Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

So here we go with Shadow Kingdom.

I’d already heard that this was not really a live concert as we had been told, but a set.  Some already seem not to like it.  I don’t mind, because it is Bob and I am always fascinated with how he chooses to rework his music.

But this time what overwhelms me is his voice – that 18 month rest seems to have done it a lot of good.

Paint my masterpiece

Wow – if I hadn’t been told I would have thought this was cover version from a singer with a better voice than Dylan in his old age.   The re-arrangement is superb; Dylan does not normally take this much trouble with re-arrangements – it is not just the speed and the melody but he’s also changed the chord sequence too, at times.  And the accompaniment is fully and utterly rehearsed.  Only oddity is that some of the solo runs of the lady bass player can’t be heard.  That’s odd mixing and I was enjoying what she was doing.   I’ve always enjoyed the fact that Bob mostly prefers the double bass to the electric bass.

False endings too.   Whatever next?

Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine

Now Bob doesn’t stand on stage and do movements does he?   Well apparently he does.  But just listen to the accompaniment on this piece.  I have never ever heard Dylan use an accompaniment like this.

Mind you I have also never heard him do “Well the judge” middle eight like that – sudden change of beat and accompaniment and then BOB SINGING UNACCOMPANIED for a couple of bars.   Honestly?  Yes indeed, and it works.

This is original and inventive and above all 100% entertaining.   In fact it is bloody amazing (and you will have gathered by now I am writing this as I hear it, exactly as we do with the Beautiful Obscurity.  It is the verdict as I hear, not after I’ve had time to add clever anecdotes and afterthoughts (not that I get any of those anyway).

Queen Jane

Gentle, slow and Bob doing hand gestures.  No this isn’t Bob is it?  Well, yes it is.  He’s turned his whole act upside down and become a night club entertainer with an audience that can’t always be bothered, and well, why not?   I must admit that when I got up this morning (in the UK) ready to listen to the recording I thought one or two of our regular contributors might have written in with their commentaries- but maybe they are as stunned as I am.

I am not in any way saying this ain’t good – it is bloomin’ incredible – I mean has he always been able to sing like this but simply not bothered to do it before?

I’ll be your baby tonight

This is where it gets weird.  I don’t mean the arrangement or Dylan voice but the filming.  I’m a bit lost here – not that I am looking for a direct meaning (I know enough about art and have created enough of my own not to think that way) but something isn’t right for me.

Mind you, nor do I get the music with the sudden slow down.  I know I have no right to criticise Bob and his musical arrangements, but this sounds to me like a “hey guys lets suddenly slow down at that point – we haven’t done a sudden pointless slow down yet have we?” and the band says “no Bob, whatever you say Bob, you’re the boss Bob.”

Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

And then he redeems himself totally – this is a beautiful arrangement.  It works to perfection, by which I mean one could think this was not how it was originally written.  Bob sounds as if he utterly believes in this song and this music and this arrangement.  It moves gently from verse to verse and the accompaniment sounds as if this is the original.

Even we when Bob changes the melody on “housing project hill” it works sublimely, and he builds up from there – not to frenetic excitement of course (not Bob!) but in a gentle musical form.

So far (and I am still writing this as I hear it for the first time) this is the song that shows the validity of the whole approach; the style, the band, Dylan’s signing…. and yes on the singing front Bob continues to  sound like he means it – not like he is trying to do a new arrangement.

Tombstone Blues

So I am enthused and enthused even more by the opening of Tombstone Blues – he’s completely rethought is.  No change of lyrics, it is the music that is reworked.  And through that first verse we are wondering if he is suddenly going to bounce into the original beat for the second verse.

But no he is taunting us.  Hey guys you were expecting a beat in verse two, but no I ain’t giving you that.   Oh that is really good.

And we get to the third verse and it becomes clear he’s running the whole song like an accompanied monologue.  And what a song to choose – a song with a chorus no less.

Best of all the band are controlled.  I’ve played on songs like this, and the temptation of everyone is to have a little bit of moment for each instrument – and then the result is we all start fighting each other (musically, not literally).  But none of that for Bob.  Everything is as controlled at the end as it was at the start.

And then he really bemuses us with a brief instrumental break, before we are back in with the “roadmaps for the soul” verse.  And those words, which we surely all know so well, are now given new strength, new meaning, new life.   How can that be after all these years.

I’ll be back anon with more from the show, but my advice, for what it is worth, is that if you ain’t watched it yet, find a very quiet space where you are all alone and give yourself time.   This is something very different and needs to be appreciated as a whole.   Or at least in a couple of parts.

By Tony Attwood

If you are a regular reader you will know that “Abandoned Love” is a Dylan song I have often championed as one of the great unknowns of Dylan’s songwriting career.

You might also know that in the “Beautiful Obscurity” series Aaron and I have been playing a little game in which he chooses the cover versions of a particular Dylan song, and then I write a review while listening to that cover version, usually for the first time.

Aaron has not sent me in a new article for the series in the last few days, so feeling rather adrift I thought I would play the game on my own, and see if there were a number of covers for Abandoned Love – and to my delight I found the answer is yes.  So as I have found them on the internet I’ve listed them, and done a quick review.

And one reason for choosing this song is that it has been covered, and yet it remains one of the lesser known Dylan songs – despite its elegance.   But Aaron – please come back and do another one.  It’s less fun on my own.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

Because the song is not that well known it must be tempting for those covering the song to simply perform it in the Dylan style.  What takes this version up to a higher level is the sparing use of harmonies – and the way they are developed through the whole piece.

But a warning.  The recording doesn’t end properly.  It sounds rather as if it were being played on an old gramophone and someone picks up the stylus and pulls it across the LP.  But we get most of the song, and it is worth hearing.

Paul Rodgers and Nils Lofgren

OK if Nils Lofgren is involved this is going to be good, and so it turns out.  The stretching of the words in places while never losing track of the time.  But I wonder; did Nils really sit down and consider what he could be doing, or did he simply knock it out and that was that.

The guys take us straight through, and even though I know the song by heart there is so much here that catches me out; so many new variations, and so that is good.  My negative thought is simply that a few of the variations aren’t quite thought through, in my view.

The main thing I find to complain about it is that they keep on adding to the orchestration and variation of the melody, gives a feeling that the guys can’t wait for it to be over but that is a very minor worry.  This is most certainly worth hearing, and they do recover from that issue of adding more and and more to the accompaniment – which means that even though every instrument is fighting with the other in the instrumental verse it turns out to fun.

OK the end instrumental section is chaotic, but it is fun.

David Moore

Such is the instrumental in-fighting at the end of the previous version it is almost a relief to get back to some sort of arrangement sanity.  But there is still that feeling of wanting to put a lot of extras into the backing, perhaps just because it is simply, verse verse verse.

But here is works better because the backing track is established and we can hear that steady pulse throughout.  I think that is a double bass I’m hearing in the background (in my old age my ears are not as reliable as before and the tinnitus certainly doesn’t help).

Stay with this to the end, it most certainly is worth it.

Seán Keane

After the previous versions it is a relief to come to something that appreciates that this can be a very simple song.

Simple accompaniment from the accordion and guitar, and the sparse use of the harmonies just takes me back to the first time I heard the song.

There is a question for everyone playing this song – do you play each verse straight after the other or pause?  And then – how do you finish?  Such are the deep questions that trouble arrangers.

I like this ending.  It’s refreshing and fits so much with the lyrics.

The Everly Brothers

I think this is one of the earliest covers, and done very straight as a pop song, with the bass guitarist doing that traditional little upwards run between each verse.  There’s a penny whistle in the accompaniment, and the verses roll on and on.

Of course the harmonies are perfect, but I never get the feeling that they actually realise they are singing a masterpiece here.  Nor does the percussionist.  Nor the arranger come to that.  But it is the Everleys.    (Oh but please, on this song of all songs, not a fade out.)

If you want some more comparisons you might care to glance at…

Covers of Dylan songs

Beautiful Obscurity

Early Roman Kings (2012) part I: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

by Jochen Markhorst

II          Anything goes

All the early Roman Kings in the early, early morn’
Coming down the mountain, distributing the corn
Speeding through the forest, racing down the track
You try to get away, they drag you back
Tomorrow is Friday, we’ll see what it brings
Everybody’s talking ’bout the early Roman Kings

“It’s not the album I wanted to make, though. I had another one in mind. I wanted to make something more religious. That takes a lot more concentration – to pull that off 10 times with the same thread – than it does with a record like I ended up with, where anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense.”

In the peculiar Rolling Stone interview with Mikael Gilmore (September 2012), it’s a rather remarkable but still credible revelation, the confession that he actually wanted to make “something more religious”. A little further on, the surprising beauty of the interview is suddenly marred by muddled, embarrassing talk of transfiguration and Dylan’s childish fascination with something as ordinary as a name. Dylan waves an autobiographical book about the life and times of Sonny Barger, the Hell’s Angel, and, awkwardly, sees mystic depths and supernatural meaning behind the unremarkable fact that some Hell’s Angel named Bobby Zimmerman died in a motorbike accident in 1964.

It is tempting to think that Dylan is here performing a mildly vile parody of Donovan’s confused autobiography (The Hurdy Gurdy Man, 2005), a painful work that shows Donovan convinced to be at the centre of an endless series of cosmic interventions and mystical fatalities. But it’s to be feared that Dylan is serious – journalist Gilmore questions the topic for a time, and Dylan persistently suggests deep, hidden knowledge (but unfortunately demonstrates naive, horoscope-like wisdom);

That’s who you have in mind? What could the connection to that Bobby Zimmerman be other than name?

“I don’t have it in mind. I didn’t write that book. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t dream that. I’m not telling you I had a dream last night. Remember the song, “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”? I didn’t write that, either.
“I’m showing you a book that’s been written and published. I mean, look at all the connecting things: motorcycles, Bobby Zimmerman, Keith and Kent Zimmerman, 1964, 1966. And there’s more to it than even that. If you went to find this guy’s family, you’d find a whole bunch more that connected. I’m just explaining it to you. Go to the grave site.”

Uncomfortable, but prevailing is the candid nature of the interview and its revealing quality. And: it puts entire songs of Tempest into perspective – like this second verse of “Early Roman Kings”.

The Biblical borrowings are unmistakable, of course. Joseph distributing the corn (Genesis 41), Moses coming down the mountain (Exodus 34), and Friday must, in this context, be triggered by the dying day of Jesus, Good Friday. These unrelated Bible references are larded with anachronistic, twentieth-century embellishments. That weird Hell’s Angels preoccupation from the interview opens the gateway to understanding speeding through the forest, racing down the track as a reference to Bobby Zimmerman’s death, and a stream-of-consciousness seems to lead him further to The Godfather III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990). At least, it does seem to do; the line you try to get away, they drag you back seems to paraphrase Michael Corleone’s embittered “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”, one of the few iconic quotes from that weirdly half-failed ending to the Godfather trilogy.

A narrative, or even one single all-encompassing lyrical impression is not to be found. Which is not the intention either, Dylan’s analysis suggests: “Anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense.” In line with the mosaic-like character of dozens of great Dylan songs, of songs like “Shelter From The Storm”, “No Time To Think”, “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” and “Mississippi”, of the masterpieces, in short, on which already a third generation of Dylanologists is breaking the teeth in the attempt to formulate a comprehensive interpretation. Driven by, as Dylan says, the belief that it makes sense.

“Early Roman Kings” seems to fit into that tradition. Just like those great masterpieces, coherence is mainly suggested by a recurring line. The big difference is the lack of an unambiguous charge, or at least: of a guiding portent. Refrain lines such as “I’ll give you a shelter from the storm”, “there’s no time to think”, “can this really be the end, to be stuck inside of Mobile” and “only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long” have a connecting, overarching quality – they direct the emotional charge of the images in the preceding lines. Apparently, the protagonist is going through something that evokes in the “she” the need to offer him shelter. An accumulation of setbacks causes despondency, so much so that the narrator fears to be stuck in Mobile.

Dylan offers no such handle in “Early Roman Kings”. Not only is “early Roman Kings” not a loaded term, as “Mobile”, “shelter” or “Mississippi” are, it is not even a term with an actual, overarching quality; nobody has any knowledge of the seven historical early Roman Kings (the first rulers of Rome, 753-510 BCE). At best, there are some associations with the very first early King, with Romulus. Raised by wolves, he – like Cain – killed his brother, Remus, abducted the Sabine Virgins and became the first King of Rome. Sort of, anyway… Romulus and his six successors called themselves Rex, King, but were elected as presidents are elected and had to answer to the Senate.

