Untold Dylan

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: “A Fool Such As I” is a song written by Bill Trader and released in 1952 as “(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I”.

Tony:  According to the tales told (and I have no idea if this is apocryphal or true) Bill Trader was musically illiterate and so when he composed a song he would then take the new song to a friend who would write out the music for him.  Bill would then take the song to Nashville and try to sell it.   I can’t find any details as to whether Bill Trader kept the rights or sold them on, but as far as I can tell it was his one giant hit, and possibly his only hit.  If you have more information on Bill Trader and any other successful songs he wrote I’d be very grateful if you could write in, as I’d love to add to my knowledge.

Aaron: Elvis Presley’s 1958 version, which reached No. 2 in the US and went platinum, could have served as Dylan’s inspiration.

Tony: One of the things that most people who were around in the 50s and listening to popular music remember from this version is the deep bass vocal which comes in at the start and one or two places thereafter.  It was sung on this recording by Ray Walker who had just recently been hired as the bass singer for the Jordanaires.   The story is that Ray Walker taught Elvis (who was musically illiterate) the song.

In fact the arranger of the accompaniment must have realised just how powerful that single line from Ray Walker was, as it ends the instrumental break with telling effect.  To the best of my knowledge, Ray Walker is (at the moment I write this in July 2023) still with us, aged 89.

It is reported (and obviously I can’t verify this, what with being in the UK) that between the 1960s and the turn of the century he was constantly recording songs for his and other churches, alongside his work with the Jordanaires, and quite a few people seem to suggest that his was the most recorded voice in the history of music!  Of course no way to verify that, but Mr Walker certainly did record a lot of songs for the benefit of his church.  It is reported in some quarters that he is still a minister of the Waverly Church of Christ in Tennessee.

Aaron: Dylan’s version came from the 1973 album Dylan.

Tony: So Bob has put in a totally different accompaniment – and I have a problem with this.  Some total reworkings of a piece can indeed offer a new insight, but if they don’t quite work, then there is the sort of problem I have here (and of course this is just a problem for me).  The fact is I know the Elvis version too well, which makes this reworking sound a bit odd and forced.  Now that is not to say that the original version of any song is always the best one – of course not as Bob himself has proven so many times.  But when making a cover that is utterly different from the original, the new version has to offer something new: a new insight or feeling for example.  But here the only newness for me is that it is not the original, which runs really smoothly and beautifully.   Unlike so many re-workings by Bob of his own material, which seem to offer new insights, I am not at all sure I get anything at all new out of this reworking.

Aaron: Dylan originally recorded this song in 1967 during the sessions for “The Basement Tapes”. That version remained (officially) unreleased until 2014.

Tony: Now this is really interesting, as obviously from the opening it is clear that Bob has not prepared what he is going to do, as he is unsure of what key to work in.   But when he gets going he retains the essence of the original song.   I do however cringe at the spoken verse – and not just here but virtually every time I hear one of these.   I never quite understand the point, and it always just sounds so horribly forced as lyrics which are written to be sung are spoken in a slow drawn out way (as is necessary to stay in time with the accompaniment.  However that is, as usual, just my response.

Overall though I do wish Bob had left it there with the Basement recording.

Aaron: A version by Steve Goodman was included on his Grammy award-winning second posthumous album Unfinished Business in 1989.

Tony: Now I do like this because it retains the whole self-deprecating notion of the title in the way that the song is sung.  It is just relaxing, and I think for the first time in all the examples here, believable.  In case you don’t know Steve Goodman’s work as a composer and would like to here is just one more:

Aaron: Jason Donovan included on his version on his 1991 Greatest Hits album. Here is the rather hilarious video for the song

Tony: I am lost for words.

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”

By Tony Attwood

A strange moment to be writing this: despite this being a mid-morning in July and thus the English summer, there is a huge storm raging and the rain is teaming down.  Rather appropriate in a way.  Thunder rolls in the background, but the temperature is pleasantly warm.

And I choose (by chance) this moment to comment upon one of Bob’s simplest songs in a musical sense but one with complex entwined lyrics (what are we to make of “the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount”?), that can be easily overlooked because of that repetitive simplicity within the music…

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya shelter from the storm"

The rhymes are simple (blood/mud; form/storm) the construction is simple, the accompaniment is simple; the meaning is, well, possibly very simple, the meaning is increasingly obscure.  What is the cover artist to do with this complex simplicity?

Cassandra Wilson and the production team add to the accompaniment while keeping the idea of openness and she manipulates the melody beautifully and elegantly with the occasional but appropriate pauses.  Even when she adds extra emphasis it stays within the context, and keeps within the bounds of the song.

We also get some interesting manipulations of the chordal background especially in the inter-verse pauses.   Of course one can be critical of some of the variations, but if there are no variations at all then what is the point of doing a cover?

Personally, I am not sure about the coda and fade out, but then, it’s her production…

Rodney Crowell has taken us further back to the basics with the two-person harmonies from the off, and I think they have made the right decision by not overplaying the part.  We can get used to the way the whole piece is worked through before they unexpectedly change key for the female vocalists.    But what really makes this work is that everything is under control.  OK the return to the original key when the male vocal returns is obvious and expected, but this is a simple song with its repeated line at the end of each verse.  The expected is fine.

Personally, I think the song can live without extra guitar effects, but this is a delicate version of a beautiful song that we all know intimately.  And for me it really works.

The only bit I am really going to complain about is the spoken verse.  Lots of singers try it, but (once again, for me) it never ever works.   Maybe that’s just me, but really, it is a song, not a recitation.

The song in fact is so simple that listening to lots of covers it is clear that many performers and arrangers don’t quite know which way to look.

The notion of slowing the whole thing right down as per Steve Adey, is interesting, but I think the problem is that I know the song so well, it is now too much to take.   Maybe if I were just sitting at home with nothing to do and wanted to drift into another place this would work, but in the morning at home, watching the rain pour down, it still seems to have gone too far.

If I had just come across Barb Jungr without reference to any of the above I am not sure what I would have made of this version, but this is now interesting….   I particularly like the “I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail” verse.

But way beyond everything above the version by Tom Lum Forest (of whom I know nothing) is just out on its own.  Everything is perfect – accompaniment, vocals, harmonies, the progress of the music through the whole piece…

Jochenn’s review is of course still on this site and he notes, “The approval of the master himself only Cassandra Wilson receives, even before he has heard her version. In the Time Magazine interview with John Farley, September 2001, Dylan sings, unrequited, her qualities:

“Among the few contemporary acts that excite him is jazz singer Cassandra Wilson. ‘She is one of my favorite singers today,’ says Dylan. ‘I heard her version of Death Letter Blues—gave me the chills. I love everything she does.’ He says he would like to see her cover some of his songs.

Cassandra does not give him a chance to change his mind. Immediately on her next album, Belly Of The Sun (2002), she performs a chillingly beautiful version of “Shelter From The Storm”, full of pent-up suspense, a slightly hoarse, muffled and most of all sensitive, lyrical execution.

And really I can’t argue with that. although maybe on my desert island, I’d still take Tom Lum Forest.  But I’m willing to try Cassandra again.

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

This is episode 122 of a comprehensive series of articles and recordings from the Never Ending Tour.    An index to the entire series can be found here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Just as Dylan’s performances in 2013 were a distinct improvement on 2012, especially his vocals, Dylan continued to build confidence and power in 2014, often giving these performances an edge on 2013.

Take ‘She Belongs to Me.’   You might like to flick back to the first 2013 post and take in that performance and then compare it to this one (Prague July 2^nd).

She Belongs to Me (A)

Good as the 2013 performance is, it’s not as outstanding as in Prague. For me that’s a ‘best ever’, the one I play when I want to hear the song. A measured vocal delivery, full of power and assurance. Carefully orchestrated for a climax. Beautifully sad, insistent harp continued over two choruses. But that quality was not untypical of 2014. Here’s another from Chicago (Nov 10^th), slightly harder-edged and maybe a little wilder but another superlative performance.

She Belongs to Me (B)

What was happening here is that Dylan was shedding songs and honing his setlists to essentially one Setlist with some minor variations, a process he began in 2012. As a result, there are no messy or under-rehearsed performances. He’s doing the songs almost note for note across the concerts, not typical of Dylan up to this point. In other words, not only was he evolving a single Setlist but an unvarying arrangement for each song. Gone are the heady days of 2011 where you never knew what he might sing or how he might sing it or even what key it would be in.

Nearly all the concerts begin with ‘Things Have Changed’ with ‘She Belongs to Me’ at number 2 on the Setlist.

Here’s ‘Things Have Changed’ from Minneapolis, Nov 5^th:

Things Have Changed (A)

And here’s the same song from Prague:

Things Have Changed (B)

Except for variations in the recordings, there’s not much to choose between them. So it goes on. Number 3 on the Setlist was invariably ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothin,’ a Dylan/Hunter song from Together Through Life. This song has had some pretty rough and rowdy treatments since 2009. The piano playing, although vigorous, has softened the effect of this one from Minneapolis (Nov 6^th – there were three concerts in Minneapolis, running from the 5^th to the 7^th).

It’s a bleak nihilistic song:

Beyond here lies nothin’
Nothin’ we can call our own

Beyond Here Lies Nothin

There is little point in me continuing to add further performances of each song as they’re pretty much all the same.

For number 4 on the Setlist we get a little variation. Early in the year, in the first, Asian leg of the tour, the gentle, humble ‘What Good am I?’ put in an appearance at Setlist number 4. Here’s how it sounds in Tokyo, April 4^th.

What Good Am I?

It was soon displaced however by ‘Working Man’s Blues #2,’ another quiet number which, incidentally, has grown on me as I’ve listened to these 2014 performances. Political melancholy is perhaps the ruling emotion here. This Minneapolis recording may be the best.

 Working Man’s Blues

When he had hundreds of wonderful songs to choose from, why he would choose the forgettable ‘Waiting for You’ for number 5 on the Setlist must remain a mystery. The song is pleasant enough but has no bite. This one’s from Chicago (Nov 10^th)

 Waiting for You

‘Duquesne Whistle’ invariably comes in at 7 on the Setlist, the first song from Tempest to make an appearance. Once more, we can’t be fooled by the bright and breezy melody stolen from Jelly Roll Morton. The lyrics are about an evil wind or a disaster heralding train or both. It’s a great foot-tapper. We’re back in Minneapolis for this one.

Duquesne Whistle

Number 7 on the Setlist is the ferocious ‘Pay In Blood.’ This one’s from Denver (Nov 1^st) and is an utterly compelling performance. A best ever to best all the other best evers. How beautifully Sexton backs this one. The whole performance is faultless, which is the upside of having a well worn Setlist. A highlight of the Concert.

Pay in Blood (A)

Wanna hear another one, just for the hell of it? Any excuse to listen to such a magnificent song twice. Try this one from Chicago.

Pay in Blood (B)

We’re approaching half-way through the setlist and we’re really into the good stuff now. ‘Pay in Blood’ is followed with our old friend ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ at number 8 in the Setlist.

You might recall that in 2013 Dylan abandoned the harmonica to play piano on this one, and he clearly relished his piano embellishments. By 2014 he had found the balance he was looking for. He’d do most of the song centre stage, blast on the harp then move to finish the song behind the piano. It gave the performance something of a musical journey to accompany the lyrical journey.

Another from Minneapolis (Nov 5^th), beautifully assured, the vocal a thrilling mix of crooning and barking, the emotional nuances coming over loud and clear. The harp solo is equally poignant. Pity it’s been reduced to three verses, but with the new lyrics it’s like a new song; we have to accept it on its own terms.

