Slithering his way through the grass
He saw him disappear by a tree near the lake
Ah, I think I call it a (snake)
(Bob Dylan: Man Gave Names To All The Animals)
And with people who “pull the wool” over your eyes:
Might a-been old master Wool
Met him on my way to school
(Bob Dylan: The Price Of Love)
Opportunistic politicians so considered:
Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office
Got no time to lose
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
As in the following song lyrics:
Well, I gotta run to serve
Wave on by me in the neighbourhood
(Bob Dylan: The Price Of Love)
Supposedly, everyone has a ‘free will’, a choice to be naughty or nice.
Or maybe it’s just the luck of the circumstance:
Well, it may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
(Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody)
When all is said and done, it’s Mr. Moloch, the lover of money, symbolized by the Golden Calf of Babylon, who rules:
How much you got with you today
Two dollar, one dollar, two dollar bill
If you don't, somebody else will
Ohh, the price of love, going up
(Bob Dylan: The Price Of Love)
Likewise expressed in the song beneath:
Fifty dollar, fifty dollar
Give me a hollar, fifty dollar
Who will bid it at a fifty dollar bill
(LeRoy Van Dyke: The Autioneer ~ Van Dyke/Black)
Light as a symbol of the unselfish spiritual life fades:
The evening sun is sinking low
The woods are dark, the town is too
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
The motif of Mankind caught between the light of goodness and the darkness of evil:
The evening sun is low ....
I stood between heaven and earth
(Bob Dylan: Crossing The Rubicon ~ variation)
And so it goes – whose side are you on?:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
(Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening)
The trouble with the 12 bar blues is that there are so many millions of them around it is hard to do much that is new – although of course the great musicians most certainly still achieve novelty and interest within this most restrictive of musical forms.
Bob Dylan did indeed create an interesting piece with “New Pony”, but it is such a distinctive piece within the 12 bar format (even with the variant that Dylan introduces by having the repeat line using the same chord as the first line, and the “how much longer” line added) that those who wish to cover the song now have a double problem: the format and Dylan’s inventiveness. The format is fixed, and Dylan’s inventiveness knows no bounds.
As a result not too many have tried to make a cover version of this song.
Jenna Silverman tells us from the off that this is going to be a pretty straight copy by giving us an introduction that is almost a complete reproduction of Dylan’s arrangement. And that turns out to be quite clever as her voice is so distinctive and seductive it is quite a contrast to the overall format, and so it turns out we need little else.
No matter that the backing singings do their part as a straight copy, the interest is built up, and when the saxophone comes in for its solo I’m still there paying full attention. And indeed it is excellent playing by the saxophonist. A great ending too.
The Dead Weather with Jack White is the cover version I particularly thought of when contemplating this little piece before actually playing any of the videos. The band seems to take on the notion that Dylan’s version is a mere gentle introduction to what could be done with a 12 bar variant, and in such a situation the percussionist just goes off and has a field day.
The trouble is I’m writing this at 9.30am on a sunday in a peaceful Northamptonshire village, after dancing last night with one of my favourite dance partners, until midnight, and I’m not really sure my environment really helps me appreciate this to its fullest extent. Mind you I have had breakfast, so that helps.
Maria McKeehas a voice that takes us elsewhere, and a nice elsewhere it is. Except I wonder about the need for a female chorus with the “How much longer” with McKee’s fine vocals running the show. I wonder what it would sound like with a male chorus?
But I find the instrumental break a disappointment – surely the pianist can do more than hit the tonic chord over and over again.
However, the drop-down “voodoo” verse is a really neat idea which I’ve not heard elsewhere. Although going straight back into the full-bloodied edition immediately after is perhaps a little too obvious for such a talented group of musicians. But maybe playing it at midnight Friday/Saturday might help, rather than this calm and peaceful autumn morning.
Outside there is the faintest breeze moving the top of the poplar trees and the sun just slightly shines through the wispy clouds. In fact I really think I am playing the wrong piece of music for this day and this time of day. But that’s not their fault.
Do listen to the end – it’s a simple idea but very much worth hearing.
Being from Cornhill, New Brunswick, not that far from the rolling foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, it’s easily seen that singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan is lifted aloft up to where the eagles fly by the winged Apollonian gods of the Maritimes.
He apparently accumulates lines drawn from Maitimers songsters.
From Gordon Vale, New Brunswick ~ John Calhoun:
In eighteen hundred and eighty
When the flowers were a brilliant hue
I sailed away from my native isle
My fortune to pursue
(Ballad Of Peter Amberley)
The lyrics of the Maritime song drawn upon in the song beneath:
Farewell to the old north woods
Of which I used to roam
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of Donald White)
From Hatfield Point, New Brunswick ~ Bob Nolan:
But with the dawn
I'll wake up and yawn
(Cool Water)
Echoed in the lines below:
I got up early
So I could greet the goddess of the dawn
(Bob Dylan: I Crossed the Rubicon)
From Brooklyn, Nova Scotia ~ Hank Snow:
Down at the pawnshop, down at the pawnshop
They got my watch and everything
(Down At The Pawnshop)
Echoed again below:
I pawned my watch, paid my debts
And I crossed the Rubicon
(Bob Dylan: I Crossed The Rubicon)
From Hilford, Nova Scotia ~ Wilf Carter:
It seems I can still see the old covered wagon
And the first day I ever met you
(The Red River Valley Blues)
And on it goes:
I painted my wagon, abandoned all hope
And I crossed the Rubicon
(Bob Dylan: I Crossed The Rubicon)
Or could be that Bob Dylan is simply a transfigured Maritimer.
We now arrive at what must be the most frustratingly brilliant, difficult, disastrous and contentious year of the NET – 2009. In this year we find some of the strangest, most remarkable – and most wretched – performances Dylan ever delivered. It is a year full of contradictions. On one hand, his love affair with rigid, jerky rhythms, what I have called the dumpty-dum, intensifies to the point of absurdity. On the other hand, Dylan plays some of the sweetest and most subtle harmonica we’ve ever heard from him, and his hoarse voice has never been more expressive. The recordings themselves, the good ones, are clean and clear, bringing into sharp relief these contending forces.
It is often said that there is a fine line between genius and madness, between brilliance and disaster, and if Dylan ever walked that line it was in 2009. There ain’t no neutral ground here, folks. You can love and hate a performance at the same time and for different reasons.
For simplicity’s sake, I have identified two contrary forces or musical influences at work here. On one hand we have that tendency that comes to the fore in 2008 towards a rigidity of musical form, what I have called the dumpty-dum. On the other hand, we have the more fluid, free flowing, complex rhythms of modern jazz and synthesized pop. All music is built on repetition, it’s just where, and how the balance is struck.
As I suggested in my last post for 2008, the dumpty-dum tendency has its roots in early jazz. It’s inherent in rock music, which comes out of the more ‘primitive’ thumpier rhythms of rock ‘n roll; try listening to Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ sometime and you’ll hear the dumpty-dum all right. This sound in turn emerges from the rigid tempos of jump jazz, boogie-woogie and honky-tonk. Those ragtime rhythms are underpinned by, on the piano, a ‘striding’ left hand bass in which the little finger and the thumb play just two notes an octave apart, usually in rapid succession. It’s the cleverness of the right hand which relieves the monotony of the striding bass by playing across the rhythm.
Blues is very repetitive because of its three-chord, twelve-bar structure. It’s a compelling structure but it’s unvarying. As anyone who’s been to a blues club can testify, one song can last half a night and it doesn’t really matter. Folk music, particularly the ballad form used by Dylan for ‘Hard Rain,’ is a set musical structure that can sound pretty dumpty-dum with no end to the number of verses that can be added. The bluegrass and country influences on folk can be equally constricting. And those maudlin old cowboy songs all sound pretty much the same after the third drink.
Running counter to that set-in-concrete musical form are the devices of modern jazz, classical and pop; varying tempos, free flowing rhythms, improvisations. Consider how Dylan dealt with the rigid, dumpty-dum rhythms of his original ‘Hard Rain,’ first in the swirling rock versions of the Rolling Thunder tour and later in the smooth, bluesy, gospel performances of his 1979-81 tours. This aspect of Dylan’s music we can call his ‘thin, wild, mercury’ sound.
In 2009, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ verges on disaster. In this Rotherbury (5th July) performance the two contending forces in Dylan’s music are at their most intense. A restricted, mechanical riff, a variety of the dumpty-dum, and a soaring, free floating harmonica, reaching for that ‘thin wild mercury sound’ Dylan spoke of in the 1960s.
I wrote about this performance in part 5 of my Master Harpist series and while I agree with my editor that quoting yourself is generally not good form, this is what I said in that article:
‘We’re on the treadmill of memory, a constricted, mechanical beat from which the song struggles to escape. It’s not just the rigid bass riff, but Dylan rinky-dinks it on the organ, emphasizing the rigidity rather than fighting it. You can hear Dylan struggling to cut across it with a hoarse, exhausted voice. But he can’t quite make it work, or just makes it – your call! When his voice falls into the beat, matching it, the result borders on the burlesque. Only the harmonica can cut loose from this cage and it sure does, sailing serenely above the mechanical beat, above the intractable struggle with memory, free as flight. At least one hand’s waving free! Dylan must have liked it too, because he comes back for a second flight before the last verse, and once more we are gliding through time, pushing higher into the stratosphere.’
Tangled Up In Blue
For my ear, it’s the harp breaks that redeem this performance, save it from disaster. However, the other way to go is not to cut across the mechanical beat with a thin, wild harp, but emphasize it, exaggerate it, turn it into something strange and obsessive. That’s what Dylan does with this performance of ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ (Rothbury). I also wrote about this performance in part 5 of Master Harpist, so I’m going to lapse into bad form for a second time to quote myself:
‘Perhaps the song itself, which is about an encounter with strangeness, is outlandish enough to sustain a performance like this. The circus really has come to town! And, by emphasizing the rigidity of the dumpty-dum, the harmonica break at end of the song just pushes the performance from the weird to the bizarre. Oh my God, am I here all alone?’
Thin Man (A)
Laughter is an appropriate response to this weirdness. It is funny, this pushing the dumpty-dum to its limits, turning it into something else, a burlesque, a travesty even, but something which makes us laugh. Because of Dylan’s seriousness of intent, we forget his humour sometimes. Genius or madness? Over to you, dear reader.
