair is numbered
Like every grain of sand
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)

Damned the narrator above be with faint praise; he’s greater than a bunch of small birds!:

But even the very hairs of your head are numbered
Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows
(Luke 12: 7)

Could it be that an extra sparrow thrown in by Satan somewhere down the line just might tip the scales?

The Devil’s not gonna serve anyone – he’s gonna be bigger than Jehovah.

No more praise for Jah as so ordered beneath:

Sing unto God, sing praises to His name
Extolling Him that rideth upon the heavens by His name JAH
And rejoice before Him
(Psalm 68:4)

So it goes – lyrics below, self-parody perhaps, but still a masterpiece, with a quite a change of words by a latter day Trojan Aeneas, and also in the tone therein expressed:

Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you're seeing double
On a cold dark night by the Spanish stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Gonna wash my clothes, scrape off all the weed
I'm gonna lock my doors, turn my back on the world for a while
I'll stay right there til I paint my masterpiece

Not always Shondellian times, there’s not:

Sailing around the world
Full of crimson and clover
Sometime I feel just like my coffee's running over
I left Rome, and I pulled into Brussels
On a plane ride so bumpy that it made me ill
(Bob Dylan: When I Paint My Masterpiece ~ revised)

Nonetheless, Rococo’s little robin redbreast hangs around somewhere to chirp out all over:

The clouds are turning crimson
The leaves fall from the limbs, and
The branches cast their shadows over stone
Meet me in the moonlight alone
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)

To say that Bob Dylan is a legend minimizes the influence he has had on multiple genres of music, including rock, folk, and pop.   Throughout the years, dozens of music publications have continued to dissect Dylan word by word, pulling his music and lyrics apart in search of greater truths.

In fact, it’s the latter that often receives the bulk of the attention. Though his compositions have also stood the test of time, there’s something particularly alluring about his wordsmithery. That’s because Dylan is also a poet and mystic, some would argue, just as much as he is a musician. Not only have his words continued to inspire generation after generation of musicians, but they’ve also become an unending source of study.

As Dylan evolved from a politically motivated protest singer into a more exciting and riveting pop performer, he introduced dozens of unique ideas and perspectives. As his evolution culminated in the folk-country Bob Dylan so many know and love, he’d already left an immovable influence on the world of entertainment.

Let’s cover a few of his most enduring lyrical themes, starting with the concept of winning and losing in life.

Wandering & Searching

One of Dylan’s greatest progressions as an artist began during the mid-1960s. Though he’d often focused on political themes before then, his lyrics began to take a more measured approach to life and philosophy. In other words, he became a bit more introverted, focused on telling stories and parables. One particular song, a studio outtake, delves deep into this theme.

In it, he describes a poker player named Willie, who sticks to the road, wandering from town to town. And while this might seem like an old tale, it’s actually still something that happens today. Online satellite tournaments allow remote poker players to enter real-life poker competitions. In fact, top players might even travel to a destination like Barcelona in order to make their name at the tables.

Just like in the 1960s when Dylan penned his song, these players must balance the demands of their skill with their interest in wandering the world and making their name. It touches on the deeply human theme of searching out places where we belong—even if that’s simply in a room of fellow poker pros.

Brewing a Modern Folk Tale

The story of rambling Willie is also a great example of Dylan’s interest in modernizing and providing context to folk tales. But his greatest example is through ‘All Along the Watchtower’, which brings an almost biblical perspective to life’s trials.

Though Dylan tells this story through the perspective of a joker and a thief, it ends on a haunting note that sees two riders approach amid howling wind.

But what are these lyrics actually about? Like most folk tales, the truth is hidden amid imagery. In this case, the watchtower, the joker, the thief, and the approaching gales hint at the unknown. They touch on themes of interpersonal dynamics during times of change or even upheaval. Interestingly enough, they also touch on the cyclical nature of storytelling—are the two riders at the end actually the thief and the joker, come to start the story again?

Ominous Self-Reflection

We’ve skipped over Dylan’s political phase in this article to focus on his more esoteric contributions to lyrics. Overwhelmingly, Dylan’s specialty has been remembered as a type of introverted reflection, which pairs well with folk lyrics. But he’s also known for his ability to recognize his own evolution and growth as an artist.

In ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, Dylan starts to situate himself as the primary observer in his lyrics. Rather than telling stories, he’s immortalizing his own experience and growth as a musician. In this song, he begins to mull on the nature of fame and high society. He shares his reflections on what it’s like to have made it—but still feel alienated from those who surround him and uphold his celebrity. Though this type of introverted reflection will contribute to his incredible feats as a folk musician, it starts with a highly relatable impression of what it’s like to be up at the top, which many remember as a form of ominous self-reflection.

1. NET 2015 Part 1 Singing to you, not at you
2. NET 2015 Part 2
3. NET 2015 Part 3: It doesn’t get any better than this
4. NET 2015: Part 4 The best year ever?

Full index to the series.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Mike Johnson is fiction writer and poet little known outside of his country New Zealand/Aotearoa. He has a new publication; his 27th book, and 12th  book of poetry – Sketches. It is illustrated by artist Leila Lees.

If you want a signed copy sent to you, email him at: m.johnson@xtra.co.nz   Or order it from our website: https://lasaviapublishing.com/sketches/

‘Sketches, a skein of fleeting moments arrested on the page, manages with its glancing, darting reflections and philosophical perceptions, to find just the right formulation to deliver a descriptive vitalism that is open, alert, tentative, ambulatory, elegant, palpable.’ David Eggleton, Poet Laureate, 2019 – 2022

————-

If 2015 was, as I have suggested, the best year ever for the NET as Dylan rose gracefully to meet the challenge of the Voice (Sinatra), then what of the following year? Does hitting a peak mean that everything that follows must be post peak? To some extent, yes, but Dylan had been on a rising curve since 2012, after shifting to the baby grand piano, and he was not about to have an off year. In many ways, 2016 was a continuation of 2015, and some of the performances were equal to that year.

Take, for example, this turbulent and magnificent performance of ‘Pay in Blood.’ In Part 3, 2015, I raved about the superlative ‘Long and Wasted Years,’ somewhat intemperately claiming that this vocal triumph must be one of Dylan’s greatest-ever live performances. I stand by that, but I have another one for you: ‘Pay in Blood.’ Like ‘Long and Wasted Years,’ this captures a voice, in this case the triumphant voice of the conquering hero who has suffered long and hard, the would-be dictator, a man of violence.

You bit your lover in the bed,
Come here I`ll break your lousy head
Our nation must be saved and freed
You been accused of murder, how do you plead?

It’s pretty clear from the context, and the threatening riffs that could overwhelm you, that this is not someone you should trust to save and free the nation. (‘Bit your lover’ becomes ‘get your lover’ on some lyric sites. I think ‘bit’ is much stronger.)

It’s the way the music comes charging at you, full-on, that brings out the dark strains of this song, particularly in this performance. The music comes thundering in as the character makes his first wheedling assertions:

Well I'm grinding my life out, steady and sure
Nothing more wretched than what I must endure
I'm drenched in the light that shines from the sun
I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you done

Note the sudden shift to violence in the fourth line; the righteousness of it. It gives me a shudder.

I don’t think you’ll find a more virulent performance of this persona than this one. (I’m pretty sure it comes from one of the Tokyo concerts from the first, spring leg of the tour, but need to confirm that).

Pay in Blood (A)

We can’t leave it there, however. In Durham (Nov 4^th), Dylan took quite a different approach to the song, more ethereal and strange, not charging at you full speed but with a shadowy voice, floating, the song’s riffs re-arranged in a way that gives me the feeling that these are the confessions of a falling angel heard from a distance. This changes the song, turning it from threatening to mysterious: a spooky performance.

Pay in Blood (B)

Those two recordings alone show that the 2016 Dylan was capable of what he delivered in 2015. Although they are, for my ear, the outstanding performances of the year, there were others up to the same standard.

Take this stunning version of ‘High Water.’ Over the years, my editor Tony Attwood and I have found many ‘best ever’ versions of the song (See for example here).  Is it possible that this 2016 performance is the very best of the best evers? Does this one leave the versions that have come before in the dust?

Quite possibly. My own favourite has, until this moment, been the 2006, darkly driven performance but this one, from Indio, Desert Trip, (Oct 14th), sets up an irresistible groove, strips it of its country/banjo trappings and turns it into solid, ass-kicking blues based rock. Oh man! The song has never sounded better. As soon as I played it, I had to play it again.

High Water (A)

But again, we can’t leave it there. In Durham once more, we find the song with a new arrangement, new chords and a different melodic line which transforms the monotonal verse structure. As with ‘Pay in Blood’ it’s like listening to a different song. It carries something of that ethereal beauty with it as well.

High Water (B)

What is evident at this point is that Dylan is sustaining the 2015 peak, and is innovative in coming up with alternative arrangements. Behind all this is the driving force of Dylan’s encounter with the Voice. In May 2016 he released his second album of American Standards Fallen Angels. Most of these songs never made it onto the setlists, or did so only occasionally, but one of Dylan’s favourites is ‘All Or Nothing At All’ which he introduced in 2015. When you think about it, the song is a kind of ultimatum, but Dylan swings it with such breezy sweetness we might not notice the implication. He’s not trying to sing it like Sinatra; he makes the song his own. It’s an old truth – no use trying to do things by halves, either you got faith or you got unbelief. (Paducah Oct 30th).

All or Nothing at All

In 2014 Dylan laid down the songs, and in which order he would play them, into a Setlist. So in that year, with some exceptions, Dylan essentially plays the same concert over and over. In 2015 that Setlist was loosened, and altered to make room for the American Standards, although the outline of it was still there.

In 2016 the Setlist is still very much in operation. A key song, and fixture in the first half of the concert was ‘She Belongs to Me.’ It comes at number 2 in the Setlist after ‘Things Have Changed.’ In 2016, however, in July, he suddenly drops the song for good, replacing it with ‘Don’t Think Twice.’

Much as I love ‘Don’t Think Twice,’ I lament the loss of ‘She Belongs to Me,’ which had an extraordinary evolution through the NET, finishing up as this pounding epic with its searing harp breaks – a standout performance at every concert. I still prefer the 2014 performance because I’m a sucker for the two-chorus harp break and that recording is particularly clear, but here it is, suddenly the last time we’ll hear it. (Berkley, June 9^th).

She Belongs to Me

The loss of that song has another consequence. Dylan’s harp playing is by now largely confined to some ritual blasts on only two songs, ‘She Belongs to Me’ and ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ Now ‘Tangled’ is the last surviving song for the harp. In some concerts he doesn’t play the instrument at all. The slow eclipse of the harp is almost complete.

So how does ‘Don’t Think Twice’ sound? It doesn’t have the insistent grandeur of ‘She Belongs To Me,’ but has its own quieter charm. These performances fully honour the original, acoustic song. A rich musical mix and heartfelt lyrics. (Puducah). There’s just a touch of ragtime in that tempo.

