Untold Dylan

The story so far…

• Gates Of Eden part I: The Lady In The Water
• Gates Of Eden part II: As if he was just taking dictation
• Gates Of Eden part III: Hello lamppost, nice to see ya
• Gates Of Eden part IV: Out of the depths have I cried
• Gates Of Eden part V: A wedding-cake left out in the rain
• Gates Of Eden part VI: The cowpuncher and the Golden Calf
• Gates Of Eden part VII: She-devils and wild angels
• Gates Of Eden: part VIII. When everyone’s super… no one will be
• Gates Of Eden: part IX: I’m The Greatest
• Gates Of Eden: part X: Domus ad orientem solem

XI         Forever Young

Leaving men wholly, total free t do anything they wish but die
And there’s nowhere t hide inside the gates of Eden

The first public company in history, and the first multinational for that matter, was the VOC, the Dutch East India Company. Founded in 1602, and still the largest and richest company that ever existed (at its peak eight times larger than Microsoft is today). It was not a gentle enterprise. The original aim of the VOC was political, to put the Spanish and the Portuguese at a disadvantage, and total, aggressive control of all trade with East Asia was an excellent way of doing this. The fact that it turned out to be extremely profitable was actually a bonus.

On a Sunday morning somewhere around 1680, when the VOC is experiencing an economic peak, Captain Willem van der Decken is arguing with his wife in Terneuzen. It is Easter Sunday and she does not want him to set sail on the Lord’s Day. Besides, the weather is bad. But there is a power struggle going on to reach Batavia (present-day Jakarta) as quickly as possible, and the eager, ambitious Van der Decken goes. It is a difficult, arduous voyage and the low point is reached at the Cape of Good Hope. The stormy weather makes it impossible to round the Cape and the crew begs the captain to take shelter in Table Bay. Van der Decken loses his head, throws the helmsman overboard and shouts: “God or the devil … I will round this Cape if I have to sail until Judgement Day!”

The outcome is known. The Devil strikes, and the Flying Dutchman has been sailing the Seven Seas ever since, slightly above the water with blood-red sails. Sometimes he sends a sloop out to a passing ship to pass on letters – letters to long-dead relatives and loved ones.

It is an ancient, archaic curse, immortality. And so cruel that even a Very Angry God, who is not at all reticent when it comes to cruel and unreasonable punishment, only imposes it very rarely. In apocryphal variants of the Creation story Cain is punished with it, and a few thousand years later Cartaphilus, the gatekeeper of Pontius Pilate, for beating Jesus, but that’s about it.

It seems that God himself is a bit ambivalent about immortality. Is it a curse or a blessing? On the one hand, His son recruits followers with the promise of “eternal life”, and one time He is so very pleased with His prophet Elijah that Elijah does not have to die, but is taken up directly into heaven (2Kings 2:11). On the other hand, an ultimate abomination is: “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them” (Revelation 9:6).

This duplicity is already present at the other end of the Bible, in Genesis. It appears that Adam and Eve are originally intended to be immortal. There is only one tree from which they may not eat: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 2:17). The Lord even states explicitly that they may eat from all other trees (“Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat”) – thus also from the Tree of Life. But after Eve’s blunder the Lord feels He must punish them, and the final punishment is banishment from Eden, “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gen. 3:22). Immortality, in other words, is seen by God here as a blessing. Or at least as a favour, a favour that the disobedient Adam and Eve have now forfeited.

In the Arts, the question of curse or blessing also remains undecided. There are hundreds of stories in which Eternal Youth and Immortality are pursued. Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, the Elves in Lord Of The Rings, the Eight Immortals from Taoism, all the myths surrounding the Fountain of Youth in the Alexander novels, in Pirates Of The Caribbean and at Herodotus, the alchemists who seek the elixir of life, Highlander… But then again, there are just as many stories in which that same immortality turns out to be a curse. The Flying Dutchman, the struldbrugs in Gulliver’s Travels, Ahasveros, Simone de Beauvoir’s Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels, the Greek myth of the pitiful Tithonos… all of them are extremely unhappy immortals – especially those who do not die, but still do age.

Dylan has struggled with this ambiguity before. In “Seven Curses” (1963), the last, the toughest curse that befalls the corrupt, lying judge is “that seven deaths shall never kill him”. But there the bard solves it pragmatically; the judge may be immortal, but that endless life becomes a long, unending torture of incurable diseases and social isolation (healers will not heal him, eyes will not see him, ears will not hear him). Dylan cannot resort to a comparable escape here; after all, we are inside the gates of Eden – he can’t make a kind of Hell on Earth out of that, obviously.

Still, one other curse from “Seven Curses”, the fifth, does seem to be transposable at first: “That five walls will not hide him” becomes here, in the original manuscript, “And there’s nowhere t hide inside the gates of Eden”. Apparently the poet, who writes down “Gates Of Eden” in one inspired flash also makes, probably unconsciously, the connection not be able to die – judge from Seven Curses – nowhere to hide. But before October, before the song’s premiere, the line is deleted and changed:

To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden

In the first place because of the inner contradiction, presumably. “To do anything they wish but die” clashes of course with nowhere to hide. And secondly, to avoid repetition; at the moment, “Seven Curses” is just over a year old, so it’s still rather fresh in the memory.

Anyway, the rewrite is quite radical. “There are no trials” is quite loaded, especially when the setting is “inside the Gates of Eden” – after all, that is where the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is. If there is one place in the universe where good and evil are distinguished, where trials must almost by definition take place, it is here. But according to the poet, there are no trials, from which follows the inevitable conclusion that there is no more Good and Evil inside the gates of Eden. God has, evidently, lifted the guard from the Tree of Life and transferred the Cherubim with the flaming sword to that accursed Tree of Knowledge. Thus Dylan’s Eden resembles Nietzsche’s ideal of a paradisaical, or at least desirable, world: a world Beyond Good and Evil.

Which at the very least for one unfortunate soul is good news. Captain Willem van der Decken and his ship with tattooed sails await salvation. He should be heading for the Gates of Eden.

To be continued. Next up: Gates Of Eden part XII: Plato and that sort of thing

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

Could you write for Untold Dylan?

We are constantly looking for authors who can offer a new perspective on Dylan’s work.  If you have an article ready, or just an idea for an article, I’d love to hear from you – just email Tony@schools.co.uk   You can send me the full article (as a word file ideally) or just the idea, as you wish.

The bad news is we don’t pay.  The good news is your article will be widely read across the English speaking world, and if you are young enough to care about your CV, it can look good there.

You can read about the writers who kindly contribute to Untold Dylan in our About the Authors page.   And you can keep an eye on our current series by checking the listings on the home page

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with getting on for 10,000 members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down

By Tony Attwood

In our earlier article “California Brown Eyed Baby” we revealed a set of lyrics from Dylan which seemed never to have been used.  I had a bash at writing some music (a “bash” being the apposite word here) but Robert Thomas and his writing partner Paul Odiase have now come up with their version.

There are more details as well as another link to the song on Paul’s website.   The music is by Paul Odiase, lyrics Bob Dylan/Paul Robert Thomas.

The original lyrics as we published before are…

The rain is falling at my window
My thoughts are sad forever.
Thinking about my fair haired baby,
The one I really do adore

She's my California brown eyed baby,
She's the one I think about today,
She's my California brown eyed baby,
Livin' down San Francisco way

Sadly I look out my window,
Where I can hear the raindrops fall.
My heart is sayin' ***** ****
Where I can hear my true love call.

Now boys don't start to ramble,
You better stay in your hometown
Get you a gal that really loves you,
Stay right there and settle down.

If you are a solo performer or working with a band or as a duo or trio, and have recorded a cover version of one of Dylan’s songs, and want to send in a performance of the music, please send it as an MP3 or MP4 to Tony@schools.co.uk along with details of who you are, including any biographical details you want to reveal.

The only requirement I’d add for that is that it’s not just a straight rendition of a Dylan song in the way Dylan did it.  The whole point of our covering the covers (as it were) is that we are looking at the way the artists have changed the song and explored dimensions that are not in the original.  Hence me sitting at a piano and singing Times they are a-changin in a very pale imitation of the Dylan original would not be acceptable!  (Just to reassure you).

Here are some of the earlier songs we’ve had completed following presentation of the lyrics on Untold Dylan.

• Tioga Pass – Jeff Kosoff.
• Bowling Alley Blues
• Song to Bonny Paul Robert Thomas
• Listen Robert Moses: Chris Sheriden
• Dope Fiend Robber Nick Juno.
• Untold Dylan Showcase: the publisher’s turn
• Don’t let anyone write your story – original renditions
• Don’t let anyone write your story, Rob Beretta
• Don’t let anyone write your story, Paul Robert Thomas
• Don’t let anyone write your story, fourth edition
• Don’t Let Anyone write your story: Claudio Diarni

Meanwhile as you may have noticed we are slowly building a file of covers of Dylan’s songs.  If you are in or are associated with a band that has recorded (privately or commercially) a cover of a Dylan song and you would like to have it added to our files, just send me either a video or an MP3 or MP4 and I’ll put it up in our Showcase section.

Tony.

The first three articles from 1997 appear at

• Never Ending Tour, 1997, part 1.  The Lonely Graveyards of the Mind
• Never Ending Tour 1997, part 2: Hanging onto a Shadow
• Never Ending Tour 1997, part 3: I came in from the wilderness

There is an index to all previous episodes here

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

When I get to the fourth post of a particular year, I am sometimes left with a random collection of performances that don’t quite fit in anywhere else. That has led to some interesting results. It’s the same this year, although I find most of my ‘leftovers’ are familiar songs from the 1960s, a bunch of the usual suspects.

There are, however, a couple of rarities. ‘Roving Gambler’ is new to us in terms of the NET, but is a song Dylan has been singing, with variations, since the early 1960s. I urge interested readers to see the full account of this song by Tony Attwood here.

