Now if I were still in a band, I suspect we would be called The Ol’ Timers, and I would urge my fellow geriatrics to introduce into our repertoire a version of “Beyond here lies nothing”, which I really think is an utterly gorgeous song. Most certainly not a song that deserved the official video that it got. (Incidentally Nash Edgerton the director of the video said, “it seems people either really love it or really fucking hate it,” but he was quite wrong if trying to talk about all people. I neither like nor hate – I criticise it for being irrelevant).
And maybe because of the video or maybe for some other reason, it seems very few people have even tried to work with this song. But there is one standout cover version – and even if you listen to a bit of this and think, well, so what? – please stay with it to the guitar solo, and tell me, who else is playing like this, these days?
This is the sort of cover I really adore… it shows a virtuoso performer at the top of his game, showing off in a way that makes absolute sense within the context of the music. And do remember as you listen, there is no studio artifice here. It is a live performance.
OK the song itself has elements of “Black Magic Woman” in it, but so what – the guitarist doesn’t have to go there, and indeed in this record he doesn’t.
I wonder why no one else seems to want to have a go.
At the beginning of 1965, Dylan declares in the liner notes to Bringing It All Back Home: “I am about t sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes,” and he seems to keep that promise, in the next five hundred days, in this mercurial period. Songs, or at least parts of songs on the Holy Trinity Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde indeed do suggest impressionism, seem to sketchily express the impressions the young rock poet has to deal with, in this thin wild mercury, tumultuous period of his life.
For the setting of “Visions Of Johanna”, for example, the poet seems to sketch a picture of his temporary residence, Room 211 of the Chelsea Hotel. With accompanying soundtrack: “In this room the heat pipes just cough / The country music station plays soft.” At the time, in 1965-66, this may have been difficult to reconcile with the image of the über-cool hipcat Dylan, but by now we have long known that the love for country music is deep and sincere – and that this description of the setting is most likely a truthful picture of what goes on around here.
After Blonde On Blonde, and after the motorcycle accident (29 July 1966) that marked a long goodbye to the public, Dylan professes his country love anonymously and unheard with his mates from The Band in Woodstock, in the basement of the Big Pink. Without restraint, as we first heard on bootlegs and from 2014 officially on The Basement Tapes Complete; Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, Bob Nolan, Hank Williams, Porter Wagoner, Dallas Frazier, Bobby Bare… half the premier league of the Billboard’s Hot Country Charts passes by. And just as enthusiastically, Dylan reaches for hardcore, antique country songs like “The Hills Of Mexico” and “Quit Kickin’ My Dog Around”.
On John Wesley Harding, we first hear the love openly, especially in the last two songs (“Down Along The Cove” and “I’ll Be Your Tonight”) and a little over a year later, when Dylan records Nashville Skyline (February 1969), country is embraced completely – in the title, the cover photo, the songs, the arrangements and in the lyrics.
Exactly two years after Dylan recorded “Visions Of Johanna” in Nashville, after Dylan wistfully recalls the soft-playing country music station, the recording of the songs that will fill Nashville Skyline begins. And the first song to be recorded on that 13th February 1969, 6:00 pm, is probably also the first song that Dylan wrote for this record: “To Be Alone With You”.
Present session musicians Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss and Kenny Buttrey must have had the pleasant feeling of playing a home game. Dylan’s first visit to Nashville, two years ago, had been quite an alienating experience. In many ways. The songs had strange lyrics and were exceptionally long, the musicians were not instructed at all and had to colour the songs as they saw fit, Dylan sat writing for hours in an adjacent room, sessions went on all night… all incomparable with the prevailing hourly-billing mores of recording a ready-made song as quickly as possible to the liking of producer and artist, incomparable with the usual method of working more like a 9-to-5 office job than a rock ‘n’ roll existence.
But in October ’67, for John Wesley Harding, at least McCoy (bass) and Buttrey (drums) have already met a different Dylan. Okay, most of the songs are still a bit weird, but almost all have a “normal” length, about three minutes, and the three recording sessions are short and simple, and finished before midnight. And now, February ’69, Dylan is more normal than ever: “To Be Alone With You” is short (2’10”), has an ordinary chord progression, an ordinary melody and ordinary lyrics – the experienced Nashville Cats are put to work on a song like hundreds they have played and recorded before. And for Dylan, too, it’s actually a kind of Trip Down Memory Lane, we gather from his autobiography:
“WWOZ was the kind of station I used to listen to late at night growing up, and it brought me back to the trials of my youth and touched the spirit of it. Back then when something was wrong the radio could lay hands on you and you’d be all right. There was a country radio station, too, that came on early, before daylight, that played all the ’50s songs, a lot of Western Swing stuff — clip clop rhythms, songs like, “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle,” “Under the Double Eagle,” “There’s a New Moon over My Shoulder,” Tex Ritter’s “Deck of Cards,” which I hadn’t heard in about thirty years, Red Foley songs. I listened to that a lot.”
(Chronicles, Ch. “Oh Mercy”)
And now all those hours of listening to the country music station playing soft come out. When Tex Ritter performs his “Deck Of Cards” at the Nashville Club in December ’68, he is led in by Canadian Stu Phillips with “How I’d Love To Be Alone With You”; life’s pleasures from the classic “Hard Times”; that’s the way it oughta be from Andy Williams’ “I Like Your Kind of Love”; Hank Williams echoes in at the close of the day (“Help Me Understand”) and in the whole night through (“Your Cheatin’ Heart”), although Dylan might just as well have taken that last one from The Beach Boys’ world hit “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, of course;
Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new?
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through
… and the great happiness from Dylan’s last verse, the joy of seeing your loved one after a hard day’s night,
I’ll always thank the Lord
When my working day’s through
I get my sweet reward
To be alone with you
… no doubt reminds Charlie McCoy and Wayne Moss of six years earlier, when they were lucky enough to be on the payroll for the recording of Roy Orbison’s masterpiece In Dreams, reminds them of “Sunset”:
At last my working day is done
The setting of the sun has finally come
It's sunset I'm gonna hold my sweetheart
Gonna hold her so tight
Not to mention the aha moment the entire studio audience must have had at Dylan’s bridge: They say that nighttime is the right time / To be with the one you love.
In short, the walking jukebox Dylan just shakes out his stetson, this chilly Thursday night in an overcast Nashville. But will take a critical look at the result fifty years later…
To be continued. Next up: To Be Alone With You part 2: That boy’s good
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:
Of course Hollis Brown itself is a cover – a cover of a traditional song. But we tend to treat it as a Dylan composition, so it can have a place in my search for a Dylan cover a day. And you may be noting this edition of the daily Dylan Covers article is being published much later than usual – which is because (if you are interested) I am a member of the walking group the Ramblers, and it was the AGM of my local branch today. I doubt that you have the slightest interest in this but in the million to one chance that you do, here’s a link to the web site that I run for the group. Rambling is rather important in England in the battle to keep ancient footpaths open, and keep the older generation fit. Quite a few of us in my branch are Dylan fans. Which just goes to show….
But enough of that. Hollis Brown is problematic for the cover artist in that it really consists of just one chord and two lines a verse (one of which is repeated.) What are you to do with that?
Well, here’s an answer. And what an answer it is. I do hope you enjoy it. If the video below shows as a blank in your part of the world, do go for a search of Hollis Brown by Paula Cole. I don’t think you will be disappointed.
Links to all the cover versions used in this series are given at the end of the article, as well as links to all the previous articles themselves.
by Larry Fyffe
There be a thematic consistency uncovered in the Dyavinci Code.
