Untold Dylan

A Dylan cover a day: Oh for a re-imagining of Maggies Farm!

Posted on July 14, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I am sure someone somewhere has recreated Maggie’s Farm and done something totally different with the song, but from the cover versions I’ve been listening to, the main thrust of the musicians’ ideas seems to be play it fast, play it loud, belt it out.

But imagine it as a soft lilting melody, or maybe with a multiple set of chord changes rather than that one chord that dominates most of the song.

And maybe it has been tried like that and I’ve just not found the recording. Or maybe it simply can’t be made to work.

Linda Gayle taunts us for three seconds with the thought that maybe this will be a totally revised version, but no, everything about apart from the in-between verse instrumental break, is much the same. It’s a belter. But otherwise…

Zero Prophet know the message and do vary both the vocal line and the accompaniment and I like the idea but even with the lyrical changes and extended verses… well yes it is different, but somehow it doesn’t hold me completely.

The Blues Band go back to the basics of the song much more, just changing the pulse to make it a standard driving force, then adding the guitar to manipulate the end of each verse.

That little instrumental pattern which appears at the end of each and then after a new guitar lick all add to the entertainment, and it’s fun, so the best of the versions tried so far.

There’s no mistaking the metallic feel of Chicken Diamond and they know that we know the lyrics by heart. I’m not sure I want to play it more than once but it was fun while it lasted, even if it is minimalist.

Jimmy Vivino taunts us with an interesting instrumental introduction, and the “no no more” vocals gives us some variety. But after a verse we’ve more or less got it, and there seems nowhere else to go.

So to David Grisman and co who do give a totally new feel. It’s so simple – let’s use a banjo rather than an electric guitar. It somehow feels very authentic, as if it were composed long before Bob actually wrote it.

And the authenticity is kept by not changing the delivery at all. What could have worked is the introduction of a folk violin part after the first verse, playing a counter melody. In the end the promise of the new sound was not delivered, and there we were, hearing the same song again.

And the Dylan Cover a Day series

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Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 2: Oh, how I love you

Posted on July 13, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 1: You’re happy, Tim?

II Oh, how I love you

In most models, the universe was filled with an enormous energy density and enormous temperatures and pressures. Filled with jump blues by men like Wynonie Harris, the songs and stage presence of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, rockabilly, Arthur “That’s All Right Mama” Crudup, bluegrass, “Ida Red” and Louis Jordan… the confluence of these leads to a sudden, violent cosmic inflation: the Big Bang of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis’ debut album Elvis Presley on 13 March 1956, the first rock ‘n’ roll million seller. And the ignition of that Big Bang is Carl Perkins, or rather his song, the opening song of Elvis Presley: “Blue Suede Shoes”, with which Perkins himself had scored his first and only No.1 shortly before.

Not a flash in the pan. After “Blue Suede Shoes” Perkins enriched us with songs such as “Matchbox”, “Honey Don’t” and “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby”, and Sir Paul McCartney declared the official canonization: “If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles”.

In short, the music-historical importance of Carl Perkins is difficult to overestimate; the credit Perkins has is infinite. Though he did lose a little of that credit in 1996, two years before his death. Just like Dylan said about his idol Elvis (“I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis […] Because it seemed like a sorry thing to do”), you should leave your image of the extra-terrestrial Carl Perkins intact. And not pollute it with too much information.

Go Cat Go! The Life and Times of Carl Perkins, The King of Rockabilly (1996) is a hybrid of autobiography and biography, written by Rolling Stone journalist David McGee. A concept that rarely works out well; a self-admiring protagonist and the uncritical admiration of the co-writer, who is almost by definition a fan, is a fatal combination. Life, by Keith Richards and James Fox, is a rare exception, and illustrates painfully clearly why the (auto-)biographies of big names like Dr. Ralph Stanley (Man of Constant Sorrow, 2010, with Eddie Dean), Judy Collins (Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, 2011) or Robbie Robertson (Testimony, 2016) are often such toe-curling exercises: unlike many of his colleagues, Keith does have self-mockery and the ability to put things into perspective.

The (auto-)biography of Carl Perkins lacks that, self-mockery and sense of perspective. With all its unpleasant consequences: superficial, self-cleansing self-reflection, unreliable anecdotes and embarrassing self-congratulation. Perkins’ account of his meeting with Dylan in January 1992 is a case in point. Perkins tells us that he is in New York, at the Plaza Hotel, and that Bob Dylan calls up to his room from the lobby. When Dylan enters his hotel room a few minutes later, Carl barely recognises him. Dylan is “fat”, and: “looked like seventy years old with his old beard and matted hair, cap on his head”. Perkins’ description of the ensuing greeting scene is weirdly alienating:

“He said, ‘Uh-uh. We’re brothers.’ And he hugged me. And I thought he wasn’t gonna turn me loose. His beard was scratchin’ my damn face – I’d just shaved. And he’s sayin’ in my ear, I love you, man. Oh, how I love you. I love you, Carl.’ And had tears in his eyes. ‘Let me look at you.’ And he just stood there. Said, I’m so thankful. You lived through it.”

Dylan also has a present for Carl, “a small gold pin in the shape of a guitar”, and hands it over with a seemingly rehearsed, monumentally trite talk:

“There’s three thoughts that go with that little guitar,” Dylan said. “One is for gettin’ well. Two is for gettin’ up and gettin’ back out. And number three is so the world can keep lovin’ Carl Perkins alive.”

… which Perkins thinks is deeply moving and he perceives it as “so poetic”. He promises to cherish the pin and even take it to his grave (in between they hug again, for the third time now), and Dylan is just as moved: “A man can’t ask for more than that,” he declares, according to Carl. And with that, Dylan leaves the room and Perkins’ life;

“Door shut,” Carl recalls. “The little bent-over fat man with the Army coat on and ragged guitar case faded into the streets of New York, and nobody knew who he was.”

“Built a little too close to the water,” as the Germans so aptly put it in relation to übersentimental, self-affected characters, men who are moved to tears by their own goodness.

It is all so out of character and implausible that it becomes almost comical. But then again, we are talking Carl Perkins, one of the Very Greats, one of the Patriarchs, an architect, a frontman and an eyewitness from the very beginning. So his memories, his opinions and his comments are music historically important, do matter one way or another. And: for the book, co-author David McGee conducted interviews with those involved – including Dylan, in 1994. The reason being, of course, the unique, one-off collaboration between Perkins and Dylan in 1969, the co-production of “Champaign, Illinois”, the little ditty that Carl would record shortly afterwards for his nice comeback album On Top.

Thanks to McGee’s research, we get a story about the song’s genesis. Perkins and Dylan meet during the television taping of a Johnny Cash special, so that must have been May 1, 1969. According to legend, Perkins then visits Dylan in his dressing room, where, again according to Carl, Dylan explains to him that he is not getting anywhere with a new song of his. He is stuck. And he sings out, “over a ragged rockabilly rhythm”:

I got a woman in Morocco
I got a woman over in Spain
But the girl I love
That stole my heart
She lives up in Champaign
I said Champaign,
Champaign, Illinois

… a first verse that remains largely unchanged. Only lines 2 and 3 change to Woman that’s done stole my heart, and the chorus line I certainly do enjoy Champaign, Illinois is missing. This seems unlikely, well: half true. Perhaps due to erroneous recall by the then 61-year-old Perkins (this recollection comes from an interview conducted by McGee in 1993). In any case, it is unlikely that Dylan has already added “Illinois” without having a rhyme word. But apart from this minor issue, Perkins’s account seems credible. Indeed, this is the only part of the lyrics that still has a somewhat dylanesque touch (mainly because of the completely unusual rhyme Spain / Champaign, of course). The rest of the lyrics are rather run-of-the-mill, so probably written by a poetically less gifted lyricist like Carl Perkins. Like the second verse:

The first time that I went there
They treated me so fine
Man alive, I'm telling you
I thought the whole darn town was mine

… in which alone the folksy darn already suggests that this was not written by Dylan.

Less credible again is Perkins’ further staging of the dressing room scene. Allegedly, Dylan plays this first, incomplete verse plus half chorus line, and asks Perkins, apparently unsure, “You think it’s any good?” And Perkins, He saw that it was good. He takes over Dylan’s guitar and easily dashes off the rest of the song:

Dylan sat transfixed as Carl worked out a loping rhythm on the bass strings with his thumb, filled in with some quick, stinging runs on the treble strings, and improvised a verse-ending lyric:

I certainly do enjoy
Cha-a-am-pai hane, Illinois

Dylan said: “Your song. Take it. Finish it.”

We weren’t there, of course, but: “transfixed”? Really? All right, it’s a nice song, but no more (well, less, actually). “Transfixed” is, again, very, very out of character. This is May 1969. Dylan already has been seeing quite a bit, this decade. He has worked with master guitarists like Michael Bloomfield and top musicians like Charlie McCoy, he was on stage with Johnny Cash just an hour ago, The Beatles and The Stones are courting him, he is jamming with George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and he has been around the world a few times… With all love and respect to Carl Perkins, Dylan is no longer a rookie who freezes like a rabbit in the headlights when Carl Perkins shakes a few common licks over an ordinary chord progression out of his guitar.

It’s hardly “Blue Suede Shoes”, after all.

