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.
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.
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 changedClouds roll in from the north and it start to rainIt rained real hard and it rained for a real long timeSix feet of water in the streets of EvangelineThe river rose all day--The river rose all nightSome people got lost in the floodSome people got away alrightThe river has busted through clear down to PlaquemineSix feet of water in the streets of EvangelineLouisiana, LouisianaThey're tryin' to wash us awayThey're tryin' to wash us awayLouisiana, LouisianaThey're tryin' to wash us awayThey're tryin' to wash us awayPresident Coolidge come down in a railroad trainWith a little fat man with a notepad in his handPresident say, "Little Fat Man, ain't it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land"Louisiana, LouisianaThey'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.”
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.
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:
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 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”?
Aaron: “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is a song recorded by Elvis Presley for the album Blue Hawaii.
From Wikipedia: The melody is based on “Plaisir d’amour”, a popular French love song composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. The song was initially written from the perspective of a woman as “Can’t Help Falling in Love with Him”, which explains the first and third line ending on “in” and “sin” rather than words rhyming with “you.”
Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album, Dylan
Tony:An unusually melodic harmonica part from Bob at the start. And a bit of a feeling that as he sings he always makes a grab at the word “help” for some reason, which I find a bit odd – but as ever that’s just me. It’s a nice, relaxing recording, but it is not something of Bob’s that I’d ever feel like listening to when I could choose what to play next.
Although I must admit the subtle changes made on the middle 8 “Like a river flows” are interesting. Plus the slight changes to the melody on occasion are enjoyable.
But there are oddities too, that I am not at all sure about. Such as why suddenly the setting of the organ is changed at 2’26” – it just seems a sudden jolt.
I suppose the answer to why this was recorded would be as a tribute, and if there are indeed many people who thoroughly enjoy this and play it often, then clearly it is a success on that score. So I guess it is just that I am not one of them, and in my old age I’m getting grumpy!
Aaron: In 1993, British reggae band UB40 covered it as the first single from their 1993 album, “Promises and Lies”. The song climbed to No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, staying there for seven weeks and the United Kingdom where it topped the chart for two months.
Tony: I like this – which is not to say that I am going to play it again, but rather is a reflection of the way the accompaniment travels its own route while the melody keeps the traditionally restrained approach – and indeed the crowded conditions of the mock performance in the tunnel add to the fun. It’s jolly, and it made me feel good in a way that neither Bob’s nor Elvis’ version ever does.
Aaron: Emmylou Harris recorded a version of the original French lyric in 2003 for her wonderful Stumble into Grace album.
Tony: Now that accordion part does work for me, and seems to be in keeping with the whole arrangement. Suddenly I enjoy the song – and the chord change (at the “joy of love”) from all the other versions also works for me, as does the instrumental.
I think it is the simplicity of the whole piece and the gentleness of the entire performance that attracts me. Plus the fact that there is no attempt to spin it out. It is a short song, and this performance lets it be just that: a sort song.
And so as I play through the selected recordings it finally hits me. Bob’s version is four minutes 20 seconds long, and that really is stretching the song beyond its natural boundaries for me.
Aaron:As an added treat here is Christine McVie covering it for an obscure movie soundtrack
Tony: I can’t resist Christine McVie’s voice, so I am expecting to like this right from the start, and she doesn’t let me down. There’s no attempt to take the song beyond its own simplicity and self-imposed limitations – which as I noted above is what I feel the Dylan version does. Emmylou Harris still gets my vote as the best of these examples, and I am playing it now for the third time as I conclude my rambling notes, and even though it is only just gone 10am and there is a load of work waiting for me in my in-box I really don’t want to do anything else except listen to it again.
Bob Dylan set himself quite a challenge in turning “Abandoned Love” into more than just an interesting song – for it consists of one of the standard pop motifs (lost love), is quite long (eight verses), and (as is inevitable with verses within popular music) has a melody that repeats and repeats across four and a half minutes.
Of course, the lyrics are really engaging, although they don’t actually follow a logical sequence or make obvious sense. Rather they are an ongoing reflection on a relationship which the singer is about to end. People and situations seem to appear and then vanish from the song as if in and out of the fog, so what we are left with is an overall vision of unhappiness but no certainty as to what is going on. The song lyrics are the musical equivalent of an impressionist painting…
But against this the music is rather jolly and is the same verse after verse. And therein lies the challenge – how to keep up the musical interest, so that the listener does not end up thinking only of the words – which actually don’t tell us the story we might expect.
One option would be to give the listener interesting and unexpected chords, but Dylan doesn’t let that happen. The chords used are absolutely standard and can be found in hundreds of thousands of songs, although the actual sequence of the chords is slightly unusual (but hardly unique) when the second and third lines are taken as a whole
GEmI can see the turning of the key
CDI've been deceived by the clown inside of me
BmCI thought that he was righteous but he's vain
GDGSomething's telling me, I wear the ball and chain
So how can our interest in the piece be kept? Partly this conundrum is solved by having the violin played exquisitely by Scarlet Rivera, as an ever-evolving counter melody – indeed it is a part that keeps going even when the harmonica comes in. Had anyone performed a violin / harmonica duet before? Possibly, but certainly not very often.
But what actually happens thereafter is that the music is so beguiling, with the slight variations that the violin adds throughout, that we keep losing track of what the lyrics are telling us, and so we want to come back again to have another listen to what the storyline is – if it is anything at all.