Humans become mortal after divorcing themselves from the Universe, symbolized by “God”
It be they, not the world, that come to an end.
Every earthly creature ages and dies.
A reality denied by believing in a human ‘afterlife’.
With death in the offering, witnessing the recurrence of progress on earth followed by decline puts any thoughts of heaven out of range.
Summed up in the following song lyrics:
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)
Obverse to the Romantic American Dream:
Home, home, on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
(Gene Autry: Home, Home On The Range ~ Higley, et.al.)
Now that He’s entombed Mary behind the walls of the Sphinx in Egypt, Dylan as Jesus remembers the biblical story about baby Moses being hidden in the bullrushes.
Speaking through the singer/songwriter, Christ opts to escape with His daughter, and to hide her away from the wrath caused by His disturbing the “Great Chain of Being”, the law that rules the Universe:
Time passes slowly up here in the mountains ....
Once I had a sweetheart, she was fine and good looking
We sat in the kitchen while her mama was cooking
Staring out the window to the stars high above
Time passes slow when you're searching for love
(Bob Dylan: Time Passes Slowly)
Mortal Eucharis of Magdala is supposed to be Mary’s mother, although, as discerned from the Code, both Jesus and love-interest Mary Magdalene are on the horizon line.
Oddly neither alive nor dead. Jesus and Mary are both floating about, hither and thither, on Swedenborg’s gnostic planes.
Sherlock Holmes deduces from Bob’s song lyrics, including those discovered in the Holy Grail, that Christ, with His child Sophia, settle down in overseas Utah – three’s a crowd.
Now perceiving that Mary has ‘assassin eyes’, Jesus has an earlier dream about tying the knot; thereby securing a rope around His neck:
Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me 'Pa'
That's what it must be all about
(Bob Dylan: Sign On The Window)
‘Signs’ concerning the untold life of Jesus are left hidden to be discovered in the song lyrics of Bob Dylan.
Jesus expects to get into trouble big time with secular and religious authorities for his fooling around with the Lilith-like, demon-filled, baby-killer Mary Magdalene:
I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train
Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any time now, I'm expecting all hell to break loose
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)
Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “The Dylavinci Code.”
Now there are two things about Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. One is that it is generally reported that this is where the band Judas Priest got their name from, while the other is that it has been covered by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, and yet that version just sounds (to me, of course, not necessarily anyone else) incredibly bland. Which is surprising considering who it is performing the cover version.
Now if that were the only cover version on offer maybe we would all conclude that there is nothing to be done with this song – and that would be a reasonable conclusion given how the song was constructed by Dylan.
But fortunately we are rescued because there is another cover… by the wonderful Thea Gilmore, whose work I have often raved over on this site. (Ah, the wonders of being the publisher as well as the author – the absolute freedom to set out one’s own feelings).
If you’ve been knocking around this site for a decade or so you’ll know that I’ve been in constant rave over her version of “Drifters Escape” which I consider the version par excellence.
So now, with Frankie Lee, what makes this cover so superb?
The song is an absolute challenge in that it is strophic (ie, verse verse verse verse ad infinitum). And not just verse verse verse verse but 11 verses, all utterly identical musically. And more than that, eight of the 11 even begin with the same word.
And yet more than that than that (if you get my drift) Bob hasn’t actually written a tune for the song… in the original version he declaims it – half chanting, half talking.
So here we are with 546 words across 11 verses with no clearly discernible melody and the same four chord sequence (with the first and last chord being the same) over and over and over – eight times per verse – and a moral at the end that seems to say don’t covet your neighbour’s house – which really isn’t that profound a thought.
And by now, with those facts in front of you, you might be asking yourself, who in his or her right mind would ever want to cover such a song? And the answer is the wonderful Thea Gilmore.
Now with any cover version, in essence, what the performer/s have to do is find something fresh to put into the song, to differentiate their version from the original. We can argue that Bob didn’t have do this as he had the advantage of recording something we didn’t know at all (obviously; he’d just written it). We were engulfed by the lyrics, which don’t seem to take us too far, but which seem as if they ought to, and so we listened and thought about what Bob was saying.
But by the time Ms Thea came along in 2011, the song was incredibly well known, and would have been heard time and time again by fans.
Apart from the album Bob did venture to play the song 20 times on tour over a period of 13 years, and I imagine that he too struggled a little to find what to do with a song so repetitive. Certainly by 2000 he had got more of a melody into the song and was differentiating the verses by changing the melody / declamation to suite the lyrics…
So you see the challenge that the song presents to the would-be coverist (my new word for the day – a person who covers someone else’s song: coverist).
But up then steps Thea. And what has she done? In essence she has given us a melody based around Bob’s melody introduced in live performances, plus additional melodic variation, variation in the accompaniment, a feeling that there is a meaning in there somewhere, and some extra speed.
She starts with a standard trick – (standard but brilliantly done here) – of bringing in the band after a verse (or in this case two).
Third, there is the lady’s voice – she has that control and style that makes me want to listen.
Fourth, an unexpected, but also unexpectedly short, musical interlude. And now as we are charging along (but with the vocals feeling utterly unhurried) we are inside the music, rather than sitting on the outside listening in, as is the case with Bob’s recorded version.
And you might well think well yes, the lady has nailed it. She’s giving a really entertaining rendition, jolly good, well done, nice try. But no, stop that patronising, for she has more for us, because suddenly and without any warning in the seventh verse,
Well, Frankie Lee, he panicked
He dropped everything and ran
she gives us a new melody. Not so new that it sounds odd. Indeed many of the people I have talked to about this recording didn’t actually notice that there was a new melody, but they felt something different. And that is, the new melody.
It allows the “not a house its a home” line to have its full meaning, and so we return to the main melody with a sense of returning to an old friend. Gone is any danger of feeling “how much longer???”
Better still, she resists the idea of giving us this new melody and accompaniment a second time, but instead, in the penultimate verse the accompaniment is held back so that we have the real understanding that we are approaching the end. Then a short instrumental before we get to the clarity that this is end (“the moral of this story”). And that leaves the opportunity to give us a slowing down in the final line without that sounding corny or hackneyed.
This is, in short, the perfect cover, a complete rediscovery of the original song, which amends and actually improves what is there, without in any sense removing the essence of the original.
Utterly brilliant arranging, performance, production and musicianship. And that, my friends, is what doing a cover version is all about.
For the second article let’s take a listen to three tracks Bob recorded for two late 80s/early 90s soundtrack albums and one tribute album.
Firstly, from Bob’s own starring vehicle Hearts Of Fire here is his version of John Hiatt’s “The Usual”. This was also released as a single and reached 25 in the US Mainstream Album Rock Tracks chart!!
Tony: I am sure I’ve heard this before, but really had forgotten about it, and I do find the lyrics quite intriguing. A real bite – I think I can see exactly why Dylan liked it.
I'm trippin' over dumb drunks at a party
Girlfriend just ran off with the DJ
I give her everything, but she refused it
It doesn't matter, she don't know how to use it
My confidence is dwindling
Look at the shape I'm in
Where's my pearls, where's my swine?
I'm not thirsty, but I'm standing in line.
I'll have the usual
It is one of those forgotten pieces (well forgotten by me) that I really do welcome back. It’s just got that great beat, great title line and some superb lyrics along the way. I mean it is a regular rock song – not something to compare alongside “It’s not dark yet” or “Johanna” but still, great fun.