‘So we have one answer to why Bob Dylan likes it – it is a long lived song that has turned up in many places.   And it is unusual with the drawn out final line and the harmony opportunities that offers the performers.  The change of tempo is not unique to this song, but it is unusual, and seems to date back to some of the early performances.’

It’s a good rollicking performance piece, and fun to listen to, but I’d add that Dylan may like the song because it fits in perfectly with the ethos of his persona: the lonesome hobo, the travelling man, the blues journeyman who goes from town to town gambling his genius on stage and maybe breaking a pretty girl’s heart before leaving town at dawn, just like so many times before.

A joyful performance. (9^th August)

Roving Gambler

‘Joey’, from Desire (1975), is another rarity, although we have had a couple of strong performances in previous years. ‘Joey’ is an ambitious song, telling the story of the life and death of Joey Gallo, a mobster murdered on his birthday in 1972. Joey Gallo is not as sympathetic a figure as Hurricane Carter, and other than his rebel, outlaw status, it is hard to see what attracted Dylan to the story. It seems that Dylan saw him as an underdog hero:

‘I was on the outside
of whatever side there was.’

In 2016 Dylan described the story as ‘Homeric’ ( Gundersen, Edna (2016-10-28). “World exclusive: Bob Dylan – I’ll be at the Nobel Prize ceremony… if I can”. The Telegraph), but also claimed that his collaborator on the Desire songs, Jacques Levy, wrote all the lyrics.

It is my least favourite song on the album, and was described by music critic Lester Bang as ‘repellent romanticist bullshit,’ a judgement I tend to share. I would have preferred to see ‘Golden Loom’ or ‘Abandoned Love’ on the album instead and would have rather tiptoed past the song in silence here. However, it is the only Desire song that Dylan performed during the NET, and according to a Mojo poll, “Joey” was rated the 74th most popular Bob Dylan song of all time.

One thing I can say is that the live performances of the song are certainly heroic. Dylan throws everything he’s got at this performance. (Sorry, no date for this one)

Joey

‘To Ramona’ (1964) is described by Wikipedia as a ‘folk waltz’ and ‘inspired by traditional Mexican Corrido folk music’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Ramona). The song has been linked to Dylan’s relationship with Joan Baez, and is not as gentle as it sounds, or as the melody would have us believe. The song seems to attack the more apocalyptic wing of the protest movement:

‘You’ve been fooled into thinking
that the finishing end is at hand’

but is a more general exposé of the destructive effects of living inauthentically and personal fakery.

‘But it grieves my heart, love
To see you tryin' to be a part of
A world that just don't exist
It's all just a dream, babe
A vacuum, a scheme, babe
That sucks you into feelin' like this’

It is no fun being deceived by the appearances of the world. In this 1997 performance Dylan plays the vocals pretty tenderly, but it won’t be long before he begins to give the song a rather nasty twist. There is an underlying element of jeering or mockery which balances the love in the song, and this can only be brought out in performance, the way it is sung. At this stage there are only hints of it.

This is an intimate, acoustic performance, with some nicely restrained guitar work by Dylan.(13^th August)

To Ramona

Another song linked to Joan Baez is the famous ‘It Ain’t Me Babe.’ This song can be seen as an extension of the sentiment in ‘To Ramona,’ and the further rejection of the role of supporter of a lover’s illusions and delusions. No hippy bullshit for Bob. This performance relies heavily on Mr Guitar Man’s acoustic work, and while I would have preferred a harp solo, which always gives the song a certain piquancy, the vocal is as rough and true as you could wish. (18^th December)

It Ain’t me Babe

Yet another song linked to Joan Baez is ‘Positively 4th Street’. Here the gloves have come off, and it is one of Dylan’s most deliberately nasty songs. As with ‘Just Like a Woman,’ however, it is too easy to miss the vulnerability and hurt revealed by the song. We always want to hit back when we have been betrayed and slighted by those who profess to love us. Dylan doesn’t filter or censor his feelings. It tumbles out raw and tough and real. Things have turned very sour, as these things do when love turns to hate. You can see a progression from ‘To Ramona,’ through ‘It Aint Me Babe’ to this:

‘Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you’

The original had a deceptively bouncy tempo. This created a disjunction between the lyrics and the upbeat sound. It only sounded like a happy song.

In this 1997 performance however, Dylan slows the tempo right down to create a nine minute epic. Oddly the effect is more tender and yearning than we would expect, and the passionate delivery is devoid of jeering edges. It is odd. It sounds almost like a love song. At least it sounds shot through with regret rather than anger. It has that world weariness more fitting to a Time out of Mind state of mind. (sorry, no date for this one)

Positively 4^th Street

A song closely associated with Dylan’s move away from topical protest songs is ‘My Back Pages’ (1964). When introducing this song previously, I suggested that the loss of moral certainty, the subject of the song, would cost Dylan dearly later on. The loss of moral compass is an important thread in Time out of Mind, and what I find fascinating about this performance in the year Dylan released that album is the way he hurls it out so defiantly. It becomes a forceful declaration, not of faith but of lack of faith. A declaration of uncertainty.

My back Pages

With ‘God Knows’ (1991), uncertainty turns into jeopardy. It might be important for considering Under the Red Sky to remember that 1991 was also the year of the first Gulf War, the year of the first US and coalition attack on Iraq. Suddenly the world was on a knife edge once more:

‘God knows it’s fragile
God knows everything
God knows it snap apart right now
Just like putting scissors to a string’

That’s just what it felt like to live through that war, with the possibility always lurking that it could turn into a more general Middle Eastern war:

‘God knows it's terrifying
God sees it all unfold
There's a million reasons for you to be crying
You been so bold and so cold’

It’s hard not to feel that the repeated phrase ‘God knows’ is meant sarcastically – God knows everything! And yet it is ambiguous. This same God ‘knows the secrets of your heart’ and might offer some hope, some prospect of a purpose, or even the ever elusive prospect of salvation.

‘God knows there's a purpose
God knows there's a chance
God knows you can rise above the darkest hour
Of any circumstance’

Here Dylan sticks pretty much to the tempo and spirit of the original album version, although the last two minutes are given over to the hectic, apocalyptic musings of Mr Guitar Man on his punky Stratocaster. God knows, you could have knocked a minute and a half off this performance with no loss, but maybe that ominous swirl of sound is the point. Remember the head-bashing 1993 performance? (see NET, 1993, Part 1). Note he changes the word ‘purpose’ in the last verse to ‘reason.’ (2^nd October)

God Knows

As has been the pattern in the 90s, Dylan has sung ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ without a chorus. During the Rolling Thunder Tour, the song sounded magnificent with a ragged chorus of voices all knocking on heaven’s door. In the 90s Dylan performs the song unaided, which creates an impression of heroic fragility, especially with this cracked voice. This is a wonderful vocal performance, with the voice upfront and well recorded. This is an encore, which might help explain the rough, end of the night voice. The song starts 1.40 mins into the recording. (13^th August)

 Knocking on heaven’s door

In this spirited performance of ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’, we hear Dylan ‘upsinging’ in at least one verse. Upsinging is when the voice is raised at the end of each line. Later this would become an annoying mannerism but at this stage he’s only trying it out.  Since this performance is faster than the album version (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965), it sounds a bit rushed, but Dylan’s high-pitched singing gives it a suitably desperate edge. (18^th April)

Ballad of a Thin Man

During the 90s Dylan was perfecting a slow, sumptuous arrangement of the mysterious ‘Love Minus Zero No Limit’ (1965). This 1997 version is pretty much the same arrangement (minus harp) as the MTV Unplugged performance of 1994. But to my ear the vocal is stronger, Dylan’s voice more expressive. The emotional range of the Time out of Mind songs, and the voice he finds to sing them, takes us further than Dylan has gone before, and he now brings that extended range to his earlier songs with, in this case at least, gorgeous effect. (Date not known)

Love Minus Zero

The same applies to ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, another from 1965. With the youthful idealism leached from the song by Dylan’s more aged voice, the desire to escape down ‘the foggy ruins of time’ away from this world ‘of crazy sorrow’ sounds world weary and disillusioned, just like the Time out of Mind songs. (18^th December)

Mr T Man

It is hard to overestimate the effect that recording Time out of Mind had on Dylan’s performances in 1997. A new maturity and emotional range are evident, and he delivers his familiar setlist with a renewed vigour and power. His voice is changing. There are new cracks. He takes advantage of this change, adding a feeling of being broken by age and experience – but still on the road, still singing the old songs, just like so many times before.

We’ll be back soon to have a look at 1998.

Kia Ora

mr tambourine says “hi”

It was 1982, and Dylan’s 80^th birthday, oh Lord. And it is swamping me, in stuff.

BBC  Radio      It Ain’t Me You’re Looking For: Bob Dylan at 80    5 x 15 minutes

BBC  Radio Drama   Dinner with Dylan

BBC Masked and Anonymous    ( they gave this one star! Meanies!! )

BBC Tangled Up With Dylan: the Ballad of A J Weberman

BBC  Well I can’t say they ignored his 80^th Birthday that’s for sure

BBC  …..Sings Dylan II     Cover versions of someone’s songs

BBC  Don’t Loook Back (or you’ll spot the extra “o”)

BBC  Getting to Dylan: the Interview (1987 if you really want to know)

BBC Arena  Bob Dylan – Trouble No More   (1979 via 2018)

BBC  Singer/Songwriters at the BBC (including Bob someone,……)

Sky Arts   New  Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan: Tomorrow is a Long Time

Sky Arts   Bob Dylan 30^th Anniversary Concert

ASDA DVD  I’m Not There  (and he may well not be). Bought this on the day, 24^th May.

YouTube   Woolhall 80 days countdown to Bob’s Birthday

YouTube    Irenehilda, SuperPenn21, e collins, nightly moth, neverending Bobfan

Thank you all, and all the others too

Rolling Stone “Inside Bob Dylan’s Lost Interviews and Unseen Letters”  and although this dates back to October 21, 2020, I find I am reading it today on 24^th May, because it has showed up. And within it there is a page of a letter (image) and he mentions “abandoned hotels….like out of last year at marianbad” and it was yesterday that I was following up on a few films a local film club is planning to show, and so I happened to read up a little about the enigma of “Last Year in Marianbad” because that is one of them. Else maybe it would mean nothing to me (O Vienna).

