Sometimes I hear a performance and it literally (and I literally mean “literally”) sends shivers through my body. Not just down my spine, but through my whole body.
I don’t think that everyone gets this effect, but if you do, there is a chance that the version of “Lay down your weary tune” that follows could do it to you.
“Lay down your weary tune” is a song that has many opportunities to excite in its musical construction and this cover version embraces these to perfection. The unexpected rhythmic change of the second verse, the way the melody meanders, the move from 4/4 to 2/4 and out again at unexpected moments – it is just extraordinary. I would count this as one of the best finds in this whole meandering series of Dylan cover.
I also like the game they have played with the album cover – which I am sure you will get without me spelling it out.
After that there is no point trying to find a version of the song that rivals Ms Lundgren so I’m moving to something utterly different: Jessica Rhaye and The Ramshackle Parade.
Putting a bounce into this song sounds on the face of it a horrible idea, but the band make it work because they have no pretensions to be anything other than they are. But at the same time they retain that extraordinary rhythmic change that is at the heart of the tune. I also like the way the accordion is used effectively and sparingly.
And the use of two vocalists – none of this moves me as the Lundgren version does, but it is enjoyable and so worth hearing.
Of course, I’ll have to include the Byrds giving the song the real Byrds treatment. That sound is now so familiar one only has to hear a bar to know who it is. But the wonder if this version is that the band keep their Byrdyness and yet manage to keep much of the essence of Dylan’s song. (The other wonder is that the spell checker on my computer doesn’t throw a fit at the word Byrdyness!)
I’ll finish with Marley’s Ghost who manage to find harmonies that others have missed along the way.
Marley’s Ghost is an extraordinary band, and really worth discovering if you don’t know them. Their website contains some wonderful gems including among other delights a performance of “It’s all over now” with Old Crowe Medicine Show.
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
If you didn’t see the previous article it might be worth having a look at it now to explain what on earth is going on – and to prepare you for what follows.
So this is now the second song to have emerged for which music has been written, and as with the first song (which I think of as being called “I had a long talk with your aunt”) I’ve simply taken the lyrics and written music around them, without thinking “what would Bob do?” because that just makes the whole thing too difficult – at least for me.
Instead, the music tries to capture the essence of the song. In this case, the 6/8 time relates to the lapping of the waves (hopefully without sounding too corny).
The agreement with Bob was that I would take the lyrics as written and not mess with them, but on this occasion I added one word – “anymore” in verse four, simply because every time I sang the song in rehearsal for the recording I kept slipping it in. It just felt like it needed to be there.
Oh, the laughter of the drowned
It’s being lost in the storm
And the piercing prayers of the found
Where the judgment is still unknown
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
And the bells of dawn are ringing in the night
Like a tune that was played before
I saw you in the wild wind
I wasn’t sure if I loved you or not (anymore)
It was so easy to love you, babe
You were so close and apart of me
I’m still hurting from the visions of dreams
And the smell of rotten meat
I was lyin’ down in the reeds
In the shade behind the wall
Oh, the pleasures of solitude are gone
And the stars are becalmed
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
The music is below but if you have come to this article not having read the previous one I would urge you to read that as well, since it does describe the project that Bob has undertaken to create these lyrics via a computer.
On the other hand, if you are a long term reader you might remember our series Showcase in which readers of Untold Dylan who had made recordings of their own music, or of Dylan songs but with a new interpretation or twist, were welcome to send me recordings and I put them onto this site.
Those recordings are all still online – click the link to Showcase above, and in time I will add these two songs to that.
And in the meantime, if you are a reader of Untold Dylan (as you obviously are or else you wouldn’t be seeing this) and you have made your own recordings of your own music or of versions of Dylan songs which are not already on the internet, do send them to me as an attached file which can be dropped into the site (.wav works well). Email as an attachment to Tony@schools.co.uk
PS I know the phrase in the title “post-Dylan” doesn’t really have any resemblance to the process here, but it seemed more elegant than Dylan-AI or anything else I can come up with.
PPS: I have to say I think the title “The laughter of the drowned” is just amazingly Dylan. If Dylan brought out a new album called “The laughter of the drowned” I think everyone would just be overwhelmed by that title alone. I’m not suggesting my music is something special, but that title is extraordinary. Remember it turned up here first.
It has an irresistible, voyeuristic appeal, the gimmick that Dylan and his producers have used many times over the years. Before the song actually begins, the listener hears shuffling, clinking glasses, studio chatter, a single stray guitar chord, a false start perhaps. Before “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” begins, we hear an acoustic, broken-off start and laughter, and in 1969 Dylan asks producer Bob Johnston “Is it rolling, Bob?”, to name just two examples.
The best-known messy intro of all time is probably The Beatles’ “Get Back”. By now, there must be billions of people who can playback along with McCartney’s enigmatic “Rosetta…” and Lennon’s warm-up exercise “Sweet Loretta thought she was a cleaner…”, can hit an imaginary piano key in sync as Billy Preston and George Harrison are still tuning up, and know every single swirling note of that first twenty-one seconds by heart.
Roxy Music’s first album (1972) opens with babbling and buzz and glass clinking – it sounds like there’s a vernissage going on, and it takes twenty-five seconds for Bryan Ferry’s piano “Remake/Remodel” to pop over it – an opening that is copied over thirty years later on Razorlight’s debut album in the song “Which Way Is Out”, with the same exhilarating effect.
Led Zeppelin’s “Black Country Woman” is introduced with Robert Plant’s question “Shall we roll it Jimmy?”, we hear a plane fly over disturbingly, Jimmy Page wants to wait a little longer, Plant laughs and says “Nah, leave it, yeah.” And Slade’s Noddy Holder insists to this day that his shouted “Baby baby baby” was not part of the song at all, but that he was just testing whether the microphone was on. In vain; the iconic scream has long since been integrated, and is also sung again when Oasis cover “Cum On Feel The Noize” in 1996. Without irony, by the way; the Gallagher brothers are devout Slade fans, as the documentary It’s Slade (1999) also shows, in which Noel solemnly declares:
“People just think when they listen to Slade, they think of Cum On Feel The Noize and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, but: How Does It Feel is easily one of the best songs ever written. Ever. Such a brilliant song. Go on buy it if you’re watching this. It’s on the Greatest Hits. Track 13.”
Lanois and Dylan are evidently aware of the particular charm of a messy intro; Time Out Of Mind opens with six seconds of unstructured studio sounds before Augie Meyer’s staccato organ strikes start “Love Sick”; the first two seconds of guitar rumble on the following “Dirt Road Blues” may remain; Lanois is still looking for a riff and someone (Tony Mangurian, probably) takes his place behind the drums at the start of “Highlands”; and the record is set by “Cold Irons Bound”: fourteen seconds of rudderless guitar and piano notes before bassist Tony Garnier gives the starting signal.
That’s already four of the eleven Time Out Of Mind songs with such a chaotic beginning – and the fifth is “Million Miles”. Eight seconds of fumbling and haggling, you can almost hear Tony Garnier giving the nod, and then it starts. Again, a deliberate choice; after all, it’s no trouble at all to cut the unstructured studio seconds from “Love Sick”, from “Cold Irons Bound”, from each of the five songs. In the case of “Highlands” and “Million Miles”, one might even suspect that the opening seconds were artificially added to suggest some kind of studio spontaneity. At least, that’s what Lanois’ account in Uncut implies:
“Tony and I played along to those records, and then I built some loops of what Tony and I did, and then abandoned these sources; which is a hip-hop technique. And then I brought those loops to Bob at the teatro. And we built a lot of demos around them, and he loved the fact that there was a good vibe on those. Some of the ultimate productions ended up having those loops in them. Songs like “Million Miles” and, uh, is it “Heartland”? [he means “Highlands”] – those long blues numbers have those preparations in their spine.”
Lanois is referring to the homework Dylan had given, those “dusty old rock’n’roll records” from artists like Charley Patton, Little Walter, Slim Harpo and “guys like that”, as technician Mark Howard says. So, for the studio recording of “Million Miles”, Dylan and the band play along with a loop already recorded by Lanois and Tony Mangurian; pressing the start button should be the natural starting signal of the song – and not the nod of the bandleader on duty.
Meanwhile, the source, that loop, is intriguing. All the guitar parts are too casual, too loose, to trace back to an old recording of Charley Patton or Lightnin’ Hopkins. Not as obvious, anyway, as for instance the lick from Little Walter’s “I Can’t Hold Out Much Longer” that we hear back in 2020’s “Crossing The Rubicon”;
https://youtu.be/cuyO8ClCxeQ
“Million Miles” may have a similar structure and stomp as, say, Little Walter’s “Sad Hours”, but the searching, seemingly improvised guitar parts, the swirling licks and the near stumbling sooner lead to the coolness of Lightnin’ Hopkins, to records like Texas Blues Man (1968), to records that Hopkins so casually fills all on his own, without a band.
Still, “Million Miles” doesn’t have much status. It’s generally dismissed as one of the lesser songs (by the same fans and critics who condemn “Make You Feel My Love”, typically), although often enough with the comment that on an album full of Great Songs there are of course Very Great Songs and Less Very Great Songs.
Dylan himself seems to share the sentiment. After all, all through 1997 he ignores the song, and even after the stage debut in January ’98, it does not receive much love either: 25 performances in a whole year of 111 concerts is a bit disappointing. Especially compared to other Time Out Of Mind songs like “Cold Irons Bound” (82 times), “Can’t Wait” (64) and “Love Sick” (104 performances).
Noteworthy then is Susan Tedeschi’s report, following her invitation to the MusiCare event in 2015, when Dylan accepts the MusiCares Person of the Year 2015 Award and surprises everyone with a long, fascinating speech. Tedeschi, along with husband Derek Trucks, is one of the artists invited to grace the festive evening with a Dylan cover:
When Susan Tedeschi found out that Bob Dylan had personally requested that she perform his song “Million Miles” with her husband Derek Trucks, her reaction was short and sweet: “Holy crap! I don’t care if it’s Super Bowl weekend, we’re there.”
(Ryan Cormier, The News Journal, 13 februari 2015)
Charming, but of course, the most remarkable thing is not so much that Dylan personally requested Tedeschi, but that he specifically requested “Million Miles” – the song to which he himself never gave too much love and which he has already more or less dropped from his setlist. The last performance, well, kind of performance anyway, was in July 2014 in Greece, where he played only the first verse, and then let the song flow into “Cry A While”.
Tedeschi and Trucks’ rendition does not lead to a reappraisal. After the well-known cover by Bonnie Raitt and the somewhat lesser-known one by Alvin Youngblood Hart (for the successful Dylan tribute album All Blues’d Up from 2002), there are hardly any artists who put the song on the repertoire anymore. Wynonna Judd does it once – and beautifully – in 2016, at the Dylan Fest Nashville, celebrating Bob Dylan’s 75th Birthday, but the best one is again from Bonnie Raitt, when she performs the song together with Keb’ Mo’ in 2019, at the fifth edition of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival…
https://youtu.be/PCgaOHUcAEE
… bringing it all back home; Raitt plays country blues licks like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Keb’ Mo’ contributes vocals like Elmore James and plays a B.B. King-like solo – and it takes 28 messy seconds before the song starts.