And beyond that there is the overall feel of guitar, drums and violin that gives us a floating romantic feeling (emphasised by the opening line “My heart is telling me I love you still”) that offers a sense of continuity. Which is interesting because if we do pick up on any of the lines in the song this is not what we hear. We hear the lover leaving, the lover who is left behind being tied down by the ball and chain, abandoned by those who might help (the patron saint for example)…
Indeed put together, none of the lyrics really make sense – after all what are we to make of
Everybody's wearing a disguise
To hide what they've got left behind their eyes
But me, I can't cover what I am
Wherever the children go I'll follow them
In fact, we don’t make anything out of it because the music carries us along. And this is my point here – this is a drifting stream-of-consciousness set of lyrics that could become dull or laughable through their lack of obvious meaning and the lack of context. But the engaging melodic line Bob sings and the beautiful counter-melody of the violin keeps the song going, along with a regular but relaxing beat, which gives us a feeling of a strange, but actually not frightening world.
There is no pain in this breakup, only bemusement at all the things happening around – and that is a very unusual context for a popular song. And thus it needs an unusual accompaniment which is what the violin brings. Indeed I would go so far as to say that without the violin’s improvised part, the recording would be far, far less interesting and might never have been kept, let alone released.
In fact so powerful is the musical accompaniment in terms of its emotional content, that when we get to the denouement we don’t feel a sense of end at all. Rather we want to go back and hear it all again.
So one more time at midnight, near the wall
Take off your heavy make-up and your shawl
Won't you descend from the throne, from where you sit?
Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it
It is an amazing recording, which with a less interesting melody and/or without the violin part, would probably hardly be remembered at all. And yet for many of us it is an essential part of the Dylan collection. A perfect example of Dylan using music AND lyrics as equals to create a set of images and a storyline, neither of which make sense, but make us feel that if we listen just one more time, will reveal more of their secrets.
There are cover versions of this song, but none of them seem to be able to take the music anywhere else – it only works in the form that Dylan laid it down. The music and the lyrics have to co-exist as he set them out. No other way is possible.
This is the third Warren Zevon song in Bob Dylan’s list of his favourite songs. We’ve already covered ‘Desperado Under the Eaves’, and ‘Lawyers, Guns, and Money’, and as ever there is a list of all the articles in this series, with links, at the end of the piece.
We’ve always known about Bob’s interest in boxing – if you would like more on this it is worth reading Jochen’s article I shall be free no 10; Bob Dylan’s love of boxing. And of course, through this series, of late I have been coming to grasp his love of the music of Warren Zevon too.
So I guess this choice is fairly natural – although it makes life difficult for me because I know nothing of boxing. I am therefore going to take what I can from Wiki by way of background to the events referred to in this song. Please do correct any mistakes you find.
Ray Mancini was born 1961, and held the WBA lightweight title from 1982 to 1984. Since then he has worked as a boxing commentator and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015.
The most well-known event in his career I think was the fight against Duk Koo Kim in 1982 four days after which Kim died. “Kim’s mother died by suicide three months after the fight, and the bout’s referee, Richard Green, killed himself in July 1983,” according to Wiki.
In January 1984, Mancini defeated Bobby Chacon when referee Richard Steele stopped the fight in the third round – another incident referred to in the song.
The song has the power and “push” if I can use that word, of the earlier two Warren Zevon songs that we have considered, although of course each has delivered that “push” in a different way, in a reflection of the lyrics. But it really does reveal the power that he was able to get into his songs.
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
From Youngstown, Ohio, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
A lightweight contender, like father like son
He fought for the title with Frias in Vegas
And he put him away in round number one
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can't take the punches, it don't mean a thing
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
When they asked him who was responsible
For the death of Duk Koo Kim
He said, "Someone should have stopped the fight
And told me it was him."
They made hypocrite judgements after the fact
But the name of the game is be hit and hit back
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
I suspect Bob’s liking of this song comes both from his admiration of Warren Zevon’s work and his love of boxing – plus of course the fact that the song doesn’t shy away from the key issue of what boxing is, and the part played in the Duk Koo Kim fight not just by Mancini but also the referee and the media.
Perhaps we might also note that Zevon is the only artist on Dylan’s list of favourite songs to have four of his compositions listed. This was the third of those four, and I rather think it might be worth, at the end of the series also looking at another Zevon song: “Mutineer,” which Bob played during his tour of the USA in the autumn of 2002. But I will leave that, as I say, for the end of the series.
Black rider, black rider, you been living too hard
Been up all night, have to stay on your guard
The path that you’re on, too narrow to walk
Every step of the way, another stumbling block
The road that you’re on, the same road that you know
Just not the same as it was a minute ago
“If Bob Dylan could go back in time, would he travel the same road, would he leave behind everything he had, to devote his whole life to music?” Sandra Jones asks Bob Dylan, in the third person for reasons that are unclear, for Belgium’s Ciné-Revue in 1978. Dylan’s answer echoes more than 40 years later in the opening lines of “Black Rider”:
“I don’t think I can answer your question with all the honesty it deserves. First, you can never rebuild the past, and that’s how it should be. So, it’s not humanly possible to answer that question. Over twenty years a man accumulates experiences, mistakes and successes. At the end of the day, he finds out that he has changed totally and that he couldn’t travel the same road again.”
