Before the Babylonians, God sends the Assyrians to punish the north and south parts of the Promised Land because the Hebrew inhabitants thereof are being led astray – they worship graven images.
Prophet Micah warns them in his manuscripts of what God plans to do about it ~ ‘all the idols will I lay desolate”.
Biblical Micah feels bad that God is going to do more that just smash idols; He’s going to smash heads, subject the wayward inhabitants to the cruel rule of the Assyrians as a just punishment; with a piling-on to come ~ the Babylonians will take over the task.
Drag ons:
Therefore I will wail and howl
I will go strippped and naked
I will make a wailing like the dragons
And mourning as the owls
(Micah 1: 8)
The modern Beat poet below borrows from Micah.
Drag offs:
I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness ....
Who howled on their knees in the subway
and were dragged off
the roof waving their genitals and manuscripts
(Allen Ginsberg: Howl)
Prophet Micah tells the Hebrews not to worry ~ even though the hour is getting late:
(A)nd thou shalt go even unto Babylon
There shalt thou be delivered
There the Lord shall redeem thee
From the hand of thine enemies
(Micah 4: 10)
Moving on, with the Vietnam War raging, two riders approach the Watchtower overlooking America, and they sing out a warning to the leaders of New Babylon, and to their obedient servants, that they’d better change their wicked ways.
Or else modern Babylon is also going to fall ~ just like the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires of yore:
No reason to get excited now
The thief, he kindly spoke
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: All Along The Watchtower)
Later we are informed who the joker is:
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
In a voice that came from you and me
(Don McLain: Miss American Pie)
Bob Dylan rhymes ~ ‘growl’/’howl’:
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
In translation, Micah rhymes ~ ‘howl’/’owls’:
Therefore I will wail and howl ...
I will make a wailing like the dragons
And mourning as the owls
(Micah: 1:8)
Bob Dylan And The Two Riders (Part IV)
God’s upset at the wayward behaviour of the Hebrews in Judah and Northern Israel; He sends the Assyrians down on them like the wolf on the fold.
It’s always a good time to be humble when faced with the wrath of the Almighty.
The prophet Micah shows himself to be a bit of a thief though:
Therefore I will wail and howl
I will go stripped and naked
(Micah 1: 8)
Lifting the image from Isaiah, another servant of the Lord:
At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah
The son of Amoz, saying
"Go and lose the sackcloth from off thy loins
And put off thy shoe from thy foot"
And he did so, walking naked and barefoot
(Isaiah 20: 2)
The narrator in the song lyrics below also borrows from Isaiah, and TS Eliot too:
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
In the song above, it’s contemporary America, with its economic and military complex, that’s under God’s judgement.
One “Dylanologist” who analyses the song, either misses or dismisses the universalized analogy.
An Euro-centric analysis that underestimates the political trauma and turmoil in America caused by the Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive at the time.
The song gives an ironic warning to America that it’s trapped in the turning spokes of the wagon wheels of history:
But you and I we've been through that
And this is not our fate
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
Tony Attwood, another European analyst, freezes the song in time as if it were an “abstract painting” with no solid socio-political meaning or message at all.
The two approaching riders – singer Bob Dylan and poet Allen Ginsberg – albeit in the figurative language of artists, assert otherwise.
The Fall Tour seems to be complete in terms of dates and schedule. From Oslo to Dublin, we are very excited to witness almost 30 more shows this year.
What will they bring?
Before we get into it, we need to see my previous setlist predictions in 2022.
Before the 2022 tour started in March in Phoenix, I was expecting a debut of Crossing The Rubicon. The first and only song prediction I got right so far, in terms of song prediction.
The only other prediction I got right was that there’ll be minor setlist changes in the summer, and so there were. I also said that Dylan will play a rarity in Denver, although I didn’t say which. But I was right, he played That Old Black Magic.
What were some of my previous predictions that I didn’t get right, at least not yet?
I just want to mention them in case I get them right eventually, even though I’m ready to make a different prediction this time. Not that being right is important to me, but it’s good to have evidence just in case.
Because these predictions come from detailed research and not based on requests or preferences. They come from examining the previous history of Dylan’s setlist changes and additions.
For a long time I’ve been saying that “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, “Gotta Serve Somebody”, “Melancholy Mood” and “Every Grain of Sand” from the current setlist seem to be on their last legs. At least I believed so.
“Every Grain of Sand” was briefly replaced in the summer by “Friend Of The Devil”, but not for long.
Other songs stayed the same except “Melancholy Mood” which was replaced by of course “That Old Black Magic” for the last show in Denver.
“Gotta Serve Somebody” even got a new arrangement in the summer, which may or may not stay in Europe this fall.
But it’s obvious that “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “Gotta Serve Somebody” may be more special to Bob than I believed at this moment in his life.
My previous prediction also pointed out possible additions of “Shelter From The Storm”, “‘Til I Fell In Love With You” and “Blind Willie McTell”, all in new arrangements, and they will replace some of the four songs I have stated were “on their last legs”.
I just wanted to put it out there, so it can be evidence if I by some chance get it right. But my current prediction is different: I expect a pretty much same setlist. The order of the songs will be different though.
“Every Grain of Sand” might not be the last song anymore, but maybe at the number eight slot.
In Oslo and Stockholm, we could get “Murder Most Foul” as song 11 in the set, while “Key West” moves to 14. Which means 10 Rough And Rowdy Ways songs should be played.
Also, I expect the return of the encore after “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” in the main set.
https://youtu.be/BlZZeZJzzN0
The encore in Oslo and Stockholm will be “That Lucky Old Sun”.
I expect those two performances of that song to be the last standard Bob will ever play live, from his three standards albums.
From Gothenburg onward, for many shows, “Murder Most Foul” should be absent, while the other nine Rough And Rowdy Ways songs will remain.
In Gothenburg, “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” gets introduced in the 11 slot, while “When I Paint My Masterpiece” returns as an encore in new arrangement.
I expect there to be switches in these positions as the tour unwinds.
“Murder Most Foul”, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”, “Forever Young”, “My Back Pages”, “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Masters Of War” might be the songs switching places in the same spots, which are 11 spot and the encore slot.
A couple of new arrangements of songs that are regulars could be established. “Watching The River Flow”, “Most Likely You Go Your Way”, “Black Rider”, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, “Key West” and “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” all might see brand new styles as the tour progresses. Minor lyric tweaks in nearly all the songs in the set are possible as well.
I would describe performances of “Murder Most Foul” to be extremely hypnotic, and I would expect them in Oslo, Stockholm and multiple UK shows, including London and Dublin, among others. If it was truly the case, the Oslo and Stockholm arrangement would differ from the later performances.
The same set would be expected for an early 2023 tour, wherever it ends up being, but with “When I Paint My Masterpiece” being probably buried by this point and out of the picture.
I expect a few Euro Tour 2022 performances of “Masterpiece” in a new arrangement before it gets probably buried for the last time live.
I think it would be appropriate to “bury” Masterpiece in Europe, since it seems like a more European than American song. Just a personal observation, that’s all. Not that it’s a competition.
The setlist will probably still be static for the most part, but with probably many changes in the order of songs and their arrangements. And of course, a few songs switching places in one or two spots nearly all the time.
I hope I am way wrong and that much more happens than I’ve predicted so far.
But I think an addition of “Murder Most Foul” alone would be monumental. Don’t you think?
Well, I believe it’s very possible to happen. Maybe I’m crazy, but we shall see soon enough.
The killing frost is on the ground and the autumn leaves are gone
I lit the torch and I looked to the east and I crossed the Rubicon
Rilke is an exceptional poet who has produced exceptional poems, and a Top 10 is actually impossible to compile reasonably. But everyone will agree that “Herbsttag” (Autumn Day, 1902) belongs somewhere at the top of every Top 10. The short piece (87 words) is Rilke’s Mondscheinsonate; perfect from beginning to end – from the crushing opening line Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß (“Lord: the time has come. The summer was great”) and the heartbreaking melancholy of the second stanza (“Command the last fruits to be full”) through to the famous final couplet with its acclaimed opening line:
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blatter treiben.
He who hasn’t built a home by now, will never build one.
He who is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will wake, read, write long letters
and will wander to and fro in the avenues
restlessly, while the leaves are drifting.
… the biblical undertones, the elegance, the musicality (of the German source text), the irrevocability and the melancholy that fellow Dylan emulates just under a century later, first in “Not Dark Yet” and almost a quarter of a century thereafter in the final verse of “Crossing The Rubicon”.
“Autumn” in itself is, of course, not a brilliantly chosen metaphor to express something like “end of life” or to communicate melancholy – we have known and used its symbolic power since we were able to write. Dylan himself, for example, at the time of writing this line, has already sung “Autumn Leaves” 235 times, the immigrant top hit from the American Songbook (the song is a translation of the French “Les feuilles mortes”, hence immigrant). Wonderful song, but literary less strong; like most artists who choose “autumn” as a setting or metaphor, the symbolism is laid on thick. Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle / Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi sang Yves Montand at the time (“The dead leaves are picked up with a shovel / As are my memories and regrets”), and translator Johnny Mercer is not too subtle either: “But I miss you most of all my darling / When autumn leaves start to fall.”
The distinctive quality of masters such as Rilke and Dylan is the unobtrusiveness, the casual naturalness with which autumnal colour is applied. In Rilke’s Autumn Day, for instance, the word “autumn” does not even appear. Dylan, similarly, manages to deepen the classic artifice as well. After his textual change in the fourth verse, he chooses to use the symbolic power of “seasons” as the bearer of the overriding theme of the album Rough And Rowdy Ways: time is an illusion.