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
“Angelina”, a song written by Bob Dyan, stirs up a great theological debate amongst Dylanologists interested in such matters.
Christian Dante Alighieri, in the epic lyrics beneath, refers to four animal-like angels that have six wings:
Four animals, each with fresh green leaves
Each with six wings, each feathered
Their plumage full of eyes
(Dante: Purgatory, Canto XXIX)
Akin to the four creatures depicted in the New Testament:
And the four beasts had each of them
Six wings about them
And they were full of eyes within
(Revelations 4:8)
In the Old Testament verse below, the referenced each have four wings:
And the wings were stretched upward
Two wings of every one were joined one to another
And two covered their bodies
(Ezekiel 1:11)
As mentioned before, figuratively burnt down is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden as far as humans are concerned. But its greenery flourishes on for the Almighty One.
The question ~ In the song lyrics below, does the angel have six wings or four?
Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
The debate centres on as to why the Christian angels have two extra wings: Is it so they can serve as messengers from God to all mankind; these angels are more than just the guardians of God’s earthy domain that consists of wild and tame animals, birds, and humans.
They’re analogous to wing-heeled Mercury of ancient Greek/Roman mythology.
“Angelina” allows the readers or listeners thereof to decide for themselves which side of the debate they are on:
In the valley of the giants where the stars and stripes explode
The peaches thet were sweet, and the milk and honey flowed
I was only following instructions when the judge sent me down the road
With your subpoena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
In ancient Greek/Roman mythology, King Minos, after his death, becomes a stern Judge of the Dead. In “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, Minos, at the entrance of Hell, issues a warning fo the Italian poet from thirteenth cenury for whom Beatrice has arranged a sightseeing tour of Hell, then of Purgatory, and finally of Heaven:
And eternal I endure
And all hope abandon ye who enter here
(Dante: The Inferno, Canto Ill)
Akin to portraying himself as Dante crossing the River Styx to Hades, the narrator in the song lyrics below takes on the role of Julius Caesar who crosses the river that leads to Civil War, a hell-on-earth.
An imaginative, artistc mixing together of historical facts and fiction:
I've painted my red wagon, abandoned all hope
And I crossed the Rubicon
Well, the Rubicon is a red river
Going gently as she flows
Redder than your ruby lips
And the blood that flows from the rose
Three miles north of Purgatory
One step from the Great Beyond
(Bob Dylan: Crossing The Rubicon)
References Dante who’s climbed to the Seventh Sphere of Heaven, up to the fixed stars:
Says Beatrice, “Why does my face so entrance you
That you look not upon the lovely Garden below
That blooms the sun beams of Christ?
There the Rose in which the Divine Word is made flesh”
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXIII)
Dante refers to Semele whom Zeus, disguised as an eagle, promises her anything she asks for. Cursed by Hera, Semele asks for a demonstration of his thunderbolts, and the flash of Zeus’ lightning kills her.
Dante below is in danger of being set afire, left smouldering like a tree stuck by a lightning bolt.
Filled with the divine light of Jesus, Beatrice speaks:
Says Beatice, "Were I to smile
You'd be like Semele
When she was turned into ashes"
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXI)
The following more-down-to-earth song lyrics ponder Dante’s dire situation:
Whatever you wanted
Slipped out of my mind
Would you remind me again
If you'd be so kind
Has the record been breaking
Did the needle just skip
Is there somebody waiting
Was there a slip of the lip
(Bob Dylan: What Was It You Wanted)
Back in 2020 Untold Dylan ran a series called “Showcase” which contained songs from a number of readers who had written or performed their own songs or versions of Bob’s songs.
We have a page up which links to many of the articles that were published in this series and just recently I went back and listened to the recordings that we got for that series, following the work Bob Bjarke did in creating a new set of Dylan lyrics using artificial intelligence.
That work resulted in a piece of music to fit with the lyrics, which I had a bash at writing, and it is this that has reminded me of the earlier series. Plus the fact that Roelie Rautenbach got in touch, and after some correspondence, he kindly sent me a song of his own, called “You” and has also given me permission to share it with readers.
That song is below, but I would like to add that this makes me think maybe we could find some more recordings by readers, be they professionally recorded in a studio, or recorded by the writer on the phone.
Now in saying “on the phone” might cause some surprise, but the fact is that the recording system installed in contemporary mobile phones is remarkably good. The playback might sound poor on the phone – but that is entirely because of the speaker that comes with mobile phones. Play the result through a decent speaker and you can find you’ve got decent audio quality.
This gives a much broader opportunity for amateur songwriters. As a breed we’ve generally been ignored if not laughed at as poor wannabes, while those who consider themselves as amateur painters are often, quite rightly, recognised as people who have found a productive and creative hobby which satisfies themselves and can bring pleasure to others.
Moving on around the arts, amateur dramatics put on productions that are not meant to rival the West End or Broadway, but which allow those who enjoy such work to be engaged in the art form of their choice and let others see it. And that is widely welcomed. So why not amateur songwriters?
So now that most of us have a recording device that allows quality recordings to be made without cost, anyone who wants to write and record her or his own song can do so. And come to think of it, I wonder how many more early Dylan ventures we would have had copies of, if he’d been a teenager in the era of the modern mobile phone.
Thus I am now saying, as before with Showcase, as a reader of this site if you are writing original materials and can make a recording you’d like to share, please do send it as an attached file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for Untold Dylan. If you would like to say something about how the song came about, even better. It is always good to have the lyrics written out too.
And I would extend this to cover versions of Dylan songs, although here I would add that the proviso that the cover does offer some new insight to the song through its arrangement and isn’t just you performing the song as Dylan does. There are lots of those already on the internet so there would be nothing “untold” about offering them here.
Back to Roelie’s song: I love the lyrics of this, especially the line “You make parties come alive from the moment you arrive” which I really, really wish I’d written. So utterly simple, so beautifully elegant, so deeply meaningful in the context of the later lines “A façade that’s not really you But just to hide a deeper view”
Now I would never ask anyone to do something that I would not do myself, so I will shortly put up one of my own songs for public exposure. If you have the nerve to offer up your own contributions, please just send to the email address above as an attached file.
And indeed this is open to other arts as well – if for example you are a visual artist and have produced a work or two that has some relevance to Dylan in some way, and would like to share please email me, with an attached file of photo/s.
Here are the lyrics
You relax at a pavement café
On a warm Saturday
You smile sweetly and passers by
See a twinkle in your eye
The others at your table
Know how well you’re able
To charm with your way
and the words that you say
when you walk down the street
looking so elegant and neat
casually and easily dressed
an impression in which you invest
you know you look great
your looks and body indicate
and your presence can’t be missed
an enigma, difficult to resist.
You make parties come alive
from the moment you arrive
your laughter and your smile
is part of your unique style.
The avant guard way you dance
Doesn’t happen perchance
but you’re alone when you go
why that is only you know
What is seen is what who knows
Is it truly you that shows
Is that elegance, laugh, that smile
A picture that just appears for a while
Is what’s inside really ever free
Is the happiness the joie de vivre
A façade that’s not really you
But just to hide a deeper view
Not showing a troubled heart
A soul that is tearing apart
You need the likes and love given
You may not get if not hidden
Your insecurities your real fear
If you’re not as you appear
Is that those, the friends you crave
Will take away all they gave
If you’re not accepted for who you are
No love, no friendship, no like you get
Will be for you won't go very far
A time will come when you are exposed
The original art piece that is you
For not being what they supposed
Is the one that real friends wish to know
To love to accept to be theirs
Be the real you and let its show
I really am grateful to Roelie Rautenbach for sharing that song with me, and for giving me permission to share it with you.
I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two
Yes, I’m tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you
It is catalogued as “humorous fiction” and as “psychological fiction”, Marni Jackson’s Don’t I Know You? from 2016, and other labels would fit the charming collection of stories too. The work consists of 14 short stories telling life chapters of the protagonist Rose McEwan, offering – chronologically – as many snapshots of Rose’s life from age 17 to 60. The “gimmick”, so to speak, of the story cycle, is Rose’s encounters – in each chapter Rose happens to meet a Famous Person, or a person who will later become famous, who is still in “the lobby of his life”, as Jackson calls it. At seventeen, she attends a writing class and attracts the attention of John Updike; a few years later, a holiday job as a waitress leads to a flirtation with a charming Bill Murray, Meryl Streep wants to be her friend at a weekend spa, and so it goes on until the final chapter, a canoe trip with Taylor Swift, Leonard Cohen and Karl Ove Knausgaard.
The fifth chapter is called Bob Dylan Goes Tubing and tells how Rose arrives with her then-life partner Eric at their holiday cottage by the lake. There is an unfamiliar Citroën parked in front of the house and Eric’s nine-year-old son Ryan sees that someone is on the lake, on an air mattress.
We shaded our eyes. A pale, small, but visibly adult figure was lying on the mattress, slowly paddling with his hands toward the diving raft.
“I need the binocs.” Eric said, and went to get them. Standing on the deck he studied the figure.
“This is really weird, but whoever that is,looks exactly like Bob Dylan.” He passed the binoculars to me. He was right. A pale little guy with a pencil moustache, in a Tilley hat, was on our air mattress.
We are probably somewhere in the early 1990s (although Jackson doesn’t place too much value on historical accuracy, apparently; she suspects Dylan “is fragile right now” because Empire Burlesque, the 1985 album, is not a big seller – but he quotes “Everything Is Broken” and they sing along with Lucinda Williams’ “Passionate Kisses”, both songs from ’89. Anyway: Dylan took a wrong turn on the way to Kashagawigamog Lake, and thought he was at his destination here, at Sturgeon Lake. And now he just stays here. Marni Jackson captivatingly and believably articulates how Rose and Eric, although finding this a little weird, take it for granted. The story unfolds charmingly and smoothly, without any dramatic plot twists. Dylan goes tubbing with Ryan on the lake, has breakfast with Rose, oatmeal and syrup, philosophises with Eric about music standing in front of the record player, they play Monopoly, and one morning, after a week or two, Dylan is suddenly gone. And has then demonstrated an autobiographical truth behind this one line from “Million Miles”: I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two.
“Million Miles” is not really a Very Great Dylan Song, but it does have, like many Very Great Dylan Songs, a somewhat alienating ending. We’ve had seven verses of lament, the wail of an abandoned lover mourning the loss of his beloved. Autobiographical interpreters with crypto-analytical ambitions might see something like “Dylan seeks his inspiration”, the incorrigibly sentimental ones search in the Bard’s love life, and stubborn Christian fans might put an evangelical spin on it (“Dylan suffers from a crisis of faith and seeks his God”, or something like that), and sure enough, with some creative acrobatics many verses and images can be turned into metaphors supporting one interpretation or the other.
All of them, however, will have trouble squeezing this final couplet, and especially this final line, into a comprehensive interpretation. In the twenty-first century, Dylan changes the line to “There must be somebody who would put me up for a day or two” (London ’03, for instance), but that doesn’t open up any vistas either – it is still out of character. This is not lovesickness or related misery, but pure, desperate, existential loneliness, no longer words directed outwards, to a you, but rather words from a desperate inner monologue, addressed to oneself.
