There’s a list of the covers so far dealt with in the series, at the end of this article.
The next song that turned up a cover in my alphabetical search is “Brownsville Girl” but I only know of one cover and I really don’t care for it, so I’m missing that out (you can of course go for a search yourself if you’ve nothing else to do) and instead next is “Buckets of Rain” of which there are multiple covers.
I’ve written before about the need to find something new to say in relation to the song, while keeping some sort of reference to the original. Sometimes the newness dominates sometimes the reference to the original is there with just a touch of variance. Like meeting an old friend who has a new haircut, but of course still the same friend beneath.
That’s what I find with Francesco Garolfi of whom I know nothing, except I do know enough art to know he’s not Francesco Gandolfi. If you know something of the artist who made this delightful recording, do write in. [Additional note added later: in fact Francesco Garolfi saw the piece and has subsequently dropped me a line personally. I am utterly knocked out by that.]
Large numbers of musicians – all far more accomplished than I – have had a go with this song, but it seems to be incredibly difficult to retain the essence of the song and yet add meaningful and successful variations.
The Orton and Ward recording shows an utterly sublime understanding of the song by the two vocalists but the balance of the recording of the guitar damages the result. But just to hear what can be done with the song by two singers who understand what it is about, it is worth hearing.
And curiously it is another live recording that I found approached some sort of understanding of what the song is all about.
How strange – how can something so difficult be so hard to take to perfection. I suppose the issue is, do you feel this as a jolly little piece or something far deeper. In many of the recordings that I have heard it seems as if the musicians haven’t actually read the lyrics
Buckets of rainBuckets of tears...I've seen pretty people disappear like smoke
I am not too sure about how the lyrics work in the Jimmy LaFave version, but at least I get the feeling that he has read the lyrics, and thought about them.
But Karen Almquist seems to understand, and has the talent to put that idea across. It seems a good place to stop – when I listen to this I believe her, I feel like she has been there and knows what it means to be in love and know the pain when that love is not requited.
Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well
I'll do it for you
Honey baby, can't you tell?
It took me a while, but I knew someone had to get it right, and finally, I got there.
If you are particularly interested in covers, you’ll find an index of the covers used in the Dylavinci Code series thus far at the end of the latest article in that series. And again at the end of the last edition of the Beautiful Obscurity series. Not to mention 220 selected covers (gathered from suggestions from Untold Dylan readers). With that lot, and the selection below, you’ll be here all night. And tomorrow.
Untold Dylanwas created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. It contains over 2500 articles and over 10,000 comments from readers. Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone). Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.
Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members which you might find quite jolly.
Links to past episodes and to all the cover versions used within this series are both given at the end of the article.
by Larry Fyffe
Clear as a bell, the breaking of the Dylavinci Code reveals that Christ, while brushing the dusty ashes off His nose, is not at all fond of Maggie Magdalene’s father who’s had an affair with Mother Mary.
Cyrus Magdala puts his cigar out in the face of his “stepson” just for kicks.
In the song lyrics below, Bob Dylan, transfigured as Jesus, let’s it be known that He does not like His daddy-o “stepfather” very much.
Pieced together from fragments in the Holy Grail, the authentic goblet stored in the Untold Archives Department:
You mistreat me, baby
I can't see no reason why
You know that I'd kill for you
And that I'm not afraid to die
But you treat me like a stepchild
Oh no, am I your stepchild
(Bob Dylan: Stepchild)
Jesus gets His own back by running off with His “half-sister” Maggie Magdalene.
Note that Jesus says He’s “not afraid to die”, suggesting either that He can’t be killed or that He’s an escape artist.
Ominous sounding is the rather ambiguous, perhaps hyperbolic, line “You know I’d kill for you”.
More to the point, an elongated ‘murder ballad” may be blowing in the wind. Could be that Christ’s already had a Libyan die on the cross in His place.
The only thing we know sure about the narrator is that his name’s not Bob Dylan, and he’s now protecting his child, given birth to by Magdalene.
Jesus could even be the Devil, a man who says He comes in peace while wearing a long, but oddly colourful black coat, the dark angel responsible for humankind becoming mortal:
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the Bible he'd quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: Man In The Long Black Coat)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Utah, daughter Sophia Sarah tells her daddy that God is not a unit composed of three parts, but there exists three separate Gods – besides Jesus Christ, there’s the Hobogod, and she’s the Holy Ghost.
No wonder Dylan as Jesus gets a headache:
Well, early in the morning
To late at night
I got a poison headache
But I feel alright
I'm pledging my time to you
Hoping you'll come through too
(Bob Dylan: Pledging My Time)
The story goes on and on, round and round in circles – just like the mysterious-travelling Hobogod.
Fragments pasted back together tell us that originally the song quoted below is entitled “Stuck Inside Of Utah With The Memphis Egyptian Blues Again”:
And the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I'd ask him what the matter is
But I know he don't talk
(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)
Untold Dylanwas 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.
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.
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.
A list of the previous articles in this series is given below.
By Tony Attwood
The most famous cover of “Born in Time” is Eric Clapton’s, and for me the quality of that recording is overshadowed by what I, in my normal pompous manner, consider to be the ludicrous commentary on Wikipedia about this song. I’ve just checked and it is still there.
I remember on reading it some time back that it seems to miss the entire essence of the song, and instead reduces it to points of detail about who did what. But then maybe Wiki would argue that facts are what they are about, not musical appreciation.
Now I’m sure many people, who by chance have stumbled on my ramblings, will consider that I do much the same, although at the moment I am immune to their comments being buoyed up by a comment from Michael Lowe who (having discovered a piece of mine from around nine years ago) simply wrote “What a brilliant review”. Nothing else, just that. That’s enough to keep me running the site for another six months at least.
Bob Dylan generally doesn’t seem at all troubled by criticism, no matter how ill-informed, and no matter how lacking in musical knowledge the critic is. Indeed the essence of my criticisms of Heylin in my reviews of Dylan’s songs is that he doesn’t seem to have a clue about the music, and yet sets himself up as the great analyst and reviewer.
Anyway such are my thoughts for the day as I plod my merry way through the cover versions of Dylan, in alphabetical order (excluding of course those for which there are no covers which are available on the internet. I could have put up blank pages for those, but that seemed a little too arty for this site).
And I guess I’d better start with Mr Clapton…
It is, I think, the use of the snare drum throughout that gives this version its unique feel, although the way Clapton handles the second section (“Just when I thought…”) as a set of short phrases with a chorus added, that again singles out this version. Personally, I find the percussion gets a little waring, and that is always the problem with a song where an idea is set up at the start and the producer says, “hey that sounds good” so it is left there, no matter what. But maybe it is just me, and no one else really minds.
“Too gooey” I think more or less sums it up for me, but I know billions of people (or at least a few who I know) rave over it.