That apparently well-thought-out lyric change in the fourth stanza, “The summer meadows turned to gold, and the winter chill was gone” is in itself schizophrenic – it suggests both autumn and spring, after all. The opening “most dangerous month” is just as foggy, as are the other text adaptations, which add “evening sun” and “dying sun going down” respectively – moving the scene from morning (first stanza; “greet the Goddess of the dawn”) to evening. It supports, all in all, a guiding motif of the album that is already introduced in the very first line of the very first song: “Today and tomorrow and yesterday too”.
Time as an elusive, illusionary unit has been a motif in Dylan’s oeuvre since the early 1960s anyway, but it is more prominent than ever in this late work. In almost every song, the poet Dylan juggles with Time, with when. After the opening line of the opening song “I Contain Multitudes”, the following “False Prophet” opens with “Another day that don’t end”, and closes with “Can’t remember when I was born and I forgot when I died”. Track 3, “My Own Version Of You”, opens with the confusing “All through the summers into January”; the I-person from “Mother Of Muses” is already outside of time (“I’ve already outlived my life by far”); “If there ever was a time, then let it be now,” the narrator begs in “Black Rider”; “Key West” grants immortality; “Murder Most Foul” hopscotches through the twentieth century, and is, for all its jumpiness, still the most time-bound song on the album.
“Crossing The Rubicon” is the standard-bearer thereof, of this Elusive Time motif. The narrator greets the morning sun, it is darkest ‘fore dawn and he sees the evening sun die, it is a dangerous month, it is late summer, spring and autumn, and now, in these last lines, it is winter – whereby it is each time ambiguous whether the poet gives stage directions or uses the time indication only metaphorically. The latter option, metaphorical use, seems obvious in this brilliant finale: The killing frost is on the ground and the autumn leaves are gone is heartbreakingly poetic.
Its particular beauty is undoubtedly due in large part to, as Dylan puts it, “a strong foundation, and subliminally that’s what people are hearing” (New York Times, 28 September 1997) – and the unusual killing frost on the ground illustrates that statement perfectly. The foundation has been laid by – of course – Shakespeare, in Henry VIII (“The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,” Act 3, Sc. 2), reinforced by Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal, in the hallucinatory poem “Ciel brouillé” (Overcast);
Dangerous woman-demoralizing days!
Will I adore your killing frost as much,
and in that implacable winter, when it comes,
discover pleasures sharper than iron and ice?
…but “subliminally”, killing frost on the ground draws us via one of the stepfathers of “Crossing The Rubicon”, via Howlin’ Wolf’s immortal “Killing Floor” (1964), to its progenitor Skip James’ “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” from 1931, a blues bedrock so successfully reanimated by Chris Thomas King in 2000 in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (“I was delighted with this album,” says Dylan in 2001 about its soundtrack). It is an almost inescapable, subliminal, associative leap, especially for a bluesman like Dylan, the leap from Skip James’
People, if I ever can get up off of this old hard killin' floor
Lord, I'll never get down this low no more
From…
… to Howlin’ Wolf’s
I shoulda went on, when my friend come from Mexico at me
But no, I was foolin' with ya, baby, I let ya put me on the killin' floor
Lord knows, I shoulda been gone
And I wouldn't have been here, down on the killin' floor
… to Dylan’s killing frost on the ground. “My songs,” Dylan says, “what makes them different is that there’s a foundation to them. That’s why they’re still around, that’s why my songs are still being performed.”
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 16: He stepped off the bridge
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:
In “Paradise Lost”, John Milton, makes the point that Satan, God’s winged lieutenant, is envious of the beauty of Eden that God creates.
The Devil sneaks into the Garden disguised as a serpent, and uses the powers that he still has to seduce Eve; not wanting to lose Eve, Adam takes a bite of the forbidden ‘apple’ offered by the dragon.
Supposing, perhaps, that Satan’s hubris is a part of the Almighty’s plan:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds
I will be like the most High
(Isaiah 14:14)
Thereafter, Satan cannot bring himself to ask for forgiveness from the angry Almighty One – the devil knows it won’t be forthcoming because he successfully tempts Adam and Eve.
So Satan simply shrugs his shoulders, and carries on with his wicked ways:
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book iv)
The narrator in the song lyrics below makes the point that all humankind has been saddled with “original sin”, attributed to God through the established dogma of much of the Christian religion.
Satan, never a rebel to give up (and apparently a good bowler), wants all to know that ’twas not he who threw the sun down this bowling alley.
Milton and other artists have The Tempter unleash some good lines through his forked tongue:
Shake the dust off your feet, don't look back
Nothing now can hold you back, nothing that you lack
Temptation's not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned I got no choice, it run in my vein
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)
According to the following song lyrics, if Satan could to it then, he can do it now:
All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
Michael is the name of one of the winged princes who, in the service of the Almighty, fights and casts rebellious Satan out of Heaven:
And there was a war in heaven
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon
And the dragon fought against his angels
And prevailed not
Neither was their place found anymore in heaven
(Revelation 12: 7, 8)
Gabriel stands guard at the gates of Eden. But neither are powerful enough to stop Satan, asserts Milton, when the Devil disguises himself as a cormorant, and flies over the walls into now-locked Eden.
According to the analogous watchtower song by Bob Dylan, God Himself does send out a couple of warnings, one by wildcat and another by wind, but not even the Almighty has the power to stop Satan with his cunning ways.
Who the two approaching riders be is left up to the reader/listener to conjecture ~ you can bet your boots of Spanish leather that Satan is up to no good.
Bob Dylan And The Two Riders (Part II)
Any “meaning”, whether social, economic, poitical, personal, to be found in the lyrics of the song “All Along The Watch Tower” be obscured by it’s author to a certain degree – the listener/reader is thereby invited into the work of art as a participant.
Not intended by the singer/songwriter is that no meaning therein is to be found.
The song is not dead history, but full of life for modern eyes/ears ~ allusions, analogies, metaphors, similes, and symbols abound throughout the lyrics.
The Tower song is based on a biblical template; no attempt is made to hide the allusion but the reader or listerner of the song must have at least some knowledge of the contents of the Bible, true believers be they, or not:
For thus hath the Lord said unto me
Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth ....
And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men
With a couple of horsemen
(Isaiah 21: 6, 9)
The war in Heaven long over, the prophet Isaiah, with the benefit of hindsight, has a vision that the Persians under Cyrus will defeat the Babylonians, and let the Hebrews do home.
Some bibilical translations consider the Persian leader be symbolized as a “lion”.
So saith the watchman in the tower:
And he cried, "A lion"
My Lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime
And I am set in my ward whole nights
(Isaiah 21: 8)
All part of God’s plan it may be, but, in the song lyrics beneath, whoever the modern Cyrus might be, or who will be set free, is left up for the listener/reader to ponder:
Outside, in the distance
A wildcat did growl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
The Bible does not name the ‘two riders’; however, Bob Dylan drops a big bright gem of a clue, rather humorously, right in the reader/listener’s lap as to whom they are intended to signify in his song:
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)
Allen Ginsberg writes and often reads his famous poem “Howl”; Dylan’s anti-establishment viewpoints are highly influenced by “the wind” that “howls”.
At the time of the Vietnam War, they are both considered to have “Satan” behind them from the point-of-view held by the “God” of the American socio-politico-economic Establishment.
On September 4, the Dylan podcast Is It Rolling, Bob featured British poet and playwright Caroline Bird.
She was fantastic; insightful, funny, and thought-provoking in her dissection of Dylan’s language. Like every guest on the show, she opened with the recitation of a song, and she gave a beautiful poet’s reading of Isis. This was followed by a long riff on the song’s meaning and Dylan’s approach to relationships in general.
The problem was, from the start, Bird and the show’s hosts locked into an interpretation of Isis that doesn’t square with the song’s lyrics. In their telling, Isis is another song about Dylan’s proclivity to run from relationships. That the protagonist abandons his bride to seek adventure only to return after the pursuit has failed.
Many interpretations of Isis follow this line, or more specifically link the song to Dylan’s unsteady marriage to Sara. It’s a forgivable offense; so many Dylan songs are centered around flight from romantic turbulence. But even as mysterious as Isis is, the lyrics reveal meaning that for some reason has been largely missed.
Dylan and song co-writer Jacques Levy have both downplayed any specific biographical meaning in Isis, characterizing it as just a story song, the kind of Western ballad Marty Robbins may have written if dosed with LSD. And while we must take anything Dylan says about his songs with a grain of salt, this feels true. As the story goes, Levy came up with the first line, Dylan loved it, and the two knocked the rest out fairly quickly.
I married Isis on the fifth day of May
But I could not hold on to her very long
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away
To the wild North country where I could not go wrong
It’s clear from these first few lines that this relationship is in trouble but there is no indication that our narrator is leaving out of the blue or even at fault. In fact, he’s the one who could not hold on to her. When you lose your grip on something you are holding onto it is that thing that pulls or falls away. The indication here is that he’s tried. Later in the song he’ll shed some light on all of this.
But at the moment of losing Isis he cuts off his hair and leaves. This reads less like a wife-abandoning adventurer and more like someone in the midst of a nervous breakdown.
So, with his marriage on the fritz he embarks on a quest. We don’t know what he’s looking for but anyone who’s experienced the traumatic dissolution of a relationship should identify with the impulse to get out of dodge and seek some understanding on the road.
Our narrator quickly finds adventure and is swept up in visions of riches. He’s also understandably thinking about Isis.