Without that thin, wild mercury of the harmonica, however, a performance can just fall deep into the rut of the dumpty-dum and never escape. This ‘Dignity’ (München,) doesn’t just court disaster but turns into one. Slowing it down only makes things worse. How many verses of this can you take before you quietly slip out of the auditorium one step ahead of dignity?
Dignity (A)
Just to rub salt into the wound, this is what the song sounded like when first played at the Oh Mercy studio sessions in 1989. This is an outtake. Arguably, it’s better than the version eventually appearing on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol 3 in 1994 as it’s less cluttered with Lanois’ accretions. Compare this smooth, cantering performance with the awful lumbering beast from 2009 – and weep.
Dignity (B)
And yet, genius will show its face. Take this Munich (4th April) performance of ‘One More Cup of Coffee,’ a song rarely performed after the 1970s. I believe this is the last time Dylan performed the song live. He sticks pretty much to the slow tempo of the original, sings it with passion and lifts it, as the violin would lift the 1970’s performances, with the lyrical force of the harp.
It’s heartbreakingly good. For me, this confirms the impression that it is the harmonica that is the real hero of 2009, the redeeming force of the performances.
One More Cup Of Coffee
The brilliance of the harp however cannot always overcome the omnipresent power of the dumpty-dum, established and sustained by Dylan’s vamping on the organ. ‘Forever Young’ cannot escape the rut, and the soaring pathos of the harp break at the end cannot redeem the performance but gives it interest. The older Dylan’s voice gets, the more pathos this song carries, the sharper our awareness becomes that nobody, even Dylan, can stay forever young. Here there is more a yearning for youth than a celebration of it. (Stockholm, 22nd March)
Forever Young
In ‘Desolation Row’ the harp both cuts across the staccato rhythm and reinforces it. The vocal is sharp and clear, the backing minimal, and the jerkiness inescapable. What makes the dumpty-dum more in-your-face is the stripped-down nature of these 2009 performances. There’s not a lot going on with the instrumentals, it’s all very naked, and we walk that fine line between triumph and disaster with every verse. It’s both terrible and wonderful. It’s harrowing, listening to this stuff, hating and admiring at the same time.
The question perhaps is, does this treatment bring across the dark beauty of the song, of the lyrics? Does it take us to Desolation Row? Does it bring the circus to town? Once more, I have to abdicate in favour of your response to this, dear reader. (12th April, Amsterdam.)
Desolation Row
When looking at the 2008 performances, I observed that the more recent songs, those written after 1997 (Time Out Of Mind) largely escaped the musical rigidity that we’re facing here, but by 2009, the dumpty-dum had begun to creep into even those more recent compositions. There’s just no escaping that vamping organ, no longer in the background as it was in 2006 and 2007 but full on, dominant even.
You can hear it on this ‘When the Deal Goes Down’ from Amsterdam, 11th April. It’s a marvellous, broken-voiced performance by Dylan, but it’s that childlike, jerky, obsessively repetitive organ that eventually calls the tune, and there’s no harmonica here to lift us into the thin, wild mercury.
When the Deal Goes Down
It’s the same story with ‘Things Have Changed’ (Amsterdam, 11th April). It starts off okay but Dylan’s vocal tends to fall into the dumpty-dum as it goes along, and the guitar break follows his lead. By halfway through the song, we’re twitching along with it like a marionette. It’s when you try dancing to this that it really shows. You jerk around like a malfunctioning android. Where has that beautiful continuity gone? What kind of travesty is this? What kind of song that goes from bad to worse? Not even its weirdness can save it.
Things Have Changed
‘Can’t Wait’ takes us down the same track. As with ‘Tangled’ we find ourselves trapped in a mechanical staccato riff which jerks us through the whole song with no harp to relieve it. The problem is, that jerkiness draws attention to itself, distracts us from the message, from the feeling of the song. It’s very strange, and yet not so strangely unpalatable. I can’t help comparing this to the slinky riff that drove the 2003/4 performances, and how much better that was. (Date not known)
Can’t Wait
I want to finish with the iconic ‘Blowin in the Wind,’ a song I also covered in Master Harpist, part 4. One way of transforming the dumpty-dum is to turn it into a waltz. To quote myself again:
‘What can you do with an iconic song like this after forty-five years, other than mess the words up a little? You swing it, give it a cheeky riff on the organ, throw in a few even cheekier, taunting harmonica blasts. Use the organ to give it bounce. A circus-barker voice rich with the irony of it all. Once around the dance floor with the same old, eternal and unanswerable questions.’
Blowin in the Wind
What more can I say, other than this has become my favourite performance of this song. It gleams with Dylan’s humour. It’s irresistible.
That’s it for this part of the journey. I’ll be back soon to further explore these contending forces in Dylan’s music, 2009.
The camera swings up, wide-shot of the cloudless, sweltering sky containing a solitary bird of prey circling. No matter then whether it is a steppe eagle, a kestrel or a greylag harrier, the Sound Effects department will always pull out that same recording of the red-tailed hawk’s cry (eeeek).
Just as a wolf’s howl can be heard briefly at every full moon. Just as in every tropical forest, anywhere in the world, the Australian kookaburra laughs, every key on the computer says bleep, doors always creak, car tyres, on every surface, squeak while braking, cornering and accelerating, and every light bulb always breaks with an electric bzzz. Hollywood has, in short, conditioned us nicely in terms of sound and vision – to the point that in the real world, we are surprised when we hear the explosion much later than we see it, that the police radio does not have five unintelligible voices crackling through each other non-stop, and that you don’t hear a shwoosh while performing a karate stroke.
The chirping of crickets is part of the same arsenal. There are no doubt millions of people who have never heard a cricket concert in real life, but thanks to Hollywood, instantly know what it signals: a sultry summer evening somewhere in the southern United States. And just wait, in a few seconds the crickets will suddenly be silent, creating a lurid, elusive menace.
Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high
There’s a soft cotton dress on the line hangin’ dry
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Cinephile Dylan speaks the language. “Man In The Long Black Coat” opens with the sound effects and wide-shot that go with the exposition, with the setting of the scene. The crickets give a false suggestion of idyll, the high water level is silent menace, the lone dress on the clothesline communicates woman alone, the open window invites danger in, and the bent trees testify to invisible violence… it really is a very visual, very cinematic opening.
It’s the crickets though, mainly. In songwriting, we know them mostly as a nocturnal accessory without too much dramatic power – quite the opposite, in fact; crickets are usually mentioned casually to accentuate nocturnal solitude. Charley Pride uses the image quite regularly (“On the Southbound”, “Mama Don’t Cry For Me”), and it is no different in blues classics like “One Room Country Shack”;
I just can't sleep no more
Crickets and frogs to keep me company
And the wind is howlin' 'round my door
… and in old Western songs like “All Along The Najavo Trail” (When it’s night and crickets are callin’ / and coyotes are makin’ a wail): an accessory. But cricket chirp as an atmospheric instrument, as Dylan uses it here, we know mostly from films. Remarkably often with alien visitations, for that matter. In both Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977) and Signs (M. Night Shyamalan, 2002), for instance, the directors stiffen the cinema audience by abruptly silencing the noisy cricket chorus – something’s coming!
We know the cliché from every film genre, of course, but in brooding thrillers it is almost inescapable. Often during the day too, although crickets actually only chirp after sunset – another piece of misinformation that Hollywood has by now implanted in three-quarters of the world’s population. Dylan doesn’t escape either, as we have known since “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”, which he wrote in 1974;
Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy
Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme
Blue river runnin’ slow and lazy
I could stay with you forever and never realize the time
… a clock time is not mentioned, but that this scene takes place in broad daylight seems abundantly clear.
Dylan seems aware of it, of the cinematic, atmospheric power of the cricket chirp. In the chapter “Oh Mercy” in his autobiography Chronicles (2004), he devotes relatively many words to the creation of “Man In The Long Black Coat”, and the song is the punchline of a seemingly through-composed, again very cinematic, short story.
The story begins when Dylan has been in New Orleans for a month, has had some minor successes and some major clashes with producer Daniel Lanois during recording, and wakes up very early in the morning. He roots his wife out of bed. He wants to leave. “I was feeling stuffy – needed to get out of town. Something wasn’t clicking.” They get on their motorbike and ride out of town. Aimlessly. Hours later (“early afternoon”), Dylan says, they have a bite to eat in Morgan City, which is only about eighty miles from New Orleans, and in the evening they arrive, apparently after another considerable diversion, at Napoleonville, 33 miles away from Morgan City, where they find a motel.
“I laid down, listened to the crickets and wildlife out the window in the eerie blackness. I liked the night. Things grow at night. My imagination is available to me at night. All my preconceptions of things go away.”
… which already provides the backdrop for “Man In The Long Black Coat”. And sure enough, Dylan feels new life and new inspiration, waking up the next morning, there in Napoleonville. He feels a lust to go back to New Orleans again, but not just yet. Freewheeling by chance, they stumble upon “an obscure roadside place, a gaunt shack called King Tut’s Museum”, which introduces the Sun Pie interlude, an interlude that has the same unreal atmosphere and place as the “Boston interlude” in the song he will record with Lanois eight years later, in “Highlands”.
King Tut’s Museum is driven by the colourful carpenter Sun Pie,
“… one of the most singular characters you’d ever want to meet. The man was short and wiry like a panther, dark face but with Slavic features, wore a narrow brimmed, flat-topped straw hat. On his bones was the raw skin of the earth.”
Dylan is intrigued by the man’s appearance, his facial expressions, his manner of speaking and his opinions. Quite intrigued even; the Sun Pie interlude covers four pages, some two thousand words. And Sun Pie inspires…
He paused and picked up an oily rag. “I think all the good in the world might have already been done.” Sun Pie talked in a language you couldn’t misunderstand. “Bruce Lee came from a good family and he defeated them all, all the babies, all the greedy criminals, the ones with clawing hands, powerful men but worthless. They couldn’t stand up to Bruce Lee. Their consciences, God help them, were vile and depraved.”
… words Dylan puts in the mouth of one of the side characters in “Man In The Long Black Coat”, of the priest in the third verse;
The preacher was a-talkin’, there’s a sermon he gave
He said, “Every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied.”
