She came down the aisle
Wearing a smile
A vision of loveliness
I uttered a sigh
Whispered goodbye
Goodbye to my happiness
(Patty Page: I Went To Your Wedding ~ JM Robinson)
Patti Smith, like Patty Page, follows the footpath blazed by Patsy Montana and Bonnie Lou (the two latter female stage names chosen because they ‘sound country’).
Bonnie ventures farther than Patsy, and steps into rocknroll “doo-wha”:
I want you badly
You're driving me madly
(Bonnie Lou: I Want You ~ Burton)
The doo-wha revamped in the following song lyrics:
I want you, I want you
I want you so bad
(Bob Dylan: I Want You)
Bonnie’s namesake mentioned as a nod perhaps thereto in the lyrics beneath.
The hollow-dwelling narrator sinks into a bottle:
Patty gone to Laredo
But she be back soon
Left Jamaica this morning
On a boat "Bonnie Lou"
(Bob Dylan: Patty Gone To Laredo)
Unlikely known to Bob Dylan when he sings “Patty Gone To Laredo” is that the “Bonnie Lou” be a NS fishing boat that burned and sank; certainly the song has nothing to do with its replacement the “Bonnie Lou ll” being lost in a storm along with its crew, since the latter sinking happened after the time “Patty Gone To Laredo” was made.
We have to start over, our life to renew
The men are fishing in Heaven
From the Bonnie Lou Two
(Isle Aux Morts Boys: The Bonnie Lou II ~ Henneberry/Clark )
Likewise, it’s unlikely that the Patty Hearst saga has anything to do with Dylan’s fragmented, “stream of consciousness” lyrics.
More befitting of Dylan be Poe-like sorrowful songs about deserted towns, winged demons and angels.
And ghost-like many-headed creatures re-incarnated in the tall-timber nests of days gone by:
Maybe they’ll get me, maybe they won’t / But whatever it won’t be tonight
I wish your hand was in mine right now / We could go where the moon is white
For years they had me locked in a cage
Then they threw me onto the stage
Some things just last longer
than you thought they would
And they never, ever explain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you,
that’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane
Allen Holdsworth was an inimitable British guitar magician for whom even men like Frank Zappa, Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani took their hats off. Contributions to projects by names like U.K., Stanley Clarke and Level 42 are, without exception, Olympic, but Holdsworth (1946-2017) was never really a team player – perhaps a little too self-willed and uncompromising. His true passion was his solo projects, filled with mainly instrumental exercises at the outer limits of guitar virtuosity and eccentric soundscapes. Perhaps not too accessible, but always fascinating. Like his eleventh and last studio album Flat Tire: Music for a Non-Existent Movie (2001). It is – as the title already reveals – a very atmospheric album with, as one of the highlights, the disturbing “Snow Moon” – just as disturbing and even more ominous than Dylan’s We could go where the moon is white, by the way.
Holdsworth is not the first and not the last to try to capture a strong visual idea in music, or to think, after the creation of the music: my, this sounds like a movie soundtrack. Elton John calls his short instrumental interlude on his unjustly somewhat forgotten Blue Moves (1976) “Theme From A Non-Existent TV Series”. Radiohead’s pièce de résistance OK Computer contains the heartbreaking “Exit Music (For A Film)”, which, incidentally, was indeed originally intended for the closing credits of the film Romeo + Juliet (1996). Complete albums by Eno (Music for Films from 1978, Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, and more), side 2 of Bowie’s Low… non-existent films and fantasised scenes prove to be a fertile source of inspiration for many artists.
The suspicion that Dylan wanted to write a veiled murder ballad à la “Soon After Midnight” (Tempest, 2012) with “Dreamin’ Of You”, or at least leave the suggestion open, as in “Cold Irons Bound” and “Dirt Road Blues”, gains more weight in this third decastich. “Maybe they’ll get me”, “locked in a cage’, “thrown onto the stage”… this narrator chooses images and words that, at the very least, insinuate a conflict with law enforcers.
Fitting also with the chosen music, its arrangement and colour. The outtake we finally get in 2008, as a free download to promote the upcoming release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs is, if anything, very, very Lanoisesque. This sound and atmosphere is familiar to us from Lanois’ work for Robbie Robertson’s first solo album, for instance, for a great song like “Somewhere Down The Crazy River”, and equally from Lanois’ more recent solo effort, the beautiful soundtrack for the film Sling Blade (1996). In musical highlights of that soundtrack like “Blue Waltz”, “Asylum” and especially the brilliant “Jimmy Was”, the colour of “Dreamin’ Of You” is unmistakably already pre-cooked, probably also thanks to co-producer Mark Howard, who is the engineer for Time Out Of Mind a few months after recording Sling Blade. We hear the same space, the same reverb of Lanois’ guitar notes swirling around in “Shenandoah”, “Bettina” and “Secret Place”, his very characteristic carpet of guitars at all, all over the soundtrack, and on “Jimmy Was” the drum part is even almost identical to “Dreamin’ Of You”;
Besides the sound of the soundtrack, Dylan’s lyrics occasionally skim remarkably close along the film script – as this verse seems to express the introduction of Billy Bob Thornton’s Karl Childers. Twenty-five years ago, as a twelve-year-old, the feeble-minded Karl murdered his mother and her lover, and has been put away in a mental hospital ever since. And now he is being released: For years they had me locked in a cage / Then they threw me onto the stage. He is cured, or at least: no longer considered a danger to society. Which Karl can relate to: “I don’t reckon I got no reason to kill nobody.” Incidentally, according to Dylan researcher Scott Warmuth the direct inspiration comes again from Henry Rollins; “For years they had me locked in a cage” is the opening line of one of the poems in his See a Grown Man Cry: Collected Work, 1988-1991.
Likewise, the potentially romantic walk in the moonshine happens to be in keeping with a film scene;
LINDA
Karl, why don’t you and Melinda go take a walk. It’s nice out.
KARL
All right then. He gets up and walks toward the front door. Melinda gets up and tries to catch up. EXT. SIDEWALK – NIGHT Karl and Melinda are walking in the moonlight. It seems a little hard for Melinda to keep up.
… but that scene is above all touchingly awkward and funny, and has no relation whatsoever to the subcutaneous threat in Dylan’s I wish your hand was in mine right now / We could go where the moon is white. The adjective “white” is particularly striking – in song and poetry, a colourless moon is actually always “pale”. “Copper Kettle”, “Sleepy Time Down South”, Hank Williams’ “When God Comes And Gathers His Jewels”, “East Of The Sun”, the American Songbook monument “The Nearness Of You”… all songs from Dylan’s jukebox with moonlight, and that light is always pale. “White” is a tad more ominous, maybe that’s why. And a bit more nineteenth-century, perhaps – both Melville and Poe sometimes colour their moon white too. Melville in Dylan’s beloved Moby Dick (“as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead”) and Poe in his early work Tamarlane (1827);
What tho' the moon—the white moon
Shed all the splendour of her noon,
Her smile is chilly—and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
… in both cases, evidently, to give a threatening, sinister touch to the narrative. And it is of course, for the third time already in this Dylan song, again a director’s instruction for the lighting technician.
The repetitiveness of the endlessly repeated five-tone lick over the same four chords from start to finish strengthens the suspicion: the film fan Dylan sees a film scene in his mind’s eye during the creation of the song – like one of those wordless interludes in which the camera follows the protagonist on his way to the next key scene. He walks along a dusty road at sunset, we get a backlit wide shot of a panoramic landscape and a lonely protagonist trudging along, a close-up of the man on a bridge staring at the water flowing underneath, usually interspersed with slow-motion flashbacks in sepia tones, of the man at the grave of a child, something like that. An interplay, in any case, where the director needs music, preferably with a repeating motif and minor chords.
It is beginning to look as if Henry Rollins has projected an unsettling character onto Dylan’s inner white screen – and that the musician Dylan hears the soundtrack to it.
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 4: If moonshine don’t kill me
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
In the last post we looked at some of Dylan’s core songs from the 1960s in terms of an increasing rigidity of musical form, a loss of fluidity with what I called the ‘dumpty-dum’ effect. However, if we move forward forty-odd years to Dylan’s more recent work, we hardly notice any loss of fluidity, particularly with the jazz-oriented songs from Love and Theft. Some of these songs, ‘High Water,’ ‘Summer Days’ and ‘Moonlight’ have been covered in previous posts, and we have heard some stunning performances of those songs.
‘Po Boy’ is Dylan’s jazziest composition and 2005 performances reflect that. Despite the jokiness of it, I see it as a protest song, a Great Depression-era song dealing with a black man on the run from Jim Crow laws and the police, trying not to ‘fall between the cars’ (for non-Americans that’s train carriages). In this New York performance (30th April) Dylan turns his upsinging into a jazz style, and Herron’s violin evokes the era in fine swinging style.
Po Boy
We have a particularly good performance from Dublin (2nd night) of ‘Till I Fell in Love with You’ which is more of a blues than jazz, and given a lighter touch than in previous years with a minimal instrumental background and a bit of a swing to avoid the dumpty dum. This is my favourite performance of the song, with its consummate vocal and sense of the dance music of the era, the same era as ‘Po Boy.’
Till I fell in love with you
I am however less certain about this London (3rd Night) version of the album’s master work, ‘Mississippi.’ It has all the hallmarks of these great London shows, a strong vocal and a brilliant recording.
My problem is with the skipping, lolloping beat Dylan has put behind the song. He could be aiming to swing it, but it starts to sound a bit dumpty-dum to me. The issue here is the loss of the emotional intensity that drives the song, although I am reminded of Dylan’s attempts to lighten the song, and the wonderful acoustic version on Tell Tale Signs.
My favourite Dylan couplet:
All my powers of expression, my thoughts so sublime
Can never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Mississippi
Finally from Love and Theft, we have that jazzy, 1920’s style ‘Floater.’ There’s no other song quite like it in Dylan’s canon. It’s an irresistible, bouncy piece of whimsy. I remember first hearing it, thinking ‘where the hell does this come from?’ He creates a narrator who is looking back fondly on something of a Norman Rockwell childhood. Dylan doesn’t mess with the song and delivers it straight. With violin and whimsical harp, this one’s a treat. (Sorry, no date for this one.)
Floater
Leaving Love and Theft behind, we go back to Time out of Mind and start with perhaps the jazziest composition in that album, ‘Million Miles.’ I feel a ‘best ever’ moment coming on here. I loved the 2003 performance for its vocal power (See NET 2003, Part 1), but nothing matches the subtlety and bluesy broodiness of this performance (Manchester, 16th Nov). With bonus masterful muted harp break to finish it off.
Million Miles
And if you would like to see Dylan in action:
While on the subject of mood songs, let’s check out ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’ from the New York concert. This song will go on evolving right through to 2019. It is the most powerful evocation of approaching death that Dylan wrote (except ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ perhaps). This is a slow, broody version, with a spacey muted harp break. Just how the upsinging works for a song like this however I’ll leave over to you…
It’s Not Dark Yet
There’s a beautifully clear recording of ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ (10th July Illinois.) Dylan is in great voice, and it’s a confident performance. What bothers me with this one is the dreaded upsinging. I do appreciate that Dylan is trying to bring some variety into his vocal expression, and training his voice to make those octave leaps, but it becomes an affectation, a regrettable vocal mannerism. For some songs it might work okay, but for this one, well again, I have to leave it over to you…
Trying to Get to Heaven
Not as well recorded, but arguably a better performance is this ‘Things Have Changed.’ (4th Nov). No upsinging at all, but a swinging, passionate performance enlivened with Herron’s violin once more. The raw power of the song comes across despite the recording. I’m glad this song hasn’t changed.