Dylan does seem to be fond of it it, of the life-is-a-road metaphor. “I’m standin’ on the highway watchin’ my life roll by”, “I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe”, “Your old road is rapidly agin’”, “The way is long but the end is near”, “I can follow the path”, “Gon’ walk down that dirt road” … every record since 1962 has featured a song that uses life = a road. Dozens of times as in these examples, and in addition often enough symbolically. “Desolation Row”, “the Highway of Regret”, “Suicide Road”, Rough And Rowdy Ways, the album on which we again encounter a “boulevard of crime”, “Armageddon Street”, a “road of despair” and a “long, lonesome road”. And in this opening couplet of “Black Rider”, the song poet seems to want to thematise the metaphor itself.
At least, we do see a similar accumulatio, an accumulation of equivalents, as in “Crossing The Rubicon”, and , more so, as in “Mississippi”:
The narrow path in verse line 3;
Stumbing blocks on the way in verse line 4;
The changed road in verse line 5/6
… where the Dylan fan will notice that Dylan, with every step of the way, chooses exactly the same words as the opening words of “Mississippi”. Remarkable, as Dylan has a documented aversion to repetition – but apparently his need to use the equivalents path, way and road in this verse trumps that aversion to repetition.
The state of mind of both protagonists, of the narrator in “Mississippi” and the Black Rider, is approximately similar. In “Mississippi”, the song poet chooses an accumulation of equivalents that all express distress; boxed in, painted in a corner, trapped, nowhere to escape, drownin’, and so on. The Black Rider is similarly trapped; the path is too narrow, there are obstacles in the way, the only route he knows has changed beyond recognition. But the distress seems even a degree worse than the one tormenting the narrator in “Mississippi” – this protagonist seems terrified. Well, he should be scared to death, at the very least. A suspicion which is triggered mostly by the opening line, of course; you’ve been living too hard.
Word choice Dylan chooses in other contexts to describe a fatal course of life, like when he talks as a DJ in Theme Time Radio Hour about Little Walters’ death: “He died at an early age, 38 years old. But if you see pictures, he looks closer to sixty. A hard-living man, but a great artist.” And like the famous words from the monumental song that stands on a pedestal with Dylan, and with all of us, from “A Change Is Gonna Come”: It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die.
The follow-up line, the second line of verse, hints at much the same thing. Have to stay on your guard suggests, quite clearly, that the Black Rider is threatened, and it is obvious that his life is threatened. In any case, the words echo Sir Toby’s words in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night:
“So if you value your life at all, be on your guard, for your opponent has all the youth, strength, skill, and anger that god can give to a man.”
… which at first seems a bit far-fetched, but on the other hand: Twelfth Night has been a purveyor of Dylan’s oeuvre for sixty years now. Starting as early as 1963’s “Percy’s Song”, which bases the final song from the play, on “The Wind and the Rain”. A few years later we hear an otherwise empty name-check in “Highway 61 Revisited”, and conversely, directors in the twenty-first century integrate Dylan’s songs into performances of Twelfth Night. And, to complete the circle, my ship’s been split to splinters from “Mississippi” is the plot-driving catastrophe from Twelfth Night or What You Will.
Anyway: both the words living too hard and be on your guard Dylan knows and uses mainly in a fatal context, and that’s how he seems to use them here – so this black rider does indeed seem to be at the end of his life’s journey. A rather hackneyed theme presents itself. Which might explain why even a Nobel Prize-winning poet does not shy away from clichés like narrow path and the road you’re on. And who, apart from “Mississippi”, indeed seems to be haunted by “A Change Is Gonna Come”:
For what I knew was wrong
Yes it's been an uphill journey
It's sure's been a long way comin
Yes it has
It's been real hard
Every step of the way
But I believe, I believe
This evenin' my change is come
But whether the coming change here in “Black Rider” is indeed the ultimate, final change, we will only hear and learn in the following verses…
https://youtu.be/xNyt7lifhjE
To be continued. Next up Black Rider part 4: He lets them synthesize into a coherent thing
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:
Bob Dylan tried a dramatic re-write of Wicked Messager in 2001 (this recording from Seattle on 6 October that year) and made a few variations along the way. It was a very similar approach to that used for “The Drifter’s Escape” – but far more successful in my view.
Here’s the original – just in case you haven’t heard it for a while…
It is quite an interesting melody running over the repeated instrumental accompaniment and with a harmonica part in between each verse which really doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything else in the song – either in terms of the chords, the melody or indeed the feeling.
Now here’s the reworked live version…
As you can hear there is an element of the original instrumentation retained but the entire feel of the song is utterly different. Where there was previously a calm journey across the plains or deserts (or wherever the messenger had come from) it is all fairly calm.
And this indeed makes some sort of sense with regards to the last verse – although the lyrics are changed slightly
The leaves began to falling
And the seas began to part
And the people that confronted him were many
And he was told these last few words
Which opened up his heart
"If ye cannot bring good news, then don't bring any"
But what we have now (I feel) is a sense of panic – which is then continued in the solo part at the end of the song.
In fact, without us knowing what on earth was in the message from God (Eli), or what is going on (apart from the seeming fact that those in power ignore its contents), we have a totally different song.
And in this regard, the rock version makes sense in its own way, just as the original folk version does. God can just let silly humans get on with their own vanity (the original album’s simple folk version) or He can swipe mankind away with a flick of the finger (this reinvented rock version).
Or maybe Bob said to the band members, “let’s just do some JWH tracks with a beat.”
What we have to remember is that this electric version was performed ten years before Thea Gilmore brought out her version which totally reconfigured the song, but around 28 years after Hendrix did his typically Hendrixian version. Also there was the fascinating reworking of the piece by the David Nelson Band and I have always had the thought that maybe Bob was trying to find something that neither David Nelson nor Hendrix had actually achieved with the song.
