Untold Dylan

Crossing The Rubicon (2020) part 1

by Jochen Markhorst

I           A hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-fighting guy

Dylan provides sparingly, but with some regularity, insight into his working methods, into how he arrives at his songs. In the interview with Douglas Brinkley (New York Times, 12 June 2020) he confirms what we have known for sixty years: “The last few verses came first. So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line,” thus confirming the notion that Dylan often works towards a pre-cooked catchy title line.

We recognise that from songs like “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Every Grain Of Sand”, “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” and dozens of other songs besides “I Contain Multitudes”, the song Dylan refers to in this particular interview (adding: “Most of my recent songs are like that”).

Thanks to Daniel Lanois, we know that Dylan doesn’t necessarily already have accompanying music in his head; for the sessions of Oh Mercy, for example, Dylan arrives with written-out lyrics for songs like “Most Of The Time”, without even a hint of a melody; a melody is sought and found on the spot, in the studio.

We owe it to drummer David Kemper to learn that a single drum pattern can be enough to spark off a whole song; when Kemper is alone in the studio trying to play a rhythm he “heard somewhere”, Dylan orders him, while grabbing his notebook, to keep playing. Dylan sits down next to the drumming Kemper and in “maybe ten minutes” comes up with the whole of “Cold Irons Bound”, after which it is immediately recorded. Similarly to how Leon Russell describes the creation of “Watching The River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”: when Dylan arrives in the studio, Russell and his mates have already, without any input from Dylan, come up with and recorded a musical accompaniment, and Dylan then, while the tape is played on repeat, writes the lyrics on the spot.

And a third working method Dylan reveals, remarkably clearly and unequivocally, to interviewer Robert Hilburn in 2003 for his “Songwriters Series” in the Los Angeles Times:

“What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate. […] I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s Tumbling Tumbleweeds, for instance, in my head constantly — while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I’m talking back, but I’m not. I’m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”

Since 1997, from Time Out Of Mind onwards, this seems to become a guiding principle, as well as a double-edged sword. Dylan uses “reference records”, usually old blues records by men like Charley Patton, but also by crooners like Al Jolson, to make clear to his collaborators what sound he is looking for. But apart from that sound, he also uses the licks or drum patterns, or melody lines that his musicians play along with on those “reference records” – and sometimes even licks and drum patterns and melody lines.

“Sugar Baby” (“Love And Theft”, 2001) is a replica of Gene Austin’s “The Lonesome Road” from 1927, “Floater” (also lovingly stolen in 2001) is a faithful copy of Bing Crosby’s “Snuggled On Your Shoulder (Cuddled In Your Arms)” from 1932, and the “reference record” for Time Out Of Mind‘s “‘Til I Fell In Love With You” seems to be a forgotten B-side by Slim Harpo from 1958, “Strange Love”.

More than twenty years later, when Dylan starts Rough And Rowdy Ways, this method still proves to be fruitful. One of the reference records is quite easy to trace: “Can’t Hold Out Much Longer”, the B-side of Little Walters’ first single for Checker Records, “Juke” (1952), a no.1 hit on the R&B charts. At least, its introductory lick gets to be the “start-lick”, the departure point of every verse of Dylan’s “Crossing The Rubicon”.

https://youtu.be/cuyO8ClCxeQ?list=RDcuyO8ClCxeQ

And beyond that, Little Walter hovers just as recognisably over the song; the stomp, the sound and the Chicago influence of slow blues like “Key To The Highway”, “Last Night” and “Little Girl” set the tone for Dylan’s song. All songs which can be found on The Essential Little Walter, a double CD from 1993 that indeed collects the highlights of Little Walter’s recordings for Chess Records (1952-1965). Also including the five songs that DJ Dylan plays in his Theme Time Radio Hour, always accompanied by roaring admiration for Walter’s skill and musical talent. Like at the evergreen “Key To The Highway” in episode 66, Lock & Key;

“This next song has a lot of different versions. Just about all of them are good. You can hear it by Count Basie, you can hear it by Eric Clapton, hear it by Buddy Guy. John Hammond Jr., the Derek Trucks Band, Junior Wells or The Band. I’m not gonna play it by the guy who wrote it either. I’m gonna play the version that I like – the best version. Here’s Little Walter, singing Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key To The Highway”.”

The DJ is serious. Twelve years later, when Dylan records “Murder Most Foul”, he reaffirms his admiration: “Play ‘Moonlight Sonata’ in F-sharp / And the ‘Key to the Highway’ for the king on the harp”, the honorary title of master harmonica player Little Walter.

The songs on The Essential Little Walter even leave traces in the song’s content, by the way; a verse fragment like this world so badly bent is most likely an echo of the last song on Disc 2, “Dead Presidents” (Well I ain’t broke but I’m badly bent) – a song that is also on the DJ’s playlist (episode 68, Presidents’ Day).

But the “Bob Nolan” method, as we will call it for now, seems to have led to “Crossing The Rubicon”. Dylan listens to the song in his head, and “at a certain point, some of the words change.” Speculation, of course, but the opening words of the final couplet are good candidates for such an inner, creative process – the most obvious seems to be the option that Dylan changes the words of Little Walters’ refrain You know I’m just crazy about you, baby / Wonder, do you ever think of me, while humming, into

Mona, baby, are you still in my mind?
I truly believe that you are

… and then the floodgates to the wildly swirling stream-of-consciousness open. This scenario would imply that Dylan moves these “opening words” to the end of the song after his work is done, and that is not unusual. We know, both from Dylan’s notebooks and from statements in interviews, that the bard often shuffles verses back and forth, to “have the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order,” as Dylan explained it to John Cohen half a century before (Sing Out!, October 1968), when a relatively young Dylan still thinks that is an original narrative structure.

And who knows, maybe biographical associations with Little Walter do flood in first. Little Walter, as DJ Dylan repeatedly points out, was not only an extremely talented and skilful musician but also a difficult man. “Walter was a hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-fighting guy,” says a poetically inclined DJ when he plays Little Walter for the first time (23 August 2006), and he repeats words to this effect on subsequent spins in later episodes. Muddy Waters’ description is even more poetic: “Little Walter was dead ten years before he died,” referring to Walter’s worn-out appearance and alcoholism, and his look, the old-before-his-time look. Which Dylan also notices;

“He died at an early age, 38 years old. But if you see pictures, he looks closer to sixty. A hard-living man, but a great artist.”

The last time the radio maker plays a record by Little Walter (episode 90, Madness, 4 February 2009), Dylan is a little less shrouded:

“Sadly, Walter had a vicious temper and a thirst for liquor. He was involved in a street fight and died from its after-effects. He was only 37 years old.”

The best biography on Little Walter was written by Dylan’s old comrade Tony Glover (Blues With a Feeling: The Little Walter Story, 2002), and it is quite likely that Dylan has read that book – or at least used it as a reference. And that Dylan has also read that the fatal street fight, the fight after which Walter crosses the Rubicon, takes place in Chicago, on the 14th day of the most dangerous month, 14 February 1968.

To be continued. Next up Crossing The Rubicon part 2: That day I’ll always remember

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

• 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
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

———————

Untold Dylan also has its own Facebook page with over 11,000 followers.  To find us just type in Untold Dylan Facebook and the relevant page ought to pop up.

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This series looks at and listens to Bob Dylan’s performances of songs written by people other than himself.  Aaron in the USA selects the tracks and Tony in the UK then tries to write something vaguely meaningful about each performance, but with the agreement that he has to finish the commentary by the time the track stops playing.  Although rambling is allowed.

Today it’s “90 miles an hour down a dead end street.”  A list of previous articles in this series is given at the end of the piece.

Aaron: 

Time magazine had this song in their list of “The 10 Worst Bob Dylan Songs”

They had this to say: “An overwrought metaphor for a relationship between two people who each belong to another, Dylan’s delivery is strained, forgettable and, worst of all, unconvincing. An instantly forgettable track.”

Written by Don Robertson and Hal Blair, it was first recorded by Hank Snow in October 1963, and it reached No. 2 on the country charts.

Tony: I have two problems here – and as ever with these little commentaries of mine these are very personal observation.  For me (an ex-motorcycle rider, although I sold my last bike just before my first daughter was born), songs about motorbikes are generally not that interesting – and I know as I’ve been there and to a small degree done it.   But there is one exception, and if you have read my ramblings before on the subject you might know it, but I’ll repeat it at the end. Any excuse to play the recording.

However, Bob’s 90 miles an hour… no not for me.  I don’t like slow songs where the instrumentalists are just told to fill in the gaps, because they invariably just end up making a noise, and that is what happens here.  Just listen to the recording and focus on the band and I think you might hear a bit of a mess.