Brahms

I wish they’d show Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

I’m enjoying cowboys this year. Last night it was Wyatt Earp.

Sometimes, there is plenty of time, but at other times, it seems there isn’t.

Get the fuck up  Up get the fuck   fuck up the get   the up fuck get   the up get fuck

and you can find the remaining variations, but none will get you up.

That’s only the half of it.

Perhaps the best part was Elston Gunn’s cakes, even though I couldn’t concentrate on them for long.

One page is more than enough. Less is more, more or less.

H B Bob. Tomorrow is a new day.

https://youtu.be/VCzneHn4rDc

There is an index of some of our more recent series on the home page and further details of series at the top of the page under the picture.

Property of Jesus Part 1

By Larry Fyffe

But you've picked up quite a story, and you've changed since the womb
What happened to the real you, you've been captured, but by whom
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)

The double-edged song lyrics above can be construed as an expression of sympathy for the Devil, represented by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.

As goes one of their songs below:

'Cause she'll never break, never break, never break
Never break this heart of stone
(Rolling Stones: Heart Of Stone ~ Jagger/Richard)

Asserted it be that s/he who’d follow the compassion of the soft-hearted Christ, including His love for Nature’s creatures, are gone missing from most songs by the band from modern Babylon:

He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)

Black’s the colour of true Baroque poetry:

Was ever heart like mine? So bad? black? vile
Is any devil blacker? Or can hell
Produce it's match? It is the very soil
Where Satan reads his charms, and sets his spell
(Edward Taylor: Still I Complain, I Am Complaining Still)

Extended metaphor, hyperbole, and paradox be its main literary devices; individual skepticism concerning the doctrines of orgainized religion the mood thereof:

Faith's overtrumped,  and oft doth lose her tricks
Repentance's chalked up noddy, and out shut
They post and pare off grace thus, and its shine
(Edward Taylor: Still I Complain, I Am Complaining Still)

I can’t think for you, you have to decide – do the following lyrics refer to Jumping Jack Flash, or to Jesus, the Saviour; perhaps to both:

When the whip that is keeping you in line
Doesn't make him jump
Say he's hard of hearing, say that he's a chump
Say he's out of step with reality as you try to test his nerve
Because he doesn't pay tribute to the king that you serve
(Bob Dylan: Property Of Jesus)

In the Thomas Hardy’s novel ‘Jude The Obscure’, Sue jumps from being a religious skeptic to being a true-believer. Seems the theme of the novel is that you’ve just gotta serve someone.

Hardy quotes from the following hymn:
Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed
Teach me to die, that so I may
Rise gloriously at the awful day
(Tallis/Ken: All Praise To My God, This Night)

The hymn refers to the Devil’s tempting Jesus by offering Him the whole wide world.

Replies Christ:

Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written
That thou shalt worship the Lord thy God
And Him only shalt thou serve
(Matthew 4:10)

Things fall apart, or do they? – the human Jesus becomes equated with the Almighty One:

You'll never break it, darling
You'll never break this heart of stone
(Rolling Stones: Heart Of Stone)

There is an index of some of our more recent series on the home page and further details of series at the top of the page under the picture.

by Jochen Markhorst

Older New Yorkers probably remember the terrible screech the BMT Broadway train made as it turned east near 59^th Street and Seventh Avenue. Almost three miles from West 4th Street, but on quiet evenings and with a north wind and an open window, Dylan must have heard it too.

It is probably no consolation, but on the other side of the ocean the suffering was, and unfortunately sometimes still is just as great. The Central Line’s tubular hell’s screeching in London, between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green is at times ear-shattering. Our German friends in Berlin, who invented the wonderful word Kurvenquietschen (“curve squeaking”, pronounce coor-ven-kweet-shen) for it, suffer at the corner of Friedrichstraße/Unter den Linden, within earshot of the former Führerbunker, and Parisians on Boulevard Diderot (XII^e) have been going insane for decades now because of the enfer acoustique, the acoustic hell of the metro line 5, when it makes the turn between the Quai-de-la-Rapée and Gare-d’Austerlitz stations.

For me it is music, though. I can even tell you exactly which music: “Visions Of Johanna”. And not for some high-brow, erudite reasons, I might add. Not because Dylan sings escapades out on the “D” train there, or because it can be associated with a ghost of ‘lectricty’s howling, or because the nightly, screeching wagons are corroded empty cages, or anything like that.  No, it’s more prosaic.

I am from September 1964 and Dylan, quite literally, rocked my cradle. My parents, like everyone in the family and friends circle, had bought the first Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits somewhere in the spring of ’66. Spring 1966, so still before Blonde On Blonde, so a Greatest Hits with a different track list than “the” Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits which is still Dylan’s best-selling record of all time – the American CBS version, with “Rainy Day Women”, “Just Like A Woman”, “Positively 4th Street” and “I Want You”. In Europe, we had to make do with “Bob Dylan’s Blues”, “Maggie’s Farm”, “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Highway 61 Revisited”. Not too bad either, obviously. That first, European compilation even had two more songs than the ten songs on the American bestseller (also “Don’t Think Twice” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”).

So “Highway 61 Revisited 61” really rocked my cradle. Still, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits was not really the soundtrack of my earliest youth. That would be Rubber Soul and Georges Moustaki, Creedence’s Willy And The Poor Boys and Freddy Quinn, Help! and James Last’s Beat In Sweet (with “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”!), the records my parents used to play and that were on the turntable at every family gathering between Hanover and Amsterdam. The Dylan lightning strike came later.

The Kinkerstraat is a long straight street north of the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, connecting the ring of canals with the Rembrandtpark. Three tramlines have been running through this long, straight street for more than a hundred years: Line 7, Line 17 and, since 1921, Line 23. There is only one bend in this long straight street: at the end, where the Kinkerstraat branches off to the Kinkerbrug, the bridge over the Kostverlorenvaart.

And in that bend lived my Aunt Joop. Kurvenquietschen.

From 1973, 1974, I was considered old and wise enough to travel alone by train to Amsterdam, to stay with one of my beloved aunts. Free-spirited, unmarried aunts without educational principles, but with stacks of comic books and even higher stacks of gramophone records. Tommy. Lou Reed’s Berlin. Harvest. American Pie. Ziggy Stardust. But above all: Blonde On Blonde.

Mind you, I think I already knew Dylan. But that’s Dylan pre-Blonde On Blonde. “Rainy Day Women” is familiar – it comes on the radio often enough. “Pledging My Time” is nice. In the closing seconds, I hear Line 7 approaching the Kinkerbrug. The inner sleeve tells me that the next song is called “Visions Of Johanna”…

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet? screeeeeeech
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it queeeeeeeek
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it krcheeeeetsch

You only experience that excitement, that kind of lightning a few times, maybe just once in your life – and with this intensity only in those receptive years of early puberty, it seems. But it never leaves you.

Like it was written, no, like it was screeched in my soul.

Happy birthday Bob

The story so far…

• Gates Of Eden part I: The Lady In The Water
• Gates Of Eden part II: As if he was just taking dictation
• Gates Of Eden part III: Hello lamppost, nice to see ya
• Gates Of Eden part IV: Out of the depths have I cried
• Gates Of Eden part V: A wedding-cake left out in the rain
• Gates Of Eden part VI: The cowpuncher and the Golden Calf
• Gates Of Eden part VII: She-devils and wild angels
• Gates Of Eden: part VIII. When everyone’s super… no one will be
• Gates Of Eden: part IX: I’m The Greatest

by Jochen Markhorst

X          Domus ad orientem solem

The foreign sun / it rises / on a house that is not mine
As friends an other strangers from their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, total free t do anything they wish but die
And there’s nowhere t hide inside the gates of Eden

The finest Dave Van Ronk compilation is – of course – made by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and is called Down In Washington Square (2005). It is a 3-CD set with a representative sample of Van Ronk’s best recordings between 1958 and 2001, embellished with well-chosen previously unreleased material. Dave’s cover of Dylan’s “Buckets Of Rain”, for instance, and a beautiful version of the time-honoured “St. James Infirmary” (which Dylan used as a template for “Blind Willie McTell”). And with the infamous arrangement Dylan so uncollegially nicked from the “Mayor of MacDougal Street” for his first album in 1961. As might be expected this story is told again in the excellent liner notes, a beautiful booklet of forty pages:

“Van Ronk recalled that after Bob Dylan had learned Dave’s version of “House of the Rising Sun,” Dylan approached him and asked if he could record it for his first album. Van Ronk replied, “I’d rather you not, I’m planning on recording it soon myself.” Dylan said “uh oh.” Van Ronk had to stop performing it because everyone accused him of getting it from Dylan. However, Dylan himself had to stop playing it when the Animals made a top hit out of it, and people accused him of getting it from them (from the film No Direction Home). Dave learned “House of the Rising Sun” from a recording by Hally Wood.”

Dylan may have felt some remorse, as evidenced by that “uh-oh”, but it doesn’t go too deep. Forty years later, when he publishes his memoir Chronicles, the autobiographer spends a lot of admiring and respectful words on Dave Van Ronk, and also readily admits that he copied him at the time:

“I was greatly influenced by Dave. Later, when I would record my first album, half the cuts on it were renditions of songs that Van Ronk did. It’s not like I planned that, it just happened. Unconsciously I trusted his stuff more than I did mine.”

In June 1964, when Dylan in an inspired flash dashes off the lyrics for “Gates Of Eden”, the song apparently still reverberates obtrusively in the back of his mind. Or he is in a bit of a vicious mood, that is also possible. The eighth verse of the draft version opens with a perfect fourteener, and is not too cryptic: “The foreign sun it rises on a house that is not mine”… intended or unintended, it can only be understood as a stab to Van Ronk and the “House Of The Rising Sun”-controversy. No, that’s going too far, the bard thinks in the following weeks, and he changes it after all.