I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold
I was thinkin' about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace
As we rode through the canyons, through the devilish cold
I was thinkin' about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless
Here Dylan drops another hint. Isis thought our narrator was ‘so reckless.’ Is he? Perhaps, after all he has gone off with a stranger in search of a mysterious bounty. But what’s revealed here is that Isis thinks he is reckless, which would presumably be enough for her to ask for space.
Why is he so obsessed with the world’s biggest necklace? Doubtful he wants it for himself. He wants it for Isis because he has something to prove to her. I may be reckless but look what I got you!
He’s not done reminiscing. He remembers:
How she told me that one day we would meet up again
And things would be different the next time we wed
If I only could hang on and just be her friend
I still can't remember all the best things she said
This is the revealing passage. Isis does the talking. For whatever reason she’s pulling away with the promise that one day they may reconcile. Things will be different, perhaps she will be different, and the relationship will work. She wants space and gives him the well-worn ‘let’s be friends’ line. These are the words of someone doing the breaking up. The subtext here is that Isis has some shit to work out.
The quest doesn’t go so well. His partner dies. The tomb is empty. The search for something real, something for our narrator to grab onto in the face of a failing relationship, was a fool’s errand. There’s nothing left to do but head home to Isis and tell her he loves her.
She was there in the meadow where the creek used to riseBlinded by sleep and in need of a bedI came in from the East with the sun in my eyesI cursed her one time then I rode on ahead
She said, “Where ya been?” I said, “No place special”She said, “You look different.” I said, “Well, I guess”She said, “You been gone.” I said, “That’s only natural”She said, “You gonna stay?” I said, “If you want me to, yes”
As Scarlett Rivera’s violin and Bob’s harmonica weave together and build to a crescendo, our narrator arrives home for an awkward reunion with Isis. Here’s where a listening of the incredible Rolling Thunder version of Isis is helpful.
Bob is at his most theatrical and with the band playing loud behind him his delivery of the final word of this penultimate verse is practically screamed. “If you want me to, YES!!!!” It reminds me of the classic exchange at a press conference in 1965 when Dylan responds to a question about whether or not he believes what he’s singing,with, “How could I answer that if you got the nerve to ask me?”
With Isis he’s equally exasperated but gives an answer as if to say, What do you mean am I going to stay, you are the one who asked me to leave!
Truth be told, I trust Dylan and Levy on this one and think Isis really is a rather random and playful story without much autobiographical significance. There are many instances of Dylan revealing unease or even vitriol with his relationships, but Isis is a poor choice to use as an example.
But who knows, as Dylan sings about Isis, the same can be true of us who endlessly try to suss out his meaning: What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
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The moment had come
I swallowed my gum
We knew there'd be blood on the sand pretty soon
The crowd held its breath
Hoping that death
Would brighten an otherwise dull afternoon
(Tom Lehrer: Old Mexico)
The following song lyrics hints at a fictionalized murder:
Her Jamaican rum
And when she did come
I asked her for some
She said, "No dear"
I said, "Your words aren't clear
You better spit out your gum"
(Bob Dylan: Fourth Time Round)
Not so foul as the killing that takes place in the satirical baking song beneath:
Down by the old maelstrom
There'll be a storm before the calm
And we will all bake together when we bake
There'll be nobody present at the wake
(Tom Lehrer: We Will Go Together When We Go)
A satirical sentiment expressed nursery-rhyme-like in the following lyrics:
Let the wind blow low
Let the wind blow high
One day the little boy, and the little girl
Were both baked in a pie
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)
https://youtu.be/QVI1zn5ko6I
Obliquely albeit, another fictionalized murder ballad is suggested in the song below:
Left Jamaica this morning
On a boat Bonnie Lou
Born in Liz Texas timber
Up where the eagles fly
Then makes him tell'im never
But she don't cry
(Bob Dylan: Patty Gone To Laredo)
The eagle, a bird of prey, often employed as a symbol of death:
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls
(Alfred Tennyson: The Eagle)
Black-humoured satire is expressed again in the lyrics beneath:
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews
(Tom Lehrer: National Brotherhood Week)
Serious razzing grates in the song lyrics beneath:
Well, he got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he doesn't get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons, and won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
(Bob Dylan: Neighbourhood Bully)
By Aaron Galbraith (in the USA) and Tony Attwood (in the UK).
Aaron:Previous articles in the series [listed, as always, at the foot of this piece] include performances of the song from before Bob’s own recording. This one is different for the simple reason that Bob was the first to record the song.
Dylan had seen Jesse Fuller perform at the Exodus coffee club in Denver in 1959, and learned “You’re No Good” from him personally. It is also possible that Dylan learned the song from hearing Ramblin’ Jack Elliot perform it. Dylan’s version is faster than Fuller’s and has a title change and some lyrical changes from the original.
Tony: This is why this website is not simply full of my own ramblings about Dylan; I somehow always presumed that this was an old blues song that Bob decided to speed up. All these years and I never realised! (Or perhaps I did know, but in my latter years have forgotten).
Aaron: Fuller’s own album release of the song was over a year after Dylan’s…
Tony:What is interesting to me is that Jesse Fuller’s version really speeds up as it goes along, and ends up quite a bit faster than it starts out. It is probably not intentional – it just happens, and I certainly recall in my short career in playing in bands we used to have that trouble and really focus on keeping the beat the same. These days as I write songs just for fun and to share with a few friends, after the recording I always have to play the start followed immediately by the end just to check.
Interesting also that Jesse Fuller does reign himself in slightly at the end – I wonder if the whole tempo change was deliberate, and Bob just decided to take it at full lick from the start.
Aaron: Donovan recorded the song in 1964 and eventually released it in 2004 under the original title and the original lyrics, “Crazy ‘Bout a Woman”
Tony: Ah, Donovan, the English Dylan. If you’ve not heard of him, don’t worry about it but if you have, you might like to look at him today as seen on his official website. Mellow Yellow and Sunshine Superman are the two hits I recall from the ancient times.
This recording is a perfectly decent version of the song, showing that the young Donovan really did have talent. It was just swamped by the hype, which I don’t think was his fault at all.
Aaron: The Graveltones recorded the song twice in two very different versions.
First, from the Don’t Wait Down album in 2013
Tony:Yes…. it took me a few moments to think that there could be any relationship between this performance and the composer’s original, but of course the lyrics are the same. The music however has been completely re-written.
It’s not my style of music at all, and I really can’t appreciate it, either in terms of this song or pretty much anything in this style. Obviously many people do, so it is me that is out of line, but well, I’m not a headbanger.
Aaron: From the Cardinal Sessions in 2014
Tony:Now this is interesting, that the these two guys could and indeed would produce both versions. This one I can relate to; I love the way the percussionist gets the sounds and fits them in with the acoustic guitar. And the setting is fun too, especially with the shot of the audience of two right at the end. I love it. For me, that’s the best of the collection today. Thanks as ever Aaron; as ever you extend my musical knowledge.
There are hundreds, hundreds and literally more hundreds of covers of this song. Including a surprising number of instrumental ranging from modern jazz to straight reproductions of the original accompaniment. There are versions that take in all the verses, and versions that cut down the verses, into the style of the Byrds hit of 1965 and versions that change the lyrics as they go along.
And much as I would like to say as your dedicated reviewer of covers that I have been through them all, that would not be your actual truth, because even with a superb song like this, there is a limit to how many reproductions of the Byrds version I can listen to. And that is what we get, over and over again.
Of course, a lot of the problem is that issue we have mentioned before: we know the song so well, there is now little (if anything) that we can learn from the images. And when someone does play a little bit with the lyrics it is more likely to sound odd or wrong rather than enlightening or entertaining or informative.
I’m not quite sure why this is, but it is certainly something I feel with the arrangement by Cloud Cult, which Jochen highlighted in his review of the song. He called it “Brooding, hypnotizing and magical”, but I can’t find I agree. Maybe I am getting even more pedantic in my old age but the pulsing beat removes any chance of brooding. Yet I must agree, it does start so wonderfully.
Maybe it is the changes to the lyrics that get me. I don’t mind lyrics being changed, but I do want them to insightful or different. I suspect you’ll know the lyrics as well as I do, and maybe the changes don’t worry you, but I keep thinking “why?” Why change such a wonderful collection of words that have been part of my world since the 1960s? (I have just realised I now sound by my wonderful late mother, who herself wondered why the old songs had to be changed. Goodness, that is quite a thought).
The point is that the changes to the music can be exciting and challenging and they do open up new possibilities but the changes to the lyrics generally just seem trivial and trite. I’m not knocking Cloud Cult who have indeed done a huge amount to take music forward, but this changing of the lyrics in this way seems a dead end to me.
Apparently, the first release of the song was not by Dylan but by the Brothers Four, who managed, in the one move of changing the rhythm, to destroy the meaning of the entire piece. I don’t normally put up versions I don’t like but I’ll add this one just to show how (in my view) covering should not be done. And in case you listen to a bit and think, ok I’ve got the idea of what he’s talking about, do try and persevere to the bit where they repeat “jingle jangle”. Although those of a nervous disposition may choose not to.
I suspect that to make a really decent contribution to the annals of Tambourine Man musicians involved in the project need insights not only into Dylan but also into the music and the lyrics. Some do make a decent attempt, but all too often the final result isn’t quite there.
Lenka, I felt, got halfway there, but then stumbles across one of the big problems of this song. It is quite long and since we all know the lyrics by heart the accompaniment needs to be really interesting but not overwhelming, and not too repetitive. Bob got away with it at the start because we didn’t know the lyrics so intimately, but now all these years on, it’s a problem. Lenka has originality, but not enough to keep me interested all the way through, and her arranger can’t find variation in the music that is needed to help it along.