It is interesting (for me if no one else) that when one artist has covered a song and inserted an element in the instrumentation, and which is continued all the way through, other cover artists feel the need to do the same. Not with the same idea, but with something that runs all the way through. Indigenous does it with reverb – do it once, do it again, do it again, and, well, you get the idea.
In fact it seems to me that everyone feels the need to over-orchestrate this song, and yet it is so beautiful and delicate in reality this is the last thing it needs, for it already has everything you could ever need. Whoever might have thought (in the version below) that suddenly we needed an accordion and a moment from a backing chorus? Oh dear, I have become a grumpy old man. Beware dear reader, that is what happens… (And as for that backing chorus repeating three words every now and then…. argh!!!!)
So thank goodness for Meg Hutchinson – and indeed I’ve featured this recording before in an article. This is how it should sound – utter elegant simplicity. And it needs that because that is what the lyrics are all about. OK the producer loses her/his nerve halfway through with some twiddly bits of backing which are both meaningless musically, and utterly unnecessary, but at least toward the end, we return to something closer to the opening which is so utterly gorgeous – until those horrible twiddles come in after the singing has stopped.
What makes it so difficult to let an artist with a voice as beautiful and commanding as Meg Hutchinson just deliver a song which is also beautiful and commanding? Not being a record producer I don’t know. So if anyone is in touch with Ms Hutchinson, drop her a note asking for a release of this song minus twiddly bits. I’d buy it, even if no one else would.
“His playing would rip your head off,” says John Fogerty in his autobiography, very Dylanesque, about bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs. Fogerty, like Dylan in Chronicles, has in his own memoir Fortunate Son (2015) a sympathetic tendency to swoon in often poetic, though sometimes alienating superlatives over musicians he admires. With great overlap, by the way. Hank Williams (“Your Cheatin’ Heart just slayed me”), Link Wray, Charley Patton, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard… well, Fogerty, of course, has also exhaustively demonstrated his deep-rooted love of country and bluegrass (most notably on his solo debut, the 1973 country tribute record The Blue Ridge Rangers).
Anyway, Earl Scruggs. Dylan’s awe is visible, in the documentary shot in 1970, Earl Scruggs – His Family and Friends. The soundtrack of the same name (released 2005) features five Dylan songs. Three that Earl performs with Joan Baez (“Love Is Just A Four Letter Word”, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” with Baez’s witty Dylan imitation, and “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”), one with The Byrds (“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, of course) and one with Dylan himself: “Nashville Skyline Rag”. In the documentary, we see another song played by the two legends together (the age-old classic “East Virginia Blues”), but not the two songs played by Scruggs, his sons Randy and Gary, and Dylan: “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance” and… “To Be Alone With You”. The mono recordings of these are finally heard on disc 3 of The Bootleg Series 15 – Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969 (2019).
https://youtu.be/crG4ZDRLVYE
The session takes place on 17 May 1970, half a year after the Rolling Stone interview in which Dylan dreams about Jerry Lee Lewis adding the song to his repertoire. Apparently, Dylan has given up hope, and now suspects that he can do Earl Scruggs a favour with it. But he is not an inspired salesman. We hear Dylan’s hesitant beginning, he seems to be looking for the melody, then he starts in the middle of the song, on the second line of the second verse (“At the close of day”), sings that second verse twice, and the rest of the song is not very steady either – he changes lines, forgets words and makes up other, hardly impressive words on the spot. It is, all in all, justifiable that documentary maker David Hoffman left this fragment on the cutting floor.
For the time being, it is the last time Dylan will concern himself with “To Be Alone With You”. The song disappears into a drawer and is only retrieved twenty years later: its live debut is 15 October 1989 in Pennsylvania. As an opener even. Dylan seems to be in a conservative country mood these days. “Man In The Long Black Coat” is also performed for the first time this week, the setlist includes songs like the Civil War ballad “Two Soldiers”, “Precious Memories”, “Lakes Of Pontchartrain” and “Barbara Allen”… but “To Be Alone With You” has become a solid, energetic Jerry Lee Lewis-like rocker. And he seems pleased with it. The song remains on the set list, always as the opener, and is also taken to Europe the following year; Dylan opens his concerts in Paris and London with “To Be Alone With You” as well. The song becomes a mainstay of the Never Ending Tour; apart from 1997 it is on the setlist every year, and, until its temporary retirement in 2005, is eventually performed 123 times.
This time the song seems to have been discarded for good. In the fourteen years from 2006 until the covid emergency stop in 2019, Dylan performs more than 1200 times, and “To Be Alone With You” remains in the drawer. But then it’s 2021, Dylan rejoices fans with the online “concert” Shadow Kingdom and surprises them with wonderful interpretations, beautiful performances and, above all, the resurrection of a fully restored “To Be Alone With You”.
The rock ‘n’ roll is gone. Actually, so is the country. The accordion gives the song a Tex-Mex flavour, Dylan’s recitation tends towards vaudeville, the band towards pop, but above all: almost every line of the lyrics has been changed.
Text changes in themselves are not too remarkable with Dylan, but such a radical and complete text revision is – we only know it from a handful of songs from the bard’s immense oeuvre. “Down Along The Cove”, “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”, a few songs of which he later (largely) returns to the original lyrics (“Tangled Up In Blue”, “Simple Twist Of Fate”)… there are not many more.
Dylan is a few times asked about these frequent and sometimes radical changes of lyrics. In the fascinating interview for SongTalk (with Paul Zollo, April ’91) he kind of shrugs his shoulders:
“They’re songs. They’re not written in stone. They’re on plastic. Somebody told me that Tennyson often wanted to rewrite his poems once he saw them in print.”
… and similar vagueness (“The original lyrics weren’t fair to me because they just didn’t feel right at the time,” regarding “Tangled Up In Blue”). Fascinating it is nevertheless – if only because it offers a glimpse into the creative mind of a Nobel Prize-winning poet.
The original first verse, like the rest of the lyrics, is not too titanic – written on plastic, indeed:
To be alone with you
Just you and me
Now won’t you tell me true
Ain’t that the way it oughta be?
To hold each other tight
The whole night through
Ev’rything is always right
When I’m alone with you
Okay, the rhyme scheme (abab-caca) is quite unusual, but the content is a saltless accumulation of clichés. Maybe that’s what triggers Dylan to change it fifty years later to:
To be alone with you, just you and I
Under the moon, ’neath the star-spangled sky
I know you’re alive, and I am too
My one desire is to be alone with you
Which is a bit puzzling. At first glance, the changes are hardly spectacular. In Lyrics and other official publications, the stanzas are indeed formatted as eight-line stanzas, but during the rewriting session Dylan apparently structured it the way he sings it: four lines, quatrains, and the simplest rhyme scheme (aabb). Perhaps the poet has indeed searched for a Verlaine-like mosaic of rhyme and assonance; you in line 1 assonant with moon in line 2; sky in line 2 with I in line 3; alive in line 3 with desire in line 4… too consistent to be coincidental, in any case. However, this melodious artifice is abandoned right from verse two – the poet has either already grown tired of it, or this steady pattern of assonances indeed was accidental.
