Untold Dylan

Dylan’s opening lines (revisited): the top ten (so far)

Posted on May 20, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood, based on an article written with Dearbhla Egan

About eight years ago Dearbhla and I concocted the idea of noting down some of our favourite opening lines from Dylan songs. I think at the time the idea was that we would then go further and maybe even make an index of all the opening lines of Dylan’s songs, just because…. well, just because we could. Perhaps just to see if there was any pattern, or just to see if Dylan was particularly brilliant at opening lines, or whether the lines we all remember come from later in the songs.

Of course, at first it is easy to think of the opening lines that stay with us because they start our favourite songs. Like the first song on the alphabetical list of opening lines below “Ain’t it just like the night…” We all know that one. Brilliant song, brilliant first line.

Anyway, I stumbled on this work that we did and which we published here, but then never went back to, and I wondered if there were more gems to be found. So I went through all Dylan’s compositions that begin with A or B and added them to the list, just to see what I got. And really…. it was a little disappointing. Dylan can do exquisite first lines that stay in the memory forever, but often the first line is just an opener, like the chord played at the start to get us in the mood. In short, the opening line doesn’t seem to be that vital to Dylan when writing a song. Which is probably why Dearbhla and I stopped making our list.

But since no one else seems to have done an index of Dylan’s opening lines, I thought maybe I would re-publish what we did, and then go on and gradually finish it, so there is an index of Dylan’s opening lines on the internet.

Mostly I wanted to look at this again because even in this list of just about one sixth of Bob’s full list of compositions that have lyrics, there are some gems. Such as that first one (Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?). I mean, how can one write a more amazing first line than that?

Now in pondering all of this I thought I would develop my own list of Dylan’s ten best openers, as I remember them at the moment. And then see if by building a complete list of Dylan’s opening list (complete in the sense that I am for the moment only considering songs where the lyrics have actually been published). Here is my list for now.

Darkness at the break of noon.
Far between sundown’s finish and midnight’s broken toll.
I can hear the turning of the key
If you see her say hello.
My love she speaks like silence.
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside.
Shadows have fallen and I’ve been here all day…
The pawnbroker roared also so did the landlord.
Well, it’s always been my nature to take chances.
You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.

I’m going to plod on through the rest of the songbook and pick out some more favourite opening lines and publish one or two more updates on “Dylan’s opening lines” – if you would like to add any, please do make a comment and I’ll put them in the list.

So here we go…

Dylan’s opening lines… from a list that will be continued.

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet? (Visions of Johanna)

All the early Roman kings in their sharkskin suits bow ties and buttons high top boots (Early Roman Kings)

All the tired horses in the sun (All the tired horses)

Are you ready, are you ready? (Are you ready?)

As I went out one morning ( As I went out one morning)

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden, the wounded flowers were dangling from the vines (Ain’t Taking)

At the time of my confession, and the hour of my deepest need (Every grain of sand)

Band of the hand (Band of the hand)

Been so long since a strange woman slept in my bed… (I and I)

Beyond the horizon, behind the sun, at the end of the rainbow, life has just begun. (Beyond the horizon)

Black Rider Black Rider you been livin’ too hard (Black Rider)

Buckets of rain, buckets of tears (Buckets of rain)

Bye and bye, I’m breathin’ a lover’s sigh (Bye and Bye)

Come around you rovin’ gamblers, and a story I will tell. (Rambling, Gambling Willie)

Crimson flames tied through my ears, rollin’ high and mighty traps (My back pages)

Darkness at the break of noon (It’s all right Ma, I’m only bleeding)

Everything went from bad to worse, money never changed a thing (Up to Me)

Far between sundown’s finish and midnight’s broken toll (Chimes of Freedom)

Fat man lookin’ in a blade of steel (Dignity)

Go away from my window, leave at your own chosen speed (It Ain’t Me Babe)

God said to Abraham “Kill me a son” (Highway 61 Revisited)

Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride (Dirt Road Blues)

He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacks (Can you please Crawl out Your Window)

Hollis Brown he lived on the outside of town (Ballad of Hollis Brown)

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun (Romance in Durango)

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? (Blowing in the wind)

I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you (All I really want to do)

I can hear the turning of the key (Abandoned Love)

I crossed the green mountain, I slept by the stream (‘Cross the green mountain)

I hate myself for lovin’ you and the weakness that it showed (Dirge)

I ain’t looking to compete with you (All I really want to do)

I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love (Wedding Song)

I love you pretty baby (Beyond here lies nothing)

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze (Balled in Plain D)

I woke in the mornin’, wand’rin’ wasted and worn out (Black crow blues)

If I had wings, like Noah’s dove (Dink’s Song)

I’m walking through the summer nights, jukebox playing low (Standing in the Doorway)

I’m walkin’ through streets that are dead (Love Sick)

If today was not an endless highway (Tomorrow is a long time)

If you find it in your heart, can I be forgiven? Guess I owe You some kind of apology (Saving Grace)

If you see her say hello (If You See Her Say Hello)

If your memory serves you well, we were going to meet again and wait (This wheel’s on fire)

In the lonely night, In the blinking stardust of a pale blue light (Born in Time)

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need (Every Grain of Sand)

I’ve just reached a place where the willow don’t bend (Going Going Gone)

I was riding on the Mayflower when I thought I spied some land (115th Dream)

I woke in the mornin’, wand’rin’ (Black Crow Blues)

Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement talking ’bout the government. (Subterranean Homesick Blues)

Like a lion tears the flesh off of a man, so can a woman who passes herself off as a male. (Foot of Pride)

Man thinks, cuz he rules the world, he can do with it as he please (Licence to kill)

May God bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true (Forever Young)

My love she speaks like silence. (Love Minus zero / No Limit)

My name is Donald White, you see (Ballad of Donald White)

Nobody feels any pain (Just like a woman)

Now the ragman draws circles up and down the block (Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again)

Of war and peace the truth just twists, it’s curfew gull it glides (Gates of Eden)

Oh I’m sailing away, my own true love. (Boots of Spanish Leather)

Oh, the benches were stained with tears and perspiration (Day of the Locusts)

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside (Dark Eyes)

Oh, help me in my weakness (The Drifter’s Escape)

Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble, ancient footprints are everywhere. (When I Paint my Masterpiece)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? (Hard Rain)

Old man sailin’ in a dinghy boat (Apple suckling tree)

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night (Hurricane)

Ring them bells ye heathen from the city that dreams (Ring them Bells)

Sad I’m a-sittin’ on the railroad track (Ballad for a friend)

Seen the arrow on the doorpost saying this land is condemned (Blind Willie McTell)

Shadows have fallen and I’ve been here all day, (Not Dark Yet)

She’s got everything she needs she’s an artist she don’t look back (She Belongs to Me)

Sometimes I’m in the mood, I wanna leave my lonesome home (Baby I’m in the mood for you)

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press. (Idiot Wind)

Some of us turn off the lights and we live in the moonlight shooting by (Red River Shore)

Something there is about you that strikes a match in me (Something there is About You)

Standing on the waters casting your bread while the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing? (Jokerman)

Stake my future on a hell of a past (Silvio)

Ten thousand men on a hill (Ten Thousand Men)

The air is gettin’ hotter, there’s a rumblin’ in the sky, (Lucinda Williams Tryin’ to get to Heaven)

The pale moon rose in its glory out on the Western town (Tempest)

The pawnbroker roared also so did the landlord (She’s your lover now)

The river whispers in my ear, I’ve hardly a penny to my name (Tell Ol Bill)

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief (All along the Watchtower)

There’s a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. (Where are you Tonight? (Journey through Dark Heat))

There’s guns across the river aimin’ at ya (Billy 1)

They’re selling postcards of the hanging (Desolation Row)

They say everything can be replaced, yet every distance is not near (I Shall be Released)

Twas another lifetime, one of toil and blood (Shelter from the Storm)

Twilight on the frozen lake (Never say Goodbye)

Up on the white veranda, she wears a necktie and a Panama Hat (Black Diamond Bay)

Well, if I had to do it all over again (All over you)

Well, it’s always been my nature to take chances (Angelina)

Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto they are ridin’ down the line (Bob Dylan’s Blues)

Well, there was this movie I seen one time about a man riding ’cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck. (Brownsville Girl)

Well, my nerves are exploding and my body’s tense (Til I fell in love with you)

Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can’t jump it (Absolutely Sweet Marie)

What’s the matter with me, I don’t have much to say (Watching the River Flow)

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Eastertime too (Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues)

While riding on a train goin’ west I fell asleep for to take my rest (Bob Dylan’s Dream)

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carrol with a cane that he twirled round his diamond ring finger (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol)

You been down to the bottom with a bad man, babe (Baby stop crying)

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand, you see somebody naked and you say “who is that man?” (Ballad of a Thin Man)

You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend (Positively 4th Street)

There is an index to our current series and most recent posts on the home page.

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A Dylan cover a day: Sara

Posted on May 19, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

“Sara” was played live by Dylan 33 times over a three month period in late 1975 and early 1976, and then set aside – as indeed many other Dylan compositions have been across the years. And it’s not a song I’m particularly drawn to, although that is not to say I dislike it, so I suspect I haven’t listened to it much in these past decades. And it is an easy song to remember and play in one’s head (if one wants to, that is).

So, not a particular favourite of mine, and coming to this song as the next piece in the “Cover a Day” series I did wonder if many artists would have tackled the idea of a cover. It is after all a very distinctive song, and the notion of a radical change to the instrumentation, speed or accompaniment seemed unlikely. Although in that thought I turned out to be quite wrong – and most certainly not for the first time.

But Barb Jungr has recorded the piece, and she knows what she’s doing so I turned to that with interest… not least because the simple piano introduction is short, but gorgeous, and she seems to have caught the image of the song to perfection. The piano remains restrained but very interesting throughout… the pictures painted by the song come more to life than I remember them doing in Bob’s own recording.

I am lucky in that where I live and write there is silence – there’s no traffic noise, very occasionally the grandchildren of the family in the next house along the road play in their garden… but today there is silence. Perfect for hearing this version of this song. The giant trees at the far end of the garden wave very slightly in the breeze as if in understanding.

This music is so restrained, so gorgeous, … I imagine it has to be heard in the right circumstances. Only the end, the last two chords, seem to offer a foreboding of something going wrong. But let’s not dwell on that.

Els Miralls de Dylan

This band perform in Catalan, which (surely obviously) I don’t speak but that never worries me especially, for it is the gorgeous sound of the accompaniment and the exquisite harmonies that draws one in. Indeed I find I don’t actually need the lyrics; this is just a total sound. A gorgeous end too, on that hovering unresolved chord with the briefest of resolutions just when I thought there wasn’t going to be one.

The Casual Lean

One wouldn’t actually expect an indie rock band from Massachusetts to pick on this song, and they’ve added a level of aggression to the song, which was certainly unexpected, at least by me. The gentleness has gone, and yet it doesn’t sound inappropriate, and maybe that is the secret of so much of Dylan’s music. He really has so often given us songs that could be treated in a multiplicity of ways, and still make sense.

I’m not sure that they don’t take it too far in the penultimate verse, but it made me pause and think and while in the end I do feel they had pushed the idea more than I wanted, I’m still glad I listened.

Wiehe & Forsberg

I was really pleased to have another version of the song to perform after the Casual Lean’s approach, for I felt a definite need to be taken back down. And this version Swedish does create a real sense of emptiness – a feeling of what eventually happened between the couple afterwards, which of course was not there at the start. There’s a bleakness here which is interesting to hear today – but I am not sure I would have enjoyed it when I first started this series during the lockdown period in England and I was, in a very real sense, totally on my own.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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NET 2012 part 2 The Ivory Revolution Continues

Posted on May 18, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Please note, a list of past articles in this series appears here.

