Untold Dylan

A list of all the previous articles in this series is given at the end.

by Patrick Roefflaer

• Released                        January 19, 1976
• Photographers                Ken Regan, Ruth Bernal, Stephanie Chernikowsky
• Collage                           Carl Barile
• Liner Notes                     Allen Ginsberg & Bob Dylan
• Art-director                     John Berg

In books or websites about album covers, Desire’s front cover is often depicted next to that of John Philips’ self-titled solo debut (1). It is often presented as an example of plagiarism or parody.

There are indeed quite a few similarities between the portraits of Dylan and those of the ex-leader of The Mamas and the Papas: on both covers we see the singer in profile, looking to the right. Both wear a grey felt hat, a scarf, and a coat with a collar of fur.

Too much to be accidental? John Berg, who was responsible for the design of the Desire cover, strongly denies that there is any influence: ‘No. I never even saw that [John Phillips cover]. I can’t imagine how I could plagiarize something I’ve never seen before.’ So Dylan is responsible. After all, he chose the photo.

The Rolling Thunder Revue 

In June 1975, Dylan moved back to New York to prepare for a new tour.

As he didn’t like the large-scale approach of his previous tour with The Band in 1974 (see Before the Flood), he searched for a new approach. The idea is to set up an itinerant show, to travel around and appear in small concert halls or even in coffee houses, without much publicity.

The core of the Rolling Thunder Revue is a regular band, but when they visit a city, local artists are invited to join them for the show.

For the design, Dylan calls on Jacques Levy, a New York writer and dramaturge. Levy wrote and directed the scandalous musical Oh Calcutta! and collaborated with Roger McGuinn on two dozen songs for The Byrds, including ‘Chestnut Mare’.

Dylan was impressed enough to ask him to collaborate on some songs together. Of the nine songs on Desire, Levy is credited as co-author.

Levy designs a décor that gives the Revue the appearance of an old-fashioned variety show. It starts with a yellow stage curtain with the name of the tour in circus letters. When the curtain is raised, a group of gypsy-like musicians becomes visible, standing on a large carpet.

“I was able to make it all very theatrical,” Levy explained. “At the beginning of the evening I had the whole band come on and everyone did a song. In between the songs, I put everything in a shadowy blue. People came up and people went off.” The setlist is built up to a grand finale – the performance of Dylan himself – followed by the encores with the whole gang together on stage.

Such a spectacle lends itself perfectly to a film adaptation. Dylan hires two professional film crews who film all the performances.  But also during rehearsals and informal sessions the cameras keep running.

It soon becomes clear that Bob has a film in mind that would involve much more than a simple concert recording. It has to be a Fellini-like work of art, with Bob, his wife, and his friends playing dramatic scenes. Sam Shepard is hired to write a script. The brief is simple but confusing:  “There doesn’t have to be coherence in it. One-third of the film is improvised, one-third is fixed and one-third is pure luck.” The young stage director is not sure what to do, and looking back concludes: “In the end, we didn’t write a script at all.” Instead, Shepard keeps a diary (2).

Unsurprisingly, the resulting four-hour film, Renaldo And Clara, is quite chaotic.

On Halloween, October 30, 1975, the Rolling Thunder Revue kicks off with a show in Plymouth, Massachusetts. According to Bob’s intention, the War Memorial Auditorium is a small hall that can hold only 1,800 spectators, in a city where rarely any renowned artists pass.

Of course, the choice of location was no coincidence: Plymouth famously is the place where, in 1620 the ship the Mayflower dropped anchor, where the first European pilgrims set foot on land. That was the first step towards the Declaration of Independence of the United States, on July 4, 1776 — an event whose 200th anniversary will be celebrated exuberantly when the film is released. (Although disappointingly, the premiere will only occur in January 1978).

The first day of shooting is October 31. Some improvised scenes are shot on the location. Dylan and his company (Roger McGuinn, Bobby Neuwirth, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and a bearded man in a cowboy hat) pretend – somewhat predictably – that they come ashore with a boat.

Further scenes are shot when they visit the Mayflower II (a replica of the original boat), the famous Plymouth Rock, and Memorial State Park.

The photo that adorns the cover is made in that park, by Ken Regan.

Ken Regan

On the occasion of the release of his book All Access: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Photography of Ken Regan in 2011, the photographer revealed to Sean Fennessey how he became the only official photographer of the Rolling Thunder Revue (1975-76).

“That was because of (promoter) Bill Graham. I worked for some magazines and Time called me up: “We want to do something about Bob Dylan. He’s going on tour with his band and it’s the last tour with The Band.” I said, “I don’t know if that’s going to work. Bob is very concerned about his privacy […], but I’ll see what I can do.”

He calls Bill Graham. Graham shows Dylan some pictures of Ken and he gets his permission. “So Time sent me to Chicago. Bill was there and he introduced me to the big shots there. Finally, I got to join Bob. He was friendly and said he liked my pictures. ‘Don’t get in my way,’ he said. ‘Take pictures as much as you want of everyone who’s on stage, but backstage is taboo.’ Fine for me.

“That first night, I stood in the wings, doing my best to stay out of his sight. Fantastic experience. I’m always looking for a new angle and thought to take some pictures of the audience. In the second row I saw a lady in her sixties – grey hair and glasses on – and she was jumping and applauding. It was a beautiful sight, because she was surrounded by all young people.

“The next night I saw Bill, he told me that Bob hadn’t said anything and that it was okay. I asked him about that woman in the second row. He shouted, ‘Did you photograph her? That’s Bob’s mother. Don’t do anything with those photos because if Bob notices that, you’ll never come close to him again.’

“Time published some of my photos and I was over the moon. It was only the second time that a photo report of mine appeared in an important magazine.

“As always, I also made some prints for Bob, including his mother’s. Bill would deliver them to him.

“About a year later, I’m asleep at home — it’s 3 a.m. — when the phone rings. It’s Barry Imhoff, Bill Graham’s partner. ‘Hey Ken! How’re you doing?’

“I shout: ‘It’s damn 3 o’clock in the morning. I’m asleep! You there in California don’t take into account the time difference.’

“He says, ‘No, I’m in New York. I wanted to know if you have anything to do in the next few months.’

“I say, ‘No idea. I work for a few magazines. What’s up?’

“‘Yeah look, Bill and I are setting up a little tour and we were wondering if you were interested.’ I asked, “Can you tell me a little bit more?” He gives me Louie Kemp, a childhood friend of Dylan’s, who tells me that it’s a Bob Dylan tour and that they want to see me and if I want to cover the whole tour. I ask to speak to Barry again and cackle him out: ‘Man it’s 3 a.m. I don’t feel like having my leg pulled now’.”

“For a moment it is quiet on the line and then I hear a voice that I immediately recognize: Bob Dylan. ‘Ken, sorry we woke you up so early. We were rehearsing all day and I had no idea what time it was. I got your pictures and wanted to thank you for that, especially my mother’s. Because you didn’t use it, I know I can trust you. We want to see you. Bring your portfolio’.

“The next day I went to S.I.R. [Studio Instrument Rentals’ in Manhattan] where they were rehearsing. I saw Bob and Louie and Barry. After half an hour Bob said he would like me to do the tour. ‘It’s very unusual, because I’ve never done anything like this before. We will be away from home for about three months. Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, David Mansfield, T-Bone Burnett and some other people we pick up along the way will come along. We’re making a movie, which I’m directing, and I want you there to photograph everything, 24/7 – no restrictions. And no one else is allowed to take pictures.’

“During that tour I took 13,750 photos (4). Every night, after the performance or the party, Bob and I would sit together and look at the prints and he would say yes or no. He either approved of them or disapproved of them. After a few gigs, the phone calls came: People, Time, Rolling Stone… I told Bob and he said he expected something like that. ‘Just choose what you give to whom. Let me see them and make sure everyone has something exclusive.’ That was my big break at the magazines, because it was an exclusivity of Bob Dylan and it opened a lot of doors for me.”

It can’t be a coincidence that out of those 13,750 photographs Bob Dylan chose one that is so similar to that of John Phillips, taken there on the first day of the Rolling Thunder Revue, in a park in Plymouth.

Why this picture? As is so often the case with Bob Dylan, he himself does not give any explanation.

The back sleeve

The back shows a collage by Carl Barile, head art director at the glossy magazine Avenue. Some of the black and white photos are hand tinted.

Ruth Bernal is credited on the inner sleeve for the “collage photos”, but Rob Stoner assured me, in a mail dated January 6, 2020: “Pics by Stephanie Chernikowsky”. Perhaps Ruth Barile only made the central portrait of Bob, which is also used for the inner sleeve.

The singer looks down thoughtfully on that central photo. Around his neck a necklace with an Egyptian-inspired jewel – a design by Edward Merrifield (whose wife was friends with Sara Dylan). Around it we see, starting at the top left and then turning like the hands of a clock: drummer Howard Wyett with violinist Scarlet Riviera.   Then producer Don DeVito talking to his brother.

Below is a smaller portrait of Dylan, smoking and partially hidden under a drawing portraiting the writer Joseph Conrad. His 1915 novella Victory provided inspiration for the song ‘Black Diamond Bay’.’

Next we see Bob talking to Jacques Levy and at the bottom right Dylan in a baseball shirt, together with Sara.

Centre below is a text by Dylan, in which he talks about the landing at Plymouth Rock. Emmylou Harris is joined by a Buddha statue.

Above that: a photo with three people. It’s not clear who’s on the left, but according to Rob Stoner: “I’m on the far right of a trio with Dylan and Don DeVito.  We are listening to a take at the mixing console. The song is ‘Abandoned Love;’ eventually released on Biograph.   I’m the unidentified harmony singer on that track.”

Finally, the tarot card The Empress. A card that, according to the book by travelling journalist /writer Larry Sloman (5), always was prominently displayed in Sara’s hotel room.

Inner sleeve

For the vinyl release, the record itself was in a black protective cover. On one side, the large black and white portrait of Dylan is printed sheet filling. On the other side is a text by Allen Ginsberg, surrounded by the other photos of the back cover, with the Tarot card placed in the center. This time the photos are not colored.

Striking is the caption to the title Desire: ‘Songs of Redemption’.

Notes

1. Although John Phillips’ debut album (January 1970) is untitled, the record is often referred to as ‘The Wolfking of L.A.’, after a poem printed on the back of the cover.
2. Sam Shepard’s diary is later published as Rolling Thunder Logbook (The Viking Press, 1977/Penquin Books, 1978).
3. Ken Regan – All Access: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Photography of Ken Regan (Insight Editions, 2011)
4. Here’s a link to some of Regan’s photos about the tour.
5. Larry Sloman – On the Road with Bob Dylan (Crown Publishing, 1978/Three Rivers Press, 2002)

Previous articles from this series

• Another side of Bob Dylan
• Biograph – see Empire Burlesque
• Blonde On Blonde: The Artwork
• Blood on the Tracks
• Bob Dylan
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• Bringing it All Back Home
• Desire
• Down in the Groove
• Dylan
• Empire Burlesque and Biograph artwork
• Good as I’ve been to you
• Greatest Hits Volume II
• Infidels: what’s in a name?
• John Wesley Harding: the art work
• Knocked Out Loaded
• Nashville Skyline
• New Morning
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
• Self-Portrait
• Slow Train Coming
• Street Legal and the secret cover location
• The Basement Tapes
• The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – the untold story of the artwork of the album
• The Times they are a changin’ album artwork
• Time out of Mind
• Travelling Wilburys Vol 1 (guest visitor, Michael Palin)
• Triplicate
• World Gone Wrong

Beelzebub And Lilith (Part VII)

• Mixing-Up The Fluids: Red Crimson And Yellow Dylan
• King Crimson And Yellow Dylan (Part II)
• The Crimson King And The Yellow Jester (Part III)
• King Crimson and the Yellow Jester (Part IV)
• King Crimson And BeelzeBob (Part V)
• The Crimson King And Serpent Lilith (Part VI)

by Larry Fyffe

Beelzebub, the crimson king, over time becomes conflated with Satan; he’s often represented as a symbol of evil by interpreters of the Holy Bible. Satan disguises himself as a snake, and seduces Adam’s once loyal wife Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Simplification be damned, however, and  Beelzebub, the grim reaper, becomes more complex –  depicted figuratively as a seven-headed dragon, upon which sits his consort, a demiurgic Lilith-like she-devil who seduces human beings:

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour
And decked with gold and precious stones and pearls
Having a golden cup in her hand
Full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication
(Revelations 17:4)

Word images irresistible to creative and imaginative artists, including song writers:

There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up into sapphire-tinted skies
I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train

(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

https://youtu.be/K_NvlvNWgsQ

An easy creative jump it be for an imaginative artist to portray one of the heads of the biblical crimson dragon as representing America, the Promised Land, a new and alluring place to start over.