In the Consequence Podcast of 9 March 2022, Mike Campbell reveals Dylan’s writing routines, which may explain why Dylan’s lyrics sometimes seem to wander off. Campbell is a founding member and mainstay of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, and Dylan’s guitarist both on stage and in the studio, so he has some expertise and some right to speak. As a songwriter, he is not unsuccessful (co-credits on Petty hits like “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl”, for example, as well as on Don Henley’s world hit “The Boys Of Summer”), but he still gratefully recounts the writing tips he received from Bob Dylan:
“He told me once, which was a really good tip, he said, when you’re writing a song, you know, you got your verses, your bridge and your chorus, he said, don’t stop there. Write twenty verses while you’re in The Zone. You know, the last ones might be better than all the stuff you had.”
Campbell’s revelation is in line with what Dylan himself says in Chronicles about the creation of the song “Dignity”. Long enough, that song, but there were many more couplets…
“There were more verses with other individuals in different interplays. The Green Beret, The Sorceress, Virgin Mary, The Wrong Man, Big Ben, and The Cripple and The Honkey. The list could be endless. All kinds of identifiable characters that found their way into the song but somehow didn’t survive.”
Speculation, of course, but it seems that the lyrics for “Million Miles” were also written in “The Zone”, also had twenty verses “with other individuals in different interplays”, the majority of which “somehow didn’t survive”. And that after the deletion of ten or twelve stanzas, the text became unbalanced – hence perhaps a melodious, but essentially strange stanza as the seventh, the “rock me” stanza. And in the last stanza the introduction of a narrator who seems to have a different state of mind than the previous one. The state of mind in which you desperately yearn for human company.
The state of mind which makes you crash other persons’ holidays at a cottage at Sturgeon Lake.
———–
To be continued. Next up Million Miles part 9 (final): Shall we roll it Jimmy?
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Bob Dylan, singer/songwriter/musician, awaits Virgil to guide him to Paradise,
Even if it’s just a little shack in the hills:
Through the sycamore, I see the home that I adore
Back in the hills of Kentucky
Every day they light that in the window there's a life
Back in the hills of Kentucky
Soon I will stray back there to the old grave that's there
Somebody's way back there to greet me
I'll be heaven blessed for I will find my peace and rest
Back in the hills of Kentucky
(Vaughn de Leath: Back In The Hills Of Kentucky)
The motif above is replicated in the song lyrics below:
God be with you, brother dear If you don't mind me asking, what brings you here
Oh, nothing much, I'm just looking for this man
Need to see where he's lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, and everything within ya
Can't you hear me calling from down in Virginia
(Bob Dylan: Goodbye Jimmy Reed)
There be light humour in them thar hills as well:
I lay awake till three o' clock this morning
And I heard you when you sneaked into the shack
You told me you stayed up late, swinging on the garden gate
But you can't put that monkey on my back
Shelton Brothers: You Can't Put That Monkey On My Back
Though very funny, darker be the hyperbolic humour in the song lyrics beneath:
Well, I been praying for salvation
Laying around in a one-room country shack
Gonna walk down that dirt road
'Til my eyes begin to bleed
(Bob Dylan: Dirt Road Blues)
More serious are the next lines – finding himself standing at the gates to Dante’s Underworld, the narrator thereof fears he’ll at best be able to ascend the stairs to Third Heaven:
I wish I knew what it was that keeps me loving you so
I'm breathing hard, standing at the gate
Ah, but I don't know how much longer I can wait
(Bob Dylan: Can't Wait)
Then again, patience is a virtue:
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or sad-eyed lady, should I wait
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
(The song begins around 1 minute 10 seconds)
Bob Dylan And Dante ((Part IV)
Guided by Virgil, Dante Dylan mixes up the medicine, meets up with the Judge of Carnal Sinners in the Second Circle of Hell:
Here comes licentious Cleopartra
Here Helen for whom long turned the windmills of war
And see the great Achilles who fought in the end for the love of Polyxena
Observe Paris who took Helen for his wife
And he pointed out more than a thousand shadows with his fingers
Naming, for me, those whom love had severed from life
(Dante: The Infernal, Canto V ~ translated)
Men as victims of demon female lovers are depicted in later poems as well:
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave
Till heart and body and life are in its hold
(Dante Rossetti: The Lady Lilith)
In the following song lyrics, as noted before, said it could be that Trojan Paris is Dylan’s persona; he’s observing Venus, the sex goddess, while conceited Achilles waits below; Achilles having betrayed the Greeks because of, among other things, his lust for a Trojan princess.
Paris turns the tables, and shoots Achilles with an arrow:
Standing at your window, honey
Yes, I've been here before
Feeling so harmless
I'm looking at your second door ....
Achilles is in your alleyway
He don't want me here, he does brag
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
Not the first time, Dyan narrator’s been daunted by love betrayed:
I stepped up to my rival, dagger in my hand
And seized him by the collar, boldly made his stand
Being mad by desperation, I pierced him through his breas
All this for lovely Flora, the Lily of the West
(Bob Dylan: The Lily Of The West)
It’s tough getting to the temperate Seventh Circle of Heaven even though only a lonely shack in the hills, let alone waiting around for the opening of the Seventh Seal to find out where you are going to end up:
You broke the heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book, and not write anymore
I've been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to Heaven before they close the door
(Bob Dylan: Trying To Get To Heaven)
Dante’s more assured, more transcendental:
Already my desire, and my will
Were being turned like a wheel
All at the same speed
By the love that shines the Sun
And the other stars
(Dante: Paradise, Canto XXXIII ~ translated)
This article records how two of us came to create a new Dylanesque song, with lyrics generated by artificial intelligence.
A recording of the song can be found at the end of the article.
Part 1: by Bob Bjarke
Over recent years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a bigger part of our lives, even if it’s not always obvious to all of us. From movie recommendations to autocorrect spelling assistants to traffic directions on mobile apps, AI has become a constant companion in many of our daily lives.
As a person interested in technology and creativity, I’m exploring AI’s potential as a creative partner asking the question, “Can AI be as useful to creative pursuits as it can be to navigating our cities or filtering spam from our email inboxes?”
One of the most accessible ways to experiment with AI is through text generation. There are many AI tools we can use to generate a high volume of text quickly and inexpensively, using free data sources found on the web. But before we ask AI to write, we need to teach it to read.
To do this, I used an AI software called GPT-2. AI scientists built GPT-2 by feeding it text found on 8 million web pages. Essentially GPT-2 learned to read by spending lots of time on the internet (like much of AI research and experimentation, this “education” raises lots of ethical concerns, but that’s the subject for another article), and is now able reliably to mimic human writing.
This software is also highly malleable. It can learn to mimic any additional text it reads, simply by studying a large quantity of data–and the bigger the sample size, the better the mimicry.
This brings us to the catalog of Bob Dylan. Dylan’s catalog is an excellent dataset, including over 600 songs. His style is also notoriously unique, having been the recipient of innumerable accolades throughout his career, including the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
The Dylan oeuvre is therefore excellent source material to help answer our question: can AI learn to be an inspiring creative partner?
In creating the AI songwriter I call Bob Dylain, GPT-2 generated thousands of lyrics for me, ranging from garbled nonsense to literal regurgitations of existing Dylan lyrics. Somewhere in between, AI composed lyrics that you might call Dylan-esque–exhibiting deft use of metaphor and social commentary often drawing from the experience of the American west.
Now, I’m not a Dylan scholar, but I am a fan. Sifting through these AI-generated lyrics at times felt like trudging through a dystopian nightmare, but at others it felt like flipping through an undiscovered Dylan notebook–watching new Dylan lyrics appear in front of me in real-time.
These lyrics are not perfect. They often lack rhyme, and they haven’t grasped Dylan’s expert phrasing and structure. I’d never pretend that they achieve anything like the poetic genius Dylan has generated throughout his career. But they do begin a conversation about AI and human creative partnerships and they do give us a glimpse into the future of AI-assisted creativity.
Part 2: Tony Attwood
When I received Bob’s details of his work, I was struck by the notion that maybe I could have a go at setting music to one of these Dylan-esque lyrics. It was a fascinating and challenging thought.
For many years I’ve been an amateur songwriter; in my early life when playing with bands I had a tiny level of success as a composer, but it was vanishingly small. Since then I’ve just written songs as an escape from the real world, playing them to long-suffering friends and occasionally within folk clubs wherein the managers kindly lock the doors to stop the audience escaping when it’s my turn to play.
But I thought I’d be the first to have a chance at writing the music to Dylan inspired lyrics was overwhelming, and as soon as I got the transcript I sat down and… failed totally.
The lyrics I tried to write the music for were fascinating indeed, and yes I could write some music, but it was not only non-Dylan it was also truly awful. In dismay, I gave up.
It took me weeks to go back to Bob Bjarke’s email and have a second go with a different set of lyrics. This time the opening lines worked well, but I still got tangled up in knots later. The lyrics are reprinted below. I’ve not changed any to fit with the music – the music has to fit with the lyrics. However the division of the lyrics into verses and a “middle 8” is mine.
This is very much a home, (not a studio) recording, and I want to stress I’m not suggesting that this is a Dylanesque song – it is a setting to music of the lyrics by an amateur songwriter.
And I’m not saying Bob would ever write music like this. Rather when faced with these lyrics, this is what I came up with. The lyrics are below.
I had a long talk with your aunt
In the churchyard, in the alley
She told me all about your death
I lay in bed and talked to myself
But I didn’t know what to do
Three bodies lyin’ there was nothin’ I could do to stop it
Memory is like a rolling cloud
Where the ancient light never fades
I had a long talk with your uncle
In the county jail
He sat in a rocking chair
He talked about the golden age
When men, women, and children went free
He said the darkest hour was still ahead
When men, women, and children went free
I had a right to be saved by love, I had a right to be
I had a long talk with your grandmother
In the home of the living
She talked about the trials and the tribulations
She said you had a right to know
What she knew about disease
and about how it was to be killed
How many people died from it, and what was left?
How many more would be left to rot?
When you died, your body was buried in the rocks
In the gutter like a boiled fish
I never saw my heart begin to bleed
I never saw my whole being disappear
I had a long talk with my brother
In the cold dark of night
He spoke of the great final struggle
When all is lost and all is made of stone
You and me we had completeness
I gave you all of what you wanted I did it my way
You followed your own fancy I had a right to be
Saved by love, I had a right to be
I enjoyed this little project enormously and having got the hang of this particular process (which included me giving myself the rule that I would not change the lyrics, no matter how obtuse, nor how difficult they were to set) I’d like to have another try.
If you find my music is nonsense, by all means have a go yourself, and then send it to me attached to an email – as ever it is Tony@schools.co.uk I’ll be delighted to publish the results.
And as long as the daily audience of Untold Dylan doesn’t fall off the edge of the cliff as a result of this, I’ll have a go at another song shortly.