Don’t Think Twice

By this time, with Fallen Angels out, Dylan was performing up to seven American Standards per concert, pushing more Dylan songs into the background. One of the songs off that album is ‘Old Black Magic,’ written by Harald Arlen and Johnny Mercer, released in 1942 and made popular by Glen Miller and his Orchestra. Mercer apparently wrote the lyrics for the actress Judy Garland. Comedian Allan Sherman did a parody called ‘That old back scratcher.’

In the previous post I lamented that Dylan did not choose some more upbeat American Standards, largely preferring the slow tear-jerkers, and now I get my wish. ‘Old Black Magic’ is a peppy number about falling in love, and it’s only Dylan’s crepuscular voice that gives this blood-quickener that touch of world-weariness. Can that old black magic still work? (Tokyo, April 14^th)

Old Black Magic

I have noted before how well the disarming ‘Spirit on the Water’ fits in with these American Standards. The song could have been released in the 1940s with hardly an eyebrow raised. Even the confession of murder near the end of the song would not have come as such a great surprise to those who had listened to songs like ‘Mack the Knife.’ I’m glad the song is still there. I love the way it captures a wistful, rueful mood. (Osaka, April 12^th).

Spirit on the Water

The first leg of the year was an acclaimed tour of Japan, which included a seven concert stint in Tokyo, running from the 18^th to the 26^th of April, following an earlier three day stint there from April 4^th to the 6th. Dylan always does well in Japan, and apparently has a large following there. He’s certainly on top form in Tokyo for ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ still a highlight in any concert. He stands centre stage until the end of the harp break, when he moves to the piano for the last verse. The lyrics are the new version he’s now been singing since 2014. (25^th April)

Tangled up in Blue (A)

We can’t quite leave it there. From later in the year, (Desert Trip), we get this recording, with the voice and harp better foregrounded, the performance grittier.

Tangled up in Blue (B)

Besides ‘Spirit On the Water,’ another song I think fits well with the American Standards is ‘To Make You Feel My Love.’ In fact we could say that it has become a 21^st Century Standard, having been covered by 450 artists. It is certainly weary and forlorn enough. A love which has gone unrequited for many years can ripen into a feeling like this. This Paducah performance must come close to being a best-ever. It captivated me. The vocal is delivered with exquisite intimacy in that borderland between singing and talking where Dylan excels. Add some understated piano and you have a standout performance.

To Make you Feel my Love

Let’s finish this post with that mysterious and atmospheric song from Tempest, ‘Scarlet Town.’ Here myth, folklore and contemporary life are swirled together on a dark pallet to create this moody masterpiece. I still think the 2014 performance comes out tops (see: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/26096), But this one from Tokyo (6^th April) doesn’t disappoint.

Scarlet Town

That’s it for now. I’ll be back soon to continue this exploration of the NET, 2016, clearly a worthy successor to the exhilarating 2015, with some top performances.

Until then

Kia Ora

Untold Dylan: The series

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This series looks at performances of songs that were not written by Dylan but which clearly have a Dylan influence within them.  As ever, Aaron selects the theme and the works, and Tony endeavours to write something moderately relevant while listening to the selections for the first time.

Aaron: Let’s look at another one of the albums that spun out of the Rolling Thunder Revue. This time it is The Alpha Band’s self-titled debut.

From Wikipedia: “The Alpha Band was an American rock band, formed in July 1976 from the remnants of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Band members were Rolling Thunder alumni T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, and David Mansfield, plus sidemen who differed from record to record and included: David Kemper (later drummer for Bob Dylan) and Ringo Starr. The band produced three albums, particularly notable for their intelligent cultural critique. The members of the band, especially Burnett and Mansfield, are known for their important roles as producers of other people’s albums subsequently.”

Aaron: Here are just a handful of my favorites from the album.   Interviews… some great lyrics in this one I thought

The first interview was out of a wrestler
Who's the maitre d' at the Bucks Owen Show
In the basement of the Empire State Building
And he's wearing his bronze and grey belt
With an atomic arm lock
On a lounge lizard at the Spanish Steps

And there were Ferrari automobiles
Sitting in the ground fifty million years ago
And there were James Brown records
Sitting in the ground fifty million years ago
And there was acrylic paint
Flying through the air fifty million years ago

The next interview was out of a gambler
Who keeps all his money in fifty dollar bills
And floats between Dallas and Vegas and Los Angeles
And he's standing outside the real motel
By a '68 Coupe Deville with his pool cue
And he's high on bullets and afraid of cobwebs

Tony: Oh my goodness, how have I missed this song?   The lyrics are, to me, (and perhaps it is just me) very hard to distinguish so I rushed off to find the lyrics of whole song – if you feel the same way they are here.

I absolutely love this – the rhythm is hypnotic and the way the two parts of the song work together is fantastic.  If I’m putting my producer hat I’d say, cut the synthesizer – I don’t feel it adds anything, and for me it gets in the way of understanding the lyrics, and it takes away from the pounding insistence of the 50 million years ago chorus section.   But that’s just me.

Brilliant – including the extra beat at the end.

Aaron: The Dogs

Tony:  I really didn’t know what to expect next; again it is fascinating.    In case you are interested the lines in Spanish mean 

The dog is not howling, it is laughing
I was crying and now bleeding

Goodness; what an amazing set of lyrics: a song that doesn’t have to have a meaning but just has to be there…

I never had a French girl outside of France
I never tasted foreign love, I never had a chance
With the finance and romance
Romance and finance

Aaron: Arizona Telegram

Tony: As I have said I don’t know this album – but of course I will get to know it.  And here’s a funny thing – I wanted to look up the lyrics of this song and there are half a dozen websites that claim they have the lyrics therein, but don’t.   What naughty chaps these fellows are!

Another good song – not so immediately taken by it as with the songs above; it seems more mainstream than all that has gone before, but I guess one can never be completely far out all the time.  (As it were).   Superb coda to the song too.

Dark Eyes

Tony:  But we are now back with the amazing originality and quality of the earlier songs.  I really must have lived a very sheltered life never to have come across this album before.  What on earth have I been doing all these years.    This is brilliant.  I do hope you are still with us here.    Of course, you may have known this album for years, but if you are a hopeless case like me, I hope you are simply smiling as much as I am listening to this for the first time.

Last Chance to Dance

Tony:   Oh what a wonderful time I have just had.   And I have just seen that the whole album is on Spotify so I can keep playing it through as I continue working.  Aaron I am always in your debt for articles on this site.   But now more than ever.

And I have just seen that they made two other albums.  Well, that’s my day’s work gone then.   Although actually I am going to add a track of my own, as I have just started playing the series of Spotify.  My life is changed.  It now includes the Alpha Band.

• Part 1: Desolation Row
• Part 2: There goes rhyming Dylan
• Part 3: Songs inspired by the music of Bob Dylan – Young, CSNY, and Coxon
• Part 4: Dylanesque: the anti-war songs
• Part 5: The Rolling Thunder album – Kinky Friedman
• Part 6: Rolling Thunder albums: Cardiff Rose – Roger McGuinn
• Part 7: Rolling Thunder albums: Joni Mitchell
• Part 8: Scarlet Rivera’s Debut Album

By Tony Attwood

The series title made sense during lockdown when we were looking for ways to fill the time.  Now it is more like a Dylan cover every two weeks, but we’re still working through the songs.  There’s no logic to which songs have appeared in this series other than the fact that I have found a few covers that I think add something to my understanding and enjoyment of the original.

And I approach each new song of course with expectations, as for example here, remembering the Byrds cover which made this lovely original composition sound just like every other Byrds song.  A real disappointment – and I’ve not included it here.

But elsewhere my expectations were more than fulfilled.

Joan Osborne plays with the melody and rhythm and comes up with a completely new feel which I really enjoy; indeed this is what I listen to covers for.  For me, this puts new life and enjoyment into a song that really hasn’t figured much in my consciousness.   A great way to start the exploration.

And I do like contrasts in these explorations, for with Particles of Change we have a delicate rendition of the song taken into completely new directions.  Inventing that accompaniment must have been fun – as indeed so must have been the performance.  I particularly like the ending around two minutes… I thought for a second it was all over, and then off we go.   I would urge you, even if you don’t find much in the opening of the track, to go on, for it mutates, but always keeps the original in mind.

Indeed I wonder sometimes if Bob ever hears renditions like this, and if so, what he thinks.  Oh, what I would give still to be performing and have be able to play alongside such musicians as these.   Trouble is the pianist we hear on this track has inventiveness way beyond anything I had.

After those first two tracks I find myself wondering what comes next.   Chris Whitley keeps closer to the original melody but the accompaniment gives an utterly different feel to the whole field.   And I wonder: why has this song so inspired artists to develop it further…

I think the answer tothat is that it is the way the verse divides into two parts – where the second group of four lines starts (for example “You have slayed me, you have made me,”) there’s a real boost to the song, which gives artists a chance to put yet more interpretation into it.

And here we go again with Don Williams – more variations in the rhythm and playing with the melody.  Wow – there really is something in this song that has inspired these performers and arrangers.   And wow again how I love this rendition – again so unexpected.  He was an artist outside of the world of music I have listened to, but oh, this is so worth hearing.

I could go on, for there are many more versions of this song out there which a bit of internet searching can reveal.   But let me end with this thought.  Bob played this song once in public, on 31 October 1964.   How amazing it would be if suddenly out of nowhere he slipped it into the Never Ending Tour – just because someone close to him read this and said, “Hey Bob, there are these guys who do a lot of celebrate your life’s work.   Play this for them…”

Won’t happen, I know, but such dreams help pass the days.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

1. The song with numbers in the title.
2. Ain’t Talkin
3. All I really want to do
4.  Angelina
5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
6. As I went out one morning
7.  Ballad for a Friend
8. Ballad in Plain D
9. Ballad of a thin man
10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
12. Beyond here lies nothing
13. Blind Willie McTell
14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
16. Blowin in the wind as never before
17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
18. BoB Dylan’s 115th Dream revisited
19. Boots of Spanish leather
20. Born in Time
21. Buckets of Rain
22. Can you please crawl out your window
23. Can’t wait
24. Changing of the Guard
25. Chimes of Freedom
26. Country Pie
27.  Crash on the Levee
28. Dark Eyes
29. Dear Landlord
30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
31. Dignity.
32. Dirge
33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
34. Don’t think twice
35.  Down along the cove
36. Drifter’s Escape
37. Duquesne Whistle
38. Farewell Angelina
39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
40. Fourth Time Around
41. From a Buick 6
42. Gates of Eden
43. Gotta Serve Somebody
44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
45. Heart of Mine
46. High Water
47. Highway 61
48. Hurricane
49. I am a lonesome hobo
50. I believe in you
51. I contain multitudes
52. I don’t believe you.
53. I love you too much
54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
55. I shall be released
56. I threw it all away
57. I want you
58. I was young when I left home
59. I’ll remember you
60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
63. If you see her say hello
64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
65. I’m not there.
66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
67. It ain’t me babe
68. It takes a lot to laugh
69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
70. It’s all right ma
71. Just Like a Woman
72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
73. Lay down your weary tune
74. Lay Lady Lay
75. Lenny Bruce
76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
78. License to kill
79. Like a Rolling Stone
80. Love is just a four letter word
81. Love Sick
82. Maggies Farm!
83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
85. Man in a long black coat.
86. Masters of War
87. Meet me in the morning
88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
90. Most likely you go your way
91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
93. Mozambique
94. Mr Tambourine Man
95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
96. New Morning
97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
98. Nobody Cept You
99. North Country Blues
100. No time to think
101. Obviously Five Believers
102. Oh Sister
103. On the road again
104. One more cup of coffee
105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
106. One too many mornings
107. Only a hobo
108. Only a pawn in their game
109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
110. Oxford Town
111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time
112. Please Mrs Henry
113. Political world
114. Positively 4th Street
115. Precious Angel
116. Property of Jesus
117. Queen Jane Approximately
118. Quinn the Eskimo as it should be performed.
119. Quit your lowdown ways
120. Rainy Day Women as never before
121. Restless Farewell. Exquisite arrangements, unbelievable power
122. Ring them bells in many different ways
123. Romance in Durango, covered and re-written
124. Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands, like you won’t believe
125. Sara
126. Senor
127. A series of Dreams; no one gets it (except Dylan)
128. Seven Days
129. She Belongs to Me
130. Shelter from the Storm
131. Sign on the window
132. Silvio
133. Simple twist of fate
134. Slow Train
135. Someday Baby

By Tony Attwood

In this piece I am going to try and compare two different performances of Gates of Eden wherein the lyrics stay the same but the musical approach is quite different.  Both recordings are taken from the magnificent Never Ending Tour series by Mike Johnson which is currently still being published on this site.