To be continued. Next up Champaign, Illinois part 3: So that’s where the song is going

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

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Bob Dylan: On the Way Home (Part V and VI)

Posted on July 12, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

The cryptic signs ‘penny’ and ‘day’ pop up in the following song lyrics:

You go in the field
You work all day
Way after night
But you get no pay
Promised some meat
A little bucket of lard
It's hard to be a renter on Penny's farm
(Bently Brothers: Back On Penny's Farm ~ traditional, et al)

Harks back to the song lyrics below:

'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many a days you have lingered all around my cabin door
Hard times, come again no more
(Bob Dylan: Hard Times Come Around No More ~ Stephen Foster)

Bringing to mind:

Pretty maids all in a row lined up
Outside my cabin door
I've never wanted any of them wanting me
Except the girl from the Red River Shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)

And moreso in:

No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime
And he asks you with a grin if you're having a good time
And he fines you every time you slam the door
(Bob Dylan: Maggie's Farm)

It’s pretty obvious that the cryptic clues from the movie “Now And Forever” found in Bob Dylan’s songs above – ‘day’ and ‘penny’ – lead down the path to Mary Magdalene’s “brother disciple”, John, and to the Day of the Pentecost.

Says he, if ye do not believe in Jesus as the Lamb of God, doomed ye shall be.

A sentiment endorsed in the song lyrics below; the narrator could well be John the Apostle, but certainly not Jesus Himself:

They say you looking for someone
Who's never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door ....
Someone to die for you and more
But it ain't me, babe
(Bob Dylan: It Ain't Me)

Brother John, if not misidentified, gets to live for quite some time; dies of natural causes:

I John, who also am your brother
And companion in tribulation
And in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ
Was in the isle that is called Patmos
For the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ
(Revelation 1:9)

Bringing to mind Long Island:

Well, it's up in the morning trying to find a job of work
You can stand in one place till your feet begin to hurt
If you've got a lot of money, you can make yourself merry
If you only got a nickel, it's the Staten Island Ferry
And it's hard times in the city, living in New York Town
(Bob Dylan: Hard Times In New York Town)

Bob Dylan: On The Way Homeward (Part VI)

In the movie mentioned below, Jerry’s gal sacrifices her own reputation to save that of the father of Penny (Penelope) as seen through his daughter’s eyes:

Jerry: "I heard the news --
The big sacrifice scene with Penny"
(Gary Cooper: Now And Forever)

In the song lyrics beneath, depicted is a day in the hectic life of a modern Ulysses on the way home to faithful wife Penelope:

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
(Beatles: A Day In The Life ~ Lennon/McCartney)

In the following song lyrics, sea-voyager John “Ulysses” Lennon is crucified after being falsely accused of bragging that the Beatles are bigger than Jesus:

I heard the news today, oh boy
They hauled your ship on the shore
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

In the above-mentioned movie, Shirley Temple plays the part of Penny, an innocent child who has faith in human goodness.

In the song lyrics below, such a bright outlook darkened:

Now the chimney is rotten
And the wallpaper's torn
The garden in the back
Won't grow no more corn

(Was Brothers: Shirley Temple (Mr Alice) Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – Bob Dylan et al)

Darkened, as presented in the next song lyrics:

Where are the men I use to sport with
What has become of my beautiful town
Wolf, my old friend, even you don't know me
This must be the end, my house is tumbled down

(Bob Dylan: Kaatskill Serenade ~ Bromburg)

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Other People’s Songs: Fixing to Die

Posted on July 12, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: Dylan recorded “Fixin’ to Die” for his debut album. The liner notes say that it “was learned from an old recording by Bukka White”. Dylan’s arrangement uses a different melody and some new lyrics.

Tony: As a youngster, I spent hours, weeks, months, listening to what Dylan did in playing this and how he sang it, and then trying (with a total lack of success) o do it myself. It was such an inspiration – although I think it rather worried my parents. But I had simply never heard a performance like this before this first Dylan album came along.

It is good to hear it again – I’d forgotten how fast Bob takes this, and how much energy he delivers. Wow, even now it gives me goose bumps.

Aaron: Bukka White’s original

Tony: The rhythm of this 1940 recording (which I think is the first ever recording of the piece) is completely different – it’s a bottleneck Delta Blues here, which it isn’t by the time Bob gets hold of it. This really comes across with the way he sings “feel like I’m fixing TO die” in the open verse. Apparently for this recording Bukka White borrowed the guitar from Big Bill Broonzy. (I just find all these snippets so amazing).

I’m not fully versed in how the song changed over time but I wonder how much of the variation between this version and Bob’s was due to Bob, and how much came from other performers along the way.

But what I have read is that Bukka White never really made it as a blues singer, and the song didn’t become widely known until Bob released it. That then led to a resurgence and hopefully Bukka White got some money out of the song. He died in the 1970s.

However, although Aaron is the selector of songs, I thought I would slip this earlier version by Bob in as it contains some interesting variations which have more relationship with the Bukka White version.

Aaron: Many of Dylan’s 60s contemporaries also recorded versions of the song, including Dave Van Ronk and Buffy Sainte-Marie, using a similar template as White or Dylan.

Here are two artists who attempted to update the song for a modern audience

Robert Plant – titled “Funny In My Mind (I Believe I’m Fixin’ To Die)” for the 2002 Dreamland album

Tony: This is not a recording I knew before now – wow it really does have some fun with the original. I thought for a moment it was going to turn into a 12 bar blues, but then didn’t. And that repeated harmonium that runs all the way through – that is a work of genius. It ought to become tedious, but it doesn’t.

And then the sudden instrumental break which really has nothing to do with the song – except that by the time we come back to the harmonium it makes some sort of sense.

I’m not sure that much is gained by making the instrumental section that long – but stay with it because the main section does come back. What a great find – thanks Aaron.

Aaron: Love & Special Sauce recorded the song as the title track of 2010’s Fixin’ to Die.

Tony: I am always amazed at just how much can be got out of what is in essence a very simple song. But by using the vocal harmonies this again takes us somewhere else once again.

I love this – and I have to admit before starting on this file I really had no idea just how much there was in this song.

Oh and by the way – don’t you dare stop listening until the full three and a half minutes are up. I am ashamed to admit I nearly did because of that pause they stick in it. The real ending is superb.

I’m really indebted to you for this one Aaron. I had no idea there were such great versions of the song around.

Previously in this series…

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The Never Ending Tour, 2006, part 4 Strange Brews

Posted on July 11, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Part 4 Strange Brews

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

While I have been generally upbeat about Dylan’s 2006 performances, it’s not hard to see why some long-time followers of the NET became disillusioned, and why there were such sharp divisions in their camp. This performance of ‘Desolation Row’ from Lincoln, 25^th October, is a good place to start to understand what was going wrong. Everything seems in place. The recording is good, Dylan’s voice is strong and forceful, the band sounds sweet and Dylan’s circuslike vamping on the organ does not seem out of place given the imagery of the song.

But something is off. It starts okay, but soon we get the feeling that Dylan is using his considerable vocal resources to make the song sound as unlike previous performances as he can. It’s not just the upsinging, he seems determined to throw his voice all over the place in an effort to make it sound different. He succeeds, but, we would argue, at the cost of the song.

Take for example the verse about Cinderella that begins around 3.40 mins. It may be the emphatic phrasing, the way he breaks the lines up so they don’t connect flowingly. This is a variation of the dumpty-dum effect we noticed in 2005 (See NET, 2005, part 5, Old Friends). You could argue that this is just another interesting variation, but I doubt it will go on anybody’s list of favourite performances.

Desolation Row

The case is clearer, perhaps, with this performance of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ from Rome (16^th July). It’s not just the missing lines and verses but that sense of disconnect from the song’s vital energies that is offputting. It’s all over the place.

Mr Tambourine Man (A)

At first I thought that the poor recording was the problem, so I turned to this one from Sun City (8^th April), and in some respects it is better, and the performance gathers some intensity, with Dylan putting his all into the vocals, but the somewhat aimless instrumentals lose the tension. By the time we get to the last verse that emphatic, dumpty-dum quality has taken over, and the performance ends up less than exhilarating.

Mr Tambourine Man (B)

From the frying pan into the fire we go with the crowd-pleasing ‘It Ain’t me Babe’ from Springfield (22^nd April). Again, it starts promisingly with an interesting new riff to carry it, and a forlorn harp break to open it, but it soon loses its springiness, becomes rigid and emphatic, and we struggle to retain our interest in the performance.

It ain’t Me Babe

Dylan also repeats words and phrases to fill out the vocal line. ‘I’m not the one you want, babe/ I’ll only let you down’ becomes, ‘I’m not the one, I’m not the one you want, babe/ I will only, only let you down.’ Never were truer words spoken.

I turned to the beautifully recorded Las Vegas performance to see if that was any better. The opening lines are sung like this:

‘Go away from my window, leave at your own chosen speed
I’m not the one, I’m not the one you want babe
Not the one you need.’

It’s marginally better than the Springfield performance but doesn’t catch fire.

It ain’t Me Babe (B)

‘The Time’s They Are A-Changing’ meets a similar fate. Again, we can’t fault the recording or the sound system. It’s another excellent recording from Las Vegas. Except for getting the words a bit mixed up, it’s a forceful vocal performance. All the elements are in place yet once more musical rigidity takes over, and Dylan’s vamping on the organ fails to provide the urgent rhythmical support that the piano provided in previous years. The tooting harp break at the end fails to offer any relief, rather emphasizes the rigidity of form. What’s happened to that lovely swing that used to carry this anthem?

Times they are a changing

Arguably, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ from the New York concert (20^th Nov) fares a little better, owing to Dylan’s hushed, partly spoken performance, but the over-emphasis on the beat makes it sound like the others, and Dylan’s circus barker voice fails to carry the tenderness of the song. It’s too rough and abrasive for the sentiment.