As we saw in the last post, the songs from Dylan’s new album, Tempest, hardly impacted Dylan’s setlists in 2012. Songs that would make a major impact, ‘Duquesne Whistle’ and ‘Long and Wasted Years’ didn’t appear until 2013. I covered ‘Early Roman Kings’ and a sole performance of ‘Scarlet Town’ in the previous post, but one more song from Tempest, that deadly little ballad ‘Soon After Midnight,’ was performed twice in 2012, and ‘Pay in Blood’ was performed once only, in Detroit, Nov 13^th, but there is no known recording of that concert.

We can’t approach ‘Soon After Midnight’ without understanding the role that dramatic monologues play in Dylan’s work, especially his 21^st Century songs. This needs a whole article to itself, which I have on my list to write after this NET series has finished, but in the meantime, if you have enjoyed, ‘My Own Version of You’ from Rough and Rowdy Ways, you will know what I mean when I talk of a scurrilous, creepy narrator who tries to inveigle us into his point of view in that song. ‘Soon After Midnight’ is something of a forerunner to that later song, featuring another creepy narrator.

There are various types of unreliable narrators from the honestly deluded to the deliberately deceptive. In ‘Soon After Midnight’ we have a narrator who can barely hide his murderous intent. The apparent sweetness and gentleness of the melody and sweetness of some of the lyrics fail to hide the homicidal nature of the narrator.

I am reminded here of the poem, ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning, a master of the dramatic monologue. In the poem the narrator is showing somebody a portrait of his now deceased wife.

She had
A heart
-- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere

There’s a nasty edge to the comment that reveals the man’s jealousy and secret rage. The woman was, he is suggesting, unfaithful and promiscuous. Murder is his solution:

Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.

A chilling comment. We get the same kind of chill from ‘Soon After Midnight’ as it slowly dawns on us that the narrator has murdered these women he speaks of. Here are the give-away lines:

They chirp and they chatter, what does it matter
They’re lying there dying in their blood

I am indebted to Jochen Markhorst for a fuller understanding of the evil that lies behind this song:

‘By the time the killing floors occur, in the third verse, the attentive listener begins to realize that this is not just a love song, that this is not some desolate whiny bigot, outside pining lonely between dusk and dawn, but that something else is going on… It is, in short, a real murder ballad. Not a love song, not a song that, as the reviewer of Pitchfork thinks, belongs to “Blood On The Tracks”, because of some bitter, vicious heartbreak, but a song like “Mac The Knife”, or “Where The Wild Roses Grow”, or “Little Sadie”, songs in which the protagonist is a murderous psychopath… The upcoming murder remains, however, as in the more subtle thrillers, beyond the reach of the cameras. The contrast is reinforced by the misleading musical decoration; it is sweet, seductive and slightly melancholy, just like Dylan’s delivery.’

There’s a nasty kick in the last verse as we realize he’s not talking about some new romantic adventure, but his next victim:

It's now or never
More than ever
When I met you I didn't think you would do
It's soon after midnight
And I don't want nobody but you

This performance is from the second to last concert of the year, Washington, Nov 20^th, and without any tricks, projects our vicious narrator in all his gentle deceptiveness.

Soon After Midnight

While on the subject of murder ballads, ‘Delia,’ not performed since 2000, gets a single playing in 2012. Although listed on the Bob Dylan official website as a Dylan song, it was in fact written by Karl Silbersdorf and Dick Toops, originally recorded by Johnny Cash in 1962 for his The Sound of Johnny Cash album. The country legend re-recorded it in 1994, a year after Dylan included it on his album of cover songs, World Gone Wrong.

We’ll never know why Dylan revisited this song after twelve years, perhaps because it does deal with murder and fits neatly with the violence of the songs on Tempest. Here it is performed in Las Vegas, 27^th October.

Delia

Another rarity for 2012 is a one-off performance of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Shadows,’ off his 1982 album of the same name. Again, we can’t know what drew Dylan to this song. It’s no murder ballad, no shadow of death lies over it. In fact it’s a sweet, lyrical love song. Rather refreshing, and Dylan does a loving cover version. (12^th Oct)

Shadows

We now switch focus from rarities to the songs Dylan most often played in 2012. ‘Ballad of a Thin Man,’ ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ and ‘Thunder On The Mountain’ were all played a whopping eighty-five times during the year, which saw eighty-six concerts in all. It’s curious that three of these songs are from his classic 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited.

His main interest in these songs, it seems to me, is adapting them with fresh arrangements for his new love – the grand piano. In 2009/10 we saw ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and some other hard rockers stripped down to their rock ‘n roll essentials, and the rendition is similarly minimal in these two performances of the song. The song is no longer guitar-heavy but thumps along with bass and drums, some light guitar work, and of course Dylan’s strange piano interjections. Sometimes he sounds like a child who’s just learned how to play boogie, hammering individual notes or odd little riffs, obsessive and repetitive; it’s a completely unique style, both primitive and sophisticated at the same time.

This first one’s from Toronto:

Highway 61 Revisited (A)

This one from Barlo (16^th July) is even more stripped down. Odd vocal phrasing which hits the rhythm rather than arcing across it. You need to know the lyrics to pick them up when sung in this rushed, jerky way.

Highway 61 Revisited (B)

Dylan’s voice is very rough and full of bark in 2012. If I were looking for the best vocal outreach in these years I’d go back to 2011, where you get the feeling that Dylan is really working his voice. In 2012 the sweet, mellifluous tones with which he would soon negotiate the Frank Sinatra songs, able to soar up into the high notes, had not yet emerged and his vocal range feels severely constrained. 2013 will see an improvement, 2012 seems to me a low point in Dylan’s vocalisation.

I notice it in this performance of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ from Dresden (3^rd July). He screeches a few high notes but it feels like a struggle.

Like A Rolling Stone (A)

By the time we get to Edmonton three months later (Oct 9^th), his voice seems to have improved somewhat. Here, he slows the pace of the song, and seems more in tune with the spirit of it. To my mind, a better performance all round.

Like A Rolling Stone (B)

Dylan’s still using the echo effect for ‘Ballad of a Thin Man.’ This Toronto performance is centre stage (I don’t hear any piano) with an edgy harp break. His broken voice seems to suit the song. Not so much spooky as accusative and triumphant. Best not to stray into strange and unlikely places where weird shit is happening!

Ballad of a Thin Man

In a somewhat quieter, more reflective vein we have this one from Sao Paulo (22^nd April). I prefer this one as the harp break is jazzier and more whimsical and there is a more understated feel to the performance.

Ballad of a Thin Man (B)

Over the next couple of years, Dylan would develop a pattern for delivering ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ He would begin centre stage, sing the first verses, blast out a chorus on the harp, then do his odd, rubbery walk to the grand where he would finish the song off. In 2012, however, he was still trying out different approaches.

In this one from Winnepeg, he doesn’t play the harp at all, and concentrates on developing the piano accompaniment. Once more this indefatigable song works its magic. Lyrically, it mixes the regular verses with the 1984 version. You can hear the switch in the last verse:

Now I’m going back again
I’ve got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
Are an illusion to me now
Some are masters of illusion
Some are ministers of the trade
All of the strong delusion
All of their beds are unmade
Me I'm still heading towards the sun
Trying to stay out of the joint
We always did love the very same one
We just saw her from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue

(For some further lyrical variations of this song see the Bob Dylan Lyric Archive)

Tangled up in Blue (A)

This one, from Toronto, is introduced by the harp and has a harp break before the last verse, but Dylan does move to the piano before the last verse. And that is Mark Knopfler on the guitar. As in 2011 Knopfler travelled with Dylan during the fourth, North American leg of the tour, often playing on the first few songs. Of this leg of the tour Wikipedia comments: “The tour was met with a mixed to negative response. Many reviews complained about Dylan’s decreasing vocal abilities and his lack of piano playing skills. As usual with Dylan reviews the press complained about Dylan’s changing of song, beyond recognition sometimes. The tour’s attendance was fairly poor with many reviews reporting fans leaving long before the concert was over.”

Tangled up in Blue (B)

While I have already commented on Dylan’s restricted vocal range in 2012, I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to make your own judgement on Dylan’s piano playing. I find it strange and intriguing, if not ‘good’ in the conventional sense. Who other than Dylan would dare play in this odd, elliptical way? One way or the other, he gives it a fair go in this ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ (Toronto) aiming for a jazzy effect. Again the musical backing is minimal, with bass and drums holding it together. You can see where he’s going with this, it’s just a pity that his voice hardly seems up to it.

Thunder on the Mountain (A)

Same with this version from Madison (Nov 5^th), although the vocal seems marginally better than Toronto. Another jazzy ending. Interesting the way the band picks up on Dylan’s piano riffs and feeds them back to him. This is my preferred version.

Thunder on the Mountain (B)

That’s all for now. Be back soon with more from 2012.

Until then,

Kia Ora

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Bob Dylan: the lyrics AND the music – Ballad for a Friend

Posted on May 17, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

When I wrote a review of this song in 2015, I noted the piece as one of the forgotten Dylan masterpieces and made a few passing references to the music – which (re-reading them now, eight years later) I find are fair enough as far as they go, but… they miss something rather important. In fact, I find now that I missed out the key issue which is the way the chords work as a background to the melody.

My defence for that error is that although the song was recorded in 1962 hardly anyone has noticed it, and even when I came to write about the song in “A cover a day” I only had one cover version that I could find. And to my shame I have to admit that I satisfied myself by saying little more than the fact that I thought the band had missed the point of the song.

But there is something else that the cover (linked in at the end of this piece) misses and which helps explains why (in my view at least) the cover doesn’t work. In the original (above) there is no regularity as to the way Dylan plays the guitar. Even when he is just playing alternating chords he keeps changing when those two chords alternate in each line, while the melody proceeds over the top.

Now most people, when they play a solo guitar accompaniment to themselves singing, keep the guitar part steady and regular, letting the variation of the song exist in the ever-changing lyrics.

But Dylan keeps on making subtle changes to the length of time he holds onto each chord. Quite often these are very subtle changes – just a beat or two – but it gives a real feel in the song for the randomness of life which is really at the heart of the song. As for example in the simple details of the cause of the friend’s death…

A diesel truck was rollin’ slow,
Pullin’ down a heavy load.
It left him on a Utah road.

Now I doubt very much that Dylan actually thought about this consciously. In my experience when talking to songwriters about the way a song evolves and is played, the answer to “why did you play it like that?” is, as often as not, “I don’t know it just came out like that.” In short, the great talents feel the music and put in subtle variations, while the regular musicians play the music regularly, making each verse pretty much the same as the verse before, letting the lyrics be the heart of the evolution of the song. By and large they don’t change the way the chords work.

But it does show that this notion of making the music respond to the lyrics (and sometimes vice versa) was there from the start, albeit (in this song) in a very subtle way.

Now, as I did manage to note before, what we also have here is a clash between the notes played on the guitar, and at times the notes used in the melody. That itself is something that does turn up in a lot of blues-related songs, so in this regard Dylan is not being particularly unusual – although those subtle clashes do have an emotional impact.

However, when added to this additional set of changes in the way Dylan plays the rotating chords, the music gives us an extra feeling of disconnect, which is what is at the heart of the song. And this in fact compensates for the fact that, as I did manage to note before, the melody is based around the notes of the chord of A major (A, C#, E).