In terms of content, again at first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much going on either; at most, one wonders why Dylan took the trouble to replace one cliché with another. Under the moon, my one desire, the star spangled sky… all as clichéd as the whole night through and hold each other tight. But then there is that one line, that one splinter that makes the listener look up: “I know you’re alive, and I am too”. A line that would rip your head off.
To be continued. Next up: To Be Alone With You part 4: Beware of his promise
——————
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.
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.
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.
I am, rather obviously, working through Dylan songs in alphabetical order, looking for unusual and intriguing cover versions which give me enjoyment in themselves and/or insight into the original. And, rather than this being a presentation of cover versions that I already know and like, I am also trying to find something new – or at least something new for me. Occasionally an old favourite slips in, but not too often.
The first reworking I came across was completely unexpected. Spanish boots of Spanish leather begins at 4’20” in the recording below, and if you by chance or decision play this video from the start, and then think “absolutely not for me” I would still urge you to jump to 4’20” – I’ve just played it four times, and really love it. Utterly haunting.
Speaking of foreign tongues, (which we weren’t) we have considered Dylan in Frisian before – De kweade boadskipper (The wicked messenger), and one that at the time wasn’t freely available but is now – The Drifters Escape. You might care to venture therein.
Anyway, back to Spanish Leather. Or rather Learen Spaanske skuon by Reina Rodina
The point is of course that since we all know the lyrics by heart, it doesn’t matter if the song is sung in another language – and venturing into these non-English versions tends (I feel) to give me ever greater insights into the potential of each song. Now that may sound like a pretentious load of old cobblers to you, and maybe it is, but I do often find these non-English versions leave me feeling the song in a new way, as well as being very pleasing.
In fact there is something about hearing a song one knows so well, without the lyrics in English, because it forces an extra focus on the music – in this case the beautiful singing voice of Ernst Jansz with his exquisite guitar work.
But of course, there are millions (well, quite a few) versions in English. Far too many beautiful ones to list here, so the recordings chosen may well miss out a range of jewels – and surely that tells us a lot about the magnitude of the achievement of some of these songs.
This version is by Tow’rs
The lines
Oh, the same thing I would want today
I would want again tomorrow
are among the most beautiful and poignant love lyrics I have ever heard.
So, it turns out there is a vast number of covers of this song, and many of them are beautifully presented and exquisitely executed.
Here are two more which travel in completely different directions
This final version is from the unlikely named The Airborne Toxic Event and this wins my prize for the biggest surprise that I got in working through some of the many versions I’ve listened to this afternoon.
The harmonies between the male and female voices are utterly unexpected as is the changing accompaniment and the glorious instrumental break. The simplicity with which the two voices deliver the last sung verse, followed by the instrumental coda is perfection for my ears.
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.
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 – but please do note, all writers are volunteers; we don’t have the funds to pay. But 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.
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members – which is rather nice.
Aaron:I’m enjoying putting this series together. It’s fun presenting rare and one off tracks officially released on various albums for fans to enjoy.
This time let’s look at three more performances from some various artists’ releases and soundtracks.
First up is This Old Man from 1991’s Walt Disney Records For Our Children charity album
Tony: I’m not sure if I have heard this before; certainly I can’t recall hearing. And I have to admit I was rather fearful of what was going to emerge. But Bob does it perfectly, exactly as the children like it – with the certainty of what is coming next. And the pictures that rotate with the song really are interesting – whoever put that collection together was having great fun. Especially at the moment where we get the pope and two later the president. Really enjoyable all round.
Aaron: From 1994’s Natural Born Killers soundtrack come “You Belong To Me”. For the actual CD someone made the boneheaded decision to add snippets of dialogue from the movie over the end of Bob’s song. I found a version online without the dialogue (I’m so used to hearing the CD version that it was a bit of a shock to hear without it!)
Tony:What a mellow feeling – and what a weird coincidence – which I am going to divert into (if you find this boring, just flip on – there is another song below).
See the market place in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
Just remember when a dream appears
You belong to me
Not Dylan’s most memorable lines, but ones that have a certain resonance with me, because I lived in Algiers for a year in earlier times – much earlier times in fact. And although it was a remarkable experience, it is not a time that I particularly think about or discuss with anyone – and I’m not sure it had a really deep impact on the way I developed. Although being a member of a minority group (a European mistaken by one and all as a French guy in a country only recently having thrown off the yolk of “l’algérie c’est la France”) was at the time a really strange experience.
So suddenly I was jerked back to those much earlier days, and that was really strange. And that’s the thing about Bob – he can take me to most unexpected places.
Aaron: Next, from the Feeling Minnesota soundtrack is Bob’s version of Ring Of Fire.
Tony: Oh this is strange – I’m still sitting in a cafe in Algiers and suddenly we’re with Ring of Fire. And strange because I had forgotten how much slower Bob performed this than on the famous Johnny Cash recording.
Indeed I’m finding it hard to adjust and think whether this really works, and whether I just like it because it is so different from the Cash version. There is something very clever about playing it this slowly; it makes the falling into the ring of fire completely different – as I see it in my mind the fall into the ring of fire is slow, inevitable, but not frightening… something he is doing willingly; moving on to the new world
Whereas with the Cash version no images are created in my mind at all. It just is a song with a set of words with no hint of a literal meaning.
My apologies to fans of Mr Cash, but having heard Bob’s version, this famous version just sounds crass. There’s no power in the lyrics at all.
Ah…. Bob at his most brilliant. Thanks for this Aaron. Yet again I owe you for another revelation.
——————-
Untold Dylanwas 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 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 – but please do note, all writers are volunteers; we don’t have the funds to pay. But 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.
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members which by and large works a lot more smoothly than this site, mostly because it is not edited by Tony.
When I started this little series I had no idea where it would go – just that I had a feeling that some artists had really done a few interesting things with Dylan songs.
But Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream – a cover version? Really? Well, yes, and not just one, but actually three. Or at least three that appealed to me as I was meandering through the archives and websites.
Asobi Seksu are first: they existed for about ten years in the early part of this century. At first in sketching this note I wrote, “It’s not something I am going to come back to that much in the future, but it really took me by surprise and I enjoyed the listen.” But that’s wrong. Haven’t finished the article and listened to the two pieces that follow, I do want to come back to this – and indeed listening to it for a second time, I find more in it than I thought…
Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band do something closer to the original, but with a few nice variations.
https://youtu.be/Ke8uZIvPa7w
And then Tito Schipa Jr.
