Untold Dylan

A Dylan cover a Day: Hurricane

Posted on January 8, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Dramatic, powerful, message dominated… what can you do with Hurricane?

The opening of Ani DiFranco’s version really is challenging and menacing, which is of course a big contrast with Bob’s original which always seems to me to be designed to incorporate his interest in boxing as much as to express outrage.

It is of course the bass that conveys that new feeling, but it is not just that, for there are other instrumental contributions that edge in and out. Nothing really obvious, it is all thought through, and the pull-back at the start of each verse returns our attention to the lyrics.

There is also a sense of absolute weirdness in some of this, which for me is how it should be because I have always felt the sport was itself weird. But that’s just me of course. Even the moments between the verses change each time. And the bit I don’t like the “triple murder” line which I find musically awful in the original, she makes work.

It’s not a piece I want to play over and over, but as an interpretation of Dylan’s original, it is something to think about.

And so by way of contrast the Vitamin String Quartet who we have met before. It is an interesting choice for them because there really isn’t too much they can do here… yet even the brief interlude between verses is handled excellently.

I suppose I like it as a contrast with Ani DiFranco telling us how it really is, and Dylan’s love of the sport. And besides whoever heard of a string quartet playing a piece about boxing?

The coda from 2 minutes 36 seconds onward is completely unexpected too – a superb ending.

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A list of previous songs reviewed is given below.

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

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk. Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

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Bob Dylan: Still Love

Posted on January 8, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

The reality of mournful death marches into the flowery pastures of the American NeoTranscendentalist Romantic poem quoted beneath:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring
(Walt Whitman: When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed)

So too in the song lyrics quoted below:

There's a far and distant river
Where the roses are in bloom
A sweetheart who is waiting there for me
And it's there I pray you take me
I've been faithful, don't forsake me
I'll be with her when the roses bloom again
(Billy Bragg: When The Roses Bloom Again ~ Cobb/Edwards)

A dreamland sentimentality, burlesqued in the following lines:

You belong to me, baby, without a doubt
Don't forsake me, baby, don't sell me out
Don't keep me knocking about
From Mexico toTibet
True love, true love, true love tends to forget
(Bob Dylan: True Love Tends To Forget)

In the song beneath, the lover’s not dead, but she ups and departs in search of a better life:

Oh, I thought I heard that steamboat whistle a-blow
And she blowed like she never blowed before ....
I'm afraid my little lover's on that boat
And it will take her to the Lord knows where
(Shirkey & Harper: Steamboat Man)

The chance of love best seized quickly, it seems:

I can hear that whistle blowing
I see that station master, too
If there's a poor boy on the street
Then let him have my seat
'Cause tonight, I'll be staying here with you
(Bob Dylan: Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You)

Parody abounds around a love that’s supposed to be everlasting – lovers reunited after death:

I was going down the river to my little cottage home
The revenue men were waiting there for me
I was coming up the hill
When they caught me with the still
I'll be with you when the roses bloom again
When the roses bloom again beside the river
And the robin redbreast sings his melody

(Shirkey & Harper: When The Roses Bloom Again For The Bootlegger)

Yes, indeed, he loves her still:

Oh, I see by the angel beside me
That love has a reason to shine
You're the one I adore
Come over here, and give me more
Then, Winterlude, this dude thinks you're fine
Winterlude, my little apple
Winterlude, by the corn in the field

(Bob Dylan: Winterlude)

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A Dylan cover a Day 44: Highway 61.5

Posted on January 7, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Highway 61 is such an original concept, and we have all now heard Dylan’s version so often, that it is stuck. Most people who play it, stick pretty close to what Bob did. The beat, the melody, the accompaniment… that’s what Bob did so that’s how we’ll do it, seems to be the key.

Except there are just a few who will take a gamble and go somewhere different.

The first video from Joan Osbourne has a pretty ropey sound to the recording, but I’ve included it because they’ve taken a daring part and changed the chord structure completely, putting the song in a minor key. From here all other changes follow and give a totally different feel.

I’m not saying this a great recording, or indeed that the new approach gives a totally new perspective, as can happen sometimes, but rather it is a perfect example of tearing up the rule book and starting afresh. Which is what is needed sometimes.

It is the sound balance that is all wrong for me – and maybe that is just the problem with the club they are playing in, but full marks for seeing a way of taking this song forward that no one else has tried. I think given a studio to record in and a few hours work this could really turn into something.

And of course that trio were not the only people to realise what is possible. You don’t need the same rhythm, or a police siren… change things around and you get a totally new meaning. This Ben Sidran version gets it just right because everything flows from the relaxed vocals. Well may he smile during the performance because the sound works so perfectly. So do the variations on the text. And the decision to cut out the instrumental bars at the end of the verse.

Love the ending too.

Mountain go for a shouty approach which might not work, but the arranger and the quality of the musicians keeps me listening. The pauses between the lines work to as does the change in vocal style.

I’m not saying this is something I’ll want to listen to over and over but it has done its job in showing me another approach into the song.

When I hear a virtuoso performer do his stuff at the very start of a song, I’ll listen, just to see what else he can deliver. And what Pat Flynn delivers is a beat and a half – as well as a nifty harp commentary on each line.

In fact there is so much clever thinking going on here – as with the instrumental verse, followed by the cut back following verse… yes it all works. Great harmonica too. Perfectly in tune with the whole occasion.

Ah I rather enjoyed that little trip around. Whoever would have thought that with a bit of imagination so many different things could be done with just an old 12 bar blues.

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Francesco Garolfi – a rare talent at re-interpreting Dylan – and others.

Posted on January 7, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Recently in the “A Dylan Cover a Day” series I mentioned the work of Francesco Garolfi. To my delight and surprise, Francesco Garolfi saw the piece and got in touch with me – which says a lot about the man (taking the trouble to write back when a reviewer has written about his music). And it also perhaps says something about (if I may add a boast) the way Untold Dylan has reached readers around the world.

So the first thing to say is if you want to know more about this artist there is a biography in English here.

What I would like to do here is look again at “Buckets of Rain” and also at “Tears of Rage”, and hope this will lead you on to listen to Francesco’s album “Wild” – which is available on the internet.

I’ve also found some of his songs on Spotify – although I always have to be cautious here – I’m a Spotify subscriber and it may well be that these recordings are not available on the non-subscriber version of Spotify. I can never work that out.

What I would stress however before we get going, is that none of this comes because Francesco is trying to persuade me to say nice things about his songs, and no money is changing hands! Here we have a most unpretentious musician, writing extraordinarily original arrangements of songs, and simply offering them to whosoever wants to listen.

I’m hoping you’ll enjoy these two Dylan songs, even if you choose not to go any further.

Buckets of Rain was the song that I reviewed for the original version – and it is one of those Dylan songs that is covered and covered over and over again. I think I found around 50 versions of the song before I couldn’t take any more.

Yet this version stood out because of its beauty and simplicity. It is a vision that is perfectly executed. I just have the feeling that the artist knows exactly where he is going and why he is going there. And he delivers perfectly.

The notion in the song

If you want me
Honey baby, I'll be here

is one of the saddest approaches of the love / lost love genre. She is free as a bird, she goes where she wants, and all he can do is say, “if you ever want me, I’ll still be here”.

Dylan’s original music suits the message perfectly but somehow Francesco Garolfi gives us that little bit more. There’s no crude over-emphasis; he retains the gentility, and as I listen I travel back to younger days and remember moments like that. Tears come to my eyes.

Tears of Rage

A second point about this artist’s work is that I am in no way thinking, “Oh this is like…”. Maybe someone else has approached Tears of Rage in this way but I don’t think so.

The harmonies, which are a consistent feature of his work, are so achingly beautiful I find it hard to say much more. Perhaps just for once I really should shut up and let the music do the talking (as it were).

So I’ll leave you to contemplate those two songs, but if you are still with me on this I would also like to direct you to “A handful of songs” – the EP which is certainly available on Spotify.

Just go on Spotify and type in the artist’s name and you should find links to more songs. Look out for “John the Revelator” – which is dead simple in the construction but actually has a depth and insight to it which I find hard to explain. We have a chorus, a harmonica and a banjo or ukelele (sorry I am not sure which). It is extraordinary what this musician can do!

I do hope you enjoy his work as much as I have been doing these last few days. And also appreciate a musician who is able to reach out to some guy sitting in middle England tapping away on his computer and say “Thanks for the review”. That really is something.

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A Dylan Cover a Day 43: High Water

Posted on January 6, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Links to all the previous articles in this series are given below.

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There is a particular challenge to be found in a song with very limited melody or indeed a song with virtually no chord changes behind. Put both facets of music together and you have “High Water”.

Dylan copes brilliantly in High Water, because although the start of each line is monotonal he does vary the melody somewhat, and so each variation becomes more and more noticeable, and the end of each verse does give us those two extra chords.

And if you go back to Bob’s recording, the use of the percussion is superb – utterly restrained but just occasionally coming in to give a sense of the dam finally giving way.

The challenge of a song with such a limited melody and with an even more limited chord changes means that the cover artists have tended to pass the song by. But there are two covers that really do appeal to me.

Joan Osborne’s version has not only a regular rhythm pattern but also that same guitar riff repeated over and over as a counter melody to her exquisite voice. I just want it to go on, even when we have verses which are almost monotonal. When she sings “things are breaking up out there” it feels true.

The introduction of changes to the music after about 1 minute 30 seconds, and then the sudden unexpected stop is to my mind, utterly gorgeous. That moment when we all think the worst is over, and it really isn’t. In fact it is easy to miss the subtle changes that the band members introduce through the piece – it is worth playing this over and over just to find them.

Oh if I still played in a band, I’d have us playing this arrangement of this song (assuming anyone would listen to the old man in the corner).

The second version is quite different and full credit to these guys in giving us a different musical introduction. This is what playing Dylan is all about to my mind – trying something different, experimenting just to see what we get.

Contemporary music depends on bands like this – bands that are very unlikely to become household names (and gentlemen in the band please forgive me if you are the biggest thing south Flordia has ever seen – I’d not come across your music until today).

My point is that they are not just playing Dylan – they are adding something to Dylan. And by that I don’t mean that this is better than Dylan himself performing the song, but rather they are giving people pleasure, spreading the word, and giving us all a chance to hear the music from a different perspective.

If we didn’t have bands like this, the world would be a much sadder place. If you would like to know a bit more about the band they have a Facebook page.

Actually, come to think of it, so do we. See below!

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Bob Dylan’s Dirt Road Blues: Passion, on the other hand, is something no one wants

Posted on January 6, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 6

by Jochen Markhorst

VI Passion, on the other hand, is something no one wants

’Til there’s nothing left to see, ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed

Friedrich Schiller himself was not too satisfied with it, with the work that is by far his most popular and most performed: “Ode To Joy” from 1785. The most performed, of course, because Beethoven used it for the choral finale of his Symphony No. 9, which in the twentieth century became the Anthem of Europe. In a letter from 1800 to his friend and patron, the freemason Christian Körner, Schiller judges that the long ode (originally 18 stanzas, 556 words) has little value, “nicht für die Welt, noch für die Dichtkunst – not for the world, nor for poetry”. But that was way past the point of being able to stop it; immediately after its publication (in the magazine Thalia, 1786) it became popular, several artists set it to music and it was sung often and gladly, especially in student circles. The great composers were attracted as well; years before Beethoven adapted the poem, Schubert, Reichardt and others already had set it to music, and after Beethoven there were musical settings by Tchaikovsky and Johann Strauss, among others.