Tangled up in Blue (A)

Again, let’s do another one because we can. Chicago once more. Is it possible to listen to ‘Tangled’ too many times? My excuse is that the harp solo is a good deal sharper. What’s yours?

Tangled up in Blue (B)

‘Lovesick’ (or ‘Love Sick’) comes in at number 9 and we are exactly half-way though the concert. I miss the harp break he put into the song in 2011 which ups the emotional ante, but I can’t fault the vocal. It may be slow, but there’s nothing sedate about this Denver performance. It’s seething with emotion.

Love Sick (A)

So is this one from Prague. I can hear the new lyrics more clearly on this recording.

You were young and wild
You looked at me and smiled
I felt my whole life I’d been sleeping

Love Sick (B)

What stands out at this point is that there is only one song from the 1960s, ‘She Belongs to Me’ and ‘Tangled’ from the 70s. All the rest are from 1997 (Time out of Mind) on.

This seems like a good place to pause. I am only half way through my usual word count, but have already included fifteen songs. My patient editor has asked me not to let the song count grow much over fifteen, so I doubt he’d be happy if I piled on more songs now. I’ll be back soon to do the second half of the Setlist.

Kia Ora

by Jochen Markhorst

VII        Allen’s outer ear

I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything’s flowin’ all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars and I eat fast foods . . . I contain multitudes

 Won’t you please come to Chicago, Graham Nash sings, in the catchy pop anthem “Chicago”, written in response to the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Vietnam protests. And especially, as the first line shows, about the shameful trial of the Chicago Seven, with Black Panther Bobby Seale forced to follow the case against him gagged and strapped to his chair by the disgraceful judge Julius Hoffmann: “So your brother’s bound and gagged, and they’ve chained him to a chair.”

One of the men who goes to Chicago even without Graham’s call is Allen Ginsberg. He travels several times from New York to Chicago to act as a witness for the defence, recording his thoughts on the release of his record Songs of Innocence and Experience along the way:

“I hope that musical articulation of Blake’s poetry will be heard by the Pop Rock Music Mass Media Electronic Illumination Democratic Ear and provide an Eternal Poesy standard by which to measure sublimity & sincerity in contemporary masters such as Bob Dylan, encouraging all souls to trust their own genius Inspiration.”

The “Commentary” written by Allen Ginsberg in December 1969, in his To Young or Old Listeners: Setting Blake’s SONGS to Music, signed with “Allen Ginsberg, December 14-15, 1969, New York City – returned again from Chicago as Defence Witness, Conspiracy Trial”.

Ginsberg is neither the first nor the last to set William Blake’s Songs to music. A few months before Ginsberg, American composer and producer David Axelrod released the follow-up to his successful Songs Of Innocence (1968), Songs Of Experience, a today perhaps somewhat dated-sounding, instrumental interpretation of eight poems from the collection. Well, dated perhaps, but still monumental; Axelrod’s vision is performed by 36 (!) musicians, meanders through symphonic orchestral parts, rock and folk, and is, to say the least, a remarkable hybrid of traditional and experimental. Towards the end of the 20th century, both albums experience a reappraisal, and Axelrod even earns a nice, unexpected penny from them: rap gods like Dr Dre discover the collection and sample excerpts from it.

Unfortunately, a collaboration with Ginsberg never got off the ground. The men met a few times, in the early 1970s, and forged plans for a joint Blake album, but that’s where it ended.

Well before Axelrod and Ginsberg, big names in classical music such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten also fabricated settings, and after 1970, following the release of Ginsberg’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake’s work in general, and this collection of poetry in particular, continues to inspire musicians. Usually to serious attempts to capture the tone and content of the poems in music, and sometimes more superficially – as in the naming of the U2 albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017). And like the references in Dylan’s oeuvre, in which we have heard Blake echoes for 60 years; from little boy lost in “Visions Of Johanna” in the Sixties, to the grain of sand and the ancient footsteps in “Every Grain Of Sand” in the Eighties, to Tyger, tyger, burning bright in “Roll On John” in the 21^st century – to name just three examples of many.

The difference between all those interpretations and Ginsberg’s attempt lies in the word like; “I sing the songs of experience like William Blake,” Dylan sings and writes in the opening of this fourth verse of “I Contain Multitudes”. Which is what Ginsberg was already striving for at the time. “The title Songs of Innocence & Experience is literal: Blake used to sing them unaccompanied at his friends’ houses,” Ginsberg explains in that same Commentary, shortly after sharing a mystical experience with us:

“Inspiration began 21 years, half my life ago, living in Harlem, in mind’s outer ear I heard Blake’s voice pronounce The Sun Flower and The Sick Rose (and the Little Girl Lost) and experienced an illumination of eternal Consciousness, my own heart identical with the ancient heart of the Universe.”

… yeah, Ginsberg never had to search long for Big Words. So: Blake’s voice itself whispered the Songs into Ginsberg’s outer ear – so that Allen could sing them like William Blake. Perhaps a little too grandiloquent and spacey, but remarkably, fifty years later Dylan uses the same image to describe how he arrives at his songs: “Those kinds of songs for me just come out of the blue, out of thin air”, “They just fall down from space” (New York Times interview with Douglas Brinkley, June 2020), and, perhaps the strongest similarity to Ginsberg’s description of the conception:

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

… the words Dylan chooses to describe how “I Contain Multitudes” came about.

Ginsberg’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, by the way, is surprisingly conventional. True, there are also a few of those dreaded, monotonous harmonium exercises, but dosed in such a way that the pain threshold is not crossed. Ginsberg and/or (more likely) producer Barry Miles have been wise enough to also invite real, seasoned musicians like Elvin Jones, Don Cherry and Archie Shepp – who, incidentally, also remain surprisingly subservient to the simple melodies. Dreamy folk, bouncy baroque (including spinet), extremely simplistic nursery rhymes, medieval plainness, and only very occasionally slightly experimental, somewhat non-conformist outliers (“The Sick Rose”, “Ah! Sun-Flower”). Nineteen songs, more than half of them shorter than two minutes, and the rest are not much longer either.

Admittedly, Allen Ginsberg does speak rather pompously and übermystically, alienatingly even, about the making, and about the songs at all;

“The deepest voice of Experience tells the tale of vanishing bodies and Time–our Guardian says innocent play ignores sexual glory till too late–the Nurse’s face turns green & pale remembering the body love & eye soul she refused to realize as a child; and now old in winter & night she is afraid to show her still childlike Desire’s naked glory because her body ages near death & it becomes repulsive to her,”

… to quote just one random example from his extensive Commentary (in this case, “Nurse’s Song”). But it must be said: with each song it is, in fact, conceivable that his “outer ear” heard Blake’s voice reciting the songs – Ginsberg sings songs of experience like William Blake.

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 8: Allen’s outer ear.  

——————-

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

By Tony Attwood

It seems appropriate at this point in the series of articles that considers the songs of Bob Dylan from a musical point of view to bring in Black Diamond Bay for which, according to such reports as I have seen Jacques Levy wrote the lyrics and Bob Dylan wrote the music.

What I don’t know for sure is what order the writing came in – was it a case of the lyrics being written and then the music added, or was it the reverse or a joint venture.  Maybe one of the publications on Dylan’s songs tells us and I’ve missed it – do say if you know and please quote the source.

It is also an unusual piece for Dylan, for starting with a musical verse, and for that musical verse having a harmonica lead.  What is also unusual – and this is something that adds a lot to the performance is that the end of lines has a harmony added by a female vocalist – not a normal thing for Bob.

This use of the harmonies helps hide the fact that the opening lines of each verse are not that interesting in terms of melody.  It is in fact the backing track and the harmonies that make the song work.

All these features in the recording make the song much more interesting than it might have been: we end up hearing the overall sound, including the violin’s improvisation around the melody.

And this is what keeps the song alive – it is seven verses straight, one after the other (with the instrumental verse at the start and the end) – there’s no variation in the music.

We might also note that lively music of this nature is unusual for Dylan in that it starts with a minor chord (Em) before resolving to C and G.  Indeed Dylan seems liberated by the lyrics, writing a melody and chord sequence that takes him into swift chord changes (such as the CDC change) with additional complexity from the descending bass.

But we have to consider here exactly what Dylan is given to work with.  It is, pretty much, nonsense.

Verse 1: there’s a lady of a certain age who isn’t gambling

Verse 2: a man asks for a rope and a pen; the woman passes him, storm clouds gather

Verse 3: the storm gathers strength, occasional characters come and go

Verse 4: the characters move around, the woman prepares to leave, its sunset

Verse 5: there is panic, the volcano erupts, a gay couple fall in love

Verse 6: the island sinks, a gambler finally hits the jackpot, the hotel is on fire

Verse 7: the focus changes to a man in LA watching the story on the news, reflecting that he had never thought about going to Black Diamond Bay anyway.

Set out like that it is weird.  In fact, listening to it with an absolute focus on the lyrics, it is weird.  But what Bob does is give us music that bounces along, and with each verse being musically the same, so we get the sense that no matter what happens, no matter what the chaos, life goes on.  Yes maybe the whole area has now sunk under the waves but the singer isn’t bothered because he wasn’t planning to go there.  It is other people’s lives that are affected not the watcher.

The whole effect is achieved by the fact of having seven straight verses with no musical variation aside from the violin accompaniment and of course the lyrics.  And in this regard it works brilliantly.  The constancy of the musical arrangement contrasts totally with the fact that the song tells the story of the island blowing itself up.

Indeed it is difficult indeed to write music which not only repeats in full across seven musically identical verses.  Consider the opening verse set out in this way

1: Up on the white veranda She wears a necktie and a Panama hat
2: Her passport shows a face From another time and place She looks nothing like that
3: And all the remnants of her recent past Are scattered in the wild wind
4: She walks across the marble floor Where a voice from the gambling room is callin’ her to come on in
5: She smiles, walks the other way As the last ship sails and the moon fades away
6: From Black Diamond Bay

Line one and two and two are musically identical, apart from slight variations made to accomodate the way the lyrics stretch and collapse the length of each line

Same again for lines three and four

And then again for lines five and six.

So my point is that there is a clear structure to the lyrics in terms of rhyming couplets, but not in terms of the beat, or the number of beats.  What Dylan does is make sense of this in a way that intrigues the listener who feels there is something slightly odd about the whole musical process but generally doesn’t pause to think what.

What we thus have is a feeling of smoothness and uncertainty plus disruption at the same time.  This is achieved by stretching or shortening the lines and the way the song is to be sung.

The lyrics are interesting because they are so unusual, but what makes the song stay in the mind is the way the music keeps the form of the three pairs of rhymed lines, while allowing the rhythm to go all over the place.  There is in fact structure and chaos at the same time, which is, when we think about it, what the whole song is about.  There is the structure of the hotel / casino, and the lives of the people, and the chaos of the volcano – all expressed within music that doesn’t change verse by verse.

I think the result is brilliant, and it is a song I’ve always loved, because of this.

The lyrics and the music series…

• How most analyses of Dylan’s songs mistake the essence of what the songs are
• Dylan: how the music and the lyrics make the song. 2: Desolation Row
• The music and the lyrics: “Not Dark Yet”
• Dylan: the music and the lyrics: Sign on the window
• Dylan: the lyrics and the music. It ain’t me babe
• Abandoned Love
• Angelina
• Ballad for a Friend
• The Drifter’s Escape
• Blind Willie McTell

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Dylanesque (comparative more Dylanesque, superlative most Dylanesque)

“In the style of, or reminiscent of the music or lyrics of Bob Dylan (born 1941).”

