The archetype of the shape-shifting serpentine female Lilith figure resurfaces again and again in the Jungian Sea of English literature; therein, men become obsessed with her image.
In the poetry of Britisher John Keats:
Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair
Hovered and buzzed his wings, with fearful roar
Above the lintel of their chamber door
And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor
(John Keats : Lamia)
Followed up in the poetry of American Edgar Allan Poe (wise Athena, whose sacred bird is the owl, accidentally spears Pallas, daughter of a sea-god):
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamp-light over him streaming throws a shadow on the floor
(Edgar Poe: The Raven)
And in the song lyrics of Bob Dylan:
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
Blowing like she never blowed before
Blue light blinking, red light glowing
Blowing like she's at my chamber door ....
I wake up with that woman in my bed
Everybody telling me she's gone to my head
(Bob Dylan: Desquesne Whistle ~ Dylan/Hunter)
Of such poetry, Bob Dylan is well aware:
Gotta tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe
Got skeletons in the walls of people you know
(Bob Dylan: I Contain Multitudes)
“Desquesne Whistle” borrows from the following song:
I thought I heard the steamboat whistle blowing
And she blowed like she never blowed before
I'm afraid my little lover's on that boat
(Shirkey and Harper: Steamboat Man)
In the song lyrics quoted beneath, Dylan presents Poe’s demonic Lithith-like figure as a raven, but this time she’s cast in a sympathetic light; the country doctors rambles – perhaps she’s pregnant:
The wind howls like a hamner
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)
The times they are changing, and Lady Lilith gets a do-over. In the song following she’s sad-eyed, not blamed for fleeing from working in Adam’s garden at all; it’s his fault that Eden is burning, nor hers.
He expects Lilith to scrub the kitchen floor – he’s the hoodlum in this tale. Before God of Order, of ‘the great chain of being’, has a chance to throw Lilith out the farm’s gate, she’s off to Babylon:
They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm
But with the sea at your feet, and the phony false alarm
And with the child of the hoodlum wrapped up in your arms
How could they ever have persuaded you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
The people we are looking at in this series are going to be artists who have a direct connection to Dylan and his work or life. So they could be from his backing bands, friends from back in the day or even family members.
In the last episode we looked at Charlie Sexton. In this second instalment let’s look at the work of possibly the greatest all round musician to play in Dylan’s band, since at least Garth Hudson. It’s Larry Campbell
Tony: That is utterly, utterly amazing. Stunning – and he just stands there and does it without any fuss or antics. It is an incredible talent. I am so glad to have this pointed out to me. I never knew he could do this!
Aaron: Larry played in Dylan’s band from 1997 to 2004. The list of other artists he has played with is mightily impressive – including Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, Levon Helm and BB King.
His first solo album Rooftops appeared in 2005. This was a collection of mainly fiddle tunes transposed to acoustic guitar. The tour de force of the album is this version of the House Carpenter.
Tony: OK after the first track I was ready for pure sheer unadulterated talent, and wow, this comes through. Dear Reader, please play this all the way through, you will not be disappointed. How does anyone get to be that nimble? Oh yes, and do keep listening to the end – don’t be too anxious to move on to the next example.
Aaron: Following this he went on produce Levon Helm’s Grammy award-winning Albums Dirt Farmer and electric Dirt.
Later he started working with his wife Teresa Williams, so far they have made a pair of really fine albums, the self titled debut in 2015 was followed by Contraband Love in 2017.
Let’s finish off with some tracks from both and see what Tony makes of these (If the studio version don’t work you should be able to find live versions on YouTube)
Attics Of My Life
Tony: That was unexpected. I often wonder why people leave the band with Bob, but with this ability playing the same songs night after night must be a bit limiting, even with Bob’s notorious habit of suddenly changing the script. But with this beautiful voice lurking at home, what ever made him go on tour in the first place?
Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning
Tony: And just when I thought I was getting the hang of what they were going to deliver, we have this. My guess is whatever these two touch, is going to be really worth listening to. If I may add one thought, the lady has far too fine a voice ever to shout, but then, what do I know?
When I Stop Loving You
What more can I say? They can do it all. Stay with this – the harmonies are beautiful.
They have their own website of course. And it has lots of other examples of their music too. Lucky Bob to have had such a musician who would tour with him.
I went to school with Sir Kazuo Ishiguro. Well I vaguely remember a Japanese boy who was in his first year at Woking Boys grammar school when I was in my last year. I had been a lackadaisical scholar and left with only three O Levels but Kazuo went on to University, fame and fortune. As far as I know we are the only pupils of that school to be published. Kazuo has been quite successful (KBE, OBE and Nobel Prize) while I remain unknown (of course, we are both overshadowed by Woking girl, the great Delia Smith) but Kazuo and I both love Bob Dylan.
Kazuo has expressed his admiration for Bob in interviews. I am thankful he has not written about Bob for two reasons – I tried to read ‘Never let me go’ and I gave up. The boredom was too great and it is one of very few books I have abandoned. (Most writing about Bob is pretentious; hello, Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray). Yet sadly, I still feel obliged to buy all books on Bob. But writers still feel compelled to be obtuse and grandiose.
Let us therefore be thankful Kazuo has not offered a dull pretentious work about Bob. I am not capable of complex writing skills so this is my memoir of an interview with Eric Clapton and it is very straightforward.
Introduction
In 1986 I rang Ian Woodward of the fanzine, ‘The Wicked Messenger’. I thought it was obvious that Eric Clapton should be interviewed about Bob Dylan. But the fanzine and its contributors were not that organised, so I took it upon myself. I had seen Eric in concert five times (if I include Blind Faith). Once I turned up at Guilford Civic Hall without a ticket but hoping to get in for the encore. On arriving in the car park, I was surrounded by four policemen which I thought was overkill security. Nevertheless, they let me through and indeed I got into the back of the theatre, with probably thirty other hopefuls. The reason for the security became clear when Eric came back onstage with Mark Knopfler, Elton John, Phil Collins and his band. They did one song, ‘Further On Up The Road’ but with so many solos that it lasted twenty minutes.
I also saw Eric with Carl Perkins at the Civic. Very annoyingly Eric played at Woking Leisure centre for many New Year’s Eve gigs. I lived about two minutes away and my wife and I walked around a couple of times. You could hear the music very well from outside and once Andy Fairweather-Low said Happy New Year to us. He was not wide-eyed or legless. To get in to the gig you needed to be in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I did not research the interview too much and I had no set questions, just topics. If you watched television in those days you could see questions being asked and the same old set replies coming out, often word for word. A few years later I went to see The Sue Lawley Show being recorded at the BBC . She had a blackboard with a list of questions on and ignored any interesting reply. Famously Sarah Ferguson did not announce her pregnancy until two days later. Roald Dahl was lovely, fascinating and could have done a much longer interview.
At the time of the interview Eric and I both had failing marriages but Eric’s life included two children with other women and a busy lovelife. He was clearly, though, not a happy person. Thankfully we both went on to long and successful new partnerships. I visited Eric Clapton’s house on many occasions, often to find he was out or busy. I went to Elton John’s house in Windsor but he was in America and never came back so my career as an interviewer came to an end. I also moved to Gloucestershire so I have not seen Eric since although my grandson goes to school just down the road from his house. Sadly my wife’s father has an ashes grave headstone in Ripley church. When we visit to clean the stone we always see the best kept grave – Conor Clapton.
Me and Bob
I was first aware of Bob Dylan when I heard “Times They Are A-Changing” on the radio, not particularly liking the scratchy folk sound but loving the sentiment of the lyrics. At this time, I was young and penniless and I could not afford those expensive LPs so I purchased a couple of EPs. “One too many mornings” was a particular favourite, but friends of mine were into blues music, the Beatles, Stones and Bo Diddley so I listened to all sorts. By now (1965) I had a part-time job so could afford albums and concerts. Chuck Berry, then B.B.King were my first concerts, both memorable. Chuck did “My ding-a-ling” much ruder than the chart version. B.B. did “Lucille” including breaking a string and mending it while still playing (I did not realise he did that in every show). My first albums were the Beatles, Chuck Berry and the Hollies. Highway 61 was so different that after playing it once I ignored it for a few months but tried it again and have loved it ever since.
My main interest was football and as I lived in Woking, Surrey I could get on the train and get to any London venue quite easily. My trips to football were combined with record shop scouring so I found bootlegs and old blues and folk albums in strange places like New Cross and Seven Sisters. Those were the days before Google. The BBC did their “Bob Dylan in Concert” show in 1965 and that was a breathtaking change for youngsters like me, growing up with musical candyfloss.
The first time I saw Bob was at the Isle of Wight in 1969. My mate let me down at the last minute so I went alone, staying in a bed and breakfast in Portsmouth on Saturday night then coming back on the ferry after midnight; what a wonderful experience. The show, though, was not what the crowd expected – it was subdued rather than rocking. The festival DJ played the Stones Honky Tonk Women on numerous occasions and that aggressive rock was missing from Bob. Nevertheless, there were some standouts: Wild Mountain Thyme, Mighty Quinn and Minstrel Boy. They were all new and exciting but overall I felt slightly disappointed. Mind you the support acts were abysmal – Blodwyn Pig anybody?
The next visit was at Blackbushe in 1978 and Bob was really on top of his game. I had tried to get tickets for the Earls Court shows but even spending all day queuing in London was fruitless. At this time Bob was massively successful – nobody else could fill six shows at Earls Court and follow that with a massive show like Blackbushe (well alright, maybe the Stones or Springsteen later).
I drove past Blackbushe recently. What a site for concerts it could have been, instead of a car auction area and a market (for a long time, but not anymore.) The show was fantastic; even my first wife enjoyed the day. Afterwards we got in a taxi and the driver wondered why there were so many people about.
I have seen Bob about forty times since then. The 1984 shows at Newcastle and Wembley were incredible. I had stayed overnight in Newcastle and caught a train to go directly to Wembley thinking I could leave my suitcase in storage at Waterloo station. They do not do that at weekends so I rolled up at Wembley with a big suitcase and they waved me in. I could have had a gun, a bomb or a pile of drugs in that suitcase. Instead it was useful to sit on. At the end of the Wembley show Bob was on stage with Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Carlos Santana and Chrissie Hynde. Nobody else can match Bob’s appeal.
One thing that is disappointing is that even being an octogenarian will not diminish Bob’s appeal. I am sure many fans would love to see him in a more intimate setting. I have been up close at Shepherds Bush Empire and once I was in the sixth row at Wembley Arena but generally those big venues are pretty soulless. Brixton empire was an exception but I would not go to any concerts in London now – it is too much like hard work, especially when I live in Gloucestershire.
Mavis Staples has just booked a show at Stroud Subscription Rooms. 450 seats – perfect. Come on Bob, you can do it. Let me walk into Stroud along the canal. Take in a meal and drinks and watch the great man. The perfect entertainment.
In 1981 I broke my leg and missed the gospel shows but I have seen Bob during most tours. The variety in the shows is staggering, so unlike others who regurgitate the same formula over and over, note for note. The most disappointing non-Bob show I ever saw was Ray Charles who did a carbon-copy of his ‘60s routine. Even a great performer can be dull!