So what we have is a melody that doesn’t change that much, and the use of just two chords on the guitar, but a constant variation in the way those two chords are played against the melody. But then to give constancy, as I did manage to note in the first review, “…his foot is tapping throughout, tapping out the unchanging rhythm of the truck rolling down the road.”

Thus there is this most unusual mix of a regular beat, changing lyrics, regular chords but changing at different times, and regular melody (with variations as we go along).

I’ve always loved this song, right from the moment I first heard it, but never actually worked out before what it is within the song that keeps drawing me back to it. Yet what we find here is a key to Dylan’s musical world: that ability to take any element of the song and vary it, in the most unexpected ways.

A lot of the commentaries written about Dylan’s songs focus on this effect in terms of the lyrics. Here we see him doing it in a very, very early composition, within the music too. I’m rather pleased I have finally understood what makes this song so attractive.

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Black Rider part 6: ‘Tis but a scratch

Posted on May 16, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Previously in this series…

by Jochen Markhorst

VI ‘Tis but a scratch

Black rider, black rider, tell me when, tell me how
If there ever was a time, then let it be now
Let me go through, open the door
My soul is distressed, my mind is at war
Don’t hug me, don’t flatter me, don’t turn on the charm
I take a sword, and hack off your arm

It is the second-weirdest line of verse in the song, I take a sword, and hack off your arm. Of course, Shakespeare has plenty of limbs hacked off too (Henry V, Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus), but when we hear this line surely we all think of that other classic from the canon, of Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975), of Scene 4, “Arthur Meets a Brave Knight… and Cuts His Limbs Off”:

BLACK KNIGHT: None shall pass.
ARTHUR: I have no quarrel with you, good Sir Knight, but I must cross this bridge.
BLACK KNIGHT: Then you shall die.
ARTHUR: I command you, as King of the Britons, to stand aside!
BLACK KNIGHT: I move for no man.
ARTHUR: So be it!
ARTHUR and BLACK KNIGHT: Aaah!, hiyaah!, etc.
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s left arm off]
ARTHUR: Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
BLACK KNIGHT: ‘Tis but a scratch.
ARTHUR: A scratch? Your arm’s off!
BLACK KNIGHT: No, it isn’t.
ARTHUR: Well, what’s that, then?
BLACK KNIGHT: I’ve had worse.

We all know the continuation. The Black Knight does not give up, loses his right arm as well, fights on without arms, kicking ferociously, loses his legs, then offers a draw, and as a now bored Arthur continues his march without further regard for the Black Knight who is now reduced to a torso plus head, the Black Knight shouts after him: “Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off!”

The build-up to Dylan’s bizarre final line in no way prepares for the alienating finale. In fact, it seems mostly a rather classic build-up to a bouncer that will confirm that the Black Rider is a metaphor for Death, or something similarly profound. At least, pleas like tell me when, tell me how, the suggestion that “now is the time”, and heavily symbolic images like a door that will now be opened, push the associations rather compellingly in that direction.

The key line, My soul is distressed, my mind is at war is likewise hardly alarming; a fairly classic mirroring with My heart is at rest from the previous verse as well as a “normal” bridge to I suffer in silence in the subsequent, final verse. The substantively rather empty distinction between “my heart”, “my soul” and “my mind” has been used by Dylan, for little insightful reasons, since 1963, since “Don’t Think Twice” (I give her my heart but she wanted my soul), but that is a sticking point that has little to do with this. The word choice and combination are remarkable, though. We know a distressed mind from the age-old English street ballad “Lily Of The West”;

I courted lovely Flora
Some pleasure for to find
But she turned unto another man
Which sore distressed my mind
She robbed me of my liberty
Deprived me off my rest

… which is also in Dylan’s repertoire (officially we know the fine, somewhat un-Dylanesque recording from Dylan, 1973), just as a distressed soul is rather archaic. A word combination that we mostly encounter in stiff nineteenth-century translations of the Classics, often with Proust, or also with Shakespeare (“O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul!”, Comedy Of Errors, for example).

My mind is at war, then, is still somewhat alienating. The thrust – the narrator being in an emotional crisis – is clear, but the specific choice of words seems inappropriate; my mind at war signals an inner conflict, a moral dilemma, something like that. But not so much an emotional crisis anyway as a mental one. Which the subsequent accumulatio only illustrates all the more explicitly. Don’t hug me, don’t flatter me, don’t turn on the charm… all outward-looking imperatives to ward off emotional expressions – not utterances signaling mental conflict, at any rate.

A friendly analyst might then still conclude that the narrator in “Black Rider” is emotionally troubled to such an extent that his mind is affected, that his mind tries to ward off feelings of anger, confusion, of depression perhaps even, and then becomes at war with himself. But that same kind analyst must then also admit that the last, extremely aggressive threat (I hack off your arm) is, like all the other words in this verse, directed outwards, towards the black rider. Or to the Black Knight, for that matter.

The incongruity and alienating choice of words does not bother Dylan himself, apparently. The live performances of “Black Rider” are textually faithful; he changes virtually nothing about the words for dozens of live performances. But there is a turnaround nonetheless; when he resumes his Never Ending Tour in Japan in the spring of 2023, playing “Black Rider” for the 103rd time, the song has taken on a gorgeous, dreamy arrangement – from the second verse onwards suddenly tightened, with continuous drum accompaniment and leaning on the same simple guitar lick, or rather strum, with which Jimi Hendrix always opens “Red House”. Dylan lets the lick carry the song until the end.

It’s a wonderful find, unexpectedly giving the song a hypnotic, waltz-like candance – and the charge of a verse like I’ll hack off your arm suddenly a warm glow. Enhanced further by Dylan’s diction; he sings it almost affectionately. “I have no quarrel with you, good Sir Knight.”

Bob Dylan – Black Rider live in Tokyo, 15 april 2023:

To be continued. Next up Black Rider part 7: A feeling for words

———————-

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

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Other people’s songs: Alberta

Posted on May 15, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

In this series, Aaron looks at songs that Dylan has recorded but not composed, and then finds some other recordings of the song of note. He then sends his commentary across the Atlantic to Tony who adds any thoughts that occur while reading. A list of previous articles for the series (which has been running for over a year) appears at the end.

Aaron: From Wikipedia: Lead Belly recorded four different versions of “Alberta”. One of these was recorded in New York on January 23, 1935 (for ARC Records, which did not issue it), and a similar version was recorded in New York on June 15, 1940 (included on Leadbelly: Complete Recorded Works, vol. 1, 1 April 1939 to 15 June 1940).

Another version, recorded in Wilton, Connecticut, on January 20, 1935, included the lyrics “Take me, Alberta, take me down in your rocking chair” and is included on Gwine Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In (Rounder Records, Library of Congress Recordings, vol. 2).

Lead Belly’s fourth recorded version survives on recording disc BC-122 of the Mary Elizabeth Barnicle–Tillman Cadle Collection at East Tennessee State University, recorded near the date of June 15, 1948, with which several related discs are labelled.

Tony: My knowledge of the history of the blues is very intermittent, and this is one of the songs that I’ve never previously heard in its original forms. I love this version and particularly the fact that we get a bit of a guitar solo near the end.

Aaron: Odetta recorded the song under the title “Roberta,” for Odetta Sings Folk Songs (1963).

Tony: This is one of those occasions where the video Aaron has found in the United States won’t play in the UK, so I’ve included both the copy Aaron found, and a copy that does play in the UK – hoping as ever that they are two identical recordings and that one of them works for you!

Tony: This is such a total transformation it is hard to imagine how we got from the original versions to this, but it is nevertheless beautiful – and relaxing which the early versions could not be described as in any way.

Aaron: Bob Dylan recorded two versions for Self Portrait (1970)

Alberta #1

Tony: There are certain moments on Self Portrait that I still hold dear. The Isle of Wight recordings for example, and indeed Alberta. To me, Dylan gets this absolutely right; it is gorgeously relaxed and somehow just perfect in every way.

Alberta #2

Tony: I often wonder why we get two versions of the song on the album. Did Dylan just decide to do versions thinking he would pick one of the two. And then decided that he couldn’t choose, so both were included? Or was there an argument about which was best, so they agreed to include both? Or maybe there was not enough other material that Bob approved of, so both the Alberta’s were included?

Certainly, we know the piece was tried several times as there was another version on “Another Self Portrait” (Bootleg volume 10). That recording is not on the internet (at least not in the UK) but can be found on Spotify. The opening guitar part on that version is reminiscent of “It takes a lot to laugh” and it is a beautiful version, although the accompaniment just occasionally becomes slightly confused with each instrumentalist doing his own thing that little bit too much. As a result, I don’t think that version was ever seriously considered for the album, and it just stops at the end in the way recordings do when the lead performer just stops and waves an arm, and everyone knows he’s not happy.

Aaron: Eric Clapton also recorded two versions for Slowhand (1977) & Unplugged (1992)

Slowhand (1977)

Tony: I am not sure I’ve heard this before, and it is quite a surprise finding how differently Clapton has decided to play the piece. There is a very understated guitar solo in the piece too, Clapton seemingly not wanting to shine through or dominate, and let the song do the talking. Classic light blues ending too.

Unplugged (1992)

Tony: Eric Clapton does get that utterly relaxed feel out of the song. And something has just made me go back to the very first version in this selection… and again I am thinking, it is amazing how far this song has travelled. How did it get so transformed? The later versions owe far more to “Corina Corina” than they ever do to the original version; it’s strange.

If you have a moment do go back and play the first recording in this sequence; I think you might agree it is one hell of a journey.

Previously in this series…

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Dylan’s favourite songs: Join Me in LA.

Posted on May 14, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood from an idea by Aaron Galbraith

Farout magazine published a list of songs that Dylan gave in answer to a question about his favourite pieces by other songwriters. I’ve been taking a look at the songs in the list and this is the final piece.

Just one of the four writers Dylan selected to make up his list, had four entries to his name: Warren Zevon. And so his fourth piece makes our last entry in this series – it is ‘Join Me In L.A.’ A list of all the songs Dylan selected is given at the end of this piece, and if you have not read through the articles I would urge you to listen to the songs. My commentaries are just an extra: it is the songs and Dylan’s choice of the songs that is the point.

So here we go.

What really strikes me is about Dylan’s choice of this song is that it is not actually about anything other than the fact that LA is a good place, please come here.

This is quite different from the other songs that Dylan chose for his list, and I wonder if this was just added to make up the dozen that maybe the publisher had asked for. Of course as ever this is just my opinion in listening to the songs, and what I have done in each case is just listened to the piece as I have come to write the article.

And throughout I’ve not been disappointed – except here. Which is strange because one of the other Warren Zevon pieces included in the list (“Lawyers Guns and Money”) has been playing in my house on a regular basis ever since I came to it in this series. I’ve even been known to knock it out myself on the piano a few times, although only late at night after coming home from a dance. (Fortunately, I live in a detached house in the countryside, so no one is going to be disturbed).

Overall, I’d say there are some absolute ultimate masterpieces of songwriting in this selection such as “If you could read my mind”, “Sail Away” and that aching, heart-wrenching piece from John Prine, “Donald and Lydia”.

Maybe therefore, I felt, there is something here I am missing in this final selection, and a little bit of work revealed what at first I thought might be the answer: Warren Zevon died in LA. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles – I believe at his request.

Unfortunately, this story however doesn’t work, because the song was recorded for Zevon’s second album in 1975, and he passed away in 2003. So, it would seem this is just another case of my looking for meanings that are not there.