The title line is really powerful, but it is never done justice in this version of the song in my view (although please do keep reading because they are not all like this).  I think the song was a filler – but then, it is Bob and he knows what he is doing.

Aaron: Hank Snow…

Here is another early version, before we move on to some more recent covers

Tony: This actually makes more sense as a parable – something that I find is lost in Bob’s version and now the metaphor makes sense – although what the girlie chorus is doing here I really am not sure, as least from a musical point of view.  And ok, we’ve now got the image, and I am still wondering how a producer could drop in the “Ah ha” from time to time.  

Moving on…

Aaron: Don Robertson

Tony: Of course what I generally don’t know is what Aaron actually thinks of these recordings himself.   And I guess if I did do, that would change what I’d write.   Do you like this Aaron?   If so please tell me why.

It is for me an interesting notion, comparing a relationship to a motorbike ride.  At least I have always heard this as a motorbike ride – but maybe I’m the only one who has that image.   Maybe it’s just me.

Aaron: Ashley Hutchings -ex Fairport Convention bass player

Tony: Ok, now this is cheating.  Bringing Ashley Hutchings in like this!   And I should explain: Aaron and I have written about Ashley Hutchings before and included some examples of his wonderful music – if you don’t know it, please follow that link – and see also what Bob said about it.

Anyway, this is, of course, the getting on for being perfect example of the song, because, well, that is what Ashley can do.  As it says on the Ashley Hutchings website, quoting Bob Dylan, “Ashley Hutchings is the single most important figure in English folk rock. Before that his group Fairport Convention recorded some of the best versions of my unreleased songs. Listen to the bass playing on Percy’s Song to hear how great he is.”

And yes, for me, all the previous versions we have had above, including I am sorry to say, Bob’s version, are just nothing.   Listen to Ashley, and you know what the song is about.  It is perfectly arranged, perfectly sung, perfectly recorded, and makes me want to play it again.

But back to the topic:

Aaron: John Berry – complete with, if I’m not mistaken, a Bob Dylan impersonation around the 2:15 mark

Tony: OK, this is good, and it works because the harmonies fit with the whole notion of the piece, which has a coherence of its own.  And it is this version which makes me want to go on.

If you want an example of Richard Thompson and Ashley Hutchings together, try “Who knows where the time goes.”  Which is as a good a way of understanding what Bob meant when he spoke about the greatest bass player…

But I won’t stay with Fairpport, because I am, once more, going to force something else upon you.  The greatest motorcycle song of all time.  And that after all is where Ashley started.

Besides if you don’t know this you are in for a treat and a half. And then some.  And then some more.  And if you do, you probably won’t mind listening again.

Incidentally Dylan did perform this once – and we have a recording of that here.

Footnote: Aside from this blog, Untold Dylan also has a very active (and excellently moderated) Facebook page.  If you don’t know it just go to your search engine and type in Facebook Untold Dylan.

Previously in this series…

• Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
• Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
• Other people’s songs: They killed him
• Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
• Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
• Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
• Other people’s songs: Love Henry
• Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
• Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
• Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
• Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
• Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
• Other people’s songs: You go to my head
• Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
• Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
• Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
• Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
• Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
• Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown

by Larry Fyffe

Taken as a whole, the metonymic motifs in the songs of Bob Dylan are not nearly as fragmented as they first appear.

Mythologists, poets, writers, and other artists, speak up for the languageless, for the ‘silent’, Cosmos – once thought made up of the basic elements of wind, water, fire and earth.

The Sun in ancient Greek/Roman mythology is personified as Apollo; he’s masculine, rational, fiery and prone to war.

Influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, poet and engraver William Blake goes further; presents Apollo as Urizen; gnostic-like, he’s a sinful and bloodied Demiurge who overlooks dark Satanic Mills down on earth.

He’s grouped in with Deists and with Satan of the Holy Bible:

Then the Divine Vision like a silent sun appeared above

Setting ... in clouds of blood
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Los (Sol spelled backwards) represents fallen man; he’s a blacksmith, an artist, who struggles in the prison of a dark world to spread some light:

The blow of his hammer is justice
The swing of his hammer mercy
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Dominant-seeking Venus, from mythology, for Blake be disharmonious Eniharmon.

She has a motherly side that’s revealed in the song lyrics below:

My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

https://youtu.be/E45C8N6YjXs

According to Blake, the modern world has been led astray by rationalists, corrupted – imagination lost.

There’s a dark earthy side to Enilhamon that fails to console under such circumstances:

Well, the road is rocky, and the hillside's mud
Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood
I found my own, I found my one in you
But your love hasn't proved  true
(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)

Los is lost in Blake’s poetry, locked outside as he is with the once-perfect Eve who’s been seduced by Satan, both locked outside the Gates of Eden:

The silent sun
He's got me on the run
Burning a hole in my brain
I'm dreaming of you
That's all I do
But it's driving me insane
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)

Perhaps it’s just William Blake’s esoteric poetry that Los is dreaming about, and his trying to untangle what the preRomanic poet is getting at, that’s driving Bob Dylan insane.

Untold Dylan also runs a lively Facebook group with over 14,000 members.  To find the group just type Untold Dylan Facebook into your favourite search engine.

by Jochen Markhorst

• One More Night 1: There’s a Tear in my Beer

II          I believe in Hank Williams

 While the lyrics may be somewhat distinctive in form, the musical accompaniment is not, nor is there much to enjoy in terms of content. In terms of content, the lyrics offer little or no sparkling poetry or other fireworks; it is mainly a string of country clichés. This starts with the theme, which is probably the trigger for the entire song text: one more night – the bittersweet farewell of a love affair. A theme like Kris Kristofferson elaborates on around the same time, much more movingly, in one of his most beautiful songs, in “For The Good Times”;

Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine
Hear the whisper of the rain drops flowing soft against the window
And make believe you love me one more time
For the good times

A song that would only be catapulted into the stratosphere after Nashville Skyline, in the version by Ray Price, who scored a huge hit with it in 1970, after which the song was definitively elevated to the canon by Elvis and Al Green, among others. Kristofferson himself recorded the song in 1970, but maybe Dylan knows Bill Nash’s version from 1968.

Or not. “Before You Accuse Me”, Ray Charles’ “Get On The Right Track Baby”, Jimmy Dean’s “One Last Time”, Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me”… the theme is obviously generic enough to have entered Dylan’s repertoire without any immediate cause or current trigger. Bing Crosby’s top hit from 1931, “Just One More Chance” even uses literally the same words;

Just one more night
To taste the kisses that enchant me
I'd want no others if you'd grant me
Just one more chance

… as well as plenty of other songs. Oh well, we even hear this word combination in one of The Monkees’ most enjoyable songs, in the 1966 world hit “Last Train To Clarksville” – a rather transparent “Paperback Writer” rip-off, but no less enjoyable for that.

'Cause I'm leaving in the morning
And I must see you again
We'll have one more night together
Till the morning brings my train and I must go
Oh, no, no, no
Oh, no, no, no

https://youtu.be/ZcXpKiY2MXE

Much the same applies to Dylan’s choice of words in the verses. Dylan has found his lyrics for “One More Night” by browsing through country classics left and right. Although not necessarily in the standards. “Kaw-Liga”, for example, echoes in more songs on Nashville Skyline, and is actually a rather atypical song in Hank Williams’ repertoire. Recorded during Hank’s very last recording session, September 23, 1952, the same session that yielded the immortal “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Take These Chains From My Heart”. “Kaw-Liga” was co-written with Fred Rose, has an unusual chord progression, an unusual story (about the wooden statue of an Indian with an unfortunate crush on a “Chocktaw maid over in the Georgia store”), and is the only Williams song with a fade-out.

Yet, or perhaps because of this, the record company sees hit potential. It is the A-side of the first single released after Williams’ death (1 January 1953), storms the charts and eventually spends 14 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Country Chart. And impresses the young Robert Zimmerman, as we can read in Clinton Heylin’s The Double Life of Bob Dylan, Volume 1: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 (2021):

“I heard Hank Williams. I think [it was] ‘Kaw-Liga’, and [the DJ] said he was dead. Hank’s voice stopped me in my tracks. It was from the same world as the Stanley [Brothers] but from [a] more focused part of it – it was more explanatory [sic] and less mysterious, more jolting and spine-tingling, especially the voice.”