For me the shows with Tom Petty and Roger McGuinn were as good as it gets. I love it when Bob does a rarity, like Bottle of Bread at Shepherds Bush, or Congratulations at Birmingham. He is so unique.
I thought I was a solid, sensible fan of Bob but in 1986 I got a job as an extra in the dire film “Hearts of Fire” filming at the Colston Hall in Bristol. I was supposed to be backstage as an extra but ended up in the main hall. We were all given lyric sheets for “Had A Dream About You, Baby”. What a waste of paper! It was fascinating to see the filming.
Bob seemed in a good mood, happily signing autographs, some left-handed and some right-handed. On Saturday morning I got in again but beforehand I had a little walk outside. I chatted for a while with a guy who collected autographs and found he had already got Bob’s but was trying to get Richard Marquand’s. Anyway, I strolled past a trailer with its door open and there sat Bob. I was so awestruck that I could not speak, but rushed off to buy a pen and calm down. I have met a lot of celebrities but none of them made me so inspired. I realised then that Bob meant an awful lot to me; something inexplicable but wonderful.
Other fans are just as enthusiastic, like the chap at Wembley Arena who rushed past me to get to Bob and bearhugged him, like the chap in Cardiff on his 149th show, like the Scottish family who stayed in Wales for a week to see Bob in Cardiff and like the two couples singing ‘Sara’ in the NEC carpark at midnight. Anyway, I went back to the trailer and asked Bob to sign the back of my lyric-sheet and daringly asked if he would be singing. Bob said that he was not singing that day, that was not the deal. I grovelled away and still feel guilty about ignoring the other occupant – Ian Dury who had said ‘wotcher, mate’ to me. They were listening to classic ‘50s country music.
Inside the Colston Hall there was a little bit of filming, mainly Ron Wood flicking a cigarette into his mouth but a jam developed onstage. I think the band was really great but the tune went on for twenty minutes, Nevertheless, Bob got a standing ovation without singing. I bumped into Ronnie Wood outside and got his autograph for a friend. He signed himself as ‘Ronnie Wood – the Rolling Stones’.
I have to mention some shows, in particular Wembley Arena 1987. John Peel gave it a dreadful review but it was a brilliant show. Roger McGuinn was brilliant, particularly Chestnut Mare, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were tremendous. When Bob performed with just Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench I thought that was perfection. Driving back from Wembley was quite strange as the great storm had started. I thought my car’s steering was a problem until I got out and was blown sideways.
I loved John Peel but to be fair John’s opinions were very odd at times. I thought John’s playing of Liverpool football chants and songs was phoney but I saw him at a Norwich/Liverpool game with the longest Liverpool scarf ever. Another show was Hammersmith 1991 when my 16-year-old son became hooked on Bob. He is still an avid fan. I also took him to an Arsenal game at Highbury. He has no interest in football whatsoever. A year later I took a gorgeous lady to Hammersmith and we are still together, even though she does not like Bob’s voice. Who can understand such things! She complains even now because the audience stood up for the whole concert and she saw nothing, being only just over five feet tall.
Some oddities I have seen are Bob singing Congratulations at the NEC Birmingham, one show at Hammersmith where the audience only heard one line, the rest being mouthed but soundless, another show at Hammersmith with an untouched piano, another show where Bob started Knockin’ on Heavens’ Door acoustically but the band gradually joined in -wonderful – and Bottle of Bread at Shepherds Bush, and Rumble/London’s Calling and Blue Monday. I have never been let down by Bob but always surprised. At one Hammersmith show, I saw Renee Shapiro who named herself Sara Dylan (Wikipedia calls her a Dylan groupie). She was murdered in 1992 but her remains were not found until twenty years later. Her killer, Joseph Naso, as never charged with her murder but is now 87 years old and in prison for other crimes.
The article continues….
If you would like to contribute to Untold Dylan with an article on anything Dylan related please write to Tony@schools.co.uk
My problem with reviewing Dylan’s 1999 performances is that there is just too much good stuff. I have settled into doing about four posts per year, with about 10 audio files per post, and here I am at post five in 1999 with about thirty songs clamouring to get onto my setlist, and one more post to go of the covers Dylan did of other songs, some of which he’d never done before, at least on the NET.
So I’ve cut the thirty songs down to nineteen and will have to rip through them pretty fast. All these songs I have introduced before in previous posts, so those following these posts won’t need any reminders. If you’re a new reader, I suggest you look at some of the previous posts. (There is an index to the series here).
Without further ado, let’s pick up from where we left the last post, looking at Dylan’s folk roots, the acoustic Folk Bob, and we can’t do better than start at Tramps, New York, with this vigorous, upbeat performance of ‘The Times They Are A-changing’. The times might change but the song doesn’t. The crowd loves this one. Wonderful vocal, and, glory be, a blaring harp solo, as jazzy and discordant as it ever was.
Times they are a-changing
‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ is one of Dylan’s great conversation songs. The sadness of parting, the sadness of gifts. This is a quiet, reflective performance. No tricks, just the unadorned song. (18th November)
Boots of Spanish Leather
Staying in the same bandwidth, ‘Don’t Think Twice’ also gets the simple, unadorned treatment. After the age of the epic versions of these short songs, it’s a pleasure to be able to appreciate the brevity of the song once more. There is some guitar work but it is not excessive, and the instrumental break at the end gives it a country twist along with that pattering beat. It’s so easy to listen to you can almost forget the sting in the lyrics.
Don’t think twice
What’s a protest song? ‘It’s All Right Ma’ is a comprehensive blast at all things false and phoney, and a declaration of resilience in the face of all that crap. Originally, Dylan would rap it out fast, the words almost too quick to catch (try the 1990 performance, NET, 1990, part 1) but by 1999 he was searching for new ways to present the song. Here he slows it down a bit and puts that pattering beat I mentioned behind it. I think I prefer the earlier hard-driving approach, but I can hardly fault Dylan’s vocal on this one. Instead of flattening his voice, as he did in the 60s, he raises and softens it.
It’s all right Ma
Moving forward in Dylan’s chronology a little, we come to his great blues composition ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’. This performance has a country edge (courtesy of the steel guitar) rather than a hard urban edge. Nice lazy beat. A masterly performance. (date unknown)
It takes a lot to laugh
One of the songs Dylan experimented with the most has been ‘She Belongs to Me’ and he would go on evolving new versions right through to 2013. All through the 90s Dylan developed a quiet, laid-back version of the song, quite different to the more upbeat, peppy album version. It would be some years before he developed the hard-driving, bluesy versions of the last years of the NET. But don’t let that foot-tapping, laid back performance beguile you into thinking that it’s a nice song.
She belongs to me
Time to hop back to Tramps for a gutsy performance of ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. The song is addressed to someone who is way out of their depth at some seriously bizarre party. Dylan’s low, snarly voice is as effective as the high, keening voice of the original. More effective maybe, as there is no escaping the nastiness of the tone here, augmented by the equally nasty tones of Dylan’s Stratocaster. If ever Dylan’s off centre, ‘off key’ guitar playing is appropriate, it is here.
Ballad of a Thin Man
Before leaving the world of Highway 61 Revisited, we have to drop in and hear ‘Desolation Row’, one of Dylan’s greatest masterpieces. I couldn’t overlook this one even though there is nothing particularly notable or outstanding about the performance. There is a beauty in the melodic structure of the song that belies the dark visions that impel it, and Dylan’s rough, late 90s voice suits the subject matter just fine.
Desolation Row
Coming to Blonde on Blonde, we find a gentle performance of ‘I Want You’. Not as transcendent as the 1994 MTV Unplugged performance (not included in the official release, see my NET, 1994), or as desperate as some live performances, this one finds the softer, more romantic, less driven side of the song.
I want you
The greatest song on Blonde on Blonde has to be ‘Visions of Johanna’, maybe Dylan’s greatest ever song. A subterranean masterpiece, a moody, early hours of the morning kind of song. As I’ve said before, none of the subsequent performances have the spooky power of the album version, or the 1966 live versions, but this one holds the mood. At least it doesn’t have the pattering beat Dylan often uses during this period. This performance carries the weirdness and darkness of the song, probably due to Dylan’s dark-edged vocal.
Visions of Johanna
What Dylan show would be complete without ‘Forever Young’? This brings us into the 70s, and the most popular song from Planet Waves, a sad anthem to the passing of time and the inevitability of old age. But it’s not really about physical age, is it? It’s about staying young in spirit. It was amazing to hear the 80 year old Dylan give the song a good airing on Shadow Kingdom. As long as you can draw breath, the song holds. There’s a bit of a fumble with the lyrics, and a ragged chorus, but that’s all right if you’re young at heart.
Forever young
‘Shelter from the Storm’ brings us into the 70s and Blood on the Tracks. Arguably, the song benefits from a slower, more thoughtful version than on the album. Both a wonderful love song and a tribute to the loved one, it reminds us that we are nothing, just a ‘creature void of form,’ if we are not loved. It is a song about the redeeming power of love. Again the steel guitar gives the song a country flavour, gentle and twangy, without sentimentalising the song at all, although there is more of a nostalgic flavour than the brisk album version.
Shelter from the Storm
We’ll pause briefly at Dylan’s gospel period for the provocative ‘Serve Somebody’, a song Dylan often used as an opener in 1999. It has a good strong rock beat. Here he delivers it to an ecstatic audience at Grand Rapids, 15th Feb. While you are up and dancing, listen for lyrical variations and verse mix ups. It really doesn’t matter with this song.
Serve Somebody
We can’t pass over Shot of Love without listening to ‘Every Grain of Sand’. It’s a song hanging in the balance between profundity and sentimentality, and works best with an unsentimental performance. If the album version is just a tad too smooth for your taste, this rougher more down-home late 90s style might be more fitting. Again there’s the steel guitar to give it that country feel, but that doesn’t push it towards sentimentality, not with that ragged, doubt-filled voice.
Every Grain of Sand
Lets move forward to 1989, Oh Mercy and the forever atmospheric ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’. Best served soft and menacing. I still hark back to the 1995, Prague performance with its soaring harp, but this rougher, gutsier version does the job just fine. Ever taken your love to a dance or rave only to have her leave with another, and a dodgy character at that? If you want to indulge that feeling, now’s your opportunity. Innocence falls into the thrall of evil. It’s a cosmic drama.
Man in Long Black Coat
Oh Mercy and Under the Red Sky also saw something of a revival of the old, radical, protest Dylan. What’s a protest song? Well, ‘Everything is Broken’ can’t be anything else. This performance bustles along, just as it should, a recitation of modern evils, but I’m afraid it can’t match ‘It’s All Right Ma’ for the denunciation of everything. It lacks a melodic line, and is too mono-tonal for my taste. I guess it leans towards punk. It’s not designed for aesthetic pleasure, and he rips through it with vigour and alarm.
Everything is broken
I could have dropped ‘I and I’ as this is not the best performance of the song, but we have been following it from the early 90s, watching it grow and develop, and this will be the final year Dylan will perform it. It’s full of the lyrical force of someone listening to their heart, whatever they might be saying. It has sadness, nostalgia, defiance and threat. One of Dylan’s great performance songs. Goodbye is too good a word.