But there’s bad news, a twist – America turns out to be the New Babylon (with its capital in Washington) that’s been released from the bottomless pit of Hell; the materialistic, not spiritualist, whore returns:

The road that you travel on

Goes to the Babylon
Girl with the rose in her hair
Starlight in the East
And you're finally released
You're stranded with nothing to share

(Bob Dylan: No Time To Think)

With the benefit of hindsight, the singer/songwriter elaborates on the biblical prophecy below:

And the woman which thou sawest is that great city
Which reigneth over the kings of the earth
(Revelation 17:18)

Interpreted in earlier biblical times that one head of the red dragon personifies Jerusalem, the capital of Judah whose inhabitants have not fully accepted the mysterious Hebrew God as their one and only commander, a regrettable mistake for which its inhabitants will surely suffer.

Updated in the song lyrics quoted beneath:

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one's command
He's the neighbourhood bully
(Bob Dylan: Neighbourhood Bully)

According to the narrator above, given all the ensuing circumstances, there be a nonZionist space that remains to have sympathy for the Hebrews – given the way they’ve been negatively portrayed by the Gospel of John, and the Book of Revelations in the New Testament.

———

Untold Dylan is published daily (occasionally more often) and details of some of our series of articles can be found at the top of the page.   If you would like to write for Untold Dylan please email a copy of your article, or your idea for an article to Tony@schools.co.uk.   We also have a Facebook group – just go to Facebook and search for Untold Dylan.

By Tony Attwood

I’m working through Dylan songs in roughly alphabetical order looking for cover versions that are available free of charge on the internet and which offer an extra insight into the songs.  And this little article contains some meandering around … but if you have a few moments please stay with me because it ends with a masterpiece of musical invention.

So, to start from the start, I would love to be able to include a cover version of “In the Garden” at this point, just to see what others might make of its very odd musical construction, but I can only find one, and I really don’t like it.  Taking a song like that and just building up the hype doesn’t work for me on a musical level, so it is set aside and I have to move on.

“In the Summer time” comes up next and here again I can only find one cover that has a video freely available and it is by Chrissie Hynde.  We’ve already picked out this cover before in Jochen’s article on the song, and it is certainly worth a repeat.

This was part of a lockdown project in which the band recorded nine Dylan songs and which we covered in part as they were released.  It was fun then, as it is now.

So moving on again, “Is your love in vain” turns out once more to be a song that artists don’t really want to record, although it is part of the Girl from the North Country show and on this video starts around 4 minutes 30 seconds.

And so I move onto Isis and at last I have re-workings that I can evolve some prose of praise around.  Julie Corbalis .

Now taking on this song as a solo with just acoustic guitar as backing is one hell of a venture – it is a long piece of course which has the most extraordinary lyrics.  But here’s the problem – most of all already know all the lyrics by heart, so stripping up the band puts an awful lot on the vocal, especially if the accompaniment is simply strumming the guitar.

But I think she does give it a good bash.  And full marks for attempting what I don’t think many others have done.

By way of contrast we have Popa Chubby, who again goes for a less than full band approach, although not as minimalist as Julie Corbalis.  I think Popa gets more out of the lyrics than Julie – I feel a much greater need to listen and focus, maybe because of the variation in his approach, maybe the three musicians are so in tune with each other through the arrangement.   After each short instrumental break I’m ready to hear how he’s going to deliver the next verse.  After each verse I’m ready to hear what the band is going to next.

And finally something different again.  I love this Vitamin String Quartet instrumental.  If you have the time do go straight from the Popa Chubby version above into the VSQ – the VSQ version is almost a coda to the Chubby performance.  Of course this is helped by the fact that both performances are in the same key, but there is something more than that.   The VSQ version really is a final commentary on everything Popa Chubby puts into the piece.  And in many ways a final commentary on the composition.

I rather enjoyed that.

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

• The song with numbers in the title.
• Ain’t Talkin
• All I really want to do
•  Angelina
•  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• As I went out one morning
•  Ballad for a Friend
• Ballad in Plain D
• Ballad of a thin man
•  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• The ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond here lies nothing
• Blind Willie McTell
•  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Blowin in the wind as never before
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Boots of Spanish leather
• Born in Time
• Buckets of Rain
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Can’t wait
• Changing of the Guard
• Chimes of Freedom
• Country Pie
•  Crash on the Levee
• Dark Eyes
• Dear Landlord
• Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dignity.
• Dirge
• Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Don’t think twice
•  Down along the cove
• Drifter’s Escape
• Duquesne Whistle
• Farewell Angelina
• Foot of Pride and Forever Young
• Fourth Time Around
• From a Buick 6
• Gates of Eden
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
• 42 Heart of Mine
• 43: High Water
•  44: Highway 61.5
• 45: Hurricane
• 46: I am a lonesome hobo
• 47: I believe in you
• 48: I contain multitudes
• 49: I don’t believe you.
• 50: I love you too much
• 51: I pity the poor immigrent. 
•  52: I shall be released
• 53: I threw it all away
• 54: I want you
• 55: I was young when I left home
• 56: I’ll remember you
• 57: Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
• 58: If not for you, and a rant against prosody
• 59: A Dylan cover a Day: If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
• 60: If you see her say hello
• 61: Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
• 62: I’m not there.

An index to the whole series on the Never Ending Tour can be found here.     Below are the previous episodes for 2004.

• NET, 2004, Part 1 – The best singing audience
• NET 2004 part 2: The Jazz Connection
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, part 3, Harping On
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, Part 4 More jazz, regulars and rarities
• NET 2004 Part 5: Rocking on

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

When I get close to finishing my survey of a particular year of the NET, I often end with a rather ragbag collection of performances that are too good or too interesting to leave on the cutting room floor.

Take, for example, this version of ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ from the Glasgow concert.

 It ain’t me babe

It has a lot going for it. A powerful vocal and harmonica, an intriguing steady beat, and a completely new arrangement. The problem here is because at some stage in the past we have bonded with a song, with its previous incarnation, because we have loved it so much, identified with the particular performance that struck us, we find it hard to take in a new vision of the song. Then we start making up all sorts of reasons why it is inferior to the one we identify with.

It took me a while with this ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ but I think I finally got it. Despite the rigidity of the beat and the awkwardness in the way some of the vocal lines fit, it’s a powerful reconfiguration of the song.

I could say something similar about this performance of the soul-searching folk ballad, ‘If You See Her Say Hello’ from Blood on the Tracks:

If you see her say hello

It comes out as a country rock song, which gives it an upbeat mood. It took me a while to get used to it as a foot-tapper, but the change in tempo hasn’t worn the painful edge off the song. Dylan makes some significant changes to the lyrics here. I haven’t tried to transcribe them, but they are worth noting. There’s a bit more bitterness in these lyrics, which remind me of the slow, agonizing, 1976 performance with the lyrics transformed into a much darker, more bitter mood. Dylan seems to veer from performing this as a ‘nice’ song with laudable sentiments, to a splenetic expression of grief. The miracle of the song is that it is both at the same time. (No date for that one, I’m sorry)

The essence of a song, however, can’t change, and that’s evident from this countrified ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ from the Toronto show (20^th March)

I’ll be your baby tonight

It sounds great as a 1950’s style pop song. You could dance around the jukebox to this one. The careless beat, the apparent careless delivery. One of Dylan’s few genuinely carefree songs. He plays brilliantly with the vocal, playing a little tipsy (‘bring that bottle over here’), almost missing the beat but not quite. We can revel in the retro feel of it.

Rainy Day Woman is another song easy to overlook, and yet those brassy, insouciant opening chords, seeming to herald the arrival of the ringmaster of a circus, first pulled us into Blonde on Blonde. Hard to credit, fifty-five years on, just how provocative and dangerous this song was at the time. Play it too loud and you might get the police knocking at your door. It’s fine to sing this one with a bit of a stoned stumble. It’s all in good fun.

Rainy Day Woman

‘Tryin’ to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door,’ from Time Out Of Mind benefits from the lusher sound Dylan achieves in 2004. There’s a sense of resignation in it. And that profound disorientation that marks most of the songs on the album:

They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don't know what "all right" even means

I couldn’t possibly have left out this beautifully considered performance.

Tryin’ to get to heaven

Any performance of ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ is hard to overlook. It’s such a drama of seduction (but who’s seducing who?), and a marvellous mood piece. While I don’t think Dylan has ever matched the soaring 1995 performance at Prague, the song never fails to cast its spell. In this one Dylan slows the tempo way down and creates a spooky atmosphere with his echoey voice.

Man in the long black coat.

I nearly left ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’ behind, but realized in time that this was only my own preference in action. Like any other compiler making a selection, I tend to favour songs with which I have formed a strong connection.

It’s not just the words themselves which seem obscure, probably no more so than other Dylan songs from “Love and Theft”  but what may be driving the song. Often, despite the complexities in a Dylan song, most songs have a powerful affective centre. Look at the emotional drive in ‘Man In the Long Black Coat.’ The sense of horror and loss.

‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’ doesn’t seem to have that kind of easily identifiable drive. I do see how it evokes the era of the 1920s and 30s, and I can see there’s a story of betrayal here, but I don’t have enough to answer the deceptively simple question – why did Dylan write this song? Favourite lines:

They walk among the stately trees
They know the secrets of the breeze

What also convinced me to include the song was the superior nature of the recording at Rochester. If any performance is going to get the song across it will be this one.

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum

‘God Knows’ is a song about war, and the imminence of war, although the lyrics might apply to a personal relationship. Being able to sing of the personal and the political at the same time is one of Dylan’s great achievements. When I hear these lines,

God knows it’s fragile
God knows everything
God knows it could snap apart right now
Just like putting scissors to a string

I can’t help thinking of the situation in Ukraine unfolding as I write. The stretched tension in those lines is palpable. Maybe it has already snapped apart like putting scissors to a string. Can we face it?

God knows it’s terrifying
God sees it all unfold

This is another Dylan song that doesn’t lose its relevance as time goes on.

God Knows

We have heard some exquisite performances of ‘Girl from the North Country’ over the past few years, and since 1999 especially. Mostly quite delicate, acoustic pieces. However, like all the very early songs Dylan is still performing, the song has had to adapt to the piano. Dylan uses the same baroque arrangement as in 2003, but this Glasgow performance has a special warmth that marks that concert out in 2004. When it begins, it almost has the feel of a medieval madrigal. Dylan’s tribute to this early love is warm and affectionate, the harp has just the right touch of pathos, and it’s hard not to feel a tear in your eye. We might love those old acoustic guitar versions, but there’s no doubt this one has the power to move us.