Aaron: Next, from the Grammy award winning (and genuinely excellent) Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly tribute album Folkways: A Vision Shared is Bob’s version of Pretty Boy Floyd.
Tony: One of the things about Bob is that he can take the old “gather round me people and a story I will tell” which we have heard in a million song starts, and do something quite different with it. I am not sure this really works, but it certainly made me pay attention to work out what he was up to.
In effect it is a simple variation, but it is so unexpected with such a famous song, it really made me stop typing and just listen. Fortunately this is not the series where I am obliged to finish my commentary during the playing of the song.
The long pauses are the issue and indeed in the later verses Bob hauls back on the long pauses (at least some of the time – he does really spread out Oklahoma) – perhaps he felt it was a musical idea that seemed good to begin with but didn’t actually relate to the song overall.
But still, it’s a nice listen, and an unexpected one too. Another good find Aaron!
Aaron: Last one for now comes from the soundtrack to the 1990 Keifer Sutherland & Dennis Hopper movie “Flashback”. Dylan’s otherwise unavailable version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready”.
It’s funny – I know how important this song is in the history of the civil rights movement, and indeed how enormous the song is in musical history. And of course the tragedy of Curtis Mayfield’s accident. And all that draws me to the song, but it has never really moved me.
Of course I never experienced by civil rights movement – I don’t mean we had race equality in the UK, but the issue (and this is just my impression as an old white English guy) did not have the same intensity in the UK as it did in the USA. But then I didn’t live in Notting Hill.
So as I watched through my lifetime the fight for civil rights and equality, it was mostly through a TV screen in some of the remoter parts of rural England. Indeed once my family moved out of north London to Dorset, we simply didn’t have any contact at all with people from any racial background other than our own.
So somehow the song doesn’t have that deep meaning for me that I think it does for so many Americans. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t lift me in any way. It’s my failing, but I would say sometimes it is hard to grasp the cultural significance of a piece of music from a different culture.
Ballad of a thin man: oh where to begin? Having struggled to find any covers at all of oh so many Dylan songs so far, I’m now swamped with choices.
One thing I have discovered since starting this journey is the existence of delightful instrumental versions of Dylan songs… something I love, I think, because of my own musical background. While many people quite reasonably focus exclusively on the lyrics, there is music there as well as these instrumentals remind us of that.
Of course the instrumentalist has to work so much harder – Dylan’s songs are by and large strophic, meaning that you get verse, verse, verse etc. And if the lyrics change and are interesting you can get away with that. But in an instrumental… the challenge is much greater.
Thus these instrumental versions do help us focus on what Bob the musician was doing, and remind us that we are listening to music, not poetry recitals with background sounds.
First off, here are two versions, one of which keeps us in touch with the origins of the piece
the other of which goes into a country related to the original, but for which you certainly need a passport and visa to enter.
For those who try to do the song as the song, the problem is that we all know the lyrics so well, and that chord structure is so distinctive, it is hard not to try too hard, which is what I think most of the re-workers are doing. In short every one seems to be trying just that bit too hard, forgetting that they can do pretty much anything they like. It doesn’t have to sound like the original!
And it doesn’t have to get more and more frantic.
I was getting to the end of my search thinking that maybe the closest to my ideal of a vocalised version comes from our old pals, The Dylan Project. Fond memories here of a great evening out with Pat (who encouraged me so much to start, and then keep going with this site).
But in the end I did find something that was refreshingly original and for me, insightful. I had almost given up, but it was worth the search.
So a bit of a run around today. But I found what I wanted in the end. A new insight. Is that too much to ask?
Publisher’s note: for reasons I can’t explain, the music for “Visions of Johanna” in the article below appears in a different format from that we normally use, but if you just click on the link, it will play perfectly well.
This is episode 62 of the Never Ending Tour series. An index of the previous episodes is provided here.
NET, 2002, part 2, Tickling the Ivories
By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)
When I finished the last post, we were still working our way through the Seattle, 4th October 2002 concert in which, much to the surprise of everybody, Dylan put down his guitar and got in behind his little electric piano, changing his sound forever. We noticed that Dylan was intent on using the piano as a rhythm rather than a lead instrument, preferring it in the background, leaving Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton to do lead guitar work. He wanted the piano to be a part of the texture of the music rather than to stand out.
We were left with two piano songs to cover from that concert, both from Love and Theft.
‘High Water’ is number fifteen on the Seattle setlist, and by this time, after nine piano tracks, we are used to the driving, minimal sound Dylan achieves here. We can sense the menace in the bassline, and the lyrics are pushed forward. Dylan is in fine voice.
If he were singing about the anarchy let loose by climate change, Dylan got it right, but I’m not sure he is singing about that any more than he is singing about nuclear radiation in ‘Hard Rain.’ It just happens to fit. The idea of apocalypse by flood is hardly new. It’s interesting, however, to contrast that to the prediction in ‘God Knows’ (1991)
‘God knows there's gonna be no more water
but fire next time’
In reality, it looks like it might be both.
High Water
Song seventeen on the Seattle setlist is the marvellous ‘Floater,’ a song that floats through scenes, attitudes and values that generally belong to a pre- WW1, or immediate post war society and culture. Some have suggested that these lines
‘Gotta get up near the teacher if you can
If you wanna learn anything’
are very un-Dylan like, far from the kind of sentiments you’d expect him to express (why, I’m not quite sure). But the sentiment is perfect for the song, and the era it creates. All we have to do is look at the preceding two lines that set the scene:
‘You can smell the pine wood burnin'
You can hear the school bell ring
Gotta get up near the teacher if you can
If you wanna learn anything’
That goes to show how misleading it can be to ascribe all of the attitudes and values expressed in any one song to Dylan himself.
A quick look at the dictionary shows several meanings for the word ‘floater’ including a person or thing that floats (People don’t live or die, people just float – ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’), or a person who frequently changes occupation or residence.
Dylan’s minimal piano playing suits this song as it helps evoke the era, and the upsinging suits the upbeat nature of the song.
Floater
And with ‘Floater’ our account of the Seattle concert comes to an end, but not our interest in Dylan’s early efforts on the piano. He’s laying the foundation for a sound that he will develop over the next three years. We will, however, stay with Love and Theft, catching up with ‘Bye and Bye’ a song I’ve always associated with ‘Moonlight’ as they both evoke the same era in a similar way, both deceptively gentle. While the music is tender and whimsical, the message isn’t quite so benign.
‘The future for me is already a thing of the past,’ he sings, lightly evoking the despair of Time Out of Mind.
‘Well, I'm gonna baptize you in fire so you can sin no more
I'm gonna establish my rule through civil war’
Those lines put us in mind of these, from ‘Honest with Me’
‘I’m here to create a new imperial empire
I’m going to do whatever circumstances require’
As with ‘Honest with Me’, the lines from ‘Bye and Bye’ recall Virgil who saw Augustus turn the Roman Republic into an Empire (See NET, 2001, part 6), and seem to uncannily predict Donald Trump’s imperial ambitions.
The lyrics are shot through with mild sounding jibes. To sing love’s praises with ‘sugar coated rhymes’ suggests a bitter truth hidden beneath the sentiment. The dark world of Time Out of Mind is here, only lurking beneath the sugar coating:
‘Well, I'm scufflin' and I'm shufflin'
And I'm walkin' on briars
I'm not even acquainted with my
Own desires’
The promise of loyalty at the end of the song is quite ambiguous. Loyalty to his first love or to his imperial ambitions?