The rewritten opening line is successful: “The foreign sun, it squints upon a bed that is never mine.” The foreign sun is an age-old, but not yet worn out image with a simple, appealing metaphorical power. Archibald MacLeish, so admired by Dylan (one of the “gigantic figures who had defined the landscape of twentieth-century America”, “the poet of night stones and the quick earth” and who “put everything in perspective”, Chronicles) chooses it in Immortal Autumn (“Now no more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth”). And in this same year 1964, The Priest, Dylan’s role model William Burroughs, uses it twice in Nova Express. Weirdly, of course: “this foreign sun in your brain,” for instance.

For the academic fan, however, Horace is the most attractive source:

Quid terras alio calentes
Sole mutamus? Patria quis exul
Se quoque fugit?

… which, while retaining its poetic force, can be translated as

Why do we leave for lands warmed 
by a foreign sun? What exiled fugitive 
can flee from himself?
                                (Horace Odes 2:16)

All the more attractive, because it fits so well with Dylan’s next verse, with as friends and other strangers from their fates try to resign. A coincidence, probably, but still a nice coincidence. And with the continuation of the opening line, it squints upon a bed that is never mine, the poet in any case smuggles in a pleasant interior rhyme (foreign sun – squints upon), and expresses the suggestion of an erotic intermezzo more subtly than with that reference to the most famous brothel in history.

Anyway, the foreign sun and the stranger’s bed (or, originally, the unfamiliar house) set the tone for the apparent theme of this verse, for detachment and alienation. “Friends and other strangers” is a beautiful poetic find with a charged, sad inner contradiction to express deep loneliness. And it seems to be a Dylan original; before “Gates Of Eden”, we don’t really know this loaded word combination. It hits home. The expression, and variants of it, is used in cinema, literature, songwriting, and also outside the arts, in science. Chapter 2 of the wonderful Benjamin Franklin biography, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (H.W. Brands, 2000), for example, is called “Friends and Other Strangers”, as is a 1995 DC Comics Star Trek: The Next Generation and an episode of the TV series Notorious. The latest episode of the hit series Roseanna is called “Daughters and Other Strangers”, an episode of the equally successful Golden Girls “Sisters and Other Strangers”, Husbands, Family, My Mother, Neighbors… the ironic addition of “and other strangers” has certainly proved to be a popular inspiration.

The not too coherent “from their fates try to resign” tries to express something like “not being able to escape your destiny” and gets a not unattractive, Jewish-mystic colour by the Yoda-like sentence structure, but is above all a bridge to one of the song’s most shining verses, to “Leaving men wholly, totally free to do anything they wish to do but die” – probably spending their lives in sin and misery, in other words. Which has been the ruin of many a poor boy, as we all know.

To be continued. Next up: Gates Of Eden part XI: Forever Young

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

——–

There’s an index to some of our more recent articles on the home page of the site, and more indexes below the picture of Bob, above.  If you are searching for a particular item the search box top right can also be helpful.

Happy birthday Bob.

Thank you for everything.

From all the writers and all the commentators and all the readers at Untold Dylan.

Research and track selections by Aaron Galbraith, commentaries and random thoughts by Tony Attwood

A list of the earlier articles in this series is given here

This is part of an ongoing series of reviews of cover versions of Dylan songs under the title “Beautiful Obscurity”.   We’re also, very laboriously, trying to putting together a complete index of covers of Dylan songs that we have commented upon over the years – the latest edition is here, and a new edition of that will be published in the next few days.

So here we go with Aaron’s selection, and Tony’s random thoughts.

Scottish rockers Nazareth from Loud n Proud (1974)

Tony: I do love covers which from the introduction don’t give you a clue as to which song this is going to be.  It’s not always possible of course but where it can be done, it gives a sense that this artist is going to try a serious re-interpretation.

The problem with the original, in terms of a re-working is that it is based entirely on one chord.  Dylan overcomes this by portraying the bleakness of Hollis Brown’s reality through the openness of the accompaniment and the fact that when the album came out, we’d never heard this before.  But as this recording shows, there are alternative routes forward.

Leon Russell also from 1974 from the album Stop All That Jazz

Tony: And wow doesn’t that opening throw us into a new dimension again – exactly as I was just saying needed to be done.   They’ve changed the backing rhythm too and the whole thing gives us a wild effect.

The only question is, having thrown so much in at the first, can they keep it up?  After all, we all know where this goes, but the horror of the starving children, and the knowledge of what Hollis Brown does keep me here, listening.

It’s really inventive and exploratory in its style, but I am not at all sure if I could listen to again.   It’s that “seven new people born” which is the problem.  How do you render this in music?

The Neville Brothers from Yellow Moon (1989)

The Neville Brothers give us a fade-in which works, and they change the rhythm of the lines which certainly holds my attention.  I particularly like what the bass guitar is doing, and the fact that the band holds back in contrast to the earlier recordings above.  I wonder if it would be possible to perform this with just a bass guitar and vocal?   It would certainly be haunting.

But I do like the pauses, which are retained throughout; it really adds to the horror.

Some more Scottish rockers Stone The Crows

Hmmmm…. that intro if not exactly commonplace is certainly something that is often heard, but then taking the music back, and the female voice really does make me listen again.

I have to admit a deep inner problem I have with this song, and that is the image of the deaths at the end.  Practicality burns into my head: how does he do it so that all of the family die and none run away?  Does he tie them up?  Is his wife complicit?   I turn the whole thing into a horror film, which actually I don’t like (but that’s my imagination for you).

Here the vocalist puts too much into the song as it builds for me.  It’s too easy to do that; the horrific silent scene of Hollis Brown committing suicide is lost.  Dylan gets it by telling  the tale in the same voice all the way through, so the deaths become matter of fact.  But the ghostly effects that the band try after the seven shotgun shells don’t work for me.

Maybe even now, after all these years of knowing the song, I am just too weighed down by it all.  As a result the organist going on a little jaunt around the 5th minute took me totally away from the scene of five children, a man and a woman lying dead at an isolated house.  This is the band having fun, each musician doing his or her stuff, without remembering Hollis Brown and his family.  The return of the vocal and the instrumentation of “roar” confirms; this is not an interpretation for me.

Aaron: You know I always like to throw a curveball your way so how about some Swedish Death Metal from Entombed

Tony: Sometimes Aaron, I reflect that it is a good job you live on the other side of the Atlantic rather than in my village.  I’d be round your house knocking on the door and demanding to know what the f*** you are playing at.

Does this add anything to the sum of human knowledge?  Does it offer insight or entertainment?  Does it carry a profound message or give a different view of reality?

As you probably have guessed, my answer is no.  There’s enough chaos in my life without this.

Aaron: After that onslaught you can clear out for brain with Stephen Stills excellent acoustic workout

Tony: Yes, thank you, although I’m not quite sure that I understand your comment above Aaron.  But the rule is I just write my response and don’t call you, so on we go.  And thank you for this, because this is an interpretation that I can appreciate, not least because of Stephen Still’s sublime talent.

It’s not just that he is a great singer and a terrific guitarist, it is that he can get right inside the song and express it in a way that reflects the complete meaning of the song as a whole, as well as the meaning inside each line.  This is one of the few in this collection that I could contemplate coming back to and playing again.  Although not today.

Aaron: Just two more to go. Academy award winning director David Lynch gave it a go on his 2013 album The Big Dream

Tony: Hmmm, don’t particularly appreciate the illustration above, and the introduction of the vocal was a disappointment to me.  But they do change the instrumentation as we progress and that works.

But it does strike me that many of these musicians and producers, talented as they are, are not considering one particular point: most of the people listening to their rendition are going to know this song off by heart.  The really, really, really good re-interpreters of Dylan do consider this – they know we know the song by heart, and so they start from that point of familiarity and take us on a new journey, making a well-known road somehow different.

That is why Hendrix’ “Watchtower” worked – he just totally shocked us by taking the music to a new place, while still keeping it as a Dylan song.

This version does that in part, but still can’t deal with the fact that every verse is musically the same.  Dylan didn’t have to worry because when he sang it, it was new to us.  But now…

Aaron: Last up it’s brother of Pete, Mike Seeger (and special guest) from his 1995 album Third Annual Farewell Reunion album

Tony: OK I think this is the eighth consecutive Hollis Brown I’ve listened to.  I’m still here, feeling that perhaps I should have stopped after four versions, and come back another day.  But I didn’t and I find myself now looking out of my window….  My study where I write is upstairs and looks down on my garden in a village so old it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book.  At the end of the garden are four huge trees with branches and leaves blowing in the wind.  To try and do my bit for the continuity of the village I’ve planted two more trees in my time here, (I’ve been here 21 years) and they are flourishing.  Beyond is farmland, the manor house and church built maybe 400 years ago, and the river flowing exactly as described in the Doomsday report.   When examined by King William’s researchers there were 36 freemen here and six slaves.

This village was thus created over 1000 years before Hollis Brown lived and died, and maybe will continue for centuries after I’ve given up the custodianship of my little part of it.  Hollis Brown reminds me how phenomenally lucky I have been with my life, and I wonder what I did to deserve it.  And I wonder why the world has to be like this – and at how I sit here where ten centuries ago the lives of the people who lived here was indeed nothing but a question of having enough food to survive until tomorrow.

———–

You can read about other series on this site on the home page.

by  Larry Fyffe

Characteristic of the Post-Modern literary style, here’s Bob Dylan, singer / songwriter / musician, in the basement, mixing up the modern musical medicine show with the traditional murder ballad.