Girl from the North Country

‘Positively 4^th Street’ is famous as an attack song:

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend..

But while this performance is not exactly affectionate, with Dylan’s rough been-through-the-mill voice, tired and world-weary, these lines seem to have lost their most vicious edge. There are two performances of this one I think are of interest. The first is from Toronto, and Dylan puts some roughness into his voice, maybe trying to keep the sentimentality out. Toughening it up.

Positively 4th Street (A)

This second performance (date unknown) sounds more in sorrow than anger. The same song, slightly different edge.

Positively 4^th Street (B)

‘Saving Grace’ from Saved (1980) is something of a rarity. It is however a song that well suits Dylan’s rough careworn 2004 voice.

Death is often mentioned in the song; it’s near death that we might feel that ‘saving grace’ and the ongoing miracle of being alive. The sense that the prospect of death brings us closer to grace is the song’s driver, and Dylan’s 2004 crackle sounds closer to that ‘pine box for all eternity’ than the warm, vibrant album version. And is there not also a touch of wistfulness in it? That saving grace is there, but can we always feel it? And do we deserve it? There is perhaps as much hope as there is faith in this performance.

Saving Grace

‘Dignity’ is a song I can easily overlook as it seems like a second rank Dylan song, but it’s a rocker with a swirling movement. I had it on my list for Part 5 of 2004, but it didn’t quite make the cut. This Rochester performance however is full of vigour. Can’t resist a performance with this flair, and I’m happy to slip it in here.

 Dignity

I went down where the vultures feed
I would've got deeper, but there wasn't any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn't any difference to me

Chilly wind sharp as a razor blade
House on fire, debts unpaid
Gonna stand at the window, gonna ask the maid
Have you seen dignity

With lyrics like that, how come we tend to think of it as a ‘second rank’ Dylan song? Is there any such thing?

Acoustic or electric, ‘Masters of War’ has always been a strident song, but by 2004 that stridency has given way to a more funereal, threatening atmosphere, supported by Dylan’s dark thumping on the piano. I’d love to see this performance (8^th Oct, Fishkill) put on You Tube as background to scenes from the Ukraine war. Still another song that’s kept its relevance.

Masters of War

While on the subject of war, I nearly overlooked this ‘Cat’s in the Well’ from the Manchester concert. Another of those ‘second rank’ Dylan songs. Wonderful vocal performance from Dylan. Listen to how he stages these lines. I’ve tried to set them out as I hear them.

The cat's in the well, the horse is going bump etybump.
The cat's in the well, and the horse is going bump ety bump.
Back alley Sally is    doin’   the Ameeeer ican       jump.

Maybe this song would be a good one to play against the background of the Ukraine war. ‘The dogs are going to war’… they sure are. The song’s last line, ‘Goodnight my love, may the lord have mercy on us all’ seems like the perfect way to finish this post.

Cat’s in the well

So that’s it for now…. But hey! wait a minute, isn’t there something we might’ve missed? A song in the shadows? Ah, how could I forget the old warhorse, ‘Tangled up in Blue’? Gotta slip it in at the end here. This is a song that, like Dylan himself, just keeps on keeping on. (Toronto)

Tangled Up in Blue

Ah! That’s better. See you soon with a brief epilogue for 2004 – some on the non-
Dylan songs he covered that year.

Kia Ora

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme
• Red River Shore (1997) part 8:  He is no one
• Red River Shore (1997) part 9: A floating nothing
• Red River Shore (1997) part 10: Send it to Lulu
• Red River Shore (1997) part 11: It’s complicated

by Jochen Markhorst

XII        I see dead people

Now I heard of a guy who lived a long time ago
A man full of sorrow and strife
That if someone around him died and was dead
He knew how to bring ’em on back to life
Well I don’t know what kind of language he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
Except the girl from the red river shore

In The Graham Norton Show, former Friends actor Matthew Perry tells the amusing story of how, in a bar, he met M. Night Shyamalan, whom he knows a little because six months earlier he had presented an award to Bruce Willis for his impressive role in The Sixth Sense. And in the process, he got to say hello to the rest of the cast and the director. Perry spends an exceptionally enjoyable, alcohol-soaked evening with the world-famous director, they go to another joint together and Matthew is already dreaming of a major role in one of Shyamalan’s next films. When the director goes to the toilet, Perry is approached by an acquaintance who happens to be passing by.

“He said, how’s your night going, and I said: what, are you kidding? I’m having the greatest night of my life. M. Night Shyamalan and I have been hanging out for the last two and a half hours. It’s been great. And M. Night Shyamalan came back from the bathroom and my friend said: that’s not M. Night Shyamalan.

And it wasn’t. It was just an Indian gentleman who looked a lot like M. Night Shyamalan.”

Perry’s eagerness is understandable. He is offered plenty of roles, but all in the romantic comedy department, and M. Night Shyamalan is Hollywood’s golden boy at the time, after the smashing, worldwide success of the occult thriller The Sixth Sense. (1999). That success is 90% due to the script, also written by director Shyamalan. And especially because of its mindfuck quality, the bewildering twist at the end that the main character, psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), is dead – we have unsuspectingly been sympathising and identifying with a ghost all this time, a ghost that, apart from the cinema audience, is only seen by the other main character, nine-year-old Cole “I see dead people” Sear.

Cole also learns why these ghosts are wandering around: they have unfinished business, only see what they want to see and don’t even know they’re dead. And that all sounds awfully close to Dylan’s protagonist, after hearing the last two lines;

Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
Except the girl from the red river shore

… lines spoken by the protagonist after he announces that he is looking for a guy who can bring the dead back to life.

There are enough lines to be drawn from Shyamalan to Dylan. He uses Dylan’s music in his films, calls Dylan one of his great heroes in interviews and even confesses to feeling a kind of telepathic connection with the Bard (in Michael Bamberger’s weirdly hagiographic, authorised study The Man Who Heard Voices, 2006).

But the suggestion that these two Dylan lines inspired his one great masterpiece is way too far-fetched. It is highly unlikely that the script-writing director could have heard the unreleased song from January 1997 at the time he was writing the screenplay for The Sixth Sense. And then again, the concept of the-one-who-can-see-ghosts is not that unique.

Meg Ryan sees the angel Nicolas Cage in City Of Angels, the Hollywoodised version of the brilliant Wim Wenders film Der Himmel über Berlin (1987). Whoopi Goldberg is the only one who can hear the murdered Patrick Swayze in Ghost (1990). Nicolas Roeg’s classic Don’t Look Now, in a way. And the witty Ricky Gervais as a blunt dentist in Ghost Town (2008) is also the only one who can see dead people – the idea was of course created for horror, but is surprisingly often used in romantic comedies and child-friendly family films as well.

But what sets Dylan’s “Red River Shore” apart from all those stories, and what it shares with The Sixth Sense, is its surprising twist. I think nobody ever saw me here at all offers, in its final lines, a new scenario that overturns all that has gone before; the scenario in which the narrator dwells in the shadows of a fading past, wanders in the dimension where the angels fly, living in the moonlight, seeks his soul’s rest there where the black winds roar, for whom the sun doesn’t shine anymore…

The closing lines offer the advanced insight that we have listened to a jeremiad of a wandering soul, of a spirit that has unfinished business and that probably does not even realise that he is dead. At least, he seems to be surprised that no one can see him.  Except the girl from the Red River shore. And it turns the motivation to find the guy who can bring the dead back to life; this is not a repentant murderer trying to undo his misdeed with the reanimation of the Red River girl, but he himself, like the angel Nicolas Cage and the jazz pianist Joe Gardner, wants to be brought back to life.

Nice twist – though far from conclusive. Dylan’s apparent dissatisfaction with “Red River Shore” (the song is discarded for Time Out Of Mind and never put on the setlist either – it belongs to the rather select club of Dylan songs completely ignored by the master himself) may have something to do with its imbalance.

Comparably great works like “Blind Willie McTell” and “Series Of Dreams” are, after initial rejection, eventually rehabilitated. “Series Of Dreams” is admitted to the stage in Vienna, Virginia (8 September 1993) four years after its demotion to outtake, and performed nine more times thereafter. “Blind Willie McTell” takes longer to be rehabilitated, but then returns all the more glorious; to the dismay of producer Mark Knopfler, among others, it is rejected for Infidels in 1983, only to be released on The Bootleg Series in 1991, and after The Band records it and enjoys success with it, Dylan surrenders: since 1997, fourteen years after its conception, Dylan has performed the song 227 times.

A reluctant capitulation, still. Dylan seems only half convinced, judging by his statements in the interview with Jonathan Lethem for Rolling Stone, 2006 (when he has performed the song already about a hundred times):

“It was never developed fully, I never got around to completing it. There wouldn’t have been any other reason for leaving it off the record.”

“It was never developed fully” also seems to be the key to explain the fate of “Red River Shore”. Presumably, the poet only gradually, around the seventh verse, recognised the beautiful ambiguity of traumatised killer or wandering soul, made a mental note, but never got around to completing it. And now the song is dead.

It needn’t be too late. Perhaps Dylan should consider a night on the town with the writer/director of The Sixth Sense. Storyteller M. Night Shyamalan is, after all, a guy who knows how to bring ’em on back to life.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 13: ’Twas in the merry month of June – finale.

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:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang

• Mixing-Up The Fluids: Red Crimson And Yellow Dylan
• King Crimson And Yellow Dylan (Part II)
• The Crimson King And The Yellow Jester (Part III)
• King Crimson and the Yellow Jester (Part IV)
• King Crimson And BeelzeBob (Part V)

by Larry Fyffe

The snake-like Lamia of ancient mythology, bewitched by the wife of Zeus, resurfaces as Lilith of biblical lore.

In the poem below, the alluring, but treacherous, shape-shifting night spirit is involved in a human relationship rather than with the crimson Beelzebub:

Her stately neck, and arms were bare
Her blue-veined feet unsandaled were
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair
(Christabel: Samuel Coleridge)

In the following poem, sympathy is shown toward the beautified demon because of her desire to please the one she loves

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue
Striped like a zebra, freakled like a pard
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barred
(Lamia, part I: John Keats)

The Gothic Romantic bent of the poems above influences the  rhythmic ballad song beneath that’s from more recent times:

I'll twine 'mid the ringlets of my raven black hair
The lilies so pale, and the roses so fair
The myrtles so bright with an emerald hue
And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue
(I'll Twine 'Mid The Ringlets: J.P. Webster et al)

In the next song appears the Lilith/Lamia figure again; she’s  depicted as flawed – separated and alienated from the unitary gnostic Monad out there beyond the stars:

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight, your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don't sense affection, no gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me, but to the stars above
(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

Reversing the polarity of the optimistic sentiment expressed in the overwrought Romantic Transcendentalist poem quoted below:

Down by the merry brook
That runs through the vale
Where blossoms the roses
And the lilies so pale 
Where the clover sweet-scented
Perfumes all the air
(I'm Waiting For Thee: 'Maud Irving')

The following bluegrass song might even be construed as a murder ballad; the Lilith/Lamia narrator therein looks forward to reaping her vengeance after her lover rejects her:

Oh, he taught me to love him, and call me his flower
That was blooming to cheer him through life's dreary hour
Oh, I long to see him, and regret the dark hour
He's gone, and neglected his pale wildwood flower
(Wildwood Flower: Carter Family)

Bob Dylan, with the Band, performs a short rendition of “Wildwood Flower”.