Our knowledge of the six remaining early Roman Kings is even more sketchy and apocryphal. We don’t know much more than that they all seem to have worn sharkskin suits. And we only know that since Dylan told us in 2012.

In short: the choice of “early Roman Kings” as protagonists has at best an as yet unexplored metaphorical quality. The same value as, for example, Jimmy Reed, and Jezebel the nun, and Blind Willie McTell, and Tom Paine, and all those other loaded names in Dylan’s songs; names that in the song itself clearly have no relation to the historical Jezebel, McTell, Paine or Reed, but that do evoke, as a free bonus, images or characters in the listener – images and character traits that will differ from listener to listener.

“Early Roman Kings” then, vaguely and unsubstantiatedly, has something threatening, something fateful.  Rather like the Nine Ancient Kings in The Lord Of The Rings, after their deaths turned into Nazgûl, cursed, invisible Ringwraiths, introduced by Tolkien as Black Riders… another loaded moniker Dylan will pick up (for “Black Rider” on Rough & Rowdy Ways, 2020).

Yeah well. Anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense.

Dylan live (2016)

To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part III: He had a left like Henry’s hammer

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

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

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

Bob Dylan In Search Of Eden (Part I)

Bob Dylan In Search Of Eden (Part II)

by Larry Fyffe

‘Gates Of Eden’, a song by Bob Dylan, is open to differing levels of interpretation though of course these levels must be based on evidence reasonably drawn from the lyrics, and on the mood of the music, plus on outside literary and music sources that are referenced:

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)

‘War and Peace’ is a novel by Leo Tolstoy that takes a “bird’s eye” perspective of history, and the image of ‘The swan on the river goes gliding by’ from “The Ballad Of The Gliding Swan” suggests events occur that do not connect with the best laid plans of human beings – happenings that are beyond their control.

In the following song, the narrator makes it farther than Moses does in his quest for the biblical, and supposedly Edenic, Promised Land; Moses dies and does not make it across the River Jordan, but the narrator in the recent song below makes it across the Rio Grande – only to find that a modern Babylon awaits:

And when you reach the broken-promised land
And all your dreams flow through your hands
You'll know that it's too late to change your mind
Because you paid the price to come so far
Just to wind up where you are
And you're still just across that borderline
(Bob Dylan: Across The Borderline ~ Ry Cooder, et.al.)

Seems that the person in the song above has been misinformed just like the one in the lyrics beneath:

Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden
(Bob Dylan: The Gates Of Eden)

The collapse of an ideal situation be a theme the above singer/songwriter often expresses as he does in the lyrics below:

People call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
(Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone)

Frequently accompanied by the theme that having money is better than not having it, but still it won’t buy spiritual happiness – as in the following song:

How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his money, I could do that my way
But little they know
That it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind
(Bob Dylan: A Satisfied Mind ~ Rhodes/Hayes)

In “Letters From The Earth”, Mark Twain sarcastically  notes how religious authorities do not allow persons to rest in peace even after they die, but follow them beyond the grave to judge them in a supposed afterlife.

In “The Prince and The Pauper” by Mark Twain, look-alike boys change places, and the prince experiences what it’s like to live in poverty, and the pauper experiences what’s it’s like to be rich and powerful in a palace that is Edenic by comparison.

Perspective depends on which side of the gates you are on:

The kingdoms of experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what's real, and what is not
It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)

By Tony Attwood

The previous episode in this series was All directions at once part 56: Most of the time Bob’s a genius

The index to the series is to be found here 

1989 was a year of confusion, of mystery, of uncertainty – at least as portrayed in Bob Dylan’s compositions that year.  Uncertainty indeed could be felt in all directions,  and the measure of this uncertainty becomes ever clearer when we consider the songs in the order they were written.

It was a year that started with “Born in Time” (“When we were made of dreams”) which finishes with the singer knowing that he is done for, and he can’t fight any more, so “You can have what’s left of me.”

Even “God knows” which sounds like a statement of belief turns out to be anything but for the meaning of the phrase seems to be reversed as in, “God knows what this world is all about”, meaning “I don’t have a clue.”

In this world of uncertainty even the man of God can turn out to be a crook, as the “Disease of Conceit” seemed to confirm.

Uncertainty is everywhere and is continued with “What was it you wanted”, perhaps one of Bob’s most spooky and mysterious songs, at least in its original form, and it is a song that is absolutely packed full of possibilities….

Is it something important
Maybe not
What was it you wanted
Tell me again I forgot

And the only explanation for all this chaos turned out to be the chaos itself given that “Everything is Broken.”  For indeed when he said “everything” he most certainly meant “everything”

Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules

And please do remember, we are going through these songs in the order they were written, as they continue the feeling of Political World: this world don’t work no more.

True, on the face of it Ring them bells might seem a celebration, but in effect is a reflection, I believe, on the cascading sound of the bells in a broken world, not the bells symbolising hope.

The bells cascade, and so of course do the images conjured by the “Series of Dreams” – in both songs the images cascade, with everything tumbling over everything else.

Out of this confusion one could consider “Most of the time” to be a love song, but actually now seen as part of this series about tumbling randomness of the world around us, it has far more in relation to  “Visions of Johanna”.  Now the fog is of the singer’s making, not poor Johanna.  For as Visions says,

“We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it”

and that is the world I see proclaimed all the way through this series of songs.

Most of the time was desperate but the singer was still coping,

Most of the time
I’m clear focused all around
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground
I can follow the path, I can read the signs
Stay right with it when the road unwinds
I can handle whatever I stumble upon
I don’t even notice she’s gone
Most of the time

with “Where teardrops fall” there is still desperation as the singer admits he can’t cope

Roses are red, violets are blue
And time is beginning to crawl
I just might have to come see you
Where teardrops fall

And all he can do is trying and find a place “far away from it all… where teardrops fall.”

She’s gone to another place.  They have been together, taken things at a gentle pace, got to know each other, stood at the edge of the world (in the shadows of moonlight) but it is her, the woman who is in the place where teardrops fall, who can show the singer “a new place to start.”

And he needs that re-start of his world, because he has lost himself…

I’ve torn my clothes and I’ve drained the cup
Strippin’ away at it all
Thinking of you when the sun comes up
Where teardrops fall

He is certainly lost, while she is in a place where one cries gently over the passing of good times.  If they could only just get together again they could pull down all the barriers between them, – and that is part of the point of this series of songs, there are barriers and uncertainties everywhere.

And that is really what this year of writing is about.  It really is saying “everything is broken” at every level.  At the social level, political level, personal level… everything but everything that can be broken, physically or mentally, has been broken.

Whereas “Tangled up in Blue,” talks of two people in a mix of different times and different realities, where the story is in the wrong order, now everything at every level just keeps moving in and out, in and out.  Just consider “Shooting Star”

Listen to the engine, listen to the bell
As the last fire truck from hell
Goes rolling by
All good people are praying
It’s the last temptation, the last account
The last time you might hear the sermon on the mount
The last radio is playing

Where Dylan moves step by step down the chromatic scale

(C sharp minor) Listen to the engine, (C) listen to the bell 
(B) As the last fire truck (B flat) from hell
(A) Goes rolling by
(B) All good people are (E) praying

and again with

It’s the last temptation, the last account
The last time you might hear the sermon on the mount
The last radio is playing

This is what 1989 is all about.  Now of course I do appreciate of course that many people have seen this as an overtly Christian statement, and obviously there are many overtly religious connotations here but not even Revelations has a fire truck in it.  Nor a radio.

I find lines like “The last radio is playing” incredibly moving, and this is what Dylan does so well – that impossible contradiction in the image to suggest oblivion, desolation and destruction.   Not entering God’s grace, but a world on the very edge.  The next thing you know the stars are beginning to hide.

The final song of the year gathers all this collapse and all this menace together, and uses a time signature that is very rare for Dylan: 12/8.   To hear what this means in practice listen to the count in on the live version below – the counting is 1-2-3-4 but there are three beats on each of those four.  Musicians would count it

123 223 323 423

the first number of each three indicating the beat of the bar, the remaining “23” counting out the triples within each beat.

And the song is sung on the album version (see the foot of this piece) as if each beat of every bar is an effort to complete.  The start is uncertain, the harmonica plays three tentative fading notes, and off we go, plod, plod, plod.  When the harmonica returns there is a haunting feeling added to the plodding.  There’s less of that in this live version, but more pain in the voice.

Here’s the live version

What sort of world is this, where each beat is like a boot sinking into the mud and the only relief is a feeling of being haunted?  Dylan calls it “something menacing and terrible,”  although that comes through more strongly on the album version than on stage.

The effect of menace, when it does emerge, is achieved by the undermining of the four beats in a bar each divided into three concept.  Each start of the three beat process is of equal importance here; normally in rock the second and fourth beat of the bar have an extra emphasis to give the music its swing.  There is no swing.  We are stuck.  There is no escape.

This is a song of atmosphere; the atmosphere of despair.  The lover has gone, for the man left behind, everything is mud or possibly even glue.  There is no way to follow, there is no way out.  We cannot even lift a foot from the floor to try and find the exit.

Everything is useless in this experience, “every man’s conscience is vile and depraved”.  There is not even the chance of a way out through which one can push one’s own life forward.  Nothing is possible, because what will be will be.  There is no decision to be made.  We are trapped.   “People don’t live or die people just float”

Oh the horror.  There is no escape at all in this world.  Because you just have to accept what is thrown at you, and get on with it.   There really is no escape ever, at all, in any way, we are here for all eternity.  There is no argument to be had, no debate, no putting forward an alternative point of view.

The sense of continuing futility is overwhelming which ever way you look at it.   The blues chords used throughout (in C you would play C E-flat B-flat C for the opening line) tell their own tale.  No major or minor key here, it is just the flattened third and flattened seventh.

In fact even when the music gives you a sense of reprieve it is still so hopeless and awful.

people don’t live or die people just float

Rarely has Dylan written more poignant, sad, desperate lines.   There’s nothing, simply nothing.  Take away the hope and all is lost.

Everything is broken, there is no sense of direction.  That is 1989.

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

by Jochen Markhorst

I           Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the early Roman Kings in their sharkskin suits
Bowties and buttons, high top boots
Driving the spikes in, blazing the rails
Nailed in their coffins in top hats and tails
Fly away little bird, fly away, flap your wings
Fly by night like the early Roman Kings

The brilliant opening line immediately sets the tone. It winks at Humpty Dumpty (“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Humpty together again”) and at Watergate (All The President’s Men), it offers intriguing alienation, and it seems to have a fascinating intertextual reference;

It turned up again in America, breeding in-a-compost of greed and uselessness and murder, in those places where statesmen and generals stash the bodies of the forever young. The plague ran in the blood of men in sharkskin suits, who ran for President promising life and delivering death.

… from Peter Hamill’s award-winning liner notes for Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks (1975).

An ancient children’s song, a reference to antique history, and a fearfully hissing, alliterating (sharkskin suits) anachronism. And we are only one line, nine words, on the move. The style, this opening line promises, shall be eclectic, the tone menacing.

That promise is fulfilled right away. The next three verses evoke a confusing carousel of a high society wedding, street violence and a moody funeral, which after that opening line with Roman Kings in sharkskin suits pushes the associations not so much to Four Weddings And A Funeral, but much more towards The Godfather part I. In accordance with the promised eclectic character, the poet grasps left and right through his cultural baggage for the description of that carousel. Through Alan Lomax’s American Ballads and Folk Songs, for example, where Dylan seems to be touched by Song 8, “Mike”;

Mike he come from Tipperary, his name's O'Burke.
Fought like he was stewed, but didn't fight to work.
A-levelin' up the road bed ain't no fun,
Nor a-drivin' down the spikes in the boilin' sun.
Heat boils down, and shakes along the blazing rails,
Hangs around your head until your mind nearly fails.

“Top hat and tails” echoes Irving Berlin’s “Top Hat, White Tie And Tails” from 1935, made famous by Fred Astaire (in Top Hat, 1935) and in Dylan’s record cabinet you’ll probably find Tony Bennet’s version, or Louis Armstrong’s or Ella Fitgerald’s (but the best is of course Gonzo’s version, who tries to sing it while tap-dancing in a vat of oatmeal).

The somewhat unusual expression “nailed in their coffins” may have entered Dylan’s baggage from a variety of sources, but one attractive option is the oldest, from the Canterbury Tale “The Clerk’s Tale”. The clerk chooses these words when he introduces his story with a tribute to the recently deceased “Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete” (the Italian poet from the fourteenth century, Francis Petrarc, the laureate poet): He is now dead and nailed in his coffin.

