Untold Dylan

by Jochen Markhorst

Dylan does not only get under the skin of David Gilmour and Syd Barrett. Drummer Nick Mason counts Dylan, just like Gilmour does in Desert Island Discs, among his all-time favourites, when Jools Holland asks him in 2020 to compile a Top 5 for a radio broadcast of Later… With Jools Holland. Mason calls Dylan “still the greatest songwriter in rock music history” and chooses The Freewheelin’ as number 1 in his Classic Albums Top 5. “There’s an abstraction to some of them,” Nick explains, “that means that you can interpret them in the way it means the most to you. I think that’s one of the great skills of great songwriting.” But equally remarkable he considers the fact that Dylan often gets behind the wheel of the tour bus himself.

Mason: He does like touring and actually driving the bus.
Holland: So why does he do that, then?
Mason: Well, I never actually had the opportunity to ask him, but it’s not something that ever appealed to me.
Holland: Has he got a passenger service vehicle license?
Mason: I haven’t checked his credentials, I’m afraid. But it’s obviously something we should do, straight after the show.

More explicit and, as always, unambiguous about Dylan’s influence is Roger Waters. When he is the castaway in Desert Island Discs in May 2011, he still pays his respects in the well-known clichés (“Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan were the two men who allowed us to believe that there was an open door between poetry and song lyrics”), but eight months later, in January 2012 in the radio studio of Howard Stern, he does not shy away from the Big Words, bordering on melodrama:

“Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands sort of changed my life. When I heard that, I thought, if Bob can do it, I can do it. It’s twenty minutes long. It’s a whole album. And in no way gets dull or boring, or anything. You just get more and more engrossed, it just gets more and more hypnotic, the longer it goes on.”

With which Waters quite specifically defines Dylan’s influence on Pink Floyd: the courage to deviate from three-minute songs, to let songs expand into whole album sides (okay, Sad-Eyed lasts a little over 11 minutes, not “twenty minutes”, but still a whole album side), and the encouragement to allow poetry into song lyrics.

Opinions differ as to the poetic qualities of Waters’ lyrics, but we can at least agree that the Pink Floyd catalogue contains a considerable number of exceptionally successful one-liners. There’s someone in my head but it’s not me (“Brain Damage”), “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, sometimes even with a Dylanesque quality: “So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell?” for instance (“Wish You Were Here”) or

You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb
That hill in my own way.
Just wait a while for the right day.
And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds
I look down, hearing the sound of the things you've said today
(“Fearless”, 1971)

Although the most Dylanesque verse was not written by Roger Waters, but by Rick Wright, for that heart-breakingly beautiful opening to “Summer of ’68”:

Would you like to say something before you leave
Perhaps you'd care to state exactly how you feel
We said goodbye before we said hello
I hardly even like you, I shouldn't care at all
We met just six hours ago, the music was too loud
From your bed I gained a day and lost a bloody year

The one time we hear Pink Floyd in a Dylan song, it is – of course – not due to some Floydian poetry in the song lyrics. “Can’t Wait” is a beautiful song, and the lyrics are larded with shiny, Dylan-worthy one-liners, but in essence the lyrics are not that spectacular; a classic blues lament of a rather desperate man tangled up in a one-way love – the lady apparently finds him much less desirable than he does her. Large parts of the text are interchangeable. Literally; in the three officially released versions (on Time Out Of Mind and on Tell Tale Signs) and in the live versions, it’s a coming and going of verse lines, some moving to other songs (Well, my back is to the sun because the light is too intense moves eventually to “Sugar Baby”, for instance) and really only the opening (I can’t wait / Wait for you to change your mind) is fixed in all versions.

The tone does shift, though; in the final album version it is desperate and sombre, as illustrated by the closing words:

Well I'm strollin' through the lonely graveyard of my mind
I left my life with you somewhere back there along the line
I thought somehow that I would be spared this fate
I don't know how much longer I can wait

…in other versions the tone is reproachful, such as:

Loneliness around me diggin’ at me like a ray
What a piece of work she is to cause my heart to pray
I thought somehow that I'd be spared this fate
And I don't know how much longer I can wait.

That’s what Dylan sings in “Alternate version #2”, the second version that can be found on Tell Tale Signs. Which is also the version that for the sake of convenience is called the “psychedelic version”, but would even more deserve the nickname “the Pink Floyd version” – on account of the arrangement, obviously. And there we have it – the one time Pink Floyd shines through in a Dylan song.

From the first bar, it is unmistakable: “Us And Them”. Same organ sound, half a tone higher, identical, mesmerizing larghissimo tempo. Drums and hypnotic bass as subdued and tasteful as in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Breathe”. And the guitar parts adapt almost automatically to the Floyd mode; sharp, guiding accents like in “Echoes” and “Money”, and as a bonus a slide guitar with the unsurpassed elegance as Gilmour plays in classics like “Breathe”, “Us And Them” and especially “The Great Gig In The Sky”. Incomparable, at any rate, with the mosaic parts Lanois puzzles together on the album version and the Dr. John/New Orleans voodoo vibe he puts underneath. Or with the Chicago/Albert King’s “Stormy Monday” colouring of “Alternate version #1” on Tell Tale Signs.

The same goes for the many, many arrangements Dylan chooses in the many, many live performances of “Can’t Wait”. I’m looking for anything that will bring a happy glow, as Dylan sings. Colours and sounds from every corner of the canon, but never again does Dylan switch back to the engrossing, hypnotic (in Roger Waters’ words) cadence and colouring of that one time Pink Floyd penetrated a Dylan song.

A pity, perhaps. But comparing the restless shuffling with accents, verse fragments and arrangements is a fascinating consolation. What Tony Attwood demonstrates in his article exploring the arrangements of the live versions.Tony does have the credentials to do so, by the way. A song arrangement exploration license, so to speak.

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978

• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (part I)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part III)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part V)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More  Mythologies (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking up more mythologies (Part VIII)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IX)

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan has a black sense of humour from which the Holy Bible does not escape:

And Adam said, "This is the bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh
She shall be called 'Woman'
Because she was taken out of Man
(Genesis 2: 23)

More often than not the persona in the double-edged lyrics of Bob Dylan addresses a modern day obedient Eve-like woman, telling her to keep him out of economic and/or sexual frustrating situations rather than making an address to a modern-day independent Lilith-like woman by whom he does not want to be led down to money, and/or carnal woes:

Come to me mama
Ease my money crisis now
Yes, come to me
Ease my money crises now
I need something to support me
And only you know how
(Chronicles: Money Blues ~ Dylan/Levy)

Often Eve’s to serve as a Muse for artistic inspiration in whatever way she can:

Mother of Muses, unleash your wrath
Things I can't see are blocking my path
Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate
Put Mr upright, make me walk straight
Forget get my identity from the inside out
You know what I'mean talking about
(Bob Dylan: Mother Of Muses)

Lilith, Adam’s “screech owl” first wife, flies off, but Eve knows her place in Eden:

Oh, well I love you, pretty baby
You're the only one I've ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my own
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

Seems all is well until every thing is broken. That old Devil, hiding in the trees, shows Eve his snake-like appendage, and she apparently becomes as bad as Lilith:

The window open, African trees
Bent over backwards like a hurricane breeze
Not a word of a goodbye, not even a note
She gone with the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: Man In The Long Black Coat)

For sure history is repeating itself:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food
And that it was pleasant to the eye
And a tree to be desired to make one wise
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat
And gave also to her husband with her
And he did eat
(Genesis 3: 6)

There’s those damned Egyptains with penises the size if donkey’s:

Yet she multiplied her whoredoms
In calling to remembrance the days of her youth
Wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt
For she doted upon their paramours
Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses
And whose issue is like the issue of horses

(Ezekiel 23: 19, 20)

Little wonder the narrator in the following song says that the size of the Devil’s appendage, who ever he may be, doesn’t matter:

Black Rider,  Black Rider, hold it right there
The size of your cock will get you nowhere
I'll suffer in silence, I'll not make a sound
Maybe I'll take the high moral ground
Some enchanted evening, I'll sing you are song
Black Rider, Black Rider, you'very been on the job too long
(Bob Dylan: Black Rider)

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

On this website we look at cover versions of Dylan songs in two ways.  One is simply by listing covers that we enjoy, song by song as in: Covers of Dylan songs

The other is via  Beautiful Obscurity in which we consider the covers in more depth.  In this series Aaron picks the cover versions and Tony, on the other side of the Atlantic, writes a commentary as the music plays (to stop him getting too pretentious and looking stuff up, and going on and on and on…).  The rule is the writing must finish by the time the performance stops.

Today, it’s Just Like a Woman.  Aaron’s provided the list as ever, but this time left no clues for me (Tony) so the rest of this article is just my ramble…

Jeff Buckley

I have to admit “Just like” has never been one of my favourite Dylan songs.  I think it’s the chorus that I can’t link to, and the opening line doesn’t endear me to the song.  It’s the notion of just pointing at a desperate broken young lady and not offering to help that I can’t take.

But this this… I’ve never heard it before, and the guitar introduction leaves me quite unsure where it is going, but I certainly want to know… and the opening of the vocal just bemuses me.   Listening, I am a struck by the incredible creativity that pours out for Jeff Buckley.  What a stunning musical talent – and all that talent lost at the age of 30.  What could he have given the world if only he could have survived.

I don’t only mean the performance here, but the conception of the musical approach in the first place.  It is quite utterly overwhelming.   When we get to the middle 8 (“…from the first”) I really didn’t know what to expect.

The only downside is that knowing what happened to Mr Buckley adds to the pain expressed in the song, and there’s only so much pain I can take each morning before my second cup of coffee.

Richie Havens

Now that is a contrast – just listen to the introductory bars of music and you know it is going be a completely different interpretation.  And not for the first time I am struck by how amazing it must be to be a composer such as Dylan having musicians of such merit turning up all the time, re-working your music.  I wonder what he thinks of it all – if he listens to that much, that is.

For me the rhythm from the guitar is a little too bouncy – it works at times – but the lyrics are so dark – I mean this is a song which has as its opening line “Nobody feels any pain” and somewhat later “With her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls” and then again

And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse is this pain in here
I can't stay in here

No, in the end I find the instruments clashing, not in the notes but the rhythm.  Nearly, but not really for me.

Hugh Montenegro

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbu0F15C8Ek

OK so I have started each time writing about the opening instrumental work, and here for a second or two I think, yes this is going to be the one that wakens my desire to hear this song, but ohhhhhhhh by the time we get to that bouncy chorus…. No!!!!  Are we supposed to be bopping along with the ladies singing in the background????

The lyrics don’t reflect this sort of emotion at all.   “Yes she takes…” bouncy bouncy bouncy.  No I can’t imagine what the arranger was thinking about – unless really he or she had no idea about what the lyrics mean.

And then when the middle 8 happens I was utterly, totally, flabbergasted.  Surely this must be a joke in the most appalling of all tastes.  Sorry I had to stop the track playing.  It is too awful.  Not because the music is bad or out of time, or anything like that, but it has no feeling at all in any direction in relation to the lyrics.

Joe Cocker

That’s one hell of a picture on the cover!  And the music…  it starts ok and Joe’s voice is well suited to this and it sounds like he has understood what is in the lyrics here.  This is a woman in a state of turmoil and collapse we are hearing about here, and I don’t think this is the time to be showing off what one’s voice can do or how clever the arranger is.

And to my relief Joe, who can in my view occasionally go a step too far, keeps himself well under control.

I suppose my problem with some versions is that the pain and collapse of the woman in the song is used as an excuse for a quick bout of “look at me listen to me, aren’t I wonderful?” and for me that won’t do.   Of course that is just my view, but it seems rather strongly fixed inside my mind.

Bill Medley

But now at last I am immediately drawn to this by the simple but brilliantly performed accompaniment, and the vocal kept under control.  Yes Bill Medley has actually listened to the lyrics and understands what they are saying.

He seems to me to be singing as the outsider looking in, without being able to do anything and without any blame.  Just neutral observation from without.

I love the simplicity and quality combined here, and I find myself listening in the desperate hope that Bill doesn’t get carried away into showing off his stunning qualities as a musician.  But no, he knows far too much about music to get taken down that false road.  He shows us what he can do, but not too much, not too far.   That’s the version for me – unless Rod Stewart can go further (which I doubt, but of course I will listen).

Rod Stewart

I take it he is miming for a pop video as they used to do, so I stopped worrying about the video which I felt was pretty awful with Mr Stewart’s moving about for no reason whatsoever.

Musically I felt he, and the producers, were only interested in him, not in the music.

“Anyone got a song we can do?”

“How about ‘Just like a woman’?”

“Yeah ok, try it in G shall we?”

First run through over.  Director says, “Hey Rod can you move around more?”

———————-

But Bill Medley and Jeff Buckley: brilliant.  Still not a song I want to be drawn to, but if I am going to listen, it will be those two.

by Jochen Markhorst

I           That dog song

In the connection between Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd, there seems to be a well working diode; the current only goes in one direction. From Dylan to Pink Floyd, that is. And the current already flows even before Pink Floyd exists: somewhere at the end of ’64, beginning of ’65 the founder of the band, crazy diamond Syd Barrett, writes his “Bob Dylan Blues”. We know the background to this almost lost song thanks to then girlfriend Libby Gausden. On the fansite sydbarrett.com, Libby is kind enough to release parts of Syd’s letters:

“I have written a song about Bob Dylan. Yeh! Yeh! Soul, God, etc. It starts off I got the Bob Dylan blues and the Bob Dylan shoes and my hair an’ my clothes in a mess but you know I just couldn’t care less. In fact a bit satirical and humorous. Ho! Ha! Hee! Tee! for Syd.”