Below a murder ballad of yore:

She took him by his long yellow hair
And also by his feet
She plunged him into well water where
It runs both cold and deep
(Bob Dylan: Love Henry ~ traditional)

Rendered from a different perspective in the following lyrics:

She's begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He's pulling her down, and she's clutching on to his long golden locks
(Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)

The lines beneath from a murder ballad:

Well, Brady, Brady, Brady, well you know you done wrong
Breaking in here while my game's going on
Breaking down the window, busting down the door
Now you're lying dead on the barroom floor
Well, you been on the job too long
(Bob Dylan: Duncan And Brady ~ traditional)

Given a different slant in the following lyrics:

I'll suffer in silence, I'll not make a sound
Maybe I'll take the high moral ground
Some enchanted evening, I'll sing you a song
Black rider, black rider, you've been on the job too long
(Bob Dylan: Black Rider)

Perhaps, the low moral ground be taken in the lyrics beneath:

She screamed 'til her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor
And I covered her up, and then
Thought I'd go look through her drawer
(Bob Dylan: Fourth Time Around)

Another murder ballad (‘penknife’ being short for ‘penny knife’):

This Brown girl had a little penknife
Which was both keen and sharp
And betwixt the short ribs and long
She pricked fair Eleanor to the heart
(Bob Copper: Lord Thomas And Fair Eleanor ~ traditional)

The murder motif in the song above reflected in the one below:

Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back
And Rosemary on the gallows, she didn't even blink
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

In the following lyrics, the deadly theme rendered more in traditional style:

Then she raised her robe, and drew out her knife ...
Then she pierced him to the heart, and his blood did flow
(Bob Dylan: Tin Angel)

You can read details of some of recent series on the home page of this site and on the indexes at the top of the page by the picture of Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan’s  Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War Part 1

Bob Dylan’s Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War Part 2

Bob Dylan’s Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War Part 3

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Dylan’s Three Nobel Prize Classics Highlighting War and Aggression

In his brilliant Nobel Lecture in response to receiving the much-deserved 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan cites three specific influential books he read when young whose themes permeate all his work.[31] One is Homer’s Odyssey, already discussed, which Dylan describes as the struggle to return home from war. Another is Moby Dick, a complex masterpiece about the obsessive and ruinous revenge of the demented Captain Ahab.

The erudite Herman Melville, very well-read it’s well known, includes in the novel an extensive catalog of whaling lore and also a wide-ranging history of social injustice from the early nineteenth century back through antiquity. Dylan describes the white whale itself as an emperor and the embodiment of evil. The book features a strikingly diverse crew and contemplations on whiteness. “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” from “Bringing It All Back Home” in 1965 is a lengthy, humorous, and satirical tale about Captain Ahab (in the song called “Captain Arab”) discovering an immoral and hypocritical America. Dylan says that the book’s themes would work their way into more than a few of his songs.

The third of Dylan’s most influential books is the powerful anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which graphically details over and over again the horrors of war from World War I. Dylan vividly describes these distresses, a nightmare in which he says you lose faith in a meaningful world. After reading this he never wanted to read another war novel, and claims he never did. It led Dylan to despise the older generation who keep sending the young into the madness and torture of war, the message Dylan would repeat in “Masters of War” and in his speech accepting the Tom Paine award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Union.

All three of the books Bob Dylan cites as seminal to his work in his Nobel Lecture feature themes related to the damages of war, its challenging after-effects, and to aggressive obsession.

Masters of War Fifty Years Later and the Long, Lonesome Road

In Dylan’s interview with Bill Flanagan from March, 2017, appearing on bobdylan.com, Dylan discusses “Triplicate,” his collection from the great American songbook covered by Sinatra, as well as his own various changes since 1970.[32] Bob Dylan says, “From 1970 till now there’s been about fifty years, seems more like fifty million. That was a wall of time that separates the old from the new and a lot can get lost in this kind of time. Entire industries go, lifestyles change, corporations kill towns, new laws replace old ones, group interests triumph over individual ones, poor people themselves have become a commodity.” Dylan has clearly not abandoned his social concerns. Rather, he sees a wall of time since the 60s in which inequality has multiplied. Corporate interests have taken control, destroying towns and making individual people into commodities, mere pawns in the corporate profit margins.

Flanagan asks, “In Don McLean’s ‘American Pie,’ you’re supposed to be the jester.” Dylan responds, “Yeah, Don McLean, ‘American Pie,’ what a song that is. A jester? Sure, the jester writes songs like ‘Masters of War,’ ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,’ ‘It’s Alright, Ma’– some jester. I have to think he’s talking about somebody else. Ask him.” Dylan vehemently denies that his life is but a joke (he has been through that, along the watchtower). If he were the jester, he would not have written “Masters of War” and his related scorching songs, and he would not have continued singing them.

Even though in his more recent subversive songs Dylan is not always explicit about his protests, he has continued to speak out against systemic injustice, oppression, and masters of war. Dylan says in “Honest with Me” from “Love and Theft,” in 2001, “I’m not sorry for nothin’ I’ve done, I’m glad I fought—I only wish we’d won.” Like the Old Testament prophets, Dylan feels like his critiques of the masters of war and other oppressors have not been effective. The warmongers continue, but he has no regrets about his efforts.

Bob Dylan has at times been a recluse hiding from his fans, but now recognizes that he has not been alone in this struggle. “I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me,” Dylan sings in “Mississippi” from “Love and Theft” in 1997. Dylan is committed to continuing his never-ending mission, the faith on the long road which includes responding to injustice and warmongers, but also faithful, artistic expression in the many other realms Dylan has engaged throughout his brilliant career of singing the blues. In his recent tours Dylan’s singing is clear and luminous. In 2006 in “Ain’t Talkin” in “Modern Times” he sings,

All my loyal and much-loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road.

Dylan’s code and faith are non-explicit, enigmatic, but also never-ending, including communal concerns as well as poetic genius.

Murder Most Foul and Rough and Rowdy Ways

In March 2020 Dylan released the album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” amid a global pandemic in which all the people of the world were inextricably united in a life-and-death struggle with the Corona virus. Many people around the world sheltered in place seeking shelter from the storm of Covid. As a preview of the album the song “Murder Most Foul” was released early on bobdylan.com, the first original Dylan song released since the album “Tempest” in 2012. At almost seventeen minutes, it is the longest song Dylan has ever recorded, surpassing “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands” from 1966, “Brownsville Girl” from 1986, and even (by less than a minute) “Highlands” from 1997.

“Murder Most Foul” is an elegy for John F. Kennedy and his assassination, discussed previously in this article as an occasion for Dylan’s response to the aged militarists promoting war for the young, also referencing the information about the assassination in JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass, including JFK’s late opposition to war. The title of Dylan’s song echoes the “murder most foul” of Hamlet’s father the king.

Dylan includes many specific references and questions about the day of the assassination. These include the “long black Lincoln limousine ridin’ in the back seat, next to my wife” to “the grassy knoll,” which has been considered the site of the shot that actually killed Kennedy, perhaps from one of the “three bums comin’ all dressed in rags” as a disguise. He refers to the untenable, ludicrous “magic bullet” official theory of the assassination. Dylan includes the botched and buried autopsy where “they mutilated his body and took out his brain. What more could they do, they piled on the pain.” Dylan even quotes the ironic last sentence John Kennedy ever heard, from the wife of Governor John Connelly who was also in the car, “Don’t say Dallas don’t love you, Mr. President.” Dylan mentions “merchants of death,” directly recalling the masters of war. This song is quite explicit, a departure from the Theme Time Radio approach of masking subversive songs, though the many cultural references perhaps serve to hide this somewhat.

Much of “Rough and Rowdy Ways” recalls “Desolation Row,” with arrays of challenged characters reacting to an often brutal world. Among multitudes of themes, most of the songs have an ambience of violence and weapons or at least images of aggression. For brief examples, in “Black Rider” we hear “My soul is distressed my mind is at war. … I’ll take out a sword and hack off your arm.” The context of ancient Rome reappears. In “My Own Version of You” Dylan sings, “I ask myself what would Julius Caesar do.” Later in the song he sings, “I can see through the history of the whole human race. It’s all right there.” In his treatment of empire and wars Dylan indeed reaches overall patterns of human history. Later that verse adds, “Where the Trojan women and children were sold into slavery, Long ago before the First Crusade. Way back before England or America were made.” Here Dylan returns to Homer’s war, its patterns prefiguring all imperial conquest since.

“Mother of Muses” celebrates inspiration, love, and beauty. Yet also, “Sing of the Heroes who stood alone, Whose names are engraved on tablets of stone. Who struggled with pain so the world could go free.” Then Dylan celebrates generals who were positive, constructive masters of war rather than war profiteers.

Sing of Sherman - Montgomery and Scott
Sing of Zhukov and Patton and the battles they fought
Who cleared the path for Presley to sing
Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King

Sherman fought against Confederate slavery. Zhukov and Patton defeated Hitler, allowing the worthy in modern America. In the song “Crossing the Rubicon” Dylan sings as Julius Caesar proceeding from Rome across the Rubicon River to his conquest of Gaul. “The Rubicon is the Red River, going gently as she flows. Redder than your ruby lips and the blood that flows from the rose.” Here is foreboding, and the red blood will flow, including from Caesar himself upon his return and his own assassination. Caesar’s and President McKinley’s assassination in “Key West” precede JFK’s murder most foul.

Returning to the song “Murder Most Foul,” along with references to the actual Kennedy assassination, Dylan focuses on the reverberations of this murder in the decades since. In the 2017 Bill Flanagan interview Dylan speaks of the past fifty years as “a wall of time that separates the old from the new and a lot can get lost in this kind of time.” In the song Dylan refers to some historical consequences of the event, such as “your brothers are comin’ … we’ll get them as well.” Mostly Dylan recalls the intervening years to the present via cultural references, mainly through music and naming many specific songs and musicians, from Charlie Parker to Stevie Nicks. “Murder Most Foul” clearly evokes the lasting consequences of Kennedy’s murder, and with elements of other songs on “Rough and Rowdy Ways” confirms that Dylan’s ongoing response to injustice and masters of war have continued up to the present, along with all of his many other concerns.

Biographical note:

Rev. Taigen Dan Leighton PhD, Sōtō Zen Buddhist teacher, leads the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate congregation in Chicago. He is online professor at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Leighton’s ten books of Buddhist commentaries and translations include numerous references to Bob Dylan. Leighton’s Zen Questions includes an essay interpreting “Visions of Johanna” as a song about Zen Mind. Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness features discussions of “I’m Not There” and other Dylan songs.