The modern jazz musicians have engaged with the song many times, but somehow for me (and of course as ever this is all just a very personal view) they can’t quite bridge the fact that I know the lyrics and the original so well. I can appreciate how the accompaniment here reinterprets the words in a perfectly reasonable manner, so that makes me think, maybe this is just me. Perhaps I’m not really wanting such a reinterpretation having lived with this song through much of my life. Perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps I should not be looking at cover versions of Tambourine Man at all.
Very frustratingly however, there is a recording of Tambourine Man which does meet all my requirements of how to do it… but it is a recording taken from the Australian production of the Voice – a TV talent show that would normally lead me straight to the exit. I can’t find a recording of AP D’Antonio performing this in a studio without wild hysterics, either on Spotify or on the internet generally but if you can screen out all the noise etc, then beneath all that is a performance that to my mind does the song justice
But I suppose, mostly the problem is that it is possible to do almost anything with this wonderful song, but most of the roads out of the original turn out to be blind avenues. Like the notion of changing the time and playing it in 12/8 – and then ending in 4/4. It just sounds rather odd to me.
I have no idea how long I have spent going through hundreds (yes literally) of versions: instrumentals, performances by children, and in multiple languages, and my brain, if not curdled before, is now.
But then right at the very final moment when I was about to give up, I found this. Maybe I like it because it is so unpretentious in the music and the performance sounds so honest and straightforward. Maybe because I have spent so long trying to find someone else’s version of the song that really does justice to it without copying Bob I am now clutching at straws. But I feel I can add this and defend my choice. The volume is very low but hopefully, you can turn it up enough to hear what’s going on.
He, alter Liedersängerby Steinbäcker,Timischl & Schiffkowitz
In his “Metamorphoses”, Roman poet Ovid mocks the gods of mythology for letting their passion over-rule their reason.
Lost while hunting, mortal Narcissus calls out, “Is anyone here?”
Madly in love with the beautiful human, but cursed to repeat only the last few words uttered by others, a mountain nymph replies, “Here”.
Says Narcissus, “Let’s meet together”.
Says Echo, “Together”.
And she rushes into his arms.
Scoffs self-centred Narcissus, “May I die before what’s mine is yours”.
And he runs away from her.
Repeats immortal Echo, “What’s mine is yours”.
And, except for her voice, she hides away in a dark cave.
In the biblical Book of Samuel, a student of a High Priest wakes up, goes to his mentor, and says, “Here I am”.
Samuel thinks it’s Eli who calls out to him when it’s actually the Almighty.
Eli, who has lost touch with God, says to Samuel: “I called not; lie down again”
And he went away and lay down. (I Samuel 3:5)
Eli, the priest, catches on when this happens a third time, but by then it’s too late; Samuel receives a message from God that there’s bad news ahead for Eli and his two pampered, supposed-to-be priestly but wayward, sons.
Sammy reluctantly passes the message on to High Priest Eli.
When God allows the death of Eli and his sons to occur, it turns out to be good news for young Samuel; he gets to take Eli’s place.
The new High Priest goes on to show by setting his own example how all those who, are obedient to God will be looked after by the Almighty:
Who through faith subdued kingdoms
Wrought righteousness, obtained promises
Stopped the mouths of lions
Quenched the violence of fire
Escaped the edge of the sword
Out of weakness were made strong
Waxed valiant in fight
Turned to flight the armies of the aliens
(Hebrews 11: 33, 34)
The Bible lesson taught through Samuel is not lost in the following song lyrics:
And he was told but these few words
Which opened up his heart
If you can't bring good news, don't bring any
Mona Baby, are you still in my mind - I truly believe that you areCouldn’t be anybody else but you who’s come with me this far
The unforgotten Joe Strummer sings her, just before his death 22 December 2002, in the opening track of his best record in years. Streetcore (2003) is the last album by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Strummer’s last band after The Clash, The 101ers and The Latino Rockabilly War, and is actually unfinished; Strummer dies unexpectedly, just fifty years old, of a heart attack halfway through the recordings. Most of the vocals are therefore first takes (there are no more), and in one song (“Midnight Jam”) the vocals have not even been recorded yet. Perhaps also because of this, because of its unpolished nature, Streetcore is Strummer’s strongest, purest album since The Clash’s 1979 masterpiece London Calling. Highlights include the song Strummer wrote for Johnny Cash, “Long Shadow”, the acoustic Bob Marley cover “Redemption Song” and the closing song, the gorgeous, heart-breaking “Silver And Gold”, a re-titled cover of Bobby Charles’ “Before I Grow Too Old” with Strummer’s last words: “I’ve got to hurry up before I grow too old” (before we hear him say goodbye with “Okay, that’s a take”), and strongholds are, apart from the dirty rock band and the leaden reggae rhythm section, Strummer’s lyrics, Dylanesquer than ever. Like in “Get Down Moses”;
Once I got to the mountain top, everywhere I could seePrairie full of lost souls running from the priests of iniquityWhere the hell was Elijah?Well, what do you do when the prophecy came was true?
… which sounds like a forgotten outtake from Dylan’s Infidels.
The album opens strongly, too, with the song sounding like a lost Clash outtake, and also giving a fat nod to Dylan:
As the nineteenth hour was falling upon Desolation RowSome outlaw band had the last drop on the goLet's siphon up some gas, let's get this show on the roadSaid the Coma Girl to the excitement gang
“Coma Girl”, which after just 3 seconds, when Joe starts singing, ignites crushing Clash nostalgia in every baby boomer and the entire Generation X. It’s a catchy ode to the ferocious Coma Girl, the leader of the motorcycle gang, who happens to be called Mona. So the final refrain is:
Dylan is a fan. In 2005 in London, he plays “London Calling” twice, both times as the opening of the encore, he writes an essay on the song in 2022’s The Philosophy of Modern Song, and as a DJ he plays four songs by The Clash in Theme Time Radio Hour: “This is Radio Clash”, “Tommy Gun”, “Train In Vain” and “The Right Profile”, even announcing the band as “Joe Strummer and The Clash”. And the last time he plays a Clash song (December 10, 2008, Ep. 85, Famous People, “The Right Profile”), the DJ says: “We don’t have to tell you about the group that’s playing the song – we all know about The Clash.”
It would be nice if The Rubicon‘s Mona Baby were a salute to the only Mona, baby in Dylan’s record cabinet, Strummer’s Mona, baby from “Coma Girl”, but that’s probably a bit of a stretch.
The tenderness “baby” appears 273 times in the official collection, in Lyrics 1962-2012. The book collects the lyrics of 390 Dylan songs, so it is not complete; the counter on Untold Dylan now stands at 627 Dylan songs. Lyrics ignores, for instance, songs that were a one-off, such as “I’m Not There” and “Wild Wolf”, of which we have only low-quality recordings from The Basement with rather unintelligible vocals; outtakes like “Western Road”, “Fur Slippers” and “Jet Pilot”, outtakes of which it is not entirely clear why they are ignored, as opposed to others which are not; and songs Dylan wrote together with Helena Springs, such as “More Than Flesh And Blood” and “If I Don’t Be There By Morning”.
The official site bobdylan.com does list 703 titles, but among them are a few hundred covers. Some of the ignored outtakes are mentioned, and even link to their own page, but that page is then empty (like “Fur Slippers” and “Too Late”, to name but two of the many examples). Most of the 237 songs that do exist, but are not included in Lyrics, are not on the official site either.
Anyway: if we apply fuzzy statistics for the sake of convenience, and simply extrapolate, we can roughly put the number of times Dylan uses the word “baby” in a song at 438. Not exceptional, of course. Statistics do not exist, but it is safe to assume that the frequency of the word “baby” in Dylan’s oeuvre is rather below average, compared to, say, Springsteen or Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards.
What is exceptional, though, is the use of capitals. In the only official publication of the lyrics of “Crossing The Rubicon”, on the site, Baby is capitalised. Exceptional, because of all 438 babies in Dylan’s oeuvre, this Mona is only the fifth baby to be capitalised;
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Nobody has to guess / That Baby can’t be blessed (“Just Like A Woman”)
Angel Baby, born of a blinding light ( “Tough Mama”)
Sugar Baby get on down the road (“Sugar Baby”)
And now
Mona Baby, are you still in my mind
There does not seem to be a system. The Baby from “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is clearly a pet name. In “Just Like A Woman”, it seems to be a private nod to the socialite Baby Jane Holzer, who happens to be in Dylan’s circle in those days (she’s also the “Baby Jane” in Roxy Music’s first hit “Virginia Plain”, 1972). The lady who gets the qualification “Tough Mama” is consistently capitalised (not only as Tough Mama but also as Dark Lady, Shady Lady and Angel Baby), presumably as a tribute, reverentially, to graphically represent the divinity of the beloved. And “Sugar Baby” gets its capital letters in all likelihood out of respect for one of the progenitors of the song and of the album “Love And Theft” (2001) at all, Dock Boggs’ landmark “Sugar Baby” from 1927.
The Baby in this last Rubicon stanza, which appears to be a common affectionate addition only by ear, does not really fit into any of the four categories seamlessly. Spelling and punctuation (no comma) are simply that of a first name + last name. Which opens the gateway to finding connections with earlier Monas in Dylan’s songs – the Mona from “To Ramona”, Mona Lisa with the highway blues from “Visions Of Johanna”, the Mona who warns the narrator about the railroad men in “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”, the Mona who stands before a harsh judge in “I Wanna Be Your Lover”… choice enough, and who knows, one of them might be a candidate for the Mona Baby from “Crossing The Rubicon”, the Mona Baby that many, many years later is still on the narrator’s mind – to his own amazement.