Dylan and his wife say goodbye to Sun Pie, and before evening Dylan is back in New Orleans, back in the studio. He has a song. Two even:
“I’d gotten back to New Orleans with a clear head. I’d finish up what I started with Lanois, even write him a couple of songs I never would have written otherwise. One was “Man in the Long Black Coat” and the other was “Shooting Star”.”
It is a perfectly rounded short story with a fascinating interlude, the story of the run-up to the song. And 99% fiction, of course. “Crickets”, “eerie darkness”, “vile and depraved”, and in between, Sun Pie quotes Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (Does your conscience bother you?), of which Dylan says: “This conscience stuff would stick in my mind” – to name just a few of the most appealing implausibilities.
The soundtrack has also been provided. Apart from the Lynyrd quote, these four pages feature The Beatles (“Do You Want To Know A Secret” plays on the radio as Dylan enters), the Dale and Grace song “I’m Leaving It Up To You”, Phil Phillips’ “Sea Of Love” and The Queen Of Country, Kitty Wells. None of these are mentioned without ulterior motive by scriptwriter Dylan, nor is Sun Pie’s profession – carpenter – a coincidence.
And a script it is, of course. For a never-filmed classic. A road movie, probably.
To be continued. Next up Man In The Long Black Coat part 2: Les gens ne font que passer
———————–
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:
Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth
For thy love it better than wine
Because of the savour of thy good ointments
Thy name is as ointment poured forth
Therefore do the virgins love thee
(Song of Solomon 1: 2,3)
Seems singer/songwriter Bob Dylan is no fan of Bible-translator Saint Jerome who turns the carnal aspects of Old Testament “Solomon’s Song” above into an overwhelming spiritual love felt by fasting virgins who are sick with love for the New Testament Jesus; His hallowed words objectified by sweet-tasting sensuous foods:
Stay me with flagons
Comfort me with apples
For I am sick of love
(Solomons Song 2:5)
Devilish Dylan turns the virgin back into the lusty lady who seeks out the King who already has many ‘wives’, and a gold mine to boot; he shoves the image down Peter and Jerome’s throats:
You can being it to St. Peter
You can bring it to Jermone
(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)
In the Holy Bible, puzzled Peter (with a couple of other disciples) gets invited by Jesus to join Him in a mountain climb to meet His Heavenly Father:
My feet are so tired
My brain is so wIred
And the clouds are weeping
(Bob Dylan: Love Sick)
Meets the Almighty God of Thunder Peter does:
While he yet speak
Behold a bright cloud overshadowed them
And behold a voice out of the cloud, which said
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased
Hear ye him"
(Matthew 17: 5)
Akin to Jerome’s virgins, Peter-Bob is so dumbfounded that he wants to stay put:
Just don't know what to do
I'd give anything to
Be withyou
(Bob Dylan: Love Sick)
Peter’s told to go back down the mountain with Jesus, and not to say anything until after crucifixion and resurrection.
A bit later Jesus says to Peter, and other disciples:
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself
As this little child
The same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven
(Matthew 18:4)
Words alluded to in the song lyrics below:
I spoke like a child
You destroyed me with a smile
While I was sleeping
(Bob Dylan: Love Sick)
In his song, the overwhelmed narrator does not mention the gender of whom he’s trying to forget:
I'm sick of love
I wish I never met you
I'm sick of love
I'm trying to forget you
(Bob Dylan: Love Sick)
He who speaks with a doubled-edged tongue, not forgetting TS Eliot, WH Auden, and Carl Jung’s shadow kingdom.
Jerome translates faithful Mary Magdalene’s name as “Mary of the Tower”; she witnesses the hanging, the crucifixion of Christ:
I see lovers in the meadow ....
I watch them 'til they're gone
And they leave me hanging on
To a shadow
(Bob Dylan: Love Sick)
“For those who care about where Bob Dylan is, they should listen to ‘Shot of Love’”, declared the singer himself in July 1983, to Martin Keller of Minneapolis City Pages. “It’s my most perfect song. It defines where I am spiritual, musical, romantic and whatever. It shows where my preferences lie. It’s all there in that one song.”
This sounds very much like promo talk for his new album, except by that time the record has been in stores for close to two years.
This enthusiasm might explain why Dylan not only used ‘Shot of Love’ as the title track for the album, but also wanted to see it illustrated on the cover. Its live-in-the-studio sound defines the sound of his 21st studio album. The sound splashes out of the boxes. That’s the feeling he wanted to show.
Probably it was the second album of The Neville Brothers that put the illustrator Pearl Beach on Dylan’s radar.
On the sleeve of Fiyo on the Bayou, released in April 1981, there’s an intriguing painting of a crocodile on fire. That art work was made by Lou and Pearl Beach.
Dylan’s management contacts the artists, with precise instructions of what he wants.
Two illustrations are commissioned: an explosion for the front and “the rear of a Cadillac with a cloud of exhaust fumes”, for the back.
Lou and Pearl Beach
Andrzej Lubicz-Ledóchowski was born in a Polish family in 1947 in Göttingen, Germany. When the boy was six years old, the Polish parents displaced by the Second World War, emigrated to Rochester, NY.
In 1968, Andrzej travelled to California, where he began an artistic career by making assemblages and collages, under the name Lou Beach (derived from the phonetic pronunciation of his family name Lubicz).
In the mid-seventies, he made his first album covers.
In 1978, he started working with Katherine Walter, six years his junior, who had studied art and Native American anthropology in Santa Monica. As Lou and Pearl Beach, they designed covers for Weather Report, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and The Neville Brothers.
However, around the time Dylan’s management contacted them, Lou and Pearl split up and the collaboration between the couple ended.
When I wrote to both Lou and Pearl Beach, Lou only said that he couldn’t help me with this particular album and that I should turn to his ex.
After a failed lawsuit against Mattel over the use of the name Pearl Beach for a Barbie doll, followed by bankruptcy, she withdrew to a remote farm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pearl Beach declined to comment.
The only interview with her about the subject, I have been able to find is in Daily News from New York, New York. In the interview, published in August 1981, Katherine shows herself somewhat dissatisfied with the back cover: “He wanted the rear of a Cadillac with a cloud of exhaust fumes. So I made a collage of photos and painted them over: a car in the air, where the exhaust fumes went up in the clouds. On the cover is a Bible quote, from Matthew 11:25. So I put M1125 on the license plate. But he changed that to 666.”
666 is known as the number of the beast, as in the Book of Revelation of the new Testament it is stated that the number indicates the Antichrist.
For the first Brazilian pressing of Shot of Love, the illustration of the Cadillac was used for the back cover. Here however, the license plate of the Cadillac has neither M1125 nor 666: the license plate is black.
For the explosion on the front, inspiration is found by Roy Lichtenstein. The American pop art artist made paintings “as artificial as possible”. By using unicolor dots, such as the grid points that were used in comic books during the sixties and seventies, his paintings look like greatly enlarged comic drawings.
Whaam! 1963 Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997 Purchased 1966 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00897
His most famous work is titled, Whaam!, dated 1963 On the left side of the large two-part painting is an American fighter plane firing a missile. The result of that action is displayed on the right panel: the approaching, hostile plane, bursts apart in a huge explosion. Comic strip-wise, the explosion is emphasized with a sound imitation: Whaam!
Howard Alk
For the official releases (outside Brazil) the Cadillac has been replaced by a photo of Dylan contemplating a rose.
The black-and-white photo was made by Howard Alk.
Alk was a longtime friend and collaborator of Bob Dylan, producing his films from the mid-Sixties until his death in January 1982.
Through his creative imagination, Percy Shelley tends to present an optimistic poetic picture as to the workings of the Cosmos on both its micro- and micro- levels:
If winter comes can spring be far behind
Poet John Keats, leans to a darker view – as if to say:
If autumn comes can winter be far behind
The dualistic controller of the Cosmos in the Old Testament promises a summer to come but otherwise a long winter to stay should its inhabitants prove unworthy of His affection:
And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children
And the child to their fathers
Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse
(Malachi 4:6)
The New Testament expresses a more optimistic view ~ though winter is here now, summer will return soon:
And she shall bring forth a son
And thou shalt call His name Jesus
For He shall save His people from their sins
(Matthew 1: 21)
The anti-AntiSemite Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes the teachings of Christianity.
Says Christian followers flitter back and forth between those he calls the “masters” and those he calls the “slaves”.
For instance, a Christian advocate claims that the Jewish Pharisees accuse Jesus of being a follower of the demonic Beelzebub:
This fellow doth not cast out devils
But by Beelzebub the prince of the devils
(Matthew 12:24 )
Says Nietzsche, the strong-willed who strive to better their situation in the here-and-now have a “master” morality that considers it “bad” to be weak like a slave.
Says that Christianity, though it flows from Judaism, is a religion established for everybody everywhere who considers s/he has little choice but to wait for a blissful reward in the Afterlife.
That is, Christianity is a “slave” morality that proclaims it’s “evil” to aspire to be in charge of one’s own household; figuratively speaking, the tough-minded God of the Hebrews be dead.
The narrator in the song lyrics below could be said to defend this slave-like point of view:
Say that he's a loser
'Cause he got no common sense
Because he don't increase his worth
At someone else's expense
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)
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It doesn’t stop there; now it’s the Christians’ turn to cry. In the following lines (viewed from a Nietzschean perspective) it could be said that the always-present Satanic demon Beelzebub, the anti-Israelite Lord of the Flies (a Baalist signifier of death) is pretty much given free reign/rein on earth by the otherworldly Christian focus on the Afterlife:
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly; to hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
No comments are known from Dylan about the uncrowned king of underground comics, Robert Crumb. And comments vice versa are not too flattering: “When Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and all that folknik stuff came out, I just found it irritating. Hated it. It sounded silly to me. Dylan was trying to be “raw” but not convincing.” (Record Collector Magazine, 15 July 2015).
Nonetheless, it’s fairly certain that both icons could have an enjoyable evening together at a table in a juke joint, with enough quarters for the jukebox. After all, there is a huge patch of common ground: the deep, deep love of real, authentic rural music, as Crumb calls it, the old stuff and crazy hillbilly Okie singers and the rugged blues of the 1920s and 1930s, “conjuring up visions of dirt roads and going deep into the back country.” Words after Dylan’s heart, of course.