Previously in this series

• Part 1: Desolation Row
• Part 2: There goes rhyming Dylan
• {art 3: Songs inspired by the music of Bob Dylan – Young, CSNY, and Coxon

Prelude by Tony: In case you have not come across any of these Aaron and Tony pieces before, I should explain… Aaron and I have never met, but we have somehow come up with this arrangement wherein Aaron selects music (and has done so over several different series of articles) and sends it to me with his notes, and I write my immediate response while listening to the music he has selected.  I thought I’d better mention this here, since my response this time takes me into my life, and you may be wondering what the hell I’m doing explaining details of my family in a Bob Dylan blog.  But really there is a point, for music triggers a multiplicity of reactions, and here I am just writing about mine.

Aaron: For Part 4 of the Dylanesque series we have three songs where the artist, inspired by Dylan’s songs such as John Brown and Masters of War, gave us their own anti-war songs. Both of these guys are massive Dylan fans so everything they do is inspired by his work.

First up we have Elvis Costello. The song is Shipbuilding and it was written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer.

Written during the Falklands War of 1982, Costello’s lyrics highlight the irony of the war bringing back prosperity to the traditional shipbuilding areas of Clydeside, Merseyside (Cammell Laird), North East England and Belfast (Harland and Wolff) to build new ships to replace those being sunk in the war, whilst also sending off the sons of these areas to fight and, potentially, lose their lives in those same ships. It was originally given to Robert Wyatt to release as a single in 1982. Costello’s own version appears on his album Punch the Clock.

Tony: I have a problem here because I do prefer Robert Wyatt’s version, although I am not sure why.   Somehow it makes more musical sense to me.  But either way that opening line of “Is it worth it?” is so evocative of that period.

Aaron: Next up we have two songs by Dan Bern. The first one is a humorous take on this subject and the second one is just beautiful and gets me every time.

Talkin’ Al Kida Blues

Tony: Yes very early Dylan talking blues, but the problem with the talking blues is that it is such a restrictive form.   It’s ok, but even the harmonica is Dylanesque.  I think it is the musician in me that objects; the talking blues reduces what the music can do to such a level there’s not much left.

The same could be said about the 12 bar blues, but somehow that format escapes and indeed so much has been done with that format we now have a multitude of songs that one can hear over and over again and still enjoy.  But that’s the problem with the talking blues – they are great fun in a folk club where the audience is hearing the lyrics for the first time, but I wouldn’t want an evening of the format.

Aaron: Lithuania

Tony: But now my problem is different.  For here I find that I really do see something to contemplate and appreciate in the lyrics:

I'd likе tо bе а gооd Amеriсаn аnd writе аn еlеgy tо thе аutоmоbilе
But nо mаttеr whеrе it tаkеs mе I dоn't rеаlly fееl аny diffеrеnt
I gоt оnе fооt in thе blасk аnd whitе twо dimеnsiоnаl 
    ghоsts оf Lithuаniа
And thе оthеr fооt in sunny Cаlifоrniа whеrе thе pеоplе 
    аrе аll friеndly
As thеy drivе thеir Mеrсеdеs tо thе mini-mаlls аnd tаkе а lunсh
Or nеtwоrk with yоu оr drivе pаst аnd kill yоu fоr nо rеаsоn

Thеsе аrе my ghоsts: Unсlе Emmаnuеl, Unсlе Eli, Aunt Miа
And my grаndpаrеnts, Jеnny аnd Tоbiаs, nоnе оf whоm I'vе еvеr mеt
I sаw sоmе lеttеrs оnсе thаt thеy wrоtе tо my dаd 
    in Pаlеstinе in 1940
Nоt tоо lоng bеfоrе thеy аll wеrе shоt
My оnly link tо thеm is my dаd, hе knеw thеm, hе knеw mе, 
    nоw hе's gоnе tоо

It is simple, but I do find that moving, perhaps because of my own experiences with my family (and as I have said so often, our reactions to music are often extremely personal).  So maybe that’s the issue with songs and poems like this – they can touch nerves that bring along thoughts welcome and unwelcome, happy and sad.   I’ll try and explain…

To do this, I’m going to veer off into a personal perspective here, which may be boring and dull and indeed irrelevant since you don’t know me, but it is where the songs have taken me, and the idea of these instant reviews is that I do give my immediate feelings.  So here I go…

I spent my life as an only child in a family that did not have strong contacts with other members of the clan.   Gradually uncles, aunts, cousins, and of course my parents all passed away, and for me divorce happened too which meant I lost my in-laws as well.  So I accepted that it was just me and my three wonderful daughters: that’s how I was, that was my life, and yes I was quite happy in it, and a little proud of some of the things I’d done….

Until a year ago, totally out of the blue, I got an email from an unknown man saying “I think I’m your brother”, and so it turned out to be.  I had a brother I knew nothing about.  We don’t live close together but we’ve met up four times since and got on really, really well, plus chatting on the phone regularly, and of course planning to get together again.

So I know something of these emotions, and maybe that’s my problem with the song.  I have my own “song” in my life.  Of course, it doesn’t follow the same pattern as described here, but has the same depth of feeling.

Back with the recording, when the melody came along after the five minutes mark, I found much more in the song and was glad I had kept listening but by then I had lost track of the lyrics, but there again, that didn’t seem to matter.   Besides, by then I was deep into thinking about my years without brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, but having great joy in my life with my children and grandchildren… and then suddenly adding a brother… and of course his family and friends.

Thus my conclusion: I think some of what is being sung about here is too close to home for me, so I lose focus.  I think it needs a different listener to be able to write about this.

If anyone would care to write a proper commentary on this song, please do let me have it and I will publish it.  Send it to Tony@schools.co.uk    Meanwhile, I’ve even thought maybe I should write a song about my brother and his finding of me, although really, I wouldn’t know how to begin.   So perhaps not.

By Tony Attwood

“She belongs to me” is a simple 12 bar blues with a complex message about control and independence and… well I am not sure.  Is the subject of  the song the child of a divorced couple or a younger woman who is (rather unpleasantly) the object of desire of a much older man?  One is never sure.   Although Jochen as ever got to the heart of the matter if you want to explore it further.

And do any of the vast number of covers actually get anywhere near either to holding the paradox or resolving it?  I’m not sure – at least until the final version I selected (see below), although of course such uncertainty comes in part because we all now suffer from knowing the song so well, it gets ever harder to unravel what Dylan actually had in mind.  Thus it is impossible to unravel how the song ought to be treated.

It is a problem made ever greater by the huge number of covers that exist – far more than I can work my way through to give a balanced review.  So here is just a selection, although it does lead to a final conclusion.

A vision of the child approach comes from Hugo Montenegro – the string based instrumental break gives me pictures of a child making up a dance to the song and all the adults applauding and telling her she is going to be ballet dancer “when she grows up”.

https://youtu.be/KyPjwxrMLHw

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band do give us an interesting violin-based break or two but I just get the feeling that having gone that far they could have gone further – just to see where it all leads.

Robert Rex Waller Jnr of the wonderfully named I See Hawks in LA, seems to me to start out on the right tracks in terms of giving us some new insights, but as the song progresses it feels to me as if the ideas have been suffused under the song – which for a song that has been recorded so many times probably isn’t the best approach.  The last verse now really feels that he is singing to an adult who has everything, exactly as the song says. There is nothing else left to give, except for the children’s toys as a symbol of her continuing vitality.

And what I do particularly like is the move toward additional chaos implied in the final instrumental verse.

Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther featuring Roland Van Campenhout takes the thought of this being an adult not a child: the man is so utterly overwhelmed by the woman he has no idea what to do: she walks with her feet never touching the ground, while he scrambles along in the gutter.   Now that of course is just my response and interpretation of their performance, and they may have had nothing like this type of thought in mind.  It’s just where I got to.

When we looked at this song in our very first series on covers of Dylan songs the version by Jerry, Phil and Bob, was suggested by Edward Thomas.  And I must say this is a relief, with performers who manage to balance their own input with Dylan’s original.  Now I don’t care if she really is a child or no, nor if the vision comes from a lover or a parent.   It is just a lovely interpretation of a long-loved song.

Margot Cotten continues the gentle theme, and I must say I do prefer these versions.  The individuality here comes from the occasional rhythmic changes – changes so slight they can easily missed.  Now the song doesn’t have to be about a person at all, but is somehow just about a time, a feeling, a place…   I am not quite sure how I got to that feeling but with this version, it really is at the heart of what I feel.  Suddenly despite all the cover versions I have listened to before starting to write this little commentary, I want to play it again.

I finish with the version Jochen picked – and it really does bring me back to earth with its straightforward gentleness.   There are some interesting musical touches in the simplicity as well, such as the bass staying on the same note through the first line rather than changing as the chord changes.  A tiny point, but it seems to help.

In a way it is very dated with the choral, backing but that’s hardly their fault; arrangements are always of the age in which they were written.  I’m rather pleased I left this til last (by chance not design).   I leave the song and move on to the rest of my day, feeling rested and happy, not concerned by its implications at all.

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

‘I’ve paid my time and now I’m as good as new’
(The Levee’s Gonna Break)

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

This is the final post for 2013, a richly rewarding year to explore, and what I need to do here is catch up with some performances that didn’t get included in the four previous posts, mostly Dylan’s 21^st Century work.

But first, let’s get ourselves tangled up in blue, another song, like ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ that has become an institution, its performance a ritual. It is a mercurial song which has no final form, musically or lyrically, and that may be the whole point. Memories come and go; the journey changes as we look back on it, as we see it from different points of view. New things keep cropping up. What might have really happened is no longer the point. This is not one journey but many; almost every time it’s performed it’s a new journey. Maybe that’s why the song has stayed so alive.

In 2013 Dylan was mixing lyrics from previous versions and adding some new ones. As ever, the song was evolving.

She lit a burner on the stove

and then she swept away the dust.

“You look like someone that I used to know,” she said,
“You look like someone that I used to trust.”

Then she opened up a book of poems and she said,

“take that, just so you know.”
“Memorize these lines,
and remember these rhymes,
when you’re up there, walking to and fro.”

And the last verse comes out like this:

I’m going back again
I got to get to them somehow
Yesterday is dead and gone
and tomorrow might as well be now.
Some of them, they went to live upon the mount
And some of them went down to the ground.
Some of the names were written in flames
And some of them, well, they just left town.
And me I’m still on the road
trying to stay away from the joint.
We always felt the same
depending on your point of view.
Tangled up in blue.

‘Tangled’ has grown statelier and more dignified since the ecstatic performances of the early 2000s, or the epic jazzy versions of 1993. Now it thumps along with a certain dignified grandeur. In 2013 Dylan stuck with the piano and didn’t pick up the harmonica, which had become a feature of previous versions. In 2014 he will reinstate the harp break. He didn’t sing it in Rome, but we can’t do better than this performance from the impeccable Stockholm concert.

Tangled Up in Blue (A)

Or can we? This one from Hamburg (20^th Oct) is pretty solid too. A bit faster and rougher.

 Tangled Up in Blue (B)

In ‘Love Sick’ there’s no energetic bounce, the journey has become a lurching plod, weary but wired. A tread of doom. The process of alienation is complete, we have become ghostly voyeurs of worlds that can never be ours:

I see lovers in the meadow
I see silhouettes in the window
I watch them 'til they're gone, and it leaves me hanging on
To a shadow

Unlike ‘Tangled’ ‘Lovesick’ doesn’t change much, either lyrically or musically. It’s not a song perpetually in the making, although Dylan did change a couple of lines. I confess to finding ‘Sometimes I want to take to the road and plunder’ a more powerful utterance than ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m being ploughed under’ although I’m hard-pressed to say why; maybe because the first is more active, anger expressed, while the second is annihilation.