This rather quaint sounding song bounces along, punctuated by Dylan’s piano. At the end of each singing line he hits a chord. The effect is syncopated and jazzy. (Sorry, no date for this one.)
Bye and Bye
Of all the songs on Love and Theft, ‘Po’ Boy’ is the most jazzy and un-Dylan like. This is from Wikipedia: ‘Guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell recalls Dylan showing him the chord changes for the new song “Po’ Boy” shortly after the band had recorded Dylan’s Oscar-winning original song “Things Have Changed” in 1999: “They were relatively sophisticated changes for a Bob Dylan song…That was the first inkling of what the material might be like – taking elements from the jazz era and adding a folk sensibility to it”’
In ‘Po’ Boy’, despite its jokiness, we catch an inside view of a black man living under Jim Crow laws trying ‘not to fall between the cars’, cars being railway carriages. There’s a happy-go-lucky feel to the song, but the picture it paints is not so lucky:
‘Workin' like on the mainline, workin' like the devil
The game is the same it's just up on a different level
Poor boy, dressed in black
Police at your back’
It is interesting that in later years Dylan would put this verse at the end of the song. It’s a beautiful evocation of the era. Except for ‘Mississippi’ it’s my favourite song on the album, perhaps because of the wonderful balance between flippancy and seriousness. (15th Nov)
Po’ Boy
We leave Love and Theft behind for a moment to consider further how some other, older Dylan songs sound with Dylan on the piano. Staying with the flippant mood, ‘Yay Heavy & a Bottle of Bread’ is a good place to start. This is a rarity. According to the official Dylan website, the song was only performed twice on the NET, once in 2002, at the Madison Square Gardens on 25th Nov, the other in 2003. (My information doesn’t add up, however, as this performance has also been dated to 11th November.) The song appears to have some affinity with the Love and Theft songs in its evident humour and nonsense. In his account of the song, Tony Attwood suggests that it is just ‘abstractly weird’ without any substance behind the weirdness other than poking fun at psychedelics. A great poet, working hard not to make any sense, might just succeed. It doesn’t really matter too much as it’s just a whole lot of silly fun.
Yay heavy and a bottle of bread.
In Part 1 of 2002, we heard the Seattle performance of ‘Love Minus Zero,’ a gentle, minimal performance. This performance from later in the year (exact date not known, sorry) shows Dylan growing in confidence in his use of the keyboard. It’s a slower, but more punchy, assured performance. Gone is constant upsinging. Dylan’s vocal is breathy and intimate, the addition of the harmonica perfectly fitting the nostalgia and mystery of the song. The lyrics are a mystery because the woman is a mystery. Hard to beat this performance.
Love Minus Zero
The piano gives a nice bluesy feel to ‘Just like Tom Thumb Blues.’ Dylan no longer sounds like a kid who just got out of his depth in Juarez, but some hardened old addict in his last gasp. In that respect, I (almost) prefer this to his famous, grating 1966 performances when he tried to sound much older than he was. In 2002, he doesn’t have to try. Mercifully free of upsinging, Dylan gives a great, rough, despairing vocal performance on this one. I have called this song a junky’s lament, that state of mind where ‘negativity don’t get you through.’ This sounds to me like blues club music. (Can’t date this one, but it belongs to the Summer Tour).
Just like Tom Thumb Blues
‘Visions of Johanna’ gets a talky, hushed treatment that goes a long way towards capturing this moody song, although he misses the lyric at one point, and doesn’t sing all the verses. It’s a brave attempt, and the last verse comes over well. The piano fits in ok, although the rhythm is a bit too dumpty-dum for my taste. His 1966 solo acoustic performances are forever embedded in my brain until voices echo this is what the song used to sound like after a while.
Some of the finest poetry of the 20th Century is right here:
‘The peddler now speaks to the countess
who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite
and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain’
‘You’re a Big Girl Now,’ fares better than ‘Visions of Johanna.’ Dylan sounds more confident with it. No fumbles here, in fact there is a thoughtful reworking of the lyric at one point. I don’t know if I’ve got it right but it sounds a bit like this:
I know that I can found you
In somebody’s care
But I ain’t gonna look there
You’re a big girl…(something)… share
It’s a vibrant, heartfelt vocal, and the piano, always a little syncopated, bumps the song along.
You’re a big girl now.
I want to finish this post with an exuberant performance of ‘To Be Alone With You.’ When Dylan first took to the keyboards his detractors immediately went to work. He’s no Oscar Peterson, they said. True, but Oscar Peterson is no Bob Dylan either. His ‘primitive’ piano style is perfectly suited to the music he’s playing. It pushes the songs along while allowing the other musicians plenty of room to move. As Dylan said, the band relate differently to each other when he’s not playing guitar.
This ‘To Be Alone with You’ is very 1950s with a hint of boogie-woogie. Now boogie-woogie is all about letting loose and having some fun, which is what Dylan is doing here. His joyful, energetic keyboard playing and singing augurs well for the future.
To be alone with you
Next post we’ll be back with more performances from this watershed year – 2002.
I think that having bought the album upon its release I played “Ballad in Plain D” once, along with everything else on the album, and then never played that track again, lifting the stylus at that point. It seemed nasty, boring, repetitive and dull. But then I was very young at the time.
Although to be truthful, I am not sure that as I have aged I have ever gone back and listened to it again that much. But I must have done occasionally, because I find I can recite quite a few of the lyrics. “Screaming battle ground” and “victim of sound” and “all is gone all is gone admit it take flight”.
And that ending, I absolutely know by heart
The wind knocks my window the room it is wet
The words to say I’m sorry I haven’t found yet
I think of her often and hope whoever she’s met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is
My friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously,
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”
How do I know that if I never listened to it? The mysteries of old age.
But it seems Bob Dylan didn’t like it much either, and indeed has never performed it in concert. So would anyone actually make a cover version?
Well, yes, but one would have to be pretty daring, not to say highly imaginative and accomplished to do it. But there are two such recordings (in my opinion). And even if you share with me the dislike of the song I would urge you to venture forth at least with the first of these two examples. This version, in particular, is exquisite and divine in its pain.
Paul Anquez & Isabel Sörling
Paul Anquez is a French pianist and vocalist Isabel Sörling is Swedish, and if you don’t know of them, I would urge you to explore their work if you can. I’ll add another piece by them at the end, just in case you are interested.
But first the second cover (if you see what I mean). Michael Chapman, below, I found less easy to listen to, but you may be made of sterner stuff than I.
And just in case you are still with me…
I do hope that if you are following this series you are getting something out of it. It turns out (for me, even if no one else) to be one of my better ideas in terms of the pure enjoyment of listening to these versions again.
More tomorrow (all being well).
Footnote: if you have ever had an idea for an article or a series, whether you can write it or just want to put it forward for someone else to write, please do send it in. Tony@schools.co.uk
Publisher’s note: the video of “Ballad of a thin man” cited in this article is not available in all countries, so we’ve put up two sources – hopefully at least one of these will work for you.
Richard Hawley has been a respected guest singer and guitarist at the forefront of Britpop since the 1990s, playing with the Arctic Monkeys, Manic Street Preachers, Longpigs, Elbow and Pulp, and collaborating with the likes of Paul Weller and Duane Eddy – no small feat. But on his solo records, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Hawley has increasingly developed into a kind of English Roy Orbison, wandering around in the 1950s, wallowing in Sheffield and South Yorkshire nostalgia, rockabilly, dancehall and easy-listening.