And Libby also tells about the background; how Syd took her to a Dylan concert in London in May ’64; how fond they both were of The Freewheelin’, The Times and Another Side; how Syd’s eyes began to sparkle when she had her hair bubbled (“done in that image of Dylan on the cover of ‘Blonde on Blonde’, which we had endlessly listened to, and identified with”) and how glad she was that David Gilmour still had the song on tape somewhere.

The song was recorded in 1970, on the second day of recording for Barrett, Syd’s second and last solo album. After that, the song was lost for years, and was eventually found in the garage of producer and guitarist Gilmour. “I probably took it away to have a listen and simply forgot to take it back. It wasn’t intended to be a final mix. Syd knocked it off, I took a tape home.” When he finds it back, some thirty years later, it is a welcome enhancement to the 2001 compilation The Best of Syd Barrett: Wouldn’t You Miss Me? With Gilmour’s comment: “Bob Dylan Blues is a bit of fun. He was quite a Dylan fan, though there was a bit of jealousy there, too.”

“A bit of fun” is a good description, indeed. Loosely based on the melody and chords of “Chimes Of Freedom”, references to “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “Masters Of War”, “I Shall Be Free #10”, and in the title, obviously, and the song is mainly what the title promises: a tribute.

Gilmour was also hooked on Dylan at the time of Syd’s song conception. Way before Syd even, if we should choose to believe him in the BBC documentary Wider Horizons, March 2016 (and we may, up to a certain point). His parents have moved to New York for work, he tells us, to Greenwich Village (“They could see the end of Bleecker Street out of their window”) and also support their son’s musical dreams from a distance: “I got Bob Dylan’s first record for my sixteenth birthday, which they sent me from Greenwich Village.” Which can’t be entirely true… Gilmour turned sixteen on 6 March 1962, thirteen days before Dylan’s first album was released. He must mean a seventeenth or an eighteenth birthday then.

The Dylan love, however, is real and lasting. When he is the castaway in BBC 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2003, Gilmour calls Dylan “fabulous” and “wonderful”, and his second Desert Island choice is a Dylan song, though a surprising one: “Ballad In Plain D”. “I’ve lived through a lot of his heavy protest stuff. This was another side I’m very keen on, this sort of love song approach.”

In the trailer for the unreleased Italian documentary Who’s Ever Met Bob (2012), people like Bernardo Bertolucci, Pretty Thing Phil May and Joe Boyd talk about their encounters with Bob Dylan. Dream Academy frontman Nick Laird-Clowes tells how he and David Gilmour were admitted to the dressing room just before a gig in London, presumably sometime in the 1990s.

“There’s Bob. Seeing David – he doesn’t know who I am – seeing David coming towards him, he’s trying to get his silver lame trousers over his motorcycle boots, and you could see it’s a thankless task, they are much too… ah! And then he sees us and he launches himself towards us, trips as he comes and it’s like my God he’s gonna break his arm! […] And then we stand, and he suddenly says: Hey Dave, I love that dog song. And David says: Dog song, Bob? What dog song? I say: Dogs Of War, your song! And he goes: Ah, thanks Bob. And Bob says: We should really write together sometime. “Yeah”. And then Bob goes: I better get ready for the show but it’s great you guys stopped by. And we say: Sure! We shake him by the hand. He squints up at us, and we leave.”

David Gilmour also speaks in the same documentary, and the interviewer comes back to that story of Nick Laird-Clowes. Gilmour remembers, and remains, as usual, modest:

And he liked Dogs Of War very much?
So he said, yeah.
So it’s like mutual fans. You’re fan of his, and he’s fan of yours
Well, I don’t know if he is. But he certainly… he seems remarkably well-informed.

It’s a bit hard to imagine. “Dogs Of War” (1988) is a fairly archetypal Pink Floyd song, not particularly loved by fans, and in many ways a kind of “Money” rip-off. But then again, content-wise the lyrics are a clone of Dylan’s “Masters Of War”, and the basis of the music is a pretty successful variation on the structure of a twelve-bar blues in minor (Gilmour goes from C minor to E flat minor rather than F minor) – both pillars could appeal to Dylan indeed. In addition, Dylan often expresses dissenting, highly unorthodox preferences, such as in the 2020 New York Times interview, in which he qualifies The Eagles’ “Pretty Maids All In A Row” as “that could be one of the best songs ever”.

Still, other candidates do seem more obvious. Dylan compliments “that dog song” and Laird-Clowes hastily fills in for Gilmour: “He means Dogs Of War!” That is quite questionable. For one, it’s pretty unlikely that the “remarkably well-informed” Dylan, with his uncanny memory for songs, would recall the striking title of a recent song like “Dogs Of War” as that dog song. A better candidate is already “Dogs” (from Animals, 1977), but Pink Floyd’s only real dog song is the most obvious: “Seamus”, the funny little throwaway that closes side 1 of Meddle (1971).

Just as reviled by the fans, but for the non-Pink Floyd fan a charming country blues, and for the dog lover (as Dylan is) a witty leading role for the howling of Steve Marriott’s border collie Seamus – by all standards a ditty that Dylan would remember a quarter of a century later, and which he would quite possibly remember as that dog song.

Too generic, though, to be qualifiable for an upgrade to influential song. That, Pink Floyd influence on a Dylan song, is really only indisputable one single time: on the rejected “Can’t Wait”, alternate version No. 2, which can be found on CD3 of the DeLuxe Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, illustrating the one single time when the diode falters and the current flows in the other direction:

By the way, the Live at Pompeii version of “Seamus” is re-titled “Mademoiselle Nobs” because the howling is now done by the beautiful, white Russian wolfhound Nobs. In a drastically changed arrangement, with David Gilmour on harmonica. “He’d introduced the harmonica,” says Gilmour in that same trailer, “not, obviously, as a new instrument, but a new way of using the harmonica.” In this particular song, Gilmour’s approach is quite traditional, though.

To be continued. Next up: Can’t Wait part 2: Has he got a passenger service vehicle license?

——————-

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978

by Larry Fyffe

First, a little Poe-try:

Ring them bells ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams
For they're deep, and they're wide
And the world is on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride
(Bob Dylan: Ring Them Bells)

In friendly competition with the Auto/Biographical School Of Dylanology, as the name Sound School suggests, it’s the rhyme and rhythm of the music and the words of the oft fragmented songs of Bob Dylan that analysts thereof ought to focus on rather than on a search for any plausible, unified meaning contained therein, whether it’s literal, figurative, symbolic, or whatever.

It follows that the main criticism of this school of sound is the tendency to ignore meaning within the lyrics, of the words. Said by some critics that its advocates get rather tangled up in their determination to uphold this ‘sound’ approach; that is, the focus on the flow and rhythm of the words and music of the song.

So you might find such an analyst of Dylan’s fragmented “Ring Them Bells” asserting that if one searches for meaning in the lyrics, just as soon as you come up with a reasonable explanation for an allusion, such as the ‘chosen few’, one is immediately confounded by another that pops up, like the bride that runs backwards.

On the other hand, a critic of the school might point out that if the line about the bride is considered a creatively revised rendition of the Red Queen running fast just to stay in one place from “Alice Through The Looking Glass”, then a plausible and unitary meaning can be proffered without much trouble; though on guard an interpreter must be since the singer/songwriter loves to throw in a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t appear to fit in order to divert the hunting hounds from the track.

The demand by this structuralist school, the Sound one, that a piece of art should have a unified meaning results in its advocates throwing their hands in the air upon examining  fragmented songs by Bob Dylan that certainly appear at first hearing not to have one. So say critics about this school.

Continue some of these critics of the Sound School that there are “Sounders” who go so far as to insist that the fragmented lyrics, or at least parts thereof, simply do not make any sense at all, are nonsense, with any plausible meaning displaced by the demands of rhythm and rhyme.

Rather the critics say that the inclusion of references to figures such as Martha, and to Saint Cartherine in ‘Ring Them Bells’ are there to show that the song is no less confusing than the Holy Bible, and accompanying extra-biblical lore. Sweet Martha, whose brother is revived by Jesus considered to be Mary Magdalene’s sister by some religious interpreters, but not so by others; Catherine, claimed to survive torture on a Roman wheel by it breaking apart with absolutely no hard historical evidence that  such an event ever happened.

That the ‘bells’ worn on the hems of their garments perhaps be  metonymy for the High Priests of the ‘chosen few’. Friedrich

Nietzsche breaks down the distance between right and wrong;  says those ruled speak of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the rulers of ‘good’ and ‘bad’; priests act as middle men who work both sides of the street – which side depends on the social and economic circumstances of the time.

Critics note that Bob Dylan is using a Postmodern literary technique that relies on word associations, like metonymy and allusion, associations picked up by informed listeners to the song, and unconsciously by others, or not at all.

I’d argue that Dylan himself is not a Postmodernist per se, but a “poststructuralist” who believes that there is a ‘higher order” in an apparently uncaring Cosmos that can be tapped into through studying different sources and points of view that seek to give meaning and purpose to the human condition.

The index to all the Never Ending Tour articles is to be found here.

The previous article in the series was NET, 1999, part 6. Honky Tonk Dylan: Despair and sentimentality.

—————–

By Mike Johnson (kiwipoet)

Dylan surged into the new millennium on the back of a year of powerful performances. Most commentators agree that 1999 was an outstanding year for the NET, and I wouldn’t disagree, but, to my ear, 2000 was even stronger. We find some extraordinary and unparalleled performances in 2000, and I’m prepared to stick my neck out and say that some of these performances are Dylan’s best ever, and I’ll do my best to prove it.

Take that mysterious song, ‘Gates of Eden’ which we have been following since the angry, electric version of 1988. (As a comparison, readers might like to check it out at NET, 1988, part 1 ). But no subsequent performance is as exquisitely spooky as this one. Whenever I want to hear this song, I play this.  It has a sense of spaciousness, and something very ancient. I wrote about this performance in my Master Harpist series, and here is what I said (Master harpist 2, slightly adapted):

‘There has always been a Celtic feel to ‘Gates of Eden’, and never more so than in this warmly received 2000 performance. At first I didn’t quite understand what I was hearing when he began to blow the harp. A low wailing sound away in the Celtic mists, maybe like the lonely sound of a bagpipe playing a single moaning note over an ancient battlefield:

‘Of war and peace The truth just twists Its curfew gull just glides’

Then it falls into place. It’s the harmonica! and what a haunting edge it gives the song. More fey sounds, friends! At first I thought it might be under recorded, but on reflection the balance is just right; the harmonica is supposed to be heard behind the sound, to creep up on us from a distance, a musical lament on the human condition.

It is said that Dylan ignores his audience. Not true. In this performance he’s playing the audience as much as the song. You can hear the magic that can spring up between audience and performer.’

If you’ve never heard this, you’re in for a treat. Prepare to be transported to some other time and place. (Sorry, I’ve lost the date of this performance.)

Gates of Eden

Note the way Dylan uses his voice, his greatest instrument. He can make it soft and gentle, soft and spooky, dark and low; he can roughen it, make it high and harsh – he can wring the emotion out of the song while holding a steady control and sense of restraint. A master vocalist is Bob Dylan.

He pulls off the same thing with ‘Girl from the North Country’, another old favourite of Dylan’s which we’ve heard many times. But we’ve never quite heard it like this. I can go back over the previous years of the NET, tuning into this song, but I can’t find anything that matches this. Again, I wrote about this performance in Master harpist 2:

‘Girl from the North Country’ is one of the purest of Dylan’s love songs; I mean untouched by bitterness, or back-biting, or some like sting in the tail. But it can be given a very nostalgic spin, or driven to a lumbering, maudlin weariness as in Dylan and Johnny Cash’s duet version. In the following performance, the mood is upbeat, and while the vocal is sensitive and restrained, the bouncy harmonica solo at the end lifts the song into a celebration. It’s a perky, jazzy, cheeky performance, and the audience loves it.’

Girl from the North Country

From sadness to celebration, from reflection to joy, from stillness to dancing; the huge potential of that little three minute song from 1963 is fully realized here. I have to take my hat off to Sexton and Campbell for their imaginative backing guitar work, and to Tony Garnier’s bow playing on the double bass which gives the opening bars a dark undertone.

What we’ve been hearing is the folk Dylan, and the voice he’s evolved for singing his old acoustic songs. But there is another Dylan, the rock Dylan, and he requires a different kind of voice, more snarly and powerful. And with that downsinging (dropping the voice at the end of the line) used so effectively, we come close to the more sinister tones Dylan used on Blonde on Blonde, or at least that resonance is there. Things can very quickly take a nasty turn, as we’ll hear on these performances of ‘Things have Changed’.

Dylan wrote Time Out of Mind in a burst, and didn’t write another song until 1999, and that was ‘Things have Changed’, released in May 2000. The song, written for the film Wonder Boys was an immediate hit, and was to win Dylan an Academy Award, and the Golden Globe Award, in 2001. Dylan was delighted with the win, and congratulated the Academy Award judges for being ‘bold enough to give me this award for this song, which is a song that doesn’t pussyfoot around or turn a blind eye to human nature.’