Things have changed
We have to wind the clock back now to 1991, and Under A Red Sky, for this fast-paced ‘God Knows.’ (Dublin, 2nd night.) The song kicks itself into rocker. A bit of dumpty-dum works fine here. I count this as a protest song which, like ‘Masters of War,’ doesn’t lose its relevance with the passing years. There is a desperation, a feature of the songs from that album, and an urgency to it. The phrase ‘God knows’ is used in both its ironical and straight sense.
God knows that when you see it
God knows you've got to weep
God knows the secrets of your heart
He'll tell them to you when you're asleep
Chilling.
God Knows
Now back to Oh Mercy to catch a shooting star. Since 2000 we have had many intense performances of this song. Those performances expressed the power of the nostalgia that drives the song. Love or salvation, it’s all the same yearning. Despite the upsinging, this is a forceful vocal. Although it needs the slow tempo, this one’s a bit more sedate than previous performances. For some who have enjoyed previous performances, this might lumber along somewhat. The final harp break lifts it, however. (30th Oct)
Shooting Star
Now we have to shoot back to the gospel era, to revisit, first ‘Lenny Bruce,’ generally considered one of the weaker songs from Shot of Love (1981). That may well be, but I think that Dylan, who loves to play with personas and pen dramatic monologues, is playing it straight here. It’s a tribute song. A eulogy, and a eulogy is fond reminiscence of someone who has died, usually delivered at a funeral. It’s a chance to be sentimental and say what qualities of the deceased you most admire. Sincerity rather than literary cleverness is its hallmark. In that respect, the modest ‘Lenny Bruce’ works just fine.
And so does this performance from 16th April.
Lenny Bruce
‘Saving Grace’ from Saved (1980). Dylan played it thirty-two times during the NET, and only twice in 2005. The song, another of those occasional visitors, is on its way out, and will be played only once more in 2012.
It’s not my favourite Dylan gospel song, but I value it for expressing the sense we get sometimes that life is blessed, and that we have been touched by a larger sense of grace. To be in a ‘state of grace’ is to be in a blessed state indeed. (11th April) For my ear, this is one of the better performances. It’s slow but not too thumpy, Dylan pours everything into the vocal and Herron polishes it off with a soul rending violin break.
Saving Grace
‘I Believe In You’ from Slow Train Coming (1979) is in a similar position. It was played six times in 2005, but is also on its way out. By 2009 it will be gone. What seems remarkable, given the vocal virtuosity of the 1980 Toronto performance, is that Dylan can capture the extremity of this passion in these later years even with his throat sounding half gone. The 2004 performance is particularly solid. (See NET, 2004, part 6) There he proved he could do it, and he does it again here, although he keeps it pretty much in the lower register. The shimmering restraint of the harp break gives the song a whole new sense. The sense that this is not a hysterical assertion of faith (Montreal 1980) but something gentler and more considered. A love that simmers beneath the surface. A love that can be more quietly stated, but with just as much dedication.
I believe in you
We now turn back the page a year to 1978 and Street Legal. Dylan’s old friend ‘Senor’ has grown more sedate over the past three years. Consider the wild ending of the 2003 performance (NET, 2003, part 2) with these more controlled 2005 versions. The first is from Dublin, 2nd night. A high-quality performance.
Senor (A)
Despite the excellence of that performance, this one from London (1st Night) is a good rival. Maybe a touch more desperation. (By the way, I missed this London/Dublin pair when doing my first two posts for this year). A touch of wildness at the end. You have to go back to the 2003 performance to beat that ecstatic harp.
Senor (B)
We have wound the clock back now to Blood on the Tracks (1974) and Dylan’s most regular friend of all, ‘Tangled Up In Blue.’ Where would we be without it? According to the official Dylan website, it has been performed a phenomenal 1648 times. In 2005 this stadium rock song par-excellence suffered something of an eclipse, being played only four times. This epic ruled from 1993, with its twelve/thirteen minute performances, to 2003 with a ‘best ever’ wild performance. It was to come back in 2006, but by 2009 the arrangement was quite different. Those interested in the history of the song might like to check out my Tangled Up In Harmonicas post
This performance from 29th October (Oberhausen) is not particularly remarkable and lacks the harp break at the end which, in previous performances, generated a lot of musical excitement.
Tangled Up in Blue
That brings us back to the 1960s where we began in Part 5, and I have enough room to squeeze in a couple of songs that didn’t make it into Part 5.
This London (1st night) performance of ‘Queen Jane Approximately,’ joins a growing list of stunning performances of this song. It’s a rare but valued visitor, with only seventy-five performances in all. The older Dylan seems to relish the world-weariness of the song, turning it into an eight-minute epic.
Queen Jane
I thought we’d better catch that little ballad, ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’ before it disappears from the setlists. This is its second to last performance (the last will be in 2008) and it’s easy to see why so many other artists, including Elvis Presley, covered the song. It belongs with ‘Don’t Think Twice’ and ‘One Too Many Mornings’ as a song of regret, and is an exquisite lyric:
I can’t see my reflection in the waters
I can’t speak the sounds that show no pain
I can’t hear the echo of my footsteps
Or can’t remember the sound of my own name
That says it all. See you soon with an epilogue for 2005.
“Can’t Escape From You”, inspired by the Bing Crosby song, is one by Bob Dylan with a fragmented narrative that deliberately leaves the meaning of the piece open to more than one interpretation on both the micro- and macro-level in regards to the existential position of human beings in the whole wide Universe.
Applying the template of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” – the 13th century Italian poet figuratively climbs from the basement of Hell to the rooftop of Heaven while he’s still alive.
Using the template helps to uncover a unity in the lyrics of Dylan’s otherwise rather amorphous song.
Trains are waiting at the station; one heading for Hell; one for Purgatory; and one for Heaven.
Dante boards the one going to Hell:
Oh, the train is rolling
All along the homeward way
All my hopes are over the horizon
All my dreams are gone astray
Its passenger dreams of his beloved Beatrice, whom he has left behind – tells her that he has abandoned all hope:
The hills darkly shaded
Stars fall from above
All the joys of earth have faded
The night's untouched, my love
Another train’s leaving for Purgatory, but for now Dante’s in Hell, and he might as well make the best of it:
I'll be here 'til tomorrow
Beneath a shroud of gray
I'll pretend I'm free of sorrow
My heart is miles away
Dante worries that he’s agonna get stuck in Hell:
The dead bells are ringing
My train is overdue
To your memories I'm clinging
I can't escape from you
At last the train arrives. In Purgatory, Dante knows another one will take him on to Heaven.
But it won’t leave until he’s cleansed of all sins:
Well, there's the sound of thunder
Roaring loud and long
Sometimes you got to wonder
God knows I've done nothing wrong
And not before Beatrice gives him a good scolding:
Ah, you've wasted all your power
You've thrown out the Christmas pie
Now you're withered like a flower
You'll play the fool and die
The poet snaps back at Beatrice for saying he’s not worthy for the Christian afterlife – just because he dressed in black vinyl:
I'm neither sad nor sorry
I'm all dressed up in black
I fought for fame and glory
And you tried to break my back
The Gnostic-like story goes on; in short, Dante Dylan reaches Seventh Heaven, but not the sublimely lit place where Beatrice waits for him beyond the Fixed Stars.
Before that happens, her smile will surely blind him:
The path is never ending
The stars they never age
The morning light is blinding
All the world's a stage
(Bob Dylan: Can't Escape From You)
Bob Dylan And Dante (Part XI)
“Can’t Get Away From You” can be considered an allegorical song,
a mini-rendition of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. The narrator in the song reaches Seventh Heaven where an individual tries to rationally balance the four fluids in the body (made up of fire, earth, air, and water) by restraining impulses that lead to excess – for example, too much sexual activity, or the accumulation of too many material objects.
Apollo, who’s the mythological Sun god, is both rational as well as wise; he plays Music.
The ideal balance, at least on earth, Dante Dylan fails to reach:
In the far off sweet forever
The sunshine peeking through
We should've walked together
I can't escape from you
His beloved (and living Beatrice, indicated by her shadow) composed more of water; he more of fire.
Sadly, things don’t work out in the end:
I cannot grasp the shadows
That gather near my door
The rainfall round my window
I wished I'd seen you more
Dante comes to terms with the situation he’s now in, but he’s sorrowful about how he handled matters:
Should be the time of gladness
Happy faces everywhere
The mystery of madness
Is propagating in the air
Expresses the Romantic vision of an idyllic country life that’s closer to the
far-away stars:
I don't like the city
Not like some folks do
Isn't it a pity
I can't escape from you:
Elysium lost
We ploughed the fields of Heaven
Right down to the end
I hope I can be forgiven
If any of my words offend
In those Elysian Fields on Earth:
All our days were splendid
They were simple, and they were plain
It never should have ended
I should have kissed you in the rain
Where grow flowers representing the innocence of youth, and, in Christianity, the Holy Trinity:
I've been thinking things over
All the moments full of grace
The primrose and the clover
Your ever-changing face
Where Beatice makes love to the unknowable and mysterious Godhead:
Can't help looking at you
You made love with God-knows-who
Never found a gal to match you
I can't escape from you
(Bob Dylan: Can't Escape From You)
The song lyrics, an epic narrative; with accompanying music to match the sombre mood… a Wonder to behold!
Bob Dylan And Dante (Part XII)
By Larry Fyffe
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan, in the following lyrics, makes it clear he’s aware of Dante Alighieri.
Dante with a Christian background, Dylan, a Jewish one:
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
(Bob Dylan: Tangled Up In Blue)
Like Dante, the former Robert Zimmerman, in his writings, references biblical characters, as well as historical and literary ones.
For example, biblical farmer Cain slays his shepherd brother Abel; Cain’s forced to wander off, and later he establishes a sinful city.
In the Ditches of Hell where sinners are punished, Dante and Virgil meet up with fortune tellers and false prophets who claim they’re able to see the future; Cain, a giver of inferior gifts, is there too; his great trespass against his blood brother marked on his face like blood spots on the Moon:
For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine
Both hemispheres, touching the waves
Beneath the towers of Seville
(Dante: The Infernal, Canto XX)
Fraudsters of a modern “Divine Comedy” are referred to in the song lyrics below:
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all of her things inside
Dante’s narrator here seemingly speaks out the window of Limbo, not from Hell:
All except for Cain and Abel
And the Hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or expecting rain
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)
According to the New Testament verse below, claimed it be, by some theologians anyway, that the crucified Jesus descends to the Underworld to rescue from Limbo the souls (shades) of particularly worthy people who are stuck there; they aren’t Christians, but it’s not any fault of their own:
He that descended is the same also
That ascended up far above the heavens
That He might fill all things
(Ephesians 4:10)
Pagan poet Virgil tells Dante he saw this happen:
He drew forth the shade of our first parent
His child Abel, and Noah, a righteous man
And Moses, lawgiver for faith approved ...
(Dante: The Inferno, Canto IV)
Eve, the mother of Cain and Abel, who likes to eat apples, and the murderer Cain, get no mention above; Eve, akin to Persephone, is seduced or raped by Pluto, the mythological ruler of Hades.
The Eve and Cain story be one to consider. Dante’s claim that some souls of Jews are saved by organized superhuman crews surrounding Jesus quite another.
