I Was Young When I Left Home (1961) part III: Old Jim McKay

Posted on November 22, 2021 by TonyAttwood

Publisher’s note: the video of “Ballad of a thin man” cited in this article is not available in all countries, so we’ve put up two sources – hopefully at least one of these will work for you.

by Jochen Markhorst

Previously…

III Old Jim McKay

Richard Hawley has been a respected guest singer and guitarist at the forefront of Britpop since the 1990s, playing with the Arctic Monkeys, Manic Street Preachers, Longpigs, Elbow and Pulp, and collaborating with the likes of Paul Weller and Duane Eddy – no small feat. But on his solo records, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Hawley has increasingly developed into a kind of English Roy Orbison, wandering around in the 1950s, wallowing in Sheffield and South Yorkshire nostalgia, rockabilly, dancehall and easy-listening.

Dylan has been under his skin all this time. This is most audible on his wonderful contribution to the soundtrack of Peaky Blinders, season 5 finale, on his masterful cover of “Ballad Of A Thin Man”. Played on the Fender Telecaster that is close to his heart:

“I bought this from Martin Carthy, a beautiful human being and a friend. I tried it and it took me about nine seconds to fall in love with it completely. He told me Bob Dylan used to play it whenever he came over. That’s a thing. I’ve got no photographic evidence for that. It’s just an anecdote of Martin.”
(interview with Guitar.com, August 2019)

https://youtu.be/5ST88Ia1Utc

… and most clearly expressed is the Dylan love when explaining his choice of his Eight Favourite Albums for The Quietus, February 2016. At number one is Blonde On Blonde. Hawley introduces his choice with a Nick Hornby-like disclaimer: “I’m not a massive Dylan head, as such, but I just like listening to his words.” And subsequently loses himself in an eloquent declaration of love, not unworthy of a massive Dylan head:

“The thing with Dylan is it’s not his guitar playing, it’s not his harmonica playing, it’s not his voice and it isn’t his band – the thing that’s always turned me on is hearing his mind. You do drift off and go to random points in the universe within a verse and it’s a record where all the receptors are open. It’s not psychedelia in the widely understood, comic sense – I loathe that – but the reason I got into Dylan was because I could hear stuff I’d heard as I grew up; people like the Delmore Brothers and Hank Williams.”

And by the time he zooms in on Blonde On Blonde, the brakes are off:

“It felt like I was being bombarded with asteroids or something. My favourite track on Blonde On Blonde is ‘Visions Of Johanna’, by a mile, but I don’t know why. It’s like a beautiful, spinning, jewelled Christmas present that comes out of its box and I don’t want to know which switch to press to make it do that. You just put the needle to the record and that’s it.”

… but a massive Dylan head, no.

A highlight of Hawley’s solo output is 2005’s successful Coles Corner, but on its equally attractive follow-up Lady’s Bridge (2007) we find more explicit Dylan traces. In the beautiful “Dark Road” for instance, which has a strong “Love And Theft” vibe anyway. Not only in its opening line (“It’s a long dark road that I call my home / It’s a long dark road that I’m cursed to roam”), but also in the “Shelter From The Storm” echoes in verse fragments like “One day from the darkness I’ll come rapping at your door”. And on the album, we also find that first “I Was Young When I Left Home” offshoot, in the gently mournful “Lady Solitude”:

I hear a whistle blowing
Morning low, guess I'll ride that train
Well you never wrote a letter
You hurt your man again

Debatable, of course, whether this could be traced back to Dylan – the words themselves are far too generic to be marked as borrowings. But still, the combination of I hear a whistle blowing, train and never wrote a letter, sung by a massive Dylan head, is a bit too coincidental accumulation of literal correspondences.

Less debatable is the reuse of the only stand-out verse of “I Was Young When I Left Home”, the sixth verse;

I’m playing on a track
Ma would come and whoop me back
On them trestles down by old Jim McKay’s

The name “McKay” does not (yet) have the status in the canon of, for example, “Mr. Jones”, “Suzie Q” or “Mrs. Brown”, but it is slowly starting to catch on. Remarkably often in combination with “longing for home” or with a “dead and gone mother”, by the way. Like in Jon McLaughlin’s forgettable ELO rip-off “You Can Never Go Back” (“Are you still at the corner restaurant / Meeting Jamie McKay when you get off”). Or with the criminally underrated troubadour Shawn Mullins; on the same album Soul’s Core that contains his brilliant “Lullaby”, we can find the beautiful “Ballad of Billy Jo McKay”;

My name's Billy Jo McKay
I just turned 16 yesterday
I'm gonna get the nerve one day to get outta here
My ma passed on 3 years ago, 
        they said it was cancer and it took her slow

(An album full of heartbreaking, sad songs, and also with an exquisite cover of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”).

Unmistakably a different door to “I Was Young When I Left Home” comes from Boston, and is crafted by the young, independent talent Vaughan Supple, who, with the help of ProTools, electronic drums, guitar and keyboard, is diligently building a multi-coloured oeuvre. Echoes can be heard of Buddy Holly, Radiohead and Vampire Weekend, but in this particular song, Vaughan sounds like Eels indulging in a Dylan song. My mother is dead and gone, I can never go home, and

I'm taking the train, 
By old Jim McKay's
I will find a place 
Where no one knows my name

From the 2020 EP Treehouse. Vaughan Williams is 18. The same age Dylan is when he sings “I Was Young When I Left Home”, in 1961.

———–

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

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Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend

Posted on November 21, 2021 by TonyAttwood

If you have been on Untold Dylan for more than a couple of minutes there is a chance you’ll have come across me raving over “Ballad for a Friend” recorded when Bob was 21. I won’t repeat the whole review here, but if you feel like a read it is here.

The point is that I rate it as one of the all-time greatest Dylan songs, for reasons that I very ramblingly explain (or not) in my review.

And as with so many songs that I rate as utterly extraordinary in the Dylan collection, this one has been ignored by one and all, even to the point of no one doing a cover version that I can find… except one.

Now I think the performers and arranger here totally miss the entire point of the song, the numbed desperation and sadness of a young man experiencing the death of a friend. But I’m including this, plus yet again, Dylan’s original (in case you’ve never heard it or want to hear it again) just to make the contrast and point out that merely doing a Dylan cover isn’t enough.

You need to understand the music too. Dylan first:

and now the cover…

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Dylan Released and Unreleased

Posted on November 21, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: The idea of this article, and possibly series if all goes according to plan, is to cover Bob Dylan tracks and performances both officially released and unreleased, which otherwise have not been mentioned previously on the site and don’t really fit in on any other ongoing series. (Or which occasionally have been included before but we now want to mention again).

They are not always going to be undiscovered classics in fact some are going to be downright awful!! But should always be fun in any case! As usual, I can provide the details and Tony can provide commentary on the actual tracks.

Let’s start with the tracks Bob released on the two Vanguard albums covering the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

Here is a live Blowin in the Wind from the album The Newport Folk Festival 1963 – The Evening Concerts: Vol. 1

Tony: Right from the start Bob had the ability to hold the stage. And of course he has done it in so many different ways, from standard introductions through to rambling stories through to saying nothing at all.

This really is an extraordinary piece of archive footage that I’ve never seen before. And I just wonder what Joan Baez thinks of being used as a backing singer? She seems to grow into it!

The guitar accompaniment isn’t up to much, but then I am not sure it needs to be given the luminaries on stage. What a fantastic moment to have captured on film.

Aaron: The second album, called Newport Broadsides contained two tracks from Dylan. Firstly a duet with Joan Baez of With God On Our Side (Skip to 2:25 on this video)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uez8EeBHGss

Tony: Another one I’ve never heard before. Joan has that magnificent ability to create harmonies that no one else has ever thought of – and this is a perfect example, even if she doesn’t know what verse is coming next.

Wow, this is incredible. Aaron can you keep this up for a whole series? I’m really loving this. Dylan again is keep the guitar accompaniment dead simple, and the guitar is fractionally out of tune. Quite a difference from Mr Guitar Man of the Never Ending Tour that Mike Johnson has commented on. If you are reading Mike, what do you make of this guitar style?

Shame the video is not related to the performance but well, you can’t have everything, can you?

Aaron: The next one I think has already appeared on the site but let’s include it now for completeness here – Bob with Pete Seeger – Ye Playboys & Ye Playgirls

Tony: So, another one done just on the spot. It is amazing that Bob could at such a young age persuade those who had been around for much longer to go with his style and approach.

Actually, I don’t remember this from earlier on the site, which shows how in old age my memory is going. You’ve got this to look forward to Aaron, the pleasure of finding something you knew about in the past, and feeling it is a new discovery! It makes old age more acceptable.

