Aaron: Little Sadie tells the story of a man, who is apprehended after shooting his wife/girlfriend. He is then sentenced by a judge.
Tony:It is strange that such a horrific set of events is set to such a jolly, bouncy tune, but somehow it seems to work; maybe it is because we don’t actually take any note of the reality – the music just takes over and we enjoy the piece because of that, not because of the content of the lyrics. And of course at the time of its composition, attitudes were different.
Aaron:It is thought that Bob took his version from the March 1930 recording by Clarence Ashley
Tony:The extra speed and the exciting banjo playing means that I now hardly even hear the lyrics as a set of words with any sort of meaning. I’m just listening to that banjo.
Aaron:Hedy West performs Little Sadie on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest
Tony:Now that is invaluable – brilliant Aaron. To see how the right-hand works to get that sound is terrific. OK that is me getting carried away because I always want to know how the music works mechanically as well as how it works as work, but hopefully I am not the only one fascinated by mechanics.
Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on Self Portrait
Tony: I am thinking this is a different recording from the one I slipped in at the start of this piece, rather than a re-mix – the accompaniment is different. I’ve not played each one over and over to work out the level of differences, but there are some – either in the mixing or in the actual performance. But they are not that great.
Aaron: The song has been covered over 90 times. Here are just a couple modern versions I liked.
Tony:Ah well, if it is Old Crowe, then it must be worth listening to. And of course they find something new to include – violin and harmonies and some extra guitar work. The wonderful thing about these guys is that the arrangements like this never feel over-crowded. It seems they can throw everything into the mix and it still works. Wonderful.
Aaron: Crooked Still
Tony:It’s actually a shock to come to this version with its modern accompaniment. And what a brilliant version it is – 100% for the arranger. This approach makes the song of interest and worth hearing all over again. I love it.
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If you, dear reader, have slipped through to the end just to see what the selections are, and haven’t played this final version all the way through while giving it your most fulsome attention please do play it through. It is two and a half minutes of absolute genius.
Footnote: Aside from this blog, Untold Dylan also has a very active (and excellently moderated) Facebook page. If you don’t know it just go to your search engine and type in Facebook Untold Dylan.
Apparently, notwithstanding the fog of history, and what is fact and what is fiction,
Jonah is reluctant to preach to nonHebrews even if a number of them do change their wicked ways; that is, they stop worshipping Baal and all; initially, Jonah doesn’t care whether or not Nineveh, the capital of ancient Assyria, is destroyed by God Yahweh.
Then, when the Persians conquered Babylon, prophet Ezra is allowed to lead some more Hebrews back home to Judah from their Babylonian Captivity; Ezra insists they follow Ezekiel’s determination to be loyal to the God of the Hebrews.
Ezra acknowledges the scepticism of Jonah; demands that the Hebrews already back in Judah become more Jewish; focus on their own beliefs; stop intermingling with ‘strangers’ from other lands:
[S]o that the holy seed have mingled themselves
With the people of those lands
Yea, the hand of the princes and rulers
Hath been chief in this trespass
(Ezra 9: 2)
In the song lyrics below, the narrator, in America, the New Babylon, struggles with Ezra’s edict.
After all, who among us can seriously fault biblical Bathsheba for sleeping with sling-shot-flinging hero David, now a very powerfu king, who happens to play the lyre, writes and sings psalms.
When the King arranges the demise of Bathsheba’s sun-goddess-worshipping husband, Yahweh’s pretty well forced to put His foot down; pleased He’s not; righteous the lust-filled King no longer.
To wit:
Been so long since a strange woman has slept in my bed
Look how sweet she sleeps, how free she must be in her dreams
In another lifetime she must have owned the world, or been faithfully wed
To some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlight streams
(Bob Dylan: I And I)
David gets his comeuppance. Bathsheba becomes a power behind the throne;
Absalom, a much-beloved son of the King by another of his wives, rebels against his father; ends up getting killed when his long hair becomes entangled in the branches of an oak tree.
In the song lyrics below, Bathsheba be compared to Deliah; King David to Samson:
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
(Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah)
‘Over and out, under and in’ (Bob Dylan: ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’, 2008 version)
In his thirteen song collection covering the years 2006-2009, known as Pool of Tears, Dylan compiler CS, at A Thousand Highways, includes only one song from 2008, ‘Love Minus Zero No Limit,’ and in his fifteen song collection covering 2008-2012, known as Center Stage, again only one song from 2008 is included, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody.’
We’ll get to those songs in due course, but what this shows is that it’s easy to pass over 2008 as if not much was going on in that year. 2008, it seems, has been largely cancelled.
The reasons are not hard to find. 2008 can be seen as an extension of 2007, only not quite as good, with Dylan’s voice thickening further, some tired, wooden and stilted performances, and no great innovation. If there is any year in which we might feel that Dylan is standing still, it would be this one.
To demonstrate this, I’ll kick off with a performance of ‘Till I Fell in Love with You.’ I suggest that readers flick back to the first performance in NET, 2007, Part 1 to catch a scintillating version of that song, then listen to this one from Vancouver, (24th Oct)
Till I Fell in Love with You (A)
Same song, same arrangement, same tempo, similar harp break, and yet the 2008 performance sounds like a pale, messy imitation of 2007. (The poorer Vancouver recording doesn’t help, admittedly.) The Vancouver performance meets industry standards, but that’s about it.
This version from Dallas (28th Feb), without harp break, is much better than Vancouver, both better recorded and more enthusiastically performed, but still doesn’t touch 2007. That’s the problem with ‘best ever’ performances; they cast a shadow over all the others.
NET 2008 part 1 ins 2 Till I Fell in Love with You (B)
2008 was not without some interesting developments, however. When considering 2007, I pointed out that when Dylan took to his little keyboard, he abdicated center stage. Since the band were arranged in a semi-circle, there was nobody to front the band and center stage remained symbolically empty. Perhaps Dylan became aware of the unsettling effect of this on his audiences for, in 2008, he began to move into center stage with his guitar, or just his harmonica, for the first two or three songs. You want to see your Bob Dylan, with guitar and harp, just like the old days, well here he is. Once he had established himself in this way, he would retreat to his keyboard and hide under his hat for the rest of the concert. Now you see him, now you don’t.
He kicked off the Dallas concert this way with ‘Rainy Day Woman,’ a playful performance with new lines being made up on the spot, it sounds like, and a taste of Mr Guitar Man.
Rainy Day Woman
He may sing with a face like a graven image, his Easter Island statue face, but we are never far from a glint of humour. Dylan is having fun.
He sounds like he’s having fun too with this upbeat Dallas performance of ‘Spirit on the Water,’ a disarmingly charming song with hidden depths. This is one you can confidently sit back and enjoy.
Spirit on the Water
I’m not sure why CS choose this ‘Love Minus Zero’ to represent the whole of 2008. On the face of it, there are much better performances.
What is of interest here is that Dylan has abandoned the previous baroque, madrigal style arrangement for a free-swinging, jazzy style. Dumpty-dum has turned quite catchy, like a dance hall number, and it’s fun to listen to, but is the music at variance with the gentle and mysterious lyrics? Has the atmosphere of the song been lost? It takes a bit of getting used to, that’s for sure. Fine if you want to get up and dance, but maybe not so fine if you want to plumb the mysteries and paradoxes of love. Easy to understand how such reconfigurations divided followers of the NET. (6th July, Madrid)
Love Minus Zero
It’s easy to see why CS chose ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ to represent Dylan’s move to center stage for some numbers in 2008. At first I thought it was a bit thumpy, a touch ponderous, but as soon as Dylan hit the harp I got right with it. That bluesy harp lifts the song into something quite special. Behind the thump there’s a swing and a solid groove. Dylan’s voice is full-throated circus barker, perhaps the perfect song for it. You don’t croon this one. You croak it from the rooftops. In this case Dylan without guitar, just the harp.
And the lyrics? If you can follow them, most are completely new. I don’t know if they’re made up on the spot or not. I can only catch fragments of them. It’s not the first time Dylan has come up with new lyrics for this song. It’s that kind of song. You could be lots and lots of things and still have to serve somebody. (21st Nov, New York City)
Gotta Serve Somebody
If I were to put up a contender for best center stage performance for 2008, I would be tempted to choose ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ from Dallas. Like ‘Love Minus Zero’ it’s been given an upbeat tempo with a bit of a swing. Again, the happy beat might be at variance with the angst of the lyrics, but it does give them a devil-may-care feeling. Lovers of the desperate original might be put off by the flippancy of this performance, but anguish can take a frivolous form. Things are just so bad we have to make fun of them. That works around the song’s potential to be weary and dreary.
Tom Thumb’s blues
Or, I might go for the lush textures of ‘Lay Lady Lay,’ also from Dallas, number 2 on the setlist, with Dylan on the guitar. We can hardly find fault here with Dylan’s enticing vocal, or the clarity of the recording. The unwearying lover never gives up; he’s always hopeful. There is an underlying humour here; he’s being flirtatious and he knows it. Take him or leave him.
Lay Lady Lay
Staying with Dallas, I was pleased to find this excellent recording of ‘Senor.’ It was only performed four times in 2008, is gradually disappearing from the setlists and will finally vanish in 2011. Now here’s a song to match ‘Tom Thumb’s Blues’ in desperation, the desperation of suppressed ennui, the desire to ‘overturn these tables,’ make a clean break, get the hell out of Dodge – ‘Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, Senor?’