By Tony Attwood

Here the whole concept of doing a study of some of the best cover versions of Dylan’s songs (which is the point of A Dylan Cover a Day in case you hadn’t noticed) falls apart.   Because there is no definitive version of the song by Dylan with which we can compare it.

The best version we have is this one (it starts with some filming that is nothing to do with the song, so if you are of an impatient disposition, you might want to pop along to around the 25 second mark.

And if you care to follow the lyrics, they are below.  They still sound to me as if they are improvised as Bob sings, but if that is the case how on earth did he manage to take it all the way to

And the old gypsy told her, like I said, “Carry on,”
I wish I was there to help her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

which is a masterpiece of an ending given all that was said before.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on about this utter masterpiece elsewhere on this site, and there’s not much I can add to that – except to note that this original by Dylan is far better than the cover version that turned up in the movie.  Which is really the reverse of the whole point of this series – what I am normally trying to comment on are the covers that ADD something to Dylan.  Nothing adds to Dylan in this case, although I’ve had a go myself out of desperation to give the world another version of this masterpiece.

We have published the lyrics before, and looking at them again I am correcting them here

Thing’s are all right and she’s all too tight
In my neighbourhood she cries both day and night
I know it because it was there
It’s a milestone but she’s down on her luck
And she’s daily salooning about to make a hard earned buck; 
   I was there.

I believe that she’d stop him if she would start to care
I believe that she’d look upon the side that used to care
And I’d go by the Lord anywhere she’s on my way
But I don’t belong there.

No, I don’t belong to her, I don’t belong to anybody
She’s my Christ-forsaken-angel but she don’t hear me cry
She’s a lone hearted mystic and she can’t carry on
When I’m there she’s all right, but then she’s not, when I’m gone.

Heaven knows that the answer she not calling no one
She’s the way, forsaken beauty for she’s mine, for the one
And I lost her hesitation by temptation lest  it runs
But she don’t honour me but I’m not there, I’m gone.

Now I’ll cry tonight like I cried the night before
And I’m leased on the highway  but I still dream about the door
It’s so long, she’s forsaken by her faith, (where’s to tell?)
It don’t have consternation she’s my all, fare thee well.

Now when I’ll teach that lady I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom waits so high above her
And I run but I race but it’s not too fast or still
But I don’t perceive her, I’m not there, I’m gone.

Well it’s all about diffusion and I cry for her veil
I don’t need anybody now beside me to tell
And it’s all affirmation I receive but it’s not
She’s a lone-hearted beauty 
    but she don’t like this spot and she’ gone.

Yeah, she’s gone like the radio, the shining yesterday
But now she’s home beside me and I’d like her here to stay
She’s a lone, forsaken beauty and I don’t trust anyone
And I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

 Well, it’s too hard to stay here and I don’t want to leave
It’s so bad, for so few see, but she’s a heart too hard to need
It’s alone, it’s a crime the way she hauls me around
But she don’t fall to hate me but tears are gone; a painted clown.

Yes, I believe that it’s rightful oh, I believe it in my mind
I’ve been told like I said one night before “Carry on the crying”
And the old gypsy told her, like I said, “Carry on,”
I wish I was there to help her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

This version I really like – I don’t know who this guy is, but full credit to him for taking this very difficult song on.  He even gets the breathing right, and certainly holds my attention.

And one more.  Ignore the date – that can’t be right.  I don’t think the opening works, but it improves… do stay with it – after 40 seconds they get going.   I wonder why the guys didn’t hear that this opening needs a much stronger solo male vocal if you are going to try it.

The instrumental verse however is perfect – brilliant thought out and executed even though the recording is a little rough.

Finally this is the version you’ll know from the soundtrack.

This is an utterly staggering song, and it deserves much more in terms of attention than these few versions.  But then as ever these are just my opinions.

Last up: the interview with the producer director Todd Haynes discussing “I’m not there” and the issue of cover versions.

https://youtu.be/bR66am6F6IE

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

• The song with numbers in the title.
• Ain’t Talkin
• All I really want to do
•  Angelina
•  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• As I went out one morning
•  Ballad for a Friend
• Ballad in Plain D
• Ballad of a thin man
•  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• The ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond here lies nothing
• Blind Willie McTell
•  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Blowin in the wind as never before
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Boots of Spanish leather
• Born in Time
• Buckets of Rain
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Can’t wait
• Changing of the Guard
• Chimes of Freedom
• Country Pie
•  Crash on the Levee
• Dark Eyes
• Dear Landlord
• Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dignity.
• Dirge
• Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Don’t think twice
•  Down along the cove
• Drifter’s Escape
• Duquesne Whistle
• Farewell Angelina
• Foot of Pride and Forever Young
• Fourth Time Around
• From a Buick 6
• Gates of Eden
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
• 42 Heart of Mine
• 43: High Water
•  44: Highway 61.5
• 45: Hurricane
• 46: I am a lonesome hobo
• 47: I believe in you
• 48: I contain multitudes
• 49: I don’t believe you.
• 50: I love you too much
• 51: I pity the poor immigrent. 
•  52: I shall be released
• 53: I threw it all away
• 54: I want you
• 55: I was young when I left home
• 56: I’ll remember you
• 57: Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
• 58: If not for you, and a rant against prosody
• 59: A Dylan cover a Day: If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
• 60: If you see her say hello
• 61: Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme
• Red River Shore (1997) part 8:  He is no one
• Red River Shore (1997) part 9: A floating nothing
• Red River Shore (1997) part 10: Send it to Lulu

by Jochen Markhorst

XI         It’s complicated

Now I heard of a guy who lived a long time ago
A man full of sorrow and strife
That if someone around him died and was dead
He knew how to bring ’em on back to life
Well I don’t know what kind of language he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
Except the girl from the red river shore

Dylan also comes along for a moment. In “the Zone”, the border area where the soul resides for a while when you are enraptured on earth – by music, for example. And that, “the Zone”, is where Moonwind Stardancer’s ship sails; to the sounds of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. Protagonist Joe roams around there, looking for Moonwind, because Moonwind knows how to bring him back to life. In Soul, the overpowering 2020 Pixar film, the soul of dying jazz pianist Joe Gardner can be brought back to life if he has a fully ticked off Earth Pass that grants him access to Earth, and thus back to his lifeless body. In The Great Before, the dimension where souls are prepared for Life, he must obtain one. A given used at about the same time by filmmaker Edson Oda for his thoroughly poetic film Nine Days (2020); in a lonely house on an unreal plain, the hermit selects, in nine-day interview sessions, the souls that are allowed to go to a body on Earth. The scenario is a Swiss cheese, but oh well; the images are pure poetry and the actors are sublimely cast.

Reanimation as a theme is of all times, but in most cases the plot leads to fright and horror, to sorrow and strife. The Flatliners who deliberately kill themselves and then reanimate each other do not exactly enjoy their regained, nightmarish lives (1990), and the life broker in the rip-off The Lazarus Effect (2017) also horribly regrets the monster he creates when he revives his own wrecked girl from the Red River shore, fiancée Zoë. She turns into an unstoppable killing machine with supernatural powers. And similar horror is provided by most reanimation stories and the dozens of Frankenstein films.

Only a handful of films have a positive twist like Soul. The Crow, although a gory revenge film, has a sort of happy ending for the revived Brandon Lee (whose actual death during the shooting is filmed, lugubriously, as a fake gun accidentally shoots a projectile into his stomach). And the cinematic monument RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987) is not quite a feel-good movie either, but the reanimated cop Alex Murphy is at least programmed to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. And is inspired by the most famous reanimator of all time, the same one who also inspires Dylan;

“The point of RoboCop is, of course, it is a Christ story. It is about a guy that gets crucified after 50 minutes, then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes and then is like the super-cop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.”
(director Paul Verhoeven in MTV News, 2010)

The final couplet of “Red River Shore” is, without a doubt, the most fascinating one of the song. Every line is striking and the whole, like Dylan’s best final couplets, offers both a twist on the previous stanzas and a menu of possible scenarios.

The opening, I heard of a guy who lived a long time ago, masks through the choice of words (“a guy”) the identity of Jesus, who therefore all the more surprisingly three lines later turns out to be “the guy”. For the time being, the storyteller keeps the suspense going; the “guy” was a man full of sorrow and strife. Which pushes the associations, again through word choice, to medieval tragic heroes and ancient murder ballads. Identical word choice as in one of the many “Matty Groves” variants, for example. In the seventeenth century, troubadours sang about Matty (or rather: about Little Musgrave, as he was more often called in those days):

‘To lodge wi thee a’ night, fair lady, 
Wad breed baith sorrow and strife; 
For I see by the rings on your fingers 
You’re good Lord Barnaby’s wife.’

… and to the nineteenth-century “Arthur McBride”, the song Dylan interprets so lovingly, seven years before “Red River Shore”, on Good As I Been To You (“And he pays all his debts without sorrow and strife”).

But on the other hand, it already has an evangelical connotation; “Sorrow and strife” does indeed have a New Testament colour, is a word combination that is otherwise only to be found in gospel music. In “Wait For Me” by The Statesmen for example, Brenda Lee’s “Some People”, and in old hymns like “Jesus, I Come” and “Out Of My Darkness Into Thy Light” – all edifying songs in which a longing for liberation from earthly sorrow and strife and for union with Jesus is sung. With the single use of those two words sorrow and strife, in short, the poet builds a bridge from the old-fashioned folk atmosphere of the previous seven stanzas to the introduction of the gospel in this finale. A bridge that becomes all the more solid with the following if someone around him died and was dead; again that Biblical tone, the tautological of John (“he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth,” 3:31), Esther (“and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink,” 4:16), Proverbs 14:24 (“the foolishness of fools is folly”), to name but three examples – the Bible is rich in tautologies like Dylan’s he died and was dead.

The road is paved. So, in this chapter 8, verse 4 we get to know who the guy is: the most famous reanimator of all time, that is. But still described with the same pleasantly disrespectful, folksy tone: He knew how to bring ’em on back to life. Undertones: boy, he was quite something, this guy Jesus. The same tone Dylan uses in “Highway 61 Revisited” in the dialogue of Abraham and God; man, you must be puttin’ me on.

Apart from that: the insinuation confirms the veiled hints from the previous verses; the narrator is looking for a guy who can bring the dead back to life – and thus insinuates that his girl from the Red River shore is dead. More than that, he reaffirms the vague suspicion that he himself is the murderer. After the cryptic opening in which he suggests that he has scared her to death in the dark, after which she has left for an area where the angels fly, and after the in this scenario rather lugubrious words she should always be with me, and all subsequent ambiguous outpourings, this is then relatively unambiguous – after “death” in the opening the narrator, neatly cyclic, returns in his closing words to the words dead, died and back to life. Words of a desperate, repentant sinner who needs a deus ex machina to undo auld lang syne, to dissolve the shadows of his past.

But: this is a Dylan song in the same category as “Desolation Row” and “Mississippi”, in the category of monumental songs that meander between lyricism and epicism, that insinuate more than they tell, that don’t show anything more than what the broken glass reflects. The poet has one final twist up his sleeve…

JOE
Does this mean I’m… dead?

COUNSELOR JERRY A
Not yet. Your body’s in a holding pattern. It’s complicated.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 12: I see dead people

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:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang

A list of all the previous articles in this series is given at the end.

by Patrick Roefflaer

• Released                                1989-09-12
• Graffiti                                   Remerro Trotsky Williams
• Photographer                       Suzie-Q
• Art-director                          Christopher Austopchuck
• Type Design                          Mark Burdett

Often, when a photo is needed for the cover of his next album, Bob Dylan invites a photographer to meet him at the recording studio where the sessions took place, usually during the mixing stage.