Schiller does try to intervene with a text revision. He deletes the last stanza and changes a few lines. In particular, the line that would become the most famous: “Bettler werden Fürstenbrüder, beggars become princes’ brothers” from the first stanza was rewritten as the famous, nations-unifying “Alle Menschen werden Brüder, all men shall be brothers”. The revision was published posthumously (Schiller died in 1805) and is the version used by Beethoven.

Incidentally, the most alienating demonstration of this unifying quality is provided by the Japanese glam metal band X Japan, the mascara collective that in the early years (around 1993) manifests itself as a living L’Oréal advertisement but does embellish, in between all the Formula 1 power rock, the hyper-neurotic songs with flawlessly executed Beethoven-on-speed interludes.

Friedrich’s dissatisfaction is somewhat understandable, though. It really is a bit too pathetic, perhaps. “Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt / To be a friend’s friend / Whoever has won a lovely wife / Add his to the jubilation!” and dozens of similarly sweet, naïve imperatives that call for a society of equal people, united by joy and friendship. Not really Schilleresque, and there are indeed indications that he originally wanted to ride his old familiar hobbyhorse “Freiheit” – so not “An die Freude, To Joy”, but “An die Freiheit, To Freedom”, actually.

Breaking chains, escaping, being freed from oppression… ninety per cent of Schiller’s oeuvre can be summed up by this one line from Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”: I’ll go on ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed. In his early work, they are often real, physical chains, prisons and oppressive tyrants; in his later work, the protagonists strive for what Schiller calls “innere Freiheit, inner freedom”, the goal also of Dylan’s protagonist: real freedom is being freed from “Leidenschaften und Trieben, passions and urges”. Schiller does not need to adapt the language; “chains”, “shackles”, “prisoners”… the idiom is perfectly adequate as a metaphor as well.

The German poet is not the first and not the only one who is fond of its symbolic power. The metaphorical meaning of words such as “slave”, “jail”, “cuffs”, etcetera, is in the Top 10 of Most Popular Metaphors in the eighteenth century. Not initiated, but at the very least scaffolded by the famous opening words of Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social (“Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains”, 1762). And, even more fittingly for Schiller and Dylan, by Immanuel Kant: “Leidenschaft dagegen wünscht sich kein Mensch. Denn wer will sich in Ketten legen lassen, wenn er frei sein kann? – Passion, on the other hand, is something no one wants. For who wants to be put in chains when they can be free?”

It all may explain the classical, perhaps even somewhat archaic beauty of Dylan’s words; the eighteenth-century ideal of inner freedom expressed with the eighteenth-century metaphor of shattered chains.

But as yet, the miserable runaway has not achieved that freedom, the freedom he expects from “nothing left to see”:

I been lookin’ at my shadow, I been watching the colors up above
Lookin’ at my shadow, watching the colors up above
Rolling through the rain and hail, looking for the sunny side of love

… on the contrary; in every line of the following fourth stanza, the narrator explicitly stresses that he still has the capacity to see. “Lookin’ at my shadow”, for starters. Which, combined with the subsequent “watching the colours above”, raises some concern about the man’s mental state.

“My shadow” is still a relatively mundane image to illustrate the loneliness of the protagonist. It is perhaps most touchingly brought about in the classic “Me And My Shadow”, which Dylan will appreciate in the versions of Bing Crosby, of The Mills Brothers, or in the most beautiful version, the one by Peggy Lee on one of her most beautiful albums (Is That All There Is?, 1969);

Me and my shadow
Strolling down the avenue
Me and my shadow
Not a soul to tell our troubles to
And when it's twelve o'clock
We climb the stair
We never knock
For nobody's there
Just me and my shadow
All alone and feeling blue

… just one example of the combination “shadow – lonely protagonist”, which has been established in dozens of other songs long before Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”, of course. Johnny Cash’s “To Beat The Devil” (When no one stood behind me / But my shadow on the floor / And lonesome was more than a state of mind); the Lovin’ Spoonful’s wonderful “Six O’ Clock” (And now I’m back alone with just my shadow in front / At six o’clock), written and sung by Dylan’s confidant and occasional guitarist John Sebastian, on the last Lovin’ Spoonful record to feature Sebastian (Everything Playing, 1967); The Monkees’ “Early Morning Blues And Greens”, on another highlight of the Summer Of Love, Headquarters… all songs that link my shadow to loneliness.

But only thanks to The Monkees do we know which colours Dylan’s narrator and his shadow are seeing there, up above.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 7

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:

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

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

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Dylan cover a day: Heart of Mine

Posted on January 5, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

A list of the previous articles in this series is given at the foot of the page.

Inevitably Jochen got to this song before I started work on this little article today, but as I generally do, I decided to make my selection without referring back to his, just to see if we both came out the same. And I have taken the opportunity to update the links in my earlier review of the song – they are very pesky things these links to internet recordings.

But onwards…

I love the start of the Blake Mills version – the first selection today. Obviously, we know what track we have chosen to play but even so it takes a moment to realise that it really is “Heart of Mine”. The artists here are Blake Mills & Danielle Haim.

I also love the way this is understated until the percussion comes in for the instrumental break. In fact, every moment within the accompaniment seems to emphasise that the heart can be broken – there’s a sort of fragility within the music which is very difficult to balance with the regularity of the heartbeat I think they want to portray. But it works.

The sheer difference between each of these cover versions shows just what a magnificent song this is. And this version below has awoken me to just how interesting the lyrics actually are. I mean, the title “Heart of Mine” could well be just a simple song about simple emotions and feelings. But it is so much more than this.

Also in the Mountain version below the instrumental break is aggressive and strong – and this is a song about “this heart of mine” – how can that work? I am not sure, but I think a lot has to do with the lead guitarist who doesn’t seek to push him/herself forward but plays always around the vocalist.

And if you have time, and the inclination, listen to the song again, and just focus on the lead guitar. This musician really knows what’ s what.

Next is the version that Jochen highlighted. I’ve always had time for the work of Norah Jones, and I’d love to know how much input she has in the arrangements. Is she “produced” or does she have the ideas? Or indeed does she tell the band, “this is how we are doing it”? I think the latter – including such beautiful elements such as pulling back the start of the verse, that fraction further than one might expect.

Lovely restrained instrumental break as well – yes let the percussion bang on, because that’s the heart beat – but all around it, the music represents the essence of the emotions. The heart beat / drum beat is there, as it has to be / but it’s not the essence.

Love the lead guitar too.

And now, if you’ve been following this series since it began, you’ll know I have a fascination with non-English performances since when they are in a language I have no knowledge of (which is most of them) it allows me to consider the music further.

What’s interesting is that almost everyone seems to want to keep the strong drum beat (except Norah J0nes) presumably because they think it represents the heart (ok, but really is that the most important part of it all?)

There’s an extra strength in these vocals and in the guitar solo too. Delicacy has gone out of the window. In this version he’s taking control of his emotions. And why not?

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NET, 2003, Part One. Things come alive or else they fall flat

Posted on January 5, 2022 by TonyAttwood

A full index to the Never Ending Tour series is here. This article launches 2003; the articles for 2002 are…

Part 1: Never Ending Tour, 2002,, Seattle Showdown
Part 2 Tickling the Ivories
Part 3: Manchester and other outstanding performances
Part 4: Magnificent performances
Part 5: Accidentally friends and other strangers
Part 6: Never Ending Tour: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

2003 is one of my favourite NET years. Not that there weren’t problems. Charlie Sexton left the band at the end of 2002, to be replaced by Billy Burnette, in turn replaced by Freddie Koella after a couple of months. It took a while for these guitarists to bed down. More importantly, Dylan’s voice continued to show cracks and strains; a new roughness had entered that amazing voice, including the emergence of what fans of the NET call his ‘wolfman voice,’ a low, throaty growl. Dylan’s rhythmic piano playing, begun in October 2002, also continued to attract negative comment from those more wedded than Dylan himself to his guitar.

And yet there is a rough vigour in these 2003 performances that is hard to match. The Dylan compiler CS at A Thousand Highways, who also confesses his liking for the year, calls his collection of songs ‘Piano Blues and Barroom Ballads,’ pretty much a perfect title to capture the unique spirit of the year’s performances. The sound is more like what you would find in a blues or jazz club, or indeed a barroom.

The concerts of the past two years became finely honed, hard-edged and disciplined. The Atlanta concert of 2002 is a perfect example. (See NET, 2002, Part 4) This is stadium rock at its most gritty. By contrast, the 2003 concerts are generally looser, jazzier and more free-spirited. More like club music. It’s Dylan’s shift to the keyboards that does the trick, abandoning the cold iron sound of his Stratocaster, and using the piano to drive the rhythm forward while evoking a bygone era of piano blues and barroom ballads (Remember Shadow Kingdom?). If it weren’t for the songs and those words of his, we could be back in the early 1950s.

Close your eyes and wander into a bar. Maybe you’re in Berlin, or New Orleans. There’s a bunch of guys rocking the joint while people smoke and flirt and live and die. There’s an old guy at the piano who thinks he’s Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s an exuberant performance. His voice is as rough as guts, sounds like he’s been on the job too long, and his piano playing’s even rougher, but it has a joyful spirit, and is sort of beguiling. (Berlin 20th Oct.) It sure rips along.

To Be Alone with You

He can’t really play like Jerry Lee Lewis, but he can pretend, with a bit of a nod and a wink, and everybody has a good time without the old guy actually having to put his foot up on the piano.

But the next song – sheoot! It’s about some place called Desolation Row and a bunch of people all dressed up doing weird things. It knocks our sox off. Nobody knows where to look; some of us laugh. Maybe that old guy’s been snortin’ too much of the silly stuff, you know, to write some screwed-up song like that. Funny thing about that Desolation Row place, it’s like I’ve been there before. It slips in between familiar streets. It used to be called Lonely Avenue. It’s where you go to cold turkey. It’s right there in front of us every day. It’s like we all live there but don’t know it. Even after the song finishes, I don’t want to go out and look up at the street sign. That old guy’s got the voodoo. I used to know Cinderella (we all did); she lived just around the corner.

But man, does he drive it along with that piano! putting funny little bunches of notes in before every verse, bluesy and forceful, and he bellows it out, a voice rougher than sandpaper but packed with power. You can bring the roof down with a voice like that; you can blast ‘em right out of their seats, and that rough and ready harmonica rips the air open like a chainsaw. This song will mangle your mind, lock you in a room and break the key, leave scratch marks on your fate.

Desolation Row

Moving from guitar to piano means more than just swapping one instrument for another; it shifts the whole balance of sound away from ‘hard rock’ Atlanta 2002, to a more rollicking, jazzy blues sound, the kind of sound you hear in this ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh.’ Without the guitar, Dylan lacks a lead instrument, and that’s where his harmonica comes in handy. He sits it up on the piano, within easy reach, and can keep the rhythm going on the piano with one hand and play the harmonica with the other as he does here. He can’t do that with the guitar. 2003 saw a revival in Dylan’s harmonica work, as if rediscovering the instrument after a long break.

The piano is a softer instrument than the electric guitar. It has different roots, taking us back through the jazz years to Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller with their ragtime jumps. We hear echoes of blues shouters like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charlie Patten in the ragged vocals. More than ever, now the guitar has gone, we get the feeling that this is the kind of music out of which rock music grew. Old classics sound new again. (23^rd Nov, London).

It takes a lot to laugh

Those who want to catch a look at how Dylan plays both instruments at once can find it here, a video of the London performance.