The same goes for “high top boots”; not too common, neither in songs nor in literature, but when it is used, it is almost always to describe the appearance of an unsympathetic persona. Chekhov consistently has this association, as for instance in one of his most oppressive stories, Ward No. 6 (1892), in chapter 15:

Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey Yefimitch — his well-fed face and vulgar, condescending tone, and his use of the word “colleague,” and his high top-boots.

Lloyd Cole seems to be lovingly describing a nice girl when he introduces her with I love to see you in your jumper girl / I love you in your high top boots, but a little later she turns out to be an annoying bitch (“I Hate To See You Doing That Stuff”, 1990), and back in the seventeenth century, the ancient folk song “The Oak and the Ash” (also known as “The North Country Maid”) warned how to recognise him, the smooth talking asshole who gets you pregnant and then runs off:

She jumped into bed without the least alarm,
Never thinking that the sailor boy would do her any harm,
Oh, he huddled her and cuddled her all the night long,
And many a time they wished it had been ten times as long.

Now if it be a girl she'd have to wear a ring,
And if it be a boy he must fight for his king,
With his high top boots and jackets all in blue,
He must walk the quarter deck as his daddy used to do.

In short, you’d better avoid them, those people in their high-top boots.

And the alienating, nursery rhyme-like closing lines of the first stanza, finally, do make an appearance in the exceptional song “Bye Bye Blackbird” but only in the last verse, which is hardly ever sung. A bluegrass source like Hazel Dickens’ “Pretty Bird” is more obvious;

Fly away little pretty bird
Fly fly away 
Fly away little pretty bird
And pretty you'll always stay

… although the words are too common to attribute to any source at all, of course. More important is the film noir trick the poet employs here; embedding something as pure, lovely and innocent as “Fly away little bird, fly away, flap your wings” in a dark, ominous context. Few scenes are as terrifying as Jack Nicholson singing “Three Little Pigs” just before he attacks the door to his family with an axe (The Shining, 1980). Or as oppressive as the use of “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” in Nightmare On Elm Street. Which is the effect of that sweet little bird here in “Early Roman Kings”, where, at the very last moment, the poet also leaves open the possibility that it is not a sweet birdie after all, but a bat: fly by night.

A bat, a bowtie, a top hat and tail, nailed in the coffin… are we really talking about Roman Kings? Or could it perhaps be about a Romanian count? From Transylvania, to be more precise?

It is truly a spectacular, eclectic, wild opening couplet.

To be continued. Next up: Early Roman Kings part II: Anything goes

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

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

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

Bob Dylan And The Eye Of Horus

Bob Dylan And The Eye Of Horus (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

The falcon of Horus flies at twilight:

Far away in a stormy night
Far away, and over the wall
You are there in the flickering light
Where teardrops fall
(Bob Dylan: Where Teardrops Fall)

The  mythology of Isis, Osiris, and Horus be long known to the Hebrews:

And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt
And that the Lord brought thee out thence through a mighty hand
And by a stretched out arm
(Deuteronomy 5: 15)

The restorative power of symbolic Horus exemplified in the following song lyrics:

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone
Egypt, Rome, even the great Babylon
He made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, and under no one's command
(Bob Dylan: Neighbourhood Bully)

The ancient Egyptian symbol of the “Eye Of Horus” is adopted as a Christian symbol – the “Eye of Providence” represents the all-seeing eye of a trinitified, protective God.

The Christian adaptation of the image, like the Judaic one, lacks the stylised teardrop below the eye, and is featured on both the American one dollar bill, and on the Great Seal of the United States; the Eye atop a yet-completed pyramid.

On the back cover of the “Blood On The Tracks” record album is an abstract image of an unfinished pyramid that apparently  represents a Promised Land desecrated; above the pyramid, a very small Eye of Providence can be discerned.

The songs on the Bob Dylan album mentioned above are sorrowful in mood.

The lyrics concern the social/economic/political state of modern America on a macro-, and on a micro-level, and said it can be that the teardrop under the Eye of Horus figuratively re-appears:

We had a falling out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart
(Bob Dylan: If You See Her Say Hello)

Let the teardrops fall:

Don't know how it all got started
I don't know what they doing with their lives
But me I'm still on the road
Heading for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point
Of view
(Bob Dylan: Tangled Up In Blue)

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

• 220 selected cover versions of Dylan songs
• Beautiful Obscurity: The man in me
• Hollis Brown, and why does it all have to be like this?
• The album of extraordinary rarities now has its own page.
• Beautiful Obscurity: The Dignity Covers
• Beautiful Obscurity: John Brown (but not beautiful)
• Tonight I’ll be staying here with you: the cover story

There are details of more articles from this series here

In this series Aaron selects a Dylan song and then a collection of cover versions which he sends over to Tony on the other side of the Atlantic, for his comments.  The game we play is that Tony has to write his comments during his hearing of each recording (almost always hearing this version for the first time).

Aaron: I thought I was going to do When The Ship Comes In next, but then I heard a new (to me) version of this song and I just had to share it straight away. So here it is.

Eels

Tony: Changing the melody and accompaniment is clever – or at least clever when it works, but what also needs is reference point back to the original, and here we do get occasional lines with the original melody, which really works in my view.

In fact I really like the whole performance except … except for the instrumental break.  It comes early on and adds nothing to the who performance.  In fact, since everyone listening is going to know the song, it just leaves all of us waiting there for what we know will be the next verse.

Given the other changes so successfully made to the piece it wouldn’t have been beyond the excellent ability of the arranger to do something else in the break – and take it back so that it resides between the penultimate and final verses.

But that’s probably just me getting all fancy.

Aaron: And now onto the rest of the selections

Keith Richards

Tony: And showing my prejudices that surprised me.  Keith Richards choosing this delicate song?

I found the video utterly distracting with its jerky frame by frame format but once I closed my eyes I was able to focus much more on the music.  And fortunately I am a touch typist so I could keep typing.

But then had to open again around 1.38 to see the time and wonder what on earth was going on.  So I am presuming this is taken from a tape that was left running in the studio.  I went to see what else I could find about this and found this quote from Mr Richards

“While the British Invasion was going on, Bob Dylan was the man who really pulled the American point of view back into focus. At the same time, he had been drawing on Anglo-Celtic folk songs, and that’s certainly true of “Girl From the North Country”. It’s got all the elements of beautiful folk writing without being pretentious. In the lyrics and the melody, there is an absence of Bob’s later cutting edge. There’s none of that resentment. He recorded it again later with Johnny Cash, but I don’t think it’s a duo song. Bob got it right the first time.”

And just in case you don’t like the the video there is another copy of the recording with a different video; also distracting but in a more acceptable way.  Actually I saw a murmuration of starlings last December over Melton Mowbray, a small town in the English East Midlands – the region in which I live.  I do think next time a see a murmuration I’ll think of this rather gorgeous recording.  I do wish he’d made a version without the pauses.

Secret Machines

Now here is a real obscurity (I think it’s beautiful – Tony’s mileage may vary). This was on the b side of a cd single from 2005 by the Secret Machines – I loved it then (especially on headphones) and listening again now, I still do – although it is looooonnng.

Tony: There is a tiny hint of also “Also sprach Zarathustra” in those opening notes which is rather strange – so that’s probably a musical allusion that wasn’t meant (or is only heard by my curious musical memory).

But after that gentle held introduction, I found the arrival of the vocalist and piano was unexpected strong, and something of an unwelcome interruption.

It is one of those songs where I have the notion that the guys said, “hey let’s do it like this” and another says, “ok yeah and you can come in here with some piano chords…” and I’m left asking “Why?”

Not that I mean that every crotchet and held chord can be explained logically – no, most of the time things just work and sound right, although thankfully we can generally eventually understand why (and so learn more about music and musical arrangements).

But here, “I’m wondering if she remembers me at all” comes belting out on storm of a growing storm, and that’s never how I’ve felt this song.  Yes of course “I wonder if she remembers me at all” is painful and desperately sad, and I guess like many people now of a certain age I’ve thought that – although not with the same painful feeling of loss (for me that seems to go after a while).

And then the big crescendo with the repeated chords, and no no no no no I do not see any connection between the meaning of the lyrics and what is happening musically.  The music  around 6 minutes 40 sounds like someone said, “And lets have a big build up here,” and I am just thinking, “What is the point of all this?”

No, really, I think this is a bunch of guys trying to be clever by doing something new, and forgetting that there are issues in music that are infinitely more profound than “clever.”

Tony Rice

Aaron: Now a bluegrass cover by the always excellent Tony Rice. Ricky Skaggs said he was “the single most influential acoustic guitar player in the last 50 years.”

Tony: It is quite a shock to move from one track to another like this.  You’d never hear this on a radio show because no radio programme would play the previous version followed by this.

There is a warmth in this song – the singer is wanting to be remembered to the lady, and wants to make sure she is all right in her coat so warm, and yes I can just about get that out of bluegrass, but only just.   I love the vocals, both solo and duets – the harmonies are gorgeous.  It is just when we move over the guitar picking solos that I feel it doesn’t quite fit.  It is a case of forget the meaning of the words and go with the fun.

Pete Townshend

Aaron: Not many people attempt to rewrite a Dylan song, but Pete Townshend gave it a go.

“Roy Harper did a version of North Country Girl based on a version done by Bob Dylan … and I do a version, based on the version done by Roy Harper.”

Tony: Oh what is that accompaniment from at the start?  How very annoying, I know it so well but can’t place it.

This is odd.  The melody is a really good rewrite and the arrangement is interesting, the harmonies work well… and the chord sequence works well; it is fine, except for that “North Country Girl oh oh oh oh oh oh”.   Really – after all the reworking before that do we need that bit.  And indeed that so reminiscent introduction.  It DOES come from somewhere else and this is really bugging me. I can hear it in my head but just can’t get what comes after it, to tell me where it comes from.

How very annoying.  But this is really good reworking only spoiled by the opening and the ending.  The rest of it is really good in my view.

But as always, that’s just my view.   Townshend made his multi-millions and I didn’t, so I guess he knows best.

Neil Young

Aaron: I could go on and on here, there are many fine versions of this – I tried to stick to some more obscure, and interesting takes, but for now I’ll finish up with a version by Neil Young from his A Letter Home album – the entire album was recorded on a refurbished 1947 Voice-o-graph vinyl recording booth at Jack White’s studio.

Tony: Only Neil Young could do this!  Yes its fun.  And actually I wish I had heard this first.  I think I’ll come back tomorrow and play this again before I’ve not heard any other music.  There is something so right about this in terms of the lonesome guy singing to the girl he left behind.

The point here is that I really do believe in the words, I believe in the “darkness of my night”.  That’s the genius of Neil Young.  He gets inside the song and becomes the song.

Brilliant.

But I (Tony) want to add one of my own suggestions to give back to Aaron.  It somehow seems to fit after having listened to all the previous versions.  I need this to allow me to continue with my day (and it’s not yet 9am).

Manu Lafer

https://youtu.be/KkFT2d5sYBs

Yes, that’s better.  I’m ready to take on the world once more.

• On The Road Again (1965) part I: I don’t know why everyone is so rude
• On The Road Again (1965) part 2: The shitting Pope
• On The Road Again (1965) part 3: A handsome Malacca sword-cane

by Jochen Markhorst

V          Mailman, stay away

Well, there’s fistfights in the kitchen
They’re enough to make me cry
The mailman comes in
Even he’s gotta take a side
Even the butler
He’s got something to prove
Then you ask why I don’t live here
Honey, how come you don’t move?

In the second take of “On The Road Again”, the mailman is still the milkman, and vice versa. The role reversal does not seem to be based on too profound intellectual considerations; apparently, the fifties archetypes of milkman and mailman are completely interchangeable to the songwriter. In any case, in both stanzas the mailman avoids the cliché. In songs since the beginning of time, the role of the mailman is rather one-dimensional: he is the link between the narrator and the lover. Dylan has Buddy Holly’s “Mailman Bring Me No More Blues”(1957) on a pedestal, as well as Elvis’ “Return To Sender” and “Tryin’ To Get To You”, and Tampa Red’s “Sad Letter Blues” from 1939, but “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes from 1961 (with Marvin Gaye on drums!) has become the template.

The archetype is much older, of course. Back in 1938, Andy Kirk And His Twelve Clouds Of Joy with Mary Lou Williams sang the song that would inspire Oasis to title their best album, “What’s Your Story Morning Glory”:

What is your story, morning glory
You've got me worried too
The postman came this morning
And left a note for you
Did you read it, then you know that I love you

… oh well, the power of a uniformed, neutral force to initiate dramatic plot turns has already been recognised by Goethe, by Shakespeare and, in fact, by every literary scholar with a sense of drama since Homer.