I and I
Before finishing, Shadow Kingdom arrived, just I was finishing the previous post. I was intrigued to see that the ambience, the scene portrayed, was of the 1930 or 40s clubs, dives and speakeasies, and he made his early songs sound like they came from that era. This movement towards the roots of modern music really gets serious with Time out of Mind, its consciously antique feel. There was no Folk Bob in Shadow Kingdom; all the music was brought home to that between the wars milieu. In 1999 you can feel Dylan positioning his songs in that way, a path that would lead to Shadow Kingdom.
Pity he didn’t play his great stadium rock epic, ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. With the right arrangement, it would have fitted Shadow Kingdom just fine. But the song was very much alive in 1999, with two very solid performances I could not choose between – so here they both are. The first is a little shorter and faster (date unknown), while the second feels a bit more adventurous. Funny how that guitar backing can bring a Celtic or Irish flavour to the melody. ‘Tangled’ has deep roots in old music, that’s why it sounds so compelling.
Tangled up in blue (A)
This next one is from New Orleans, 3rd Feb. We welcome back the epic, and Dylan’s harp improvisations.
Tangled up in blue (B)
Next post will be the last for 1999. We’ll hear Dylan covering the songs of others, his ‘uncovers’. Until then, stay well and stay tuned.
I’ll strip you of life, strip you of breath
Ship you down to the house of death
One day you will ask for me
There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see
Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings
Gonna break it wide open like the early Roman Kings
Apart from “Desolation Row”, there is probably only one song in the entire Western canon that features both the sinking of the Titanic and Emperor Nero: Harry Chapin’s “Dance Band On The Titanic” from 1977. Just like Dylan’s masterpiece, without too much dramatic depth, by the way. The ninth verse of “Desolation Row” opens with the enigmatic words Praise be to Nero’s Neptune / The Titanic sails at dawn, where, as often, euphony seems to have been a decisive argument for the choice of words. As we all know, the Titanic did not sail at dawn, but at noon, and indeed: the soundscape of be to – Nero – Neptune is a supple, very musical triplet.
In Chapin’s case, Nero is given some more substance, as a famous mythical lie about Nero is used as a comparison for the protagonist’s actions:
Jesus Christ can walk on the water
But a music man will drown
They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned up
Well, I was strummin' as the ship go down
History really has not been too kind to Nero, and we owe the most persistent and popular story about him to the Roman historian Suetonius, who does like to spice up his De Vita Caesarum (The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, AD 121) with juicy, rancid and exaggerated details anyway;
“He set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands […]. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. […]Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in ‘the beauty of the flames,’ he sang the whole of the Sack of Ilium, in his regular stage costume.”
(The Life Of Nero, Ch. 38)
More serious historians think that Nero was not even in the city at the time of the Great Fire (AD 64), and they also justifiably question all the stories about Nero’s orgies, atrocities and murders, but the image is ineradicable. In fact, the image only becomes more theatrical as the centuries go by. Whereas Suetonius only mentions that Nero sings (“The Sack of Illium” is lost, and presumably one of his own compositions), later generations soon thrust a lute into his hand, and still later generations find a fiddle an even better detail to illustrate Nero’s cruel insanity. Cartoonesque, of course (fiddles are not invented until 1000 years later), but admittedly, visually strong.
So strong, in fact, that a verse such as Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings, spoken by such a bloodthirsty narrator as in “Early Roman Kings”, irrevocably evokes associations with Nero. Especially with a narrator who already is compared to a city-destroying Roman king. Which works both ways, presumably; a poet like Dylan, who can shake songtexts out of his sleeve while associating, will probably end up with Nero via Roman king -destroyed your city, and thus with that cartoonish image of a fiddle-playing maniac. The by-catch is that this leads the lyrics somewhat back on track.
The opening of this fifth verse, after all, keeps building on that Dracula trail for a while. After the blood and the handkerchief from the previous verse, the sinister narrator speaks ominous texts, which all sound perfectly coming from the mouth of the bloodthirsty count; apart from the death threats I’ll strip you of life and I’ll strip you of breath also the substantively correct relocation announcement: the UnDead truly do live in a crypt, in a house of death, during the day. And then there’s the prediction One day you will ask for me / There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see – Dracula’s female victims do indeed become zombie-like groupies, completely under the spell of their killer.
The turn, then, to an evil genius playing the fiddle abruptly derails that train of thought. The noble vampire has many qualities and skills, but musically adept he is neither in Bram Stoker’s original nor in any adaptation of the material (though in Van Helsing, 2004, he is quite a dancer). That one fiddle, in short, moves the setting from Transylvania back to Rome.
It is tempting to think that this intuitive intervention leads the poet via the Nero associations with his own “Desolation Row” then two songs further to the album’s key song, the monumental title song “Tempest” – Dylan’s own “When That Great Ship Went Down”, Dylan’s own contribution to the long line of folk songs recounting the sinking of the Titanic. The legendary shipwreck has preoccupied him throughout his career as it is. In his autobiography Chronicles, Dylan himself acknowledges this:
“The madly complicated modern world was something I took little interest in. It had no relevancy, no weight. I wasn’t seduced by it. What was swinging, topical and up to date for me was stuff like the Titanic sinking.”
Sometimes sideways, as in “Desolation Row”, sometimes aphoristic, as in Tarantula (“live before you board your Titanic”), sometimes straightforward, as in “Tempest”, and sometimes cryptic. Or so it seems to be the case, anyway, in 2020 on Rough & Rowdy Ways. The opening of the powerful song “Crossing The Rubicon” does raise questions and points more to the Titanic than to the early Roman king Julius Caesar;
I crossed the Rubicon on the 14th day
Of the most dangerous month of the year
Caesar crossed the Rubicon on the 10th day of January, so he can hardly be the “I”. The Titanic, on the other hand, did in fact sink on the 14thday – the fourteenth of the month of April. Which, according to T.S. Eliot, also present on the Titanic (in the captain’s tower, as Dylan reveals in “Desolation Row”), is the most dangerous month. Or rather: April is cruellest month (“The Waste Land”, opening line).
But that’s another sad, sad story.
To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part VII: Ding Dong Daddy
—————
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:
Lilith is represented in a number of mythological sources as the sexually wanton first wife of Adam in the Garden of Eden; she’s not drawn from Adam’s rib, but from the dust just like he is; demands equality.
The black-skinned Queen Sheba of Ethiopia is portrayed that way some of the time but not all the time.
King Solomon’s son Rehoboam becomes the ruler of Judah, the southern part of the once united Kingdom of Israel; Jehovah’s not happy with big daddy Solomon bedding so many foreign (‘strange’) women; consequently, the Almighty causes the Northern Kingdom to separate in order to punish the wayward King.
Disregarding that the son is actually helping along His plans to punish Solomon, the Hebrew God’s somewhat upset with Rehoboam for letting all the gold be stolen from Jerusalem by the leader of an invading Egyptian army (the leader in league with the ruler of the Northern Kingdom where erected are idols of the Golden Calf for people to worship):
And he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord
And the treasures of the King's house; he even took away all
And he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon
had made
(1Kings 14: 26)
Could well that there’s an allegorical reference to the Bible story in the song lyrics below:
Two doors down the boys finally made it through the wall
And cleaned out the bank safe; it's said they got off with
quite a haul
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
According to Rastafarians – another son of Solomon, he born of the Queen of Sheba, becomes the ruler of Ethiopia.
Sheba, she's alluded to perhaps in the song lyrics beneath:
Been along time since a strange woman has slept in my bed
Look how sweet she sleeps, how free must be her dreams
In another lifetime, she must have owned the world, or been faithfully wed
To some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlight streams
(Bob Dylan: I And I)
Bringing it all back home to:
Draw me, we will run after thee
The king hath brought me into his chambers
We will be glad and rejoice in thee
We will remember thy love more than wine
The upright love thee
(Song Of Solomon 1:4)
For sure, the singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan likes to mix-up mythologies – does it with laughter, and he does it with tears.
In the following song lyrics, the songwriter parodies the waitress as a modern Queen Sheba, and the narrator likewise as King Solomon:
Then she says, "I know you're an artist, draw
a picture of me"
I said, "I would if I could, but I don't do sketches
from memory"
"Well", she says, "I'm right here in front of you, or haven't
you looked?"
(Bob Dylan: Highland)
https://youtu.be/LtlMiKz57kA
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“Only a pawn in their game” is one of those famous Dylan songs that very few professional musicians have attempted to cover.
And that number gets even lower when one searches not just for professional cover versions but for cover versions that are widely and freely available on the internet. In fact I just found two.
The Lenny Nelson Project is a band of which I know very little indeed – I’d not come across them before finding this track, and then when I went a-hunting on the internet all I found were references to this track.
This was released in 1988 with vocals by Lisa Lowell, known for her work with Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny, and released her own album “Beautiful Behavior”.
And that’s all I know, so mystery upon mystery.
But this is a remarkable reinvention of the song which Dylan of course sings with a very liberal interpretation of the beat and rhythm in order to maximise the emphasis on the lyrics.
However the fact is we all know the lyrics which makes this song ripe for re-interpretation, but still artists have not been forthcoming.
In fact the only other version I have found which I can share with you is Morrissey’s approach…
Wiki’s article on Morrisey states that his music contains “recurring themes of emotional isolation, sexual longing, self-deprecating and dark humour, and anti-establishment stances,” which gives us a wide enough range to make this a song that is perfect for him.
Now what has stopped people taking on this song, I think, is the singular approach of Dylan’s recording, and thus an alternative singularity is needed by anyone brave enough to take this on.
And this is what Morrisey gives us – not least by changing the accompaniment as the piece development. The rhythm continues but somehow the power of the voice means that I want to listen to this and thus hear the lyrics afresh.
Even the ending in the Morrisey version is a surprise – there is no sense in the vocal or accompaniment that makes one feel that this is the end – it just is. Which makes it all the more powerful.
I must admit, knowing the song and Dylan’s original version off by heart I don’t think I have played Bob’s version for years. If I want it, I can play it in my head. And given that he only played it live eight times (and all those renditions between July 1963 and October 1964) there was little chance of a reworking of the song. So Bob has obviously not felt there is potential for a re-consideration.
And thus we just have two covers (or rather just two covers of which I can find publicly available copies). Yet both really are worth hearing in my view.
Bob Dylan’s soundtrack for Sam Peckinpah’s western is packaged in a very sober cover: on the front there are only letters and on the back there’s one photo plus the credits.
Curiously enough, in the liner notes it says: ‘Photography: Manuel Palomino, Bob Jenkins & Sarah (sic) Dylan’. Three photographers for one photo? Strange.
The explanation can be found in an article in the American music magazine Rolling Stone of August 2, 1973: “A hodgepodge of film footage by staff photographer Bob Jenkins – and photos by Sarah (sic) Dylan – have been incorporated into a poster, which will be included with the LP.”
The unnamed author provides even more interesting info: “The cover design was intended to consist of a collage of paintings by Bob Dylan, which he had made on the film set [in Mexico].”
Charles Lippincott, head of the promotions department at the MGM film studios, explains why that didn’t go through: “The paintings were accidentally destroyed while packing in Mexico, to be sent to Los Angeles.”