A humourous cowgirl Dante rides on the foam of the Jungian sea:
Now we're on our cowboy honeymoon
I'll find a shack over back
In the valley
(Patsy Montana: A Cowboy Honeymoon)
Waiting for her is hairy:
Pacing round the room
Hoping maybe she'd come back
Well, I praying for salvation
Laying round in a one-room country shack
(Bob Dylan: Dirt Road Blues)
While listening to a tune about the fickle moon:
Where are you old moon of Kentucky
There's somebody lonesome and blue
There's nothing it seems
But memories and dreams
Waiting to whisper to you
Day is done, and here am I
All alone and you know why
Roll along, roll along, Kentucky moon
(Montana Slim: Roll Along Kentucky Moon)
A moon that can apparently speak:
Whatever you want to say to me
Won't come as any shock
I must be guilty of something
Just whisper it into my ear
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)
In the meantime, the blacksmith forges a tune of his own:
The seasons they are turning
And my sad heart is yearning
To hear the songbird's sweet melodious tone
Won't you meet me in the moonlight all alone
Bob Dylan: Moonlight)
While he’s listening to another song that makes a reference to the constant ‘tiny’ stars afar; ‘Elena’ like ‘Selene’ means “moon”.
In Greek/Roman mythology, she is the sister of Apollo, the Sun and Music god:
Maria Elena, you're the idol of my heart
Maria Elena, why are we so far apart
I linger here inside a reverie tonight
Where tiny stars remind me of your eyes so bright
Maria Elena, tell me, will we meet again
Maria Elena, must I hope in vain
You're all I long to call my very own
'Til dreams come true, I'll wait for you alone
(Jimmy Wakely: Maria Elena)
Zeus, the god of Thunder is their father:
Oh sister, am I not a brother to you
And one deserving of affection
And is our purpose not the same on this earth
To love and follow his direction
(Bob Dylan: Oh Sister)
Part II
Play Nat King Cole. Play Nature Boy
(Bob Dylan: Murder Most Foul)
Dante Alighieri saddle up, not in the afterlife, but alive in the Old West.
In the song lyrics below, infernal hell is reduced to a campfire around which a boy plays a game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’:
Brush that little tear away, old timer
You know a cowboy never cries
Something must have spoiled your day, old timer
Did campfire smoke get in your eyes
(Jimmie Davis: Old Timer)
The lyrics beneath express a romantic heavenly vision of country life in contrast to the hellish aspects of big city life, a song made famous by country singer Jimmie Rodgers:
Memories are bringing happy days of yore
Miss the Mississippi and you
Mocking birds are singing around the cabin door
(Bob Dylan: Miss The Mississippi And You)
The sentimental motif expressed above akin to that in the song lyrics quoted beneath:
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)
In the following song lyrics, the advice of temperance offered in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” heeded:
Sycamore tree, sycamore tree
Tell the folks, tell the shack, that my heart is dragging me back
Sycamore tree, tell'em for me
I know I'm going to find my Paradise Lost
In the hills of Tennessee
I know I'm going to find my Seventh Heaven
It's just a cabin, my Seventh Heaven
(Jimmie Rodgers: The Hills Of Tennessee)
With some luck the moderate path between extremes just might be found:
Well, I'm a stranger in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I'll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will bring me a song
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
The inconstancy of the lunar sphere addressed below (the song also recorded by
Wilf Carter/Montana Slim, and by Hank Snow:
Where are you old moon of Kentucky
There's somebody lonesome and blue
With nothing it seems, but memories and dreams
Waiting to whisper to you
(Jimmie Rodgers: Roll Along Kentucky Moon)
Sad things happen beyond the control of mere mortals:
Let the bird sing
Let the bird fly
One day the man in the moon went home
And the river went dry
(Bob Dylan: Under The Red Sky)
An obverse vision of the above Kentucky moon song follows (sung together by
Bob Dylan and Paul Simon); it be the sphere of fixed and far-off stars that speaks this time:
Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining
Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue
It was on a moonlight night, the stars were shining bright
And they whispered from on high, your love has said goodbye
(Bill Monroe: Blue Moon Of Kentucky)
A star closer by, that wise old Sun, sends sounder advice:
This he said to me
The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love, and be loved in return
(Nat King Cole: Nature Boy)
A meander around the internet today found me over 180 cover versions of this song, including a surprising number of instrumental pieces.
It is of course one of the most widely known Dylan songs, and it has a highly distinctive melody, opening line, chord sequence and chorus, and when you’ve got all three you have a song that everyone will remember.
It is also an incredibly simple song, something that comes across if one just looks at the lyrics
Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
This is not Dylan the great lyricist but Dylan turning a simple phrase into a song everyone remembers. It is in fact the antithesis of “Visions of Johanna” – and that one man could write both is extraordinary.
So perhaps it is the sheer simplicity that attracts everyone. I can only give the simplest of samplings of what musicians have done with the song..
Kuku treats it with due regard and simplicity and keeps the accompaniment down to a minimum, using the choir to give the extra element. I’m not sure about mixing up the verses though.
Turning the piece into an instrumental seems to be a favourite activity – perhaps the attraction is that there is so little to work with that the deviations that the performer needs can go anywhere. This is not to everyone’s taste, of course, because it deviates from the meaning of the lyrics, and instead becomes an extemporisation.
I find I can remove the lyrics from my mind, and enjoy where this goes; I find it fun, but I know not everyone is happy with this.
Staying with the basic elements that Bob has given us, means that those who can’t develop the song and can’t add their own deviations from the original get a bit stuck. Thom Cooper shows us just how much one can do with only the slightest movement.
Jochen’s contribution on this site to the discussion of the song is as ever comprehensive and insightful, and I certainly can’t improve in any way on his insights, so I’ll reprint from the original…
Following the horrific shooting of school children in the Scottish village of Dunblane, in which a 43-year-old man kills fifteen children between the ages of five and six plus a teacher, musician Ted Christopher rewrites the lyrics. Mark Knopfler helps free of charge and in the Abbey Road studios, with a choir of brothers and sisters of the victims, the single is recorded on December 9, 1996. It immediately climbs to first place in the English charts.
Psalm 23 is incorporated in it (The Lord is my shepherd), the second verse has been rewritten and a third verse has been added:
Lord these guns have caused too much pain
This town will never be the same
So for the bairns of Dunblane
We ask please never again
Lord put all these guns in the ground
We just can’t shoot them anymore
It’s time that we spread some love around
Before we’re knockin’ on heaven’s door
Nobody knows what possessed the murderous coward, who commits suicide on the spot. Heaven’s Door remained closed to him, in any case.
I was thinking I would stop there, but was then reminded of The Cat and Owl, a mysterious ensemble – if you want to know more, try their Facebook page
And that’s where I shall stop, because I rather like that and it is just right for me at this moment. I forget the lyrics of the original and this soothes me at a moment when my head is everywhere at once. (Not in a bad way, I should add, but through very positive events: I have just for the first time met the brother I never knew I had).
Well, there’s voices in the night trying to be heard
I’m sitting here listening to every mind-polluting word
Suddenly producer Tom Wilson is gone and replaced by Bob Johnston. In January ’65, Dylan and Wilson passionately and harmoniously complete the first album of the mercurial trio, Bringing It All Back Home. When Dylan is over in England to be called Judas, Wilson is in New York doing overdubs for the intended single “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” (21 May 1965). And when Dylan returns, the men just get to work on the next masterpiece, on Highway 61 Revisited. Two days of recording, Wilson is still in the control room (15 and 16 June), the days when the final recording of “Like A Rolling Stone” is realised. No small feat either.
But still Wilson’s swan song. On the third day of recording, 29 July, Bob Johnston is suddenly at the controls. Dylan acts like he doesn’t know why, when Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner asks him four years later;
JW: Why did you make the change of producers from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston?
BD: Well, I can’t remember, Jann. I can’t remember… All I know is that I was out recording one day, and Tom had always been there – I had no reason to think he wasn’t going to be there – and I looked up one day and Bob was there. (Laughs)
Evasive and not very credible. It is not too plausible that Dylan, like a submissive wage slave, would let the Bosses Above Him decide with whom he must cooperate. Johnston doesn’t know the ins and outs of it either, but he has an educated guess:
“His producer was Tom Wilson then. Gallagher called me in the office said, “We’re getting rid of Tom Wilson.” He didn’t say why but maybe it was because Albert Grossman said he didn’t like him, and I don’t think Dylan liked him. I don’t know, but he never said anything about it.”
Wilson will never meet Dylan himself again, but indirectly, as a producer of other artists, still often enough, of course. In 1967, for instance, when he and Nico record one of Dylan’s masterly throwaways, “I’ll Keep It With Mine”. And even more indirectly in 1970, when Wilson is the producer for the fifth LP of the infectious weirdos from San Francisco, for CJ Fish of Country Joe and the Fish. The final track of Side One will have taken him back in time a few years;
Hey Bobby, where you been ? We missed you out on the streets
I hear you've got yourself another scene, it's called a retreat
I can still remember days when men were men
I know it's difficult for you to remember way back then , hey
… “Hey Bobby”, the slightly awkward call for Dylan to return to the front, set to the same chord progression as “Like A Rolling Stone” is set, to “La Bamba”.
In Dylan’s 2004 autobiography Chronicles, it is a theme. In Chapter 3, “New Morning”, Dylan looks back on a dark period in his life, the period around 1970, the years when Country Joe McDonald (among others) makes his pathetic appeal. The bard leaves no doubt about how enormously unpleasant he found it to be promoted “as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation”. And how disruptive the consequences were. In Woodstock, he and his family were harassed by fans, followers and other nutcases, “goons were breaking into our place all hours of the night”, in the press they kept portraying him as a kind of High Priest of Protest, colleagues like Robbie Robertson were waiting for his next move, waiting to show them where he’s “gonna take it”.
It is very, very unpleasant. “It would have driven anybody mad,” Dylan writes. All the more so because he does not recognise himself at all in that image, nor does he have the ambition to be a spokesman of any kind. “I would tell them repeatedly that I was not a spokesman for anything or anybody and that I was only a musician,” but that doesn’t help, of course. It seems to frustrate Dylan still thirty years later, when he writes these words. “I really was never any more than what I was – a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”
And even more than Robbie Robertson’s docility, even more than Country Joe’s “Hey Bobby” or David Bowie’s brilliant harangue, “Song For Bob Dylan”, he will have been irritated by the embarrassing “protest song” of his former life partner Joan Baez.
“Joan Baez recorded a protest song about me that was getting big play, challenging me to get with it — come out and take charge, lead the masses — be an advocate, lead the crusade. The song called out to me from the radio like a public service announcement.”
Dylan refers to Baez’s open letter “To Bobby”, the much-discussed song from the very mediocre album whose title also signals painful naiveté: Come From The Shadows (1972). In the self-written song, Baez does her best to wrap her appeal in dylanesque rhyme patterns and eloquence. Like in the third verse;
Perhaps the pictures in the Times could no longer be put in rhymes
When all the eyes of starving children are wide open
You cast aside the cursed crown and put your magic into a sound
That made me think your heart was aching or even broken
… four lines that are “actually” six lines, judging by the aabccb-rhyme scheme (Times-rhymes-open / crown-sound-broken), just like “Love Minus Zero” and “I Don’t Believe You”, dylanesque assonant rhyme (open-broken, for instance) and a dylanesque image like a cursed crown. From a technical point of view just fine – but unfortunately Baez’ foible for toe-curling melodrama, for kitschy images like the wide-open eyes of the starving children, is dominant. A foible she unfortunately also demonstrates in the possibly even more pathetic chorus, in
Do you hear the voices in the night, Bobby?