Dylan breaks with song tradition. In the last verse of the song, the mailman is added to the list of factors that threaten his happiness, the mailman is one of the enumerated reasons why he does not want to live in this house. So he is not a connecting link between him and his beloved – on the contrary, he is one of those responsible for the impending removal.

It suggests that the role of the mailman, like that of the milkman, does not correspond to the thousands of previous songs, dramas and poems, but to that of the mailman in Playboy cartoons, farces and screwball comedies. Which is also demonstrated by the remarkable introduction of the mailman in this song; he just walks in. Remarkable, because this is a large and probably well-to-do household (they even have a butler), but the mailman can apparently just open the door, walk in and get involved in a big, physical domestic fight. He doesn’t even ring once, let alone twice.

It breaks the narrator. Buddy Holly buzzes through his head;

Cried like never before
So hard, couldn't cry no more
Shoo, shoo, Mailman, stay away from my door

Buddy Holly – Mailman Bring Me No More Blues:

VI         I gave it a name yesterday

Time is cruel to this minor mercurial masterpiece. In the studio, Dylan spends plenty of time on “On The Road Again” (18 takes in three days), but then he rejects the song rudely to the Waters Of Oblivion; he will never play it again. Unique – even the other throwaway track from Bringing It All Back Home, “Outlaw Blues” eventually gets the spotlight. Presumably thanks to Jack White’s guest appearance and persuasion, by the way. “Outlaw Blues” debuts, more than forty years after its inception, in Nashville, on September 20, 2007, after Dylan has already approved the long-overdue premiere of “Meet Me In The Morning” the night before. And that, we know, was indeed at the request of the White Stripe.

Peculiar, as “On The Road Again” is undeniably at least as wonderful. Perhaps the master himself is still on the wrong track. The very first takes are indeed not too earth-shattering. The first is on that packed, explosive first day of recording Bringing It All Back Home, Wednesday 13 January 1965. We hear Dylan droning a thirteen-in-a-dozen blues on the piano, while he seems to be plucking words and sounds out of the air. Producer Tom Wilson tries to get his attention.

“Wait a minute Bob. Let me slate it. What’s the name of it?”
[in the distance] “Paa-pa, paa-pa”
“Bob?”
“Oow babe”
“HEY BOB!”
“Ahm.. ahm the name of this one is… ahm… [some piano notes] … ahm On The Road Again! [chuckles]”

That first take is straight off a complete take. Dylan seems to be thinking up the piano accompaniment as he goes along, it doesn’t quite fit yet, he plays a catchy harmonica solo in between, is sometimes too late for a chord change and the tempo is unsteady. So, for the time being, “On The Road Again” seems to be a poorly worked out, hardly serious in-between – not much more than a warm-up exercise.

Still, Dylan seems to see something in the song after all. The next day, the song is played at the end of the session. Four takes, two of which are complete, now with a full band. Overfull even; Dylan sits at the acoustic piano and around him three guitarists, two bassists, a drummer and Frank Owens on the electric piano are ready to do their best.

“What’s the name of this Bob?”
“Ahm… I don’t know. I gave it a name yesterday! [laughter] On The Road Again!”

The band makes a difference like a frog inside a sock. Suddenly, in the second full take, the song takes on a jittery, attractive pulse, a vibrating wall-of-sound. Dylan seems to hear it too. In the ensuing studio talk, we don’t hear any more chuckling or other nonsense – Dylan sounds a lot more serious and gives focused directions to one of the guitarists (“Were you playing high notes? Play it lower. Yeah, that’s good, yeah”). Drummer Bobby Gregg is also taken. The nervous pulse comes more and more from him, with the train ruffle in continuo that he now puts under it.

The third and final day of recording, Friday 15 January, begins with the first and only take of “Maggie’s Farm”. That one is a one-take hit, but “On The Road Again”, which comes next, keeps Dylan busy. The song is given thirteen more takes. The last one is the definitive one, and on The Cutting Edge we can hear how the song grows towards perfection. The surprisingly conventional harmonica opening is introduced in the second take, the striking vibrato on the guitar thereafter, Gregg abandons his continuo roll and arrives at a concrete base with unconventional, fierce Keith Moon-like breaks – the second guitarist (Kenneth Rankin, presumably) now has to guard the tempo with a staccato, unimaginative blues riff. Which works great. The mercurial vibrato guitar (Bruce Langhorne, by the sound of it) has all the freedom he wants to glue hundreds of shimmering accents against the massive wall of sound and Dylan’s harmonica flutters around it from time to time.

However successful, it does not seduce the master. Maybe he still has that first, saltless take in his head when he thinks of the song, maybe he has trouble identifying with the protagonist. After all, contrary to what Dylan says about himself in the liner notes, the protagonist is incapable of accepting chaos. On the other hand, the song does fit the profile Dylan formulates a little further on in those same liner notes:

my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion/ divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes / subtracted by people constantly torturing each other.

Behind Dylan’s cold shoulder the colleagues hide; the song is pretty much ignored, even by the usual suspects. Only four noteworthy dreadnoughts:

American jazz phenomenon Ben Sidran delivers an attractive, neurotic cover on his wonderful tribute project Dylan Different (2009) – the performance on Dylan Different Live In Paris At the New Morning (2010) is a degree more neurotic and two degrees more attractive.

Ben Sidran Live: 

In 2005, Ava Wynne makes the unnoticed but very enjoyable CD Never-Was, full of fine performances of beautiful songs (“In The Pines”, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “I Still Miss Someone”), including a solid, nice and dirty pounding version of “On The Road Again”.

Ava Wynne: 

Incomparable to the trashy, oldest cover of the song, by the Australian savage weirdos The Missing Links, which music historians and now elderly fans are placing – and rightly so – in the “Psychedelic Garagepunk” corner (1965).

 The Missing Links: 

They are all defeated by the superior version by Canadian talent Julie Doiron, on the equally superior 2010 tribute project Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’. It skims along the original and doesn’t really add much more than the wonderful double female vocals, but hey… a song is anything that can walk by itself, as the master himself defined it at the time, in those wonderful liner notes.

Julie Doiron: 

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

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

There is an index to earlier articles in this series here   The two earlier parts of 1999 are…

• NET, 1999, Part 1: Every night in a combustible way.

• Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 2 – Is everything as hollow as it seems?

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

The story goes that in 1989, while recording Oh Mercy, Dylan exclaimed to producer Lanois, ‘This is archaic music we’re making.’ In other words, Dylan realised he was no longer on the cutting edge of rock music, which had become increasingly sophisticated during the 80s, and arguably increasingly over-produced, or at least elaborately produced – a tendency that continued into the 90s. Along with that sophistication came a certain slickness, the kind of slickness you hear in the Spice Girls, whose music now seems to typify the commercial sounds of that decade.

In the face of these developments, Dylan’s approach in the 90s seems determinedly retro. Not for the first time. At the end of the 1960s, when bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were making albums that were increasingly baroque, complex and sophisticated, and the Cream were producing their creamy sounds, Dylan released, John Wesley Harding which had a thin, minimal sound, deliberately backward looking musically.

Listening to some of these recordings from 1999, I’m struck by how 1950s the sound is, or at least how obviously and deeply rooted in the origins of rock music Dylan’s music is. Call it primitive, call it primal, call it dance music, call it roots music, call it whatever,  Dylan determinedly evokes music from a previous age. Not just rock music but rock-and-roll, pre-rock. While the album Time out of Mind shows the influence of that ‘archaic music,’ more consciously and deliberately than Oh Mercy, his live performances tap directly into the music of a previous age. He loves to sing those old songs.

Buddy Holly was right on the cusp, as rock-and-roll was turning into rock music. Holly wrote ‘Not Fade Away’ in 1957, but in the late 90s we find Dylan doing wonderful performances of the song, heavier than Holly would have conceived, but smack-bang in that tradition. The one thing we know when listening to Dylan performing the song at Tramps, New York, is that this is not the Spice Girls, that this is as far away from that kind of music as you can get. That this, most joyfully, taps into the roots. While I love the more minimal version of 1998, the sheer verve and energy of this performance carries me away. I think I’ll just listen to it one more time.

Not fade away

Wow! that was as good as I thought it was. Even better. Buddy Holly would have loved it. Dylan does some nifty guitar work on this one. Stand up and dance!

‘Not Fade Away’ is not an isolated example. ‘Alabama Getaway’ is a Robert Hunter song, released by the Grateful Dead in 1980, but it taps right into Chuck Berry and the more ‘primitive’ tradition of 1950s countrified blues. I imagine Dylan likes the song because it’s doing what he wants to do, to return to the golden age of Sun records when the music was still fresh and you could go to jail for playing it. This is another from Tramps.

Alabama Getaway

Dylan’s music is haunted by these 50s, early 60s pre-rock singers like
Buddy Holly, Jean Vincent, Dion – and of course Elvis Presley. Presley released ‘Money Honey’ (written by Jesse Stone) in 1956. Dylan clearly enjoys raking it over here, in 1999 (date unknown). It feels just like coming home.

Money Honey

It’s not hard to see how firmly rooted Dylan’s own rock songs are in this ‘primitive’ tradition, however sophisticated the lyrics might be. This performance of ‘Tombstone Blues’, for example, takes us right into the simple, jangling chords of old rock-and-roll, jump music. Dylan’s twin guitarists, Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell, make all this possible with their happily expert, retro playing. It’s that disjunction between the ‘primitive’ music and the wild lyrics that makes Dylan’s rock songs so distinctive. This is another one from Tramps.

Tombstone Blues (A)

Fascinating lyric change here. This is what I think he’s singing:

‘Mama’s in the alley, she ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the graveyard, looking for the fuse’

I have tended to argue throughout this series that Dylan didn’t really stop writing protest songs, he just extended and deepened the range of protest. In ‘Tombstone Blues’ we find surrealist mockery as a form of social criticism.

‘The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce’

Where, I assume, he’s still sitting.

‘Tombstone Blues’ (1965) is not really a blues in the strict sense of the word. It’s not a three chord, twelve bar structure, with a repeated first line, and nor is ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way’. This latter song is fast and hard-driving, and the more advanced technology permits sounds impossible to achieve in the 50s, but it wouldn’t have sounded too out of place in a rock and roll dance hall of the late 50s. Some of these lyrics, though, might  have sounded a bit strange. They still do:

‘The judge, he holds a grudge
And he's about to call on you
But he's badly built and he walks on stilts
Watch out he don't fall on you’

Gone are the long, wandering epics of the earlier 90s. This is short and sharp and takes no prisoners. And the way Dylan drops his voice at the end of the lines (down-singing) makes for an ominous, nastyish effect. I start to reach for that word definitive when I think of this performance. It captures all the turbulence and bile of the original (Blonde on Blonde, 1966), but ups the tempo to a frenetic pace. It’s sharp and punky. Another Tramps performance.

Most likely you go your way (A)

That Tramps version is very hard-edged, but Dylan didn’t always perform it like that. This performance (date unknown) changes the mood a bit with a more echoey sound and a less strident vocal. I sometimes wonder if these variations of sound and mood have to do with the acoustics of the venue, and even the nature of the recording, but this one certainly has a different feel to it. Both are great vocal performances.

Most likely you go your way (B)

The rise of rock-and-roll, and later rock music, is closely associated with the blues, and how blues spilled across racial boundaries to became popular with young white kids. (For those interested in that history, I recommend the acclaimed multi-part PBS series ‘Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues’.) Also, listen to Dylan’s early 1960s recording of ‘One Kind Favour’ and you’ll get the feel for how important the blues were in shaping Dylan’s music and vocal style.

A catchy little blues number, ‘Down Along the Cove’ comes as the second to last track on John Wesley  Harding (1967), but we had to wait until 1999 to get the first live performance. Bringing it forward at this point, nested among the Time out of Mind songs, and antique songs, is yet another indication of the influence of this retro music on Dylan’s own songs. It’s a Dylan song but could almost be someone else’s. It’s a straight no frills rock blues. A treat for the ears. (8^th November)

Down along the Cove

While on the subject of the blues, let’s consider ‘Leopardskin Pillbox Hat,’ a derisive social commentary in blues style. But while he keeps the twelve bar, three chord structure, instead of repeating the first line, he makes up a new one for line two:

‘Well if you, wanna see the sun rise
Honey, I know where
We'll go out and see it sometime
We'll both just sit there and stare
Me with my belt wrapped around my head
And you just sittin' there
In your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat’

Dripping with sarcasm, it’s a comic put down. Taken out of Blonde on Blonde and transferred to 1999, with Campbell and Sexton on the job, it loses none of its jeering insouciance. (Date unknown)

Leopardskin Pillbox hat

Funny thing is, this song sounded pretty retro even in 1966 when it first appeared. It was a throwback to an earlier urban blues sound.