Some are quick to identify the senor as Jesus but that doesn’t work for me. To see the senor as any authority figure, a true one or false, leaves the image more open-ended and potent. And what if Senor doesn’t have the answers?
Dylan doesn’t try to give this one a frivolous makeover. Those lyrics are just too heavy I guess for anything other than this funereal beat. Dylan’s vocal is wonderfully emphatic, but there’s a curiously stilted riff behind it, courtesy of the organ (that lurking dumpty-dum), and the final harp break is quite sedate compared to the wild excesses of 2003. (See NET 2003 part 2)
(By the way, the official Dylan website does not list this Dallas concert for this song.)
Senor
In my first article for 2007 (See NET, 2007 Part 1) I included three recordings of ‘Ain’t Talkin,’ the masterpiece from Modern Times, with the comment that it was in that year the song fully came into its own. Dylan continued to deliver the song in 2008, playing it some forty times, but to my mind these performances don’t match 2007. The song is a journey from the ‘mystic garden’ to Ovid’s ‘last outback at the world’s end.’ It’s one of my top five Dylan songs, up there with ‘Desolation Row,’ ‘Visions of Johanna,’ ‘Tell ol Bill’ and ‘Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat).’
‘Ain’t Talkin’’ is one of those Dylan songs that seems to cast a spell over the listener, the walking beat carrying us along through dark emotional landscapes. This is a fine performance from Vigo, Spain, although the background audience noise is louder than we would like. I’m still searching for a better version and may come back to the song in later posts, if I can find one.
Ain’t Talkin’
Staying with Modern Times, and slipping back to Dallas, we find an energetic performance of ‘Thunder on the Mountain.’ The spirit of freedom that pervades this song is hard to describe. It feels like he could take it anywhere he wants, recalling old blues songs and classical literature, all kinds of things thrown into the pot.
Sometimes I think of Dylan songs as tapestries. Strands of different colours and textures are woven in to create the overall texture. The boundaries are loose; the song is held together by a buoyant rhythm and sense of celebration. This is creativity at its most open-ended. ‘I feel like my soul is beginning to expand,’ he sings, and as his soul expands, it takes in more and more of the world. I am reminded of these lines from ‘False Prophet’ in a somewhat darker context: ‘I opened my heart to the world and the world came in.’
As with 2007, the most exciting performances are of more recent songs, songs from Modern Times and Love and Theft. It’s the older songs that can sound a bit tired. At Dallas, Dylan also performed a moving version of ‘Working Man’s Blues # 2,’ a sombre, ambitious, atmospheric song. A melancholy call for revolution, to ‘join the front line.’ It’s a very American song, but the malaise he’s describing echoes through our western culture.
Working Man’s Blues
I’ll finish with another Modern Times song, ‘When the Deal Goes Down,’ another melancholic song steeped in the music of the 1930s/40s. I think the idea here is that beyond the passion of the senses and the flesh, there is a love which will not fade or fail. When the deal goes down, when the big changes happen, that’s the kind of love you want, steady and unconditional. This is not a Christian song as such, but the feeling behind it reminds me of ‘What Can I Do For You?’ from Saved (1980). There is a dogged devotion in it, a vow to stay the course whatever may come.
This Dallas performance sounds like a cross between a song and a poetry recitation, half-spoken, half-sung.
When the Deal Goes Down
That’s it for this time around. Catch you later with more from 2008.
Kia Ora
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Put my heart upon the hill where some happiness I’ll find
If I survive then let me love - let the hour be mine
Take the high road - take the low, take the one you’re on
I poured the cup and I passed it along and I crossed the Rubicon
In the novel there is only one brief phase when Jean-Baptiste Grenouille finds some happiness: halfway through, in Part Two, in a cave high upon the hill. Well, a mountain actually, “on the peak of a six-thousand-foot-high volcano named Plomb du Cantal”. And it’s a bit more than “some happiness”, to be precise;
“He erupted with thundering jubilation. Like a ship-wrecked sailor ecstatically greeting the sight of an inhabited island after weeks of aimless drifting, Grenouille celebrated his arrival at the mountain of solitude. He shouted for joy.”
Grenouille, the protagonist of Patrick Süskind’s brilliant masterpiece Perfume – The Story of a Murderer (1985), will spend seven years in his mountain lair. In the Auvergne mountains, in eighteenth century France, at the farthest point from other people, alone with all the scents he has stored in his mind, living off a minimal diet of dripping meltwater, grass and the occasional dead bat. Seven years upon the hill, seven years of soulful bliss… Put my heart upon the hill where some happiness I’ll find;
“Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother’s belly. The world could go up in flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He began to cry softly. He did not know whom to thank for such good fortune.”
Coincidence, of course, but curiously enough, the rest of this fifth verse of “Crossing The Rubicon” also skims along the plot of Perfume. Grenouille barely survives his years on the mountain, decides to go in search of love, literally takes the high road (over the mountains) and then the low road (to the sea), reaches the hour is mine, experiencing his hour of ultimate victory in Grasse, and finally dies, literally, by pouring a cup. Well alright, by pouring a little glass flacon of his perfume. Which, by the way, can be counted as one of the most spectacular suicides in all of world literature.
Grenouille even survives his execution years after the hardships on the mountain, but will never experience love. Frustratingly, he does inspire love, excessive love even – and that will eventually kill him too. “Love” is, as a matter of fact, the last word of the book:
“They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of love.”
Exactly halfway through the song, in this fifth verse of the nine, the song poet introduces a fermata, a grand pause in the rollercoaster of emotions. It’s not really a stylistic feature in Dylan’s oeuvre, but every now and then his poetic instinct seems to move him to such a break. We know it from songs like “The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest”, “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and “Hurricane”, long songs with a more or less chronologically told story, usually filled with a hectic accumulation of events. In which, just like in the better action films and literary thrillers, the story gains strength from a breather, a stillness, a phase of reflection just before the final sprint. Like that second just before the murderers, selected by Grenouille to kill him, complete their bloody task:
“For a moment they fell back in awe and pure amazement. But in the same instant they sensed their falling back was more like preparing for a running start.”
The parallels with Perfume in terms of content or plot development are, of course, only coincidental, but the stylistic ones are not; both Süskind and Dylan are craftsmen. And both have a poetic instinct that tells them when the fermata should come.
Descriptions of idyll, like the opening line of this fifth verse, are effective on that front. Put my heart upon the hill where some happiness I’ll find and the continuation with love and let the hour be mine are not much more than psalm-like wishes of salvation, and take the sting out of the previous, ferociously aggressive stanza. Just as the word-playing third verse, Take the high road – take the low, take the one you’re on, has a cooling, don’t worry be happy-vibe. Inspired, probably, by Gordon Jenkins’ American Songbook evergreen “Good-Bye” (1935), which Dylan has been singing along to for the past 60 years in Sinatra’s rendition on Sings For Only The Lonely (1958) – the album that is situated somewhere at the front of Dylan’s inner jukebox;
But we'll go on living
Our own way of living
So you take the high road
And I'll take the low
It's time that we parted
It's much better so
But kiss me as you go
Good-bye
… although it might be more appealing to hope that in this case Dylan’s inner stream flows past Dennis Wilson, past his heartbreaking “Farewell My Friend”, one of the many highlights on his 1977 masterpiece Pacific Ocean Blue. And all the more heartbreaking as it is also the song that will eventually be played at the Beach Boy’s funeral, 4 January 1984.
Farewell my friend
My beautiful friend
Farewell
You take the high road
And I'll take the low road
And we'll meet again
Farewell my friend
But without these text-external, sought-after associations, a dramatic tension in Dylan’s middle stanza actually only flares up again in the final line, in the chorus line with the next link in the chain of metaphors that all express something similar to “crossing the Rubicon”: I poured the cup and I passed it along.
A loaded and slightly provocative metaphor. After all, the Jesus reference is inescapable – both at the Last Supper (And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it) and in the Garden of Gethsemane (O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me), Jesus uses the image of the passed cup in a farewell setting. And to make matters worse, it’s not the first time Dylan suggests identification with the Messiah. In “Shelter From The Storm”, the narrator makes remarkable, blasphemy-bordering statements like “she took my crown of thorns” and “they gambled for my clothes”, also loaded images borrowed from the biblical account of Jesus’ last days.
Thus, the accumulation of equivalents of crossing the Rubicon is already becoming a quite colourful list:
– couplet 1: I painted my wagon – I abandoned all hope
– couplet 2: I prayed to the cross and I kissed the girls
– couplet 3: I embraced my love put down my head
– couplet 4: I pawned my watch and I paid my debts
– couplet 5: I poured the cup and I passed it along
Wild West, Dante, gospel, country, blues, Socrates and Matthew, and we are only halfway… Dylan takes the high road and takes the low road, and crosses three-quarters of Western cultural history.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 10: They’re written on plastic
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:
Leon Redbone, a Helgalian Romantic, trifles with the lyrics and music of yesterday to mesh them in with modern times – country, blues, ragtime, woggie-boggie, tin-pan-alley-pop, whatever, but for Redbone the history of good music stops with the coming of the nonvocalized big band ‘dance sound’.
Once upon a time, there were archetypical ‘hobo’ railroad songs like those of Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie:
You bet your life she was a pearl
She wore the Danville curl
She wore her hat on the back of her head
Like high-tone people all do
The very next train come down the track
I bid that gal 'adieu'
(Woody Guthrie: Danville Girl ~ traditional)
His family having fled to Canada from the trauma of war, Leon Redbone sought personal solace in his art, not in the politics and conflicts of the day.