So it can be construed in the double-edged song lyrics quoted beneath – in reference to the Christian concept of “original sin”:
Preacher was talking, there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved ...
It ain't easy to swallow, it sticks in your throat
She gave her heart to the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)
https://youtu.be/8Q1EFoOs_CU
Christian Dante makes no mention of the possibility of Adam’s first wife; that the couple splits up, and Eve, cleaved from Adam, replaces her:
So God created man in his own image
In the image of God created He him
Male and female created He them
(Genesis 1: 27)
Could be she’s acknowledged in the song lyrics below:
Please, see for me if her hair is hanging long
For that's the way I remember her best
(Bob Dylan: Girl From The North Country)
Aaron: Bob’s version of Rank Stranger To Me appeared on Down in the Groove
Tony: This was written by Albert E Brumley, and I must admit I found myself completely without any knowledge of the composer of this wonderful song. He was a tenant farmer (sharecropper) and so grew up picking cotton on the family farm. But his musical talent took him away from the farm to Hartford Musical Institute in Arkansas.
Aside from Rank Stranger, he wrote around 800 songs (including the hymn “I’ll fly away”) and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. He died in 1977.
Aaron: Back in the day the song was recorded by all and sundry with the Stanley Brothers being the most famous.
Tony: Not knowing the song in any version other than Bob’s, it is a bit of a shock to hear this version – and I guess this is how it originally sounded. I don’t know enough about the song to know if Bob was the first person to transform it as he did for “Down in the Groove” version, but my goodness he has put in a lot of power and passion into his version, which I don’t hear in the Stanley Brothers version.
Aaron: More recently the song seems to have fallen out of favor to cover. I only have one other version in my collection: Vic Chesnutt.
He was a quadriplegic with limited use of his hands but realized he could still play basic chords. He recorded 17 albums before his untimely death at just 45 in 2009. Check out his work if you have a moment, he was quite, quite brilliant.
Tony: This is an extraordinary sound with the guitar being dominant over the voices. For me the rhythm feels too plodding, and it is Bob’s move away from this that makes his version seem so good in my opinion. But the notion of making it sound this way is really interesting.
Aaron: The only other recent version was by tenor Alfie Boe on his 2012 album Storyteller.
Tony: This video isn’t playing for me in the UK [to explain, Aaron is in the USA and sends me his selection and comments and then I add mine in England], but I am guessing it works in the US so I am leaving it in. But if it doesn’t work for you, please scroll down…
… for here is one that I have found that works in the UK
This is the Royal Albert Hall performance from 2013 (which I add in case this version isn’t available in your area). The performance starts at around 1 minute 35 seconds.
And for me, this is the one performance that like Bob’s that gives me a piece that I want to listen to today – it delivers the power that the lyrics demand.
I wandered again to my home in the mountainWhere in youth's early dawn, I was happy and freeI looked for my friends but I never could find themI found they were all rank strangers to meEverybody I met seemed to be a rank strangerNo mother or dad, not a friend could I seeThey knew not my name and I knew not their facesI found they were all rank strangers to me"Well, they all moved away, " said the voice of a stranger"To some beautiful home on that bright, crystal sea"Some beautiful day, well, I'll meet 'em in HeavenWhere no one will be a stranger to meEverybody I met seemed to be a rank strangerNo mother or dad, not a friend could I seeThey knew not my name and I knew not their facesI found they were all rank strangers to me
These lyrics are incredibly powerful and they deserve a performance like this, or like Bob’s, to do them justice.
And oh, to have a voice like Alfie Boe’s!
Thanks Aaron as ever for launching us yet again into another fascinating musical journey. I really do enjoy these journies of discovery.
The only official publication of the lyrics of “Dreamin’ Of You” is on www.bobdylan.com, on the official site. In Lyrics 1962-2001 from 2004 there are no lyrics of outtakes in the chapter Time Out Of Mind, only the lyrics of “Things Have Changed” under “additional lyrics”. In the successor, The Lyrics 1961-2012 (2016) “Red River Shore” is added too, again with the indication “additional lyrics”. The word “outtake” is never used anyway, and would of course be incorrect in the case of the Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed”; that song was recorded two and a half years after Time Out Of Mind, somewhere between May and July 1999. When compiling the book edition, the choice was apparently made to place the song with Time Out Of Mind for practical reasons only – although chronologically it is actually closer to “Love And Theft” (recorded May 2001).
On that only official publication then of “Dreamin’ Of You”, on the site that is, the lyrics are presented in ten stanzas. Each second verse ends with the recurring lines I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do / And it’s driving me insane, which we can call the refrain with some tolerance. Some irregularities do stand out, though:
– the ten stanzas alternate between four and six verses, except for the second stanza, which has five verses;
– the poet seems to have fixed a rhyme scheme in mind, but that scheme is not correct in a few places – or not yet, assuming that Dylan has recorded a work in progress;
– the line breaks in the published text seem rather arbitrary, hence perhaps the “not quite right” second stanza with the different number of five lines – in any case, presented like this, the lyrics ignore existing rhyme and a content-wise logical division into strophes.
All in all, it does seem that Dylan had a much tighter, more logical structure in mind: not stanzas of varying length, but five stanzas of ten lines, rhyme scheme aabbcc – deed, where the last four lines have a chorus function. A rhyme scheme like Sir Walter Scott uses, for instance, in the nineteenth century (in The Lay of the Last Minstrel). The published text is fairly easy to rearrange into this structure, or rather: to restore. The first two stanzas, for example, are on the site shown as a four-line stanza plus a five-line stanza:
The light in this place is really bad
Like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now
I’m expecting to wake up from a dream
Means so much, the softest touch
By the grave of some child, who neither wept or smiled
I pondered my faith in the rain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane
Illogical sentence breaks (verse 3 to 4, for example), only two end rhymes, an overdose of inner rhymes… a restructuring to a ten-line couplet seems much more obvious:
The light in this place is really bad,
like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now I’m expecting to wake up from a dream
Means so much,
The softest touch,
By the grave of some child,
who neither wept or smiled.
I pondered my faith in the rain -
I’ve been dreamin’ of you,
That’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane
The strongest indication for this option is the aabbcc – deed rhyme scheme. The whole text can be reformed into this scheme (still having three “wrong” rhymes, though – again: work in progress, presumably). So, the next two stanzas are not stanza 3 and 4, but the second ten-line stanza:
Somewhere dawn is breaking / Light is streaking ‘cross the floor
Church bells are ringing / I wonder who they’re ringing for
Travel under any star
You’ll see me wherever you are
The shadowy past
is awake and so vast
I’m sleeping in the palace of pain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you,
that’s all I do
But it’s driving me insane
The same number of lines, a similar syllable distribution per stanza, an identical rhyme scheme… it seems very likely that this was the form the poet had in mind. Why Dylan, or the book editor, or the web editor, conceals this form is unclear. Maybe he thinks it looks corny, or that dissimilar couplets are cooler, or whatever. It does occur quite often, actually – that the layout of the official publication ignores or disguises the “true” form of a song text. The most extreme example is “No Time To Think”, which is in fact a long, cleverly composed sonnet cycle of nine inverted sonnets, and there are plenty of other examples (“Where Are You Tonight”, “Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, to name but three). The rearranging of the lyrics into their “real” form, as with this song, usually reveals cast-iron, classic poetry forms – and shows authentic, honest craftsmanship. Nothing to be ashamed of, in any case.
Anyway; “Dreamin’Of You”. The content of this second ten-line stanza builds on the first. Again, it starts with a stage direction for the lighting technician, and there is again a reference to a grave, to a cemetery, to a death, at any rate. At least, variations of the expression Church bells are ringing / I wonder who they’re ringing for in blues lyrics always refer to death bells (not to an ordinary church service, hardly ever to wedding bells). Dylan knows it from blues classics as Roosevelt Sykes’ “Sad And Lonely Day” from 1933, from “Stop And Listen Blues” by The Mississippi Sheiks (1929) and Muddy Waters’ “Buryin’ Ground Blues”(1947). And Dylan himself sings it on his debut album, in “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”:
Did you ever hear them church bells tone
Means another poor boy is dead and gone
… as Dylan himself incorporates it in the Blood On The Tracks outtake “Call Letter Blues” (Well, I walked all night long / Listenin’ to them church bells tone). And in the big sister of “Dreamin’ Of You” of course, in “Can’t Escape From You” on Modern Times:
The dead bells are ringing
My train is overdue
To your memory I’m clinging
I can’t escape from you
Ringing church bells, in short, always mean death, both in the blues and with Dylan. Something similar applies to shadowy in the verse “The shadowy past is awake and so vast”. In the canon, in American Songbook classics like “I Surrender, Dear”, or “The Lamp Is Low”, or the song of which “Dreamin’ Of You” is a kind of negative image, in “I Thought About You”, shadowy usually signals: idyll, romance, the place where lovers meet:
I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you
… but with Dylan it is always threatening, ominous. The shadowy sun from “Only A Pawn In Their Game”, the shadowy world from “Jokerman”, and the passage about Fred Neill in the first chapter of Chronicles:
“I’d heard stuff about him, that he was an errant sailor, harbored a skiff in Florida, was an underground cop, had hooker friends and a shadowy past.”
… and like shadows and shadowy is also used dozens of times by Henry Rollins – almost always metaphorically, and almost always with a sinister connotation;
Walk away from me as fast as you canNever speak of me or to me again
It’s too late
For all that
Death is the only shadow on my road
(from “Don’t Come Close”, Now Watch Him Die, 1993)
“Dreamin’ Of You” is apparently, apart from being set up in a rigid, classical structure, also conceived as a sultry, uncomfortable cloak-and-dagger. “Confessions of an Assassin”, perhaps. “Memoirs of a Strangler”, or “Soon After Midnight”, something like that…
———-
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 3: I don’t reckon I got no reason to kill nobody
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:
There are stage plays that run for years to spectacular successes. Written and staged by renowned artists. Played to capacity-filled auditoriums in different countries. Cf. Twyla Tharp’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ or Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country.
But I’d like to tell you about something completely different. A play of an ephemeral life, very well-conceived and written and fabulously played by students only to merit their acting college degrees.
In Poland, part of the acting schools are public. In order to get a degree, aspiring actors have not only to write theses but also to be cast in so-called “degree-plays”, plays that are either adaptations of existing dramas, or newly-conceived works.
One of the most important Polish acting schools is Leon Schiller National Film School in Łódź. Among its alumni, there are many great film and theatre artists: Roman Polański, Jerzy Skolimowski, Zbigniew Rybczyński of the Tango fame, Andrzej Wajda.
This year’s graduates prepared three plays. One of them was written by a renowned Polish musical director Wojciech Kościelniak. It is entitled 115 sen Boba Dylana, or “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”.
The plot tells a story of one Robert Zimmerman (Wiktor Dębski) who arrives in New York City in the early freezing weeks of 1961 and searches for the opportunity to see his idol Woody Guthrie. He’s determined to follow Guthrie’s footsteps and sing his mentor’s songs, or songs Guthrie sang.
While meandering through famous and not-so-famous places he meets several people, as if in a dream, some of them fictitious and some of them real. He learns about the realities of the music business and its expectations (that’s the lesson he gets from Kapitan, played by Kirył Pietruczuk), and he is made aware by a blind girl Moonbird (Karolina Kowalska, a variation on the figure of Louis ‘Moondog’ Hardin) that the only sense in pursuing a career is in being true to oneself and so he has to think of expressing himself and not only mimicking his hero.