Hank Williams’ repertoire seems to be etched in the creative part of Dylan’s brain, to which we probably owe the jumpiness of the musical accompaniment and the simple poetry of the lyrics of “One More Night” anyway, but we also see it more explicitly. “Tell Me That It Isn’t True” varies quite literally on Hank Williams’ “You Win Again”, from “Kaw-Liga” a lyric fragment like “Is it any wonder” moves to “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” and Hank’s refrain

Kaw-Liga, ooh
Standin' there, as lonesome as can be
Ah, just wishin' he were still an ol' pine tree

… echoes in Dylan’s opening couplet:

One more night, the stars are in sight
But tonight I’m as lonesome as can be
Oh, the moon is shinin’ bright
Lighting ev’rything in sight
But tonight no light will shine on me

In which, of course, we hear more Williams traces. “Wait For The Light To Shine”, “I Saw The Light”, “Blue Moon Of Kentucky”… this first verse can be cut and pasted from Hank’s oeuvre quite effortlessly, as can almost all of the lyrics.

It is, all in all, clear that Dylan is not driven by a thirst for originality. He trusts – rightly so – in the power of the familiar. “My songs, what makes them different is that there’s a foundation to them. That’s why they’re still around, that’s why my songs are still being performed. It’s not because they’re such great songs,” says Dylan in 1997, in the interview with Jon Pareles for the New York Times. The same interview in which he says: “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book […] I believe in Hank Williams singing I Saw the Light. I’ve seen the light, too.”

Nevertheless, “One More Night” is neither “still around” nor “still being performed”. Dylan himself performs the song only once, and not even really. It’s 6 June 1990, Dylan is in Toronto, has just played the fourteenth song on the set list and then says:

“Hero of mine … Ronnie Hawkins! Where is he? He said he would come up and sing a song … called One More Night. It would be awfully nice if he would come up. If he doesn’t want to come up that’s okay too! … All right … Oh, here he comes now!”

… and then has Ronnie The Hawk Hawkins sing “One More Night”. A gesture of appreciation, presumably – Hawkins is one of the very few artists to ever record a cover of the song. And was there early; Ronnie’s cover is the opening song of his eponymous 1970 solo album, produced by Dylan producer Jerry Wexler, with Duane Allman on guitar. The real highlight is the opening song of Side Two, Hawkins’ brilliant cover of Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings”, but Ronnie himself apparently thinks “One More Night” is a stronger entrant.

Not exactly an unforgettable performance, but then again, there’s nothing wrong with it. And we have to hand it to The Hawk: although he approaches the flatness and the emotionlessness of Dylan’s original, he can’t suppress a little sob here and a half-breaking of the voice there.

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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
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

Untold Dylan also has a Facebook account with over 11,000 readers. You can join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan

By Tony Attwood

Musically “Mama you’ve been on my mind” is extremely unusual in Dylan terms – it might even be unique, although I’d have to go through the whole catalogue to verify that point, and I have other bits and pieces to do, so let’s say for the moment, “extremely unusual.”

Dylan’s songs, like most songs in the pop, rock and folk genres don’t modulate – which is to say, they stay in one key all the way through, mostly starting and ending the song on the chord based on the key.   So if the song is in the key of C major, it (or at least the accompaniment) starts on C major, and finishes there.

“Mama” does this, but immediately changes to the chord of E major, which has no place normally in a song in C.  Then on to A minor (which is a chord associated with songs in C, but not with songs in E) and then goes to D7, which isn’t normally associated with songs in any of these keys.   It gives the song a unique sound and feel.  Here is how Dylanchords.info shows it

   C                                  E
Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat
    Am           D7/f#
An' cov'rin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
   C              /b      Am G              C/g
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
    G              G6 G7 C

This is so unusual I can’t imagine why anyone would ever dream of changing it, or simplifying it to make it sound like a more conventional song.   But they do.

And just as extraordinary, Judy Collins who has the ability to make even the blandest piece of music into something extraordinary, in this case turns the extraordinary into the bland.

Even more bizarre, the normally ultra-reliable Second Hand songs website manages to include Förlåt mej by Dan Tillberg under “Mama you been on my mind” which it isn’t.

But rescue is at hand.   Jeff Buckley’s version is delicate and charming, his voice is on perfect form, reminding us that if only he had survived what glorious gems he might have offered us, and how much he could have enriched our lives.

Gentleness is of course the order of the day, and here I am not sure there is anything else to do with this magical piece other than just performing it with all the delicacy it demands.

The only challenge then is what to do with the instrumental break and I’ve got no problems with that.

Andrew Kidman follows the requirements and takes it as gentle as you could wish.  He is not an artist that I know much about but he does seem to turn up in many media doing many different things.  If you know more of him, please do write in.

Finally, I’ve selected one of the versions that does put in some musical variations.  I’ve no problems with these, but I think they make the point that the song is so perfect, it really doesn’t need any amendments.

It is an absolute gem as Dylan delivered it, and I’m not at all sure we have to go any further.  But in case you think otherwise, here’s one alternative.

In addition to this blog we also have a very active Facebook page with over 11,000 followers.  It is highly moderated to keep out adverts, abuse and just plain daftness of the “Bob Dylan phoned me yesterday” variety.  If you’d like to join the conversations please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan/about/ or alternatively just type in Facebook Untold Dylan

The Dylan Cover a Day 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 immigrant. 
  •  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.
  • 63: In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  • 64: It ain’t me babe
  • 65: It takes a lot to laugh
  • 66: It’s all over now Baby Blue
  • 67: It’s all right ma
  • 68: Just Like a Woman
  • 69: Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  • 70: Lay down your weary tune
  • 71:  Lay Lady Lay
  • 72: Dylan Cover a Day 72: Lenny Bruce
  • 73: That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  • 74: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  • 75: Dylan Cover a Day: License to kill
  • 76: Like a Rolling Stone
  • 77: Love is just a four letter word
  • 78: Love Sick
  • 79: Maggies Farm!
  • 80: Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.

Bob Dylan and Don’t Ya Tell Henry (part one)

Don’t You Tell Henry (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/writer/musician Bob Dylan oft pays tribute to other writers:

Even if the flesh falls off my face ....
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)

As in:

Flesh is falling off his face ....
(Henry Rollins: Black Coffee Blues)

A word image that traces back to a biblical prophet who foresees a blissful paradise on earth, but it’s in the future, certainly not now:

Their flesh shall consume away
While they stand upon their feet
(Zechariah 14:12)

Henry Rollins threads  himself a purple cloak of sorrow, of misery, of the black dog from Bob Dylan’s song lyrics rather than the other way around. Dylan treads a middle path, refrains from overdoing conceits that plough the feeling of despair so far into the ground that the reader or listener becomes so desensitized that s/he can no longer feel what is meant to be conveyed.

Rollins turns poet/musician Rod McKuen on his head, finds darkness within himself rather than the spiritual joy expressed by McKuen in spite of gloom and doom in the world outside.

For Zechariah and McKuen a rosy garden be in the offing:
When the sun comes a-singing, I'll still be waiting
Jean, Jean, the roses are red
All the leaves have gone green
The clouds are so low, you can touch them. So
Come into my arms, bonnie Jean
(Rod McKuen: Jean)

The above overwrought Romantic images tempered in the following song lyrics:

Now when all the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me Queen Jane
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)

Painted baroque black below – to the point of mockery:

They say love only comes around once
And you have to hold out, and be strong until then
I have been waiting, I have been searching
I am a man under the moon walking the streets of the earth until dawn
There's got to be someone for me, it's not too much to ask
Just someone to be with, someone to love
Someone to give everything to
(Henry Rollins: Someone)

A sentiment borrowed from a song before:

You say you're looking for someone
Who's never weak, but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong

(Bob Dylan: It Ain’t Me)

You might also enjoy Don’t ya tell Henry: Dylan’s exuberant tattle

and Bob Dylan goes fishing: Don’t ya tell Henry.

—————–

Untold Dylan also runs a vibrant Facebook page with over 11,000 followers.  If you are interested you can find us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/UntoldDylan/about/ or just go onto Facebook and type in Untold Dylan.

The group is well-moderated in order to stop advertising, abusive and irrelevant commentary, which makes it a place that by and large is safe and warm.

By Aaron Galbraith (in USA) and Tony Attwood (in UK)

Aaron: Bob’s band on the track includes punk legends Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) and Paul Simonon (The Clash).

Tony: This is one of those tracks that sounds good, but having not played it for years (and so effectively coming to it quite afresh) I just wish they had had a little more time to rehearse and consider the sound of the vocals – the backing vocals always sound like they are sung as if a little unsure of what Bob is going to do next!