Though he did it on his own terms, Leon is often considered a ‘sellout’ to the music industry by those who feel the need for political protest in the hypocritical “Candy Land” of capitalist greed and militarism.
Singer/singer writer Bob Dylan, whose family fled to the United States from oppression, moved on from political protest songs. America might be a New Babylon, but, relatively speaking, it’s not all bad.
In some ways America, the New Promised Land, was like the great white moon-mother of yore envisioned by Romantic Robert Graves.
History is somewhat cyclical as envisioned by other Hegalians, and by the imagination of a number of artists; there are good eras, bad ones; the wagon wheels of time turn and turn again.
Seems like a long time ago
Long before the stars were torn down
Brownsville girl with you Brownsville curl
Teeth like pearls
Shining like the moon above
(Bob Dylan: New Danville Girl ~ Dylan/Shepard)
But for Redbone, as for some Hegalians, history has pretty well come to a stop – at least as far as music is concerned.
In “Candy Mountain’, a dark-humoured, end-of-era movie, Elmore Silk’s daughter (married to wheelchair-bound Henry, played by musician Dr John) is given money by Julius Book if she launches him across the Rubicon (as it were) in search of her Godot-like father.
Book is a lackadaisical guitar-player in quest of the crafter of what are considered the ‘holy grail’ of guitars; Elmore Silk, that guitar-maker, secludes himself up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Leon Redbone calls Julius “Mr. Brook” in this, what else, Silk Road movie.
Julius thinks he’s in the right place at the right time. But he does the right thing for the wrong reasons. With “greed is good” as the spiritual creed of the new era, the ‘bounty hunter’ hopes to make money by arranging deals between the elusive producer, and musicians who desire to own one of the special guitars.
“Local constable” Leon Redbone, a shotgun-carrying lion, so to speak, stands in Julius’ way. With his father, ‘the justice of the peace’, Leon makes it difficult for Book to carry on with his mission.
After he gets into an accident, Julius is locked up; gets out by handing a bribe to Leon’s father.
Thereby Redbone plays the guitar, and with his movie father, performs a little ditty that indicates this mini-Odyssey is gonna have a funny, if fiery, ending:
I'm the justice of the peace
My law you can't resist
Put'm in jail, you hear'em wail
He's on the road to nowhere
(Leon Redbone: Justice Of The Peace)
Until today I had never heard of Luke Vassella, but in doing my usual unco-ordinated, not to say disconnected meandering around the internet and my record collection looking for any versions of the chosen song of the day that I might have missed previously, I found him, and his recording.
And a search on the internet has not revealed too much about him other than that he is from the north coast of New South Wales, which is currently where my youngest daughter, her husband and my youngest grandchild are on a boating holiday at this very moment. Which in turn isn’t really relevant to the music, but I thought I’d throw it in, because, well, it’s important to me.
Anyway, I thought I knew most of the covers of this wonderful song, but this is new. It is a perfectly simple rendition, and it is simply near perfect. Or if you prefer, perfect. There is no attempt to deliver anything other than the song, beautifully played and beautifully sung. And because of that simplicity I absolutely enjoyed it, totally. I do hope you’ll have time to listen – and if I may add, listen fully, not in the background. It deserves nothing less. It simply is.
Big Brass Bed, for their version, have the band playing, but what makes their version different is not so much that, but the bounce. The arrangement is far from perfect from my point of view (a repeated triangle hit at one point doesn’t really add anything, remembering as always, that we are all listening to a song we’ve heard many times before so the details in the background tend to stand out.)
But the bass guitarist has fun, and that’s welcome; he sounds like he is really enjoying his performance, and that’s how it should be.
Now I know I have submitted for your attention the Dixie Chicks version so often, if you are a regular reader you’ll know every moment of the piece by now. And it is not just a wonderful version of a wonderful song, but they really do add something else – or rather lots of somethings else.
The beat is different, the harmony on the chorus line is a real stand-out moment, the instrumental break with the violin between each verse…, and then having got it all going they keep changing the arrangement with subtle extras.
Here’s one simple point that strikes me. We all know the line “Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t” – of course we do – but just listen it here. It just rings so true, the emotion within the line comes pouring out so we really feel it even though we’ve heard it a hundred dozen times before.
10 out of 10 for performance, but also several million out of ten for the arranger. It is a work of sublime, overwhelming art which has, since I first heard it, added something else to my life, even in times when all else seems to be taking things away.
And don’t you dare stop playing it, before the end. Those ladies on the violins really know a thing or three about music, about Dylan, and about this song.
I feel the bones beneath my skin and they’re tremblin’ with rage
I’ll make your wife a widow - you’ll never see old age
Show me one good man in sight that the sun shines down upon
I pawned my watch and I paid my debts and I crossed the Rubicon
The sudden change from gentleness to fury is not the only remarkable thing about the fourth verse. Each verse of this exceptional song has an inner tension, a clash of colours, a collision of culture carriers or conflicting associations. Like the clash in the first stanza of the very American, nineteenth-century painted my wagon with the fourteenth-century, old European abandoned all hope. Or the clash in the second stanza of the carnal (I kissed the girls) with the spiritual (I prayed to the cross). Which, for an important part, colours the fascinating, eclectic power of “Crossing The Rubicon”.
This fourth verse takes the crown, as far as that is concerned. The opening line, I feel the bones beneath my skin and they’re tremblin’ with rage, leads to R.L. Stevenson’s immortal masterpiece The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Not only through its transcendent, substantive clash with the preceding stanza, the clash of two personas, but also through its specific image. After all, the first words that the disconcerted Dr. Jekyll chooses to describe his transformation into the enraged Mr. Hyde are:
“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.”
… the first thing worth mentioning is apparently, just as with the transformation of the “I” in “Crossing The Rubicon”, a disturbing osteological shivering; a grinding respectively trembling in the bones. Dylan’s specific choice of words, however, brings to mind, remarkably enough, for the second time in Dylan’s oeuvre a fairly recent song (1993) by the Counting Crows;
I got bones beneath my skin, and mister...
There's a skeleton in every man's house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody
There's a dead man trying to get out
Please help me stay awake, I'm falling...
From “Perfect Blue Buildings”, from the successful debut album August And Everything After. “Bones beneath my skin” is perhaps a bit unusual in itself, but still too generic to be considered appropriation. However, elsewhere in the song we come across the beautiful line “Try to keep myself away from me”, a line that Dylan word-for-word copies to “Dirt Road Blues” (Time Out Of Mind, 1997) – which at the very least suggests that the Counting Crows song has been buzzing around the back of Dylan’s mind for almost a quarter of a century.
After this introductory, worldly opening line, the verse takes a turn towards evangelical horizons – specifically Psalm 109, the famous/infamous “Judas Psalm”, so often misused for political bullying thanks to verse 8; Let his days be few; and let another take his office. It is a psalm that celebrates its heyday among Republican politicians when Obama is president, but immediately afterwards, with the advent of Trump, becomes just as popular among Democratic colleagues. The poet Dylan does not turn off the radio, after verse 8, and also hears verse 9: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”.
At least, it is beginning to look that way. Psalm 109 is a peculiar, rather double-hearted psalm, written by David. Moving back and forth between grovelling praise of God and quite cruel, unreasonable curses of an unnamed enemy (10: “Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places”, for example), between tame and aggressive – it is understandable that the Catholic Church finds the psalm so offensive that in 1970 it was removed from the Liturgy of the Hours.
So, it has the same schizophrenic character as Dylan’s “Crossing The Rubicon”, with on the one hand the humble requests for personal happiness (Dylan’s “Put my heart upon the hill where some happiness I’ll find” versus David’s “because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me”, for example), and on the other hand the harsh, vengeful passages directed at an anonymous enemy (David’s “so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones” versus Dylan’s “I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife”, to quote just one random example). But Dylanesque, poetic beauty is just as well to be found in Psalm 109. Verse 23, for example: I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust – a verse that would fit without a hitch on Time Out Of Mind or on Rough And Rowdy Ways.
Fitting also with the biblical connotation of Dylan’s third verse, Show me one good man in sight that the sun shines down upon. On its own this classical, grim demand would lead first of all to Diogenes, of course, the peculiar Greek philosopher († 323 B.C.) who, in broad daylight in the market square, was looking with a lantern for a “man” – a good man in sight that the sun shines down upon, as it were.
But the line does not stand alone; the tone of the preceding line pushes the associations to biblical distances, and so this search for “one good man” rather recalls that weird haggling of Abraham, when he tries to stop God from destroying Sodom. Genesis 18; when Abraham argues that God should not destroy the city if there are fifty righteous, but then neither should there be forty-five, forty, thirty, and so on until finally there is only one good man in sight, Lot, who will then be spared. A biblical connotation reinforced by the biblical choice of words; the tautological show me someone in sight and the scriptural sun shining down upon.
Nevertheless, despite that attractive biblical colouring, Dylan seems to feel some unease. The site of “dylyricus”, a seasoned fan who has taken on the praiseworthy task of keeping track of lyric variations in performances (and also letting us hear them), mentions the first recurring text change of “Crossing The Rubicon” at exactly this verse. In Phoenix, 3 March ’22, at the live debut of the song, Dylan sings instead of the one good man-line: “The summer turned to gold, and the winter chill is gone”, and similar are the words the next day, 4 March in Tucson: “The summer meadows turned to gold, well, and the winter chill was gone”, and in Albuquerque (6 March) the golden meadows seem to be internalised – there Dylan sings them again, and that’s how he keeps on singing this verse line the rest of the tour.