Dylan has been under his skin all this time. This is most audible on his wonderful contribution to the soundtrack of Peaky Blinders, season 5 finale, on his masterful cover of “Ballad Of A Thin Man”. Played on the Fender Telecaster that is close to his heart:
“I bought this from Martin Carthy, a beautiful human being and a friend. I tried it and it took me about nine seconds to fall in love with it completely. He told me Bob Dylan used to play it whenever he came over. That’s a thing. I’ve got no photographic evidence for that. It’s just an anecdote of Martin.”
(interview with Guitar.com, August 2019)
https://youtu.be/5ST88Ia1Utc
… and most clearly expressed is the Dylan love when explaining his choice of his Eight Favourite Albums for The Quietus, February 2016. At number one is Blonde On Blonde. Hawley introduces his choice with a Nick Hornby-like disclaimer: “I’m not a massive Dylan head, as such, but I just like listening to his words.” And subsequently loses himself in an eloquent declaration of love, not unworthy of a massive Dylan head:
“The thing with Dylan is it’s not his guitar playing, it’s not his harmonica playing, it’s not his voice and it isn’t his band – the thing that’s always turned me on is hearing his mind. You do drift off and go to random points in the universe within a verse and it’s a record where all the receptors are open. It’s not psychedelia in the widely understood, comic sense – I loathe that – but the reason I got into Dylan was because I could hear stuff I’d heard as I grew up; people like the Delmore Brothers and Hank Williams.”
And by the time he zooms in on Blonde On Blonde, the brakes are off:
“It felt like I was being bombarded with asteroids or something. My favourite track on Blonde On Blonde is ‘Visions Of Johanna’, by a mile, but I don’t know why. It’s like a beautiful, spinning, jewelled Christmas present that comes out of its box and I don’t want to know which switch to press to make it do that. You just put the needle to the record and that’s it.”
… but a massive Dylan head, no.
A highlight of Hawley’s solo output is 2005’s successful Coles Corner, but on its equally attractive follow-up Lady’s Bridge (2007) we find more explicit Dylan traces. In the beautiful “Dark Road” for instance, which has a strong “Love And Theft” vibe anyway. Not only in its opening line (“It’s a long dark road that I call my home / It’s a long dark road that I’m cursed to roam”), but also in the “Shelter From The Storm” echoes in verse fragments like “One day from the darkness I’ll come rapping at your door”. And on the album, we also find that first “I Was Young When I Left Home” offshoot, in the gently mournful “Lady Solitude”:
I hear a whistle blowing
Morning low, guess I'll ride that train
Well you never wrote a letter
You hurt your man again
Debatable, of course, whether this could be traced back to Dylan – the words themselves are far too generic to be marked as borrowings. But still, the combination of I hear a whistle blowing, train and never wrote a letter, sung by a massive Dylan head, is a bit too coincidental accumulation of literal correspondences.
Less debatable is the reuse of the only stand-out verse of “I Was Young When I Left Home”, the sixth verse;
I’m playing on a track
Ma would come and whoop me back
On them trestles down by old Jim McKay’s
The name “McKay” does not (yet) have the status in the canon of, for example, “Mr. Jones”, “Suzie Q” or “Mrs. Brown”, but it is slowly starting to catch on. Remarkably often in combination with “longing for home” or with a “dead and gone mother”, by the way. Like in Jon McLaughlin’s forgettable ELO rip-off “You Can Never Go Back” (“Are you still at the corner restaurant / Meeting Jamie McKay when you get off”). Or with the criminally underrated troubadour Shawn Mullins; on the same album Soul’s Core that contains his brilliant “Lullaby”, we can find the beautiful “Ballad of Billy Jo McKay”;
My name's Billy Jo McKay
I just turned 16 yesterday
I'm gonna get the nerve one day to get outta here
My ma passed on 3 years ago,
they said it was cancer and it took her slow
(An album full of heartbreaking, sad songs, and also with an exquisite cover of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”).
Unmistakably a different door to “I Was Young When I Left Home” comes from Boston, and is crafted by the young, independent talent Vaughan Supple, who, with the help of ProTools, electronic drums, guitar and keyboard, is diligently building a multi-coloured oeuvre. Echoes can be heard of Buddy Holly, Radiohead and Vampire Weekend, but in this particular song, Vaughan sounds like Eels indulging in a Dylan song. My mother is dead and gone, I can never go home, and
I'm taking the train,
By old Jim McKay's
I will find a place
Where no one knows my name
From the 2020 EP Treehouse. Vaughan Williams is 18. The same age Dylan is when he sings “I Was Young When I Left Home”, in 1961.
———–
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:
If you have been on Untold Dylan for more than a couple of minutes there is a chance you’ll have come across me raving over “Ballad for a Friend” recorded when Bob was 21. I won’t repeat the whole review here, but if you feel like a read it is here.
The point is that I rate it as one of the all-time greatest Dylan songs, for reasons that I very ramblingly explain (or not) in my review.
And as with so many songs that I rate as utterly extraordinary in the Dylan collection, this one has been ignored by one and all, even to the point of no one doing a cover version that I can find… except one.
Now I think the performers and arranger here totally miss the entire point of the song, the numbed desperation and sadness of a young man experiencing the death of a friend. But I’m including this, plus yet again, Dylan’s original (in case you’ve never heard it or want to hear it again) just to make the contrast and point out that merely doing a Dylan cover isn’t enough.
You need to understand the music too. Dylan first:
Aaron: The idea of this article, and possibly series if all goes according to plan, is to cover Bob Dylan tracks and performances both officially released and unreleased, which otherwise have not been mentioned previously on the site and don’t really fit in on any other ongoing series. (Or which occasionally have been included before but we now want to mention again).
They are not always going to be undiscovered classics in fact some are going to be downright awful!! But should always be fun in any case! As usual, I can provide the details and Tony can provide commentary on the actual tracks.
Let’s start with the tracks Bob released on the two Vanguard albums covering the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.
Here is a live Blowin in the Wind from the album The Newport Folk Festival 1963 – The Evening Concerts: Vol. 1
Tony: Right from the start Bob had the ability to hold the stage. And of course he has done it in so many different ways, from standard introductions through to rambling stories through to saying nothing at all.
This really is an extraordinary piece of archive footage that I’ve never seen before. And I just wonder what Joan Baez thinks of being used as a backing singer? She seems to grow into it!
The guitar accompaniment isn’t up to much, but then I am not sure it needs to be given the luminaries on stage. What a fantastic moment to have captured on film.
Aaron: The second album, called Newport Broadsides contained two tracks from Dylan. Firstly a duet with Joan Baez of With God On Our Side (Skip to 2:25 on this video)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uez8EeBHGss
Tony: Another one I’ve never heard before. Joan has that magnificent ability to create harmonies that no one else has ever thought of – and this is a perfect example, even if she doesn’t know what verse is coming next.
Wow, this is incredible. Aaron can you keep this up for a whole series? I’m really loving this. Dylan again is keep the guitar accompaniment dead simple, and the guitar is fractionally out of tune. Quite a difference from Mr Guitar Man of the Never Ending Tour that Mike Johnson has commented on. If you are reading Mike, what do you make of this guitar style?
Shame the video is not related to the performance but well, you can’t have everything, can you?
Aaron: The next one I think has already appeared on the site but let’s include it now for completeness here – Bob with Pete Seeger – Ye Playboys & Ye Playgirls
Tony: So, another one done just on the spot. It is amazing that Bob could at such a young age persuade those who had been around for much longer to go with his style and approach.