They're crying for you
See the children in the morning light, Bobby
They're dying
“Now listen,” Dylan says in his 2015 MusiCares speech, “I’m not ever going to disparage another songwriter.” And indeed, in this same speech, he does speak of Baez only with praise, with love and admiration (“A woman of devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back”). Elegant. But probably no one in the audience, and not even Baez herself, would have blamed Dylan if, more than forty years after the fact, he had given his opinion about “To Bobby”.
However, exactly halfway between Baez’s 1972 song and Dylan’s 2015 speech, he seems to be venting his opinion, subtly of course. In the last verse of “Million Miles”, which Dylan recorded in January ’97, he echoes the chorus of “To Bobby”:
Well, there’s voices in the night trying to be heard
I’m sitting here listening to every mind-polluting word
… in which, in this scenario, he expresses his opinion somewhat less elegantly (every mind-polluting word). Not unequivocal, however. The metaphor “voices in the night” is hardly unique (The Eagles’ “Witchy Woman” comes to mind, and Joni Mitchell’s “I Think I Understand”), but it is still so unusual that it seems obvious that Dylan himself would think of Baez’s whiny refrain. And apart from that, it fits perfectly on an album full of wandering protagonists with confused sensory impressions, on a record on which one protagonist confesses “I’m beginning to hear voices and there’s no one around” (“Cold Irons Bound”), a second wonders if he hears someone’s distant cry (“Love Sick”) and a third, in “Not Dark Yet”, sighs: “Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer”.
But still. The expression “voices in the night” is just a bit too distinctive. And after all, “To Bobby” is, for all its awkwardness, one of those songs that float in a luminous haze.
To be continued. Next up Million Miles part 8: Write twenty verses while you’re in The Zone
———-
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:
As the years go by Dylan sheds some songs and introduces new ones. In 2005 he did introduce one new song, an orphan, which we’ll come to shortly. A notable first performance.
I haven’t always noted last performances, but for 2005 I count nine songs never to be heard again. They are not core songs, but rather songs that have been hanging around in the periphery, occasional songs used to bring some variation into the setlists.
But we have the remarkable case of a song only ever performed once, both a first and a last, ‘Million Dollar Bash’ from The Basement Tapes. Like ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ and ‘Tiny Montomery’ the lyrics merely flirt with meaning. We know there’s a crazy party going to happen (or is happening), and some Dylan circus characters will be there, and chaos will reign, but not much else. It has a similar anarchic feel to ‘Rainy Day Woman.’
Well, I'm hittin' it too hard
My stones won't take
I'm get up in the mornin'
But it's too early to wake
First it's hello, goodbye
Then push and then crash
But we're all gonna make it
At that million dollar bash
Note the reference to the Beatles song, ‘Hello, Goodbye.’ It’s not the only reference to a popular song:
Well, I took my counsellor
Out to the barn
Silly Nelly was there
She told him a yarn
Then along came Jones
Emptied the trash
Ev’rybody went down
To that million dollar bash
‘Along Came Jones’ is a Leiber-Stoller song released by The Coasters in 1959.
‘Million Dollar Bash’ is a raucous, drunken kind of song. A celebration of partying. Dylan’s one and only live performance is from the London residency (2nd night) and there’s nothing tentative about it; it sounds like he’s been doing it for years. And the audience loves it.
Million Dollar Bash
Now to ‘Waiting For You,’ the new Dylan song I mentioned. Untold editor Tony Attwood is not a great fan of the song. After digging into some of the song’s references he writes: ‘And all in all I find this a bit confusing, a bit of a mish-mash, a bit, dare I say it, of a waste of time. I have the awful suspicion that Bob had thrown everything into his writing this year, and just as with the song that preceded this (“Sugar Babe”) he was somewhat out of ideas, and so used an old classic for the music and lines from elsewhere, so he started collecting other people’s lines and putting them together. The problem for me is that he now seemed to be writing them at random…. Of course I could be completely wrong – maybe there is an art in all this. Maybe it all makes a lot of sense and carries deeper meanings, but … well sorry. Someone else needs to write a review of this song to make that point, because I really just don’t see it.’ https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/487
I sympathise with Tony’s frustrations. I have to confess when I first heard the song, I didn’t know it was a Dylan song and thought he was singing something by Hank Williams or the like. It had that doleful sound. As with other orphan songs, ‘Things Have Changed,’ ‘Cross The Green Mountains’ and ‘Tell Ol Bill,’ ‘Waiting For You’ was written for a film, this one called Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, which was released in May 2002, and the song alludes to the relationship in the film between the characters Shep and Vivi.
Interestingly, in response to Tony’s article a correspondent, Carrie Frey writes ‘I always felt like this song was Shep describing his and Vivi’s relationship. He loved her so much and waited for her to return the love despite knowing he wasn’t her first choice. Vivi was so unhappy about losing her first love that I felt like “happiness is but a state of mind, anytime you want you can cross the state line” was him begging her to see she could be happy with him. Even the “it’s been so long since I held you tight, been so long since we said goodnight” makes me think of them sleeping in separate rooms and never speaking at night. All of the jazz references fit with the Louisiana backdrop and while it sounds like a mish-mash, it seemed like a poetic way of Shep promising to always be there for Vivi no matter the abuse she threw at him.’
Without overthinking it, the song seems to have quite a simple emotion driving it, summed up in the title. Arguably, as Carrie Frey suggests, the songs random images fall in line with this emotional pull, or rather tug on the heartstrings. Anyway, here it is from London (3rd night)
Waiting For You
Now for the songs we must bid farewell too. Let’s start with one of my favourites, one I most regret not hearing again, ‘To Be Alone With You,’ an exuberant, rousing 1950’s style rocker. Dylan was to find the song again after the NET, for Shadow Kingdom and his 2022 performances, but for the NET it is lost.
Here it is from 29th April, and Dylan doesn’t sound the least bit tired of the song. With Donnie Herron ripping it up with his violin and Dylan with an exultant harp break, the song has never sounded more vigourous and so much fun. Another celebratory song.
To Be Alone With You
‘Never Gonna Be the Same Again’ is a real rarity, having only ever been played twenty-six times, and only twice in 2005, but I can’t say it’s a favourite. It comes from Empire Burlesque, 1985, and although Dylan does his best to breathe some life into the song, I find it a bit lumbering, and it doesn’t break any new or interesting ground, at least for me. Not even the sharp, jagged harp break can lift this one. (26th October)
Never Gonna Be the Same Again
I feel a bit the same about ‘I’ll Remember You’ also from Empire Burlesque. Dylan is seldom mawkish, although he doesn’t mind being sentimental. For me, this song slips from the sentimental into mawkishness. Crying into his cups. We all know the feeling; remembering somebody we can’t forget. Consider the apologetic last verse:
I’ll remember you
When the wind blows through the piney wood
It was you who came right through
It was you who understood
Though I’d never say
That I done it the way
That you’d have liked me to
In the end
My dear sweet friend
I’ll remember you
‘Piney wood’ is a good example of the kind of poetic diction we can do without, and rarely indulged in by Dylan. Yet, on the other hand, one of things I love about Dylan is his unselfconsciousness. He doesn’t censor himself. If something’s worth feeling it’s worth singing. Certain kinds of feeling might require language like this, to explore the maudlin and not care if it sounds like some pop song on the B side of a Patty Paige album. Yes, there is a strong tradition in pop songs for this kind of emotional indulgence. (26th May)
I Remember You
‘Bye and Bye’ takes that kind of feeling to a whole different level, one with humour and wry reflection (‘I’m singing love’s praises with sugar-coated rhyme’), an exquisite little song, and I was surprised to learn that this was its last performance, especially since it is from “Love and Theft” and so only four years old, with only 76 performances. The song contains one of my favourite couplets:
Well the future for me is already a thing of the pastYou were my first love and you will be my last
It’s with much regret that I say goodbye to this little gem. And, to rub salt into the wound, this is a great performance, full of bitter-sweet nostalgia. Brilliant period sounding violin from Herron. I lovely take on 1930s jazz. Dylan manages to turn his upsinging into a jazzy style all its own, with some muted trumpet sounding harp to take the song out. (17th October)
Bye and Bye
Another song I’m reluctant to see go is ‘If Dogs Run Free.’ This song, from New Morning, made an unexpected appearance in 2000, and had a brief run with 104 performances. It fits in well with the jazzy turn Dylan took with “Love and Theft” and I think the song has rather come into its own over those five years, with its lazy beat and insouciant, jaunty lyrics. As I have written, it’s a send up, a piss take of the cosmic mysticism of the beat poets, but it is beguiling in its amusing play with those ideas.
It’s a solid performance, with Dylan doing so much upsinging it becomes, as with ‘Bye and Bye,’ a style all of its own. It’s no longer just a flourish at end of the line, but comes in midline, any point. The instrumental is outstanding, with Dylan doing some great jazzy harp to finish.
If dogs run free
‘Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)’ is another song from The Basement Tapes. It had 176 plays from 1995. This song is not to be confused with ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break,’ which will appear in 2006 on Modern Times, but the song does remind me of ‘High Water (For Charley Patten)’ from “Love and Theft”. ‘Crash on the Levee’ might be seen as a background song for both these later songs, as rising flood water is used to suggest chaos and apocalypse in all three. This final performance is from Karlstad, Sweden, 20th Oct.
Down in the flood
What a great rocker! We’ll miss this one.
I wrote about ‘Ring Them Bells’ in NET, 2004, part 3, and don’t have much to add to those comments except that I’ve always had a soft spot for this song. It has a magic to it I find hard to explain. It’s a song that haunts us with the possibility of salvation. He does, however, change one of my favourite lines. ‘Time is running backward and so is the bride’ becomes ‘time is running backward and there’s nowhere to hide’ which to my mind is not an improvement. This last performance is from Erfurt, Germany, 6th Nov. A strong, somewhat dreamy performance. Somewhere those bells will go on ringing for the ‘lilies that bloom.’
Ring Them Bells
‘Hazel’ from Planet Waves must be, ‘Million Dollar Bash’ aside, the rarest of the rare, played only seven times from 1994, four of those performances from 2005. It is a beautiful tribute song, slow and gentle. This is from Clearwater, 29th May, and is the second to last performance. The last was on 10th June but I don’t have that recording on hand.
Hazel
So we’ve said our hellos and goodbyes. Next post we’ll visit some old friends, friends that stick around and never say goodbye.
At first I thought this version of Tom Thumb by Whiskerman was going to take us all the way through the song without any beat at all, but no, the rhythm section comes in at around 2′ 45″ and suggested to me that this was worth persevering with. But having listened to the whole piece I wondered whether it might not have just used the music of that verse from 2′ 45″ onwards as the template.
I did listen all the way through and it is interesting, in that the final line of “do believe I’ve had enough” takes on a new meaning by the end, but I’m not sure I will happily go back to this another time. I’ve got the idea, and I suspect five seconds of the piece in a week or two’s time will do enough to remind me of the whole thing.