It’s one of those songs that is great if you are there, bopping away, but sitting at home on a rather grey and dismal morning (the 40 degree heat of the first two days of the week now a dim and distant memory) I just feel the need for something a trifle slicker.

Aaron: Arthur Alexander is the only songwriter whose songs have been covered on studio albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. This was his debut single in 1960.

Tony:  Oh, an absolute classic sound – complete with the sort of echo that Elvis had on his rock songs and the Little Richard style piano.  And one thing I know about Arthur Alexander is that this first single of his  – Sally Sue Brown – was released on the record company owned by the brother of Sam Phillips, who founded Sun Records on which… well you know the rest.

Aaron: Louisianan swamp-rock musician C. C. Adcock, included it on his self-titled debut solo album in 1994.

Tony: Those first five notes are an absolute classic of the genre.  And I rather prefer this version as the vocals have a cleaner sound – no hint of echo and the piano is given a more meaningful part to play.  Somehow the overall sound just feels more in keeping, to me, with the meaning of the lyrics.   That’s not to say there’s anything amiss with Arthur Alexander’s version, it’s just this is even better.

It’s one of those tracks that I wish lasted more than the regulation 2 minutes 20 seconds.  (Whoever laid down the law that each side of a 45 rpm record should be under 2 minutes 30 ought to be tried for crimes against music).

Aaron: Elvis Costello picked this one, possibly due to the Dylan connection, to cover on the 1994 tribute album “Adios Amigo: A Tribute To Arthur Alexander”

Tony:  Wow, that’s a surprise – I was completely taken aback by the opening and wondered if I was listening to the same song.  A real re-working – although the brief solo guitar part seems over the top.  But everything else is wonderful as a tribute.  Really, really enjoyable.

And now, what I have just done, having played through the versions Aaron has supplied, is played Dylan’s version again, and I think I now really appreciate it far more.   If you have time and have enjoyed these recordings, do go back and play Dylan’s version one more time.  I think listening to the earlier versions gives us a greater amount of context.

——————–

If you enjoy Untold Dylan you can also join in the conversation with 14,000 others on Facebook – just follow the link or type Untold Dylan Facebook into your search engine.

——–

Previously in this series…

• Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
• Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
• Other people’s songs: They killed him
• Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
• Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
• Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
• Other people’s songs: Love Henry
• Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
• Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
• Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
• Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
• Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
• Other people’s songs: You go to my head
• Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
• Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
• Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
• Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
• Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?

by Jochen Markhorst

I There’s A Tear In My Beer

Arguably one of the prettiest, though one of the most middle-of-the-road songs on Nashville Skyline is “One More Night”. And arguably the song with the most remarkable vocals, too. Even among all those other songs sung with that remarkable new voice. “Everybody remarks on the change of your singing style,” says Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner in the interview, June 1969.   

“Well, Jann, I’ll tell you something. There’s not too much of a change in my singing style, but I’ll tell you something which is true… I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking my voice changed… So drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s true. I tell you, you stop smoking those cigarettes [laughter]… and you’ll be able to sing like Caruso.”

Which, of course, is total bullshit. Dylan is in Nashville, recording a country album with country musicians, has written country songs and is looking for a country voice. Hank Williams’ quiver and yodel soon sound too artificial, tenor Caruso’s high D and depth are obviously a bridge too far, but in the vast prairie between those two extremes are plenty of light, velvety baritone voices that Dylan can come close to. Hank Snow, in particular – a country hero who has been under his skin since puberty anyway.

“I’d always listened to Hank Snow,” Dylan says to Sam Shepard (True Dylan, 1986), and it’s demonstrably true. In the Basement, the men play “I Don’t Hurt Anymore”; on Down In The Groove, Dylan covers “Ninety Miles An Hour”; in the 1970s, he records, “A Fool Such As I”; in 1985, he names Snow’s “Lady’s Man” first in a list of “a dozen influential records”; and as a DJ in the twenty-first century, he plays The Singing Ranger three times on Theme Time Radio Hour, each time admiring both Hank’s repertoire (“seven numbers one, all conspicuous and distinct, plain and straightforward”) and his voice (“he was one of the biggest voices in country music”). In short: in every decade of Dylan’s career, Hank Snow passes by. Before that even; “When I was growing up, I had a record called Hank Snow Sings Jimmie Rodgers,” he says in a 1997 phone interview with Nick Krewen on the occasion of The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers – A Tribute, a star-studded tribute album organized by Dylan in celebration of Jimmie Rodgers’ 100th birthday.

“One More Night” is musically in the vein of “I’m Moving On” or “Music Making Mama From Tennessee” or “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight” anyway, one of those mid-tempo songs from that endless string (85 titles!) of Hank Snow singles from the first half of the 50s. With an intro that seems to have inspired Neil Young’s “Heart Of Gold”, by the way (the song of which Dylan says: “There I am, but it’s not me”).

Strangely, Snow’s sharper singing voice is closer to Dylan’s voice on John Wesley Harding than to the more nasal onset on Nashville Skyline, but still it does seem as if the smooth baritone of The Singing Ranger is haunting Dylan’s mind here. That’s not the most remarkable thing, though. What is particularly striking is Dylan’s largely unemotional delivery. In all the other songs on Nashville Skyline, we hear Hank Snow-like devices to communicate emotion. The near cracking in “To Be Alone With You”, the descent into a sultry baritone in “Lay Lady Lay”, the light vibrato and the hint of a head voice in “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” and “I Threw It All Away”… the “usual” crooning tricks, as it were. But “One More Night” gets a detached, almost mechanical treatment. The opening lines,

One more night, the stars are in sight
But tonight I’m as lonesome as can be

… are, admittedly, not too inspiring, but then again, so are plenty of verses in the other songs, which do get audible love in the delivery. Here, however, Dylan sounds like the jaded country star of old who has to sing his one sole hit from thirty years ago for the umpteenth time at an Oldies festival. An impression that in the last lines, in

Oh, I miss that woman so
I didn’t mean to see her go

… is squared again; you can just hear how this washed-out country star wonders what the hell I am doing here, and is already, while indifferently singing these lines, thinking about the way back to his camper and his bed.

The song can take it, weirdly enough. It is, after all, a skilled, immaculate country song, Dylan is accompanied by skilled, excellent musicians who effortlessly layer an irresistible bounciness under Dylan’s drawl, and the familiar melody lines are strong enough to stand on their own, are not necessarily in need of polishing with frills and tinsel.  

Just as clichéd, but no less appealing, are the lyrics, with tone, idiom and content of each tear-in-my-beer ballad between Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me” (1950) and “There’s A Tear In My Beer”, the late Hank Williams’ unique duet with his son Hank Williams Jr. from 1988.

… lamentations which communicate the same suffering as

One more night, the stars are in sight
But tonight I’m as lonesome as can be
Oh, the moon is shinin’ bright
Lighting ev’rything in sight
But tonight no light will shine on me

The only distinguishing feature, as is to be expected from a Nobel Prize-winning poet, is the superior form. Dylan chooses, instinctively presumably, the form he tends to choose for his Very Big Songs, the Spanish sextet (six-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme aabccb). Concealed, as usual, by an inexplicable intervention by the layout editor, who rearranges all four stanzas into five-line stanzas. But both the rhyme scheme and Dylan’s delivery demonstrate that all four stanzas are “actually” Spanish sestets. This first verse, for example, is in fact:

One more night, 
the stars are in sight
But tonight I’m as lonesome as can be
Oh, the moon is shinin’ bright
Lighting ev’rything in sight
But tonight no light will shine on me

Just as the second verse “actually” is aabccb, turns out to be a Spanish sextet as well:

Oh, it’s shameful and it’s sad 
I lost the only pal I had
I just could not be what she wanted me to be
I will turn my head up high
To that dark and rolling sky
For tonight no light will shine on me

… revealed through an intervention in the opening line, an intervention that produces the same result in each of the stanzas: Spanish sextets, all of them.

We see it often enough, Dylan’s love for this form, the rather rare form of songs like “A Boy Named Sue” and “Hallelujah”. Dylan chooses it in exceptional songs like “Love Minus Zero” and “Where Are You Tonight?”, always concealing the form in the official publications (Lyrics and on the site), as here again, by re-formatting the lyrics.  

It remains a mystery why Dylan, or the layout editor, would choose to do that. But it’s certainly not middle of the road, in any case.

To be continued. Next up One More Night part 2: I believe in Hank Williams 

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

• 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 2nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

By Tony Attwood

•  “Obscurity and Clarity”
• Dylan’s songs of meaninglessness: Series of Dreams and Drifter’s Escape

I am seeking to evolve a theory that a lot of Dylan’s lyrics actually have no meaning at all and that rather than being seen as songs in which the meaning is deliberately obscured, they should be seen as atmospheric pieces, akin to abstract pieces of visual art.