[31]  The lecture was actually given in June, 2017. See comments in Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters, pp. 311-319.

[32]  http://www.bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/

Hi Bob,

A billion people will be saying the same thing to you today, and from what I know you’ll be sitting somewhere peaceful and quiet, with family and friends, just being you.

And why not?  If I make it to 80 I’d like to do that on my birthday too.  Just hanging out.  No big celebration, no speeches, no reflections, just those people who really matter to me and who kindly say I matter to them.  Family, friends, you know what I mean.

Of course you’ve not noticed us Bob, because well, I guess we’ve done this site for us, not for you.  And anyway you’ve got a load of other stuff to think about.

No, we’ve done it because we love what you’ve done for us.  And just occasionally in the wildest of the wild dreams that follow me through the nights, I think maybe you might get an inkling of just how you have touched us all.

There’s nothing my friends and I who work on this website can give you, except a big vote of thanks, and a sense that well, you did all that, and we did this, and maybe somewhere along the line, the two sides meet.

Cheers Bob.  Have a good day.  And for everyone’s sake, just keep on keeping on.  Tangled or untangled, I don’t really mind which.  As long as you are there.

And may I finally offer back to you as one final thing, a recording you’ve probably forgotten all about.  It is, for me, your unheralded masterpiece, and is with me every day.  (And not just because you say, “Ready Tony?” at the start).

I look at you and I smile.  How could it be any other way.

Tony.

By Tony Attwood

“All directions at once” is a series which looks at Bob Dylan’s writing as it evolves over time, rather than focusing entirely on individual songs or albums or an individual theme through Bob’s career.   The index of all the articles published so far is here.

I have been looking at Dylan’s work in the early 1980s, and called one episode “Dylan post Angelina: step by step it’s falling apart in all directions at once,” which took us up to the composition of “Foot of Pride.”

And falling apart certainly was the theme, and now not only falling apart in all directions at once but in all times at once, so that not only is this moment a mess so it is also impossible to understand the past, and inevitably the future.

Understandably expressing such a vision is difficult, and quite often painful, not least when there are legions of critics and fans pouring over your every word and every note, with the self-appointed, anxious to show that they have the definitive opinion, the clear understanding, the final word.  And their view seemed to be: Bob’s lost it.

Most people in their working lives try to do a decent job day by day.  If one has a bad day, well, everyone has bad days and people just shrug and let it go.  It’ll be all right tomorrow.

But consider the poor creative artist…  The actor’s interpretation of a part on stage or on film can be hammered by critics who have never acted in their lives.  Novels can be dismissed (“not as good as his earlier works…”) art can be incomprehensible (“what’s that supposed to be?”).  And as for the songwriter… Somehow every song is expected to be a masterpiece and the fans give the singer-songwriter hell if it isn’t.

And of course I join in, even though I know the pain of criticism of my own very modest work as a writer.  Except my view is that Bob has always gone for meanders into arenas where the songs don’t quite work.  And each time he has come back the stronger.

I think many writers have this experience – the difference is that we’ve got copies of most of the work Bob himself has rejected, and some of us feel that maybe Bob himself wasn’t the best judge of his own work, in terms of what should be released.

Even so, to say Bob went for a meander towards the end of the 1982/3 songwriting era is a little of an understatement.  A meander with a zig-zag, a couple of diversions, a 360 degree turn, and well, any other metaphors you can find for going walkabouts.

Yet what is amazing is that within that meander there are works of sublime genius which were by and large set aside… “Foot of Pride”, “Angelina”,  “I once knew a man”…

This last is so beyond the edge that it is not even listed on BobDylan.com, while Heylin (who to his credit does note it) calls it a re-working of an old blues, that still defeats attributionists.  He gives the song four lines in his 600 page review.

As for me, I think this song is brilliant, so yes, I have been an defeated attributionist on this occasion, as have many Untold readers who have helped me out.  We can’t find an original, and clearly nor could Heylin or else he wouldn’t have put the lack of a source down to the research failings of others.

All of which suggests it is a Dylan original.  Bob might have taken the song from elsewhere (and suggestions as to the source have been made on this site) but if Bob did, the changes he has made to the song are so profound, it has to count as an original.  I certainly don’t know a song that has the sort of complex rhythms in the opening line, nor do I know of anyone else who would write lines such as

I once knew a man opening a door
In by another
Opening a cupboard
Never to be here no more
Yeah I once knew a man

Well I once knew a man
Creeping in the side
Opening a door
Falling thru the floor
Setting someone for a ride
Yeah I once knew a man

This is certainly not just another 12 bar blues – rhythmically and lyrically it is way, way beyond that. Yet it seems that Bob was unconvinced too, for after performing the song just once we just seem to get sketchbook ideas and variants on other people’s work such as “Dirty Lie”, which is a straight copy of “Stray Cat Strut”).

In short Bob heads towards experimentation with no sense of direction (which is after all just another way of saying, “all directions at once”.  The results aren’t poor songs; there’s nothing wrong with “Go way little boy” written for  Lone Justice, for example, but it is not a great song in itself.  And songs such as  Drifting too far from shore are experiments which just don’t hit the high spots Bob has reached in the past.

I’ve always been an emotional person but this time 
    it was asking too much.
If there’s an original thought out there, 
    Oh, I could use it right now!
Yeah, I feel pretty good, but you know 
    I could feel a whole lot better,oh yes I could,
If you were just here by my side to show me how.

Now I’ve always been the kind of person that doesn’t like to trespass 
     but sometimes you just find yourself over the line.
Oh if there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now
You know, I feel pretty good, but that ain’t sayin’ much. 
     I could feel a whole lot better,
If you were just here by my side to show me how.

Way down in Mexico you went out to see a doctor 
     and you never came back.
I stayed there a while, till the whole place 
     it started feelin’ like Mars.

Way down in Mexico you went out to find a doctor 
     and you never came back.
I would have gone on after you 
but I didn’t feel like letting my head get blown off.

Indeed  Something’s Burning Baby, suggests everything is gone.  For “whereas we once knew, now we don’t.”  It sounds very much like the edge.

And that sums up Bob in this year.  He’s lost.  He knows he once had found the way, but now that is long since gone.  He can’t go back; indeed he doesn’t want to go back but where to go.  His sensational “I once knew a man” didn’t offer a new road.   There is no new road.  Worse, there’s no road at all.  All that is out there is darkness, looked upon with dark eyes.

The “All Directions” series will continue shortly.   There’s an index to some of our series at the top of the page under the picture, and there is more about our recent work along with contact details, on the home page.

• Gates Of Eden part I: The Lady In The Water
• Gates Of Eden part II: As if he was just taking dictation
• Gates Of Eden part III: Hello lamppost, nice to see ya
• Gates Of Eden part IV: Out of the depths have I cried
• Gates Of Eden part V: A wedding-cake left out in the rain
• Gates Of Eden part VI: The cowpuncher and the Golden Calf
• Gates Of Eden part VII: She-devils and wild angels
• Gates Of Eden: VIII. When everyone’s super… no one will be

—————

by Jochen Markhorst

IX         I’m The Greatest

The Kingdoms of experience / in the precious wind they rot
while paupers change possessions / each wishing for what the other’s got
An the princess an the prince discuss what is real an what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden  ____

After the break-up of The Beatles, Ringo merrily produces an immense pile of carefree, saltless rubbish, albums that sometimes end up in the trash cans of oblivion faster than in the sell-out bins. But every now and then there is a big surprise. Unthreatened at the top of Ringo’s Best Albums list is 1973’s Ringo, the record that features all-stars like The Band, Jim Keltner, Billy Preston and Marc Bolan, as well as all the Beatles, who generously donate five excellent new songs to their old drummer. McCartney presents the solid gem “Six O’Clock”. George Harrison comes through with three great songs: the brilliant “Photograph”, the irresistible “Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)”, which would have fitted right in on Music From The Big Pink and was indeed recorded with The Band, and the song with the album’s best intro, “You And Me (Babe)”. Lennon’s contribution is the shortest, but undeniably the greatest: the monumental “I’m The Greatest” – rightfully chosen as the opener.

“I’m The Greatest” is the only post-Beatles song to feature more than two ex-Beatles, both lyrically and musically one of the most Beatlesque solo songs ever written and a rare highlight in Ringo’s catalogue – one that brings together the best of Harrison and the best of Lennon. And both bassist Klaus Voormann and keyboardist Billy Preston, each a sort of Fifth Beatle anyway, excellently compensate Paul McCartney’s absence.

Five years later, in 1978, when Ringo plays himself in a trivial made-for-television comedy for NBC, again called Ringo, this is the song that introduces the protagonist, with a firm wink. Ringo, sitting blasé in the backseat of a limousine, surrounded by four beautiful ladies competing for his attention.  Like Ringo’s solo albums, the short film (45 minutes, still available in its entirety on YouTube) is filled to the brim with all-stars. Carrie Fischer, John Ritter, George Harrison, Angie Dickinson, to name but a few. Trivial, perhaps even a bit cheesy – Starr’s acting skills are on a par with his singing skills – but yet: somehow charming and entertaining. The script is set up as a frame story, and the first frame is a hectic press conference in which George Harrison tells us what happened today:

“Let me start Ringo’s story at the beginning. It seems two babies were born, the very same moment, the very same second in the very same country – England. Remarkably, both children, though born from different parents, looked exactly alike. One of the infants was taken to America, the other became quite well-known in certain circles.”

… immediately giving away the basis for this otherwise thin narrative. The same source that forms the basis for Garfield’s A Tail Of Two Kitties (2006), Netflix’s The Princess Switch (2018), Monte Carlo with Selena Gomez, Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd (1983), The Prisoner Of Zenda (1893), and dozens of other films, books, plays, TV series and even a video game (Beggar Prince, 1996): all adaptations of Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper from 1881.