A remarkable change; not only are the words different, the emotional content has changed as well. The one good man line, especially in this context, breathes pessimism, the new line is pure optimism. Cheerful even, weirdly enough. Although the evangelical connotation is maintained, albeit less strong. It has a gospel colour to it. It could have been a line on Hank Snow’s religion album Gospel Train (1966), anyway. Something like “How Big Is God?”;
As winter chill may cause the tiny seed to fall
To lie asleep till wake by summer’s rain
The heart grown cold will warm
And trod with life anew
The Master’s touch will bring the glow again
But as of yet, Dylan’s lyrics have not been officially sanctioned: the official publication, on the site bobdylan.com, still reads Show me one good man in sight that the sun shines down upon.
And to complete the mosaic-like character of this fourth verse, Dylan fills the closing line, the refrain line, the next link in the chain of accumulatio, with an anachronistic image: I pawned my watch. Motivated, presumably, by a poetic need to achieve some kind of unity via mirroring with the previous verse, with
How can I redeem the time - the time so idly spent
How much longer can it last - how long can this go on
… and borrowed, no doubt, from Elizabeth Cotten’s immortal classic, “Shake Sugaree” (Pawn my watch, pawn my chain, pawn everything that was in my name). Or, perhaps a better candidate, Skip James’s wonderful “Drunken Spree” from 1931;
I pawned my watch, pawned my chain
Pawned my diamond ring
And if that don't settle all my drunken spree
Lord, I'll never get drunk again
But the main by-catch of that quirky I pawned my watch is that it contributes to the eclectic nature of this wonderful stanza. Which, to top it off, gets a final extra facet with the closing I paid my debts, words we have been associating with Last Words since the death of Socrates (“Crito, we owe a cock to Asklepios; pay him, don’t forget,” 399 B.C.).
David, The Counting Crows, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Socrates and Hank Snow… in one verse, four lines, Dylan spans thirty centuries, Bible and nineteenth-century literature, gospel and rock, Socrates and Skip James. The song sure crosses many a river.
————
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 9: For a moment they fell back
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
The Roman Emperor Constantine allows the Christian religion, at least some historians claim, to unify the diverse Roman Empire.
Seeking a simplified explanation as to why the Empire eventually breaks up, other historians claim it’s because the Christian Church undermines the absolute authority of the emperors who claim a lineage sanctified by Jupiter, the chief Roman god.
For one thing, the Germanic Vandals go on to conquer more Roman territory after politically-weakened Constantine, having had a vision of Apollo (the son of Zeus/Jupiter), allows Vandals to settle down within the borders of the Roman Empire.
Made just all too concise and too clear by the following song lyrics:
Lookout kid, they keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole, light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals, try to avoid scandals
Don't wanna be a bum, you better chew gum
The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handle
(Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues)
https://youtu.be/DaXD9Pldfbw
Apparently, the same thing – or so it could be said – happens to the New Babylon of America once “organized” Christianity takes a firm hold of the handle.
A Puritan minister in the poem below, which he hides away with other poems of his, warns himself not to look outwards to organized religion for the way to achieve salvation, but rather inwards in order to magnify and examine where he as an individual goes astray:
You want clear spectacles: your eyes are dim
Turn inside out, and turn your eyes within
Your sins like motes in the sun do swim: nay see
Your mites are molehills, molehills mountains be
(Edward Taylor: Accusations Of the Inward Man)
Taylor’s baroque sentiment and style apparently depicted in song lyrics below:
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into you eyes where the moonlight swims
And your match-book songs, and your gypsy hymns
Who among them could try to impress you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
How wide the Jungian Sea is, we do not know, but Bayard Taylor, an American poet of yore (well-versed in the German language, he translates Goethe’s ‘Faust’ that features the pact with the Devil) appears to mimic Edward, the Puritan poet, in a couple of poems – as previously mentioned.
Anyhow, as noted before too, all we know for sure is that Bob Dylan’s name isn’t Bob Dylan.
Bonnie Raitt does a live version of this song which takes us through the emotions, and does what all the really good cover versions do – hide the fact that is a 12 bar blues in terms of musical construction, which actually is 12 bars long.
What Dylan’s composition doesn’t do however is repeat the first line, and instead has a fixed final line in terms of lyrics. And this is what keeps us listening – or at least that, along with the fact that the construction gives good musicians every opportunity to show how good they are without actually seeming to be showing off.
And what is interesting in putting together a short collection of versions of this song is just how different is each treatment, even though it is a classic blues in contstruction…
One might be tempted to think that after all these years the 12 bar blues might have had its day, but no, we can go on and on being entertained, and indeed surprised by each new approach. In this version by Vintage 18 the guitar plods its way through without boring us, not least because its part is suddenly taken over by the bass while the lead guitar multiplies the speed by something like 12-fold. An extraordinary virtuoso performance, and great arranging.
Bonnier Raith has the voice to carry off the atmospheric version of this song, and she is fulsomely aided by the accompaniment, both in the vocalised verses and in the instrumental break, which I really love. Everything and everyone working together with the same object in mind. Superb.
Well may she have that twinkle in her eye when she can deliver a performance like this. It’s stunning.
So by the time we reach Viktoria T0lstoy, the feeling surely must be, there can’t be much more you can do with what is in essence such a simply constructed song. Yes the melody is particularly fine, but is there anything else to say?
Well, actually yes…
Once again we can see the importance of the accompaniment – and here the arranger doesn’t just rethink how the instruments are going to perform, he/she also changes the chord sequence. Not a lot but enough for us to feel. And I really do feel that works, because, as I say so often we all know the songs so well, sometimes we need to be jerked out of our historic knowledge.
This version is not only my favourite of this song, but also one of my all-time favourite Dylan covers both for the way the vocalised verses progress but also the instrumental break. It’s a virtuoso performance – but not just that, it is sensitive to the rest of the performance.
The idea of multiple key changes is interesting too. Generally I think doing more than one is pushing one’s luck a bit, but a really clever idea which this time works. And a beautiful coda as the music changes from 4/4 to 6/4 and back over the “Yea yea yea yea” sections. Another great idea – give the arranger an award. Blues songs very, very rarely have codas, so there is no history of adding that extra section at the end to consider when creating one. Thus this ending comes out of almost nowhere and works a dream.
Utterly brilliant. Listen, and listen again. And marvel.
There are interpretations of Daniel’s four creatures that differ from the aforementioned possibilities.
Some Christain interpretations proclaim that the symbols mean ~ firstly, the empire of Babylonia; secondly, of Persia; thirdly, of Greece: and finally, of the Roman Empire.
The last empire is hallmarked by bad human beings like Nero, but also by the good “Son of Man” which brings us back to Isaiah’s “Immanuel” who’s later interpreted as Jesus – not as, for example, the suggested Hezekiah.
Four wings appear on the creatures in Ezekiel’s Old Testament vision:
And this was their appearance
They had the likeness of a man
And every one had four faces
And everyone had four wings
Ezekiel's 1: 5, 6)
Six wings in Isaiah’s vision; the number of creatures not mentioned:
Each had six wings
With twain he covered his face
With twain he coverd his feet
And with twain he did fly
(Isaiah 6: 2)
And six wings in John's New Testament vision:
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him
And they were full of eyes within
And they rest not day and night
Saying, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
Which was, and is, and is to come"
(Revelation 4:8 )
The latter two prophets announce the coming of somebody, anybody ~
Could it be Immanuel, or could it be Jesus?
In his masterpiece below, the singer/songwriter gives us his best advice ~
If you don't know the answer, don't ask the question:
Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Past the tree of smoke, past the angel with four faces
Beggining God for mercy, and weeping in unholy places
(Bob Dyan: Angelina)
Just remember what the dormouse said:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea
And saw a beast rise up out of the sea
Having seven heads and ten horns
And upon his horns ten crowns
And upon his heads the name of blasphemy
I Contain Multitudes (Part 10)
Jupiter becomes the chief god of the Romans, and their rulers seek deification as the “son of god”.
Greek gods, like Zeus, be immortal; but for the most part, humans are mere mortals.
Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon; declares himself the “dictator” of the Roman Republc; he’s supported by General Mark Antony.
It’s cold in the winter month of January in northern Italy; Aurora, sister of Helios (the Sun god) and Selene (the Moon god), be the Roman goddess of the Dawn:
I crossed the Rubicon on the fourteenth day
Of the most dangerous month of the year
At the worst time, and at the worst place
That's all I seem to hear
I got up early
So I could greet the goddess of the dawn
I painted my wagon, abandoned all hope
And I crossed the Rubicon
(Bob Dylan: Crossing The Rubicon)
After Caesar’s death by Brutus, Antony rises in power, forms a coalition; marries the sister of Octavian, the first Roman Emperor-to-be.
Herald the Great is appointed to rule over land from which the Hellenists have been ousted; his son Herald inherits a part thereof; refuses to condemn Jesus, steps aside because Jerusalem is not within his jurisdiction.
Drifter Jesus escapes death, at least for a while:
Outside, the crowd was stirring
You could here it from the door
Inside the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)
Saith the Holy Bible:
And Herald with his men of war
Set Him at nought, and mocked Him
Arrayed Him in a gorgeous gown
And sent Him again to Pilate
(Lukes 23:11)
Cleopatra, the Hellenistic Queen of Egypt cements her position too: she combines belief in the Egyptian goddess Isis with that of the moon goddess of Greek mythology.