First a recording from 1988.  Here Bob has virtually dispensed with the melody and declaims the words, thus making the rhythm more important than the tune.   Meanwhile the percussionist puts in a virtuoso performance; the full emphasis is on nothing but the horrors of what is happening to the world.

Second a recording from 2000 in which Bob has not only returned to singing the melody he also has a counter melody appear from time to time in the guitar.   Whereas in the first recording above everything is subsumed beneath the horrors, now there is a delicacy among the descriptions of destruction.   We are invited to feel sorrow and pity at what has been lost, rather than anger at what we have destroyed.

To see a song one has written, in such utterly different ways, takes an amazing amount of insight into one’s own work – something that many creative people lack.  And indeed it is something that Bob himself has been accused of lacking from time to time.

Personally, I find the first of these recordings hard to listen to: I really don’t want to know.  But with this second recording, I find myself uplifted even in the realisation of the horrors of what we have done to the planet and to ourselves.  I am in fulsome agreement that humankind has destroyed its own environment, and that we treat each other appallingly.  But I don’t need the heavy-handed approach of the 1988 recording to tell me.  Here I can take it all in through the reflection that I am seeing the world as Bob is – or at least he did at that moment of performance.

But more, I find this a beautiful piece of music in 2000.  In 1988 it was a horror show.   And yes of course the world can be described in that way.  But it is one of those things I know, I don’t want to be reminded.

Yet however you hear these two performances, and whatever reflections you have, please do appreciate the extraordinary ability of the artist to see his own work in two such different ways.  And I hope you can also see that this is a perfect example of why we need to contemplate the music AND the lyrics.   Change either, and one changes the entire artistic creation.

• How most analyses of Dylan’s songs mistake the essence of what the songs are
• Abandoned Love
• Angelina
• Ballad for a Friend
• Drifter’s Escape
• Blind Willie McTell
• Black Diamond Bay
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Chimes of Freedom
• Cover Down Pray Through
• Desolation Row
• Drifter’s Escape
• Early Roman Kings
• It ain’t me babe
• Not Dark Yet
• Sign on the window

Mississippi, Desolation Row, Crossing The Rubicon, Where Are You Tonight, Tombstone Blues… Some songs are so rich and multicoloured that they deserve their own book . I fear that almost every song on Rough And Rowdy Ways is going to claim that right.  The book of this series is now available.

 ——————-

by Jochen Markhorst

XV       The aim of all life is death

Greedy old wolf - I’ll show you my heart
But not all of it - only the hateful part
I’ll sell you down the river - I’ll put a price on your head
What more can I tell ya - 
              ...I sleep with life and death in the same bed

“I sleep with life and death in the same bed. I suppose we all feel that way when we hit a certain age. Do you think about mortality often?” asks Douglas Brinkley in the New York Times interview, June 2020. In which he relegates himself to yet another analyst who equates the “I” in a work of art with the author. It’s 2020, so Dylan has been confronted for literally more than half a century by fans, journalists and even scholars who stubbornly insist on the superficial, sensation-seeking belief that the songs were written by Dylan and that they must then therefore be about himself, his life, his loves, his beliefs and all the other intimately-personal stuff.

Inevitably on unfiltered media like expectingrain‘s fan forums, where heated conspiracy thinkers are given ample scope to – for example – “prove” that Dylan in 2020 is still trying to come to terms with his stranded marriage of nearly fifty years ago to Sara Dylan (to name just one of the more desperate theories), but interviewers from more serious media have for over fifty years proved just as susceptible to the naive, facile approach.

It’s hardly a consolation for Dylan, but still: it is of all times. When Goethe, in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (From my Life: Poetry and Truth; 1811–1833), looks back on the work that brought him world fame and fortune and immortality, on Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows Of Young Werther, 1774), Dylan will nod in recognition at:

“Being prepared for all that might be alleged against Werther, I found those attacks, numerous as they were, by no means annoying; but I had no anticipation of the intolerable torment provided for me by sympathizers and well-wishers. These, instead of saying anything civil to me about my book just as it was, wished to know, one and all, what was really true in it; at which I grew very angry, and often expressed myself with great discourtesy.

“To answer this question, I should have been obliged to pull to pieces and destroy the form of a work on which I had so long pondered, with the view of giving a poetical unity to its many elements; and in this operation, if the essential parts were not destroyed, they would, at least, have been scattered and dispersed.”
(Dichtung und Wahrheit, part 3, thirteenth book)

Goethe complains about the intolerable torment (“eine unleidliche Qual”) of remorseless fans who only want to know what is really true, which makes him very angry (“sehr ärgerlich”). He writes this around 1812, but is certainly not new to it; as early as 1788, in one of his Italian letters, he has exactly the same complaint: “Hier sekkieren sie mich mit den Übersetzungen meines „Werthers“und fragen, ob auch alles wahr sei! Das ist nun ein Unheil, was mich bis nach Indien verfolgen würde (Here they pester me with the translations of my “Werther” and ask whether everything is true! This is a misery that would follow me all the way to India).”

But not only the tired irritation will evoke recognition from Dylan. Noteworthy is Goethe’s explanation of his distaste: to answer the question of what is true, he would “zerrupfen und die Form zerstören müssen, have been obliged to pull to pieces and destroy the form”, thus pulverising its “poetische Einheit, poetic unity”. In slightly different words, this is the same argument with which Dylan opposes Brinkley’s attempts at interpretation in this same interview:

“You’re taking Anne’s name out of context, she’s part of a trilogy. […] It’s the combination of them that adds up to something more than their singular parts. To go too much into detail is irrelevant. The song is like a painting, you can’t see it all at once if you’re standing too close. The individual pieces are just part of a whole.”

… after Dylan has also already resisted biographical interpretation, less vexed or weary than Goethe; “I think about it [death] in general terms, not in a personal way.”

Brinkley’s fascination with this particular verse, however, is of course perfectly understandable. I sleep with life and death in the same bed has a nineteenth-century grandeur; the form has a Baudelaire-like couleur, the content is – obviously – twenty-four-carat Freud. With a bit of goodwill, one might even appreciate Dylan’s verse as an extremely concentrated, all-encompassing summary of Freud’s life’s work; after all, Freud is already sixty-four years old when he comes to the conclusion that all our urges and passions are ultimately reducible to Eros and Thanatos, to life drive and death drive. Freud tries to prove this in his essay Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920), the essay with the much-quoted Das Ziel alles Lebens ist der Tod (“the aim of all life is death”), and in which he argues at length that the Todestrieb (death drive) and the Lebenstrieb (life drive, usually called libido by Freud) are not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary, precisely because they coexist in us, they define our behaviour. Or, as Dylan would say, we sleep with Eros and Thanatos in the same bed.

Which will all, to complete the circle, again be inspired by Dylan’s main source, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Life”, in which the balance of life a death is a motif woven through all 52 sections. The living and dead lay together, for example, in Section 34, and in the closing lines of Section 15:

The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

… or, to combine Eros and Thanatos even more literally: Copulation is no more rank to me than death is (Section 24).

“I die on top of the hill,” Dylan would probably have made thereof.

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 16: Have at it, ladies

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: This work is often misattributed as “traditional”. The poem was originally published as “A Border Affair” in the June 1907 issue of “Pacific Monthly”. It was republished in 1915 by Chapman & Grimes as part of a compilation of Clark’s works entitled “Sun and Saddle Leather”. The song ended up with several variant lyrics.

Although there has been some controversy about whether Bill Simon composed the tune, that is the consensus nowadays. Simon heard the poem, thought it would make a good song, and worked out a tune while riding the range as a cowboy. Some twenty to thirty years later somebody added a bridge to the music, which is how it is now typically played but, as with the lyrics, there is variation in the tune.

The song’s first release was as The Border Affair by Tex Fletcher in 1936.

Tony: What hits me as the dominant feature of the song is the empahsis on the 123-123 pattern of the guitar accompaniment (which is completely lost by the time we get to Judy Collins – see below) while the melody itself is a lilting four beats to a line.  It makes a pleasing effect, but after a while to my ear there is nothing to hold my interest.

But of course when it was written, this was the popular way of telling simple stories, so it would have held everyone’s attention.  It is really simple, but if one takes in the lyrics, it somehow seems to be gripping, although reading the lyrics now I’d immediately want to slow the whole piece down.

Spanish is a loving tongue
Soft as wind, light as spray
Was a girl I learned it from
Living down Sonora Way

I don't look much like a lover
Yet I say her love words over
Often when I'm all alone
Mi Amor, Mi Corazon

Aaron: Ian & Sylvia recorded the song for the 1963 album Four Strong Winds

Tony: I’m much more comfortable with this slower speed and of course the change of chords is much more in keeping with the way we expect songs to go these days.   This really is beautiful, as long as one has to stop doing anything else and just take it in.

Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album

Tony: If I didn’t know this was Bob, I would not guess.  It’s the recording to give to anyone who says Bob can’t sing.   But I do have problems with the accompaniment both in the opening slower, softer sections and in the second half.  Bob singing with the piano accompaniment and maybe the chorus singing along, is enough.  The other instruments just seem to be fighting for space.   And indeed in the latter part of the recording the piano seems to want too much space, and appears to be fighting back.   I’d love to get hold of the original recording and cut out most of that accompaniment and listen… in my head it sounds so much better.

Just listen to the “I don’t look much like a lover” line near the start and imagine it without the piano.  It maintains the effect much more.  I wonder, did Bob do the arrangement or was it the producer who pushed him to this?   The la la la section around the two minute mark almost seems a parody of the whole song with every instrument fighting for its space.  What a shame.