It does now, however, have a final, settled form. I tend to hark back to the driving version of 2011, my best ever  This one from Stockholm is certainly a little softer, and the harp solo is not as sharp, but it still has that unnerving edge.

Lovesick

Although I know that Dylan never gets stuck in a mood or mode, that he is the ultimate shape-shifter, it still amazes me how he was able to move from the dark pilgrimage of Time out of Mind to the often breezy, bouncy territory of Love and Theft. Of course it’s far from being all sweetness and light despite the fast rhythms and busy music. Take ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,’ a lengthy song which bustles along but portrays a somewhat sordid situation that ends with homicidal sentiments.

Tweedle-Dee Dee is a lowdown, sorry old man
Tweedle-Dee Dum, he'll stab you where you stand
"I've had too much of your company, "
Said, Tweedle-dee dumb to Tweedle-dee Dee

Dylan would perfect this technique of hiding grim realities behind happy or sweet-sounding music in Tempest (‘Soon After Midnight’). We’re in Rome again for this one.

Tweedle Dee

‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ is another bustling song from the boogie-woogie, jazzy end of the blues. The band is really cooking. It’s a lot of fun as long as you don’t take the images of disaster too much to heart. The levee might break but in the meantime you’d better get dancing. Note how spare Dylan’s piano playing is, and how foundational Garnier’s bass playing is. This Rome performance is a beauty.

Levee’s Gonna Break.

‘Thunder On the Mountain’ is another long, bustling song. But in this case there is a genuine upbeat feel: we can change, we can grow, we can enjoy (just don’t worry too much about that ‘mean old twister.’)

Thunder on the mountain rolling to the ground
Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down
Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king
I wouldn't betray your love or any other thing

Oh yes, there are plenty of edges here, and dark hints, but the effect is basically affirmative. Rome again:

Thunder On the Mountain

‘Honest with Me’ hardly lets up the pace. We are still ripping along, still tangled up in love and desire. However, there is no nostalgic indulgence in images from the past, it’s a bit more desperate than that – ‘these memories I got, they can strangle a man.’

Desperate enough for some bad jokes:
I'm stark naked but I don't care
I'm goin' off into the woods, I'm huntin' bare

Cynicism seems to have taken over:

They say that my eyes are pretty and my smile is nice
Well, I'd sell it to ya at a reduced price

Here’s a place where heartbreak rules and smiles are cheap. We get the feeling that the plea to ‘be honest with me’ is going to fall on deaf ears. We’re still in Rome.

Honest With Me

We slow right down for ‘Workingman’s Blues #2.’ It’s an elegy for a lost prosperity and is the most openly political song of Dylan’s 21^st Century output. “At a time when the poor and working classes are as diverse as they’ve ever been in this country – and perhaps as powerless as they’ve ever been – the song’s powerful closing lines do something more effective than asking us to listen for an answer blowing in the wind, they point to our common enemy”. (Spectrum Culture.)

I’m not convinced that the last lines do ‘point to our common enemy’ whoever or whatever that is, but the fifth verse comes close to identifying financial institutions and their economic oppression:

They burned my barn and they stole my horse
I can’t save a dime
It’s a long way down and I don’t want to be forced
Into a life of continual crime

This one’s from Dusseldorf. Great bowing of the double bass from Garnier here.

Workingman’s Blues #2

We return to Rome to pick up another slow number, ‘To Make You Feel My Love,’ a world-weary love song if ever there was one. There’s nothing quite like it, although the sentiment reminds me a little of ‘Born in Time.’ With over 450 cover versions, this song has entered the realm of the ‘standards’ – songs from what is known as The Great American Songbook or American Standards, the popular music canon into which Dylan will be soon be diving to produce his ‘Frank Sinatra’ albums. It has a classic feel to it as if it were written in the 1950s.

This performance comes close to being a ‘best ever’ surely. As I’ve said, these Rome recordings are hard to resist. A strong, loving treatment from Bob. It’s interesting how he has managed to integrate some upsinging into his style without making a fetish of it. The harp break is a welcome, novel addition to his performance of the song. Those heart-rending blasts are just right.

To Make You Feel My Love

Speaking of American Standards, I don’t know if Bobby Vee’s ‘Suzie Baby’ qualifies as one, but it is the 1950s pop song par excellence. There were lots of Bobbys in the late 1950s pop scene just as there were lots of Hanks in the cowboy/country scene. We have Bobby Vinton and Bobby Darin, but Dylan has always had a special place in his heart for Bobby Vee, maybe because Dylan briefly played piano for Vee under the name Elston Gunn. But his unexpected performance of the song, a one off, at St Paul, Minnesota (July 10^th), was doubtless because Vee was in the audience. Dylan gave him a heartfelt plug before singing the song. This one needs a video:

And here’s the audio in case the vid vanishes.

 Suzie Baby

So that’s 2013, the year in which Dylan’s ‘new’ voice, the mellifluous, soft voice with which he would tackle the Sinatra corpus, began to emerge. Now, we sense, he can turn it off and on. He can make his voice throaty and rough, or soft and croony, at will. He’s starting to claw back his vocal range. Compare this with 2009/10 and you’ll see what I mean. This turnaround in Dylan’s voice is astonishing.

It’s also the year the songs from Tempest came into their own. ‘Scarlet Town’ and ‘Pay in Blood’ particularly enriched Dylan’s setlist even as he was busy shedding other songs.

Lastly, we have two remarkable concerts, Rome and Stockholm, very different in atmosphere but both superlative.

Next, I’ll be turning to 2014 where the revival continues and Dylan’s performances hit some new heights. We’re on a rising curve.

Until then

Kia Ora

An index to the entire series can be found here.

The earlier episodes for 2013 are

• NET 2013 Part 1: Shedding old Favourites: A Roman Farewell.
• NET 2013 part 2: The art of the Dramatic Monologue
• Never Ending Tour 2013 Part 3: A Date with The Faerie Queene?
• NET 2013 Part 4: Softly softly golden oldies

By Tony Attwood

The choices in this series of “Absolute Highlights” are mine, made without reference to anyone else, and selected by looking at the notes I have made while publishing each episode of the Never Ending Tour series and then going back and listening again to the recordings Mike Johnson has provided.

Then having made my selection I do have a look at what Mike said in his commentary.  Sometimes I agree, sometimes not: this is as I’ve always tried to say a totally personal choice of the “absolute highlights”.   They are the recordings I would put on a box set of CDs if I was ever given the chance.

So quite often I pick recordings that Mike has not particularly singled out, apart from the fact  that he has chosen them in the first place.  But here, with Desolation Row, I find we are in absolute agreement.   This is what Mike said.

“What makes this Bethlehem performance of ‘Desolation Row’ so special is the inclusion of that which over the years has become the missing verse. Why Dylan chose to drop this verse will remain a mystery I guess, but I always thought it was one of the best verses of the song. In it, Dylan the post-modernist reflects on the two great modernist poets of the early part of the 20^th Century.”

‘Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row’

“Interestingly, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ is a pro-union song by Pete Seeger. Dylan may have been taking a sideswipe at Seeger, but his real aim is at the increasing polarisation of political attitudes, the sense of battle lines being drawn. In Desolation Row (the place) you can hear them all playing their penny whistles.

“You can hear a few members of the audience react when Dylan begins the verse.

“Listening to that, I can’t help but reflect on Dylan’s acoustic style. I don’t think there is that big a difference between his acoustic and his electric playing, but the effect is sure different. I have suggested that Dylan’s guitar playing is percussive rather than melodic or lyrical. It’s there to drive the beat and build up the tension as the song progresses, not to sound pretty. This ‘Desolation Row’ is a particularly good example of how he pushes the song along with the guitar. With Dylan’s singing it’s all about phrasing; with his acoustic guitar it’s all about timing.”

So yes, I am there with Mike all the way through.  He’s even beaten me to my usual commentary on which verses of the long songs are missing.

And as maybe you can understand, to write a piece like this I do listen to the recording several times, and what really strikes me here is the gentleness of the opening verses, compared to where Dylan gets to at the end.  Indeed if all we had was a recording of the opening verses, I’d still include this recording in the series.   This for me is a superb reflection on all that has gone wrong – rather than what is wrong now.

Quite how Bob manages to keep that gentle approach going is beyond me.  Indeed it is not until the “Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood” verse that we start to get a sense of where this version is going to end up.   And that is for two reasons: one is the increasing volume and stridency of the vocal, but there is also the insistence on abandoning the original melody and repeating the same melodic line over and over.   In a way it is painful, but then it is a painful message that is being delivered.

After that comes the first instrumental break, which takes us back down slightly but the insistence of the instrumental breaks as we pick up on the last verses gives us the power of the song.

I find it hard to imagine any Dylan fan not being overwhelmed by the last vocal verse, and so on first hearing what happens next is a surprise; taking the song back down for two  more instrumental verses.   But this too builds and builds; there really is no way out of Desolation Row.

One final thought.  Why would anyone shout or whistle during that final instrumental part?  I couldn’t; I’m just sitting here in amazement with my mouth hanging open.  But then, I’m sitting at home, and outside the sun is shining.

The 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

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.

Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go) is another song written by Boudleaux Bryant (see also Take a message to Mary) and was first recorded and released by “Little” Jimmy Dickens in 1954.  He was a Country musician known for his novelty songs and short stature — 4 feet, 11 inches.

Tony: As with so many of these songs there is not much by the way of lyrics, and some of those that are there really do stand out as, well, what do I say?… unusual…

Why must you always try to make me over
Take me as I am or let me go
White lilies never grow on stalks of clover
Take me as I am or let me go

I’m a Londoner by origin, and one brought up in a flat (apartment) without a garden and thus the attributes of lilies and clover are not something I have considered much in my life, (although I do have one now, and indeed look out onto it when writing these little articles) but maybe there is a hidden gardening message there.  I did look the words up in case I had missed something in my urban education but all I found was “Lily and Clover were two experimental floating airfields tested towards the end of the Second World War by the British Admiralty.”  Not quite what I was looking for.

To me it is a sweet, short, country song that says “I love you why don’t you love me?” and I’m sorry to say I can’t find anything more in it.  But that is probably just me.

Aaron: Dylan’s version came from 1970s Self Portrait (I think this is the last song from this album to look at in this series, so we will move on to another album in the next one).

Tony: Actually, I really like this, and always have done, since the release of the album.   I’ve never thought about the lyrics but just considered the overall sound – including excellent vocals by Bob.  Certainly, as a way of saying to the critics that he could sing in the conventional style, this is a perfect riposte.   I do wonder however what the female chorus thought of sitting through the whole recording to sing two lines and (I think) do a bit of background humming).   But it’s a nice sound… what else can one say?

Aaron: Here is a version by Scottish singer Rab Noakes, he was a founding member of Stealers Wheel and was a member of Lindisfarne in the early 70s.

Tony: Rab Noakes also appeared on “Fog on the Tyne” which relates to the river that flows through Newcastle in north west England, but I’m not really moved to put up a copy of that not least because this on-line conversation has led me to recall one of my absolute all-time, all-time, all-time favourite recordings, which I will leave to the end.   But I would say that for me this is one of the utter joys of these articles written from Aaron’s notes and ideas (apart from fostering Anglo-American goodwill!) and that is that it reminds me of earlier times and earlier joys, as well as introducing me to songs and recordings I didn’t know.