Just as close to Dylan’s heart is the collection R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country, 21 songs compiled by Crumb in 2006. Seven songs by Pioneers Of Country Music like Dock Boggs (“Sugar Baby”) and Hayes Shepherd (“The Peddler And His Wife”), seven Early Jazz Greats like Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra and Jerry Roll Morton, and seven Heroes Of Blues all idolised by Dylan: the Memphis Jug Band (with “On The Road Again”, the song to which Dylan dedicates an essay in his Philosophy Of Modern Song), Blind Willie McTell (“Dark Night Blues”), Charley Patton (with “High Water Everywhere”) and Skip James’s “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues”, among others.
Next to a jukebox filled with Crumb’s selection, the men would, in short, undoubtedly forge a deep soul connection. And, who knows, if the tête-à-tête takes place in the twenty-first century, Crumb might even tolerate a single Dylan song in the jukebox. “Dirt Road Blues” perhaps, or “Crossing The Rubicon”, one of those songs harking back to older blues. Although for the versatile bandleader of the Cheap Suit Serenaders, that is also presumably still too inauthentic; even recognised greats like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters are to him “electric stuff, wanting to be seen as sophisticated, to embrace the prevailing urbanity.” And anyway, he is not a fan of jukeboxes either, for that matter: “By 1939 there were 400,000 jukeboxes! That immediately eliminates so many live musicians – a juke joint, which is where jukeboxes got their name from – would fire the barrelhouse pianist.”
No, for all the sympathy Fritz the Cat’s father will feel for the intentions of, say, “High Water (For Charley Patton)” or “Red River Shore”, he will dismiss those masterpieces too for being “sophisticated”, as inauthentic. Not to mention the songs Dylan himself dares to call “blues”. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, “Outlaw Blues”, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Tombstone Blues”… fan favourites, but also songs that embrace the prevailing urbanity. On which, by the way, Dylan himself may also have a more nuanced opinion in his later years;
“To me, the blues are a more rural, agrarian type of thing. And even when they’re taken to the big city, they still remain that way only pumped up with electricity. That’s the thing: I mean, we’re listening to all this music today, it’s all electricity. Electric guitars, electric bass, electric synthesizers – it’s all electronic. You don’t really feel somebody breathing, you don’t feel their heart in it. The further away you get into that, the less you’re going to be connected to the blues. The blues to me is just a pure form, like old country music.”
(London Press Conference, 4 October 1997)
Crumb will nod in agreement. And then somewhat sardonically inquire how Dylan would then categorise his own “Living The Blues”.
“Irony,” Dylan might reply. After all, there is a certain incongruity between words like
Since you’ve been gone
I’ve been walking around
With my head bowed down to my shoes
I’ve been living the blues
Ev’ry night without you
… and the neatly coiffed, blue-eyed, conservatively dressed good family man singing these words soothingly, standing in the glamorous setting of The Johnny Cash Show.
In fact, exactly what he had an opinion about seven years ago, in the liner notes of The Freewheelin’:
“What’s depressing today is that many young singers are trying to get inside the blues, forgetting that those older singers used them to get outside their troubles.”
Still, it is a charming song. But miles away from what both the elder Dylan and Robert Crumb associate with “blues”. That, of course, already applies to the song’s template, the time-honoured “Singing The Blues”, which also really should have been called “Singing A Schlager”, and, like Dylan’s dilution, is mostly sophisticated, polished and artificial – up to a point, authenticity really does co-determine the art pleasure.
Crumb sets the example both in the selection of his compilation album and in images; the bonus to Crumb’s wonderful tribute R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country is a collection of drawn portraits of the heroes, colourful trading cards, like baseball cards, with the heads of Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Leroy Carr and all those others, everyone drawn with the love and respect of a devout fan.
But the most love and beauty Crumb puts into the graphically stunning comics that tell the life stories of his blues heroes in black and white, compiled in R. Crumb Draws the Blues. Also containing one of Crumb’s absolute masterpieces, “Patton”, the life story of Charley Patton, which oppressively and overwhelmingly depicts what living the blues really is like – from the struggle to follow your calling, the violent and fatal love adventures, the pub fights, the madness, the flood catastrophe, the wandering on the deserted dirt roads to the death that slowly creeps into first Patton’s life and then his songs and finally, three days before his 43rd birthday, fells him. Patton’s fatal lover Bertha Lee sits at his deathbed; otherwise, his passing goes unnoticed.
With Dylan’s lyrics, then, Crumb will have some peace. At least, there is little offence in it for a man who longs for “that sound of something old and atavistic” – after all, “Living The Blues” is entirely free of sophistication; three unimaginative, clichéd couplets with easy-going rhymes like I don’t have to go far / To know where you are and a bridge with all the poetic depth of, say, Roscoe Holcomb’s white hillbilly music, of Crumb’s beloved “authentic rural music”. Still, as far as the rest goes… No, though Crumb, generally speaking, is particularly modest and reticent about his own music recordings, in this case he had probably stood up, stopped “Living The Blues”, and put on something from his own Cheap Suit Serenaders. “Crying My Blues Away” (Chasin’ Rainbows, 1993) presumably;
I sit around and twiddle my thumbs
make not a sound and nobody comes
with my head hanging low
I’m crying my blues away.
And it is quite likely that the Dylan of the twenty-first century would then have slid a quarter across the table. “Play it again, Robert.”
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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:
Aaron:First release by Mississippi Sheiks in June 1932
From World Gone Wrong Liner notes by Bob Dylan : “BLOOD IN MY EYES is one of two songs done by the Mississippi Sheiks, a little-known de facto group whom in their former glory must’ve been something to behold. rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. All their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks.”
Tony:If I may disagree slightly, when Bob recorded his version of the song, their fame had diminished but in their day they really were well known, in part thanks to having Bo Carter as their occasional manager who wrote some of the most outrageous songs of the era. These are totally unacceptable today but for the sake of historical completeness and to give a flavour of the times I might mention “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me” and “My Pencil Won’t Write No More.”
They were mostly members of the same family (the Chatmons – Bo Carter was part of that family) and were popular for much of the 1930s and into the 1940s. Bob’s reference to “their former glory” is right in that they were really well known over a number of years, but of course their type of music was overwhelmed by swing and then rock n roll.
Anyway, I’m going to slip in another track from them, just to give the full flavour of what they were.
Aaron:Bob’s version appears on World Gone Wrong. I was delighted to discover a quote from me appearing on the Wikipedia page for the album and amused to be described as a “scholar”, “Filmed in 16mm black-and-white, it has been called “beautiful” and one of Dylan’s best music videos by Dylan scholar Aaron Galbraith.” https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/17505
Tony:There you are, you see Aaron. Stick with Untold and fame follows.
Tony: I haven’t played this track for so long I had forgotten how stunning it is. And I recall when I first heard it I was totally overwhelmed. I didn’t know the original at the time and had no idea of the antecedents; it was just completely overpowering both in terms of the lyrics and the music – and I do so remember the accompaniment and trying to mimic it. I’d never heard such an accompaniment carried on through a five minute track in this way; I still remember now it was utterly overpowering. I’m sure someone will tell me that Bob was copying someone else’s arrangement or style, and maybe so, but the point for me it was new. For a long time I think I ignored the rest of the album and just played this over and over, and worked like mad to be able to play that accompaniment myself.
Aaron:Subsequent versions include this one by Tin Men from 2013
Tony:And of course it is a problem now for me, because those memories of that Dylan recording of this song are so strong and I haven’t played it for such a while it is hard to take alternatives in. But clearing my head as best I can, yes this is great fun – it really makes sense of the humour. “If you don’t want me, give me my money back” really is one hell of a line.
Great pace, great fun, great accompaniment. It is so good to know that there are such talented people around who are still going back to the songs of the 1930s and reworking them with new aplomb.
Aaron:Blake Mills & Bill Frisell at the 2015 Fretboard Summit – Prior to this song, Frisell and Mills had never performed together.
Tony: Of course by now with each new track I’ve no idea what I’m going to hear. So suddenly we are back to the slow pace, and these guys really do get that original feeling out of the song. I think after I’ve posted this article I’m going to try and play the song in this style myself. Fortunately, I live in a detached house so no one in the village is going to suffer as a result, and besides cultural terrorism is not yet a crime in the UK. And it will give me a lot of fun.
That track is seven minutes of overwhelming emotion and a fantastic tribute to and commemoration of the Sheiks. Brilliant selection Aaron.
The truth is I am disappointed that so many of Dylan’s songs have no cover versions recorded, or if they do, just one or two which don’t really take us any further forward in our understanding of the song. Just a different voice and a slightly different accompaniment, and one wonders, really, was it worth it?
Thus were my feelings as I meandered through the alphabetical listing of Dylan’s songs and looked today at “Neighbourhood Bully” (the one song on which I’ve virtually had to ban all commentary from readers because the abuse level got so high), but no, nothing in terms of insightful re-invention.
I also had a very, very tiny hope that some daredevil might have had a go at “Never Say Goodbye” – the one song Jochen and I have utterly and totally disagreed on, and yes there is one version but it doesn’t add anything. (See also here). (Maybe my next series could be “The 10 Dylan Songs I love that Everyone Else Hates”)
Thus sadly I must pass that extraordinary song by and head on to New Morning, And also sadly I don’t seem to be able to find anything extraordinarily insightful. But maybe you’ll find additional merit in these. Or maybe I somehow missed the one great work of genius and insight in relation to this song. If so, do say.
Darren Criss and Chuck Criss of Freelance Whales certainly showed inventiveness in their entire handling of the song, both in the vocals (particularly the harmonies) and the instrumental break and yes it is really worth hearing – a good choice for the album. Gentle, restrained, insightful – it’s all these, but the one thing that it can’t do is cover for the fact that the original song is quite light.
With the next piece you might be put off by the opening seconds, but do stay with it – personally, I think that the opening is a mistake, but the rest is a very decent reinterpretation. The incessant piano chords are a bit of a pain, unless you happen not to notice them, and given the inventiveness of the vocal harmonies, I would have thought someone at the recording could have come up with something else. Lovely treatment for the middle 8 though – beautifully restrained.