Aaron: Subsequent versions include… Judy Collins

Tony: Oh Aaron, how can you introduce this as “Subsequent versions include…”   This is one of the great moments of contemporary music.  Judy Collins is always one of my favourite performers; what an utterly exquisite voice and invariably a full understanding of the song she is performing.  Actually I don’t want to write anymore; I just want to listen… although if I have to say something it would be that if only Bob had listened to this version and realised this is all this delightful song needs, then his version would be so much better.

What works here is not only the sound, but the understanding of the link between music and lyrics…

Still I've always kind of missed him
Since that last sad night I kissed him
Broke his heart, lost my own
Adios, Mi corazon

If you are not crying your eyes out by now you have either no emotions or have never lost a lover, or perhaps it is just that Judy Collins’ voice does something for me.

Aaron: Emmylou Harris

Tony: I approach this with trepidation.  Apart from the fact that I find so much in Judy Collins work that I admire, I find it hard to imagine anything that could surpass her rendition of this song.

This final is delightful, but I would again be critical of overdoing the accompaniment, and I find the beat over-emphasised.  But now I am just an old man having been taken back to thoughts of lost loves of the past by Judy Collins.   I don’t want to hear anyone else.  I don’t want to do anything else.  I just want to sit here and listen to Judy and wallow in my sorrows of what might have been.  The tears are running down my face. I can’t write no more.

Meta: According to reports, Bob Dylan, one of the world’s most iconic singers, is also a baseball fan, even mentioning the sport in one of his songs.

Long after Bob Dylan has gone, he will be remembered as one of the world’s most talented musical geniuses. He will also be remembered as a major figure in popular culture in a glittering career, which has so far spanned six decades.

Some even regard him as the Shakespeare of his generation, having been able to resonate with millions of people across the world through his work. However, not many people will remember him as being a baseball fan. He even wrote a song in 1975 based on a famous pitcher called James ‘Catfish’ Hunter.

How much of a baseball fan is Bob Dylan?

Baseball is one of Bob Dylan’s favourite sports. However, he isn’t a baseball fan in the traditional sense of the word. He is more of a fan of individual players as opposed to teams.

He once talked about the problem with teams is that baseball players inevitably get traded to a new team and that when your favourite players get traded out, the team is no longer the same, so how can it still be before your favourite team when all the players you like are no longer there.

Some people would agree, and others would disagree, saying he’s not a true club supporter. He once wrote a song called Catfish for the 1976 album Desire about an iconic American pitcher, James ‘Catfish’ Hunter, purely because he admired Catfish as a player and all he had achieved throughout his career.

Are there any other songs about baseball?

There are a handful of songs about baseball, which most music fans, baseball fans, and UK betting sports fans will likely have never even heard of before. Examples include a song from Dropkick Murphy’s called Tessie, Les Brown’s Joltin’ Joe Di Maggio, and Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days.

Other famous songs about baseball that you may or may not also be familiar with are the following:

• The Greatest by Kenny Rogers
• Load Up the Baseballs (aka The Baseball Song) by Whiskey Falls
• Centerfield by John Fogerty
• Joe DiMaggio Done It Again by Wilco
• Night Game by Paul Simon
• Talkin’ Baseball by Terry Cashman
• Right Field, by Peter, Paul, and Mary
• America’s Favorite Pastime by Todd Snider
• Say Hay (The Willie Mays Song) by The Treniers

You can now listen to many of these songs on free streaming sites like YouTube. They can also be purchased or listened to for free on several other trusted audio streaming sites, such as Spotify and Amazon Music.

Honourable mentions

If you enjoy listening to any of these baseball songs and want more, you also have That’s the Way Baseball Go by Merle Haggard, Piazza, New York Catcher by Belle and Sebastian, Cheap Seats by Alabama, and The Baseball Song by Corey Smith.

Others include the D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song by Danny Kaye, Saga of Dandy, the Devil & Day by Ultramagnetic MCs, and Knock It Out of the Park by Sam & Dave, to name just a few.

Fun facts about Bob Dylan

The 82-year-old singer/songwriter Bob Dylan was born in May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. His full name is Robert Allen Zimmerman. In 2016, he received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature (for having pioneered a new form of poetic expression within America’s tradition of great songs).

Throughout his successful career, which has lasted for more than half a century, he has sold tens of millions of albums to fans across the globe, and he has written over 500 songs that have been recorded by more than 2,000 artists.

He was also once part of a supergroup of musicians called The Traveling Wilburys, which included himself, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Pettey. Hit tunes to listen out for are ‘Handle with Care’ and ‘Don’t Back Down.’

by Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan And The Rastas

Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan takes on the persona of Odysseus more than once.

Thus speaks the Greek hero to Polyphemus:

Would to God that I could strip you of life and breath
And ship you down to the house of death
As surely as no one will ever heal your eye
Not even the earthquake god himself
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book IX, translation)

Poseidon (Neptune), maker of earthquakes, is the father of the one-eyed Cyclops; it’s Poseidon’s son, Polyphemus, whom Odysseus blinds.

Quite understandable that Poseidon’s son, an eater-of-human-flesh, is angry at the Greek warrior Odysseus for shoving a burning stick in his eye which causes loss of sight; not surprising either that the father of Polyphemus is unhappy about that too.

Sorrowful Trojan Aeneas(according to poet Virgil) heads off to Rome, Italy, after the Greek victory over his beloved Troy.

Aeneas, so the story goes, splashes a royal blood line on the Italian boot.

In the song lyrics below, dark humour – again rhyming ~ ‘death’ with ~ ‘breath’:

I'll strip you of life, strip you of breath
Ship you down to the house of death
One day you will ask for me
There'll be no one else that you'll want to see
(Bob Dylan: Early Roman Kings)

That is, readers thereof have to be aware of ancient Greek/Roman mythology to ‘get’ the joke.

Furthermore note that Greek/Roman mythology and the Hebrew/Christian religion (ie, King Solomon and Queen of Sheba) both tend to paint the dark-skinned peoples of Ethiopia into a Romantc dream-like, earth-bound, paradisal picture:

.... I wandered, and Egypt
And I came to the Ethiopians
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book IV)

And:

Princes shall come out of Egypt
Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God
(Psalm 68: 31)

And in the epic poem of rebellion against etablished authority beneath (see also Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”):

Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True paradise under the Ethiop line
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book IV)

Little wonder that Mr. Skeptic puts  his bleeding foot in the salted song bath below:

So let so not be enticed
On the way out of Egypt through Ethiopia
To the judgement hall of Christ
(Bob Dylan: Precious Angel)

Apparently, after Jah (Jehovah), the black God, finishes the battle between good and evil, Africans sold as slaves (to America – the New Babylon, giant Polyphemus personified) will be delivered back to their blissful home in Ethiopia.

The Stabber Of Polyphemus

In vain do some analysts of his song lyrics downplay the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan.

For Dylan, mythological Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclopes, man-eater, son of earth-shaker Neptune (like the biblical Whore Of Babylon, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster – even Mattel’s plastic blonde Barbie doll) represents America.

Apparently, Polyphemus has a number of Jungian friends:

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels
When he tries to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger, and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye, he just grows it
(Bob Dylan: Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window)

According to the English Gothic Romantic poet beneath, dark dragons and demons inhabit what initially seems a sunny Eden:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
A savage place! as holly and enchanted
As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover
(Samuel Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

So beware, beware, one needs to be of symbolic Satan ~ no server intends he to be though all Hell breaks loose beneath:

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Part IV)

In the song lyrics beneath, the demon-narrator takes on the role of a cold-hearted lover:

The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and raining
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

But the poetic lyrics below assert that it’s better to be like Trojan Aeneas ~ to show compassion, and avoid hubris:

Roman, remember by your strength to rule
Earth people's - for your arts to be these
To pacify, to impose the rule of law
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud
(Virgil: The Aeneid, Book VI ~ translated)

Expressed in the following song lyrics:

I'm going to spare the defeated
I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to spare the defeated
'Cause I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to teach peace to the conquered
I'm going to tame the proud
(Bob Dylan: Lonesome Day Blues)

Virtues learned from the blowing wind when down in the now-modernized Underworld of Ancient Greece:

Key West, under the sun, under the radar, under the gun
You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right
Feel the sun on your skin, and the healing virtues of the wind
(Bob Dylan: Key West)

By Tony Attwood

In this little series I’ve been trying to explain why I sometimes write as much about the music of Dylan as the lyrics: something that most commentators don’t do very often (or at least that is how it seems to me).

And one song that demonstrates perfectly why one should comment on the music is “Every Gain of Sand”.  The lyrics are of course beautiful and elegant, and it is perhaps because of this we can easily forget how superbly simple but utterly elegant the musical composition is.

Indeed the number of utterly different cover versions of the song should keep us aware of just how much there is in the music.  Which is interesting because the verse of the song opens with three lines based mostly on one note.

What we have is a song that can be performed against a variety of different rhythms, but no matter what rhythmic device is used the first four lines seem to have little to offer in the way of melody, although many arrangers have played around with the percussion to provide some extra interest.

But really all that we have is the end of the second and fourth line to give us variation.  The same music phrase that we hear with “In the time of my confession” is indeed repeated three times, and only “flood every newborn seed” brings us relief.   But as soon as we have that we are back to the original brief and hardly varying melody with a “dying voice within me”.

Indeed if you consider the opening verse that same musical phrase that we hear accompanying “In the time of my confession” crops up no less than nine times.

In the time of my confession, [1] in the hour of my deepest need [2]
When the pool of tears beneath my feet  [3] flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me [4] reaching out somewhere [5]
Toiling in the danger [6] and in the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment [7] I can see the master's hand [8]
In every leaf that trembles [9], and in every grain of sand

Yet two things save the song.   First the music and the lyrics seem utterly at one.   “Deepest need,”  “Pool of tears,” “Dying voice,” “morals of despair” – these and other brief phrases all are in keeping with the slow repeating music.

But then what happens, after the fourth line, just as we might be feeling (or at least would be feeling on first hearing) that we are going to hear that mournful music forever more, both the music AND the lyrics change at once with

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break

Suddenly there is not only hope in the lyrics, but also in the music which rises up and just falls back slightly at the end of the line ready to be taken up again.

Now at this point the composer has a problem.  The music has risen above the despair – so what happens now?   A lesser composer might well carry on taking the music up as the chain of events is broken, but no, Dylan takes us back to the original simple line of music to accompany, “In the fury of the moment I can see the master’s hand,” before gently rounding the verse off musically and lyrically, with the line “In every leaf that trembles, and in every grain of sand,” which in both the musical and lyrical sense evokes resolution and calm.

The point is that the lyrics of the song speak of the simplicity of perceiving the Master’s creation – it is there in every grain of sand.   But actually finding a musical accompaniment to such thoughts is hard.   Clearly the music cannot be complex because that would contradict the thought of the words.     But on the other hand if the music is repeated too much it will become too tedious.

Indeed if there is any one moment that shows more than anything Bob’s craftsmanship in handling the music it is with the line “Don’t have any inclination…”

If anyone gets this absolutely spot on in terms of understanding the role the melody is playing here it is Emmylou Harris who changes the way she handles the lines with the “Don’t have any inclination” line, in order to make the final line “every grain of sand” a resolution of certainty.