After the death of Julius, with whom she has a male child, Cleo sets her eyes on Antony:
Isis, oh Isis, you're a mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain
(Bob Dylan: Isis)
They name their children Helios, Selene, and Ptolemy.
To make a long story short, things go awry everywhere, and the two love birds commit suicide.
Egypt, like Judea, becomes part of the Roman Empire.
—————
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Information supplied by Dr Leo Ensel, commentary by Tony Attwood
“After the Empire” is a collection of 15 studio recordings made by Bob Dylan as he tried out new material in his usual style, with the band having to work out what Bob wants as they go on. But these are of course perfect musicians, so by and large they understand what the master wants.
I was thinking of adding this CD to each of the reviews that we have already done of the songs but I thought in the end that it really needed a piece of its own with links back, just in case you really want to know what we thought of the song when we first found it.
But if you do follow these links you will find some of the links to the recordings are now broken, so you will have to use these… And you will notice that some of the songs don’t have a link, which seems to suggest we haven’t actually reviewed them – probably because at the time we felt they were not written by Dylan.
And it is also quite possible that we’ve got those songs listed under other titles – so now it is time to try and resolve all this.
But meanwhile what is interesting is that we really did Bob’s technique of working out the song with the band. Here’s the list
One of the key things to resolve is if “You can have her”. “My sweet baby” and “That’s all” were written by Dylan. I’ve already added the note to “That’s all” is not a Dylan song, but I am going to have to do some further digging to find out who did write it.
So I am hoping you might be able to supply some information on those songs – but if you can, please may I make a further request. Please don’t just say XYZ was or was not written by Dylan, but do tell us how you know it was or was not written by him. A citation from an article with some evidence will do.
Thus a bit of a work in progress, but hopefully you can enjoy the album if you have not heard it before, and maybe provide a bit of evidence about the songs that we have not resolved.
Meanwhile I’ll add a note to our Facebook page to see if anyone there can help. If you are not one of the 11,000+ people who are members of the group, you can find us by typing into your search engine Untold Dylan Facebook.
And of course if you’d like to write an article for Untold Dylan we’d love to hear from you. Just email Tony@schools.co.uk
I feel the bones beneath my skin and they’re tremblin’ with rage
I’ll make your wife a widow – you’ll never see old age
Recording with Dylan is usually fast, says almost every hands-on expert. Session musicians, guest vocalists, producers and technicians… a refrain in interviews when asked about the experience of a studio session with Dylan is: you don’t get any time. Backing vocals are improvised on the spot (Emmylou Harris on Desire, Jennifer Warnes on “Every Grain Of Sand”), musicians are given no instructions, not even a chord progression or key, and are left to watch the master’s hands and play by ear (and, if they don’t pick it up quickly enough, are immediately sent away, as Eric Weissberg’s band on Blood On The Tracks experienced), and technicians and producers are given no warning; Dylan can start any time. Bob Johnston, the producer of Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding, among others, solves this pragmatically: he places microphones everywhere and always lets the tape run.
But there is an exception. A telling, fascinating exception. We know about it thanks to Malcolm Burn, the multi-instrumentalist/engineer alongside Dylan and Lanois on Oh Mercy (1989). “Fixing a vocal part,” Burn tells in Uncut‘s interview series in 2008, following the release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs, “took a lot of time getting.” And the reason for that is telling:
“Y’know if he wanted to punch in just a part of a song again. It was never about whether it was in tune or out of tune or anything like that. It would be – let’s say he’s singing a replacement line – he’d sing it and you’d try to mix it into the original track, he’d listen to it and he’d say, “Ah, nah, nah, nah. That’s not the guy.” And I’d say, “The guy?” And he’d say, “Yeah. It’s not the same guy.”
Burn understands. It is just like acting. Dylan has a protagonist, a narrator in mind, and tries to capture his character;
“So when he came to fixing up a vocal, I’d say to him: “Yeah that’s the guy.” And it would be the guy. The guy, the character he had invented for that particular thing.”
It is a more elaborate, but perhaps clearer way of expressing what Dylan has been repeating since the 1960s: je est un autre, the Rimbaud quote with which Dylan tries to make clear that the “I” in his songs is not “I, Bob Dylan” – but rather “I, some guy”. With the bulk of Dylan’s songs, that’s clear enough. “Cold Irons Bound”, “Isis”, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”… songs where it’s obvious that Dylan is playing a character. But for songs where it is less clear, Dylan has to explain ad nauseam that they are not about himself. “Is that the kind of woman you’re looking for?” asks Jonathan Cott in 1978 regarding the controversial Street-Legal song “Is Your Love In Vain?”. Dylan acts surprised: “What makes you think I’m looking for any woman?”, well knowing that Cott identifies the “I” in that song with Dylan again, of course. Cott does not give up, hiding behind the transparent, hypocritical “some people think”- statement, behind which every sensation-seeking journalist hides:
JC: You could say that the song isn’t necessarily about you, yet some people think that you’re singing about yourself and your needs.
BD: Yeah, well, I’m everybody anyway.
… with which Dylan expresses that universal themes, feelings and motives can, by definition, be about anyone, including himself. It is the consistent response of the song and dance man. He said it in the 1960s, he said it in 1978, and he’s still saying it in 2020. Interviewer Douglas Brinkley (New York Times, 12 June 2020) also tries again to catch the human Bob Dylan in the songs, in this case in “I Contain Multitudes”, the opening song of Rough And Rowdy Ways. The line “I sleep with life and death in the same bed” has caught Brinkley’s ear, and he slyly asks, “I suppose we all feel that way when we hit a certain age. Do you think about mortality often?” And Dylan explains yet again that the “I” in “I Contain Multitudes” is not “I, Bob Dylan”:
“I think about the death of the human race. The long strange trip of the naked ape. Not to be light on it, but everybody’s life is so transient. Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty, is frail when it comes to death. I think about it in general terms, not in a personal way.”
… explaining, at least in part, the timeless, universal power of Dylan’s best songs, but also underlining once more: it’s not personal. I is another.
It becomes more challenging and fascinating from a dramaturgical point of view when Dylan allows several characters to speak. Sometimes it’s evident, with stage-managed roles, as in “Isis”, “Tin Angel” or “All Along The Watchtower”. But much more often it is debatable, open to interpretation, whether in a song text one or more persons are speaking – whether we are listening to a monologue or an ensemble piece.
That question flares up again here, in the fourth verse of “Crossing The Rubicon”. Until now, we have been listening to a presumably traumatised first-person narrator who seems to be pretending he is determined and bold – but who is above all characterised by, as Thoreau would say, quiet desperation. In the verse before, for instance, he asks himself no less than five questions, in increasing desperation (“how long can this go on” is the last question).
But then… the quiet desperation suddenly gives way to an aggressive, uncivilised bully with psychopathic tendencies. The change is radical. So radical that we have to wonder if this is still the same narrator. The same man who just now meekly mused about “your ruby lips”, and thought something as poetic as “going gently as she flows”, now snarls bloodthirsty things like “I’ll make your wife a widow – you’ll never see old age”? Either the crossing of the Rubicon is a metaphor for a Jekyll/Hyde scenario, expressing something like “I unleashed my inner beast”, or there has been a change of perspective – the camera is now on a second protagonist, who is also referred to as “I”.
The likelihood that there is more than one antagonist argues in favour of the latter option. In stanza 2, the first-person narrator thinks of “your ruby lips”, which insinuates that the “you” is an attractive lady. In stanza 4, the narrator threatens the “you” with I’ll make your wife a widow – suggesting that the “you” is a male rival. The “I” of the first three stanzas, for example.
Well, whoever it is, it’s not Dylan.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 8: And let his children be fatherless
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:“Arthur McBride” is a folk song probably of Irish origin, also found in England, Scotland, and North America. A. L. Lloyd described it as “that most good-natured, mettlesome, and un-pacifistic of anti-militarist songs”.
The first to record the song was The Exiles in 1966 on the album Freedom, Come All Ye. This video is not available in the UK, but is available in the USA and probably some other countries.
I have however found it in the UK on Spotify under the heading “The Exiles Playlist” lifted from the album “Freedom come all ye”. If you are in the UK or anywhere else that does not have the above video available do try and find it on Spotify. It is a solo violin accompanying one vocalist – and is an utterly brilliant performance.
Aaron: It was recorded by many others during the British folk revival of the late 60s-70s, including Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, Planxty and Paddy Reilly.
The song took on a new life when Paul Brady adapted a long version from Carrie Grover’s A Heritage of Songs. Carrie Grover had been recorded for the AFC Archive by both Alan Lomax and Sidney Robertson Cowell. Lomax recorded Grover’s version of “Arthur McBride and the Sergeant” in April, 1941, at the Library of Congress
To read more about the piece and hear Grover singing it go here (After you have finished reading our article of course!)
It was included on the 1976 album Andy Irvine/Paul Brady. Here is a live version from 1977 which really shows off Brady’s talent
Tony: I do hope you have had a chance to hear the Exiles performance, so that you have a real contrast with this version. Both are utterly brilliant in their own genre, and it shows how songs of this nature can be transformed and re-evaluated into the style of the day. I am utterly in awe of both performances. As for the guitar technique revealed above, oh for such dexterity and musical understanding. Don’t you dare to listen only to part of this truly wonderful recording. I’ll add the lyrics below in the hope that they’ll be of interest.