We get the same kind of rollicking sound with ‘Dear Landlord.’ Dylan played piano on the album version (John Wesley Harding), so it’s not too surprising that he should revive the song in 2003, but with a less fragile and more rollicking version. We may suspect that Dylan’s pleas to the masters of his fate will fall on deaf ears; you don’t make deals with the gods – unless you’re Bob Dylan. Just a little mutual respect is what he’s asking for. Give me a chance to use my ‘special gift.’ It’s a blues prayer. (24^th Nov, Hammersmith)

Dear Landlord

You could argue that a song like ‘Million Miles’ from Time out of Mind doesn’t come fully into its own until Dylan gets in behind the keyboard. The roots of the song are much closer to smoky jazz than rock music, and the piano is the instrument of smoky jazz. It still rollicks, but with a slower, skippier beat. The sense of being in a blues or jazz club is even stronger. The lyrics feed into that atmosphere. ‘I’m drifting in and out of dreamless sleep…’ We’re way down Lonely Avenue at 3 a.m thinking about telling lies, how impossible it is to feel close to someone with all those lies, how impossible it is to get a decent night’s rest with all those ‘voices in the night trying to be heard.’ (This is another one from Hammersmith, 24^th Nov).

Million Miles

That slinky, jazzy feel starts to creep into Dylan’s arrangements of other songs from Time out of Mind. ‘Can’t Wait’ gets a prowling, descending bass line that transforms the song, making it quieter and more menacing. Someone’s on the prowl, padding through the night, someone who’s reached a final, desperate edge. A compelling performance. (3^rd Nov.)

Can’t Wait (A)

Again, it strikes me that the song seems to come into its own with that obsessive little riff he plays on the piano, a little gentle syncopation towards the end, again pushing away from rock towards jazz. Some particularly effective backing guitar from Freddy Koella, whose guitar playing can sound oddly like Dylan’s own.

I thought I could leave ‘Can’t Wait’ there, but this performance from Berlin (20^th Oct) is so good I couldn’t leave it out. The same arrangement, but perhaps bit more vocal power from Dylan, a bit edgier maybe? He’s pushing the song for all its worth.

Can’t Wait (B)

As with 2002, the better concerts seem to be clustered towards the end of the year. The first leg of the tour, Australasia, is not held in high regard. A simple comparison tells the story. This is ‘Floater’ from the Wellington, New Zealand concert, 24^th Feb. In New Zealand we have felt a bit short-changed by Dylan concerts, as if he’s using his down-under gigs as rehearsals. Just a suspicion. It’s not clear how much rehearsing Billy Burnette had before being thrust into the limelight

Floater (A)

Not bad, but it pales in comparison to this performance from Hammersmith. It’s not just the recording that’s sharper and clearer. The music’s full of vitality. Who said anything about a worn-out star? Edwin Muir, in his book One More Night sees in these later performances a miraculous recovery after a patchy year. ‘Energised and resplendent in his white shirt, Dylan took the stage…’ (Describing the Hammersmith Show, page 310)

Floater (B)

One thing for certain, old NET fans were falling out over these 2003 concerts. These are serious Bobcats who follow the concerts around as much they are able, and who found themselves with divergent views of some concerts. I think it was all a bit exaggerated, but then, it’s all very well for me, I can cherry pick concerts and performances, and in the process, inadvertently give the impression that a particular year was stronger than it really was. I wasn’t driving for hours, lining up to buy tickets, only to find myself disappointed at yet another mediocre concert.

Dylan’s performances may have been uneven, but I persist in feeling that some of these songs, like ‘Floater’ and others from Time out of Mind sound just right with a piano backing in Dylan’s vigorous, ‘primitive’ style, as it places them more firmly in their era. Dylan’s gentle backing in this performance of ‘Trying to get to Heaven,’ is a case in point. He uses that soft piano vamping to back a wonderfully hushed, almost breathless performance of the song. It’s to do with creating a midnight atmosphere. Dylan’s guitar was often so weird and forceful it would tend to dominate the sound of the band, and therefore the atmosphere of the song. Here, the subtleties of the song get their full expression. And what a vocal performance! From power notes to soft whispering, from crooning to crackling. This can only be Dylan at his mature best.

‘Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems’

Trying to get to heaven

You could make a similar argument for ‘Cold Irons Bound,’ another Time out of Mind gem. With Koella and Larry Campbell on the job, we have plenty of antique guitar sounds. I always thought it was a bit too guitar heavy. Here Dylan’s minimal piano, just a touch or two here and there during the verses, is enough to anchor us in the ‘piano ballad’ era, and to create a different balance of sound.

Cold Irons Bound

That’s it for this post. I’ll be back soon to continue looking at this fascinating year of the NET.

Until then

Kia Ora.

———-

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.

Posted on January 4, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I was hoping that someone might have done a cover of that old stomper, “Had a dream about you baby” but no one has – or at least if they have I can’t find a copy on the internet to offer unto you. But then last time I checked it wasn’t on BobDylan.com either and maybe that’s where the cover artists go a-looking. They really ought to use Untold Dylan.

So I keep meandering down the list looking for a song that the cover artists might have taken on in some new and meaningful manner. And I came to Hard Rain, and stumbled upon one of weirdest covers of all time. Don’t worry, there’s no test at the end so you can turn off after 30 seconds. The audience however quite liked it.

And if you want some more

I wonder what Bob thinks.

Indeed the point about all these articles is not that I am saying that these are my favourite versions, or even that they are musically exquisite, but rather in most cases they have informed me about the possibilities in the music – possibilities I most likely have never discovered or would ever have discovered on my own .

Moving on, Eliza Gilkyson takes us on a different route. And this really leads me to the other key point in all this – many commentators write and speak as if all that matters are the lyrics. I don’t think Dylan feels this at all, and I can assert I most certainly don’t. The lyrics become the bedrock of the possibilities for the music that can emerge from the song. Indeed why else would Bob himself have created so many versions of his songs? Yes sometimes he changes the lyrics (Tangled up in blue is perhaps the most famous example) but just think how often he then changes the music, taking the lyrics as the bedrock and then moving the music on.

There’s a lovely extra in this version, and that is the harmonies which are exquisite and from which I do, even after all these years, get more from the song. For example, in listening to the “who did you meet verse”, I can feel tears coming to my eyes… over the top I know but that’s how it goes.

I have found an instrumental of the song by DeJohnette – Gredadier – Medeski – Scofield which for me goes the wrong way into another universe where the song has no meaning at all. You can go and find it if you want to but I’m helping you. I really don’t like it.

And to clear my head of that I’m going to have to bring forward my favourite, or one of my favourite versions of the song – it ended one of the series of Peaky Blinders, one of my favourite TV series of recent years.

What makes it so good… oh I’ve thought about that so much. The vocal harmonies are delicious, the percussion is perfectly arranged, and above all, it retains the understatement of Dylan’s original, even when there is a build-up of the instrumentation. There is a sort of galloping punchiness to the piece that just works so perfectly.

But if you feel that the song’s message is so strong, so vital and so important that it really does need to be shouted from the rooftops then you’ll probably like Charlie Daniels.

But for every musical route in one direction, there is always the chance of going the other way. I’ve only just found this version with which I will conclude my meander today. It is not perfect, it is not exactly to my taste, but it offers me new insights through the harmonies of the voices, and the dedication to keeping the guitar part as simple as they can.

There is also a beautiful way in which they often hesitate for a quarter or even an eighth of a beat at the end of each line. It is that sort of inventiveness that I enjoy – just to know someone out there is actually thinking musically and artistically …. If you are going to be an artist that has to be the road map you follow. Just doing it straight doesn’t work; not in this world.

———-

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Dylan Released and Unreleased part 12: the one-offs

Posted on January 4, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

An index to this full series of Dylan Released and Unreleased is given at the end of the piece. As always with these articles by Aaron and Tony, Aaron in the USA chooses the tracks and writes a few words by way of introduction, and then Tony in the UK tries to write some sort of commentary while the music is playing.

Aaron: Let’s take a listen to some more rare and one-off Dylan performances released on other artists’ albums.

First from the album “Earl Scruggs Performing with His Family & Friends” it’s Nashville Skyline Rag with Bob on guitar.

Tony: Seeing the piece had a lead banjo I wondered what Bob was going to do… and the answer was to play a very appropriate rhythm guitar with some nice touches. It seems a little bit like having Martin Luther King Jnr reading a nursery rhyme, in that one is not actually going to get the full flavour of what the great man can actually do, but even so it’s a nice little jog-along piece.

Aaron: Now from the Grateful Dead compilation of Dylan live covers “Postcards Of The Hanging” we have this version of Man Of Peace recorded during a backstage rehearsal with Bob on lead vocals and guitar.

Tony: Listening to it, not able to grasp the words clearly, this sounds to me more like “From a Buick 6” than “Man of Peace” – and I do think Bob has taken some of the melody from the Buick and used it here. Although sitting here in my study looking across the English countryside and sneezing occasionally (just a cold, not covid) I might be meandering a bit in terms of my thought processes this morning. Of course these 12 bar blues can all take on an air of similarity – especially where the whole piece is improvised.

Aaron: The Ballad Of Hollis Brown from Mike Seeger’s Third Annual Farewell Reunion album featuring Bob on vocals and guitar.

Tony: The use of the minor third drop at the end of each line (the two notes sung for the last word on each line) gets to me a bit, it means that each line is, in essence, the same – which I guess is part of the point of the song; the ultimate repetitiveness of the life that Hollis Brown had, but I am not sure about this from a musical and performance point of view.

I am reminded of the complaint that Mike Johnson has quite reasonably made on occasion through the Never Ending Tour series about Bob’s repeated use of “upsinging” and “downsinging” – it does seem to be a thing with him; find a vocal idea and re-use it. He doesn’t do it with lyrics, nor with the melodies that we normally get on the albums. It just seems to occur on other occasions.

Aaron: It Takes A Lot To Laugh from Wynton Marsalis United We Stand. We covered this before but it is brilliant and meets the criteria of the series so let’s take another listen.

Tony: Unfortunately my memory is now so bad that I had no idea what was about to turn up when I just saw the cover and the note that we had covered this song before – but then when it started, oh yes I did remember it. And how!

This is a truly remarkable rendition and I know I was knocked out by it before, as I am hearing it again – in particular, what happens in the last verse with “I want to be your lover baby, I don’t want to be your boss”.

Dylan does sometimes put in small variations to the songs, sometimes he takes them on a different journey, and just occasionally he puts the song on a different planet, and that is what happens here.

I won’t repeat myself from last time (if you are the slightest bit interested in the technicality of what is actually happening in the music, I bored everyone senseless with that in the earlier review and you can read it here) but I would urge you, if at all possible, please do listen to this without anything interrupting your focus (by which I mean please don’t do the washing up at the same time or read my ramblings – just close your eyes and listen).

We know the song, we know where it is going, but this time it is travelling at a different speed through a different countryside. And as I mentioned before, just take in the “I want to be your lover” line and compare it with the recording we all know from the album. On the album it is a statement of intent and desire, here it is a statement from a relaxed world where everything sort of jogs along and somehow gets there, and let’s not worry about it all, because it will turn out ok at the end of the day.

And then, maybe if you have time, play it again, just to enjoy it.

Dylan released and unreleased: the series

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Dylan cover of the day 40: Gotta Serve Somebody

Posted on January 3, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Being an atheist the notion that I have got to serve somebody doesn’t sit very well with me – except in the sense of being as kind and helpful to my fellow humans as I can. It’s a very simplistic view of the world; a sort of “do the right thing” with the “right thing” regularly being redefined as befits a constantly changing world around me. But most importantly, being defined by me, not be some deity looking down.

As a result “Gotta Serve Somebody” doesn’t sit well with my view of reality. The religious context is right out for me, but I try to have a moral compass within my daily life and obviously within that I have a sense of morality.