Mockery as social criticism is again to the fore in ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ another retro sounding song, although less obviously derived from the blues. Again the complexity of the lyrics is set against a simple, ‘primitive’ jump music structure. It’s a lot of irreverent fun. This Tramps performance really pushes it along, the wild lyrics flying by before we can get a hold of them. Taming Dylan’s lyrics to the page hardly does justice to the madcap, whirling effect this song creates.

Highway 61 revisited

A little less hard and fast, but no less rooted in the early history of rock is the 1985 ‘Seeing The Real You At Last’. Its dramatic portentous style might hark back to early Ray Charles, but it’s that same jump rhythm that marks these Dylan songs. The lyrics too, some of them lifted from late 1940s movies (the Humphrey Bogart connection), reinforce the antique feel of the music. I keep thinking I’ve heard it before somewhere. There’s an echo of Presley in it. This snarling Tramps performance does it full justice. The song is starting to fade from Dylan’s setlists, so it’s good to hear it get such lively treatment.

Seeing the Real You

Let’s end this post where we started, with that pivotal figure Buddy Holly, that mid fifties rock and roll singer whose music pointed firmly towards the future. ‘That’ll Be The Day’ (1957) is another Holly song that fits quite seamlessly into Dylan’s setlists in 1999. In this case, Dylan creates a medley with Dion’s ‘The Wanderer’. Dion DiMucci is another transitional figure, the last of the great doo-woppers who didn’t quite make it onto rock music, and whose sound had already dated by the mid sixties. Yet there are echoes of Dion’s high, clear voice in Dylan, and some of Dylan’s 1999 performances of ‘The Wanderer’ sound uncannily like Dion himself.

By morphing without changing the beat from Holly to Dion, it says a lot about 50s pop music. These songs are sort of interchangeable. But it also says a lot about the influence of these singer/songwriters on Dylan. In some respects Dylan belongs more to that era of pop music which featured the vocalist (Dion, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin…) than to the rock music of the 60s which was oriented towards groups, bands (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Hollies, the Animals…).

Even in his heyday in the 60s, there was something retro about Dylan – ‘the last of the best…’

I think he’s singing here with Paul Simon, another lone singer/songwriter. (20^th July)

That’ll be the Day/The wanderer

In the light of all this, I’m tempted to declare Dylan to be the last and the greatest of the old rock-and-roll merchants, yet he was able to do what those 50s singers didn’t or couldn’t do, namely bring rock-and-roll into the rock era.

Of course there was another side to Bob Dylan, that of the folk singer, another kind of retro, it is there we’ll be turning in the next post.

Stay cool and safe.

Kia Ora

Bob Dylan And The Eye Of Horus (Part I)

by Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan messes around with mythologies – it could be interpreted that in the song lyrics below, that the narrator thereof takes on the persona of a modernized Ra, the Egyptian male Sun-God-in-Chief, who, with the help of Set (he cuts up Osiris, sending him to the Underworld), restores the cosmic and social order when Horus, sired by Osiris, is given birth by the Moon Goddess Isis.

Set, the brother of married twins Osiris and Isis, is associated with a snake; Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, with a falcon:

Show me your ribs, I'll stick in the knife
Gonna jumpstart my creation to life
I wanna bring someone to life, turn back the years
Do it with laughter, do it with tears
(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)

In the rather double-edged lyrics that follow, the narrator portrays his own version of the undertaker from Egyptian mythology. Anubis is a deity who guides the dead to the Underworld; he has the head of a jackal, and oversees the embalming of the dead:

With a face any painter would paint
As he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman
Well-endowed
And the head of a hyena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

Ra, reincarnated in Horus, it could be claimed in the lyrics beneath, brings order back to the stage with the aid of departed female characters in a couple of songs from the recent past (by Jimmy Wages, and Ricky Nelson):

Hello Mary Lou
Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides from the Underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business, and I do too
(Bob Dylan: False Prophet)

Below, the narrator, like a modernized Osiris, who’s separated from the ocean-pulling Moon Goddess, measures his life out in coffee spoons as the “eternal footman” Anubis awaits:

And her pleasure knows no limits
Her voice is like a meadowlark
But her heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go
To the valley below
(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

Bringing to mind a poem by an artist whose mother be a follower of the gnostic-like Emanuel Swedenborg:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep
(Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening)

Then, it’s back home again:

The evening sun is sinking low
The woods are dark, the town is too
They'll drag you down, they'll run the show
Ain't no telling what they'll do
(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

https://youtu.be/8hx3GEJ84es

Oft at performances put on by Bob Dylan and his band, a backdrop hangs upon which is emblazoned an image of the ‘Eye Of Horus”.

By Tony Attwood

Earlier episodes of All Directions are listed here

The previous episode was “After the loss the rebuild”

A while back I fantasized on the notion that Bob Dylan would one day knock on my door and in my living room, sitting over a coffee or a beer, would suggest that in the light of my work on this site, would I perhaps like to put together a compilation album.

Leaving aside the social interactions that would follow I set out what I would put on the album, and the fact that it was to be called “1980” gives you a pretty good clue as to what it is all about.

With the songs from the end of the decade I don’t have to indulge in such whimsy, because we have Oh Mercy, but if I was given the task of re-working that fine album I would put forward the idea of running the songs in the order they were written – although I think I would continue Dylan’s own decision making by dropping TV Talking Song.  “Series of Dreams” however would most certainly be in there.

I called the last episode of this series “After the loss, the rebuild” and rebuilding was most certainly what was going on in 1989 after the Wilbury’s adventure.  For 1989 gave us as good an outpouring of compositions one after the other, since 1974.   My imaginary album of 1989 would run…

1. Born in Time
2. God Knows
3. Disease of Conceit
4. What was it you wanted
5. Everything is Broken
6. Ring them Bells
7. Series of Dreams
8. Most of the Time
9. Where teardrops fall
10. Shooting Star and see Shooting Star and Hendrix
11. Man in a Long Black Coat

In the last article I got as far as “Everything is Broken” after which Bob wrote Ring them Bells, a song which is a mixture of many different approaches and with a unique cascading piano part which defines the music from the start.

The only problem is that so many re-interpreters are tempted into using the piano as a way of reminding us that it is all about bells (as if we were so stupid we’d forget).   But when this is overcome, the depth of possibilities of the song are revealed.

Indeed that persistent desire to make the music represent bells is a tragedy because as a piece of music it works beautifully – the melody just gives us the chords, the chords give us the melody – one of those beautiful songs where everything seems to fit so naturally together, rather than have any feeling that the composer was searching to find a way, any way, to end a line or make a rhyme.

Stephen Inglis gets it right too…

There’s no hint of blues anywhere, and indeed where unusual chords are thrown in, as in the middle 8, they have nothing to do with the blues genre.  Rather they are stretching the song to see just how far it can go, and the answer is always… a very very long way.

I am a believer in following Dylan’s own suggestions that it is the sound of the lyrics, and the possibilities of meanings that fascinate him rather than there being deep literal meanings within each song, and here we can consider for a moment St Catherine, St Peter and Sweet Martha.  If we are looking for literal meanings the issue must be “why those three?”   We can all find explanations for each, but all three in one song?   True, we also have a reference to The Chosen Few  – which could take us to the Saints who will judge the world at the end of time (I could show off and say Revelations 20:4, but that would just be showing off), but then again why those three people, in this context?

The problem is as fast as we try and track down one reason for a reference the others fall out of sync with it.   Which leads me to see these references as reflections placed throughout the song as much for the sound of the words as any symbolism or direct pointing in any direction.

Indeed when it comes to how religious the piece is, I keep coming back to the 1997 interview for The New York Times, just four years after the Supper Club recordings, where Dylan said, “This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else. Songs like “Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain” or “I Saw the Light”—that’s my religion. I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.”

Bells ringing are emotional; the calling of us all together and of course it can be argued that Dylan has Joel 3:11 at the back of his mind

Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about.

But quite why the bride is running backwards is beyond me.  But I still love the line.

Poetry at this time for Dylan (as so often in other eras of his writing) is as much about playing with words as it is about telling us to do this, not do that.  It expresses what non-poetic forms can’t express.   It is not always meant to be taken literally.

It can be deadly serious and insightful, it can be fun, it can make us sit up and take notice (Hollis Brown is a perfect example) and it can give us deeper insights into the human condition (Subterranean Homesick Blues does that I think).  But as often as not, it is not intended to be taken literally.

“Ring them bells” for me is an update on Times they are a changing and Chimes of Freedom.  My thought is that if Bob wanted to preach, he would preach, loud and clear.   Here’s he’s just giving us an update, and it is no worse a song for all that.

So by now in this year of 1989 Bob has composed

• Born in Time
• God Knows
• Disease of Conceit
• What was it you wanted
• Broken Days / Everything is Broken
• Ring them Bells

… which by any measure is a staggering collection of works to come one after the other.  But he absolutely wasn’t finished yet – not by a long chalk because we were only half way through this year in terms of writing, and there were five more brilliant works to come.

• Series of Dreams
• Most of the Time
• TV Talking Song
• Where teardrops fall
• Shooting Star
• Man in a Long Black Coat

As I’ve intimated before I can do without TV Talking Song, but just look at the rest of the compositions.  Many of us had not heard “Series of Dreams” before it was released on the first set of outtakes and we got Bob’s explanation for it not being on “Oh Mercy”, in Chronicles…

Although Lanois liked the song, he liked the bridge better, wanted the whole song to be like that. I knew what he meant, but it just couldn’t be done. Though I thought about it for a second, thinking that I could probably start with the bridge as the main part and use the main part as the bridge…the idea didn’t amount to much and thinking about the song this way wasn’t healthy. I felt like it was fine the way it was – didn’t want to lose myself in thinking too much about changing it.

And he was right, in my view, not just to reject Lanois’ view but only to think about it for a second.  The “bridge”

Dreams where the umbrella is folded
Into the path you are hurled
And the cards are no good that you’re holding
Unless they’re from another world

for me is a perfect bridge (or middle 8 as I’d call it), and I can’t imagine a reason to change this.

But it clearly wasn’t a real favourite of Bob’s as it just got ten outings in 1993/4, and was then set aside.  I guess it was just one of those that somehow he felt wasn’t quite right.

After that wonderful piece, Bob wrote another lost love song: “Most of the time” a song that takes me back to that earlier masterpiece “Visions of Johanna”.  Now the fog is of the singer’s making, while in Visions the fog covers the whole world; but in both songs the issue of self-delusion is at the forefront.    As Visions says,

“We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it”

Now the emotions are totally ruling the body so that one can’t see the truth, the reality, the real world.  In Visions the mists come from without, here they come from within, but in both songs the feeling is out-of-body, uncertain, unreal.  However in “Most of the Time” the assertion is that the singer can handle it.  That is never the case with Johanna – which of course unlike “Most of the time” is not personal, but is third person.

The music too is unexpected – there’s an E major chord which throws the music out of kilter, and that pause at the end of the line after “or if I was ever with her” adds to the unreality.   He knows utterly that he was with her, but his denial is so overwhelming he doesn’t know it at all.  He’s muttering small talk at the wall.

And so we build up to the climax of denial by taking the assertions to ludicrous proportions.

I don’t cheat on myself, I don’t run and hide
Hide from the feelings that are buried inside
I don’t compromise and I don’t pretend
I don’t even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time

The music and the lyrics show that the singer is so deeply in denial we know that he is fooling himself from that open ethereal chord to the fade out.

And it’s not just a fantastic piece of writing; it is a piece of writing that came straight after the masterpiece that is “Series of Dreams”.

Not too many performers choose to tackle “Most of the time”, but for me this is the ultimate stand-out version, which captures every single moment of the lyrics and music.  I do hope, after reading my ramblings you’ll have a moment spare to listen to this – and indeed listen to it all the way through.

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

Beautiful Obscurity and the Covers Index

• 220 selected cover versions of Dylan songs
• Beautiful Obscurity: The man in me
• Hollis Brown, and why does it all have to be like this?
• The album of extraordinary rarities now has its own page.
• Beautiful Obscurity: The Dignity Covers
• Beautiful Obscurity: John Brown (but not beautiful)

In this series Aaron selects a Dylan song and then a collection of cover versions which he sends over to Tony on the other side of the Atlantic, for his comments.  The game we play is that Tony has to write his comments during his hearing of each recording (almost always hearing this version for the first time).

Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings

Tony: Immediately I am with this, because it is notably different from Bob’s versions, and that is what I am after.  I mean, what is the point of singing and performing it as Bob does?