This view, I feel, is one that many writers have deliberately veered away from, simply because it makes it harder for them to write long and seemingly learned pieces which reveal hidden meanings.  Take away the notion of meaning, and an industry collapses.

And I feel somewhat emboldened in that view by the fact that it is rarely explained why any artist should deliberately make his or her work more obscure.  Surely the artist uses images and juxtapositions to enlighten and to give insights which are hard to give in other ways, not simply as representation, or at the other extreme, the increase of confusion.

Added to this is the fact that Dylan’s lyrics regularly change, and there is often uncertainty as to what the “definitive” lyrics are, if there are any definitive lyrics at all!

And some of these variant lyrics can get quite a lot of publicity.  Today, as I write this, I typed into Google “All along the watchtower lyrics” and without going to a site was given this by Google itself at the top of the page

there must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None will level on the line
Nobody offered his word

Which isn’t how I have known them at all.   The site Genius which has lots of lyrics on it and seemingly has editors who take a fair amount of care about what they put up has

"There must be some way out of here"
Said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth"

Lots of differences, including the addition of punctuation.

The official BobDylan.com site has

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

Same lyrics this time, but different line divisions, different punctuation.

And both are interesting (for me if no one else) because I have always heard the joker’s statement ending with the word “relief” after which I take it as Dylan commenting rather than the joker.   Obviously, I’m wrong.  Or they are.  Or we all are.

But still a problem remains: what on earth does this mean?  (And I would add, if it means nothing, then why do so many commentators believe that lots of other Dylan songs mean something even when the meaning is obscure?)

We don’t know anything about the joker or the thief, nor why they are in communication, nor what they represent, nor why they (or at least the joker) feels trapped, and why his possessions are being used in a way that he doesn’t like.

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

So the thief is trying to calm the situation down, and yes this is getting quite interesting but then suddenly and with no explanation the theme moves and we have no more joker or thief, but instead a watchtower, some princes, some women, some servants, a wildcat and a couple of riders.  Oh yes and we know about the weather.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

In essence, it is a painting in words of which we can make no sense because we are given no context, beyond the fact that this is an album in which a number of songs are three verse, 12 line compositions.  It fits a format, it would make quite a good painting, and after that there is no certainty that any of it has any meaning or symbolism at all.

Indeed, go on the internet and you can find pictures called “All along the watchtower” – which are for sale.  (I’m not reprinting it here, for copyright reasons, but you can click and see).

So my concern is that the notion that some of Dylan’s lyrics are abstract pieces is rarely if ever considered.  It seems to me (and it really is just my thoughts on this) that there is quite an industry built on putting meaning into all Dylan’s songs, where in fact quite often none might exist.

Now to be clear, this is not to say that the images don’t come from somewhere.  Dylan might well by quoting, copying, delving into his subconscious, or referring to other lyrics.  But that’s not the issue.  The issue is, is the song “about” something.   I would put forward the notion that no it is not – and that this applies to lots of Dylan songs.  It is an abstract, or perhaps one could say “an atmosphere”.

We can use our minds to make it be about something – of course we can because our minds are very inventive things.  But that is not the same as Dylan writing about that thing.

Now, if you have time, take a look at this video – and contemplate not just the performer, but the setting, and the people passing by.  When I do that the abstract meaning of the song changes.  It becomes a reflection of the extraordinary talent of the guitarist, and that he is performing in the street for passers by who take no notice.   It seems to fit, but I am not sure how.

By Larry Fyffe

Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan sprinkles his song lyrics with reworked Greek and Roman mythology, oft thread through the Gothic/Gnostic poetry of John Keats.

A  long poem by John Keats, messes with the mythology of Poena; therein, she’s the sister of Endymion as well as assistant to the remorseless Goddess Of Divine Retribution. Poena, in Latin, means “Pain”.

Keats has Poena do her best to reconcile shepherd Endymion with any painful fate that awaits:

Dear brother mine
Endymion, weep not so
(John Keats: Endymion, book iv)

Met her before we have, under another name:

Red mouth like a venomous flower
When these are gone by with their glories
What shall rest of thee then, what remain
O mystic and sombre Dolores
Our Lady of Pain
(Charles Swinburne: Dolores)

In the song lyrics following too:

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhyme
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh, who do they think could bury you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)

Apparently, the many female offspring of Poena’s mistress, as the great White Mother, be immortal, and therefore more immune to pain than men.

Men, alas, are mere mortals:

You'll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

In ancient Greek/Roman mythology, winged Nemesis, the Goddess of Retribution,  leads the non-empathizing  Narcissus to a pool in which he sees his own reflection; he falls in love with it; dies alone there on its banks; turns into a flower.

In the song lyrics beneath, Poena herself pours out her own special torment to punish the regretful narrator therein for the way he treats Echo (Helstrom?), a mountain nymph:

I can't see my reflection in the waters
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps
Or remember the sound of my own name
(Bob Dylan: Tomorrow Is A Long Time)

By Tony Attwood

If you really like this song, as indeed I think most Dylan fans do, then Untold Dylan must be the site for you, for we have covered it many times in many ways.

For example in the Bob Dylan Showcase series in which readers can send in their own recordings Denise Konkal was featured, as well as Jüri Aida.

Jochen has of course considered the song in depth and presented an extraordinary version by Pernilla Andersson which for both its outstanding orchestration and the lady’s vocals deserves most fulsome mention once again

But for Jochen that was not the pinnacle, for he gave that accolade to Josh Kelly.  This time the backing is utterly standard – it is the vocal in which the singer uses his sublime natural talent to deliver a performance in which we have not choice but to feel his love with him.    He (and his arrangers) can even be forgiven a verse of hmmmmmmms.  This is Dylan – the master wordsmith.  The man don’t need no hmmms.

And there’s a very interesting set of divergent views expressed in the comments section beneath.

Meanwhile, the cover versions go on and on – there are hundreds of them (really yes, hundreds).   But does anyone add anything new?

Of course, I have not listened to them all – it is a beautiful song, but there is a limit as to how many times one can listen.  Sometimes, I must admit, I hardly get past the opening but fortunately, this article is rescued by the sheer number of bands that have had a go.

As for example…

The band is Stories, the singer is Hunter, and what I love is that there is no pretentiousness here, no attempt to overdo what is already a perfect song.  The vocalist and the musicians know their job, they are very good at it, and they just deliver it straight.

As many musicians will confirm, this is actually a very hard song to perform, and there are some ghastly performances around where the vocalist clearly thinks she or he has got something new to offer, and has, except that something new is quite horrible.   I don’t normally give mention to versions of Dylan songs that really (in my opinion – and of course it is always in my opinion) get a song utterly wrong in every dimension, but just to show it is possible here is one such…

And it is amazing how often, in listening to various recordings today I came to the view that yes, this may be a fine singer and/or set of musicians, but they either should shoot the arranger or choose another song.  I will give one more example.  Of course if you enjoy this, that’s fine.  I just offer my views, and in my defence I would add that I try and offer an open door policy for articles on this site.  So if you want to write something about Dylan which counters my view you’ll have a fairly high chance of having it published.

And before we get to the good ones, here’s one more version that doesn’t work…  I just think Lucinda Williams hesitant approach to the vocals is exactly wrong for this song.   The message is clear and firm, not hesitant.  “There is nothing I wouldn’t do” is not a line of hesitancy.

And as I have suggested, this doesn’t mean I don’t think it is possible to play with this song.   I’ll offer two more versions where at the very least I think the performers and arrangers have given us not just a pleasurable listen, but an extra insight.   And not for the first time by any means I’ll contradict myself by saying yes clicks are possible.  A trifle annoying perhaps, but possible.

And, wow you are still with me!  Great because you will be rewarded, for at last… I found someone who in my view actually understood the song, then got inside it, then lived inside it, and then took the time to consider exactly what was going on.

What’s more it was recorded under really unusual circumstances.

The “Stilgoe in the Shed” show was performed on the internet daily during lockdown across 67 shows.  In a note Joe Stillgoe said, “All these songs mean different things to different people, but for me there’s an attachment because at a time when the days seemed to meld into one another, playing every day in the shed gave me a tangible memory for each flip of the calendar, and each song its own poignant place. They, and music in general, took on new meaning during the lockdown.”

Yes I’ll go with that.  I, like so many, had a very difficult lockdown, and found my way out by writing.  Joe Stillgoe, with infinitely more talent, did it by performing and recording songs.