So is there anything in this song for me? Certainly when I first heard it, I didn’t think so. A simple 12 bar blues structure, and a clearly spoken message which has always sounded to me ludicrously anti-individualistic.

Thus I didn’t expect to find anything to my taste meandering around the cover versions, but I did like Sweet Little Band’s take. To me they convey the simple message by giving me a simple but enjoy tune over bar after bar of 1234123412341234. And they make it work.

What it really makes me think is the world without end, world without change, just going on and on and on until it fades away. It is indeed a sweet little band.

Michael Des Barres gives me a new emphasis which again I enjoyed despite myself. This time the lyrics don’t have a religious connotation at all (and of course this is just my impression, not a definitive judgement). “If you want to get on,” the song is now saying, “you will have to be subservient.”

Also a lovely deviation from the rigid chord structure by bringing in the flattened seventh as if this is a major act of defiance.

And then of course if I listen to the song in a foreign language I don’t have to deal with the religious context that I have always heard from Dylan.

Put like this, it is rather an enjoyable basic blues song. Who knows that the recitation is about – I’ve no idea if he is sticking to a strict translation of the original, but the music is removed enough from Dylan’s version for me to imagine it as a new song.

I also like the way the chorus comes in, and the way the music varies just a little. For when stripped down to its basics, there really is not that much there. And yet that little more is added as we go.

I’m not sure if I’d want to play this again – at least not for a while – but in itself it is quite good fun. And that lasts all the way through. Indeed it is remarkable how the band managed to find more and more to do.

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Bob Dylan: The Last Train’s A-Coming Round The Bend

Posted on January 3, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Themes expressed in prose, plays, poetry, and song-and-music deal with the trials and tribulations of human existence.

From the Bard, hopes of happiness found in a life so brief:

If he thrives, and I be cast away
The worst was this: my love was my decay
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet LXXX)

From Romantic poets, hopes of eternal fame achieved through one’s works:

Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath
A grave among the eternal. - Come away
(Percy Shelley: Adonais)

Hopes smashed by the sand:

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
(Percy Shelley: Ozymandias)

From Gospel, a promise of eternal life in a paradisal hereafter:

Beautiful flowers that will never decay
Gathered by angels and carried away
(Kitty Wells: Gathering Flowers For 
     The Master's Bouquet ~ Baumgardner)

From blues, sadness of life in the micro-sphere:

It's such a sad thing to see beauty decay
It's sadder still to feel your heart torn away
(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)

And sadness in the macro-sphere:

I said the soul of a nation is torn away
And it's beginning to go into a slow decay
(Bob Dylan: Murder Most Foul)

That is to say that those who seek to make a clear distinction between literature and song search in vain.

The works of Shelley haunt the song lyrics beneath:

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Ploughmen, they dig my earth
None of them along the line
No what any of it is worth
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Nature’s free-wheeling, regenerative beauty can be felt, even broken at times, but not replicated:

And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me
(Percy Shelley: Love's Philosophy)

An everlasting Universe beyond the understanding of mortal human beings:

Column, tower, and dome, and spire
Shine like obelisks of fire
Pointed with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies
(Percy Shelley: Euganean Hills)

Quite alien she can be:

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

———-

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A Dylan cover a Day: 39 “Gates of Eden” as never before

Posted on January 2, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Today (2 January) is a public holiday in England, wherein I reside, and as a result there ain’t much doing. No dances are scheduled, the football team I support are not playing (having been beaten yesterday) and most of my friends seem to be asleep, recovering perhaps from a week of holiday celebrations or just not answering the phone.

And so, thinking that maybe you too might be living in a land where there’s not much to do, and given that next up on the schedule for “A Dylan cover a day” is “Gates of Eden”, I thought I might go rather overboard and offer not just one, two or three covers, but lots of them.

Because “Gates of Eden” is a bit of an oddity. It has not been covered by nearly as many people as some of Dylan’s most famous tracks, but where artists have had a go, they’ve normally come up with the goods. At least as far as I can see.

Now, if you are a regular here you will have seen and heard most of these before, not least in Jochen’s master series on the song (of which the last episode is here and that contains an index to the whole series).

And in part I have done this because an amazingly high percentage of covers are actually very good indeed – which is perhaps surprising because the song is utterly strophic, has a distinctive beat, and was issued of course as a solo piece. So off we go…

Totta Näslund starts with a solo guitar and it’s only as we go along the realisation occurs that there is a further accompaniment (unless one is paying very close attention). The artist takes a huge risk running the song at this speed – for he has to keep the piece running for over seven minutes, and we all know the lyrics by heart. Which means what he has is the magic of his voice, and that slowly evolving accompaniment.

And wow, suddenly a chorus turns up and the arrangement evolves… but never once interrupting or overlapping the singer. This really is an incredible achievement, I’m still here wanting to hear this song I’ve heard I don’t know how many thousand times.

Even when he sings fractionally out of tune, it is still grabbing me – every word is delivered as if he feels this is the key to the whole song. Stunning – and a superbly done simply ending too.

(I regret that since this article was written seemingly all videos of this version have been removed from the internet, but if you are a subscriber to Spotify you can find it there. It is on Totta’s Basement Tapes: Down in the Flood.)

Marc Carroll gives us full accompaniment from the off, and his own vision of the final line of the verse. Then in comes the percussion with a relentless six beats a bar – surely no one else has ever tried this before: I mean six beats a bar????

In fact it builds up to such a degree that by the time of relationships of ownership one is beginning to feel, “What on earth is going to happen?”

In fact what happens is we get an instrumental break after which the arrangement takes us down a notch or two, which is a huge relief – but it is only a relief for one verse, we’re back with the full blast next time around.

I’ve no idea who did the arrangement but whoever it was is a total genius. It is relentless, phenomenal, complex and demanding, but leaving the vocalist free to create his delivery, so that by the time his lover comes in telling him of her dream, we are part of the dream, the vision, the hope, the nightmare, the ruins, the ideals… everything.

This is stunning beyond belief, as is the ending.

If you have played Marc Carroll’s recording to the end this next version – an instrumental – is now offered to help you calm down. Arranging this is quite a task, because in essence what the music consists of is one line repeated, a counterpart line ending on the dominant chord, and then the verse resolving itself in the fourth line.

I’ve never played this type of jazz in an ensemble, but I imagine the key point is to key everyone aware of exactly where they came from and where they are going to, and that is exactly what happens.

And now by way of contrast back to one performer – Gene Clark. If you are particularly drawn to his music, there is a web page featuring several of his covers of Dylan songs. It is reported that he was buried beneath an epitaph that reads “No Other.”

There is an enormous power in this version, and Gene Clark’s early passing is surely a reminder of the destructive nature of the industry that produces these extraordinary pieces of music. And yes I know that sounds trite, but it is a reflection that I have listening to these performances.

Bryan Ferry undertaking any song is bound to give us something memorable, and this must be one of my favourite performances, because the gentleness of the performance contrasts so utterly with how I have always perceive the words. And I love the way Mr Ferry physically seems to become part of the music.

And who thought of combining a blues harmonica with an occasional wordless female voice? And who thought of making the female counterpoint to the harmonica just two notes. Haunting is not the word – it is much more than that.

Bryan Ferry takes it verse after verse knowing that we are going to be there following each line of the lyrics, taking us in a different direction. And when we get to “no words but these to tell what’s true” I can utterly feel it.

Julie Felix’ arrangement is of the more obvious variety: let’s start with the lady on her own and then bring in some instruments – but what marks this out is the counter melody of the flute, complete with trills, because we then have the quasi-military drum as well.

But what really works here is that there is no descent into making the piece build and build – it is not that sort of song, for each verse delivers a sit of images that are as powerful as all that has gone before and is yet to come.

If you are still with me (as opposed to playing a little bit of each recording and then jump forward) then you’ll be getting the feel of just how many variations this song offers.

DM Stith was of course not even conceived of when Dylan wrote this masterpiece, and maybe that is what liberates him in creating this extraordinary version. There really is nothing like this version anywhere – every verse, indeed every line is original.

I have a friend who I asked to listen to this version and when I then went back and asked for an opinion, the answer was “didn’t like it”. So I said, “But what about the black Madonna verse?” to which he replied, “I didn’t get that far”.

Of course what you listen to is totally your business; I merely pass a public holiday in mid-winter gathering these together and writing about them, but I would argue, one can get an extra insight into what Dylan’s compositions have given to our civilisation by listening to recordings such as this. And if one is going to listen, then surely one must listen to the end.

If you have been, thank you for listening.

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Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 5: The purple piper plays his tune

Posted on January 2, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

V The purple piper plays his tune

’Til there’s nothing left to see, ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed

Fans anyway, but there are some more serious music journalists and historians as well who consider In The Court Of The Crimson King, King Crimson’s debut album from 1969, to be the big bang of prog rock. Which is debatable, of course, and ultimately mainly a matter of definition. The Moody Blues had already released Days Of The Future Passed two years earlier, and The Nice, with The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (1968), also deserve the label “Patriarchs of Prog Rock”. But we can probably all agree that In The Court Of The Crimson King is a milestone, one of the Pillars Of Creation under the classical/symphonic rock that evolved from the psychedelic rock.

The whole album consists of five marble songs, and the three crown jewels are “21st Century Schizoid Man”, “Epitaph” with the beautiful, Rimbaudesque refrain Confusion will be my epitaph / As I crawl a cracked and broken path and as a finale the namesake of the album, the stately, overwhelming, mellotron-driven “In The Court Of The Crimson King”. A monumental song, a crowd favourite to which King Crimson, in all its manifestations, always remains faithful and which, more than fifty years later (e.g. December 2021 in Japan), is still on the set list.

Robert Fripp, the genius who actually is King Crimson on his own, usually has a somewhat mythical story to tell about the song in interviews and retrospectives. “The name King Crimson is a synonym for Beelzebub, which is an anglicized form of the Arabic phrase B’il Sabab. This means literally the man with an aim and is the recognizable quality of King Crimson,” he says in the booklet for Frame by Frame: The Essential King Crimson Box Set (1991).

The man who should know, the poet and songwriter Peter Sinfield, lyricist and sort of fifth King Crimson member on that smashing debut, casually dismisses Fripp’s pompous interpretations. “It isn’t the devil, it isn’t Beelzebub, but it’s… arrogant, and it’s got a feeling of darkness about it, and Gothic.” In the same fascinating Japanese TV documentary Song To Soul (2011), Sinfield recalls: “It was a sort of Bob Dylan song [plays air guitar and sings “on soft gray mornings widows cry”], it was like that.” Composer Ian MacDonald confirms: “He had written it in a sort of folky, Donovan-esque, early Bob Dylan style. A little folksy song. But essentially I threw out his music [laughs apologetically].” With which Sinfield can only agree: “It had to be better than what I had. Mine was three chords, not-very-good Bob Dylan, you know. Except the lyrics were interesting in their Gothic way.” And elsewhere he characterises his lyrics as “a pastiche of images from Dylan, the Bible, and some of my favourite sci-fi and fantasy novels.”

It is not the first time Sinfield mentions Dylan as a source of inspiration. In 2007, Sinfield is interviewed by Paul Henderson for Louder:

“It was originally a sort of Bob Dylan song, if you can imagine that”, says Sinfield. “Ian took it and rewrote the music. He’d studied harmony, he’d studied orchestration, so his references were not just The Beatles, but also big, sweeping things like Stravinsky, Mahler, things that were emotional. And that would come out. That track did take quite a while to pull together.”