I was also unsure what extra insights Stephen Inglis was giving me until just after the first minute mark when the instrumental section came in… and this version (below) is really worth listening to just for the wonderful dexterity of the accompaniment. Oh to be able to play like that!
And I must admit the more it progressed the more I enjoyed the recording, although it was probably in part caused by the fact that I was just waiting to see what on earth the guitarist could manage to do in the second instrumental break (and I guessed there had to be one, after such extraordinary dexterity in the first).
It’s one of those songs which will stay in the memory but I am not sure quite powerfully enough to make me want to play it again later. And I wasn’t really too sure of the point of the coda.
Totta Näslund goes a different way with the sort of beat I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else use in accompanying this song.
What I particularly like is that the accompaniment is written to be in the background behind the voice and the beat, and the production team manage to keep it there and not compromise the artistic notion.
Somehow this version creates a new musical arrangement which utterly fits with the lyrics, as if this could be how it was originally intended by the composer. Of course, from all that we know, that’s not true, but that feeling stays with me all the way through.
I really, really do like this, not least because as it progresses the song manages to incorporate new elements in the accompaniment without destroying the essence of the song. Just consider the “Now all the authorities” verse – that tells us the song is growing, and that continues with the “burgandy” verse next, but this growth has been gradual, verse by verse, so it really works.
Somehow by the time we get to going back to New York City it has all happened, and the instrumental verse that follows conveys both where the signer has been and where he’s going to.
I do pity the poor pianist however; his/her performance is essential to the whole piece, but my god it must be mind-numbing to play, especially when the producer says, “Oh guys that was great but can we take it one more time all the way through.”
I love it.
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
The last thing you said before you hit the street
“Gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet”
I said, “That’s all right, you do what you gotta do”
Well, I’m tryin’ to get closer, I’m still a million miles from you
The song poet Dylan has a nice final couplet up his sleeve. But makes the debatable decision of going there by taking a detour; the two verses before that final couplet surely are the weakest links of the song. The penultimate verse even comes frighteningly close to being filler or even lousy poetry, and this sixth verse is unfortunately quite forgettable too. Mainly due, of course, to the corny pun with the janitor.
In itself, there is nothing wrong with a corny pun, every once in a while. Dylan indulges in it with some frequency, in fact in every decade of his sixty-year career. In the early sixties in songs whose form alone allows a cabaretesque approach, in talkin’ blues songs like “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues”. Later in frenzied mercurial songs like “Tombstone Blues” (The sun’s not yellow – it’s chicken), it continues through to twenty-first century songs like “Po’ Boy” (Freddy or not here I come), and culminates on Rough And Rowdy Ways (2020).
Here, however, there is something amiss. In a blues in which the protagonist is tossed to and fro between bitterness and despair, the cheap pun with “janitor” and “sweep me off my feet” is, well, inappropriate. All the more so, because the line catches the ear coming after the drama-promising opening line The last thing you said before you hit the street and before the melodious but clichéd That’s all right, you do what you gotta do. A verse line with a word combination, by the way, that is always attractive anyhow, as we can hear in Manfred Mann’s “You Gave Me Somebody To Love”, and in Santana’s “Choose”, but especially as demonstrated by the Grandmaster Jimmy Webb, who in 1968 wrote a whole song around it. “Do What You Gotta Do” sounds great in any version (B.J. Thomas, Nina Simone, The Four Tops, Clarence Carter, and more), but rarely as beautiful as when Roberta Flack halves the tempo and pours a can of violins over it (1970, on the same record that features Roberta’s heartbreaking “Just Like A Woman”, Chapter Two);
… a beautiful song Jimmy Webb dashes off in 1968, sometime between “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”, “MacArthur Park” and “Wichita Lineman” (to name but three landmarks).
Dylan himself seems to feel some dissatisfaction as well. After the recording, in January ’97, he first ignores the song completely. Other Time Out Of Mind songs like “Love Sick”, “Can’t Wait” and “Cold Irons Bound” are immediately taken to the stage and performed over thirty times in their year of birth, “Million Miles” has to wait until the next year, until January 1998. This verse is then sung, but the following one is skipped – and a year later, in 1999, this janitorial couplet is also discarded completely. After that, “Million Miles” is only performed occasionally. Three or four times a year, culminating in 2008, when the song is on the set list a mere eight times – leaving out even the last three verses.
The reservations about the penultimate verse are even more pronounced. In the studio, Dylan sings:
Rock me, pretty baby, rock me all at once
Rock me for a little while, rock me for a couple of months
And I’ll rock you too
I’m tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you
… hardly earth-shattering, indeed. A friendly critic might qualify it as a reverence to one of the great blues foundations, to B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby”, but Dylan’s own fumbling with this verse suggests that he himself also sees it as a less successful improvisation product. In 1998, when the song is finally allowed to the stage, it is inexorably dropped. Only in 2003, in England, we hear the seventh verse return, but it has been rewritten in the meantime:
Rock me, pretty baby, rock me ’til everything gets real
Rock me for a little while, rock me
’til there’s nothing left to feel
And I’ll rock you too
I’m tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you
… rewritten to the version as it is published officially (in Lyrics and on the site). Dylan seems to think it’s okay now; in 2004 and 2005 this rewritten Lyrics version is maintained – but in the dying year of the song, 2008, the stanza, together with the preceding and the concluding one, is removed again. The void is filled – rather un-dylanesquely – with long, somewhat rudderless guitar solos.
A pity, still. The rewritten version is superior; both ’til everything gets real and ’til there’s nothing left to feel have the same colour, communicate the same emotional wound as “Cold Irons Bound” and “Dirt Road Blues”, as Time Out Of Mind at all, actually. And the intentional or unintentional reverence to “Rock Me Baby”, or rather, to its real father “Rockin’ And Rollin’” by Lil’ Son Jackson from 1950 remains intact. Not inconceivable, this reverence option; the song is one of the stepfathers of the unsightly snippet that a slightly bored Dylan shakes off in ’73, during the recordings for the Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid soundtrack, and which is later polished up and promoted to a world hit by Old Crow Medicine Show and Darius Rucker, of the throwaway “Rock Me Mama (Like A Wagon Wheel)”.
Colleagues hardly have problems with it, for that matter, with the skipped or rewritten rock me couplet. The two best-known covers, the one by Alvin Youngblood Hart (2002) and the one by Bonnie Raitt from 2012, simply stick to the discarded lyrics of the original studio recording, and unconcernedly rock all at once, rock happily for a couple of months.
To be continued. Next up Million Miles part 7: Songs that float in a luminous haze
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Aaron:This track is known by various names: Stagger Lee, Stagolee and other variants. Bob’s version, Stack a Lee, appeared on Worlds gone Wrong.
Tony:Now you are really pushing my musical knowledge beyond the boundaries… I had to look this one up, although I did know it has been around for a long old time. I just didn’t know where it had been.
The journey took me to Frank Hutchison who is pictured on the left, (and I’ll come back to him in a moment) to my favourite actor and comedian. But let’s try and do the whole journey…
According to wiki: “The song was first published in 1911 and first recorded in 1923, by Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians. A version by Lloyd Price reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959.
As you can hear that was an instrumental, and the first version with lyrics did not turn up until 1924, as Skeeg-a-Lee Blues, by Lovie Austin. It’s available on Spotify and really worth hearing.
And then in 1925 Ma Rainey recorded it. Ma Rainey you will of course know because “ma rainey and beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll” on Tombstone Blues. Although quite what that means I have no idea.
So the song evolved and meandered and then Bob went back to the early version
It may be that my English upbringing leaves me not fully attuned to the lyrics and Bob’s intonation in this song, so in case that affliction affects you also, here are the lyrics…
Hawlin Alley on a dark and drizzly night,
Billy Lyons and Stack-A-Lee had one terrible fight.
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
Stack-A-Lee walked to the bar-room,
and he called for a glass of beer,
Turned around to Billy Lyons, said, "What are you doin' here?"
"Waitin' for a train, please bring my woman home.
"Stack-A-Lee, oh Stack-A-Lee. please don't take my life.
Got three little children and a-weepin', lovin' wife.
You're a bad man, bad man, Stack-A-Lee."
"God bless your children and I'll take care of your wife.
You stole my John B., now I'm bound to take your life."
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
Stack-A-Lee turned to Billy Lyons and
he shot him right through the head,
Only taking one shot to kill Billy Lyons dead.
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
Sent for the doctor, well the doctor he did come,
Just pointed out Stack-A-Lee, said, "Now what have you done?"
You're a bad man, bad man, Stack-A-Lee."
Six big horses and a rubber-tired hack,
Taking him to the cemetery, buy they failed to bring him back.
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
Hawlin Alley, thought I heard the bulldogs bark.
It must have been old Stack-A-Lee stumbling in the dark.
He's a bad man, gonna land him right back in jail.
High police walked on to Stack-A-Lee, he was lying fast asleep.
High police walked on to Stack-A-Lee, and he jumped forty feet.
He's a bad man, gonna land him right back in jail.
Well they got old Stack-A-Lee and they laid him right back in jail.
Couldn't get a man around to go Stack-A Lee's bail
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
Stack-A-Lee turned to the jailer, he said, "Jailer, I can't sleep.
'Round my bedside Billy Lyons began to creep."
All about that John B. Stetson hat.
So how on earth did we get from the music and lyrics of the early versions to Bob’s version? Did he re-write it himself, or is he re-interpreting an earlier interpretation?
This is where Frank Hutchison comes in…
Frank Hutchison was an early 20th century Piedmont blues singer/songwriter who worked with Okeh Records (who called him “The Pride of West Virginia.”) Most reports name him as the first non-African American musician to perform and record the country blues. Which would explain very much why Bob was drawn to hims music.
Aaron:Many artists have tackled the song using variants of the lyrics and melody. Here are a couple I liked.
Grateful Dead
Tony: This is one of the reasons why I love working through the history of these old songs – Stagger Lee seems to have transformed itself into a million different forms. I quite enjoyed that. But then….
Hugh Laurie
Tony: Now Hugh Laurie has for many years been at or near the very top of my list of people who I would love to meet, and who, if I did meet, I would undoubtedly end up with my mouth hanging open and being utterly unable to say a word and then probably find I had been dribbling.
If you don’t know the work of Hugh Laurie well, all I can do is say it ranges from music as above, to his primary source of fame and undoubtedly income, acting. From “House” to “Jeeves and Wooster”, from “Fry and Laurie” to my absolute favourite, “The Night Manager”.
Indeed it has always seemed rather unfair that one man should have such a phenomenal range of talent – but I guess when they were doshing it out the bucket slipped and Hugh Laurie got 150 people’s worth, leaving us poor mortals scrabbling around for the odd bits that dripped down after he had been submerged in the stuff.
He has won three Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards was appointed OBE in the 2007 New Year Honours and CBE in the 2018 New Year Honours, for services to drama.
Thank you Aaron for giving me a chance to say something about this amazing man. And to Hugh Laurie, thank you for that really is a most fantastic version of Stagger Lee that you recorded. I’m so glad it was filmed. I live in awe of your multiple talents.