Aaron: Interestingly Bob’s three tracks were also released on a series of EP‘s by Fontana Records along with tracks from Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. The EPs were quickly withdrawn from sale because of legal problems with CBS Records (the then trading name of Columbia in the UK) who had licensed Bob’s appearances on LPs only.

Footnote from Tony:

Coming up with ideas for series is open to everyone. Whether it is just an idea for a series of articles or whether you would like to write the whole thing, or indeed co-write, I always love to have suggestions, not least because it usually means less work for me. Please write to Tony@schools.co.uk

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Cover version of the day: As I went out one morning

Posted on November 20, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

The whole point of this is not to offer any old cover version of a Dylan song, as I work through his compositions in alphabetical order, but a cover version that discovers and offers something new in the music, or reveals to the willing listener an insight previously unrealised.

And that is most certainly what happens here with Jef Lee Johnson’s free jazz inspired instrumental version of “As I Went Out One Morning.” Of course not everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who have ears to hear…

Jef Lee Johnson started out playing garage bands and later moved on to play on albums with multiple pop and rock stars (Aretha Franklin and Billy Joel are the most quoted). He was also in a lot of experimental music moving easily into free jazz, as you can hear on the track below.

He sadly passed away from complications following a bout of pneumonia in January 2013.

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Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXII)

Posted on November 20, 2021 by TonyAttwood

Links to all the cover versions used in this series are given at the end of the article, as well as links to all the previous articles themselves.

By Larry Fyffe

Papers uncovered in the Untold Archives Department show that Jesus (through the transfigured singer/songwriter Bob Dylan) reveals (to Dr. Sigmund Freud) a feeling of resentment towards mother Mary for forcing the “Son of God” to take part in a traditional Jewish pseudo-marriage ceremony with His promiscuous step-sister Mary Magdalene (Mag’s the illicit daughter of Cyrus of Magdala and the supposed “Saint” – Mary, the Mother of Jesus).

The two kids are told by family members to imagine that they are in an overseas paradise.

Encoded in the following song:

Twelve years old, and they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute
There were gold fringes on her wedding dress
(Bob Dylan: Key West)

Further indicated is that when grown up, Dylan as Jesus has a change of heart – encrypted in the song lyrics quoted beneath:

Beyond the horizon, the night winds blow
The theme of the melody, from many moons ago
The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chim
Beyond the horizon, I found you just in time
(Bob Dylan: Beyond the Horizon ~ Dylan, et. al.)

The song lyrics below, rhyme ~ ‘disire’/’fire’; while floating around in Gnostic Space-Time, the singer/songwriter touches base with preRomantic poet William Blake:

I'm touched with desire
What don't I do
Through the flame and through the fire
I'll build my world around you
(Bob Dylan: Beyond The Horizon ~ Dylan et. al.)

Constructs a world of song lyrics around the poetic lines below:

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear; O clouds unfold
Bring me my chariots of fire
(William Blake: Jerusalem)

Again speaking as Christ, the narrator in the song below rhymes ~ ‘cold’/’unfold’; rather than ~ ‘gold’/’unfold’.

Jesus excuses his own odd behaviour by pointing out that He can’t help it since He’s compelled to follow the Divine Plan of His Almighty Father:

God knows it's terrifying
God sees it all unfold
There's a million reasons for you to be crying
You've been so bold and so cold
(Bob Dylan: God Knows)

Nevertheless, the transfigured Jesus fears, with good reason, that the Commander-in-Chief’s about to order that his daughter, given birth to by the now-entombed Mary Sophia Magdaline, be sacrificed in order to prove His loyalty.

Not to mention that He’s been told that her death will save all humankind from their sins. What’s a poor boy to do?!

Well I'm the enemy of treason
An enemy of strife
I'm the enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain't no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely kind go
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “The Dylavinci Code.”

Index to past episodes

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Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.

Posted on November 19, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood+

If you have been following my daily ramble about cover versions, you’ll know that I’m working through Dylan’s songs alphabetically, and am finding lots of songs that no one seems ever to have covered (apart from the valiant home recordists with a youtube account).

One such is Any Time – it is sitting there, it could be evolved and developed, but no one wants to give it a go. Which is a shame.

So we march onward, and next is Apple Suckling Tree

which is ok but not actually setting me alight. However it is the only cover I can find on the internet for this song.

So always being a rebel, even when I write the rules, I’m marching on and the next song is “Are you Ready”, and although the subject is not something that fits in with my own universal view the music is really something else.

Thus my second cover of the day. (I would say two for the price of one but there is no price so that would be nonsense.)

More tomorrow.

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I Was Young When I Left Home (1961) part II: Different doors

Posted on November 19, 2021 by TonyAttwood

Previously: I Was Young When I Left Home: I An absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of 20 to have written

by Jochen Markhorst

II Different doors

The evolution of the old folk song “900 Miles” to the reworking “500 Miles” to Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home” illustrates the truth of Dylan’s analysis in that famous 2015 MusiCares speech;

“All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. It’s just different, saying the same thing. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Well you know, I just thought I was doing something natural […] I didn’t think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line.”

… and Dylan, of course, is not the end of that line. Just as “900 Miles” is not the first, “I Was Young When I Left Home” is not the last link in that chain of songs in which a lonely protagonist, far from home, laments his nostalgic suffering in similar words. Hedy West’s “500 Miles” was further popularised by the Kingston Trio (1962), Peter, Paul & Mary (also in 1962) and became a hit for Bobby Bare in 1963 (“500 Miles From Home”, #9 in the Country Charts), and remains on the set list of countless, mostly country artists to this day.

“I Was Young When I Left Home” is of course not the only offshoot of “500 Miles”. The song branches out, which in turn lead to new branches, which in turn “open up different doors in a different kind of way”. The title of The Proclaimers’ 1988 world hit, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”, to name but one example, does not come out of the blue, of course.

After all, it can hardly be biographical, those 500 miles. The Proclaimers’ home base of Auchtermuchty, on Scotland’s east coast, just below Dundee, is only 400 miles from London, for example. The missus would have to have fled all the way to Plymouth to force the brothers to that 500 miles walk. Not too likely, obviously. Although, come to think of it, the sturdy sailors in the old sea shanty longingly sing their “Sweet Ladies Of Plymouth” from as far as the Bay of Biscay, from the Cape of Good Hope, and even from the other side of the world, off Australia’s beach, – apparently Plymouth’s women are worth the 500 miles after all.

“I Was Young When I Left Home” only reaches the general public in 2001, when the old 1961 recording is added as a bonus track on the CD version of “Love And Theft”. And so it is only from 2001 onwards that new ramifications and different doors emerge.

The first covers are not too different yet. And it will be another six or seven years before they really come off. The first notable one is by the Californian jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman, the versatile talent who, apart from making beautiful solo albums, is also an esteemed call employee for A-category artists such as Lou Reed, Bono, Aretha Franklin and Norah Jones. Her “I Was Young When I Left Home” from 2008 is restrained, but with slide guitar and violin it adds a successful plaintive dimension to the song.

Better known is the contribution of Antony + Bryce Dessner to the highly successful charity project Dark Was the Night for the Red Hot Organization, a compilation album produced by Bryce and his brother. The colourful Antony of Antony And The Johnsons (after coming out as transgender: Anohni) already attracted attention and applause with the contribution to the Dylan film I’m Not There (2007), with that thin, wild mercury “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, she will record a strangely attractive “Pressing On” in 2011, and scores, mainly thanks to that surreal, ethereal voice, in between with another Dylan song, with a hypnotic “I Was Young When I Left Home”. A near-perfect performance; all the pathos, homesickness and yearning that the song holds are captured in just under five minutes, thanks also to the tasteful, sober instrumentation.

The song then slowly but surely floats up to the surface – after Antony’s missionary work, many follow. “I Was Young When I Left Home” has not yet entered the canon, but it is being covered more and more often. Almost always pleasantly so; apparently the song has the same indestructible power as, say, “Buckets Of Rain” or “Mama You Been On My Mind” or “To Ramona” have. The British American Marcus Mumford, Big Thief from Brooklyn, the Australian duo Montgomery Church, the infectious, heart-breaking South African collective Freshly Ground, the Belgian Puerto-Rican Gabriel Rios… all beautiful covers from all over the world, all of which are still within spitting distance of Dylan’s original.

(Gabriel’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, which he recorded in the same Dylan birthday week at the end of May 2011, is just as beautiful, by the way).

The first – slight – deviations from the original are not heard until 2021, when Marissa Adler, encouraged by her well-received “Absolutely Sweet Marie” (on the 2016 Mojo special Blonde on Blonde Revisited), dares to tackle another Dylan song.