But let’s keep going:

Aaron: After a long hard look there doesn’t appear to be many versions of this song worth listening to so here is Rab Noakes doing some Bob Dylan covers instead,

Mississippi

Tony: Rab Noakes was (and indeed with his recordings still is) incredibly important in the world of Scottish folk music and he really did help deliver a knowledge and understanding of Scottish folk music both to Scots and to English people like me who had been brought up with the understanding of Cecil Sharp’s work in collecting English folk, but knew nothing of music beyond the borders.

This recording of Mississippi is not one that I have heard before, and I really do like it.  It is incredibly hard to take a song as long as this, and one that we all know so well, and then stay true to the original but still give something new, and for me, Rab did this.  Even if the whole recording doesn’t strike you as beautiful, just listen to those occasional harmonies.

Gorgeous.   Thank you for that Aaron.  It goes on my playlist.

Absolutely Sweet Marie

Tony:  Rab does the song straight, with no particular innovations, but it is still (for me at least) highly enjoyable.  And oh yes, there is that line, “To live outside the law you must be honest”.  Great short harmonica solo too.  Four minutes of fun.

Aaron: I Shall Be Free

Tony: An interesting song to choose, and a hard piece to put a new interpretation into.  It’s one of those covers that takes me somewhere but I am not quite sure where – the fact that musically it is the same line over and over makes it hard to hold together in a four and half minute piece.   No, I’m not sure….

But now, I’m going to add another song, a song that immediately came to my mind through reading through Aaron’s notes, listening to the music and adding my thoughts.  The connection is Gerry Rafferty who was also a Scottish musician, and a member of Stealers Wheel.

OK so that is not that much of a connection I know, but of course if you just want Dylan connections then you don’t have to read on and you don’t have to listen to the next and final track, which in effect is miles away from where Aaron started this piece.  But it is one of my all-time favourite pieces of music and was one of the first pieces of music I choreographed (although that probably is far too formal a word for what my dance partner at the time and I did all those years ago).  And Gerry Rafferty did say in one interview that he was a Dylan fan.   Anyway, because you don’t have to play anything I choose to put up, I’m including the song.

But before I do I want to add something else.   What I try to put across in this series in which I respond to Aaron’s selections, is that our response to music is always incredibly complex.  It might be that we are taken by the beat or the melody or the instrumentation, or the artist in question, but also there will be other musical memories and personal associations in there too.  What we come to like and not like is caused by a whole plethora of past events, memories and even false memories.   Here, I’m picking up on a moment maybe 25 years ago; who knows how accurate that memory is…. but even if I’ve embellished the recollection over the years, it is still a wonderful song, and those memories still make me smile.

As it happens, and by pure chance, I am planning to be back at the dance venue where the two of us worked on our dance to accompany this song.  Maybe that’s what makes me embellish my memories at this moment…

Another great journey Aaron – thank you.  I really do enjoy these meanders.  And dare I add, I hope that occasionally it might encourage you, my reader, to treasure your past musical memories too.  They really are worth keeping.

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”

• I contain multitudes 1: Two Irish countries at odds
• I contain multitudes 2: To the buried that repose around us
• I contain multitudes part 3: The thrill of rhyming something that’s never been rhymed before
• I contain Multitudes part 4: Boogaloo dudes carry the news
• I contain Multitudes 5: All the people on earth… all you

by Jochen Markhorst

VI         All things lost on earth are treasured there

I’m just like Anne Frank - like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge - I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost - are made good again

 The closing lines of this first bridge completely drown in the surge of that surprising, bizarre triplet before it, in the absurd-appearing “flurry of pan-cultural references” of Anne Frank, Indiana Jones and the Rolling Stones – which is, after all, quite a bomb carpet.

A bit of a shame, though. The closing lines have a dramatic power of their own, communicating a rather unexpected switch to quiet, intimate suffering, and do so elegantly poetically with a pinch of melancholy;

I go right to the edge - I go right to the end
I go where all things lost are – made good again

(the studio version I go right where all things lost – are made good again is soon replaced on stage by the rhythmically stronger variant without the third “right”)

Opening with the rarely used, graceful four-footed anapest, the anapestic tetrameter as the professor would say (da da dum, da da dum, da da dum, da da dum), which Dylan has previously employed in “Where Are You Tonight?” (1978) and in “Cold Irons Bound” (1997). So, roughly once every 20 years, Dylan embellishes a lyric fragment with it – making him, incidentally, one of the very rare songwriters to use this classic metre with any regularity.

Equally tried and tested and classic is the anaphora I go right, though the third I go right soon falls by the wayside. In rhetoric (Churchill, Martin Luther King) as popular as in songwriting, the rhythmic repetition of phrases, and Dylan too has embellished dozens of songs with the stylistic device of repetition, but it is striking that Dylan does not sing that third I go right on stage, at the performance of the song: the following where is rhythmically impossible to fit in, and thus the third leg of the anaphora falls. Remarkable for a songwriter who repeatedly claims that sound trumps everything else – but here the holy trinity of rhyme, rhythm & reason apparently wins out over sound after all.

The reason, the content of this text fragment is equally remarkable. In context, it is alienating. In a middle eight with those three incompatible characters, and as a bridge from the preceding All the young dudes to William Blake’s Songs Of Experience hereafter, reason seems far off, or so it seems. Taken by itself, however, it is a truly beautiful, haunting and at the same time comforting quatrain:

I go right to the edge - 
I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost - 
are made good again

… an almost classical ballad stanza with a “Not Dark Yet” couleur and the noblesse of the Rubáiyát, Omar Khayyám’s quatrains; the words of a narrator at the end of his life, suicidal perhaps, expecting relief on “the other side”. At least, that’s what loaded, metaphorical locations like “the edge” and “the end” suggest. The cryptic geo-information “where all things lost” is more ambiguous. In Alexander Pope’s vile, masterful The Rape Of The Lock (1712), it is not an afterlife, in any case:

Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere,
Since all things lost on earth are treasured there

… here is “all things lost” worthless rubbish, ridiculous, nonsensical banalities. “There Heroes’ Wits are kept in ponderous Vases / And Beaus’ in Snuff-boxes and Tweezer-Cases,” as Pope clarifies. And the tears of greedy children whose rich parents die, broken vows, the smile of the harlot and cages for mosquitoes and thick books on Casuistry – good-for-nothing junk, in short. And apparently, the Lost and Found Bureau is in the “lunar sphere”.

The similar word combination “all things lost” is a coincidence, of course, but still: echoes of and borrowings from Alexander Pope’s output can be heard throughout Dylan’s oeuvre. The love of the specific playfulness catachresis, “wrong-use” like your sheets like metal and your belt like lace or Mack the Finger we owe to Alexander Pope anyway; in “Jokerman”, Dylan integrates Pope’s aphorism Fools rush in where angels fear to tread unchanged; Basement songs like “Tiny Montgomery”, with all those short, nonsensical imperatives (Scratch your dad, Do that bird) follow Pope’s template, and like that, there are more – mostly unaware, we may assume – Pope borrowings, appropriations even, to be found.

Then again, these two closing lines of Dylan’s first bridge are, in fact, simply not isolated. They are integrated in a lyric introducing a narrator who communicates that he contains multitudes, illustrating this with a long list of very different identities, behaviours, preferences and opinions. And therein, such an intimate, farewell-insinuating quatrain with the tone and colour of a eulogy is actually rather alienating. Not to say misplaced. “They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them,” Dylan says of “I Contain Multitudes” in that famous New York Times interview, in an understandable but not too successful attempt to deflect further grilling. But surely the perfection of this quatrain and its profundity strongly suggest that this excerpt did not “just fall down from space”, did not originate in a “trance state”, but that it fell out of that mythical box, the box of hotel stationary, little scraps like from Norway, and from Belgium and from Brazil, the box with all those scraps of paper on which Dylan has been jotting down his ideas, brain waves and findings for years. “He makes his poetry out of that,” Larry Charles reveals, and “lets them synthesize into a coherent thing.”

But whether Dylan always succeeds equally well in synthesising all those snippets into a coherent thing… that’s debatable. He may not always reach that place where all things lost are made good again.

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 7: Allen’s outer ear

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

Intro By Tony Attwood

Recently Jemmy Joe wrote to me with a copy of his own recording of “Dark Eyes”, telling me this was to be the first of a once-a-month set of releases of Dylan covers next year, and wondering if “Untold Dylan” would like to mention the work.

Here’s the recording…

I wrote back saying that the arrangement wasn’t to my taste but asking Jemmy to tell me more about his work.    He has replied and I’m publishing his commentary below.

But before moving on to that I would like to say a little more about the video and music, now I have had a chance to consider it further.

I have to say I still find the video very disturbing, and after the first two views/listens, I have taken to listening to the music without watching the screen.   And I have also gone back to read my own review of the song published on this site some 15 years ago (although subsequently updated a little).  And I’m quoting myself not out of some sense of my being right or clever (or come to that old), but rather because by pure chance I made a point that I think is relevant here.  I wrote…

“Returning to “Dark Eyes” after years of singing it myself in different arrangements in folk clubs (and I must admit, for my own enjoyment) it is a jolt to realise how straight is Dylan’s recording.

“It’s his song, so he can decide what is done with it – but the options and possibilities with this song are enormous – the speed can vary, the power can grow, it can be strummed instead of plucked… Over the years I seem to have done everything possible to it.

“But Dylan in his recording gives us the bare bones.”

And now this new recording from Jemmy Joe really does make that point. It is a song of a million possibilities.  And listening to this new recording without watching the video (which I still find hard to take) I am struck by the way it is possible to retain the meaning of the original with an extra layer on top.

To explain, Dylan commented that he created the song after passing a call girl in a hotel.  Not knowing that when I first heard the song I took it to be about the way the demands of everyday working life, followed by an evening of watching TV could remove all life, energy and creativity from people.  Effectively, being human in this world removes the essence of humanity from us.

Now this utterly different version, which as I said, didn’t appeal to me at first, suddenly reminds me of my earlier interpretation.  For there are so many ways in which people can manage to get through existence.  Some revel in family life, some in isolation, some with substance abuse, some in family life, some in untold riches, some in power…

Thus there can be the horrors of the contemporary world around everywhere to be seen, but there can also be escapes.  In fact a multiplicity of escapes.

I was of course helped along in my re-adjustment to this song by the comments made back to me by the performer Jemmy Joe who replied to my comment that I found his version disturbing.   I present these below, unedited…

Comments by Jemmy Joe back to Tony Attwood

Your hearing the original words and my musical direction, never mind the music video, being out of step with each other is quite pleasing. Though I accept not being to everyone’s taste, it is somewhat vindicating when someone dislikes what I do for the right reasons.

I am seeking to explore the borders of what a song can mean by how it is presented. My view of Dylan is that he is a songwriter more like Gershwin or Irving Berlin than Joni Mitchell or The Beatles: the work is meant to be interpreted both musically and in-depth of meaning, not accepted as finished works. I know I am not unique in seeing that even Dylan doesn’t do Dylan straight: he is an interpreter of his own songs from night to night and most recently in the wonderful “Shadow Kingdom” collection. With Dylan, a song’s tone can change and give it a different story than the original meant or was even capable of. The best “uncovering” of Dylan does this.