It is a musical composition which is utterly simple in its construction, but within that has the opportunity to express both a simple and complex idea – the simplicity of the grain of sand and the complexity of creation.

But more than that, this is a strophic song – there is no release from the format of identical verse following identical verse with repeated of musical line interrupted only occasionally.

And this is where this version stands out, although there are many others that can really be appreciated.    If you can, set aside the words just this once, and listen to this as a piece of music without any meaning in the lyrics.   What we have here is a very simple musical offering which works beyond perfection – and that takes genius.

The lyrics and the music series…

• How most analyses of Dylan’s songs mistake the essence of what the songs are
• Abandoned Love
• Angelina
• Ballad for a Friend
• Drifter’s Escape
• Blind Willie McTell
• Black Diamond Bay
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Chimes of Freedom
• Cover Down Pray Through
• Desolation Row
• Drifter’s Escape
• Early Roman Kings
• It ain’t me babe
• Not Dark Yet
• Sign on the window

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This series looks at performances of songs that were not written by Dylan but which clearly have a Dylan influence within them.  As ever, Aaron selects the theme and the works, and Tony endeavours to write something moderately relevant while listening to the selections.

Aaron: Let’s look at another one of the albums that spun out of the Rolling Thunder Revue. This time it is Scarlet Rivera’s self-titled debut. The band included Rolling Thunder Drummer Gary Burke.

Wikipedia tells us that Bob Dylan is said to have discovered Rivera before the rehearsal for his 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. While being driven in his limousine around the Village, Dylan spotted Rivera walking with her violin case. Dylan stopped to converse with Rivera and invited her to his rehearsal studio where she spent the afternoon playing along with several of his new songs. “If I had crossed the street seconds earlier,” said Rivera in 2012, “it never would have happened.” After a session with her, Dylan invited Rivera to play on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. She played an important role in Dylan’s studio album Desire.

In 1977, Rivera released her self-titled debut LP for Warner Brothers Records. Lindsay Planer from AllMusic praised the album, saying that Rivera “has consistently found specific and viable places for the violin in rock”.

Here are some of the tracks from the album, let’s see what Tony makes of these…

Leftback

Tony: I am an absolute sucker for the complex rhythmic changes that we hear in this – my old friend, the sudden move to 7/4,  pops up here along with so many other variations I couldn’t take them all in.   And the lady is a stunning violinist.  But more than anything I would love to know how this recording was made; there are so many changes of structure as well as time, I can’t imagine that it was performed without the music in front of the artists unless it was a series of separate recordings that were carefully edited together.

But then again maybe there is a deeper structure in the piece which as I’ve only heard it once, I can’t fathom.  If that is the case then, as with a violinist playing (for example) Bartok’s second violin concerto, the key to it is that the piece is a set of variations on a theme, and that is perfectly learnable by the violinist.  Just in case you have a spare 40 minutes and a mind to hear another wonderful violinist, here it is (but listening is not a pre-requisite for reading the rest of my rambling.  Come back to it another time).

Gypsy Caravan

Tony: Now here at once we do have a structure but it does seem to me rather jumpy – I do appreciate that the caravan “goes around the world” and things do suddenly happen, but the caravan travels at a sedate pace.  And maybe I am getting to the heart of my problem with this: perhaps I am too hooked on structure.  (And/or getting too old).

There is of course a long-established structure in music known as “through composed” which is the opposite of a totally structured piece of music (usually a song), and which has no chorus, and varies throughout.  This is what we have here I think (but I have heard this only once so I may be mistaken and maybe there is a structure.  Although it that case I have to admit it is lost on me.)

In a sense I get a feeling of a film score perhaps written to accompany a movie in which there is no dialogue, only action.  But this is not to say I am not enjoying this.  There is, for example, a change of pace at just on seven minutes which has a wonderful dramatic effect.

Perhaps the problem is that there is so much to take in here and to understand that without someone else’s commentary to guide me, I am struggling to take everything in.  For example consider what is happening around 8 minutes 50 seconds, and then at nine minutes 20.  I feel I am being taken on a journey akin to someone taking lots of scenes from different movies and pasting them together.   However the taking of that theme around a descending bass and then speeding it up over and over appears a bit like a trick to show off the artist’s amazing ability as a violinist, but not to deliver a meaningful piece of music.

Cloak and Dagger

Tony: Of course these rambles are just my immediate perceptions of the music written as I hear the pieces – in this case for the first time.  And it reminds me that I never appreciate virtuoso performances undertaken just to show off how good the instrumentalist is.  I feel the same about rock music where the lead guitarist is allowed to play for several minutes getting more and more frantic.   Yes we might witness an amazing technique, but I am left asking, “for what end?”   I’m also reminded of watching a footballer (as in “soccer”) who can dribble with the ball and beat the defenders inside out.  But if it doesn’t end up with a goal, or at least a significant goal chance, the question remains, “to what end?”

But this final example Jochen has given us is different.  It has a clear and interesting structure based on 6/4 time – which is unusual in itself.  However just after the four-minute mark it goes somewhere completely different and again I simply don’t understand how this relates to what has gone before.  It is, for me (and as ever this is just my response) like a second piece of music has but stuck onto the first.  And as it happens, I rather like the first piece, but not the second.

Of course, this is a staggering musical talent of which I am completely in awe.  And I don’t know why structure in music is so important to me, but obviously, it is.  Which is perhaps why I like Dylan’s compositions so much.  If nothing else, we always have a structure.

And so it does make me wonder if I am obsessed by structure – it would seem in terms of how I have chosen to publish the Untold Dylan site I am, grouping the articles into series as I do on the home page, and having an original aim (to review each and every Bob Dylan composition – which we achieved).

But then this is what working in the creative arts does for a person.  It makes one look within, and (sometimes) contemplate what is there.  For me it seems I want organization.  Scarlett Rivera described her album “all of me” as a “self-portrait of the winding road of my life journey,” and that I think is the issue.   I do like winding roads and meanders, and I love the five mile walks I go on each week, with the Ramblers group across fields and footpaths I have never visited before.  But within those I find a structure (not least in that we do come back to where we started so we can get back in our cars and go home – after a visit to a local hostelry).  Ms Rivera however is on a journey that seems to have no repeats, no returns…. and that is obviously great for her.  But doesn’t quite fit with me.   And I am sure the loss is all mine.

• Part 1: Desolation Row
• Part 2: There goes rhyming Dylan
• Part 3: Songs inspired by the music of Bob Dylan – Young, CSNY, and Coxon
• Part 4: Dylanesque: the anti-war songs
• Part 5: The Rolling Thunder album – Kinky Friedman
• Part 6: Rolling Thunder albums: Cardiff Rose – Roger McGuinn
• Part 7: Rolling Thunder albums: Joni Mitchell

Mississippi, Desolation Row, Crossing The Rubicon, Where Are You Tonight, Tombstone Blues… Some songs are so rich and multicoloured that they deserve their own book . I fear that almost every song on Rough And Rowdy Ways is going to claim that right.

The book of this series of articles is now available.

by Jochen Markhorst

XIV      I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in

Greedy old wolf - I’ll show you my heart
But not all of it - only the hateful part
I’ll sell you down the river - I’ll put a price on your head
What more can I tell ya - 
                 I sleep with life and death in the same bed

Towards the end of the song, another “you” suddenly drops out of the blue. Classifying it as a stylistic feature goes a bit far, but still: Dylan has been doing this with some regularity since the 1960s. In both “Tombstone Blues” and “Desolation Row”, a “you” is only introduced in the very last verse; in “Changing Of The Guards”, a single utterly isolated “you” pops up halfway through the song, never to return; in “I And I”, it even lasts until the very last line (I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot); “Lonesome Day Blues”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin'”, “I Am a Lonesome Hobo”… in every decade of Dylan’s career we encounter songs with this peculiar and often confusing artifice.

Something similar applies to the equally confusing variant we are now confronted with here in this second and final bridge of “I Contain Multitudes”: an entirely different “you” pops up. We have already been introduced to a “you” in the opening couplet (I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me), which, at least on an emotional level, seems to be the same “you” as the only other “you”, the “you” from the third verse (Half my soul baby belongs to you): an object of love.

This “you”, on the other hand, is not a love object but, quite on the contrary a hate object, and is of a different gender (wolf as a term of abuse suggests that a man is being scolded here). At first glance, the antipathy does not seem to be that bad. “Old wolf”, greedy or not, is hardly offensive after all – it is rather an affectionate invective, something like “you scoundrel” or “naughty boy”. It is even somewhat childish – so in the song canon, we hardly ever encounter it either. In Dylan’s record collection, at most “The Girls I Never Kissed” by Sinatra can be found (on The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings or on Live From Las Vegas), and presumably Dylan did sing along with the opening couplet at some point;

The old wolf sniffs the summer breeze, and dreams about his youth,
For the sight of skirts above the knees turns his 
                                        hardboiled brain to tears.
And the scent of honey in the tree whets an old sweet tooth

… the opening couplet of the skillful ballad, written on request especially for the then 70-year-old Sinatra by the legendary success duo Leiber/Stoller, in 1986.  Which explains the uncomfortable dirty ol’ man vibe of the slightly awkward, somewhat creepy lyrics (The pretty girls go strolling by / I smile at them, and heave a sigh).

Anyway: not too threatening, this old wolf. And the most threatening greedy old wolf in Western culture, the wolf in The Story Of The Three Little Pigs, isn’t much scarier either; after all, in almost all versions of that age-old children’s story, the wolf, while greedy, is also too stupid to catch three piglets. Still, it does seem to have been intended as an aggressive threat, as is clear from the sinister, wondrous continuation I’ll show you my heart, but not all of it – only the hateful part. And more so from the spiteful, archaic bouncer I’ll sell you down the river – I’ll put a price on your head.

It is, after the Lincoln reference from the previous stanza, the second time we see a fascination with the nineteenth century creeping in. “I’ll sell you down the river” is well defined in all dictionaries as To betray one for a personal benefit, and most dictionaries also reveal its origin: “dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to slaves being sold down the Mississippi River”. Where the dreaded cotton plantations are, where slaves literally work themselves to death. Dylan must also be familiar with it in this literal sense. Either from his self-study of nineteenth-century history or from the literary canon; in both Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mark Twain’s oeuvre, we encounter this literal use of selling down the river. As in Twain’s hit Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894):

And now he added these words of awful import:

“I give you one minute.” He took out his watch. “If at the end of that time, you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you, BUT—I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!”
It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri Negro doubted this. Roxy reeled in her tracks, and the color vanished out of her face; the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came in the one instant.
(Chapter 2 – Driscoll Spares His Slaves)

They stumble over their words in their haste to confess what their marster wants to hear, who then graciously passes his judgement: “I will sell you here though you don’t deserve it. You ought to be sold down the river” – to the unspeakable relief of the poor slaves, who sob while thanking him for so much kindness. “They were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of hell against them.” A bizarre scene told in Twain’s typical, superior blend of humour, satire and cutting criticism – it leaves no reader unmoved, and the introduction to the bizarre, alienating threat I’ll sell you down the river is unforgettable. The subsequent threat in Dylan’s song, I’ll put a price on your head, would be a rather small associative leap then; after all, a selling price is quite literally stuck on the slave who has fallen into disgrace and is sold to the cotton plantation.