After the film shooting in New Mexico, Dylan didn’t returned to New York, but moved with his family to L.A., where he has bought a house. For the first time, therefore, he does not call on anyone from the New York staff of CBS. After all, many graphic designers can be found in L.A. John Van Hamersveld was responsible for the album covers of Capitol Records from 1965 to 1968. He made Wild Honey by The Beach Boys and the American version of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. After that he focused on concert posters by Jimi Hendrix and Cream, and also continued to make covers such as Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones.
For the soundtrack album of Pat Garrett Van Hamersfeld comes with an extremely sober design: the title of the film in black Western type letters on a white background. Above the title, in sepia: ‘Bod Dylan Soundtrack’. For the first American pressing, the letters are embossed.
On the back cover we see a black and white photo by Manuel Palomino. It’s a scene from the movie, where Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) is on his knees, while Deputy Sheriff Bob Olinger (played by R. G. Armstrong) threatens him with a gun.
The (first) Japanese pressing has an alternate sleeve, with more stills from the film.
If you have an idea for an article or a series of articles that you would like to write for Untold Dylan we would love to hear from you. Please write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details.
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I’ll strip you of life, strip you of breath
Ship you down to the house of death
One day you will ask for me
There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see
Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings
Gonna break it wide open like the early Roman Kings
A sensational side-step in Tom Cruise’s steep career is the role he plays in the freaky 2005 film Tropical Thunder, a film that has since achieved some cult status. This cult status is largely due to Cruise; his scenes are, to put it mildly, memorable. The film is driven by overacting anyway, and action hero Cruise stretches that freedom to the limit. He plays the role he created for himself after reading the script and concluding that the story needed another villain: the greedy studio exec Les Grossman, “who represents the gross part of Hollywood”. The name is probably a play on words (“gross man”), the character is modelled on Harvey Weinstein, rather than being inspired by Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, but Cruise’s Grossman is also fat, has remarkably large hands – thanks to prosthetics – and is an absurd extrapolation of the harsh, ruthless image that, rightly or wrongly, has been attributed to Albert Grossman.
A highlight is the raunchy, weirdly inappropriate dance that Les Grossman performs in the closing minutes of the film, between the credits, over Ludacris’ vulgar rap hit “Get Back”.
And the other pillar of the cult status are the rants, the tasteless stream of insults, threats and obscenities that Grossman pours out on his opponents. A whole generation of Tropic Thunder fans knows by heart Grossman’s rant at a baffled Asian crimelord who has kidnapped one of Grossman’s actors and is demanding a ransom:
“First, take a big step back… And literally, FUCK YOUR OWN FACE! I don’t know what kind of pan-pacific bullshit power play you’re trying to pull here, but Asia Jack is my territory. So whatever you’re thinking, you’d better think again! Otherwise I’m gonna have to head down there and I will rain down in a Godly fucking firestorm upon you! You’re gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I’m talking about a scorched earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I WILL FUCK YOU UP!”
The look on the criminal’s face on the other side of the line, on the other side of the world, is priceless.
Fortunately, Dylan does not resort to similar x-rated banalities, but since the twenty-first century he has shown a noticeable preference for – somewhat more eloquent – Les Grossmans as protagonists. It is a change. From Oh Mercy (1989) and on Time Out Of Mind (1997) and on «Love And Theft» (2001), the weary, beaten protagonists, Io-personas like the jaded protagonists in “Most Of The Time”, “Love Sick”, “Floater”, “Not Dark Yet” and “Mississippi”, for example, predominate. All “lowdown, sorry old men,” as Tweedle-dee Dee is characterised.
But from «Love And Theft», from that same “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”, we see the shift from passive, despondent protagonists to assertive, intimidating characters. The other will stab you where you stand, “I’ve had too much of your company,” says Tweedle-dee Dum. “Gonna break into the roof, set fire to the place as a parting gift,” says the protagonist in “Summer Days”. “I always said you’d be sorry and today could be the day,” says another, after revealing that he feels like a fighting rooster (“Cry A While”). “I’m gonna ring your neck,” “Gonna raise me an army,” “I’ll just slaughter my opponents”… on Modern Times (2006) Dylan continues the line and the tone gets grimmer. And the – hopefully interim – culmination offers Rough & Rowdy Ways (2020); “I’m just here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head,” “I’ll make your wife a widow,” “I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife” – it is just a selection of the powertalk on Dylan’s most recent album.
In between, on this Tempest from 2012, the blood is sloshing around as well. Nash Edgerton, the director of the music video for “Duquesne Whistle,” has a good feel for the atmosphere. The clip, released before the album’s release, is “bloody, Tarantino-ish” (according to Spin Magazine) and “brutally violent” (Music Feeds, August 2012). With Dylan’s full agreement, apparently; Edgerton had already directed the clip for “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”, for which the label “extremely violent” is not out of place. Edgerton made that first clip in complete freedom, without any interference from Dylan. Which was rather surprising to him as well, as he tells Pitchfork (4 June 2009):
Pitchfork: Did you have any contact with Dylan for this video? Nash Edgerton: Not that I know of. It’s kind of strange. Normally, I sit down with the artist and suss things out. Dylan is in the video though – no one has spotted him yet. I’ll let you try and find it.
And what Dylan ultimately thinks of it, Edgerton still does not know (“I know his manager and his record company are really into it. But I don’t know whether the man himself has seen it or not”). In the meantime, however, he can be assured of Dylan’s satisfaction with it: Edgerton is asked for three more clips (apart from “Duquesne Whistle”, “Must Be Santa”, and “The Night We Called It A Day” too).
For the time being, Dylan’s inflamed obsession with violence is not as graphic as in the video clips and as on Rough & Rowdy Ways. Sinister and fatal, certainly, but for now packaged in veiled, poetic imagery. I’ll strip you of life even has a somewhat stately, nineteenth-century sound – something that Poe or Baudelaire could have written (quite literally even: your muscles stripped of skin, “Skeleton with a Spade”, Baudelaire).
In fact the phrase is, paradoxically, both ancient and modern. Dylan borrowed the first two lines of this stanza from a 1996 Homer translation; from Professor Robert Fagles’ translation of the Odyssey. At the end of Book IX, Odysseus threatens the Cyclops, and over the centuries most translators have translated that into something like I were as sure to rob thee of soul and life, and send thee within the house of Hades (Lang, 1883) or dislodge thy bloody mind, and send thee howling to the realms of night (Pope, 1715), but at the end of the twentieth century the academic poet Fagles turns it into:
Would to god I could strip you of life and breath and ship you down to the House of Death as surely as no one will ever heal your eye, not even your earthquake god himself!
And it does seem to make some waves; a month after Tempest is released, the American painter Tim Biskup is interviewed by Wall Street International Magazine, on the occasion of his exhibition “Excavation” in Milan. By his own admission, Biskup has long been “obsessed with the image of the human skull,” but this is the first time he has put it in such words:
“Perhaps it is the complex and elegant geometry and pure aesthetic balance of the object. More likely our attraction comes from our guts and not our eyes. The skull is ourselves stripped of life. It is a clear reminder of our mortality. It can be a brutal and unnerving signpost that stares us down and fills us with dread, but at best it brings us into the present and reminds us to appreciate our lives.”
Beautifully phrased, and Biskup paints and draws beautiful, colourful skulls, stripped of life. But maybe the unusual expression is just hanging in the air, there on the Californian coast in late summer 2012 – Tim Biskup is from Santa Monica, just around the corner from Dylan’s home in Malibu (20 minutes, just follow the Pacific Coast Highway).
To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part VI: The beauty of the flames
———
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:
Sexually wanton Lilith be not only a southern queen, she’s a spectre that haunts the hoped-for Promised Land in the west – America.
Translated as ‘screech owl’ in the Holy Bible, the name “Lilith” can be shortened to “Lily”.
In the song lyrics below, she is more the independent, vengeful owl-type than a pretty flower:
I have to stand my trial, I had to make my plea
They placed me in the witness box, and commenced on me
Although she swore my life, deprived me of my rest
Still I love my Flora, the Lily of the West
(Bob Dylan: Lily Of The West ~ traditional, et.al.)
The Lily, in the lyrics directly above, be more like Big Jim’s gal, and quite unlike the faithful Rosemary (in the aforementioned allegorical masterpiece “Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts”).
Considering the faces from ‘Lily Of The West’ as being re-arranged, Big Jim’s wife may well have taken the ‘fall’ for Lily’s killing of ‘Diamond’ Jim (a King Solomon archetype), and she’s the one who gets hanged.
An aside: interestingly, actress Lillian Russell marries two-timing composer Edward Solomon.
A western winged avenger-queen makes an appearance in the song quoted beneath – she’s a dark angel, a Lilith from a modern-day Babylonian hell:
The motorcycle black Madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray-flannel dwarf to scream
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
https://youtu.be/eB5olCey6Lo
In the song lyrics below, there are characters featured similar to the wealthy Big Jim and the husband-thieving Lily (Lilith) – she calls herself Lil, but everyone knows her as Nancy:
Handy Dandy, he's got a stick in his hand
And a pocket full of money
He says, "Darling, tell me the truth
How much time I got?"
She says, "You got all the time in the world, honey"
Handy Dandy, Handy Dandy
He's got that clear crystal fountain
He's got that soft silky skin
He's got that fortress on the mountain
With no doors, no windows, no thieves can break in
(Bob Dylan: Handy Dandy)
All Directions is a series of articles that considers Bob Dylan’s compositions in the order they were written, looking for links between the songs which perhaps on occasion reflect how Bob was feeling about himself, his friends, and the world.
My thesis in that previous article was simple: although some people see the songs of the early part of 1990 as “children’s songs” those songs are much darker and deeper, and in fact continue the negativity of 1989. And with this much negativity going on it was probably a great relief for Bob to return to the Wilburys for a second expedition (called volume 3).
There were 11 songs all told in this second collection but most commentators suggest that four of them (New blue moon, Wilbury Twist, Poor House and Cool Dry Place) had little to do with Bob Dylan the composer. They have been considered briefly on this site, and I think that’s enough.
Which leaves seven songs starting with “The Devil’s been busy” – which itself seems to have some of the negative thoughts of the earlier songs from this year and the previous year, still lurking within.
You see your second cousin
Wasted in a fight
You say he had it coming
You couldn’t do it right
You’re in a western movie, playing the part
The devil’s been busy in your back yard
Apart from that, I’m not sure there is much to get excited about.
With the next song, “If you belonged to me” I am ready to get very unexcited by the title – I really don’t like references to one person in a relationship owning the other… I thought we removed that in the 1960s.
There is some fun such as with “You say let’s go to the rodeo to see some cowboy fall,” and some real negative nastiness reminding us of day to day reality…
The guy your with is a ruthless pimp
Everybody knows
Every cent he takes from you
Goes straight up his nose.
That darkness that has beset Bob last year and this, sure is still there.
Inside Out takes Bob into an area of concern I am not sure we have had much of before, with the issue of the environment. And musically Bob does something very odd – although it is possible that George Harrison is the one who threw this in… he suddenly jerks to a new key, with “Be careful where you’re walking…” I really do wonder if that came from a quite separate Harrison song and was just thrown in the middle.
But the negativity is still there…
The other link we find here
You’re saying that you’re all washed up
Got nothing else to give.
Seems like you would’ve figured out
How long you have to live
which is a sort of mirror image of Positively 4th Street – which is about as negative as you can get.