Or perhaps more likely, this is a great song and I am just not getting it. Here are the lyrics…

Well, they say this place is evil
That ain't why I stay
'Cause I found something
That will never be nothing
And I found it in L.A

It was midnight in Topanga (in Topanga)
I heard the DJ say
There's a full moon rising (full moon rising)
Join me in L.A
Join me in L.A

Oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh
Oh-oh-oh (wake up, wake up)
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh

I was at the Tropicana
On a dark and sultry day
Had to call someone long distance
I said, "Join me in L.A"
Join me in L.A

What I would say is that the rest of this little series has been a wonderful excursion into music that I am not particularly familiar with, and it really has been a joy to discover and re-discover the songs and to puzzle out what Dylan perhaps saw in each one to make him include it in the list.

I will, if I may, finish with a repeat of by far and away my favourite song from the collection, knowing of course that you don’t, in any way, have to play it. There is a full list of the rest of the series below, and may I add, if you have an idea for what might make a good series for Untold Dylan do let me know (email tony@schools.co.uk). Then, if we agree, you can write it for the site. Or if you don’t want to write it, and if you give me permission, if I feel I can make something of the idea, I’ll have a go.

So, to conclude, here’s my rave favourite track from the series, and the full list of articles is below. And if you have been, thank you for staying with the series. If not, well, perhaps I’ll do better next time.

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The Never Ending Tour – the absolute highlights: I and I (1998)

Posted on May 13, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood, based on “The Never Ending Tour” series by Mike Johnson.

Dylan said that he knocked this song off during a time spent in the Caribbean in about 15 minutes. That may or may not be the absolute truth, but if it were composed quickly, then it must be one of the most rewarding ways ever to have spent a quarter of an hour or so, not least because between 1984 and its final putting to bed in 1999 Dylan performed it 204 times. That’s about 17 hours of live performance, all out of 15 minutes original work (although to be fair they would have spent some time in rehearsal getting the arrangement sorted).

And it is clearly not an easy song to get a perfect performance out of, because of the instrumental sections in which the various parts of the band seem to be competing with each other to be at the fore, in musical representation of the I and I message.

I’ve read the various reviews of what the song is all about, and indeed I wrote one myself, but I think I have just reached the stage where it has become a set of lyrics and musical phrases that eternally intertwine representing this “two sides of everything” concept. The exact meaning of the lyrics, if there is one, has for me become secondary to the overall sound.

And indeed why not? Why should not lyrics be more about sound rather than meaning? Of course I have now meandered into the world of sound poetry, of which I am absolutely not in any way an expert, but which is there and has some highly praised practitioners. Just because poetry with meaning dominates, it doesn’t mean that sound poetry isn’t of equal merit – or at the very least worthy of contemplation.

These are the thoughts that swirl around as I listen to this recording in which there is such a movement from the opening section to the frenetic build-up of the music later. And as a result, while writing this I jumped from the frantic musical entanglement that we get to at the five-minute mark back to the start. It is a phenomenal contrast, and the fact that after the five-minute section they do take it all back down as they enter the final coda, shows that there is an overall conception in the piece rather than just an improvisation around a theme.

In fact, it is the extraordinary set of contrasts within this performance that made me think of adding it to this series. The opening, both in terms of the musical accompaniment and Bob’s singing is an extraordinary entwining of voice and instruments, so that it seems to me we are no longer in the world of vocals and accompaniment but of an entwining of a range of sounds in which at different moments different elements come to the fore. The meaning of the lyrics thus disappears in terms of importance.

And in this entanglement, take the piano as an example: a lot of the time we don’t know it is there at all, and yet occasionally up it turns. But always it is those repeated guitar phrases that entwine themselves and dominate our vision.

But despite this level of entwining, still there are moments where everything is taken back down. Indeed in this regard just consider the final verse of the song which starts around the four minute mark:

Noontime, and I'm still along the road, on the darkest part
Into the narrow lanes, I can't stumble or stay put
Someone else is speakin' with my mouth, 
        but I'm listening only to my heart
I've made shoes for everyone,  I'm still going barefoot

I and I
In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives
I and I
One said to the other, "No man sees my face and lives"

This is, for me, a perfect example of a Dylan sound picture. The lyrics give us images which are not precise – we can change them as we wish. For me the “darkest part” makes sure that we do appreciate this is the bleakness of the world that is being portrayed in which we each have two parts to our personality, each facing the other.

The entanglement of the music through the guitars thus expresses this vision perfectly. Everything is a contradiction, but everything fits together into one life, one piece of music, two parts of the same. I and I.

Brilliant.

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NET 2012 part 1 The Ivory Revolution Begins

Posted on May 12, 2023 by TonyAttwood

Please note a full index to this series, of which this is episode 114, is available here.

Mike Johnson (Kiwi Poet)

I ain't dead yet
My bell still rings
(Early Roman Kings)

2012 is one of those pivot years for the NET in which big changes are heralded. I am reminded of 1992, when Dylan added a fifth musician, steel guitarist, to his basic line of four. A decade later, in the most dramatic change of all, Dylan largely abandoned the guitar to take to the keyboards. A decade after that, 2012, Dylan abandoned his little electronic keyboard to get in behind a real piano, a grand piano no less, and so laid the foundation for the sound we hear now, if we tune into the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour.

We need to appreciate that when Dylan started playing ‘piano’ in 2002, and ‘organ’ in 2006, he was playing a little electronic keyboard. You could flip a switch and make it sound like a piano and flip another switch and make it sound like an organ. An actual piano, however, especially a grand, is a different beastie altogether; its resonant tones and more mellow sound were to shape Dylan’s sound as it emerged over 2012 and 2013. Dylan used his electronic piano from 2002 to 2005 strictly as a rhythm instrument, mostly vamping chords, adding urgency to the band’s sound. With the grand however, he was prepared to go further, using the instrument as a lead, often picking at single and double notes as he had done when playing lead guitar during those years from 1992 to 2002.

A distinctive, ‘primitive’ style emerged with echoes of Dr John and Thelonious Monk.

At the moment I don’t have access to the Hop Farm Festival concert, (Kent, June 30^th) when Dylan first presented the grand, and the ivory revolution began, so we’ll skip to Barolo, Italy (16^th July), to hear what those first audiences heard. As was his wont with these early concerts, Dylan kicked off with an organ number, in this case ‘Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat,’ before moving to the grand for the second number and the rest of the concert. In Barlo that second song was the softer ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,’ a song that had gone through many changes. It’s an upbeat take on the song. Note the piano break starting around 3.30 mins.

Baby Blue

We find him doing the same thing at Chester(Sept 4^th), kicking off the concert on the organ with ‘Watching the River Flow,’ to switch to the grand for a moving rendition of ‘Love Minus Zero No Limit.’ Again you can hear him shaping the arrangement around the softer sound of the grand.

Love Minus Zero

Another notable aspect of that performance is that it is the second to last time we’ll hear that mysterious little love song (last play Oct 30^th). In an earlier post, can’t remember which, I made a reference to the great purge of his setlists in 2011. That was not quite accurate. Dylan began dropping significant songs in 2010 – ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ for example, never to be heard again, and ‘Masters of War,’ gone but for a lone performance in 2016; these slipped into NET history without me noticing – but his purge of the setlists cranked up in earnest in 2012 and 2013, losing fifteen songs in each year, a total of thirty songs over the two years.

Songs last played in 2012 are:

‘My Back Pages’ (Montreux, July 8), ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’ (Lyon, July 18), ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ (Carhaix, July 23), ‘Saving Grace’ (Johnstown, August 29), ‘This Dream Of You’ (Winnipeg, October 5), ‘Nettie Moore’ (Edmonton, October 9), ‘Hattie Carroll’ (Sacramento, October 20), ‘Hollis Brown’ (Sacramento, October 20), ‘Love Minus Zero’ (Broomfield, October 30), ‘John Brown’ (Broomfield, October 30), ‘Joey’ (Toronto, November 14), ‘Sugar Baby’ (Toronto, November 14), ‘Mississippi’ (Philadelphia, November 19), ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’ (Brooklyn, November 21), ‘Chimes Of Freedom’ (Brooklyn, November 21).

This is more than just pushing a few songs aside to make way for new material, but a significant narrowing and refocusing of the setlists. And a step in the direction of solidifying the setlist into songs he’d play pretty much every night with little variation. The setlists in his current Rough and Rowdy Ways tour are almost identical, just a few wild cards thrown in here and there. The days of turning up to a Dylan concert not knowing what to expect are well and truly over, and that movement began in 2012.

I lament the passing of a number of these songs, ‘Love Minus Zero,’ both ‘Hollis Brown’ and ‘John Brown’, staples from his earliest writing of topical protest songs. Sad to see the trenchant ‘Wheel’s on Fire’ and the magnificent ‘Mississippi’ disappear. In 2002 Dylan shifted from guitar to piano, which changed the sound of the band, but everything else stayed in place and there was no great purge of songs or upheaval in the setlists as in 2012/2013

I’m not going to cover all of these vanishing songs, but let’s at least pay homage to a few of them. Here’s the last performance of the happy-go-lucky sounding ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,’ the opening number at Toronto (Dylan on organ here).

You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

Staying in Toronto, let’s hear the last ‘Sugar Baby.’ This slow, contemplative song was never an easy one to perform. I’ve argued that it is not an attack song, despite the line ‘you ain’t got no brains no how,’ and that the song is more melancholic than accusatory. I love this performance and find I’m regretting its passing; with its quiet tone, it seems to suit the piano perfectly.

Sugar Baby

‘Joey’ has never been a favourite Dylan song of mine. I find it portentous and bombastic, and the glorification of a hoodlum (but that’s just me). I have however given Dylan due credit for giving the song his all in a mere handful of performances, and it is a sustained piece of storytelling from an album, Desire, full of stories.

We return to Toronto to hear its final performance.

Joey

I’m not sure if Dylan ever really got on top of his masterpiece, ‘Mississippi’ in performance. I don’t think he ever improved on his passionate 2001 performances (See NET, 2001 part 6), and I seem to prefer the acoustic version on Tell Tale Signs. Here it is, the final performance, (Grand Prairie, 1^st Nov), a swinging rendition, and a good opportunity for Dylan to tickle those ivories.

Mississippi

Let’s go to Broomfield (29^th October) and catch the final performance of ‘Saving Grace,’ a song from Dylan’s gospel period from the album Saved. I just wish the recording was not so tinny.

I’ve got a soft spot for this song, and its gentle surrendered sentiment. I’m certainly not religious in the sense that Dylan was during those gospel years, but as someone who has recently escaped death by a whisker, I can certainly relate to these lines:

I've escaped death so many times, I know I'm only living
By the saving grace that's over me

By this time, I'd a-thought that I would be sleeping
In a pine box for all eternity
My faith keeps me alive, but I’ll still be weeping
For the saving grace that's over me

Saving Grace

Finally, in terms of these last performances, I can’t overlook the Edmonton performance of ‘John Brown’ (9^th Oct). Not only is it the last performance, but I would suggest a ‘best ever’ performance as well. Dylan has rarely played the harp on this song, but does so here to great effect. When I want to enjoy this song, this is my go-to performance. Donnie Herron’s banjo gives it both a country, and somewhat eerie sound, as if the song is coming across to us over the centuries with its timeless message of senseless war and death. This wonderful performance makes the loss of this song more acute.

John Brown

(Before moving on, it’s worth noting that this winnowing of Dylan’s setlists will have a knock-on effect on these posts. Up till now I have written between four and six articles per NET year, but that will drop to three or even two as the setlists become more honed to fewer songs.)