Of course that is pure speculation on my part – but I think it is relevant, because of why I chose this piece as a highlight. Not because it is a musically brilliant re-interpretation or a sublime live performance but because it expresses to me Dylan’s thought processes as he seeks to find a reinvention not just of his original work but of other people’s re-interpretations in the cover versions.
In short, I find it a highlight because it shines a light on the working process, not because of the end result – although I do enjoy this reworking enormously as an illumination of Bob’s regularly changing views on religion. The “When He Returns” era is long since gone and with this version of the song I am left wondering who the messenger now is, what his message was, and whether he feels the whole message delivery thing is worth the trouble.
And there is that line, “If you can’t bring good news then don’t bring any,” that is so anti-Christian in its approach (for Christianity brings us not just the news of the Second Coming but also the work of the Devil) that it does seem to me (as a non-Christian) that Bob really had shaken a lot of the Christian era out of his thinking. A feeling that is emphasised by the ending as it descends down and down to the final note.
Of course a very personal interpretation, but then, by and large, they all are.
& tolstoy - all right then
- what my work is
- is merely picking up where they left off
- nothing more
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Apparently, it’s really nothing to carry on, at least according to the rather foggy poetic diction below into which rides our “cowboy angel”.
Leo Tolstoy pens “War and Peace,” a fictionalized rendering of Napoleon’s actual invasion of Russia:
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
The translated quote below, be at the end of “The Gambler” ~ a book by another Russian writer:
" ... later i left the Casino with one hundred & seventy gulden
in my pocket
- it's the absolute truth!"
- fyodor dostoevsky
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Inferred above is that what you need to win in life is to first have the courage to make the bet:
Well, I knew I was young enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
'Cause I'd already seen it done enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
(Jim James et al: Nothing To It ~ Bob Dylan)
Another Russian author comes along; this time a modernist playwright whose dark-humored dramas introduce characters who have desires ~ albeit suppressed~ about which they speak inferentially.
For Anton Chekov, the trick in life is to reconcile lofty romantic sentiments with stone-cold reality – as best that one is able.
His writings and literary symbolism go together:
I shall always remember you as I saw you that bright day … you wore your light dress, and we talked together, and the white gull lay on the bench beside us
(Anton Chekov: The Lake Gull ~ translated)
Though time moves on – ie, the wilderness passes, youth passes –
hope remains:
Our conservation was short and sweet
It nearly knocked me of of my feet ....
Bird on the horizon, sitting on the fence
He's singing his song for me at his own expense
And I'm just like that bird, oohh
Singing just for you
(Bob Dylan: You're A Big Girl Now)
White Swan
From out of the Blakean poem beneath springs “Home On The Range”, a song that depicts the Old West of America as an Edenic paradise on earth:
I love these wild flowers in this bright land of ours
I love , too, the curlew's wild scream
The bluffs of white rocks, and antelope flocks
That graze on the hillsides so green
(Brewster Higley: The Western Home)
Gather what you can from author Leo Tolstoy, from post-modernist word-twists, and from pure coincidence ~ in the song lyrics below.
Also, there’s the possible playful ‘fore’, ‘forer’, and ‘forest’:
Of war and peace the truth just twists
It's curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
Poet William Blake engraves visions that tightly combine the spiritual and physical aspects of the mysterious Universe.
In the Dylan quote above, the two cosmic planes are congealed into somewhat-updated word-images which are carried solumnly along by the accompanying music.
Similarly so in the book “Tarantula” by Bob Dylan; but of course without any accompanying “music” ~ except for the ways the sounds of the words are put together to create rhythm, onomatopoeia, assonance, dissonance, consonance, alliteration, and all.
As in the following quote:
(T)here's no liquor in the land
that can stop your brain from bleedin
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Dylan’s “Gates Of Eden” crosses the path of the paradisal “Home On The Range”, a version of that song made well-known by Gene Autry, the singing cowboy “angel”; then owner of the “California Angels” baseball team.
Below, akin to the early version of the range (Autry, on the other hand, leaves out the white swan):
Where the graceful white swan goes gliding along
Like a maid in a heavenly dream
(Frank Sinatra: Home On The Range~ Higley, Kelley, et. al.)
The range also crosses the path of the following ballad:
And the swan on the river goes gliding by
The swan on the river goes giding by
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of The Gliding Swan ~ Dylan/Jones)
Anyway, the cowboy angel’s rendition goes:
Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play ....
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed, and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours
(Gene Autry: Home On The Range ~ Higley, Kelley, et.al.)
Actor Alan Hale plays “Tiny”, Gene Autry’s cowboy sidekick ~ a couple of times on screen.
But apparently, things have changed:
Tiny - I met her at an outrageous party ....
& she's got a new boyfriend now
& he looks like machine gun kelly
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
The great problems with doing a cover version of “Ring Them Bells” are a) the song itself is highly distinctive, and b) the use of the word “bells” invites the uninventive performer / arranger / producer to do the obvious. So in listening to a range of cover versions I have veered away from both of those approaches and looked for versions that take us to completely new interpretations. And thankfully quite a few artists have gone to new places and found new things to do.
As Cindy Cashdollar has worked on occasion alongside Bob Dylan she ought to know a thing or two about re-arranging, and that certainly shines through here. The harmonies are beautiful, and the accompaniment laid back without any temptation to include a few bells, gongs or chimes. The instrumental with which the song ends is perfection.