Actually, I don’t remember this from earlier on the site, which shows how in old age my memory is going. You’ve got this to look forward to Aaron, the pleasure of finding something you knew about in the past, and feeling it is a new discovery! It makes old age more acceptable.
Aaron: Interestingly Bob’s three tracks were also released on a series of EP‘s by Fontana Records along with tracks from Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. The EPs were quickly withdrawn from sale because of legal problems with CBS Records (the then trading name of Columbia in the UK) who had licensed Bob’s appearances on LPs only.
Footnote from Tony:
Coming up with ideas for series is open to everyone. Whether it is just an idea for a series of articles or whether you would like to write the whole thing, or indeed co-write, I always love to have suggestions, not least because it usually means less work for me. Please write to Tony@schools.co.uk
The whole point of this is not to offer any old cover version of a Dylan song, as I work through his compositions in alphabetical order, but a cover version that discovers and offers something new in the music, or reveals to the willing listener an insight previously unrealised.
And that is most certainly what happens here with Jef Lee Johnson’s free jazz inspired instrumental version of “As I Went Out One Morning.” Of course not everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who have ears to hear…
Jef Lee Johnson started out playing garage bands and later moved on to play on albums with multiple pop and rock stars (Aretha Franklin and Billy Joel are the most quoted). He was also in a lot of experimental music moving easily into free jazz, as you can hear on the track below.
He sadly passed away from complications following a bout of pneumonia in January 2013.
Links to all the cover versions used in this series are given at the end of the article, as well as links to all the previous articles themselves.
By Larry Fyffe
Papers uncovered in the Untold Archives Department show that Jesus (through the transfigured singer/songwriter Bob Dylan) reveals (to Dr. Sigmund Freud) a feeling of resentment towards mother Mary for forcing the “Son of God” to take part in a traditional Jewish pseudo-marriage ceremony with His promiscuous step-sister Mary Magdalene (Mag’s the illicit daughter of Cyrus of Magdala and the supposed “Saint” – Mary, the Mother of Jesus).
The two kids are told by family members to imagine that they are in an overseas paradise.
Encoded in the following song:
Twelve years old, and they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute
There were gold fringes on her wedding dress
(Bob Dylan: Key West)
Further indicated is that when grown up, Dylan as Jesus has a change of heart – encrypted in the song lyrics quoted beneath:
Beyond the horizon, the night winds blow
The theme of the melody, from many moons ago
The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chim
Beyond the horizon, I found you just in time
(Bob Dylan: Beyond the Horizon ~ Dylan, et. al.)
The song lyrics below, rhyme ~ ‘disire’/’fire’; while floating around in Gnostic Space-Time, the singer/songwriter touches base with preRomantic poet William Blake:
I'm touched with desire
What don't I do
Through the flame and through the fire
I'll build my world around you
(Bob Dylan: Beyond The Horizon ~ Dylan et. al.)
Constructs a world of song lyrics around the poetic lines below:
Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear; O clouds unfold
Bring me my chariots of fire
(William Blake: Jerusalem)
Again speaking as Christ, the narrator in the song below rhymes ~ ‘cold’/’unfold’; rather than ~ ‘gold’/’unfold’.
Jesus excuses his own odd behaviour by pointing out that He can’t help it since He’s compelled to follow the Divine Plan of His Almighty Father:
God knows it's terrifying
God sees it all unfold
There's a million reasons for you to be crying
You've been so bold and so cold
(Bob Dylan: God Knows)
Nevertheless, the transfigured Jesus fears, with good reason, that the Commander-in-Chief’s about to order that his daughter, given birth to by the now-entombed Mary Sophia Magdaline, be sacrificed in order to prove His loyalty.
Not to mention that He’s been told that her death will save all humankind from their sins. What’s a poor boy to do?!
Well I'm the enemy of treason
An enemy of strife
I'm the enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain't no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely kind go
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)
Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “The Dylavinci Code.”
If you have been following my daily ramble about cover versions, you’ll know that I’m working through Dylan’s songs alphabetically, and am finding lots of songs that no one seems ever to have covered (apart from the valiant home recordists with a youtube account).
One such is Any Time – it is sitting there, it could be evolved and developed, but no one wants to give it a go. Which is a shame.
So we march onward, and next is Apple Suckling Tree
which is ok but not actually setting me alight. However it is the only cover I can find on the internet for this song.
So always being a rebel, even when I write the rules, I’m marching on and the next song is “Are you Ready”, and although the subject is not something that fits in with my own universal view the music is really something else.
Thus my second cover of the day. (I would say two for the price of one but there is no price so that would be nonsense.)
The evolution of the old folk song “900 Miles” to the reworking “500 Miles” to Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home” illustrates the truth of Dylan’s analysis in that famous 2015 MusiCares speech;
“All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. It’s just different, saying the same thing. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Well you know, I just thought I was doing something natural […] I didn’t think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line.”
… and Dylan, of course, is not the end of that line. Just as “900 Miles” is not the first, “I Was Young When I Left Home” is not the last link in that chain of songs in which a lonely protagonist, far from home, laments his nostalgic suffering in similar words. Hedy West’s “500 Miles” was further popularised by the Kingston Trio (1962), Peter, Paul & Mary (also in 1962) and became a hit for Bobby Bare in 1963 (“500 Miles From Home”, #9 in the Country Charts), and remains on the set list of countless, mostly country artists to this day.
“I Was Young When I Left Home” is of course not the only offshoot of “500 Miles”. The song branches out, which in turn lead to new branches, which in turn “open up different doors in a different kind of way”. The title of The Proclaimers’ 1988 world hit, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”, to name but one example, does not come out of the blue, of course.
After all, it can hardly be biographical, those 500 miles. The Proclaimers’ home base of Auchtermuchty, on Scotland’s east coast, just below Dundee, is only 400 miles from London, for example. The missus would have to have fled all the way to Plymouth to force the brothers to that 500 miles walk. Not too likely, obviously. Although, come to think of it, the sturdy sailors in the old sea shanty longingly sing their “Sweet Ladies Of Plymouth” from as far as the Bay of Biscay, from the Cape of Good Hope, and even from the other side of the world, off Australia’s beach, – apparently Plymouth’s women are worth the 500 miles after all.
“I Was Young When I Left Home” only reaches the general public in 2001, when the old 1961 recording is added as a bonus track on the CD version of “Love And Theft”. And so it is only from 2001 onwards that new ramifications and different doors emerge.
The first covers are not too different yet. And it will be another six or seven years before they really come off. The first notable one is by the Californian jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman, the versatile talent who, apart from making beautiful solo albums, is also an esteemed call employee for A-category artists such as Lou Reed, Bono, Aretha Franklin and Norah Jones. Her “I Was Young When I Left Home” from 2008 is restrained, but with slide guitar and violin it adds a successful plaintive dimension to the song.
Better known is the contribution of Antony + Bryce Dessner to the highly successful charity project Dark Was the Night for the Red Hot Organization, a compilation album produced by Bryce and his brother. The colourful Antony of Antony And The Johnsons (after coming out as transgender: Anohni) already attracted attention and applause with the contribution to the Dylan film I’m Not There (2007), with that thin, wild mercury “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, she will record a strangely attractive “Pressing On” in 2011, and scores, mainly thanks to that surreal, ethereal voice, in between with another Dylan song, with a hypnotic “I Was Young When I Left Home”. A near-perfect performance; all the pathos, homesickness and yearning that the song holds are captured in just under five minutes, thanks also to the tasteful, sober instrumentation.