This is how this song should sound.  Talk about “brings tears to my eyes”; this really does bring tears to my eyes.

The Dylan Cover a Day 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 immigrant. 
  •  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.
  • 63: In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  • 64: It ain’t me babe
  • 65: It takes a lot to laugh
  • 66: It’s all over now Baby Blue
  • 67: It’s all right ma
  • 68: Just Like a Woman
  • 69: Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  • 70: Lay down your weary tune
  • 71:  Lay Lady Lay
  • 72: Dylan Cover a Day 72: Lenny Bruce
  • 73: That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  • 74: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  • 75: Dylan Cover a Day: License to kill
  • 76: Like a Rolling Stone
  • 77: Love is just a four letter word
  • 78: Love Sick
  • 79: Maggies Farm!

• Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 1: You’re happy, Tim?
• Champaign, Illinois (1969) part 2: Oh, how I love you

by Jochen Markhorst

III         So that’s where the song is going

I got a woman in Morocco
I got a woman in Spain
But the girl I love that stole my heart
She lives up in Champaign

Still, according to that (auto-)biography with the great and inevitable title Go, Cat, Go! this was all Dylan had written before Carl Perkins took over. It’s not much, indeed. The clumsy, tautological third verse is just filler anyway, and it seems clear that the trigger, or the “catalyst”, as Dylan calls it, is just the beauty of the city name “Champaign”. “So that’s where the song was going all along,” the artist says in the 2020 New York Times interview with Douglas Brinkley, about the inspirational power of the three words “I contain multitudes”.

The mere word “Champaign” does indeed have a special power. Also, or especially, in the combination, as it is usually used, with sister city Urbana. “Champaign-Urbana” has an ingrained antithesis that is irresistible to any language artist. After all, “Champaign”, campania, means plain, field, while the Latin origin of “Urbana” is urbanus: from the city, urban, civilised. Plus, as a free bonus, the association with the homophone Champagne, with the festive bubbly drink.

“So that’s where the song is going,” Dylan the songwriter presumably decides, and will have little trouble finding a rhyme word to get there. “Spain” may not be the strongest rhyme word, but it does almost automatically force a filling of the corresponding verse – the formula I got a woman in… surfaces by itself, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne. Dylan, who actually has quite a reputation for disliking repetition, has used the formula himself, not so long ago, in “Outlaw Blues” (I got a woman in Jackson), which was already not too original back then either.

In 1927 Furry Lewis already sang Got a girl in Texas (“Rock Line Blues”), and a year and a half before Dylan struggled with this “Champaign, Illinois” Ray Pennington scored in the country charts with the song that would become a standard, with “I’m a Ramblin’ Man”: Got a girl in Cincinnati. But under Dylan’s skin, there are probably Otis Spann’s “Little Boy Blue” (I’ve got a girl in Chicago) and most certainly Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On”, the biggest country hit of the 50s;

Mister Fireman please woncha listen to me 
I got a woman in Tennessee 
Keep on moving 
Keep a rolling on 
You're flying too high 
It's all over now 
I move on

An indestructible classic, recorded by The Stones, by Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and whoever else. Arguably the most beautiful version is done by Johnny Cash, who recorded it again with producer Rick Rubin just before his death, but performed it in the 1980s together with Waylon Jennings, making it sound like a real Waylon Jennings song:

… with Johnny and Waylon taking the liberty of turning “I got a woman in Tennessee” into “got a pretty mama in Tennessee”. Dylan played the song with some regularity between 1986 and 1996 (23 times). Mostly as a song on the setlist, and sometimes just at the soundcheck or during rehearsals. Like in February ’96, in Phoenix, when he has “I’m Moving On” played after Hank Williams’ “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle” and before… Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox”. He seems to detect a connection.

Anyway, the I got a woman formula. Dylan seems to want to use it for a list song. A continuous enumeration of places where the narrator has women, who will then be crossed off at the end of each verse against that one woman in the chorus, against that incomparable thief of hearts from Champaign, Illinois. Not very inspired either, of course. Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man”, for example, with the beautiful, all-encompassing verse

I got a gal in Cincinnati
Got a woman in San Antone
I always loved the girl next door
But anyplace is home

… and thirty years later, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the formula has lost none of its force, as the phenomenon Lou Bega demonstrates in yet another list-song, but still irresistible mambo, in “I Got A Girl”:

I got a girl in Paris, I got a girl in Rome
I even got a girl in the Vatican Dome
I got a girl right here, I got a girl right there
And I got a girlfriend everywhere
I got a girl on the Moon, I got a girl on Mars
I even got a girl that likes to dance on the stars
I got a girl right here and one right there
And I got a girlfriend everywhere

There are hardly any fresh, original interpretations of the formula. Just one, in fact: Josh Ritter’s outer category song “Girl In The War” (The Animal Years, 2006);

Peter said to Paul
"All those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
But now talkin' to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun
I gotta girl in the war, man I wonder what it is we done

… with the coincidental link to Dylan’s little ditty in Ritter’s final couplet:

But I gotta girl in the war, Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain

But presumably Dylan is planning a more traditional use of the formula I gotta woman in. With as a gimmick something like Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man”: exotic women all over the world versus the girl next door, here in Illinois. At least, that is what the first choice “Morocco” suggests. A geographical indication that seems to have an exotic sound for Americans more than for Europeans. Morocco is very close to Europe, but choosing Morocco as location in a film like Casablanca, in songs like the first song Graham Nash offers to Crosby and Stills in America (“Marrakesh Express”, 1969), as a retreat for poets like Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac, and by Dylan himself in “If You See Her, Say Hello” (she might be in Tangier), to name but a few examples, illustrates that “Morocco” is associated by American artists with the excitement of faraway, strange and exotic. Especially unfortunate then is the following I got a woman in Spain; Spain is only forty kilometres from Morocco, which somewhat dilutes the idea of “I got women all over the world”. Plus: unintended of course, but many Europeans will think of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco (Ceuta and Melilla) – with just a little ill will, one might even see these two women as one and the same woman – I got a woman in Spain, Morocco.

Not what the poet means, obviously. Though perhaps he did notice the unintentional digression. Anyway, he gets stuck, still manages to squeeze out a weak filler (But the girl I love that stole my heart), and finishes it off with the catalyst, with She lives up in Champaign. Is that all there is? Yes, Peggy, that’s all there is.

Ah, there’s Carl Perkins. “Your song,” Dylan says. “Take it. Finish it.”

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

• 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
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

By Larry Fyffe

“I wish I didn’t love you so much” ~ Casablanca

As Will Shakespeare reigns in the First Elizabethan Era, Bob Dylan reigns in the Second.

To the point ~

The Jungian template for a number of masterful songs by Bob Dylan is “Endymion” by John Keats; the poem based on ancient Greek/Roman mythology.

The three-folded Moon Goddess – represented, for instance, by virgin Diana, by mother Isis, and by crone Kali – falls in love with the beautiful mortal shepherd named Endymion.

He, in turn, desires to become immortal like she.

As expressed by the Bogart-like narrator in the following song lyrics:

Go over to London
Maybe gay Paree
Follow the river, you get to the sea
I was hoping we could drink from life's clear stream
I was hoping we could dream life's pleasant dream
(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)

The mortal shepherd tries to change; endeavours to cease chasing after his concept of the ideal woman, represented by the great white moon. But he cannot resist doing so.

To escape one of the predicaments in which Endymion finds himself (while down in Pluto’s watery Underworld), the shepherd is required to help re-unite lovers who are floating around all alone:

The visions of the earth were gone and fled
He saw the giant sea above his head
(John Keats: Endymion, book ii)

Initially, singer/songwriter/musician Dylan (as narrator in the song below) doesn’t envision that problem difficult to solve; the sea is but a stream; the stream is but a dream:

The light in this place is really bad
Like being at the bottom of a stream
Any minute now
I'm expecting to wake up from a dream
(Bob Dylan: Dreaming Of You)

Easy does not turn out to be the case – instead, all Hell breaks loose:

The ghost of our old love has not gone away
Don't look like it, like it will anytime soon
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Under the midnight moon
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)

Bringing to mind the Gothic poet of gloom standing by the moonlit doorway of doom:

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
(Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee)

A thing of beauty gone can bring sorrow forever; leave a person stranded on the night’s dark Plutonian shore:

Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
You left me standing in the doorway crying
In the dark land of the sun
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)

And so it goes, the Gnostic-like poems of Keats and Poe cast their ghostly shadows over a number of songs by Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan As Endymion (Part II)

John Keats reworks the mythology of Endymion; has the shepherd decide to settle down to an earthly existence after having tasted hellish death beyond the River Acheron, and heavenly immortality up on Mount Olympus.