The Grease Band take us down a totally different route – and it is a good reminder that the song is one that is open to re-interpretation. It’s just that no one has really found a really exciting and wonderful way of doing it. The band try giving it quite a bounce, and in a sense that works, but not quite enough to make me want to hear it again. Maybe the bass is just a bit too prominent and repetitive.
The middle 8 is fun, but the problem is that in this version it seems to have very little to do with the rest of the song.
And then onto a reggae version, and having said that, that is what it is: a reggae version of “New Morning.” Not really too much else to say.
I think that to be successful a cover of New Morning needs to be restrained and the opening of the Michael Henry Martin is just that at the start, but then the vocalist comes in determined to dominate (and well, yes, he’s the star, so of course he would) but really that takes away the delight of the simple song.
So, no, not for me. I can’t find a cover of this song that for me does it justice. But as ever I guess that is just me. Still, you can’t win them all.
All Along The Watchtower” unfolds itself to reveal an analogical-historical interpretation; the literary template is the Book of Isaiah which foretells of a changing of the guards, of a change of watchmen on the tower, symbolized by two riders that are approaching.
Either Bob Dylan travelled back in space and time and writes Isaiah himself; or perhaps a more plausible explanation is that he simply uses his creative imagination, and borrows from the Old Testament in the present:
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl
(All Along The Watchtower)
Allan Ginsberg authors the anti-war poem “Howl” at this time in history:
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem
Which shall never hold their peace day or night
Ye that make mention of the Lord
Keep not silence
(Isaiah 62: 6)
Easy construed that the two riders in the Tower song are Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg ~ they foresee the coming of a Shelleyan spring after a dark cold winter.
The members of the Washington Establishment that control the American military will be the ones who howl in pain while those against the Vietnam War will sing exultations:
Behold my servants shall sing for joy of heart
But ye shall cry for sorrow of heart
And shall howl for vexation of spirit
(Isaiah 65: 14)
Specific historical events univeralized into a broader motif be Dylan’s hallmark:
The battle outside raging
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changing
(Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A-Changing)
“All Along the Watchtower” can even be taken down to a personal level, an autobiographical conflict with the music industry, for instance, as can be “Frankie Lee And Judas Priest”; however, though it can be done, such reductionism strains credulity.
“All Along The Watchtower” is a song of beauty that brings joy forever:
An endless fountain of immortal drink
Pouring into us from the heaven's brink
(John Keats: Endymion)
Bob Dylan And The Two Riders (Part X)
According to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, the joke is on the Babylonians; the Persians are going to spoil their successful conquests ~ do unto them as the Babylonians did unto the Assyrians.
It’s a circle game envisioned by God’s watchman up in the Almighty’s prophetic tower:
A grievous vision is declared unto me
The treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously
And the spoiler spoileth
(Isaiah 21:2)
That grief updated to modern times in the following song lyrics:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
The Hebrews who stick by their God are given some reprieve when the Zoroastrian Persians allow departures over time back to Judah and Jerusalem.
Yet matters are not well - Satan's winning all the battles:
The good man is perished out of the earth
And there is none upright among men
They all lie in wait for blood
They hunt every man his brother with a net
(Micah 7: 2)
Them be hyperbolic lines no writer with a dark sense of humour worth his salt could resist:
When I'm gone, I don't wonder where I be
Just say that I trusted in God
And that Christ was in me
Say He defeated the Devil
He was God's chosen son
And there is no man righteous
No not one
(Bob Dylan: Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One)
Meanwhile, back in the tower – on the macro-level – the United States survives the Civil war, but is near another one due to the war in Vietnam.
Speaking with a partially forked tongue as many of the writers of the Holy Bible do, modern-day Isaiah leaves lots of room to indicate to his listeners that it’s time they break the vicious cycle of war with non-violent civil action.
Since they have no well-armed troops of their own to back them up:
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late
(Bob Dylan: Along The Watchtower)
In short, the Bible is not to be taken as a literal historical document, but as a figurative book, bound with symbols of water, earth, wind, and fire ~ from which important lessons can be learnt …
On the occasion of his painting exhibition The Asia Series, Dylan is interviewed by the former Chief Curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, John Elderfield. They have spoken to each other before, and Elderfield has also written about Dylan’s paintings before, on the occasion of the so-called Brazil Series, and that has paved the way for pleasant, substantive conversations, in which a sharp and apparently relaxed Dylan feels an inclination to not only make statements about his artistic conception in general, but also to reflect on his own songwriting in particular. Including statements that some Dylanologists prefer to ignore, by the way:
“A song is a prismatic thing, nonlinear. Writing songs, you are looking for rhymes that feel right—things that come to you even as you are singing. They come to you quick-like. Sometimes even in a scatological way. You don’t have time to distil meanings or ideological fallout. You want to make sure that the feeling is there, but you can create feeling out of tone, texture, and phrasing, not only words. You want to make sure that there’s camaraderie between the lyric and the rhythm. That just has to be, or you wouldn’t have much of a song. All that profound meaning stuff—that comes later. And truthfully, that’s for other people to experience. Believe me, the songwriter isn’t thinking of any of those things.”
… in which Dylan once again expresses his opinion that semantics is often secondary – something he declares at almost every stage of his career (“I’m sick of people asking what does it mean. It means nothing,” Royal Albert Hall 1966, for example, and “It’s the sound and the words. Words don’t interfere with it,” Playboy interview 1966). Here, in this Elderfield interview, he expresses the same thing even less elegantly than in his Nobel Prize speech (“I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means”): “All that profound meaning stuff – that comes later.” Plus, it’s “other people” who put all that “profound meaning stuff” into it – he himself, as he implicitly says, is not that familiar with this reflex.
What is elegant, though, and to some extent enlightening, is the beginning of Dylan’s answer (remarkably, at a point in the interview when Elderfield actually tries to direct the conversation towards Dylan’s painting): “A song is a prismatic thing, nonlinear.”
Faceted and not strictly chronological, Dylan seems to mean. His substantiation is not too strong, unfortunately. Interviewer Elderfield looks for a parallel between the paintings and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”. “That particular song is a one-person narrative,” says Dylan, unlike a song like “Frankie And Johnny” with all its changing narrative perspectives and time shifts. Frankie says something, Johnny says something, the bartender says something… “prismatic”. Great word, but unnecessarily complicating; the narrative perspective of “Frankie And Johnny” is rather banal; it is really nothing more than the perspective of an omniscient narrator. The camera is at a fixed point for almost the entire song, filming wide open from somewhere in an upper corner, as it were. The time shifts are jerky, but still simply chronological. There are much better examples to be found in his own oeuvre, which Dylan presumably does not mention out of modesty (“Tangled Up In Blue”, for example, with its shift from an I-person perspective to an omniscient narrator, and its non-chronological narrative structure).
Anyway, “prismatic” is an excellent, all-encompassing qualification for a considerable number of songs in Dylan’s oeuvre, and “Crossing The Rubicon” can bear that label as well. “Prismatic” in a particularly attractive variant, even; at first hearing there is only one narrative perspective, for example (each verse has the I perspective). However, at second glance, the “I” turns out to be not one person, but at least two and maybe more – multitudes contain I, as it were. The anachronistic multiplicity of references (Dante, Caesar, Wild West, Matthew and 20th century blues, to name but a few) and setting choices (winter, summer, autumn and “most dangerous month”) is another quality that can be summed up by “prismatic”, a third is the rollercoaster of emotions demonstrated by the various first-person narrators, and the many suggested narratives a final one.
In other words, there is little left of Aristotle’s age-old laws of theatre, of the prescribed and tested unities of Time, Place and Action, the principles to which we have remained reasonably faithful for almost two thousand years now. At the most, Aristotle’s functional requirement “catharsis” can, with some tolerance, be distilled from the ending, from the melancholic “Mona-couplet”, but even that would probably not qualify as a real catharsis, by the standards of the old philosopher.
No, an art historian specialising in Low Countries painters like Rubens, Breughel and Bosch probably understands “Crossing The Rubicon” better than the literary critic. “I suppose the song is like a Rubens painting – maybe Massacre of the Innocents or something – only difference is you hear it instead of see it,” says Dylan in the catalogue to that earlier painting series, The Brazil Series (2010) about “Tangled Up In Blue”. “Crossing The Rubicon” would bear a similar mirroring with a work like, say, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (painted around 1500) or Breughel’s Triumph Of Death (1562); overflowing paintings with a multitude of diverse scenes, a range of emotions and dizzying synchronicity.
“It reminded me of the Hank Williams song You Win Again,” says Dylan about one of his own paintings, Skull And Bones from The Brazil Series. Conversely, all the verses of “Crossing The Rubicon” recall scenes from the old Flemish and Dutch masters. In the right-hand panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights, the damned cross a red, bloody river; in the left-hand panel, the Goddess of Dawn colours the morning sky rosy. Dark skies span worlds badly bent, both in Breughel’s Triumph of Death, where Death stabs his victims with a crooked knife, and in Bosch’s Hell, as in Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents. On Bosch’s middle panel, the Holy Spirit has descended and we see happiness on the hills. One finds oneself between heaven and earth, we see broken keys, buttoned coats and strapped belts, torches lit and looking to the east, we see bowed heads and prayers to the cross, Breughel paints a wagon and everywhere, with Breughel, Bosch and Rubens, all hope has been abandoned, most succinctly in the deep and lurid darkness in Bosch’s upper right.
“I would like to try my hand at marquetry,” says Dylan at the end of the interview with art historian Elderfield, “I’ve never done that. I can definitely see myself creating panels of elaborate scrolling – doing high-style inlaying work – wood mosaics, stuff like that.” This is 2011. Nine years later, Dylan records “Crossing The Rubicon”. Creating panels of elaborate scrolling and high-style inlaying work. Like a medieval altarpiece by Hieronymus Bosch.
Packed with profound meaning stuff.
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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:
I come to the end of 2008 with mixed impressions. The naysayers, like Andrew Muir, who ‘fell out of love’ with the NET after 2004, suggest that Dylan not only lost his mojo during these years, but his authenticity too; that he was faking it.
In 2011 he would miraculously recover his mojo and his authenticity. However, if you listen to Dylan’s vocals, and his harmonica playing, you find him as passionately engaged with his material as ever, but what you do find is that he was increasingly falling victim to stilted tempos and rinky-dink backings. His keyboard playing gets most of the blame for these peculiar arrangements. That circus-like organ is just too much for many fans.