The song then slowly but surely floats up to the surface – after Antony’s missionary work, many follow. “I Was Young When I Left Home” has not yet entered the canon, but it is being covered more and more often. Almost always pleasantly so; apparently the song has the same indestructible power as, say, “Buckets Of Rain” or “Mama You Been On My Mind” or “To Ramona” have. The British American Marcus Mumford, Big Thief from Brooklyn, the Australian duo Montgomery Church, the infectious, heart-breaking South African collective Freshly Ground, the Belgian Puerto-Rican Gabriel Rios… all beautiful covers from all over the world, all of which are still within spitting distance of Dylan’s original.
(Gabriel’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, which he recorded in the same Dylan birthday week at the end of May 2011, is just as beautiful, by the way).
The first – slight – deviations from the original are not heard until 2021, when Marissa Adler, encouraged by her well-received “Absolutely Sweet Marie” (on the 2016 Mojo special Blonde on Blonde Revisited), dares to tackle another Dylan song.
And apart from the covers, we also see the first branches, the first “different doors” of the song coming down in the work of the colleagues. Actually, even before that; the British Dylan disciples The Charlatans demonstrate their knowledge of even the more obscure Dylan songs throughout their catalogue, and include a fragment of “I Was Young When I Left Home” already in 1999, so before the official release of the song, on their wonderful record Us And Us Only, in one of the many highlights of that record, in “The Blind Stagger”;
Lord, it's been a long, long time
And people don't you find always leave their troubles at your door
I, I live on my own
I don't need a bitter soul beatin' on about my country anymore
Don't you think your daddy needs you home right away
Your daddy needs you home right away
… the closing line of the opening verse is not accidentally a copy of Dylan’s verse – the album is filled to the brim with Dylan references and allusions.
The (presumably) first echo of the song after its official release then, also comes from England, and is placed by the extraordinary phenomenon from Sheffield, by Richard Hawley, an artist after Dylan’s heart. Being a line-extender and a different-door-opener par excellence.
Publishers footnote: if you are having a problem getting through to the Adler link you might try this link: https://marissanadler.bandcamp.com/track/i-was-young-when-i-left-home I not, and you do find another link in your part of the world – please do write in to help out your fellow readers.
———–
To be continued. Next up: I Was Young When I Left Home part III (final): Old Jim McKay
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:
First, to my total surprise, there are vast numbers of Dylan songs that no one has covered and put on the internet. Naively I expected that someone somewhere (leaving aside the usual suspects with their home recordings which really don’t offer us too much insight, since they are just cases of getting through the song and out the other side) a band or really talented solo artist would have ventured into every Dylan song. Why wouldn’t you?
But no, that’s not the case. So if you are in a band, and you want to gain a bit of exposure, here’s something to do. Find one of the more obscure Dylan pieces listed in Dylan Songs of the 1950s and 1960s and the pages covering subsequent decades, and find yourself an obscure song, get a recording and re-arrange it. And if you feel like it, re-arrange the lyrics while you are at it.
This is certainly what Ashley Hutchings did – mind you Dylan did call him something akin to the most important man in British folk music, so he had quite a start.
And yes, I know I have highlighted this recording a million times before, but I still play this recording it all the time and for me its glory never fades. No one will ever ask me onto the long-running BBC radio show “Desert Island Discs” but I’d take this as one of my eight songs.
“Do I have your permission to turn the other cheek?” What an incredible line that is.
“Trying to heaven by force.” Absolutely.
Retreating up the spiral staircases – story of my life.
On the 4th October, 2002, at the Seattle Centre Key Arena, an extraordinary event took place within the rollout of Bob Dylan’s NET. In the middle of the stage, where Bob ought to be, was an electric keyboard. There was further astonishment when Dylan went on to play keyboard on eleven out of the twenty-one songs presented that night.
Is Bob Dylan without guitar still Bob Dylan? Not everybody thought so. His guitar was more than just an instrument, it was an inseparable part of his identity. From the moment he appeared in the folk clubs of Manhattan in 1962, a kid trying to make a name for himself, it was the guitar-toting Dylan that captured the cultural imagination. Scruffy kid armed with nothing but a guitar and a squeaking harmonica speaks truth to power.
The story goes that it was arthritis that pushed Dylan off the guitar, and I have no reason to dispute that, but most commentators agree that the NET was ripe for change. It was in 1992/93 that Dylan, (I called him Mr Guitar Man), began playing lead guitar, both acoustic and electric, and arguably ten years later that whole movement had played itself out. (If you want to hear Mr Guitar Man at his best might like to check out 1993 part 1 – Tangled up in guitars)
Often dense, dark and intricate, repetitive and obsessive, Dylan’s guitar playing dominated the band’s sound over those years (with a brief interregnum in 1995 owing to illness), and his strange, off-centre playing has been the subject of much dispute among Bobcats.
Those of you who have been following these posts will have seen me register my disquiet with Dylan’s lead guitar playing. I was aware of the inconsistencies and contradictions in my attitude, however. What I liked with the harmonica, I disliked with the guitar. And it sounded better acoustically, even though he might be doing the same thing as with the electric guitar.
What is Dylan up to with these instruments, which he does not play in the standard rock blues manner?
In response to my first Bob Dylan Master Harpist article, a correspondent called Caleb wrote this with regard to Dylan’s harmonica technique:
‘Dylan usually plays a straight harp……meaning that if the song is in the key of G, he uses a harmonica in the key of G. If you blow straight into a harmonica, you get the chord of the straight key. G on a G harmonica. Blues players usually play a “cross harp”, meaning that if the song is in the key of G, they use a C harmonica. To get the G chord on a C harmonica, you suck in on the lower four notes….you not only get the G chord, you get the G7 note…an F, which isn’t the “Blue note”, that takes you into another realm. You can also get the flatted African third, and the “devil tone” …the flatted fifth, by “bending” the third and fourth holes. You suck the air in, in a way that flattens the note…giving that bluesy sound which turns a harmonica into a blues harp….those are the basics…..you take it from there.’
Something similar is happening when Mr Guitar Man gets behind the frets. Our editor, Tony Attwood, after explaining that Dylan didn’t go in for the traditional verse plus guitar break, put it to me this way in an email:
‘Then to liven it up Dylan started playing the notes that you are commenting on which make the song sound somewhat off key. And just as with the harmonica he developed the habit of playing the same notes over and over.
The question is which notes? If playing the blues in G the notes you would commonly use are (with b representing “flat” – ie one semitone lower – typically the black notes on the piano):
G A Bb C D E F G
This is not the key of G major or G minor, but a blues key. G major would be
G A B C D E F# G (# being sharp – up one semitone)
On a blues piece playing an extemporised instrumental break on the harmonica Bob would sometimes play F D F D F D over and over. It sounds very bluesy.
Now on guitar he is doing the same thing, but experimenting with different pairs of notes while the band continue to play the main theme. In effect Bob has introduced a new form of instrumental break based on the same notions of the harmonica break, but using a guitar not a harmonica, and sometimes different notes.
So there is a perfectly sound musical explanation for what he does, and he likes it. I must admit I quite enjoy it too. But it is not in the blues tradition; it is using the blues technique but with different notes.’
I thank both Tony Attwood and Caleb for those explanations and will leave the matter there, and in the hands of my readers, except to say that it is with mixed feelings that I watch Mr Guitar Man put away his ax. He may have had a weird and wonderful style but it was ‘Bob Dylan’ as we’d always known him; the man who hunched in behind his electric piano was someone else.