In 1970 he created the Italian rock opera Orfeo 9, which then became a movie, and an album. And ten years later, a rock adaptation of Donizetti’s opera Don Pasquale.
The Dylan connection came in 1988 with the release of Dylaniato, with the songs performed in Italian and the Romanesco dialect. Tito Schipa has since translated Dylan’s complete works as well as working as an actor, writer for broadcast media and theatre director.
Untold Dylanwas 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 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 – but please do note, all writers are volunteers; we don’t have the funds to pay. But 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
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members which by and large works a lot more smoothly than this site, mostly because it is not edited by Tony.
Because Dylan put aside the guitar and took up the keyboards at Seattle on 4th October, some commentators have suggested that prior to that concert Dylan had been running out of steam, that the NET was flagging, and that the movement begun ten years before in 1991 had played itself out. According to this view, Dylan took to the keyboards in a desperate effort to revitalize his performances.
There’s no evidence for this. While Dylan’s voice was clearly thickening up (compare his voice now to what it was in, say 1999, and you can hear the difference), there was no lack of power and passion, nor innovation. The great innovation of him taking up the keyboards in October might have overshadowed his achievements earlier in the year; a natural attention to those last two months of 2002 might have kept us from appreciating how good Dylan was in the rest of the year and seeing how his shift to the keyboards might be the outcome of a fervent pushing of the boundaries rather than flagging energy.
We are lucky to have a wonderful recording of a top-notch concert in Manchester on 9th May. You can find bad recordings of good Dylan concerts, and good recordings of bad concerts, but an excellent soundboard recording of a concert with Dylan obviously on fire, is a chancy and comparatively rare thing. The Manchester concert is one of those.
Remember, the first song Dylan played at the Seattle concert was an acoustic version of the rock gospel ‘Solid Rock.’ He kicks off the Manchester concert with an acoustic performance of ‘Maggie’s Farm’ (popularly known as the song that Dylan used to first hit his folkie audience with his raucous electric sound at the Newport Folk festival in 1965), and follows that up with an acoustic performance of ‘Senor’, never before performed acoustically as far as I know. Here’s ‘Senor.’
Senor (A)
The ever-versatile Larry Campbell is playing a cittern (pictured above), described as a ‘plucked stringed musical instrument that was popular in the 16th–18th century. It had a shallow, pear-shaped body with an asymmetrical neck that was thicker under the treble strings.’
Let’s leave the Manchester concert for a moment and hear another ‘Senor’, this time electric but with Larry, I believe, on violin, capturing for a moment the spirit of the Rolling Thunder Tour of 1975/76. A heavier but equally powerful performance from Dylan. (No date for this one, but it’s from the Summer Tour)
Senor (B)
Before we get any older, let’s slip back to the Manchester concert, the acoustic ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ and have a quick listen to that. Larry’s on the mandolin (what can’t he play?) and Dylan’s voice is right to the fore. Not quite as wild and anarchic as in 1965 but, although sounding minimal without those electric guitars, still a hard driving foot-tapper.
Maggie’s farm
And how long has it been, I wonder, since we have heard an acoustic ‘Forever Young’? As with ‘Senor’ and ‘Maggie’s Farm’, getting rid of the electric guitars strips the song back to its basics. There might be a bit too much upsinging on this one, but it’s a vibrant, heartfelt performance nonetheless. The band sound wonderful on the chorus. This is not from Manchester, and again sorry it’s undated.
Forever Young
Also undated, but from the Summer Tour, is this acoustic ‘Man in the Long Black Coat.’ I haven’t heard such a powerful performance of the song since the famous 1995 Prague concert. Again, it wasn’t written as an acoustic song, and has always been given an epic, electric treatment. Yet, it perfectly suits the half-singing, half-talking style Dylan was experimenting with in 2002. This drama of a girl falling into the clutches of evil has not been told with such a sense of astonishment and outrage.
Man in the long black coat
Dylan has been singing ‘I Don’t Believe You’ live since it was written in 1964, but it has never sounded like this. He has replaced the slower, more ponderous tempos he has been using with a foot-tapping beat to drive the song, adding a bit of harp to the opening bars. You can argue that it’s not the scream of pain we heard with the fully electric performances of 1966, and that the vocal is a bit rushed, but it gets the message across okay. Although it’s electric it has that minimal feel that marks Dylan’s sound in 2002. Another undated one from the Summer Tour.
I don’t believe you
Further evidence of Dylan’s innovating drive in 2002 is the reappearance of ‘In the Summer Time’ from Shot of Love (1981), not performed since 1981. That album and subsequent 1981 performances, wonderful as they are, don’t strike me the way this one does.
The opening verse suggests a mystical encounter, and has been interpreted as Dylan’s meeting with Jesus:
‘I was in your presence for an hour or so
Or was it a day?
I truly don't know
Where the sun never set, where the trees hung low
By that soft and shining sea’
But by the last verse it’s starting to sound a bit like a love song, with echoes of ‘Let’s Keep it Between Us.’ Yes, Dylan may want us to think of Jesus, but I can’t help speculating (and it is pure speculation) that the religious sentiments of some of these gospel songs have got mixed up with Dylan’s love affair, and marriage in 1981, with backup singer Carolyn Dennis.
‘Strangers, they meddled in our affairs
Poverty and shame were theirs
But all that suffering was not to be compared
With the glory that is to be
And I'm still carrying the gift you gave
It's a part of me now, it's been cherished and saved
It'll go with me unto the grave
And into eternity.’
There is general agreement that this is not one of Dylan’s strongest songs, but this is probably the strongest performance of this song that you will hear, notwithstanding Dylan’s performance peak of 1981. (2nd Nov)
In the Summertime
Now let’s slip back to the Manchester concert for a top-quality performance of ‘Blind Willie McTell’, possibly a ‘best ever’ performance, at least it’s a best ever recording. Since introducing this song to the NET in 1997, it has become a regular on his setlists, and, at this stage not changed around much – that would come later. This vision of a corrupt America has never sounded more convincing. I think Larry’s on the cittern again here, and Mr Guitar Man has never sounded better.
Blind Willie McTell
At Manchester, Dylan sang four songs from Love and Theft, still barely a year old, and while we have heard how Dylan handled these songs after shifting to the piano, it is interesting to compare those performances with these. You might like to go to the previous two posts for a comparison, and to catch my introductions to those songs. (Seattle Showdown and Tickling the Ivories).
First up is ‘Moonlight,’ number 6 on the Manchester setlist. It features Tony Garnier on the double bass, and is paced a little slower than the album version. It’s gentle, minimal, and Dylan sings with a delicious sense of the irony, and perhaps hidden menace, inherent in these ‘sugar coated rhymes,’ a phrase from ‘Bye and Bye’ that perfectly suits ‘Moonlight’ too.