He tries to find comfort in the arms of women – a married cloak keeper Chloe (Emilia Lewandowska) and young posh-raised activist Suze (Maria Adamska). He is figuratively told about the dangers of fame through the tale of Edie (Aleksandra Bernatek). Other people he meets are Queequeg (Hubert Sycz) of “Pequod”‘s fame and two clown-like figures Tirli Bim (Marcin Walkowski) and Tirli Bom (Bartek Dargiewicz) who act as commentators of the events.
And, last but not least, in this dream-like, Brechtian landscape he listens to tales of greed and despair, told by Mrs. Thomas (Olga Rayska) and Black Lady (Oliwia Adamowicz).
Eventually, Zimmerman-turned-Dylan he comes to the mental hospital where Woody Guthrie is confined to a bed, and sings him his tribute.
Not much of a plot, apparently.
But what struck me was the way it was all written, staged and played.
The libretto is based on Bob Dylan’s interviews, on his Chronicles Vol. 1, excerpts from Tarantula, Kościelniak’s own ideas – and the songs, in yours truly’s translations (which applies to Tarantula, too). And in spite of its apparently sketchy character, it all seems well-crafted and engaging, the intrigue is not difficult to follow.
These students are of course very young people. And yet they absorbed the storyline and its intricacies, they act and sing with conviction, making the songs their own. They are THEN and THERE, in the 1961 New York and New Jersey. They mention names that are next-to-anonymous to the majority of people in Poland – Woody Guthrie, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Carolyn Hester, Edie Sedgwick, Suze Rotolo – and they seem to know who they talk about.
They managed to capture the audience’s attention fully, through an over-3h-performance. Incredible.
The songs are very cleverly arranged. They do not copy the existing Dylan-wannabes, they do not try to emulate the folk scene. It’s the theatre and its isolated world, and its one-of-a-kind reality requires something different. The students of Łódź’s Music Academy made splendid arrangements, played by a foursome of upright piano, drums (with a djembe), bass guitar and electric guitar, and the music is something unique between, say, Kurt Weill and trip-hop.
Finally, the selection of songs is rather unusual. All songs bar two are long pieces, and the actresses and actors sing them in their entirety, no short cuts. Just see:
The Times They Are a-Changin’, sung by Tirli Bim
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, sung in parts, throughout, by TIrli Bim and Tirli Bom:
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), sung by Kapitan [photo from a different play]:
A Hard Rain-s a-Gonna Fall, sung by Chloe:
Like a Rolling Stone, sung by Edie:
Tempest , sung by Karolina Kowalska
(all 49 verses, and she manages to keep us on a short lead):
North Country Blues, sung by Mrs. Thomas:
Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream…
sung by the whole cast:
Thereafter we had Hurricane, sung by Queequeg, Black Diamond Bay, sung by Black Lady, Gotta Serve Somebody, sung by Tirli Bom, and Song to Woody, sung by Zimmerman/Dylan:
What more can I say? It was impressive. It was moving. It was hope-bringing.
And sadly, it was a fugitive. The School has no rights to perpetuate the event so there was no nor will be any recording, sound- nor videowise. Thus, I just want to spread the message of young Poles who, for a couple of months, have been recreating the world of Dylan songs and his world. And they inhabited it.
After one of the shows, the one that I attended, I met them and we talked for a while. And I could see they were sorry to become aware it was not going to live much longer. They knew they’d done something special.
Richard Thomas points out that Bob Dylan sources the poem below in his song “Crossing The Rubicon”.
Caesar marches on Rome:
The bright red river flows from a modest spring
Through the bottom of a valley
Valleys dividing Gaul from Italian lands
(Lucan: On The Civil War, Book I)
Dante crosses the River Styx, and enters Hades; to the right there is a path that leads to the blissful Elysium Fields:
Here comes the place where cleaves our way
The road to the right to Pluto's dwelling place goes
And leads to Elysium
But the one to the left leads to Tartarus
And speeds the souls of the cursed to doom
(Virgil: The Aeneid, Book I)
In the following song lyrics, Hades is placed above ground; the narrator therein takes on the role of the Trojan Aeneas:
Key West is under the sun, under the radar, under the gun
You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right
Feel the sun on your skin, and the healing virtues of the wind
Key West, Key West is the land of light
(Bob Dylan: Key West)
In Seventh Heaven, Dante meets up with Beatrice in the Elysium Fields; he’s not yet been guided through the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and onward to where they begin to rotate:
For in the smile that glowed in her eyes
I thought that I, with mine, had touched the height
Of both my blessedness and Paradise
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XV)
In the song lyrics quoted beneath, like Dante on tour when he still throws a shadow, the narrator’s quite content to have gotten thus far.
Coulld be said that Dante Dylan decides to give himself to his beloved Beatrice once he passes from this Earth:
Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things
I'll see you are sunrise, I'll see you at dawn
I'll lay down beside you when everyone's gone
(Bob Dylan: I've Made up My Mind To Give Myself to You)
Part IX
“Can’t Escape From You”, inspired by the Bing Crosby song, is one by Bob Dylan with a fragmented narrative that deliberately leaves the meaning of the piece open to more than one interpretation on both the micro- and macro-level in regards to the existential position of human beings in the whole wide Universe.
Applying the template of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” – the 13th century Italian poet figuratively climbs from the basement of Hell to the rooftop of Heaven while he’s still alive.
Using the template helps to uncover a unity in the lyrics of Dylan’s otherwise rather amorphous song.
Trains are waiting at the station; one heading for Hell; one for Purgatory; and one for Heaven.
Dante boards the one going to Hell:
Oh, the train is rolling
All along the homeward way
All my hopes are over the horizon
All my dreams are gone astray
Its passenger dreams of his beloved Beatrice, whom he has left behind – tells her that he has abandoned all hope:
The hills darkly shaded
Stars fall from above
All the joys of earth have faded
The night's untouched, my love
Another train’s leaving for Purgatory, but for now Dante’s in Hell, and he might as well make the best of it:
I'll be here 'til tomorrow
Beneath a shroud of gray
I'll pretend I'm free of sorrow
My heart is miles away
Dante worries that he’s agonna get stuck in Hell:
The dead bells are ringing
My train is overdue
To your memories I'm clinging
I can't escape from you
At last the train arrives. In Purgatory, Dante knows another one will take him on to Heaven.
But it won’t leave until he’s cleansed of all sins:
Well, there's the sound of thunder
Roaring loud and long
Sometimes you got to wonder
God knows I've done nothing wrong
And not before Beatrice gives him a good scolding:
Ah, you've wasted all your power
You've thrown out the Christmas pie
Now you're withered like a flower
You'll play the fool and die
The poet snaps back at Beatrice for saying he’s not worthy for the Christian afterlife:
I'm neither sad nor sorry
I'm all dressed up in black
I fought for fame and glory
And you tried to break my back
The Gnostic-like story goes on; in short, Dante Dylan reaches Seventh Heaven, but not the sublimely lit place where Beatrice waits for him beyond the Fixed Stars.
Before that happens, her smile would surely blind him:
The path is never ending
The stars they never age
The morning light is blinding
All the world's a stage
(Bob Dylan: Can't Escape From You)
What can you do with a song that is not only incredibly famous in terms of its original but has had such a vast number of covers that it is pretty difficult to imagine anything else being possible?
One answer seems to be to produce a vast number of instrumental covers, many of which are, well, rather bizarre and odd. Take these two…
I am not going further down that road, but there are plenty more out there if you find that interesting.
Meanwhile, we’ve already done an article on how Lay Lady Lay can be used as the basis for something else, with Lay Lady Lay: The Sampler Sessions.
And Jochen has also chosen his selection of winning covers with versions by Magnet, Ministry, Cher and Isaac Hayes, and that selection is most certainly worth looking into.
So is there anything else? Indiana Nomma goes somewhere else again, and has the virtue of sounding like she really believes it and wants to be performing the song. It is perfectly arranged and performed, and nothing in the production shows any sign of someone saying, “we need to do something else here guys.” It just is, it sounds complete. I could almost believe that this is how the piece was initially imagined.
Of course, some have really tried to play around with the chords, the melody and rhythm to see what happens. And the answer usually is nothing very exciting. But here’s one that I would give 10 out of 10 to, for inventiveness and production. It does show that differences can be made even with songs we know 100%.
Moving on, the next track is a version that does nothing new, and treats the song as it is, without trying to go anywhere else. And yet contains far more than enough for me to want to keep listening, even though I know exactly where it is going.
How does that happen? I guess, by no one trying too hard, and just accepting the fact that the song as written is complete in itself. It needs an accompaniment, but that’s it… It is, and us listeners simply need to take it for what it is.
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
Just like the equally compelling time document The Bootleg Series 12 – The Cutting Edge 1965-66 (2015), on which we can voyeuristically follow the evolution from run-up to final studio recording (such as the twenty takes of “Like A Rolling Stone”), the brilliant The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006 from 2008 does give us a glimpse into the phase before as well, into the sketchbook, into the process of coming up with a lyric. We hear how lines and word combinations from the rejected “Marchin’ To The City” are transferred to “Not Dark Yet” and “‘Til I Fell In Love With You”, and we get alternative recordings with textual differences (“Born In Time” and “Dignity”, for example).
The rejected outtake “Dreamin’ Of You” offers the same insight as “Marchin’ To The City”, and more: apart from the gems Dylan picks out to use for other songs, it seems to reveal what a very first seed for a Dylan lyric can be. At least, that’s what the opening lines appear to give us, the opening which will eventually, after the rejection, be transferred to “Standing In The Doorway”:
The light in this place is really bad
Like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now
I’m expecting to wake up from a dream
The opening line, as Dylan researcher Scott Warmuth found, is lifted in its entirety from Henry Rollins’ poem “One Way Conversation” (in See A Grown Man Cry, 1992);
Yea, hi I thought I'd check in
This house I'm at is full of bugs
There's lots of things that I don't tell you
Lots of things that don't have words to wear
The light in this place is really bad
I'm thinking about your eyes
Hell, we're tied up in this shit you know
Stuck behind walls, frozen in doorways
I hope these bugs don't get into my food
… and from the remaining eight lines, which are similar in content, it becomes clear that the narrator is talking to an answering machine and is in a slightly detached state; he does not know exactly where he is, for example. Somewhere halfway through, there is then the line that Dylan has underlined, “The light in this place is really bad”, and which initially inspires him to the somewhat alienating, and in any case original metaphor, “Like being at the bottom of a stream”. Alienating, because few listeners or readers will have an aha-experience with “the light at the bottom of a stream” – given that a metaphor is actually meant to make something clear by naming a resemblance to something familiar. But then, of course, this characteristic does not apply so much to poetry. And to an even lesser extent to Dylan’s poetry.
“Being at the bottom of a stream” forces the associations to lugubrious distances, as a matter of fact. It is a location where we find victims of a witchcraft trial, where Ophelia ends up after her suicide, it is a classic dumping ground for murder weapons whose owner wants to get rid of, and more macabre connotations just like these – but there are really no positive links with a river bottom. The gloominess is triggered, presumably, by the morbid Now Watch Him Die, the 1993 work in which Henry Rollins processes the horror of the gruesome, senseless murder of his friend Joe Cole (who is shot through the head point-blank right before Henry’s eyes in a brutal robbery). Dylan incorporates more fragments from that chilling work into his Time Out Of Mind songs, like in this stanza; the fourth line, “I’m expecting to wake up from a dream”, is also taken from Now Watch Him Die:
“In semi-darkness I think about my friend. In a few days it will be a year since his death. I remember when it was a week. I sat behind the desk of the office space I was living in and I was amazed at how unreal the entire week had been. I kept expecting to wake up from it like a dream.”