According to Wikipedia, ‘Brian Hiatt, writing in Rolling Stone, where the song placed first on a 2020 list of “The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century”, saw it as a stylistic about-face from 1997’s Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind and the beginning of an important new chapter in Dylan’s career: “The effortless feel of the playful-yet-ominous, hard-grooving, utterly dazzling ‘Things Have Changed’ was an early indication of the renewed friskiness of Dylan’s 21st-century work — and the vividly live-in-the studio creations he would achieve as his own producer, with the help of engineer Chris Shaw”’.

I’m not sure that Hiatt’s last comment is quite accurate, as Dylan was experimenting with ‘live in studio creations’ for Time out of Mind in an attempt to recreate the sound of the old Sun records, and in fact most of Dylan’s albums are created ‘live in the studio’, but he is right in that the sound Dylan created for the song is far from the echoey sound of Time out of Mind and much more like what he will create on “Love and Theft’ in 2001. With this song, Dylan became his own producer, Jack Frost.

It is a song which takes us to the edge of the abyss. But should the song be taken as a purely personal expression? I don’t think so. Dylan’s tendency to write dramatic monologues confounds attempts to ascribe personal meanings to his songs. That is particularly so in this case, as the song’s point of view is ostensibly that of Grady Tripp, a character in Wonder Boys. The references to ‘dancing lessons’, ‘the jitterbug rag’ and dressing ‘in drag’, all relate back to the character of Tripp.

However, the relish with which he delivers the refrain, ‘I used to care but things have changed’, and those lyrics themselves, have given rise to the simplistic view that Dylan, once the passionate protester, doesn’t care anymore. He’s given up. But that’s far from true as the song itself, and the subsequent album Love and Theft testifies. The apocalypse is freaking the 59 year old Dylan as much as it did the 22 year old who wrote ‘Hard Rain’, it just has a more zany, absurdist expression. The song is bursting with energy, an exuberant despair, if we can call it that.

‘I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed’

Twenty years on, and people are even crazier, and the times are even stranger, so the song is just as potent now as it was then, perhaps more so. With months of lockdown and social isolation in many countries, a lot of people have felt ‘locked in tight and out of range’.

Tony Attwood notes the connection between this song and TS Eliot’s poem ‘The love song of J Alfred Prufrock’ . I see another Eliot connection, to his play Murder in the Cathedral: ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’.

There’s a devil-may-care, throw away feel to the song, but the lyrics are precision tooled for the job.

For sheer vocal power, it’s hard to get past this performance from London (6^th October). Sustained notes, hints of vibrato, subtle downsinging, surges of volume, going from the familiar nasal twang to full throat – that voice holds the performance all the way through, speeding us through the lyrics without breaking a sweat.

Things have changed

We get a sharper feel, however, from this performance (19^th Oct, Newcastle). It might be the recording, but it sounds to me like Dylan is giving the song harsher treatment. I think I prefer this version as more unsettlingly ‘not turning a blind eye’ as Dylan put it.

Things have changed 

One more for luck. This one from Anaheim (10^th March); further vocal variations and emotional nuances.

Things have changed 

It was, however, the performances of songs from Time out of Mind that we hear Dylan’s most adventurous vocalizing in 2000. The folk Dylan and the rock Dylan both give way to a new Dylan voice, a voice that would, thirteen hears later, take on the Frank Sinatra canon.

We heard ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ in 1999 (see part 2) in which Dylan first exercises what I could call his Great American Songbook voice: modulated, jazzy and tuneful. In this 2000 version he slows the song down even more than in 1999, savouring every line and fully demonstrating his vocal prowess. He sacrifices the tempo of the song, which drove the album version, in favour of exploring the melodic line with loving care in this more gentle, and arguably more expressive performance.

Trying to get to heaven

But his finest vocal performance of the year might have to go to ‘Standing in the Doorway’, a song from Time out of Mind we haven’t yet heard. Three years on from the album’s release and Dylan finally presents his melancholy masterpiece, a veritable hymn to betrayal. It is easy to see this song as another love gone sour song, and it is that, but the resonances go deeper, go into disillusionment with the promises of religion. To stand in a doorway is to stand on the threshold of a new life, to be at the crossroads between two worlds, damnation and salvation, perhaps.

‘I can hear the church bells ringin' in the yard
I wonder who they're ringin' for?
I know I can't win
But my heart just won't give in’

But in the ultimate extremity, won’t there be a comforting presence? Surely there will:

‘I eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm dry
And live my life on the square
And even if the flesh falls off of my face
I know someone will be there to care’

Remember the song from the gospel years, ‘The Groom’s Still Standing at the Altar’? He’s still there. If earthly love is next to divine love, then earthly betrayal is next to divine betrayal; the first blurs into the second.

Dylan does the same here as with “Trying to Get to Heaven.’ Slows it right down, takes his time with every line and uses all his vocal resources to bring out the dark emotion behind the song.  (6^th October)

Standing in the Doorway

Even Mr Guitar Man’s sharp, dissonant interjections make a kind of sense here. Little jabs to the heart.

Catch you next time for the second part of Bob Dylan, master vocalist.

Kia Ora

——————————————

Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: you can find us by searching for Untold Dylan on the Facebook page.

by Jochen Markhorst

II          Lovely, lovely song

It is not until 1983 that Elvis’ first, original version of “One Night” is released, the song Presley recorded over a quarter of a century earlier in 1957, after Smiley Lewis had already scored a hit (peak position no. 11) with it on the R&B charts in 1956;

One night of sin
Is what I'm now payin' for
The things I did, and I saw
Would make the earth stand still

Smiley Lewis – One Night Of Sin: 

Elvis himself does not have much of a problem with it, but he is overruled and scores his world hit with the re-recorded, cleaned-up and censored version:

One night with you
Is what I'm now praying for
The things that we two could plan
Would make my dreams come true

Meanwhile, a sexual revolution has taken place, and the singing of The Act, even of paid love, has long since ceased to be taboo in the mainstream media, though we are still far from being completely free of sexual taboos. A word like “fuck” is still avoided, or bleeped out, as are explicit indications of genitalia. Even “tits” is still in the oh-la-la department.

Not necessarily a bad thing. It forces songwriters to be creative, to use concealing language, and thus to endless series of variants on metaphors to indicate “sex”, “orgasm” or physical qualities and activities. And as long as it remains in the taboo corner, it does amuse us. Beating on my trumpet, come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you, juice running down my leg… agreed, not too sophisticated, but it certainly does have a nudge nudge wink wink entertainment value.

Strange though it is. Explicit aggression and bloody violence are no problem at all. Since 1975, we have all been cheerfully singing along to the world’s most popular pop song, whole football stadiums, women, minors and elderly, are merrily and loudly chanting mama, just killed a man, put a gun to his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead. But try replacing “killed” with “fucked” and “gun” with “dick”, or something in that vein… little chance of it ever being sung outside a gay bar during happy hour. Apparently, we accept to make war, not love.

In that light, it is not so very otherworldly that Manfred Mann, and thus indirectly Dylan, was banned by the BBC because of the licentious lyrics of “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”. After all, the protagonist only slightly disguises the fact that the lady present has to go to bed with him now, and moreover that it is not the first time they have committed the disgusting sex crime of extramarital intercourse: “It ain’t that I’m wantin’ anything you never gave before.”

Still, the music is great. The first take, solo on acoustic guitar on 13 January ’65, already has a Beatles vibe, but two days later, on the electric full-band versions, it’s unmistakable; A Hard Day’s Night was released six months ago and has had time enough to get under the skin of Dylan, Al Gorgoni (guitar), Kenneth Rankin (guitar), Bruce Langhorne (guitar), Joseph Macho Jr. (bass), Bobby Gregg (drums) and Frank Owens (electric piano). The groove and the pace and the al niente of “You Can’t Do That”, fragments of melody lines from “Anytime At All” and “When I Get Home” and strangely enough, even the second voice of Angelina Butler is reminiscent of “Things We Said Today”.

It’s a vibe that Manfred Mann taps into effortlessly, of course. Even before he has heard Dylan’s electric version – when he records his cover, he is only familiar with the acoustic version that Dylan plays in the BBC studios on 1 June ’65. Weirdly, the BBC had not yet any problems with the erotic content of the lyrics back then; it is broadcast, no bleeps or anything, 19 June on BBC TV-1. But Manfred Mann’s version with exactly the same words is unacceptable, three months later. Well, perhaps different standards apply to “our” Manfred than to bloody foreigners.

Actually, Manfred is not at all that much of a fan of his successful 60s singles, as he confesses in Greg Russo’s Mannerisms:

“I’m not at all putting down what we did, as people always imagine, but the best stuff we did was not the hit records. The best stuff’s been on albums and EPs.”

… but “If You Gotta Go Now, Go Now” is the exception – “lovely, lovely song.”

Dylan agrees – it is a lovely song. In ’64 and ’65 it is on the setlist quite often (eighteen times) and he especially likes to perform it in England. And besides him and Manfred Mann, many other colleagues are charmed. The song is covered often and gladly, and often successfully. For Fairport Convention, who have it translated into French for unknown reasons, it is even the only single ever to reach the charts (peak position no. 21, 1969). They cut and juggle the lyrics (Sandy Denny only sings the fifth, the second and the fourth verse, in that order), but the remaining words are still translated quite literally, and these are precisely the most “daring” fragments (C’est pas que je te demande de faire que tu n’as jamais fait). Besides two stanzas, Richard Thompson and his crew delete the Merseybeat as well; with Fairport Convention it is a charming folksong.

The Canadian Dylan fans Cowboy Junkies have been making great albums and wonderful songs since the 80s, and have also been demonstrating since the 80s that they are masters at making covers that enrich the original – thanks to brilliant, often restrained arrangements, but especially thanks to Margo Timmins’ shrouded vocals. Their “Sweet Jane” is smashing, George Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity” never sounds as regretful as Margo’s, Neil Young’s “Helpless” is heartbreaking. They know what to do with Dylan, too. “Girl From The North Country”, a slow, compelling “License To Kill”, and especially their recent Rough & Rowdy cover “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You”, which has very quickly and very deservedly risen to the top of Best Dylan Covers Ever.

The Junkies’ “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” is a highlight on the 2001 tribute album The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol. 2- May Your Song Always Be Sung Again, but was recorded ten years earlier. Not coloured with their characteristic melancholy, but harking back to the very first cover, the one by The Liverpool Five from 1965, with furious banging on the toms, licentious honking on the harmonica and Timmins’ drawling vocals. Very catchy.

When the Cowboy Junkies fail to do their usual trick of “melancholising” the song, Father John Misty, J. Tillman, seizes his chance. And promptly delivers the most beautiful cover of “If You Gotta Go”. His cover turns the protagonist from confident to insecure, from cool and indifferent to desperately in love – and that is a wonderful find, an enrichment of the original, as it should be with a cover. On one of the artistically most successful Dylan tribute albums ever, on Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ (2010).

She really should stay all night.

——————

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978

• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (part I)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part III)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part V)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More  Mythologies (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking up more mythologies (Part VIII)

by Larry Fyffe

The four ancient basic elements of air, water, fire, and earth are symbols featured in the poetry of William Blake, derived from the teachings of Zarathustra for one; if out of balance in the human body, the imbalance can be damaging to the human spirit.

For example, water, associated more with the female, has its creative side, but can be destructive to the artistic urge within the male, as well as to the external environment, if it rises to a level that is too materialistic; ie, dark Satanic Mills.

A theme expressed in the following song lyrics:

Take care of your body like you care for your soul
Don't you dig yourself into a hole
Until you've paid the price, you can't know what it's worth
The air, water, fire, and earth
(Ben Harper: Well, Well, Well ~ Dylan/O'Keefe)

A motif expressed in the following lines as well ~ ‘earth’/’worth’ rhymed in both lyrics:

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

In Roman/Greek mythology, the female followers of Dionysus are driven into a frenzy by drinking too much alcohol.

A myth modernized, presented realistically albeit satirically, in  the song lyrics below:

There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes ...
Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now, I'm expecting all hell to break loose
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

In the lines beneath, typical of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, the theme is reversed, satirically turned back to the good old days of Judeo/Christian morality when men were men, and women were woman – women really had no need to flee, like the screech owl Lilith does, from Adam in the Garden of Eden:

You would feel like a baby again
Sitting on your daddy's knee
Oh, how happy you would be
If you belonged to me
(Traveling Wilburys: If You Belonged To Me ~ Dylan/Harrison/Lynn/Petty)

A rather Blakean message is delivered with accompanying music:

What’s required is a  balance regained in the ‘humours’ that make up the human body and soul, they wrought from the basic elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.

The four ancient basic elements of air, water, fire, and earth are symbols featured in the poetry of William Blake, derived from the teachings of Zarathustra for one; if out of balance in the human body, the imbalance can be damaging to the human spirit.

For example, water, associated more with the female, has its creative side, but can be destructive to the artistic urge within the male, as well as to the external environment, if it rises to a level that is too materialistic; ie, dark Satanic Mills.