I was enjoying the first verse, but then my enjoyment escalated upwards when the harmonies came in – this does what I want a cover version to do – it gives me new insights and feelings in relation to the original.

Personally I am not sure they have got the arrangement of the two guitars together, but that may simply be the positioning of the microphones – and it doesn’t distract from a really beautiful re-interpretation.  It makes it all so much more gentle and so much more believable.

Orange Bicycle

Hmmmm… a quasi church organ effect?  Really?  OK, it works in a way of surprise because the voice was not what I was expecting, and so yes it works.   But the chord change over “with you”?   Hmmm (again) … this time methinks now he is trying too hard.

And that is the feeling that continues with the unusual lead guitar sound, the bass guitarist going through every virtuoso line he knows – in the end it is all too much for me… and that tremolo on the vocal part before the instrumental break… no sorry not for me.

It really is one of those tracks where things are tried but there doesn’t seem to be a musical director who is able to say, “ok guys but this isn’t working, let’s go back to basics for a moment.”  And that guitar solo just before the fade where the guitarist hits a particular high note several times… actually I found that rather painful.   Goodness me I am getting old.

Ben E King

From that introduction I’d never have guessed what the song was going to be, and although it goes on much longer than I needed, the transition into the song proper, itself worked for me.   Of course it is helped by the fact that Ben E King has a faultless delivery, but behind him there seems to be a race going on to see who can get out of the studio and into the bar first.

But oh, please, no effects like the descending guitar part or the pause around the 2 minutes 35 mark.   The guitar solo that follows is perfectly good, it doesn’t need that.

And I think that is the idea that is really taking hold with me.  I don’t need all these effects and games, and treating this like just another soul song.   OK, it is perfectly reasonable for arrangers and musicians to find new meanings is songs, but Ben E King is not really doing that with the long postscript complete with “come on come on come on come on come on” etc and lots of “baby” calls.  What is the point?

If it were not for writing this piece I wouldn’t have got to the end.

The Charlatans

Aaron: The Charlatans – wasn’t sure about this one to start with but it grew on me. If you don’t dig the falsetto, just wait til the 2 minute mark when he drops down.

Tony: I really found the video wretched – what on earth is the point of putting one of the most famous Dylan vids with this song?

But the music – yes I’ll go with this.  I don’t know why it is sung as a falsetto, but that doesn’t matter.  It works because it intrigues and interests me, and engages me in and gives me different thoughts about the music and its meanings.  (And I am writing “me me me” because that is the point – the song has to appeal to the audience of one, if it is going to appeal to the many.)

Not that these meanings can be transcribed into words – if they could there would be no point in having the music, but they are there if you want to take them.  And this piece works somehow because the falsetto does reflect the possibility that the lyrics are all bravado and the singer doesn’t have the certainty that the line “Tonight I’ll be staying here with you” suggests.  When I think of it, the singer is pretty damn sure that the lady listening is not going to say, “Oh no you’re not!”

Aaron:  Several other “big name” acts have tried this one out (Jeff Beck, Tina Turner, Cher and Albert Lee) but I want to finish up with two new acts (to me, anyway). I’d never heard these before and I loved them so I wanted to share them with everyone

Michelle Moonshine

Tony: Now this video I like.  It is totally honest; it is what can happen in recordings – and if you’ve not been through the studio experience you have to remember that quite often the recording we get to know can be take 20, by which time a several members of the band may well have (metaphorically) died.

But this is beautiful and gentle and when I’ve finished the comments I am going to play it again and quite probably again.   They really do get this song right, and also give us a moment or two of insight into what such sessions are all about.

Absolutely love it.

Liam Bailey

Not sure about the opening second of vocalisation, but once it starts I’m fascinated by the way the vocalist has utterly changed the chords.   Fascinating, but I am not sure it adds to my understanding of the song.  These unexpected and complex chords contrast so much with what Dylan wrote – he used everyday chords to reflect an everyday expression of desire – that I can’t quite feel the link.  If you are going to change this much, why not write a new song?

The lyrics are not magical, they are in fact simple.  The emotion is powerful, it doesn’t need such complexity in the music.   Although to be fair a lot of my reaction here could be because I know the song so well, and this changes it so much.

But clearly, if this were a competition, Michelle Moonshine would win for me, utterly, totally, 100%.  With a very honourable mention to Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings.  Both are stunning re-workings.

Thanks guys.

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

By Larry Fyffe

As mentioned before – according to ancient Egyptian mythology, Horus is the son of Isis, the Goddess of the Moon and her twin brother Osiris; Set (or Seth), another brother of Isis, causes Osiris to descend to the Underworld; son Horus represents the restoration of order after jealous Set disrupts the country by killing Osiris (in later revisions of the myth, puts him in a coffin, and throws it into the Nile). In any event, Isis manages to put Osiris back together enough to get pregnant.

The bigger eye of Horus, who’s depicted as a falcon, represents the sun king, and the other eye, the moon queen which influences the waters on Earth.

Using the befit of hindsight, some Christian writers, though  with difficulty, reformulate Isis as Mary, Horus as Jesus, and Set as Satan.

With Judaism, however,  there is a direct biblical link to the ancient mythology through the story of Moses, and an Egyptian  princess – in what is then the Land of Isis:

And the child grew

And she brought him to the Pharaoh's daughter
And he became her son
And she called his name 'Moses'
And she said, "Because I drew him out of the water"
(Exodus 2:16)

As rendered in the song lyrics beneath:

And the Pharaoh's little daughter stepped down into the water
To bathe in the cool of the day
And before it was dark, she opened the ark
And found the sweet child was there
(Bob Dylan: Little Moses ~ traditional/et.al.)

Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan often has the symbolic image known as the ‘Eye Of Horus’ at the back of the stage on which he performs; also, the image appears in the film “Renardo And Clara”.

Since Dylan’s often mixes-up the mythological medicine, the following song lyrics might be interpreted as the narrator thereof being the persona of Set, the Egyptian God Of Chaos, who wants Osiris out of the way so he can have Isis for himself:

I picked up his body, and I dragged him inside
Threw him down in the hole, and put back the cover
I said a quick prayer, and felt satisfied
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her
(Bob Dylan: Isis ~ Dylan/Levy)

https://youtu.be/uk3JsRieJeI

Members of the Autobiographical School of Dylanology might even claim that motherly Joan Baez, to whom Dylan gives an Egyptian ring, is represented as Isis, the saviour of Moses, in the lines beneath:

She wears an Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks
She's a hypnotist collector, you are a walking antique
(Bob Dylan: She Belongs To Me)

Apparently, the Isis princess keeps Moses chained down in the Land of the Folkie Pharaohs too long where he forgets his duty to the God of the Hebrews – in the song lyrics below, the State of Mississippi on the Nile of America could be said to represent the Egypt of old:

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
(Bob Dylan: Mississippi)

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

By Tony Attwood

In the article Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 2 – Is everything as hollow as it seems? Mike posed a really interesting question:

“The oddest aspect of these 1999 performances of ‘Can’t Wait’, which Dylan regularly performed, is the disconcerting  ‘off key’ playing of Mr Guitar Man. Again, I have to ask, what does Dylan intend here, what does he think he’s doing? I ask the question because it’s clearly deliberate. It throws the song off-centre with guttural sounds. It makes its own weird sense but its relationship to the melody is problematic to say the least.”

Of course I don’t have any unique insight into Bob’s intention – oh to be able to call him up and ask him!   But I do have a thought that might be able to push us maybe part-way to a resolution of the question.   To see what I am going to try and argue, it is perhaps helpful to listen to the recording of “Not Dark Yet” from the album.  The one we all know.

Now this recording takes us in the standard approach through the four sung verses, plus an instrumental introduction, and instrumental verse, and an instrumental conclusion.

In all three of the instrumental sections, the band plays on, in virtually the same way as it does in the rest of the piece when Bob is singing.  There is no extra instrumental input, for example with a lead guitar extemporising on the vocalist’s approach.

Now compare that with the classic way in which pop and rock music evolved, with a couple of verses and then an instrumental verse.  In “That’s Alright Mama” (Elvis Presley’s first record, I think) you get two verses sung and then a verse in which the chord sequence is exactly the same as in the sung verses,  which is followed by an instrumental verse in which the lead guitar does something that is related to the melody verses: a variation in fact.

https://youtu.be/NmopYuF4BzY

Also developed was an alternative approach in which instead of the song going through a sequence of Verse – Verse – Verse etc for as long as wanted (a form known in musical terms as “strophic”) there also evolved a structure in which pop and rock borrowed from the classical song structure in which the music ran

• Verse
• Verse
• Middle 8
• Verse

The “Middle 8” is a section of the song which has words and music, but in which both music and lyrics are different from the verse.  In classical form analysis of music it is known as “ternary form” and written in musical shorthand as A B A (with the understanding that the music of A is repeated at the start of the piece).

Dylan doesn’t use this form very often but he has to done.  Consider “We’d better talk this over”.   Here the B section comes after the first two verses in the classic form, and is just two lines (as compared to the “A” verse which is four lines long).

You don't have to be afraid of looking into my face,
We've done nothing to each other time will not erase.

https://youtu.be/o9EtT2WVdaE

(Incidentally it is worth leaving the above video running – there’s a couple of very different Bob versions after the example I’ve cited).

So Bob does use ternary form occasionally, and indeed does have an instrumental break occasionally in which the lead guitar or other instrument plays and extemporisation over the melody.

But from the earliest days his chosen form was strophic – think of “Times they are a changing” or “Blowing in the Wind” etc etc – they are verse verse verse.   And even when we get into the longer songs like “Gates of Eden” we still have verse verse verse.

When it came to the live performances Bob had the choice of just singing the song straight through, or instead putting in an instrumental break – which if nothing else gives his voice a break.   And when he does put in an instrumental break he takes the radical path of just having the music continue, without an improvised guitar or keyboard solo.

Now we also have to remember that in the early days Bob primarily played rhythm guitar, holding the band’s beat together – effectively taking on the role of the conductor in an orchestra or the 1st violin in a string quartet.

But over time I think he got a bit bored with that.  He didn’t want to change the structure of the music, because his way of performing suggested that the music and the vocal line were of equal importance.  But he wanted to experiment a bit.

By this stage the rhythm guitar was unnecessary – he knew the musicians and they knew him, so instead of playing the rhythm guitar (which is in essence just playing the chords) he started to play bits of the chords – odd notes taken from the chord, rather than the chords as chords.

This evolved into him playing individual notes during the instrumental verses, which then in turn evolved into him playing those notes while he was singing.

So what did he think he was doing?  Well, I think he was just following an evolution of the music.  I also think no one in the band would dare tell him it didn’t sound very good.  I mean, would you dare?  If it were me I’d just think “well, he’s Bob” and leave it at that.

But Bob is not alone among musical giants in regard of doing the odd thing that we might occasionally consider to be a bit naff.  For example, I wonder if anyone dropped Beethoven a note to the effect that Gratulations-Menuet” in Eb for Orchestra is actually not very good.

And no matter how tedious a piece might appear at first, it might still be rescue-able.  Personally, I never have been been able to listen to “Ballad in Plain D” which is plain indeed with its structure of verse-verse-verse etc ad infinitum, until I found this…

It just goes to show: no matter how naff it sounds to you, there might be something in there…

Publisher’s note…

You can read more about all our regular writers here

If you would like to read more commentaries, Untold Dylan also has a very active Facebook group: Untold Dylan.

If you would like to see some of our series they are listed under the picture at the top of the page, and the most recent entries can be found on the home page.

If you would like to contribute an article please drop a line to Tony@schools.co.uk

An index to all the articles in the series appears here.

The last article in this series appeared, and then had a technical fault. It has been republished here.

By Mike Johnson (kiwipoet)

‘Windows were shaking all night in my dreams
Everything was exactly the way that it seems’

Time Out of Mind is all about the hollowness of life, how empty and meaningless it can all be. This theme or emotion is not new to Dylan. The struggles for faith and meaning are deeply intertwined and go way back to ‘It’s All Right Ma’ and even earlier. We could go even further and say that that struggle has driven Dylan’s artistic development right from the start.

It’s just that in Time Out of Mind, it reaches a certain pitch and intensity, and is linked specifically with ageing. No song deals more  explicitly with the ageing process than ‘Highlands’, that long, ungainly song that finishes the album.

‘I see people in the park, forgettin' their troubles and woes
They're drinkin' and dancin', wearin' bright colored clothes
All the young men with the young women lookin' so good
Well, I'd trade places with any of 'em, in a minute if I could
I'm crossin' the street to get away from a mangy dog
Talkin' to myself in a monologue’

Anyone with a few years under their belt knows what it’s like to see young people partying and having fun, oblivious of their youth and the passing years, oblivious of some old person slipping by in the shadows.  It’s a kind of jealousy or envy. Trade places with ‘em? Sure thing. It’s a feeling that alienates us, for we are forever separated from what we once were and would like to be again.