His 26 studio album, Oh Mercy, was famously recorded in New Orleans in the Spring of 1989. But when the record company asks for a photo, the singer is in New York City, where he is rehearsing for his imminent Summer tour.

Tour 89 starts in Europe, on May 27. There’s only a two-day break between the last show in Athens, Greece on June 28 and the start of the American leg in Peoria, Illinois, on July 1^st. That tour ends on September 24.

A show is planned in New Orleans on August 25, but that’s too late to obtain a picture for the album.  So, it’s time for a plan B.

The rehearsals take place in The Power Station in the Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood in Manhattan. Those recording facilities are located at 441 West 53rd Street. On the next corner – just a three-minute walk – is a Chinese Restaurant, Kowk Wah.

The entrance of the restaurant is on 9^th Street,  the wall facing West 53^rd is graced with a colorful acrylic-on-brick mural, which charms Bob Dylan. The mural is signed: Trotsky ‘86.

Dylan has the work photographed.  The photograph was taken by JIM LINDERMAN / DULL TOOL DIM BULB.

With the help of a local community group, representatives of Columbia Records locate the artist living just across the street of the mural. They find that his name is actually Trotksy: Remerro Trotsky Williams.

Williams was born (in February 1953) and raised in Washington DC.  He had painted murals in his hometown, and on the West German side of the Berlin Wall before creating the ‘Dancing Couple’ mural.

In an interview with New York Magazine, published in September 1989,  Trotsky recounted: “I had just come from the housing court, and I owed thousands of dollars in rent. I was just about to give up and move to Atlanta or Istanbul, and I get a phone call: ‘CBS calling – we want to use one of your paintings for the Bob Dylan LP’, and I say ‘You’re kidding me; this is some kind of cruel joke; go away, but give me your number and I’ll call you back.’ I called back and it ended up being a real thing.”

The artist is offered $5,000 for the use of his art on the next Bob Dylan album and he’s invited to meet the singer (probably on July 23 at the show at the Jones Beach Theatre, Wantagh, Long Island, NYC).

“He told me my painting blew him away,” says the artist in another late 1989 interview for People. “He was also concerned that I liked the title of the album to go with my artwork. That was very nice.”

”I’m hot right now and I love it,” Trostky concluded. However, a few months later he was diagnosed with HIV. Luckily he survived.

The mural itself self however didn’t survive. In 2011 it was replaced by two new pieces of wall art. Nowadays the place is a pizzeria, called Norma. The brick wall is painted brownish, without any artworks.

On the back of the cover is a photo of the singer with a hat, according to the credits taken by Suzie-Q. This probably refers to his clothing advisor, Suzie Pullen.

The overall design of the album is overseen by Christopher Austopchuck, graphic design professor at the School of Visual Arts. As Creative Director for CBS, he was responsible for the art works for three other Bob Dylan related albums: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 (1991), The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1992) and  Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3 (1994).

Type Design by Mark Burdett, another photographer & art director for CBS.

————-

This is a continuing series of articles with illustrations, concerning the origins of and decision making within, creating the covers of Bob Dylan’s albums.

Here are the articles so far .  All are by Patrick Roefflaer.

• Another side of Bob Dylan
• Biograph – see Empire Burlesque
• Blonde On Blonde: The Artwork
• Blood on the Tracks
• Bob Dylan
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• Bringing it All Back Home
• Down in the Groove
• Dylan
• Empire Burlesque and Biograph artwork
• Good as I’ve been to you
• Greatest Hits Volume II
• Infidels: what’s in a name?
• John Wesley Harding: the art work
• Knocked Out Loaded
• Nashville Skyline
• New Morning
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
• Self-Portrait
• Slow Train Coming
• Street Legal and the secret cover location
• The Basement Tapes
• The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – the untold story of the artwork of the album
• The Times they are a changin’ album artwork
• Time out of Mind
• Travelling Wilburys Vol 1 (guest visitor, Michael Palin)
• Triplicate
• World Gone Wrong

• Mixing-Up The Fluids: Red Crimson And Yellow Dylan
• King Crimson And Yellow Dylan (Part II)
• The Crimson King And The Yellow Jester (Part III)
• King Crimson and the Yellow Jester (Part IV)

By Larry Fyffe

In the Gnostic-like Book of Revelations of the New Testament, Satan is depicted as a red dragon with seven heads. In the Old Testament, as a smooth-talking serpent whereby humans end up mortal:

Now the serpent was more subtil than any  beast of the field
Which the Lord had made
(Genesis 3:1)

Whether by flies or by fires, death consumes us all – the biblical winged Baalzebub and red Satan symbolic thereof.

As in the Gospels of the Holy Bible, the recordings of the musical band known as ‘King Crimson’ merge the two demons  – Beelzebub with Satan.

Inspired no doubt by the Blakean-tiger-pounching song lyrics below written by Bob Dylan:

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rolling high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
(Bob Dylan: My Back Pages)

In the New Testament of the Holy  Bible, Jesus (who gets raised to God’s level in the Christian religion) is accused of being a follower of Satan, not of God:

And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said
"He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils
Casteth he out devils"
(Mark 3:22)

To which Jesus, the Christian Messiah-to-be, replies:

" ...How can Satan cast out Satan?
And if a kingdom be divided against itself
That kingdom cannot stand"
(Mark 3: 23, 24 )

In a number of his songs, BeelzeBob Dylan tries to reconcile good (God) and evil (the Devil) both of whom the singer/songwriter takes as haunting the souls of us all; he attempts to marry Heaven and Hell [please click on the link after the four lines from the song to hear a cover version].

I been double-crossed now
For the very last time, and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye to the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

However, Satan, the beastly side of the Almighty One, hangs around; isn’t that easy to get rid of:

I dreamt a monstrous dream
Something came up out of the sea
Swept through the land of the rich and the free
(Bob Dylan: 'Cross The Green Mountain)

There is a list of most of the earlier articles from this series at the end of the article.

By Tony Attwood

If this song has to be anything, it has to be fun.  Which means a lilting beat and beautiful harmonies.  Or delicate.  Or beautiful.  Or smooth.  Or lilting… which explains why this is so successful a song.  It can be what you make it.

Just let this track play and enjoy the perfection as well as the smoothness…  It is by the Shaken Bakers, of whom I know next to nothing – if you know please fill in a comment and tell me more.

By way of contrast Dennis Bono turns the song into something utterly different.  Dennis Bono, was noted as “the consummate interpreter of the Great American Songbook,” by the Chicago Tribune as “a thoroughbred singer, born and bred to sing.”

It doesn’t do much for me, but that’s just me.   It’s the other end of the spectrum from the Shaken Bakers.

Many of the hundreds of recordings of this song are just obvious in what they do, relying on us knowing the song and accepting it as background music.

But some, like those above, make the effort, and in that category we must include Clare Teal and Her Mini Big Band.  A really good middle eight, and a suitably understated use of the full band.

Just one more to show what people with musical imagination (as opposed to people who do the obvious) can actually do with a Dylan song.  It’s not revolutionary, but it has its own beauty, and there are moments in life (if you are very lucky) when it applies.  By the end, chances are, you are ready to fall asleep in her arms.

If you have been, thanks for reading.

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

• The song with numbers in the title.
• Ain’t Talkin
• All I really want to do
•  Angelina
•  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• As I went out one morning
•  Ballad for a Friend
• Ballad in Plain D
• Ballad of a thin man
•  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• The ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond here lies nothing
• Blind Willie McTell
•  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Blowin in the wind as never before
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Boots of Spanish leather
• Born in Time
• Buckets of Rain
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Can’t wait
• Changing of the Guard
• Chimes of Freedom
• Country Pie
•  Crash on the Levee
• Dark Eyes
• Dear Landlord
• Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dignity.
• Dirge
• Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Don’t think twice
•  Down along the cove
• Drifter’s Escape
• Duquesne Whistle
• Farewell Angelina
• Foot of Pride and Forever Young
• Fourth Time Around
• From a Buick 6
• Gates of Eden
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
• 42 Heart of Mine
• 43: High Water
•  44: Highway 61.5
• 45: Hurricane
• 46: I am a lonesome hobo
• 47: I believe in you
• 48: I contain multitudes
• 49: I don’t believe you.
• 50: I love you too much
• 51: I pity the poor immigrent. 
•  52: I shall be released
• 53: I threw it all away
• 54: I want you
• 55: I was young when I left home
• 56: I’ll remember you
• 57: Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
• 58: If not for you, and a rant against prosody
• 59: A Dylan cover a Day: If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
• 60: If you see her say hello

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme
• Red River Shore (1997) part 8:  He is no one
• Red River Shore (1997) part 9: A floating nothing

by Jochen Markhorst

X          Send it to Lulu

Well I went back to see about her once
Went back to straighten it out
Everybody that I talked to had seen us there
Said they didn’t know who I was talking about
Well the sun went down on me a long time ago
I’ve had to pull back from the door
I wish I could have spent every hour of my life
With the girl from the red river shore

 Chancellor Merkel also plays along. In 2012, at a prize-giving ceremony, she happens to mention a recent visit to the town of Bielefeld, a small city in North Rhine-Westphalia. She drops a dramatically perfect pause and then adds: “… so es denn existiert – if it exists at all.” The audience laughs all the louder, as Frau Merkel very rarely allows herself to indulge in frivolities. When the laughter subsides, the Chancellor places, again perfectly timed: “Ich hatte den Eindruck, ich war da – I was under the impression that I was there.”

Merkel is referring to a running gag that by then has been popular in Germany for nearly 30 years: the collective conspiracy to maintain that Bielefeld does not exist at all. Its existence is said to have been fabricated by, as befits a good conspiracy theory, an unnamed “THEY” (“SIE” – always written in capitals).

The city council deals with it somewhat ambiguously. For the first few years, until 1999, the increasingly popular joke is ignored, but then the council decides on a counter-offensive and launches the Bielefeld gibt es doch! campaign (“Bielefeld does exist!”) with an official press release. Unfortunately, an inattentive official sends the official statement to the press on 1 April, so obviously, it backfires. In 2019, the next counter-offensive follows: the city council awards 1 million euros to the person who can prove conclusively that Bielefeld does not exist.

Usually, it is less funny, such a collective conspiracy. Which seems to be Dylan’s approach now; the less funny track. Apparently, the previous verse, the I know I’ve stayed here before verse, inspires him to the plot of an old-fashioned mystery thriller – the plot of a movie like The Lady Vanishes, to be more precise. Not too far-fetched; Hitchcock is on a pedestal with Dylan. In interviews, he does mention the director quite frequently, always admiringly, Hitchcock passes by once in Tarantula (“the world didn’t stop for a second – it just blew up / alfred hitchcock made the whole thing into a mystery”) and anyway: Dylan does have a fondness for old black and white crime thrillers in general.

In this old Hitchcock film (The Lady Vanishes is from 1938 and is considered one of Hitchcock’s “early sound films”), the plot revolves around a young woman who seems to be the only one to notice the disappearance of a fellow passenger on the train, the elderly lady Miss Froy. The other passengers and the train staff all claim they never saw her. Everybody that I talked to had seen us there said they didn’t know who I was talking about. A doctor present diagnoses hallucinations in poor, desperate Iris, and is not bothered by professional secrecy; he blabbers about it all over the train. An artifice that effectively contributes to the feeling of increasing suffocation for both the protagonist and the audience – in a more modern film (2005) with a similar plot, Flightplan with Jodie Foster, poor Jodie is even tied to her plane seat by supposedly well-meaning airline staff, and a therapist present there diagnoses something like hallucinations due to an unresolved trauma. Which, of course, exponentially increases the helpless frustration of the audience and Jodie. Especially since the missing lady in this film is Jodie’s six-year-old daughter – an extra traumatising dimension already added in Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) and later, in a variant, in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling with Angelina Jolie.