Or: the use of capitals and the absence of a comma signal a title. Which is a more probable possibility, considering Dylan’s oeuvre; references, paraphrases, quotations and bows to songs are much more common than cryptic references to the private worries of the man behind the songwriter.
On that front, Monas in songs, there is plenty of choice, of course. Even when leaving aside the hundreds of songs in which a loved one is compared to the Mona Lisa, “Mona” is a name with a sound combination that lends itself well to being sung – like “Lola”, “Laura”, “Carol”, “Donna”, “Sharona”, “Rosanne”… the o/a combination simply is euphonious. Dylan probably also knows Waylon Jennings’ “Mona” (1974), and certainly J.J. Cale’s enchanting “Mona” from 1979. But deepest under his skin, of course, is Bo Diddley, the giant who helped polish the sound of Rough And Rowdy Ways, and whose “Mona” was put on a pedestal by the Stones, was melted down by Buddy Holly into “Not Fade Away”, and in the twenty-first century is one of the five Diddley songs on DJ Dylan’s playlist:
“There’s Bo Diddley, cracking the Mona code. Written about the famous painting The Mona Diddley. Tell you Mona what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna build my house next to you. “Mona” – a name that’s derived from the Irish, which means: little noble one.” (Theme Time Radio Hour Ep. 35, “Women’s Names”)
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 15: Today and tomorrow and yesterday too
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:
This article is part of a series reviewing the artwork across Dylan’s albums. There is an index to past articles below, and at the top of the page under “Album Artwork”
Episode 33 – “Love and Theft”
Released: 2001-09-11
Photographers Kevin Mazur, David Gahr, Danny Clinch
Art-director Geoff Gans
For the cover art of Dylan’s 31st studio album “Love and Theft”, no less than three photographers were employed, and three different shoots were undertaken.
Kevin Mazur
On the front, the singer looks determinedly into the lens and proudly shows his new look with the pencil-thin moustache.
The black and white portrait was made by the concert photographer of the new millennium: New Yorker Kevin Mazur. The Rolling Stones, U2, Nirvana… they all want him to capture their appearance on stage.
As the official photographer for the likes of the MTV Video Music Awards and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony, he had photographed Dylan before.
He captured the famous Soy Bomb incident at the 1998 Grammy Awards in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on February 25th, 1998. And he was also present at an Academy Awards party in Los Angeles on March 20th, 1999, where he portrayed Dylan in the company of Madonna and Chris Rock.
In 2018 the photographer explained that the photo was the result of an organized accident: “I was there for the recording of Love and Theft with Bob Dylan [May 2001].
My photo ended up being the album cover. Bob at one point during the recording said to someone, ‘Hey man I think you should have Kevin come in and take photos.’ And I was hiding behind a road case. I popped out and I said, ‘I’m right here, Bob.’ He jumped. I scared the shit out of him.”
During the same occasion, he also made the group shot of the band, gathered around guest player Augie Meyers’ Hammond B-3 organ.
David Gahr
The photo on the back of the album breathes the same atmosphere as the one on the front. A smartly dressed Dylan – moustache still present – lifts his white hat to the viewer.
This portrait is made by an old acquaintance of the singer, going back to the start of his career in Greenwich Village, capturing him performing at Carnegie Hall (1962), and the festivals in Newport Folk (1963-’65) and once more in Winter 1971 in New York.
Gahr later made the album covers of Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, and Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard.
In the Summer of 2001, Dylan invited the then 79-year-old photographer to shoot him around the Brooklyn area of New York. They spent an afternoon in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach Boardwalk, Pitkin Avenue, and Coney Island.
One thing, though: It states that the pictures were made in November 2001, two months after the album was released.
In the booklet, two more photos from the shoot were used: the one with Dylan sitting in a sportscar, wearing a black hat, and another one where he stands in a pavilion on Brighton Beach boardwalk.
Danny Clinch
In the liner notes of the cd-booklet one more photographer is mentioned: Danny Clinch. In March of 1999, he was an up-and-coming photographer in Los Angeles, when he got a phone call from Dylan’s management, asking him to take some pictures of Bob Dylan.
“It was kind of a dream come true”, Clinch said to Rolling Stone magazine in 2014. “I didn’t even think he’d show up, I just didn’t believe it. I was really prepared and I booked this place called the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. That’s not only where the Rat Pack played all the time in the Coconut Grove room, but Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen there. It was really cool because there’s a lot of different styles and locations. I thought, ‘If I have Bob Dylan, I want to make the most of it.’
“Little did I realize, he’d be so enthralled by the fact that all that history had happened there. We wandered all around this hotel and got a history lesson from the guy that was our host. Dylan was completely into it, so he stuck around for a really long time.
“He was intrigued by it”, Clich said to Andy Gensler, for another interview published in October 2010 in Culture. “He originally committed to four hours and I thought if I could just get two that would be great. He doesn’t do a lot of shoots, and ours ended up being seven hours.
“He showed up and I had my camera on and we talked about what we wanted to do, and he seemed really excited about it. I picked my camera up right away and he was like, “I’m going to change my clothes.” He looked in a mirror and was fixing his hat and I just started shooting.
“From that shoot, I had stuff in Love and Theft and some of the singles. Talk about an honor of placement for your photography, to have pictures in a Bob Dylan record.”
He refers to the color picture used only in the cd-booklet where Dylan, seated on a white couch, guitar in hand, looks straight into the camera. It’s an outtake of the classic shot of Dylan reading a newspaper with his feet up. “That was the shoot. [The Ambassador Hotel] has this cantina feel about it, and every room is different. There were these cabanas by the pool with old shutters and chipped paint — it was really cool.”
From the same shoot comes another famous picture, with Dylan wearing what looks like a golden suit and hat, holding a harmonica.
“On the way over to the shoot I get a call from his publicist”, Clinch says in 2014, “and he said, ‘Bob wants to know if you are familiar with Little Walter.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m a big fan of Little Walter. I play harmonica myself.’
He says, ‘There’s a famous photo of him on one of his records and he’s holding the harmonica and it’s Hollywood lighting.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. In fact, I have that CD here at the shoot.’ He was like, ‘Oh, great.’ They show up and Bob’s psyched that I knew what he was talking about. When I was waiting for them to arrive, I set up this old-school, Hollywood-style lighting. He pulls out this old chromatic harmonica, which was really beautiful. I then proceeded to shoot in that style.
“They’ve been using this photo on all the posters they have at all the Dylan shows. This photo has been reproduced, like, a million times. Since 1999, they’ve used others there and again, but this has been the staple and I’m super proud of that.“
Geoff Gans
Since 1996, Geoff Gans is the preferred art director for Dylan’s albums and box sets. He didn’t have too much work with this one: just adding the title and name of the artist in white letters, with an extra red rectangular highlighting the name.
For the back, the same color scheme is used for the song titles and the added info: Produced by Jack Frost.
The title is presented as a quote, presumably as a reference to the 1993 book by Eric Lott: Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
——————–
Here are the articles so far . All are by Patrick Roefflaer.
Opinions on Mozambique are divided – did it belittle the struggle of the country for independence from Portugal, or was it actually a celebration that the fight was over, or simply did the name of the country fit with a song that was emerging?
Of course with Bob we never know, but I have always enjoyed it as a piece of music as such without worrying about the connotations of the lyrics. Besides, I’ve never blamed Bob for not making his political views clear. After all, “Times they are a changin” actually says quite clearly in the lyrics that the world changes as time goes by, not that we the people make the changes or need to make changes. It happens, adjust to the new ways rather than say the old days were better, is the clear message in the lyrics. But then, who cares what the lyrics say, when we have our views to implant on the top of them?
Cover versions of Mozambique are rare, and of those around not all are really innovative nor beautiful nor intriguing enough to warrant a specific mention. But “A Nod to Bob 2” (a tribute on his 70th birthday), really did involve artists listening and re-thinking.
I’m not overwhelmed by the intro but am so glad that I persevered and discovered this interpretation; it has become one of my favourite reworkings. This is because this cover keeps enough of the original for us to recognise exactly what it is, but puts in so much in terms of new material that I just have to listen.
I’m also not too sure many of my pals would enjoy this, but if you listen all the way through please do pay special attention to the harmonies and the way the instruments weave around them.
This is what I call a tribute.
In fact I only have two cover versions of Mozambique that I enjoy, and both of them play with the melody and focus on the enjoyment and lightness of the songs.
And yes I know “Kids sing Bob Dylan” is a bit twee and a bit of a strange idea, but I still enjoy this. It brings a certain lightness to my day, in a world when not all days are light.
I feel the Holy Spirit inside and see the light that freedom gives
I believe it’s within the reach of every man who lives
Keep as far away as possible - it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn
I turned the key and I broke it off and I crossed the Rubicon
The turn to peacefulness after the preceding wordless verse (in the revised live versions of “Crossing The Rubicon”) is not a feint; the Rubicon babbles relatively gently towards the end. No more savage eruptions like “I’ll cut you up” and “I’ll spill your brains out”, or vulgar outbursts like “suckin’ off the younger men”. The waves calm down. In the finale, the song takes a turn towards a more conciliatory tone, introduced with the humble and edifying I feel the Holy Spirit inside and see the light that freedom gives.
Words that we have already seen and heard everywhere, in the Old and New Testaments, in psalms, from Luke the Drifter a.k.a. Hank Williams up to and including Elvis and Mahalia Jackson, but now do bubble up in the poet’s mind presumably thanks to Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. We already heard an earlier echo of that unspectacular Bible book in the third verse (redeeming the time and idly spent in combination with dark days, from Ephesians 5).