… whereby Dylan will have poetically associated the setting, in semi-darkness, with that other Rollins quote The light in this place is really bad – and the morbid context might then trigger the sinister décor, the bottom of the stream.
In any case, the continuation of this first stanza confirms that we should not understand the title Dreamin’ Of You romantically, not as the title of a love song:
Means so much, the softest touch
By the grave of some child, who neither wept or smiled
I pondered my faith in the rain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane
…the grave of “some child”, a crisis of faith at a funeral in the rain, the longing for a comforting hand – this is the despair of a narrator left behind after the death of his loved one. With similar word choice and identical emotion as one of Bob Forrest’s (well, officially The Bicycle Thief’s) most beautiful, raw mourning songs “Everyone Asks” from 1999, in which he poignantly tries to come to terms with the death of a loved one almost a year ago:
Why do I always
Call your name
If it doesn't stop
I'll go insane
I just know
https://youtu.be/8ztUSXZw2bg
Wonderful song by the devout Dylan fan Forrest, in whose work we hear more Dylan echoes – although usually more raw, more unadorned than at Dylan, of course. Dylan, meanwhile, is apparently also pleased with the word combinations in this first stanza: after the song’s dismissal, the line “means so much, the softest touch” moves to “Standing in the Doorway” as well (as “Dreamin’ Of You” will be the purveyor of the lyrics to that song anyway).
For the colour of his song the poet aims, or so it seems, at the nineteenth century, at “steamboat, civil war, very Mark Twain,” as guitarist Duke Robillard would say about that other discard, “Red River Shore”. The grave of a child is already a Chekhovian background, the disturbing character description who neither wept or smiled seems to come from Henry James (“she only looked at him silently in return, neither weeping, nor smiling, nor putting out her hand,” Madame De Mauves, 1874), and pondering faith in the rain is a rather Walt Whitman-like image.
It appears, all in all, as if Dylan has ticked those two Rollins lines, and then opened the floodgates. In the run-up to Time Out Of Mind, he has already dug a bed, the nineteenth-century steamboat, Mark Twain bed, and inspired the stream of consciousness leads him along Checkhov, Whitman and Henry James, along nineteenth-century word combinations and images to be found at the bottom of this stream. Far, far away from Henry Rollins, in any case.
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 2: The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Aaron:My favorite performance from the two acoustic albums would be Bob’s take of “Love Henry”. It’s another song which has gone through many variations, lyrics and titles over the years
Here are the lyrics from the official Dylan site
1. "Get down, get down, Love Henry," she cried.
"And stay all night with me.
I have gold chains, and the finest I have
I'll apply them all to thee."
2. "I can't get down and I shan't get down,
Or stay all night with thee.
Some pretty little girl in Cornersville
I love far better than thee."
3. He layed his head on a pillow of down.
Kisses she gave him three.
With a penny knife that she held in her hand
She murdered mortal he.
4. "Get well, get well, Love Henry, " She cried,
"Get well, get well," said she.
"Oh don't you see my own heart's blood
Come flowin' down so free?"
5. She took him by his long yellow hair,
And also by his feet.
She plunged him into well water, where
It runs both cold and deep.
6. "Lie there, lie there, Love Henry," she cried,
"Til the flesh rots off your bones.
Some pretty little girl in Cornersville
Will mourn for your return."
7. "Hush up, hush up, my parrot," she cried,
"And light on my right knee.
The doors to your cage shall be decked with gold
And hung on a willow tree."
9. "I won't fly down, I can't fly down
And light on your right knee.
A girl who would murder her own true love
Would kill a little bird like me."
Tony: This song goes back to Scotland in the 18th century, and possibly before, and was collected both by Francis James Child and by Cecil Sharpe as they attempted to record the musical traditions of the two nations before they were lost forever.
The name of the song varies enormously across the British Isles and the United States, including Henry Lee, Earl Richard and the rather obvious, The Proud Girl.
Across all the versions the young man tells the woman he’s in love with another, she gets him drunk (although not in all versions), seduces him (ditto) and then murders him, throwing the body into the river.
The bird (sometimes a parrot) then talks with her but refuses to come to the woman for fear of being murdered also. When challenged later the woman denies killing her lover, but later still admits it and is burned at the stake for her crime.
Dylan performs it without embellishment which gives us a lot of time to appreciate the excellent guitar work throughout.
Aaron:Here are a couple of other more recent versions for comparison
Ralph Stanley from 2002
Tony: This shows us at once just how the accompaniment can be varied to give a totally different feel to the song and here we don’t get any of the bleakness that comes from Dylan’s accompaniment. Indeed Dylan’s decision to play an instrumental verse at the start adds to the sense of loneliness and desolation not to say hopelessness across the whole song – and I think this is missing in Henry Lee’s version. This version makes me feel that the song has been adapted to the musical accompaniment he wants to add. With Dylan it is the other way around.
PJ Harvey & Nick Cave
This 1996 recording from the “Murder Ballads” album and has a different set of lyrics. It is one of the recordings where Nick Cave’s singing was recorded in one place and Harvey’s in a completely different location, and was one of a series of murder ballads the band recorded – hence the name of the album! I’m not sure I need the video – I rather like the music to speak for itself. Besides these two are musicians, not actors.
But that’s just me. I’ll stick with Dylan’s version.
In ancient Greek/Roman mythology, King Minos, after his death, becomes a stern Judge of the Dead. In “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, Minos, at the entrance of Hell, issues a warning to the Italian poet from the thirteenth century for whom Beatrice has arranged a sightseeing tour of Hell, then of Purgatory, and finally of Heaven:
And eternal I endure
And all hope abandon ye who enter here
(Dante: The Inferno, Canto Ill)
Akin to portraying himself as Dante crossing the River Styx to Hades, the narrator in the song lyrics below takes on the role of Julius Caesar who crosses the river that leads to Civil War, a hell-on-earth.
An imaginative, artistic mixing together of historical facts and fiction:
I've painted my red wagon, abandoned all hope
And I crossed the Rubicon
Well, the Rubicon is a red river
Going gently as she flows
Redder than your ruby lips
And the blood that flows from the rose
Three miles north of Purgatory
One step from the Great Beyond
(Bob Dylan: Crossing The Rubicon)
References Dante who’s climbed to the Seventh Sphere of Heaven, up to the fixed stars:
Says Beatrice, "Why does my face so entrance you
That you look not upon the lovely Garden below
That blooms the sun beams of Christ?
There the Rose in which the Divine Word is made flesh"
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXIII)
Dante refers to Semele whom Zeus, disguised as an eagle, promises her anything she asks for. Cursed by Hera, Semele asks for a demonstration of his thunderbolts, and the flash of Zeus’ lightning kills her.
Dante below is in danger of being set afire, left smouldering like a tree stuck by a lightning bolt.
Filled with the devine light of Jesus, Beatrice speaks:
Says Beatice, "Were I to smile
You'd be like Semele
When she was turned into ashes"
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXI)
The following more-down-to-earth song lyrics ponder Dante’s dire situation:
Whatever you wanted
Slipped out of my mind
Would you remind me again
If you'd be so kind
Has the record been breaking
Did the needle just skip
Is there somebody waiting
Was there a slip of the lip
(Bob Dylan: What Was It You Wanted)
Bob Dylan And Dante (Part VII)
Richard Thomas points out that Bob Dylan sources the poem below in his song “Crossing The Rubicon”.
Caesar marches on Rome:
The bright red river flows from a modest spring
Through the bottom of a valley
Valleys dividing Gaul from Italian lands
(Lucan: On The Civil War, Book I)
Dante crosses the River Styx, and enters Hades; to the right there is a path that leads to the blissful Elysium Fields:
Here comes the place where cleaves our way
The road to the right to Pluto's dwelling place goes
And leads to Elysium
But the one to the left leads to Tartarus
And speeds the souls of the cursed to doom
(Virgil: The Aeneid, Book I)
In the following song lyrics, Hades is placed above ground; the narrator therein takes on the role of the Trojan Aeneas:
Key West is under the sun, under the radar, under the gun
You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right
Feel the sun on your skin, and the healing virtues of the wind
Key West, Key West is the land of light
(Bob Dylan: Key West)
In Seventh Heaven, Dante meets up with Beatrice in the Elysium Fields; he’s not yet been guided through the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and onward to where they begin to rotate:
For in the smile that glowed in her eyes
I thought that I, with mine, had touched the height
Of both my blessedness and Paradise
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XV)
In the song lyrics quoted beneath, like Dante on tour when he still throws a shadow, the narrator’s quite content to have gotten thus far.
Could be said that Dante Dylan decides to give himself to his beloved Beatrice once he passes from this Earth:
Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things
I'll see you are sunrise, I'll see you at dawn
I'll lay down beside you when everyone's gone
(Bob Dylan: I've Made up My Mind To Give Myself to You)
Some of these old friends are very old indeed and go all the way back to the early 1960s. These are the songs that made Dylan’s name, and he has never forgotten them. He has stuck by them. We like to say that the old ‘protest’ singer has gone, but he has never stopped singing the songs. Each year they appear again, sometimes in new guises.
One of these is ‘Masters of War,’ from the Freewheelin album of 1963. This darkly-driven song has never grown old, but performances have changed drastically over the years. By 2005, we have an emphatic, minimal piano-based version that can raise the hair on the back of your head. Maturity has brought this song some gravitas.
In my article ‘Masters of War & Extinction Rebellion: Bob Dylan’s ongoing contemporary relevance’, I argued that the song can’t die because the world won’t let it, that as long as those masters of war still rule, the song will stay fresh. (See: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/9984) And, with the war in Ukraine raging as I write, who can doubt it?
This performance is from Berlin, (25th October), and to my mind is one of Dylan’s best ever performances of the song.
Masters of War
In my first post for 2005, I suggested that, to commit the sin of quoting myself, ‘these arrangements become dogmatic and thumpy, and might seem to run counter to the spirit of the songs.’ I think what I want to say here is that the songs are not as light on their feet as they were, not as agile in their arrangements and presentation. I’ll try and develop that idea a bit in these posts.
Right from the start ‘Hard Rain’ had a tendency to be a bit dumpty-dum because of the ballad form, but Dylan brilliantly overcomes this in both the Rolling Thunder Tour, with a swirling, hard-driving rock version, and in 1981 with an equally brilliant, fluid gospel version. But by 2005, London residency (4th Night), the dumpty-dum is back and, good as it is, seems too rigid considering those earlier versions.
Hard Rain
We could say something similar about that other great early 1960s masterpiece, ‘Chimes of Freedom.’ This is something of a rarity, an occasional visitor rather than a close friend, having been performed only fifty-six times, with ten of those performances in 2005. This song relates a mystical experience in which the value and grace of all life, especially for the poor and socially outcast, flashes forth in a storm. The stormy elements themselves seem to assert and celebrate the freedom of the spirit for all, and seem like bells tolling
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
In this respect, Dylan’s message hasn’t changed at all. Compare those lyrics with these from ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020):
I feel the Holy Spirit inside and see the light that freedom gives
I believe it’s within the reach of every man who lives
Dylan doesn’t sing all the six verses in this performance from 15th April (Boston), but enough to give us a good sense of the song and what it conveys. Again, however, it becomes dumpty-dum, the lilt of the original becomes somewhat too emphatic. Arguably, the song needs more fluidity to hold us.