A theme expressed in the following song lyrics:

Take care of your body like you care for your soul
Don't you dig yourself into a hole
Until you've paid the price, you can't know what it's worth
The air, water, fire, and earth
(Ben Harper: Well, Well, Well ~ Dylan/O'Keefe)

A motif expressed in the following lines as well ~ ‘earth’/’worth’ rhymed in both lyrics:

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

The last episode in this series was All Directions 60: After the interregnum, the compositions of 1996 

The index to the series, with yet another attempt at getting the numbering to make sense, can be found here.

————–

As the title suggests we are dealing with the compositions of 1996 which means, in order of composition, we have now got to…

• Marchin to the City (Doing alright)
• Million Miles
• Not Dark Yet
• Red River Shore
• Standing in the doorway

In the first part of this review of 1996 the themes in Bob’s mind were clear.  The old favourites of moving on and lost love were well established, but now they had an extra element: being alone.   Of course “moving on” often implies being alone, but now, this year, it is made utterly overt.  He’s had enough of everything including people.  This is the ultimate hobo

In the last article we reached “Dreamin of you,” so that now takes  us on to “Marchin to the city”.  It appeared on disc 3 of Tell Tale Signs.

And what this song did give us was more lines that are thoroughly arresting, as this song is the origin of “I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes” and the bit about London and Gay Paree, and following the river til it gets to the sea (all used, of course, in Not Dark Yet).

Consider the first verse…

Well, I’m sitting in church in an old wooden chair
I knew nobody would look for me there
Sorrow and pity rule the earth and the skies
Looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes

Thus “Dreamin of you” is like a notebook of ideas concerning isolation – bits and pieces, some of which ended up in other songs.  It also gives credence  to the notion that rather than Bob Dylan working his way through complex sets of related ideas through using poetic forms and quotes, he does (at least on occasion) come up with lines that he rather likes and then fits them in where he can.   And what is particularly interesting is that there are also lines from Not Dark Yet in Marchin, and Marchin certainly isn’t a prototype of Not Dark Yet.

What we have then is an early version of a song, of which bits were then re-used elsewhere – something that all artists in every art form are prone to do.  We don’t know what Dylan would have done with Marchin later had he kept it, and indeed we don’t know he would have done anything.  But given the way he changes his music time and again during the recording process and thereafter, there is every chance he might well have done something quite different.

However as it stands, it is an enigmatic 12 bar blues; enigmatic in the sense that you get the idea of where we are, but not at all where we are going.

Some of the lines show great promise such as

Loneliness got a mind of its own
The more people around the more you feel alone

which really resonate because we are still in the laid back verse two, but each time we are dragged down by the chorus.

But this is the one that I think was out of phase with the rest of the writing, although Dylan is still writing about being lost with this 12 bar blues, but at least he’s trying to get back rather that just disintegrate.  The mood has changed.  Not totally but just a bit.  Maybe not for all time, but at least for this moment.

Bob never played “Marchin to the city” in public, but the next song, Million Miles, fared better and got some 75 outings.  Yet very few people have tried re-interpretations of the song.   The lyrics offer so much.  And the ladies seem to like it.

The theme is still the same: we are all isolated, we tell each other lies, I’ve been hurt, I’m alone…

You took a part of me that I really miss
I keep asking myself how long it can go on like this
You told yourself a lie, that’s all right mama I told myself one too
I’m trying to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you

And then, and then, and then… suddenly, having only recently started writing again, and for the most part still playing around with the old 12 bar blues, Bob writes a second utter masterpiece (Mississippi being the first of this period in my view):  Not Dark Yet.

What is extraordinary is how much Not Dark Yet stands out from the rest of Dylan’s work this year.   It is still utterly dark but it is a different kind of dark – which I know sounds pretentious, but I find it hard to locate other words that express my feelings.

Something happened between “Million Miles” and “Not Dark Yet”.    I wish I could tell you what, but I wasn’t there so I can’t.  Except to take it that Bob kept on thinking about being a million miles away from you forever more, and then wondering what comes next, and the answer is of course nothing.

Remember, by now he had written “Mississippi” and maybe was already thinking that it was not right in some way and couldn’t go into the album – even though it is a perfect song of moving on and the self-admonishment of having stayed there too long.

But maybe Mississippi wasn’t dark enough to fit with his mood.  And if that were the case “Not Dark Yet” sorts that little problem out.   For even after all these years of living with Not Dark Yet I can still get tears in my eyes.  (I won’t bore you with the connections I see and feel but I know a few other people who’ve admitted that this song resonates with specifics in their lives too).

I can also still remember exactly, in every detail, my reaction on playing Not Dark Yet for the first time – where I was and what I was doing and who I was.   It is a song that from the moment I first heard it, took me over and wrapped itself around my life.

And maybe that is because like others who have earned a modest living in the arts I’m fairly emotional – certainly far more emotional than many of my friends who have worked in business or industry or farming.

I think there is a further clue as to what was going on here when we turn to “Red River Shore”, for there is a link between “Not Dark Yet” and “Red River Shore”, the final composition of the year, although it is the nature of that final song that led it to being cut from the whole album.

For if you just take the line “we’re living in the shadows of a fading past” that gives us a strong connection with Not Dark Yet, but the style and approach is out of phase with what had gone before, and what was to happen in the following year as the writing of the album was concluded.  Thus I think it was absolutely right to drop “Red River Shore” from the album.  Not because it is not a worthy song, but because it just doesn’t fit with everything else with that very special level of darkness that Bob was creating around him.

We can also ask if Mississippi have fitted into the album.   When I first heard it, of course I thought leaving it out of the album was a crime, but looked at now from this far on, I once again don’t think so.  Of the versions we have, the first version on Bootleg 8 is the one that still makes me stop what I am doing and listen again and again, but even so, in terms of the total meaning of this album, no, Mississippi doesn’t work.  It’s a work of genius, but it comes from the next exhibition of insights, not this one.

The songs of the year were clearly Mississippi and Not Dark Yet but I think we were also given what is now a forgotten masterpiece with “Dreamin of You.”  That too is most certainly a song worth re-visiting.

And so by and large, that was on hell of a come-back after all those years of silence.   And whether a song was on the album or not, just think of all the reflections these works of genius have given us.  Genius, let us not forget, conceived out of years of stubborn silence.

by Jochen Markhorst

I           Real groovy

“In May, 1964, Bob Dylan dropped in at London’s Marquee Club to listen to The Manfreds, declaring them to be ‘real groovy’. They return the compliment with their performance of Dylan’s controversial With God On Our Side.”

The closing words of the liner notes to one of Manfred Mann’s biggest hits, on the EP The One In The Middle (nine weeks no. 1 in the summer of ’65), marking the first in a long, long line of mostly very successful Dylan covers. The master can appreciate the covers too, according to his roaring recommendation at the press conference in San Francisco, December ’65:

Of all the people who record your compositions, who do you feel does most justice to what you’re trying to say?

“I think Manfred Mann. Manfred Mann. They’ve done the songs, they’ve done about three or four. Each one of them has been right in context with what the song was all about.”

Dylan has a foresight, apparently. At that time, Manfred Mann had recorded not three or four, but only two Dylan covers, though a third and a fourth would soon follow (“Just Like A Woman”, 1966, and the world success “The Mighty Quinn”, 1968).

Apart from the outspoken artistic appreciation, Dylan will also appreciate the financial merits that his British disciples bring him; with the second Dylan cover, Manfred Mann, and thus indirectly Dylan as well, has another huge hit. “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” scores the No. 2 position in the UK and reaches the Top 10 in Ireland, Sweden and Australia. The single is also released in the US, but doesn’t get any further than a one-week listing at no. 100 on the Cashbox charts. In the week of 16 October, when “Yesterday” is at 1, when Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Positively 4th Street” are still in the charts (at 50 and 17, respectively), and when The Turtles’ cover of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is at 27 – Dylan himself will hardly have noticed it, the basement rating of yet another one of his songs.

In Greg Russo’s admirable, painstaking Sisyphean work Mannerisms – The Five Phases Of Manfred Mann (1995) Manfred tells how he came to his inspired move:

“Dylan did it in a concert. And what staggered me was the whole of Britain was interested in Bob Dylan; he was a great songwriter everybody knew. He did this song and nobody followed it up! I think it was Tom [McGuinness] and I who discussed it and we then contacted the publishers and said ‘Can we have a copy?’ and then we did. And you would have thought with all these people looking for songs to record, there it is on television and nobody is paying attention! So we did it. Lovely, lovely song.”

Good story, but not quite correct. Manfred records “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” 19 July 1965, and is thus the second to record the song. He is just beaten by The Liverpool Five, who released an equally beautiful version as a single in July 1965 without any success.

Manfred Mann seems to have his marketing in order; although the single is only released in September, two months later, it is a huge success – it becomes Manfred’s biggest hit in the UK since “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”. The Liverpool Five can console themselves with the fact that Dylan himself didn’t manage to score with it either. As far as we can tell, at least. For reasons that are unclear, the mono single “If You Gotta Go, Go Now b/w To Ramona” was only released in the Netherlands on 18 August 1967 (two years after Manfred Mann). Which did not make waves either.

Zeitgeist, presumably. Half a century later, the flop is less understandable. Strong song, sung by a very popular artist, and well produced. The Dutch single is a so-called composite. Producer Wilson added overdub recordings with “unidentified musicians” to the original recordings of 15 January 1965 four months later (Friday afternoon 21 May, Dylan is still in England), with extra backup vocals by the same lady who sings with Dylan in the same microphone on 15 January, with Angelina Butler – which makes it look like there is more than one lady singing along (it is not, as some sources still say, the ladies group The Poppies). That afternoon in May, Wilson even made two composites, and eventually pasted the intro of the second one to the first one – that’s the final master for the single.

Despite the strength of the song and the producer’s loving craftsmanship, it will not be released for the time being. When Dylan returns from England, he has “Like A Rolling Stone” up his sleeve, and so, obviously, any argument for releasing “If You Gotta Go” evaporates. When Dylan’s record company Columbia decides, for whatever reason, to release the single two years later in a small country by the North Sea, the train has already left. The Summer Of Love has broken out, and when that May 1965 recording finally hits the Dutch stores on 18 August 1967, the Billboard Top 10 looks like this:

1. All You Need Is Love – The Beatles
2. Light My Fire – The Doors
3. Pleasant Valley Sunday – The Monkees
4. I Was Made To Love Her – Stevie Wonder
5. Baby I Love You – Aretha Franklin
6. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – The Buckinghams
7. Ode To Billie Joe – Bobbie Gentry
8. Cold Sweat – Part 1 – James Brown And The Famous Flames
9. A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harum
10. A Girl Like You – The Young Rascals

In most European countries, the Top 10 looks similar, only Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” is still in the Top 3 everywhere (in the UK on 1, in the Netherlands on 3). In any case, apart from a few local heroes, the menu is equally limited everywhere: psych-pop or soul, that’s all we have to offer. Only a outer category song, such as “Ode To Billie Joe”, still manages to squeeze in, but a hopelessly outdated Merseybeat rocker like “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” stands little chance.

Thematically it does fit, of course. The lyrics have a high if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with content, and maybe that’s why Columbia is trying it first in Holland, which has a certain reputation for loose morals and free love. Manfred Mann had some trouble with the lyrics in England, two years ago at any rate. The BBC producers thought it “too suggestive” and on September 27, 1965, after being invited to the very last episode of Gadzooks! on BBC2, the Manfreds were told that the song was “unsuitable” for the viewers. Two days later, Crackerjack banned the song as well.

That it nevertheless became a big hit, may have encouraged Columbia’s marketing strategists to release the Dylan version as a single two years later, but may also have inspired them to try it out on the other side of the North Sea first. Fruitless – but not because of the alleged licentiousness of the lyrics or because of boycotts by prudish opinion makers. Neither the one nor the other is a factor in that small country on the European mainland. The reception is even downright positive. The leading pop magazine Hitweek writes:

“A forgotten song, which we only knew from the Manfreds until now. It’s an excellent song, with very good lyrics (…). A very relaxed Dylan, assisted in the choruses by some extra vocals (…). We’re so happy to hear something relatively new from Dylan, that we’ll give this a nine and a half.”

Which doesn’t help either. The first, small run sells quite well, so a second pressing is made, it is on sale for months in Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, but does not make the charts and eventually ends up in the sell-out bins. Yeah well. The Merseybeat rocker just sounds outdated in the Summer Of Love. Zeitgeist, that polluting phenomenon on which already Goethe’s Faust (1808) commented:

“What you the Spirit of the Ages call / Is nothing but the spirit of you all / Wherein the Ages are reflected.”

Frustrating, still; nowadays the Dutch single is one of the most sought-after collector’s items in the Dylan community.

To be continued. Next up: If You Gotta Go part II: Lovely, lovely song

——-

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978

• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies part 1
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part III)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part V)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More  Mythologies (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part VII)

by Larry Fyffe

The mythologies of Lambia and of Lilith have roots that go way back in time.

The female followers of Dionysus, the God of the Vine and of Wine from Roman/Greek mythology, can be thought of as screech-owl Liliths.