A bit weird, but still traceable, all in all. Although it might be more appealing to think that Dylan is saluting an old mate, English Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Famer, Alan Price. We saw the old keyboardist of The Animals horsing around with Dylan in Dont Look Back (1967), and Price’s beautiful 1967 second album A Price On His Head stands the test of time – because it contains, apart from a whole slew of strong covers of Randy Newman songs (who was then still completely unknown), also one of the very finest “To Ramona” covers, and one of the finest Dylan covers at all.

Admittedly not very likely, Price’s album title being one of Dylan’s multitudes, but on the other hand: we heard Dylan sing The flowers are dying like all things do a few minutes ago, here in the opening stanza of “I Contain Multitudes”, as we hear Alan Price sing in the opening stanza of Dylan’s “To Ramona”:

The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines

“All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled,” as Dylan says in his MusiCares speech in 2015, “it’s just different, saying the same thing.”

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 15: The aim of all life is death

——-

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip

By Tony Attwood

In this series I select my favourite performance by Dylan of a particular song from across the years of the Never Ending Tour – using of course the recordings selected from the mega-series which Mike Johnson is compiling for us and which has now reached episode 128.

In those 128 episodes we have 17 recordings of Every Grain of Sand, and I have just worked my way through them with increasing despair, not finding one that I could really say stands out.   Of course, this is my personal view, and really, who am I to judge what Bob does?   But even so, I still feel moved to consider the recordings, and wonder.  Because if you were to go through each one I think you might reach the same conclusion as me: that Bob has been trying between 2009 and 2013 to find a way to deliver an alternative version, but without success.

Except for once.   This one recording from 2007 stands out to me, head and shoulders above all the others.

Every grain of sand

While some of the alternative versions sound to me as if Bob had an idea and then let it happens, this version appears to have been worked out in detail.  It is as if the composer has gone back to the original and asked himself: what does this song mean?  Why is it here?  Why do I want to perform it?

And here he finds an answer.   While other versions virtually dispense with the melody completely, and indulge in endless repeats of one melodic line, here it is as if he has returned to the meaning rather than simply having a need to get through the lyrics.

I am not saying that this version is perfect; I am not convinced by the notion of the six repeats of specific chords, but even so this is a great step forward from other versions.   Even the harmonica solo seems to fit.

Indeed what we have is a song that has all the components of a song which keeps my interest, no matter how often I have heard it.    But now compare the above with this version from 2009 in which the lines are called out and the harmonica used between the lyrical lines.  It just feels to me as if this version arose from a desire to do something different with the song whereas the 2007 version above actually solves the problem.

This is not to say that I think the 2007 performance does the song its full justice, but I think it does get closer and does give some further insights into the lyrics.

Indeed I guess my feeling about this song comes particularly from the lyrics which I do find really moving

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

That contradiction of moods where on occasion one feels completely isolated but other times part of world, sharing all its joys and sorrows with everyone else…   I think these lines reflect that thought perfectly, but somehow on stage (and this as ever is just my thought) Bob doesn’t quite maximise the potential of the song.  But with the 2007 version, in my view he does get that much closer.

My guess is that the problems that I perceive with the performance of this song began with the album recording, which is very fixed and rigid in its rhythm and for me doesn’t have the sway and relaxation that the lyrics seem to demand.  So, extending guess upon guess, I think in the live performances Bob has been trying to move on from the rigidity of that recorded version and give us something more in keeping with the swaying motion of the lyrics.

Of course, I’m just an outsider listening in, but my view, for what it is worth, is that the perfect live performance of the song is yet to be found.

The (very personal) Absolute Highlights series

• • 1: John Brown 1987
  • 2: Desolation Row. 1990.
  • 3: She Belongs to Me
  • 4: Tangled up in Blue
  • 5: I and I – power without meaning
  • 6: It ain’t me babe – go lightly.
  • 7: Perfection in desolation – Gates of Eden
  • 8: Girl from the North Country.
  • 9: When He Returns
  • 10: It’s alright Ma
  • 11: Satisfied Mind
  • 12: Visions of Johanna
  • 13: Dark Eyes
  • 14: Man in the long black coat
  • 15:  Don’t think twice (2000)
  • 16: Silvio (1998)
  • 17: Gates of Eden (2000)
  • 18: One Too Many Mornings 2001.
  • 19: It’s all over now baby blue 1994
  • 20: The Wicked Messenger
  • 21: Positively 4th Street (1994)
  • 22: I and I
  • 23: Restless Farewell
  • 24: Botony Bay
  • 25: Blind Willie McTell
  • 26: Desolation Row
  • 27:  Love Minus Zero – 1992
  • 28: Spanish Boots in Prague
  • 29: The Levy’s Gonna Break
  • 30. Idiot Wind

By Larry Fyffe

Onward march the reindeer armies of metonymy.

Considered by some is that Queen of Sheba with King Solomon’s baby in her belly transfers the Heaven-On-Earth of the future, at least in part, from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, a paradise in Africa modelled after the idealistic depiction of the biblical Garden Of Eden:

She was the rose of Sharon from paradise lost
From the seven hills near the place of the cross
(Bob Dylan: Caribbean Wind)

She’s the personification of an ideal place ~ as presented in the poem below:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on a dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount Abora
(Samuel Coleridge: Kubla Khan)

Though Ethiopia’s not biblical Eden, it’s close enough thereto ~ as noted in the poem “Paradise Lost”:

Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
true paradise under the Ethiop line
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book IV)

Noted too is that Queen Sheba’s skin is not white:

I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem
As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon ....
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley
(Song Of Solomon 1:5, 2:1)

Thus claimed that via her womb there be descendants of Hebrew slaves delivered out of Egypt who settle in Abyssina (Abassin).

King David and Bathsheba are Solomon’s parents:

Princes shall come out of Egypt
Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God
(Psalm 68:31)

Jamaican “Rastafarians” refer to God, who is black, as “Jah” (Jehovah).

Ethiopia/Abyssinia ~ from where many of the Queen’s offspring end up getting kidnapped by men armed with iron guns, and shipped off as slaves  to America, including the islands of the Caribbean Sea:

She told me about the jungle
Where her brothers were slain
By the man who invented iron
And disappeared mysteriously
(Bob Dylan: Caribbean Wind)

America becomes New Babylon, and a post-apocalyptic return by blacks to heavenly Ethiopia is envisioned by Rastafarians:

Every new messenger brings evil report
'Bout armies on the march, and the time that is short
And famines and earthquakes and train wrecks
(Bob Dylan: Caribbean Wind)

In the following song lyrics, the ancient elements of earth, wind, water, and fire (figuratively presented by poet William Blake) act as objective correlatives:

I see a house in the country being torn apart from within
I hear my ancestors calling from the land far beyond
And the Caribbean winds still blow from Nassau to Mexico
From the flames of the furnace of desire
(Bob Dylan: Caribbean Wind)

Reminding of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-like lyrics below, and the train that is supposed to come up around the bend:

Walk out in the rain
Walk out with some dreams
Walk out of my life if it don't feel right
And catch the next train
(Eric Clapton: Walk Out In The Rain ~ Bob Dylan/ Helena Springs)

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

In this series (of which there is a full index at the end) Aaron selects a song that Dylan has recorded but which he did not write, and looks at the Dylan version and other artists’ versions of the song.   Tony (on the other side of the Atlantic) then adds his comments.

Aaron: “Sarah Jane” is inspired by “Rock about my Saro Jane”, written sometime around the turn of the 20th century and most notably performed by Uncle Dave Macon in 1927.

Tony: Not a song that I know and I’m immediately struck by the very curious rhythm around “Oh there’s nothing to do but sit down and sing.”  The previous line Oh Saro Jane! only has three beat in it, and every other bar is the standard four beats to the bar.   It gives a very interesting effect, and not one that happens very often in folk music.   It makes me suspect (and I fully confess I am not in any way, shape or form anything remotely like an expert on American traditional folk music) that this was an unaccompanied song originally where the solo singer could slip in that unexpected change and not have to worry about the band knowing what was going on, while at the same time giving the audience the feeling that there’s something a little different about this song.

But I would add it is a great, fun song with a lovely swing, and very memorable chorus melody too.

This all makes me curious – have those who have come later kept this unusual change to the beat, or have they cast it aside for the sake of making something more acceptable to contemporary hearing, where far too often, things are simplified for the sake of keeping the audience’s attention.

Aaron:  “Rockabout My Saro Jane” appeared on The Kingston Trio’s first album, the million-selling, “The Kingston Trio,” which was released June 1, 1958

Tony: Yep that beat change has gone, and we have a solid four beats to the bar, with the only quirk being that in the line “Oh Saro Jane” the first beat of the bar – the one that normally has the strongest accent, has no melody at all.   “Oh” comes on beat two, beat three is “Sar” and beat four is “o” leaving Jane to have a bar on its own.  It works fine, but something is lost, I feel.

Aaron: Odetta recorded a version in 1968

Tony: And she does retain the oddity of the beat in the verse with the “Oh Saro Jane” line.  I suspect that the Kingston Trio were doing what they often did and simplifying the music for white audiences – which then helped give the impression that traditional folk songs from the black communities were simple – which they often were not.  But let me stress, this is not a subject on which I can speak with any authority (I know a certain amount about traditional English folk music, but not American) – so it is just a conclusion I’m reaching from hearing these recordings for the first time.   There could be some other explanation.

Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album, Dylan.

Tony: Bob does something curious.  He omits the change involving the move to a bar with only three beats, but instead he extends the lyrics so we have verses that are 14 bars long – which itself is very unusual (normally verses are eight or 16 bars long to give a feeling of symmetry).

It would be wonderful to find out how this happened.  Did Bob just feel that the song always had a rhythmic oddity so deliberately added one of his own, or did it simply happen during rehearsals.   Certainly for anyone who has played in a rock or folk rock band, it feels slightly odd.  That doesn’t mean it’s hard to play or there is anything wrong, it’s just a little twist that one has to be conscious of in performance.

Aaron: Subsequently the song became a staple for bluegrass banjo bands . I quite like this version by Dan Zanes & Friends from the Kids album Putumayo Kids Presents American Playground

Tony: Rhythmically we have now lost the oddity completely, and what really comes to the fore is the slightly unusual chord sequence, with the song opening with a minor chord but alternating with the major chord that is the foundation of the song.   Obviously, I know nothing of the decisions made by each artist, but each person or ensemble recording the song appears to have taken one of the unusual elements since the piece and brought it to the fore.

This version is in E, and the opening instrumental verse clearly starts in E, and brings in the chords of A, C# minor, B and then back to E.   But as soon as the vocal verse starts we start on C# minor, which is what gives the piece its slightly unexpected feel.    It really does seem that everyone wants to have an unusual twist somewhere in the music, but over time it has moved on from being that rhythmic change to an unexpected chord sequence.