Chimes of Freedom
This issue doesn’t arise in the same way with ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown,’ another protest classic from the 60s, because the blues, by its very nature, tends more towards rigidity of form than jazz. In other words, the musical form fits the song.
Hollis Brown
With ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, Dylan’s sustained vocal performance and the minimal nature of the instrumental backings push the problem of rigidity into the background. We don’t lose the narrative to the dumpty-dum. This one’s from Dublin (1st concert).
Hattie Carroll
Although it’s not a blues, ‘John Brown’ comes out of the same bag as ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown,’ a similarly paced protest song, in this case the story of a mother and her soldier son. The reality of war is sharply contrasted to the mother’s rosy image of ‘a good old fashioned war.’ In the wonderful 1994 MTV Unplugged performance, Dylan plays it as a rock song and the lines flow smoothly; here he plays it as a folk blues, happy to allow the thump of an emphatic beat to drive the vocal line. It’s effective in creating a drums of war feeling, but doesn’t allow for a fluid vocal line.
John Brown
We can’t leave these protest songs behind without covering that dearest old friend of all, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin,’ that ode to passing time. Over the years the song has become as much a celebration as a warning, and we have been treated to many majestic versions of it. This performance is not too different from its predecessors in that respect, but again there is this tendency for it to become a bit jerky and ricky-tick. Wonderful harp break for the finale, however. The superiority of these Crystal Cat London recordings is evident here. (2nd night)
The Times they are a changing
Are we really moving away from ‘protest songs’ when we come to ‘Drifter’s Escape’? I don’t think so. The poor drifter is caught up in a chaotic and vicious legal system, which he only escapes by divine intervention, when ‘lightning struck the courthouse out of shape.’ I think it must be the same lightning that flashed out the chimes of freedom in that song. No problem with any lumbering, emphatic quality. This performance, (Reno, 18th March), is one in a now long row of kick-arse rock versions, dating back to 2000. The heavier and thumpier the better.
Drifters escape
Another song from John Wesley Harding that Dylan has been presenting as a kick-arse rocker is ‘Wicked Messenger.’ But here, ( 20th April, Verona, US) it gets a major overhaul. With a new arrangement that curiously pre-figures the way it would sound on Shadow Kingdom, 2021, Dylan rubs off the hard rock edges, and puts a bit of lilt into it.
I’m not too sure of it. I liked the old kick-arse versions. I’m not sure it sustains itself; I’m not sure that a bit of dumpty-dum doesn’t creep in. The song is on its way out in terms of Dylan setlists, and after a few more performances will be gone by 2009. The great years for the song were 2000 – 2002. Fascinating though.
Wicked Messenger.
‘I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine,’ another from the same album, is more of an occasional friend than a regular visitor, being played only thirty-nine times, this being the second to last performance.
We don’t turn to poets for the literal truth. The real St Augustine (of Hippo) was not ‘put out to death’ in the sense of being martyred, but died of illness and old age. Dylan’s dream St Augustine, is a herald, a messenger, and he brings sad news. He wears a coat of solid gold, suggesting spiritual richness and purity, but the souls he’s searching for ‘already have been sold.’ The song ends on a note of anguish.
This bitter-sweet performance is from Dublin (1st Night). Some beautiful steel guitar work from Herron saves it from being too dumpty-dum. Despite the upsinging, or maybe because of it, this is a powerful vocal performance.
St Augustine.
The rigidity, or lack of fluidity, I have been referring to may be the outcome of some successful adaption of Dylan’s early love songs to a more baroque feel. You hear it in this lovely, clear version of ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ and you’ll have to decide how successful that is.
Boots of Spanish Leather
One of the first songs to be given the baroque treatment is ‘Love Minus Zero (No Limit),’ and we have seen some successful adaptions of the song in that style. Here, however, he breaks away from that to deliver a mid-tempo performance, probably closer to the original pace than more recent slow versions. It’s quietly rollicking rather than dumpty-dum. (Dublin 2nd Night)
Love minus zero /No limit
Jubilation greets the opening bars of ‘Don’t Think Twice’, which over the years has become a celebration rather than a sombre reflection. The original affected a jauntiness that Dylan wants to recapture here. That jauntiness saves it from the dumpty-dum. This one from London (1st Night). Note the crowd rousing slammer of an ending.
Don’t think twice
A heavier, thumpier arrangement of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ worked brilliantly when set against Dylan’s soaring voice and harp in 1995. The 2005 arrangement, with hints of the baroque, does not work so well for me. The vocal line feels a bit rushed. It doesn’t feel like the great love song that it is. Somehow the soul of the song seems to have been lost.
It’s all over now baby blue
‘To Ramona’ has been a waltz right from the start, and so arguably suits the dumpty-dum treatment. With the slide guitar, this one has the feeling of a slowed down country waltz. I started off enjoying it very much, as it’s beautifully performed and recorded (London, 1st Night) but by the end I had wearied of the lumbering tempo. Dylan’s harp can often cut across lumbering rhythms and lift them, and although this happens to some extent at the end of the song, Dylan’s ‘tooting’ style on the harp rather accentuates the lumbering effect.
To Ramona
The fast-paced jazz songs, like ‘Summer Days,’ and equally fast-paced rockers like ‘Tombstone Blues,’ are largely immune to the dumpty-dum effect. This band does sound good in kick-arse mode. This one throbs along in fine style. Gets into the groove and doesn’t lose it. (29th June, Louisville, Kentucky.)
Tombstone blues
On the other hand ‘Tears of Rage’ was born with a lumbering beat back in the Basement Tapes days. You could say that The Band, with its album Music from Big Pink pioneered that heavy, ponderous sound. Maybe because of that, this mysterious song bears up well in the 2005 sound. (Hamburg, 24th Oct) It successfully carries both the rage and the grief of the song.
Tears of Rage
For this post, I have saved the best till last. ‘Desolation Row’, a loyal friend indeed. This is a full version, all the verses sung; you can hear that wonderful line, ‘the Titanic sails at dawn.’ Dylan seems to stumble on the verse by accident as he fudges the lyrics on an earlier verse by singing a line from the verse he always misses. That accidental line seems to lead him to the whole verse. This, added to a generally high standard, a willingness to allow this epic to be a twelve-minute epic, makes this one of his best-ever performances of the song. It’s a little too emphatic at times but survives the worst of the dumpty-dum. A powerhouse performance.
Desolation Row
That’s it for eighteen old friends, all from the 1960s. Their joints are a bit stiffer, but they have survived their years. In the next post I’ll look at some other friends from later years and see how they have fared.
Sometimes I hear a performance and it literally (and I literally mean “literally”) sends shivers through my body. Not just down my spine, but through my whole body.
I don’t think that everyone gets this effect, but if you do, there is a chance that the version of “Lay down your weary tune” that follows could do it to you.
“Lay down your weary tune” is a song that has many opportunities to excite in its musical construction and this cover version embraces these to perfection. The unexpected rhythmic change of the second verse, the way the melody meanders, the move from 4/4 to 2/4 and out again at unexpected moments – it is just extraordinary. I would count this as one of the best finds in this whole meandering series of Dylan cover.
I also like the game they have played with the album cover – which I am sure you will get without me spelling it out.
After that there is no point trying to find a version of the song that rivals Ms Lundgren so I’m moving to something utterly different: Jessica Rhaye and The Ramshackle Parade.
Putting a bounce into this song sounds on the face of it a horrible idea, but the band make it work because they have no pretensions to be anything other than they are. But at the same time they retain that extraordinary rhythmic change that is at the heart of the tune. I also like the way the accordion is used effectively and sparingly.
And the use of two vocalists – none of this moves me as the Lundgren version does, but it is enjoyable and so worth hearing.
Of course, I’ll have to include the Byrds giving the song the real Byrds treatment. That sound is now so familiar one only has to hear a bar to know who it is. But the wonder if this version is that the band keep their Byrdyness and yet manage to keep much of the essence of Dylan’s song. (The other wonder is that the spell checker on my computer doesn’t throw a fit at the word Byrdyness!)
I’ll finish with Marley’s Ghost who manage to find harmonies that others have missed along the way.
Marley’s Ghost is an extraordinary band, and really worth discovering if you don’t know them. Their website contains some wonderful gems including among other delights a performance of “It’s all over now” with Old Crowe Medicine Show.
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
If you didn’t see the previous article it might be worth having a look at it now to explain what on earth is going on – and to prepare you for what follows.
So this is now the second song to have emerged for which music has been written, and as with the first song (which I think of as being called “I had a long talk with your aunt”) I’ve simply taken the lyrics and written music around them, without thinking “what would Bob do?” because that just makes the whole thing too difficult – at least for me.
Instead, the music tries to capture the essence of the song. In this case, the 6/8 time relates to the lapping of the waves (hopefully without sounding too corny).
The agreement with Bob was that I would take the lyrics as written and not mess with them, but on this occasion I added one word – “anymore” in verse four, simply because every time I sang the song in rehearsal for the recording I kept slipping it in. It just felt like it needed to be there.
Oh, the laughter of the drowned
It’s being lost in the storm
And the piercing prayers of the found
Where the judgment is still unknown
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
And the bells of dawn are ringing in the night
Like a tune that was played before
I saw you in the wild wind
I wasn’t sure if I loved you or not (anymore)
It was so easy to love you, babe
You were so close and apart of me
I’m still hurting from the visions of dreams
And the smell of rotten meat
I was lyin’ down in the reeds
In the shade behind the wall
Oh, the pleasures of solitude are gone
And the stars are becalmed
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
The music is below but if you have come to this article not having read the previous one I would urge you to read that as well, since it does describe the project that Bob has undertaken to create these lyrics via a computer.
On the other hand, if you are a long term reader you might remember our series Showcase in which readers of Untold Dylan who had made recordings of their own music, or of Dylan songs but with a new interpretation or twist, were welcome to send me recordings and I put them onto this site.
Those recordings are all still online – click the link to Showcase above, and in time I will add these two songs to that.
And in the meantime, if you are a reader of Untold Dylan (as you obviously are or else you wouldn’t be seeing this) and you have made your own recordings of your own music or of versions of Dylan songs which are not already on the internet, do send them to me as an attached file which can be dropped into the site (.wav works well). Email as an attachment to Tony@schools.co.uk
PS I know the phrase in the title “post-Dylan” doesn’t really have any resemblance to the process here, but it seemed more elegant than Dylan-AI or anything else I can come up with.
PPS: I have to say I think the title “The laughter of the drowned” is just amazingly Dylan. If Dylan brought out a new album called “The laughter of the drowned” I think everyone would just be overwhelmed by that title alone. I’m not suggesting my music is something special, but that title is extraordinary. Remember it turned up here first.
It has an irresistible, voyeuristic appeal, the gimmick that Dylan and his producers have used many times over the years. Before the song actually begins, the listener hears shuffling, clinking glasses, studio chatter, a single stray guitar chord, a false start perhaps. Before “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” begins, we hear an acoustic, broken-off start and laughter, and in 1969 Dylan asks producer Bob Johnston “Is it rolling, Bob?”, to name just two examples.
The best-known messy intro of all time is probably The Beatles’ “Get Back”. By now, there must be billions of people who can playback along with McCartney’s enigmatic “Rosetta…” and Lennon’s warm-up exercise “Sweet Loretta thought she was a cleaner…”, can hit an imaginary piano key in sync as Billy Preston and George Harrison are still tuning up, and know every single swirling note of that first twenty-one seconds by heart.