2012 was not just remarkable for Dylan’s shift to the grand piano, and the loss of fifteen songs, but in September Dylan released a new album, Tempest. Tempest could not be more different from the previous Together Through Life. That album had a rough-and-ready, improvised, throw-away feel; Tempest is a precision machine, much more like the album which would come eight years later, Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Critics lavished praise on the album, some seeing it as even better than Love and Theft and Modern Times. “Tempest is Dylan’s best musical album of this century, a vibrant maximising of strict rules and the savaged-leather state of that voice” (Mojo Magazine) and “Tempest’s epic scale and grandeur makes his few previous albums look like short stories leading up to a great novel.” (Tiny Mix Tapes)

Dylan did not immediately overwhelm his setlists with this new material. Indeed, some of the concerts in September and October didn’t include any of the new material, or maybe one song. Duquesne Whistle,’ co-written with Robert Hunter, which would become a regular, was not performed until 2013. ‘Early Roman Kings,’ which would also become a favourite, was only played a handful of times.

For my ear, these first performances of the new songs would be surpassed in quality by performances in later years, but to kick things off, here is ‘Early Roman Kings’ from Toronto, the only song from Tempest played at that concert, and the second time the song was performed.

Early Roman Kings

I’m not going to attempt a full exploration of the song. Our editor Tony Attwood has a pretty good crack at it here. It seems to deal with a state of lawlessness in which powerful groups can lord it over others for better or worse. ‘Sluggers and muggers,’ ‘peddlers and meddlers.’ What they give can just as arbitrarily be taken away.

This song contains a number of directions and misdirections and may perhaps be more playful than the heavy blues riff that carries it suggests.

I’m going to finish this post with the sole performance of ‘Scarlet Town’ in 2012 (Winnipeg 5^th Oct) and my favourite song from the album. It has a deep history in folk music. Again, Tony Atwood gives a good account of it here and Hobo Magazine goes into it pretty thoroughly here:

I can’t add a lot to these accounts except that it makes me think of Lenard Cohen, I can imagine him singing it, and that it evokes both the comfort and terror of our childhood. Scarlet Town is a mythical contradictory place, a place you need to escape yet ‘wished to God’ you’d never left.

The last verse, the first two lines of which are beautifully aphoristic, and which reminds of maybe Catullus, seems to end with a vision of racial harmony, all the colours of humanity, ‘beautiful in their time,’ are ‘right there for ya’ in this mythical place of love and war, death and sacrifice:

If love is a sin then beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and the white, the yellow and the brown
It’s all right there for ya in Scarlet Town

It’s a beautiful performance and a lovely way to meet this profound song.

Scarlet Town

That’s all for now. See you soon with more songs from that formative year – 2012.

Until then,

Kia Ora

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Black Rider part 5: Marjorie

Posted on May 11, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

V Marjorie

Black rider, black rider, all dressed in black
I’m walking away, you try to make me look back
My heart is at rest, I’d like to keep it that way
I don’t want to fight, at least not today
Go home to your wife, stop visiting mine
One of these days, I’ll forget to be kind

“Creative ability is about pulling old elements together and making something new,” Dylan says in the Wall Street Journal interview with Jeff Slate. That’s in December 2022, so Dylan’s conception of art is no longer really surprising; by then, we’ve known for more than 20 years that Dylan doesn’t so much borrow the occasional line here or metaphor there, but that he cobbles together whole songs out of odds and ends and bits and pieces.

What is new, though, is Dylan’s clarity – he has never expressed this so bluntly before. Interviewer Jeff Slate wants to hear it again, and comes back to it a few minutes later, when they pretty much conclude the topic of creativity. “Are you able to listen to music passively,” Slate asks, “or do you think maybe you are always assessing what’s special – or not – about a song and looking for potential inspiration?” Dylan’s answer is crystal clear:

“That’s exactly what I do. I listen for fragments, riffs, chords, even lyrics. Anything that sounds promising.”

Riffs or chords he does not seem to have borrowed for “Black Rider”. The music under the lyrics is remarkably complex, as a delighted Eyolf Østrem argues and demonstrates in his brilliant, comprehensive analysis “Black Rider – Dylan’s most complex song ever” on his site things twice (Black Rider – Dylan’s most complex song ever). Østrem is a highly versed musicologist, and cannot recognise the harmonic structure – so suspects that the music is a Dylan original. Although he still does build in a disclaimer; “If he has written it himself, which obviously can’t be taken for granted these days, given his track record of musical thievery. But for the sake of argument: his most complex song.”

The lyrics now in this third verse, on the other hand, prove more and more to be an example of Dylan’s working method of pulling old elements together and making something new. The opening, Black rider, black rider, all dressed in black, would have been disappointingly tautological if the clichédness of the word combination all dressed in black had not already detached itself from its content.

After all, we know it from hundreds of songs, and among them are quite a few monuments. “I’m Waiting For My Man”, of course (Here he comes, he’s all dressed in black), “Fool If You Think It’s Over”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Blues in D” by the McGarrigle sisters (All dressed in black, he won’t be coming back), “Cocaine Blues”… in Dylan’s jukebox alone, there are probably more than a dozen records to listen to with the words (all) dressed in black.

Which is equally true of the other lines in this verse. “I don’t want to fight” is already just as over-used (“Let The Good Times In”, Costello’s “Tears Before Bedtime”, Tom Petty, Arthur Alexander’s “Soldier Of Love”) as “I’m walking away” + all variants of “looking back”, which has been trotted out by poets since Orpheus and Eurydice, for thousands of years in other words.

Characteristically, 21st-century Dylan additionally draws from the literary canon. At least, a somewhat archaic sigh like My heart is at rest could theoretically also come to him via a lyric (Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Cry of the Wild Goose”, for instance), but seems, also given the other Shakespeare paraphrases here on Rough And Rowdy Ways in general and here in “Black Rider” in particular, to have come from the Supreme Bard, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Titiana: “Set your heart at rest: The fairy land buys not the child of me”).

Less uncertain is the source of Go home to your wife; that’s most likely an echo of…

Stop ramblin' and stop gamblin'
Quit staying out late at night
Go home to your wife and family
Stay there by the fireside bright

… of “Goodnight Irene”, one of the indestructible pillars under the song canon since John Lomax recorded Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter’s granite version in prison, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola, in 1933. And has since been recorded by everything and everyone. From Pete Seeger and The Weavers to Keith Richards, Ry Cooder and Frank Sinatra, and one of the best might be Little Richard, with Jimi Hendrix on guitar, just before his dishonourable dismissal from the band.

But the Nobel laureate is not just a thief of thoughts, of course. His lyrics, in turn, inspire entire generations of artists. Often enough with overt tributes in the form of quotations, as in Hootie & the Blowfish’s world hit “Only Wanna Be With You”, or the dozens of quotes and references Gillian Welch incorporates into the songs of her wonderful album The Harrow And The Harvest (2011). Or like, less noticeable, the last line of this verse, One of these days, I’ll forget to be kind, a few months after its release seems to echo in the opening lines of one of the most beautiful songs by the phenomenon Taylor Swift, the moving “Marjorie”;

Never be so kind, you forget to be clever
Never be so clever, you forget to be kind

It is a superb ode to the memory of Taylor Swift’s grandmother, the opera singer Marjorie Finlay, and Taylor explains that she incorporates life wisdom and advice from her grandmother, who died in 2003. Which is touching enough, but perhaps a slightly embellished version of the genesis. Swift wrote the song just after the release of her album Folklore, 24 July 2020, and well before December 2020, when “Marjorie” is released – exactly in the weeks when Taylor, like the rest of the music-loving world, has Rough And Rowdy Ways on her turntable. And presumably has heard Dylan sing, “I’ll forget to be kind” more than once.

Yeah well. “All these songs are connected,” as Dylan says in that wonderful speech, in the MusiCares speech, February 2015.

To be continued. Next up Black Rider part 6: ‘Tis but a scratch

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

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Other people’s songs: Lily of the West

Posted on May 10, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: This is a traditional Irish folk song, best known today as an American folk song. It’s alternative title: “Flora, the Lily of the West”. The lyrics to the American version were first published in 1861.

Joan Baez recorded the song in 1961, including it on her second album; her live concerts have frequently included performances of the song well into the 2010s.

Tony: It’s one of those pieces of music which really allows a singer such as Joan Baez, who has a terrific range in her singing voice, to show off that range, as well as giving the opportunity for an active, enjoyable guitar accompaniment – exactly as we hear on this recording (although just wait until you hear some of the other guitar and banjo work that appears in the recordings below!)

And believe me, singing the piece while playing this accompaniment is no easy achievement. Which is why most people who attempt the song in live performances return to playing chords.

Aaron: Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it as Flora for their 1963 album “Moving”.

Tony: And unbelievably they took it even faster – and of course the speed does convey the extreme turn of events the song portrays. In this way we can get through the whole story from

When first I came to Louisville
Some pleasure there to find
A damsel there from Lexington
Was pleasing to my mind

through to

Although she swore my life away
Deprived me of my rest
Still I love my faithless Flora
The Lily of the West

… in just three minutes. It is a breathless performance, and then some.

Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album, Dylan. Just listen to the harpsichord. I think the player is being paid by the note!

Tony: If I didn’t know better, I’d say that wasn’t Bob singing, although of course once one knows, then yes it is Bob, and a reminder of how his voice used to be. What I like far less is the very obvious bass part. Surely that wonderful performance by Bob and the ladies deserves better than that plod plod.

Aaron: Subsequent versions include:

The Chieftains with Mark Knopfler on lead vocals

Tony: Ah the traditional Irish feel. And indeed you can’t get more authentic in terms of recreations than the Chieftans. Goodness, how many awards the guys have picked up! And their interpretation is undoubtedly as authentic as it comes in terms of the melody and lyrics.

No one knows who wrote this, but it appeared in 1839 for the first time. What it must be like to have a time machine and travel back to then, find the person who created the song, and tell that person that we are still listening to it in the 21st century, and still appreciating all the emotions within.

Aaron: Crooked Still included it on their 2004 album Hop High, as Flora

Tony: These guys are always utterly amazing in terms both of their technical skill and the arrangements they come up. Really all I can say is play this and just listen. And then play it again. And then go and find some other recordings by the band.

And isn’t their ending just a perfect way to conclude my ramblings?

Well, to answer my question, yes, but I can’t resist adding one more by this band. In case you are still reading, and want some more music. If yes, try this…

Previously in this series…

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Dylan cover a day: Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands, like you won’t believe

Posted on May 9, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I must admit I approached this classic with trepidation. Of course it is a masterpiece of the genre, but it is just that I don’t think I’ve chosen to play it and listen with any sort of contemplative focus that I think the song needs to appreciate it, since I first bought it. That failing is of course mine – the song is widely regarded as one of the greats, and yet I find I don’t want to give it 11 minutes of my time. I bought the album in 1966 and dutifully played it a few times – and of course have listened a few times since, but it just doesn’t move me. Work of genius it might be, so I guess the failings are all mine.

However in 2017 along came 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde – the album of the Old Crowe Medicine Show recorded the year before. And then I discovered the composition properly. But I’ll have to leave that recording to last in my little selection of Lowland covers, because for me it is such an overwhelmingly brilliant re-working of the song everything else falls into the shade. Yet some of the covers deserve far more than that relegation.

And as I often try to say, that is just “for me.” My response to music is always initially emotional, and I am sure that for everyone else it has always been a masterpiece, and perhaps Dylan’s original recording is still often listened to and noted as being a great work. And indeed others have looked, listened and successfully taken the song elsewhere, and I’ll try and show in this little selection.

But if like me, the song is not for you, you are excused a complete run through all these tracks (although they are excellent), although if I may I would you not to skip everything but to go to the end of the article, for the final version in this collection really is beyond everything else. (Although really I think you might get some enjoyment from the other versions that come before the grand finale.)