Seeking union with the spirit of the corn-and-apple-growing demigod Dionysus (fathered by Zeus, who impregnates princess Semele), these forest ‘Bacchanals’ drink and dance and sing themselves into a frenzy in an effort to escape their earthly bodies that are clothed in animal skins:

"They sing,
O Bacchanals come
Oh, come
Sing Dionysus
Sing to the timbrel
The deep-voiced timbrel
Joyfully praise him
Him who brings joy
Holy, all holy
Music is calling
To the hills, to the hills
Fly, O Bacchanal
Swift of foot
On, O joyful, be fleet"
(Edith Hamilton: Mythology, Timeless Tales Of Gods And Heroes)

Like the Dionysus regenerative myth is akin to the Osirus/Horus myth, the imagery above is retained in the following song lyrics though the mythology be humorously somewhat re-arranged; it’s a bit corny:

Fly away, little bird
Fly away, flap your wings
Fly by night
Like the early Roman kings
All the early Roman kings
In the early, early morn
Coming down the mountain
Distributing the corn
Speeding through the forest
(Bob Dylan: Early Roman Kings)

Oh, but what fun it is to go riding in an open sleigh – through the satirical snow – with a domesticated Bacchanal:

Winterlude, Winterlude, my little apple
Winterlude by the corn in the field
Winterlude, let's go down to the chapel
Then come home, and cook up a meal
(Bob Dylan: Winterlude)

According to mythology, Dionysus is disrespected by Pantheus who does not believe that the grainman has godly powers. Not a good idea on the part of the King of Thebes (who is the son of Semele’s sister).

Dionysus shows him who is really the king; he drunks up the Bacchanals; see the earthly king they do as a mountain lion, and they tear him into bloody pieces, limb from limb.

There’s no fooling with the Dionysus of today, according to the double-edged song lyrics quoted beneath – best not be one of those who  puts him or herself on the wrong side of the real god of music:

Ding dong daddy
You're coming up short
Going to put you on trial
In a Sicilian court
I've had my fun
I've had my flings
Gonna shake'em all down
Like the early Roman kings
(Bob Dylan: Early Roman Kings)

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

On this site we look at cover versions of Dylan songs in two ways.  One is simply by listing covers that we enjoy, song by song as in: Covers of Dylan songs

The other is via  Beautiful Obscurity in which we consider the covers in more depth.  In this series Aaron picks the cover versions and Tony, on the other side of the Atlantic, writes a commentary as the music plays (to stop him getting too pretentious and looking stuff up).

Aaron: As promised in an earlier piece here are a few interesting covers for this Dylan classic.

I choose this track principally to include these first two, and I then went searching for a few more to make up enough for this article.

So first up it’s The Pogues. This is from an album they made after Shane MacGowan quit the band, so Spider Stacy took over as lead singer. I love it!

Technical: we’ve got that regional variation again – hopefully one of these two links will work for you.  If not, try Spotify or a Google search.

Tony: What a scream!  Having never heard this before I was shocked, as if I was looking at an sombre old friend never known for outlandish ways, coming to my village, and walking up to my house dressed in a clown’s outfit and then doing a jig on my doorstep.

But why not, this is fun, and that variation between the first and second part of each verse never becomes obvious – it caught me each time.  Loved the false ending too.  There’s real imagination in creating this reading of the song in this way, and delivering it.

The second of the videos above (which is the only one I can play in the UK) is followed by the Peter Paul and Mary version, which is always worth hearing again.  But I’ve listened to that just the once this time, before going back to the Pogues, just to make sure I really did hear what I thought I heard.

Aaron: Now Arlo Guthrie, who always seemed to find space for a Dylan cover in most of his albums. 1972’s Hobo’s Lullaby was no exception.

Tony: Having just listened to the Pogues (and Peter Paul and Mary) I really had no idea what I was going to hear next – and this is really good.  It takes the music in a new direction by varying both the chord sequence and the melody.  We still know it is “When the ship” of course because we’ve all heard it so often, but now this is gives us variations and re-emphasises the meanings.

There is a change to the chord structure that he does in the penultimate line of each verse that changes the song – and prepares us for the change in the last line.  And all that is all before we think of what he has done to the rhythm.  Dylan does it as a straight four beats in a bar.  Here it something different – more like 12/8 time.  OK that’s just me getting carried away, but the timing has changed, and its that which gives us a totally different feel.  I love it.

Aaron: Next, it’s Chris Hillman’s pre Byrds group The Hillmen.  (Another regional variation here, so once more hopefully one of these works for you – if not go a searching).

Tony: OK they have well considered harmonies and its neatly arranged, but for me that’s it.  It just continues as it starts and there is nothing unusual or unexpected enough to get me excited.

The problem for me is not just that the banjo and the vocal harmonies continue the same throughout, but they sing the first and second halves of the song in the same way rather than varying them, which the recordings before do.  So, since I know the song off by heart, it just gets a bit ordinary.

That of course is the trouble with strophic songs – there is nothing in the form that allows variation.  Good for a sing along, but not so good when the song has been a part of your life for 50+ years.

Aaron: Barbara Dickson made a Dylan covers album? Who knew!? Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright came out in 1992 and this is a surprisingly great version of Ship…stick with it, it picks up when the drums kick in.

Tony:  I’m glad you said stick with it Aaron, as I wasn’t sure it had started.  So, bagpipes – not heard that done before with this song, and the great thing is Barbara Dickson has the voice to carry this off.

Actually, this one stopped my typing up my comments for several moments until I remembered the rules we had agreed (that I have to finish my review by the time the recording finishes, largely set up to stop me pontificating eternally).

I loved the idea, not least because this notion of building verse by verse requires a really good orchestrater / arranger to hold it together, but oh……no……    What happens before the instrumental break is that for no reason that makes any sense the piece is moved up a semitone or a tone (I was so shocked I didn’t fully take it in).  Anyway what I mean is that suddenly the piece is performed in a new utterly unrelated key.

That jerk from one key to the next really is a dodgy thing to do, and generally shows that  the arranger has run out of ideas.  Its a solution that does nothing to the music except make it sound as if it has changed when it hasn’t.  What a letdown.

Aaron: Now I wanted one more version to end this with, and couldn’t decide between the Hollies, the Chieftains or Peter, Paul & Mary. Then I came across this version by Billy Bragg and couldn’t not include it. I believe every single word he sings here. Spine tingling.

Tony: Well, with an intro like that, Aaron, I was holding my breath.  And at first I didn’t quite see what was exciting you so much.

But you are right: he holds the stage and transfixes the audience by delivering the song straight.  Very tiny changes to the melody, but nothing artificial.  It just is.  Even the instrumental half-verse simply is strummed.

It is quite extraordinary how he does that.  He holds the song, plays it straight, and yet delivers a punch.  Amazing.

If you have an article for Untold Dylan or an idea for a series, do write in to Tony@schools.co.uk

by Jochen Markhorst

• Early Roman Kings (2012) part I: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part II: Anything goes
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part III: He had a left like Henry’s hammer
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part IV: You can ring my bell, ring my bell
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part V: I will massacre you
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part VI: The beauty of the flames
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part VII: Ding Dong Daddy

VIII       I got the John the Conqueror root

The Tooth Of Crime from 1972 (revised 1996 with a new score, rewritten by T-Bone Burnett) is a fascinating though somewhat depressing, successful musical play by Dylan’s writing partner Sam Shepard about the price of fame. The plot revolves around the decline of celebrated ageing rock star Hoss and the rise of his young rival Crow. The dialogues are – of course – larded with rock quotes, song clichés and winks (“Live outside the Code”, “Good morning little schoolgirl”, “Take out the papers and the trash”), as during the first confrontation between Hoss and Crow:

HOSS: Old habits break hard.
CROW: You don’t break ’em, you chop ’em off.
HOSS: I didn’t invite you in here to get schooled, bug boy!
CROW: You didn’t invite me, period. I’m yer Backdoor Man.
HOSS: Oh—So, Mr. Willie Dixon still remains on your list? You’re not so far removed as I thought.

… with which Hoss, or rather Sam Shepard, demonstrates a most heartening, accurate, knowledge of music history by attributing “Back Door Man” not to Muddy Waters or The Doors, but to the person who actually wrote it, the legendary Willie Dixon.

The golden collaboration of Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters starts with the mother of all stop-time blues songs, the grandmother of Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings”: the monument “Hoochie Coochie Man” from 1954. The importance and greatness of the song are undisputed and officially confirmed by now – in 2005 the song is selected for preservation by the US Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. Like most of Dixon’s classics (“Spoonful”, “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, “Help Me”, “Little Red Rooster” and many more), “Hoochie Coochie Man” demonstrates Dixon’s inordinate talent for achieving an Olympic-size maximum of musical power with a minimum of musical resources. Technically it is simple enough. So simple, in fact, that Dixon could sell it to Muddy Waters during a break behind the scenes in the bathroom of Club Zanzibar in Chicago, as he recounts in his autobiography I Am The Blues (1990):

“We fooled around with “Hoochie Coochie Man” there in the washroom for 15 or 20 minutes. Muddy said, “I’m going to do this song first so I don’t forget it.” He went right up on stage that first night and taught the band the little riff I showed him. He did it first shot and, sure enough, the people went wild over it. He was doing that song until the day he died.”

https://youtu.be/U5QKpsVzndc

And he is also good at explaining why he insists that Muddy Waters take the song. He had written the song some time before, before that meeting, but when he saw Waters perform, he knew enough. Good-looking man, dresses well, attracting the audience in this boastful, manly kind of manner – exactly the kind of black badman Dixon has in mind. The bragging Hoochie Coochie Man is an “epitome of virility”, aided by hoodoo power, women want to submit to him, men want to be him;

“The average person wants to brag about themselves because it makes that individual feel big. These songs make people want to feel like that because they feel like that at heart, anyway. They just haven’t said it so you say it for them.”

Not only did the people go wild over it, as Dixon says, but the song also strikes a chord with colleagues. A few months later Bo Diddley scores a no. 1 hit on the Billboard R&B Chart with the two-sided single “Bo Diddley/I’m A Man” (April ’55). “I’m A Man” is one of the few Diddley songs without the Diddley beat, but Bo’s “betrayal” of his own beat is forgotten after just one bar: he uses the stop-time riff from “Hoochie Coochie Man” as a template, and that’s just as catchy and powerful. Muddy Waters hears it too, and writes his answer song “Mannish Boy”, the title of which is already a jab at Diddley (Bo is fifteen years younger than Muddy). Halfway through, Waters acknowledges his indebtedness to Dixon’s song, elegantly incorporating it into the lyrics:

I'm a man (yeah)
I spell M
A, child
N
That represent man
No B
O, child
Y
That spell mannish boy
I'm a man
I'm a full-grown man
I'm a man
I'm a rollin' stone
I'm a man
I'm a hoochie-coochie man

It’s a big hit in The States, and remarkably enough Waters’ only UK hit – albeit only thirty-three years later, in 1988, after being used in a Levi’s commercial. But still in its original version, the first recording, played by one of Dylan’s all-time favourite bands. Spin Magazine had Dylan fill out a favourites list in 1988, with sections like “Some Movies I Wish I Was In” and “Three Authors I’d Read Anything By”. Under the heading “Five Bands I Wish I Had Been In” are:

King Oliver Band 
The Memphis Jug Band 
Muddy Waters Chicago Band (with Little Walter and Otis Spann) 
The Country Gentlemen 
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Okay, “Mannish Boy” is the only recording from the golden Muddy Waters Chicago Band period that doesn’t feature Little Walter (who happened to have other commitments on the day of the recording, May 24, 1955, Bobby Zimmerman’s fourteenth birthday), but the song’s impact on Dylan is crushing nevertheless; “Cold Irons Bound”, on Time Out Of Mind (1997) imitates the atmosphere, colour and menace of the song, “Early Roman Kings” is also musically an unveiled, reverent copy of “Mannish Boy”. Just as “My Wife’s Home Town” (Together Through Life, 2009) is a reprint of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, by the way – but unlike “Early Roman Kings”, Dixon does get the credit for that one.

More indirectly, but still fairly obvious, also seems to be the influence of “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I’m A Man” and “Mannish Boy” on the attitude and presence of the protagonist of “Early Roman Kings”. Dixon established it in the early 50s, this monument to the powerful bragger:

I got a black cat bone,
I got a mojo too,
I got the John the Conqueror root,
I’m gonna mess with you,
I’m gonna make you girls,
Lead me by my hand,
Then the world’ll know,
I’m the Hoochie Coochie Man.

He is big and powerful, he is aggressive and he steals your girl… he truly is an Early Roman King.

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This article is part of the Bob Dylan and Friends series.   You can find an index to other articles in this series here.

Tony: Bob and Van Ronk knew each other from back in the Greenwich Village days. Such was Van Ronk’s influence on the musical scene at the time that he was given the nickname “The Major Of MacDougal Street”.

His repertoire focused mainly on old traditional blues, folk and jazz tunes and he gave considerable encouragement to the up and coming artists of the day: Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan.   Plus (and the reports at this point generally say, “especially” Joni Mitchell.  I’ll return to this at the end.

Aaron: He didn’t write many of his own songs (we might cover the one album he did write himself in a later piece), so this will concentrate purely on covers he performed throughout his career.

We’ve all heard the story of Bob stealing his arrangement for House Of The Rising Sun for his debut album. So here is Van Ronk’s own version:

Aaron: He recorded a handful of Dylan tracks throughout the years. Two important ones appeared in the early 60s. He was the first to record and release “If I Had To Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You” from 1963s “In The Tradition” album.