In the run-up to that fifth chapter Paul writes four chapters filled with “seeing the light” and “Holy Spirit”, and along the way we also encounter a few times the message from Dylan’s second line; the message that it’s within the reach of every man. Even within the reach of Jews, as Paul conciliatory explains in detail in chapter 2. They no longer need to be “strangers and foreigners”, “for through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). Culminating in the same chapter 5, in the “Children of Light” paragraph.
It all ties in peculiarly badly with Dylan’s third verse, “Keep as far away as possible – it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn”. Granted, it’s a very musical verse line, in a sought-after, tight eight-foot trochee. Not the first time Dylan has copied a rhythm from Poe’s “The Raven”, of course (a verse like As of some-one gent-ly rap-ping, rap-ping at my cham-ber door, for instance, has exactly the same, unusual trochaic octameter). But in terms of content, it is alienating; its sombre, pessimistic thrust clashes with the two preceding verse lines, with the evangelically-pleased glad tidings.
Equally strange is that the repetition-hating Dylan for the second time rhymes dawn with Rubicon (just like in stanza 1), and that the repetition-hating Dylan allows “it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn” into the song at all; after all, that’s an almost identical verse fragment as “They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn” from his own “Meet Me In The Morning” (Blood On The Tracks, 1975).
The verse, despite its technical beauty, also seems to bother Dylan himself. By the time it gets to Phoenix, the song’s live debut, 3 March 2022, the line has already been deleted and replaced:
I can feel the holy spirit inside,
I see the light that freedom gives
I believe it’s within the reach of every man who lives
The dying sun’s going down and the night is coming on
… a not too exciting, but otherwise harmless revision. The oppressive menace of the original Keep as far away as possible – it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn has been maintained in a watered-down form, but now has the poetic sheen of an ancient poem. The dying sun’s going down and the night is coming on has a somewhat stately, nineteenth-century couleur, it smells of Baudelaire, and the tone fits the third line of the coming, last stanza (“The killing frost is on the ground and the autumn leaves are gone”), another black-romantic, Baudelaire-like mood image. But above all: not as alienating as the studio version.
Dylan seems to think so too: he sings this variant from that debut on all subsequent performances in this American spring/summer tour. Except once, San Antonio, 14 March, when he sings “Seem like ten, maybe 20, years now I’ve been gone”. Clearly a mistake; that’s a line from a revised version of the sixth verse, where thirty seconds earlier Dylan had accidentally sung The dying sun’s going down and the night is coming on – he shifts gears quickly, this evening, and quickly improvises a one-time reversal of both new lines.
A little rustier, by the way, seems to be the switching speed at the fourth line, at the “refrain line” with the next links in the accumulatio. Both in the studio, and in the official publication on the site, and in all 52 performances after the debut in Phoenix, Dylan sings “I turned the key and I broke it off”. Which is a fine enhancement to the series, of course. In songwriting, turning the key is usually used as a metaphor for the opposite, for opening “the door to your heart”, “the gateway to a new life”, “the home of our love”, something like that. Use of a key, in any case, as we know it from songs like “A House Is Not A Home”, John Mayall’s “Key To Love”, Madonna’s “Open Your Heart”. And if the key is used at all to close, it is usually idyllic and romantic as well. Ray Charles singing “(Turn Out the Lights) Love Me Tonight” (We can turn the key and lock the world outside the door), Charley Pride’s “My Heart Is A House”, and the most beautiful of all: Dusty Springfield’s “Breakfast In Bed” (1969);
Don't be shy
You've been here before
Pull your shoes off, lie down
And I will lock the door
https://youtu.be/11fFE9lR56U
Dylan, however, is Dylan, and he chooses a nice inversion of the cliché, thus creating a next strong link in the chain of “cross the Rubicon” equivalents. Still, at the very first performance, he seems less convinced of its beauty. What he sings there is quite unintelligible, though. It sounds like “I’m hot as a bull, took out the pills” or perhaps “I had a second look up the hill”, which of course it isn’t (at 5’41”):
Eventually it is deciphered with 99% certainty, in New York by Craig Danuloff, founder of the wonderful Freak Music Club, an on-line Bob Dylan Fan Club:… it is, as Craig hears, probably:
“Unharnessed the bull, took out the pins”
Not something you just pull out of a sleeve – it seems, like the line before it, to be a deliberate, rehearsed revision of the text. “Unharnessed” is a very unusual word in song art, and in literature at that. It is a word that you come across once in a while with Mark Twain and more often with Chekhov, and then always in a literal sense: to strip a horse of its harness. Curious, as the term is eminently suitable for metaphorical use – like here, where it indicates something like unleashing the inner beast.
All the more remarkable, as we encounter the positive, harness, often enough, both in literature and in the art of song. Dylan sang it sixty years ago along with Woody Guthrie, in his overflowing list-song “Talking Hard Work” (1944): “I held a 125 wild horses, put saddles and bridles on more than that, harnessed some of the craziest, wildest teams in the whole country”; in the 80s we sing it along in REM’s “Feeling Gravity’s Pull”, one of Michael Stipe’s more Dylanesque lyrics;
Reason had harnessed the tame
Holding the sky in their arms
Gravity pulls me down
Or in one of the most gorgeous songs by The Pretty Things, on their somewhat forgotten 1970 masterpiece, Parachute:
Beside grey lakes of lead she's harnessed to a kneeling form,
Before the storm subsides, she's flown
And leaves the body torn.
… “She Was Tall, She Was High”, from the magnificent Abbey Road-like suite on side 1.
Anyway, “unharnessed the bull”. Strong metaphor, just like the continuation, whether misheard or not, “took out the pins”: charged, ambiguous and fitting in the accumulation of crossing the Rubicon equivalents – but nevertheless discarded after one performance.
The next day, 4 March 2022 in Tucson, Arizona, Dylan has felt a Holy Spirit and seen a light. Which is, as we know, within the reach of every man who lives. He turns the key and breaks it off.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 14: I’m gonna build my house next to you
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:
God kicks Adam and Eve out of Eden into a Hell on Earth; locks up the gate, and keeps the keys inside for Himself.
Eve (who changes her name to Patti Page in order to protect herself from her all-knowing, Father) decides that she’s not going to take it anymore; leaves Adam, moves on, and ends up jumping on a train with Laurel, who’s left Hardy because he’s pulled a gun on him.
She’s from Laurel, Mississippi; takes it as a good omen; says, “Man, please don’t get up”; grabs a glass of champagne; and sits on Laurel’s lap.
Locked out of paradise, Patti and Stan hope to escape from Hell’s Kitchen together; they click westward along the ribbon of railroad tracks, looking for the doorway to heaven on dark old earth.
A song from the musical score:
And Laurel's playing for money
On the ribbon wide
She's on his side
It's a doorway
The door is locked
And the key's inside
(Bob Dylan: Patty Gone To Laredo)
Funnyman John Milton writes the script for the film.
Taken from a book of his, the movie’s entitled:
Who Would Not, Finding Way, Break Loose From Hell
(John Milton: Paradise Lost, book iv)
Though the movie is all about Eve, Stan (dressed up as “a song and danceman”) performs the main song in the movie:
Any minute now, I'm expecting all hell to break loose
People are crazy, and times are strange ....
This place ain't doing me any good
I'm in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)
That’s where the two end up. But heaven can wait. At the end of the film, the song and danceman meets Anne Baxter in a Hollywood parking lot; she’s starring as “Eve”, in a movie with Bette Davis.
Laurel and Anne run off together, leaving the real Eve standing there, crying in the rain.
The credits roll up on the big black screen, and Stan the Man sings:
She's got everything she needs
She's an artist
She don't look back
She can take the dark out of the night-time
And paint the daytime black
(Bob Dylan: She Belongs To Me)
John Milton wins an Academy Award for the best blind screenwriter.
Aaron:“Hard Times Come Again No More” is an American parlor song written by Stephen Foster in 1854.
It was first recorded in 1905 by the Edison Quartet on wax cylinder.
Tony: This is a song in the tradition of the poor asking for support from the rich during times of famine and unemployment. As such when a performer sang it to the local population it always resonated. Wiki tells us that the image of the pale drooping maiden is a hallmark of Foster’s writing.
Aaron: Bob’s version is another track from the Good As I Been To You album
Tony:Bob certainly manages to make it sound desperately mournful, and, well, desperate. I’m not at all sure I would want to play this twice.
It is actually much harder to perform than one might imagine, for there is a need to keep all the desperation in the performance without sounding mawkish.
Aaron: Several of my favorite artists have covered the song including Bruce Springsteen, Arlo Guthrie, Jay Farrar, Johnny Cash etc so I will include one from a recognized artist and one that perhaps will be new to you.
Yo-Yo Ma with James Taylor from 2000.
Tony: Another of those pesky videos which Aaron in the US has selected but which won’t play in rural England. So two sources are included
Tony: I find this much more approachable than Bob’s version, perhaps because the string trio is so eloquent; three cheers for the arranger. It would be so easy to kept the accompaniment in the background all the way through, but the instrument break is not just completely unexpected, but totally delightful.
Now suddenly I do want to play this song again, although I must admit I am focussed on the wonderful accompaniment.
Aaron:The Swingles from 2018
Tony: It is a piece that cries out for a set of exquisite harmonies and the Swingles will always deliver that. I defy anyone listening without distraction not to be emotionally moved by this performance.
Just how many unexpected harmonies can one get out of such a simple song?
With such a performance all I can think is, “What a beautiful way to end an article!”
Dante Alighieri pops up here and there in songs written or co-written by Bob Dylan.; there be a world of light, a world of darkness, and a world betwixt the two.
Often humorously, but not always, real places get substituted for other-worldly sites like Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.
Heaven according to the song lyrics below:
I say Champaign, Champaign, Illinois
I certainly do enjoy Champaign, Illinois
(Carl Perkins: Champaign Illinois ~ Perkins/Dylan)
Purgatory, akin to Desolation Row, in the lyrics beneath:
Oh, if you die fearing God
Painfully employed
No, you will not go to heaven
You'll go to Champaign, Illinois
(Old Ninety-Sevens: Champaign Illinois ~ Miller/Dylan)
The following gnostic-like lyrics present the material world as one of darkness, either it’s full of ignorance, or full of sin, or both, from which only a few wise or lucky individuals escape:
Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape
And while everybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)
Blaming the darkness on someone or something else be a flawed means of escape:
I used to sit by my fire place
And dream about you
But now that won't do
There's a flaw in my flue
(Bob Dylan: There's A Flaw In My Flue ~ Van Heusen/Burke)
False conclusions wrought by religious prejudice:
Nobody spoke so they shouted all the louder
It's an Irish trick that's true
I can lick the Mick that threw
The overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder
(Bing Crosby: Who Threw The Overalls In Mrs Murphy's Chowder; Geifen)
https://youtu.be/GPkcpewzYno
Yes, indeed, give me that old time religion; that’s what we need:
Where the Jews, and Catholics, and Muslims all pray
I can tell they're Proddie from a mile away
(Bob Dylan: Goodbye Jimmy Reed)
A song that Bob has never performed in public, and one that I didn’t expect to find any cover versions of, and lo and behold there is one. Or actually two, although only one in English.
And that English language cover is damn good too. For here we have performers who understand the essence of the original, and then make their own adjustments to the song to turn it into… well not something new, but rather the same scene as Dylan set out, but looked at from a totally different angle.
I must admit I haven’t listened to the original version in years but the lyrics are still in my head, and that of course makes the job of a cover version harder – the musicians have to work harder to keep one’s attention since there is a temptation for the listener to think, “I know this”.
The chord change (just one extra chord) is subtle, the lead guitar’s little solo romp after every other verse is perfectly placed and is novel but not intrusive.
But above all it is the whole laid-back approach that really works – the opposite of the frantic insanity of the lyrics and which is conveyed in Dylan’s original.
I am of course limited to recordings that I can legally put online for you to contemplate, and although there are one or two other recordings of the song around I have only found one more that is available on the internet to share.
I include it because it is the only other one, and I wouldn’t think normally it was worth putting in, because the musicians don’t add that much to Dylan’s original. But it is an interesting example of this problem: just recording Dylan’s music is not enough, because, well, Dylan has done that. The musician/s also need to move the whole thing on and give us something else, something new. A new perspective or insight, ideally.
And at least we have one version that does this. Here’s the only other one I have found.
You won’t find any happiness here - no happiness or joy
Go back to the gutter and try your luck -
find you some nice young pretty boy
Tell me how many men I need and who I can count upon
I strapped my belt and buttoned my coat and I crossed the Rubicon
Jim Morrison, who we can hardly accuse of prudery or conventionality, who, for instance in “The End”, effortlessly identifies with Oedipus, and in a dramatic reconstruction kills his father and does the unthinkable with his mother, the Lizard King, who doesn’t practise self-censorship when he loudly proclaims the pleasures of anal sex (“Back Door Man”) – this taboo-breaking Morrison does have a boundary after all, as it turns out when he sings the second verse of “Alabama Song”, the fifth track on the “greatest debut album of all time”, 1967’s The Doors.
“Alabama Song” (or “Whiskey Bar”, or “Moon Of Alabama”, the song has been recorded and performed under different titles) is, along with “Mack The Knife” and “Pirate Jenny”, one of the crown jewels of the song treasure left to the world by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and has probably been under Dylan’s skin since 1963, when he breathlessly absorbed a performance of Tabori’s play Brecht On Brecht. At least, that is what we can conclude from both the memoirs of Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo (A Freewheelin’ Time, 2008: “Brecht would be part of him now”) and from Dylan’s own autobiography Chronicles (2004):
“Every song seemed to come from some obscure tradition, seemed to have a pistol in its hip pocket, a club or a brickbat and they came at you in crutches, braces and wheelchairs. They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated.
Within a few minutes I felt like I hadn’t slept or tasted food for about thirty hours, I was so into it.”
And Dylan, of course, is not the only one touched by Brecht songs. Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin, Marianne Faithfull, Bing Crosby, David Bowie… the entire premier league plus the divisions below it have Brecht & Weill songs in their repertoire. Including “Alabama Song”, with that second verse:
For we must find the next pretty boy,
For if we don't find the next pretty boy
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die!
… the verse that Jim Morrison, apparently fearful of homoerotic connotations, cannot get out of his throat. Instead, Mr. Mojo Rising sings:
Show me the way to the next little girl
Oh, don't ask why
Oh, don't ask why
For if we don't find
The next little girl
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
Even more remarkable is the fact that even Bowie is beating about the bush. Remarkable, given that in his wild 70s, Bowie had no qualms about venting his bisexual predilection, with a fairy stage presence and an androgynous image. But when Bowie has shaken off his mascara and funky hair, in 1980, and records “Alabama Song”, he too sings very straight:
Oh show us the way to the next little girl
Oh don't ask why, no don't ask why
For we must find the next little girl
Or if we don't find the next little girl
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
(Although, in the twenty-first century, both Morrison and Bowie would probably have found this “little girl” a little too sensitive as well.)
“Nice young pretty boys” are, in short, rarely sung by our male entertainers. But Dylan, in 2020, seems to be beyond shame. Partly, at least. He doesn’t yet go so far as to put himself in the shoes of an I-person looking for a handsome lad, but is emancipated enough to allow his interlocutor a homoerotic escapade: Go back to the gutter and try your luck – find you some nice young pretty boy.
It is the first and only time in the studio version of “Crossing The Rubicon” that Dylan makes such an atypical, semi-aggressive allusion to his opponent’s sexual preference, whether supposed or not. There is a charm in the fact that the poet borrows words from a song that is almost a century old, but it is atypical and alienating nonetheless. Dylan himself seems to think so too: these words, and the entire verse, are radically removed even before the first performance – in none of the 53 performances of the American tour in which “Crossing The Rubicon” debuts (Phoenix, 3 March 2022 – Denver 6 July 2022) is this verse sung. Weirdly enough, Dylan initially seems to want to keep a homoerotic allusion anyway, as evidenced by that odd text change in the previous verse, in verse 6, in which he changes the original lines
You defiled the most lovely flower in all of womanhood
Others can be tolerant - others can be good
and replaces with:
Well, you foxy man, you’re the talk of the town
You’ve been suckin’ off all of the younger men
… but as we have seen, this variant lasts only three performances (Phoenix 3, Tucson 4 and Albuquerque 6 March). At the fourth concert (Lubbock 8 March), Dylan already waters down the line by deleting the vulgar “sucking off”: “You foxy man, you’re the talk of the town, you been going down for other men”. And from performance five (Irving, 10 March) onwards, this last LGBT+ connotation has also completely disappeared:
Well, there’s nothin’ you got, my good man,
and that ought to be understood
You can keep your gifts, take ’em all back,
I got things that are just as good
After which, with the earlier deletion of the seventh verse, the entire song is finally completely free of same-sex innuendo.
Apart from discomfort at the nice young pretty boy fragment, the song poet might also feel a certain redundancy at the opening of this deleted verse. “You won’t find any happiness here – no happiness or joy” has the same tone and communicates the same message as the Dante quote in stanza 1, as “abandon all hope”. It could be a nod to his old comrade in arms Roy Orbison, to his charming little ditty “Paper Boy” (1959), with the same opening words;
I walk down to the blue side of town
Where there's no happiness, no joy
Down at the end of a long dark street
I saw a little paper boy
… but a reverence to The Big O would probably have been less subtly hidden and, moreover, not so rashly deleted. No, “dispensable,” he probably thinks, like the unspectacular metaphors he chose for the next two equivalents in the accumulatio, “I strapped my belt and buttoned my coat”: dispensable.
The ghost couplet, as befits a good ghost, does not disappear completely. The band keeps playing it, but the words don’t come. In all his performances, Dylan remains stoically silent, at the piano, sitting through the verse. The now-empty verse still does get its own intro, though; a sudden, frightening eruption like the entrance of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, or rather à la Scottie Moore’s solo in “Heartbreak Hotel”, insinuating a dramatic climax – but soon Tony Garnier’s bass, à la Bill Black in “Heartbreak Hotel”, calms the waves. And peacefully, the Rubicon ripples on to the next verse.
Crossing The Rubicon live: the silenced 7th verse at 4’17” (Spokane, 28 May 2022):
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 13: I’m hot as a bull
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:
Friedrich Nietzsche expounds that we have killed God, He being found wanting as the author of all creation.
Rowland Barthes posits that modernists like Ezra Pound and TS Eliot, and subsequent poets, have killed off the writer (killed off William Blake, for example) as the creator of a piece of art.
Words have many meanings of their own over which creative authors have little control: “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (Barthes).
French Symbolists, akin the Edgar Allan Poe, focus on the sounds of intertwined words; any meaning or message within the lyrics of a poem is left for its readers or listeners to dig up.
Seems they’re all struggling on dry land in the unconscious waves of a Jungian sea:
Here I was wandering, with my eyes
Riveted to ancient cobble stones
When with sunshine in your hair, in the street
And in the night, you appeared to me, laughing
And I thought I saw the fairy with a hat of clarity
(Stephane Mallarme: Apparition ~ translated)
Could be said, an imaginative concept that’s not lost, but surfaces rather negatively in the sound of the song lyrics quoted beneath:
Sweat falling down, I'm staring at the floor
I'm thinking about that gal who won't be back no more
(Bob Dylan: 'Til I Fell In Love With You)
However, all in all, the tables are turned, upset on Roland.
Announced below is that the death of the author and his sentiment (“the light is never dying”) is greatly exaggerated; the over-optimism of Romantic God-pervading Transcendentalists, even of the mythological Elysian Field, not dead.
A Hamlet archetype he be; the author is a-gonna, at least figuratively, avenge his traditionalist father’s death; regrets leaving his true love hehind.
The author is revived:
I'm learning, still yearning
Thinking about that gal I left behind ....
As I walked out in the mystic garden
On a hot summer day, on a hot summer lawn
Excuse me ma'am, I beg your pardon
The gardener is gone
Ain't talking, just a-walking
Up the road around the bend
Heart burning, still yearning
In the last outback of the world
At the water's edge
(Bob Dylan: Ain't Talking)
We finished Part 1 of 2008 with four songs from Modern Times (2006) from the Dallas concert. Indeed, Dylan weighed his setlists heavily with his most recent songs, not just from Modern Times but Love and Theft also. For example, at Salzburg, 11th June, ten out of the 19 songs on the setlist were from those two albums and just one (‘Till I Fell in Love with You’) from Time Out Of Mind. The rest were a scattering of 1960s songs with no songs from the 1970s or 1980s. Exactly the same at Odense (28th May), ten new songs, none from the 70s or 80s.
I surmise from that, and the enthusiasm of these performances, that Dylan related to those songs more strongly than the others. This weighting may be one reason why many Dylan fans fell out of love with the NET – they just weren’t getting enough of the old Bob, the one they knew and expected to see.
‘Nettie Moore’ couldn’t generate the recognition and affection that ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ could. Yet here it is, from Salzburg, a solid, powerful performance. Despite the funereal beat and apparent seriousness of the song, there’s a good deal of absurdity in it, the kind of humour we associate with the two most recent albums.
Don't know why my baby never looked so good before
I don't have to wonder no more
She been cooking all day, and it’s gonna take me all night
I can't eat all that stuff in a single bite
Nettie Moore
And yet that kind of madcap humour is evident in Dylan’s earliest work.
I gotta woman, she's so mean
She sticks my boots in the washing machine
Sticks me with buckshot when I'm nude
Puts bubblegum in my food
That’s from ‘I Shall Be Free No: 10’ (The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, 1963).
We find the same style of humour in ‘Honest with Me’ (Love and Theft, 2001)
My woman got a face like a teddy bear
She's tossin' a baseball bat in the air
The meat is so tough, you can't cut it with a sword
I'm crashin' my car trunk first into the board
I’m not sure what that last line means, but the implication is clear enough. The blues tradition of men complaining about their women fits Dylan just like a glove. However, this later humour has a darker edge.
I'm here to create the New Imperial Empire
I'm gonna do whatever circumstances require
I care so much for you, didn't think I could
I can't tell my heart that you're no good
Is that even funny, given the current state of global affairs?
Dylan holds nothing back in this raw Salzburg performance.
Honest With Me
Because ‘Beyond the Horizon’ from Modern Times was not performed as often as some of the songs from that album, good live recordings of that song are all the more precious. This recording from Odense (28th May) comes as close as I can find so far to a definitive performance, if there is such a thing, despite the background audience noise.
The dumpty-dum becomes the plinkity-plunk of the Ink Spots of the 1930s, gentle and lilting. I can imagine the Ink Spots singing this song, if it had been around then. I wonder if anyone would have noticed the hidden depths in the apparently straightforward if rather melancholy lyrics.
Beyond the horizon the night winds blow
The theme of a melody from many moons ago
The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chime
Beyond the horizon I found you just in time
This is my favourite song from the album after ‘Ain’t Talkin’ and is, I believe, one of Dylan’s most successful ‘retro’ songs.
Beyond the Horizon
In the same gentle vein, we find ‘Moonlight’ also on Love and Theft. This is another song which wouldn’t have sounded too out of place on an Ink Spots album. There’s a wistfulness in this song which makes us wonder if she ever will meet him ‘in the moonlight alone.’ As Christopher Ricks points out in his Dylan’s Visions of Sin, the number of times he has to put the question puts the outcome in doubt. One of the things I like is the song’s evocation of nature. The song’s focus is as much on nature’s ‘turning seasons’ as on the desire for love.
The dusky light, the day is losing
Orchids, poppies, black-eyed Susan
The earth and sky that melts with flesh and bone
Won't you meet me out in the moonlight alone?
This one’s from Salzburg. There’s a welcome and unexpected harp break before the last verse. I wonder what the Ink Spots would have made of it.
Moonlight (A)
Fans of the song might appreciate this performance from Vigo, Spain. Rather than a harp break, there’s some nicely appropriate guitar work. As with Odense, a bit of background audience noise here.
Moonlight (B)
There’s a very contemporary ring to ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ for even as I write, flooding has been threatening the Mississippi due to heavy rains. That Dylan was most probably writing about the 1927 floods doesn’t change that. In this age of global heating and its effects this song is just as relevant now, if not more so, than when it was written twenty-one years ago. ‘Some of these people don’t know which road to take.’ This one from Odense.
The Levee’s Gonna Break
As in 2007, ‘Summer Days’ is one of Dylan’s firm favourites. This is an exuberant, celebratory song from the jump jazz tradition of the 1930s. My preference is for this jaunty performance from Odense.
Summer Days (A)
But it’s also hard to resist this high-spirited performance from Salzburg.
Summer Days (B)
‘High Water (For Charlie Patton)’ is another regular, and another prescient extreme weather event song, regularly but wrongly interpreted as being about Hurricane Katrina. It was written before then. At best the song has a heavy, apocalyptic fury to it. I think the 2006 performance is the best so far (see NET 2006 part 3) but this one from Odense is close to it.
However, the way Dylan emphasizes the second half of the line means that the first half of the line gets gabbled. If you don’t know the words you won’t be able to make them out. This is an experiment in terms of the phrasing, and I’ll leave the reader to decide how successful that is.
High Water (A)
The same issue is evident in the Salzburg performance, maybe a little more pronounced.
High Water (B)
‘Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum’ was the opening song at Odense as ‘Maggie’s Farm’ began to fade as Dylan’s favourite opener. It’s also the opening song on Love and Theft. As I’ve said before, I find it hard to work my way into this song. It’s not so much that I don’t know what the song is really about, many of the later Dylan songs are not necessarily about any one identifiable thing, but what the affective centre of the song is. That is, the emotion that’s driving it. That it’s about betrayal and backstabbing is clear enough, and, it has its own intrigue.
Well, a childish dream is a deathless need
And a noble truth is a sacred creed
My pretty baby, she's lookin' around
She's wearin' a multi-thousand dollar gown
Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum
‘Rollin and Tumblin’ sounds just the way the title reads. It rolls and tumbles like a sleepless man, and is a darker song than the frenetic tempo might suggest. It’s the agonies of a love gone sour that drive this song. Another urban blues, solidly in the complaints-about-love genre. The touch of hope at the end, before the final chorus, may well be tinged with sarcasm. Going ‘down to the greenwood glen’ to make amends sounds too bucolic to be real:
Let's forgive each other darlin', let's go down to the greenwood glen
Let's forgive each other darlin', let's go down to the greenwood glen
Let's put our heads together, let's put old matters to an end
Why do I think that’s just not going to happen?
This first one is from Odense.
Rollin and Tumblin (A)
That kicks it along, but so does this one from Salzburg.
Rollin and Tumblin (B)
‘Sugar Baby’ was not performed as often as the faster-paced songs from the last two albums I’ve focused on here. Because of the chorus, and the line ‘you ain’t got no brains no how,’ it might seem like an attack song like ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ but it’s much softer than it at first appears, or maybe more contemplative.
‘Love’s not an evil thing,’ he sings, but the prospects of success in love are not bright. Fate can play some dirty tricks on us, and happiness can vanish in the blink of an eye. In addition, our good intentions may be counterproductive.
Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick
Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick
Any minute of the day the bubble could burst
Try to make things better
For someone, sometimes you
just end up making it a thousand times worse
The mood is one of sad resignation rather than anger or bitterness. This is well captured by this Salzburg performance.
Sugar Baby
I had to go back to Dallas to find this performance of ‘Mississippi,’ perhaps Dylan’s greatest early 21st Century song. I have it sitting right beside ‘Ain’t Talkin.’ Once more I can only recommend Jochen Markhorst’s massive study found on Untold Dylan here https://bob-dylan.org.uk/mississippi. Markhorst has said it all.
‘The emptiness is endless,’ Dylan sings, and the song certainly makes us feel it. This is a good recording, and Dylan is in excellent voice, but I find the performance less than compelling because of the dumpty-dum which, to my ear, trivializes the song, turning it into a stilted waltz. The effect is quite peculiar and unsettling. It just doesn’t do the song justice. The album version and the 2001/2002 performances have a touch of grandeur, an epic feel befitting the scope of the song. That’s all gone here. We have this weird, childlike tempo. Something’s out of whack. Make of it what you will.
Mississippi
I’m going to stay in Dallas to quickly catch ‘Blind Willie McTell.’ It’s got a bit of a lilt but otherwise is played straight. Enthusiastically played and received.
Blind Willie McTell
That’s it for now. I’ll be back shortly to see what else we can uncover in 2008.