“In The Court Of The Crimson King” is a masterpiece that shines 2000 light years away from Dylan’s oeuvre, but “a sort of Bob Dylan song” is perfectly understandable if you only look at the lyrics. “The purple piper plays his tune”, “The cracked brass bells will ring”, “The pattern juggler lifts his hand”, “The yellow jester does not play / But gently pulls the strings”… the music archaeologists who, five hundred years from now, dig up this song will no doubt label it as mid to late 20th century, probably B. Dylan.

This is not only because of those Dylanesque images like purple pipers and cracked brass bells, but also because of Sinfield’s perceptibility to sound, a sensitivity he shares with Dylan and which he developed through Dylan in the first place. He explains it, better than Dylan ever did, on the basis of the refrain-line in the court of the Crimson King:

“What you have are the noises, the sounds of the words, like crowds, queue, jokers… ‘k’, ‘k’, ‘k’, do you see? You get this sharp cracking sound, and then it softens again…what is very important, even if you don’t pick up on it, is the feel of these hard sounds, even if you don’t understand the words, that there is something going on here – it was quite intentional to cause this effect – Bob Dylan admits to doing the same – it’s like playing games, but the games you play with the noises, the sounds and the syllables, and especially the consonants in this example, should keep the listener right there, suspended – it’s all in the way these are constructed.”

… more clearly than Dylan put it in that famous “thin wild mercury sound” interview with Rosenbaum, 1977 (“It’s the sound and the words. Words don’t interfere with it. They… they punctuate it”), or during that wonderful 1965 press conference in San Francisco (“The whole total sound of the words, what’s really going down is… it either happens or it doesn’t happen, you know”). And similarly, in Chronicles, Dylan doesn’t get much further than saying that it may affect him like that (“you get tripped out on the sound of the words alone”), but he doesn’t quite succeed in explaining it as vividly as Sinfield does.

However, the artistic congeniality is there. And we see it, for example, in the third verse of Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”, in that special word combination shattered chains, the combination Sinfield used in 1969 for the opening lines:

The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.

“Shattered” is pretty much only used in songwriting for shattered dreams or a shattered heart anyway (“Confessin’ The Blues”, “The Curse Of An Aching Heart”, “You Are My Sunshine”, “There Goes My Everything”, “One By One”… the list is endless, culminating in the Stones’ 1978 “Shattered”). And “chains” are usually chains of love, and get broken or get tighter, or can’t loosen, or bind me, or have to be taken from my heart, and are rarely strong enough to hold me – but shattered they never are, except by Dylan and his disciple Sinfield. Both poets undoubtedly being guided by the sound affinity of the palatal consonants [sh] and [ch].

The difference, not surprisingly, lies in the poetic eloquence. Sinfield’s pièce de résistance still breathes the influence of psychedelia and contents itself with quasi-deep images like “prison moons” and “I wait outside the pilgrim’s door with insufficient schemes”, with “a load of words that half mean something,” as the British prog rock legend guitarist Richard Sinclair puts it.

Dylan, on the other hand, upholds the Holy Trinity of Rhyme, Rhythm & Reason; “I’m gonna walk down that dirt road ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed”… the yellow jester most certainly does not play. He walks a road and horizons change.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 6

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:

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part III

Posted on January 1, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

This is the final article in the series continuing from

Fifteen songs were recorded for Time Out of Mind, of which eleven made the final cut. (Some people over the years have even said that there were 13 songs recorded and 11 made the cut.)

On past albums, some fans have criticized Dylan for some of the creative decisions made with his albums, particularly with song selection. Time Out of Mind was no different except this time the criticism came from colleagues who were disappointed to see their personal favorites left on the shelf. When Dylan accepted the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, he mentioned Columbia Records chairman Don Ienner, who “convinced me to put [the album] out, although his favorite songs aren’t on it”

Searching For A Gem has this to say about the album:

Daniel Lanois said of the Time Out Of Mind sessions that Bob left his (Daniel’s) favourite tracks off the album – these out-takes have been rumoured for a long time: some out-takes from the album were finally released in Oct 2008.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs (2008): Mississippi (three unreleased takes of original versions – released in 2001 on “Love And Theft” in a new recording), Red River Shore (two takes of the rumoured unreleased song); Can’t Wait (alternate take); Dreamin’ Of You (unreleased song not previously known to collectors plus a radio edit R-0354, see 2008); Marchin’ To The City (two takes of unreleased songs not previously known to collectors).

Other out-takes rumoured but not yet released are Not Dark Yet – a reputedly stunning alternate version, better than the released take, and Highlands – a version reputed to last for 27 minutes!

This is something I found out about sometime ago:

Cold Irons Bound nailed in two takes only. The second take was the released version. Reportedly, Bob wrote the lyrics of the song on the spot, in the studio, while Jim Keltner was playing drums. Bob encouraged him to keep playing until he wrote the song. The song was written in only a few minutes, according to Keltner.

Lanois despised the song, saying that the world doesn’t another Bob Dylan blues song. Cold Irons Bound then won a Grammy in 1998 for Best male rock vocal performance.

There’s an unknown song from Time Out Of Mind, mentioned by Searching For A Gem by the name of “All I Ever Loved Is You”. This is the info:

Out-take from “Time Out Of Mind” recorded at Real Music Studios, Oxnard, CA, 26 Sep 1996. Reported by Clinton Heylin in “Still On The Road – The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974-2008” (Constable, 2010)

In my former article covering Time Out Of Mind and the Oxnard Demos, I mentioned one Dylan researcher assuming that Things Have Changed might’ve been performed during the Time Out Of Mind sessions.

Here’s some Wikipedia info about Things Have Changed.

The song was inspired by a meeting with country musician Marty Stuart and Stuart’s song “The Observations of a Crow” from the concept album The Pilgrim.[8] Dylan critics disagree about when this song was recorded. According to Olof Björner, “Things Have Changed” was recorded in May 1999 at Sterling Sound studios in New York.[9] Clinton Heylin, in his account of Dylan’s songs between 1974 and 2008, believes the song was recorded at Sony Studios, New York, probably on July 25 and 26, 1999. On these latter dates, Dylan was touring the US with Paul Simon.[10]

Sources agree the musicians who accompanied Dylan in the studio were his touring band at the time: Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell on guitar, Tony Garnier on bass and David Kemper on drums and percussion.[9] Kemper has said, “We were touring and had a day off in New York. Bob said, “Tomorrow let’s go into the studio. I got a song I want to record. We went in and played “Things Have Changed” with only an engineer. We did two takes. The first was a New Orleans thing. The second was what you hear. So in about five hours we learned it, recorded it, mixed it”.[10]

Engineer Chris Shaw has confirmed there was another version, which “was really great, which had a kind of New Orleans shuffle to it”. Shaw hoped to include this unreleased version on Volume 8 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs. But when the studio recording could not be located, it was replaced by a live version recorded in Portland, Oregon, on June 15, 2000, which Heylin describes as “mediocre”.[10] The song was recorded in the sounding key of G minor.[11]

Chris Shaw did a rough mix of the song the same day it was recorded, which became the final mix. As he explained to Uncut, “We did ‘Things Have Changed’ in one afternoon, and when we were done we did a very quick mix of it, and I thought it was just going to be a rough mix to give to Bob who’d maybe give it to someone else, like Daniel Lanois, who’d wind up engineering and mixing the final thing. But it turned out that that rough mix ended up being the final mix. And that was pretty funny, because the very last thing Bob did was raise the shaker up like 10db, making it ridiculously loud, and that was the mix he wanted to go with”.[12]

When we’re talking about Love And Theft, there’s not much information to rely on.

One of the interesting stories is that Po’ Boy might’ve been soundchecked before one of the 2000 shows, one year before the album recording sessions and release. It could’ve been Bob solo acoustic and on vocals. Although, I can’t prove this. It’s just a rumour I’ve heard that might be true.

As for the Love And Theft sessions, Bjorner suggests that the sessions lasted between May 8 and May 19 2001 and also had a brief continuation on May 21 2001. Seems like just a few days before Bob’s 60th birthday if rumours are true.

This is what Bjorner suggests as far as session info:

May 8, 2001

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
Number of takes - 9
Released take: take #9

Summer Days
Number of takes - unknown ?
Released take: take #5

May 9, 2001

Honest With Me
Number of takes - 6
Released take: take #6

May 11, 2001

Lonesome Day Blues
Number of takes - unknown ?
Released take: take #3

May 12, 2001

Floater (Too Much To Ask)
Number of takes - 5
Released take: take #4

Bye & Bye
Number of takes - ?
Released take : take #5

May 16, 2001

Moonlight
Number of takes: 3
Released take: take #1

Po' Boy
Number of takes: 3
Released take: take #1

May 17, 2001

High Water (For Charley Patton)
Number of takes: 2
Released take: take #1

May 18, 2001

Cry A While
Number of takes: 2
Released take: take #2

May 19, 2001

Sugar Baby
Number of takes: 7
Released take: take #7

May 21, 2001

Mississippi
Number of takes: 4
Released take: take #4

Not much is known about Modern Times.

Bjorner says it was recorded February-March 2006.

Although, I have heard some rumours from one of my subscribers who said that he had a friend who was close to the recording and said that Bob was doing piano demos for certain songs from Modern Times.

I’m pretty sure one of the songs was Beyond The Horizon, while the other could’ve been When The Deal Goes Down. Maybe even Workingman’s Blues or Nettie Moore.

It would be nice to hear some of these one day.

Together Through Life is nothing different. All we can really talk about is: what’s with the song Chicago After Dark? Does it exist?

We know that there used to be an interview when the album was about to be released and the interviewer asked Dylan about the song under that same name. Dylan responded something at least, which might mean that the song exists. Maybe it was cut at the last moment?

Who knows…

It also could be a hoax, as many people have said over the years.

Maybe one day we’ll find out.

Tempest, we have info from Bob directly. Bob said there were the Tempest songs and there were also “Christian songs”, whatever those are. He said he needed to choose between those two. He ended up choosing the Tempest songs as we know.

He also said that he has soundchecked Tempest songs before concerts a few years before Tempest release.

That’s why there exists a rumour of Pay In Blood being soundchecked in 2009 or 2010, or maybe even both.

Tempest was recorded January-March 2012 according to Wikipedia, which could be Bob’s longest sessions to date?

It would be interesting to one day find out about those Christian songs he was talking about.

And finally, when it comes to Rough And Rowdy Ways, people close to the album have said that there were multiple takes of all the songs, including Murder Most Foul. I think Matt Chamberlain said that in numerous interviews, mostly for podcasts.

Other interesting studio activities from around this time include the infamous Ardmore Sessions in 2017, and also the Shadow Kingdom sessions.

As for Shadow Kingdom, I recently learned that there were at least 40 songs recorded for the project, but most outtakes, if not all of them, are instrumentals of songs such as Simple Twist Of Fate, Saving Grace, Shooting Star, If Not For You and Oh Sister. Can’t say how true this is, but it’s something at least.

The Ardmore Sessions on the other hand, are a very interesting project.

I can’t remember the name of the young musician in the business, but he was a guest on a podcast where they talked about the Ardmore Sessions, and he was there. Not in the room though, but he was in the rooms right next to it. He sneaked his way into hearing some stuff they were playing.

He even said he spotted Bob and passed right by him one time and Bob was in disguise completely, with the hoody and everything.

He said he heard that Bob and his band did a lot of acoustic arrangements of songs, and the young musician remembers them playing Girl From The North Country (which wasn’t played live between 2014 and 2019 by the way) and a lot of Time Out Of Mind songs. Could be, since Time Out Of Mind had its 20th anniversary at the time.