Roxy Music’s first album (1972) opens with babbling and buzz and glass clinking – it sounds like there’s a vernissage going on, and it takes twenty-five seconds for Bryan Ferry’s piano “Remake/Remodel” to pop over it – an opening that is copied over thirty years later on Razorlight’s debut album in the song “Which Way Is Out”, with the same exhilarating effect.
Led Zeppelin’s “Black Country Woman” is introduced with Robert Plant’s question “Shall we roll it Jimmy?”, we hear a plane fly over disturbingly, Jimmy Page wants to wait a little longer, Plant laughs and says “Nah, leave it, yeah.” And Slade’s Noddy Holder insists to this day that his shouted “Baby baby baby” was not part of the song at all, but that he was just testing whether the microphone was on. In vain; the iconic scream has long since been integrated, and is also sung again when Oasis cover “Cum On Feel The Noize” in 1996. Without irony, by the way; the Gallagher brothers are devout Slade fans, as the documentary It’s Slade (1999) also shows, in which Noel solemnly declares:
“People just think when they listen to Slade, they think of Cum On Feel The Noize and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, but: How Does It Feel is easily one of the best songs ever written. Ever. Such a brilliant song. Go on buy it if you’re watching this. It’s on the Greatest Hits. Track 13.”
Lanois and Dylan are evidently aware of the particular charm of a messy intro; Time Out Of Mind opens with six seconds of unstructured studio sounds before Augie Meyer’s staccato organ strikes start “Love Sick”; the first two seconds of guitar rumble on the following “Dirt Road Blues” may remain; Lanois is still looking for a riff and someone (Tony Mangurian, probably) takes his place behind the drums at the start of “Highlands”; and the record is set by “Cold Irons Bound”: fourteen seconds of rudderless guitar and piano notes before bassist Tony Garnier gives the starting signal.
That’s already four of the eleven Time Out Of Mind songs with such a chaotic beginning – and the fifth is “Million Miles”. Eight seconds of fumbling and haggling, you can almost hear Tony Garnier giving the nod, and then it starts. Again, a deliberate choice; after all, it’s no trouble at all to cut the unstructured studio seconds from “Love Sick”, from “Cold Irons Bound”, from each of the five songs. In the case of “Highlands” and “Million Miles”, one might even suspect that the opening seconds were artificially added to suggest some kind of studio spontaneity. At least, that’s what Lanois’ account in Uncut implies:
“Tony and I played along to those records, and then I built some loops of what Tony and I did, and then abandoned these sources; which is a hip-hop technique. And then I brought those loops to Bob at the teatro. And we built a lot of demos around them, and he loved the fact that there was a good vibe on those. Some of the ultimate productions ended up having those loops in them. Songs like “Million Miles” and, uh, is it “Heartland”? [he means “Highlands”] – those long blues numbers have those preparations in their spine.”
Lanois is referring to the homework Dylan had given, those “dusty old rock’n’roll records” from artists like Charley Patton, Little Walter, Slim Harpo and “guys like that”, as technician Mark Howard says. So, for the studio recording of “Million Miles”, Dylan and the band play along with a loop already recorded by Lanois and Tony Mangurian; pressing the start button should be the natural starting signal of the song – and not the nod of the bandleader on duty.
Meanwhile, the source, that loop, is intriguing. All the guitar parts are too casual, too loose, to trace back to an old recording of Charley Patton or Lightnin’ Hopkins. Not as obvious, anyway, as for instance the lick from Little Walter’s “I Can’t Hold Out Much Longer” that we hear back in 2020’s “Crossing The Rubicon”;
https://youtu.be/cuyO8ClCxeQ
“Million Miles” may have a similar structure and stomp as, say, Little Walter’s “Sad Hours”, but the searching, seemingly improvised guitar parts, the swirling licks and the near stumbling sooner lead to the coolness of Lightnin’ Hopkins, to records like Texas Blues Man (1968), to records that Hopkins so casually fills all on his own, without a band.
Still, “Million Miles” doesn’t have much status. It’s generally dismissed as one of the lesser songs (by the same fans and critics who condemn “Make You Feel My Love”, typically), although often enough with the comment that on an album full of Great Songs there are of course Very Great Songs and Less Very Great Songs.
Dylan himself seems to share the sentiment. After all, all through 1997 he ignores the song, and even after the stage debut in January ’98, it does not receive much love either: 25 performances in a whole year of 111 concerts is a bit disappointing. Especially compared to other Time Out Of Mind songs like “Cold Irons Bound” (82 times), “Can’t Wait” (64) and “Love Sick” (104 performances).
Noteworthy then is Susan Tedeschi’s report, following her invitation to the MusiCare event in 2015, when Dylan accepts the MusiCares Person of the Year 2015 Award and surprises everyone with a long, fascinating speech. Tedeschi, along with husband Derek Trucks, is one of the artists invited to grace the festive evening with a Dylan cover:
When Susan Tedeschi found out that Bob Dylan had personally requested that she perform his song “Million Miles” with her husband Derek Trucks, her reaction was short and sweet: “Holy crap! I don’t care if it’s Super Bowl weekend, we’re there.”
(Ryan Cormier, The News Journal, 13 februari 2015)
Charming, but of course, the most remarkable thing is not so much that Dylan personally requested Tedeschi, but that he specifically requested “Million Miles” – the song to which he himself never gave too much love and which he has already more or less dropped from his setlist. The last performance, well, kind of performance anyway, was in July 2014 in Greece, where he played only the first verse, and then let the song flow into “Cry A While”.
Tedeschi and Trucks’ rendition does not lead to a reappraisal. After the well-known cover by Bonnie Raitt and the somewhat lesser-known one by Alvin Youngblood Hart (for the successful Dylan tribute album All Blues’d Up from 2002), there are hardly any artists who put the song on the repertoire anymore. Wynonna Judd does it once – and beautifully – in 2016, at the Dylan Fest Nashville, celebrating Bob Dylan’s 75th Birthday, but the best one is again from Bonnie Raitt, when she performs the song together with Keb’ Mo’ in 2019, at the fifth edition of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival…
https://youtu.be/PCgaOHUcAEE
… bringing it all back home; Raitt plays country blues licks like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Keb’ Mo’ contributes vocals like Elmore James and plays a B.B. King-like solo – and it takes 28 messy seconds before the song starts.
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:
“Angelina”, a song written by Bob Dyan, stirs up a great theological debate amongst Dylanologists interested in such matters.
Christian Dante Alighieri, in the epic lyrics beneath, refers to four animal-like angels that have six wings:
Four animals, each with fresh green leaves
Each with six wings, each feathered
Their plumage full of eyes
(Dante: Purgatory, Canto XXIX)
Akin to the four creatures depicted in the New Testament:
And the four beasts had each of them
Six wings about them
And they were full of eyes within
(Revelations 4:8)
In the Old Testament verse below, the referenced each have four wings:
And the wings were stretched upward
Two wings of every one were joined one to another
And two covered their bodies
(Ezekiel 1:11)
As mentioned before, figuratively burnt down is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden as far as humans are concerned. But its greenery flourishes on for the Almighty One.
The question ~ In the song lyrics below, does the angel have six wings or four?
Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
The debate centres on as to why the Christian angels have two extra wings: Is it so they can serve as messengers from God to all mankind; these angels are more than just the guardians of God’s earthy domain that consists of wild and tame animals, birds, and humans.
They’re analogous to wing-heeled Mercury of ancient Greek/Roman mythology.
“Angelina” allows the readers or listeners thereof to decide for themselves which side of the debate they are on:
In the valley of the giants where the stars and stripes explode
The peaches thet were sweet, and the milk and honey flowed
I was only following instructions when the judge sent me down the road
With your subpoena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
In ancient Greek/Roman mythology, King Minos, after his death, becomes a stern Judge of the Dead. In “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, Minos, at the entrance of Hell, issues a warning fo the Italian poet from thirteenth cenury for whom Beatrice has arranged a sightseeing tour of Hell, then of Purgatory, and finally of Heaven:
And eternal I endure
And all hope abandon ye who enter here
(Dante: The Inferno, Canto Ill)
Akin to portraying himself as Dante crossing the River Styx to Hades, the narrator in the song lyrics below takes on the role of Julius Caesar who crosses the river that leads to Civil War, a hell-on-earth.
An imaginative, artistc mixing together of historical facts and fiction:
I've painted my red wagon, abandoned all hope
And I crossed the Rubicon
Well, the Rubicon is a red river
Going gently as she flows
Redder than your ruby lips
And the blood that flows from the rose
Three miles north of Purgatory
One step from the Great Beyond
(Bob Dylan: Crossing The Rubicon)
References Dante who’s climbed to the Seventh Sphere of Heaven, up to the fixed stars:
Says Beatrice, “Why does my face so entrance you
That you look not upon the lovely Garden below
That blooms the sun beams of Christ?
There the Rose in which the Divine Word is made flesh”
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXIII)
Dante refers to Semele whom Zeus, disguised as an eagle, promises her anything she asks for. Cursed by Hera, Semele asks for a demonstration of his thunderbolts, and the flash of Zeus’ lightning kills her.
Dante below is in danger of being set afire, left smouldering like a tree stuck by a lightning bolt.
Filled with the divine light of Jesus, Beatrice speaks:
Says Beatice, "Were I to smile
You'd be like Semele
When she was turned into ashes"
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXI)
The following more-down-to-earth song lyrics ponder Dante’s dire situation:
Whatever you wanted
Slipped out of my mind
Would you remind me again
If you'd be so kind
Has the record been breaking
Did the needle just skip
Is there somebody waiting
Was there a slip of the lip
(Bob Dylan: What Was It You Wanted)
Back in 2020 Untold Dylan ran a series called “Showcase” which contained songs from a number of readers who had written or performed their own songs or versions of Bob’s songs.
We have a page up which links to many of the articles that were published in this series and just recently I went back and listened to the recordings that we got for that series, following the work Bob Bjarke did in creating a new set of Dylan lyrics using artificial intelligence.
That work resulted in a piece of music to fit with the lyrics, which I had a bash at writing, and it is this that has reminded me of the earlier series. Plus the fact that Roelie Rautenbach got in touch, and after some correspondence, he kindly sent me a song of his own, called “You” and has also given me permission to share it with readers.
That song is below, but I would like to add that this makes me think maybe we could find some more recordings by readers, be they professionally recorded in a studio, or recorded by the writer on the phone.
Now in saying “on the phone” might cause some surprise, but the fact is that the recording system installed in contemporary mobile phones is remarkably good. The playback might sound poor on the phone – but that is entirely because of the speaker that comes with mobile phones. Play the result through a decent speaker and you can find you’ve got decent audio quality.
This gives a much broader opportunity for amateur songwriters. As a breed we’ve generally been ignored if not laughed at as poor wannabes, while those who consider themselves as amateur painters are often, quite rightly, recognised as people who have found a productive and creative hobby which satisfies themselves and can bring pleasure to others.
Moving on around the arts, amateur dramatics put on productions that are not meant to rival the West End or Broadway, but which allow those who enjoy such work to be engaged in the art form of their choice and let others see it. And that is widely welcomed. So why not amateur songwriters?
So now that most of us have a recording device that allows quality recordings to be made without cost, anyone who wants to write and record her or his own song can do so. And come to think of it, I wonder how many more early Dylan ventures we would have had copies of, if he’d been a teenager in the era of the modern mobile phone.