The perfect example within Dylan’s classic interpreters is Johnny Cash’s version of “It Ain’t Me Babe” versus Dylan’s original. A friend of mine was critical of JC’s take because it had none of the pathos and yearning of the right partner that he heard in the original. Dylan was resentful, lonely at being misunderstood and tired of the nonsense. Cash seemed to be amused, winking at who he’s singing to and saying, “Good luck, babe”. My friend was critical of that, saying Cash “didn’t get it”. But I believe it was it was a great compliment to the song. Many of Dylan’s other works have a flexibility of situation, character and root meaning. If you can hear yourself or your world understand in a song, you ought to express it as honestly as you can, even if it goes against other’s perception or the original recording.

“Dark Eyes” is a look at the world. An observer is seeing human frailty, games being played, the failure of society. Behind it all, at its core, this person can see one individual (the “dark eyes” he is looking eyeball to eyeball with) with the sadness and weight of it all within them. The original recording’s tone fits this reading. But upon reflecting of the song and story, I pulled back. I want to see the person seeing. Who is it that is seeing this society that is missing the lovers’ pearls? What is their story? Who do I see singing this song from their heart?

That person is a snotty, condescending punk kid. “I’m Not Like Other Girls” personified. They are too clever for their own good and think they’re better than people who live normal lives. Basically, I see a younger me. I am amused, but I don’t think they’re as smart as they think they are. They surely aren’t as empathetic as they think they are. I appreciate Thoreau’s fellow who is following the beat of their owner drummer, but if you’re in a marching band that’s not going to work. To my younger self, I’d say “Friend, we *are* all in a marching band together.”

While I have some judgments against the younger me and find the sympathies of the narrator of this song to be self-isolating, I wanted to create a track that matched that spirit of youth. I could be a bit exhausting then, but I was pretty fun. I am generations off from the source, but I was raised on rock n roll. From the retro soundtracks from movies like “Stand By Me” or “American Graffiti” and then an uncelebrated by invigorating rock n roll revival in the punk scene of the Bay Area in the 1990s, I grew up listening to music from the 1950s or bands seriously aping the styles. When I was most clever and poetic, “head in the clouds so I can see the stars”, this is the music I was listening to. I do believe a poet rock n roller could have written a song that sounded like this and meant it. It may discordant to the original, but only because I am not Bob Dylan. I have felt these words in my life. But those feelings were without pathos but with a wink. Good luck, babe!

As for the video, visual art is my least skilled medium but my most actually “creative”. With music, I am good enough to aim. I might miss, but I know what I am trying to do and have a likely ability to get close if not hit my mark. With visual art, I do not have that skill. I am floating over a point like a seagull over a bit of potential food because I don’t know how to get on the ground and just grab it. Not to be overly serious about myself, but this video was very subconsciously created. “What would happen if I did this?” is the general methodology of its creation. Noting to myself that I had no plan or idea, I will point out that it is probably no accident that you can’t see my eyes in the video and the eyes that are on the screen are askew and twisted. I don’t know what that means. I didn’t mean it to mean something. I didn’t have a plan. But I also think the passive nature of visual art for me is still expressing something I intend without meaning too. Certainly in how I feel about this song, this video makes sense.

But none of this is suitable for a blog. I know, I know. Semi-edited thoughts that a disinterested reader could easily call “ramblings”. I’d have no defense. Well, I suppose my defense is simply I don’t have anyone in my life with whom I can talk seriously about Dylan’s work and my own art. I hope I’ve kept your interest enough that you’d get to this point where I thank you for your patience. I do have it in me to write a “think piece” blogpost about this song. Maybe there is something to edit and clarify to a sharp point in everything I wrote. But maybe I ought to skip it for this song. Again, I have about twelve songs already recorded, ready for release, and maybe I should save my ammo for the future songs. While I have created songs that are even more trying on the average Dylan fan’s taste, I do have some work I know are well within “the pocket” of what people would like for the work. I’ll pass it on if you’re still interested in hearing it.

Thank you again for your time and the work you already do.

Jemmy Joe

Footnote by Tony:  As you might know, I write an occasional series on this site on the cover versions of Dylan’s work, and something in all the above reminded me of one such cover which I highlighted in that series.   By way of conclusion, here it is.

by Tony Attwood

This recording comes from 23 October 1997.

Now of course not only are the performances that I choose for this series a very personal reflection, they are also reflections that change from day to day.   So I must admit that my inclusion of this version of this song is slightly influenced by the fact that I found myself writing about Blind Willie McTell just the other day in the “Lyrics and Music” series.

But I’ve gone for this version as my favourite, because of the way the backing track with its four-chord accompaniment after each line of the verse is maintained throughout.  It gives us a solidity to the song which wasn’t there before.  Which is not to say that other versions are not excellent musically, but rather that this arrangement goes that little bit further.

If one listens, for example, to the “God is up in His heaven” verse which is more gentle than the others, that backing music is still there at the end of each line.  What’s more, the follow-up line “And we are what was His” seems to take on a much greater meaning here.

I think what really works for me is the entanglement of the instruments here, symbolising (to me if to no one else) the entanglement of the concepts of the almighty God and His creation.

But going right back to the beginning I think also that Bob gets a feel in his singing that is not always there, from the very start with

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying this land is condemned

We also get a couple of instrumental breaks which I think work really well, but as ever that seems to be done at the expense of a couple of verses.  I’ve mentioned this before in these articles: it appears that Bob has a concept of how many verses there are going to be, so if a couple of them are instrumental, then that means a couple of the sung verses are dropped.

Is there a logic in that?   I can’t see it, but Bob of course knows, and it is after all his piece.  But just so you know (not that you don’t know anyway) what we lose are

Seen them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghost of slavery ship


There's a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Wille McTell

Of course, this is not a song where each verse follows the other – it is a song of atmosphere and consideration, not of logical sequence.   But I guess I just always want more and more.

But at least thanks to those who make the recordings, and to Mike Johnson for curating them, we do have the recordings.

The 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

An index to the 100+ previous episodes of this series can be found here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

The two Rome concerts I drew on in Part 1 for this year, in which Dylan sang ten songs for the last time, were notable in another respect – Dylan didn’t play any songs from Tempest, and dedicated both concerts to golden oldies. I like the concerts for the evident warmth of the performances and the enthusiastic audience response. We’ll drop in to Rome again to pick up on some songs he did there but nowhere else, at least that I’ve heard. Sole performances.

You won’t find a more golden oldie than ‘Boots of Spanish Leather,’ Dylan’s great dialogue song from his acoustic period and a genuine tear-jerker. The whole situation, a final conversation between someone going away and their lover soon to be left behind, is drenched in pathos – the violin is a nice touch. Dylan gives it the soft, gentle treatment it deserves.

Boots of Spanish Leather

‘Girl From the North Country’ is from the same era. In it you find the distilled essence of nostalgia. Another tear-jerker, but Dylan doesn’t play it that way. The intensity generated by thoughts of the lost love is mediated by distance and time. It could easily be an old person’s song; we can feel comfortable with the reflective wisdom evident in Dylan’s aged voice. Marinated in sorrow.

Girl from the North Country

‘Don’t Think Twice’ is another from the same era, but this time the perspective is from the lover who is leaving. One of those ‘almost was’ relationships, painful in their own way; best not give them too much thought. There is a sting in the tail here, for while the singer exhorts his now ex-lover to ‘don’t think twice’ he keeps reminding her of what they were, and failed to be. I wish I had more space to consider the line ‘I’m on the dark side of the road’ because it seems in retrospect to be prophetic, and sets the scene for the emotional/spiritual valency of many Dylan songs. Here’s ‘I and I’ from 1984:

‘Noontime and I’m still pushing myself along the road
The darkest part, I can’t stumble or stay put
Someone is speaking with my mouth, 
                     but I’m listening only to my heart

Don’t Think Twice

We come forward a year or so for ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe.’ Dylan is on the cusp of his electric revolution which will change his music forever. ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ has been seen as a renunciation of his old ‘protest singer’ self, and maybe you can read it that way. For me it’s another farewell to love song, a step along from ‘Don’t Think Twice.’ There’s a beauty in these images that belies the message, maybe in an attempt to soften the blow.

Go lightly from the ledge, babe,
leave at your own chosen speed

It Ain’t Me Babe

Before we hit the electric revolution, however, we’d better slip over to Milan (3^rd Nov) to catch Dylan’s early great masterpiece ‘Hard Rain.’

‘Hard Rain’ is one of those Dylan songs that never ages. It could have been written today, for today’s messed up world. It’s as prophetic as Nostradamus (and at times as mysterious) and as radical as any song ever written. It’s political in the best sense, not taking sides with this party or that, but cutting through the rhetoric of war, racism and injustice to the hard truth behind it all.

Like ‘John Brown,’ it takes the form of a conversation between a mother and her son, in this case a question-and-answer form. The ‘blue-eyed son’ has been out in the world and has seen horrors that would make even Dante’s toes curl.

After listening to this, I wound the clock back sixty-one years and listened to the earliest known live performance in 1962.

Yes, there is a certain pathos in the purity of that defiant young voice, yet a different kind of pathos altogether hearing a cracked-voiced seventy-two year old sing it. Now there is a world of experience behind those apocalyptic lyrics, but the vision, and the passion behind it, haven’t changed.

I have some problems with Dylan’s vocal here, the way his voice sometimes descends from high to low, rigidly hitting the beat. We’ve noticed it before. It doesn’t work for me.

Hard Rain

Now for the electric revolution. It’s a pity we don’t have ‘Maggie’s Farm’ but we can’t do better than his most famous rock song of all – ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ It’s more of an institution than a song by now, its performance a ritual heavy with history. I remember first hearing the song when it came out as a single in 1965. I was sitting with a group of friends. Everybody looked at each other in bewilderment. What the hell was this? One or two didn’t like it at all; something in Dylan’s tone got right under their skin. Now, too many decades later, I wonder if we can even hear the song anymore, feel the force of its attack on self-pretense and false appearances.

We’re back in Rome to catch this celebratory performance. We have another singing audience here, bellowing out the chorus. Again I’m reminded of Glasgow 2004. And while Dylan’s voice doesn’t soar the way it did when he was young, this is a powerful vocal performance; there can be no mistaking the intention or the message.

Rolling Stone

‘Highway 61 Revisited’ has all the youthful brashness and iconoclastic impulses that drive Dylan’s early electric music. There’s some strange stuff going on in this song, and it doesn’t need youthfulness to carry the satire. Get ready to rock. This one thrums along. Dylan tries out some lead piano trills at the end. There’s a problem with over enthusiastic audience clapping. That Rome audience sure gets carried away. Audience clapping can kill a song.

Highway 61 Revisited

‘Rainy Day Woman’ carries forward this gleeful attack on all the deadening forces of the world, those same forces that would knock you silly or stone you to death. Whatever you’re doing, they’ll come for you. From those sardonic opening chords, jeering and circuslike, the song opens out, and this Rome audience is right with it, delighting in every stoning. By some odd alchemy, it becomes a happy, stomping song.

Rainy Day Woman

Also from Blonde on Blonde, and also a rocker, is ‘Mostly Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine).’ The undulating voice Dylan uses on that album has morphed with age into something much rougher, but just as full of implication. Consider the games, truth and falsehood play in these deceptively simple lines:

You say you're sorry for tellin' stories
That you know I believe are true
You say you got some other kind of lover
And yes, I believe you do

This is a great vocal performance.

 You Go Your Way

Perhaps I should have included that song among the farewell songs I covered in Part 1 of 2013, as it would not be played after 2014 until 2021, the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. It’s still being played in 2023.