The whole song is one big monologue in which despair and meaninglessness are pitted against a paradisaical vision of ‘the highlands’. This how it begins:

‘Well my heart's in The Highlands, gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow’

By the end of the song the separation from the world is complete. A new, parallel world has come into existence, but it’s ‘over the hills and far away’. He remains ‘a prisoner in a world of mystery’.

‘The sun is beginnin' to shine on me
But it's not like the sun that used to be
The party's over and there's less and less to say
I got new eyes, everything looks far away
Well my heart's in The Highlands at the break of day
Over the hills and far away’

The central event of the song is a confrontation between the Dylan persona and a waitress. This encounter has been likened to the central encounter in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’, but that encounter is both sharper and more mysterious than the rather lumbering narrative in ‘Highlands’. The waitress asks Dylan to draw her, he does a drawing which she rejects as it doesn’t look like her:

‘I said "Oh kind miss, it most certainly does"
She say "You must be joking", I said "I wish I was"
She says "You don't read women authors do ya?"
At least that's what I think I hear her say
Well I say "How would you know, and what would it matter anyway?"
Well she says "Ya just don't seem like ya do"
I said "You're way wrong"
She says "Which ones have you read then?", I say "Read Erica Jong"’

Dylan is probably referring to Jong’s Fear of Flying, (1973) which was still popular. But despite some Dylanesque dry humour here, and his ability to weave conversations into his songs is evident, this prosy story fits rather uneasily into the overall structure of the song, and it’s not quite clear what the story is intended to demonstrate.

Dylan rarely performed the song, which he débuted in 1999. I’m glad he sang all the verses and was not tempted to drop any out. It has a simple blues riff, but is not an easy song to carry in live performance. (18^th Nov)

Highlands

Dylan didn’t overwhelm his setlists with songs from Time Out of Mind. He  slips them in here and there, augmenting his setlists rather than dominating them with new material. Along with ‘Highlands’, another new song that appeared in 1999 was ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’.

I have to put this latter song in my top ten (at least for the moment). It has a pleasing melodic line and musical structure, and is a further exploration of the hollowness of life. In his account of the song, Tony Attwood has suggested that it could be placed before ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’ as a stepping stone to that final despair, and that’s a helpful way to see it.

‘When you think that you've lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I'm just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to Heaven before they close the door’

There is an elusive feeling here of a bygone era, both in the nostalgia of the lyrics and the overall musical effect, which takes us back to those 1930s and 40s which so haunt  this album, and which Dylan consciously evokes.

‘I'm going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don't know what all right even means’

Note the archaism of: ‘I was riding the buggy with miss Mary Jane…’ Mary Jane is a street name for cannabis, but putting that aside the scene could be from the civil war. The Dylan persona here has a ‘lone cowboy’ feel to it, also from a previous era:

‘Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers like they did before
I've been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I'm trying to get to Heaven before they close the door’

Despite a contemporary drug reference to LSD in Sugar Town, shaking the sugar down has a somewhat archaic feel of having pulled off a successful scam or deal. It is perhaps a rather unflattering reference to Dylan’s financial success.

I have two performances worth tuning into. This first is from 7^th April, and is perhaps the sharpest and clearest recording. An example of how good an audience recording can be.

Tryin to get to heaven (A)

This next recording is from 30^th April, and is a little more lush in its sound. Another powerful vocal performance from  Dylan.

Tryin to get to heaven (B)

Besides these two new songs that Dylan débuted in 1999, he continued to develop Time out of Mind songs he’d introduced in the two previous years. ‘Lovesick’ is never going to change too much over the years. It has a strict form that doesn’t allow for too much improvisation. This one sticks pretty much to the album version, but notice how Dylan drops his voice at the end of the lines (the opposite of upsinging), creating a sinister effect.

Lovesick

We get the same effect from ‘Cold Irons Bound.’ Listen to how he drops his voice art the end of these lines.

‘One look at you, and I’m out of controool
Like the universe has swallowed me whooole’

Dylan would use this ‘downsinging’ to great effect in the next couple of years, giving familiar lyrics an ominous edge. We are prisoners of our love, the song seems to be saying. This is a very hard-edged performance. Maybe the recording is a little on the sharp side, but so is the song. There is no way to sugar-coat this pill: ‘Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood’.

Despair and anger do make a good couple, don’t they?

Cold irons bound

Musically, ‘Till I Fell in Love with You’ has an archaic feel too. I keep hearing Jimmy Rushing or one of the old urban blues singers. It is driven by an unvarying bluesy riff, and with no bridge or other musical breaks, it relies totally on its lyrics and swing to keep it going. This is not so much rock music but pre-rock music, the more ancient blues and big-band era music. Replace the guitars with saxes and trumpets, and you’d almost be slap-bang in the dance-hall music of the late 1940s.

Dylan was consciously after that sound when he made the album. He apparently told producer Lanois that he was after the kind of sound of the early music studios, of what were known as ‘race records’ which brought forward many black performers. Lanois told him it could be done, but in the end the sound on the album was too sophisticated, too nuanced, to capture the raw sound Dylan was after.

On stage, however, he could do it, and does it brilliantly in this performance of ‘Till I Fell in Love with You’. Again I avoid the word definitive, but this one ranks as my number one version of the song. Dylan’s voice is up front, the lyrics crackle out, and the band swings along, a touch of bluesy swagger.

Till I fell in love

‘To Make You Feel My Love’ evokes the same era, but the sentimental ballad tradition, rather than blues. I can imagine Vera Lynn singing it (almost), it has that tearful ‘We’ll Meet Again’, feel to it.

These lyrics could have been written for Billie Holiday:

‘I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue
I'd go crawling down the avenue
No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love’

Such lyrics are quite formalised, quite generic. Going ‘black and blue’ was not an uncommon phrase, and ‘crawling down the avenue’ has a similar well used feel to it. The lyrics are not intended to sound original, rather to signal the sentiment through familiar references.

‘The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret’

The effect of this is to evoke a sense of familiarity, as if we’ve heard the song before somewhere, maybe in a speakeasy in the small hours of the morning. Hasn’t every singer who’s ever pulled on your heart strings sung from ‘the highway of regret’? There’s a lot of traffic on that highway.

In this performance Dylan introduces it as ‘a song to my ex-wife, who’s a tennis player…’ Make of that what you will. And again, a performance that tops those of the two previous years.

To make you feel my love

The oddest aspect of these 1999 performances of ‘Can’t Wait’, which Dylan regularly performed, is the disconcerting  ‘off key’ playing of Mr Guitar Man. Again, I have to ask, what does Dylan intend here, what does he think he’s doing? I ask the question because it’s clearly deliberate. It throws the song off-centre with guttural sounds. It makes its own weird sense but its relationship to the melody is problematic to say the least.

 Can’t Wait

Perhaps, to return to Tony Attwood’s comments on ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’, it was not just that song, but the others as well, ‘Can’t Wait’, ‘Till I fell in Love’, ‘Cold Irons Bound’, that lead, somehow inevitably, to the total loss and despair of ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’. Seen that way, ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’ could be seen as the quintessential song on the album, the song which pushes the darkness and alienation of the collection to the very extreme. An epic performance from a beautifully scarred voice.

It’s not dark yet

That’s it for now. I’ll be back soon with more goodies from 1999

Kia Ora

Symbolism Of The Cypress Tree Part I

By Larry Fyffe

In the song lyrics below,  the narrator thereof depicts himself as Paris, a Trojan of Troy, who’s under attack by Achilles (and other Greeks) – sourced from ancient Greek/Roman mythology:

Achilles is in your alleyway
He don't want me here
(Bob Dylan: Temporarily Like Achilles)

Old Crowe Medicine Show, Temporary Like Achilles

In the mythology, the cypress tree is a symbol of sadness. The tree is sacred to Diana, the Goddess of the Moon, sister of Apollo, the Sun God.

The Trojans fleeing the Greeks are told to meet under a cypress tree dedicated to Ceres, the Goddess of Corn, her daughter Proserpine kidnapped by the God of the Underworld:

Without the walls a ruined temple stands
To Ceres hallowed once; a cypress nigh
Shoots up her venerable head on high
By long religion kept: there bend your feet
And in divided parties let us meet
(Virgil: Aeneid, Part II ~ translated)

Noted before, singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan models his song “Key West” after the mythological Underworld, and in the lines below, he refers to Virgil’s “Aeneid”, casting America  as the modern Babylon from the Holy Bible:

Stand over there by the cypress tree
Where the Trojan women and children  were sold into slavery
Long before the first Crusade
Way back before England and America were made
(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)

In the lyrics beneath, the songster takes on the persona of  Aeneas fleeing Troy, and waiting for his lost wife:

The boulevards of cypress trees
The masquerades of birds and bees
The petals, pink and white, the wind has blown
Won't you meet me in the moonlight all alone
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)

The waiting all in vain, and very sad:
I waited for you on the running boards
Near the cypress trees, while the springtime
Turned slowly into autumn
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Rather ambiguous are the following lyrics that might be construed as an attempt to transform the Confederate States into the Troy of old (but note – Virgil, the Roman poet’s name, is combined with Cain(e), a farmer of biblical infamy, who kills his brother):

Back with my wife in Tennesee
When one day she said to me
Virgil, quick come see
There's goes the Robert E. Lee
(The Band: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

~ Robbie Robertson)

In Virgil’s version of the ancient legend, Aeneas, defeated in Troy, escapes and founds Rome, helped along by Venus, his mother – her birth depicted in a famous painting by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli.

As apparently rehashed by a much older, a very much older, and now happier, Aeneas – in the following song lyrics:

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my master piece
(Bob Dylan: When I Paint My Master Piece)

Publisher’s note: we seem to have had a technical fault on the site which I am currently trying to sort out.  For the moment the 1999 part 1 edition of the Never Ending Tour series appears to be unavailable so I’m republishing it, before I publish 1999 part 2.  Apologies for the inconvenience.

An index to all the articles in the series appears here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘Touring is something you either love or hate doing. I’ve experienced both. I try to keep an open mind about it. Right now, I’m enjoying it. The crowds make the show. Going onstage, seeing different people every night in a combustible way, that’s a thrill. There’s nothing in ordinary life that even comes close to that.’
– Bob Dylan (Edna Gundersen interview for USA Today – April 1999)

At this point in our headlong dash through the NET, it is time to pause and take stock. The NET has completed its first decade, we are entering its eleventh year, we are on the brink of a new millennium, and it is fair to say that Dylan and his band have never sounded better.

When I began this series I observed that some commentators are tempted to see the NET as a work of art in itself. That would imply, however, some intentionality or deliberate structuring, and I certainly don’t see that. That doesn’t mean that the NET doesn’t have some kind of shape or movement, but having said that, no two commentators see the same thing. Everybody who looks at the NET creates their own narrative, and I’m no exception.

One commentator claims that the NET’s finest hour was the performance of ‘Ring Them Bells’ at the Supper Club in 1993. Another claims that 1997 was the strongest year of the NET. The same claim is made for 1998, suggesting that the San Jose concert of that year was the best NET concert ever. Another claims that 1994 was the peak year for the NET, with a distinct falling off in 1995. Still others (me included) see the Prague concerts of 1995 as a high point of the NET. And so it goes on.

Rather than a work of art, it seems, the NET is more like a Rorschach test with everybody reading their own narrative into it, creating their own version of Bob Dylan as they go. With over a thousand concerts for the decade and about fourteen songs per concert we have an incredible 14,000 plus performances, enough raw material for all sorts of constructions.

I have spoken of a ‘rising curve’, (from the song ‘Born in Time’) which I see moving from 1991, a low point generally, to 1995 and the outstanding Prague concerts. 1996 saw something of a falling off (but a fine concert in Berlin that year), with a strong comeback in 1997, and a new rising curve that takes us through 1999 to 2000.

‘One of the peaks of the Never-Ending Tour, 1999 may be one of Dylan’s finest years on-stage. After years of building credibility throughout the 1990s, the performances exploded at the turn of the century.’ (CS at A Thousand Highways)

Egil, at AllDylan, comments: ‘Every N.E.T. junkie seems to agree that 1999 was a wonderful Dylan year. Strong performances in all 5 legs.’