Boots of Spanish Leather

At least with ‘To Ramona’ I thought that the natural waltz-time would carry the song without it having to fall into the dumpty-dum, and to some extent that’s true. The song flows along sweetly enough, and Dylan gives a performance full of feeling. Certainly, it’s the best we’ve heard so far in this post, and a rare harp break gives the performance an added interest. (Springfield, 22^nd April)

To Ramona

The gentle, lilting opening to ‘Every Grain of Sand’ is promising, and to a large extent that promise is fulfilled, despite the upsinging and Dylan rinky-dinking on the organ. In this rather beautifully minimalist performance it becomes clear that it’s the way Dylan plays the organ that is partly the problem. The long sustained notes are not the issue, rather when he vamps to the beat, accentuating the dumpty-dum, that performance takes on that marionette feel. The liquid smoothness of the song has gone. (Sun City)

Every Grain of Sand (A)

That’s about as good as it gets. In this version from Boston (Nov 12) we can hear Dylan breaking up the flowing vocal line to accentuate the emphasis. He’s foregrounding the dumpty dum.

‘In the fury of the mo-ment
I can feel the master’s hand…
The flowers of indul-gence
And the leaves of yest-ter-year..’
And so it goes on…

Every Grain of Sand (B)

We can get away from all this by playing something fast. Something like ‘Maggie’s Farm.’ This is a foot-tapper from Stockton, and has a lot of bounce, but then, so did the original, the rock and roll ripper that shocked the folkies at Newport back in 1965. I like the new riff that carries the song, and while it’s a long way from any favourite performance, and you won’t hear me blathering about ‘best ever,’ it’s an enjoyable, celebratory experience.

Maggie’s farm.

A countrified ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ from Las Vegas is a further antidote to musical rigidity. The crowd loves this rollicking version, which is not surprising. It’s a warm-hearted invitation to love, quite unique in the Dylan canon.

I’ll be your baby tonight

We move further from staccato rhythms with a particularly sweet and gentle performance of ‘Lay Lady Lay’ (Stockton). Raucous versions of this song, with the band joining in on the choruses, have long gone and the song has been restored to its original melodic form. If anything, a certain pathos has crept into the song with age. The singer doesn’t sound quite so smoothly confident as he once did; the outcome of the seduction not as sure as it might have been in his younger days. When you have to keep asking, the cause might already be lost.

Lay Lady Lay (A)

This isn’t the only gentle, tremulous performance of the song. Here’s another one from Las Vegas.

Lay Lady Lay (B)

The apocalyptic ‘God Knows’ has always been pretty thumpy, if not dumpty-dum. Dylan has never messed much with this song, changed its pace or melodic line. It starts quietly and builds. This one from Sun City joins a long line of successful performances of the song. I particularly like the background riff which enhances the obsessive flavour of the song.

God Knows

For some years now Dylan has been developing a ‘John Brown’ with a Celtic flavour. The thumpy, heavy beat is a long way from the smooth rock version of 1994, but is a successful adaption of the song. It gives the anti-war story an ancient flavour. In that heavy beat we feel the threat of war, the tread of war. The dramatic confrontation between generations has not lost its power. (Madison, 31^st 10^th)

John Brown

Similarly, there is a natural stridency to ‘Masters of War.’ The slow, threatening arrangements reached their apex in the Berlin performance of 2005 (See NET, 2005, part 5), and Dylan stuck to the same arrangement in 2006. I miss the threatening rumble of the piano we found in 2005 but the churchy organ in this Boston performance is an interesting variation.

Masters of War

‘Don’t Think Twice’ is a bitter-sweet, reflective little song which Dylan has been turning into a celebration, allowing the song to build from those opening tender moments to a rousing end. That movement is evident here, with the crowd-pleasing slow-down at the end. It really is ‘all right’ after all. (Sun City)

Don’t think twice.

The vituperative ‘Positively Fourth Street’ originally derived its power from the mix of ‘happy,’ bouncy music with sharp-edged lyrics. The bounce has been replaced with that staccato dumpty-dum, and the circus barker sounds rough around the edges but the jeer has not been lost, even if the sweetness of the bitter pill has. (Boston)

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

Positively Fourth Street

Let’s finish this post, and the year 2006, with our old friend and NET companion, ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ 2006 is very much a mixed bag with some exciting new sounds from Modern Times and some strange brews from yesteryear, with Dylan’s controversial organ playing in the spotlight. High, sustained quavering notes, emphatic rinky-dink rhythms that create a staccato sound so difficult for NET aficionados to deal with.

Next post we turn to 2007 for more of the same as Dylan enters more deeply into these new sounds he’s creating, for better or for worse. Those who find it all pretty hard to deal with will be relieved to hear that ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ hasn’t changed much, at least not yet. This song’s greatest days may be behind us, but listening to this hectic recital from Boston, we may for a moment convince ourselves that not much has really changed, that he keeps on keeping on just as he’s always done.

Tangled up in Blue

Kia Ora

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Bob Dylan: On His Way Home (Parts III and IV)

Posted on July 10, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan on his way home (parts I and II)

by Larry Fyffe

Characteristic of Post Modern art is its use of fragmented thinking; associations that fly off in all directions.

In the movie mentioned below, Gary Cooper, plays the part of Penny Day’s criminal father; he struggles with his conscience – (daughter Penelope played by Shirley Temple); he says of the police:

“They don’t look so bad close – not nearly as big as when you’re running away from them”

(Now And Forever)

A line messed with a bit in the following song lyrics:

What looks large at a distance
Close up ain't never that big
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)

Gary Cooper stars in another movie; it’s about a western sheriff who’s abandoned by the townsfolk; he must stand alone against outlaws with his conscience and his gun – a movie with David Crosby’s father as cinematographer, a film that’s made in the days when artists and actors be blacklisted by the House Committee On UnAmerican Activities.

The otherwise-abandoned sheriff is helped only by his Quaker gal who shoots down one of the bad guys.

The following song is featured in the film where the size of the clock matters:

Do not forsake me, oh my darling
Wait along, wait along
I do not know what fate awaits me
And I must face a man who hates me ....
Look at that big hand move along
Nearing high noon

(Tex Ritter: The Ballad Of High Noon ~ Washington/Tiomkin)

In the song lyrics below, ‘penny’ and ‘day’ pop up – but there’s no happy ending to an actual event – the hero therein is killed by an extremist Christian:

Doctor, doctor, tell me the time of day
Another bottle's empty, another penny spent
He turned and slowly walked away
They shot him in the back and down he went
Shine your light
Moving on

(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

Bob Dylan On The Way Home (Part IV)

Though somewhat shrouded in the fog of history with the Great Vowel Shift and ‘nick names’ derived from rhymes, the decoding of the important cryptic key words such as “penny” and “day” in the song lyrics of musician/ singer/songwriter Bob Dylan is as easy as falling off a log.

As previously noted, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump in time from the spelling and sound of Penny Day to Peggy Day, then to Maggie Day; and from there to Magdala and Magdalene.

Without the above historical knowledge of language, some Dylanologists dismiss some songs by Dylan out-of-hand; mischaracterize them as trivial ones.

For instance, many official interpretations of the New Testament Bible tag Mary of Magdala as either a prostitute or a reformed one who’s possibly still possessed by demons.

As a consequence, the following song actually has a deep cultural meaning behind it – is or isn’t Mary Magdalene a good girl?

Taking the song’s narrator to be Jesus (He affectionately calls his Father “Golly”), reformed Mary at first gets a thumbs up from Christ for her whitened-up purity:

Peggy Day stole my poor heart away
By golly, what more can I say
Love to spend the night with Peggy Day
(Bob Dylan: Peggy Day)

The trouble is that Golly’s Son can say more, and does; there’s the darkness of night hanging over Peggy/Maggie – the shadow of a temptress, of the bejewelled Whore of Babylon no less:

Peggy night makes my future look so bright
Man, that girl is out of sight
Love to spend the day with Peggy night
(Bob Dylan: Peggy Day)

There’s a loud thunder clap heard in the mountains, and the religious take on Bob Dylan’s view of women becomes split in two forever and ever:

Well, you know ever even before I learned her name
You know I loved her just the same
And I tell'em all, wherever I may go
Just so they'll know that she's my little lady
And I love her so
(Bob Dylan: Peggy Day)

And that’s just how it goes:

What's your name?
Jerry
Mine is Penny Day
(Shirley Temple/Gary Cooper: Now And Forever)

Honour bright!

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Dylan cover a Day: Love Sick (Updated)

Posted on July 10, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

For a complete resume of “Lovesick” there is an article on this site by Jochen and of course he’s picked out some of the best covers there are. But I had a couple of others to drop in, so I thought I’d give the song another feature.

And yes, I will admit it, there is a second reason. For I am rather chuffed that for this song, an unknown (to me at least) Wikipedia editor, decided to give me lead billing (well, at least first mention) in the Wiki analysis. It begins…

“Dylan scholar Tony Attwood characterizes “Love Sick” as the “ultimate, absolute, total, complete lost love song” and “the strangest way ever to start an album – starting with what appears to be the end”

OK, I’ll stop there, since if you are really interested you can read the rest on wiki but I do think that is the first time I’ve seen myself referred to as a “Dylan scholar”. It’s rather flattering, and actually I think I might mention it in passing at the dance tonight to one or two of my regular dance partners. And a few friends. And my daughters. And the couple next door. And the others in my company. And…

Enough. You know the song, you’ll remember how it starts desolate and gets ever lower. So this might surprise you…

I really like that. For a start it is so unexpected, and so imaginative, and just shows that no matter how a piece is originally written, it can go anywhere, if the musicians and arrangers have enough imagination and talent.

Jochen particularly noted what I think is a live version of Lovesick by Trigger finger, and contrary to what I wrote before I have now got a copy – thanks Jochen. It starts at 10 minutes 50 seconds, and then mutates into Ballad of a Thin Man.

Now when I couldn’t find that, and before Jochen (not for the first time by any means) put me back on the right track and I inserted instead the Mariachi El Bronx

Mariachi (I am told) is music from rural western Mexico that goes back to the 18th century of earlier and this track comes from Música Muerta Vol. 1 & Vol. 2. It is available on Spotify, and if you want to explore the rest of their music I would suggest typing in Música Muerta in the search box. You’ll then have this song and the rest of the album if you would like to hear that. Although I do think Love Sick stands out above the rest.