But then we really do have a song that is Dylan through and through, a tribute to a slow 1950s doo-wop type of music that might be associated with a B side of a 78rpm by the Platters or the Teenagers.
“She’s my baby” was copyrighted by Dylan and there’s a fair amount of his feeling for the opposite sex in it.
My baby
She’s got a body for business
Got a head for sin
She knocks me over
like a bowling pin.
She came home last night and said,
“Honey, honey, honey it’s hard to get ahead.”
My baby
And then, finally Bob came up with something that I think is worthy of this array of talent gathered together for no purpose other than to make a follow up, a song that has Bob Dylan with a bit of help from Tom Petty written all over it: “Where were you last night” (not to be confused with Nightwish).
What makes it Dylan is the unusual chord structure – after the first 8 bars there are a couple of unexpected minor chords which really makes the listener jump back, even if one doesn’t know why.
There’s also a bit of the sloppiness in the lyrics that were typical of Dylan at this time – rhyming “week” with “tree” really won’t do (although I have seen it written as “creek” – which rhymes but is out of context.)
But what makes this work is the melody – only occasionally one of Dylan’s strong points -combining in a perfect way with the lyrics, and mixing with that irresistible bass line.
What did you do, who did you see?
Were you with someone who reminded you of me?
It is not just a lost love song – there is the twist – “who reminded you of me” is one of the most interesting lines that I think Bob wrote around this time. You’re not going out with me, but with someone who reminds you of me, because…. Well because I’m in the studio with the guys or I’m on tour or…
The purists tend to dismiss these albums as being quite unnecessary, but there is fun and laughter here, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And it is even funnier when we have
You weren’t waiting where you said
You sent someone in your place instead.
That’s the twist. What on earth is going on? So now, who is reminding who of whom? Who is taking whose place?
Maybe as said, everyone was throwing lines and ideas in, and Bob Dylan popping in occasionally. Heylin also makes the point that Dylan recorded everything before letting the rest of the band get on with it. Maybe all that is so, but this song hardly feels like that at all.
Yes it is a pop song, with no deep or profound meaning but it works perfectly in the genre for which it is made. The confusions within the song fit perfectly with the “where were you” notion, and the bounce and life and indeed sheer vivacity within the piece adds to the notion that the singer is searching here there and everywhere
But it is a pop song with twists. Take the chords for example. The first line runs
D G Gm D A D
Then we get a C minor included, and later in the middle 8 we have a modulation to E major. Unexpected or what?
Maybe everyone was throwing in ideas – although I’d still say this was mostly Bob with a bit of Tom Petty, but for me this makes the album worthwhile, first because I really enjoy it as a song, and second because although Bob is still in his negative mode (his woman didn’t turn up) he is having fun with reality. This is much more “who’s who, and who’s where?” rather than “the world gone wrong”.
The negative songs that beset the last couple of years seem to have been pushed back, just a little bit, and in retrospect we can see just how important that was because after this set of songs Bob was about to set off into a prolonged period of not writing.
Four compositions have been suggested between this point and 1995
but all four could equally be considered as part-pieces from 1984 as well as 1995. I only rate one of those four as really interesting – “Well well well” and we know that Bob only wrote the lyrics not the music. But either way, and irrespective of whenever it was written, I think it is a stunning piece of music.
We have two recordings of Well Well Well and I’ll include both here because they are so good.
In this first version by Danny O’Keefe, there is talk first about how he came to write the song with Bob Dylan, which is ok, but could put you off… so I would beg you to stay with it, or reset the counter to 1’16” and listen. This is so worth hearing…
And then go to Ben Harper
And if you enjoy the Ben Harper version do get some of his albums. You will not be disappointed.
I would love to say these songs were Bob’s return to real live songwriting of genius but no. What happened next was a long period of not writing after the second Wilbury’s album. That not-writing period lasted for around about five years and as noted above at most during that time Dylan wrote four songs, only one of which is particularly memorable. However when he did hit the floor once more he was most certainly running.
He hadn’t got rid of the blues – far from it in fact – but he came back with the blues like we had never heard them before. It made that wait worthwhile. Oh, so worthwhile.
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.
For practical purposes, we can invent two Bob Dylans (there are a lot more; the man contains multitudes, after all). One is a rock singer with his feet firmly planted in the 1950s and the era of rock and roll. I explored the Rock Dylan in my last post. There we saw Dylan singing ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘Money Honey’, ‘That’ll Be the Day’, and the rock and roll derived ‘Alabama Getaway’. There are others we’ll catch up with in the next post. We saw how the rhythms and chords of rock and roll influenced Dylan’s great early songs like ‘Tombstone Blues’ and ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way’.
Full credit is due to guitarists Sexton and Campbell for brilliantly echoing the sounds of that earlier era of music.
But as well as the Rock Bob we have the Folk Bob. In the 1960s, Dylan acknowledged these two Bobs by breaking his concerts into acoustic and electric sections. That division carries through into the 1990s largely intact, although Dylan evolved a ‘soft rock’ sound which tended to blur the gap. He didn’t necessarily divide his shows into two halves, as he did in the 60s, but the two sides of Bob Dylan were evident every time he switched guitars from acoustic to electric and back again.
In this post I want to explore the Folk Bob because, in 1999, Dylan covered some of the folk songs that influenced him, just as he did with the rock and roll songs. The two Bobs have distinct musical lineages, although when it comes to the blues, the line gets blurred.
Let’s start with ‘Roving Gambler’ (See https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/15673). This is a traditional song, first recorded by Samantha Bumgarner in 1924, but which dates back to 19th Century England. The Folk Bob has an English/Celtic connection, sometimes direct but more often, as in this case, after the song has entered the American tradition.
Dylan has been singing it since 1960. It’s peppy and a good performance piece. Like ‘Pretty Peggy O’ it’s a root song for Folk Bob’s own songwriting. As evidenced in this performance, the song has lost none of its charm for Dylan. ( 19th November, Atlantic City.) Here he uses it as an opener.
Roving Gambler
‘You’re Gonna Quit me’ is credited to Blind Blake, first recorded in 1926, and included in Dylan’s folk collection Good as I Been to You, in 1993. The title of the album is a phrase from that song. Here Dylan plays it straight, just as he does on the album, and the ambience of it takes us right back to the folk clubs in New York in the early 60s. (8th April)
You’re gonna quit me
It is well known that Dylan began his songwriting career by writing his own lyrics for pre-existing melodies. (I believe ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was Dylan’s first fully original melody.) The first song Dylan wrote, ‘Song to Woody’, takes its melody from the Woody Guthrie song, ‘1913 Massacre’. (see https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/45540) The origin of the melodies of these songs is often obscure, which suggests they come from more ancient folk traditions.
In ‘Song to Woody’ the major features of a Folk Bob song are established – a simple ballad like structure with multiple verses, and no bridge. In revisiting the song, I was surprised at how good it is. Dylan didn’t begin by writing bad songs; he was good right from the start. Like ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’, another early song, there’s a sense of nostalgia, as if the singer is much older than he was, a sense of a life travelled and lived. There’s a world weariness that belies his youth, but of course by 1999 his voice has grown old enough for the song.
The song celebrates and is quite explicit about these folk and blues singers from the 1930s and 40s whose melodies and attitudes underpin Dylan’s own.
‘Here’s to Cisco an’ Sonny an’ Leadbelly too
An’ to all the good people that traveled with you
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind’
The reference is to Cisco Houston, a comrade of Guthrie. Sonny is probably Sonny Boy Williamson, a bluesman from the 1930s and a great harmonica player, while Leadbelly and his prison songs were getting known in the early 1960s, mainly thanks to the efforts of collector Alan Lomax.
Once more, Dylan plays it straight, with no frills.
Song to Woody
The early ‘Masters of War’ shows how effective welding his own lyrics to pre-loved melodies could be. The melody comes from ‘Nottamun Town,’ an ancient traditional English song, a nonsense rhyme, which was collected and then arranged by Jean Ritchie. (See https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/527)
In the article just referenced, Tony Atwood has a fascinating discussion of the ‘Dorian Mode’ in which the song is written, a mode that is in neither the major nor the minor keys, but a more ancient key which has largely fallen out of use. This Dorian Mode helps create that ominous, threatening effect we hear in the song, something that has come from a more ancient place. The genius of the song lies in this combination of hard hitting, contemporary anti-war lyrics with this antique Dorian Mode. Somehow, I am reminded of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘ancestral voices prophesying war’ (Kublai Khan) and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’:
‘And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.’
Dylan has done this song as a hard rocker, but in the 90’s he developed a more quiet but no less threatening arrangement, not as rigidly dumpty-dum as the original (Freewheeling, 1962), but more a syncopated, surging sound better suited to the song. I’m still stuck on the 1995 London performance, but I have no quarrel with this powerful version (a harp break would have been nice, though). The audience is a little rowdy for my taste, but what interests me is the guitar work, with Sexton, Campbell and Dylan giving the song a Celtic drive both moving and spooky.
Masters of War
Dylan does the same thing with his anti-war drama, ‘John Brown’. In this case he uses a traditional Irish melody from ‘My Son John’, an anti-war song in its own right. (See https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/48) Again it is this mix of antique folk melodies and contemporary themes that drives the song along. There is a curious sense of antiquity to the lyrics of this song also, however. The term ‘cannon ball’ takes us back to wars of previous eras.
Probably the best live version of ‘John Brown’ remains the 1994 MTV Unplugged performance. It’s very smooth. But by the late 90s Dylan had evolved a slower, starker arrangement, with banjo, that rivals the Unplugged performance. This 1999 performance (From Tramps, New York) is both simpler and more deadly. The antique nature of the melody is brought to the fore by the arrangement.
There is however a problem. By the late 90s Dylan has lost his grip a little on the lyrics (same with ‘Blowing in the Wind’), and he fluffs them a couple of times (while brilliantly covering up for it) and this mars the performance for me.
John Brown
‘Tomorrow is a Long Time’ (1963) is built on three simple chords common to many songs, which is maybe why it sounds familiar, even if we haven’t heard it. It’s a wonderful love song, I put it alongside ‘Girl from the North Country’ – it has a similar innocence. In this performance Dylan doesn’t try any clever tricks, or attempt to add chords, but plays it in all its original simplicity, giving it a gentle melody with the band joining in on the chorus. It is done without sacrificing the delicacy of feeling we find in the original.
Tomorrow is a long Time.
It’s not exactly clear where the melody for ‘Girl from the North Country’ comes from, and it doesn’t really sound much like ‘Scarborough Fair’ to which it has been linked. It does, however, have an old worldly sense to it in some of the phrasing. Love songs are as old as folk music itself, and it’s the sense of deep time, a long tradition, that gives these songs their gravitas. In singing these compositions, Dylan becomes the archetype of the travelling bard or minstrel.
Once more the 1999 performances honour the feeling of the original. This is a softer version from 2nd April.
Girl from the north country. (A)
And here’s a somewhat sharper version. (Date unknown)
‘Blowing in the Wind’ is derived from ‘No More Auction Blocks’, a song about slavery dating back to the American Civil War. The wind may be elusive, but the questions are eternal. It was one of the first protest songs Dylan wrote that wasn’t based on a topical event. The antique feel of it, and its anthemic quality, give a sort of timelessness. Again the use of ‘cannon ball,’ a deliberate archaism to give the message a more universal feel.