This seventh verse is, apart from the last, the odd duck out in “Gates Of Eden”. “Kingdom”, “prince” “change possessions”, “pauper” and “each wishing for what the other’s got” is all little disguised – that refers straight to Mark Twain’s classic. Dylan stirs up the plot a little and adds a princess, but the association is inescapable – mainly thanks to the word choice “pauper”, of course. Dylan only uses the word pauper twice in his entire catalogue, and both times in a “Prince And The Pauper” setting: in this song and in “Song To Woody” (Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings).

Still, the opening line is alienating. The “Kingdoms of experience” (in the manuscript Dylan writes Kingdoms with a capital letter, later in the official Writings & Drawings and in Lyrics with a small letter, but then Experience with a capital letter) evokes, obviously, mind-expanding psychedelica, and may reveal some chemical influence. Which in itself does not affect the lyrics’ expressiveness, of course. The word combination kingdoms of experience, capitalized or not, pushes the listener’s expectation towards William Blake either way.

As it is, Blake’s The Gates Of Paradise and The Keys Of The Gates float throughout the song at all, also because of the thread Eden, but now there also seems to be a bridge to Songs Of Experience, which Dylan will namecheck 55 years later on Rough And Rowdy Ways. On the other hand: after that half association with Jewish mysticism by the appearance of a “lonesome sparrow” in the previous verse, “Kingdoms of Experience” leads, rather straight as well, to Jewish mysticism again. To the four “realms of experience” of the Kabbalah; the realms, or worlds, that embody the four dimensions of consciousness within human experience (our ability to think, to imagine, to sense, and to will, which together constitute our image of God).

It is a bit vague and certainly a bit far-fetched, but the poet seems to be floating on a stream of consciousness – indeed, the wildest associations might surface. It is not entirely unrelated though; after all, the Kabbalah tries to explain the relationship between the infinite God and the mortal, finite Creation. And both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the trees of Eden from the first verse, are the designated keys to unravelling that mystery.  

Dylan’s sequel, in the precious wind they rot, does, however, lead to the despondent conclusion that all our experience is meaningless; all those abilities don’t help us either, we still can’t distinguish what is real and what is not, we can’t know what is Good and what is Evil – but fortunately none of that matters inside the gates of Eden.

And well; tree, wind, rot… perhaps the unleashed poet is incorporating, in addition to Mark Twain, the Kabbalah and William Blake, unrelated echoes of one of the greatest songs of the twentieth century, Billie Holiday’s magnum opus “Strange Fruit” (1939);

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

… awarded one of the 100 “Best Songs of the Century” by Time Magazine on 31 December 1999. Dylan contributes just one song. According to Time, only Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is one of  the “songs of enduring beauty, power and inventiveness”.

But then again. “I’m The Greatest” did not even make that list. So there’s that.  

 To be continued. Next up: Gates Of Eden part X: Domus ad orientem solem

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

An index to the whole series can be found at Dylan and Hardy

By Larry Fyffe

In a vault of the ‘Untold Archives”, there’s a copy of the original rendition of a well-known song by Bob Dylan.

Exclusively for our dear readers, the original lyrics of the first verse of the song are revealed to go like this:

Tom Wessex Hardy
Was a friend to the poor
He travelled with Shelley to every land
All along the countryside
He opened many a book
He was never known to injure
A farmer's hand

Obviously, before the  song was recorded and released, the original lyrics were changed to make them more appealing to American audiences.

Exclusively again for our readers, the original lyrics of the second verse go like this:

'Twas down in Dorset County
A time he talks about
With Lady Emma by his side
He took a stand
And soon the situations there
Were all written out
Tom Hardy was never known
To leave unhurt the heroine

Here’s the original third and  final verse of “Tom Wessex Hardy” from the ‘Untold’ vault:

All across the telegraph
Tom's name it did resound
No charge of plagiarism against him
Could they prove
There was no critic around
Who could track or chain him down
He was hardly known
To make a foolish move

Note: in regards to “The Trumpet-Major”, Thomas Hardy was accused of plagiarizing bits concerning military drills, but he vehemently denied doing so.

Bob Dylan explains how he first became aware of the works of authors such as Thomas Hardy:

– typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all of that with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.

(Bob Dylan: The Nobel Lecture)

https://youtu.be/Swlh0MYuf5M

Limited laminated copies of Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “Tom Wessex Hardy” can be purchased by mail from the ‘Untold Offices’ at a very reasonable price!

Report by Tony Attwood, based on press releases

The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma will open on May 10, 2022, and details have been released as to what can be expected from the facility.

Those behind the project are avoiding the word “museum,” and instead are suggesting that it will be the “ultimate repository of Dylan artifacts”.   Overall it is said that there will be more than 100,000 “exclusive culture treasures” to be seen, including previously unseen or unheard recordings, filmed performances, photographs, lyric manuscripts and visual art.

As part of the preliminary publicity what is said to be the first ever recording of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” has now been released – just click on the link above.  It is said that it has previously not been made available, and dates from 1962.   It was apparently recorded in the New York apartment of Mell and Lillian Bailey.

Bob already has his trademark finger plucking style, plus the way he drops the last word of the last two lines of the song.  Oh yes and “like you never done before” is more grammatically correct, being rendered as “like you never did before.”

The non-museum will be in Tulsa’s arts district near the Woody Guthrie Center and the design is being worked on by 59 Productions who also worked on “David Bowie Is”.

Among the elements highlighted at the announcement of the project are an introductory “immersive film experience,” directed by Jennifer Lebeau; a screening room offering documentaries and concert performances, some previously unreleased; a facsimile recording studio, “where visitors will experience what it was like to be present at one of Dylan’s historic recording sessions”; a multimedia timeline covering Dylan’s entire life; a changing, curated display of artifacts housed within the archive; and a section of the museum dubbed the Columbia Records Gallery which will be devoted to deep dives into some of his most revered songs.

So, a bit like a physical version of Untold Dylan, but with fewer words!

Besides the previously unheard version of “Don’t Think Twice,” the Dylan Center has also released what they say is a newly discovered photograph of Dylan on stage when he toured with the Band, shot in 1974 by Barry Feinstein.  I’m hesitant about reproducing it as it comes with a very clear copyright notice – sorry about that.

Also at the centre, we are told, is a three-story tall image of Dylan taken in 1965, taken from a photo by Jerry Schatzberg.

You can become a founder member of the BobDylanCentre by visiting their website.  As a bonus you’ll also get lifetime memberships in the Guthrie Center.

———

And of course in case you can’t get there, we have our own museum of articles, including the series: Play lady play  in which we have collected together some of the prime selections of renditions of Dylan songs by female performers.

Bob Dylan’s  Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War Part 1

Bob Dylan’s Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War Part 2

by Taigen Dan Leighton

Workingman’s Blues #2

“Workingman’s Blues #2” from “Modern Times” is one of Bob Dylan’s most beautiful songs.[28] Among other things, it expresses concern about the murderous effects of poverty and inequality caused by social systems, with references to the masters of war. The song opens:

There's an evenin' haze settlin' over the town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak
Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory
It's a new path that we trod
They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad

There may not be another rock song with the word proletariat in it. The Rolling Stones did sing of the salt of the earth, John Lennon sang of a working-class hero, and many other fine political rock songs deal with class or war. In “Workingman’s Blues #2,” Bob Dylan effectively mourns the downfall of the working class, and the complete loss of a living wage for many honest workers who can no longer manage in the new reality. He adds a plea for peace and love:

My cruel weapons have been put on the shelf

Come sit down on my knee

You are dearer to me than myself
As you yourself can see

Then comes a reference to Woody Guthrie riding the rails 
   during the Depression:
I’m listening to the steel rails hum

Got both eyes tight shut
Just sitting here trying to keep the hunger from
Creeping its way into my gut

Dylan later expresses personal sadness that his previous efforts at encouraging change have been futile, a concern he repeats a few times in this period. He sings,

Sometimes no one wants what we got. Sometimes you can't give it away.

More lines evoke the effect of poverty, enforced by the masters of war, or perhaps by police states:

They burned my barn, and they stole my horse

I can't save a dime

I got to be careful, I don't want to be forced

Into a life of continual crime. …

All across the peaceful sacred fields

They will lay you low

They'll break your horns and slash you with steel

Then Dylan adds, with a sense of self-irony:

I say it so it must be so.

Before the final chorus, the last verse closes with a line about those who profit from inequality, echoing his closing damnation of the “Masters of War”:

Some people never worked a day in their life

Don't know what work even means

Richard Thomas points out numbers of lines in “Workingman’s Blues #2” that Dylan transforms from Ovid’s later period, when he was exiled by Augustus, who had converted the Roman republic into an empire. We might see this context as reinforcing Dylan’s concern about imperialist oppression.[29] More is going on in this song, as in all of Dylan’s later non-explicit subversive songs. The poignant “Workingman’s Blues #2” evokes memories of old lovers and friends, the fading of such memories, and the ultimate imminence of all loss in the touching line, “No man, no woman knows/ The hour that sorrow will come.”

Another line from “Modern Times,” from “Ain’t Talkin,” warns of the threat of the oppressors, “They will crush you with wealth and power, Every waking moment you could crack.”

The Early Roman Kings Back in the U.S.A.

For “Tempest” from 2012, Richard Thomas discusses how Dylan has adapted Homer’s Odyssey, using its lines and its themes of journeying and homecoming. Dylan has identified with the figure of Odysseus as trickster, traveler, adventurer, and storyteller, including having a statue of Odysseus’s patron goddess Athena (the Roman Minerva) onstage during his recent tours.[30] “Early Roman Kings” from “Tempest” further connects Rome and the American empire, and the arrogance of all imperial aggression. The song begins:

All the early Roman kings
In their sharkskin suits
Bow ties and buttons
High top boots
Drivin’ the spikes in
Blazin’ the rails
Nailed in their coffins
In top hats and tails

From their garb, these early kings of industry are like Dylan’s 19th century Americans, not two thousand-year-old Romans wearing togas.