Aaron:Bob, perhaps unwisely attempts to copy Paul Brady’s adaptation on the album Good As I Been To You
Tony: “Perhaps unwisely” is right – Bob cannot match the virtuosity of Brady’s version. That’s not to say Bob is not is good performer of course, but the Paul Brady performance is one of the absolute masterpieces of the genre. Besides which, Bob’s guitar, which has been re-tuned from the standard, is, I think, fractionally out of tune on one string. Although maybe that is just my hearing.
Aaron: Recently the song has become regarded as a Christmas song, with several artists including it on Christmas albums and singles.
Tony: That is quite a surprise – a feeling of a change of the time signature because of the way the accompaniment works. It’s got that 1-2-3 1-2-3 feel but is no so spread out I think it would actually be written as 12/8 rather than 6/8 – certainly the whole feel of the piece is utterly different.
I love this version as well – what a morning I’m having listening to two utterly stunning versions of this traditional piece. I’m sorry neither of them are by Bob, but he doesn’t have a monopoly on brilliance.
The lyrics are below, but perhaps I might add a little something about the line “Threw it in the tide for to rock and to roll” which may lead to a thought that this is a modernised version of the lyrics.
In fact “to rock and to roll” and indeed “rocking and rolling” is a 17th century phrase that was used to describe the motion of a ship. It was later used to describe sexual intercourse (or “making love” as it was known in politer circles) before moving on to being use as a name for the form of music popularised in the 1950s by Bill Hayley and others. But here we are back with the original meaning.
Lyrics for this as with all songs of this era can vary from one source to another.
Arthur McBride
Oh, me and my cousin one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walking down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it being on Christmas morning
Out for recreation we went on a tramp
And we met sergeant Napper and corporal Vamp
And the little wee drummer intending to camp
For the day being pleasant and charming
"Good morning, good morning, " the sergeant did cry
"And the same to you gentlemen, " we did reply
"Intending no harm but meant to pass by"
"For it being on christmas morning"
But says he, "My fine fellows if you would enlist"
"It's ten guineas of gold I will slip in your fist"
"And a crown in the bargain for to kick up the dust"
"And drink the king's health in the morning"
"For a soldier he leads a very fine life"
"And he always is blessed with a charming young wife"
"And he pays all his debts without sorrow and strife"
"And always lives pleasant and charming"
"And a soldier he always is decent and clean"
"In the finest of clothing he is constantly seen"
"While other poor fellows go dirty and mean"
"And sup on thin gruel in the morning"
But says Arthur, "I wouldn't be proud of your clothes"
"For you've only the lend of them as I suppose"
"And you dare not change them one night for you know"
"If you do you'll be flogged in the morning"
"And although that we are single and free"
"We take great delight in our own company"
"And we have no desires strange faces to see"
"Although that your offers are charming"
"And we have no desire to take your advance"
"All hazards and dangers we barter on chance"
"For you would have no scruples to send us to france"
"Where we would get shot without warning"
"Oh now, " says the sergeant, "I'll have no such chat"
"And I neither will take it from small penal brats"
"For if you insult me with one other word"
"I'll cut off your heads in the morning"
And then Arthur and I we soon drew our hods
And we scarce gave them time for to draw their own blades
When a trusty shillelagh came over their heads
And bade them take that as fair warning
And their own rusty rapiers that hung by their sides
We flung them as far as we could in the tide
"Now take them up devils!" cried Arthur McBride
"And temper their edge in the morning"
And the little wee drummer we flattened his bow
And we made a football of his rowdy-dow-dow
Threw it in the tide for to rock and to roll
And bade it a tedious returning
And we haven't no money paid them off in cracks
And we paid no respect to their two bloody backs
For we lathered them there like a pair of wet sacks
And left them for dead in the morning
And so to conclude and to finish disputes
We obligingly asked them if they wanted recruits
For we were the lads who would give them hard clouts
And bid them look sharp in the morning
Oh, me and my cousin one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walking down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it being on Christmas morning
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If you have read any of my ramblings about cover versions of Bob Dylan’s music in the “Dylan Cover a Day” series, you might just recall regular comments about the recurring problem with Dylan.
We all know each song off by heart – we know the lyrics inside out, and many of us, if pushed (or after a few beers) could probably have a bash at singing along.
So faced with this situation, the cover artist really needs to re-think the song, bring in something new, find a different approach, give it a new twist, that sort of thing.
In which case singing the song in a language which a) 99% of your audience won’t understand a word and b) through its use of sounds gives an utterly different feel to the piece, is an advantage. One is immediately in new territory. Expectations are removed. The listener’s mind opens.
And that is what we have with the “Dylan.pl” double CD: 29 Dylan classics performed by a brilliant band and sung in (what is for me, and will I suspect be for most of my readers) an utterly incomprehensible language: Polish.
Which brings me back to the title of this little piece. “Dylan.pl” is the title but on the front cover there is another text printed sideways which says “Niepotrzebna pogodynka, zeby znac kierunek wiatru”. Actually I am missing a couple of accents in there, and I may have made some spelling mistakes, but I am hoping any errors don’t matter too much…
But more to the point, my translation program tells me, the phrase means “There is no need for a weatherman to know the direction of the wind” which of course you will immediately have translated back into Proper Dylan Speak as the phrase “You don’t need…” etc etc.
Now this really is my point: poetry is damn hard to translate, just as colloquial language can be tough going. Not because each word in Polish doesn’t have an equivalent in English, but because the phrases have meanings beyond the words.
Just consider “There is no need for a weatherman to know the direction of the wind”. That is of course NOT what Dylan wrote in terms of words, but nor is it the meaning of what Dylan wrote. He wrote “…to know which way the wind blows” which normally has an utterly different meaning from “to know the direction of the wind”.
Of course, none of that is to say that Dylan.pl got anything wrong – translate from English to Polish and then use a machine to translate back to English and it is bound to get a bit screwed – and that is absolutely not their fault. But I think it makes the point. There’s more to this “translating the songs” lark than simply looking up the words.
But I don’t want to get bogged down in language, for there is so so so much more here, because the band has, like the very best cover bands, delivered their own interpretation of the music. And this brings me back to my opening point… those of us who don’t speak the language are getting a new interpretation of the songs, without (and this is the main point) the distraction of already knowing all the lines.
And that is interesting, because as I listened to the album I immediately forgot about the originals. It was as if I were listening to new songs. OK familiar tunes, yes, but still something quite new, which I rarely get when listening to covers in English.
And that because a) the lyrics were not there to remind me (as I have so labouriously pointed out) of Dylan’s version, but also because the musical realisation of each piece is not just original but also so highly inventive. These are not Dylan songs sung in Polish but Dylan songs afresh: a completely new look at Dylan’s music in almost every case.
So for me this opens up a whole new area of understanding of Dylan. By performing the songs in a language I do not comprehend, I can strip away all preconceptions and listen to the new interpretations utterly afresh. And that is an incredibly valuable thing to be offered.
According to prophet Isaiah if proper love is not shown to God, He’s going to make the wayward Hebrews suffer for their ungratefulness.
They’ll be overtaken by their enemies; many will flee elsewhere, or be exiled:
And many among them shall stumble
And fall and be broken
And be snared and be taken
(Isaiah 8:15)
Time and space collapse in the song “Changing Of The Guards” by musician Bob Dylan.
Therein, he becomes the new Isaiah (and just as confusing as the old) in the new Babylon of America.
It’s back to the Bible ~
Before the coming of the Romans, Greeks under Alexander the Great establish a Hellenistic Empire; taken over is Judea; the Persian Empire defeated.
Greek mythology with statues of gods like Zeus(Jupiter) and Apollo idolize the ideal beauty of the naked ‘human’ body.
Under Judaism, the image of the one Hebrew G-d is not permitted; Adam and Eve clothe themselves.
In Hellenistic Judea, deadly battles break out over the covenant-symbolism of circumcision; some Jews get the procedure reversed; traditionalists enforce it on those who don’t want it (in order to make Christianity distinct, apostle Paul insists instead on baptism by water).
History, according to Bobisaiah, repeats itself.
Though the Devil’s in the details.
Allegorical chaos reigns in America; it’s mixed-up confusion, everything is broken.
Could be entertained that in a “flash forward” episode of the song below, the narrator therein chooses to take the middle path between no-idol-worshipping Judiac “spiritualism”, and the marble-headed addiction to Hellenistic “materialism”.
There’s really nothing to turn off:
I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending
'Neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests, and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
Nothing is revealed, except perhaps that the history of black slavery haunts America; “Captain” John Brown’s dead, a-moulding in his grave:
Bearer of a flaming torch on a tower, the mask of the white-faced Statue Of Liberty is lifted; the “other America” with an ebony face revealed:
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs, I couldn't help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
Or so the ambiguous wording of the song above can be decoded to mean.
But certainly the song is not senseless and meaningless ~ as the Sound School of Dylanology would likely declare it to be.
Part 6
According to the Old Testament, prophet Daniel, captive in Babylon, has a dream that involves four animals – a lion, an eagle, a bear, and a leopard:
And four great beasts came up from the sea
Diverse from one another
(Daniel 7:3)
Referred to in the following song lyrics:
Beat a retreat up them spiral staircases
Past the tree of smoke, past the angels with four faces
Begging God for mercy in unholy places
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
Taken by some biblical interpreters at the time to mean the Assyrian; the Babylonian; the Persian; and the Grecian empires; by later interpreters to mean Britain; United States; Russia; and Germany.