Blowing in the Wind
Fast forward three or four years and we have ‘Fourth Time Around’, a narrative which evokes the English ballad tradition and was a poke at the Beatles song, ‘Norwegian Wood’, which Dylan felt was too much like one of his own songs. But the lyrics tell a sordid, unsavoury little tale quite at variance with the sweetness of the melody. It is a deadly little song about an un-romantic encounter. It is dripping with venom and bitterness.
‘She threw me outside, I stood in the dirt where everyone walked
And after finding out I'd forgotten my shirt, I went back and knocked
I waited in the hallway, she went to get it, and I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair that leaned up against
Her Jamaica rum, and when she did come, I asked her for some
She said, "No, dear, " I said, "Your words aren't clear,
you'd better spit out your gum"
She screamed 'til her face got so red, then she fell on the floor
And I covered her up and then thought I'd go look through her drawer’
But what a beautiful, spooky performance Dylan gives here. The complaint that Dylan never sings his songs the way they sound on the album doesn’t apply here. The thirty-three years between the writing of the song and this performance drop away. Yep. This is just the way it sounded.
Fourth Time Around
Well that’s me this time around. Back soon with more sounds from 1999.
I’ll dress up your wounds with a blood clotted rag
I ain’t afraid to make love to a bitch or a hag
If you see me coming and you’re standing there
Wave your handkerchief in the air
I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings
I keep my fingers crossed like the early Roman Kings
It is number 18 in Billboard’s “The 50 Sexiest Songs Of All Time”, Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell” from 1979. Which was not exactly the intention of songwriter Frederick Knight. He was so concerned about the image of the 22-year-old elementary school teacher Ward, honestly. “Anita is a very clean-cut person,” Knight tells Billboard Magazine (9 June ’79) without blinking an eye, “I went to great pain being picky about lyric content. We’re trying to build a respectable image for her.”
It works out anyway. One-hit wonder Ward never gets an image like that of sex goddess Donna Summer. She really is a clean-cut person. The oldest of five children in a Baptist family from Memphis has never even been to a disco before her hit single, and the song is definitely not as explicit as “Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi”, or as the No. 1 Sexiest Song, Olvia Newton-John’s “Physical” (There’s nothing left to talk about, unless it’s horizontally), but still… “Ring My Bell” is not No. 18 for nothing;
I'm glad you're home
Now did you really miss me?
I guess you did by the look in your eye
Well lay back and relax
While I put away the dishes
Then you and me can rock a bell
You can ring my bell, ring my bell
https://youtu.be/4_68RwJyzkA
… and more unambiguous flirting, like “The night is young, and full of possibilities, well, come on and let yourself be free”. Agreed, not bawdy or unrespectable, but also not really the words a lyricist who is “being picky about lyric content” chooses to use in an attempt to build “a respectable image”. No, Frederick Knight’s pious words notwithstanding: since 1979, ring my bell has meant something like “let’s have sex”.
It lends an ambiguity to Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings” that Dylan is not averse to. In the context, however, it takes on a different connotation. We are in the fourth verse, and the tone has long been set: sinister, dark, menacing. Nailed in their coffins, dragging you back, destroying you and your city, treacherous sluggers… hardly the prelude to a sultry seduction scene with an erotic finale. And certainly not by the somewhat macabre main sentence with which the protagonist introduces the ringing of the bell: “I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings”. The evoked atmosphere has already led us to the Victorian, Gothic far horizons, from Roman kings to a Romanian count, to the undead Dracula. “My bell still rings” then pushes the associations to the very nineteenth-century safety coffins.
The cholera epidemics of the 19th century cause a spike in a time-honoured collective fear: the fear of being buried alive – which, incidentally, happens all too often, with “succumbed” cholera patients. One of Dylan’s literary idols, Edgar Allan Poe, floated along with the Zeitgeist – and undoubtedly stirred up the collective fear as well – with stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado and with the horror story The Premature Burial (1844). A final scene like the one in the House of Usher, the entry of Madeline, thought dead and buried, does resonate in this verse; “There was blood upon her white dressing gowns, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” – well, the couleur resonates, in any case.
Anyway – atmosphere and preliminary insinuations push the verse I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings towards good old-fashioned nineteenth-century horror, towards a narrator buried alive in his safety coffin, operating the cord-and-bell system to indicate that he ain’t dead yet. Just as the handkerchief, the blood clotted rag and the dressed-up wounds push the associations to good-old Count Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, after all, the handkerchief has only one function: “I noticed that Van Helsing tied a soft silk handkerchief round her throat,” for example (Ch. 12) – to dress up Lucy’s bite wounds in the neck. Too late, as we know – Lucy is already an UnDead, gives herself to the Count night after night, has already become his bitch.
It is an attractive, and in this case narratively correct, underlying layer of the scabrous “ring my bell”. After all, also with Bram Stoker the unspoken suggestion is that poor Lucy (and later Mina too) has become the “bride” of Dracula, there is a sexual undertone in the gruesome, phased murder of Lucy and the attempted murder of Mina.
It is not conclusive, however. Dylan is not writing a poetic retelling of the Victorian masterpiece – like many of his best songs, the lyrics of “Early Roman Kings” are a kaleidoscopic, multi-coloured jewel. Impressions from all corners of Dylan’s cultural baggage seem to descend on it. Waving with the handkerchief, for example, does not suit Lucy at all; every time she reports to the count, she is in a trance, moving like a sleepwalker – that handkerchief is really only there to dress up her wounds. Waving a handkerchief in the air at a male counterpart is not uncommon though, in Victorian, nineteenth-century English masterpieces, but much less gruesome:
“You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.”
“Of course I’ll wait,” said Alice.
… when Alice waves to her Knight, that is, in Through The Looking Glass (1871), the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, and in any case a work from which Dylan repeatedly draws in the twenty-first century (for Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, for instance).
But of course the poet Dylan can take all the freedom he wants to mould his poetic Dracula retelling to his liking. So he can turn a Romanian count into a Roman king and he can turn a sleepwalking UnDead into a handkerchief-waving vampire groupie. Although in that scenario, the last line does introduce a curious plot twist. Does “Lucy” say that? “I’ll keep my fingers crossed”? The sign of the cross? To ward off the vampire?
https://youtu.be/ZPHuZ_8xGGM
To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part V: I will massacre you
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:
An archetype of Lilith apparently gets a mention in the New Testament: “The queen of the south shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it. For she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon”
(Matthew 12:42)
The Old Testament states that the southern queen from Ethiopia brings gifts to Solomon; traditional lore says he gives her a ring, and that she returns home carrying the King’s child in her belly:
And King Solomon gave unto the Queen of Sheba all her desire
whatsoever she asked
Beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty
So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants
(I Kings 10:2)
In another extrabiblical tale, Jehovah-defying Lilith sneaks back into Eden one night, and has sex with the sleeping Adam; his present mate is the submissive (at least for now) rib-begotten Eve; Lilith carries away his seed in order to produce more demons.
In the song lyrics below, the stories above get modernized, stirred up real good, left open to allegorical interpretation ~
Said it could be that whoring Lily (Lilith) fools around with mine-owner Big Jim (King Solomon of the United Kingdom) who’s married to the older, now trying-to-be-faithful Rosemary – she in her youth, like Lily, having messed about with big-cocked Egyptains.
Needless to say, the Jack Of Hearts (Jehovah’s earthly manifestation) is on everyone’s mind:
Rosemary started drinking hard, and seeing her reflection
in the knife
She was tired of the attention, tired of playing the role of Big Jim's wife
She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide
Was looking to do just one good deed before she died
She was gazing to the future, riding on the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
As noted, it’s said that King Solomon gives a ring to the Queen of Sheba:
It was well known that Lily had Jim's ring
And nothing even would come between Lily and the king
No nothing ever would except maybe the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
Seems the Jack Of Hearts pays a visit to Lily before leaving the scene:
In the darkness by the riverbed, they waited on the ground
For one more member who had business back in town
But they couldn't go no further without the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)
The people we have in mind for this series are going to be artists who have a direct connection to Dylan and his work or life. So they could be from his backing bands, friends from back in the day or even family members.
As with other series that the two of us have worked on, there is no detail plan set out of where this might go. We might look at an overview of someone’s career or focus on one particular album. As usual Aaron will pick the subject and send four or five tracks to Tony who plays the game of writing a commentary while listening to the track.
If you have not come across the notion before you might like to have a look at the Beautiful Obscurity series in which we use the same technique to look at some of the less well-known cover versions. Links to that series can be found at the end of this piece.
But now, first up in “Dylan adjacent artists”…
Aaron: Let’s look at some of the solo work for Charlie Sexton. He was Dylan’s guitar player from 1999 to 2002 and played on Things Have Changed and Love and Theft amongst others.
He made his first album at 16 and had a big hit (US #17) in 1985 with the Bowie-esque Beat’s So Lonely.
Tony: And that was his problem as I recall – he put everything possible into this song and it was his biggest hit. After that it was downhill as a solo artist. Listening to it now it doesn’t really work for me any more, it is just another song of the era. And really I am not sure that video does it any favours.
But the video certainly captures the chaos of recording sessions where there seems to be a load of guys around who think that anything they touch is going to turn to gold, and maybe once or twice it does.
That’s not to put down his guitar work – it’s just, as a single…. it doesn’t work now. Goodness me I am getting so very, very old.
Aaron: Stints with (amongst others) Bowie, Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, Don Henley, Lucinda Williams and Dylan followed. Solo work continued with several fine albums, including Under The Wishing Tree. Here is Sunday Clothes from that album.
Tony: Close your eyes and just listen to that musical introduction to the song. I don’t think it really does anything – which is why there is so much in the video – to hide the lack of content of the song. The song content has been done so many times before: life in four minutes. And that’s the problem – it just doesn’t do anything new, nor does it do something old in an exciting new way. The one bit that shines is the guitar solo – although the return to the vocal after the instrumental break seems to have a little more light.
Aaron: His 2005 album Cruel and Gentle Things showed a new maturity in his writing and heavily influenced by all the fantastic artists he had worked with over the years.
Tony: And indeed it is true – he has worked with so many people and is an utterly fantastic guitarist, but I am not at all sure that his forte is as a solo artist or as the leading light. It is as if when he does his own thing, everything is technically perfect (including the guitar work of course) but he doesn’t have that final spark which makes me stop everything else and think, “oh my – who is this?” and make me want to play the track again.
Moving on… for the next track there are two video links as it seems there are country limitations on them. Hopefully one will work where you are, but if not type “Charlie Sexton Gospel” into Google and it might well find you a copy for where you are.
https://youtu.be/EXc3ITKOiuM
Tony: Now having written my negative intro I must admit this is more like it. I think here has got his voice and exquisite guitar technique together working in sympathy with each other. Just listen to the total sound of the piece, treating the voice and the instrumentation as one, and there is perfect harmony between the two. It sounds to me like a song that came together as music and lyrics, without trying to force one part to fit with the other.
Without even listening to the lyrics the over all sound comes straight into me. OK I realise there is a lot of Jesus in there and being an atheist that doesn’t appeal to me, but that still doesn’t detract from a beautiful sound.