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers
They buy and they sell
They destroyed your city
They’ll destroy you as well

Like the masters of war, they are profiteers from mass destruction. The ruin of cities also descends on individuals personally. These Roman kings brag,

I can strip you of life
Strip you of breath
Ship you down
To the house of death

These lines serve as a general threat to the audience. The modern context is confirmed in the following:

I was up on black mountain
The day Detroit fell
They killed ‘em all off
And they sent ‘em to hell

The song closes

I’ve had my fun
I’ve had my flings
Gonna shake em all down
Like the early Roman kings

This evokes the casual cruelty of both these early Roman kings and all the masters of war.

As Richard Thomas explicates, “Pay in Blood,” also from “Tempest,” directly echoes the vow by Odysseus when he finally reaches home to force his wife’s suitors besieging Ithaca to pay in blood. Here are a few lines from the song that additionally speak to themes from “Masters of War.” First, the song’s refrain:
I pay in blood, but not my own

Emperors and presidents always pay with others’ blood, mostly that of young soldiers and those they conquer, never with their own. Later in the song:

Our nation must be saved and freed

Oppressors always claim to be acting for the good of the nation, with God on our side. Then:

You’ve been accused of murder, how do you plead?

This sounds like “Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness?” in “Masters of War.

[28]  I am citing the original lyrics from the “Modern Times” album. Since the album Dylan has revised some of the lyrics including the last two verses. See http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/.

[29]  Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters, pp. 238-241.

[30]  Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters, pp. 254-265.

There is a full index of this series at Dylan and Hardy.

The most recent articles are

• Bob Dylan And Thomas Hardy (Part XVII)
• Bob Dylan and Thomas Hardy, part XVIII

By Larry Fyffe

In the poetic lines beneath, all along the shore by the Jungian waves, two sea horse riders are approaching – the winds begin to howl:

No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
(Thomas Hardy: Lines Composed On The Loss Of The Titanic)

The song lyrics below seem a tribute paid to the blue Titanic writer from the Late Victorian era:

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
(Bob Dylan: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue)

A verse of regret from the poet:

I look into my glass
And view my wasting skin
And say, 'Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
(Thomas Hardy: I Look Into My Glass)

From the singer/songwriter/musician:

Oh, I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head, and cried
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine)

Below, the poet ponders the mystery of time, and of life and death:

Yet is it that, through whiling
Through time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling
I live not now
(Thomas Hardy: The Dead Man Walking)

The flight of time figures into the following song lyrics:

Ain't talking, just walking
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burning, still yearning
No one on earth would ever know
(Bob Dylan: Ain't Talking)

In the poem beneath, fleeting love shoots by:

You love not me

And love alone can lend you loyalty
I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name
Was it not worth a little hour or more
(Thomas Hardy: A Broken Appointment)

And this in a Universe that gives not a damn as to what is going to happen:

I don't sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above
One more cup of coffee before I go
(Bob Dylan: One More Cup Of Coffee)

Darkling visions these two riders see –  momentary shadows on the stones are we – and what’s worse, deserving of little pity:

And the thin note of pity that came: "A king's daughter is she" ...
Enghosted seers, kings - one on horseback who asked "Is it peace?" 
Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreal
(Thomas Hardy: Jezreel)

And now a little grave humour to help matters along:

The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits 
To Jezebel the nun who violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues

And some music too as the Titanic goes down:

Sing ballad-singer from your little book
Make me forget these heartbreaks, achings, and fears
Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look
Make me forget her tears
(Thomas Hardy: The Ballad-Singer)

In case you missed it: Bob Dylan and the Faithful Symmetry

If you would like to write for Untold Dylan please email Tony@schools.co.uk

by Jochen Markhorst

• Gates Of Eden part I: The Lady In The Water
• Gates Of Eden part II: As if he was just taking dictation
• Gates Of Eden part III: Hello lamppost, nice to see ya
• Gates Of Eden part IV: Out of the depths have I cried
• Gates Of Eden part V: A wedding-cake left out in the rain
• Gates Of Eden part VI: The cowpuncher and the Golden Calf
• Gates Of Eden part VII: She-devils and wild angels

VIII       When everyone’s super… no one will be

Relationships of ownership wait outside the wings
Of those condemned t act accordingly waiting for succeeding kings
An I try t harmonize with songs / the lonesome sparrow sings
All men are kings inside the gates of Eden  ____

Remarkably, it is an apocalyptic image to Jewish mystics, a solitary singing sparrow. And linked to the Garden of Eden, too. The Tree of Life is the tree whose blossom produces souls. The souls fall from the tree into the Guf, the “Treasury of Souls” in the Seventh Heaven, and Gabriel plucks from the Guf the souls that go down to a new embryo. Sparrows are the only creatures that can see this descent – and they start chirping happily every time they see one come down. But one day, the Tree of Life will bring forth its last soul. On that day, only one single lonely sparrow will sing – his last song, for when the last soul has descended, the Messiah will come and Judgement Day will dawn. The world will come to an end. The soundtrack of the Apocalypse, therefore, will not be a swan’s song, but a lonesome sparrow singing.

In the draft version of the sixth verse (fifth verse of the final album version), only this third verse line is completely unchanged. “Wait outside the wings” in the first line changes into they whisper in the wings. Hardly drastic, but both lyrically and poetically an improvement, indeed. Rhythmically, the fourteener’s iambus is restored (Relationships of ownership they whisper in the wings), with the poetic by-catch of assonance (ships – ship – whis – in – wings) and lyrically, whisper is stronger, has more expressiveness than wait. In the sketch version, “smile” is added (in brackets) over the word “wait” – apparently the poet feels a need to upgrade this phrase already in the draft phase.

Even more insignificant is the change in the second line; “of those” becomes to those, and “waiting’ becomes and wait – both merely adjustments to the shifted semantics. Radical, however, is the change of the last line, of the chorus line.

In fact, the young poet only changes two words. “All men are kings” becomes There are no kings. But in terms of content, of course, quite a lot happens: all the kings in Eden, all the men, lose their crown. It is a mass, collective abdication – or impeachment, who knows – quite unique in our cultural history.

The operation reveals a number of things. To begin with, the poet seems to regard the verses as closed tableaux. After all, for the transcending eloquence, for the power or impact of the lyrics as a whole, it makes no difference whether everyone in Eden is a king or no one is royal. And second, that Dylan does attach some importance to logic.

Somewhere in the months between conception in June and the live debut 31 October 1964, Dylan comes to a similar realisation as in “Who Killed Davey Moore?”, where everyone is guilty and so no one is guilty, a similar realisation as the vengeful Buddy a.k.a. “Syndrome” in Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004):

“When I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super… [laughs maniacally]…no one will be!”

… Dylan recognises, in short, the levelling effect of the Tall Poppy Syndrome. If you elevate everyone to the status of king, as he does in the sketch, then no one is elevated anymore. For the status of the inhabitants of Eden, of course, it makes no difference whether everyone is a king or not – but apparently the poet is disturbed by the inherent contradiction, and chooses the safer, linguistically more logical “there are no kings”. That the analysts who are so keen to see political overtones in Dylan’s lyrics are now being handed a kind of plea for a classless society, he takes the rough with the smooth. Christian fans, on the other hand, will be less happy with the implication that there is no Supreme King in Eden either – which is rather at odds with the Bible.

Anyway, it’s a nice one-liner, there are no kings inside the gates of Eden – but not the most popular, not the most quoted from this verse; that still is the lonesome sparrow sings.

The sparrow is a spiteful bird

The sparrow has been a much-sung birdie throughout the ages. Precisely because of its unremarkable mediocrity, of course. “The sparrow with its simple notes,” as Walt Whitman says. Not much different with Dante, Baudelaire, Grimm, Blake, Shakespeare (“Something as trivial as a sparrow’s death,” Hamlet) or Villon; with all poets through all ages, a sparrow is used to illustrate “ordinary”, unspectacular. Heine, of course, then recognises some satirical potential, and uses sparrows to ridicule the bourgeois, trite art appreciation of Philistines:

They gaze, with glances that glisten,
On each romantic thing;
With ears like asses they listen
To hear the sparrows sing.

Only with the Ancient Greeks, with Homer and Aeschylus for example, do the sparrows have a more colourful symbolic meaning; there they symbolise something like “stupid and lust-driven”. And Chekhov has something against them too:

“The sparrow doesn’t matter, he’s a bad, spiteful bird. He is like a pickpocket in his ways. He doesn’t like man to be happy. When Christ was crucified it was the sparrow brought nails to the Jews, and called ‘alive! alive!’”
(A Day In The Country, 1886)

Dylan must have come across the little bird mainly in his jukebox, though. In each variation of “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies” (“The Little Sparrow” by The Country Gentlemen, “Single Girl” by Peter, Paul And Mary, “Fair And Tender Ladies” by Anita Carter) Dylan sings along with

I wish I were some little sparrow
And I had wings and I could fly
I'd fly away to my false true lover
And when he'd speak, I would deny

… and no doubt the bard is familiar with the old gospel classic “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” (1905) too, which uses sparrow just like all those songs, poems, fables and heroic tales do:

Why should I feel disgrace and why should the shadows come
Why should my heart feel lonely and long for a heavenly home
When Jesus is my fortress and my constant frantisy
His eye is on the sparrow and I know he cares for me

… to represent, in other words, insignificance or mundanity. This also seems to be the intention here in “Gates of Eden”. It’s the first time a first person is given a supporting role in the song (a first person who only returns in the very last verse), and this I-person seems to be eager to stress his own insignificance. Dylan places him between “relationships of ownerships’, “succeeding kings” and again “kings in Eden”, and has him subordinate himself to a lonely sparrow – he tries to harmonize with the songs the lonesome sparrow sings.

It is a beautiful, humbling and, well alright, apocalyptic image. The correction of the last line, There are no kings inside the gates of Eden, is still appropriate in this context. “There are no souls inside the gates of Eden” would have been even nicer, perhaps. Well, more ominous anyway.

To be continued. Next up: Gates Of Eden part IX:

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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