But then I am a Dylan fan.

Jochen in this article gave us this wonderful rendition which most certainly bears repetition.

Jochen also reviewed a version by the Flemish band Triggerfinger but search as I might on Spotify and the internet at large, it avoids me. If you know of a recording on line or can find it on Spotify please do write in with a link.

However another version found by Jochen is still available and that is by Duke Robillard.

And yes indeed this does give us a new insight, both because of the way the vocalist approaches the lyrics, and the use of the saxophones behind. It would have been so easy to overuse them and yet they are restrained, and so much more poignant. A superb version.

Interestingly there are so many songs called “Lovesick” (as I discovered when trying to find the Triggerfinger version,) it is extraordinary that Bob could take such a well-worn word from songs of the past and find something completely new to do with it.

But that’s genius for you.

Anyway, because I can’t find any more versions that I can refer you to, here is the last live version of the song by Bob.

https://youtu.be/IlPUIJuwLQo

And the Dylan Cover a Day series

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Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 1: You’re happy, Tim?

Posted on July 9, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 1

by Jochen Markhorst

I You’re happy, Tim?

“When you buy a cup of coffee today, do you still know who is responsible for it? Who makes that coffee? The gentleman here, of course, thinks it was Herr Starbuck. But you, Frau Bellini, and I, we both know: This Starbuck can’t cook everywhere at the same time. No one knows who made the coffee, the only thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t Herr Starbuck.”

Er ist wieder da (by Timur Vermes, English title Look Who’s Back) from 2012 is a phenomenal sales success, despite lukewarm to scathing reviews. Millions of copies sold, a successful film and theatre adaptation, translations in more than 40 languages. The story is set in 2011 and the protagonist is Hitler who has risen from his ashes. The monologue above is an example of the satirical quality of the work; the resurrected Hitler does not yet understand these times, but his criticism, in this case the modern reflex to avoid responsibility, makes sense. And Hitler, who was resurrected only a few days ago, has not even been able yet to learn that “Herr Starbuck” also produces television programmes, records and films; Starbucks Entertainment has been around for five years at this point, late summer 2011. And has already scored big hits; Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full, for example, and the film Akeelah and the Bee (both in 2006).

Less commercially successful, but artistically partly very successful, is the Artist’s Choice CD series, compilation CDs filled with the choice of famous greats such as Ray Charles, Yo-Yo Ma and Willie Nelson. Bob Dylan selects his pick for the February 2008 release in the series, and it’s a beautiful CD. Eclectic as an episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, with lesser-known tracks by Dylan favourites like Wanda Jackson, Junior Wells and Ray Price, a few usual suspects (The Stanley Brothers’ “The Fields Have Turned Brown”, for example), and also featuring liner notes written by the bard:

“They’re a lot of different ways a record can get under your skin. Sometimes it’s the way they sound, sometimes it’s the words. Maybe it’s a guitar riff or a horn line or maybe you feel like the singer is talking right to you. Some people say it’s chemistry but chemistry is too much of a science. A great record is more like alchemy. Here’s a bunch of folks who somehow manage to turn lead into gold for a couple of minutes. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.”

And his brief commentaries of the individual songs are just as charming and worth reading. Like the opening track, Pee Wee Crayton’s “Do Unto Others” from 1954: “I bet that John Lennon heard this record at a party once and probably didn’t even know who did it, but that guitar just stuck in his head” – elegantly referring to the fact that Lennon and Ringo have simply stolen the intro for “Revolution”.

The selection of Pee Wee Crayton’s “Do Unto Others” seems, in a nutshell, to be a symptom of Dylan’s weak-spot for shuffling and rearranging facts, styles, genres and artistic expressions. We know this postmodernist artifice – of course – from his music, which combines centuries of songwriting, diverse musical genres and paraphrases from both low and high culture into the oeuvre we all admire. But in other areas, Dylan is just as fond of creating mosaics. The screenplay of Masked & Anonymous, his autobiography Chronicles, his forging and his paintings – the common denominator of Dylan the literary man, Dylan the visual artist, Dylan the musician and Dylan the scriptwriter is: it’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, to quote Ray Davies (“Lola”, 1970).

And that also applies to Dylan the DJ.

The listener examining the cover of that Dylan edition of Artist’s Choice is struck by the name of the “Compilation Producer”: Tim Ziegler. A name familiar from episode 66, “Lock and Key”, of the Theme Time Radio Hour, aired on 30 January 2008, nineteen days before Starbucks releases Artist’s Choice: Bob Dylan (Music That Matters To Him).

In this broadcast, the sixth song DJ Dylan plays is “Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door” by Wynonie Harris;

“Back in the forties, you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Wynonie “Mr. Blues” Harris. Here is one of his recordings for the King record label: “Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door”.

The DJ makes a small, insignificant mistake. King Records has indeed released plenty of Wynonie Harris’ records (the irresistible jump-blues monument Good Rockin’ Blues, for example, from which Elvis learned “Good Rockin’ Tonight”), but precisely “Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door” was not released by King Records. And so a phone call is made to the studio by a listening know-it-all, and a dryly comic dialogue unfolds with an increasingly grumpy Dylan:

TZ: “Yeah, I’ve been listening to the show all day, and that song you just played, “Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door”, well, you know, you told everyone that it was on the King record label and I went to Wikipedia, and sorry to tell you, it was on Apollo Records.”
BD: “Huh! Whaddayaknow. You’re probably right, Tim. You know, sometimes we tell you who wrote the song, what kind of music it is, who else recorded it, but you know sometimes we don’t get it right. I mean it’s important to remember this isn’t a classroom here; this is music we’re playing. This is music of the field, the pool hall, the back alley crap game, the barroom and the bedroom. We don’t want to make it dusty and academic. It’s full of sweat and blood, it’s like life itself. If every once in a while we get a name wrong, or we tell you it’s on the wrong label, it’s not gonna kill anybody, Tim. Just listen to the music.”
TZ: “Well, I hear what you’re saying, but you know… it was on the Apollo record label.”
BD: “Well, thanks for your call Tim.”
TZ: “Yeah thanks.”
BD: “Well, there’s just no pleasing some people. That was “Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door” by Wynonie Harris. On the Apollo record label. You’re happy, Tim?”

Funny. But the Dylan fan’s attention has already been caught shortly before, when the caller and the DJ are still exchanging pleasantries:

BD: Hello caller, you’re on the air. What’s your name and where you’re calling from?
TZ: Yeah, my name is Tim Ziegler, calling from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois…

Not only does Theme Time Radio Hour choose the very name of the “Compilation Producer” of the CD that will be released by Starbucks in a few weeks, but Tim Ziegler is also being dragged some 2,000 miles away from his hometown. The real Tim Ziegler has lived and worked on the West Coast all his life (and started his career in the music business, by the way, as a colleague of his current interviewer, as a DJ for KUSF-FM, the radio station of the University of San Francisco).

But for some reason, the mixing up, muddling up, shaking up DJ moves poor Tim from California to Champaign, Illinois…

To be continued. Next up Champaign, Illinois part 2: Oh, how I love you

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

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Bob Dylan: They Killed Him

Posted on July 8, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan: They Killed Him Part I

They shot him in the back, and down he went
Shine your light
Moving on
You burned so bright 
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

The song lyrics above lament the passing of John Lennon, alluding back to events, such as being trapped in a cave with a man-eating giant – from Homer’s “Odyssey”.

Anti-Establishment John appears at the The Cavern Club in Liverpool with The Quarry Men:

Sailing through the trade winds, bound for the south
Rags on your back just like any other slave
They tied your hands, and they clamped your mouth
Wasn't no way out of that deep dark cave
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

Unlike Odysseus, Lennon roams the streets of New York City undisguised and is gunned down by a Christian fanatic because the Beatle joked that the British band be more popular than Jesus.

Throwing filthy rags on his back like any other slave
He slipped into the enemy's city, roamed the streets
All disguised as a totally different man, a begger
(Homer: Odyssey,  Book IV ~ translated)

To add insult to the death, there are some Dylanologists who claim the elegy to John Lennon refers instead to John the Apostle who supposedly pens a biblical Gospel as well as the Revelation.

The Book of John (5:35) says of John the Baptist: “He was a burning and shining light”, but the last book of the Bible is based on the Book of Ezekiel – both books filled with buckets of flaming coals that are poured down upon the heads of all those condemned as “nonbelievers”.

Blasted in the Old Testament is Aholibah, defiled she is by big-cocked Egyptians and depicted as the whore to Babylonians in southern Israel:

For she has doted upon their paramours

Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses
And whose issue is like the issue of horses
(Ezekiel  23: 20)

So too the New Testament great whore of Babylon now drunken “with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”:

For all nations have drunk of the wine 
   of the wrath of her fornication 
And the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her
And the merchants of the earth have are waxed rich
Through the abundance of her delicacies
(Revelation18:3)

Blasted too a neoBabylon of today – femaleless (no one to blame), under no God’s command, a neighbourhood bully:

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone
Egypt, and Rome, even the great Babylon
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with no one, under no one's command
(Bob Dylan: Neighbourhood Bully)

The song “Roll On John”, on the other hand, expresses compassion for musician and singer John Lennon who stands for peace, not war.

Influenced by preRomantic poetry, a sorrowful song it is indeed:

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the the night
(William Blake: The Tyger)

Bob Dylan: They Killed Him (Part II)

‘Tex’ Lennon romanticizes life in the hustle and bustle of New York City; for him, it has the appeal of frontier freedom as depicted in movies about the Old West.

But it’s also New Babylon; the buffalo are killed off:

Rumbling over the tumbleweed
Do we do the battering and tattering of the buffalo
Thundering in wild stampede
Where the buffalo roam
I'll build you a home
A home on the range for you
(Tex Ritter: Home on the Range ~ Hartford/Sanucci/Ritter)

The Britisher ought to have known better; for one thing he should have taken steps to avoid the Sirens.