Her apron wrapped about her
And he took her for a swan
Oh and alas, it was she Polly Vaughn
(Bob Dylan: Polly Vaughn)
In the song lyrics below, a husband does in his wife, the world outside not caring:
Tenderly William kissed his wife
Then he opened her head with a butcher knife
And the swan on the river went gliding by
(Bob Dylan: Ballad Of The Gliding Swans ~ Jones/Dylan)
Supernatural events occur in mythology, and indeed are not always happy ones:
In the following song lyrics, the narrator thereof might be considered Trojan Paris; upstairs he is visiting Aphrodite/Venus, with her pet scorpion; she promised Paris that he’d get to have beautiful Helen; she (and her sister) the offspring of Leda by Zeus – the thunder god having disguised himself as a swan.
Achilles has sworn to fight for Helen’s return to Greece, but he’ll be killed by archer Paris, his arrow guided by Apollo, son of Zeus but not born of wife Hera:
Achilles is in your alleyway
He don't want me here, he does brag
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
Seems in the song below, Paris poses a question to the sea-foam goddess as to why her beauty is so alluring to all men as is the swan-like body of Helen; Paris decides he must have Venus, who sides with the Trojans for the most part anyway, as much as he desires Helen the Greek.
Meanwhile, temporary as it be, Achilles has turned against his Greek commander; his heels are showing, and they ought to be wandering:
How come you get someone like him to be your guard
You know I want your loving, honey, but you're so hard
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)
As the story goes, Venus, by a prince, becomes the mother of the Trojan commander Aeneas.
The victorious Greek commander on his return home is done in by his betrayed wife and her lover.
The commander of the Greek forces ought not to have angered his wife, she fathered by swan Zeus just like Helen.
The story condensed in the poem below ~ ‘thighs’/’lies”:
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs
And how can body, laid in that white rush
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies
(William Yeats: Leda And The Swan)
Low burlesqued, and obversed in the song lyrics beneath ~ ‘my’/’pie’:
Saddle me up my big white goose
Tie me on'er and let her loose
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)
The last two posts have been all about the London residency and the Dublin concerts in November, and I’ll certainly be returning to those six concerts for further treasures they contain. However, I want to take time out from London and Dublin to look at two concerts Dylan did in Seattle, one on March 7th and again on July 16th.
The March 7th concert was a regular NET concert, but the July 16th concert was a special event sponsored by Amazon.com. Here’s how it was noted in the Seattle Times:
Amazon.com will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a present to employees — an exclusive concert featuring Bob Dylan, Norah Jones and political satirist Bill Maher. The event will take place in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall on July 16.
No tickets will be sold to the public, but the company says it will be broadcast live on the Internet (Amazon.com/showofthanks), beginning at 5 p.m.
I want to start by working through the July 16th concert as what we have here is no run of the mill audience recording, but a beautifully balanced soundboard. This is the best quality sound you’ll find in 2005, Crystal Cat’s famous London recordings notwithstanding. Not only is it the best recording, but it is also arguably one of Dylan’s best performances for the year, again London and Dublin notwithstanding.
Because of this, I’m taking the unusual step of going through the concert from start to finish. It’s the only way to do justice to these performances.
One thing that struck me was the quality of Dylan’s piano playing. Because, with the audience recordings, the piano is often grumbling away in the background, it is not always evident how skilful Dylan’s keyboard playing has become. As always, he never takes the lead, but these recordings show clearly the importance of the piano in creating the musical texture.
I’m going to skip ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ the opening song, as we’ve had two fine performances of this from London and Dublin, and the July 16th Seattle performance is pretty standard. The next two songs, however, are outstanding. Exquisite performances of two songs from NashvilleSkyline (1969), ‘Tell Me That It Isn’t True’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.’ As the years have rolled on, and the songs on Dylan’s setlists have grown darker and more complex, particularly with the arrival of songs from Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, these more modest, lighter songs from Nashville Skyline have grown more precious. These two songs could have been pop songs with a country twist from the 1950s. There is an innocence to them.
These are very accomplished performances; there are no rough edges. Dylan’s performance is restrained and quietly assured, as are the two beautiful harp breaks in both songs.
Tell me that it isn’t true
The necessary touch of melancholy in that song is not found in ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ a happy-go-lucky love song which takes a different approach to seduction than the more famous ‘Lay Lady Lay’ – a somewhat more subtle and indirect approach, but with the same aim in mind.
Well, that mockingbird’s gonna sail away
We’re gonna forget it
That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon
But we’re gonna let it
You won’t regret it
Another state of the art performance:
I’ll be your baby
I don’t feel quite so effusive about ‘Lay Lady Lay,’ which comes as number four on the Seattle setlist. I’d like to say that he hits three in a row from Nashville Skyline, but for me this performance is marred by too much upsinging and a sound not quite as smooth as the preceding two. I think he did a better job of the song at Dublin, but we’ll catch up with that in a later post.
Lay lady lay
Number 5 on the setlist is ‘You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine’ from Blonde on Blonde. A nice clean recording, and a superior performance. Nothing particularly special about it, however.
You Go Your Way
‘Blind Willy McTell’ however is special, as Dylan has come up with a totally new arrangement of the song. Fans of his swinging 2012 performances will find the origin of that arrangement here, in 2005. For the first time, Dylan experiments with making the song swing. Swing music originates with the big bands, and does have a technical definition. This is Wikipedia:
‘The term swing, as well as swung note(s) and swung rhythm,[b] is also used more specifically to refer to a technique (most commonly associated with jazz[1] but also used in other genres) that involves alternately lengthening and shortening the first and second consecutive notes in the two-part pulse-divisions in a beat.’
Put more simply: ‘The name derived from its emphasis of the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat.’
It’s odd that such an intense song, with its dark themes of ‘power and greed and corruptible seed’ should work so well put to what is essentially a dance rhythm, but it works. It works well here, and will work well even better in years to come. I still lament, however the disappearance of ‘the ghost of slavery ships’ and that wonderful verse with the ‘sweet magnolias blooming.’
Blind Willy McTell
Now for a real treat. A performance of ‘Watching the River Flow’ that puts me in a ‘best ever’ mood, especially given the fine extended harp break. He performs the song at the March 7th concert too, and we’ll be checking that one out shortly as an interesting comparison. Here it is from July 16th, number 7 on the setlist.
Watching the river flow (A)
Number 8 on the setlist, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ keeps the energy going. Another superlative performance. Wonderful ending with Dylan playing a duet with himself, harp and piano. Hints of swing here too. It may not be as spooky as the album version, but loses none of the mockery.
Ballad of a thin man
Now for the treat of treats, Dylan singing ‘I Shall Be Released’ with Nora Jones. Dylan invites her onto the stage and an exquisite performance follows. Doesn’t seem like they’d done much in the way of rehearsal, but that just adds to the spontaneous feel of it.
The whole professionally filmed concert can be found on YouTube and ‘I Shall Be Released’ starts around 43.45 mins. There’s a lot of communication going on between them as they work through the song. Nora Jones is watching Dylan closely, and you can feel the buzz between them. Two consummate professionals at work. It’s a pleasure to watch.
I shall be released
The first thing I noticed when moving to March 7th was the difference in spirit between the two concerts. When Dylan does celebrity gigs or special gigs he tends to be more restrained, more careful, and the performances tend to be more polished than the ordinary NET concerts. I noticed the looser feel when I compared this version of ‘Watching the River Flow’ to the July 16th version. This is looser, rougher, not as well recorded of course, but personally I like that less restrained feel. It’s not so perfect, but it has more of the excitement of performance to it.
Watching the river flow (B)
Although it’s not listed on the official Dylan website, he did a performance of ‘The Man In Me’ at Seattle March 7th. This is another quite modest, unexceptional song off New Morning. I like this rougher, 2005 version better than the album’s. He puts a lot into the vocal, and an appreciative audience helps to make this relatively rare performance of the song an enjoyable listen. It begins to sound like a love song.
The Man in Me
In 2004 Dylan began to experiment with slow versions of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, Dylan’s ode to escapism. These slow versions are mesmerising, and bring out the inherent melancholy of the song. I don’t mind his missing the ‘skipping reels of rhyme’ verse, but I do wish he hadn’t dropped a line or two from the last verse. I miss ‘the haunted frightened trees’ and the ‘one hand waving free.’ I think the whole verse is so masterful, missed lines seem like a violation of the song. Nonetheless, this is a different experience from the faster versions, more thoughtful and contemplative, with Dylan slipping into semi-talking in his hushed voice, the harp break similarly restrained.
Mr Tambourine Man
‘Moonlight’ is a beguiling song from Love and Theft that hasn’t changed a lot in performance. However, what is of interest in this Seattle March 7th performance is the way Dylan has speeded it up. This is very different to how he will perform it in London at the end of the year, where he returns to the slower tempo version. This Seattle ‘Moonlight’ could be seen as an experiment he was to abandon.
Moonlight
2003/4 saw some powerful performances of ‘Sugar Baby’ and 2005 continues that run. Another ace vocal performance from Dylan. At the heart of this complex song there is a sense of a stoical resignation. The efforts we make in the world are often futile and pointless, and have the opposite effect to what we intended:
Any minute of the day the bubble could burst
Try to make things better for someone, sometimes you just end up
making it a thousand times worse
Sugar Baby
Over the years we have also been treated to some powerful performances of ‘Queen Jane Approximately.’ From 2000 on this song has become one of Dylan’s core songs, although with only 76 performances in all, these recordings have all the more interest. I feel that the live performances have helped establish the song as a major work. It is an invitation to friendship, a post-love love song, full of world-weary stoical resignation. The world can be too much with us, people expecting all kinds of things from us.
Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you’re sick of all this repetition
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?
Queen Jane
Let’s finish with a rousing performance of ‘Cat’s in the Well’ which is one of Dylan’s fast-beat rockers with an uncompromising message. What makes this performance special is the swirling violin. That’s Donnie Herron at work. It’s loud and a little messy, but it punches us out of Seattle with a bang. ‘May the Lord have mercy on us all.’
Cats in the well
That’s it for our Seattle stopovers. In the next post I’ll be welcoming a couple of new songs and saying farewell to quite a bunch. See you then.
Sing in me, Muse, and though me tell the story
Of that man skilled in all ways of contention
The wanderer, harried for years on end
After he plundered the stronghold city of Troy
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book 1 ~ translated)
Lines echoed in the song lyrics quoted beneath:
Mothers of Muses, sing for me
Sing of the mountains, and the deep, dark sea .....
Got a mind to ramble, got a mind to roam
I'm travelling light, and I'm a-slow coming home
(Bob Dylan: Calliope)
In the epic poem is the story of Odysseus, and how he blinds the Cyclops; then he insults Zeus’ brother Neptune (Poseidon), the immortal god of the sea and of earthquakes, who’s also the father of the one-eyed giant.
‘Tis not a good idea to insult the gods:
Would to god I could strip you of life and breath
And ship you down to the house of death
As surely no one will ever heal your eye
Not even the earthquake god himself
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book 9 ~ translated)
The narrator in the song lyrics below takes on the role of Neptune himself – so you think you can build an ‘unsinkable’ ship do you…..you don’t know to whom you are talking, do you?!