Aaron: The album also includes this rather pleasant version of Forever Young by Randy Kaplan

Tony: Here’s an irony – this version adds three extra chord changes that Dylan didn’t write in the original. I guess the arrangers felt that they needed something else to keep up interest with the sort of accompaniment they have devised.  I’m not sure it helps, but it has been fun listening to how this song has been treated.  I really do wonder how much of it was conscious and how much was simply “feel”.

There’s an index to our current series and the latest article in each case, on the home page.

Other people’s songs: the series

1. Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
2. Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
3. Other people’s songs: They killed him
4. Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
5. Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
6. Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
7. Other people’s songs: Love Henry
8. Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
9. Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
10. Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
11. Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
12. Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
13. Other people’s songs: You go to my head
14. Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
15. Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
16. Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
17. Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
18. Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
19. Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown
20. Other people’s songs: Ninety miles an hour down a dead end street
21. Other people’s songs: Step it up and Go
22. Other people’s songs: Canadee-I-O
23. Other people’s songs: Arthur McBride
24. Other people’s songs: Little Sadie
25. Other people’s songs: Blue Moon, and North London Forever
26. Other people’s songs: Hard times come again no more
27. Other people’s songs: You’re no good
28. Other people’s songs: Lone Pilgrim (and more Crooked Still)
29. Other people’s songs: Blood in my eyes
30. Other people’s songs: I forgot more than you’ll ever know
31.  Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
32. Other people’s songs: Highway 51
33. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
34. Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
35. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
36. Other people’s songs: Highway 51 Blues
37. Other people’s songs: Freight Train Blues
38. Other People’s Songs: The Little Drummer Boy
39. Other People’s Songs: Must be Santa
40. Other People’s songs: The Christmas Song
41. Other People’s songs: Corina Corina
42. Other People’s Songs: Mr Bojangles
43. Other People’s Songs: It hurts me too
44. Other people’s songs: Take a message to Mary
45. Other people’s songs: House of the Rising Sun
46. Other people’s songs: “Days of 49”
47. Other people’s songs: In my time of dying
48. Other people’s songs: Pretty Peggy O
49. Other people’s songs: Baby Let me Follow You Down
50. Other people’s songs: Gospel Plow
51. Other People’s Songs: Melancholy Mood
52. Other people’s songs: The Boxer and Big Yellow Taxi
53. Other people’s songs: Early morning rain
54. Other people’s Songs: Gotta Travel On
55. Other people’s songs: “Can’t help falling in love”
56. Other people’s songs: Lily of the West
57. Other people’s songs: Alberta
58. Other people’s songs: Little Maggie
59. Other people’s songs: Sitting on top of the world
60. Dylan’s take on “Let it be me”
61. Other people’s songs: From “Take me as I am” all the way to “Baker Street”
62. Other people’s songs: A fool such as I

The Never Ending Tour: the complete index

Untold Dylan: the Facebook group

1. NET 2015 Part 1 Singing to you, not at you
2. NET 2015 Part 2
3. NET 2015 Part 3: It doesn’t get any better than this

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Some found it incongruous that Bob Dylan should be singing Frank Sinatra songs. It was the young Bob Dylan whose songs put an end to an era of popular music that flourished in the 1950s, the era of the American Standards and the music that had grown out of the Big Band jazz/swing music of the 1940s. Dylan’s lyrics in particular seemed to out-class the often mushy but certainly sentimental ‘moon in June’ type love songs, Sinatra’s natural habitat. When Dylan released Shadows in the Night in February 2015, I recall seeing a cartoon showing Sinatra in heaven singing ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ to a group of puzzled saints.

However, we can see, I think, that Dylan’s discovery of the American Standards was natural and even inevitable. Since Love and Theft in 2001, Dylan had been exploring and drawing from music rooted in the 1930s and 40s. In the 90s Dylan put out two albums of traditional material, all from the folk tradition. American Standards was the final territory to be opened up to Dylan’s voice, and Dylan’s voice opened up to meet it. A remarkable fusion.

It’s exciting to see how, growing from that fusion, Sinatra influenced the way in which Dylan interpreted his own songs, at least some of them. Perhaps the clearest and finest example of that influence can be found in this performance of ‘Shelter From the Storm’ (Locarno, July 15^th). If someone tells you Dylan can’t sing, play them this one. A fine baritone, he sings it the way Sinatra might have. Readers who know of the super slow version of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ from 1978, or are aware of the slow ‘Tombstone Blues’ on Shadow Kingdom may not be surprised to hear this.

The slow treatment seems to add layers of years to the song. I mean, that memory is no longer fresh; it is now immersed in the same sepia nostalgia as ‘Autumn Leaves.’ A Dylan song in disguise as an American Standard. Almost as if he were singing somebody else’s song, which becomes grand and majestic. A remarkable performance with two aching harp breaks. A treat!

 Shelter from the Storm

And here is ‘Autumn Leaves,’ composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945, which has seen over a thousand commercial recordings including Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, John Coltrane, and of course, in 1957, Frank Sinatra. I wonder how many of them Dylan listened to. (Oslo, Oct 1^st).

Autumn Leaves

The rustle of those autumn leaves characterizes the performances from 2015. The hopes of youth have faded but we can drown our sorrows in sublime song. Even in some of those mushy lyrics Dylan can uncover a vein of universality.

‘Visions of Johanna’ is the crepuscular song par-excellence. It really is grand and majestic. Dylan floats through it all quite fine, maybe a little too fine, a little too airy for the freaky subject matter. We can breeze through incomparable lyrics like ‘the ghost of ‘lectricity / howls in the bones of her face’ as if it were a jaunt in the park. I guess it just doesn’t sound bleak enough for my ear, a bit too jaunty, but I wouldn’t let that spoil your response. (Lörrach, July 16^th)

Visions of Johanna

‘Desolation Row,’ that other standout song from the mid 1960s, doesn’t suffer from jauntiness so much as the overuse of a little piano riff between lines and repeated in the instrumental breaks. Dylan handles the vocal with the same airy confidence that marks the other performances from this year.

Desolation Row

These last two performances sound a little detached to me. They seem to lack emotional impact. We get the feeling that Dylan is more engaged with his current material, the American Standards and songs from Tempest than his ancient stuff from the 1960s.

I’d like now to return to ‘Duquesne Whistle’ which I covered in Part 2. That recording was from Manchester, but since writing that I have discovered this one from Ljubljana, June 25^th which to my mind has the edge on the Manchester performance. I also think that my comments in Part 2 were quite inadequate. There’s a lot going on in this song.

‘Duquesne Whistle’ is a bright, chirpy number, a bustling train song, the train which might be bringing the singer home, or Christ back for his second coming at the end of the world. At the same time, it evokes a tornado, capable of uprooting oak trees, and also at the same time is about the whirlwind of a love affair. Christ is the wind is love – Is it a warning or a celebration? Or both. Or a mad, devil-may-care dance at the end of the world? Or a frenetic jazz piece from the madcap 1930’s courtesy of Jelly Roll Morton? All of the above. Dylan keeps all those balls in the air in a joyful lyrical juggle.

For my ear, this performance towers over those from previous years. The band is jumping. They are right into the roots of jazz. Dylan sounds suitably manic, throwing his voice around like the master he is. Staccato jabs at the piano. Again, what is impressive here is the sense we get of Dylan being in complete command of his material. He gets right on top of the song and stays that way.

Duquesne Whistle

No one contributed more songs to the Great American Songbook than Irving Berlin. ‘What’ll I do?’ is seen as an autobiographical song, with the composer pining for his love who has been sent to Europe by her rich, disapproving father. There’s an odd parallel with Dylan. The family of Dylan’s first known love, Suzie Rotolo, sent her to Europe to get her away from, and take her mind off, the rascally young Bob Dylan. From that we get ‘Boots of Spanish Leather.’ Sinatra’s version was released in 1962.

Here you find the honeyed voiced crooner at his best; there’s hardly a bark or a growl to be heard. (Copenhagen Oct 8^th)

What’ll I do?

‘Stay With Me’ was the first American Standard Dylan presented near the end of 2014. It remained one of his favourites. It was written by Carolyn Leigh and Jerome Moross, and was originally recorded by Sinatra in December 1963. (Detroit)

Stay With Me

Now we arrive at the encores. ‘All Along the Watchtower’ has been largely replaced by ‘Blowing in the Wind,’ but occasionally he played both, with sometimes an American Standard thrown in.

The musical blizzard that was once ‘All Along the Watchtower’ has long since given way to quieter, more throbbing performances. It’s a reminder that war is never far away.

This performance from Mainz leaves Jimi Hendrix behind as the guitar work of old is replaced by the piano. It rocks, as it has always done, but it also swings a little. Dylan’s vocal is heavy with implication. A great performance. The hour, is indeed getting late.

All Along the Watchtower

That leaves us with ‘Blowing In the Wind,’ a blast of nostalgia ending a setlist made up of mostly modern material, a reminder of where Dylan came from, the young Dylan, a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Of course, it rapidly became an anthem, but there has always been a touch of the forlorn to the song; those questions it asks can never be answered. There’s a yearning in it for a world far from this world of war and racism. The Detroit audience rapturously welcomes the old Dylan back into its collective heart. There’s a bit of lilt to it, a touch of a waltz, and again Dylan’s right on top of the lyric. All I miss are a few blasts from the harp at the end…

Blowing in the wind.

So that’s 2015. Is it really the best ever year for the NET? I’ll have to leave you to decide that; I’ve had a lot of fun testing that idea out. For my money it must come close. There’s a sense of easy mastery and a fluidity in the vocal contrasting to the staccato iterance of the piano. The band are sweet perfection, totally at home in their medium.

Dylan described Sinatra (the Voice) as a mountain he had to climb each time he approached an American Standard. He had trepidations: ‘I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a five-piece band.”

Well…he succeeded in climbing that mountain, taking advantage of his aged voice to wring perhaps more melancholy out of these Standards than Frank himself, who was young and vital when he sang most of these songs. A bit too pleased with his virtuosity, perhaps.

Mastering these songs had a profound effect on the way Dylan approached his own work, evolving a complex verbal collage of singing baritone, soaring into the notes, crooning, half whispering, talking, confiding in us, with a bit of barking and growling thrown in for good measure. Bringing these threads together is a stylistic triumph.

That completes 2015. Next up 2016 in which something remarkable took place: Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Until then

Kia Ora

By Tony Attwood

This series is supposed to be simple: a look at a few of the cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs, picking out a few highlights along the way.   But what is one to do when Dylan’s “original” song is itself a cover – as is the case here?

I guess the easiest thing to do is to start with the original recording

But then where do we go?  The problem is that it is a 12 bar blues, and Bob did make some remarkable changes to the way the song can be performed.  And although I don’t normally come back to Bob’s version (as this is obviously a series about covers) I think it is worth doing so to remind ourselves just how far he took it in his re-written version.

There is a gentle feel to this rocking blues, with all the instrumentation completely under control.  So what have others done, either by starting from the original or going on from Bob’s version?