I have to agree with these assessments. Dylan finishes the decade, and the century, with a bang. Other than the galvanising effect of the success of Time Out of Mind, we have other factors to consider. First, there was another shake up in the band’s line up. Bucky Baxter, who joined Dylan is 1992 playing steel guitar and dobro, leaves the band. But rather than simply replacing him, Dylan brings in Charlie Sexton, a guitar all-rounder, who will often play dual lead with Larry Campbell. Sexton would leave Dylan’s band in 2002 and rejoin it in 2009.

Both Sexton and Campbell are superior guitarists, weave a wonderful web of sound around Dylan’s voice, and at the same time provide an expanded context for Dylan’s own lead guitar playing. Mr Guitar Man’s insistent hammering at one or two notes during a guitar break sounds a lot better with these two ace guitarists backing him. To my mind, and I have to say I’m no expert, Sexton is easily a match for Eric Clapton. Clapton has a commanding grasp of the blues, and a rapid, fluid style.  But Sexton is more adventurous, sharper and more passionate.

But it’s not only the backing, it’s Dylan’s voice, his major instrument, which puts the icing on the cake for 1999. Dylan makes his voice as rough as any roadhouse blues singer, but can also sing softly and smoothly when the song calls for it. And power. There’s little that is thin and reedy here, unless he wants it to be. His voice is full of power and expression. I have to go back to 1995 to catch him singing like this. Now, however, his voice is richer and fuller than it was in the mid nineties. The origins of Dylan’s later crooning voice might be found here, although we could push that right back to Nashville Skyline(1969) and the Johnny Cash sessions.

My problem as your tour guide is that there is just such a surfeit of high quality material. Looking at the past three years, I have been able to hone in on two or three ‘best’ concerts, but that’s not so obvious for 1999. The concert at Tramps, New York, is highly regarded, but most of the 117 concerts he did that year are good. I can’t organise a post around three or four concerts. Furthermore, I suspect that technology took a jump around the end of the century, as the quality of the audience recordings is very high, better than we’ve ever heard, I think. There is a cornucopia of material.

While in 1997 and 1998 the setlists were pretty consistent, with essentially the same concert being delivered night after night with variations and wild cards thrown in, in 1999, particularly in the latter part of the year, Dylan throws the setlists wide open, singing a wide variety of his songs and cover songs.

So where do I start and, more urgently, what do I leave out? For 1996 and 1997, I began with new songs being drip fed from Time out of Mind, and we will certainly cover those songs, but I’m sorely tempted to begin with a kick, that old familiar warhorse ‘Maggie’s Farm’.  This song may be so familiar that we can easily slip over it. Dylan might not have helped by, on occasion, ripping through it as if he just wanted to get to the end. It can too easily become a messy guitar fest. Not here. Listening to this, I’m taken back to 1964, the Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan rounded up some musicians from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and blew everybody’s ears out with ‘Maggie’s Farm’,  a hard-edged attack on those folkie sensibilities.

It’s too easy to miss the bitter irony of his lampooning of the American family, and the claustrophobia inherent in that desperate desire to escape. Maggie’s Farm just ain’t no place to be, especially if you happen to be a restless young genius: ‘They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.’ This performance restores the song to its original power and vigour. Dylan is in wonderful voice and the band is working as sweetly as any freight train.

It’s a good song to start with because it’s all about busting loose, busting out of constrictions which is just what Dylan does in 1999, busting out of his setlists, busting into new vocal power, busting open the sound of the band. (I don’t have the date)

Maggie’s Farm

If that doesn’t get you up and rocking, I don’t know what will. I think there’s a bit of a fudge with the lyrics, well disguised, but it doesn’t matter. And that nifty little riff Sexton puts in behind it gives it style.  This has quickly become my favourite performance of the song, keeping well clear of the word definitive.

I could say the same about this masterful performance of ‘Senor’, in which there is also a glitch in the lyrics. If I was tortured into choosing just one superlative performance from 1999, it would be this one (I think…). ‘Senor’ is a wonderful song,  easily my favourite from Street Legal (1978) and apparently Dylan’s favourite too, as it’s the only song from that album that has stayed the course in terms of live performance. The song has a sinister edge. To my mind it’s about having your whole universe, your world view, shaken up, tipped upside-down. Unwelcome reality comes crashing in. You’d better watch out for that ‘gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring’. He’s (she’s?) the harbinger of the most unbearable truth.

When writing about this song for the Master Harpist series, I commented that it reminded me of that famous quote from Thoreau, ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country…’ What are we waiting for, Senor? There’s nothing left for us here. It’s a song from the dark side.

I certainly get that sense from this performance. And, for fans of Dylan’s harmonica playing (like me), the harp work here is a rare pleasure, for, as with 1997/98, Dylan mostly left his harp at home in 1999. The searing, cutting edge of Dylan’s harp works well with the end of the line feeling that comes through the song. Unfortunately I have not been able to track down who is playing violin here, perhaps some helpful reader knows. But it’s compelling, and transports us back to the Rolling Thunder Tour.

I wouldn’t be tempted to equate the mysterious Senor of the song with Jesus or any particular figure. We may well all have our ‘senors’ who we hope will have the answers to our most desperate questions.

Senor

After completing the European summer tour Dylan returned to the United States to perform a thirty-eight date tour with Paul Simon. I believe that this ‘Sounds of Silence’ comes from Portland Oregon, 12^th June. In my last post I commented that Dylan seldom does his best work when duetting with others, but I’m eating my words now. While avoiding hyperbole as much as possible, I now have to say this duet is exquisite. There’s no other word for it. Maybe ‘The Sounds of Silence’ is a song Dylan wished he’d written. It’s all about our moral silence, the creeping deadness of our outrage, the quiet apocalypse.

Paul Simon takes the lead with Dylan doing back up vocals. It’s gentle and totally moving. And the harmonica. Talk about rare moments of harp magic in 1999, we certainly have one here, chilling and melodic. I can’t imagine the song sounding any better. And doesn’t the crowd love it!

Sounds of Silence

They look good together on stage too, a sense of close communion. They are both living the song. This video is not the same performance as the sound clip above, and is of poor visual quality, but gives us the idea of how these two work together. Another brilliant, but quite different, harp solo.

So I’ve run out of space, just when I was getting started. I’ll be back soon to continue this exploration of this peak NET year.

Kia Ora

• On The Road Again (1965) part I: I don’t know why everyone is so rude
• On The Road Again (1965) part 2: The shitting Pope

On The Road Again (1965) part 3

by Jochen Markhorst

 A handsome Malacca sword-cane

Your grandpa’s cane
It turns into a sword
Your grandma prays to pictures
That are pasted on a board
Everything inside my pockets
Your uncle steals
Then you ask why I don’t live here
Honey, I can’t believe that you’re for real

It is one of the many mysterious details surrounding Edgar Allan Poe’s enigmatic death in 1849; his days-long disappearance begins when he leaves his friend Dr John Carter’s office in Richmond, leaving his own walking stick behind but taking his friend’s with him: “a handsome Malacca sword-cane,” according to Dr Carter’s own account of this evening. Poe is found five days later, semi-conscious, dressed in unfamiliar, ill-fitting, cheap clothes and unable to tell what has happened to him. The cane-sword is still in his possession. He is admitted to Washington Medical College, where he dies four days later.

A cane-sword, or swordstick, is a nineteenth-century accessory and is mostly known to us from films and comic strips. In the days when Dylan writes his song, for example, the Paramount Theatre in New York City shows the playful horror The Curse Of The Living Corpse (Del Tenney, 1964); an old-fashioned body-count horror, in which the sinister killer perforates victims with his cane-sword, among other killing methods. An assassin from, of course, the Upper Class.

The weapon does have an appealing double whammy; it signals both civilisation and taste on the part of the carrier, as well as a life-threatening danger – and as a bonus the director gets the Vicorian, gothic connotation for free. Ideal, then, for Dr Jekyll (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with Jack Palance, 1968), for Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie, 2009) and for Sean Connery in The Great Train Robbery (1976), to name but three examples of Victorian heroes who – usually to the relief of the audience – suddenly conjure up a sword from their walking sticks.

The grandfather in “On The Road Again” is of the same antique, aggressive ilk, but here he uses it not so much to ward off a bad guy or to commit a sneak attack, an assassination, but to further intimidate our poor protagonist. Presumably to cut off whining about the pickpocketing “your uncle”, i.e. the son of the sword-wielding grandfather.

In the midst of that aggressive, bullying, thieving, intimidating mob, of that particularly nasty in-laws, the image of Grandma seems to fall out of tune. After all, Grandma is sitting, perfectly harmlessly as it seems, praying to pictures pasted on a board. Yet something must be wrong. The narrator provides a dispiriting list of unpleasantly acting housemates and visitors. He does so rather matter-of-factly, without qualifying adjectives, but it is nonetheless a list of harassment and unpleasantness that, when added up, must explain why he doesn’t want to live here – and somewhere in the middle of that procession of pranksters, thieving uncles, aggressive grandpas and strange visitors, he points to the praying grandma. Apparently, she too is one of the factors that make it so unbearable, here in this house.

We are not given any further information, but in any case the suggestion is that grandmother is not praying to our Saviour or to sweet Saint Brigid, but to something disturbing. Baron Samedi or maybe even Baal, something like that. Or, at least as likely: the musician Dylan briefly takes over from Dylan the Narrator in this verse fragment.

This is a highly rhythmic, sound-oriented interlude, after all – it really is a line from a poetic musician. Your grandma prays to pictures that are pasted on a board is a perfect fourteener, a line of 14 syllables, made of seven iambic feet; an iambic heptameter, as the literature professor would say. The rhythm is dictated by the triple alliterating p (prays-pictures-pasted), and that the poet takes sound into account is demonstrated in the first version, where Dylan is still singing:

Your grandma prays to pictures
That are posted on a board

Posted, not pasted. The sonorousness of the word, as Edgar Allan Poe calls it, is apparently the decisive factor; posted does not assonate very well with board, but pasted echoes perfectly in prays. To whom she prays is still not clear, of course. Probably to St. Paul, the patron saint of swordsmen, come to think of it. Anyway, our narrator will behold Bill Withers’ grandmotherly joy and happiness with some envy;

Grandma's hands
Clapped in church on Sunday morning
Grandma's hands
Played a tambourine so well

If I get to Heaven I'll look for
Grandma's hands

To be continued. Next up: On The Road Again part 4

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

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

The Ballad of Frankly and Joni

by Larry Fyffe

Charles Darwin dumps a bucket of water, his “Theory of Evolution”, onto the fire of the Romantic Transcendentalist writers’ attempts to save God. What’s worse, Darwin’s Theory is transformed into an explanation of the human condition.

Even  within the micro-world of the creative arts, there are those artists, with wings spread like an eagle, who survive, and those, not so talented, who vanish forever into oblivion:

He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls
(Lord Tennyson: The Eagle)

It’s a world in where female artists struggle to survive under the talons of a patriarchal social system.

But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

In the lines below, a female Canadian singer/songwriter turns the tables, depicts herself as a female eagle, albeit with claws withdrawn, and criticizes singer/songwriter Bob Dylan for apparently criticizing her for having just stepped down off the turnip truck – for being too much of a romantic idealist:

But now it's cloak and dagger
Walk on eggshells and analyse
Every particle of difference
Ah, gets like mountains in your eyes
(Joni Mitchell: Good Friends)

Referring to the following lyrics:
The cloak and dagger dangles
Madame light the candles
In the ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)

Missing the chance to note that the American songster twists a line from a poem-play by a famous Welsh poet:

The meadows still as Sunday
The shut-eye tasselled bulls
The goat, and daisy dingles
Nap happy and lazy
(Dylan Thomas: Under The Milk Wood)

The Canadian songster seems not beyond lifting conceits herself from an alliterative American Baroque poet of yore:

Turn inside out, and turn your eyes within
Your sins like motes in the sun do swim: nay, see
Your mites are molehills, molehills mountains be
(Edward Taylor: The Accusation Of The Inward Man)

Anyway, someone’s sneaking around the corner, and could that someone be Darin – or rather Darwin rife with tooth and claw:

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down and out, you just stood there grinning
You've gotta a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winning
(Bob Dylan: Positively Fourth Street)

Of the ‘you’ in the lyrics, says a Dylanologist ~ to wit, the folk fan above:

“…. metonymically represents the entire group of people who denigrate the celebratity status that Bob Dylan has gained from indulging in the pop-electronic medium.”

(Louis A. Renza: Dylan’s Autobiography Of A Vocation)

Jungianly bringing it all back home to:

And genius, clear and countless as the dies
Upon a peacock's plumage, taste refined
Wisdom and wit, were his - perhaps much more
'Twas strange they had not found it out before
(Fitz-Greene Halleck: Fanny)

Publisher’s note…

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