And apart from the covers, we also see the first branches, the first “different doors” of the song coming down in the work of the colleagues. Actually, even before that; the British Dylan disciples The Charlatans demonstrate their knowledge of even the more obscure Dylan songs throughout their catalogue, and include a fragment of “I Was Young When I Left Home” already in 1999, so before the official release of the song, on their wonderful record Us And Us Only, in one of the many highlights of that record, in “The Blind Stagger”;

Lord, it's been a long, long time
And people don't you find always leave their troubles at your door
I, I live on my own
I don't need a bitter soul beatin' on about my country anymore
Don't you think your daddy needs you home right away
Your daddy needs you home right away

… the closing line of the opening verse is not accidentally a copy of Dylan’s verse – the album is filled to the brim with Dylan references and allusions.

The (presumably) first echo of the song after its official release then, also comes from England, and is placed by the extraordinary phenomenon from Sheffield, by Richard Hawley, an artist after Dylan’s heart. Being a line-extender and a different-door-opener par excellence.

Publishers footnote: if you are having a problem getting through to the Adler link you might try this link: https://marissanadler.bandcamp.com/track/i-was-young-when-i-left-home I not, and you do find another link in your part of the world – please do write in to help out your fellow readers.

———–

To be continued. Next up: I Was Young When I Left Home part III (final): Old Jim McKay

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

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Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina

Posted on November 18, 2021 by TonyAttwood

OK what have I learned so far?

First, to my total surprise, there are vast numbers of Dylan songs that no one has covered and put on the internet. Naively I expected that someone somewhere (leaving aside the usual suspects with their home recordings which really don’t offer us too much insight, since they are just cases of getting through the song and out the other side) a band or really talented solo artist would have ventured into every Dylan song. Why wouldn’t you?

But no, that’s not the case. So if you are in a band, and you want to gain a bit of exposure, here’s something to do. Find one of the more obscure Dylan pieces listed in Dylan Songs of the 1950s and 1960s and the pages covering subsequent decades, and find yourself an obscure song, get a recording and re-arrange it. And if you feel like it, re-arrange the lyrics while you are at it.

This is certainly what Ashley Hutchings did – mind you Dylan did call him something akin to the most important man in British folk music, so he had quite a start.

And yes, I know I have highlighted this recording a million times before, but I still play this recording it all the time and for me its glory never fades. No one will ever ask me onto the long-running BBC radio show “Desert Island Discs” but I’d take this as one of my eight songs.

“Do I have your permission to turn the other cheek?” What an incredible line that is.

“Trying to heaven by force.” Absolutely.

Retreating up the spiral staircases – story of my life.

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Never Ending Tour, 2002, part 1, Seattle Showdown

Posted on November 18, 2021 by TonyAttwood

This is episode 61 of the Never Ending Tour series. An index of the previous episodes is provided here. The episodes covering 2001 are

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

On the 4^th October, 2002, at the Seattle Centre Key Arena, an extraordinary event took place within the rollout of Bob Dylan’s NET. In the middle of the stage, where Bob ought to be, was an electric keyboard. There was further astonishment when Dylan went on to play keyboard on eleven out of the twenty-one songs presented that night.

Is Bob Dylan without guitar still Bob Dylan? Not everybody thought so. His guitar was more than just an instrument, it was an inseparable part of his identity. From the moment he appeared in the folk clubs of Manhattan in 1962, a kid trying to make a name for himself, it was the guitar-toting Dylan that captured the cultural imagination. Scruffy kid armed with nothing but a guitar and a squeaking harmonica speaks truth to power.

The story goes that it was arthritis that pushed Dylan off the guitar, and I have no reason to dispute that, but most commentators agree that the NET was ripe for change. It was in 1992/93 that Dylan, (I called him Mr Guitar Man), began playing lead guitar, both acoustic and electric, and arguably ten years later that whole movement had played itself out. (If you want to hear Mr Guitar Man at his best might like to check out 1993 part 1 – Tangled up in guitars)

Often dense, dark and intricate, repetitive and obsessive, Dylan’s guitar playing dominated the band’s sound over those years (with a brief interregnum in 1995 owing to illness), and his strange, off-centre playing has been the subject of much dispute among Bobcats.

Those of you who have been following these posts will have seen me register my disquiet with Dylan’s lead guitar playing. I was aware of the inconsistencies and contradictions in my attitude, however. What I liked with the harmonica, I disliked with the guitar. And it sounded better acoustically, even though he might be doing the same thing as with the electric guitar.

What is Dylan up to with these instruments, which he does not play in the standard rock blues manner?

In response to my first Bob Dylan Master Harpist article, a correspondent called Caleb wrote this with regard to Dylan’s harmonica technique:

‘Dylan usually plays a straight harp……meaning that if the song is in the key of G, he uses a harmonica in the key of G. If you blow straight into a harmonica, you get the chord of the straight key. G on a G harmonica. Blues players usually play a “cross harp”, meaning that if the song is in the key of G, they use a C harmonica. To get the G chord on a C harmonica, you suck in on the lower four notes….you not only get the G chord, you get the G7 note…an F, which isn’t the “Blue note”, that takes you into another realm. You can also get the flatted African third, and the “devil tone” …the flatted fifth, by “bending” the third and fourth holes. You suck the air in, in a way that flattens the note…giving that bluesy sound which turns a harmonica into a blues harp….those are the basics…..you take it from there.’

Something similar is happening when Mr Guitar Man gets behind the frets. Our editor, Tony Attwood, after explaining that Dylan didn’t go in for the traditional verse plus guitar break, put it to me this way in an email:

‘Then to liven it up Dylan started playing the notes that you are commenting on which make the song sound somewhat off key. And just as with the harmonica he developed the habit of playing the same notes over and over.

The question is which notes? If playing the blues in G the notes you would commonly use are (with b representing “flat” – ie one semitone lower – typically the black notes on the piano):

G A Bb C D E F G

This is not the key of G major or G minor, but a blues key. G major would be

G A B C D E F# G (# being sharp – up one semitone)

On a blues piece playing an extemporised instrumental break on the harmonica Bob would sometimes play F D F D F D over and over. It sounds very bluesy.

Now on guitar he is doing the same thing, but experimenting with different pairs of notes while the band continue to play the main theme. In effect Bob has introduced a new form of instrumental break based on the same notions of the harmonica break, but using a guitar not a harmonica, and sometimes different notes.

So there is a perfectly sound musical explanation for what he does, and he likes it. I must admit I quite enjoy it too. But it is not in the blues tradition; it is using the blues technique but with different notes.’

I thank both Tony Attwood and Caleb for those explanations and will leave the matter there, and in the hands of my readers, except to say that it is with mixed feelings that I watch Mr Guitar Man put away his ax. He may have had a weird and wonderful style but it was ‘Bob Dylan’ as we’d always known him; the man who hunched in behind his electric piano was someone else.

I have spoken of a rising curve in terms of Dylan’s performances that take us from 1991 right through to 2002. We can now identify the peak years: early peak, 1999; mid peak, 2000 and 2001, and late peak, 2002 up to Oct 4^th. At that point a totally new movement begins that will take us on the next leg of this amazing journey. Interestingly, Dylan was asked why he didn’t hire a piano player, and he replied that all the piano players he knew played lead, and he didn’t want that. (Sorry, lost the reference for that.)

Dylan wanted to use the piano as a rhythm instrument, to vamp chords and put in an occasional few notes. He deliberately pushed the sound of the piano into the background, to merge it into the total sound. It was there for rhythm, timing and emphasis.

Let’s tune into that Seattle concert and be in at the birth of that new movement, even if there might be better versions of the songs to come. Fascinating to hear history being made.

Dylan playing piano on the opening song, ‘Solid Rock’ wasn’t the only new thing about it. This loud, hard rock gospel gets the acoustic treatment. Note how spacious the sound is without Dylan’s guitar. It’s all very new and tentative but full of promise. Drummer Dave Kemper has been replaced by George Receli whose less emphatic, more ‘staggered,’ jazzy drumming style had an immediate effect on the sound of the songs.

In another break from the NET past, Dylan had not played this song since 1981.

Solid Rock

Song two on the setlist is ‘Lay Lady Lay’, also done acoustically with piano. It’s a sweet, mellow version compared to some we have heard, more of a gentle coaxing than a plea for mortal bliss; seduction rather than instruction. The soft, equally gentle harp break prefigures an alliance between the harp and the piano, as the harp can replace the guitar as lead instrument. Dylan can play the harp with his right hand and keep vamping the piano with his left.