Jessica Rhaye and the Ramshackle Parade give us rhythms variations and harmonies that take us from the constancy of the original, without losing the message – but now the music brings us the thought that life does indeed go on, no matter what, and the memories of the past can be a useful bridge to the future. Sometimes.

Moving on, I was very hesitant about including a solo version of the song, but Juliana Daily does carry it off through the restrained passion of her performance. A memorable version indeed.

Weyes Blood keeps the feel of the original… at first but keeps my interest with the build up of the accompaniment and gives us an extra chorus and verse without lyrics at the end – which is a brave notion. I didn’t think it would, but it does indeed work as a conclusion.

A solo guitar instrumental version of Sad Eyed Lady? Surely that is impossible given that it is five identical musical verses (each of three sections) and what keeps us going are the lyrics… and yet it has been done – and again to my surprise, with success. Although largely that is because it is by Ken Navarro. And indeed this version really did invoke another re-think of the whole song.

But I must admit everything above is building up to this moment. Old Crow, as you perhaps well know, did the whole double album some years back, in their own style. And in fact they start “Sad Eyed Lady” by playing… yes their version of “Visions of Johanna”…. which amazingly does become “Sad Eyed Lady”. It is a stunningly brilliant idea, and gives a completely new insight and meaning to the whole song. In fact it virtually is a new song, except that when we get to the title line we know where we are.

Until I heard this version I really didn’t connect “Sad Eyed” with “Visions” and yet having heard both in the Old Crow versions, I suddenly realised they are both about the same woman. OK she might not be real (how would I know?) but the image is the same.

So, back to “Sad Eyed”, the harmonies Old Crow find are extraordinary, in that they sound obvious, and yet I am not sure anyone thought of them before.

But most of all, this arrangement changes the entire meaning of the song. The sadness is replaced by vigour. Now the singer is fighting back. He’s not defeated, he’s moving on, because he’s the one with life and vitality and a future. The answer to “should I wait?” suddenly becomes “NO! Absolutely not, there’s a world out there and it is waiting for me.”

So, the song now says, you are your own problem, not my problem. I am moving on. What a brilliant revision.

I have been so grateful over the years for a number of Old Crow reworkings of Dylan and I’ve noted these quite a few times on this site, but I think this one is the best of them all.

And if you have been lurking around Untold for a while you may recall my writing before the Old Crow’s version of “Visions” was how song was always meant to sound. The same is true of “Sad Eyed Lady”.

And just in case you haven’t had enough here’s Visions by Old Crow

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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Songs Linked To Tarantula and The Talking Mule

Posted on May 8, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Songs Linked To Tarantula

(D)ictator wires for more candy
- US sending in marines
& arnold stang
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Arnold Stang plays “Peewee”, a US soldier, in the movie “Dondi” (based on a newspaper cartoon). Features David Janssen and Patti Page.

An orphaned Italian boy stows away on a ship returning American troops to New York City.

The following lyrics sung in that film:

There's a meadow in the sky
Where breezes spin the silver willow tree
Where you and I can leave our worldly cares
And wander anywhere we please
(Patti Page: Meadow In The Sky ~ Garson/Shuman)

Similar to the Edenic theme in a previously mentioned song:

I was just rambling through
Through the streets of Laredo
Just another stranger that day
On my way to anywhere

(Patti Page: Streets Of Laredo ~ Evans/Livingston)

Brings to mind by association the following improvised song lyrics:

Patty gone to Laredo
But she be back soon
Left Jamaica this morning
On a boat Bonnie Lou
(Bob Dylan: Patty Gone To Laredo)

The “Tarantula” informs us that all’s not well here, there, and everywhere:

& Lord Randall playing with a quart of beer
- Fanny Blair dragging a judge
- Willie Moore, a shoemaker, who counts his thumbs with a switchblade ...
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The following ballad from the Old Country – about a poisoning:

Oh, where have you been, Lord Randall, my son
Oh, where have you been, my bonnie young man
I've been to the wild wood; mother, make my bed soon
For I'm weary of hunting, and I fain would lie down
(Ewan MacColl: Lord Randall ~ traditional)

This one from there too – about a false accusation:

It was last Monday morning, I lay in my bed
A young friend came to me, and unto me said
Rise up, Henry Higgins, and flee you elsewhere
For they're bound out against you by young Fanny Blair
(A.L. Lloyd: Fanny Blair ~ traditional)

Bob Dylan meets ‘Bert’ Lloyd and MacColl way back at the Singers Club in London, England.

Another death song – the one below, an American Appalachia song, about Anna who drowns herself because her parents would not consent to her marrying the man she loves:

Willie Moore was a king, age twenty-one
Courted a lady fair
Her eyes were like two diamonds bright
Raven black was her hair
 (Joan Baez: Willie Moore ~ Baez/traditional)

The Talking Mule

More suggestions for song and dance numbers in Untold’s production of “Tarantula: The Musical” by Bob Dylan.

Charles Starkweather (later executed for his deadly deeds), and his younger girlfriend Caril Fugate go on a killing rampage in Nebraska and Wyoming.

All makes for good entertainment as far as those in the media industry are concerned:

(T)hese people consider themselves gourmets 
for not attending charlie starkweather's funeral
ye gads the champagne being appropriate pagan 
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula )

The lyrics below, from the soundtrack of ‘Natural Born Killers”, a movie inspired by Starkweather and Fugate’s bloody spree:

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise from a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me
(Bob Dylan: You Belong To Me)

Let’s not forget that senators and businessmen have their troubles too:

He is on a prune diet
& secretly wishes he was bing crosby
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Crooning:

She sailed at the dawning
All day I've been blue
Red sails in the sunset
I'm trusting on you
(Bing Crosby: Red Sails In The Sunset ~ Kennedy/Grosz)

Bringing it all back home – lyrics beneath with same tune as above:

I'm touched with desire
What don't I do
Through the flame and fire
I'll build my world around you
(Bob Dylan: Beyond The Horizon ~  Dylan/Kennedy/Grosz)

There be other musicians and singers in the Tarantula pilgrimage from which to choose:

& it sounds like john lee (!!!!!!) coming
& oh Lord louder like a train
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

That is, guitar-player and blues-singer John Lee Hooker.

Not to be confused with the rockabilly piano-player:

... (I) shall have to recommend that you place 
jerry lee lewis first and foremost
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

There’s Jose the piano player from “The Tonight Show”, hosted by Jack Paar; and then there’s Don the dancer with Francis, the talking mule.

Someone shouts out that freedom’s great:

(I)s it possible that jose melis could have said it? 
perhaps donald o'connor? 
i happen to be a library janitor, so could you please clarify things 
a little for me, thank you 
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Likely, it was the mule.

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More of more than flesh and blood

Posted on May 7, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

You might recall a series of articles Jochen Markhorst wrote about “More than Flesh and Blood” in 2021 – and if not there is an index to them at the end of this little piece.

And I mention that today because Aaron Galbraith has just sent over a note about the song saying, “I thought you might be interested to hear this. I believe this is the first officially released studio version of this song. I found the information on the searching for a gem site.”

Here’s what they say…

“MORE THAN FLESH AND BLOOD CAN BEAR, a 1978 song by Bob Dylan and Helena Springs, newly recorded by Bob’s ex-band member Billy Cross with Danish band Dissing Las & Cross, included in their November 2022 Bessie Productions Denmark album “Copenhagen Skyline”. The album also includes a new version of LEGIONNAIRE’S DISEASE, previously recorded by Billy Cross with the Delta Cross Band in 1981.”

Coming back to this song for the first time in a couple of years, I actually rather like it. Now I do agree with Jochen’s assessment that “The song lyrics Dylan writes together with Helena Springs, or the songs that are in both their names anyway, mostly have a cut-and-paste character…

“Dylan doesn’t seem to take the collaboration very seriously anyway. None of the Dylan/Springs songs are selected for recording, only a fraction of the bulk of probably about twenty songs get an occasional live performance. Which seems to be due to the most likely explanation: Dylan himself is not too impressed by the songs either. Only “Stop Now” is said to have been a candidate for Street-Legal for a while – but it has since floated away over the waters of oblivion, too.

“The lyrics of “More Than Flesh And Blood” are perhaps the most unbalanced in that hybrid club, or at least the most frown-inducing. Just take the opening couplet:

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong, I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And it’s more than flesh and blood can bear

———–

And yes I take the point, but with the sort of beat and production that is put into this version, it makes me want to play it again – not for the lyrics but for the sound. Indeed I immediately found I’m not taking too much notice of the lyrics because there is a fun bounce to the song, which is exactly what I want this Sunday morning, what with my car having broken down on the way home in the early hours. It now sits useless on my drive, and with today being Sunday and tomorrow beaing a public holiday in England, it will so remain for a couple of days. Which means I can’t go anywhere unless I hire a car or persuade my friends to drive me. “More than flesh and blood can bear,” indeed.

Here’s the recording of “Legionnaire’s Disease” that Aaron mentions, and I am going to admit here I stopped it at 1 minute 9 seconds… really I do think this song has very little going for it. But that’s just me. Jochen found a lot more in the song that I have ever done, and his review is here.

And so it is interesting to compare the band’s version of these two songs – one really knocks me out, one leaves me cold.

The More than Flesh and Blood series.

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Bob Dylan: The lyrics AND the music – Angelina

Posted on May 6, 2023 by TonyAttwood

In relation to this song you might also enjoy Jochen’s review of the song. An index to our most recent articles can be found on the home page.

By Tony Attwood

If ever there was a song of Dylan’s in which (in my opinion even if no one else’s) one absolutely must consider the music and the lyrics as one, for me that song is Angelina.

And to explain this I would start with Dylan’s own comment,

“That one I couldn’t quite grasp what it was about after I finished it. Sometimes, you’ll write something to be very inspired, and you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few little pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place.”

(Biograph, 1985)

Of course such a comment as “I couldn’t quite grasp what it was about after I finished it,” gives us the notion that all Dylan’s songs have to be about something concrete such as a love affair, mankind’s propensity to fight, poverty, injustice…. And that is the perfectly reasonable line that many people take. After all, we live in a world of science where everything is explained except the paranormal and those who believe in the paranormal are often considered a little off-centre themselves. So “what it was about” is taken to mean the song needs to be about love, or lost love, or power and corruption, or religion, or … well something.

But the phrase “what it’s all about?” (or its variant “what’s that all about?”) is often used in a quizzical form, suggesting that in this piece there is no underlying meaning, and therefore something is wrong. Stuff happens, innocent youngsters die, the church authorises and encourages wars to scour the sinners and disbelievers from the face of the earth, an earthquake kills thousands….

Thus this “what’s it all about?” phrase can indeed be about a specific event or about life in general. And although “What’s it all about?” is not a phrase I tend to use, I think quite possibly if I was engaged in a debate about the Crusades I think I might be reduced to dragging it out.

So because it is such a common phrase, often used as a bit of a throw-away line, I don’t think Dylan’s single comment about this song should be taken as the be-all and end-all of any discussion about the song. Rather it could well mean that the recording just didn’t feel right to Bob as they listened to the playback. And of course, Dylan is an infinitely superior musician and lyricist to me, so I normally bow to his view. Except…. this time I think he called this one wrong. And although that sounds ludicrous, I take heart from the fact that commentators on the works of great artists have often suggested over the centuries that the artist, in whatever branch of the arts he/she works, doesn’t always fully appreciate what he has just created.