A blast to the past:
Judas Maccabeus, a Jewish traditionalist priest, considers that not only the statues of Greek gods in Judea have to be destroyed, but also the repressive leopard that erected them.
Judas is sure that he has Yahweh on his side.
The armed revolt eventually leads to a semi-independent Jewish state that lasts up to the time when Herold becomes King of Judea, backed by Roman Empire.
Maccabeus, the Jewish ‘Robin Hood’, is inspired by the brave words and deeds of biblical heroes like Joshua and David:
Now therefore fear the Lord
And serve Him in sincerity, and in truth
And put away gods your fathers served ...
And serve ye the Lord
(Joshua 24: 14)
Below, a verse of similar sentiment written and sung by the new Judas Maccabeus from the New Babylon:
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
(Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody)
Isaiah’s “Immanuel” has cometh:
The neighbourhood bully just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down when his door is kicked in
(Bob Dylan: Neighbourhood Bully)
“Meet me in the morning” is the only 12 bar blues on Blood on the Tracks, and is itself a cover of sorts, being akin to “Call Letter Blues” which of course Bob recorded, and which appeared later on “More Blood on the Tracks”
So it is not going too far off the rails to say that “Meet me in the morning” is itself a cover. In which case we are listening out for covers of a cover. A cover squared. A square cover. A…
The question for the cover artist is, do you go further (ie ever more bluesy) or somewhere else (hardly a blues at all). This is the former which is what generally happens with this song (although not always – please keep reading). One chord change, otherwise its just heavy
So compare and contrast with Clas Yngström & Big Tex Three which has taken off in a completely different direction to give a sense of mystery and almost threat.
I really like this, simply because it does take us in a new direction, while retaining all the essence of the song. OK after a while it becomes another 12 bar but that doesn’t matter too much because of the opening.
Of course most of the time the quest is just how far one can actually take the bluesiness and Carolyn Wonderland have a bash at going as far as one can
But it really doesn’t have to go that way. What I was really looking for was a version that turns it back into a ballad. I didn’t really find one, but this is on its way, and I do enjoy angel Snow
And finally just to show it really is possible to take even a 12 bar blues into another territory with a totally different feel, and come to that a totally different message we have Drew Emmitt. I think this is the version that I found most refreshing this search. Maybe that’s because I tend to write my Dylan piece in the mornings, and today is very hot in my part of the world. And as soon as I have finished this I am off to meet one of my daughters, and my twin grandsons, to celebrate their birthday. For such a moment Drew Emmitt has the sound I want.
What are these dark days I see in this world so badly bent
How can I redeem the time - the time so idly spent
How much longer can it last - how long can this go on
I embraced my love put down my head and I crossed the Rubicon
In early 2007, certified Dylan fan and one of the world’s most widely read authors, Stephen King, writes a column for Entertainment Weekly in which he announces and explains his ten Top Music Picks for 2006. It’s a nice list that shows a preference for rock, “straight puke-on-your-Dingo-boots rock & roll,” as King says, for sentimentality (“If that makes you want to call me a sap, I can take it”) and country. And Stephen King also appears to have a good feeling for songs that stand the test of time. At least: “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol we still play today, just like Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, number 2 in King’s Top 10, commented on with words that still ring true:
“You could argue that Cash saved the best for last and get no disagreement from me. This is the voice of an Old Testament prophet on his deathbed, eerie and persuasive, full of power and dust and experience. The entire album (American V: A Hundred Highways) is a masterpiece, but this and ”Like the 309” are the ones I keep coming back to.”
King’s number one of 2006 is the only one on the list that is not a single song, but an entire album: The Animal Years, Josh Ritter’s masterpiece. “An amazing accomplishment,” says the Master of Horror, and he even equates an album highlight, the strange and gorgeous “Thin Blue Flame”, with Dylan: “This is the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” And the other song that King singles out is the perfect opening track:
“Mysterious, melancholy, melodic…and those are only the M’s. Songs like “Girl in the War” simply do not leave the consciousness once they’re heard.”
King is not the only one who in 2006 has a soft spot for Josh Ritter. In the same year, the versatile Idaho native was chosen by Paste magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Living Songwriters”. Which is already an understandable choice for the song “Bright Smile” alone (Hello Starling, 2003), but Paste has also heard “Girl In The War”, with its wonderful opening words:
Peter said to Paul
"All those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
Also an example of that “exuberant outburst of imagery”. A reference to the Letters of Paul is not only unusual in rock music, but even in gospel. After all, these are not the most exciting books of the Bible, Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians and all those others. Many exhortations, many tiresome do’s and don’ts, a few painful slips here and there smelling penetratingly of anti-Semitism (1 Thess 2:15: “[The Jews] are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men”), a lot of redundancy (“Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good”, Rom 12:9) and little action. No, the Pauline epistles are no Ezekiel or Revelation.
But Dylan seems to have retained a few things anyway – perhaps thanks to the Bible study lessons at the time, the three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches in 1979. As evidenced by this third verse, which does seem to echo the otherwise not very exciting Epistles to the Ephesians, in particular chapter 5. Therein, especially Great Truths can be found (such as the profound truth “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife,” 5:22), but in Dylan’s Rubicon of consciousness, echoes from the “Children Of Light” paragraph (5:8-21) are now apparently flooding in:
“Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. […] See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
The rather evangelical concept of “redeem” is, of course, found often enough in the Bible, and in psalms and in gospel music in general, but the combination with “time”, “evil days” and “darkness” is only found here… and in the third verse of “Crossing The Rubicon”, of course.
The verse gives a fascinating glimpse into that meandering flow in the creative part of Dylan’s brain. The song depicts the state of mind of an emotional storyteller at a crossroads in his life, and Dylan’s point of departure is probably that Little Walter riff over which he lays his lyrics. Where those echoes from Paul’s letters come from is impossible to pinpoint, but it is likely that the peculiar phrase in the opening line, this world so badlybent, comes via Little Walter, via “Dead Presidents”, the Willie Dixon song that Dylan plays in Little Walter’s version in his Theme Time Radio Hour (episode 68, Presidents’ Day);
Them dead presidents
Them dead presidents
Well I ain't broke but I'm badly bent
Everybody loves them dead presidents
Well, somewhat likely anyway. Although it is more appealing to think that Dylan is winking at the enchanting Angaleena Presley, who, in between her work with the successful country trio Pistol Annies, recorded two solo albums. The second, 2017’s Wrangled, stands out for its collaboration with greats like Guy Clark, with whom she writes “Cheer Up Little Darling”. A heartbreaking, sentimental song with an irresistible Tex-Mex flavour and the goosebumps moment when Guy Clark reports to the microphone, at the second verse:
You can't fix the world, girl, it's so badly bent
But you can help it along if you save your own skin
The first thing you do, honey, is make you a list
Of the things that you've done and the things that you've missed
It is one of the highlights of Angaleena’s Wrangled. Another is “Good Girl Down”, which Angaleena wrote with living legend Wanda Jackson. Great song, but its main merit is that, against all odds, it animates Wanda Jackson into a final burst of her impressive career. “Right around the time I retired from performing and what I thought was the end of my career, I found myself back to writing songs with some of the great writers in Nashville,” as Wanda says on the occasion of that unexpected bonus, the wonderful and moving album Encore (2021). “Good Girl Down” is track 4, a re-recording now with Wanda as lead singer and co-author Angaleena Presley on backing vocals.
I'm not just a pretty face
Not a flower in a vase
It's a man's world, and I'm a lady
And they'll never appreciate me
They don't take the time to get to know who I am
Frankly, boys, I don't give a damn
I got my head on straight
… Wanda does not let her head hang down as she crosses the Rubicon.
To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 7: Je est un autre
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:
King Ahaz makes a deal with the Assyrians, already occupiers of parts of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in order to protect Judah from foes trying to conquer the southern kingdom; pays the Assyrians gold and silver, allows worship of their idols (David be the lusty King who spies Bathseba bathing on the roof of his palace).
The Judean/Assyrian alliance lasts sixteen years before it falls apart:
Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign
And he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem
And did not that which was right in the the sight
Of the Lord his God, like David his father
(II Kings 16: 2)
In the song lyrics below, the historical biblical times under which Isaiah lives are alluded to.
The prophet foretells of the coming invasion of Judah by the Assyrian Empire,
"and the stretching out of his wings"(Isaiah 8:8)
Sixteen years, sixteen
Banners united over the field
While the good shepherd grieves
Desperate men, desperate women, divided
Spreading their wings 'neath the falling leaves
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
Prophet Isaiah foretells of the coming invasion of Judah by the Assyrian Empire, “and the stretching out of his wings” (Isaiah 8:8)
Isaiah figuratively interprets God’s message that’s delivered unto him ~ Yahweh expects any servant of His to follow His command as when to open the door to the coffers, and when to close it; symbolic of doing so with the door of Heaven.
Most importantly, it’s God decision alone to make, and the decision rendered is completely at His pleasure:
And the key to the House of David
Will I lay upon his shoulder
So he shall open, and none shall shut
And he shall shut, and none will open
(Isaiah 22: 22)
The narrator in the song lyrics below is really happy he receives a favorable judgement as to whether or not he can enter the door to Heaven ~ the door is open wide.