This is the only info we have of the Ardmore Sessions so far. Some people have speculated that Bob was maybe recording some video footage of him and the band recording. Some people also speculate that Bob might’ve been interested in recording something for the Nobel prize committee at the time… Who knows…

Interesting stories really.

As a bonus before I close, I’d like to mention some pre-1989 stuff you might not have heard about along with some post 1989 stuff you also might not have heard about.

A song by the name of Ain’t It Funny:

Lyrics of this song are reported by Clinton Heylin to have been found in a notebook containing lyrics of the “Blood On The Tracks” songs, but no studio or live version is known

Thanks to Searching For A Gem for this as well. Apparently, there’s more songs like this out there, which Untold Dylan writers can cover in a separate article. If they need my assistance, they can let me know.

———-

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989 Part II

Posted on January 1, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

This continues from

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Heading towards Bob’s next studio album, World Gone Wrong, here’s some Wikipedia info that might be useful for you:

Similar to how he had recorded his previous album, Good As I Been to You, Dylan held sessions at his Malibu home garage studio and recorded World Gone Wrong solo in a matter of days. He was assisted by sound engineer Micajah Ryan but served as his own producer. In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon describe “a clear difference in the sound quality of this new record: Good As I Been to You has a ‘full’ sound, with Dylan’s guitar recorded in stereo; World Gone Wrong sounds more raw. Listeners can hear breathing and distortion”.

The balance of songs in World Gone Wrong swung more towards rural blues. Two had been recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks, two more by Blind Willie McTell, one by Willie Brown, and another by Frank Hutchison. Songs popularized by Tom Paley and Doc Watson were also recorded. In the case of “The Two Soldiers”, Dylan learned it from Jerry Garcia and had been performing it live since 1988.

Possibly influenced by the controversy surrounding the lack of credits on Good as I Been to You, Dylan wrote a complete set of liner notes to World Gone Wrong, citing all possible sources. It had been decades since Dylan had written his own liner notes, and they were always surrealistic; these notes, while still playfully written, were actually informative.

Two outtakes from these sessions, Robert Johnson’s “32-20 Blues” and the traditional “Mary and the Soldier”, were released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs in 2008. There are rumors of at least three additional outtakes that do not circulate among collectors: “Goodnight My Love”, “Twenty-One Years”, and the Carter Family’s “Hello Stranger”.

Many people know a lot about the MTV Unplugged album that Bob released in 1995, and recorded in late 1994.

The songs, probably the outtakes as well.

But what if I told you that Bob wanted to do songs from Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong?

It would’ve been an entirely different album.

That was Bob’s choice.

But somehow, the producers of the project, or whoever, convinced him to do more of a greatest hits kind of set.

And Bob did just that.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely a greatest hits set, it also had a few rarities. It wouldn’t be Dylan’s way to do the hits only.

You know about some of the outtakes like Hazel or I Want You, I’m sure. Those outtakes are circulating even though they’re not yet officially released.

But …

Bjorner says that Bob also rehearsed I Pity The Poor Immigrant during those 4 nights, 2 nights of rehearsals and 2 nights of recording and performing. That performance is not in circulation, unfortunately.

I Pity The Poor Immigrant was previously played in 1976. It was never performed yet on the Never-Ending Tour still to this day, making this a very treasured performance probably.

Did you know that back in the early days of the internet, there used to be a rumour circulating about a hoax new Dylan album coming up in 1997? No no, it’s not Time Out Of Mind.

It’s actually Stormy Season.

If we were sticking to the Searching For A Gem website, in the category Starlight In The East – Unreleased Dylan songs, you would find some info about the majority of the songs that are a part of the Stormy Season hoax. But let’s take a look at the title track of that album and the info provided below, which should be the same for all the songs the exact same way. Here it is:

Fake title tracks first circulated on the Internet in October 1996 as part of a hoax about a new album to be called “Stormy Season” – the phoney list was posted to the DylanChat section of Karl Erik Andersen’s Expecting Rain web-site by someone calling themselves “The Masked Tortilla” (this is the name of the character played by Bobby Neuwirth in the film “Renaldo and Clara”). The hoax track list given was:

Butcher’s Crew
The Fire Starter
Apollo’s Love
Police State
You Belong To Me – the song included on the 1994 “Natural Born Killers” film soundtrack, see “Searching For A Gem”, 1994 (R-0231)
Abraham’s Altar
When You Give Me Your Love
Up On The Hill
Stormy Season
No Compassion

I tried to find more info about this hoax on Google and I found this article that’s very entertaining and amusing in so many ways:

No other info that I could find.

The rumours though weren’t far from wrong, as Time Out Of Mind got released not long after.

A while ago, I wrote an article for Untold Dylan about the Oxnard Demos in 1996 and the full Time Out Of Mind sessions, which included the Oxnard Demos in ’96 + Miami Sessions in 1997.

Back then, I knew a little less than I know today, and I was also telling too many stories without providing the sources for readers.

I wanted to do it again this time and make up for a missed opportunity to write a more insightful and a better article overall and make it more interesting. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Time Out Of Mind before we get to the Searching For A Gem part, which is also interesting.

In April 1991, Dylan told interviewer Paul Zollo that “there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them”.[4]

Dylan’s last album of original material had been 1990’s Under the Red Sky, a critical and commercial disappointment. Since then, he had released two albums of folk covers, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, and MTV Unplugged, a live album of older compositions; there had been no signs of any fresh compositions until 1996.

Dylan began to write a fresh string of songs during the winter of 1996 at his farm in Minnesota, which would later make up Time Out of Mind.[5] Criteria Studio in Miami, Florida, was booked for recording. In a televised interview with Charlie Rose, Lanois recalled Dylan talking about spending a lot of late nights working on the lyrics. Once the words were completed, according to Lanois, Dylan considered the record to be finished saying, “You know, whatever we decide to do with it, that’s that.” Lanois replied: “What’s important is that it’s written”.[6]

Dylan demoed some of the songs in the studio, something he rarely did.[5] Members of Dylan’s touring band were involved in these sessions. Dylan also used these loose, informal sessions to experiment with new ideas and arrangements. Dylan continued rewriting lyrics until January 1997, when the official album sessions began. It was the second collaboration between Dylan and Lanois, who had previously produced Dylan’s 1989 release Oh Mercy and was known for his work with artists such as Emmylou Harris (on Wrecking Ball) and U2 (on The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby). Dylan wanted the sound of Time Out of Mind to be influenced by early blues musicians, such as Charley Patton, Little Walter, and Little Willie John, and he recommended that Lanois listen to their recordings to prepare for the sessions.[8]

New personnel hired for the album included slide guitarist Cindy Cashdollar and drummer Brian Blade, both hired by Lanois. Dylan brought in Jim Keltner, who was Dylan’s tour drummer from 1979 to 1981. Dylan also hired Nashville guitarist Bob Britt, Duke Robillard, Tex-Mex organist Augie Meyers, and Memphis pianist Jim Dickinson to play at the sessions.

With two different sets of players competing in performance and two producers with conflicting views on how to approach each song, the sessions were far from disciplined. Years later, when asked about Time Out of Mind, Dickinson replied, “I haven’t been able to tell what’s actually happening. I know they were listening to playbacks, I don’t know whether they were trying to mix it or not! Twelve musicians playing live—three sets of drums,… it was unbelievable—two pedal steels, I’ve never even heard two pedal steels played at the same time before! … I don’t know man, I thought that much was overdoing it, quite frankly”.[10]

Lanois admitted some difficulty in producing Dylan. “Well, you just never know what you’re going to get. He’s an eccentric man…”[6] In a later interview, Lanois said Dylan and he used to go to the parking lot to discuss the recording in absence of the band. Lanois elaborated their discussion on the song “Standing in the Doorway”. “I said ‘listen, I love “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. Can we steal that feel for this song?’ And he’d say ‘you think that’d work?’ Then we’d sit on the fender of a truck, in this parking lot in Miami, and I’d often think, if people see this they won’t believe it!”[11] With Time Out of Mind, Lanois “produced perhaps the most artificial-sounding album in [Dylan]’s canon,” says author Clinton Heylin, who described the album as sounding “like a Lanois CV”.

Dylan talked about his difficulty at the recording sessions in an interview with Guitar World magazine. “I lose my inspiration in the studio real easy, and it’s very difficult for me to think that I’m going to eclipse anything I’ve ever done before. I get bored easily, and my mission, which starts out wide, becomes very dim after a few failed takes and this and that.” In the same interview Dylan cited Buddy Holly as an influence during the recording sessions.

In relation to past works like Highway 61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, and Infidels, Dylan said:

Those records were made a long time ago, and you know, truthfully, records that were made in that day and age all were good. They all had some magic to them because the technology didn’t go beyond what the artist was doing. It was a lot easier to get excellence back in those days on a record than it is now…..The high priority is technology now. It’s not the artist or the art. It’s the technology that is coming through. That’s what makes Time Out of Mind… it doesn’t take itself seriously, but then again, the sound is very significant to that record. If that record was made more haphazardly, it wouldn’t have sounded that way. It wouldn’t have had the impact that it did…. There wasn’t any wasted effort on Time Out of Mind and I don’t think there will be on any more of my records.

— Bob Dylan in Guitar World (1999)[13]

The album’s cover art is a blurry photo of Dylan in the recording studio, taken by Lanois.

Part III follows shortly.

——

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A Dylan cover a Day: From a Buick 6

Posted on December 31, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

I’m cheating up to a point. Jochen found the Ken Hamm version of this song – but the link we put up when he wrote his review has now disintegrated, so I’ve found another one. Now you can listen again, or for the first time.

This is what doing a cover is all about. Thinking what the song is… by which I mean what the essence of it is, and think what you are doing with that essence. That doesn’t mean that one can’t change what is going on, but it does mean knowing why you are doing it, rather than just trying something for the sake of being different.

This version does that totally.

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Posted on December 31, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

I’m sometimes intrigued by how much Dylan fans actually don’t know or aren’t aware of about Bob, even though they have, and show, a desire to know a whole lot more than they already do.

By no means am I trying to suggest that I know more than anybody or that I figured out what it’s all about. In fact, I don’t even consider myself to be a great Dylan fan or a great researcher. I just see myself as a person who’s lucky enough and was at the right place at the right time to learn all the things that I have learned over the years.

However I haven’t stumbled upon a person like Bob whose life is so complex and so relevant, but yet so rarely talked about.

When you take a look at celebrities, whether the ones when Dylan was starting out, or the ones that have come and gone throughout his career and life, especially the big ones, you pretty much know what to expect of them.

Even the great literary figures, or the great scientists, or world leaders… All of those people are familiar to the public; you can see why they are who they are.

Dylan, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. So many things in his life and career are guesses or speculations. God knows how many misconceptions are there about him. No wonder he never wanted to talk about his personal life too much.

Yes, we’ve had books written about him, movies made about him, even Dylan himself gave us Chronicles volume 1 back in the day. But does that reveal anything much? Not really.

There’s so much more out there.

It’s a pattern that there’s always something not many people know about out there in existence. But I would like to start out with 1989 and try to give you some rare info you might not have caught, even if you did the research.

1989 is the beginning of Dylan’s complete disappearance from the public eye. Not that he was very easily spotted before that, but in the years 1961-1988 you can still find a handful of stories. 1989 is the beginning of major silence.

In the 1961-1988 period, you can find a lot of interviews, many have at least audio, while some even have footage. But from 1989, it became rare for Dylan to do any interviews.

I’m not gonna get into details why Dylan decided to hide so much, as I don’t have any proof. I wouldn’t mind guessing of course, but then I could keep guessing all day and it probably wouldn’t take us anywhere.