Then there is the second issue – the combination of the lyrics and the music. Just listen to the opening verse and I suspect you will see that what we have is a set of images in both the lyrics and the music. The music is hesitant, except in the way the word “Angelina” is portrayed; the lyrics portray a more secure world in which the singer knows what he is about … until it gets to Angelina. Thus when the lyrics are certain the music is unsure, when the music is certain the lyrics are unsure; it is a brilliant artistic contradiction.

The opening in Dylan’s version with the piano has a restricted melody line except for the word Angelina, which musically doubles up around itself in a most un-Dylan-like way. That name is sung like a snake coiling around – an utterly different musical moment from the rest of the song, which is much more Dylan-like. Also, it is worth noting that singing the word “Angelina” in that way is really difficult – you have to be an expert vocalist to get away with it, which may well explain why hardly anyone tries. Performing it and getting it wrong sounds utterly ghastly (believe me I’ve tried).

The musical image is of being haunted, being somehow removed from this world, when we think of Angelina. Meanwhile, the singer sings of himself in a way that tells us nothing except that this is a world of disconnected images.

Just take those two lines near the start

I know what it is that has drawn me to your door
But whatever it could be, makes me think you've seen me before

This is a world of uncertainty. Just contrast “I know what it is” with “Whatever it could be” … is he sure or know. Yet this is often what the world of love is. One loves another person, but trying to describe exactly why or understanding the other party’s feelings, is often difficult.

And so Bob gives us all sorts of images such as the multiple Biblical references as Jochen points out in his review, but at the same time what we are getting are snatches from other moments in life

Do I need your permission to turn the other cheek?
If you can read my mind, why must I speak?
No, I have heard nothing about the man that you seek
Angelina

We know nothing of the man who she is seeking – which suggests we are just suddenly jumping into a conversation that has been had in the past, and we are picking up the end, without any context. A bit like reading someone’s reply to a letter or email without having a clue what was in the previous correspondence.

Now one way to deal with such lyrics would be to have music that is just as confused as the singer of the song is portrayed as being. But Dylan does the reverse – he makes the music gentle and emphasises not the confusion but the quality of the singer’s reverence for the lady about whom he is singing.

And then he emphasises this beautifully with the chorus “Oh Angelina” – which says both in those two words and the four bars of music that accompany them a deep sigh of heartfelt love plus total uncertainty. Those four bars [I am taking it that the song is in 2/4 not 4/4 time] are both the lyrical and musical contrast with each and every verse of confusion.

This is how we can get to answer Bob’s pondering of what the song is about. It is about confusion, and the genius of the piece is that the singer can portray perfectly the confusion he finds around him (and indeed there is confusion in almost every line) while at the same time the music keeps us grounded. Yet there are no discordant harmonies, no clashes of percussion – which would be the obvious musical way to make the point. There is just an outpouring of love.

I don’t have any problem that Bob is supposedly quoting from the four Evangelists, because when I hear this song I don’t relate, “No, I have heard nothing about the man that you seek” to “Peter’s denial from John” as Jochen noted, but rather I perceive it as the heartfelt agony of the singer so desperately in love with Angelina, but knowing that the only reason she is talking to him is to find someone else.

And maybe I feel that so much because something slightly akin to this has happened to me – meeting up with a lady with whom I had had a relationship decades before; a relationship which I still recall with affection, and thinking I might enjoy this reunion conversation, only to find her asking me if I had any idea what happened to the guy she left me for. A guy who I had in the intervening years successfully forgotten all about. But seemingly she had not.

Getting personal meanings out of other people’s songs is of course always something that can enhance or reduce one’s affection for the song. But in this case, it doesn’t knock back my love of this piece, because the music is so beautiful while being so achingly painful. The constant repetition of the “Oh Angelina line”, as (at least it seems to me) the singer thinks back to those glorious days now long since gone, is achieved brilliantly in the music, in my view.

Jochen’s point is as ever well-founded when he says of the song, that it is “All very expressive and most mysterious, but a coherent image still does not rise.” And maybe that is the point. There is no coherent image in the lyrics, because the coherent image is in the music – particularly the chorus.

As I noted the last time I wrote about this song, “Dylan himself never plays the song. Not even when he performs in Berlin on April 4, 2019, at the Mercedes Benz Arena. Where a glittering black Mercedes is proudly showing off in front of the entrance.” It would have been fun to throw the song in, but maybe Bob had forgotten the lyrics. Or the whole song.

But as for now, it would be hard to compete in any arrangement or re-arrangement of the piece with the version that Ashley Hutchings created. And for so many, many years I have been so grateful to Mr Hutchings for making this recording of this wonderful song, and preserving such a beautiful recording of the performance. Somehow the non-existent Angelina of the song has, for me, in the strange world I inhabit, become utterly real. It is as if I have known her and lost her myself. Somehow she is out there, and one day, just possibly, we might meet.

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Dylan’s favourite songs: Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927”

Posted on May 5, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood, based on research by Aaron Galbraith

We are now at number 12 in the list of Dylan’s favourite songs and so far we have had two from Randy Newman: Sail Away and “Burn down the cornfield”. The third and final Newman song is ‘Louisiana 1927’.

And I would urge you, if at all possible to leave the video running because there is a second version of the song, this by Martin Simpson which follows it. That second recording starts with a couple of minutes of Martin chatting, so if you want to avoid that move on to the 2 minute mark. I do think it is worth it.

And here are the lyrics

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it start to rain
It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day--The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemine
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge come down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand
President say, "Little Fat Man, ain't it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land"

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away

If ever there was a song where the music and the lyrics fit together perfectly, surely this is it – although as noted below the music is not original. But the music rolls reflecting not just the storm and flood itself but the aftermath.

And, for myself, being English, I had to look up “cracker”, although I could guess it was an insult. In case you are not familiar with the term, Cracker, “sometimes white cracker or cracka, is a racial slur directed towards white people, used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States,” according to the definition I found.

This recording by the composer gives some illustrations and information about the event.

Randy Newman was brought up in Louisiana, and wrote the song in 1974. But 31 years later another, and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Deep South, the song was used as a fundraiser and is now permanently associated with the two tragedies.

In an interview in 2008 Newman was asked if he would be playing it at every show until he retired. He replied: “I wouldn’t have, because it’s the same tune as ‘Sail Away’ and it’s not quite as good a song maybe… But yeah I do.”

Which is as good a cue as any for Sail Away – and I am sure you can hear that what the composer admits, is quite true.

He added later, “I wanted to write a song about North and South again. I’ve written a number of them, about the guy in the song, sort of, complains about the whole treatment, not quite trusting the president coming down. And it kind of did that. I have the clouds coming in from the north, which they really never do. I mean, as if the North had sent these clouds down.”

The article continues… “In the chorus, when Newman sings, “Louisiana… They’re tryin’ to wash us away,” he’s referring to the North, and the feeling that those states were indifferent to Louisiana and bordering states. It’s a similar sentiment heard in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

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The Never Ending Tour – the absolute highlights: Positively 4th Street (1994)

Posted on May 4, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This recording from 1994 was one of two utterly different versions of Positively 4th Street from that year – you can hear the other version and indeed other performances from this era in the episode “1994 part 2”.

This one I adore because it takes out the stridency and anger of the song (which is of course a natural part of it, given the lyrics), and replaces it with a deep, deep sadness. And given the nature of the lyrics that is quite an achievement.

And for me this is not only a beautiful rendition of a remarkable piece of music, but a shining example of Dylan’s ability to take a song written from one angle and turn it completely around so it almost becomes a different piece of music.

The reason it works, I think, is because that one can imagine that famous opening line “You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” being said in anger or in desperate sadness.

What is also interesting is that the chord sequence is so distinctive in Dylan’s song writing (I don’t think any other Dylan song starts G – A minor – C – G, although having written that I am rather afraid there might be many of them, so if there are, tell me gently) so that anyone who plays Dylan on a guitar or keyboard will know what is coming up. And yet the beat and gentleness of the opening makes us think, it can’t possibly be “4th Street”.

And the song brings with it its own problems in performance, for musically the song simply runs through the verse’s unchanging chord sequence 12 times – there are no variations to play with. But that turns out to give this version its brilliance. By performing the piece in a manner of one who is simply resigned to the problem and has reached the view that there is nothing more to be done, the whole piece holds me in its grip, as it builds up to that most extraordinary final verse.

Indeed in this version, the instrumental break, which again I think works so well, prepares us afresh for those lines

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you

And then we have that musical epilogue in which Bob doodles on his guitar, suggesting once more that this just goes on and on and on. But at the very end there is that slight uplift in the music before the final run-through of the verse and finally one can let out a breath as it concludes.

I do hope you have time to listen to all nine minutes of this performance and either close your eyes or look at a single painting, or perhaps a rural setting where nothing is changing. Heard in this way it is an extraordinary performance and an amazing piece of rewriting.

And then perhaps, if you really want an extraordinary experience, play the original four minute version below. It will utterly break the spell of the live version above, but of course, you can always go back and listen again to the live version, which I must admit I have just done.

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Black Rider (2020) part 4: He lets them synthesize into a coherent thing

Posted on May 3, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

IV He lets them synthesize into a coherent thing

Black rider, black rider, you’ve seen it all
You’ve seen the great world, and you’ve seen the small
You fell into the fire, and you’re eating the flame
Better seal up your lips if you want to stay in the game
Be reasonable mister, be honest, be fair
Let all of your earthly thoughts be of prayer

A change does come in this second verse, but for the time being for the worse; the suggestion suddenly becomes that the Black Rider is the blackest of all: Satan himself. At least, that’s what the second and third verse lines really seem to insinuate. You’ve seen the great world, and you’ve seen the small is an echo of the words with which Mephisto announces Faust‘s entire arc of action. After Mephisto’s first attempt to infiltrate Faust’s household fails miserably, he makes himself known as the Devil, with the usual detours (“I am the spirit that denies”, “Destruction is my original element”, “Part of the part am I, which once was all”, and a few more such cryptic hints), but then gets to the point fairly quickly: he wants Faust’s soul. They agree on the terms, and then Faust asks:

Faust
Which way now shall we go?
Mephistopheles.
Which way it pleases thee.
The little world and then the great we see.
O with what gain, as well as pleasure,
. Wilt thou the rollicking cursus measure!

… so, the little world and then the great world, it shall be – the same route that the Black Rider has travelled, according to the narrator. In Faust I, the setting is then the small world, the here and now, with a relatively manageable radius of action – Faust and Mephisto move roughly between Leipzig and the Brocken in the Harz, so some two hundred kilometres all in all. We get to know the great world in Faust II. Boundaries of time and space no longer exist; Faust and Mephisto are in Ancient Greece, in a dream world, at the court of a medieval emperor, crisscrossing Europe.

And the next line, You fell into the fire, and you’re eating the flame, doesn’t really contradict the suggestion that the Black Rider is the Devil himself. Well, “fallen into the fire” fits, at the very least, Lucifer’s fall from grace, out of Heaven, straight into Hell, “so I brought fire out from your midst; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you,” as God says it, flowery as ever, in Ezekiel (28:18). You’re eating the flame, however, is a less recognisable image. Remarkably, Dylan himself used it once before, more than 50 years ago:

Too much of nothing
Can turn a man into a liar
It can cause one man to sleep on nails
And another man to eat fire

… in one of the Basement highlights that is, in “Too Much Of Nothing”. Apart from the wondrous content, it is notable that Dylan is now repeating himself for the second time: after the “Mississippi” quote in the opening verse, now a Basement paraphrase in the second verse.