Lay Lady Lay

Song number three on the setlist is ‘Tombstone Blues’. We get our first taste of how the new sound will work with electric guitars. It’s driving, insistent, and without Mr Guitar Man, it sounds uncluttered and minimal. You can sense Dylan relaxing into his new sound, catching the groove of this forever surreal foot-tapper. Note how he punctuates the rhythm by jabbing the piano – plink-plink, plink-plink.

Tombstone Blues

Next up is Warren Zevron’s ‘Accidentally like a Martyr,’ but I’m putting that one aside for a separate post on Dylan’s covers, so we move on to number five on the setlist, another old favourite, ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ given the brisk, country treatment with a touch of boogie-woogie, partly thanks to Dylan’s plinky-plonk piano. One of Dylan’s lighter, happier songs. Forget the world and enjoy a night of love, or a night of good music – I’ve often thought this song is addressed as much to the audience as to a lover.

A touch of Dylan’s harp reinforces the happy-go-lucky feel of the song.

I’ll be your Baby Tonight.

At this point Dylan leaves the keyboard and picks up the guitar for a rousing performance of the Rolling Stones’ song ‘Brown Sugar’ and an acoustic guitar version of ‘Don’t Think Twice’. He then returns to the keyboard for the eighth song on the setlist, ‘It’s All Right Ma’. 2002 was Dylan’s worst year for upsinging, that is lifting his voice at the end of the line. Judiciously used, it can, like its opposite, downsinging, work quite well, but not when it’s over used. You can hear it in this ‘It’s All Right Ma’, and even more so in the next song, ‘Love Minus Zero’ but, depending on your ear, it doesn’t reach annoying levels.

With the piano, and Receli’s drumming, the song is given a decidedly blues twist. He slows it down, making it a bit more gentle, not so savage, but it does have a bit of a dumpty-dum rhythm.

It’s all Right Ma

Gentle also applies to his performance of ‘Love Minus Zero’, gentle, lush and countrified. If you don’t get too stuck on the upsinging, this is a fine vocal performance. The piano works discretely around the melody. This mysterious song, with its beautiful obscurity, comes across as a love song.

Love Minus Zero

Dylan then picks up the guitar for three more songs before, at slot number thirteen, returning to the piano for ‘Honest With Me’ from Love and Theft, now just a year old. This is a guitar driven rocker which, like ‘Tombstone Blues’, benefits from this more minimal, uncluttered approach. I find this a compelling performance, and Dylan’s cynical, slurred delivery fits the song like a glove. I think he’s making his voice rougher than it need be on some of the notes, because he loves that tearing sound. Receli’s lighter drumming can be felt on this one. It’s more than just a foot-tapper.

Honest with Me

I’ve got two more “Love and Theft” songs to cover from the Seattle concert, ‘Floater’ and ‘High Water,’ but I’m running out of space and will look at them in the next post, when I’ll continue to consider Dylan’s piano performances from late 2002 and the birth of this new sound.

In the meantime, keep with it.

Kia Ora

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Bob Dylan’s Ventures Outside of Music

Posted on November 18, 2021 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan’s Ventures Outside of Music

They say that music heals the soul, and many artists have done just that for millions of people worldwide. Among these talented performers, you’ll find none other than iconic rock/country legend Bob Dylan! The superstar might be best-known for his heartbreakingly good songwriting, but you might be surprised by some of the other ventures he’s taken up throughout the years. If you’re a fan of Bob Dylan’s music and want to learn more about some of his other projects, then strap in and enjoy the ride!

Bob Dylan’s Casino Features

Here’s something you might not have expected to see on this list. While the artist might not be officially involved with any casinos, his tunes often grace the background of many popular slot games! With the online casino trend gaining traction these past few years, the prominence of these games has reached a new peak. Naturally, this means that plenty of people are being introduced to Bob Dylan’s music while giving the slots a spin! If you’re interested in checking some of these games out, you can visit www.novibet.co.uk, an excellent online casino with tons of titles to choose from.

Bob Dylan’s Writing Achievements

As we’ve already mentioned, one of the best parts about Dylan’s music isn’t the music itself but the wonderful poetry behind every lyric. Knowing that putting pen to paper is among his biggest strengths, Bob Dylan has done plenty of writing throughout his long career. Other than songs etched in everyone’s memory, he’s written an autobiography detailing his greatest successes and failures, along with a prose poetry book that’s bound to impress even the harshest of critics.

When such sheer talent and love are poured into a piece of literature, recognition is bound to follow. Dylan’s songwriting has received high praise since the beginning of his career, but his entire writing journey has now been honored with two of the most prestigious writing awards in existence. In 2008, the artist received a Pulitzer Prize for his impact on American music and pop culture. Eight years later, in 2016, he received a Nobel Prize in Literature!

Bob Dylan’s Whiskey Collection

One of the most interesting things about Bob Dylan is his willingness to experiment and venture out of his comfort zone. These ventures include co-creating a whiskey collection that any fan of good spirits can appreciate! Of course, we don’t expect you to take our word for it. Celebrities often try out new things and fail, but that’s not the case here. The appropriately named Heaven’s Door Whiskey brand won the #1 Consumer Choice Award at the 2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition in the American Bourbon category!

Other than serving as the perfect base for some of the most delicious whiskey cocktails you’ve ever had, Heaven’s Door is pretty popular for another reason. The beautiful bottles feature Dylan’s hand-crafted welded iron gates designs! Yes, you heard that right! Bob Dylan owns the Black Buffalo Ironworks studio, where he partakes in another creative hobby that’s a pretty different stroke from music.

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Bob Dylan cover of the day: All I really want to do

Posted on November 17, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

The idea of this little series is to find the occasional cover of a Dylan song that you might not have heard before, and offer it as something to lighten the day, or to make you fire off an email saying “What a waste of time” or something else. Whatever you like.

These two versions of “All I really wanna do” completely fascinated me. And even if you don’t like the first do play the second. They are related but utterly different.

and on to the second

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Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXI)

Posted on November 17, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

Links to all the cover versions used in this series are given at the end of the article, as well as links to all the previous articles themselves.

According to the Holy Bible, after the ‘crucifixion’ of Jesus, a disciple from Damascus convinces Paul (Saul) to convert to Christianity:

And Ananias went  his way
And entered into the house
And putting his hands on him said
"Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus ....
Hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight
And be filled with the Holy Ghost"
(Acts 9: 17)

The Dylavinvi Code cracked in the song lyrics quoted beneath, reveals that floating time-traveller/shape-shifter Bob Dylan elaborates on the above biblical narrative.

The singer/ songwriter mixes modern-day celebrities into the soupy tale – i.e., like entertainers Errol Flynn and Dorothy Lamour (she stars in “Hello Dolly”).

He cloaks himself in the persona of the early Christian disciple Ananias.

Dylanias visits Paul, calling him his ‘brother’, who’s been locked up in the royal prison in Rome by Nero, falsely accused of setting the fire there:

He had a brother named Paul out at the cafe royal
Where Miss Dolly plays, and the reviews have been mixed
(Bob Dylan: Too Late)

The Code deciphered makes it quite clear that Ananias hears about the ‘crucifixion’ of Jesus; under questioning by secular and religious authorities, the disciple says he does not remember, or at least claims he doesn’t, whether it’s been rumoured that Jesus escapes death because he can’t actually be killed, or because a Libyan is put in place of Jesus on the cross.

Dylan as Ananias explains:

Well whether there was a murder, I don't know
I was busy visiting  a friend in jail
(Bob Dylan: Too Late)

Actress Amanda Blake plays Marshall Dillon’s girlfriend in TV “Gunsmoke” series; in the song ‘Too Late’, strangely beautiful Magdalene is encoded by Dylanias as Blake, the girlfriend of Jesus.

Magdalene comes from the shore of the Sea of Galilee:

But then there's  Rosetta Blake
Who's been on both sides of the lake
She's rough to look at, but she's righteously fit
She'll feed you coconut bread, and spiced buns in bed
(Bob Dylan: Too Late)

Whatever the crucifixion case may be, Ananias states that Christ and Mary Magdalene have sailed off to America.

Says he, the details of what happened consequently don’t matter:

Yes, I loved him too
I still see him in my mind climbing up the hill
Or was it a wall, I don't recall
It don't matter at all, and it never will
(Bob Dylan: Too Late)

Lightening flashes, and, one way or the other, Jesus Christ, the drifter, escapes in the confusion.

He’s over the wall, like Errol Flynn.

Index to past episodes

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Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin

Posted on November 16, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.

This series started yesterday with the article linked above. Next should be Abandoned Love but we’ve already done a review of a whole range of interesting covers in the Beautiful Obscurity series.