Instead I want to start with the Oh Mercy sessions in 1989.

Bob covers this period in his memoir Chronicles volume 1, and gives us a lot of alternate lyrics to the songs. But something he hasn’t covered in the book, that exists on Bjorner’s Still On The Road page, in the Oh Mercy sessions, is a song by the name of Three Of Us Be Free.

Any info about this song is hard to find, but luckily, I know where to look and have found some information regarding this song. I looked at one of my favorite sources for these things, and it’s a site Searching For A Gem, which has a special section called “Starlight In The East – Dylan’s unreleased songs”.

Here, you have thousands of songs, in alphabetical order. Not all of them are unreleased, as some of them eventually got released, since the site was apparently first edited many years ago, in the really early days of the internet.

As for the song “Three Of Us Be Free”, here is the info we have:

According to Michael Krogsgaard, the song was recorded in two takes at Studio On The Move, New Orleans, LA, 14-15 Mar 1989, during the “Oh Mercy” sessions. This was originally identified as an alternate title for BROKEN DAYS, later released on “Oh Mercy” as EVERYTHING IS BROKEN, but in his book “Still On The Road – The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974-2008” (Constable, 2010), Clinton Heylin thinks it’s is a different, still released, song

Make of it as you will.

All we know so far is that it’s the only song from the Oh Mercy sessions which we haven’t heard about.

Also, I think the only songs whose alternate versions we haven’t heard, whether officially released or in circulation are Man In The Long Black Coat and Where Teardrops Fall. According to Bjorner, there are multiple takes of Where Teardrops Fall, while Man In The Long Black Coat seems to have only two takes.

If we were heading to 1990, this was one of the last times ever that you could get informed about Dylan’s studio work, or even what he was up to behind the stage, whether we’re talking about rehearsals, soundchecks or his private life. This is when it all became more mysterious than ever.

Let’s first take a look at the Under The Red Sky sessions.

Seems like the first sessions took place on January 6 1990 in Oceanway Studios in Los Angeles.

During these sessions, Bjorner lists these songs as being performed:

Handy Dandy
Handy Dandy
10,000 Men
God Knows
Cat’s In The Well

Then Bjorner also lists more sessions and takes at Record Plant Studio, The Complex Studio, The Sorcerer Studio Los Angeles, California from Mid March to Early April 1990, produced by Don Was, David Was and Jack Frost.

Wiggle Wiggle
Under The Red Sky
Unbelievable
Born In Time
Born In Time
T.V. Talkin’ Song
T.V. Talkin’ Song
2 x 2
2 x 2
Shirley Temple Don’t Live Here Anymore
Under The Red Sky
Unbelievable
Unbelievable
Born In Time
Born In Time
T.V. Talkin’ Song
T.V. Talkin’ Song
2 x 2
2 x 2
Wiggle Wiggle
Some Enchanted Evening (Rodgers-Hammerstein II)

Of the unknown songs that you see on this list, obviously, Shirley Temple Don’t Live Here Anymore stands out.

Once again, Searching For A Gem, through Starlight In The East, provides info about this song:

“Out-take from the Don Was-produced album “Under The Red Sky”, which may have been recorded at The Complex, Los Angeles, CA, 19-20 Apr 1990. This song was originally intended to be recorded by dance artist Paula Abdul! It was recorded in the early 1990s by Was (Not Was) as MR. ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE but not released. They performed it live on radio as part of a Dylan tribute called “Oh Merci”, broadcast on KCRW radio, Santa Monica, CA, on 04 Jul 1993. Thanks to Gil Walker for this quote from Don Was: “There’s one song that we wrote with Bob Dylan when I was producing “Under the Red Sky.” We were sitting around watching “I Dream of Jeannie” in the lounge, and I thought, ‘This was kind of a waste. You work all your life to be able to hang out with your hero and then you end up watching “I Dream of Jeannie.”‘ So at the time, my wife [then in A&R for Virgin Records] had signed Paula Abdul so she was about to record her second album. So I said, ‘Let’s write a song for Paula Abdul.’ So Bob shut the TV off and he, David and I wrote “MR. ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE.” Thanks to Harold Lepidus for news that the song is now included on the Was (Not Was) Rykodisc album “Boo!” (Rykodisc RCD-10943, USA, 2008) and thanks to Jack from Canada for the scan.”

As for Some Enchanted Evening, Searching For A Gem has an answer as well:

“Out-take from “Under The Red Sky”, recorded at The Complex, Los Angeles, CA, March 1990 – could it be the standard from “South Pacific” by Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein, recorded by Bob for “Shadows In The Night”, 2015?”

Even though Bjorner lists it as definitely a song by Rodgers and Hammerstein, not Kern and Hammerstein, but okay.

Would also like to add that I’ve heard rumours that there are incredibly longer versions of Handy Dandy and Under The Red Sky, that go up to 30-60 minutes. Not sure how accurate that is.

I’ve looked at Searching For A Gem for some possible info, but I haven’t found any.

We’re still in 1990, past the Under The Red Sky sessions, and unto the rare July/August 1990 rehearsals before tour.

I found this on Bjorner, and he states these were rehearsed:

Unidentified Studio
Unidentified Location, U.S.A
July-August 1990
Rehearsals before tour.

In The Pines (Huddie “Leadbelly” Leadbetter)
Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad. arr. by Bob Dylan)
A Long Time A-Growin’ (trad.)
Hey La La (Hey La La) (McBride)
Precious Memories (arr. by Bob Dylan)
House Of Gold (Hank Williams)
Peace In The Valley (Thomas A. Dorsey)
Everybody’s Rockin’ (Neil Young)
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper – Otis Redding)
Stand By Me (Charles Albert Tindley)
Moon River (Henry Mancini – Johnny Mercer)
Shut Your Mouth
Trouble
On A Night Like This
Eternal Circle
Spanish Harlem Incident
Heart Of Mine
Had A Dream About You, Baby
One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
When Did You Leave Heaven? (W. Bullock – R. Whiting)

What’s special about these songs? To find out let’s get into detail using Bob Dylan’s official website as a source.

In The Pines

This song was performed by Bob only five times live, and all the performances happened before this rehearsal. Dylan hasn’t done it since this rehearsal.

Man Of Constant Sorrow

This song was only performed nine times before this rehearsal, and it was performed 13 times since then, but only five times in 1990. It was then not played until 2002, when it was performed in a electric arrangement, that was very intense.

A Long Time A-Growin’

This song was only performed twice, in 1961, and not played live since this rehearsal in 1990.

Hey La La

Only performed three times in 1989 live and never again, not even after this 1990 rehearsal.

Precious Memories

Only performed 3 times, twice in 1989 and once in 1990 but before this rehearsal, on January 12 1990. Not performed since the rehearsal.

House Of Gold

Only performed twice live, both times in 1989 and not since.

Peace In The Valley

Performed only once in 1989 and never again.

Everybody’s Rockin’

Never performed live

The Dock Of The Bay

Performed once live, after this rehearsal

Stand By Me

Performed once live, after this rehearsal. Also read during the Musicares 2015 speech.

Moon River

Performed twice live, both times after this rehearsal, once in 1990 and once in 2018

Shut Your Mouth

I used Searching For A Gem for this, here: “Included in a list of songs rehearsed at Montana Studios, New York, July-August 1990, in the section marked “electric B.D.” and not in the section marked “electric covers”, but no other details are known.” This song was never played live.

Trouble

Performed seven times live, but in 1989 only.

On A Night Like This

Never played live

Eternal Circle

Played 3 times live in 1963 and 1964 only.

Spanish Harlem Incident

Performed only once live in 1964 and not again

Heart Of Mine

It was previously played only once in 1989, which was the first performance since 1987 of the song. Not played in 1990 at all. However, it was performed only once after 1989, and that was in 1992 and not since then.

Had A Dream About You Baby

Performed only four times in 1988 and not again

One More Cup Of Coffee

Not performed in 1990 after this rehearsal, even though it was played 3 times earlier in the year. Played live 7 more times in 1991, 1993, 2007 and 2009.

When Did You Leave Heaven?

Not played in 1990 after this rehearsal, but played twice in 1991 and never again.

The rare appearances for these songs overall in Bob’s career, makes this rehearsal precious to behold. Unfortunately, it’s not in circulation currently. Hopefully someday.

One of the Holy Grails for hardcore Dylan fans is to one day get a hold of the Bromberg Sessions of 1992.

Here’s some info using Wikipedia:

“Since launching the Never Ending Tour in June 1988, traditional covers became a feature at virtually every Dylan concert, often as part of an acoustic set. After recording Under the Red Sky in 1990, Dylan would not release an original song until 1997, and during that time, he would increasingly rely on his stockpile of covers for ‘fresh’ material. Dylan called these covers “the music that’s true for me”.”

Dylan scheduled studio time at Chicago’s Acme Studios in early June 1992, hiring long-time associate David Bromberg as his producer. An album’s worth of cover songs were recorded at these sessions with the accompaniment of a full band. The recording engineers were Blaise Barton and Dan White. For reasons unknown, Dylan scrapped the release of this album, deciding to record solo acoustic material instead. Two songs from the Bromberg sessions, “Duncan and Brady” and “Miss the Mississippi”, would eventually be released on the album The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006. All of the songs for Good As I Been to You were recorded later at Dylan’s garage studio at his home in Malibu, sessions that are believed to have taken place from late July to early August 1992.

Basically, Dylan abandoned the Bromberg Sessions, to work later on Good As I Been To You.

Now, let’s take a look at the full list of songs from those sessions from Bjorner:

Acme Recording
Chicago, Illinois
3-5 June 1992
Produced by David Bromberg.

Rise Again (trad.)
Nobody’s Fault But Mine (Blind Willie Johnson)
The Lady Came From Baltimore (Tim Hardin)
Polly Vaughan (trad.)
Casey Jones (trad.)
Duncan And Brady (trad.)
Catskills Serenade (David Bromberg)
World Of Fools (David Bromberg)
Miss The Mississippi And You (Jimmie Rodgers)
Sloppy Drunk (Jimmie Rodgers)
Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)
Northeast Texas Woman (Willis Alan Ramsey)

The reason why there’s hype for these sessions is because of not only the released Duncan And Brady and Miss The Mississippi, but also the circulating recordings of Polly Vaughan, Catskills Serenade and Sloppy Drunk are some of Dylan’s finest performances of the decade. Especially Polly Vaughan and Catskills Serenade have some of Dylan’s most emotional and finest vocals of the decade.

As far as Good As I Been To You goes, not much to say but that the album had an outtake, You Belong To Me.

Here’s some Wikipedia info:

When time came to sequence the album, producer Debbie Gold was unable to convince Dylan to include “You Belong to Me”. Though it wasn’t authentically traditional, it was popular enough to be covered by Jo Stafford, Patti Page and Dean Martin. The most popular version was recorded by the Duprees, one of the final Italian doo wop groups to make a wave in the early 1960s. Dylan’s version from the Good As I Been to You sessions eventually appeared in Oliver Stone’s controversial 1994 film Natural Born Killers and on its accompanying soundtrack album.

The series continues.

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Never Ending Tour Part 6: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

Posted on December 30, 2021 by TonyAttwood

A full index to the Never Ending Tour series is here. The articles for the earlier parts of 2002 are

Part 1: Never Ending Tour, 2002,, Seattle Showdown
Part 2 Tickling the Ivories
Part 3: Manchester and other outstanding performances
Part 4: Magnificent performances
Part 5: Accidentally friends and other strangers

This article below was written as Part 5, with Part 5 being part six. Unfortunately an editorial cock-up meant that Part six was published as part five on Boxing Day, so here is Part five. Now called part six. If you follow my drift.