‘Well, I’m preaching peace and harmony
The blessings of tranquility
But I know when the time is right to strike’
Moonlight
Next up, and number 8 on the Manchester setlist, is ‘Lonesome Day Blues’, one of the 12 bar blues on the album. I don’t think Dylan did a piano version of this song in 2002. I find the force and clarity of this performance has the edge on the 2001 performances, but that could be owing to the superior recording. This song keeps referencing the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the classics. (see NET, 2001, Part 6: More power, wealth, knowledge and salvation)
‘Well, they're doing the double shuffle, throwing sand on the floor
They're doing the double shuffle, they're throwing sand on the floor
When I left my longtime darling, she was standing in the door’
The ‘double shuffle’ is described in the dictionary as: ‘a clog dance characterized by fast syncopated taps of the feet,’ or ‘a dance in which a person makes shuffling movements twice with each foot alternately.’ This dance movement is generally dated to the rave scene in the 1980s/90s, thought to have originated in Melbourne, but I think Dylan was probably referencing a much earlier use of the term from an 1883 song called ‘Sambo’s Double Shuffle’ published by Phil B Perry. That harks back to the era in which they would throw sand on the dance floor to make the floors less slippery.
Clearly Dylan is digging deep into musical history for the imagery in this song, and others on Love and Theft. It makes me wonder just which war Dylan is referring to when he sings ‘Well, my pa he died and left me, my brother got killed in the war.’ Could be WW1, could even be the Civil War; perhaps it’s just whatever war you have in your mind. Dylan excels at this kind of open-ended imagery.
Lonesome Day Blues
‘Summer Days’ might be the jazziest song on Love and Theft. Coming in at number 13 on the Manchester setlist, it features some outstanding double bass (stand up bass) from Tony Garnier once again. ‘Summer Days’ is a celebratory song, although it sings of an era that is ‘gone.’ We find similar open-ended imagery here when he sings:
‘Everybody get ready to lift up your glasses and sing
Well, I'm standin' on the table, I'm proposing a toast to the king…’
What king? Maybe Elvis. Maybe those early Roman kings; whatever king you have in your mind.
If you want to practice your ‘double shuffle’ this is the song, and this is the performance, an outstanding one by any standards. And if you can’t do the double shuffle just do any old soft shoe shuffle you like, but take time to listen to how wonderfully guitarist Charlie Sexton, adept of the ‘new wave,’ rides this old one:
Summer Days
Last up from Love and Theft, and number 19 on the Manchester setlist, is ‘Honest with Me,’ a much darker song than ‘Summer Days.’ The lyrics are wide ranging, but despite an element of jokiness, the sentiment takes us back to the gloomier days of Time Out of Mind and the spectre of despair:
‘Well, I'm stranded in the city that never sleeps
Some of these women they just give me the creeps
I'm avoidin' the south side, the best I can
These memories I got they can strangle a man’
The riff on which the song is built is sharply repetitive, which may put some listeners off. I think it best to flow with the lyrics rather than let the riff take over. That sharpness is there for a purpose, to jolt us over and over, to throw us into that city that never sleeps and make sure that we never sleep.
Honest with Me
That’s it for me today, I gotta run, but see you next around with more sounds from 2002 soon.
Kia Ora
—————————
Untold Dylanwas 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), and 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 – but please do note, all writers are volunteers; we don’t have the funds to pay. But 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
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members which by and large works a lot more smoothly than the site, mostly because it is not edited by Tony.
OK this is Untold Dylan, which means there are going to be mistakes. I don’t do them on purpose; they creep in when I am not looking and change what I have written, even infecting the perfect articles of my pals who have never made an error in their lives.
So, to be clear, this is number seventeen in this series no matter what else I’ve said to the contrary elsewhere.
What I didn’t realise when I started this idea of doing a Dylan Cover of the Day every afternoon, as an extra contribution to the site, was how personal this was going to get – although looking back, I should have realised. However, you don’t have to read the text. It’s the music that matters.
Betty and the Baby Boomers’version comes from 2016 – it is not a radically different version as some are in this series, but it is just so stunningly beautiful and elegant, I really felt the need to lead with this. I know every word by heart of course, and can play the piece on piano or guitar with my eyes closed (which many who have heard me perform claim makes a considerable improvement to the performance) but still despite the familiarity, the desperate sadness of the concept behind the song comes through. “I wish I wish…” oh yes, how I wish.
Brian Ferry is going to put emotion into every word – hell, he can even put emotion into semicolons. But the intro of a harmonica at the start along with the clippity clop sounds are both alarming – and yet then Brian comes in, and on my, I’m off again.
I’m forever reminded of Brian’s comment when asked what he would say to Dylan if the two ever met. His response was that he would probably say, “I hope you don’t mind.”
Monica Grabin
There is a note on Monica’s webpage which says she is “teaching the story of America through its songs.” What a stunningly beautiful and important thing to do. Wow, I wish I’d thought of that in the UK.
What interests me is how this fairly simple song, which is of course in essence all that this is, still resonates so strongly. As you’ll know, I’m sure, it is a 19th folk ballad normally known as “Lord Franklin.”
I suppose for me it was perhaps the first song I heard as a teenager which enabled me to think about getting older. And now here I am, “older”, and thinking back on the life that I have had.
So in this way the renditions are very personal – but they still need the beauty of the performance to create these feelings. The guitar playing is elegantly simple, like clothes that are nothing special but can still be utterly perfect on the right person. Guitar and voice together are, indeed, perfection.
Riddarna kring runda bordet: Björn Afzelius
And finally something different – both by the fact that it uses a light rock beat, and is not in English. Björn Svante Afzelius died tragically young in 1999, and I heard of him through his being an advocate of socialism, via my friends in Sweden at the time. According to wiki he wrote about 150 songs and sold over two-and-a-half million albums.
Well now, I’ve written more than 150 songs, and not sold a single album. I think he wins.
Previously on Dylan Cover of the Day. (Caution, this list might contain errors).
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).
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 – but please do note, all writers are volunteers; we don’t have the funds to pay. But 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
We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members which by and large works a lot more smoothly than the site, mostly because it is not edited by Tony.
Publishers’ apology: due to a significant lack of coffee, the wrong episode was put up earlier today. This is (or at least might be) the right episode
By Larry Fyffe
Links to all the previous articles in the series are given at the end along with the list of cover versions from those articles…
Cracking the Dylavinci Code, demonstates that, by taking on the persona of Jesus, the singer/songwriter/musician essentially writes the Third Testament to the Holy Bible.
Jesus therein contains multitudes; all mixed up in confusion.
Christ is the son of Roman soldier Panther and Mother Mary, she’s married to carpenter Joseph.