In the Gothic-tinged poem “Endymion”, the three-spirited Moon Goddess, who accompanies the shepherd for a while as an Indian Maiden, transfigures herself into a caring Crone.

As such, Diana bears him painful news; despaired, he sees her body fading gaunt and spare; she tells mortal Endymion she’s sorry, but being immortal and divine, she can never be like he is – return youthful yet again she always will.

The White Goddess, coined so by Robert Graves, nevertheless says she will eternally adore the earth-bound shepherd, he being the creative artist that he is.

Come then, Sorrow
Sweet Sorrow ....
There is not one
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid
(John Keats: Endymion, book iv)

To endure sorrow in order to appreciate bliss is supposedly a wise message garnered from Nature, and expressed through the mercury-coloured lips of the poet of Autumn.

An Existentialist melancholic message that irks mightily the tough-minded narrator of the song lyrics below:

Sorrow and pity
Rule the earth and the skies
Looking for nothing
In anyone's eyes

(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)

Accordingly, the moody Moon can  keep right on rolling along:

I would be crazy to take you back
It would go up against every rule
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Suffering like a fool
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)

For Bob Dylan, or at least for the writer as narrator, John Keats is just too unhappy in his unhappiness while the sunshine Romantic Transcendentalist boys (like Ralph Emerson) tends be a bit too optimisitc given some of the harsher aspects of human existence.

Oh, oh, oh, lo and behold; the story does not end here. You see, Endymion has a sister, and her name is Poena.

She’s the Goddess of Divine Retribution and does not tolerate mistreatment without it being returned in kind.

So don’t go blaming the Moon in June:

The peaches they were sweet, and the milk and honey flowed
I was only following instructions when the judge 
                                      sent me down the road
With your subpoena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 1, Enter The Organ Grinder
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 2, Enter Modern Times
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 3.  Walking through the Cities of the plague
• Never Ending Tour 2006, Part 4.  Strange Brews
• A list of the previous 86 episodes is here.

By Mike Johnson

Odd, inflexible staccato rhythms, broken phrasing, tired dumpty-dum tempos, a broken circus barker voice, a curious rinky-dink organ…this is what I thought I had to look forward to in 2007, given the hole the NET appeared to have fallen into, at least among the commentators I read.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, as I was sorting my files, to find ‘Till I Fell in Love With You’ from the Birmingham concert (17^th April). It was playing in the background, when I realized I had found something special. It’s a standard blues complaint, but it was swinging, as the 1940s big bands swung, and when Dylan started on the harp, I suddenly had a ‘best ever’ performance on my hands. The band was on fire. Dylan was blasting away like Paul Butterfield in the 1960s. I kept thinking I was hearing saxophones and trumpets but of course it is all guitars, guitars that sound like a big band. And Dylan’s full-throated harp.

I should have learned by this stage not to trust the critics, but insteda to trust my own ear. Fair to say that Dylan had been working on that song since 1997 (Time Out Of Mind), honing it, bringing forward its menacing beat, swinging it, slowly turning it into a solid performance like this. The success of this performance is a testament to the power of blues, however ‘generic’ it might sound to some. The theme of the song, that falling in love can be a total, life-wrecking disaster, has its underlying humour.

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

(Note, these Birmingham recordings are the work of bootlegger Crystal Cat who we encountered back in 2005, famous for the sharpness and clarity of their recordings. See 2005, Part 1.)

Till I Fell in love with you

That was not the only pleasant surprise. I’d pretty much given up on expecting anything new and exciting from ‘It’s Alright Ma,’ as it had been stuck in a lumbering Sonny Boy Williamson riff for some years. Listening to this one, from Orillia (7^th July), I was swept along by a new, hard rocking arrangement. The song hadn’t sounded so powerful in years. The sweeping attack on all things false and phoney was once more full of vitality, a compelling experience.

It’s Alright Ma (A)

Just four months earlier, at Stockholm, the song had still been in the Sonny Boy Williamson mode. It was swinging, but leaning towards the dumpty-dum. It was emerging into the version we’d hear at Orillia, but hadn’t quite got there yet.

It’s Alright Ma (B)

While that had a driving rock force carrying it along, this version of ‘It’s a Hard Rain Gonna Fall’ goes in the other direction, towards a lilting gentleness in counterpoint to the horrors being described. The performance seems to tiptoe around its subject matter as if these visions were too terrible to be described much above a whisper.

Hard Rain

These were not the only pleasant surprises in store for me as I worked through the material. Many of these songs sounded fresh and reinvigorated rather than old and stale. Take this ‘She Belongs to Me,’ from 14^th April (Sheffield). Abandoning the slow, dirge-like tempo of previous years, and to which he will later return, Dylan belts this one out as a mid-tempo rock song. It has a catchy beat and a bit of swing to it. This is a bit of alright, I thought.

She belongs to me

I was also pleasantly taken with this thoughtful version of ‘Shelter from the Storm.’ Dylan abandons the upbeat tempo that made for such a great performance in 2005 (See NET, 2005, part 1) for a performance slower and more contemplative. This goes to show how different performances of the same song suit different moods. This one is gentle and contemplative. Incidentally, I notice that there are times, such as here, where Dylan can really sing and hit the high notes. It seems the circus barker appears when Dylan wants him to.

Shelter from the Storm

And sometimes that rinky-dink organ sound really works. When writing about this performance of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ in my Master Harpist series (See Master Harpist, part 3), I commented on how Dylan’s circus-like organ added pathos to the scenes we are presented within the song, while the harp helped keep us at a whimsical distance from those scenes. I’d like to take that a step further. Dylan’s curious organ riffs put me in mind of an amusement park or fairground, and I see the two protagonists of the story with this in the background, maybe a Ferris wheel turning, gaudy lights flashing, tawdry music playing. The experience related may have happened many years before, and we are seeing it through the hurdy-gurdy of memory.

Suddenly this old masterpiece glitters with a new strength.

Simple twist of fate

On a lighter note, I was happy to find this performance of ‘Country Pie,’ a rarity for the NET and the last known performance of the song. It’s a delightful bit of fun and nonsense from Nashville Skyline. This one, from Stockholm, barely three minutes, is a cheeky little interlude. No matter how light-hearted and frothy Dylan can be in such rare moments, those innocents who assume he’s talking about a baked pie from the oven might look again:

Saddle me up my big white goose
Tie me on ’er and turn her loose
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie

Country Pie

In the last post for 2006 (Part 4), I introduced the song ‘Ain’t Talking’ and said that the song came into its own in 2007. This is one of Dylan’s journeying songs, taking us on a wild trip through landscapes and emotional postures. The journey, I suggested, parallels and echoes the Roman poet Ovid’s journey into exile.

It is dark, violent and conveys a vision of an earth of endless suffering.

The sufferin' is unending
Every nook and cranny has its tears
I'm not playing, I'm not pretending
I'm not nursin' any superfluous fears

The mystic garden of paradise, with its ‘wounded flowers’ has been deserted. The spiritual guardian of the garden has departed.

Excuse me, ma'am, I beg your pardon
There's no one here, the gardener is gone

I’d like to begin with the St Louis performance (22^nd Oct). It’s a beautifully clear recording with Dylan singing softly, with an almost ghost voice, emphasising the spookiness of the song.

Ain’t Talkin (A)

That was my favourite performance until I heard this next one (date unknown). Here the softness and spookiness of the song develop a hard edge. The vocal is a little more forceful.

Ain’t Talkin (B)

That was my favourite until I heard this one, from Birmingham. It may be that forward, Crystal Cat recording that does it, but the vocal is very strong. The spookiness of the song is still there, but that hard edge is now clearly despair and anger. A remarkable performance.

Ain’t Talkin (C)

I have to reiterate here that I think ‘Ain’t Talkin’ is one of Dylan’s best songs. The imagery is wide-ranging, but there is a focus and emotional coherence which lifts it into greatness. Interestingly, while Dylan is happy to drop verses out of his old, 1960’s classics like ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, all nineteen verses of ‘Ain’t Talkin’ are intact in these performances.

Staying with Modern Times, we come across the first performances of ‘Beyond the Horizon,’ which Dylan did not perform in 2006. This song is one of several (‘Bye and Bye’,’Moonlight’,’Spirit on the Water’…) which use happy, schmaltzy melodies from the era between the two world wars as a vehicle for lyrics of power, of subtlety, lyrics that are deceptively simple. The song appears to offer the comforts of banality, but there are deep currents beneath.