‘Just Like Tom Thumb Blues’ demonstrated that the electric Dylan didn’t have to be loud and fast and rock and roll, and it didn’t have to be about disappointed love; it could be about feeling strung out. Doc Pomus’ ‘Lonely Avenue’ did it for the 1950s, ‘Tom Thumb’ does it for the sixties. It’s never fun coming down. Your buddies melt away and the local prostitutes ‘take your voice and leave you howling at the moon.’ A broken grandeur.

Dylan no longer plays the harp on this one, sad since the thin, pitiless harp added a sharp edge to the song. Nevertheless, this is a richly textured sound we have here, and a pace to carry the song, faster than it has been but solid. It’s hard to resist these Rome performances.

Tom Thumb Blues

It’s a natural movement to go from ‘Tom Thumb Blues’ to ‘Visions of Johanna’ which swirls at a deeper darker level than the upfront anguish of the former song. The last verse of ‘Visions’ might see us coming down, heading for the crash, but for most of the song we’re swimming in a queasy murk full of strange apparitions and visual effects. This song was not performed in Rome, we have to go to Milan to catch it.

If you are a regular reader of my series you will know that I usually find the NET versions of ‘Visions’ lacking the qualities of the 1966 performances, but this Milan performance must rank as one of the better attempts to render the song. He’s in such good voice and there are interesting sounds from the guitar. The piano riffs give the song a strong underpinning.

Visions of Johanna

‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Visions’ are the great larger canvasses of the mid-sixties rock period. Originally, when Dylan played ‘Desolation Row’ solo, acoustically, its roots in folk music were very evident. There is the hint of a narrative, the ‘I’ – Lady and I – wanders from scene to scene, circus character to circus character, until returning, in the last verse, to the sick spiritual/emotional state of the ‘I’. ‘Visions’ does something similar. We float from hallucination to hallucination, through a lot of weird stuff, before returning to the ‘I’ who sees all these things ‘while my conscience explodes.’

‘Desolation Row’ seems better suited to performance, and we’ve heard some masterful versions over the years. This one from Milan joins them. I miss the harp break at the end but the rich piano chords lend this song their gravitas.

Desolation Row

Another rocker that started life as a folk song is of course ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ This song is more or less a fixture in the final stages of a concert. In 2012/2013 he often relegated it to the second to last slot, keeping ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ till last. The song, however, was on its way out. It would only be performed half a dozen times in 2015 and would drop out of sight until 2018.  It had to make way for Frank Sinatra.

‘Watchtower’ too has evolved from deliberately raucous apocalyptic blasts to thrumming ominously, the band dropping back during the verses. This Rome performance is restrained but no less effective. Indeed, rather than going out in a blaze of glory, the band dampens the song right down, the piano plays deftly but softly around the chords. A wonderful way to go out!

Watchtower

We’ll finish with ‘Watching the River Flow,’ another golden-oldie, a good old rock song post-mid-sixties. Dylan is not exactly celebrating indolence. ‘What’s the matter with me?’ he asks in the first line. He has a rueful attitude to sitting ‘on this old bank of sand’ to ‘watch the river flow.’ After all, he’s on the road, a pilgrim through life, he can’t linger too long even if you can sit back and watch it all, watch how it all just keeps moving.

Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though

No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow…

Watching the River Flow

That leaves me with a few from Dylan’s later albums to catch up on, songs like ‘Lovesick’ and ‘To Make You Feel My Love.’ Oh, and let’s not forget ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ We can’t miss out there, so I’ll be back for them in a final post for 2013 shortly.

Until then

Kia Ora

Dylanesque (comparative more Dylanesque, superlative most Dylanesque)

In the style of, or reminiscent of the music or lyrics of Bob Dylan (born 1941).

———-

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: For Part 3 of the Dylanesque series I decided we could look at three songs where the artist admitted the inspiration behind the music was Bob Dylan. So these tracks are musically inspired by Dylan but not necessarily lyrically similar.

First is Neil Young with Days That Used to Be from his awesome 1990 album Ragged Glory. Young revealed that the song is inspired by Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”.

Tony:  The music has a real feel of “My Back Pages” especially with the melody and chord sequence at the start of each verse.  Musically the song is very much in that vein, and there are moments throughout which remind us very closely of the origins.

I seem to remember this was actually called “Letter to Bob,” at one time although he later said the song was for all his musician  friends – including himself.  It is “the day WE used to be” not the day you used to be.

And I guess the key point is that it is a lot easier to have dreams of a land where materialism is not an issue, when one doesn’t have much money, but much harder to give one’s money away and live a life of poverty when it is there.

There’s nothing particularly profound in the lyrics, but the last verse does have a certain ring to it if one imagines it is Young talking to Dylan.

Talk to me, my long lost friend,
tell me how you are
Are you happy with
your circumstance,
are you driving a new car
Does it get you where you wanna go,
with a seven year warranty
Or just another
hundred thousand miles away
From days that used to be

Incidentally, if you are interested in more on Neil Young and Bob Dylan then Aaron’s article on Dylan and Young is packed with videos and really worth a look back.

Aaron: Next up we have Neil and his mates Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Seen Enough from their hugely underrated 1999 reunion album Looking Forward. It uses the verbal meter and rhythm from Subterranean Homesick Blues – so much so that Stills even calls it out on the sleeve notes. It is one of Stills’ finest lyrics in my opinion.

Tony: I love this song, not least because it so obviously a re-working of Homesick Blues but because it is a huge improvement on Homesick.  Dylan’s original broke the boundaries but I always have the feeling it was a rather rushed composition, and if Dylan had had more time or taken more time, he could have delivered something as good as “Seen Enough”.

It really is hard-hitting stuff…

I lost my innocence over intolerance
All the indignities heaped on the black man
We went to church, they all prayed for the white man
The cops and the preachers were most of 'em in the Klan
What's a kid s'posed to think when the adults
Are all such hypocrites impossibly smug

The next generation, the Woodstock nation
A little bit flaky, but no hesitation
Stop the war, it wasn't worth dyin' for
The paranoia of the cold warriors
Arrogant old men with domino theories
Fractured fairy tales tryin' to kill me

And do listen to that last instrumental section.  It is gorgeous.   And yes of course I know that being gorgeous was not Bob’s intention, but really there is nothing wrong with music that has that quality.

Aaron: Lastly we have a track from my favorite guitarist from the Britpop era:  Graham Coxon is the guitarist with Blur, but this is from his excellent solo album Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, it is You & I. Coxon has described the backing track as inspired by Dylan, and for me it is very reminiscent of 1965 Bob.

Tony: This is one of those annoying videos that I can’t get to play in the UK, so here’s the version I can get

but if you have trouble with this here’s the link that Aaron provided.

I love the way the lyrics are treated musically – one of those songs where reading the lyrics gives you no idea of exactly how this might all pan out

You and I gotta think for a while
Look to the sky, gotta decide if we're gonna see tomorrow

You and I gotta look to the sky
Are we gonna die wondering why life ain't nothing but sorrow?

I really enjoyed this – and indeed if you have a moment you might like to let the recording continue to play: “In the morning” is a beautiful piece of music.  Even if Blur was not youg thing you might still be interested in the fact that since moving on he has produced albums in which he plays all the parts, as well as writing the music.   Just play the album, and the rest of his music, if you don’t already know it.

(Note to self: If Untold Dylan runs out of steam, and I am still capable of using a computer – set up a website celebrating Graham Coxon).

(Second note to self: mention of Neil Young must mean it is time to play his “Foot of Pride” just one more time).

Previously published in this series: 

Part 1: Desolation Row

Part 2: There goes rhyming Dylan

by Jochen Markhorst

• I contain multitudes 1: Two Irish countries at odds
• I contain multitudes 2: To the buried that repose around us
• I contain multitudes part 3: The thrill of rhyming something that’s never been rhymed before
• I Contain Multitudes (2020) part 4: Boogaloo dudes carry the news

V          All the people on earth… all you

I’m just like Anne Frank - like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge - I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost - are made good again

Understandably, most of the attention for this first bridge goes out to that remarkable combination Anne Frank, Indiana Jones and the Rolling Stones. The Uncut reviewer categorises the triplet as “a truly bizarre set of juxtapositions”. Simon Vozick-Levinson picks out this fragment of text to illustrate that “some of his bons mots are absurd verging on insane,” as he writes in his declaration of love for the song in Rolling Stone, December 2020. The Guardian devotes the first half plus the title of the review to it (“I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones”: Bob Dylan continues return to new songs, 17 April 2020), and on the same day, New Musical Express classifies the unlikely pairing as “another flurry of pan-cultural references”.

And by the way, the Nobel laureate himself likes to throw the spotlight on it too, judging by the hashtag bombardment accompanying the tweet announcing the song: “#today and #tomorrow, #skeletons and #nudes, #sparkle and #flash, #AnneFrank and #IndianaJones, #fastcars and #fastfood, #bluejeans and #queens, #Beethoven and #Chopin, #life and #death.” Well, the PR coolies surrounding the then 78-year-old grandmaster do, anyway – we can assume Dylan is not tweeting himself.

When Douglas Brinkley asks about it, in the New York Times interview of 12 June 2020, Dylan serves him, and the reader, with a disappointingly insipid answer;

“You’re taking Anne’s name out of context, she’s part of a trilogy. You could just as well ask, “What made you decide to include Indiana Jones or the Rolling Stones?” The names themselves are not solitary. 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.”

Disappointing because, like a politician, Dylan first incorrectly paraphrases Brinkley’s question; Brinkley did not take Anne’s name out of context at all, but literally asked What made you decide to mention Anne Frank next to Indiana Jones? – properly in context, in other words. Furthermore, he does not, as Dylan half and half seems to hold against him, go “too much into detail”. Equally tendentious like a slippery politician is the continuation of Dylan’s “answer”, in which, pedantic almost, he turns Brinkley’s question into the “answer”: It’s the combination of them that adds up to something more than their singular parts. Which is true, of course, but most of all it is:

1. a) rather meaningless (what then, pray tell, is this “something more”), and it is
2. b) quite an open door (any combination is more than the singular parts – which is usually why we combine singular parts in the first place).

Besides, annoyingly, it is almost literally precisely what Brinkley was asking about; why did you combine those names? The interviewer does drill just a little bit further, fruitlessly, and then lets it go. And right he is: there is, after all, no deeper meaning behind the combination of these particular names – it could also have been any three other incompatible names. And this we know again thanks to this same interview, which apart from this excerpt is of course a brilliant, telling account – the elder Dylan is open, articulate, vulnerable, sharp and, well, wise is the word. The honest part, or rather: the sensible part of Dylan’s thoughts on the merger of Anne Frank with Indy and the Stones is that the creation of that merger occurs in a “trance state”;

“Somewhere in the universe those three names must have paid a price for what they represent and they’re locked together. And I can hardly explain that. Why or where or how, but those are the facts.”

So, I don’t know either. Still not enlightening, but at least relatable. Although it does seem explainable, incidentally. “I contain multitudes,” after all. Illustrating that wondrous identity definition becomes all the more clear by uniting completely incompatible characters. More clearly at least than by, say, I’m just like Goofy – like Fozzie Bear and them Home Alone idiots Harry and Marv, by uniting completely similar characters. It’s the same narrative trick as science fiction author Andy Weir uses in that crushing short story The Egg, the story in which the quasi-godly entity sends the “you” after his death back to a next life, and the you understands that he is multitudes, that he has been and will be every life in all time on earth;

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”

… among who was Anne Frank. The image is, in short, simply more penetrating when uniting opposites.