It is a somewhat bizarre image. In “Too Much Of Nothing” we can deduce from the context that it should be understood as an expression of despair, and in the canon, we really only know it that way as well: Portia’s gruesome suicide from the fourth act of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“she fell distract and, her attendants absent, swallowed fire”) – there are not many more examples of eating fire.

Quite a lot of examples of the opposite, of course. Tragic heroes consumed, eaten, devoured and extinguished by fire – we know hundreds of examples thereof. An “ordinary” playful inversion of the cliché, however, it doesn’t seem to be – there is, in any case, no illuminating continuation, not one that builds on this alienating image, or a mirroring of catachreses, as we know from 1960s songs like “Stuck Inside Of Mobile” (the post office has been stolen / and the mailbox is locked) or ” Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” (your sheets like metal and your belt like lace).

The other obvious association is equally incomprehensible, although Dylan sings about that significantly more often than about bizarre suicides;

Th’ iron horse draweth nigh,
With his smoke nostril high;
Eating fire as if grazing,
Drinking water while he’s blazing;
Then his steam forces out,
Whistling loud, “Clear the route”

… the fire-eating black rider that is the steam locomotive. Which is closer to Dylan’s heart, and old-fashioned train songs like this nineteenth-century “The Utah Iron Horse” are bound to be found in Dylan’s jukebox too.

Anyway: the last lines of this verse torpedo the last attempts to distil a narrative or a coherent portrayal from the lyrics. Better seal up your lips if you want to stay in the game are not words anyone can say to Satan, nor to a steam locomotive. “Seal up your lips, and give no words but mum” are Hume’s words in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II and have a certain notoriety because it is often incorrectly identified as the origin of the expression mum’s the word (mum has nothing to do with “mother”, but is “an inarticulate sound made with closed lips” according to the Oxford English Dictionary).

Be reasonable mister is a cliché that appears in dozens of film noirs, westerns and hard-boiled detectives, and the concluding Let all of your earthly thoughts be of prayer is utterly alienating again. Tone and content are derived from archaic, Puritan edifying literature popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The tone of religious hymns or evangelical poetry, usually written by pastors’ wives or old maids. Writers in whose biographies you always come across concepts like “Christian piety,” “purity” and “honest simplicity”. Like Eliza Lee Cabot (1787-1860) and one of her greatest hits, her hymn to the Lord’s Day, which opens with:

Sabbath Day

How sweet, upon this sacred day,
The best of all the seven, 
To cast our earthly thoughts away, 
And think of God and heaven!
How sweet to be allowed to pray
Our sins may be forgiven!

On the whole, it is beginning to look very much like Dylan has opened his ornate, beautiful box once again. The box we know about thanks to the loose tongue of screenwriter Larry Charles, who has worked with Dylan a few times. In Pete Holmes’ podcast You Made It Weird, Charles revealed in 2015 that Dylan has a box, filled with pieces of written paper, which he occasionally turns over on the table:

“It was hotel stationary, little scraps like from Norway, and from Belgium and from Brazil, you know places like that. And each little piece of paper had a line […]. I realized, that’s how he writes songs. He takes these scraps and he puts them together and makes his poetry out of that. He has all of these ideas and then just in a subconscious or unconscious way, he lets them synthesize into a coherent thing.”

… to which Larry Charles, however, still notes: “He lets them synthesize into a coherent thing.” But what holds “Black Rider” together, what exactly makes it a coherent, unified whole is, for now, still puzzling…

To be continued. Next up Black Rider part 5: Marjorie

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

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A Dylan cover a day: Romance in Durango, covered and re-written

Posted on May 2, 2023 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

If you have been lurking around Untold Dylan for a few years you’ll perhaps remember that the notion of a Dylan Cover a Day came about when lockdown hit England, and I was shut up on my own day after day with just the computer and phone for company.

With lockdown very much a thing of the past I am now allowed out again (although I think quite a few people reckon that is not quite such a good idea) so it’s no longer “a day” but maybe “once a week” or so.

Anyway this is episode 123, and I mention that because I think this might be the first time I have brought in covers not just of the song in question (Romance in Durango) but re-writes of that song under different names. Hopefully, I’ll be able to explain myself in a moment.

But first a straight cover: Els miralls de Dylan is described on Secondhand songs as “A duo project dedicated to Bob Dylan songs in Catalan, mainly translated by themselves. Temporarily also integrating other artists.” Except much of this is in English, so I remain as confused as normal.

I love the song, and find this a rather jolly version, and one worthy of a listen but not one that suddenly gives me that insight into the music which deepens my appreciation, or which really draws me back to it. But as I say, in my view, worth a listen.

The next example, from Nicole Stella, does however give me something extra. There’s more emotion here, which I always feel is what this song needs. Not over the top emotion, but just more than Els miralls de Dylan gave us. Somehow, because of the fractional delay of certain words and the fractional speeding of others, I believe in the song more. The harmonies work for me as well.

In fact it is one of those frustrating pieces that I can say, yes I really do appreciate this music, but I find it hard to explain exactly why. Maybe it is the way the accompaniment is always held back with no temptation to get above itself. Maybe it is because I don’t understand the language – and in fact that is interesting, because there is nothing in my head that is translating the lyrics into English – I am in fact enjoying the sound of the lyrics without trying to remember the English.

The video ends with a note to the effect that if you enjoy the video please share it, so I have.

https://youtu.be/i4GD4XvAzWE

This next one is Fabrizio De André, but now not just with a language I don’t speak and a totally different accompaniment, and indeed what seems to me inappropriately fast moving pictures (which I find distracting) I am less inclined toward this version. But I don’t think it is the music that is putting me off, it really is the video. These pictures just fly past too quickly, and the timing of that movement is so out of keeping with the music.

Indeed it is a thought I do get sometimes – that the video makers really don’t have any appreciation of what the music is doing. How could anyone think that the music requires a new picture (one without association to the next) every two or three seconds? It just seems utterly bizarre and self-defeating to me. If by any chance you feel the same, try closing your eyes. I most certainly found it helped. (Mind you as I get older I often find that helps).

And now for something different. Because this is one of the songs that Dylan didn’t just write once, but wrote again and again. And that’s not just me trying to be clever with a bit of musical memory – as many others have noted he really did use the same music in different songs.

Try this for example… and don’t be put off by the rhythm and accompaniment. Listen to the melody.

And if that were not clear, try this version.

We’ve moved from covering to copying – but you know, it’s Bob. He’s written over 620 songs so he’s entitled to have one or two sounding like the others, surely.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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The Tarantula Files: Cowboy Angel and Who Wrote Tarantula?

Posted on May 1, 2023 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

Cowboy Angel

The Tarantula chapter entitled ‘Cowboy Angel Blues’ alludes not only to Gene Autry, the owner of the California Angels baseball team, and singer of ‘Home On The Range’, but also to the Tennessee Williams play ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ in which Stanley Kowalski rapes Blanche, the sister of his wife Stella.

In “Tarantula”, Sigmund Freud, with a big-mouth-Martha-Raye-like grin, gives some sage advice to Mr. Clap:

& if anything drastic comes up 
- here - take these pills
- by the way, you should call your mother 'Stella'
just to show her that you mean business
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

That play by Williams also alluded to in the following song:

And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

In the one below too:

Well, they're going to the country, they're gonna retire
They're taking a streetcar named desire
(Bob Dylan: Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum)

However, let us not digress ~ back to the source poem of ‘Home On The Range’.

Beaver Creek is in Kansas; the the Solomon River in that State refers way back to the biblical times – to King Solomon of Israel:

Oh, give me the gale of the Solomon vale
Where the streams with buoyancy flow
On the banks of the Beaver where seldom if ever
Any poisonous herbage doth grow
(Brewster Higley: My Western Home)

https://youtu.be/CTYI5MVR4vU

The sad-eyed lady described by Dylan as having a kiss like a “geranium”, the flower brought to America by the Dutch; thought by some to be poisonous to humans.

The giant Tarantula, hairy-legged and horrible, on the other hand, tramples over the cities and countryside of America, wreaking havoc everywhere it goes:

& voids held up to Scawny Horizon by lee marvin ....
& malcolm X forgotten like a caught fish
& wonder - ah wonder just what
- just what that means
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Lee Marvin portrays gun-slinging killer Tim Strawn (as well as Tim’s drunken brother – who reforms) in the humorous movie ‘Cat Ballou’, starring Jane Fonda. Another character therein be Jackson Two Bears.

Malcolm X, an actual person, advocates the separation of blacks from the ‘evil’ white race; gets assassinated after he moderates his views.

Who Wrote Tarantula?

Who writes ‘Tarantula’?

Not:

Matty Groves, who secretly at midnight
tries to chop down the church steeple
with Edward, who cuts hedges
for his wages
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The above lines written by Bob Dylan allude to the folk ballad below:

Rise up, rise up, my gay young bride
Draw on your pretty clothes
Now tell me do you like me best
Or your Matty Groves
Or the dying Matty Groves
She picked up Matty's dying head
She kissed him from cheek to chin
It is Matty Groves I'd rather have
Than Arlen and all his kin
(Joan Baez: Matty Groves ~ traditional)

Mentioned in ‘Tarantula’ too is the following ballad:

'Twas in the merry month of May
The green buds they were swelling
Poor William on his deathbed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen
(Bob Dylan: Ode To Barbara Allen ~ traditional)

In the print of his little book, Dylan deliberately tongue-fumbles over ‘woody guthrie’, ‘woody guppie’, ‘coody puppie’, and ‘boody guppie’, though we’re still not sure that the writer fools around with words like “curlew”and “curfew”; “forest” and “fore-est”; “Strawn” and “Scrawny”.

However, Dylan songs sure mix actual happenings, and possible ones, with the world of entertainment, past and present.

With factory-made teenage heart-throbs of recent times, a number of them from families with Italian backgrounds – i.e., Franklin Avalon, Fabian Foote.

Noted on the CBC ‘Quest’ show, for instance:

Turned on my record player
It was Fabian singing
"Tell your ma, tell your pa
Our love's a-gonna grow
Ooh-wah, ooh-wah"
(Bob Dylan: Talking World War III Blues)

In “Tarantula” too:

T)he little old winemaker immediately took off his head
& his belt
& who do you think it turned out to be
but fabian
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

On the tv show, sitting at the CBC Quest table, Michael Zenon’s observed writing down a bunch of stuff in his notebook while Dylan sings –

giving rise to a suspicion:

Could it be that the Canadian actor from “The Forest Rangers” tv show actually provides most of the words for the upcoming book that young Dylan titles “Tarantula”?

Perhaps …..

Well, maybe not!

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Dylan’s opening lines (revisited): the top ten (so far)

A Dylan cover a day: Sara

NET 2012 part 2 The Ivory Revolution Continues

Bob Dylan: the lyrics AND the music – Ballad for a Friend

Black Rider part 6: ‘Tis but a scratch

Other people’s songs: Alberta

Dylan’s favourite songs: Join Me in LA.

The Never Ending Tour – the absolute highlights: I and I (1998)

NET 2012 part 1 The Ivory Revolution Begins

Black Rider part 5: Marjorie

Other people’s songs: Lily of the West

Dylan cover a day: Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands, like you won’t believe

Songs Linked To Tarantula and The Talking Mule

More of more than flesh and blood

Bob Dylan: The lyrics AND the music – Angelina

Dylan’s favourite songs: Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927”

The Never Ending Tour – the absolute highlights: Positively 4th Street (1994)

Black Rider (2020) part 4: He lets them synthesize into a coherent thing

A Dylan cover a day: Romance in Durango, covered and re-written

The Tarantula Files: Cowboy Angel and Who Wrote Tarantula?

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