Rhetorically, he asks the Creator what He’d like in return; i.e., the narrator knows the answer is “love”:
Pulled me out of bandage
And You made me renewed inside
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied
Opened up a door no man can shut
And You opened it up so wide
And You've chosen me to be among the few
"What can I do for You?"
(Bob Dylan: What Can I Do For You)
At least according to the opponents of the later rebellious prophet John Calvin (opponents like John Wesley who holds it a duty on the part of all faithful followers of God to please Him)’ Calvin insists that God’s already made up his mind who’ll be among the “chosen few”; rather mischievous is this Protestant Calvinist God ~ supposed repentance certainly not good enough to gain salvation, but God keeps his followers guessing as to exactly what is.
I Contain Multitudes (Part 6)
As already conjectured, the “Immanuel” referred to by prophet Isaiah might be the son of King Azah of Judea.
King Hezekiah does his best to undo the damage caused by his father’s alliance with the Assyrians; he fortifies the capital, smashes foreign idols, and closes the door to Judah’s coffers.
The Assyrians ferociously attack, but are unable to take Jerusalem.
Isaiah writes, or has it written down, that the Hebrew God is pleased, and so He casts a devastating plague upon the invading army led by King Sannacherib of Assyria.
Yahweh reverses His decision to severely punish the southern kingdom for its misdeeds.
Below, a poem by one of Bob Dylan’s favorite Romantics:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown
Thar host on the morrow lay withered and strown
(George Byron: The Destruction Of Sennacherib)
The Judeans are uplifted:
Spreading their wings 'neath falling leaves
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
The song by the singer/songwriter/musician might be considered a codified biblical narrative concerning Isaiah’s prophecies ~ Judah portrayed as feminine when ruled by Apollo-like Ahaz; as masculine when ruled by his Jupiter-like son Hezekiah.
She's caught betwixt and between Apollo and Jupiter.
King Hezekiah is first compared to tough-minded Jove; there’s trouble behind; now there’s trouble ahead ~ the Babylonians are moving in next door.
The Judean king begins to look more like Apollo, the lyre-playing Sun-God, than he-man Jupiter:
She wakes him up
Forty-eight hours later, the sun is breaking
Near the broken chains, mountain laurels, and rolling rocks
She's begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He's pulling her down, and she's clinging onto his long golden locks
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
Judah, personified as feminine, gets captured by Jupiter archetype King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon: he holds tightly the key that bolts her in Captivity.
An Apollo archtype Persian King Cyrus unbolts the door, and lets the Hebrews go back home to Judah.
Jupiter archetypes Roman Emperor Constantine and his wife make Christianity the state religion; a political tool to hold the Empire together without resorting to war.
Expressed below:
Peace will come with splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
A cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and Queen of Swords
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)
In the New Testament, Jesus gets painted the whitish colour of the Moon, the twin sister of mythological Apollo:
His head and his hairs were white like wool
As white as snow
And His eyes were as a flame of fire
(Revelations 1:I4)
Obviously, the crucified Christ is no moon to be fooled with.
Jesus boasts that He doesn’t have the keys to the treasury, but says, “I” am eternally eternal:
“And have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).
As noted previously, Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes Christianity for its focus on death, and on what happens to us mere mortals in the Afterlife.
Details of other articles in this series are given at the end.
Aaron:Canadee-I-O is a traditional English folk ballad. It is believed to have been written before 1839.
Tony: … although Wiki does one of its regular tricks in confirming that date but also in the same article claiming it was written before 1700. But of course these songs circulated throughout the British Isles for hundreds of years being passed on through performance and never written down. The composers in the classical-romantic tradition considered them primitive and unworthy of reference, and it is only in the last 100 years that their true worth and merit has been understood – at least in England (I’m sorry, I’m not well informed about American folk music and its recognition, so I can’t comment there).
When her lover goes to sea, a lady dresses as a sailor and joins (his or another’s) ship’s crew. When she is discovered, the crew decide to drown her as having a woman on a ship is considered bad luck. The captain saves her and they marry.
Aaron:Perhaps the most popular/well-known version is by Nic Jones– appearing on his fantastic 1980 album Penguin Eggs – voted the second best folk album of all time, second only to Liege & Lief.
Tony:This is one of those annoying videos that is available in different parts of the world at different URLs. Hopefully one of these two videos will work in your location. If not enter “Canadee I O Nic Jones” into your search engine and with luck you’ll find one.
Tony:There is something so utterly exquisite about this performance that it is hard to describe it. Every guitar note, every word sung, is perfection. And it sounds so natural – including the way he occasionally delays the start of the line. It is, for me, an utterly overwhelming performance. What an astounding talent. Please listen all the way through to the end, even if this is not normally your taste in music.
Aaron: Dylan’s version appears on Good As I Been To You, borrowing the arrangement from Jones… uncredited on the album sleeve notes.
Tony:Bob can’t compete with Nic Jones for the simple reason that no one can. The guitar accompaniment does not have the utter perfection of Nic’s version, again simply because no one else can create and play accompaniments like this for this type of music. That’s not to say Bob’s version isn’t a good performance, but it is being compared with perfection.
Bob simply suffers from the fact that his singing doesn’t reach the standard of Nic’s – which is not Bob’s fault, since we can all do more than sing with the voice we have been given – although professional tuition can help.
I think the point is also that Nic’s version is irresistible through to the end, whereas Bob’s diction doesn’t help unless you already know the lyrics by heart, so he doesn’t carry the story through.
And above all, the song still holds its own. Which is pretty amazing for a folk song.
Aaron: Here are a couple of other recent versions that came out after Dylan’s take
American alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs released their version on 2015 album Twice Told Tales:
Tony: I think this majestic song deserves a better musical introduction than we get here – and worse than we have it repeated between the verses. It is so simplistic and obvious, and this song deserves so much more than this. Maybe I just hear the music differently but that simple rise and fall of notes at the start of each verse is just trivial, and it destroys everything. Take that out and it would be a very reasonable performance. Worse, however, with the instrumental break, they try to make something out of nothing. Not a good idea in my view.
Aaron: Shirley Collins – Another folk legend, over the years she has worked with Ewan MacColl, Alan Lomax, Davey Graham, Richard Thompson and others… as well as being married to Ashley Hutchings.
This version is from her 2020 album Heart’s Ease
Tony:As I understand it, if one takes out the accompaniment this is pretty much as the song would have sounded in the mid-19th century, and the accompaniment here is very acceptable, leaving the melody and lyrics to take centre stage.
A piece to choose Aaron. Thanks for this one.
Footnote:Aside from this blog, Untold Dylan also has a very active (and excellently moderated) Facebook page. If you don’t know it just go to your search engine and type in Facebook Untold Dylan.
I’m sure everyone knows that “Masters of War” originated with the English folk song Nottaman Town. The earliest recording of that song that I can lay my hands on is by Jean Ritchie in 1954 but the version on the internet is not particularly fine – and indeed the recording I found jumps at one point. But if you want to go back it is here. However thankfully a later recording by the same artist is available.
And of course singers still venture back to our musical history to reconsider the work in contemporary terms. Here’s a rather inventive approach by Jowe Head. I’m not sure I would want to go back and play it again – I rather feel the vocalist tries too hard – but in terms of re-imagining the song it is most certainly worthy of note.
Judy Collins was one of the first to make a cover version of the Dylan song, and used the gentle repeating string-based accompaniment which very slowly grows. It is a rather obvious effect to use, but nonetheless incredibly effective, simply because it is such a simple idea, and one that is used with delicacy.
Indeed it is very hard to build a piece that slowly and make it work – although of course the exquisite lyrics help enormously, but it still needs the beautiful musicianship that we have here.
But there is a problem, as we can see here – because we all know the lyrics so well, and the impetus to let the song build is so strong, not much else is allowed to enter the song. When the acoustic guitar has reached a powerful almost frenetic level, where does one go next?
Don McLean took the song as slowly as anyone could – at least in his on stage solo rendition – it is a very brave try indeed. I’m not at all sure it works for me completely because of that old problem of us all knowing every syllable so well, but it is certainly an interesting approach.
And of course, eventually, the idea started to catch on that this did not have to be one singer and one instrument. Valérie Lagrange tried this but perhaps discovered that lots of pounding of the beat and voice emphasis isn’t quite enough.
One of the most interesting points from a musical point of view is how reluctant subsequent artists have been to change the time signature. The song is written in what musicians would call 6/8 – two groups of three beats which allows two words in every line to have a strong accent, followed by six beats of music but no vocals.
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
While Pearl Jam keep the essence of that, after the first verse the accents change so that it also feels at times like a conventional four beats in a bar. It’s a clever trick – change, but not quite a change. Definitely worth a listen.
Of course, as ever there is the problem that we all know the song so well that it is hard to retain the essence of the song and its frightening message and yet do something different. However thankfully musicians tend to be an inventive lot, and they will keep trying, and just sometimes, something rather exciting and chilling emerges. For that accolade, I’d offer the Swedish singer/songwriter Daniel Östersjö.
And I would add a PS, for even after playing through multiple versions of the song, it still sends a chill through me. Maybe because I heard the song first of all in my teens, grew up knowing that I was an only child, only to find in recent years that all this time I had an older brother who I never knew about, while also having my own children and grandchildren…. maybe all that makes the song still so important to me on a personal level as well as appreciating it as a great work of art. “Fear to bring children” indeed.