And moving on through the Dylan compositions in alphabetical order it has quickly become clear that there are lots of Dylan songs that no one seems to have covered. Or indeed maybe just one or two people have had a go at, but in my imperious way I don’t rate them highly enough to be worthy of a place in “Cover of the Day”.

And so I’ve meandered on to Ain’t Talkin’ recorded by Betty LaVette

I love the fact that the percussionist is reduced to doing the same thing all the way through – and yet it works perfectly. Mind you when you get a full band shot, he looks bored out of his mind.

But, hell, the band and Ms LaVette, really do get something out of this song. Worthy of inclusion as cover of the day. The sudden stop of the band took me by surprise too.

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I Was Young When I Left Home: An absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of 20 to have written

Posted on November 16, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

I An absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of twenty to have written

Ostalgie, the contraction of “Ost” (East) and “Nostalgie”, is the beautiful portmanteau word that emerges from 1991 to express the longing for life in Ostdeutschland, in East Germany before the fall of the Wall. The fall of the Wall, 9 November 1989, initially led to euphoria and to an exaggerated expectation of all the blessings that the wealth of the capitalist West would bring – the sobering, slowly sinking realisation that it is not all moonlight and roses, this capitalist welfare paradise of prosperity, is quite disappointing. The disappointment is combated with a return to the products and music of the GDR era at Ostalgie-Party’s and from 2000 the entertainment industry joins in. Television series set in an idealised GDR, bands specialising in East German hits, and films such as the witty Sonnenallee and especially the brilliant Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003). That film, in which the main character goes to extremes to save his mother from the shock of finding out that the Wall has fallen, drives Ostalgie to unprecedented heights and makes the demand for old GDR products explode.

Ostalgie, in short, is not only for works of art a fertile emotion to exploit. However, the assimilation of the term contributes to a blurring of the actual, original meaning of nostalgia – it has become more and more something like melancholy, the bittersweet longing for the “good old days”. Originally, however, “nostalgia” denotes the feeling that Dylan expresses so masterfully and poetically in “I Was Young When I Left Home”: the pain of realising that you have lost something dear to you forever. As the Greek origin reveals; nostos = return and algos = sadness, pain, suffering.

Only one recording exists, Dylan never played it live. That one recording was made in Minneapolis, in the flat of friend Bonnie Beecher. On that December day in 1961, no less than 26 songs are put on a tape, which is called the Minnesota Hotel Tape (Bonnie’s flat was called “Beecher Hotel” in the circle of friends). On the soundtrack to No Direction Home, which was released in 2007 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 7, Dylan announces the song and we can hear that he appropriates it: I sorta made it up on a train. And he has an opinion as well: This must be good for somebody, this sad song. I know it’s good for somebody. If it ain’t for me, it’s good for somebody.

“I sorta made it up” is sorta about right. Dylan copies almost entirely two verses of “500 Miles” by folk singer Hedy West (the Not a shirt on my back and the If you miss the train I’m on verses), the structure is the same and he borrows a few fragments from the melody. This “500 Miles” is the song of a down and out vagabond, consumed by homesickness.

Dylan adds more melodrama, stepping into the shoes of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15, 11-32), but without a happy end. This runaway remains lost; mother dead and gone, sister on the wrong track, father in trouble… no, I can never go home again. By the way, West’s song is also an adaptation: she nibbles 400 miles off the folk-traditional “900 Miles” but spares enough that eventually trickles through to Dylan’s adaptation.

A line like You will hear that whistle blow a hundred miles, for instance, is already in that original 900 miles version. A mutilated version thereof, to complete the circle, is played by Dylan in 1967 in the Big Pink and can be heard on The Basement Tapes. In it, only the line ‘Cause I’m 900 miles from home and the melody (more or less) remain. A playful Dylan further shuffles the old negro spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” and a lot of spontaneously made-up verse lines into the song.

The second part of Dylan’s introductory talk is telling. “This must be good for somebody. If it ain’t for me, it’s good for somebody.” Which is in line with the modest self-image that emerges from the autobiography Chronicles Vol. 1; Dylan often refers to himself as a conduit – it’s The Song that matters, not the singer. He himself is just 20 when he sings this. Far too young and inexperienced, one might say, to be able to identify with the protagonist here. The protagonist is a tired, beaten-up over-50-year-old who has the right to be nostalgic and to tell his sad story. Of course, tenderfoot Dylan is an extremely gifted natural. It’s still amazing, though.

Marianne Faithfull expresses a similar, admiringly meant, amazement relating to the creation of “As Tears Go By”:

“I was never that crazy about “As Tears Go By.” God knows how Mick and Keith wrote it or where it came from. It’s a great fusion of dissimilar ingredients: “The Lady of Shalott” to the tune of “These Foolish Things.” The image that comes to mind for me is the Lady of Shalott looking into the mirror and watching life go by. It’s an absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of twenty to have written. A song about a woman looking back nostalgically on her life. The uncanny thing is that Mick should have written those words so long before everything happened. It’s almost as if our whole relationship was prefigured in that song.”

“An absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of twenty to have written.” Beautifully phrased by the as always eloquent Faithfull, and she indirectly puts her finger on the sore spot: for all the beauty of the song, the gap between the unmistakably pure, innocent youthfulness of the singer and the nostalgic, autumnal ripeness of the protagonist is insurmountable. Marianne is simply too young and too green to cover up that gap. She sings heartbreakingly melodic and high – totally out of character, in other words. Later, as her young voice fades, everything falls into place, by the way. On Negative Capability, the album she will record in 2018 with Nick Cave and her current life partner Warren Ellis, she sings a fairly definitive, withered version.

A highlight that is even surpassed by the bare recitation of the lyrics, in September 2021.

In 2020, the grand old lady experiences another low point in her constant, endless succession of health problems and physical discomforts when she suffers pneumonia on top of a Covid-19 infection. As usual, she gets back on her feet, again as usual against all odds. In September 2021, La Faithfull is staying at Denville Hall, a retirement home for performing artists. In the garden, sitting in a wheelchair next to an oxygen machine, she receives journalists to promote her new album She Walks In Beauty. On that album, she doesn’t sing, but recites, over a sober carpet of murmuring muzak, eleven poems by the Romantics, by poets like Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth. The album concludes with, very fittingly, Tennyson’s “The Lady Of Shalott”, the poem she already linked to “As Tears Go By” in her first autobiography (1994). It may explain her receptivity to the somewhat silly question from a Dutch journalist whether she would care to recite the lyrics of her first hit, here in the garden of Denville Hall. La Faithfull half-heartedly objects (“But this is not a poem”), but then does it anyway – somewhat surly, presumably mainly motivated by the urge to put the whole thing behind her, gasping for oxygen in between… and now suddenly a real 74-year-old lady is speaking, interpreting the words of a fictional 74-year-old lady.

Faithfull reciting As Tears Go By at 01’50”:

The fantasy of how much beauty and power Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home” would gain if some silly journalist could persuade 80-year-old Dylan to perform the song again, sixty years later, is tantalizingly attractive. But it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. A Faithfull-like reworking, an “I Was Young When I Left Home Revisited”… we can only dream. “I’m not a nostalgic person,” says Dylan, in his Post-MusiCares Conversation with Bill Flanagan in 2015. And in October 2021, another well-informed source, oldest son Jesse Dylan, provides a verbatim confirmation of that self-analysis in the Times interview, when the interviewer asks him if he and his dad ever look back on the Sixties. “He’s not a nostalgic person, he’s always looking forward to the next thing,” Jesse says.

On the other hand… “Highway 61 Revisited” is still on the set list often enough. And Highway 61 does lead to Duluth, does lead home…

To be continued. Next up: I Was Young When I Left Home part II: Different doors

——-

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

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Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.

Posted on November 15, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

(Writer’s note: there’s a long preamble here of no particular significance or importance. If you just want to hear the cover version that maybe you’ve never heard before, and which might surprise you, skip the chitchat and go scroll straight to the end. You won’t miss much).

Anyway, before I started this site, 13 years, 2430 articles and 10,126 comments ago, I didn’t really have much interest in covers of Bob Dylan records. I’m not sure why, but it simply hadn’t happened even though my life changed in 1988 when Ashley Hutchings recorded “Angelina”. But then people like Jochen, Larry and Aaron came along and through one route or another, I became much more focussed on just what covers could do for my understanding of Dylan’s work.

Of course, I had a few favourites before starting this site, and knew all the famous covers (Hendrix, Byrds etc) but those covers didn’t really get to the centre of my consciousness until I began to realise how listening to another musician re-work a Dylan song gave me a much deeper understanding of the music than I ever had before. The lyrics of course tend to stay the same in cover versions, and I don’t think many of us actually want a cover musician to start messing around with what Bob wrote. After all, he does enough of that himself. But the music does change.