In the Underworld of the Ancients, John , like the wandering Trojan Aeneas, gets one last chance – across the river to the right lies Heaven; to the left Hell:

Roll on John, through the wind and snow
Take the right-hand road, and go where the buffalo roam
They'll trap in an ambush before you know
Too late now to sail back home
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

In the movie “Where The Buffalo Roam”, about the failure of idealistic activists in the 6O’s and 7O’s, “Highway 61” by Bob Dylan, is heard, along with the music of Neil Young.

Irony abounds in the following song lyrics; Lennon gets shot down by a Christian:

Slow down you're moving too fast
Come together right now over me
Your bones are weary, you're about to breathe your last
Lord, you know how hard it can be
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

In contrast, Odysseus on his return home to Greece from Troy is given the assistance of the goddess of Wisdom and War; after escaping from an island, he is able to fight off the anger of the sea-god (for blinding his son, the Cyclops), as well as confront any ambushes set by the suitors of his wife Penelope.

The goddess enables the Greek hero to sleep and recover after his ship is wrecked by Neptune:

Odysseus covers himself with leaves
And Athena sheds sleep upon his eyes
So that the night enfolds his lids
And speedily frees his  bones from weariness
(Homer: Book V~ translated)

How dare anyone claim that the Dylan song is not about John Lennon – compared with Odysseus:

How dare they:

In the forests of the night
Cover him over, and let him sleep
(Bob Dylan: Roll On John)

Untold Dylan

If you feel you’ve something new and different to say about Bob Dylan or his music, and would like to offer it to Untold Dylan for publication, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please write to Tony@schools.co.uk

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Other People’s Songs: (The Blooming Bright Star Of) Belle Isle

Posted on July 8, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: Marc Bolan, of T.Rex fame, had this to say about the track, ”I’ve just listened to Dylan’s new album, and in particular “Belle Isle”, and I feel deeply moved that such a man is making music in my time…

“‘Belle Isle’ brought to my memory all the moments of tenderness I’ve ever felt for another human being, and that, within the superficial landscape of pop music, is a great thing indeed.”

Tony: The problem I have is with the music to the lines

I spied a fair maid at her labour
Which caused me to stay for a while

which Bob copied directly as the music to

Though we kissed through the wild, blazing night time
She said she would never forget

for “I don’t believe you”, and having got that in my head I find it hard to disentangle the two.

But even trying to set that aside, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right to me. Why add all the strings in the background? I could see this if the song were taken at a slower pace, but is there really any need for them here as the music trots along at this speed? (We can hear what it is like without them, in the “without overdubs” version, which I’ll add at the end.)

I also think Bob takes it too fast – which shows I must be in a crotchety mood this morning. Maybe it is because many centuries ago I did spend a not completely successful three weeks on Belle Île, off the coast of Brittany, France, although I am not sure it is the Belle Isle of the song.

But then, what do I know?

Aaron: Noted “song interpreter” Ed Trickett, who sadly passed away just last month, including his version on his 1972 album The Telling Takes Me Home

Tony: Now this is more like it. I think this is a lot closer to the original version – using the modal chords and the constant running of each verse into the next really is how this song should sound. I really love this version. This is indeed how such a delicate song should be performed.

I know Bob Dylan claimed it as one of his own compositions, and the music is his, but really that is stretching it a bit I think. Still, Bob’s covering of the song has led to us including the Ed Trickett version on this site and for that Bob should be thanked!

Aaron: Ex-Pixies front man Frank Black included his version on solo album Snake Oil

Tony: Now curiously, I find this better than Bob’s version, because there is no pretending that this has anything much to do with folk music, while at the same time it keeps the old style lyrics. I am not saying I would want to play it a second time, but it is interesting, and it does drive me back to the Ed Trickett version.

Aaron: A version without the overdubs was released on Another Self Portrait in 2013.

Tony: And I am rather glad this was done, because I do think those violins were a mistake.

I’ve just been back to check, and in constructing our list of Dylan compositions on this site, we didn’t include this as a Dylan original, and I think that was the right decision. But it is interesting to hear the original use of the music for

Though we kissed through the wild, blazing night time
She said she would never forget

Previously in this series…

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Dylan’s songs of abstraction: all those visions

Posted on July 7, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

One of my earliest ventures into Bob Dylan as a songwriter whose songs didn’t always make sense came with the article “Lo and behold”: but what does it all mean?

Since then I’ve written two more parts to this thesis…

And all the while I have been trying to think of a phrase that might represent a type of Dylan song that doesn’t have a concrete meaning, but which has a feeling.

Of course, many such songs are then turned into songs of meaning by writers who appear to feel that all (or at least most) Dylan lyrics must have a meaning – especially those writers who want to find a specific message in Dylan that seems to suit their own version of the meaning of life.

But although that is a popular vision, I would contend it is not one that always fits what Dylan writes. Consider:

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks 
   when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it

Yep by and large that is pretty clear. Sit in an dark, empty room and you hear things and maybe see things that are not there. Did that curtain twitch? What was that creak on the stairs? Try to get to sleep and you’ll be amazed how many people pass by outside (or in the case of a house like mine, where very few people pass by, how loud those owls can be at times).

But then…

Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it.

Now of course all this can be explained. Here’s one explanation taken at random...

“Dylan’s second line takes the form of an answer to the first. What tricks? The tricks of denial, perhaps the false consciousness that represses the earthbound nature of our existence. We must be on our guard, in case the night tempts us into denial of our finitude, he suggests. And Louise is to be on our side in this battle, urging us to defy the need to deny it. Louise wants more than friendship, though. She holds a handful of rain, tempting you. This is plainly a fertility image: Louise is womanly, and knowingly so – she offers tangible rewards. Repressing the urge to enjoy these offerings is itself denial, of a different sort.”

In taking this example, I am not trying to make fun of it, or suggest it is wrong, or that I know any better, but rather to say this is speculation, as indeed the author suggests with “perhaps” in the second line.

But just consider this: it is an interpretation, with no supporting evidence, because Bob has never given any supporting evidence. We can say that some of the lines connect because there is quite a bit of information about the room and a bit about its occupants, but who they are and what if anything they represent is not at all clear.

Especially as verse two takes us somewhere completely different…

In the empty lot where the ladies play 
   blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of 
   escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane

And then suddenly we are back to Louise and Johanna.

So my point is that all these lines, and all these people (Little boy lost turns up soon, and those jelly-faced women etc) can all be explained as representing a particular place and individuals. And there could even be a story in there somewhere. But also it is possible – and indeed easier – to consider all this as an abstract piece in which there are people, rooms, a train, anxiety, philosophical contemplation, fat old women, all flitting in and out of a reality that is not quite that reality most of us find beyond the curtains.

Now, in the world of science there is a rule known as “Occam’s razor” (although the spelling of Occam varies because the chap who invented the idea lived in the 14th century when spelling was variable) which basically says that unless there is clear evidence to the contrary the simplest explanation should be preferred to the more complex.

And I would contend that the simplest explanation of Visions is that it is about atmosphere in the same way that many abstract paintings are about atmosphere.

If ever there were a perfect example of this it is the conclusion of Visions… Characters who we have not met before suddenly appear. Objects that have not been mentioned now play a part. Events happen that have no connection with the earlier verses. And to end it all, the visions, which have never been explained, are the only thing that is left at the end.

The peddler now speaks to the countess 
     who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite 
     and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

It is, in short, one of the greatest pieces of abstraction in song ever written. And given that Bob wrote it early in his career, it is not surprising that he wrote many others in this genre.

The songs of abstraction is, in my view, a category of Dylan writing in its own right, and they are to be cherished, because they open up the doors not only to our own thoughts, but to the thoughts of arrangers, who find it possible to take the songs to all sorts of other places.

I am hoping to find the time to consider a few more examples in the near future.

But let me leave you, if I may, with one particular thought.

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

If ever there were lines of abstraction in a piece of popular music here they are. Yes of course you can invent a meaning for them, but why? Dylan just gives us the abstraction. Why is it necessary to go beyond that?

Untold Dylan

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Bob Dylan And Don’t You Tell Henry

Posted on July 6, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

From Celtic mythology, the Shannon River in Ireland gets named after the granddaughter of the Son of the Sea diety: she supposedly opened a well, and out burst the mighty river.

Shamus Heaney’s poem “Rite Of Spring” perhaps references that myth.

From the mythology of native American ‘Indians’, the Shenandoah River gets named after the Daughter of the Stars; supposedly after the ground holding it gives way, the river flows from a mountain lake in Virginia.

James Joyce’s “Finnigans Wake” shows how the mythological culture and language of one country gets stirred in with the language and beliefs of another country when the latter becomes the dominant domain.

On the micro-level, artists feed off of one another’s works.

Off Samuel Beckett’s, for example:

I tell myself something is coming ...
but it never does
(Henry Rollins)

Mashed together the likes of Godot, the Nazz, the Crimson King, and now the Chokerman jumps aboard Pirate Jenny’s Black Freighter ~ with his black-humoured monologues:

He comes up to me, and says, "Are you registered to vote?"
(Henry Rollins)

The song lyrics beneath reference the absurdist writer/punk-singer above who commits the high sin of hubris; deludes himself that he can out-depress the master of the black dog:

I'm crossing the street to get away from a mangy dog
Talking to myself in a monologue
I think what I need might be a full-length leather coat
Somebody just asked me if I'm registered to vote
(Bob Dylan: Highlands)

Referenced above too be Robert Burn’s poem about the Highlands, and Washington Irving’s story about Rip and his dog “Wolf”.