And incidentally, if you are enjoying this music and don’t know too much about all the things Charlie Sexton has done there is a decent summary of his life and work on Wikipedia which is worth looking at if you want an introduction.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RsXQ7ruc5PY
Tony: But now back to my nagging. That opening doesn’t grab me at all – it’s just like so many other songs. And yet it feels like it could be so much more. I’m sorry if you are a real fan of Charlie, but I can only reflect it as I hear it. – and I hear an amazing guitarist… who I think wants to be more than that.
For example, that middle 8 section seems disconnected and the upping of the percussion after the middle 8 feels like it was added as a rescue moment because the song wasn’t going anywhere. Sorry, Aaron, but for me this really is a brilliant musician, not focusing on what he is brilliant at. He is a fantastic technician, but I am not sure that much of the time he has anything to say. Even the title has been said so many times before.
Cruel And Gentle Things: again there seems to be regional issues – hopefully one of these two will work for you.
https://youtu.be/2pLamihiJ4Q
And if you, dear reader, disagree with me from top to bottom, please explain to me what I am missing. I really would like to learn how to appreciate this music better. I think he misses that instinctive knowledge that Bob so often has of being able to make the lyrics, the melody and the accompaniment all work together in equal parts.
But that’s probably just me getting all carried away once again.
They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers, they buy and they sell
They destroyed your city, they’ll destroy you as well
They’re lecherous and treacherous, hell bent for leather
Each of them bigger than all men put together
Sluggers and muggers wearing fancy gold rings
All the women going crazy for the early Roman Kings
The paths of British guitar god Mark Knopfler do cross Dylan’s career quite often, and each time it results in beautiful music. The first feat is smashing right away: the session work that the then up-and-coming talent does on Slow Train Coming (1979). Producer Jerry Wexler and Dylan wisely let Knopfler do whatever pleases him, resulting in, apart from the ear-catching ornaments in every song, the superb melancholy of “I Believe In You” and especially the irresistible drive of the forgotten gem “Precious Angel”. Dylan is impressed, and a few years later asks Knopfler to produce Infidels, which again yields many beautiful songs, plus one of Dylan’s all-time highlights, the perhaps most beautiful version of “Blind Willie McTell”.
Knopfler does not understand at all why the song is rejected for Infidels, but he is and always will be a devout admirer. Like when he, following in the footsteps of broadcaster Dylan, is allowed to host the British Grove Broadcast series for SiriusXM’s Volume channel. It is an extremely attractive series of 24 broadcasts in which DJ Knopfler, à la Dylan, leads an eclectic journey along “some goodies”, as he calls it, along 263 songs, his musical loves. Dylan as a performer is featured five times, and the DJ also likes to play Dylan covers. The first reverence is right away in Episode 1 (4 March 2020), of course:
“The most important songwriter for me growing up was Bob Dylan. From the age of 12 onwards, really, it hasn’t changed that much. Let me just read from this next song, just a couple of lines: Seen the arrow on the doorpost, saying this land is condemned all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem – and that was a song Bob wrote called ‘Blind Willie Mc Tell’. We ended up doing that song in the studio and this is Bob on the piano, doing a version, and yours truly on the 12-string guitar. And that’s all it was. That’s a fantastic song, Bob, and what an honour to be part of it. Blind Willie McTell, studio outtake from 1983.”
Bizarrely, the Dire Strait follows his idol not only as a musician and a radio DJ, but also as a crash pilot. At a quarter to eleven in the morning on Monday 17 March 2003, Knopfler, then 53, is riding his Honda along the Grosvenor Road in Belgravia, London, when he is unable to swerve out of the way of a red Fiat Punto that is suddenly turning right. He breaks six ribs and his collarbone and, like Dylan in ’66, cannot perform for months. In fact, after seven months of therapy, he still cannot hold an acoustic guitar. Which he handles with British understatement, by the way: “I thought, oh no, that’s going to be a drag, I’ll just be playing electric guitar for the rest of my life.”
These are not lost months. Knopfler is sitting at his computer, writing the songs for his next solo album, the beautiful Shangri-La. Which is eventually, indeed, recorded in the legendary Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, just around the corner from Dylan’s home – the studio which was set up by The Band and Dylan producer Rob Fraboni, where Richard Manuel lived, where Dylan camped in a tent in the garden, where Clapton recorded No Reason To Cry (1976) with the help of The Band and Dylan, and whatnot.
The record contains, not unusually for Knopfler, drawn-out, epic songs, but this time it is also clear that he has had a lot of time to read. Quotations from the autobiography of Ray Croc, the man behind McDonald’s worldwide success, are used verbatim in the single “Boom, Like That”, “Back To Tupelo” about Elvis’ film career, the murder ballad based on the true story of the 1967 One-Armed Bandit Murder in North East England, where Knopfler grew up, “5:15 A.M.”, but also songs with Dylanesque joy of language in the lyrics, like the ode to Lonnie Donegan, “Donegan’s Gone”;
Donegan's gone
Gone, Lonnie Donegan
Donegan's gone
Stackalee and a gamblin' man
Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
Gone, Lonnie Donegan
Donegan's gone
And like the enchanting “Postcards From Paraguay”, played on the good old red Stratocaster:
I never meant to be a cheater
But there was blood on the wall
I had to steal from Peter
To pay what I owed to Paul
I couldn't stay and face the music
So many reasons why
I won't be sending postcards
From Paraguay
… which sounds Dylanesque enough, but the Dylan bell goes off earlier, on the opening line already: “One thing was leading to the next, I bit off more than I could chew” – an abrupt opening line like that of Dylan’s “Up To Me” (Everything went from bad to worse, money never changed a thing).
Presumably, however, Dylan himself really pricked up his ears on one of the the record’s stand-out tracks, and a 21st century fan favourite: “Song For Sonny Liston”.
“Song For Sonny Liston” is, in a way, Knopflers “Hurricane”. Remarkably, though, more poetic than that template, and less activist anyway. Knopfler is also aiming for a kind of rehabilitation of a boxer, of the greatest intimidator of all time, the 1962 world heavyweight champion, the unpopular Big Bear, who had to relinquish his world title to Muhammad Ali in 1964. The song is epic, tells of rise and fall, larded with sentimental asides, and is above all Dylanesque; just like his idol, Knopfler draws from old folksongs, he seeks the Golden Mean of Rhyme, Rhythm and Reason, and sometimes lets sound outweigh semantics. Like in the near-perfect chorus:
He had a left like Henry's hammer
A right like Betty Bamalam
Rode with the muggers in the dark and dread
And all them sluggers went down like lead
First, a brilliantly found reference to the folk song “John Henry”, the black nineteenth-century “steel-driving man” with the hammer, embedded in a masterfully alliterating opening line (He had a left like Henry’s hammer). Then a wonderful bridge to Betty Bamalam, which is both an onomatopoetic nod to a boxer and a salute to that other legendary antique work song, to Lead Belly’s “Black Betty” (Whoa, Black Betty bam-ba-lam), and finally the two closing lines which are a joy in rhyme and language.
The same, that joy of rhyme and language, of course applies to this third verse of Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings”. And the suspicion that Dylan borrowed that unusual sluggers and muggers from his music partner Knopfler is strengthened by another remarkable verse line from “Song For Sonny Liston”:
The writers didn't like him the fight game jocks
With his lowlife backers and his hands like rocks
They didn't want to have a bogey man
They didn't like him and he didn't like them
Black Cadillac alligator boots
Money in the pockets of his sharkskin suits
A boxer, Lead Belly, a Cadillac, “John Henry”, inner rhyme, assonance and alliteration, sharkskin suits… when music archaeologists dig up this song five hundred years from now, “Song For Sonny Liston” will undoubtedly be catalogued as “Folk ballad. Late 20th/early 21st century. Most likely written by the then famous troubadour B. Dylan.”
To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part IV: You can ring my bell, ring my bell
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:
What Bob Dylan leaves out of song lyrics is often as important as what he puts in them. Space is left for interpreters who dare to trek where angels fear to tread:
Three angels up above the street
Each one playing on a horn ....
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anyone even try
(Bob Dylan: Three Angels)*
As already mentioned, according to Judeo-Christian lore, Lilith’s not happy with her relationship with Adam; she flees Eden in the form of a ‘screech owl’; sets down in a cave in Babylon where she bears lots and lots of children.
Adam snitches to God who sends three angels to fetch her back. But Lilith refuses to return. The angels blow their horns; sing to her that they’ll kill a hundred of her offspring each day as just punishment for disobeying God’s winged messengers.
Unlike the high priest Eli, who too does not repent, Lilith swears that she’ll fight back.
Eli just let’s things slide; tells Samuel, his student:
And he was to told these few words
which opened up his heart
"If you cannot bring good news, then
don't bring any"
(Bob Dylan: The Wicked Messenger)
Not so Lilith. Says she’ll have her revenge; she’ll cause other’s children to be still-born, or die while sleeping in their cribs.
She aims her bolt well, this pretty one. Ready now to show mercy, the three angels promise that they’ll not slay any of the screech owl’s children if they’ve been given special amulets to hold:
With your holy medallion in your fingertips that fold
And your saintlike face, and your ghostlike soul
Who among them could ever think he could destroy you
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
In Greek/Roman mythology, the owl is associated with Athena (Minerva), the flashing-eyed virgin Goddess of Wisdom:
Shut your mouth, says the wise old owl
Business is business, and it's murder most foul.
(Bob Dylan: Murder Most Foul)
As a judge, not a Mafia boss, Athena lets Orestes off because he’s suffered greatly for what he did; does not try to excuse himself for causing the death of both his mother and her lover even though Apollo tells the court that he commanded Orestes to kill them both.
Another reference to the ancient mythology:
You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)
Hercules is strong even as a baby. With his two hands, he kills a couple of snakes sent into his bedroom at midnight by the angry, vengeful Hera, the wife of Zeus.
* Publisher’s note: it may seem perverse in an article about the lyrics of Dylan to provide a musical example not sung in English. The reason here is twofold. First, I’ve not been able to find any covers of the song in English which in my view actually add something to Dylan’s interpretation of his own work. Second, musically I rather like this. So it was a case of this version, or none, and since you have the choice of playing it or not, you already have the option of none. So, in essence, I’ve just added an option. I hope that explains everything. Tony.
There is an index to the All Directions series here. The idea of the series is to trace Dylan’s compositions in the order of their being written, to see what insights that gives us into what he was thinking, and where he was going.
The last episode ended “Everything is broken, there is no sense of direction. That is 1989.” and that is certainly the impression I got from Bob in the year which also gave us “Disease of Conceit”, “Series of Dreams”, “Most of the Time”, “Where teardrops fall” and ended with “Man in a long black coat”. Was there ever a more downward spiralling collection in terms of negative themes, combined with an upward spiral of musical and poetic inventiveness?
The question at this time was therefore, could Bob pick himself up and give us something a lot more forward looking and positive? Indeed did he want to? Or if not, could he at least retain some of the mystery without every prognostication being negative.
It certainly did not seem so with the opening song of the new decade, “Handy Dandy.” Negativity might not pull him through, but it gave him a lot of ideas…
Handy dandy, controversy surrounds him
He's been around the world and back again
Something in the moonlight still hounds him
Handy dandy, just like sugar and candy
Handy dandy, if every bone in his body was broken he would never admit it
He got an all girl orchestra and when he says
"Strike up the band", they hit it
Handy dandy, handy dandy
You say, "What are ya made of?"