There is a difference though, a psychological deepening in fact, with Dylan’s protagonist – in all these films, the unhappy protagonist has at least one powerful ally: the audience. We have all witnessed that Miss Froy really exists, that Jodie Foster is not crazy and that little Bunny Lake is not a figment of a mentally ill lady’s imagination either. In “Red River Shore”, however, the screenwriter has already sown doubts about the protagonist; the audience has already heard him say that his time with that girl was “a dream”, has heard him sigh that she was “true to me”, and we even have some reason to suspect that the protagonist is a traumatised murderer – with all those whole and half references to a fatal event in the shadows of the past.

The build-up is good. “I went back to see about her once, went back to straighten it out” is an announcement that already makes the audience cringe: “Don’t do it, man.” The subsequent observation that everyone denies knowing her, all those people that had seen us there together back then, is then even a bit of a relief; thankfully, the whole village conspires to keep this dubious figure away from her. We, the audience, even become accomplices in a way; unlike in all those paranoia films, we are not on the side of the victim of the conspiracy, but we have sympathy for the conspirators.

It seems to break the I-person. “The sun went down on me a long time ago / I’ve had to pull back from the door” – Dylan’s paraphrase of the poetic resignation from a recent pop song beyond categorization, from Elton John’s 1974 “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. The brilliant song, which superficially expresses a long jeremiad of a spurned lover, but with, as lyricist Bernie Taupin says, “a dark twist”;

But you misread my meaning when I met you
Closed the door and left me blinded by the light
Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me

An hors catégorie song that achieves a Holy Trinity: majestic lyrics with a dark twist, delightful melodies and a brilliant, just not over-the-top from babbling-mountain-brook-to-wilderness waterfall arrangement. Thanks to the chilling elegance of Davey Johnstone’s guitar, Del Newman’s superior horn arrangement and the heavenly backing vocals of the Beach Boys Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston (and Toni Tennille of Captain & Tenille).

Elton, too, had an opinion, by the way:

“I’m not always the best judge of my own work – I am, after all, the man who loudly announced that ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ was such a terrible song that I would never countenance releasing it […]. I hated the song so much we were going to stop recording it immediately and send it to Engelbert Humperdinck – ‘and if he doesn’t want it, tell him to send it to Lulu! She can put it on a B-side!’ – I was coaxed back to the vocal booth and completed the take. Then I yelled at Gus Dudgeon that I hated it even more now it was finished and was going to kill him with my bare hands if he put it on the album.”
(Me – Elton John, 2019)

Which, in retrospect, makes us regret that Gus Dudgeon was not the producer in Miami in January 1997. To coax Dylan back and complete the song.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 11: It’s complicated

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:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang

An index to the whole series on the Never Ending Tour can be found here.     Below are the previous episodes for 2004.

• NET, 2004, Part 1 – The best singing audience
• NET 2004 part 2: The Jazz Connection
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, part 3, Harping On
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, Part 4 More jazz, regulars and rarities

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

While we have considered Dylan’s jazzy tendencies, his roots in folk music, and we have noticed how he leans towards country and blues, that is both urban and country blues, it is rock music that is core to Dylan’s musical project. Dylan is a rocker – the last of the best, as he boasts in ‘False Prophet.’

From the moment he got on stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with a hastily improvised group of musicians from The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and belted out a rough and rowdy ‘Maggie’s Farm’ Dylan was all about rock music. Not folk rock (like Simon and Garfunkel) or soft rock (like The Eagles) but hard rock, solid rock.

Rock music is harder to define than it is to identify. Google describes it as, ‘a form of popular music that evolved from rock and roll and pop music during the mid and late 1960s. Harsher and often self-consciously more serious than its predecessors, it was initially characterized by musical experimentation and drug-related or anti-establishment lyrics.’ It is also described simply as ‘a form of music with a strong beat.’

In his early acoustic, pre-rock period, Dylan liked to start his shows with ‘The Time They Are A’Changing,’ a declaration of form as much as the ‘protest’ content of those early songs. By the time we get to the period we’re looking at now, 2003 – 2005, the folky Dylan has almost entirely vanished, and his favourite concert openers were ‘Maggie’s Farm’ or ‘Drifter’s Escape,’ both blistering rockers.

As it moved further away from its 1950’s roots in rock ‘n roll, rock music became more and more sophisticated. By the time we get to the end of the 1960s the great rock bands, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, were making albums like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Their Satanic Majesties Request in which rock music, having moved away from its blues and rock ‘n roll roots, had become complex, elaborate, Baroque and at times over-inflated. King Crimson’s Court of the Crimson King took rock music to new levels of orchestration and portentousness.

Despite the sophistication of his lyrics, Dylan never went there. As a rocker, he remained true to the music’s ‘primitive’ roots. As a singer he was more drawn to the blues shouters like Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Joe Turner than the gauzy harmonies of King Crimson or the sweet melodious tones of Simon and Garfunkel.

So let’s turn to that prototype of Dylan rock songs, ‘Maggie’s Farm’ the first song that clearly marked him as a rock singer. Here’s how he kicks off the Rochester concert. He’s taken some of the jangle out of it and turned the song into a smooth, somewhat minimal, hard-hitting rock song, with all the emphasis on the compelling beat. The drums and bass sure move it along. Dylan feels entirely comfortable with this one. He rarely plays harmonica on this song, although it feels like the song’s made for it, or at least that’s the way Dylan makes it sound here:

Maggie’s farm

Listening to that, I have to wonder how we ever thought this song was not a protest song. Maggie’s dysfunctional farm is Dylan’s America, the stultifying 1950s by the sound of it. It is satire by absurdity.

A straight-out blues-rocker, ‘Down Along The Cove,’ was also a favourite to kick off a concert or played early. Dylan feels comfortable with this one too. He’s adding new verses. Whether he’s making them up on the spot, which is what it sounds like, or not I wouldn’t know, but it gives the performance an off-the-cuff, improvised feel. A great foot-tapper, mood setter this one. There’s a joyousness in it, a simple unaffected feeling. You see your true love coming your way!

Dylan kicks off the Manchester concert with this one. (11^th June)

Down Along the Cove

‘Watching the River Flow’ is another bluesy rocker that Dylan likes bring out early in the concerts. It has a relaxed and easy beat to swing along to. It’s a good one to follow a slow song. Dylan does a remarkable vocal here, slurring his voice, making it sound as if he’s too weary to even catch the beat – but of course he does, appearing to just catch the line in time. That vocal, plus an insistent harp break at the end, makes this one compulsive listening.

Watching the river flow

‘Wicked Messenger’ that obscure little ballad from John Wesley Harding has turned into a real slammer, full-frontal assault. If it doesn’t wake you up, nothing will. We have seen some outstanding performances of this song over the last four or five years. This recording from Plougskeepsie (NY) 4^th August, where it is the opening number, is not as good as some we have had, but fans of the song will be glad to know that it’s as wicked as ever.

Wicked Messenger

Now for a change of pace. ‘Can’t Wait,’ is a dark and desperate rocker from Time Out of Mind, and early performances of the song pretty much stuck with the album arrangement. In 2003, however, we saw Dylan transform the song into a quiet, almost sinister, prowling rocker. This 2004 performance keeps that arrangement, and what a powerful performance it is, outdoing the 2003 version in my opinion, as good as the earlier one was (See NET, 2003, Part 1). This has all the prowling energy of a caged tiger. It’s a restrained performance, but like a coiled spring. A powerful vocal pushes at the edges of that restraint. It doesn’t have to be loud to be explosive. [I don’t have the date for this one. It is from a compilation called Gone to the Finest Schools, for which I have lost the paperwork. Apologies.] It comes in at number eight on the setlist.

Can’t Wait

What better song to stir things up after that but ‘Highway 61 Revisited.’ Like Maggie’s Farm it rips a hole in the American dream. Death, deception and war; it’s all there. I’m glad Dylan’s never tried to slow this one down. Over the years it hasn’t changed much, hardly at all. It still rushes along at full gallop. It comes in at number 10 on the Manchester setlist.

Highway 61 Revisited

In Part 1 of this year, I included ‘Lovesick,’ that song of twilight shadows. I have to include it here again, I’m afraid, as I’ve since discovered a performance in which Dylan plays the harmonica, rare for this song. To my ear the harmonica is under-recorded, but it’s Dylan in his old form, playing those high, wild, mercurial notes he loves so much. It adds a certain desperate edge to the song. It’s lurching, emphatic beat makes it a rock song, just slowed down. [Another from Gone to the Finest Schools, slot 7 on the setlist]

Lovesick

We can’t get too deep into any imagined concert without encountering  ‘High Water.’ This one, a vision of ecological and moral mayhem, has a country rock feel, especially when the banjo comes in, but with that heavy back beat and those rock chords, the song is more rock than country. This one comes in at number 9 at Rochester. Dylan belts it out, a compelling performance.

High Water

Many of Dylan songs have the sense of a journey in them, a journey through a dystopic vision of modern America. Remember ‘Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream,’ a comic, madcap pilgrimage through modern American life. ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again’ is a song like that, out of the same bag. It’s just that the terms have changed, and the vision is darker. You might get the Memphis Blues when you’re coming down off an amphetamine trip and the world begins to look twisted and strange, and you’re trapped in repetitive cycles. I don’t know if post-album performances of the song have quite captured its ambience (Blonde on Blonde) but this Rochester performance is as good as you’re going to get in 2004. It’s certainly raw and real enough.

Memphis Blues Again

‘Lonesome Day Blues’ is a classic urban rock blues. Dylan received some criticism for writing generic, ‘derivative’ songs like this, but that’s what the blues are. There is a familiarity to the best of these urban blues songs. You feel like you might have heard them before somewhere. Did Paul Butterfield play that? No, he didn’t. It might sound like it was written in 1948 for Sonny Boy Williamson, but it was actually written in 2001 for “Love and Theft”. The complaints in such a blues are similarly generic and derivative. That’s what makes such songs what they are. They have the force of familiarity about them. This was number 4 on the Rochester setlist.

Last night the wind was whispering, 
       I was trying to make out what it was
Last night the wind was whispering something, 
       I was trying to make out what it was
Yeah I tell myself something's coming, but it never does

Lonesome Day Blues

‘Honest with Me’ is another generic, derivative sounding song, although the tempo is faster and the lyrics more edgy. Elements of the absurd are woven in. It’s highly repetitive and relies on its wide-ranging lyrics to keep its interest. This is number 13 on the Rochester setlist

Well, my parents, they warned me not to risk my years
And I still got their advice oozing out of my ears

Honest with Me

‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ is one of Dylan’s greatest mid-1960s rock songs. It has a queasy, swaying motion in keeping with its tripped-out lyrics. During the 1966 tours Dylan would play the piano, but that didn’t stop it from being a heavy number. The album version had a spooky feel Dylan didn’t aim for on stage, at least not at this point (later he will try an echo for this song, to give it that feel). This is a solid performance, with Dylan starting to play harmonica more often on this song. This is number eight on the Glasgow setlist.