I can strip you of life, strip you of breath
Ship you down to the house of death
One day, you will ask for me
There'll be no else that you'll wanna see
(Bob Dylan: Early Roman Kings)
The sea-god is mentioned in the lines quoted beneath:
Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's asking, "Which side are you on?"
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)
Our homeward hero makes it pass the sweet-singing Sirens by being tied to the mast, but Neptune’s brother then smashes the ship all to pieces, and only Captain Odysseus survives:
Then Zeus roared out his thunder
And with a bolt of lightning struck our ship
The blow from Zeus' lightning made our craft
Shutter from stem to stern
And filled it up with sulphur smoke
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book 12 ~ translated)
The narrator in the song below again takes on the role of Odysseus who’s trying bring it all back home – though now he’s not so self-assured:
Well, I sailed through the storm
Strapped to the mast
Oh, but our time has come
And I’m seeing the real you at last
(Bob Dylan: Seeing The Real You At Last)
Part Two
In Greek/Roman mythology, Poseidon (Neptune), the god of the sea, brother of Zeus(Jove), upset at Odysseus (Ulysses) for poking out the only eye of son Cyclopes tries to drown the hero of the Trojan War.
Due to the insistence of Athena (Minerva), the thunder god somewhat reluctantly, sees to it that the wandering seafarer eventually makes it back to his weaving wife Penelope.
In the following verse, the narrator takes on the persona of Pluto, ruler of the Underworld, and brother of Zeus and Neptune; Hermes (Mercury), his wing-footed guide to and from Hades – changed below to two female singers:
Hello, Mary Lou
Hello, Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides from the underworld
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)
Hermes is depicted in the following lines:
They called him Hermes of the golden wand, the fleet-footed messenger
On his feet Hermes bound his golden sandals that never grew old
And bore him safely and swiftly over wet sea, and dry land
(Homer: Odyssey, Book 5 ~ translated)
So goes the story ~Trojan Paris, to gain Helen, judges Aphrodite (Venus) more beautiful than Athena, and Hera (Zeus’ wife). In the tangled story of the Trojan War that results, with his sister Artimis (Diana), Apollo, son of Zeus, along with Aphrodite, sides with the Trojans; Hera and Athena with the Greeks and Odysseus.
In the song lyrics quoted beneath, Aphrodite is portrayed as the protector of the Trojan leader:
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl from the half-shell
Could keep you from harm
(John Baez: Diamonds And Rust)
In the lines below, Aeneas is told a bigger destiny awaits him in Italy:
Roman, remember by your strength to rule
Earth's peoples - for your arts are to be these
To pacify, to impose the rule of law
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud
(Virgil: The Aeneid, Book VI)
The Trojan leader gets the good news when taken on a special trip to the Underworld; modernized in the song lyrics below:
Key West, under the sun, under the radar, under the gun
You stay to the left, and then you lean to the right
Feel the sun on your skin, and the healing virtues of the wind
(Bob Dylan: Key West)
Well, I don’t dare close my eyes and I don’t dare wink
Maybe in the next life I’ll be able to hear myself think
Feel like talking to somebody but I just don’t know who
Well, I’m tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you
The hint of acceptance from the previous stanza evaporates again already in the fifth stanza. No, this narrator is still pretty upset, still in the penultimate stage of mourning, depression. Disregarding the context, the opening line would seem to be the mantra of a serious case of FOMO, of Fear Of Missing Out. Very serious, even: “I don’t dare close my eyes and I don’t dare wink”; this guy really doesn’t want to miss anything. But within the context, and conditioned by a century of song tradition, we know what is really going on. Bing Crosby already warned about it:
Just when I think that I'm set
Just when I've learned to forget
I close my eyes, dear, and there you are
You keep coming back like a song
A song that keeps saying, remember
… in “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song” from 1946, with its truly beautiful title, which eventually inspired the heartbreaking album You Come And Go Like A Pop Song by The Bicycle Thief in 1999. In fact a project from the tragic hero Bob Forrest, whom Dylan fans know mainly from his contribution to the I’m Not There soundtrack, “Moonshiner”, and who, on his ’99 pièce de résistance, expresses with much more credibility the same suffering as Bing Crosby: “I can still see your face” (in “Everyone Asks”).
As Sinatra, too, confesses in ’55 on the unsurpassed heartburn album In The Wee Small Hours in “I See Your Face Before Me” (I close my eyes, and there you are always), as Dylan’s fellow Travelling Wilbury Roy Orbison confided in “Afraid To Sleep” (Can’t close my eyes, afraid to sleep / Cause when I do I would only dream of you, 1965)… we know by now what it means when a Victim of Love says he dare not close his eyes. The choice of these particular words, though, seems to be triggered by Henry Rollins – not for the first and not for the last time on Time Out Of Mind.
Rollins’ trigger, in turn, is of course more intense and more personal than fictional heartbreak. Rollins writes Now Watch Him Die (1993) after witnessing how his friend Joe Cole dies brutally and senselessly when he and Joe are victims of a robbery; before Henry’s eyes Joe is shot through the head. In the literary coping therewith, Rollins uses the word combination a few times to express a similar fear (“I close my eyes and I’m in the room with Joe’s body”, for instance), just as Dylan’s continuation Feel like talking to somebody but I just don’t know who seems to be inspired by it: “No one is anyone I can talk to,” Rollins writes, for instance, and “I look at the phone thinking about calling out there / There’s no one to call.”
The other distorted sense is less unambiguous. The narrator shares the inability to hear himself think with an earlier protagonist in Dylan’s oeuvre, with the I-person from “One Too Many Mornings” (1964):
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
… at least, if we assume that it’s not interfering noise, preventing him to hear himself think. In any case, that is the scenario that Henry Rollins invokes time and again in his work. The choppers are so loud I can’t even hear myself think, for example (in “Art To Choke Hearts”, 1986), or I have the music cranking in my headphones so I can hear myself think over the caterwaul of my fellow masticators. It is disturbing enough, the state of Henry Rollins’ mind, but it is to be feared that Dylan’s narrators are even worse off – there it is the inner chaos that makes following one’s own thoughts impossible. In “Million Miles”, a threatening inner chaos, even; an addition like maybe in the next life and the ultimate loneliness of feel like talking to somebody but I just don’t know who suggest suicidal despair.
Seeing, hearing, feeling… his senses have been stripped, the poor soul. And apparently ready to fade too. But the cheerful, carefree connotation that Mr. Tambourine Man’s friend communicates with those words is completely missing here. This is the fourth song on Time Out Of Mind, and the motifs begin to emerge. Walking is one (preferably at night, or so it seems), world weariness, or rather life weariness a second one, and the disturbed perception, like here in this stanza of “Million Miles”, a third one. This motif returns in almost every song, with the devastating power of mental illness even. “I’m beginning to hear voices,” the man in “Cold Irons Bound” notices. “Insanity is smashing up against my soul,” says the narrator in the closing song “Highlands” – a superlative of the announcement “my brain is so wired” in the opening song “Love Sick”. Prior to “Million Miles”, in “Standing In The Doorway”, we have already heard the narrator complain that he feels “sick in the head”, and before that, in “Dirt Road Blues”, concerns about mental health and the reliability of his sensory perceptions are justified as well.
After the first four songs on Time Out Of Mind, all three motifs keep returning. The weariness less pronounced, but unmistakable. They all walk, sometimes in combination with the third motif, the mental crisis: “I’m strolling through the lonely graveyard of my mind,” says the pitiful wretch in song no. 10, in “Can’t Wait”. By then we have met his fellow sufferers one by one. Fellow sufferers whose nerves are exploding (“‘Til I Fell In Love With You”), whose nerves are vacant and numb (“Not Dark Yet”), who don’t even know what “all right” means (“Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”)… no, our narrator from “Million Miles” may be lonely, but he is not alone. Any one of those men is a suitable conversation partner for a guy who feels like talking to somebody but just doesn’t know who.
Indeed. But then again, every one of those possible conversation partners is probably a million miles away, too.
To be continued. Next up Million Miles part 6: Like a wagon wheel
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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:
Aaron: I have always considered “World Gone Wrong” as my favorite of Dylan’s covers albums. However, in picking the songs for this series, “Good as I Been to you” is fast rising up the rankings.
Yet another track from the latter album worthy of reappraisal is Dylan’s version of Tomorrow Night.
Tony:This song has the utterly perfect blues opening, and this continues with the simple guitar part.
But what is strange about the song is that the chords are nothing like the chords we normally hear in blues music. I am sure there is an F diminished in there, which is really unusual in the key of E. (Or F#dim if you are playing it in F). And it is because of this, I think, that Dylan simply strums the accompaniment with no attempt at anything beyond this. The chords are telling us a story by themselves.
As our good friends at the Bob Dylan Project confirm (but I looked it up to be sure as my memory is getting very dodgy these days) the piece was written by the Austrian composer and conductor Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939) and Sam Coslow.
Although you may only be familiar with this song beyond Dylan’s recording, you probably do know “Red Sails in the Sunset” by the same composer Or, if I may be sold bold as to tell you what you ought to know, you ought to know it if you don’t. Written in 1935 by which time Wilhelm Grosz was writing under the name Hugh Williams.
But I digress. Back with “Tomorrow Night”, I have no evidence for this but I wonder if Dylan’s interest in the song came from this Lonnie Johnson recording
https://youtu.be/POnWb_fJc4I
This version brings out every element of the beauty of the song and ok there is the odd moment of perhaps unnecessary virtuoso guitar runs, but in essence the song is presented as itself – which of course is all it needs. It is an absolute classic.
Aaron: Here are a couple of other versions of this song for Tony to compare with Dylan’s. First, Elvis Presley.
Tony:It is interesting that the producer felt there needed to be a touch of echo in this – I mean Elvis had a superb voice so why add anything to this?
The basics are all there, but if you have a moment I would urge you to play a bit of Elvis’ version and then Lonnie Johnson’s. I so much prefer the latter to what seems to me the horrible over-production of the Elvis performance.
Also, I lose touch with those gorgeous chord changes against that beautiful flowing melody in the Presley production. So no, this is not for me. But I could go on listening to Lonnie Johnson over and over. And in fact I have been.
I think there is something about my musical taste which somehow always takes me back to days way before I was born rather than enjoying contemporary versions of older songs. The addition of violins in the latter stages of this version really isn’t necessary, in my view, nor are the moments of vocal solo without accompaniment.
To make the singer the forefront of the piece, rather than let this wonderful song speak for itself seems ludicrous to me, but of course I know that the producers were wanting to maximise the fact that each (with Elvis and with Tom Jones) had a star performer in the studio.
And that is the difference between Bob Dylan and these other latter-day performers. Bob delivers the song, reveres the song, nurtures the song, caresses the song… It is all about the song, not about Bob Dylan. Elvis and Tom Jones make the song nothing more than a vehicle for their own glorification.
Which is one of 10,000 reasons why I like the work of Dylan so much. He rarely if ever puts himself before the music. With Bob, the music is always everything. It’s not the singer, it’s the song.