In the song lyrics below, the young word-slinger Henry is figuratively gunned down by his own bullets:

I have nothing for you
I don't even have a self for myself anymore
(Henry Rollins)

As in:

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, pain pouring down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

According to the Holy Bible, God punishes Moses because he claims credit for leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt when he actually stays with the Isis princess too long; Moses dies looking over the Jordan River at the Promised Land.

As in:

You can't come back, not all the way
(Henry Rollins)

The “Nile of America” flows through Egyssippi:

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day to long
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

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’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 5 (final)

Posted on July 6, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

V Still among the living, all of them

Well, I’m tired of talking, I’m tired of trying to explain
My attempts to please you were all in vain
Tomorrow night before the sun goes down
If I’m still among the living, I’ll be Dixie bound
I just don’t know what I’m gonna do
I was all right ’til I fell in love with you

“South Bound Blues”, which Ma Rainey recorded with her Georgia Jazz Band in April 1924, is actually a non-blues, but no less influential; the lyrics offer a sampling of phrases, one-liners and word combinations that generations of songwriters will use gratefully. “You caused me to weep and you caused me to moan” from the refrain, for example. Pete Seeger copied and pasted it into his version of “Goodnight Irene”, Blind Blake took it, also in Chicago, into his immortal “Black Dog Blues” (1927), and somewhere in the 1930s the verse even infiltrated the granite monument “In The Pines”. At least; the first commercial recording of it (Dock Walsh, 1926) doesn’t have the line yet, Lead Belly, the moral owner of the song, recorded several versions and sometimes smuggles in “You caused me to weep, and you caused me to moan”, and in 1941 Bill Monroe records his version with “You caused me to weep, you caused me to mourn”. Although Monroe probably stole it from The Carter Family’s “Foggy Mountain Top” from 1929, to complete the circle to Dylan.

Anyway, it’s just one example of the fertility of “South Bound Blues”. Its author, the legendary Tom Delaney, has struck dozens of such piles under the blues canon in his career. In this “South Bound Blues” alone, templates like “my time ain’t long” (a pillar under Robert Johnson’s monumental “Dust My Broom”), “low-down, dirty ways” (“Thank you,” say Sonny Boy Williamson, Son House, Alberta Hunter and all the others), “you done me wrong”, and one that Dylan, too, respectfully steals:

Yes, I'm mad, my heart's sad
The man I love treats me so bad
He brought me out of my hometown
Took me to New York and throwed me down
Without a cent to pay my rent
I'm left alone without a home
I told him I was leavin' and my time ain't long
My folks done sent me money, and I'm Dixie bound

“I’m Dixie bound”, then. Not that its use sheds much light on the plot of Dylan’s song. In this last verse, there is no shift like in other semi-narrative Dylan songs, there is no hint like in songs like “Desolation Row” or “Red River Shore” that turns the lyrics around or sheds a new light. We still hear an abandoned, resentful lover á la “Don’t Think Twice”. That moaner complained 35 years ago “You just kinda wasted my precious time,” this one whines, “My attempts to please you were all in vain.” Or like the hurt suitor in “Idiot Wind” who snarls at his lover that she’s too stupid to breathe, this one is equally spiteful and misguided when he growls “I’m tired of trying to explain.” Not a change in trend, all things considered, from the previous choruses.

Just like he continues to make quasi-lurid allusions, still blurred and ambiguous, in this final couplet. The rather melodramatic “If I’m still among the living” is as unclear as the “girl who won’t be back no more” from the previous verse, for example. Although the addition that he has to leave here, will flee to the South, at least confirms that something has happened, Something, in any case, that forces him to leave. After all, he is not sent away; the you has either left or is dead. Plus, that theatrical “If I’m still among the living” provides, again not for the first time in this song, a Biblical connotation; not only through the mere use of the word “among”, but especially thanks to Anyone who is among the living has hope (Ecclesiastes 9:4).

Well, it may not be too clear what is bothering the narrator or what is driving him – but still, a blues it is.

That also applies to one of the pillars under the musical accompaniment: Slim Harpo. “What’s the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m a King Bee’ when you can listen to Slim Harpo doing it?” Mick Jagger asks rhetorically in the Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Cott in 1968. Slim Harpo, the name Dylan himself mentions when he tells in the interview with Mikal Gilmore (2001) which “reference records” he played to producer Lanois at the time, is a benchmark for Dylan, these years.

And he remains so; the Grammy Award-winning “Someday Baby” from 2006, for instance, is a rip-off of Slim’s “Shake Your Hips” from 1966 (also covered by The Stones), and the melody of the hit “Got Love If You Wanted” (which, incidentally, is not only on – again – The Stones’ set list, but also on Dylan’s), moves to Dylan’s “It’s All Good” in 2009.

For “‘Til I Fell In Love With You”, the reference record was probably one of Slim’s particularly beautiful gems: the hypnotic, brooding “Strange Love” from 1958, the B-side of the second single “Wonderin’ And Worryin'”. Songs, which James Moore aka Slim Harpo recorded just like his first single and hit “I’m A King Bee”, all in 1957, all in the same little studio of producer J.D. Miller in Crowley, Louisiana, all with the same musicians – then and there, with those men, the sound Dylan so diligently searches for is forged.

Forty years later, January 1997, when Dylan does his thing at Criterion Studios in Miami, they are all still alive; Gabriel “Guitar Gable” Perrodin, his brother John “Fats” Perrodin on bass and Clarence “Jockey” Etienne on drums. The studio in Crowley, Louisiana, also still exists, and is run by J.D. Miller’s son Mark Miller. Even Lovell Moore, Slim’s widow who came up with the name “Slim Harpo” for her husband James, and – uncredited – had written and co-written most of his hits, is still among the living. She is 72 then, and very much alive and kicking. “Slim wrote a bunch of his songs with his wife, Lovell…boy, do I wish I had a wife like that to help me write songs,” says DJ Dylan in May 2006, in episode 1, “Weather”, of Theme Time Radio Hour, announcing “Rainin’ in My Heart”.

So, Dylan could have saved himself a lot of searching for the right words and a lot of experimenting with the right sound if he had followed his own advice. If he had made a phone call to Mark Miller and visited Lovell with some flowers. If he, in short, had decided to be Dixie bound.

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

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Bob Dylan Chops Up Zechariah

Posted on July 5, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

The Holy Biblical presents a rather cyclical view of history though there is supposed an “end time” coming at some unknown time in the future.

For example Elijah gives up for a time trying to convert the wayward, but God doesn’t.

He later sends another drought upon Baal-worshippers, famine symbolized by black horses, and the Zoroastrian Persians are victorious; they allow the Hebrews to return home from exile to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple there.

To Zechariah explains an angel of the Lord that the north country of Babylonia has got its just desserts:

The black horses which are therein go forth to the north country
And the white horses go forward after them ....
Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying
Behold, these that go to the north country have quieted my spirit 
   in the north country

(Zechariah 6: 6,8)

The prophet tells the Hebrews, as long as they do not slack off again, that Northern Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem shall become as peaceful as the Garden of Eden:

And the streets of the city shall be
Full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof
(Zechariah 8: 5)

The false prophet Zechariah is brought back to life in the following quite ironic song lyrics – his head seems to be missing:

Bring it to the corner where the children play
You can bring it on a silver tray
I'll bring someone back to life, spare no expense
Do it with decency and common sense
(Bob Dylan: My Own version Of You)

The narrator in the song lyrics below tips over the tables on God’s plan that is supposed to bring back Eden, but doesn’t:

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

God’s plan instead allows human history to repeat the same damn scenerio over and over again.

So expressed below; the horse riders have been on the job too long:

All the tired horses in the sun
How am I supposed to get any riding done
All the tired horses in the sun
How am I supposed to get any riding done
(Bob Dylan: All The Tired Horses)

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Love Minus Zero

Posted on July 5, 2022 by TonyAttwood

An index to past episodes of this series appears at the end.

By Tony Attwood

Jochen has of course offered us a really detailed insight into Love Minus Zero (there’s a full set of links to that series at the end of this article) and within his series there are multiple examples of other people’s performances, and going back through them I felt that several of these were just this particular singer singing this particular song. There’s no new insight to be gained, no re-interpretation, no re-imagining, just “hey that’s a lovely song, let’s do that.”

Which of course is just my view, and of course is ok, except that we all know the song so well, and have heard it so many times, I am not sure the straight interpretations are much more than background music. And that’s a tragedy since Love Minus Zero is such a gorgeous love song.

And it is sad because when artists and their arrangers can’t find anything new within a song they start changing bits and pieces just for the sake of it, rather than because the new interpretation adds to our enjoyment and/or understanding.

Bridget StJohn falls into this category. Maybe her version would work if just the melody was played with, but the accompaniment seems to diminish the imagery of the lyrics. Too many twiddly bits it seems to me.

Agnes Chan however also has the idea of changing the song, and seems at first to get it right, retaining a lot of the original but with subtle rhythmic changes. However the lead guitar gradually gets carried away with the freedom he’s been granted, and as the beat becomes clearer everyone is told to do a build-up, and unfortunately, it all falls apart and by the end it is pretty ghastly, in my view. But at least the start really works.

Quite how any musician or arranger could think that this is a song that ought to build and build is utterly beyond me.

Now the Walker Brothers and their musical team know a thing or two about production, and how to handle the most wonderful attribute they had – those astonishing voices. And that attribute is utilised to the full here.

Of course it is the Walkers so we are going to have the strings come in, but mostly they are kept under control and made very Walkerish. They don’t quite fit with the lead guitar break, where clearly the guitarist has just been left to make it up as he goes along, but compared with the versions above, it’s not too bad.

Cockney Rebel with a full orchestral introduction… and surprisingly (for me at least) this is worthy of a listen. But the problem is we all know the song so well, the slow moving strings find it hard to hold attention. Which is presumably why they added an ever moving video, to distract from the music.