Muscle and Bone play with us by playing a chord sequence at the start and starting the song in exactly the place we don’t expect. The guitar part is so simple, but fits so perfectly with the melody and the lyrics. It just shows you really don’t need to go further and further to get a good cover of Dylan. And perhaps because of that, when the harmonies start it feels so natural.
Perfection in simplicity. (Incidentally, I found myself listening to lyrics in a completely new way through this version – which is always a good thing).
Jumping from one version to another of the same song is always fascinating, and doing it over and again in writing this series I have so often reached the view that amusician or producer or arranger has made changes just for the sake of it. But that doesn’t apply here. Just compare Natasha Bedingfield’s version with Muscle and Bone. Two utterly different interpretations but both really worth contemplating.
After the previous version – indeed after all the previous versions, this is another jolt.
And Gordon Lightfoot has of course the right to do anything he likes with any song. After all, if the composer of “Early Morning Rain” hasn’t earned that right, who has? (Incidentally, Gordon Lightfoot also wrote “Rainy Day People” years after “Rainy Day Women” and I’ve often wondered why – but that’s another story).
Anyway, the starting point is so different and a different interpretation throughout.
So to the final version, and I’ve kept this to last because the opening is so odd, but also because the accompaniment is so unexpected in parts. It just shows how much can be done with a good song. And because I think it works – despite its complete divergence in parts from the original feeling of the song. If you have a moment please do listen throughout. It is worth staying with it.
Aaron:This article in which we look at Bob Dylan singing songs he didn’t compose, marks the one-year anniversary since the first piece in this series!!
Tony:That first episode can still be found here, and a full list of all the episodes is given at the end. This is number 53 in the series.
Aaron: “Gotta Travel On” was based on a fragment of an unnamed song found in the archives of the Virginia Folklore Society. It was also titled “Done Laid Around”, though versions with that title typically use a different set of lyrics.
Tony:According to Wiki, “The earliest known version was printed in Carl Sandburg‘s The American Songbag in 1927 under the title “Yonder Comes the High Sheriff” and several variations were recorded in the 1920s.” Not that Wiki always gets it right!
Aaron: Billy Grammar had the hit with it in 1958
Tony: This is one of the occasions on which the version Aaron (in the USA) has forwarded to me (in the UK) doesn’t play for me, so here’s a copy I’ve found that hopefully works in parts of the world where the version above doesn’t.
Tony:It’s a jolly piece, but what really attracted my attention (beyond the drummer standing up) was the bass part. If you missed it just listen again to what the bassist is doing – he’s having a rare old time and it really gives a buzz to what might otherwise be a not particularly memorable recording.
Aaron:The Au Go Go Singers were a nine-member folk group formed in New York City in 1964, and best remembered for featuring Stephen Stills and Richie Furay two years before they formed Buffalo Springfield.
Tony:Well, I’d never guess that Stephen Stills was on that recording, and I always loved his work – although I must admit this doesn’t do too much for me. But Suite Judy Blue Eyes was a major influence in my very early days as a wannabe musician / songwriter. This, I was convinced, is the way to write songs that say something, and which don’t sound like Bob Dylan. So many layers within one song – oh I haven’t listened to it for several years, but there was a time when it was always there with me. “Fear is the lock and laughter the key…” Oh yes. I tried to make that my motto in teenage years.
Aaron: Dylan’s version came from 1970s Self Portrait
Tony:My usual comment comes straight into my mind – if we are listening to a song we know well, then the new version must give us something more than we already know. Does Bob do that? Well, I suppose so, but I am not sure I quite get the message or that I really want to get the message. It doesn’t deliver anything new to me – rather as if a bunch of good musicians just decided to play the piece they all knew, without bothering with too many rehearsals. (See also the final piece in this article!)
It reminds me of the sort of thing we used to play just because we all knew it, and no one quite knew how to end it. Indeed that ending is rather rough. But I would really like to hear from someone who does like this and feels it adds something such that she/he would feel inclined to play it again. It doesn’t do that to me – but then I’ve heard the song off and on all through my life, so maybe that’s the problem. (Hell, I’m getting really crotchety in my old age).
Aaron: Neil Young & Crazy Horse recorded the track for their 2012 album Americana
Tony:This is weird – or at least that opening is weird. Why do we have that? It is a crude version in the sense of the percussion as a driving force – there is no sophistication there at all. But the harmonies are really good and work very well. Yet we have that bash bash bash percussion part all the way through. Why is that? And can you imagine being part of the chorus that sings the last line of each verse in perfect harmony? It must have been hard not to leave the session thinking “what the **** was that all about?”
Especially as the piece runs to over six minutes (although it really does sound as if no one has any idea how to end it).
Hmmm. I might have laughed too if I had been on the piano in the recording session, but then crawled under the table the moment I found that recording was being released.
But hey ho – these are fine musicians having some fun, so why not?
Black rider, black rider, you been living too hard
Been up all night, have to stay on your guard
The path that you’re walking on, too narrow to walk
Every step of the way, another stumbling block
The road that you’re on, (the) same road that you know
Just not the same as it was a minute ago
Vintage engraving of a pair of wrens, 1870
Unconventional the song certainly is. On all fronts, in fact. That goes for the opening words already, the opening line with its unusual metre. Black RIder, black RIder, you been LIving too HARD – twice an amphibrachys, twice an anapest.