Tony: We’ve got a regional problem on the video here, so if the video below doesn’t work, I think the best approach is going to be either to do a Google search hoping it turns up in your country, or to turn to Spotify.   That’s certainly working in the UK.

Tony: I love this, it is just such a silly song, and so lively and bouncy.  That doesn’t mean I’d play it over and over, and now as I move into my later years it is too fast to dance to any more (although I could at one time) but it’s nice to remember.  Curiously Spotify then chose to play me “Who knows where the time goes” by Fairport Convention.  Totally different and knocking me into another world.

But enough, let’s move on.

The Old Man (AKA Man On The Street) from 1966 “No Dirty Names” album

Tony: This is an Almanac Singers song originally, I think, which Bob Dylan shifted around.  The original version had the line about the only clue to how the old man died being the bayonet sticking from his side, but that anti-war element was changed over time to turn the piece into a commentary on the plight of the urban poor.

I’ve found songs about the urban poor affect me more and more as I have got older – this one is so simple but it still eats me up.   “There but for the grace…” except I’m an atheist.

Aaron: I’ll finish off with 3 of my favorites and let Tony provide his thoughts on all of this!

From 1959s debut album – “Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues and a Spiritual” – Duncan And Brady

Tony: It is all a reminder of just how important Dave Van Ronk was (he passed away on 10 February 2002).     There’s a note about him on the Wiki site that says, “Van Ronk refused for many years to fly and never learned to drive (he took trains or buses or, when possible, recruited a girlfriend or young musician as his driver), and he declined to ever move from Greenwich Village for any extended period of time (having stayed in California for a short time in the 1960s)”.

I am not sure why I find that fascinating but somehow I do.

Mack The Knife from 1964 “Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers”

I wonder if when Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht wrote Mack the Knife nearly 100 years ago they had any idea how it would survive.  To me it seems to occupy a unique and isolated place in musical traditions, aside from the rest of the music, just sitting there, on its own – although I am sure that feeling primarily comes from a lack of knowledge of the era in music on my part.

I also wonder if all those people who endlessly go on and on about Dylan supposedly stealing other people’s work rage on in the same way about Bertolt Brecht.  Do they notice that the Threepenny Opera included, “Les Contredits de Franc Gontier”, “La Ballade de la Grosse Margot”, and “L’Epitaphe Villon” all written by François Villon, with translations by K. L. Ammer? 

OK Villon passed on hundreds of years before, so there’s an excuse (although I think citing origins is always a good thing to do even when from the Middle Ages) but Klammer should have been credited but wasn’t.  Brecht replied to the allegations that that he had “a fundamental laxity in questions of literary property.”  Maybe Bob should have tried that line.

Of course the funny thing in all this is that although text, melodies and musical arrangements are all subject to the Copyright Act in the UK, and something very similar in most of the rest of the world, ideas are never subject to copyright and evil journalists can go around just nicking ideas and passing them off as their own.  But I digress…

Clouds (AKA Both Sides Now)

Tony: According to reports (as they say) Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell – the latter of whom of course wrote the song – performed it together in Austin Texas in 1976, but I simply can’t find a recording of the performance.  If you know of a recording, please please please write in with the URL.

Certainly the picture seems to prove that yes the two played together (not that it needs proving) but music can I find none.  The video below therefore is obviously not the one of the show, but still, I can never hear the song enough.  It is one of those that has been with me through such much of my life – indeed I think it was this song that made me feel I could never be a professional songwriter, since I couldn’t even imagine how to begin creating something this beautiful.

But I’m here to write about Dick van Ronk so having diverted Aaron’s work (a privilege gained from being the second party in this writing arrangement) back to the original

And this is a beautiful arrangement.  I’d not heard it before (part of  the joy of writing these pieces with Aaron, with us each on our own continent).

Something’s lost and something’s gained in living every day, indeed.   The extra pauses after some of the lines is a shock simply because I know the song so utterly and perfectly.  And despite that this arrangement gives me new insights – which is all one can ask for.

There is a song I wrote (“She walks through midnight”) which people who have heard it say is the best piece of music I’ve ever done, and maybe they are right.  But it is not even in the same universe as “Both Sides Now” which pretty much puts me in my place.

But it’s not a bad place (most of the time).

We have an Untold Dylan Facebook group (just go to Facebook and type in Untold Dylan) and we also welcome contributions to this site (just email Tony@schools.co.uk)

The Never Ending Tour

This series charts the NET from its origins in 1987 to the present day, with multiple examples of Dylan’s performances through the period in question.  The full index is here.

• NET, 1999, Part 1: Every night in a combustible way.
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 2 – Is everything as hollow as it seems?
• NET, 1999, part 3 Touchdown at Tramps – Archaic Music
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, Part 4  – Minstrel Bob
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 5 – Inside the museum.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

This post, the last for 1999, is dedicated to the non-Dylan songs Dylan performed in that year.  We have already seen some of these songs in previous posts; ‘Sounds of Silence’, (NET, 1999, part 1, don’t miss it!), ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘Alabama Getaway’, ‘Money Honey’ (NET, 1999, part 3), ‘Roving Gambler’ and ‘You Gonna Quit Me’ (part 4). But that doesn’t cover the range of songs Dylan does in 1999, which is particularly rich in cover songs, as Dylan keeps returning us to an earlier era of music, mostly country and cowboy songs, thus establishing a context and background for his own songs.

Some of these songs, like ‘Friend of the Devil’ have cropped up in Dylan’s setlists for a couple of years. That song is from the Grateful Dead, with the lyrics written by Robert Hunter. Released in 1970, it has been widely covered by a number of artists, and has been described as progressive bluegrass. It has that classic feel to it. The themes of insomnia and relationship woes put the song firmly in Time out of Mind territory. (18^th Nov)

 Friend of the Devil

Remember when you first put Dylan’s 1980 Saved on the turntable? The first song is ‘Satisfied Mind’, a slow, bluesy intro to the album. The song was written by Jo Hayes and Jack Rhodes and was number 1 on the billboard Hot Country Song list in 1955. It was the kind of song the child Dylan would have been listening to on his radio during those lonely Hibbing nights. Dylan’s first known performance of the song was in 1967, during the Basement Tapes era. Those who know it from Saved are hardly going to recognise it performed in this antique fashion. It turns out to be a rollicking cowboy song with suitably melancholy lyrics about the illusory nature of money. (9^th Nov)

Satisfied Mind

As far as I know, ‘Pass Me Not, Oh Gentle Saviour,’ written by the blind Fanny Crosby in 1868, was not performed by Dylan prior to 1999, and would only be performed five times over 1999 and 2000. It’s a country music hymn, an interesting fusion that produced many such songs. Fanny Crosby herself wrote dozens of them. Still a cowboy song, it’s about salvation rather than whisky or love woes. Dylan’s arrangement here is similar to The Stanley Brothers version released in 1960.

It’s something of a curiosity in this context, a dark period for Dylan in which his faith is deeply called into question by the Time out of Mind songs. ‘Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer’, he sings on ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’. Perhaps this expression of a simple, old fashioned faith appealed to Dylan during such a time, a crisis of faith if we can call it that. There’s a strong flavour of nostalgia in all of this. (23^rd Feb)

Pass me not, oh gentle saviour

Not quite so maudlin, and more upbeat, ‘Honky Tonk Blues’ by Hank Williams turns out to be a crowd pleaser. Not to be confused with ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ by The Rolling Stones, Williams’ song was released in 1952, and was made famous by Charlie Pride in 1980. The song is about a farm boy who goes to the city and becomes disillusioned. There may be an echo here of Dylan’s experience – a kid from the northern provinces goes to New York to suffer his own rude awakening. But of course, you can never go back again… (23^rd Feb)

Honky Tonk Blues

‘You’re Too Late,’ by Lefty Frizzell, recorded in 1954, was only performed once by Dylan at Daytona Beach, FL, Jan 29, 1999. (See Tony Atwood’s post: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/16040). Again, we’re in country, cowboy music territory, sob songs I like to call them. They are sentimental in the way that ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ from Time out of Mind is. Despair and sentimentality are a matched pair. This is a wonderful, robust performance of the song. Highly recommended. Perhaps this sentimentality is an antidote to despair, or maybe a traditionally safe way to channel it. (29^th Jan)

 You’re too late

‘Oh Babe It Aint No Lie’, by the incomparable Elizabeth Cotton, was released in 1958 and has been covered by many artists including Gillian Welsh and Anita Carter. There is a wonderful You Tube video of Cotton performing the song (looks like the early 60s to me, but there is no date on the performance). In her lengthy intro she tells how the song came about. Captivating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQLxGmU4QA

Dylan did the the song on 27^th July and gives it a brisk treatment, changing the lyrics around a bit, making it more of a love/regret song. Still it’s a lot of fun. This is from the Tramps concert in New York.

Oh Babe it aint no lie

Dylan’s admiration for Johnny Cash is well known, and around 1969/70 Dylan sought to emulate the iconic country singer, wearing white suits and adopting a ‘country singer’ voice. Dylan mimicked Cash as he did Guthrie years before. That admiration never faded, perhaps because they both went to the same musical well to draw their inspiration. Apart from ‘Walk the Line’, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is Cash’s most famous song, not without controversy, as Cash was never a prisoner there, nor anywhere else. Dylan doesn’t have Cash’s deep, majestic voice, but he gives the song a vigorous airing with his own nasal twist. You’d almost think Dylan had been a prisoner there too, you know – cold irons bound. (10^th Nov)

Folsom Prison Blues

Dylan also sang ‘Big River’, another Johnny Cash song released by Sun Records in 1958. Perhaps it was from Cash that Dylan learned the power of place names, and how to use them in a song. Here’s a verse from ‘Big River.’

‘I met her accidentally in St. Paul, Minnesota,
And it tore me up every time I heard her drawl, Southern drawl,
Then I heard my dream was back Downstream cavortin' in Davenport,
And I followed you, Big River, when you called.’

Listening to the opening bars, you might think you are about to hear a Dylan song, ‘Tombstone Blues’ maybe, or ‘Watching the River Flow’(8^th Nov). The crowd loves it.

Big River

In NET Part 3, we heard Dylan do a Dion song, ‘The Wanderer’, in duet with Paul Simon, I think. Here he does it on his own, and it sounds, to my ear, uncannily like Dion. Clearly Dylan has listened carefully to Dion. This homage to the rogue male, released in 1961, has dated more than Dylan songs have – men are no longer encouraged to boast about their ‘two fists of iron’ or their rampant womanising, but it’s a rocking foot tapper and Dylan has fun with it here.

The wanderer

We’re no strangers to ‘Stone Walls and Steel Bars’, by the Stanley Brothers. Dylan began including the song in 1997, and in an earlier post I suggested that it was, in spirit at least, an ally of ‘Cold Irons Bound’. (Tony Attwood gives a good account of the song here: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/11475)

Dylan’s performances of the song are remarkable for their power and intensity. This one from the early show at Atlantic City, New Jersey, is no exception. Some gentle acoustic guitar from Mr Guitar Man. It works better for me as a prison song than ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, but I don’t know if the Stanley Brothers ever went to prison either.

 Stone Walls and Steel Bars

Robert Johnson’s ‘Crossroads’(1936), is more than just a song. It is a seed that would help inspire and spark the rhythm and blues revolution that underpinned the rock music era. It was covered by Cream in 1966, with Eric Clapton demonstrating his mastery of the blues. The lyrics don’t support the myth that the song is about how Johnson met the devil at the crossroads and sold his soul in return for musical genius, but there is the mysterious fact that Johnson suddenly learned how to play the guitar, and play it brilliantly, from being a bad player.

Here is Robert Johnson’s 1936 original.

The song stands at the crossroads where the folk Dylan and the rock Dylan meet. While Johnson performed alone on an acoustic slide guitar in Delta blues style (the earliest known blues style, featuring slide guitar and harmonica), the song easily lent itself to electric treatment, as the Cream version shows. Dylan learned to convert many of his songs from solo acoustic to electric full band treatment, and it is ‘Crossroads’ that shows the way.

Here, Dylan is duetting with Clapton, but I’m not sure it was a good idea to put Mr Guitar Man with Eric Clapton. Dylan’s obsessive hammering at two or three notes doesn’t stand up well against the fleet-fingered, melodic Clapton. (Note: this was not a regular NET performance, but a televised benefit concert with a different backing band.)

Crossroads

That’s it for my survey of 1999. I think it was not just the band working sweetly together, but Dylan’s voice that made this an outstanding year. It is his greatest instrument. He can make it soft, luminous and intimate, or rough and throat torn as he choses. We haven’t heard him do that so effectively since 1995, and by 1999 his voice is richer and more full bodied. He hits the high notes when he wants and there’s a ton of power.

The performances were more disciplined than previous years, with not so many wandering epics, while two superb lead guitar men seemed to be able to successfully underpin Dylan’s own stubbornly unique and problematic guitar style.

Yes, Dylan had reached a peak in his rising curve, but it was not to finish there. While 1999 is lauded as being one of the greatest years of the NET, and I wouldn’t argue with that, the following year, 2000, was a triumphant continuation of the 1999 peak with, in my opinion Dylan’s best performances ever of certain songs.

That’s coming up in the next post. See you then!