This version of ‘Desolation Row’ from Oeiras (July 11th) illustrates the point. It starts off well enough but soon falls into the dumpty-dum. When Dylan sings across the stilted tempo it doesn’t sound so bad, but by the time we get to the instrumental break, around 4.45 minutes, the staccato rhythm has taken over, and in the subsequent verses, when his voice falls into that rhythm, the effect is bizarre and unsettling.
Unless you have a particularly jerky foot, you’re not going to get with this sound. That beautiful melodic backing, which has always been a part of the song’s charm, gets cut up into little pieces that bounce and jump, as does the vocal line.
Desolation Row (A)
It’s worth tuning into the Vancouver concert for another version of the song. Dylan does some great singing in this performance, that is until we get to ‘At midnight all the agents’ at 7.20 mins when once again his voice falls victim to the dumpty-dum.
Desolation Row (B)
We find the same problem with ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.’ Though the tempo is slowed right down, it still falls into the dumpty-dum, just a slower, more painful variety. The vocal line has to be gabbled, although we have previously seen that Dylan’s hushed, half-spoken vocal can be quite effective with this song. This tale of the wanton murder of a poor black cleaning woman by a rich white man barely survives this treatment. (2nd Feb, Dallas)
Hattie Carroll
Listening to that, you can see why audiences might have been heading for the door before the last number.
The effect is not quite so severe with ‘Just Like A Woman,’ which is given a lilt which almost hides the dumpty-dum. It’s still there, however, and you can hear it in Dylan’s vocal delivery, that tendency to cut the line up into emphatic syllables. Listen to the way he handles the ‘it’s time for us to quit’ verse at around 4.50 mins. It’s hard to feel comfortable with that. (Calgary, 27th Oct).
Just Like A Woman
The same thing happens with ‘My Back Pages.’ Once more, the lilt can’t save it from the dumpty-dum. Listen to the way his voice falls into the stilted tempo at 4.50 mins, with the organ providing the rinky-dink vamping that accentuates the effect. It sounds very weird and, to my mind, distracts from the message of the lyric. And with regard to that, the effect of the repeated line ‘But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’ has a different impact when sung by an old voice rather than a young man. The young voice can claim to have once been old, but can the old voice now proclaim to be young?
Perhaps because the song represents a turning point in Dylan’s evolution, he hasn’t dropped it, but I can’t help thinking it might have been better if he’d left this one behind. (Calgary).
My Back Pages
Dylan finds it hard to resist the lure of falling into the dumpty-dum on this subdued interpretation of ‘Ballad of a Thin Man.’ The tempo is very close to the original album version. This is a much more interesting performance as it eschews the spookiness of the song for a more intimate, suggestive vocal. The circus-like organ vamping is still there, but in this case, it fits the circus-like atmosphere of the song, a song full of circus performers. The harmonica break too helps keep it interesting. You can hear Dylan playfully exploring the dumpty-dum, accentuating it and cutting across it, even finding some humour in it. This performance is heading towards the even stranger version we’ll find in 2009. (Incidentally, the song finishes at 6.10 mins, the rest being audience noise. The Oeiras concert was nearing its end.)
Thin Man
I get the feeling that Dylan might be consciously playing with the effects of these stilted rhythms in this, also subdued, version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue.’ This song has changed markedly since its glory days as an ecstatic stadium rocker. Here it is quiet and thoughtful, the dumpty-dum getting a nice lilt, a bit of swing. Like ‘Thin Man’ this is an interesting take, and also like that song, is heading towards an even stranger fate in 2009. The sweet harp break after the last verse both swings with the rhythm and cuts across it with longer sustained notes or syncopated tooting. I got to like this one after a while. It suggests a less painful response to life’s experiences. You gotta roll with the punches, you gotta bounce back. You gotta swing a little.
Curiously, this swinging version from the Oeiras concert prefigures what Dylan will do with the song, much further down the line in 2019.
Tangled up in Blue
The faster songs, like ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ seem more resistant to the dumpty-dum than the slower ones. After honky-tonk came boogie-woogie, which is the upside of the dumpty-dum and the basis of rock ‘n roll, having its origins in the early jazz keyboard masters of the 1920s and 30s. You can hear boogie-woogie in the thrumming beat of this performance. It’s retro, and it works with these swirling lyrics, all about the madness and fucked-upness of modern life.
In the last two songs we’ve noticed the backing cut to a minimum. The backing quiet and discreet, the voice brought forward. That worked well for ‘Tangled’ and ‘Thin Man’ and it works well here in this potentially rowdy song, despite building up to some guitar work at the end. (Oeiras)
Highway 61 Revisited
It’s pretty much the same story with ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile’ which, in this performance from Calgary, sticks to the same tempo as the album, or close to it. All goes well until, at 3.28 mins, his voice succumbs to the emphatic and falls heavily into dumpty-dum, cutting up the lines like this, as far as I can get it:
And me
I
Expect-
ed it to happen
I knew
He’d
Lost
Control
Who’s lost control?
Stuck inside of Mobile
‘Tears of Rage’ always did have something of a slow, lumbering beat, but this performance from Odense (28th May) is gentle and moving. And it would be hard to find a more suggestive vocal. Dylan largely avoids the dumpty-dum by interspersing his organ vamping with long, chord spanning sustained notes. A very cool guitar break plus a mellow harp break make this a stand-out performance. There is a bit of bounce in it, but that doesn’t do this song any great harm. What can sound mournful, here sounds reflective and probing.
Tears of Rage
‘Like A Rolling Stone’ also escapes pretty much unscathed. The vocal is subdued with a talking edge to it. And, as with ‘Tears of Rage,’ we get a soft, in this case sombre harp break. Dylan rarely plays the harp on this song, so it’s great to hear it here (Calgary). The vocal lines are not quite as sustained as when he was young and could draw out those notes, but the passion is there. Those incomparable lyrics come across loud and clear. It’s not exactly a ‘wild mercury sound’ and does lumber a tad with the tempo slowed down. The song’s old magic, however, is still there.
Like a Rolling Stone
Where else to finish but with ‘All Along The Watchtower,’ still Dylan’s signature, his signing-off song. Here the rigid tempo gets speeded up to a demented march. That suits the song. The apocalyptic warnings come to the sound of marching armies. I have previously called this a ‘goose-stepping’ version. This one from Calgary is a good example. Dylan has fair crack at actually singing, his voice at full strength.
Watchtower (A)
For those who can’t get enough of this ominous song, this performance from Salzburg might be welcome. The recording is superior to Calgary, and Dylan’s more hushed vocal creates a different ambience altogether from Calgary.
Watchtower (B)
That was a great way to finish this visit to 2008, a difficult and contentious year for the NET, but not as difficult and contentious as 2009 will prove to be. Stay tuned for the next post.
Poet TS Eliot depicts a fallen Babylon; much of the great art of yesteryear in fragmented ruins.
Says no Hamlet, nor Shakespeare he be, but determined the modernist poet is to scavenge the litter left over, and put fallen Humpty Dumpy back together again as best he can.
Eliot becomes the attendant and nurse to a sick, sexless society where over-production and inflation leads to too much education and useless knowledge:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michaelangelo
(TS Eliot: The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock)
Renaissance man Michaelangelo creates a seventeen-foot marble statue of naked David, but the Hebrew hero-to-be has small, uncircumcised genitals.
The French Symbolist-influenced imagistic song below depicts today’s busy world as motionless as a black-bough.
It’s gnostic-like, a dark, walled-in place from which there is no escape; where everyone waits for tea and coffee:
All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
While Friar Tuck, Robin Hood; Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein; Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud; Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung; TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, ride up to the castle walls to fight over the captain’s tower.
It’s all mixed-up confusion:
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)
Not one appreciates the gravity of the situation.
Bob Dylan And The Two Riders (Part VII)
Temptations not an easy thing; I tend to stay away from making declarative assessments, but it’s difficult to avoid the view that ‘All Along The Watchtower’ is a mere footnote to, a summary of, Isaiah ….albeit a diminutive and beautifully written one.
According to the Old Testament, the inhabitants of Northern Israel and Judah will come face to face with the wrath of their enemies; they’ll be the prey of roaring lions from Assyria and Babylon because they have forsaken the Almighty One for the worship of the idols of the Baalists; for sacrifices to Moloch, for example:
Their roaring shall be like a lion
They shall roar like young lions
Yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey
And carry it away safe
And none will deliver it
(Isaiah 5: 29)
For now anyway, delivered out of captivity by the Almighty, the Hebrews shall not be.
By means of analogy, supposedly enclosed securely in a Watchtower, the inhabitants of the today’s American Empire take the credit themselves for the production of goods in the Babylonia of New Rome – necessities that have been created not by them but by God for use in a wise, unselfish, and nonwasteful manner.
Regardless of their eagle banners a-flying, for their misuse of the Lord’s benevolence, God (or the Cosmos if you prefer) will make these modern Nero’s pay dearly.
A clear warning that’s transmitted in the following song lyrics:
In the distance, a wildcat did growl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
And that ain’t no joke:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
There are some cover versions of Dylan songs which I fear the casual listener may never get to hear simply because he/she listens to the opening 20 seconds or so and then makes a decision not to go on.
Such could be the case with the the Keith Jarrett Trio version. I am not saying everyone will enjoy this approach to the song, but the very slow introduction is not directly related to what happens thereafter in terms of pace and variation. It is a scene setter, and none the less interesting for all that, but it does have that disadvantage that because we are used to recordings of Dylan songs adopting the same approach throughout this expectation will pervade every Dylan cover we come across.
But it shouldn’t.
And while we are on the subject of instrumental versions of the song, let me offer another. This again goes its own way, but its own way is closer to the original throughout, and so offers different insights into the music.
These two instrumentals contrast significantly with the way many vocalists have treated the song, venerating Bob’s approach, rather than innovating through using the original as a basis.
But the trouble with the versions with the full vocal incorporated is that they tend for the most part to play the song without much innovation.
Jimmy LaFave does do a reworking but somehow this doesn’t work for me; it is that problem of knowing the song so well, that the slowed-down versions seems to make the song drag. If I didn’t know the song at all I might well be drawn to this rendition but sadly now, I just know it too well, so I’m not.