In which, as so often with Dylan, the formatting of the official publication (on the site) differs from the recitation; the stanzas are published on the site as six lines. Presumably dictated by the rhyme, which thus appears aabbcc. However, the recitation is different – Dylan rather clearly sings 12 lines:
Black rider, black rider,
You been living too hard
Been up all night,
Have to stay on your guard
The path that you’re on walking,
Too narrow to walk
Ev'ry step of the way,
Another stumbling block
The road that you’re on,
(the) Same road that you know
Just not the same as it was
A minute ago
Small textual differences between the official release and the studio recording illustrate that Dylan the Singer is guided by metre. The site says, for example, The path that you’re on. In the studio, Dylan sings The path that you’re walking. As he also sings it at the first live performance, Milwaukee 2 November 2021, and as he still sings it 104 concert performances later, April 2023 in Japan. Prompted by an apparent need to preserve the short-long-short, these dual amphibrachys; The PATH that / you’re WALking.
It is, oddly enough, a completely unusual metre. Strange, because it has an elegant, attractive rhythm that naturally imparts a waltzy cadence to the words. But in the canon, we really only know it from Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat”;
It’s four in the morning, the end of December,
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
… which, given the song’s classic status, might have been a template. If Dylan applied his famous “Bob Nolan method”, as he explained to journalist Robert Hilburn, in a 1984 interview for the L.A. Times:
“What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. […] I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s Tumbling Tumbleweeds, for instance, in my head constantly — while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. […] I’m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”
And this time, instead of “Tumbling Tumbleweed”, it might have been the monumental “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Possible, though not too likely. Content-wise, there is one thin overlap passage (Dylan’s Go home to your wife, stop visiting mine from the third stanza), and thematically, “Black Rider” has hardly any common ground with Cohen’s chilling, moving adultery ballad either. More attractive candidates can be found on Dylan’s poetry shelf. William Blake is a regular guest in Dylan’s oeuvre anyway, since the 1960s in fact, and resorts to the amphibrachys often enough. In Songs Of Experience (1789), for instance, the collection Dylan explicitly names as an inspiration in the opening track of Rough And Rowdy Ways, in “I Contain Multitudes”:
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything’s flowin’ all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars and I eat fast foods . . . I contain multitudes
Somewhere halfway through Songs Of Experience we find the beautiful “The Garden Of Love”, which will also appeal to Dylan in terms of content; it is one of Blake’s both religious and sensual attacks on the rigidity of organised religion, on the church that is. Very musically contained in amphibrachs;
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
Graceful and dashing, but again an unlikely candidate for the template, for the song in Dylan’s head where “some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.” Another regular guest in Dylan’s discography is then a more likely “Bob Nolan on duty”: W.H. Auden. And then one of his all-time greatest, “O Where Are You Going?” (1932);
“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,
“That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.”
…Auden’s breathtaking, near-perfect ballad with the same theme, choice of words and subcutaneous suspense as Dylan’s “Black Rider”. And quite conceivable it is, the step an in-his-head-reciting Dylan can take from “O where are you going?” said reader to rider to the man who seems to be on a quest as well, to Black rider, black rider, you been living too hard. For which Auden in turn, very Dylanesque, also had a template. A folk song even, to complete the circle; the eighteenth-century “The Cutty Wren”, with its opening lines
“O where are you going?” said Milder to Maulder
“O we may not tell you,” said Festle to Foes
“We're off to the woods,” said John the Red Nose
Popular in English folk circles, so many artists have the song in their repertoire, but its sinister undercurrent is nowhere more hauntingly captured than by Steeleye Span on 1996’s relaunch album Time.
Maulder, Festle and John the Red Nose, Auden’s rider, Blake’s love seeker and the man bereft of his blue mackintosh… all men on a quest. Just like the Black Rider. But o, where is he going?
To be continued. Next up Black Rider part 3: A Chance Is Gonna Come
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:
“It ain’t me babe” is a complicated song to write about from the musical point of view because Dylan himself has changed the chordal accompaniment to the song in various performances, and so have those who have issued cover versions.
But if we go back to the start, and the original album version, the song has a feel of tentativeness, uncertainty, and apology, all brought about through the music because at the start we are not clear what key we are in. In terms of the chords, if you want more on this there is of course Dylanchords).
The opening chords are D and C, (although the D chord sounds to me incomplete) and this alternation of the chords along with the way the D chord is played, gives a sense of uncertainty which contradicts the forthrightness of the opening line…
Go away from my window Leave at your own chosen speed I'm not the one you want, babe I'm not the one you need
It is a push out the door – but not a violent push, more a gentle edging outwards. And as the lyrics say, it is presented as being in the lady’s best interests: “I’m not the one you need”.
For me this opening is a perfect example of how Bob Dylan can get the music and the lyrics to operate as one. The gentleness of the persuasion and the feeling of issues unresolved in the music, since we have not heard the key-chord until the word “speed”.
Thus the music edges the lady along, across those first four lines, with just a touch of the tonic – the chord that is at the base of the music.
And just to make the point of the uncertainty Dylan moves 0nwards immediately taking us to the chord of B minor 7 – a chord of uncertainty – followed by A minor 7 (ditto)… and then the song rocks back and forth between the following lines until we get to the dominant chord of D at “each and every door”. That is the resolution of what she wants, and the music finally “agreeing” (as it were) that this is where everything is building to…
And then bang, we are with the tonic chord of G around which everything else circles – the minor chords have gone and as the words become more strident (as in “No, no, no…”) we are hearing the three major chords of songs in G (G, C, D). You can’t get more forceful than that.
Now my point here is not that Dylan thought this through – I am not suggesting he said to himself, “Hmmm I am going to be more strident in the chorus in saying ‘No no no’ so I need chords that reflect that.” Of course not.