NET, 2002, Part 6 Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘I ain’t no pig without a wig
I hope you treat me kind.’

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

As we have seen in the earlier posts of 2002, this was remarkable year for the NET, as from October Dylan put down his guitar and began playing piano on stage. Two outstanding gigs prior to October were Atlanta and Manchester, both with excellent soundboard recordings, although the sound produced in each concert was very different. And, to my ear, the mature Dylan has rarely sounded better.

In Atlanta, we get a hard, scrubby sound, tight and punkish, while the Manchester sound is a little looser and not so hard-edged. A good way to catch the difference between these performances is to listen to ‘All along the Watchtower’ played at both concerts. So let’s start where the concerts often ended. The Atlanta recording is so clear you can hear each instrument distinctly without the instrumental blurring you find in many performances of this song. If it’s the apocalypse you want, this is as urgent and claustrophobic as it gets. You can hear that wind begin to howl…

Watchtower (A)

That’s great rock music. But is it any greater than this one from Manchester? The bit of echo in the voice gives the song an eerie touch that fits. A bit more spooky. Take your pick.

Watchtower (B)

‘Forever Young’ has always seemed to me to be a song poised between hope and despair, between wistfulness and resolution. The grittiness of the Atlanta performance doesn’t leave much room for pipe dreams, or the hope that we may stay forever young at heart. The youthfulness and power of the album version gives way to the cracked hopes of the old. All the upsinging in the world can’t change that. It’s a desperate prayer.

Yet there are lines here I carry with me in the great confusion of the world:

‘May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift.’

I can feel those winds of changes right now, all our certainties blowin’ in the wind. What else can we do but know the truth and see the light surrounding us?

Fine opening harp solo.

Forever Young

‘High Water’ seems perfectly made for the hard, jangly Atlanta sound. We last heard this in Part 2 of the 2002 posts, the Seattle concert, with Dylan playing piano. You might like to compare that performance with this Atlanta one. While I like the piano version for its uncluttered sound, I’m leaning towards this one for its gritty urgency – ‘Things are breakin’ up out there/high water everywhere.’

High Water

‘Just like a rolling stone,’ is a song that always suffers in comparison to the famous 1965 studio version, or the 1966 live shows. There’s nothing quite like that jeering tone. As with ‘Visions of Johanna’ it’s hard to get past the originals. But this blistering attack on bad faith has weathered the weary years and is as cogent as it ever was. There is no sugar coating this bitter pill. Another abrasive Atlanta performance.

Like a Rolling Stone

Before leaving the Atlanta gig we can’t miss our old friend, ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ It may be closer to the famous 1975 acoustic version so popular on You Tube than others we have heard. It’s the raw acoustic sound that does it, the sense of a life lived ‘on the lam’ as he expressed it in ‘Standing in the Doorway.’ We are driven on, one scene to the next, by our inner demons, but we can never escape our pasts.

In keeping with his practice in 2002, we get the harp solo at the beginning of the song.

Tangled up in blue.

Talking about harp intros and ‘Standing in the Doorway,’ here’s a strong performance of that song from the Summer Tour (date unknown, sorry). Dylan rarely plays the harp on this song. Don’t know that this performance reaches the heights that we found in 2000, but this Time out of Mind song never fails to be a moving experience to listen to. There’s an emotional fragility in these live performances that doesn’t quite come over on the album version for me. As with many of Dylan’s ‘she’s gone and left me’ songs, there is an undertone of vulnerability, a strong thread of hurt.

Standing in the Doorway

‘Don’t think Twice’ may often sound more tender than it is. There’s just enough tartness in it make anybody think twice. A touch of hurt. After all, it’s a song of disappointment, a confession of failure – ‘we never did too much talkin’ anyway.’ A sad commentary, but maybe a lucky escape. Women who want your soul rather than your heart tend to make a mess out of you. I have two performances worth contrasting. The first is from Manchester, with a harp intro and a warm vocal delivery. A crowd pleaser this one.

Don’t think twice. (A)

Equally crowd pleasing is this performance from 15^th November (Philadelphia). As he has done before Dylan turns the song into a celebration. A jubilant performance, urged on by the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Don’t think twice. (B)

A song I often associate with ‘Don’t Think Twice’ is ‘One too many mornings’ as they both seems to come from the same place. A quiet performance from Manchester, tenderly delivered, the melody given a gentle lilt with Larry’s steel guitar. Dylan no longer has to try to sound old and wise – he is old and wise.

One too many mornings

The Manchester performance of ‘It’s all right Ma’ is driven by a fast, skipping little riff. It’s all here and works well, but I wonder if the bouncy tempo suits the gravity of the song. Arguably this is Dylan’s most comprehensive and powerful protest song. A protest song that transcends protest to become a proclamation of resilience. Even in cold irons you may be free if you walk upside-down. Those false gods can’t touch you.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
graveyards, false gods, I scuff
at pettiness which plays so rough
walk upside-down inside handcuffs
kick my legs to crash it off
say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

Larry’s playing the cittern once more, giving the performance that tinkly sound.

It’s all right ma

The jokiness and humour in many of the “Love and Theft” songs seem new but that may be because the humour stands out in comparison to the overriding seriousness of Time out of Mind. If we go back to the early 1960s we find seriously funny songs like ‘Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream’ and ‘Talking WW3 Blues.’ That satirical humour survives through to the mid 1960s and underlies ‘Stuck inside of Mobile,’ another madcap tale of Dylan’s adventures in America. This could be Dylan’s 116^th dream. Bizarre events still rule:

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I could watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon

I said, "Oh, come on now
You must know about my debutante"
She said, "Your debutante knows what you need
But I know what you want"

The focus of the humour here is not so much political madness but love, sex, and seduction; the satirical drive is the same. Only at the end of the song is the humour dropped, for a more desperate, claustrophobic edge. The real horror of the situation is having to ‘go through all these things twice.’ A groundhog nightmare from which we cannot awaken:

Now the bricks they fall on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed

And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice

The album performance has a kind of smoothness that Dylan doesn’t try to capture in his NET performances. This 2002 performance is rough in the best sense. The events in the song are not just strange and funny, they are dangerous and threatening. Stolen post offices and locked mailboxes are not just oddities in Dylan’s crazy, circus world, but indicators of the human condition. (And oddly prophetic given the shutting down of post offices in much of the western world in the last thirty years. Our local post office was stolen some years back.)

Larry plays the acoustic guitar on this Manchester performance, taking a bit of the jangly edge out of the song.

Stuck inside of Mobile

It’s not a completely wild leap to go from ‘Mobile’ to ‘Cold Irons Bound,’ just a step further into the darkness where the pain of lost love and the claustrophobia of the world is amped up. We go from ‘deep inside my heart, I know I can’t escape’ to ‘I’m waist deep, waist deep in the mist/ It’s almost like, almost like I don’t exist.’

Dylan hasn’t changed the format of the song, that will come later, but it’s rewarding to hear Dylan singing the verses with just the drums clicking in behind. The song sure does suit a more minimal treatment. Notice that once again the crackle seems to have vanished from Dylan voice which is sharp enough to cut like those Chicago winds. (Summer Tour, date not known sorry.)

Cold irons bound

‘Love’s no evil thing,’ Dylan sings ‘Sugar Baby’ but it can be a bruising experience, and appearances can be deceptive. Even a gorgeous, magical hippy chick might turn into a tyrant demanding tributes, which is what happens in ‘She belongs to Me.’ You don’t want to ‘wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees.’

Knowing what a powerful, throbbing song this will become in the post 2012 period, I find it fascinating to watch Dylan slowly evolving the song. Getting the beat behind it in place, inching towards a more bluesy vocal performance, and discovering how the harmonical might work with the song.

She belongs to me.

Let’s finish with ‘Tell me it isn’t true;’ more love and betrayal. I find this performance more compelling emotionally than the album version, which is just a little too smooth. In this one from 1^st February, Fort Lauderdale, the pain of it all is to the fore. A masterful performance.

Tell me it isn’t true

That’s it for now. Don’t forget if you have not already seen and heard them the previous episode contained some of the non-Dylan songs covered in 2002 for, like 1999 and 2000, the year was rich in cover songs.

Kia Ora

——

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Fourth Time Around

Posted on December 29, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

A list of the articles published previously in this meandering series is given at the end of the piece.

I’ve never counted 4th Time Around as a major Dylan composition and given that Bob has only played it 37 times across the years I guess we can conclude he’s not that knocked out by it either. But as you will see below Jochen in his review of the song did discover some more than interesting renditions. So rather than by pass the song in my little series I thought I would try and find something even more engrossing.

I started out with high hopes with a version from Old Crow. After all they have delivered what I think is the definitive Visions of Johanna, so surely they must know a thing or three…

But the opening tells us exactly where we are with the Dylan soundalike harmonica.

I don’t mean that the performance is not of value, but it simply doesn’t add anything new to the song, and that for me is part of the point. The harmonies are beautiful as is the wailing of the accompaniment, but still, I really thought Old Crowe might go further.

So I kept on meandering around looking for my desired complete reinterpretation, and certainly in terms of musical re-arrangement by Ryley Walker does come up with the goods, but somehow it doesn’t drive me on to want to hear it through to the end.

You’ll probably know the beautifully gentle version from the “I’m not there” soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. This does keep me listening, not because the music has changed but because the vocals are so engaging. And the production team know when they are onto a good thing… they don’t play games, but instead, let it roll along. And when we get to the dirt where everyone walked… well, yes I’m there.

Chris Whitley’s version has come up on this site before, and oh that voice is so unusual and haunting, and thank goodness the musicians and producer know how to perform behind it.

I’d never thought of doing it the way Terry Melcher does. And having listened a few times I am still not sure that this actually works with this song. It is that moment of “When I got up to leave” that trips people up, but by having the full ensemble of voices in the next line, yes it works.

I think it is just the mandolin that puts me off – that and the feeling that every instrumentalist is trying to get heard, which really isn’t the point.

Which brings me on to Jewels and Binoculars who featured in the review of Dark Eyes and Gates of Eden and probably several other places as well.

But now after all the meandering I have to admit it is Jochen who has led me (not for the first time) to the most extraordinary and beautiful reworking of the song with the working through by Orien Lavie – if you don’t know “Her morning elegance” you really should watch the video.

However back to where I am supposed to be…

So Jochen wins again and indeed wins twice because he also found The Young Relics which he called “Jumping, neurotic and contagiously energetic, including a pleasantly surprising, completely unexpected change in rhythm; halfway a full organ brutally descends down, calming the nervous guitar, smothering all the unrest, crushing every last splinter of Norwegian wood.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Or actually to be honest, couldn’t have said it.

———-

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A Dylan cover a Day: Hurricane

Bob Dylan: Still Love

A Dylan cover a Day 44: Highway 61.5

Francesco Garolfi – a rare talent at re-interpreting Dylan – and others.

A Dylan Cover a Day 43: High Water

Bob Dylan’s Dirt Road Blues: Passion, on the other hand, is something no one wants

Dylan cover a day: Heart of Mine

NET, 2003, Part One. Things come alive or else they fall flat

A Dylan Cover a Day: Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.

Dylan Released and Unreleased part 12: the one-offs

Dylan cover of the day 40: Gotta Serve Somebody

Bob Dylan: The Last Train’s A-Coming Round The Bend

A Dylan cover a Day: 39 “Gates of Eden” as never before

Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 5: The purple piper plays his tune

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part III

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989 Part II

A Dylan cover a Day: From a Buick 6

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Never Ending Tour Part 6: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

A Dylan Cover a Day: Fourth Time Around

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