He says, "Can you repeat what you said?"
You'll say, "What are you afraid of?"
He'll say, "Nothin' neither 'live nor dead"
Bob created a lilting version of the song which gave a different musical vision – as if we can just drift along through this world without taking any notice of the world around us.
but the picture above tells us what the album really is about. The desolation of his home town, and other towns like it.
This version totally undermines the album version; it is much more insidious because it sounds so sweet and fine and ok when in fact everything is absolutely not OK. We are still trapped by the man in the long black coat and the disease of conceit. This remains a very dark world.
And just in case we thought this might be a passing phase (albeit one that was taking a hell of a long time pass) Bob had no hesitation in pointing out we were wrong. For the next song told us…
The cat's in the well, the wolf is looking down.
The cat's in the well, the wolf is looking down.
He got his big bushy tail dragging all over the ground.
The cat's in the well, the gentle lady is asleep.
Cat's in the well, the gentle lady is asleep.
She ain't hearing a thing, the silence is a-stickin' her deep.
The cat's in the well and grief is showing its face
The world's being slaughtered and it's such a bloody disgrace.
Just because it is a rocking 12 bar blues, it doesn’t mean everything is ok. It sure isn’t. And it wasn’t going to stop. For if ever Bob had a theme that he wanted to pour through and look at in every possible way, this was that moment. 10,000 men takes us once more along the same route.
Ten thousand men on a hill,
Ten thousand men on a hill,
Some of 'm goin' down, some of 'm gonna get killed.
Ten thousand men dressed in oxford blue,
Ten thousand men dressed in oxford blue,
Drummin' in the morning, in the evening they'll be coming for you.
This is not a world in which sometimes things are ok, and sometimes not. This really is “Everything is broken” over and over and over again. And not surprisingly, there are not too many cover version around. I mean, “Desolation Row” tells us just how bad the world is – how appallingly awful the world is – but at least if we can see the world as Bob sees it, we can talk with him, and share thoughts with him. And it has a nice tune.
But these songs have nothing like that. In Desolation Row we live in a broken world, but we can share some hopes together, some desire to make the world better, some comfort that we can give each other. Here we live in a world of utter and total bleakness. And that’s been the theme of one song after another after another.
My point is that the 1965 sequence of 15 songs from “On the road again” to “Ballad of a thin man” told us of moving on and disdain, of life being a jumble, of hopeless self-centred people etc. But by and large these are people who are as much as anything hurting themselves by their own attitude – which is why Bob’s lyrics in works such as “Rolling Stone” are so disdainful.
But now this is far worse. It is not the junkie who has hurt him or herself by overdosing the drugs but people who appear to be living normal lives but are just going to get really hurt by the world they live in. And like the cat in the well (a really pitiful and painful metaphor) we are stuck.
And he’s not giving up because the lyrics to the next song (Unbelievable) take us even lower
It's unbelievable, it's strange but true,
It's inconceivable it could happen to you.
You go north and you go south
Just like bait in the fish's mouth.
Ya must be livin' in the shadow of some kind of evil star.
It's unbelievable it would get this far.
The song ends
It don't matter no more what you got to say
It's unbelievable it would go down this way.
And there isn’t anything more negative than this.
The only question there was, was how negative could this get, and how long could it go on. OK that is two questions. But they get answered by the next song, “Under the red sky” – the song that Bob himself said was about being stuck in one’s backwater home town.
Let the wind blow low, let the wind blow high.
One day the little boy and the little girl were both baked in a pie.
This is the key to the kingdom and this is the town
This is the blind horse that leads you around.
And so it has continued song after song of total negativity. There is no way out. Perhaps the message became unclear because of the way Dylan chose to write the music, but the cat is most certainly still stuck down the well, only now the cat has become two young people whose lives are ruined by being born in a dead end town and having no way out of it.
Even when working with Willie Nelson there was no escape
There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
And the bankers are takin' my home and my land from me
There's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be
There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
There's a well with water so bitter nobody can drink
Ain't no way to get high and my mouth is so dry that I can't speak
Don't they know that I'm dyin', Why nobody cryin' for me?
And still the negativity went on with Wiggle Wiggle
Wiggle ’til you vomit fire
Was it possible to go any deeper? Well yes
How many paths did they try and fail?
How many of their brothers and sisters lingered in jail?
How much poison did they inhale?
How many black cats crossed their trail?
And that was it. Bob, having taken us down so deep he couldn’t find anything much deeper now went back to the Wilbury’s (and it is interesting that the first song from the second collaboration seems to have been “The Devil’s been busy in your back yard”, but that takes us onto the next episode.
And I’m left thinking, it is hand’t been for the Wilbury’s, just how dark could Bob have got?
The Holy Bible verse below indicates that the God thereof has both male and female attributes:
So God created man in His own image
In the image of God created He him
Male and female created He them
(Genesis 1:27)
The following song indicates that the God thereof has both a good (god) side, and an evil (devil) side; be the Creator of both Life and Death:
Already the fiesta has begun
And in the streets, the face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)
The next lyrics create a figure that’s serpentine:
His eyes were two slits
That would make a snake proud
With the face any painter would paint
As he walked through the the crowd
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
The Godlike creature is associated with Anubis, the male Embalmer – albeit the Egyptian deity described beneath is likened to a female:
Worshipping a God
With the body of a woman
Well endowed
And the head of a hyena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
In the jolly green valley below, the partner of the giant Goddess is painted as both heavenly and hellish, even Nazi-like:
I've tried my best to love you
But I can't play this game
Your best friend
And my worst enemy
Is one and the same
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)
Referencing Genesis 1:27, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, Jewish biblical lore presents Lilith as Adam’s first wife; translated into to a ‘screech owl’ in the New Testament (akin to Egyptian mythology in which Ra, the Sun God, is depicted as a “falcon”); Lilith flies out of Eden to Babylon because her male partner is sexually domineering – she, her offspring, portrayed as night demons:
Therefore the wild beasts of the desert
With the wild beasts of the islands
Shall dwell there
And the owls shall dwell therein
And it shall be no more inhabited for ever
Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation
(Jeremiah 50: 39)
The following lyrics, the songster, claws retracted, laments that America is modern Babylon:
The driver peeks out, trying to find one face
In this concrete world full of souls
The angels play on their horns all day
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anybody even try
(Bob Dylan: Three Angels)
Pausing between writing up my review part one and the second section (imaginatively named, “part 2”), I saw a comment that had come in from a reader.
“It’s prerecorded. Disappointing. Staged. Would of been nice to see him unplugged & live. Mistakes and all. Good musicianship & arrangements but uninspired , faux playing & the band is wearing masks… does that mean they don’t get performance credits? Bummed this could be his last recorded “live” performance.”
I would agree that it was disappointing that the advertising was misleading, and I can’t see the point of that. Advertising is there to generate interest so that people buy, but I am surprised that anyone would think that calling the show one thing when it turns out to be another is going to help Dylan. £20 for the video? No, I wouldn’t say that is the best £20 I have spent this week.
Of course it may well be that the advertising agency had no idea what the show was going to be like and their brief was wrongly written because Bob told his management that it was going to be something else. That certainly happens.
And indeed maybe he started working on a live show and then changed his mind (just like on one tour when he rehearsed with a group of female vocalists for two months and then sacked them all two weeks before they went on the road).
Anyway, advertisements change as things develop, and we have what we have. So although I am not at all sure it was worth £20, I thoroughly enjoyed it as far as I got before my first break to post my thoughts and do the odds and ends a person running a website has to do.
So now to move on – still writing the review as I listen to the show for the first time.
To be alone with you
As I suspected earlier, this sound has been re-mixed, for it really doesn’t correspond with the movement of the musicians on stage. Not for the first time the bassist is playing away but we can’t hear her, until suddenly there she is. I’ve got no problem with that, but it just seems odd to let us see the musician play when nothing is there on the track.
And there is that business of Bob holding the guitar and not doing that much with it. Not my favourite song, but an OK arrangement for me. Just doesn’t move me much.
What was it you wanted
Now this is interesting for me (even if no one else) since I recently spent several days trying to place this song within the context of Dylan’s writing in the 1980s (“All Directions part 58”). It is one hell of a song, and musically very different from his normal writing, although the lyrics are very much in the context of the music, and this rendition does it perfect justice.
He only ever played it 22 times on stage (1990 to 1995 – so very spaced out one performance to the next), and yet it is such an amazing song from an exquisite sequence of writing.
Forever Young
Really – that is strange. The spooky final response to the “Visions of Johanna” that is “What was it you wanted” followed instantly by “Forever Young”. But then what do I know?
Maybe he is still thinking of the person in “What was it you wanted” and wanted to say “but no hard feelings”. Could be.
This rendition doesn’t really add anything to the song for me; the accompaniment is too picky and plinky plinky (technical terms, sorry).
Pledging my time
Plinky plinky introduction to this as well, which I don’t really understand either. Either my focus has gone or Bob and his band had lost the feel for the show. It can’t be them, so it must be me. I’m obviously losing it.
But I am redeemed for once into it, this really is enjoyable as a straight 12 bar blues. It’s a re-arrangement I can totally believe in, and believe in it so much it feels as if this how it was meant to sound from the start. A little too strong in the mixing of the lead guitar occasionally, for my taste, but that is me just finding something to say.
I should add that by this time in my first viewing of the show, I had stopped bothering with the film, and was just focused on the music. I am not at all a film critic, so ignore any of my comments on the visuals that gets through.
The Wicked Messenger
One of Bob’s favourites from the JWH album, and the re-working took me by surprise. Although I quickly got used to it and appreciated the new arrangement even by the end I couldn’t get the hang of the end of every other line with the extended last two syllables. Struck me that it could have been possible to hold interest in the arrangement by just having it at the end of each verse, but twice a verse seems too much.
Which is a shame for me (and as ever it is just for me) because otherwise I really enjoyed this.
Watching the river flow
An interesting insert here, given that we started with “Masterpiece” – the two great songs from 1971 while he was having a two year break from the heavy lifting in terms of compositional stuff. It’s a jolly bounce, but it doesn’t really give me new insights.
It’s all over now baby blue
Is it going to be slow all the way through? Well, yes, it is, which means we have a fair bit of listening to a set of lyrics that we have all known by heart through most if not all of our adult life.
So is there enough here to keep us alert? Is there a secret message?
Well, there could be a message for an unknown lover or friend, but for us… we know there are some new gigs planned now the lock downs are ending, so no it is not the end in that sense. No message – and not a lot of listening; just a short version of the song.
But we do get a chance to see that the bass player was Janie Cowan – and that is a worthwhile snippet, because that led me to this, which I really did enjoy.
I always try to take something from a show, and this time I didn’t have to try – she is there for all the hear – and the track above is something special.
As for Bob’s show, I enjoyed watching it this bright sunny morning, but I can’t imagine watching it again, nor will I buy it if it comes out as a video release. But it was fun, and I can certainly see why Bob invited Janie Cowan into the ensemble. Thanks for that Bob; I’ve found a new exciting talent to listen to.
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