What I am saying is that this happened just naturally as part of the composition, as it would for any talented and experienced song writer. It is quite possible that as he first sketched out the idea of the song Dylan started with the “It ain’t me babe” line, and then built the verse around it later, but there is no doubt that this title line needs strength in the music.
The major chords of G C and D give us that strength, but just playing the chorus straight out wouldn’t make us feel the strength. It is by having the rotating D and C chords at the start that we get the feeling of gentleness with which the “It ain’t me” line can contrast.
This is, I am sure, a highly talented instinctive songwriter simply coming out with the lyrics and the music, knowing as he plays the guitar in readiness for this song for the first time, that this contrast is what is needed. And it happens in a way that just feels natural to us, because the minor chords (associated with unhappiness and uncertainty) contrast so clearly with the major chords of the chorus.
Then add in the fact that “No no no” naturally descends, indicating the end of the affair, and you have the whole picture.
Instinctive writing, I suspect it was. But also instinctively right. Music and lyrics at one.
Reverend Dylan simply would not be an ordained vicar were most of his music unaccompanied by words.
He wouldn’t have been able to marry literature and popular music.
There are still a number of analysts who promote the very dubious claim that singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan constructs lyrics to reinforce the feeling that accompanies the ‘meaning’ of a song that’s already been encoded therein by his choice of music.
When, of course, word-sounds are written down as to what their literal and figurative meaning(s) are – defined in dictionaries; musical notes not so encumbered.
Lyrics and then the music may be created, or vice versa, maybe both together, but the end product, how the lyrics and music mesh together, is what counts.
Words and sentences can be chosen by an author because of their bare sound, but they are still clothed in meaning ~ meaning that can even be turned upside down when spoken or sung in an ironic tone of voice.
Pre-surrealist poet Rimbaud, for instance, can play with sounds and tropes including assonance, and consonance all he wants while insisting on creating without emotional attachment “art for art’s sake”.
But to some degree or another, the inherent structure of a language, and the meaning(s) attached to its words, demand attention be paid.
Likewise, the innovative Baroque musician Jean-Phillippe Rameau had to contend with the accepted structure of classical instrumental music at that particular time in history ~ though it be not possible to deal with the music in the same manner as with a broadly spoken and/or written language.
For sure, Bob Dylan demonstrates more than once that he is aware of poets like Edgar Poe, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud; symbolist writers who are not musicians, but who focus nevertheless on the pleasing and unpleasant effects of sounds that can be produced through the uttering of words and phrases:
Relationships have all been bad
Mine's been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud
(Bob Dylan: You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go)
Novelists too:
There was music from my neighbour's house
through the summer nights
(F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, chap.3)
Echoed, albeit more specifically, beneath:
I'm walking through that summer night
The juke box playing low
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)
Prelude from Tony:I took on this series following a suggestion by Aaron (with whom I’ve written a number of earlier series, Aaron himself providing the research and background, myself filling in some detail and personal opinion). And I love doing this because with Aaron choosing the songs, it takes me into all sorts of areas that I have never really contemplated and music I didn’t know.
For example, I had never heard “Lawyers, Guns and Money” before it turned up in this series, and it is still getting a regular playing in my house, both in terms of listening to the original and the various cover versions. (Which makes me think there might be a series to be had out of “Cover versions of Dylan’s favourite songs” although that I rather suspect is going one step too far.)
But back to the here and now, and we are now at song number 10 in the list Bob provided for “Far Out” magazine of his favourite songs. In fact Bob only nominated four performer / songwriters within his list of favourite songs: Gordon Lighfoot, Warren Zevon, Randy Newman and John Prine. And today for episode 11 we are back Gordon Lightfoot for his third and final contribution.
There’s a full list of the episodes in this series as usual at the foot of the article, but in case you want a bit of background first, the three Gordon Lightfoot nominated songs were Shadows, ‘Sundown’, and now here we have, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’.
Now the song in question.
And if you have been following this little series, or if you are conversant with Gordon Lightfoot’s extraordinary ability as a songwriter, you’ll know where we are going with this song, even if you have never heard it before (which seems unlikely).
It is another utterly extraordinary piece – something many people feel from the moment the original recording starts alternating just two chords with an utterly magical melody above it, and lyrics that must dig into the heart of anyone with any sort of feelings and uncertainties within her or his life.
The song is a look back to Lightfoot’s thoughts on his divorce with a combination of extraordinary honesty and extraordinary poetic delicacy about what has happened – and all the time there is that amazing melody circling around and around.
So thus we have it – extraordinarily beautiful melody, unusual chord changes which use perfectly usual chords but in a different way, and such poignant lyrics. Just consider
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I am a ghost, you can't see
As a person who has been divorced twice, and lost multiple other relationships, these words pierce my heart – and I suppose this is the point of such amazing songwriting. If one has been there, a song like this says everything. And if you are lucky, and have loved and stayed in love through your life then there is still the melody – and the knowledge of how lucky you are. If not, the lyrics are there if you fancy having a few extra nails hammered into your emotional backdrop.
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take
But in fact we don’t have to go that far or that deep. Just the opening lines, which with a less moving melody might sound trite, now sound utterly extraordinary…
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
I’m putting another video below – a video that is not only of interest because it is about Gordon Lightfoot, but it is particularly interesting as it includes a number of comments about Bob Dylan talking about Gordon Lightfoot. It then gets into the technicalities of how the song is written which are I guess primarily added for musicians and particularly for up-and-coming songwriters who want to have an answer to “what did he do there to get that sound?” but still, the opening I think will be of interest to most people.