Ballad of a Thin Man

I’ve run out of space, but before the inevitable ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ always the last song, I don’t want to miss this ‘Senor’ (date unknown). This is a classic performance of another slow and heavy rock song. Slow and heavy yet oddly uplifting. For me the song is about putting an end to what, in False Prophet’ Dylan calls ‘the unlived meaningless life.’ We can overturn the tables of the money lenders, and maybe find salvation. Because of the epic harp solo at the end, reminiscent of the 2003 version, this performance really belonged with the songs in Never Ending Tour, 2004, part 3, Harping On but I’m happy to fit it in here.

Senor

And, as promised, the inevitable ‘Watchtower,’ always the last song on the setlist, or used as the last encore.

This first one’s number 17 on the Rochester setlist. Dark and threatening and slower than usual. Almost quiet during the verses. Note the echo on Dylan’s voice.

Watchtower (A)

This second one is from Glasgow, and is no less of a blast.

Watchtower (B)

Kia Ora

Previously in this series

• Mixing-Up The Fluids: Red Crimson And Yellow Dylan
• King Crimson And Yellow Dylan (Part II)
• The Crimson King And The Yellow Jester (Part III)

By Larry Fyffe

Christian theologians and artists tend to simplify the rather complicated ancient depiction of the cosomological order – Beelzebub, for instance, becomes equated with Satan, who rebels against the Almighty; or, at least, he’s Satan’s spokesman or ‘captain’. Either way, Beelzebub is implicated in causing humans to become mortal.

Nonetheless, the mixed-up confusion does not end. According to some latter-day Gnostics, Beelzebub hooks up with Lilith after she flees from Adam because of his domination over her when she’s his first mate; Lilith is therefore exiled as a ‘screech owl” to some God-forsaken place.

A burlesque perhaps, but with reference to:

There shall the great owl make her nest
And lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow
There shall the vultures also be gathered 
Everyone with his mate
(Isaiah 34: 15)

Beelzebub and Lilith are crowned the King and Queen of  Hell-on-Earth.

In the song lyrics below, rather Baroque in tone, their disorderly conduct is countered by the King and Queen of Swords, depicted on Tarot cards, who strive to restore some semblance of an Edenic order where the coming on of death is made a bit more peaceful; yet death still triumphs:

Peace will come
With tranquility and splendour on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when the false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and Queen of Swords
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)

Jochen Markhorst, analyzing the song lyrics above, dismisses any attempt to find coherent meaning therein; the words are just there for the way they sound; they’re empty vessels that have no meaning – they have no life of their own.

Beelzebub will surely see to it that such Dylanologists are not cremated “on wheels of fire”, but buried alive – as occurs in a number of stories by Edgar Allan Poe…. Well, maybe not.

In any event, the singer/songwriter/musician below can’ t help

mixing-up the message – you’re going to have to serve somebody; it may be beastly Beelzebub who supposedly has a big one; it may be the Lord, or it may be Jesus.

You’re really never sure which one. After all, it had to be the Almighty One who creates Satan, the Great Deceiver:

He’s a great humanitarian, he’s a great philanthropist

He knows how to touch you, honey, and how you like 
to be kissed
He'll put both his arms around you
You can feel the tender touch of the beast
You know sometimes Satan will come as a man of peace

(Bob Dylan: Man Of Peace)

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is currently published once or twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

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By Tony Attwood

Unless this is the first “Cover A Day” you’ve read, you may have got the hang of what I am looking for in this series: people who are able to find something extra or at least different in the Dylan song they are covering.  Something which takes Dylan’s original thoughts and finds a new place to send them.  Something perhaps which through the musical arrangements gives a new edge – maybe even a new meaning – to the music.

This doesn’t mean I think all these covers are better than the originals, but rather that they give me a chance to return to songs that I know by heart and can play in my head, if the mood so takes me.

And I spell that out here because that is exactly what this version of “If you see her” does

Peter Viskinde was a major force in Danish rock music who died last year; I’m really pleased to have a chance to feature one of his performances.  To me, he really gets hold of the song and find levels in it which Dylan chose not to exploit in his recording.   Here we have the anger expressed which so often comes years after a relationship has broken down.

And in the arrangement he gets that heart-piercing gut-wrenching final section perfectly:

Sundown, yellow moon
I replay the past
I know every scene by heart
They all went by so fast

If she's passin' back this way
I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up
If she's got the time

“If she’s got the time” is a real killer of a final line for this song which has earlier had the lines

And though our separation
It pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me
We've never been apart

The singer is so screwed by the end of the relationship that “if she’s got the time” is just one of those amazing Dylan lines that looks so simple but carries with it depths of emotion that reach down to the core of the earth itself.

Sfuzzi (who once produced an album of Transylvanian Surf Music – a notion that gets my vote for the most unlikely genre of all time) go a totally different way, even changing the chord sequence to take out the blues feeling Dylan introduces with the flattened 7th.  So “go from town to town” is just another line rather than having that blues edge that Dylan gives us.

But it is so pop all the way through it catches me out – rather than the music adding to the feelings of despair it contradicts those feelings in a strange, but effective way.  If you can, do play this all the way through, because the ending will come as a bit of a surprise too.

Jeff Buckley produced one of the oddest re-workings of a Dylan song ever with “If you see her”.  It’s not just that he really does take the song to another planet, it is that this recording gives us a minute and a half of attempts to tune his guitar.   If you are short of time head for about 3 minutes 30 seconds by which time he’s got the hang of where he is going.   By 6 minutes 21 seconds, with “Sundown, yellow moon” I think we’ve got what he was really after.

Moving on, if you are a regular reader of these ramblings you will not be surprised to find Mary Lee’s Corvette turning up.  After all, their third album was indeed, Blood on the Tracks.

This is a version where “still gives me a chill” really does send my nerves a-tingling.  I am not sure the contrasts in the low and high range of Mary Lee Kortes’ voice in the recording is the best use of her talent but it’s an interesting idea.

My final offering is one that changes the sex of who is being sung about – which of course we are prepared for by the fact that it’s from the Stonewall Celebration Concert.   It’s great to hear the song performed by a man with a sublime singing voice, who can use its range of pitch and phraseology to perfection within what is quite a limited song musically.

It is really worth a listen.

If you have been, thanks for reading.

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

• The song with numbers in the title.
• Ain’t Talkin
• All I really want to do
•  Angelina
•  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• As I went out one morning
•  Ballad for a Friend
• Ballad in Plain D
• Ballad of a thin man
•  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• The ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond here lies nothing
• Blind Willie McTell
•  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Blowin in the wind as never before
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Boots of Spanish leather
• Born in Time
• Buckets of Rain
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Can’t wait
• Changing of the Guard
• Chimes of Freedom
• Country Pie
•  Crash on the Levee
• Dark Eyes
• Dear Landlord
• Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dignity.
• Dirge
• Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Don’t think twice
•  Down along the cove
• Drifter’s Escape
• Duquesne Whistle
• Farewell Angelina
• Foot of Pride and Forever Young
• Fourth Time Around
• From a Buick 6
• Gates of Eden
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
• 42 Heart of Mine
• 43: High Water
•  44: Highway 61.5
• 45: Hurricane
• 46: I am a lonesome hobo
• 47: I believe in you
• 48: I contain multitudes
• 49: I don’t believe you.
• 50: I love you too much
• 51: I pity the poor immigrent. 
•  52: I shall be released
• 53: I threw it all away
• 54: I want you
• 55: I was young when I left home
• 56: I’ll remember you
• 57: Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
• 58: If not for you, and a rant against prosody
• 59: A Dylan cover a Day: If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme
• Red River Shore (1997) part 8:  He is no one

by Jochen Markhorst

IX         A floating nothing

Well I’m a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I’ll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will give me a song
Though nothing looks familiar to me
I know I’ve stayed here before
Once a thousand nights ago
With the girl from the red river shore

It’s a diesel, Dylan’s lyrical engine. Today, anyway. It starts slowly and sputters, but is now almost at its optimum. After that wonderful opening full of alienation and melancholy, the engine sputters again, just for a second, and reluctantly produces one last filler. The unreal, dreamy atmosphere that the song poet evokes with the Kafkaesque I’m a stranger here in a strange land but I know this is where I belong evaporates at once with the introduction of a clichéd, earthy Rambling, Gambling Willie, the knave who indeed rambled and gambled for the ones he loved (“He supported all his children and all their mothers too”). A colourful protagonist, and a wonderful song – but a total miscast here.

Equally out of place is the meaningless, unrelated And the hills will give me a song. It’s possible that the faltering engine seeks a shortcut via Bing Crosby (“The Singing Hills”, 1940), or sputters past Rex Allen’s “Song Of The Hills” from 1949. And if Dylan has a hidden drawer somewhere in which he keeps the ignored phenomenon of Kevin Coyne, we may owe the musical hills to one of his hidden treasures, to “Shangri-La” from 1976 (when the later Police star Andy Summers is still in Coyne’s band, demonstrating his crushing talent);

Shangri-La is a million miles away
You might see it on a clear blue day
Over the hills and far away
They're singing out: 
Duh-de-doo-doo, duh-de-doo-doo

… who knows. After all, “Million Miles” also features in these same recording sessions for Time Out Of Mind, and our protagonist is also on a hopeless quest for unattainable happiness. Unlikely, though. Singing hills probably impose themselves on the poet Dylan the way the image will impose itself on almost every listener: via one of the corniest highs (or lows, depending on personal taste) of the twentieth century:

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

… the song with which Julie Andrews introduces the Unbearable Lightness of her Being in The Sound Of Music, an association that at the most a minority of Dylan’s generation, and of the generation before that, and of the generation after that, will escape. And an association that, like Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie, quite seriously clashes with the mood and the setting that the songwriter in “Red River Shore” seems to want to evoke; the rather uncomfortable, Kafkaesque uncanniness. In Kafka’s words:

“To describe reality in a realistic way, but at the same time as a “floating nothing”, as a clear, lucid dream, so as a realistically perceived irreality.”
(the so-called “Petřín Hill Experience”, in his Reflections From The Year 1920)

… the mood that Dylan, fortunately, rediscovers after this little dip.

Though nothing looks familiar to me I know I’ve stayed here before is an oppressive outpouring from the protagonist. More sinister and less innocent, and even more unreal than a déjà vu – a déjà venu, as it were. It is a plot that is effectively used in mindfuck films such as Total Recall and Before I Go to Sleep, to evoke in the audience the same frightening feeling as in the protagonist, who usually has undergone something like a memory reset or implanted memories. Or, in the more criminal variety, the stories that suck us into the maddening frustration of victims of gaslighting; offices are dismantled, photos are swapped, walls are painted over, and when the protagonist returns with the police, the evidence is gone and everything is different. Though nothing looks familiar to me I know I’ve stayed here before – it’s the paranoid version of the musical highlight from The Muppets Movie (1979), from Gonzo’s heartbreaking “I’m Going To Go Back There Someday”;

This looks familiar
Vaguely familiar
Almost unreal yet
It's too soon to feel yet

Close to my soul
And yet so far away
I'm going to go back there
Someday 

It really does seem that the song poet Dylan has found the tone again now. The following once a thousand nights ago is not such a hollow cliché as, say, “ramblin’ and gamblin’” or “when it’s all been said and done”, but has the same magical, poetic sheen as cloak of misery and fires of time; the paradoxical quality of being simultaneously fresh and old-fashioned. Its magical sheen can surely be traced back to Sheherazade, the Persian storyteller of the tales from One Thousand and One Nights, and is perhaps unintentionally reinforced by choosing not something like “once a long, long time ago” but rather “once a thousand nights ago”.