And ultimately, once again, after a minute or so I begin to wonder why I’m listening to this song which I know so well. Maybe if it were just an orchestral piece with no vocals that would work…

Fleetwood Mac had a go too, and once again I had hope, but really? I mean really?

Does this do justice to this delicate wonderful love song?

No, is the only answer I have.

And so to Judy Collins, who (if you have read any of my ramblings over the years) you’ll know I can always give the time of day to.

This is the best of the bunch, in my view, and her gorgeous voice holds the performance together but we really don’t need the plinky guitar behind her.

So, for once in a while, pretty mucyh a complete failure this time. No one, does it as well as Bob. No one finds another dimension. No matter how hard they try.

Jochen’s series

And the Dylan Cover a Day series

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’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 4

Posted on July 4, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

IV It Keeps Rainin’

Junk is piling up, taking up space
My eyes feel like they’re falling off my face
Sweat falling down, I’m staring at the floor
I’m thinking about that girl who won’t be back no more
I don’t know what I’m gonna do
I was all right ’til I fell in love with you

“He soon got used to the various changes in his room. It had become a habit in the family to push into his room things there was no room for elsewhere, and there were plenty of these now.” The family treats Gregor more and more as what he, in fact, is: an annoying insect. At first, Grete, the sister who has taken on the care, still has a loving urge to give “him as wide a field as possible to crawl in and of removing the pieces of furniture that hindered him,” but after the painstaking process of habituation and the growing irritation, Gregor’s room degenerates into a junk room. Junk is piling up, taking up space.

Dylan communicates in this fourth verse the same claustrophobic feeling as Kafka in Die Verwandlung (“The Metamorphosis”, 1912), but we may assume that in “’Til I Fell In Love With You” it is meant purely metaphorically – to express a panic-stricken state of mind of the protagonist. He feels, just like the narrator in “Mississippi”, trapped and tight as the corner that I painted myself in, and

Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape
We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape

An identical state of mind, very similar word choice (Time is pilin’ up versus Junk is piling up; thinking about Rosie versus thinking about that girl; my eyes go blind versus my eyes feel like they’re falling off my face )… it starts to look like “’Til I Fell In Love With You” is one of the reasons for Dylan’s unforgivable decision to discard “Mississippi” from Time Out Of Mind.

It might even be the same narrator, one might think after hearing the last two stanzas. In the last verse of this song, the narrator considers going “Dixie bound”, the narrator in “Mississippi” has meanwhile arrived in the South, coming from the North (“I got here following the southern star”). And seems to be haunted by a similar unspeakable something that is insinuated in this song now, at the end.

The narrator’s panic-stricken claustrophobic attack in “’Til I Fell In Love With You” is followed by a bizarre emotion that is hard to fathom: “My eyes feel like they’re falling off my face”. Either he is crying very, very hard, or his subconscious has a very strong need to stop seeing something. In the canon, we recognise at most a half-resemblance of the latter option to the gruesome climax in Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus is so shocked by the crimes he has unknowingly committed that he gouges out his eyes. And furthermore, we only know about eyeballs popping out from Spongebob and Tex Avery’s whistling wolf in Little Red Walking Hood – but it is highly unlikely that Dylan is trying to drive the listener’s associations towards Looney Tunes. No, apparently there is something particularly shocking there, so shocking that the eyes want to leave their owner. But what?

The lyrics are, as we can reconstruct thanks to the outtakes on Tell-Tale Signs, largely pasted together from scraps of the rejected “Marchin’ To The City” (57% of the 277 words come from that outtake), making it less obvious that Dylan had a narrative in mind when he sat down for “’Til I Fell In Love With You”. It’s more like, as in many Dylan songs, Dylan gets inspired by his own words while he’s writing, arrives at a hint of a scenario, and then doesn’t worry about plot holes or incongruities – it’s lyrical poetry, after all.

He seems to want to build in a hint of a murder ballad now, about halfway through the song’s lyrics. The opening, with its claustrophobic panic attack, is then retroactively given a kind of logical underpinning; Sweat falling down, I’m staring at the floor / I’m thinking about that girl who won’t be back no more suggests the aftershock of a dramatic climax, of a man who, panting, stands bent over the corpse of the woman he has killed to his own dismay – she won’t be back no more, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. In which, incidentally, Dylan incorporates a nod to Fats Domino, to his 1961 hit “It Keeps Rainin’”, probably out of playfulness. At least, the way Dylan, especially in live-versions, sings “she won’t be back no more”, is very much à la Domino’s “she won’t be back no mo’ah’” – also as a rhyme word for the preceding “floor”, by the way;

She left me reelin' an rockin'
Walkin' the floor
She lef' a note last night
She won't be back no mo'

Reasoning back, the preceding stanzas are then something like fragments of a bitter quarrel, fragments of scenes, echoes of reproaches back and forth. A sentence like I’m gonna win my way to wealth and fame is, in that scenario, not spoken by the protagonist, but by his female counterpart while she is packing her suitcase. “I feel like the whole world got me pinned up against the fence”, the second line, expresses the strangling panic attack that overwhelms the narrator when she says she is going to leave him. And so, with some adjustments, each line of the text can be interpreted as a non-chronological account of a murder and the run-up to it.

It is, of course, a facile interpretation. Well, lazy even. All exaggerations, incongruities and untruths in the text would then be explained by the stressed, and therefore unreliable, state of mind of the narrator in the first minutes after a traumatic event. But then again – still more conclusive than the interpreters who get no further than “a pretty nasty song” (Heylin), “reflections of a man who still trusts in God” (Beckwith), a lost love (Weir) or “dull and pointless” (Kevin P. Davis in Judas! #19). But, by far, most commentators and Dylanologists ignore the song.

Still, everyone does agree that he is in some kind of trouble, this narrator. He should leave. And go South, for some reason…

To be continued. Next up ’Til I Fell In Love With You part 5 (final): Still among the living, all of them

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

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Bob Dylan And The Prophets

Posted on July 3, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

With his thorough knowledge of the Holy Bible, the stories of the biblical prophets, who are often strangers in strange lands, are likely spinning around in the back of Bob Dylan’s conscious as well as his unconscious Jungian mind.

Positing these prophet stories, such as those of Moses, Elijah, and Ezekiel, to be templates for Dylan’s narrative song lyrics is therefore not an overreach when plausible links thereto, sometimes obverse ones, can be pointed to.

Rather blatant that the cloak of the faithful young prophet Samuel is donned in the following double-edged song lyrics; his mentor Eli pays no heed to Samuel’s message of warning:

And he was told these few words
Which opened up his heart
"If you can't bring good news, don't bring any"
(Bob Dylan: The Wicked Messenger)

At other times, the reference to a prophet is more oblique.

For example, Big Jim, in the song below, as the wayward King Solomon who is punished by having his United Kingdom divided:

Big Jim was no one's fool, he owned the town's only diamond mine
He made his entrance looking so dandy, and so fine
With his body guards, and silver cane, and every hair in place
He took whatever he wanted to, and he laid it all to waste
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary,  And The Jack Of Hearts)

According to the Old Testament, Elijah gets swept up by God in a whirlwind, but is going to be later sent back down to Earth to save wayward Hebrews:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord
And he shall turn the heart of the father to the children
An the heart of the children to their fathers
Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse
(Malachi 4: 5, 6)

So the song lyrics below can be construed; the narrator takes on the role of the frustrated nemesis of Jezebel – a modern-day Elijah, as it were – who foretells of the coming of the Jewish Messiah:

Well, I went back to see about'er 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)

Another warning beneath from Elijah, black-humoured though it be:

You don't know me, darling
You never would guess
I'm nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain't no false prophet
I just said what I said
I'm just here to bring vengence on somebody's head
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

https://youtu.be/kWzgB6KWsdc

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A Dylan cover a day: Love is just a four letter word

Posted on July 2, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Jochen has written an excellent series on “Love is Just a Four Word” (links at the end of this piece) and at the end he considered the cover versions of the song.

And in reality, there’s nothing to add about the song, which is what I invariably find with Jochen’s commentaries (although that doesn’t always stop me) – but I thought I would do a little exploring to see if anything else had turned up since he wrote his piece. And to remind you, in case you need reminding, of the covers that Jochen covered (if you see what I mean).

One that Jochen did find was the recording by John Winn which is quite remarkable

And he surprised me (even if no one else) with this version from Darren Holter – and returning to that today I really did enjoy it again.

Anyway, trying to find something new, what was new (for me at least) was the Sound Symposium…

which just shows what can be done with a song if one starts with a desire to go in a new direction. Of course, it is the lyrics that power the song as much as the music, so a lot is lost here, but it made an interesting diversion on a wet saturday morning in July.

I did find one which is a version by Earl Scruggs and Joan Baez.

And I know this is going to look like the Joan Baez show but it is interesting to contrast this with her original recording, and what really is surprising is that someone thought that it was a good idea to put in an extra bit of instrumental whatnot after each line. It is particularly pronounced in the first verse, although the twangy guitar does get occasional outings throughout the piece – which I find extraordinarily annoying. I mean, what sort of person listens to this song and then says, “Hey, let’s put in a bit of twangy guitar.”

Besides, didn’t anyone then reply, “Errr… why have we got that in there exactly???”

It really is as if the producer thought, “Actually this song is rather dull, we’d better throw in some random sounds here and there – I know let’s put in some twang, twang is always good.”

For me the accompaniment in this piece absolutely destroys the song and all its meanings.

Thankfully Ms Baez later realised that she had been betrayed by the production team and doing it her way was a much better idea. That doesn’t mean singing it solo, but it means keeping the accompaniment in the background. The song has a natural bounce, the lyrics really are fun (which is why the repeated melody works so well), and yes it can be an enjoyable experience.

Why the Lord allowed humankind to invent musical producers is completely beyond me.