Kia Ora

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• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies part 1
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part III)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part V)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More  Mythologies (Part VI)

by Larry Fyffe

As woman’s role in society changes, so changes the depiction of the Lilith archetype by writers and artists.

Christian and Jewish writers tend to hold on to the view that Lilith’s an evil ‘screech owl’ who seeks revenge on humankind by disrupting Adam’s rightful place as the boss in the relationship that he has with Eve – even before the submissive rib-created Eve upsets the apple cart herself in the paradise of Eden.

In a Gothic Romantic poem, the shape-shifting Lilith, under the guise of beautiful Geraldine, deceives, and then seduces Christabel who’s saving herself for her boyfriend.

In that poem quoted below, Lady Geraldine casts a witch’s  spell on the innocent girl so she’s unable to remember what happened:

And the lady's eyes, they shrunk in her head
Each shrunk up to serpent's eyes
And with somewhat malice, and more of dread
At Christabel she looked askance
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Christabel)

In the following song, the narrator sure ain’t a-looking for a screech-type of woman nor one with serpent’s eyes:

Covenant woman got a contract with the Lord
Way up yonder, great will be her reward
Covenant woman, shining like a morning star
I know I can trust you stay the way you are
(Bob Dylan: Covenant Woman)

In the song above, there’s a cynical caveat –  no sure promise is made to the woman that she’ll be delivered to a paradise on earth, but rather it will be one up yonder in the heavens above after she’s gone.

The narrator tells the female ‘stranger’, that he’s got a covenant of his own, and because of it, he’s still waiting to be delivered to the Promised Land:

I just got to thank you once again
For making your prayers
Unto heaven for me
And to you, always, grateful
I will forever be
(Bob Dylan: Covenant Woman)

And so it could be said in the song lyrics beneath – figuratively the Hebrew God be the groom:

West of the Jordan, east of the Rock of Gibraltar
I see the burning of the stage
Curtain rising on a new age
See the groom still waiting at the altar
(Bob Dylan: The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar)

Could be this time the shape-shifting Lilith shows up in the figure of Claudette:

What can I say about Claudette
Ain't seen her since January
She could be respectively married
Or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires
(Bob Dylan: The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar)

Perhaps this Lilith’s run off with the man in the long black coat:

Tell me tall man
Where would you like to be overthrown
In Jerusalem or Argentina
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

The singer/songwriter is difficult to nail down in one place.

This continues from part one which can be found here.

Me and Eric

by Roger Gibbons

It was a struggle to get to meet Eric Clapton.   His address was well documented and his driveway gate was generally open.  Of course, he was not at home that much.   So I first met Patti Boyd at their house and asked if she would give him a message to ring me.   Patti was very nice but I was not optimistic, so returned several times.   I did see Eric one day and we agreed a date to get an interview done.   My really good tape recorder broke down just before the appointed time (who remembers tape recorders?) so I took an older machine hoping that Eric might volunteer the use of one.   No such luck, the recording is pretty shitty; however, my son is cleaning the CD and it will be available soon.   Eric’s den was full of vinyl and books and those new-fangled videotapes. Oh – and guitars…  I contemplated borrowing some of the vinyl records but did not think I could hide them too well.

During the taping Eric took a phone call which perturbed him a bit and shortly after he curtailed things but agreed to continue sometime.    I went to his house as agreed but Eric had been fishing all day at Roger Daltrey’s lake and wanted to continue.      He was very much into his fishing at this time, mainly as a stress reliever (Pattie had just left him).  So off we went to a different lake, where I wrote down Eric’s answers.   Eric also explained fly-fishing to me but he caught absolutely nothing all day.  On the way back to the car Eric chatted about fishing with an older chap.  We went for a drink afterwards, someone played Cocaine on the pub jukebox and Eric immediately drummed along with the tune. I was so jealous because I simply cannot keep a beat   I gave up trying to clap in time at concerts because of the embarrassment of missing the beat. When we parted Eric took back the jumper he had let me wear. To be fair, it was a bit tight.

Eric’s childhood is well documented and caused him great anguish.   Like Eric, I was brought up by my grandparents.   After being so traumatised by my parents my brain simply erased all memory of my first five years.   They call it PTSD nowadays or traumatic amnesia or dissociative amnesia or a really good idea.  Of course, childhood trauma is a great inspiration for authors, actors, musicians, perverts and serial killers.  I believe your childhood dictates the way you live but it is the scars that drive you to success or failure.

A colleague of mine took me for a quick home visit and there was clearly friction between him and his wife.   His young son looked petrified and about thirty years later he murdered his partner in a gruesome way.  Strangely the parents divorced and remarried and stayed together. I visited another workmate to find his parents would not speak to each other, but communicated through him.   Twenty years later I tried to employ him again but found he could not cope with work and was a sad lonely person.  I have often wondered where Bob’s driving ambition originated.   There is little written about Bob’s childhood and nothing to indicate he was going to be such an inspiration.  I am sure something was a spark and maybe we will find out one day.   Chronicles 2 perhaps.

Eric produced a tame autobiography that did not really shed light on his young life.  (My wife originates from Ripley, like Eric, and was best of friends with Eric’s sister Heather.  She was the last person to talk seriously to his mother Pat before she left to live in Canada.   Pat obviously talked about Eric and showed her Eric’s school reports with their alarming collapse in results.  Pat commented that this was where things went wrong, which was the time Eric found out the truth about his parentage.)

Eric was really nice to me.   At the time we were both losing our marriages.   I pointed out that my wife (the first one) could not leave me because we had no money, a stupid theory, soon disproved.   He also told me that crying was good for you, but I still find emotional turmoil very alarming.  I am 70 now so should get over this soon, or not.  Eric’s garden is pretty spectacular and I would love to have been able to walk around.     My wife, before we met, was invited to go swimming at Eric’s pool but turned down the offer.

As a thank-you to Eric I gave him a one-sided 78rpm vinyl of Enrico Caruso because I knew he loved Pavarotti.

The Interview

The one regret about my questioning is that I did not pursue Eric’s comment about him and Bob being kindred souls.   He says that it was way deeper than being musicians.   I wanted to ask if a terrible sadness was their bond, but that seemed a bit pushy.   One day we will find out, maybe.   “He’s not your everyday person,” sounds now like an understatement about somebody who welds gates, is an artist, whisky producer, actor, film maker, author and a radio presenter on top of his day job.  Eric’s comments about “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” also seemed doom-laden and he also speaks of songs written about personal pain.  Yes, I wish I had pursued things, but I did privately encourage Eric to write an autobiography.   My own two-page autobiography had been very therapeutic but Eric said he could write his in one page.   Thirty years later Eric produced his book but it did not say too much and I guess it was not very therapeutic.

Bob’s charisma gets mentioned and I tried to think of other performers who can walk on stage and grip an audience.  Bob is in a league with few others.

Eric recommended I get a voice-activated recorder and I did.  It was never used but my wife and I were waiting for a Chinese takeaway one evening when Paul Weller walked in and asked for his order.  The young Chinese lady asked “what is your name”.   I would like to ask Paul why he did an anaemic version of “All along the Watchtower”.  Still anybody who wrote “A Town Called Malice” is alright with me.

On one of my many visits to Eric’s house I saw Rob Fraboni, but Eric was on holiday.  Carl Wayne, lead singer of the Move, bought a lot of building materials from me.  He was a great character who would come into our office and tell us Jim Davidson’s latest jokes.  Carl showed me around his house which had been owned by Steve O’Rourke, the original manager of Pink Floyd, who practised in the large garage.  Carl rated Luther Vandross the best singer ever, but considered Bob could stay in tune at least like Liam Gallagher.  He became lead singer of the Hollies when I knew him, replacing Allan Clarke whose voice was raddled by alcohol and was lip-synching the encore of shows.  I saw the Hollies with Allan Clarke in their prime, he had a fantastic voice and stage presence.  Somebody called out for him to sing “Gasoline Alley Bred”.   He did sing a bit a capella but was most ungracious and curmudgeonly at the same time.

With the Hollies Carl had to sing “Blowing in the Wind”.  They had recorded an overwrought, overblown version on their Hollies sing Dylan album.   Carl gave me tickets to see the Hollies at Norwich Theatre Royal and he duly concluded the first half with the song.  He loved the song but not their version but it went down very well anyway.   When they did “He Ain’t Heavy” Carl appeared to play immaculate harmonica, but in fact could not play a note.   I call this harmonica synching – maybe Bob should try.   Carl once played a show with Larry Adler, the legendary harmonica player.   After singing “My Funny Valentine” Carl was told by Larry he did not sing it like Sinatra.   Carl told him to fuck off.   He should have written a book – he was full of anecdotes.  I was deeply shocked when Carl died such an untimely death.   I still have golf balls which Carl collected from his garden (between two golf courses) and gave me.

In the last few years I have sold building materials to Roy Harper and Mike D’Abo, both have Dylan connections.  Roy is a nice man and gets a good review on Wikipedia after recording thirty-two albums.  The only song of his I recall is “When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease” but he did cover “Girl From The North Country”.   Mike D’Abo recorded three hit songs as singer with Manfred Mann.  The Mighty Quinn was his biggest hit and he called his band the Mighty Quintett, later in his career.  Manfred Mann in their various guises recorded twenty Dylan songs.

The transcript of the interview was sent to John Bauldie to publish in the Dylan Fanzine ‘The Telegraph’.   John cut a part of Eric’s answer about songwriting and I remember being very upset because the same issue contained an incredibly long, boring and pretentious piece about the song “Belle Isle”.  I complained to John and he duly corrected the article for the book “Wanted Man” and inscribed my copy.  Of course, John also died far too young.

I thank Eric for the time he gave me but I doubt if he even remembers me now. His life is pretty full.

Addendum

Let us hope that Bob tours next year (with the Shadow Kingdom band).   My wife and I have followed the career of Guy Davis.  He appeared on “A Nod to Bob” – the 2001 tribute album, and tours small venues in Britain playing old-time blues really well. He finishes shows with ‘Sweetheart like you’. which was a highlight of the ‘Nod to Bob’ compilation.   Go and see him if you can.

There is an index to some of the recent work on this site on the home page.

By Tony Attwood

The last episode in this series was All Directions at Once: Dylan at the end of 1990

The index to the series, with yet another attempt at getting the numbering to make sense, can be found here.

 ————–

Bob Dylan had had times in his writing career prior to the 1990s when he had stopped composing – or at least stopped composing and releasing anything he had written (for of course, we can never be quite sure what he was up to in his spare time).

The first pause was 1968 when he wrote “Lay Lady Lay” and nothing else.  1971/2 was a different sort of pause, for in 1971 a couple of songs still highly regarded (When I paint my masterpiece and Watching the river flow) and in 1972 the music to Billy the Kid, and “Forever Young” but again nothing on the industrial scale of production we had seen earlier.

1976 saw another one song year (Seven Days) before the work on the next album began the following year with “Changing of the Guards” (which made 1977 the year not of a large number of songs but certainly a number of very significant and memorable songs).

1978 was a different type of year again – a lot of compositions, but most of them hardly remembered.   “Slow Train and “New Pony” are the main exceptions.

Then suddenly in 1979, Bob was running on full speed, writing songs which all seemed to have (and indeed in the latter stages all overtly had) a Christian theme.

1980 gave us 13 new compositions, and a gradual movement away from the Christian theme, while 1981 gave us another variation: 23 songs (including the last ever gospel song, at the end of the year, but only maybe half a dozen of these would most people remember).

Across 1982/3 the number of songs written (17 in all) was less high, but included within its number various songs the average fan might particularly recall.  Songs such as  “Jokerman”, “I and I”, Blind Willie McTell,” “Don’t fall apart on me tonight,” “License to Kill”, “Neighbourhood Bully”, and “Foot of Pride” (although I probably exaggerate with that last one – many not might immediately recall it, it seems to be just me that rates it so incredibly highly).  Quite a repertoire nonetheless.

But then once again, Bob stopped.  For the period from 1991 to 1995 either had just four compositions, or none at all – depending on your point of view.  The evidence is unclear, and of those four songs, only one Well well well has been noted as being of particular merit.  And even then, Bob only wrote the lyrics, not the music.

And yet, the last two songs of this period “Tragedy of the trade” and “Time to end this masquerade” were co-written with none other than Gerry Goffin, who wrote the lyrics of  “Will you love me tomorrow?” “Take good care of my baby,” and “It might as well rain until September” – to name but three out of his enormous catalogue.

But somehow the two geniuses together simply didn’t make it happen…

Although quite possibly Bob was telling it how he saw it, in the middle 8.

I forgot to milk the cow, but I don’t wanna do it now
Like to sleep for a hundred years, till’ this old world 
   just disappears

So what did we expect in 1996?  Probably by then some of us were a bit downbeat about the chances of any more masterpieces, but of course Bob fooled those of us thinking that way for we got a whole set of masterpieces, and then some.   Which ones you pick from the ten compositions of that year is obviously a highly personal choice, but I suspect “Mississippi” is going to be up there for everyone, along with “Not Dark Yet”.  And many of the others are, I am sure, personal favourites among Dylan’s legions of fans.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because Bob’s return the world of writing started here…

Dirt Road Blues, is a 12 bar country blues: and for a composer like Bob returning to serious composition after such a long break, the old 12 bar is a good place to start.  Indeed how incredibly appropriate it was that the whole process re-started with “Goin’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride” – a reflection on the endless “moving on” theme that had been part of Dylan’s writing and his life on the road, all these years until he seemingly called it a day.