And I sympathise with the problems those involved in the “What makes this song great” video have, for trying to make this interesting to everyone else is tough going. And indeed I know this myself for just recently Jochen Markhorst (whose writing you will of course know if you are a regular reader on this site) asked me to help a little in considering how 5/4 time was used by Nick Drake in the recording of that most amazing piece of music “River Man”. I did write out my thoughts on how Drake used that most unusual time structure, and gave the notes to Jochen.
By coincidence just yesterday I started to read Jochen’s book “Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British masterpiece”, and (literally) fell off my chair when I found myself reading my two page explanation of what Drake did with the 5/4 time signature that was not just so unusual but as far as I know unique.
So I know from recent experience just how hard it is to explain how a piece of music is written, and re-reading my commentary just yesterday how difficult it is to explain the clever twists and turns genius composers come up with, in a way that might be interesting to the non-musical reader. Jochen’s book incidentally is available here – if you know River Man you really must read it – not in any way for my small part in the affair, but because it really does help us all consider that work of utter genius.
But enough of that, back to the plot. To me, the “What makes this song great” explanation of “If you could read my mind” on the video below is so detailed that I think it loses the sense of creativity that comes with the writing. And not because the speaker doesn’t know his stuff – he most certainly does. It is just incredibly hard to do, as I found out with my explanation of how 5/4 time is used in “River Man.”
I don’t know how Lightfoot added all those twists and turns to the accompaniment that the commentator goes into in such detail in the video below, but from the songwriters I have chatted to, I know that often it is by chance – it just comes along suddenly and one thinks “yes that’s it”, and “that’s what I need there.” (I don’t think that applies to River Man, because that is a song on another planet, but it applies here and this is a song of genius).
This video is by Rick Beato, music producer.
So back with the main theme – “If you could read my mind” – we have a wonderful, wonderful song, with every element being perfect, and in the video above every element being reduced down to its individual sub-atomic particles. I am not sure I want to go that far – but if you do, there it is.
In the case of Lightfoot, for me, just hearing it and knowing it is about his divorce is enough.
Overall, “What makes this song great” is an interesting approach, but to me it loses the creativity and suggests that we could all be great songwriters if we pinched some of these techniques. No, “If you could read my mind” is great because it has a beautiful melody, powerful and painful lyrics, and gently different chords.
“River Man” was different – it goes beyond greatness onto another planet, and hence breaking it down somewhat helps if one wants to know how the previously unheard and unconsidered effects within the song were achieved. With “If you could read my mind” a simpler explanation will suffice. Gorgeous melody, somewhat unusual chords in passing, a painful theme but with the thought of survival, and the unique notion of a songwriter writing to his ex about their actual real-life divorce. It is a wonderful, wonderful song. Painful but wonderful.
Digging into what makes a song work can be helpful – but is certainly not always necessary. Sometimes yes, but not always.
By Tony Attwood, based on the research by Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet) for the Never Ending Tour series on this site. Links to previous articles in the “Absolute Highlights” series are given at the end.
Dylan was trying out this new arrangement of Baby Blue all through 1994, resulting in a series of different performances with differences of emphais. And before anyone asks, we don’t have the date or location of this particularly slow version, with its own different balance. Just the year.
This song is one that has always seemed to me much sadder than the music of the original recording portrayed, and here in this recording we can get a much deeper insight into what other emotions and feeling – and indeed background – lie within the song which are not revealed in the LP recording.
Because Dylan was changing the arrangements as he moved through the tour, we don’t (in my opinion) get a version in which Bob is fully certain where he is taking each and every line, but the overall effect most certainly tells us the direction he is going in and the type of feeling he wishes to portray.
And what we now have in bucketfuls is the desperate sense of loss – it is all over and there is a sense of total desperation here, which the two harmonica solos each just one verse apart deliver very clearly.
I very much get a sense that this version had only had one or two rehearsal run-throughs before they ventured into it on stage, so we are getting a raw re-working here with Bob interested in seeing just how far the sadness of the song could be pushed.
The quiet opening of Dylan playing the guitar is followed with the lines we all know but with a slightly different rhythm both in the guitar and the vocals. It is the sort of thing that we only notice now because we know the song so well. Different words are emphasised occasional lyrics are changed. “Now” the sky is folding over you. Previously in the published lyrics it was folding under you. One word, but it means everything.
As a result of these changes to the music, the lyrics take on a completely different meaning. Before
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
was just a hippy friend who had been dossing down in the room who has moved on. Now there is something far more desperate going on. Before everyone assumes you can just move on and everything will be ok. Now all that certainty has gone.
And as for the final verse – I am not sure I have heard Bob more desperate in his singing than we get here. Nor much more plaintive on the harmonica. “Strike another match, go start anew” is not a case of venturing out to find others to play with, others to be with, others to talk to, it is a case of leaving everything behind without any certainty that the next stop will actually be ok. And that final repeated and repeated and repeated single phrase on the harmonica is painful beyond belief.
This really is not a case of moving on, because that is what people do, this is a case of the entire world breaking up. So “it’s all over now”, now means everything is falling apart. Absolutely everything. The masters of war have, it turns out, won.
After listening to this recording three or four times as I write this, I found it almost impossible to listen to the original album version. It just seems so out of place. Far too jaunty, far too accepting. I’m almost thinking, “how can this be?” How can he sing this with all this pain going on around him?
But of course in the original there was no pain. It really was a case of just moving on, because that’s what we do.
Previously on “The Never Ending Tour, the absolute highlights…”