The poetic power, then, is due to a kind of generally accepted metaphorical quality of “thousand”; although thousand nights covers a relatively manageable span of time (not much more than two and a half years, in fact), we all experience it as “endlessly long”, “half a lifetime”. Like Emmylou Harris uses it in her moving ode to Gram Parsons from 1985, “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo”, in the beautiful opening line A thousand nights a thousand towns I took the bows, eventually leading to the equally beautiful closing couplet

I stepped into the light you left behind
I stood there where all the world could see me shine
Oh I was on my way to you to make you mine
But I took the longest road that I could find

Or as it is used in “I’ve Made Love To You A Thousand Times” by Smokey Robinson, the man whose poetic value was once equated by Dylan with Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg (jokingly, we may assume, in an interview with the Chicago Daily News in 1965). And like this, there are a few more songs in which thousand nights, usually in a romantic context, is used as a metaphor for “unbearably long time” – but except for Sinatra’s “How Old Am I?” no songs from the canon – it’s not too common. “Thousand nights” is a realistically perceived irreality, so to speak.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 10: Send it to Lulu

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:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang

Previously:

• Mixing-Up The Fluids: Red Crimson And Yellow Dylan
• King Crimson And Yellow Dylan (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

Jesus, says, in an ironic tone to his accusers, that it’s with the help of Almighty God that the evil influence of demons can be removed from one’s body; not with the aid of the Gnostic Beelzebub, the prince of darkness (Satan, as construed by many Christian authorities), because he does not have the spiritual strength, doesn’t possess the brightness, to do it:

"And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils
By whom do your sons cast them out? ...
He that is not with me is against me
And he that gathereth not with me scattereth"
 (Luke11:19, 23)

The narrator in the song lyrics beneath takes the side of Jesus:

Jesus said, "Be ready
For you know not the hour which I come"
Jesus said, "Be ready
He said, "He who is not for Me is against Me"
Just so you know where He's coming from
 (Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

Apparently, the problem is that there be those who claim to support Jesus and the Almighty, but behave as though they’re actually on the side of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies:

You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch
Flies buzzing around your eyes
Blood on your saddle
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Happy little children, Diana and Apollo their names could be, greet King Crimson when he wings off to a Late Baroque/ Rococo light-scattered Fairy Land in the song lyrics below – a place to which Bob Dylan seldom travels:

Sailing on the wind
In a milk white gown
Dropping circle stones on a sun dial
Playing hide and seek
With the ghosts of dawn
Waiting for a smile from a sun child
(King Crimson: Moonchild)

The ‘yellow jester”, sometimes imagines himself in a rather Rococoesque fairy place where the reddish-purple Beelzebub of autumn appears to be in control:

The clouds are turning crimson
The leaves fall from the limbs and
The branches cast their shadows over stone
Won't you meet me in the moonlight all alone
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is currently published once or twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.

We also have a Facebook site with over 14,000 members.

by Jochen Markhorst

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme

VIII       He is no one

Well I’m a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong

 According to legend, Sean Lennon, John and Yoko’s son, triggered the song. In 1989, Sean visits Billy Joel in the studio, they got talking and Sean complains about the misery of our time, AIDS and wars and crises, and how hard it is to be 21 in this day and age. Ah yes, says Joel, we felt the same when we were 21. “Yeah, but at least when you were a kid,” counters Sean, “you grew up in the fifties, when nothing happened.” Do you really believe that, asks the Piano Man in surprise. Korean War, the Hungarian Uprising, the Little Rock Nine… a lot of stuff happened. I don’t know anything about it, Sean answers. I have to write about this, Joel thinks, I have to explain to Sean’s generation that this kind of epic struggle is of all times.

“The chain of news events and personalities came easily—mostly they just spilled out of my memory as fast as I could scribble them down,” says Billy. “I had a chord progression that originally belonged to a country song I was trying to write, and I sandwiched the words into those chords—‘Harry Truman, Doris Day,’ okay, so far so good—but then I didn’t know what to call the song, and therefore what words to use in the chorus.”

Something with “fire”, anyway. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner drops by the studio these same days and disapproves of both Dancing Through the Fire (“that sucks”) and Waltzing Through The Fire. In the end, Jann thinks “We Didn’t Start The Fire” is cool. The lyrics are a recapitulation of 118 events, loaded names, controversial films and influential books, interspersed with the now-familiar chorus, and it becomes a No. 1 hit. Not really one of Joel’s great masterpieces, but at least more sincere and exciting than the bland “The Fires Of Time” by The Bellamy Brothers.

Looking back, Billy Joel himself is not too proud of the song either;

“Even I realized I hated the melody. It was horrendous, as I said at the time; it was like a droning mosquito. What does the song really mean? Is it an apologia for the baby boomers? No, it’s not. It’s just a song that says the world’s a mess. It’s always been a mess, it’s always going to be a mess.”
(Fred Schruers – Billy Joel. The Definitive Biography, 2014)

Still, the song has a value. The Scholastic Weekly uses the lyrics as a teaching aid, and indeed, Sean Lennon’s generation now does see the 1950s a bit more nuanced, with less rose-tinted glasses.

And just like in “The Fires Of Time”, Dylan comes along in “We Didn’t Start The Fire” as a historical landmark;

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK – blown away, what else do I have to say?

… when Joel, in his – almost chronological – enumeration, has arrived at the 1960s. Between Hemingway’s suicide, the Eichmann trial, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Bay of Pigs Invasion – so we are in 1961, the year Dylan scored his record deal. And the year in which the infamous “Stranger In A Strange Land” was published, the overwhelming socio- critical science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein. Bowie didn’t like it (“It was a staggeringly, awesomely trite book”), but the novel is on the bookshelf of the front fighters from the sixties scenes, as David McGowan shows in his wonderful book Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon (2020). Zappa is a fan, as are Gene Clark, Grace Slick, Charles Manson, Jim Morrison and David Crosby, to name but a few. Heinlein himself lives in Laurel Canyon (at 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue) during those years, and not only his book, but he, personally, too lingers at the crossroads of revolution, hippie rock, avant garde and Hollywood.

It seems that Dylan is thinking of Heinlein’s protagonist Valentine Michael Smith when he opens the sixth verse of his “Red River Shore” with the overused expression stranger in a strange land. The phrase itself, of course, has been around for 27 centuries or so (already spoken by Moses in Exodus 2:22, “And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land”, and Moses probably didn’t get it from himself either), and is almost always used as Moses intended: to express displacement, literal non-home-ness and consequent discomfort. The feeling that even Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula fears (“But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one”), the feeling that Mark Twain’s Chinese alter ego Ah Song Hi incorporates into a letter home with words that we also hear in Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home”: “I was to begin life a stranger in a strange land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my back” (Not a shirt on my back, not a penny on my name, sings He-who-never-wrote-a-letter-to-his-home in Dylan’s song). Madonna (“Wash All Over Me”), Herman Melville, Pete Townshend, U2, journalists, Robbie Robertson (in the beautiful, atmospheric Lanois production “Somewhere Down The Crazy River”), Albert Camus and Sophocles… the expression is used gladly and often in all times in all corners of the cultural spectrum – and always to express that something or someone does not belong here.

But Heinlein’s protagonist in Stranger In A Strange Land, Michael Smith, is a stranger who, as Dylan says, knows that this is where he belongs, here, on Earth. Michael is born aboard a spaceship on its way to Mars. The landing fails fatally and baby Michael is the only survivor. Raised by Martians, he is discovered twenty-five years later by a next, this time successful, Mars expedition and taken back to Earth. He belongs here – but remains an alien. About the situation Mowgli finds himself in when he goes to the village, how Tarzan feels like Lord Greystoke, the state of mind of the civilised savage John in Brave New World and of the surveyor K. in Kafka’s The Castle: “But I know this is where I belong”.

It is a beautiful, both poetic and Kafkaesque situation sketch, stranger here in a strange land, but I know this is where I belong. Uncanny and frustrating, meaningless and indeterminate; it is the existentialist version of an unrequited love – like the love for a girl from the Red River shore.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 9: A floating nothing

———

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:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is currently published once or twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.

We also have a Facebook site with over 14,000 members.

By Tony Attwood

There are some Dylan songs that I really think ought to be covered by other artists, but which no one seems to want to try.  “If you ever go to Houston” is one such.   Listening to it today, I can just hear what I would want to try if I were a) a lot younger and b) still playing in a band.   Indeed I think after finishing this little piece I might pop downstairs and see what I can do on the piano.

So I moved on to “If you gotta go” but before I get to that, I would add that while looking just to see if anyone had had a bash at Houston, I did discover this from Don Gibson recorded in 1976.  The song has nothing to do with Bob’s composition, but I wonder if Bob overtly or subliminally took his title from there.

Mind you, “Midnight special” also has the line “If you ever go to Houston”  so maybe that was the source.  Bob was certainly there having been invited to play harmonica on the original recording of that song with Harry Belafonte.   Here’s one of the run-through takes with Bob…

All of which finally brings me on to “If you gotta go go now”.

The first-ever cover version was by The Liverpool Five.

Despite their silly name (well, I think it is silly, but then I’m a Londoner, so I would do) they were one of those warm-up bands that seemed to turn up all over the place playing at concerts of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Stevie Wonder, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers and The Byrds.  And probably a lot more.

As for the music – for me, it’s too much of a plod which takes all the fun out of the song.

The next one is also not to my taste but my goodness it really made me smile…

Oh that plinky guitar in between verses!

One of the funny things about this song is that it seems to inspire people to do all sorts of funny things with it – if you see what I mean.  Just listen…

Somewhat better, because the singer understands what the words are about, is the Cowboy Junkies version.  The only problem is the band are seemingly fighting with each other to be part of the overall sound.  Didn’t they have producers in those days?

But there is always someone with some musical intelligence who can apply him or herself to making more out of the composition.  And finally, I found one (and you should hear some of the covers that didn’t make it to this edition, some of them really are pretty lacking in understanding of what music is actually about.)

And yes I would say this version has been worth waiting for.

Tony Skeggs is a Cavern Club performer and there’s a little bit about him through that link.

But I must include the Fairport Convention version, just because it is so silly and funny and just whacky.   And I always love whacky.

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

• The song with numbers in the title.
• Ain’t Talkin
• All I really want to do
•  Angelina
•  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• As I went out one morning
•  Ballad for a Friend
• Ballad in Plain D
• Ballad of a thin man
•  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• The ballad of Hollis Brown
• Beyond here lies nothing
• Blind Willie McTell
•  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Blowin in the wind as never before
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Boots of Spanish leather
• Born in Time
• Buckets of Rain
• Can you please crawl out your window
• Can’t wait
• Changing of the Guard
• Chimes of Freedom
• Country Pie
•  Crash on the Levee
• Dark Eyes
• Dear Landlord
• Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dignity.
• Dirge
• Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Don’t think twice
•  Down along the cove
• Drifter’s Escape
• Duquesne Whistle
• Farewell Angelina
• Foot of Pride and Forever Young
• Fourth Time Around
• From a Buick 6
• Gates of Eden
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
• 42 Heart of Mine
• 43: High Water
•  44: Highway 61.5
• 45: Hurricane
• 46: I am a lonesome hobo
• 47: I believe in you
• 48: I contain multitudes
• 49: I don’t believe you.
• 50: I love you too much
• 51: I pity the poor immigrent. 
•  52: I shall be released
• 53: I threw it all away
• 54: I want you
• 55: I was young when I left home
• 56: I’ll remember you
• 57: Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
• 58: If not for you, and a rant against prosody