So a while back, instead of seeking out another recording of Bob playing the song the latest article on this site was about, I started (as is my right as the editor/publisher!) to slip in cover versions instead, to illustrate a point being made in the article.

Aaron and I then started our little game which often involves Aaron supplying cover versions of Dylan songs and me writing a review in the time it takes to play the song. I have no idea if anyone else thinks that’s interesting, or instead finds it a pretentious load of old tripe – but then that’s the beauty of a blog. There’s no use of paper, and if you don’t like today’s article, well there are 2430 previous ones on line, and another one tomorrow.

But I must also mention Jochen who appears to have a knowledge of everything musical far beyond mine (which is annoying since I’m the one who worked as a musician – albeit an unsuccessful one) and liberally illustrates his articles with musical examples, and Larry who kindly leaves it up to me to pick which musical examples go into his pieces – as indeed happened this morning where Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XX) which has a staggeringly beautiful rendition of “Not Dark Yet” tucked away within it.

And so now I have got to the notion of thinking: aside from all these opportunities, why don’t I just pick out one cover version a day, and put it online for you, a person who is kind enough to read my ramblings (and the much more illuminating articles by my pals who so kindly give of their time in keeping Untold Dylan going). Just in case you are interested. A Dylan cover a Day in fact.

Or better said, A somewhat obscure Dylan Cover A Day.

Maybe I’ll write a few words about the selected version, maybe not. Maybe you’ll listen, maybe not. Maybe you’ll come back tomorrow to see what odd piece I have chosen. Maybe not. I’d like it if you did, but really, in the nature of things, it’s up to you. With a bit of luck Untold Dylan will last a few more years before they take me away to the Old Writer’s Home, where, when I turn up the CD player too loud they’ll say “Oh give the old sod some paper and tell him to write about Bob Dylan”) so there should be time to pick up tomorrow what you don’t pick up today.

And if the series stops because I get bored with it, maybe someone else will pick it up. But at least after today, you won’t have to read a long rambling piece of nonsense explaining something that really doesn’t need explaining at all. I’ll just put in a link back to this page.

I’ve decided to go in alphabetical order. Which means we start with 2×2. Don’t blame me – numbers just always come before letters in alphabetical lists. I don’t know why. But anyway, if you don’t know it, try it. It might surprise you.

PS: If any aspiring band would like to bribe me to include their version of a song as my selected cover, my bank details are available on request.

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Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XX)

Posted on November 15, 2021 by TonyAttwood

Links to all the cover versions used in this series are given at the end of the article, as well as links to all the previous articles themselves.

by Larry Fyffe

Our unwavering researchers, digging deep into the files of the Untold Archives, are able to uncover the psychological consequences of the mental scars that Jesus endures.

The love relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ ends in sorrow; beautiful Maggie entombed in the Sphinx forever.

Just like all good psychiatrists do when they are at a lost to see what’s causes the odd behaviour of patients, the blame for their mental condition is placed squarely on the shoulders of their mommas.

Documents uncovered at the Archives show that singer songwriter Bob Dylan, while lying on the couch in Dr. Sigmund Freud’s Vienna office, tells about his travels through space and time, and about his “troubles” therein.

According to papers marked “Confidential”, Bob confides that he has the supernatural ability to time-travel, and also acknowledges that he’s a bon fide, dyed-in-the-wool, shape-shifter.

And, listen to this, Dylan explains to the Doctor that he often takes on the form of Jesus Christ, and through these transfigurative experiences, we learn that during her earthly life Mary, the mother of Jesus, “had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide”.

In one of his sessions with Sigmund, the singer/songwriter describes what happens to him while floating around in Relativity, floating up there in the spiritual plane of Gnostic Time, shape-shifted into the figure of the Saviour.

There Bob/Jesus bumps into the Greek philosopher who goes by the name of Celsus. The philosopher supports Hadrian, the Emperor who builds the ‘Temple of Venus’ in Rome (Dylan claims he makes fun of the Emperor’s name by later penning the song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”).

Anyway, Celsus, interested in Egyptian mythology, taunts Christian evangelists for spreading what he calls ‘supernatural’ beliefs, such as Christ being the ‘Son of God’.

According to Greek/Roman mythology, Venus has an affair with Dionysus, a son of Zeus by a mortal woman. Hera gets her revenge on the Goddess of Love for her being judged more beautiful than she, the wife of Zeus (Jupiter). Hera bewitches the son of Venus and Dionysus – son Priapus is ugly, and his huge cock, usually hard all the time, does not function when the grown-up Priapus wants it to.

Celus strikes back at the Christians because they call the philosopher a ‘pagan’, a follower of the Roman God Jupiter.

So it goes that Celsus whispers into the ear of the transformed Jesus that some Jews say that Mary cuckolds her husband Joseph by having an affair with a Roman soldier whose last name is Pantera, which translates into “Panther”.

Gleefully embellishing the gossip with the information that the Roman soldier has a large reproductive organ, Celsus whispers that when Mary becomes pregnant with Jesus, she tells Joseph, her husband, that she’s been impregnated by the Holy Ghost of God.

Jesus realizes His actual last name is “Panther”, and He’s not the “Son of God” that John the Baptist says He is. Rather shocking news that leaves psychological scars on the mind of Jesus for life; there’s no sunshine that’s a-gonna heal it.

Sings a song to Sigmund:

Shadows are falling, and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feels like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

Dylan as Jesus explains to the head doctor how He takes revenge on the Roman soldier, his daddy:

Black Rider, black rider, hold it right there
The size of your cock will get you nowhere
I'll suffer in silence, I'll not make a sound
Maybe I'll take the high moral ground
(Bob Dylan: Black Rider)

Index to past episodes

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A full show video from the 2021 Dylan tour

Posted on November 14, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

If you’re a regular reader here you’ll know mr tambourine is and has for a long time been a good friend of Untold Dylan. So as a little thank you here’s a video from mr tambourine,

Bob Dylan – Chicago 2021 Full Show (Audio+Footage)

Great pictures – what a good seat you had!

Maybe one of us will get round to doing a review of the tour. Here’s the set list

Watching the River Flow
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
I Contain Multitudes
False Prophet
When I Paint My Masterpiece
My Own Version of You
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Black Rider
To Be Alone With You
Mother of Muses
Gotta Serve Somebody
Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
Early Roman Kings
Melancholy Mood
I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
Goodbye Jimmy Reed

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Why does Bob Dylan like “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”?

Posted on November 14, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

In this series Aaron selects the tracks, and sends them over to Tony who tries to write some sort of commentary while the music is playing.

Aaron: The track was written and first recorded by Peter La Farge

Tony: Being British, the name Ira Hayes meant nothing to me, and I don’t know how widely his name is known in the US. I’ve picked up such information as I have from the wiki article on him (Curiously I do know a little of Peter La Farge and I’ll come back to that at the end after the listening has finished).

I must admit I am not a fan of songs about the sad collapse of a hero; perhaps just generally I don’t like this type of sentimentality and because as mentioned above I do by chance know a little of the composer.

In essence it seems to me we’ve all got huge numbers of faults, and perhaps for that reason it feels a better idea to remember the positive contributions of our heroes rather than their failings – at least in a song. Maybe the failings can be left for the biography.

But of course, that is not the way of the world: failings are what people talk about, maybe as compensation for not being able to do what their heroes do. Maybe that is why some people focus so much on the way Bob has taken lyrics and melodies from other songs, just as composers have done through all human history.

I would call the song “maudlin” but as ever that’s just me: I’d choose not to listen if I had the choice. But having listened, I still don’t get this – the beat seems to have nothing to do with the hero or the tragedy.

Aaron: The most famous and popular version was by Johnny Cash on his 1964 Bitter Tears album (which contains mostly La Farge compositions)

Tony: The point I suppose is that many of us have two sides to our lives, not least because we are human, and we need to cope with all the complexities of life. So we adapt to different circumstances, sometimes in good ways sometimes in very regrettable ways.

The problem is, that is not that profound a message, is it?

Aaron: Bob recorded his version during the Self Portrait sessions. It was eventually released on the 1973 Dylan album.

Tony: This song is clearly considered a classic, and Bob adds a very reasonable piano background with the organ sitting behind, which works well – at least until the organist starts to fight for a greater exposure. But I must say that of the versions that I have now heard this is the one I would go for because Bob gets the move from the talking to the singing just right.

The problem for me is that he then returns to the talking, which is of course the essence of the song, and by the time we get to the chorus again we’ve got a set of choral vocalists joining in as well. It’s too much for me.

Yes, it is the best of the versions presented above, but by the later parts the organ player really has gone far too far for my taste.