Of course, this problem of knowing the song’s lyrics is overcome if the song is sung in Japanese.
The version below from the Masked and Anonymous soundtrack was first featured in the 200 greatest covers series, and where possible I’ve tried not to replicate that series’ choices with this occasional review, but sometimes it seems worthwhile, just in case you missed it last time.
There have been a number of attempts to take the song very, very slowly, but again the problem with knowing the lyrics off by heart means that a lot of drama is lost.
But all is not lost overall, if you see what I mean, for I can offer one more version which I really do rather enjoy. I like the way the beat is given more prominence, the way the melody is slightly modified in places, how the rhythm has subtle changes, and how the harmonies work.
All these changes are slight, but together they offer me not exactly a new song, but an interpretation that I find refreshing and worth contemplating even though I know the piece off by heart. And indeed suddenly after listening to this version, I love the song again. In fact of all the versions I have listened to this morning in order to put this little piece together, this is the only one I have played more than once. In fact it is now playing for the fifth time.
And actually on a day when I don’t feel the need to be uplifted, I am nonetheless quite uplifted by this. And given that I am now of a certain age, the notion of being “younger than that now” really does appeal. It is, well, as I said, uplifting.
Do play it to the end. It’s Georgia Whiting…
Now I must admit Ms Whiting is not a musician whose work I have come across before – which is obviously my loss. If you like this music you might like to see her Facebook page and there is other information here.
For me, this one is quite a find. Hope you like it.
I lit the torch and I looked to the east and I crossed the Rubicon
He only says it in the film version, Gandalf. “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the East.” In the book, Tolkien has him shouting at Aragorn and Éomer, “Keep well the Lord of the Mark, till I return. Await me at Helm’s Gate! Farewell!”, so no wind direction and no daytime, no “East” and no “at dawn”.
Also, there are plenty of torches lit in Lord Of The Rings, but it is still far from likely that the film is playing in Dylan’s mind when he writes this last line, these last links in the accumulatio. With a wonderful dynamic of their own, these final metaphors. In the previous eight verses, we have heard fifteen equivalents that all more or less close a gate;
– couplet 1: I painted my wagon – I abandoned all hope
– couplet 2: I prayed to the cross and I kissed the girls
– couplet 3: I embraced my love put down my head
– couplet 4: I pawned my watch and I paid my debts
– couplet 5: I poured the cup and I passed it along
– couplet 6: I stood between heaven and earth and I crossed the Rubicon
– couplet 7: I strapped my belt and buttoned my coat and I crossed the Rubicon
– couplet 8: I turned the key and I broke it off and I crossed the Rubicon
Only the essentially strange, “I stood between heaven and earth” from verse 6 seems to escape that pattern of active, farewell-suggesting deeds, but in view of all the other closing lines it is probably also meant as an active act, so meaning something like “rose, got upright, placed myself between heaven and earth”. Which then suggests a descent, a step towards worldly concerns.
The last closing line has a different tone than all those earlier equivalents. “I lit the torch and I looked to the east” also announces a change of scene, but it is open-ended. And ambiguous enough to be understood as an optimistic turn. More future-oriented and open, in any case, than “I put down my head” or “I broke off the key”. After all, we associate looking east with sunrise, with a new day, with hope – as Jackson Browne puts it in “Looking East” (1996):
In the absence of light
And the deepening night
Where I wait for the sun
Looking east
And secondly, with the coming of the Three Kings, with the worldliness of the East Coast perhaps, or with Eastern Wisdom – but first and foremost with a New Day.
The same applies to I lit the torch: bringing light. Slightly different from the cliché, by the way. “Torch” is actually always used metaphorically in songwriting. “You’re only burning a torch you can’t lose”, for example (“Learnin’ The Blues”), “This torch that I found, It’s gotta be drowned”, from the Arlen/Mercer song that Dylan plundered from front to back in his career, “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” (Dylan quotes and paraphrases from this one song in at least six songs), “The Big Hurt”, the 1959 Toni Fisher hit, and which is kept alive by covers by Scott Walker, Del Shannon and others (“Lighting that torch and watching it burn”), not to mention the hundreds of songs in which the phrase carrying the torch is used.
The aggressive variant, in which a torch is the weapon used to start a fire, is rare. The best known is the Elton John song that closes his still special, The Band-like album Tumbleweed Connection (1970), the somewhat pompous “Burn Down The Mission”;
Everybody now bring your family down to the riverside
Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide
Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps
It's time we put the flame torch to their keep
Burn down the mission
If we're gonna stay alive
Watch the black smoke fly to heaven
See the red flame light the sky
… in which, coincidentally or not, Elton also sings the words look to the east in the same verse.
Dylan’s use of the torch is at most comparable to – amazingly enough – Duran Duran’s 1984 hit, “New Moon On Monday”, the single with the failed, über-pretentious video (still with Miss France 1980 Patricia Barzyk, though), but the song itself stands the test of time remarkably well;
I light my torch and wave it for the
New moon on Monday
And a fire dance through the night
I stayed the cold day
With a lonely satellite
Anyway, Dylan’s use of I lit the torch differs; here it is not so much a metaphor as a symbolic action. In this context, the testimony of a narrator who takes a radical step to leave behind a traumatising life episode, fairly simple symbolism, but no less effective for that. He leaves the darkness, apparently, and does so on willpower. Not passively waiting until the “dark period” is over, but deliberately bringing it to an end himself.
He paints California or bust on his wagon, abandoning the hope that things will work out. He does all the right things to end his present life neatly (pays his debts, says goodbye, transfers his current affairs and puts on his coat). Finally, he dispels the darkness and turns his face and his steps towards the rising sun. It almost seems like a happy ending. Although a more sinister scenario is still possible, a scenario like the one on the last page of the brilliant novel “De Uitvreter” (The Freeloader) by Nescio from 1911, one of the highlights of Dutch literature:
One summer morning around half past four, as the sun was rising beautifully, he stepped off the Waal bridge. The bridgekeeper noticed him too late. “Don’t worry, old chap,” Japi had said and then stepped off facing the North-East. You couldn’t call it jumping, the man had said, he just stepped off.
… with one of the most poetic suicides of the twentieth century. Whether Japi, the freeloader, lit a torch as well, history does not mention. Nescio’s style is much more sober, unaffected and down-to-earth than that of Nobel Prize winner Dylan. Still, the Waal is deeper and wider than the Rubicon. And two kilometres longer.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 17:
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:
The prophet Isaiah tells the authorities of Northern Israel and Judah that God is not at all pleased with them for how they are running matters; rulers and priests become figuratively and literally intoxicated by power; they stumble and fall; they follow not the discretion of the farmer who knows when to plough and when to stop and plant:
(T)he priest and the prophet have erred
through strong drink
They are swallowed up by wine ....
"Doth the plowman plow all day to sow?"
(Isaiah 28: 7, 24)
In the song lyrics below a modern-day prophet, a servant of the Almighty, casts his net of condemnation even wider.
Intrinsic value gone, over-production rampant, greed instilled by the development of corporate capitalism affects all classes in the hoped-for-new-found Promised Land; a potential peaceful Eden lost in the New Babylon of America:
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
The other rider approaching the walls of modern Babylon also references the Holy Bible ~ Moloch be a bull-like icon of the Baalists to whose “fire” children are symbolically “sacrificed”.
Raged against by a number of Jewish biblical prophets:
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed
Pass through the fire to Molech
Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God
I am the Lord
(Leviticus 18: 21)
In the poem beneath, Moloch (or Meloch) is transformed into a symbol of the ruler of the New Babylon:
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery
Moloch whose blood is running money
Moloch whose fingers are ten armies
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl)
In the following song lyrics, so-called Christians who hypocritically worship Moloch are condemned.
No shoeless servants be they:
Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He's sucking the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes, you been teasing me
(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)
Bob Dylan And The Two Riders (Part VI)
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan often references biblical passages – adding an innovative twist of his own:
And the governor said
Why, what evil hath he done
But they cried out the more
Saying, "Let him be crucified"
(Matthew 27: 23)
In the song lyrics following, a drifter, a Christ-like figure, escapes from his questionable trial by pure luck, or is it because the God of Thunder intervenes?:
Inside, the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)
From an updated New Testament perspective, the two riders are approaching the gates of American Babylon wherein three men are being hoisted up to die; Christ between two others.
At least, the two riders think one of the men be Jesus, and not a Libyan substitute:
And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene
Simon by name
Him they compelled to bear his cross
(Matthew 27: 32)
In any event, they’re selling postcards of the hanging.
Depending on the source referenced, one of the thieves, Dismas, repents; he confesses to Jesus his wayward ways; the other, Gestas, laughs at the bad day they are all having.
Or maybe it’s Festus, Matt Dillon’s deputy?
Anyway, before the other three are nailed, Barabbas, a really notorious thief is relieved, and receives a pardon:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
Not to mention – do all these events take place before, during, or after the Jewish Passover meal?
Little wonder some analysts think the above song makes no sense.
Nevertheless, says reader to writer – unravelled in these littered Post Modern literary days, it does.
Aaron: Lone Pilgrim is a traditional song dating back to the early 1800’s. The authorship is unknown but it is often partially credited to Elder John Ellis in 1838. Others credit the song to singer/preacher B.F. White.
The earliest recording is by Doc Watson in 1963
Tony: In terms of timing this is one of the weirdest recordings of folk music I’ve ever heard. I think what is happening is that one, two, two and a half or three beats are sometimes added at the end of each verse, and occasionally elsewhere. How the instrumentalists manage to know when and where is beyond me.
What makes this even odder is that the Doc Watson I know (and I am thinking it is the same guitarist) was a sublime performer with not a hint of any variation of timing – everything came from his superb ability. (Aaron, have I got the wrong person here?) Just listen to this
But it is when he sings that he plays about with the timing, especially between the lines. Take this for example
Sorry about this diversion – and sorry Aaron particularly for meandering off course, but I just find that original of The Lone Pilgrim really odd. Anyway, I’ll get back to the plot…
Aaron: Bob’s version appears on World Gone Wrong
Tony:Bob takes away all the odd rhythmic meanderings and sings it soft and straight with a lot of veneration which the lyrics demand.