Thus I am now saying, as before with Showcase, as a reader of this site if you are writing original materials and can make a recording you’d like to share, please do send it as an attached file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for Untold Dylan. If you would like to say something about how the song came about, even better. It is always good to have the lyrics written out too.
And I would extend this to cover versions of Dylan songs, although here I would add that the proviso that the cover does offer some new insight to the song through its arrangement and isn’t just you performing the song as Dylan does. There are lots of those already on the internet so there would be nothing “untold” about offering them here.
Back to Roelie’s song: I love the lyrics of this, especially the line “You make parties come alive from the moment you arrive” which I really, really wish I’d written. So utterly simple, so beautifully elegant, so deeply meaningful in the context of the later lines “A façade that’s not really you But just to hide a deeper view”
Now I would never ask anyone to do something that I would not do myself, so I will shortly put up one of my own songs for public exposure. If you have the nerve to offer up your own contributions, please just send to the email address above as an attached file.
And indeed this is open to other arts as well – if for example you are a visual artist and have produced a work or two that has some relevance to Dylan in some way, and would like to share please email me, with an attached file of photo/s.
Here are the lyrics
You relax at a pavement café
On a warm Saturday
You smile sweetly and passers by
See a twinkle in your eye
The others at your table
Know how well you’re able
To charm with your way
and the words that you say
when you walk down the street
looking so elegant and neat
casually and easily dressed
an impression in which you invest
you know you look great
your looks and body indicate
and your presence can’t be missed
an enigma, difficult to resist.
You make parties come alive
from the moment you arrive
your laughter and your smile
is part of your unique style.
The avant guard way you dance
Doesn’t happen perchance
but you’re alone when you go
why that is only you know
What is seen is what who knows
Is it truly you that shows
Is that elegance, laugh, that smile
A picture that just appears for a while
Is what’s inside really ever free
Is the happiness the joie de vivre
A façade that’s not really you
But just to hide a deeper view
Not showing a troubled heart
A soul that is tearing apart
You need the likes and love given
You may not get if not hidden
Your insecurities your real fear
If you’re not as you appear
Is that those, the friends you crave
Will take away all they gave
If you’re not accepted for who you are
No love, no friendship, no like you get
Will be for you won't go very far
A time will come when you are exposed
The original art piece that is you
For not being what they supposed
Is the one that real friends wish to know
To love to accept to be theirs
Be the real you and let its show
I really am grateful to Roelie Rautenbach for sharing that song with me, and for giving me permission to share it with you.
I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two
Yes, I’m tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you
It is catalogued as “humorous fiction” and as “psychological fiction”, Marni Jackson’s Don’t I Know You? from 2016, and other labels would fit the charming collection of stories too. The work consists of 14 short stories telling life chapters of the protagonist Rose McEwan, offering – chronologically – as many snapshots of Rose’s life from age 17 to 60. The “gimmick”, so to speak, of the story cycle, is Rose’s encounters – in each chapter Rose happens to meet a Famous Person, or a person who will later become famous, who is still in “the lobby of his life”, as Jackson calls it. At seventeen, she attends a writing class and attracts the attention of John Updike; a few years later, a holiday job as a waitress leads to a flirtation with a charming Bill Murray, Meryl Streep wants to be her friend at a weekend spa, and so it goes on until the final chapter, a canoe trip with Taylor Swift, Leonard Cohen and Karl Ove Knausgaard.
The fifth chapter is called Bob Dylan Goes Tubing and tells how Rose arrives with her then-life partner Eric at their holiday cottage by the lake. There is an unfamiliar Citroën parked in front of the house and Eric’s nine-year-old son Ryan sees that someone is on the lake, on an air mattress.
We shaded our eyes. A pale, small, but visibly adult figure was lying on the mattress, slowly paddling with his hands toward the diving raft.
“I need the binocs.” Eric said, and went to get them. Standing on the deck he studied the figure.
“This is really weird, but whoever that is,looks exactly like Bob Dylan.” He passed the binoculars to me. He was right. A pale little guy with a pencil moustache, in a Tilley hat, was on our air mattress.
We are probably somewhere in the early 1990s (although Jackson doesn’t place too much value on historical accuracy, apparently; she suspects Dylan “is fragile right now” because Empire Burlesque, the 1985 album, is not a big seller – but he quotes “Everything Is Broken” and they sing along with Lucinda Williams’ “Passionate Kisses”, both songs from ’89. Anyway: Dylan took a wrong turn on the way to Kashagawigamog Lake, and thought he was at his destination here, at Sturgeon Lake. And now he just stays here. Marni Jackson captivatingly and believably articulates how Rose and Eric, although finding this a little weird, take it for granted. The story unfolds charmingly and smoothly, without any dramatic plot twists. Dylan goes tubbing with Ryan on the lake, has breakfast with Rose, oatmeal and syrup, philosophises with Eric about music standing in front of the record player, they play Monopoly, and one morning, after a week or two, Dylan is suddenly gone. And has then demonstrated an autobiographical truth behind this one line from “Million Miles”: I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two.
“Million Miles” is not really a Very Great Dylan Song, but it does have, like many Very Great Dylan Songs, a somewhat alienating ending. We’ve had seven verses of lament, the wail of an abandoned lover mourning the loss of his beloved. Autobiographical interpreters with crypto-analytical ambitions might see something like “Dylan seeks his inspiration”, the incorrigibly sentimental ones search in the Bard’s love life, and stubborn Christian fans might put an evangelical spin on it (“Dylan suffers from a crisis of faith and seeks his God”, or something like that), and sure enough, with some creative acrobatics many verses and images can be turned into metaphors supporting one interpretation or the other.
All of them, however, will have trouble squeezing this final couplet, and especially this final line, into a comprehensive interpretation. In the twenty-first century, Dylan changes the line to “There must be somebody who would put me up for a day or two” (London ’03, for instance), but that doesn’t open up any vistas either – it is still out of character. This is not lovesickness or related misery, but pure, desperate, existential loneliness, no longer words directed outwards, to a you, but rather words from a desperate inner monologue, addressed to oneself.
In the Consequence Podcast of 9 March 2022, Mike Campbell reveals Dylan’s writing routines, which may explain why Dylan’s lyrics sometimes seem to wander off. Campbell is a founding member and mainstay of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, and Dylan’s guitarist both on stage and in the studio, so he has some expertise and some right to speak. As a songwriter, he is not unsuccessful (co-credits on Petty hits like “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl”, for example, as well as on Don Henley’s world hit “The Boys Of Summer”), but he still gratefully recounts the writing tips he received from Bob Dylan:
“He told me once, which was a really good tip, he said, when you’re writing a song, you know, you got your verses, your bridge and your chorus, he said, don’t stop there. Write twenty verses while you’re in The Zone. You know, the last ones might be better than all the stuff you had.”
Campbell’s revelation is in line with what Dylan himself says in Chronicles about the creation of the song “Dignity”. Long enough, that song, but there were many more couplets…
“There were more verses with other individuals in different interplays. The Green Beret, The Sorceress, Virgin Mary, The Wrong Man, Big Ben, and The Cripple and The Honkey. The list could be endless. All kinds of identifiable characters that found their way into the song but somehow didn’t survive.”
Speculation, of course, but it seems that the lyrics for “Million Miles” were also written in “The Zone”, also had twenty verses “with other individuals in different interplays”, the majority of which “somehow didn’t survive”. And that after the deletion of ten or twelve stanzas, the text became unbalanced – hence perhaps a melodious, but essentially strange stanza as the seventh, the “rock me” stanza. And in the last stanza the introduction of a narrator who seems to have a different state of mind than the previous one. The state of mind in which you desperately yearn for human company.
The state of mind which makes you crash other persons’ holidays at a cottage at Sturgeon Lake.
———–
To be continued. Next up Million Miles part 9 (final): Shall we roll it Jimmy?
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Bob Dylan, singer/songwriter/musician, awaits Virgil to guide him to Paradise,
Even if it’s just a little shack in the hills:
Through the sycamore, I see the home that I adore
Back in the hills of Kentucky
Every day they light that in the window there's a life
Back in the hills of Kentucky
Soon I will stray back there to the old grave that's there
Somebody's way back there to greet me
I'll be heaven blessed for I will find my peace and rest
Back in the hills of Kentucky
(Vaughn de Leath: Back In The Hills Of Kentucky)
The motif above is replicated in the song lyrics below:
God be with you, brother dear If you don't mind me asking, what brings you here
Oh, nothing much, I'm just looking for this man
Need to see where he's lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, and everything within ya
Can't you hear me calling from down in Virginia
(Bob Dylan: Goodbye Jimmy Reed)
There be light humour in them thar hills as well:
I lay awake till three o' clock this morning
And I heard you when you sneaked into the shack
You told me you stayed up late, swinging on the garden gate
But you can't put that monkey on my back
Shelton Brothers: You Can't Put That Monkey On My Back
Though very funny, darker be the hyperbolic humour in the song lyrics beneath:
Well, I been praying for salvation
Laying around in a one-room country shack
Gonna walk down that dirt road
'Til my eyes begin to bleed
(Bob Dylan: Dirt Road Blues)
More serious are the next lines – finding himself standing at the gates to Dante’s Underworld, the narrator thereof fears he’ll at best be able to ascend the stairs to Third Heaven:
I wish I knew what it was that keeps me loving you so
I'm breathing hard, standing at the gate
Ah, but I don't know how much longer I can wait
(Bob Dylan: Can't Wait)
Then again, patience is a virtue:
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or sad-eyed lady, should I wait
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
(The song begins around 1 minute 10 seconds)
Bob Dylan And Dante ((Part IV)
Guided by Virgil, Dante Dylan mixes up the medicine, meets up with the Judge of Carnal Sinners in the Second Circle of Hell:
Here comes licentious Cleopartra
Here Helen for whom long turned the windmills of war
And see the great Achilles who fought in the end for the love of Polyxena
Observe Paris who took Helen for his wife
And he pointed out more than a thousand shadows with his fingers
Naming, for me, those whom love had severed from life
(Dante: The Infernal, Canto V ~ translated)
Men as victims of demon female lovers are depicted in later poems as well:
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave
Till heart and body and life are in its hold
(Dante Rossetti: The Lady Lilith)
In the following song lyrics, as noted before, said it could be that Trojan Paris is Dylan’s persona; he’s observing Venus, the sex goddess, while conceited Achilles waits below; Achilles having betrayed the Greeks because of, among other things, his lust for a Trojan princess.
Paris turns the tables, and shoots Achilles with an arrow:
Standing at your window, honey
Yes, I've been here before
Feeling so harmless
I'm looking at your second door ....
Achilles is in your alleyway
He don't want me here, he does brag
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
Not the first time, Dyan narrator’s been daunted by love betrayed:
I stepped up to my rival, dagger in my hand
And seized him by the collar, boldly made his stand
Being mad by desperation, I pierced him through his breas
All this for lovely Flora, the Lily of the West
(Bob Dylan: The Lily Of The West)
It’s tough getting to the temperate Seventh Circle of Heaven even though only a lonely shack in the hills, let alone waiting around for the opening of the Seventh Seal to find out where you are going to end up:
You broke the heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book, and not write anymore
I've been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to Heaven before they close the door
(Bob Dylan: Trying To Get To Heaven)
Dante’s more assured, more transcendental:
Already my desire, and my will
Were being turned like a wheel
All at the same speed
By the love that shines the Sun
And the other stars
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXXIII ~ translated)