However. the way Bob sings the chorus really is the highlight of all these recordings, and he extracts the meaning of the song in a way that other performers don’t.

Aaron: On November 16, 1975, Dylan performed the song live at the Tuscarora Reservation, and this rendition appears on the 2019 box set The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings and in the 2019 film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.

Tony: Now having picked up on the song properly, through having heard the earlier versions, I really do wonder about this.

Culturally what is going on here? By now I can get toward an understanding of the song and its history, but I just don’t have a good feeling about that last video. Of course, I am totally outside of the cultural references going on here and maybe that’s the problem, but even taking that into account, I am really not sure where Bob was going with this.

As for why does Bob like the song… well, I don’t know really. He does make something interesting out of it in his recorded version, although I could have done without the chorus, but …

I do want to add something about the composer of this song, because he was a most interesting man who died at the age of 34, just as Dylan was reaching out toward the stratosphere.

La Farge was a military man serving his country in the Korean War, and later working as an undercover agent (I think for the CIA but I might have remembered that wrongly) in the fight against drug smuggling. He was highly decorated for his bravery and patriotic work.

But like many men who were then discharged from the military, he appears to have found it hard to settle down, working as a cowboy in rodeo shows before studying to be an actor, and his tragically early death.

There is an index to other articles in this series here.

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The Never Ending Tour 2001 part 6: More Power, Wealth, Knowledge and Salvation

Posted on November 13, 2021 by TonyAttwood

This is episode 60 of the Never Ending Tour series. An index of the previous episodes is provided here. The previous episodes covering 2001 are

———-

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff.’ ‘Sugar Baby’

This post is a continuation from the previous post in which I began to introduce the new songs from Love and Theft. As far as I can make out, ten of the twelve songs on that album were performed in the last two months of 2001. ‘Bye and Bye’ and ‘Po Boy’ would have to wait for 2002. (Since writing that I have heard that there is a recording of ‘Po Boy’ from 2001, but if so, I don’t have access to it.)

Because Dylan recorded Love and Theft with his touring band, not his usual practice, there is less distance between the studio and stage performances of the songs – unlike our experience with Time Out of Mind, which saw Dylan reacting to Lanois’ production by performing the songs in a harder, sharper manner.

In addition, Dylan did his own producing on Love and Theft (calling himself Jack Frost), the result being that the stage performances sound very much like the album’s.

Let’s start with ‘Lonesome Day Blues.’ As Dylan wrote the four bluesy songs for the album first, we can surmise that he used the blues, with its familiar 12 bar, three chord pattern, deeply rooted in American musical history, to write his way into the album.

‘Lonesome Day Blues’ might sound like a standard, urban blues song, but in terms of the lyrics it is far from that. There is a fanciful weave of phrases from Junichi Saga’s Confessions of a Yakusa and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There are 12 references to Saga on the album, spread over five songs, generally two per song.

‘Lonesome Day Blues’:

‘Samantha Brown lived in my house
For about four or five months
Don’t know how it looked to other people
I never slept with her even once’

Saga:

‘Just because she was in the same house didn’t mean we were living together as man and wife… I don’t know how it looked to other people, but I never even slept with her, not once.’

‘Lonesome Day Blues’:

‘Well, my captain, he’s decorated
He’s well schooled and he’s skilled
He’s not sentimental, doesn’t bother him at all
How many of his pals have been killed’

Saga:

‘There was nothing sentimental about him – It didn’t bother him at all that some of his pals had been killed. He said he’d been given any number of decorations…’

‘Lonesome Day Blues’:

‘My sister, she ran off and got married
Never was heard of any more’

Huckleberry Finn:

‘…and my sister Ann ran off and got married and was never heard of no more.’

(My thanks To Richard F Thomas, Why Dylan Matters for these examples, pages 197 – 201. A reader has questioned this last example, however as simply phrases in common usage.)

This intertextuality gives the song a much great range of expression than most blues lyrics, which are about whisky, women and hard times.

I like this performance from Milwaukee, 28^th Oct, for its sharpness and clarity.

Lonesome Day Blues (A)

However, this somewhat more solid version from New York, 19^th Nov, has its attractions, with Dylan’s voice powerful and upfront. Excellent recording.

Lonesome Day Blues (B)

I find, in ‘Honest With Me,’ although it’s written fifteen years earlier, a curious echo of Donald Trump’s promise to ‘make America great again.’

‘I’m here to create the new imperial empire
I’m going to do whatever circumstances require’

These dark lines go back to Virgil who witnessed Augustus turn the Roman republic into an empire. As a whole, however, the lyrics of ‘Honest With Me’ are a whirl of the humorous and the absurd. It’s more sheer fun than anything else. I’m reminded of the exuberant nonsense of ‘Mighty Quinn’ and ‘Tiny Montgomery.’

‘I'm stark naked but I don't care
I'm goin' off into the woods, I'm huntin' bare’

This performance from Madison Square Gardens does full justice to the song. Larry sounding good on slide guitar. It rips along.

Honest with Me (A)

If you like your sound a bit harder and sharper, however, this one from Seattle might suit you better.

Honest with Me (B)

Dylan kicks off the album with ‘Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.’ It wasn’t my favourite track from the album, I had trouble relating to the lyrics. I just didn’t understand the song, and still don’t. Maybe these are the Siamese twins referred to in ‘Honest with Me.’ Is this a kind of protest song about the way the power-hungry echo each other? The song tempts us into political interpretations (Republicans and Democrats, Arabs and Israelis?) but these can’t be sustained. Sense has been abandoned.

What we do pick up is that these twins are backstabbing phonies, to borrow a phrase from ‘Cry A While.’ It’s all about power and wealth – and violence.

In his account of the song Tony Attwood quotes the critic Kot. It’s such an excellent quote I think it can be repeated here: ‘It rolls in like a storm, drums galloping over the horizon into earshot, guitar riffs slicing with terse dexterity while a tale about a pair of vagabonds unfolds. It ends in death, and sets the stage for an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperados, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.’

It also sets the stage for the strong streak of absurdist humour that runs through the album. We can be pushed beyond earnest outrage into a mad humour in which the whole spectacle becomes ridiculous and despicable. As for the tweedle dum and tweedle dee, neither of them are to be what they claim, to steal a line from a much earlier song. Incidentally, the phrase ‘His Master’s voice is calling me’ has been variously interpreted. My only contribution here is that ‘His Master’s Voice’ was a record label.

This performance is also from Seattle. The sharp sound from that concert suits the song, which if too muted can lose its potency. The song bears the full weight of Dylan’s vocal sarcasm. There’s nothing tender about the song. Another song ideally suited to Dylan’s downsinging.

Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

Another song deeply steeped in the blues is ‘Cry A While.’ The changes of rhythm in the original, and these early performances, evoke different blues traditions. The underlying sentiment, that it’s ‘your turn’ to cry is common enough in the blues, where there is a lot of crying over lost and broken love – and above all, betrayal.

But no blues singer I’ve ever heard evokes the world of Italian Opera, in this case Don Pasquale, a story full of intrigue, false appearances, backstabbing and betrayal. The context in which Dylan puts this story, having the fool Pasquale making a ‘booty call’, is clearly humorous in its intent, despite the lack of humour in the heavy blues sound and nasty-edged delivery of the song.

‘Last night 'cross the alley there was a pounding on the walls
It must have been Don Pasquale, making a 2 a.m. booty call
To break a trusting heart like mine
Was just your style’

While that might bring a smile to our faces, the song is darker than most of the others on the album. For a moment we return to a Time Out of Mind frame of mind, even maybe a taste from the Dylan of Blood On The Tracks:

‘I'm on the fringes of the night, fighting back tears that I can't control
Some people they ain't human, they got no heart or soul
But I'm crying to the Lord
Tryin' to be meek and mild’

At the same time we’ve got the old Dylan resilience and defiance, retranslated for old age.

‘I'm gonna buy me a barrel of whiskey
I'll die before I turn senile’

Mordant humour indeed. This one’s from 6^th Nov. Again, it’s very like the album version, just a bit stronger and appropriately vengeful.

Cry A While

‘Sugar Baby’ seems to come from a similar dark place, reminding us that despair does not go away just because we make jokes in the face of it, or seek a larger, comic – cosmic? – perspective, or take refuge in absurdity, or channel the Classical poets. There is no cure for fate:

‘Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick
Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick
Any minute of the day the bubble could burst
Try to make things better for someone
sometimes you just end up making it a thousand times worse’

Despite the grim chorus, I don’t feel this to be a finger-pointing song. Yes, it’s about betrayal in its most personal form, but behind that there lies a deeper sense of how the world might work.