But in case my comments above lead to a feeling that Arthel “Doc” Watson was some kind of oddity, I must add that he won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award with particular note of his fingerpicking style and his championing of traditional American music. He is highly venerated by those who maintain the traditions of American folk, so it is not surprising that Bob picked one of his songs.
Aaron: Subsequent versions include this one by Tom Jones from 2013.
Tony:We’ve hit another one of these videos that is available to Aaron in the US but not to me in the UK so I’ve put up a second copy below.
Tony: A very respectful rendering by Mr Jones, but to me it relies completely on the emotion of the lyrics, rather than combining the music and the lyrics as one. But that’s probably just me being a bit finiky.
Aaron: Crooked Still – their version appears on the album Shaken By A Low Sound, the same album which included their version of Little Sadie, which is a favorite of the Untold Dylan site.
Tony:Well, Crooked Still is a favourite of mine, and yes I raved over them last time they turned up with Little Sadie earlier in this series. If you missed that article, no need to read my ramblings but do skim down to the foot of the article and play their version of that song.
And here of course they do a beautiful and original version of “Lone Pilgrim.” The point about Crooked Still is that they seem to have an instinctive feel of how novel instrumentations can work with each different song. Here the banjo plays the simplest of accompaniments but because of what elegance of the double bass and cello play, it doesn’t feel just like a banjo being plinked. It is staggering in its simplicity and perfect as an accompaniment. Are there any other bands who would even consider, let alone perfectly execute an accompaniment of double bass, cello and banjo?
And since I write my commentary to Aaron’s selections and then press the “publish” button (which means Aaron doesn’t get a veto over my ramblings) I am going totally off-piste by putting in another Crooked Still song which has nothing to do with Dylan. So if your interest is simply Dylan and nothing more, stop here. Otherwise, I think you really might enjoy this – please do play all five minutes – it is so worth it.
‘Something in the moonlight still haunts him.’
(Handy Dandy)
In the last post I focused on Dylan’s performance of his most recent songs, that is, from the albums Love and Theft (2001) and Modern Times (2006). I commented that his enthusiasm for those songs was, in the main, more evident than for his older songs, some of which he seemed to struggle with.
I’m going to start this post by picking up where I left off, and look at some of those more recent songs I haven’t yet covered.
Let’s start with ‘Things Have Changed’ from the Oeiras concert (11th July). This is a wonderful recording and a passionate vocal performance, perhaps the most passionate of any performances of the song we’ve so far encountered.
Despite this, you might not like it. Why? Because of the bouncy beat, a variation of what I have been calling the dumpty-dum. Listening to this, my ambivalence with regard to these 2008 performances reached a peak. In some respects, this is a ‘best ever’ and yet in the end the rigidity of the beat got the better of me. It was okay to begin with, but by the end I was wearying of it despite the superb vocal. Readers may not find that bouncy beat a bother. If that’s the case, enjoy!
Things Have Changed.
Not hard to see why such performances were controversial.
Also from Oeiras, we find a turbo-charged performance of ‘Lonesome Day Blues,’ from Love and Theft. In this case the bouncy beat is not so much of a problem as the blues is suited to it, and here it has a bit of swing to it. The song is a traditional urban blues with a Dylan twist to the lyrics. Of interest is the number of words he squeezes into the last line of each verse.
Well the road’s washed out, weather not fit for man or beast
Yeah the road's washed out, weather not fit for man or beast
Funny, the things you have the hardest time parting with
are the things you need the least
Lonesome Day Blues
Note the theme here of extreme weather events, a theme that shows up in other songs of the period like ‘High Water (for Charlie Patten)’ and ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break.’
For ‘Million Miles’ we go back to Time Out Of Mind where it takes its place among the intensely personal and dark songs on that album. ‘Million Miles’ is a jazzy, blues infused song concerning the gulf that can separate lovers. Again, the bounce here is not such a problem as it’s in keeping with the genre, and again, Dylan’s vocal is compelling and his harp playing exquisite. This is not the ‘muted trumpet’ sound of 2003-2005, which made the harp sound distant, but sharper and brought forward.
Also brought forward is the organ. In 2006-2007 Dylan was content to have the organ very much in the background, sometimes hardly audible, often just thin notes weaving through the texture of the music. In 2008, however, he begins to bring the organ forward, vamping the chords, getting a richer sound than has been evident so far. This one’s from the 27th October, Calgary.
Million Miles
Another Time Out Of Mind song performed at Calgary is ‘Tryin To Get To Heaven’ where once again extreme weather features:
The air is getting hotter
There's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
The song is full of pathos and a despair at the vacuous nature of modern life.
Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
The same odd juxtaposition occurs here, an incomparable vocal hitched to a stilted rhythm. I’m not sure what Dylan is trying to do with these stilted rhythms except perhaps return to the roots of modern jazz in the keyboard playing of Art Tatum, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. There’s bounce and dumpty-dum there too. Interested readers might like to sample ‘The Crave’ by Jelly Roll Morton …
Is this era of music the origin of Dylan’s strange, wooden rhythms?
Tryin to Get to Heaven.
In part 1 of 2008, I included an ‘Ain’t Talkin’ from Vigo, Spain, and said that I was on the lookout for a better performance. I think I might have found one from the Oeiras concert. Whether this performance stands up to the great performances of 2007 (See NET 2007 part 1) I’ll leave to the reader. The ambience may not be as spooky as the 2007 performances, but again the vocal can’t be faulted. Since this song is a walking song, with its roots in walking blues, there’s no problem with the rigidity of rhythm. Unsatisfied spiritual hunger seems to drive the song, and the pilgrimage of the singer.
Ain’t Talkin
Before leaving Dylan’s contemporary songs behind (Time out of Mind through to Modern Times) let’s check out what must be a contender for the saddest love song ever written, ‘To Make You Feel My Love,’ a song made famous by Adele. The lengths we’ll go for love!
Arguably Adele’s voice is a bit too sugary for the song, amazing as her version is. Maybe it sounds more convincing delivered by the old circus barker himself, a sad old voice for a sad old song, even though it does lumber along a bit. This one’s from Vancouver.
To Make You Feel My Love
Perhaps no one will ever know what prompted Dylan to pull ‘Handy Dandy’ out of the hat for a one-off performance in Vigo, Spain, an obscure song from Under the Red Sky (1990). Occasionally Dylan does this, presents a song that he’s never performed before. Remember ‘Million Dollar Bash’ from 2005?
‘Handy Dandy’ is what your English teacher might have called a ‘character study.’ It is a portrait of a character, precise in its details but murky at the same time. It’s a complex portrait with several fragments of conversation:
You say, "What are ya made of?"
He says, "Can you repeat what you said?"
You'll say, "What are you afraid of?"
He'll say, "Nothin' neither 'live nor dead"
Note the shift from the present to the future tense. Does it shift from being a real conversation to an imaginary one? Do we ever, finally, connect in our conversations?
And as for squeezing a lot of words into the melodic line, it’s hard to beat this verse:
Handy dandy, sitting with a girl named Nancy
in a garden feelin' kind of lazy
He says, "Ya want a gun? I'll give you one."
She says, "Boy, you talking crazy"
Handy dandy, just like sugar and candy
Handy dandy, pour him another brandy
The character that emerges from these assembled fragments is of some small time big shot and ego tripper with a streak of paranoia. He’s ‘been around the world and back again’ but has ‘a basket of flowers and a bag full of sorrow.’ There are the inevitable suggestions that this is an oblique self-portrait but I don’t feel that; he’s more like some character you might run into in a bar.
Dylan puts a rollicking beat to this performance, quite different from the album version, which sounds a bit like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ with the chord structure of that song. This performance makes the character sound more laid back, less desperate and intense than on the album.
Handy Dandy
After that rarity, it’s time to return to more familiar territory, some of Dylan’s old favourites. ‘Watching The River Flow’ has a pleasing bluesy rhythm, a good song to kick off a concert. This is number one on the Calgary setlist. Dylan is clearly in good form, the audience responsive. I miss the wailing harp breaks of previous performances but no complaints.
Watching the River Flow
‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ has gone through many changes over the years, not all of them successful. This one from Calgary doesn’t convince me either, but you can get hard to please with great versions of the song ringing in your years.
Again, easy to see why some Dylan fans might react negatively to this performance. That rigid beat cuts up the vocal line into little bits. With each word being emphasized the flow is lost, the drama is lost. The vocal delivery is oddly emphatic. It’s a curiosity, and there are other versions I’d much rather listen to, despite the trenchant harp break which also falls victim to the musical rigidity. The song seems to have lost its soul.
It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
‘Girl From the North Country’ fares somewhat better. Dylan keeps the baroque feeling that he’s been developing for some years now, and it suits the song even though it doesn’t flow as it once did. The half-talking vocal delivery suits the song too. These old regards are hard to lay to rest. An excellent recording from Oeiras.
Girl from the North Country
Dylan didn’t forget his old protest songs in 2008. This performance of ‘It’s All Right Ma’ features Donnie Herron on the banjo, giving it a country rather than a hard rock feel. Fully committed vocal from Dylan. This Oeiras version seems more in the spirit of the original than some of the more ponderous rock versions we’ve seen, it skips along at a foot-tapping speed. The important thing for me is that the song does not lose its angry edge. This magnificent denunciation of the greed and falseness of the world has not lost its relevance, and while it may be tickled along by the banjo it can still cut deep.
It’s All Right Ma
‘Masters of War’ also continues its run of powerful performances. As I’ve suggested, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine gives the song a contemporary edge. Those masters of war are still at work. The circus barker’s voice does this song no harm either. Wonderful, passionate vocal from Dylan, obsessively relentless backing from the band. Like a slow, stiff-legged march. (Buenos Aires, 15th March)
Masters of War
And where would we be without ‘Blowin In The Wind’? A great way to wind up a concert. Some of us purists might have trouble with the waltzlike, rollicking tempo but it seems to suit the song somehow. It’s no longer thin and plaintive, as it first was, but, behind the happy beat, insinuating and insistent. This may be an old complaint, and we might even be able to dance to it, but there’s the sting of sadness in the tail. How many times, how many years, indeed.
Dylan finishes off the Buenos Aires concert with this one and I’ll do the same. See you soon with a roundup of the some of the strays from 2008 not so far covered.