For ‘Beyond the Horizon’ Dylan uses that vacuous old song ‘Red Sails in the Sunset,’ written by Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams in 1935, to create a song that evokes our most dear hopes that love will survive after death.

Beyond the horizon, in the springtime or fall
Love waits forever for one and for all

Beyond the horizon across the divide
'Round about midnight, we'll be on the same side
Down in the valley the water runs cold
Beyond the horizon someone prayed for your soul

However, the phrase ‘beyond the horizon’ does not simplistically stand for death. The ‘horizon’ might stand for any great divide in our lives, the point beyond which we cannot know.

Beyond the horizon the night winds blow
The theme of a melody from many moons ago
The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chime
Beyond the horizon I found you just in time

It's dark and it's dreary
I been pleading in vain
I'm old and I'm weary
My repentance is plain

Part of Dylan’s genius as a lyricist is his ability to use ordinary phrases, common sayings and cliches and bind them into something extraordinary. That is what he does here. The song has this breezy surface, as if it is just one of those mushy old love songs, while it actually explores some of our deepest feelings around love and death.

Beyond the horizon, 'neath crimson skies
In the soft light of morning I'll follow you with my eyes
Through countries and kingdoms and temples of stone
Beyond the horizon right down to the bone

I don’t know the date of this one, but I’m guessing that it’s from Manchester (5^th Oct). The song was only performed fifty-eight times between 2007 and 2009, and this live recording is as good as it gets.

Beyond the Horizon

The best song to follow that is another from the same bag, ‘Moonlight’ from Love and Theft (22^nd June, Atlantic City). Except for the refrain, which recalls the Carter Family’s 1928 recording of Joseph Wade’s song ‘Meet Me by the Moonlight’, the melody is Dylan’s own. Interestingly, it sounds as if it were borrowed. Wikipedia gives our editor a mention on this one: ‘According to Dylan scholar Tony Attwood, the song sees Dylan “playing with chords that he rarely if ever used before – chords of the type we might well find in the American popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s”’. We could say the same about ‘Po Boy.’

Moonlight

Ritual dictates that I finish this post with ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ still Dylan’s preferred final song.

A goose-stepping ‘All Along the Watchtower’? Well, it’s always had the drums of war thrumming along in the background, but here the song has turned into a frenetic march, goose-stepping for Armageddon. The vocal lines get chopped up by this relentless march. Even the softer parts sound weird with that menacing little organ. This one’s from St Louis.

Watchtower

That’s it for us this time around. Join me next time for more Dylan sounds from 2007.

Until then,

Kia Ora

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This article is part of the series on Bob Dylan’s recordings of songs not written by himself.  A list of the previous articles in the series is given at the end.

The songs and example recordings are selected by Aaron in the US and passed over to Tony in the UK for commentary.  But sometimes (as here) something different finds its way into the article – as will become apparent in a moment.

Why did you leave heaven?

Aaron: Track 2 on the 1988 album Down in the Groove was Bob’s take of this Walter Bullock/Richard Whiting song

Heylin offers an explanation for the selection of the album’s tracks, “As it is, Dylan’s intent all along may have been to show the rich vein of music he listened to when growing up in Hibbing.”

Tony: The accompaniment to this song sounds very un-Dylan to me.  The strong drum beat at the start of each bar and then on the half beat at the end of the bar… I can’t recall anything quite like this on any other Dylan recording or performance.  And then the sudden cutting of half a bar of music before the resumption of the verse after the middle 8.  It is very, very unBob.  A triumph of production over the music, it seems to me, which is sad because although I find the lyrics somewhat mawkish, it is a fine song in its own terms.

Aaron: Some wonderful early film clips to show you here including the original version: Tony Martin from the 1936 musical film ‘Sing Baby Sing’. This was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936.

Tony: That’s an all lady orchestra, including a female conductor [I wrote that before watching the whole video, from which it becomes quite apparent it is an all female ensemble!]  And apart from that it’s a bit of a shock to hear this as a straight 1930s popular song, which it does not resemble in any way in Bob’s treatment of the song.

It is actually from the movie “Sing Baby Sing” released in 1936.   It was written by Richard A. Whiting and Walter Bullock.

Aaron: Big Bill Broonzy recorded it for a short film on Broonzy called “Low Light, Blue Smoke” from 1956 (available on YouTube if you want to watch the whole film)

Tony: Wow, that’s an unexpected transformation.  I wonder (and maybe someone can help me on this), did this sort of reworking happen very often in the 1950s?  It is not something I have really looked at before – taking a popular song from the 1930s and transforming it into having something akin to a blues feel in the 1950s.

Aaron: Here are two modern artists’ versions of the song.

World Party from 2012

Tony: The opening guitar work sounds to me as if they are going to break into “Desolation Row”  And I wonder why it is there, because very quickly the guitars move right away from that.   Is it an admission to the fact that musicians had discovered the song through Dylan?

I rather suspect it is for World Party was in effect Karl Wallinger, and it is the sort of thing I can imagine him doing (World Party was, I think, what he did after leaving The Waterboys.  He also wrote “She’s the One” which Robbie Williams had a hit with.)

Of the examples so far this is the one that I like – and sorry to say I like it much more than Bob’s version, which still sounds to me, even on playing again, as if the accompaniment was added later by the production team in an attempt to beef the whole thing up.

Aaron: Pokey LaFarge from 2015

But now… Where on earth to begin writing about Pokey LaFarge?  Well first off I am going to have to admit that I have changed the recording from that which Aaron provided, because this live recording allows us to see the artist in person.  Hope that’s ok Aaron – won’t happen again, promise.

There is no way I can do justice to him and his work, but if I tell you that “Chittlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County” was produced by Jack White (yes that Jack White) and released on Jack’s own label, you will start to appreciate how highly this guy is valued by musicians.

Jack White also collaborated with LaFarge on “I guess I should go to sleep” from “Blunderbuss”.

OK, I have meandered a long way from Aaron’s starting point.  I can only hope that Aaron will forgive me and that you may have found something of interest here.

Previously in this series…

• Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
• Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
• Other people’s songs: They killed him
• Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
• Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
• Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
• Other people’s songs: Love Henry
• Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
• Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
• Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
• Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
• Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
• Other people’s songs: You go to my head
• Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
• Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
• Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
• Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die

By Tony Attwood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the Dylan Cover a Day series

• • 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 immigrant. 
  •  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.
  • 63: In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  • 64: It ain’t me babe
  • 65: It takes a lot to laugh
  • 66: It’s all over now Baby Blue
  • 67: It’s all right ma
  • 68: Just Like a Woman
  • 69: Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  • 70: Lay down your weary tune
  • 71:  Lay Lady Lay
  • 72: Dylan Cover a Day 72: Lenny Bruce
  • 73: That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  • 74: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  • 75: Dylan Cover a Day: License to kill
  • 76: Like a Rolling Stone
  • 77: Love is just a four letter word
  • 78: Love Sick

by Jochen Markhorst

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

II          Oh, how I love you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master

• Bob Dylan: On his way home (parts I and II)
• Bob Dylan: On His Way Home (Parts III and IV)

by Larry Fyffe

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

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

Harks back to the song lyrics below:

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

Bringing to mind:

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

And moreso in:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bringing to mind Long Island:

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

Bob Dylan: On The Way Homeward (Part VI)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darkened, as presented in the next song lyrics:

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

(Bob Dylan: Kaatskill Serenade ~ Bromburg)

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

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

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

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

Aaron: Bukka White’s original

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously in this series…

• Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
• Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
• Other people’s songs: They killed him
• Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
• Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
• Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
• Other people’s songs: Love Henry
• Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
• Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
• Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
• Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
• Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
• Other people’s songs: You go to my head
• Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
• Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
• Other people’s songs: Belle Isle

• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 1, Enter The Organ Grinder
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 2, Enter Modern Times
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 3.  Walking through the Cities of the plague
• A list of the previous 86 episodes is here.

Part 4 Strange Brews

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

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

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

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

Desolation Row

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

Mr Tambourine Man (A)

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

Mr Tambourine Man (B)

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

It ain’t Me Babe

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

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

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

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

It ain’t Me Babe (B)

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

Times they are a changing

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

Boots of Spanish Leather

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

To Ramona

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

Every Grain of Sand (A)

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

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

Every Grain of Sand (B)

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

Maggie’s farm.

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

I’ll be your baby tonight

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

 Lay Lady Lay (A)

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

Lay Lady Lay (B)

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

God Knows

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

John Brown

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

Masters of War

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

Don’t think twice.

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

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

Positively Fourth Street

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

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

Tangled up in Blue

Kia Ora