I feel Peter Poirier tried to get a midway point between Bob and the original, and it makes a nice rocking jazzy blues feel – which of course is a complete contradiction, but I can’t find a better way of describing what he has done.

Homesick James however will have none of this, and takes us back to the traditional blues version.  A straight 12-bar blues – except it isn’t, for liberties are taken with the rhythm and what we actually have is an 11 bar blues (or is that a 10 and a half bar blues – it is so unexpected, what the singer does, coming in with his vocal line half a bar too early on various occasions that I got totally taken by surprise.   It must have been a nightmare to play.)

Scott Biram gives us the “one man and an amp” treatment, which is interesting …. for about 30 seconds in my case, but maybe you feel it is worthy of the whole song.  I’m never sure about this type of treatment.  Does it give me anything new?  Not really.  Although an amusing end.

Duke Robillard stays with the blues, complete with strummed acoustic guitar, harmonica, and a banjo playing from time to time behind both of them.  It’s got a bounce too.

So by now you are completely excused for thinking, “what more can be taken from this song?”   And I guess that is my point – for the answer is far more than one might imagine.  RL Burnside goes somewhere utterly and completely different with the same simple origins.   Even if by now you’ve now got into the habit of just playing the first few bars of each track and moving on, I would urge you to give this a full listen.   I am not saying this is great music, but it is highly inventive, and inventiveness is what all the arts need all the time otherwise they turn into nothing beyond being endless repeats of the past.

“Is there much more of this?” you may ask.  It is after all a 12 bar blues.  How often do we have to hear it?   And actually, I was planning to stop with the Burnside version above, but as you are still here, here’s another variant that is fun.

The key point I take from all this is that Bob did come up with a completely original version of the song in a crowded field.  His version, for me, really does stand out.  And believe me there are hundreds of other versions of this classic.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

1. The song with numbers in the title.
2. Ain’t Talkin
3. All I really want to do
4.  Angelina
5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
6. As I went out one morning
7.  Ballad for a Friend
8. Ballad in Plain D
9. Ballad of a thin man
10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
12. Beyond here lies nothing
13. Blind Willie McTell
14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
16. Blowin in the wind as never before
17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
18. BoB Dylan’s 115th Dream revisited
19. Boots of Spanish leather
20. Born in Time
21. Buckets of Rain
22. Can you please crawl out your window
23. Can’t wait
24. Changing of the Guard
25. Chimes of Freedom
26. Country Pie
27.  Crash on the Levee
28. Dark Eyes
29. Dear Landlord
30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
31. Dignity.
32. Dirge
33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
34. Don’t think twice
35.  Down along the cove
36. Drifter’s Escape
37. Duquesne Whistle
38. Farewell Angelina
39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
40. Fourth Time Around
41. From a Buick 6
42. Gates of Eden
43. Gotta Serve Somebody
44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
45. Heart of Mine
46. High Water
47. Highway 61
48. Hurricane
49. I am a lonesome hobo
50. I believe in you
51. I contain multitudes
52. I don’t believe you.
53. I love you too much
54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
55. I shall be released
56. I threw it all away
57. I want you
58. I was young when I left home
59. I’ll remember you
60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
63. If you see her say hello
64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
65. I’m not there.
66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
67. It ain’t me babe
68. It takes a lot to laugh
69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
70. It’s all right ma
71. Just Like a Woman
72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
73. Lay down your weary tune
74. Lay Lady Lay
75. Lenny Bruce
76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
78. License to kill
79. Like a Rolling Stone
80. Love is just a four letter word
81. Love Sick
82. Maggies Farm!
83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
85. Man in a long black coat.
86. Masters of War
87. Meet me in the morning
88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
90. Most likely you go your way
91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
93. Mozambique
94. Mr Tambourine Man
95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
96. New Morning
97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
98. Nobody Cept You
99. North Country Blues
100. No time to think
101. Obviously Five Believers
102. Oh Sister
103. On the road again
104. One more cup of coffee
105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
106. One too many mornings
107. Only a hobo
108. Only a pawn in their game
109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
110. Oxford Town
111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time
112. Please Mrs Henry
113. Political world
114. Positively 4th Street
115. Precious Angel
116. Property of Jesus
117. Queen Jane Approximately
118. Quinn the Eskimo as it should be performed.
119. Quit your lowdown ways
120. Rainy Day Women as never before
121. Restless Farewell. Exquisite arrangements, unbelievable power
122. Ring them bells in many different ways
123. Romance in Durango, covered and re-written
124. Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands, like you won’t believe
125. Sara
126. Senor
127. A series of Dreams; no one gets it (except Dylan)
128. Seven Days
129. She Belongs to Me
130. Shelter from the Storm
131. Sign on the window
132. Silvio
133. Simple twist of fate
134. Slow Train

by Jochen Markhorst

XIII       A little bit of Lincoln can’t park the car

Pink pedal pushers and red blue jeans
All the pretty maids and all the old queens
All the old queens from all my past lives
I carry four pistols and two large knives
I’m a man of contradictions and a man of many moods 
    . . . I contain multitudes

A first association might lead the Dylan fan back to that loving, charming Woody Guthrie project Mermaid Avenue, which, after a Vol. 1 in 1998, was followed up in 2000 with Vol. 2 and finally completed in 2012 with the release of a box set that also includes a Vol. 3. In total, it ends up being 47 songs, all set to lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s estate, lyrics that on average some 50 years after their creation are finally set to music by the men of Wilco and by Billy Bragg.

It is a successful, respectful project that is rightly well received, and the timing of that last release, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions is perfectly chosen: on the centenary of Woody Guthrie’s birth. Dylan most likely followed it all with above-average interest – after all, Guthrie is one of his artistic fathers, his personal catalyst, a role model. “The songs themselves, his repertoire, were really beyond category,” as he swoons in Chronicles, and

“It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor.”

In those 47 songs, we hear plenty of turns of phrase, jargon and imagery that seem to echo in Dylan’s songs. For instance, in the witty “Meanest Man”; I’d preach the gospel of hate and I’d drink your blood, which we would effortlessly classify as a Rough And Rowdy Ways -verse fragment, or

If my wife didn't kiss me the way she does 
I'd carry four or five daggers and three or four guns 
I'd shoot craps and ramble and hang out late 
I'd steal baby buggies and Cadillac Eights

Billy Bragg/Wilco – Meanest Man:

… which seems to be a source for the slightly hysterical verse I carry four pistols and two large knives from this fifth verse of “I Contain Multitudes”. Attractive option, but incorrect, as James Adams of Bob Dylan Notes discovers and tweets on the very day of its release, 17 April 2020. Not Woody. We need to go back even further.

“It reminded me of some old still images I’d seen of the Civil War. How much did I know about that cataclysmic event? Probably close to nothing,” writes Dylan in his autobiography, reflecting back on his early days, on those first floundering months in New York. But he catches up on his knowledge gap. In the decades that follow, he remains a fascinated student of American history. Well, of U.S. history anyway, and especially of those disastrous years 1861-65, the years of the Civil War. Images and motifs can be heard surfacing in songs like “John Brown” and “Blind Willie McTell”, Dylan regularly plays Civil War ballads (“Two Soldiers”, “The Lakes of Pontchartrain”), and a highlight, of course, is Dylan’s contribution to the Civil War film Gods And Generals (2003), “‘Cross The Green Mountain”.

During self-tuition, in particular Shelby Foote’s The Civil War – A Narrative, the 3,000-page monumental work published in three volumes between 1958 and 1974, makes an impression, apparently. True, in 2012 he proclaims that neither reading Grant’s memoirs nor Foote’s reconstruction can be compared to studying newspaper accounts of the time;

“Shelby Foote is looking down from a high mountain, and Grant is actually down there in it. Shelby Foote wasn’t there. Neither were any of those guys who fight Civil War re-enactments. Grant was there, but he was off leading his army. He only wrote about it all once it was over. If you want to know what it was about, read the daily newspapers from that time from both the North and South. You’ll see things that you won’t believe.”
(Rolling Stone interview with Mikal Gilmore)

… but at the latest since his 2001 album “Love And Theft”, we see phrases, images and idioms from Foote’s pièce de résistance popping up in Dylan’s songs.

In “Floater”, for example. Word combinations like “grove of trees”, and remarkable, undylanesque idioms like “squall”, “timber” and “dazzling” are utterly common with Foote, but never occur in Dylan’s oeuvre elsewhere. The verses with which Dylan opens the last verse of “Floater”, If you ever try to interfere with me or cross my path again / You do so at the peril of your own life come verbatim from Volume 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian (1963);

“I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them … and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”

From Chapter 8, The centre gives, the words Foote puts into the mouth of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the words with which he lashes out at his immediate commander, General Baxton Bragg, who, incidentally, is indeed regarded by historians as one of the worst generals of the South. And the décor of Dylan’s song, finally, also looks very familiar to readers of Foote’s standard work: the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee / All the rest of them rebel rivers.

It’s not a one-off wink, this colouring songs with idioms or phrases or even fun facts (Ever since the British burned the white house down from 2012’s “Narrow Way”, for example) from American history. And here on Rough And Rowdy Ways, that motif culminates – where a sub-motif seems to be “dead presidents”; Kennedy and Johnson in “Murder Most Foul”, McKinley and Truman in “Key West”, and here then, indirectly, the reference to Lincoln:

While they waited, Lincoln heard a drunk bawling “Dixie” on the quay. Lamon, with his bulging eyes and sad frontier mustache, sat clutching four pistols and two large knives. At last the car was picked up by a train from the west, and Lincoln stepped onto the Washington platform at 6 o’clock in the morning. “You can’t play that on me,” a man said, coming forward. Lamon drew back his fist. “Don’t strike him!” Lincoln cried, and caught his arm, recognizing Elihu Washburn, an Illinois congressman.
(The Civil War – A Narrative, Volume 1, “Prologue – The Opponents”)

… the reference to Lincoln’s bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, who with four pistols and two large knives may have been a bit over-armed, but as an image in a song lyric it works well. And, on reflection, also sheds new light on that much-discussed, enigmatic distich of another highlight on Rough And Rowdy Ways, on the opening lines of “Crossing The Rubicon”: “I crossed the Rubicon on the 14th day / Of the most dangerous month of the year”. After all, Lincoln was cowardly shot from behind by the lowly John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday 14 April 1865 – Good Friday, the day the Lamb of God was crucified,

Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die
Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb

… as the narrator in “Murder Most Foul” says about the day that other president, Kennedy, is assassinated. In which he also cannot resist to recall that Kennedy was in the backseat of a Lincoln when he was shot – also through the back of the head.

All too thin to really speak of a theme, but that loose association that Dylan accepts of  “Lincoln” as a sub-motif on the album seems plausible. Or else the Willie Dixon song DJ Dylan plays on his Theme Time Radio Hour in 2008 (Little Walter’s version), “Dead Presidents”;

Them dead presidents
Them dead presidents
Well I ain't broke but I'm badly bent
Everybody loves them dead presidents

… “a little bit of Lincoln can’t park the car – a five hundred McKinley is the one for me.”

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 14: I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in

————-

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip