Untold Dylan Showcase is a feature we’ve run whenever we’ve had the chance, which quite simply consists of recordings made by our readers or about our readers’ music making. Sometimes the music we get is supplied simply because a reader wants to offer it up, other times there is a theme.
Here’s today’s latest piece by David Kerner, it is a regular 12 bar blues with a simple message – go and vote! I love it, not least because I always vote. I’m old enough to have ancestors who (my family has told me) died in the fight for the right to vote, which has always seemed as good a reason as one can get to exercise one’s democratic duty – and to remind others of the benefit. (I don’t normally go into my political views here, but there seems a good excuse at this point!)
The most recent addition to the Showcase venture, before the above, came when Bob Bjarke wrote in about his use of artificial intelligence to create some new Dylan-esque lyrics. I think somewhat to his surprise, I then had go at writing the music to those lyrics; I don’t claim them as works of art, but it was a fun experiment.
The earliest part of the venture was “Help complete a Dylan song” in which we printed the lyrics of Dylan songs that had never had music added, and invited readers to join in with the writing.
Our good friend Filip Łobodziński has also contributed a lot in this regard with his perspective on performing Dylan in Polish, and Bob Dylan in Poland.
Biblical Beezlebub, linked to the worshippers of Baal, and later to Satan, seduces young women.
The Lord of the Flies sneaks into lyrics performed by a Christian-oriented singer:
They'd say when he grows up, watch out
When the gals see his big blue eyes
They'll hang around like a bunch of flies
Those women knew what they were talking about
(Hank Snow: Lady's Man ~ Coben)
In the following song lyrics, Beezlebub, though unnamed, and stinker though he be, fails to attract the female fly he’s after.
Perhaps she’s Jezebel, once a Baalist, who turns out to he more nun than fly:
Well I went back to see about her once
Went back to straighten it out
Everybody that I talked to had seen us there
Said they didn't know who I was talking about
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
In the lyrics below, Beezlebub, here sex changed into the Sweet Lady of the Flies, is warned that she will get her comeuppance:
You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch
Flies buzzing around your eyes
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)
In a related tale of Greek mythology Io, the daughter of a Water Naiad by a mortal, catches the eye of the Thunder God. To hide her from Hera, Zeus turns her into a white heifer. The wife of Zeus torments the young cow with a gadfly. Io runs away, but Zeus follows her tail all the way to the Nile where he transforms her back to her beautiful human form.
Could be said that Beezlebub and Zeus come together in the song lyrics below:
Don't ever take yourself to a place
Where I can't find you
Don't ever take yourself away
I will never leave you
I will never deceive you
I'll be right there walking behind you
(Bob Dylan: Steel And Feathers ~ Dylan/Jean)
Untold Dylan has a very active Facebook group – and we are always happy to receive positive articles about Bob Dylan, his music and those who have influenced him. If you have an article, or an idea for an article please do email it to Tony@schools.co.uk
It’s natural that the more recent songs, in performance, find Dylan at his most enthusiastic. While we have had some powerful performances of ‘It’s Alright Ma,’ ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown,’ some of those old chestnuts like ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Blowing in the Wind,’ ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ have started to sound pretty jet-lagged. Missed verses, mixed up verses, dropped lines and flubbed lines, a sense of strain trying to make the songs sound fresh, is what we can find.
But with songs written from 1997 (Time Out of Mind) through to 2006 (Modern Times), we can feel Dylan engaged and enthusiastic. In my last post (NET, 2007, Part 1), I started to look at Dylan’s 2007 performances of those songs, and I want to continue that in this post. Let’s start with ‘Spirit on the Water,’ a song that is very much in the same spirit as ‘Beyond the Horizon.’ A bright and breezy surface, but in this case, a sting in the tail. The singer will not be able to join his love in paradise because he ‘killed a man back there.’
Wikipedia says, ‘In their book Bob Dylan, All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon discuss the song as exhibiting Dylan’s “love for jazz”, noting that “the atmosphere is light and bright” and that “Dylan sings with his crooner voice, which foreshadows his 2015 album Shadows in the Night“.
For my ear, this performance from Birmingham (17th April) has an edge on the 2006 performance (See NET, 2006 part 2).
Spirit on the Water (A)
The sharpness of the Crystal Cat recordings is hard to resist, although some find them a bit abrasive. This one, from Newcastle (12th April), is also a Crystal Cat recording, but the performance is somewhat muted compared to Birmingham, somewhat lighter and more airy perhaps.
Spirit on the Water (B)
‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ is an upbeat, rock-and-roll tinged song (See NET, 2006, part 2) that bustles along, Dylan once more mixing the political and the personal as he does. I offer two recordings here, quite different in spirit. This first one is from St Louis (22nd Oct), and has been my favourite. Dylan belts it out in fine style.
Levee’s Gonna Break (A)
But I’m also aware of the appeal of this one from Florence (26th of June) which is not as high-powered as the St Louis performance (a different key?), with Dylan singing in a lower register. Take your pick.
Levee’s Gonna Break (B)
Judging by the number of performances, ‘Summer Days’ must be counted as Dylan’s favourite from Love and Theft. Somewhere around number 14 on his setlist, this song is guaranteed to lift the energy in any concert. Full of humour, sexual innuendo, classic blues complaints about infidelity in love, and some wild touches, this one’s a crowd pleaser. I’m struck by the contrast between the way this song ends, in rabid defiance, and the bitter-sweet farewells of ‘Don’t Think Twice.’
Well, I'm leaving in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift
Yes, I'm leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift
Gonna break in the roof, set fire to the place as a parting gift.
And here’s ‘Don’t Think Twice’:
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm a-traveling on
But don't think twice, it's all right
Never let it be said that Dylan mellowed as he got older.
In terms of recordings, I have an embarrassment of riches here. Four excellent versions. I’ve chosen two, regretting the loss of the other two. This first one is from Birmingham again and is full of brash energy.
Summer Days (A)
This second one is from St Louis, with Dylan’s vocal to the fore.
Summer Days (B)
There are a couple of very slow songs on Modern Times, ‘When The Deal Goes Down’ and ‘Nettie Moore.’ The first is a melancholy ode to love, the kind of love that sticks with it right to the end. It’s a precursor to that wonderful ballad from Rough and Rowdy Ways, ‘I Made Up My Mind.’
The song is shot through with a stoical acceptance of time, love and death.
In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewilderin’ brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down
It’s a haunted but determined state of mind. A love song to God. It’s hard to beat this Birmingham performance:
When the Deal Goes Down (A)
But for those who like their recording with a bit of a softer edge, this one from Florence has its charms. On balance, this one is my favourite.
When the Deal Goes Down (B)
The blues soaked ‘Cry A While’ used to jump from one tempo to another just as the lyrics jump from a particularly Dylanesque defiance of fate and the world to grief and sorrow. Here Dylan smooths over those tempo changes to produce a more standard, consistent bluesy riff. I miss the tempo switches and find the 2007 versions somewhat less interesting. To my mind, this doesn’t stand up to earlier versions. For a contrast, try the performance from 2003 (NET, 2003, Part 4).
It’s worth noting the constant edge of rueful humour in the song:
I'm gonna buy me a barrel of whiskey
I'll die before I turn senile
This one’s from Florence.
Cry a While
Did Dylan test his audiences’ patience by singing the dead-slow ‘Nettie Moore’? Dead slow can turn dreary. It seems not. The audience stays with this one (Stockholm) and appreciates the progression of the lyrics. While this is a love song, the lyrics are wide-ranging and there doesn’t seem to be a lot holding it together.
Nettie Moore (A)
For those who like the sharper, Crystal Cat recordings, this one from Sheffield might do the trick.
Nettie Moore (B)
For a change of pace, let’s go to ‘Thunder on the Mountain.’ This is the ultimate chuggy song. It’s relentless, funny, and at times profound:
Feel like my soul is beginning to expand
Look into my heart and you will sort of understand
You brought me here, now you're trying to run me away
The writing on the wall, come read it, come see what it say
Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music coming from
I don't need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I'm your servant both night and day
It’s easy to miss the depth of this. We might need to remind ourselves that he’s probably addressing his god.
The song is all about movement, and momentum. There’s no time to think, to mull over a verse, as the next one is right on top of you. That thunder just keeps on rolling.
This first one’s from St Louis, and Dylan uses a descending vocal, starting high and moving low. It helps keep our interest in the performance.
Thunder on the Mountain (A)
This one, from Florence, doesn’t use the same trick but vocal expressiveness is to the fore here.
Thunder on the Mountain (B)
I can’t resist, however, popping in this one from Stockholm. The vocal’s not as gritty as Florence, or as adventurous as St Louis, but it’s smoother than both of those and is becoming my favourite.
Thunder on the Mountain (C)
Staying in Stockholm, let’s catch another of those generic blues songs the critics didn’t like because they thought Dylan’s compositions were getting a bit melodically lazy, and that Dylan was using such songs as album fillers. I don’t get that impression at all. Once he got rid of the repetitive guitar riff you hear on the album, the song bedded down very nicely. It thrums along with a suitably ominous edge.
Honest With Me
No one could accuse ‘Working Man’s Blues #2’ of being generic, even if it does reference the Merle Haggard song. It’s a very atmospheric song, political passion mixed with nostalgia for the world we have lost as we get ground down with globalization’s race to the bottom:
Where the place I love best is a sweet memory
It's a new path that we trod
They say low wages are reality
If we want to compete abroad
It’s a call to arms, but a sad, reflective one.
This Birmingham recording has to take top slot.
Working Man’s blues (A)
This one from St Louis, with its more hushed vocal, caught my ear. The softer feeling may suit the song better.
Working Man’s blues (B)
‘Rollin And Tumblin’ takes us back, once more, to classic urban blues. Tony Attwood has an excellent account of the song here; I can’t add much to his account except to say that, like the best blues, it expresses the anguish of mind and heart when it comes to failed love. You may study the ‘arts of love’ all you want but you’ll still end up rollin and tumblin and crying the whole night long.
This Newcastle performance won’t leave you in any doubt. In this case the abrasive Crystal Cat recording fits the song like a glove.
Rollin and Tumblin
I’ll finish this post with another Newcastle performance, ‘High Water (for Charlie Patton).’ To my mind, the song reaches its performance high point in 2006 (see NET, 2006, part 3), which is an interesting contrast to this one. The 2006 performance features Donnie Herron’s banjo more prominently, but in both performances the darker undertones of the song are brought out by that heavy guitar riff.
The song hasn’t lost its bounce, or with increasing floods a consequence of global heating, its relevance.
‘Don’t reach out for me’, she said, ‘can’t you see I’m drowning too?’
High Water
That’s it for me this time around. Keep body and soul together and join me next time for another round of sounds from 2007.
If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, please simply drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk with details of your idea. We’ll be pleased to hear from you.
You might also like to follow Untold Dylan on Facebook – just type Untold Dylan Facebook into your search engine, and we should pop up.
I am revisiting this amazing compilation of Bob Dylan’s LIVE *Lovesick* performances.
To me, this song brilliantly examines the deepest experience of love-longing. It effectively explores the torture that love can cause a person, especially when there is separation with no foreseeable end. The music alone sets a mood of perpetual agony and arduous passing of time.
This lyrical out-loud expression of inner dialogue truly captures the battle between the heart and mind. Many of Bob’s songs deal with aspects and themes of mind/heart struggle but “Lovesick” seems to illustrate it so well. It portrays how love can cause such misery; disobliging any rhyme or reason. Attempting to cerebrally subdue the overwhelming feelings of deep desire of love seems beyond the capability of the most astute mind.
In this song the protagonist feels it is impossible for them to be together. He’s so in love, he is sick from it and of it! His longing for her is so powerful that everything but her love seems dead to him. Even using the line: “streets that are dead” echoes back to Bob’s early years; to the innocence of youth and first love. It is so similar to his line in *Mr Tambourine Man* “…the ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming.”
This is not ordinary love and though it seems obsessive it’s not that either. It’s the kind of love in which their entire beings are inextricably connected. Love that is melded to the point that to hurt the other is to hurt yourself.
His brain is “wired” because “there’s a battle [inside] and it’s raging.” He and his love are separated for some reason and the waiting so long as indicated by: “I hear the clock tick.”
He also cannot fathom why she always seems to know and understands his secret hidden places of his soul like no one else ever has. How does she know? He tries to reason away this intuition and insight she seems to have informing her as shown in the line: “you went through my pockets when I was sleeping.” This also alludes to Bob’s song *Covenant Woman* in the line: “…who knows those secret things of me that are hidden from the world…”
So in this lonely separation, he tries desperately to find a way to dismiss his feelings by dismissing her. He begins to build a case against her by thinking she doesn’t love him the way he loves her. His heart and soul is ravaged. Wrestling with such thoughts, he’s trying to make himself believe she’s bad. It’s like if he can blame her and think she is fickle then maybe he can stop loving her. He cannot move on or love anyone else but he is worried that in this separation, she might not be faithful to him. He sees other couples enjoying love and imagines her in a silhouette with someone else and it’s driving him crazy inside. He asks: “…could you ever be true, I think of you and I wonder….” This love is so powerful it is tortuous and he can’t get it out of his head.
He wants to escape the pain of not being with her but in the end he knows he can’t because in his last line he says: “I’d give anything just to be with you.” For all this thinking, he cannot extinguish the fire of his desire! He still hopes they will be together somehow because he knows he’s in it for keeps.
This song is reminiscent of the Song of Songs (Solomon) in which two separated lovers are searching for the other. Their love is pure but sensual, and sweetly tender but also intense like fire; a perfect model of true love.
—————–
Denise is the moderator of the Untold Dylan Facebook group. You can find out more about the group and apply to join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan or by typing in Untold Dylan Facebook on your search engine.
I crossed the Rubicon on the 14th day of the most dangerous month of the year
It is a popular way to open a story, or – as in Dylan’s case – to merely suggest an epic writing: the exposition, the opening according to the classic formula who-where-when. Not only for fairy tales, but also for films, novels and short stories. “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York,” as Sylvia Plath in 1963 opens her The Bell Jar. Kafka’s “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin” (Metamorphosis, 1915) and Don Quichote opens in 1605 with “Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.” And the best, the most wonderful of them all: “Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders,” although that is not actually the very first opening line of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), of course.
In sung narratives, in ballads, it is even more common – time and space are simply much more limited than in other art forms, so the writers often choose to get the necessary exposition, the who-where-when, over with as quickly as possible so that they can start with the what, how & why, with the story itself. After all, suggesting authenticity increases the attraction and tension, and can be achieved through detailed geolocation, for example, whether fictional or not. “Twelfth Street and Vine”, “56th and Wabasha”, “Rue Morgue Avenue”, “where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog”, “Bagby and Lamar”… Dylan himself has also felt the special power of precise location for over half a century.
The same applies, even more so, to the when. The choice of a date, then, not only works more authentically than, say, “once upon a time”, but has also, for all its factuality, a poetic, almost mysterious power. “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” is, of course, by itself an off-category song, but its brilliance would have been less without the magical opening “It was the third of September”. The same goes for remarkable songs like Arlo Guthrie’s “Darkest Hour” (It’s the tenth of January) or the Bee Gees’ “Odessa” (Fourteenth of February , eighteen ninety nine), and monuments like “Isis” (I married Isis on the fifth day of May) and “Ode to Billie Joe” (It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day)… all extraordinary songs that gain poetic lustre by opening with something as dry as a date.
But Dylan is Dylan, the poet that Joan Baez so aptly defined back in the 70s with “You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague” (“Diamond And Rust”), and he once again confirms Joan’s analysis with the brilliant opening line of “Crossing The Rubicon”: I crossed the Rubicon on the 14th day of the most dangerous month of the year.
The beauty of the verse line is mainly due to the embedded duality, of course. Ostensibly, the opening line offers a classic exposition, yet it gives nothing away. We do not know who the “I” is, the “where” is only a metaphor and the “when” is agonisingly unclear in its suggested clarity; no one knows which month is the “most dangerous month”. Or rather, depending on your perspective, any month qualifies for “most dangerous month” – sailors between Micronesia and Japan dread September (an average of four typhoons); health insurance companies see a pneumonia spike in March every year; the California traffic police know that August is the most dangerous month. In short: just as in his Very Great Songs, songs like “Shelter From The Storm” or “Visions Of Johanna”, the poet, through word choice, only suggests a narrative, only insinuates an epic – but in fact reports nothing more than that some anonymous I-person in an undisclosed place at an unclear moment has made an unknown, but apparently far-reaching decision.
Presumably, the by-catch amuses the elderly, playful poet Dylan. Predictably enough, all analysts, reviewers, professional Dylanologists and amateur interpreters bite. A disappointing large faction of them clicks through to Wikipedia, soon finds the historical source of the phrase to cross the Rubicon, and reports, usually with some misplaced triumphalism, the finding that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon not on a fourteenth day, but on January 10. Even such a highly respected and intelligent Dylan interpreter as the author of the brilliant Dylan book Why Dylan Matters, Professor Richard F. Thomas, in his wonderful, very readworthy essay “And I Crossed the Rubicon”: Another Classical Dylan (Dylan Review, 2020), devotes a great many words (some 900, almost half of the entire essay) to solving the date puzzle. For, “As always with detail in Dylan, there is a reason, here making us confront the puzzle.” Unfortunately, Prof. Thomas then allows himself to be partly led by the somewhat naive starting point of taking “Rubicon” literally, of seeing “Rubicon” as a concrete, historical and geographical indication. And then keeps on meandering around Julius Caesar again:
“But the 14th was also the eve of what for Julius Caesar was emphatically the most dangerous month, March, whose Ides of course fell on the next day, his death day.”
Why it should be relevant that 14 March is the eve of Caesar’s death on 15 March is completely unclear, apart from the fact that “most dangerous” would be a very poor, Dylan-unworthy choice of words to describe someone’s death month. And apart from the peculiar reflex to take a metaphor literally – that’s like poring over old weather reports in the archives to locate when and where a hard rain has a-fallen or trying to find Desolation Row in the New York street directory.
Anyway, the professor is certainly not the only one who gets carried away by the historical background of “Rubicon”. In the apparent belief that Dylan would have a childlike tendency to hide some secret meaning behind cryptic clues, which can be solved with the help of the chapter on code-cracking in the Junior Woodchuckers’ Guidebook, or something like that. Which, by the way, is a very popular belief; after all, cryptanalytic interpretation has been the most flourishing faculty of Dylanological studies worldwide for sixty years.
More obvious, and also less spectacular, however, is the observation that the expression crossing the Rubicon is used in the way we have all been using it for twenty centuries now: metaphorically. The premise that the lyrics are lyrical, not epic, is not too bold either. The song seems mainly to want to express the state of mind of a distressed protagonist who has just made an existential decision. An epic-suggesting exposition such as this opening line enhances the couleur and, moreover, is a strong attention grabber – it is quite unlikely to be a cryptic masking of some biographical fact.
And well, if you insist on finding a month to go with this “14th day of the most dangerous month”: in Dylan’s inner jukebox, there are two records with a “14th day”. Both quite prominent. Woody Guthrie’s “Dust Storm Disaster” is furthest in front, the song that was etched in Dylan’s memoria musica sixty years ago;
On the 14th day of April of 1935,
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky.
And somewhere near there is undoubtedly Blind Willie Johnson with his “God Moves On The Water” from 1929;
Year of nineteen hundred and twelve, April the fourteenth day
Great Titanic struck an iceberg, people had to run and pray
… both opening lines, as it should be. Both marking a most dangerous event, the latter on the same day that Dylan himself has already named in his own Titanic song, in “Tempest” from 2012 (‘Twas the fourteen day of April / Over the waves she rode). For the Titanic sank on the fourteenth day of the month which, if not the most dangerous, is at least, as we all know, the cruellest month.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 3: So many things that we never will undo
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:
According to the Jewish/Christian Bible, with Moses gone up on the mountain, most of those fleeing Egypt demand that his brother Aaron construct a Golden Calf, a representation of a Baalist fertility god, for them to follow on their homeward journey to the Promised Land:
And all the people brake off the golden earrings
which were in their ears
And brought them unto Aaron, and he received them at their hand
And fashioned it with a graving tool,
after he had made it a molten calf
(Exodus 32; 3,4)
In the persona of a genie, the narrator in the following song lyrics takes into account the so-called pagan ideas of transitional alchemy along with the orthodox biblical story of Moses.
There's conflict between the two points of view:
With a time-rusted compass blade, Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks sidesaddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise you will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
As the biblical story goes, the Hebrew God gets angry, frightens his leading prophet Moses into crushing the sacred bull of the Baalists into tiny bits and pieces of gold:
And he took the calf which they had made
And burnt in the fire, and ground it to powder
And strawed it upon the water
And made the children of Israel drink of it
(Exodus 32: 20)
The narrator, apparently as Moses, in the song lyrics beneath burlesques the orthodox depiction of the prophet:
Put out your hand, there's nothing to hold
Open your mouth, I'll stuff it with gold
Ah, you poor devil, look up if you will
The City of God is up there on the hill
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)
The Holy Grail gets lost, the Ark of the Covenant too, but apparently Moses is wrong in thinking he’s gotten rid of the memory of the symbolic Golden Calf.
Egyptian mythology, rooted in gnostic ideas but then not so-called, depicts Isis, adorned with the headdress of a motherly cow. Over time, she becomes as important as the bull in the ancient view of the renewal process; the moon, the white goddess, becomes as important as the sun. A later medieval theory of the fluid humours governed by earth, air, fire, and water, develops therefrom.
According to the Holy Bible, it’s an Egyptian princess who takes care of young Moses.
He’s reluctant to leave the caring offshoot of mother Isis at the command of the Hebrew God, portrayed as male:
And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter
And he became her son
And she called his name Moses
And she said, "Because I drew him out of the water"
(Exodus 2:10)
Moses does leave. But sorrowful memories of that day he has; so said in the following song lyrics:
Isis, oh Isis, you're a mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I can still remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain
(Bob Dylan: Isis)
I can still remember the first time I heard Dylan’s “Man in The Long Black Coat” – someone (I can’t recall who) had given me a cassette of the album (remember cassettes?) upon its release, and I was playing it in the car in the evening as I drove on my own to Leicester to visit a very ill very close friend in the hospital, and we got to this track. I seem to recall I nearly caused an awful accident by not seeing that the car in front had stopped suddenly at a red light. I missed causing a collision by an inch.
So presumably that was in 1989. 33 years ago. And I can still recall it, but it is not the near accident, nor even my pal (sadly no longer with us) that I recall first: it is still the first time I heard this song and the incredible impact it made on me.
And in case that sounds heartless, of course I still remember my late friend, and I’m still very close to his family, but it is the music that symbolises that moment. I have a thousand memories of one of the best friends I ever had, but for that evening, it is playing this song in the car that is the first recollection.
Rolling Stone said, it was “a chilling narrative ballad suffused with a medieval sense of sin, death, illicit sexuality and satanic power…the sparce musical background evokes a universe frighteningly devoid of absolute meaning”. Much later I wrote “The sense of continuing futility is overwhelming which ever way you look at it,” and I think for once I really got it right. What is the point of all this, if in the end we simply pass away in the night?
“Long Black Coat” is above everything pure and utter atmosphere, and coming to the cover versions all these years later, that is what I look for. If the atmosphere goes, then the song has gone too. But of course for cover-artists, the temptation is to use electronics as a way to create atmosphere as some sci-fi movies do.
And yes, of course you can get atmosphere by electronics, but really it is the spooky nature of the melody and sparce accompaniment that does it. Emerson Lake and Palmer get half way there, but they have a repeated electronic guitar four note effect – and it is the repeat of that which really turns me off the version.
https://youtu.be/8Q1EFoOs_CU
The soft guitar of Admiral Freebee however gives the sense of menace, but then the suddenly loud couple of guitar notes seems too simple, too obvious. This song is horrifying but also subtle. It deserves more than sudden bangs, or their equivalent.
Daniel Bedingfield adds to the menance and chaos element, and although the occasional use of a chorus of voices helps enormously, it is just too repetitious for me, too pounding, too fast. Certainly as the voices are used more and more the sheer sense of a world falling apart develops, but really someone should have shot the percussionist for his (or of course maybe her) use of the bass drum. Without that we could have focussed so much more on the really clever use of the voices throughout. Try and ignore the drum – although it is hard.
Barb Jungr obviously knows Dylan better than most and she’s done some brilliant work with his music – and here we really do get the sense of menace. The church bell tolling is a bit obvious (really, do these musical directors not have a single new idea in their heads?) but everything else she gives us is remarkable – not least because she and the arranger hold back. The piano is delicate and the rhythm is controlled, and the meance is heightened – its an extraordinary trick. Very very difficult to pull off, but she gets it. The shivers go up and down my arms as I type this.
Gentle can mean horror, threat, regret… hard to do, but when it is right, it is spooky.
Found Wandering have this understanding too, but they manage to go further by doing less. The singer is delicate, the harmonies are perfection, and yet still contain that absolute sense of menace. It’s a good job this version wasn’t on that cassette I was playing when I first heard the song; if it had been I think the accident I just avoided would most certainly have happened.
Just listen to those harmonies as the performance evolves. And do stay to the end, it is worth it. This is perfection.
In fact, listening to these (and a few other versions I really didn’t want to include here) it turns out that the key to every performance comes in the last two lines of each verse. Get those right, and you stand a chance of giving a superb recording.
And the fact is that the very last two lines of the song are probably the most chilling ever written by Bob.
She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat
That is the ultimate darkness. There is nothing beyond; nothing is left behind.
Dylan provides sparingly, but with some regularity, insight into his working methods, into how he arrives at his songs. In the interview with Douglas Brinkley (New York Times, 12 June 2020) he confirms what we have known for sixty years: “The last few verses came first. So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line,” thus confirming the notion that Dylan often works towards a pre-cooked catchy title line.
We recognise that from songs like “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Every Grain Of Sand”, “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” and dozens of other songs besides “I Contain Multitudes”, the song Dylan refers to in this particular interview (adding: “Most of my recent songs are like that”).
Thanks to Daniel Lanois, we know that Dylan doesn’t necessarily already have accompanying music in his head; for the sessions of Oh Mercy, for example, Dylan arrives with written-out lyrics for songs like “Most Of The Time”, without even a hint of a melody; a melody is sought and found on the spot, in the studio.
We owe it to drummer David Kemper to learn that a single drum pattern can be enough to spark off a whole song; when Kemper is alone in the studio trying to play a rhythm he “heard somewhere”, Dylan orders him, while grabbing his notebook, to keep playing. Dylan sits down next to the drumming Kemper and in “maybe ten minutes” comes up with the whole of “Cold Irons Bound”, after which it is immediately recorded. Similarly to how Leon Russell describes the creation of “Watching The River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”: when Dylan arrives in the studio, Russell and his mates have already, without any input from Dylan, come up with and recorded a musical accompaniment, and Dylan then, while the tape is played on repeat, writes the lyrics on the spot.
And a third working method Dylan reveals, remarkably clearly and unequivocally, to interviewer Robert Hilburn in 2003 for his “Songwriters Series” in the Los Angeles Times:
“What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate. […] I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s Tumbling Tumbleweeds, for instance, in my head constantly — while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I’m talking back, but I’m not. I’m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”
Since 1997, from Time Out Of Mind onwards, this seems to become a guiding principle, as well as a double-edged sword. Dylan uses “reference records”, usually old blues records by men like Charley Patton, but also by crooners like Al Jolson, to make clear to his collaborators what sound he is looking for. But apart from that sound, he also uses the licks or drum patterns, or melody lines that his musicians play along with on those “reference records” – and sometimes even licks and drum patterns and melody lines.
“Sugar Baby” (“Love And Theft”, 2001) is a replica of Gene Austin’s “The Lonesome Road” from 1927, “Floater” (also lovingly stolen in 2001) is a faithful copy of Bing Crosby’s “Snuggled On Your Shoulder (Cuddled In Your Arms)” from 1932, and the “reference record” for Time Out Of Mind‘s “‘Til I Fell In Love With You” seems to be a forgotten B-side by Slim Harpo from 1958, “Strange Love”.
More than twenty years later, when Dylan starts Rough And Rowdy Ways, this method still proves to be fruitful. One of the reference records is quite easy to trace: “Can’t Hold Out Much Longer”, the B-side of Little Walters’ first single for Checker Records, “Juke” (1952), a no.1 hit on the R&B charts. At least, its introductory lick gets to be the “start-lick”, the departure point of every verse of Dylan’s “Crossing The Rubicon”.
https://youtu.be/cuyO8ClCxeQ?list=RDcuyO8ClCxeQ
And beyond that, Little Walter hovers just as recognisably over the song; the stomp, the sound and the Chicago influence of slow blues like “Key To The Highway”, “Last Night” and “Little Girl” set the tone for Dylan’s song. All songs which can be found on The Essential Little Walter, a double CD from 1993 that indeed collects the highlights of Little Walter’s recordings for Chess Records (1952-1965). Also including the five songs that DJ Dylan plays in his Theme Time Radio Hour, always accompanied by roaring admiration for Walter’s skill and musical talent. Like at the evergreen “Key To The Highway” in episode 66, Lock & Key;
“This next song has a lot of different versions. Just about all of them are good. You can hear it by Count Basie, you can hear it by Eric Clapton, hear it by Buddy Guy. John Hammond Jr., the Derek Trucks Band, Junior Wells or The Band. I’m not gonna play it by the guy who wrote it either. I’m gonna play the version that I like – the best version. Here’s Little Walter, singing Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key To The Highway”.”
The DJ is serious. Twelve years later, when Dylan records “Murder Most Foul”, he reaffirms his admiration: “Play ‘Moonlight Sonata’ in F-sharp / And the ‘Key to the Highway’ for the king on the harp”, the honorary title of master harmonica player Little Walter.
The songs on The Essential Little Walter even leave traces in the song’s content, by the way; a verse fragment like this world so badly bent is most likely an echo of the last song on Disc 2, “Dead Presidents” (Well I ain’t broke but I’m badly bent) – a song that is also on the DJ’s playlist (episode 68, Presidents’ Day).
But the “Bob Nolan” method, as we will call it for now, seems to have led to “Crossing The Rubicon”. Dylan listens to the song in his head, and “at a certain point, some of the words change.” Speculation, of course, but the opening words of the final couplet are good candidates for such an inner, creative process – the most obvious seems to be the option that Dylan changes the words of Little Walters’ refrain You know I’m just crazy about you, baby / Wonder, do you ever think of me, while humming, into
Mona, baby, are you still in my mind?
I truly believe that you are
… and then the floodgates to the wildly swirling stream-of-consciousness open. This scenario would imply that Dylan moves these “opening words” to the end of the song after his work is done, and that is not unusual. We know, both from Dylan’s notebooks and from statements in interviews, that the bard often shuffles verses back and forth, to “have the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order,” as Dylan explained it to John Cohen half a century before (Sing Out!, October 1968), when a relatively young Dylan still thinks that is an original narrative structure.
And who knows, maybe biographical associations with Little Walter do flood in first. Little Walter, as DJ Dylan repeatedly points out, was not only an extremely talented and skilful musician but also a difficult man. “Walter was a hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-fighting guy,” says a poetically inclined DJ when he plays Little Walter for the first time (23 August 2006), and he repeats words to this effect on subsequent spins in later episodes. Muddy Waters’ description is even more poetic: “Little Walter was dead ten years before he died,” referring to Walter’s worn-out appearance and alcoholism, and his look, the old-before-his-time look. Which Dylan also notices;
“He died at an early age, 38 years old. But if you see pictures, he looks closer to sixty. A hard-living man, but a great artist.”
The last time the radio maker plays a record by Little Walter (episode 90, Madness, 4 February 2009), Dylan is a little less shrouded:
“Sadly, Walter had a vicious temper and a thirst for liquor. He was involved in a street fight and died from its after-effects. He was only 37 years old.”
The best biography on Little Walter was written by Dylan’s old comrade Tony Glover (Blues With a Feeling: The Little Walter Story, 2002), and it is quite likely that Dylan has read that book – or at least used it as a reference. And that Dylan has also read that the fatal street fight, the fight after which Walter crosses the Rubicon, takes place in Chicago, on the 14th day of the most dangerous month, 14 February 1968.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 2: That day I’ll always remember
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:
Untold Dylan also has its own Facebook page with over 11,000 followers. To find us just type in Untold Dylan Facebook and the relevant page ought to pop up.
This series looks at and listens to Bob Dylan’s performances of songs written by people other than himself. Aaron in the USA selects the tracks and Tony in the UK then tries to write something vaguely meaningful about each performance, but with the agreement that he has to finish the commentary by the time the track stops playing. Although rambling is allowed.
Today it’s “90 miles an hour down a dead end street.” A list of previous articles in this series is given at the end of the piece.
Aaron:
Time magazine had this song in their list of “The 10 Worst Bob Dylan Songs”
They had this to say: “An overwrought metaphor for a relationship between two people who each belong to another, Dylan’s delivery is strained, forgettable and, worst of all, unconvincing. An instantly forgettable track.”
Written by Don Robertson and Hal Blair, it was first recorded by Hank Snow in October 1963, and it reached No. 2 on the country charts.
Tony: I have two problems here – and as ever with these little commentaries of mine these are very personal observation. For me (an ex-motorcycle rider, although I sold my last bike just before my first daughter was born), songs about motorbikes are generally not that interesting – and I know as I’ve been there and to a small degree done it. But there is one exception, and if you have read my ramblings before on the subject you might know it, but I’ll repeat it at the end. Any excuse to play the recording.
However, Bob’s 90 miles an hour… no not for me. I don’t like slow songs where the instrumentalists are just told to fill in the gaps, because they invariably just end up making a noise, and that is what happens here. Just listen to the recording and focus on the band and I think you might hear a bit of a mess.
The title line is really powerful, but it is never done justice in this version of the song in my view (although please do keep reading because they are not all like this). I think the song was a filler – but then, it is Bob and he knows what he is doing.
Aaron: Hank Snow…
Here is another early version, before we move on to some more recent covers
Tony:This actually makes more sense as a parable – something that I find is lost in Bob’s version and now the metaphor makes sense – although what the girlie chorus is doing here I really am not sure, as least from a musical point of view. And ok, we’ve now got the image, and I am still wondering how a producer could drop in the “Ah ha” from time to time.
Moving on…
Aaron:Don Robertson
Tony: Of course what I generally don’t know is what Aaron actually thinks of these recordings himself. And I guess if I did do, that would change what I’d write. Do you like this Aaron? If so please tell me why.
It is for me an interesting notion, comparing a relationship to a motorbike ride. At least I have always heard this as a motorbike ride – but maybe I’m the only one who has that image. Maybe it’s just me.
Aaron:Ashley Hutchings -ex Fairport Convention bass player
Tony: Ok, now this is cheating. Bringing Ashley Hutchings in like this! And I should explain: Aaron and I have written about Ashley Hutchings before and included some examples of his wonderful music – if you don’t know it, please follow that link – and see also what Bob said about it.
Anyway, this is, of course, the getting on for being perfect example of the song, because, well, that is what Ashley can do. As it says on the Ashley Hutchings website, quoting Bob Dylan, “Ashley Hutchings is the single most important figure in English folk rock. Before that his group Fairport Convention recorded some of the best versions of my unreleased songs. Listen to the bass playing on Percy’s Song to hear how great he is.”
And yes, for me, all the previous versions we have had above, including I am sorry to say, Bob’s version, are just nothing. Listen to Ashley, and you know what the song is about. It is perfectly arranged, perfectly sung, perfectly recorded, and makes me want to play it again.
But back to the topic:
Aaron:John Berry – complete with, if I’m not mistaken, a Bob Dylan impersonation around the 2:15 mark
Tony: OK, this is good, and it works because the harmonies fit with the whole notion of the piece, which has a coherence of its own. And it is this version which makes me want to go on.
If you want an example of Richard Thompson and Ashley Hutchings together, try “Who knows where the time goes.” Which is as a good a way of understanding what Bob meant when he spoke about the greatest bass player…
But I won’t stay with Fairpport, because I am, once more, going to force something else upon you. The greatest motorcycle song of all time. And that after all is where Ashley started.
Besides if you don’t know this you are in for a treat and a half. And then some. And then some more. And if you do, you probably won’t mind listening again.
Footnote:Aside from this blog, Untold Dylan also has a very active (and excellently moderated) Facebook page. If you don’t know it just go to your search engine and type in Facebook Untold Dylan.
Taken as a whole, the metonymic motifs in the songs of Bob Dylan are not nearly as fragmented as they first appear.
Mythologists, poets, writers, and other artists, speak up for the languageless, for the ‘silent’, Cosmos – once thought made up of the basic elements of wind, water, fire and earth.
The Sun in ancient Greek/Roman mythology is personified as Apollo; he’s masculine, rational, fiery and prone to war.
Influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, poet and engraver William Blake goes further; presents Apollo as Urizen; gnostic-like, he’s a sinful and bloodied Demiurge who overlooks dark Satanic Mills down on earth.
He’s grouped in with Deists and with Satan of the Holy Bible:
Then the Divine Vision like a silent sun appeared above
Setting ... in clouds of blood
(William Blake: Jerusalem)
Los (Sol spelled backwards) represents fallen man; he’s a blacksmith, an artist, who struggles in the prison of a dark world to spread some light:
The blow of his hammer is justice
The swing of his hammer mercy
(William Blake: Jerusalem)
Dominant-seeking Venus, from mythology, for Blake be disharmonious Eniharmon.
She has a motherly side that’s revealed in the song lyrics below:
My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)
https://youtu.be/E45C8N6YjXs
According to Blake, the modern world has been led astray by rationalists, corrupted – imagination lost.
There’s a dark earthy side to Enilhamon that fails to console under such circumstances:
Well, the road is rocky, and the hillside's mud
Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood
I found my own, I found my one in you
But your love hasn't proved true
(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)
Los is lost in Blake’s poetry, locked outside as he is with the once-perfect Eve who’s been seduced by Satan, both locked outside the Gates of Eden:
The silent sun
He's got me on the run
Burning a hole in my brain
I'm dreaming of you
That's all I do
But it's driving me insane
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)
Perhaps it’s just William Blake’s esoteric poetry that Los is dreaming about, and his trying to untangle what the preRomanic poet is getting at, that’s driving Bob Dylan insane.
Untold Dylan also runs a lively Facebook group with over 14,000 members. To find the group just type Untold Dylan Facebook into your favourite search engine.
While the lyrics may be somewhat distinctive in form, the musical accompaniment is not, nor is there much to enjoy in terms of content. In terms of content, the lyrics offer little or no sparkling poetry or other fireworks; it is mainly a string of country clichés. This starts with the theme, which is probably the trigger for the entire song text: one more night – the bittersweet farewell of a love affair. A theme like Kris Kristofferson elaborates on around the same time, much more movingly, in one of his most beautiful songs, in “For The Good Times”;
Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine
Hear the whisper of the rain drops flowing soft against the window
And make believe you love me one more time
For the good times
A song that would only be catapulted into the stratosphere after Nashville Skyline, in the version by Ray Price, who scored a huge hit with it in 1970, after which the song was definitively elevated to the canon by Elvis and Al Green, among others. Kristofferson himself recorded the song in 1970, but maybe Dylan knows Bill Nash’s version from 1968.
Or not. “Before You Accuse Me”, Ray Charles’ “Get On The Right Track Baby”, Jimmy Dean’s “One Last Time”, Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me”… the theme is obviously generic enough to have entered Dylan’s repertoire without any immediate cause or current trigger. Bing Crosby’s top hit from 1931, “Just One More Chance” even uses literally the same words;
Just one more night
To taste the kisses that enchant me
I'd want no others if you'd grant me
Just one more chance
… as well as plenty of other songs. Oh well, we even hear this word combination in one of The Monkees’ most enjoyable songs, in the 1966 world hit “Last Train To Clarksville” – a rather transparent “Paperback Writer” rip-off, but no less enjoyable for that.
'Cause I'm leaving in the morning
And I must see you again
We'll have one more night together
Till the morning brings my train and I must go
Oh, no, no, no
Oh, no, no, no
https://youtu.be/ZcXpKiY2MXE
Much the same applies to Dylan’s choice of words in the verses. Dylan has found his lyrics for “One More Night” by browsing through country classics left and right. Although not necessarily in the standards. “Kaw-Liga”, for example, echoes in more songs on Nashville Skyline, and is actually a rather atypical song in Hank Williams’ repertoire. Recorded during Hank’s very last recording session, September 23, 1952, the same session that yielded the immortal “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Take These Chains From My Heart”. “Kaw-Liga” was co-written with Fred Rose, has an unusual chord progression, an unusual story (about the wooden statue of an Indian with an unfortunate crush on a “Chocktaw maid over in the Georgia store”), and is the only Williams song with a fade-out.
Yet, or perhaps because of this, the record company sees hit potential. It is the A-side of the first single released after Williams’ death (1 January 1953), storms the charts and eventually spends 14 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Country Chart. And impresses the young Robert Zimmerman, as we can read in Clinton Heylin’s The Double Life of Bob Dylan, Volume 1: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 (2021):
“I heard Hank Williams. I think [it was] ‘Kaw-Liga’, and [the DJ] said he was dead. Hank’s voice stopped me in my tracks. It was from the same world as the Stanley [Brothers] but from [a] more focused part of it – it was more explanatory [sic] and less mysterious, more jolting and spine-tingling, especially the voice.”
Hank Williams’ repertoire seems to be etched in the creative part of Dylan’s brain, to which we probably owe the jumpiness of the musical accompaniment and the simple poetry of the lyrics of “One More Night” anyway, but we also see it more explicitly. “Tell Me That It Isn’t True” varies quite literally on Hank Williams’ “You Win Again”, from “Kaw-Liga” a lyric fragment like “Is it any wonder” moves to “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” and Hank’s refrain
Kaw-Liga, ooh
Standin' there, as lonesome as can be
Ah, just wishin' he were still an ol' pine tree
… echoes in Dylan’s opening couplet:
One more night, the stars are in sight
But tonight I’m as lonesome as can be
Oh, the moon is shinin’ bright
Lighting ev’rything in sight
But tonight no light will shine on me
In which, of course, we hear more Williams traces. “Wait For The Light To Shine”, “I Saw The Light”, “Blue Moon Of Kentucky”… this first verse can be cut and pasted from Hank’s oeuvre quite effortlessly, as can almost all of the lyrics.
It is, all in all, clear that Dylan is not driven by a thirst for originality. He trusts – rightly so – in the power of the familiar. “My songs, 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. It’s not because they’re such great songs,” says Dylan in 1997, in the interview with Jon Pareles for the New York Times. The same interview in which he says: “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book […] I believe in Hank Williams singing I Saw the Light. I’ve seen the light, too.”
Nevertheless, “One More Night” is neither “still around” nor “still being performed”. Dylan himself performs the song only once, and not even really. It’s 6 June 1990, Dylan is in Toronto, has just played the fourteenth song on the set list and then says:
“Hero of mine … Ronnie Hawkins! Where is he? He said he would come up and sing a song … called One More Night. It would be awfully nice if he would come up. If he doesn’t want to come up that’s okay too! … All right … Oh, here he comes now!”
… and then has Ronnie The Hawk Hawkins sing “One More Night”. A gesture of appreciation, presumably – Hawkins is one of the very few artists to ever record a cover of the song. And was there early; Ronnie’s cover is the opening song of his eponymous 1970 solo album, produced by Dylan producer Jerry Wexler, with Duane Allman on guitar. The real highlight is the opening song of Side Two, Hawkins’ brilliant cover of Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings”, but Ronnie himself apparently thinks “One More Night” is a stronger entrant.
Not exactly an unforgettable performance, but then again, there’s nothing wrong with it. And we have to hand it to The Hawk: although he approaches the flatness and the emotionlessness of Dylan’s original, he can’t suppress a little sob here and a half-breaking of the voice there.
————–
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Musically “Mama you’ve been on my mind” is extremely unusual in Dylan terms – it might even be unique, although I’d have to go through the whole catalogue to verify that point, and I have other bits and pieces to do, so let’s say for the moment, “extremely unusual.”
Dylan’s songs, like most songs in the pop, rock and folk genres don’t modulate – which is to say, they stay in one key all the way through, mostly starting and ending the song on the chord based on the key. So if the song is in the key of C major, it (or at least the accompaniment) starts on C major, and finishes there.
“Mama” does this, but immediately changes to the chord of E major, which has no place normally in a song in C. Then on to A minor (which is a chord associated with songs in C, but not with songs in E) and then goes to D7, which isn’t normally associated with songs in any of these keys. It gives the song a unique sound and feel. Here is how Dylanchords.info shows it
C E
Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat
Am D7/f#
An' cov'rin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
C /b Am G C/g
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
G G6 G7 C
This is so unusual I can’t imagine why anyone would ever dream of changing it, or simplifying it to make it sound like a more conventional song. But they do.
And just as extraordinary, Judy Collins who has the ability to make even the blandest piece of music into something extraordinary, in this case turns the extraordinary into the bland.
Even more bizarre, the normally ultra-reliable Second Hand songs website manages to include Förlåt mejbyDan Tillberg under “Mama you been on my mind” which it isn’t.
But rescue is at hand. Jeff Buckley’s version is delicate and charming, his voice is on perfect form, reminding us that if only he had survived what glorious gems he might have offered us, and how much he could have enriched our lives.
Gentleness is of course the order of the day, and here I am not sure there is anything else to do with this magical piece other than just performing it with all the delicacy it demands.
The only challenge then is what to do with the instrumental break and I’ve got no problems with that.
Andrew Kidman follows the requirements and takes it as gentle as you could wish. He is not an artist that I know much about but he does seem to turn up in many media doing many different things. If you know more of him, please do write in.
Finally, I’ve selected one of the versions that does put in some musical variations. I’ve no problems with these, but I think they make the point that the song is so perfect, it really doesn’t need any amendments.
It is an absolute gem as Dylan delivered it, and I’m not at all sure we have to go any further. But in case you think otherwise, here’s one alternative.
In addition to this blog we also have a very active Facebook page with over 11,000 followers. It is highly moderated to keep out adverts, abuse and just plain daftness of the “Bob Dylan phoned me yesterday” variety. If you’d like to join the conversations please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan/about/ or alternatively just type in Facebook Untold Dylan
Singer/writer/musician Bob Dylan oft pays tribute to other writers:
Even if the flesh falls off my face ....
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)
As in:
Flesh is falling off his face ....
(Henry Rollins: Black Coffee Blues)
A word image that traces back to a biblical prophet who foresees a blissful paradise on earth, but it’s in the future, certainly not now:
Their flesh shall consume away
While they stand upon their feet
(Zechariah 14:12)
Henry Rollins threads himself a purple cloak of sorrow, of misery, of the black dog from Bob Dylan’s song lyrics rather than the other way around. Dylan treads a middle path, refrains from overdoing conceits that plough the feeling of despair so far into the ground that the reader or listener becomes so desensitized that s/he can no longer feel what is meant to be conveyed.
Rollins turns poet/musician Rod McKuen on his head, finds darkness within himself rather than the spiritual joy expressed by McKuen in spite of gloom and doom in the world outside.
For Zechariah and McKuen a rosy garden be in the offing:
When the sun comes a-singing, I'll still be waiting
Jean, Jean, the roses are red
All the leaves have gone green
The clouds are so low, you can touch them. So
Come into my arms, bonnie Jean
(Rod McKuen: Jean)
The above overwrought Romantic images tempered in the following song lyrics:
Now when all the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me Queen Jane
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)
Painted baroque black below – to the point of mockery:
They say love only comes around once
And you have to hold out, and be strong until then
I have been waiting, I have been searching
I am a man under the moon walking the streets of the earth until dawn
There's got to be someone for me, it's not too much to ask
Just someone to be with, someone to love
Someone to give everything to
(Henry Rollins: Someone)
A sentiment borrowed from a song before:
You say you're looking for someone
Who's never weak, but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Untold Dylan also runs a vibrant Facebook page with over 11,000 followers. If you are interested you can find us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan/about/ or just go onto Facebook and type in Untold Dylan.
The group is well-moderated in order to stop advertising, abusive and irrelevant commentary, which makes it a place that by and large is safe and warm.
By Aaron Galbraith (in USA) and Tony Attwood (in UK)
Aaron:Bob’s band on the track includes punk legends Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) and Paul Simonon (The Clash).
Tony: This is one of those tracks that sounds good, but having not played it for years (and so effectively coming to it quite afresh) I just wish they had had a little more time to rehearse and consider the sound of the vocals – the backing vocals always sound like they are sung as if a little unsure of what Bob is going to do next!
It’s one of those songs that is great if you are there, bopping away, but sitting at home on a rather grey and dismal morning (the 40 degree heat of the first two days of the week now a dim and distant memory) I just feel the need for something a trifle slicker.
Aaron: Arthur Alexander is the only songwriter whose songs have been covered on studio albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. This was his debut single in 1960.
Tony: Oh, an absolute classic sound – complete with the sort of echo that Elvis had on his rock songs and the Little Richard style piano. And one thing I know about Arthur Alexander is that this first single of his – Sally Sue Brown – was released on the record company owned by the brother of Sam Phillips, who founded Sun Records on which… well you know the rest.
Aaron:Louisianan swamp-rock musician C. C. Adcock, included it on his self-titled debut solo album in 1994.
Tony: Those first five notes are an absolute classic of the genre. And I rather prefer this version as the vocals have a cleaner sound – no hint of echo and the piano is given a more meaningful part to play. Somehow the overall sound just feels more in keeping, to me, with the meaning of the lyrics. That’s not to say there’s anything amiss with Arthur Alexander’s version, it’s just this is even better.
It’s one of those tracks that I wish lasted more than the regulation 2 minutes 20 seconds. (Whoever laid down the law that each side of a 45 rpm record should be under 2 minutes 30 ought to be tried for crimes against music).
Aaron: Elvis Costello picked this one, possibly due to the Dylan connection, to cover on the 1994 tribute album “Adios Amigo: A Tribute To Arthur Alexander”
Tony: Wow, that’s a surprise – I was completely taken aback by the opening and wondered if I was listening to the same song. A real re-working – although the brief solo guitar part seems over the top. But everything else is wonderful as a tribute. Really, really enjoyable.
And now, what I have just done, having played through the versions Aaron has supplied, is played Dylan’s version again, and I think I now really appreciate it far more. If you have time and have enjoyed these recordings, do go back and play Dylan’s version one more time. I think listening to the earlier versions gives us a greater amount of context.
——————–
If you enjoy Untold Dylan you can also join in the conversation with 14,000 others on Facebook – just follow the link or type Untold Dylan Facebook into your search engine.
Arguably one of the prettiest, thoughone of the most middle-of-the-road songs on Nashville Skyline is “One More Night”. And arguably the song with the most remarkable vocals, too. Even among all those other songs sung with that remarkable new voice. “Everybody remarks on the change of your singing style,” says Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner in the interview, June 1969.
“Well, Jann, I’ll tell you something. There’s not too much of a change in my singing style, but I’ll tell you something which is true… I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking my voice changed… So drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s true. I tell you, you stop smoking those cigarettes [laughter]… and you’ll be able to sing like Caruso.”
Which, of course, is total bullshit. Dylan is in Nashville, recording a country album with country musicians, has written country songs and is looking for a country voice. Hank Williams’ quiver and yodel soon sound too artificial, tenor Caruso’s high D and depth are obviously a bridge too far, but in the vast prairie between those two extremes are plenty of light, velvety baritone voices that Dylan can come close to. Hank Snow, in particular – a country hero who has been under his skin since puberty anyway.
“I’d always listened to Hank Snow,” Dylan says to Sam Shepard (True Dylan, 1986), and it’s demonstrably true. In the Basement, the men play “I Don’t Hurt Anymore”; on Down In The Groove, Dylan covers “Ninety Miles An Hour”; in the 1970s, he records, “A Fool Such As I”; in 1985, he names Snow’s “Lady’s Man” first in a list of “a dozen influential records”; and as a DJ in the twenty-first century, he plays The Singing Ranger three times on Theme Time Radio Hour, each time admiring both Hank’s repertoire (“seven numbers one, all conspicuous and distinct, plain and straightforward”) and his voice (“he was one of the biggest voices in country music”). In short: in every decade of Dylan’s career, Hank Snow passes by. Before that even; “When I was growing up, I had a record called Hank Snow Sings Jimmie Rodgers,” he says in a 1997 phone interview with Nick Krewen on the occasion of The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers – A Tribute, a star-studded tribute album organized by Dylan in celebration of Jimmie Rodgers’ 100th birthday.
“One More Night” is musically in the vein of “I’m Moving On” or “Music Making Mama From Tennessee” or “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight” anyway, one of those mid-tempo songs from that endless string (85 titles!) of Hank Snow singles from the first half of the 50s. With an intro that seems to have inspired Neil Young’s “Heart Of Gold”, by the way (the song of which Dylan says: “There I am, but it’s not me”).
Strangely, Snow’s sharper singing voice is closer to Dylan’s voice on John Wesley Harding than to the more nasal onset on Nashville Skyline, but still it does seem as if the smooth baritone of The Singing Ranger is haunting Dylan’s mind here. That’s not the most remarkable thing, though. What is particularly striking is Dylan’s largely unemotional delivery. In all the other songs on Nashville Skyline, we hear Hank Snow-like devices to communicate emotion. The near cracking in “To Be Alone With You”, the descent into a sultry baritone in “Lay Lady Lay”, the light vibrato and the hint of a head voice in “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” and “I Threw It All Away”… the “usual” crooning tricks, as it were. But “One More Night” gets a detached, almost mechanical treatment. The opening lines,
One more night, the stars are in sightBut tonight I’m as lonesome as can be
… are, admittedly, not too inspiring, but then again, so are plenty of verses in the other songs, which do get audible love in the delivery. Here, however, Dylan sounds like the jaded country star of old who has to sing his one sole hit from thirty years ago for the umpteenth time at an Oldies festival. An impression that in the last lines, in
Oh, I miss that woman soI didn’t mean to see her go
… is squared again; you can just hear how this washed-out country star wonders what the hell I am doing here, and is already, while indifferently singing these lines, thinking about the way back to his camper and his bed.
The song can take it, weirdly enough. It is, after all, a skilled, immaculate country song, Dylan is accompanied by skilled, excellent musicians who effortlessly layer an irresistible bounciness under Dylan’s drawl, and the familiar melody lines are strong enough to stand on their own, are not necessarily in need of polishing with frills and tinsel.
Just as clichéd, but no less appealing, are the lyrics, with tone, idiom and content of each tear-in-my-beer ballad between Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me” (1950) and “There’s A Tear In My Beer”, the late Hank Williams’ unique duet with his son Hank Williams Jr. from 1988.
… lamentations which communicate the same suffering as
One more night, the stars are in sightBut tonight I’m as lonesome as can beOh, the moon is shinin’ brightLighting ev’rything in sightBut tonight no light will shine on me
The only distinguishing feature, as is to be expected from a Nobel Prize-winning poet, is the superior form. Dylan chooses, instinctively presumably, the form he tends to choose for his Very Big Songs, the Spanish sextet (six-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme aabccb). Concealed, as usual, by an inexplicable intervention by the layout editor, who rearranges all four stanzas into five-line stanzas. But both the rhyme scheme and Dylan’s delivery demonstrate that all four stanzas are “actually” Spanish sestets. This first verse, for example, is in fact:
One more night, the stars are in sightBut tonight I’m as lonesome as can beOh, the moon is shinin’ brightLighting ev’rything in sightBut tonight no light will shine on me
Just as the second verse “actually” is aabccb, turns out to be a Spanish sextet as well:
Oh, it’s shameful and it’s sad I lost the only pal I hadI just could not be what she wanted me to beI will turn my head up highTo that dark and rolling skyFor tonight no light will shine on me
… revealed through an intervention in the opening line, an intervention that produces the same result in each of the stanzas: Spanish sextets, all of them.
We see it often enough, Dylan’s love for this form, the rather rare form of songs like “A Boy Named Sue” and “Hallelujah”. Dylan chooses it in exceptional songs like “Love Minus Zero” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, always concealing the form in the official publications (Lyrics and on the site), as here again, by re-formatting the lyrics.
It remains a mystery why Dylan, or the layout editor, would choose to do that. But it’s certainly not middle of the road, in any case.
To be continued. Next up One More Night part 2: I believe in Hank Williams
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
I am seeking to evolve a theory that a lot of Dylan’s lyrics actually have no meaning at all and that rather than being seen as songs in which the meaning is deliberately obscured, they should be seen as atmospheric pieces, akin to abstract pieces of visual art.
This view, I feel, is one that many writers have deliberately veered away from, simply because it makes it harder for them to write long and seemingly learned pieces which reveal hidden meanings. Take away the notion of meaning, and an industry collapses.
And I feel somewhat emboldened in that view by the fact that it is rarely explained why any artist should deliberately make his or her work more obscure. Surely the artist uses images and juxtapositions to enlighten and to give insights which are hard to give in other ways, not simply as representation, or at the other extreme, the increase of confusion.
Added to this is the fact that Dylan’s lyrics regularly change, and there is often uncertainty as to what the “definitive” lyrics are, if there are any definitive lyrics at all!
And some of these variant lyrics can get quite a lot of publicity. Today, as I write this, I typed into Google “All along the watchtower lyrics” and without going to a site was given this by Google itself at the top of the page
there must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None will level on the line
Nobody offered his word
Which isn’t how I have known them at all. The site Genius which has lots of lyrics on it and seemingly has editors who take a fair amount of care about what they put up has
"There must be some way out of here"
Said the joker to the thief"There's too much confusion
I can't get no reliefBusinessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earthNone of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth"
Lots of differences, including the addition of punctuation.
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”
Same lyrics this time, but different line divisions, different punctuation.
And both are interesting (for me if no one else) because I have always heard the joker’s statement ending with the word “relief” after which I take it as Dylan commenting rather than the joker. Obviously, I’m wrong. Or they are. Or we all are.
But still a problem remains: what on earth does this mean? (And I would add, if it means nothing, then why do so many commentators believe that lots of other Dylan songs mean something even when the meaning is obscure?)
We don’t know anything about the joker or the thief, nor why they are in communication, nor what they represent, nor why they (or at least the joker) feels trapped, and why his possessions are being used in a way that he doesn’t like.
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”
“No reason to get excited,” 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”
So the thief is trying to calm the situation down, and yes this is getting quite interesting but then suddenly and with no explanation the theme moves and we have no more joker or thief, but instead a watchtower, some princes, some women, some servants, a wildcat and a couple of riders. Oh yes and we know about the weather.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
In essence, it is a painting in words of which we can make no sense because we are given no context, beyond the fact that this is an album in which a number of songs are three verse, 12 line compositions. It fits a format, it would make quite a good painting, and after that there is no certainty that any of it has any meaning or symbolism at all.
Indeed, go on the internet and you can find pictures called “All along the watchtower” – which are for sale. (I’m not reprinting it here, for copyright reasons, but you can click and see).
So my concern is that the notion that some of Dylan’s lyrics are abstract pieces is rarely if ever considered. It seems to me (and it really is just my thoughts on this) that there is quite an industry built on putting meaning into all Dylan’s songs, where in fact quite often none might exist.
Now to be clear, this is not to say that the images don’t come from somewhere. Dylan might well by quoting, copying, delving into his subconscious, or referring to other lyrics. But that’s not the issue. The issue is, is the song “about” something. I would put forward the notion that no it is not – and that this applies to lots of Dylan songs. It is an abstract, or perhaps one could say “an atmosphere”.
We can use our minds to make it be about something – of course we can because our minds are very inventive things. But that is not the same as Dylan writing about that thing.
Now, if you have time, take a look at this video – and contemplate not just the performer, but the setting, and the people passing by. When I do that the abstract meaning of the song changes. It becomes a reflection of the extraordinary talent of the guitarist, and that he is performing in the street for passers by who take no notice. It seems to fit, but I am not sure how.
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan sprinkles his song lyrics with reworked Greek and Roman mythology, oft thread through the Gothic/Gnostic poetry of John Keats.
A long poem by John Keats, messes with the mythology of Poena; therein, she’s the sister of Endymion as well as assistant to the remorseless Goddess Of Divine Retribution. Poena, in Latin, means “Pain”.
Keats has Poena do her best to reconcile shepherd Endymion with any painful fate that awaits:
Dear brother mine
Endymion, weep not so
(John Keats: Endymion, book iv)
Met her before we have, under another name:
Red mouth like a venomous flower
When these are gone by with their glories
What shall rest of thee then, what remain
O mystic and sombre Dolores
Our Lady of Pain
(Charles Swinburne: Dolores)
In the song lyrics following too:
With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhyme
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh, who do they think could bury you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
Apparently, the many female offspring of Poena’s mistress, as the great White Mother, be immortal, and therefore more immune to pain than men.
Men, alas, are mere mortals:
You'll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)
In ancient Greek/Roman mythology, winged Nemesis, the Goddess of Retribution, leads the non-empathizing Narcissus to a pool in which he sees his own reflection; he falls in love with it; dies alone there on its banks; turns into a flower.
In the song lyrics beneath, Poena herself pours out her own special torment to punish the regretful narrator therein for the way he treats Echo (Helstrom?), a mountain nymph:
I can't see my reflection in the waters
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps
Or remember the sound of my own name
(Bob Dylan: Tomorrow Is A Long Time)
If you really like this song, as indeed I think most Dylan fans do, then Untold Dylan must be the site for you, for we have covered it many times in many ways.
For example in the Bob Dylan Showcase series in which readers can send in their own recordings Denise Konkal was featured, as well as Jüri Aida.
Jochen has of course considered the song in depth and presented an extraordinary version by Pernilla Andersson which for both its outstanding orchestration and the lady’s vocals deserves most fulsome mention once again
But for Jochen that was not the pinnacle, for he gave that accolade to Josh Kelly. This time the backing is utterly standard – it is the vocal in which the singer uses his sublime natural talent to deliver a performance in which we have not choice but to feel his love with him. He (and his arrangers) can even be forgiven a verse of hmmmmmmms. This is Dylan – the master wordsmith. The man don’t need no hmmms.
And there’s a very interesting set of divergent views expressed in the comments section beneath.
Meanwhile, the cover versions go on and on – there are hundreds of them (really yes, hundreds). But does anyone add anything new?
Of course, I have not listened to them all – it is a beautiful song, but there is a limit as to how many times one can listen. Sometimes, I must admit, I hardly get past the opening but fortunately, this article is rescued by the sheer number of bands that have had a go.
As for example…
The band is Stories, the singer is Hunter, and what I love is that there is no pretentiousness here, no attempt to overdo what is already a perfect song. The vocalist and the musicians know their job, they are very good at it, and they just deliver it straight.
As many musicians will confirm, this is actually a very hard song to perform, and there are some ghastly performances around where the vocalist clearly thinks she or he has got something new to offer, and has, except that something new is quite horrible. I don’t normally give mention to versions of Dylan songs that really (in my opinion – and of course it is always in my opinion) get a song utterly wrong in every dimension, but just to show it is possible here is one such…
And it is amazing how often, in listening to various recordings today I came to the view that yes, this may be a fine singer and/or set of musicians, but they either should shoot the arranger or choose another song. I will give one more example. Of course if you enjoy this, that’s fine. I just offer my views, and in my defence I would add that I try and offer an open door policy for articles on this site. So if you want to write something about Dylan which counters my view you’ll have a fairly high chance of having it published.
And before we get to the good ones, here’s one more version that doesn’t work… I just think Lucinda Williams hesitant approach to the vocals is exactly wrong for this song. The message is clear and firm, not hesitant. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do” is not a line of hesitancy.
And as I have suggested, this doesn’t mean I don’t think it is possible to play with this song. I’ll offer two more versions where at the very least I think the performers and arrangers have given us not just a pleasurable listen, but an extra insight. And not for the first time by any means I’ll contradict myself by saying yes clicks are possible. A trifle annoying perhaps, but possible.
And, wow you are still with me! Great because you will be rewarded, for at last… I found someone who in my view actually understood the song, then got inside it, then lived inside it, and then took the time to consider exactly what was going on.
What’s more it was recorded under really unusual circumstances.
The “Stilgoe in the Shed” show was performed on the internet daily during lockdown across 67 shows. In a note Joe Stillgoe said, “All these songs mean different things to different people, but for me there’s an attachment because at a time when the days seemed to meld into one another, playing every day in the shed gave me a tangible memory for each flip of the calendar, and each song its own poignant place. They, and music in general, took on new meaning during the lockdown.”
Yes I’ll go with that. I, like so many, had a very difficult lockdown, and found my way out by writing. Joe Stillgoe, with infinitely more talent, did it by performing and recording songs.
This is how this song should sound. Talk about “brings tears to my eyes”; this really does bring tears to my eyes.
I got a woman in Morocco
I got a woman in Spain
But the girl I love that stole my heart
She lives up in Champaign
Still, according to that (auto-)biography with the great and inevitable title Go, Cat, Go! this was all Dylan had written before Carl Perkins took over. It’s not much, indeed. The clumsy, tautological third verse is just filler anyway, and it seems clear that the trigger, or the “catalyst”, as Dylan calls it, is just the beauty of the city name “Champaign”. “So that’s where the song was going all along,” the artist says in the 2020 New York Times interview with Douglas Brinkley, about the inspirational power of the three words “I contain multitudes”.
The mere word “Champaign” does indeed have a special power. Also, or especially, in the combination, as it is usually used, with sister city Urbana. “Champaign-Urbana” has an ingrained antithesis that is irresistible to any language artist. After all, “Champaign”, campania, means plain, field, while the Latin origin of “Urbana” is urbanus: from the city, urban, civilised. Plus, as a free bonus, the association with the homophone Champagne, with the festive bubbly drink.
“So that’s where the song is going,” Dylan the songwriter presumably decides, and will have little trouble finding a rhyme word to get there. “Spain” may not be the strongest rhyme word, but it does almost automatically force a filling of the corresponding verse – the formula I got a woman in… surfaces by itself, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne. Dylan, who actually has quite a reputation for disliking repetition, has used the formula himself, not so long ago, in “Outlaw Blues” (I got a woman in Jackson), which was already not too original back then either.
In 1927 Furry Lewis already sang Got a girl in Texas (“Rock Line Blues”), and a year and a half before Dylan struggled with this “Champaign, Illinois” Ray Pennington scored in the country charts with the song that would become a standard, with “I’m a Ramblin’ Man”: Got a girl in Cincinnati. But under Dylan’s skin, there are probably Otis Spann’s “Little Boy Blue” (I’ve got a girl in Chicago) and most certainly Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On”, the biggest country hit of the 50s;
Mister Fireman please woncha listen to me
I got a woman in Tennessee
Keep on moving
Keep a rolling on
You're flying too high
It's all over now
I move on
An indestructible classic, recorded by The Stones, by Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and whoever else. Arguably the most beautiful version is done by Johnny Cash, who recorded it again with producer Rick Rubin just before his death, but performed it in the 1980s together with Waylon Jennings, making it sound like a real Waylon Jennings song:
… with Johnny and Waylon taking the liberty of turning “I got a woman in Tennessee” into “got a pretty mama in Tennessee”. Dylan played the song with some regularity between 1986 and 1996 (23 times). Mostly as a song on the setlist, and sometimes just at the soundcheck or during rehearsals. Like in February ’96, in Phoenix, when he has “I’m Moving On” played after Hank Williams’ “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle” and before… Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox”. He seems to detect a connection.
Anyway, the I got a woman formula. Dylan seems to want to use it for a list song. A continuous enumeration of places where the narrator has women, who will then be crossed off at the end of each verse against that one woman in the chorus, against that incomparable thief of hearts from Champaign, Illinois. Not very inspired either, of course. Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man”, for example, with the beautiful, all-encompassing verse
I got a gal in Cincinnati
Got a woman in San Antone
I always loved the girl next door
But anyplace is home
… and thirty years later, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the formula has lost none of its force, as the phenomenon Lou Bega demonstrates in yet another list-song, but still irresistible mambo, in “I Got A Girl”:
I got a girl in Paris, I got a girl in Rome
I even got a girl in the Vatican Dome
I got a girl right here, I got a girl right there
And I got a girlfriend everywhere
I got a girl on the Moon, I got a girl on Mars
I even got a girl that likes to dance on the stars
I got a girl right here and one right there
And I got a girlfriend everywhere
There are hardly any fresh, original interpretations of the formula. Just one, in fact: Josh Ritter’s outer category song “Girl In The War” (The Animal Years, 2006);
Peter said to Paul
"All those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
But now talkin' to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun
I gotta girl in the war, man I wonder what it is we done
… with the coincidental link to Dylan’s little ditty in Ritter’s final couplet:
But I gotta girl in the war, Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain
But presumably Dylan is planning a more traditional use of the formula I gotta woman in. With as a gimmick something like Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man”: exotic women all over the world versus the girl next door, here in Illinois. At least, that is what the first choice “Morocco” suggests. A geographical indication that seems to have an exotic sound for Americans more than for Europeans. Morocco is very close to Europe, but choosing Morocco as location in a film like Casablanca, in songs like the first song Graham Nash offers to Crosby and Stills in America (“Marrakesh Express”, 1969), as a retreat for poets like Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac, and by Dylan himself in “If You See Her, Say Hello” (she might be in Tangier), to name but a few examples, illustrates that “Morocco” is associated by American artists with the excitement of faraway, strange and exotic. Especially unfortunate then is the following I got a woman in Spain; Spain is only forty kilometres from Morocco, which somewhat dilutes the idea of “I got women all over the world”. Plus: unintended of course, but many Europeans will think of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco (Ceuta and Melilla) – with just a little ill will, one might even see these two women as one and the same woman – I got a woman in Spain, Morocco.
Not what the poet means, obviously. Though perhaps he did notice the unintentional digression. Anyway, he gets stuck, still manages to squeeze out a weak filler (But the girl I love that stole my heart), and finishes it off with the catalyst, with She lives up in Champaign. Is that all there is? Yes, Peggy, that’s all there is.
Ah, there’s Carl Perkins. “Your song,” Dylan says. “Take it. Finish it.”
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:
As Will Shakespeare reigns in the First Elizabethan Era, Bob Dylan reigns in the Second.
To the point ~
The Jungian template for a number of masterful songs by Bob Dylan is “Endymion” by John Keats; the poem based on ancient Greek/Roman mythology.
The three-folded Moon Goddess – represented, for instance, by virgin Diana, by mother Isis, and by crone Kali – falls in love with the beautiful mortal shepherd named Endymion.
He, in turn, desires to become immortal like she.
As expressed by the Bogart-like narrator in the following song lyrics:
Go over to London
Maybe gay Paree
Follow the river, you get to the sea
I was hoping we could drink from life's clear stream
I was hoping we could dream life's pleasant dream
(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)
The mortal shepherd tries to change; endeavours to cease chasing after his concept of the ideal woman, represented by the great white moon. But he cannot resist doing so.
To escape one of the predicaments in which Endymion finds himself (while down in Pluto’s watery Underworld), the shepherd is required to help re-unite lovers who are floating around all alone:
The visions of the earth were gone and fled
He saw the giant sea above his head
(John Keats: Endymion, book ii)
Initially, singer/songwriter/musician Dylan (as narrator in the song below) doesn’t envision that problem difficult to solve; the sea is but a stream; the stream is but a dream:
The light in this place is really bad
Like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now
I'm expecting to wake up from a dream
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)
Easy does not turn out to be the case – instead, all Hell breaks loose:
The ghost of our old love has not gone away
Don't look like it, like it will anytime soon
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Under the midnight moon
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)
Bringing to mind the Gothic poet of gloom standing by the moonlit doorway of doom:
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
(Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee)
A thing of beauty gone can bring sorrow forever; leave a person stranded on the night’s dark Plutonian shore:
Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
You left me standing in the doorway crying
In the dark land of the sun
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)
And so it goes, the Gnostic-like poems of Keats and Poe cast their ghostly shadows over a number of songs by Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan As Endymion (Part II)
John Keats reworks the mythology of Endymion; has the shepherd decide to settle down to an earthly existence after having tasted hellish death beyond the River Acheron, and heavenly immortality up on Mount Olympus.
In the Gothic-tinged poem “Endymion”, the three-spirited Moon Goddess, who accompanies the shepherd for a while as an Indian Maiden, transfigures herself into a caring Crone.
As such, Diana bears him painful news; despaired, he sees her body fading gaunt and spare; she tells mortal Endymion she’s sorry, but being immortal and divine, she can never be like he is – return youthful yet again she always will.
The White Goddess, coined so by Robert Graves, nevertheless says she will eternally adore the earth-bound shepherd, he being the creative artist that he is.
Come then, Sorrow
Sweet Sorrow ....
There is not one
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid
(John Keats: Endymion, book iv)
To endure sorrow in order to appreciate bliss is supposedly a wise message garnered from Nature, and expressed through the mercury-coloured lips of the poet of Autumn.
An Existentialist melancholic message that irks mightily the tough-minded narrator of the song lyrics below:
Sorrow and pity
Rule the earth and the skies
Looking for nothing
In anyone's eyes
(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)
Accordingly, the moody Moon can keep right on rolling along:
I would be crazy to take you back
It would go up against every rule
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Suffering like a fool
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)
For Bob Dylan, or at least for the writer as narrator, John Keats is just too unhappy in his unhappiness while the sunshine Romantic Transcendentalist boys (like Ralph Emerson) tends be a bit too optimisitc given some of the harsher aspects of human existence.
Oh, oh, oh, lo and behold; the story does not end here. You see, Endymion has a sister, and her name is Poena.
She’s the Goddess of Divine Retribution and does not tolerate mistreatment without it being returned in kind.
So don’t go blaming the Moon in June:
The peaches they were sweet, and the milk and honey flowed
I was only following instructions when the judge
sent me down the road
With your subpoena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