Which finally brings me to the ultimate, ultimate. And if you have been plodding through the examples I have offered above will come as a contrast. The melody is dropped to a new lower key, and everything starts off sounding a little bit more like a song with an edge – which is what Dylan wrote. “Kept my mouth shut” stands out now, those changing and unexpected vocal harmonies add back in the element that Dylan had in the lyrics from the start.

We no longer need and certainly don’t want any more meandering ideas in terms of accompaniment. Who needs instrumentation when this sort of inventiveness in terms of harmonies is on offer?

If you have a mind to, and the time, please just listen to the multiple vocal lines and how they change the meaning of the lyrics, as well as change themselves verse by verse.

It is a stunning masterpiece of performance.

In fact, this is a song that has quite a covering on Untold Dylan. We even included it in our Dyaln Obscuranti album – of which more below.

First, here’s the index to Jochen’s series on the song…

And to conclude, a reminder of the Dylan Obscuranti album we created

As you can see, it is a bit of a favourite.

If you’d like to explore other thoughts on Dylan and his music please do visit our Facebook group which has over 14,000 members. Just go to Facebook and search for Untold Dylan.

And finally, here’s a list of the earlier articles from Dylan Cover a Day

Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…

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’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 3: Ballad Of A Smalltown Boy

Posted on July 1, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

III Ballad Of A Smalltown Boy

Neon Park (1940-1993) was a colourful and versatile illustrator, cartoonist and designer, whose clients included Playboy and DreamWorks, but his lasting fame is mainly due to the beautiful album covers he drew for Little Feat – apart from the 1971 debut album, Park provided every Little Feat album up until his death, i.e. up to and including 1991’s Shake Me Up, with great, often witty covers. Apart from his technical craftsmanship, Neon Park distinguishes himself by his playfulness; the men of Little Feat usually let him do what he wanted, which resulted in covers full of hidden allusions, obvious persiflages, winks and Hieronymus Bosch-like frenzies. Like the cover of Sailin’ Shoes (1972): a pie with women’s legs, swinging on a tree swing, watched by both a giant snail and Mick Jagger dressed as Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy from 1770.

A running gag throughout his career are duckfaces; Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich… he paints them in iconic, recognisable poses, but replaces body and face with enlarged, humanised Donald Ducks. And Little Feat did not escape this either; the last album with Lowell George, Down On The Farm (1979), is decorated with one of Parks’ most perfect covers: a sexy Duck posing as one of Gil Elvrgen’s famous pin-ups from the fifties: “The Finishing Touch”.

It is a brilliantly chosen template to illustrate the title song of Little Feat’s album:

They all asked about you
Down on the farm
The cows asked, the pigs asked
The horses asked, too
All want to know why to the city
You moved, changed your name to Kitty
What's come over you?
It ain't true; it ain't true, Linda Lou
Say it ain't true, Linda Lou

… the classic story of the local beauty who tries to satisfy her lust for wealth and fame in the Big City, and goes down with it. For Neon Park, the exceptional opportunity to place its running gag in a narratively correct context; this one time, the banality of something as mundane as a duck, placed in an alienating, glamorous setting, does actually make sense.

The plot is over-familiar and has been milked in dozens of films, novels and songs. Usually rather kitschy and moralistic. The one-hit wonder John Collins Cunningham scored a hit with “Norma Jean Wants To Be A Movie Star” in 1974 (“She died in L.A. in a lonely room”), Elton John’s brilliant, enchanting ballad “Cage The Songbird”, Bob Seger’s compelling “Hollywood Nights”… kitschy or not, the theme often brings out the best in artists.

For this third verse of “’Til I Fell In Love With You”, Dylan borrows clichés and motifs from all those identical, doomed fame-chaser stories;

Boys in the street beginning to play
Girls like birds flying away
When I’m gone you will remember my name
I’m gonna win my way to wealth and fame
I don’t know what I’m gonna do
I was all right ’til I fell in love with you

… whereby in Dylan’s mind there are probably no Elton John or Bob Seger buzzing around, but one of the pillars of all those lonely-at-the-top songs: Johnny Cash’s corny “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen” from 1958, recorded for his first compilation album Sings The Songs That Made Him Famous. Certainly not a highlight of Cash’s discography, this ballad with its hard-to-enjoy penny novelette content and its super sweet happy ending, but it provides a motif and some jargon for a Dylan song – and that’s worth something. And a No. 1 hit in the Country Charts it was as well, nonetheless;

Then one day the teenage star
Sold her house and all her cars
Gave up all her wealth and fame
Left it all and caught a train

Though with Dylan too, as with Cash and unlike Elton and Seger and Cunningham, the motif of the hollow pursuit of wealth and fame does not bring out the best. This central stanza of “’Til I Fell In Love With You” falls a bit out of tune. These four lines are the only lines that don’t emotionally connect with the chorus lines I don’t know what I’m gonna do / I was all right ’til I fell in love with you, they are the only lines in which the narrator’s tone is not defeated and despondent, but rather one of venom and revenge. Childish, that just wait, you’ll be sorry wailing of verses three and four, and not fitting for the state of mind of the main character as we get to know it in the other four stanzas.

Still, apparently, its inclusion was a well-considered decision by the songwriter. After all, the lines come from the preliminary study of “’Til I Fell In Love With You”, from the outtake “Marchin’ To The City #1” that we know from Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8. Thanks to that wonderful Bootleg Series episode, we also know that Dylan himself initially had some reservations about these trite lines: in #2 of “Marchin’ To The City”, the version that also musically resembles the final product “’Til I Fell In Love With You”, these lines have been deleted and replaced by the admittedly very sentimental, but thematically more appropriate “Sorrow and pity through the earth and the skies / I’m not looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes”. However, somewhere between the recording of this version and the final recording of “’Til I Fell In Love With You”, these lines are also deleted and Dylan returns to that just wait, you’ll be sorry wail of “When I’m gone you will remember my name / I’m gonna win my way to wealth and fame”.

A rather incomprehensible intervention. But then again, it is the literary intervention of a small-town boy who left home to pursue wealth and fame and a Nobel Prize for Literature in the Big City, and who, as we all know, has succeeded incomparably –

All want to know why to the city
You moved, changed your name to Dylan
What's come over you?

… is a question no one will ever ask Robert Zimmerman.

To be continued. Next up ’Til I Fell In Love With You part 4:

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

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Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle (please make it to the end)

Posted on June 30, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Songs and performances selected by Aaron Galbraith, commentary by Tony Attwood

Aaron: Clinton Heylin writes, “‘Copper Kettle’…strikes all the right chords…being one of the most affecting performances in Dylan’s entire official canon.” The track opened side 3 of Self Portrait in 1970.

The song was composed by Albert Frank Beddoe in 1953 (or 1946!) and made popular by Joan Baez.

Tony: Bob’s voice is in good form, and sustains the slow tempo. The big difference to the feel that he gets from that delivered by Joan Baez is in the chord sequence – she emphasises the minor chords, particularly at the end of the verse, which gives an utterly different feel to the song. The sadness comes through – a sadness for the days past, and concerning perhaps the battle with the authorities, which somehow to me is lost in Bob’s version.

Aaron: Bobby Womack , recorded in Lookin’ for a Love Again, 1974

Tony: The emphasis of one word per bar rising quickly to the virtuoso vocal performance seems to me a little too much for what is in essence a folk song. It becomes “listen to my voice, look at one I can do” and I am not at all sure that is right for this song. Really one has to abandon the lyrics to listen to this, and I get the feeling that maybe the singer and producers expected no one to know what the song was about. Or maybe they didn’t

As for repeating “the moon” three times – what is the point? Sorry, but it does nothing for me except to suggest an awful lot of showing off, which turns me off. In fact as I come to think about it, one of the wonderful things about Bob is that he never ever shows off, neither in his studio work nor on stage. There never is any feeling that he is saying “Look at me, listen to me”. It’s much more, “Here it is, take it or leave it.”

Aaron: Jump, Little Children recorded a fantastic version last year during lockdown

Tony: That’s a great way of making the video and yes, finally Aaron, I am with you. This is a terrific recording, with brilliant harmonies and exquisite orchestration. Now at last I am not bothered by the lyrics…

And notice the return of the minor chord at the end.

As for the instrumental break – I just wish it was longer. And that pause around 3 minutes 15 seconds is brilliant.

But above everything else, I think a word of thanks must go to the producer for the way the whole thing is mixed, and the thought that goes into the arrangement. One might think that around four minutes it is coming to an end, but then they pick it up again.

And still, there is more as we get the coda starting around 5 minuts 20 seconds. The pianist does something very odd showing us a picture, and then trotting away for a while before returning for the last exciting run-through.

Oh, that is what the contemporary re-enactment of folk music is all about. Done with a complete understanding of the origins of the song, using quality musicians in sympathy with each other and with the music and with the arrangement. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Previously in this series…

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A Dylan cover a day: Oh for a re-imagining of Maggies Farm!

Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 2: Oh, how I love you

Bob Dylan: On the Way Home (Part V and VI)

Other People’s Songs: Fixing to Die

The Never Ending Tour, 2006, part 4 Strange Brews

Bob Dylan: On His Way Home (Parts III and IV)

Dylan cover a Day: Love Sick (Updated)

Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 1: You’re happy, Tim?

Bob Dylan: They Killed Him

Other People’s Songs: (The Blooming Bright Star Of) Belle Isle

Dylan’s songs of abstraction: all those visions

Bob Dylan And Don’t You Tell Henry

’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 5 (final)

Bob Dylan Chops Up Zechariah

A Dylan Cover a Day: Love Minus Zero

’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 4

Bob Dylan And The Prophets

A Dylan cover a day: Love is just a four letter word

’Til I Fell In Love With You (1997) part 3: Ballad Of A Smalltown Boy

Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle (please make it to the end)

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