Mother Mary also has a child by Cyrus of Magdala who’s married to Eucharis – the child’s name, Mary Magdalene.
Jesus marries Mary Magdalene, akin to a legitimate half-sister. This incestuous relationship produces daughter Sophia.
Cyrus and Eucharis are the parents of Martha and Lazarus; their two offspring akin to a step-sister and step-brother of Jesus.
Had Jesus married Martha instead, there’d be a weaker blood connection in any offspring produced. But trouble still for sure.
So it’s clear that Saint Jerome gets it all wrong. There is no ‘original sin’ because of disobedience to God since in order to obey the command to be fruitful and multiply, Adam and Eve have to commit incest with their offspring.
Everlasting guilt comes out to play with them because they obey God’s command.
Adam can’t get pregnant so he’s got no choice in the matter – he presses on in the higher calling of the Lord, God given Adam the Devil’s reign.
The singer/songwriter puts on the mask of Adam in the song lyrics quoted beneath:
Oh what dear daughter beneath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him 'no'
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief
(Bob Dylan: Tears Of Rage ~ Dylan/Manuel)
Incest’s a problem for the authorities. As we have seen, they are out to ‘get’ Jesus and Magdalene in order to put an end to any strong blood-line-contender that would surely undermine the ‘rock’ that holds up the authority of the organized Church, that ‘rock’ being Saint Peter:
Aim well my little one
We may not make it through the night
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)
As the Code unravels, Christ (He’s a little confused I remember well) locks Magdalene inside the Sphinx, and hides out in Utah with their daughter.
There’s trouble ahead; trouble behind.
As she grows up, daughter Sophia, who’s got her mother’s eyes, and drinks champagne, becomes a prophet for a religion in Utah that proclaims Christ is coming soon to a theatre in Salt Lake City.
All Jesus wants is a few crumbs, and a place to hide.
Nevertheless, the singer/songwriter, well dressed in the colourful cloak of Jesus, is determined to be a good daddy to Mother Mary’s granddaughter.
As proclaimed in the song lyrics below:
Come fathers and mothers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize what you don't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
(Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A--Changing)
Now it gets tough. When I started writing this piece I couldn’t think of any cover version of “Blowin in the wind” that really stood out for me. And then searching around for cover versions that I might not know I found over 500 available. Which may seem like quite a few but that’s the iceberg on the tip of… or whatever the phrase is. There’s thousands of the things out there.
And worse (and this is of course just my opinion) most of them add absolutely nothing to the original. OK they might add strings or a female chorus, so in that sense they add, but in terms of the feeling one can get from the piece, or the depth of understanding, or the emotional experience… no there is nothing new.
But I started this series, and it would be ludicrous not to have a cover of Blowin’ so I started with the original from the Chad Mitchell Trio recorded in 1962.
So that’s how it was first seen – humming backing and plinky plink banjo, with strict tempo and standard, but perfectly executed harmonies. Yes that is how it used to be.
Now when we did a previous venture into Dylan covers, featuring those kindly submitted by Untold Dylan readers, we did have one that I remembered, and playing it again it still sounds good… I haven’t gone back to this for several years, but it really is refreshing and gives me new faith in musical arrangers.
So what I decided to do, in the absence of anything in my memory that made me say, “This is the greatest cover” was to pick out a few unusual versions of the song from modern times. Or at leat from the 21st century.
2003 delivered the String Quartet Tribute – which changed the key from the major to minor, which is interesting in itself. But then it suffers from the fact that the song is strophic (which is to say verse, verse, verse) and chordally based, so you end up with the chug chug chug effect of the chords, from which we are not released until the third verse.
2008 brought a guitar version of Pierre Van Dormael – by no means the first instrumental edition, but one that stands out for me because of the space it allows for us to appreciate the simple but highly effective representation of the chords without playing any.
2010 saw the song travel much further, and really you only have play a few seconds to know this is beyond any previous edge imagined for the song in times past. But I would beg you to stay with it at least for 30 seconds just to appreciate what is going on. This is one of the renditions that really does something for me – it honestly gives me insights into what there is in the piece which I never had before.
Moving forward a little more to 2013, as you’ll see from the cover of the album below this is a solo guitar. Even if by now you are getting a bit bored with all the oddities please do give this a chance – once again it takes us on a journey not imagined when Dylan wrote the original, but still one worth travelling.
And now 2018, which is what this whole meander has built up to – if a meander can ever be said to build up. This is a vocal version that really gives me something additional. The Mayries offer something so plaintive that I wonder how I could ever not have understood that this is how this song deserves to be played.
and to show that it is not a one off here are the ladies playing It ain’t me babe.
And because the whole of my country is gripped by the combination of a new outbreak of the pandemic and thoughts about Christmas I thought I would add this.
This ability to re-arrange and deliver performances of such simple elegance and beauty is a rare talent indeed. This of course isn’t Dylan – it’s a Joni Mitchell song, and I got here by chance. But that’s really what this is all about. Just having an after-lunch meander.
What else does one say during a pandemic? “I wish I had a river I could skate away on,” feels about right.
“Have you written any songs lately for any other artists to do, specifically for that artist? Or any of your old songs,” asks Jann Wenner during the Rolling Stone interview, November 1969.
“I wrote To Be Alone With You – that’s on Nashville Skyline – I wrote it for Jerry Lee Lewis. [Laughter] He was down there when we were listening to the playbacks, and he came in. He was recording an album next door. He listened to it… I think we sent him a dub. Peggy Day – I kind of had the Mills Brothers in mind when I did that one. [Laughter]”
Wenner adds “laughter” twice, apparently to indicate that both Dylan and his interviewer find the idea of Dylan writing something for Jerry Lee Lewis or something for the Mills Bothers a rather funny joke. Implying, of course, how absurd that would be. However, increased insight suggests that Wenner is either embellishing the written account of the interview with invented atmospheric descriptions after the fact, or that Wenner completely misjudges Dylan’s sincerity. The latter is more likely. It is more likely that Wenner is laughing in order to signal that he is sharp enough to recognise that Dylan is throwing a sarcastic side-swipe at Jerry Lee Lewis, and that Dylan is laughing along out of discomfort.