All in all, Andy Weir’s first-person from The Egg can very well explain to Dylan and Douglas Brinkley why or where or how those names are locked together; “All the people on earth… all you. Different incarnations of you.”

To be continued. Next up I Contain Multitudes part 6: All things lost on earth are treasured there

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

A full index to this series is given here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

When introducing the song from Tempest, ‘Soon after Midnight’ in 2012, I concurred with Jochen Markhorst’s assessment that this is ‘a real murder ballad.’  Ian Maxton from Spectrum Culture leans the same way, but allows for some ambiguity: The song “elides the border between tale and metaphor like one of those optical illusions where the picture changes depending on what details you fix your eyes on: it’s both. ‘It’s soon after midnight / And I don’t want nobody but you’ is maybe the most terrifying line Dylan ever wrote – and all the more so for its tenderness.”

After writing that article, my attention was drawn by the following verse:

Charlotte’s a harlot, she dresses in scarlet
Mary dresses in green
It’s soon after midnight and I’ve got a date with the fairy queen

Looking at that last line I began to wonder if we weren’t missing something. The ‘fairy queen’ is generally taken to refer to Titania from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it seems to fit as Titania can cast love spells and turn the clown Bottom into an ass. However, Titania is ultimately a benevolent figure, and the play itself something of a feel-good comic fantasy. There’s no compelling reason to murder Titania.

But what if Dylan had another fairy in mind, Acrasia (sometimes written Akrasia) from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene written from 1590 to 1596? Acrasia is thought to be derived from Homer’s portrait of Circe, the witch in The Odyssey, who turns Odysseus’ crew into pigs and keeps the hero dallying for a full year before he breaks free. Now here’s a more villainous character than Titania; not only a witch and seductress of bold knights, ‘Akrasia is an evil witch. Enslaves men to sexual desire… She is a vampire or succubus who sucks away the spirit of men.’

Her abode and the seat of her enchantment, the Bower of Bliss, is a false paradise. The undaunted Knight, Sir Guyon, sets out to destroy her Bower of Bliss and her power. This is as good as murder as ‘The bower of bliss references the female body; the Bower of Bliss is to be found between women’s legs.’

First, he must deal with two lesser harpies (Charlotte and Mary?) and overcome various obstacles. Sir Guyon, who is supposed to represent Reason and Temperance, himself descends into fury as he destroys the Bower of Bliss. Sir Guyon’s battle with Acrasia is symbolic, or indicative, of the conflict within the soul of the male hero.

‘Spenser treats these as hostile, morally disruptive forces within the soul, powers which reason must fight against in a perpetual psychomachia.’ Psychomachia refers to that state in which we do battle with ourselves, our good versus our evil selves, reminding me of a Dylan line from another song:

I fought with my twin, that enemy within
Until both of us fell by the way

All this is highly speculative, of course, with little textual support, but it seems to me to be more tuned to the drive behind the song than Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s worth remembering that the precise time, soon after midnight, is traditionally the witching hour, the hour of enchantment, when supernatural forces are at their strongest.

The song was sung many times in 2013, but there is one performance that stands out from the rest, and may indeed be a ‘best ever’ (at least until the next best ever comes along) – this one from Stockholm (13^th Oct)

Soon After Midnight.

We’ll stay in Stockholm for this wonderfully contemplative version of ‘Scarlet Town.’ I introduced this song in 2012 and there’s not much I can add here. There might well be an ‘optical illusion’ effect operating here too, depending on which details you hone in on. However you interpret the song, there’s no doubt it casts a powerful spell. It has a sombre mood and reflective feel. It’s my favourite track from the album, and yet I find it hard to account for the mysterious hold it has; the best of Dylan’s later songs are multifaceted and something new seems to be revealed each time you listen. Hard to find a better performance than this one.

Scarlet Town

We’ll stay in Stockholm for ‘Early Roman Kings,’ another Tempest song with shifting perspectives and points of view. Most significant to my mind is the shift to the first person after the second verse, turning the song into another dramatic monologue, and making it sound as if the persona has adopted the position close to those scary early Roman kings, whoever they are:

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
Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings
Gonna break it wide open like the early Roman Kings

For my ear the song lacks the emotional coherence, like ‘Scarlet Town,’ which would bring these disparate images into some kind of focus and the song seems to fly apart at the seams.

I suggest the reader check out Jochen Markhorst’s series of articles on the song. He does a wonderful job breaking the song down verse by verse. He finds it to be full of references but, after relating it to the ‘mosaic like character’ of many great Dylan songs like ‘Shelter From the Storm’ and ‘Memphis Blues Again,’ admits that, ‘The big difference is the lack of an unambiguous charge, or at least: of a guiding portent. Refrain lines such as “I’ll give you a shelter from the storm”, “there’s no time to think”, “can this really be the end, to be stuck inside of Mobile” and “only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long” have a connecting, overarching quality – they direct the emotional charge of the images in the preceding lines…

‘Dylan offers no such handle in “Early Roman Kings”. Not only is “early Roman Kings” not a loaded term, as “Mobile”, “shelter” or “Mississippi” are, it is not even a term with an actual, overarching quality; nobody has any knowledge of the seven historical early Roman Kings (the first rulers of Rome, 753-510 BCE).’

Early Roman Kings

I’m going to stay mostly in Stockholm to pick up some other songs Dylan was playing in 2013 along with the Tempest songs. Since I’ve introduced these songs before many times I’ll move through them briskly. Enjoy these wonderful recordings.

Let’s begin with that wonderful melancholy ballad, ‘Forgetful Heart’ we covered in some detail in 2011. The song is still going strong in 2013.

Forgetful Heart

With regard to ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’ also from Together Through Life I still hark back to the harp and trumpet performance of 2009 but have no issues with this one:

Beyond Here Lies Nothing

Dylan carried over the more stripped-down arrangement of ‘Summer Days’ that we found in 2012. It’s taken me a while to really like this arrangement, as I have preferred the ‘big band’ versions of 2005, but it’s hard to resist this more restrained, chuggy, bass and drums driven version. A fine jazzy performance. A great vocal too.

Summer Days

We’ve listened to some amazing versions of ‘High Water’ over the years. Too many ‘best ever’ performances to keep track of. Editor Tony Attwood has rightly brought attention to a cheeky 2012 version in which Dylan taunts his audience with the harmonica and I trust he’ll enjoy this somewhat smoother vocal performance. Another ‘best ever’ to add to our collection.

High Water

I’m glad we haven’t lost ‘Spirit on the Water’ – it will last until 2018 – for this gentle song has delicate shadings. The song celebrates a relationship, however painful it might be. In the end, love trumps everything else:

I’m saying it plain
these ties are strong enough to bind

Spirit on the Water

‘Things Have Changed’ is also a survivor, and I’m glad of that too. Dylan’s rebellious spirit shines brightly in this song: ‘Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through.’ Jochen Markhorst has cast his illumination on this song, ‘“Things Have Changed’ is mainly lyrical, expresses in unrelenting, poetic images the discomfort of a displaced, numb narrator, through which the poet strings mysterious observations and half-known references.”

And we mustn’t forget the humour of the song.

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

Things Have Changed.

That humble, reflective song, ‘What Good Am I?’ will be the only survivor from Oh Mercy but will not last beyond 2014. Something of a rarity, its self-questioning and self-doubt make for a refreshing change from Dylan’s usual postures. The only other song like it I can think of right now is ‘What Can I Do For You?’ off Saved, 1980.

What Good am I?

Again Dylan improves on the 2012 performance of ‘Simple Twist of Fate.’ He’s learned how to make his voice softer, less bark and more croon. A welcome development. Those softer tones are full of implication and feeling. Dylan is finding his new voice, a voice beyond the croak and the bark; Frank Sinatra can’t be far behind.

Simple Twist of Fate

Tony Attwood has suggested that ‘Waitin’ for You,’ which was written in 2002 after the great writing burst that led to Love and Theft, lacks focus with a tendency to random images. I won’t argue with that. We often have to read unity into a Dylan song; he sets it up that way. But perhaps the emotional charge of this song isn’t sufficient to unify the images, I don’t know. You can overthink a Dylan song: he sets it up that way, little traps for the intellect that seeks to impose order on everything, even a Dylan song.

Waitin’ for You

Over 2012/13 Dylan started replacing ‘Watchtower’ as the final song of the night with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ A much gentler way to finish a concert. Here it is, our last song from that incomparable Stockholm concert, and Dylan’s final song for the concert. I always enjoy Donnie Herron’s violin, and get an echo from Rolling Thunder. The song still swings, but not as cheekily as in 2009 where it became a somewhat exaggerated waltz; this is just a gentle lilt. Some subtle harp at the end to cap everything off.

Blowin’ in the wind

So that caps me off for this post. I’ll be back with more from 2013 soon

Until then

Kia Ora

Poster photograph supplied by Joe LaMay

Commentary from Tony Attwood

“Untold Dylan” has no editorial rule book as to what should or should not be published on the site.  Basically, if we like it we publish it.

So although no one has provided a copy of a Dylan poster before I see no reason why we should not put up a picture of a couple of 1980s posters, since they have been sent in my Joe LaMay.

By Tony Attwood

Coming to “Seven Days” in the Dylan Cover a Day series, I had high hopes, as it seemed to me a song that Dylan had never really taken to its limit (it only got 18 performances across a 20 year period ending in 1996), and which had some real hidden potential.

Indeed several musicians of note have had a go at the song and yet somehow they don’t seem to get anything new out of it.   Although please don’t make that comment of mine encourage you to move on elsewhere immediately because there is a bonus at the end – although it might cost you.

But yes, these opening songs are disappointing, and in listening to them I wondered if the fact that there was something else there in the song, was simply all in my imagination.   Ron Wood’s version for example never really takes that dramatic leap which I feel lurks within…

Joe Cocker, another man of great eminence of course, has a spikier go which I prefer, although I still find something missing.  And I find the shouting out of the first line of each verse a little obvious.

Mountain take the view that there must be something important in the song and again feel it needs to be shouted out, and that gives me the thought that maybe the opposite approach is needed.   (Unless there really never was anything there at all – and by this stage I was starting to think that was the case).

But if that is the approach that is required, then Jimmy Barnes seems to be able to do it more naturally and hence with more conviction.  When he sings “every inch of the way” followed by some really good vocal harmonies, yes I start believing in the song’s possibilities again.  Maybe there is a really good cover version out there, if only I could track it down…

I even went touring the foreign language versions but really couldn’t find the innovation that I thought must be there somewhere.  This is Niedecken – I am presuming Wolfgang Niedecken, the singer with BAP.   Interesting, but still…

And so, in disappointment, and as a last resort, I turned to Spotify – which of course then means I can’t put a recording here.   But if you have a Spotify subscription or can find it somewhere else, do try Born 53’s version of the song, if for nothing else, then for the fact that they’ve changed the beat and so changed the meaning of the entire song.  Suddenly it’s bouncy and a fun celebration of what is going to happen.  It really does work.

Then if you want to go any further there is Bitter Sweet’s version.   Once again the artist has used his creativity and insight to build on Bob’s work but not slavishly copy the original style and intent.  As a result we get Bob’s song with and lot of extras and thoughts of new directions that music can be taken.

I’m not here to convince you to buy a Spotify subscription, but if maybe if you don’t have one you could get a free trial or something like that, so you could use it to listen to these two recordings.   They really do give a completely new set of insights into a song that does have all the possibilities that I felt must be hiding in there somewhere.   I’m just sorry the other more eminent musicians didn’t quite find them.

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)