‘Love is pleasing, love is teasing,
love's not an evil thing.’

That strikes me as the central revelation of this slow, thoughtful song. Just to step out onto the street is be up for grabs. Eros and other gods are there eager to make a fool of you, but ‘love’s not an evil thing.’

‘The ladies down in Darktown, they're doing the Darktown Strut
You always got to be prepared but you never know for what’

This one’s from New York (MSG), and features Tony Garnier on the upright bass.

Sugar Baby

If these two songs come from the darker side of the album, so does ‘Mississippi,’ the most famous song on the album. This song, however, is something of an odd man out here, originating in the Time Out of Mind sessions in 1997. The mood and themes of this song are deeply embedded in that album.

For those wishing to plumb the depths of this marvellous song, you couldn’t do better than read the 16 part account of the song by Jochen Markhorst on this site. Nothing I say here can add anything to that. As with the greatest Dylan songs, ‘Mississippi’ can bear countless hearings. It’s the way Dylan juxtaposes images, traditions and literatures that makes for a great Dylan song.

The song starts humbly enough, evoking Johnny Cash, the journey of the hobo, very familiar territory

‘Every step of the way, I walk the line
Your days are numbered, and so are mine’

but soon gently extends the sentiment into a love/regret song of the highest order:

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long’

What song better sums up the ethos of the blues journeyman, who never does put his suitcase down?

This first performance is from Portland. It’s a solid performance and a good introduction to how the song sounds onstage.

Mississippi (A)

But I rather prefer this, harder-edged recording from the Washington concert.

Mississippi (B)

So that’s it for 2001. Next up, the most pivotal year in the NET, perhaps in Dylan’s whole career. 2002, the year in which he would lay down his guitar.

See you then

Kia Ora

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Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (1969): Part X: Smooching with Lisa Bonet

Posted on November 12, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

X Smooching with Lisa Bonet

Nick Hornby is a justly celebrated writer and talented scriptwriter whose own books are often made into very enjoyable films by other scriptwriters. About A Boy, Fever Pitch, A Long Way Down… but the real success began with the film adaptation of his first novel, High Fidelity (book 1995, film 2000, musical 2006, television series 2020). Autobiographical elements shine through enough, but most clearly in protagonist Rob’s obsessive tendency to make Top 5 lists of everything. The book even opens therewith;

“My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:

1) Alison Ashworth
2) Penny Hardwick
3) Jackie Allen
4) Charlie Nicholson
5) Sarah Kendrew

These were the ones that really hurt.”

How fond Nick Hornby himself is of making lists, he shows in 2003, with the publication of 31 Songs, a beautiful collection of essays on his 31 favourite songs. In it, he also expresses his awkward, very two-faced relationship with Dylan’s records. In the opening line to Favourite Song No. 8, Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”, he is quite clear: “l’m not a big Dylan fan.” A stroll through his record collection, however, reveals, to his own surprise, that he has some twenty CDs by Dylan – “in fact I own more recordings by Dylan than by any other artist.” And when discussing Favourite Song No. 7, Rod Stewart’s cover of the Dylan song “Mama You Been On My Mind”, the not-a-big-Dylan fan drops:

“Dylan’s ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’ seems to me to be not much more than a strum – an exquisite strum, with one of Dylan’s loveliest and simplest lyrics, but a strum nonetheless. Stewart’s evident love for the song rescues it, or at least spotlights it: where Dylan almost throws it away, with the implication that there’s plenty more where that one came from, Stewart’s reverence seems to dignify it, invest it with an epical quality Dylan denies it.”

That same special talent, the talent to express admiration with highly quotable, cast-iron sentences, Hornby demonstrates again in Chapter 8, the chapter on “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”: There’s a density and a gravity to a Dylan song that you can’t find anywhere else.

In the book High Fidelity, however, Dylan is not mentioned too often. About four times. Very respectful, though: “All-time top five favourite recording artists: Madness, Eurythmics, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley.” And Dylan is explicitly linked to Rob’s emotional struggles once:

“When I get home (twenty quid, Putney to Crouch End, and no tip) I make myself a cup of tea, plug in the headphones, and plow through every angry song about women by Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello I own.”

Striking enough, in any case, for the screenwriters to highlight Dylan more in the otherwise very faithful film adaptation. “Most Of The Time”, under the romantic climax, in the pouring rain after a funeral vigil late at night, makes the most impression. The song from 1989 was covered once until the filming, by Lloyd Cole in 1995. After the success of the film and the soundtrack, it has been covered more than twenty times (most beautifully by Sophie Zelmani in 2003, but the raw, unadorned cover by ex-Grandaddy Jason Lytle in 2021 also has its own distinctive emotional power).

In the scenario Dylan’s name pops up as well, every now and then. Like in the witty shop scene in which Barry (Jack Black) pushes one must-have album after another into the hands of a dorky customer:

“You don’t have it? That is perverse. Don’t tell anybody you don’t own fucking Blonde On Blonde [stacking the album on the pile in the hands of the overwhelmed customer]. It’s gonna be okay.”

And on the soundtrack, one more Dylan song comes along: “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”, under the sensual love scene Rob has with a one-night stand, the enchanting singer/songwriter Marie DeSalle. Played, incidentally, by the secret childhood crush of half the Western world’s population over 40, Lisa “Denise Huxtable” Bonet. To complete the circle, the lead role in High Fidelity‘s 2020 television adaptation is played by Zoë Kravitz, Lisa Bonet’s equally enchanting daughter from her marriage to Lenny Kravitz.

The splashing Rolling Thunder performance of the song did not really lead to a broad, general reappraisal of the song at the time. From the 70s, only the 1979 version by British blues veteran Dave Kelly is worth mentioning. An unadventurous, country-like arrangement, true, but it’s all the first years after the Rolling Thunder Revue have to offer. And it does have a pleasantly nostalgic piano.

https://youtu.be/O7WNTEqBGJ0

In the 80s, the song remains just as obscure. Dylan himself never plays it, his colleagues also ignore “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”. With one exception: the energetic soul veteran Nappy Brown experiences a come-back in the 80s, some thirty years after his glory years (between 1954 and ’58 he scored his biggest hits). After Jeff Beck, Cher and Esther Williams, Nappy is the next to recognize the soul potential of the song and records a catchy, swinging mid-tempo soul stomp for his strong album Tore Up (1984).

From 1990 onwards, Dylan plays it himself again, at irregular intervals, and that, plus perhaps the reasonably successful cover of Albert Lee (1991), leads to a steady reappraisal.

In the course of the 90s, the song then appears here and there on the setlist of Second Division artists, until Premier League player and Dylan disciple Jimmy LaFave reanimates it completely in 1999;

… in turn inciting the blues potential, but above all – as usual – appealing because of his husky, skipping vocals and his unique phrasing.

The film adaptation of High Fidelity then seems, as it did for “Most Of The Time”, to throw open the gate once and for all; after 2000, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” enters the canon. In all categories, too; blues, country and rock artists, of course. A forgotten recording by Rick Nelson from 1969 surfaces, as a bonus track on the reissue of Rick Nelson In Concert (2011). [Editor’s interruption, for this track just click on the link]

And even in jazz circles, as in a somewhat safe, sultry, but not unattractive rendition by Janet Planet;

And soul, especially soul – which usually makes for very attractive covers;

…as the delightful Ann Peebles, with old master Allen Toussaint on the piano in 2005, proves. En passant demonstrating why the old soul diva (“I Can’t Stand The Rain”) is inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014.

However, its particular beauty is best appreciated in a hybrid, in a mash-up of rock, soul, blues and country, as Jeff Beck argued half a century ago. For an exercise in that winning category we have to go to continental Europe, to a small town in the south of Holland. In Breda, Jan Barten and Fons Havermans produce Dylan covers, in which the Muscle Shoals-like piano, funky guitar, driving Hammond organ, Kenny Buttrey drums and jazz-rock-ish Steely Dan guitar solos create the perfect blend of Memphis, Nashville and New York. Their “One Of Us Must Know” with brilliant, percussive Stevie Wonder keyboard work is a great example of that approach, and “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” emulates the warmth and drive:

Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” never made it to the real top, though. In a – fictitious – list of Most Covered Dylan Songs, the song probably only just makes it to the Top 30 – at best, it ‘s a mid-tier. And apparently, only Dylan’s original has the magical power to give even a sucker like Rob Gordon the chance to make out with Lisa Bonet:

…after which he is allowed to be staying with her tonight, the lucky devil.

————————

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

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Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXI)

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Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.

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The Never Ending Tour 2001 part 6: More Power, Wealth, Knowledge and Salvation

Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (1969): Part X: Smooching with Lisa Bonet

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