It seems to have escaped Wenner’s attention which corner Jerry Lee Lewis is in now, in 1969. The Killer has long since left Sun Records, has taken a different turn and in Nashville is fully immersing himself in pure, hardcore country. The album he records “next door” is the beautiful She Still Comes Around, an album filled with honky-tonk and tears-in-your-beer ballads like Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again”, like “Louisiana Man” and the title track with the brilliant full title “She Still Comes Around (To Love What’s Left of Me)”, which reaches the second spot on the country singles chart. And will later be played by fan Keith Richards, by the way, on a curious 1977 bootleg on which Keef accompanies himself surprisingly skilfully on piano;
https://youtu.be/i3QP05bApnA
The Killer’s love of country is as deep and intrinsic as Dylan’s. Before this record, Jerry Lee had already scored with his comeback album Another Place, Another Time, which earned him two Top 5 singles and even won the heart of country god George Jones. And after She Still Comes Around, the one he records while Dylan is recording Nashville Skyline next door, Jerry Lee stays in Nashville, for the time being. Still in this same year of 1969, he will release Sings the Country Music Hall of Fame Hits, Vol. 1 and Sings the Country Music Hall of Fame Hits, Vol. 2, albums that totally live up to their titles. “Oh, Lonesome Me”, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight”, “Jackson”, “Cold, Cold Heart”, “He’ll Have To Go”… they’re all on there, the landmarks of country, the songs that, one way or another, have all trickled into Dylan’s oeuvre.
In short, it is not at all absurd or laughable to go along with Dylan’s idea that “To Be Alone With You” would fit perfectly on the album The Killer is recording next door. But alas, apparently Lewis is not impressed. Or, more likely, he thinks the song’s content doesn’t fit in among all those tearjerkers on She Still Comes Around – after all, Dylan’s lyrics are rather cute and cloudless. Incidentally, Dylan’s anecdote seems to be contradicted by the stories surrounding “Rita May”, the first Dylan song Jerry Lee will record.
Ten years later, in 1979, The Killer enthusiastically returns to his rockabilly roots for another comeback album (Jerry Lee Lewis, with the hit “Rockin’ My Life Away”). Producer Bones Howe has Dylan under his skin. Apart from being from Minnesota too, Howe’s impressive career (Elvis, Mamas & Papas, Tom Waits) started with Dylan; his breakthrough as a producer is the 1965 hit he produced for The Turtles, Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe”. So, obviously, Bones has warm feelings for Bob Dylan. For Jerry Lee’s comeback, he proposes a bare-bones band (including Elvis’ guitarist James Burton), and takes care of a strong tracklist. Charlie Rich’s “Who Will The Next Fool Be”, for example, and Arthur Alexander’s “Every Day I Have To Cry”. And he nominates Dylan’s throwaway “Rita May” already at the first recording session, “a simple fifties rock thing” according to co-author Jacques Levy.
The song is a product of Dylan’s collaboration with Levy, the experiment that would lead to the world successes “Hurricane” and Desire (1976). Lewis slams “Rita May” on the tape with gusto and full commitment, and it’s only when he’s listening back that he remembers to ask producer Howe: “Say, who wrote this?” “Bob Dylan,” Howe replies, grinning, for he is sure that Lewis will be mighty surprised. But The Killer doesn’t seem to recognise the name at all. “That boy’s good,” Jerry Lee Lewis says, “I’ll do anything by him.”
This is January 1979, a little less than ten years after Jerry Lee, according to Dylan, has been listening to playbacks of “To Be Alone With You” with him, in the control room of Columbia Studio in Nashville. It doesn’t seem very likely that Dylan would make this up, in the interview with Wenner conducted eight months after that alleged meeting. More likely, The Killer has already forgotten that February 1969 interlude ten years later. Or, even more likely, that the name “Dylan” meant as little to him then as it does today, in January 1979. Anyway, Lewis’ highly quotable “I’ll do anything by him” is therefore pertinently incorrect – he was handed “To Be Alone With You” on a silver platter at the time, but he left the song uncommented on the studio floor.
Much later again, 35 years after that first Dylan cover to be precise, yet another skilful producer with Dylan roots takes care of yet another Jerry Lee Lewis comeback album. In 2014, Daniel Lanois produces Rock & Roll Time, a kind of return to the 1950s, to Sun Records. Like his predecessor Bones Howe, Lanois cleans out the studio and restricts himself to a basic rock ‘n’ roll band to accompany Jerry Lee (featuring Dylan drummer Jim Keltner), and like his predecessor Bones Howe, Lanois also nominates a Dylan throwaway from the 70s, which – history repeats itself – is picked up enthusiastically and wholeheartedly: Jerry Lewis Lee’s cover of Dylan’s “Stepchild” is exciting, heavy and swampy. And underlines once again that The Killer should have accepted Dylan’s “To Be Alone With You”. That boy is really good.
To be continued. Next up: To Be Alone With You part 3: Shadow Kingdom
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:
I can’t understand why there are so few cover versions of Black Diamond Bay around… although judging by the few that I have found this afternoon one reason might be that it’s a difficult song to perform. The renditions are ok, but nothing really shines out.
However there is one cover version that really, really ought to be better known and that is Jacques Levy’s own version with Jacques on piano. I have a feeling that this is the only recording available of him playing the song.
In fact I know that at one stage I had an email from a close relative of Jacques Levy, thanking me for digging this out, as he didn’t have a copy, and indeed didn’t even know of its existence.
Listen to the piano – it really is adventurous and reflects the fun of the lyrics.
And yes I know Mr Levy was co-composer, so it’s not really a 100% cover but this is so much fun I don’t really mind. I value this recording so much – not just because it is fun, but also because I really do think it is a great co-composition.
Meanwhile – if you are thinking of going to listen for any other versions of the song, unless I’ve missed something, I wouldn’t bother. The few that are out there, are ok, but really don’t say anything new, nor are they particularly entertaining.
According to the official site, Bob only performed it once in public – that in 1976 – but really listen to the piano and just think of the fun one can have with this. Ok it’s Levy and not Dylan, but still it is hilarious, original, excellently constructed, and well, just so enjoyable.
Aaron: If you’ve never seen Dylan’s 1986 VHS concert movie Hard To Handle you could do worse than find an hour in your day and settle down with Bob, Tom and the Heartbreaker boys and enjoy the whole thing here:
Aaron: But if you don’t have an hour let me and Tony present you with a 3 track highlight reel.
The show kicks off with a song for Bob’s “hero”, In The Garden.
Tony: In terms of the music this is one of the most extraordinary compositions by Dylan – I can’t think of anything that sounds like this. Taking a musical phrase and then repeating it a tone higher is unusual enough. But then to do it again is amazing.
And most amazing of all is that it works brilliantly. And in case you are a musician and this means something to you, just look at this (source Eyolf Østrem)
B F# G#m G+
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
Cm G+ Eb F
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
G C/g G7 C/g
Did they know He was the Son of God, did they know that He was Lord?
G C/g G7 C/g
Did they hear when He told Peter, "Peter, put up your sword"?
A D/a A7 D/a
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
B E/b B7 E/b
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
F# B/f# F#
It really is an extraordinary piece of writing, and delivered with absolute conviction – and really unusually for Dylan out of the six lines of lyrics, four of them are identical – which shows just how much the song relies on the music. When you think of this, it is the absolute reversal of normal Dylan, where we get musical lines repeated but the lyrics change. A one-off oddity, but no less powerful for that.