So now, coming back to that favourite old theme, he tells us quite clearly that he is back to the old music, back to his roots.  And, back to all that this implies: the hobo keeping on keeping on, walking down the highway ALONE.

Of course there is an eternal contradiction in singing this song to mass audiences of adoring fans and being anything but alone, but then whenever was Bob not a bundle of contradictions?

And more than anything let us not forget how this song ends: “Gon’ walk on down until I’m right beside the sun, I’m gonna have to put up a barrier to keep myself away from everyone.”  And there are certainly moments in this collection of songs that tell us that is absolutely what he is doing.  In a strange contradictory way he is writing again because he’s had enough.  Of everything.

If this were just another Dylan song I’d perhaps not even think of these lines in this context, but this is the first Dylan song in years and years.

Although you might well be more familiar with

Gonna walk down that dirt road 'til everything becomes the same
Gonna walk down that dirt road 'til everything becomes the same
I keep on walking 'til I hear her holler out my name

And just in case we were thinking that Bob had used that first composition in so many years to get that out of his system, and get the old creative juices running via a familiar theme, his next piece suggested otherwise

I can't wait
Wait for you to change your mind
It's late
I'm trying to walk the line

Well, it's way past midnight and there's people all around
Some on their way up, some on their way down
The air burns and I'm trying to think straight
And I don't know how much longer I can wait

and it ends,

I thought somehow that I would be spared this fate
But I don't know how much longer I can wait

No this is not Bob bouncing along with the joys of being out on the road, for here we are right in the depths of lost love.

OK, so that was getting dark and gloomy, but at least after those two amazing if somewhat dark songs, Bob then produced one of the all time masterpieces, with that by now seemingly regular Bob Dylan reaction to a masterpiece – he dropped it from the album.

After which he moved onto writing Highlands.  And when we think of these songs in the order they were written this truly is an extraordinary set of jumps both lyrically and musically – although the theme of the influence of the environment on how you feel is a dominant theme throughout.

So Dylan is still fascinated by writing about travelling and wishing to be elsewhere.  Mississippi, the Aberdeen waters…we are moving on and on… “I crossed that river just to be where you are” onto “I’m going there when I’m good enough to go”; Dylan still feels like a prisoner.  Just as he did as he did as he sang “I don’t know how much longer I can wait.”  He’s trapped, and travelling is the only way out.

But there is a clarity in Bob’s singing on that outtake version which really does take us somewhere else.  And that’s before we even contemplate the fact that he played it on the outtake version in D-flat.  Now I appreciate that might not mean too much to you, but believe me, no one performs in D flat.  I mean, you just don’t.

So then came Mississippi, in which Bob is still the prisoner – “all boxed in nowhere to escape”.   I mean, how clear do we want Bob to be – writing about feeling like a prisoner in one song and then talking about nowhere to escape: I think we are seeing a theme here.

But in the midst of the singular message he can still write lines that have been part of the lives of so many of us ever since, while at the heart of this we still have the whole issue of moving on – the very essence of Dylan’s early songs.  I’m immediately taken back to I was young when I left home  in 1961, Rambling Gambling Willie  in 1962, followed a little later with “Rocks and Gravel” and Down the Highway,  Long Time Gone , Walking Down the Line and  Kingsport Town  – all songs of moving on, all written in 1962.

He stayed with the theme for many years but then “moving on” seemed to get a bit lost.   “Ride this train” in 1986 was probably the last moving on song (although the words are impossible to make out), and maybe before this “Drifting too far from shore” (although again lyrics are obscure).

But now we are back with the moving on theme, as Mississippi has the new thought at as one travels on “Some people will offer you their hands and some won’t”.  Indeed the mere fact that “I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down” shows how important moving on is.  It is as if Bob is saying, I’ve not been writing anything because I lost the drive to keep on moving on.

So important is “Mississippi” in understanding the music of Bob Dylan you will perhaps forgive me putting up a third version – this being the first ever live performance of the masterpiece.

The pain expressed through some of the singing is hard to take; in fact the expression of the pain of not moving on overwhelms the desire to make the song something that we want to listen to.

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now
My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in

But now he is out of that corner, he’s off and most certainly is moving again.

As for Highlands – I guess I appreciate and understand it, but I’ve still find that mid-piece interlude in the restaurant where Dylan expresses the fact of being so fed up with everyone wanting him to do what they want, not what he wants, just, well, odd.

I say "All right, I know but I don't have my drawin' book"
She gives me a napkin, she say "You can do it on that"
I say "Yes I could but I don't know where my pencil is at"
She pulls one out from behind her ear
She says "Alright now go ahead draw me I'm stayin' right here"
I make a few lines and I show it for her to see
Well she takes the napkin and throws it back and says
"That don't look a thing like me"

But of course even here, in this restaurant, he is moving on, because nothing in the Dylan universe is ever fixed.

Dreaming of You didn’t make the album, perhaps because of its lines which are derivative from Standing in the Doorway, but it is a truly remarkable piece of music and really deserved to be given a place.  After all, couldn’t he have just re-written those lines if they popped up by mistake?

Means so much, the softest touch
By the grave of some child, who neither wept or smiled
I pondered my faith in the rain
I’ve been dreamin’ of you, that’s all I do
And it’s driving me insane

But the tale is the same: for all that travelling, he still can’t escape.

The series continues.

• Early Roman Kings (2012) part I: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part II: Anything goes
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part III: He had a left like Henry’s hammer
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part IV: You can ring my bell, ring my bell
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part V: I will massacre you
• Early Roman Kings (2012) part VI: The beauty of the flames

by Jochen Markhorst

VII        Ding Dong Daddy

I was up on black mountain the day Detroit fell
They killed them all off and they sent them to hell
Ding Dong Daddy, you’re coming up short
Gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court
I’ve had my fun, I’ve had my flings
Gonna shake ’em all down like the early Roman Kings

The most successful animation series of all time is the Despicable Me series plus spin-offs (the top hit Minions); the franchise is now approaching a box office turnover of 4 billion dollars. The protagonist is the supervillain-gone-soft Gru, indispensable and frequent comic relief is provided by his army of little yellow helpers, the Minions. Artwork, humour, pace and acting are all stunning, and the success is more than justified. But for all the jubilation, the source of inspiration remains somewhat underexposed.

In January 1966, the Teen Titans first encounter a supervillain who also has a troop of gremlins as helpers, and who has a similar build, nose and motor skills to Gru: Ding Dong Daddy, the villain who talks like a Dylan song: “Chill out, cool cat! The Ding Dong Daddy ain’t cruisin’ for a bruisin’!” Teen Titans screenwriter Bob Haney did not make up the name Ding Dong Daddy himself, of course. His inspiration is the same source from which Dylan draws: “I’m A Ding Dong Daddy (From Dumas)”.

“I’m A Ding Dong Daddy (From Dumas)” is written in the 1920s by a then still unknown Phil Baxter, the bandleader of the Jack Benny Radio Show. The song becomes popular, and remains popular in the 1940s when a radio station from Dumas, Texas, names itself after the song (KDDD-FM) and uses it as a theme tune. But in Dylan’s case, the song undoubtedly came to him through his great hero Bob Wills.

Radio broadcaster Dylan professes his love for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys again and again in Theme Time Radio Hour. Eight times he finds a reason to play one of his songs, and almost always he introduces the record with words of admiration. “Here on Theme Time Radio Hour we believe you can never play too much Bob Wills,” for example, and:

“Every year in April, on the last Saturday, they celebrate Bob Wills Day, in Turkey, Texas. I guess you know where you can find me, next April.”

Bob Wills records “Ding Dong Daddy” in 1937 and it is not difficult to understand what attracts Dylan to the song: it is a particularly catchy song with an overwhelming cascade of alliterations, inner rhymes and absurdities, fierce secondary characters, naughtiness and frenzied scenes;

Got a whiz bang momma
She's a Bear Creek baby and a wampus kitty
I'm a ding dong daddy from Dumas
You ought to see me do my stuff
I'm a ding dong daddy from Dumas
You ought to see me do my stuff
I'm a popcorn popper and a big apple knocker
You ought to see me strut
I'm a mamma makin' man
And I just made Mary
She's a big blonde baby from Peanut Prairie
I'm a ding dong daddy from Dumas
You ought to see me do my stuff

More jolly and more innocent than Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings”, certainly, but the frenzied joy of language is one-to-one comparable – as with this last verse. The engine seems to be, as in the highlights of the mercurial years ’65-’66, a wildly splashing stream-of-consciousness. The scenery from the opening line sets the tone: Black Mountain undoubtedly triggers the classic “Black Mountain Blues” in the walking jukebox Dylan. He knows the song from Janis Joplin, from Dave Van Ronk and from Nick Drake, and especially from Bessie Smith, the original version from 1930.

But closest to his heart is Dr. Ralph Stanley, who often played it with his brother Carter, and continued to play it after Carter’s death in 1966 – with The Clinch Mountain Boys on Live In Seattle (1969), for example. Paula Cole keeps the song alive well into the twenty-first century, on American Quilt (2021). Intended as a tribute to Bessie Smith and Janis Joplin, she explains:

“Both women sang this song. It is strong like good coffee and brings out something different in me as I honor the legacy of two great artists who identify with the lyrics of ‘Black Mountain,’ where appetite and violence rule – and softness must yield to steeliness. Bessie and Janis related to these lyrics. And I do too.”

[Note: we have two sources for this video – there seems to be a regional issue with it.  Hopefully one will work for you].

“Black Mountain Blues” is another fierce, frenzied song with outrageous imagery (“Those people in Black Mountain are mean as they can be / Now they uses gun powder just to sweeten up their tea”), and the verse that will lead Dylan associatively to that “Sicilian court”:

Well, out in Black Mountain you can't keep a good man in jail.
Yeah, out in Black Mountain you can't keep a good man in jail
'Cause if the jury convicts him, the judge will pay his bail

Dylan’s verse Gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court is another example that demonstrates why we shouldn’t look for too many historical references behind name-droppings like “Roman Kings”, or the Fall of Detroit in this stanza’s first line. After all, a Sicilian court has nothing to do with justice – by “Sicilian court” we mean the group of Italian poets centred in the courts of Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), the Sicilian court of the Italian-born Holy Roman emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, who ruled the Sicilian kingdom from 1208 to 1250. An early Roman king, if you will. Not an insignificant group, by the way; one of those poets was Jacopo de Lentini, the inventor of the sonnet form.

But Dylan paints a portrait of a Mafia-like clan, the stream-of-consciousness has already led him to The Godfather III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990), to that paraphrase of Michael Corleone’s “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” in the second stanza (you try to get away, they drag you back). Furthermore, the stream has already been led to that bizarre courtroom scene in “Black Mountain Blues”, the denouement of The Godfather III is set in Sicily… the leap to trial in a Sicilian court is not too far-fetched.

The chosen date seems just as historically unfounded and in itself insignificant as that court on a southern Italian island: the day Detroit fell. There are plenty of analysts who take this seriously, and then try to build a bridge to The Siege Of Detroit (15-16 August, in the British – U.S. War of 1812), but “Detroit” also seems to be the choice of a walking jukebox who puts poetry far above historical accuracy or significance. After all, in rock ‘n’ roll and blues classics, “Detroit” is a synonym for “big American city” or “exciting place where it all happens”, something like that. “The Motor City where the girls are so pretty,” as Steve Miller knows (“Rock’n Me”, 1976).

No, if you do want to take The Day Detroit Fell seriously, then a metaphorical connotation like The Day The Music Died, “the end of real music” would be more obvious. “Things were beginning to get corporatized,” Dylan says in the Rolling Stone interview in September 2012, around the days Tempest is released, trying to explain why the 50s define him, and not the 60s – “those days were cruel.” And then he specifies:

“I truly loved the music. I saw the death of what I love and a certain way of life that I’d come to take for granted.”

The Fall of Detroit, then, seems more like the poetic, melancholic sigh of an elderly icon (Dylan wrote the song when he was 71) noting the demise of his favourite, outdated music, the death of what I love. Which is more than just Motown, obviously. “Back In The U.S.A.” by Chuck Berry, Lee Dorsey’s “Ride Your Pony”, Chubby Checker’s “Twistin’ USA”, “Mary Lou” (she left Detroit to go to Kalamazoo), Bobby Bare’s first Top 10 hit “Detroit City” (better known as “I Wanna Go Home”), Skip James, Fats Domino, The Beach Boys, Tampa Red’s “Detroit Blues”… they are not the least names and not the least songs in Dylan’s backpack, choosing Detroit as their backdrop.

“Here’s something we couldn’t fit in to our Musical Map-show,” the DJ says halfway through the Theme Time episode “Spring Cleaning”, when he announces “one of Bobby’s biggest hits, from 1963”. It has absolutely nothing to do with spring cleaning, but Dylan really, really wants to play “Detroit City”. Just as in the closing line, the nod to one of the forefathers of the Blues, to the early Roman king Bukka White and his legendary “Shake ‘Em On Down” (1937), comes out of the blue.

Dylan, well, he has his fun, and he has his flings.

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To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part VIII: I got the John the Conqueror root

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978