I have spoken of a rising curve in terms of Dylan’s performances that take us from 1991 right through to 2002. We can now identify the peak years: early peak, 1999; mid peak, 2000 and 2001, and late peak, 2002 up to Oct 4th. At that point a totally new movement begins that will take us on the next leg of this amazing journey. Interestingly, Dylan was asked why he didn’t hire a piano player, and he replied that all the piano players he knew played lead, and he didn’t want that. (Sorry, lost the reference for that.)
Dylan wanted to use the piano as a rhythm instrument, to vamp chords and put in an occasional few notes. He deliberately pushed the sound of the piano into the background, to merge it into the total sound. It was there for rhythm, timing and emphasis.
Let’s tune into that Seattle concert and be in at the birth of that new movement, even if there might be better versions of the songs to come. Fascinating to hear history being made.
Dylan playing piano on the opening song, ‘Solid Rock’ wasn’t the only new thing about it. This loud, hard rock gospel gets the acoustic treatment. Note how spacious the sound is without Dylan’s guitar. It’s all very new and tentative but full of promise. Drummer Dave Kemper has been replaced by George Receli whose less emphatic, more ‘staggered,’ jazzy drumming style had an immediate effect on the sound of the songs.
In another break from the NET past, Dylan had not played this song since 1981.
Solid Rock
Song two on the setlist is ‘Lay Lady Lay’, also done acoustically with piano. It’s a sweet, mellow version compared to some we have heard, more of a gentle coaxing than a plea for mortal bliss; seduction rather than instruction. The soft, equally gentle harp break prefigures an alliance between the harp and the piano, as the harp can replace the guitar as lead instrument. Dylan can play the harp with his right hand and keep vamping the piano with his left.
Lay Lady Lay
Song number three on the setlist is ‘Tombstone Blues’. We get our first taste of how the new sound will work with electric guitars. It’s driving, insistent, and without Mr Guitar Man, it sounds uncluttered and minimal. You can sense Dylan relaxing into his new sound, catching the groove of this forever surreal foot-tapper. Note how he punctuates the rhythm by jabbing the piano – plink-plink, plink-plink.
Tombstone Blues
Next up is Warren Zevron’s ‘Accidentally like a Martyr,’ but I’m putting that one aside for a separate post on Dylan’s covers, so we move on to number five on the setlist, another old favourite, ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ given the brisk, country treatment with a touch of boogie-woogie, partly thanks to Dylan’s plinky-plonk piano. One of Dylan’s lighter, happier songs. Forget the world and enjoy a night of love, or a night of good music – I’ve often thought this song is addressed as much to the audience as to a lover.
A touch of Dylan’s harp reinforces the happy-go-lucky feel of the song.
I’ll be your Baby Tonight.
At this point Dylan leaves the keyboard and picks up the guitar for a rousing performance of the Rolling Stones’ song ‘Brown Sugar’ and an acoustic guitar version of ‘Don’t Think Twice’. He then returns to the keyboard for the eighth song on the setlist, ‘It’s All Right Ma’. 2002 was Dylan’s worst year for upsinging, that is lifting his voice at the end of the line. Judiciously used, it can, like its opposite, downsinging, work quite well, but not when it’s over used. You can hear it in this ‘It’s All Right Ma’, and even more so in the next song, ‘Love Minus Zero’ but, depending on your ear, it doesn’t reach annoying levels.
With the piano, and Receli’s drumming, the song is given a decidedly blues twist. He slows it down, making it a bit more gentle, not so savage, but it does have a bit of a dumpty-dum rhythm.
It’s all Right Ma
Gentle also applies to his performance of ‘Love Minus Zero’, gentle, lush and countrified. If you don’t get too stuck on the upsinging, this is a fine vocal performance. The piano works discretely around the melody. This mysterious song, with its beautiful obscurity, comes across as a love song.
Love Minus Zero
Dylan then picks up the guitar for three more songs before, at slot number thirteen, returning to the piano for ‘Honest With Me’ from Love and Theft, now just a year old. This is a guitar driven rocker which, like ‘Tombstone Blues’, benefits from this more minimal, uncluttered approach. I find this a compelling performance, and Dylan’s cynical, slurred delivery fits the song like a glove. I think he’s making his voice rougher than it need be on some of the notes, because he loves that tearing sound. Receli’s lighter drumming can be felt on this one. It’s more than just a foot-tapper.
Honest with Me
I’ve got two more “Love and Theft” songs to cover from the Seattle concert, ‘Floater’ and ‘High Water,’ but I’m running out of space and will look at them in the next post, when I’ll continue to consider Dylan’s piano performances from late 2002 and the birth of this new sound.
They say that music heals the soul, and many artists have done just that for millions of people worldwide. Among these talented performers, you’ll find none other than iconic rock/country legend Bob Dylan! The superstar might be best-known for his heartbreakingly good songwriting, but you might be surprised by some of the other ventures he’s taken up throughout the years. If you’re a fan of Bob Dylan’s music and want to learn more about some of his other projects, then strap in and enjoy the ride!
Bob Dylan’s Casino Features
Here’s something you might not have expected to see on this list. While the artist might not be officially involved with any casinos, his tunes often grace the background of many popular slot games! With the online casino trend gaining traction these past few years, the prominence of these games has reached a new peak. Naturally, this means that plenty of people are being introduced to Bob Dylan’s music while giving the slots a spin! If you’re interested in checking some of these games out, you can visit www.novibet.co.uk, an excellent online casino with tons of titles to choose from.
Bob Dylan’s Writing Achievements
As we’ve already mentioned, one of the best parts about Dylan’s music isn’t the music itself but the wonderful poetry behind every lyric. Knowing that putting pen to paper is among his biggest strengths, Bob Dylan has done plenty of writing throughout his long career. Other than songs etched in everyone’s memory, he’s written an autobiography detailing his greatest successes and failures, along with a prose poetry book that’s bound to impress even the harshest of critics.
When such sheer talent and love are poured into a piece of literature, recognition is bound to follow. Dylan’s songwriting has received high praise since the beginning of his career, but his entire writing journey has now been honored with two of the most prestigious writing awards in existence. In 2008, the artist received a Pulitzer Prize for his impact on American music and pop culture. Eight years later, in 2016, he received a Nobel Prize in Literature!
Bob Dylan’s Whiskey Collection
One of the most interesting things about Bob Dylan is his willingness to experiment and venture out of his comfort zone. These ventures include co-creating a whiskey collection that any fan of good spirits can appreciate! Of course, we don’t expect you to take our word for it. Celebrities often try out new things and fail, but that’s not the case here. The appropriately named Heaven’s Door Whiskey brand won the #1 Consumer Choice Award at the 2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition in the American Bourbon category!
Other than serving as the perfect base for some of the most delicious whiskey cocktails you’ve ever had, Heaven’s Door is pretty popular for another reason. The beautiful bottles feature Dylan’s hand-crafted welded iron gates designs! Yes, you heard that right! Bob Dylan owns the Black Buffalo Ironworks studio, where he partakes in another creative hobby that’s a pretty different stroke from music.
The idea of this little series is to find the occasional cover of a Dylan song that you might not have heard before, and offer it as something to lighten the day, or to make you fire off an email saying “What a waste of time” or something else. Whatever you like.
These two versions of “All I really wanna do” completely fascinated me. And even if you don’t like the first do play the second. They are related but utterly different.