Aaron: The acoustic section of the show contains an extraordinary version of It’s Alright Ma
Tony: Again an incredibly powerful performance and the only thing that puts me off this version is the delivery of the lyrics at the start – but fortunately Dylan does move the melody on (or maybe I should say, recovers the melody). However, this is a trivial comment in the face of an incredibly dramatic version of the song delivered so fast that I felt utterly blown away. And I love the way he suddenly puts in pauses in the lines – there seems no reason, it just happens. Maybe he just runs out of breath.
I really don’t think there is another performance like this – no hold on, having written that I am sure there is. It is just that I don’t have a good enough memory to transport myself away from this performance back to another one. I just want to enjoy this. It is amazing.
Aaron: I could have picked any track from the rest but I’ll finish off with I’ll Remember You
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mww_Q9h2eTY
Tony: This is something of a rarity in my view, as Bob really looks as if he is meaning the lyrics while performing – normally I feel that the music takes him over rather than him thinking of the lyrics. But not this time.
OK I am now going to settle down and watch the whole production. Thank Aaron, certainly not for the first time, I am totally indebted to you for what you have come up with.
Aaron: As one of very few home movies released by Bob over the years it’s a damn shame they never upgraded the vhs to DVD or Blu-Ray but at least we have the YouTube version to enjoy whenever you want!
The list of previous episodes is to be found at the end of the article.
Of course that comment in the title that “it’s more fun than you might recall” is just my opinion, but it is a fact that I never really thought much of “Black Crow Blues” when first released on “Another Side”. It sounded to me like a quickly written filler for the album.
But obviously, what do I know? That comment is probably more a reflection on what I would have done, and besides maybe it is an important art work and the piano has to sound like that. Anyway, it’s not an issue that has bothered me that much and I’m not sure too many other people have written in pointing out the artistic merits of the piece.
If you haven’t got a copy of Another Side, and you want to remind yourself of just what the original was like, it is of course on Spotify, but beware, the other songs of the same title on Spotify are not Dylan’s Black Crows.
But if you ain’t got Spotify or can’t be arsed to search, you could go to this link and scroll down to the word “Description” and there it is – you can play it to your heart’s content.
And there is a second Dylan version here… and I much prefer this….
So, now we are all up to speed, what about the covers? I hear you demand.
There are actually very few (in fact just one that is playable) which is why I have been taking up your time with Dylanistic versions. But now we have been through it all, here’s the only cover version I know.
Now that performance really can get me listening to the old 12 bar blues again.
Per Frost don’t seem to have a website per se (at least the old one that I know about appears to have vanished into the stratosphere) but they do have a Facebook page
Links to all the previous articles in the series are given at the end. And here is the list of cover versions from those articles… after which is today’s episode
Jesus, personified by singer/songwriter Bob Dylan as the narrator in the following song, runs away with His daughter, and travels all the way to Utah.
The original lyrics are pieced together from fragments found in the Holy Grail, now stored in the Archives Department of the Dylan Untold Corporation.
No wonder sad-eyed Jesus decides to drift over the Atlantic Ocean with blanketed Sophia Sarah wrapped up in His arms.
As evidenced in the following pieced-together song lyrics:
God said, "Christ, kill me your daughter"
Jesus say, "Man, you can't mean slaughter'er?"
God say, "No"; Jesus say, "What?"
God say, "You can do want you want, son
But the next time you see me coming, you better run"
(Bob Dylan: Highway LXI Revisited)
It’s quite obvious for those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, that clues to the solution of the Dylavinci Code are spread throughout many of the songs by Bob Dylan, whether old, new, or reworked, wherein the narrator thereof often takes on the persona of Jesus Christ.
Or the lyrics reference John the Baptist, as Kees de Graaf points out.
The Baptist calls Christ the sacrificial "Lamb of God":
The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him
And saith, "Behold the Lamb of God
Which taketh away the sin of the world"
(John 1: 29)
Jesus rebels; decides to save his daughter Sophia from such a fate, evidenced by the lines below:
I don't complain, what I need is control
To gain the whole world, and give up my soul
I ain't going to hell for anybody
Not for father, not for mother
Not for sister, not for brother
No way
(Bob Dylan: Ain't Going To Hell For Anybody)
No way, Jose.
Not for father Roman soldier Panther; nor for mother Saint Mary; nor for sister Mary Magdalene; and certainly not for brother Lazarus.
The list of previous episodes is to be found at the end of the article.
If you have been paying attention you’ll know by now that the cover versions I am choosing are the ones that offer something new to the understanding of the song, or simply offer a different level of entertainment.
So I listen for different accompaniments, a new style of vocal delivery, that sort of thing. And yes for Blind Willie, Chrissie Hynde certainly delivers. And it’s not just her vocal delivery, it is the accompaniment which evolves during the course of the performance.
Magnificent.
And then of course as you listen to the second cover that one has to be different not just from Dylan’s version but also the previous cover. This second one took me by surprise at the start because I had enjoyed Chrissie Hynde’s reworking of the song so much. But Patterson Hood and Jay Gonzalez don’t disappoint because although they have the same sort of vision as the version above they go elsewhere – and that’s really what I want.
The integrity of the song remains but the notion of what we have within the song changes. This is exquisite.
There are a number of other versions that base their interpretation on the slowing down of the song just about as far as it can go, but I’ll end today with one that give us a bit of speed and beat.
Of course it all depends on your taste and why you are listening. I explore these for the fun of hearing where the original piece takes different musicians and producers. I can only hope you find a reason for listening – and perhaps even returning to the series tomorrow.
This final version I stumbled on by chance and it was a refreshing moment after the dedication within the two songs above. I don’t know if the end is meant to be like that – but still, up to that point, it’s fun.
Untold reader “AJD” has sent me an email containing a link to a concert of Dylan covers. Which as you may note is highly relevant since you will have seen, if you have been paying attention, we’ve been running “Dylan Cover the Day” for the past week or so.
And as a result, Andrew has written in to Untold with this note…
“I’m really enjoying the Dylan covers. I thought I’d reach out to let you know of one that is simply an amazing piece of work. My wife and I were floored by this, but I’ll let it speak for itself.”
And having listened to the concert I can see why.
So I thought it would be churlish just to run this as another in the series of Dylan covers – it certainly needs a billing of its own.
Below the link to the concert, there is the concert agenda, with each song performed by a different artist. I would strongly recommend you listen, even if not every rendition is to your taste and you skip forward to the next.
This really constitutes a refreshing insight into what solo performers and duos can bring to songs that we have all heard so many times before. Here are the songs covered… With a bit of luck you’ll find the links on the left take you to the start of each track – each by a different artist.
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:
